Letter From the Deputy Editor: How to Build a Winning Team

Rajasthan won the championship not merely on the field but through administrative reforms off the field as well

Winning, it is said, is a habit. Individuals or teams that win frequently know how to escape the trapdoors of defeat. They know how to keep going mentally and physically for that extra minute that tires their opponents into surrender. Winning combinations can battle their demons and find a way to overcome them. When the pressure to perform is at its peak, winners bring out their best move. What happens if you have never known the winning feeling? As the Eagles (almost) sang: “… haven’t had that (winning) feeling since 1969”! Asking such a unit to win is equivalent of you or me doing the Roman Rings at the Olympics. There will be only broken bones and shattered ego on display.

Somebody forgot to tell the Rajasthan Cricket Team all this. Before the 2011 season, they had little to show in domestic competitions, especially the premier Ranji Trophy. The Rajasthan team was the proverbial minnow. The purpose of their existence seemed to be to provide the other team with 5 points to advance through the league. Rajasthan changed the script to cast themselves as the winners of this year’s Ranji Trophy. And they won the championship not merely on the field but through administrative reforms off the field as well. They were gutsy and dominating, as champions should be. They could be in that mental frame of mind because the Rajasthan Cricket Association officials set aside factionalism to create a player-friendly environment. The officials took some radical decisions like importing some talent from outside the state. They combined the radical with the incremental and took small but important decisions like investing in their players’ medical care. The players returned the favour by not losing even one match and posting massive totals in almost all their matches.

This story holds a great deal of insights that can be used by our own Men in Blue and their Captain Fantastic to best all the other sides in World Cup 2011. As my colleagues, Special Correspondent Udit Misra and Principal Photographer Amit Verma, discovered while working on this story, the one critical thing that Rajasthan can show Team India is that to be a champion you should believe that you are the champion, dominate your opposition and once you have them on the mat, keep them down in a deadlock till they scream: “Concede”!

Here’s looking at the Cup!

Modern loneliness is an extraverted loneliness, in which the person is surrounded by many people and partakes of much communication but feels unrecognized and more alone than he would like to..

Second Modern Paradox: People's best efforts often fail not because the aren't working hard enough, but because they are working too hard.

Do We Need More Ecological Intelligence?

Daniel Goleman, the author of the bestselling Emotional Intelligence, says that the growing field of industrial ecology can give us simple ways to evaluate the relative environmental impacts of consumer products—and help us restore a lost capacity for understanding our surroundings.

Q: You've written books on emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and now ecological intelligence. Would you talk about the idea of multiple intelligences?

The big idea is that, although while we're in school it seems that the only intelligence that counts is the academic sort, as you live your life, it's clear that there are other abilities that matter immensely, for personal happiness, for relationships, for success, for teamwork, for leadership. The rubric "emotional intelligence” was conceived by Peter Salovey, who is now the provost at Yale, with Jack Mayer, who is now at the University of New Hampshire. At that time I was working with the New York Times, doing science writing, although I'm a psychologist. I saw that concept and I thought, wow, that really organizes a lot of understanding.

Ecological intelligence is a completely theoretical construct. It's one that I developed to explain why it is that we have entered the Anthropocene Age. The Anthropocene Age, geologists tell us, began with the Industrial Revolution and is the first geological era in which the activity of one species, humans, is driving biogeochemical systems that sustain global life—unfortunately in the wrong direction.

It struck me that in order to have survived, any human group needed to understand and have an exquisite attunement to its local ecosystem. This is what ecological intelligence is. It's the way native peoples everywhere have survived, wherever they lived, whether the desert or the tundra. And with the Industrial Revolution, we began a huge disconnect between what sustains us and its origins. We have only the vaguest idea what transpired in order for us to get the things that we now depend on to live. And so there has been an enormous, species-wide de-skilling in ecological intelligence, and to our detriment.

Q: So we have ecological intelligence, but it was designed for another context?

We have the capacity for ecological intelligence. It's stunted in modern societies because we don't grow up learning, for example, what's poisonous and what's nutritious. We have specialists who know it. A mycologist can tell you this mushroom will kill you and that one is good to fry. But now it's specialized information.

Q: Do we need to train our brains to have ecological intelligence? How do we do that?

I think what we need is an information prosthetic. And luckily those systems have just been developed.

We need to understand how our daily activities, the things we do and the things we buy, impact the major systems that sustain life. And industrial ecology is a new field that connects those dots. It studies how human systems like energy systems, transportation systems, and industry impact natural systems. And it does it in a very fine-grained way, using life-cycle assessments [LCA].

It would, say, take this tape recorder and break it down into the 1,000-plus discreet steps over its entire life cycle, from when you started to extract the chrome ore you're going to mix with pig iron to make the stainless steel, or the trace amount of rare metals that are in it that are mined in parts of Africa that are run by warlords who use child labor in the mines. LCA can measure a wide array of environmental, health, and social consequences of every single step in the life cycle. And you can aggregate all that data and give this item a score vis-à-vis another tape recorder you might buy.

Those scores are now becoming transparent at point of purchase. This is the big, disruptive technology moment. There is now a system called GoodGuide.com, which has an iPhone app. It aggregates about 200 databases and gives a single score to about 65,000 products on their eco-virtue—10 being the best, 1 being the worst—and you can unpack it and get the details. It's really just a proof of concept—it shows that it can be done. The state of the art would base those scores on LCAs done by the companies. But we're not there yet.

Walmart, actually, is driving its suppliers in that direction. They’re asking 100,000 suppliers to provide data such as energy footprint; partially diminished fractions of an ecosystem; disability-adjusted life-years, which is a public health unit. If this happens, it's going to create an entirely new metric that will, in turn, create a competitive battlefield for companies. And the only way to win will be to perpetually find ways to become more sustainable in operations.

Q: Do you see a movement toward a common metric, or are there going to be a bunch of different ones?

It's too early to tell. I know, for example, that Walmart has co-founded a sustainability consortium to develop an eco-index that they plan to use in their stores in five years. Best Buy and some other big-box stores are in it, as well as some suppliers. And there's, I understand, an internal debate over whether to use a system called Earthster, which is an LCA-based, open-sourced, supply-chain management tool. Since it's open-source, it lets companies see what their sector average is and then, in turn, answer a question like, if we made this change in this supplier—say, if we no longer got palm oil that was from forests in Indonesia that had been clear cut but rather from more sustainable providers—how much will it improve our score?

I don't know how it's going to work out. But I do think that, in order for the system to work at all, whatever becomes the standard has to be credible. It needs to be LCA-based and done by experts. It needs to be certifiable, independently audited, and transparent.

Q: And do you imagine the result would be a single index number? Or a series of scores?

I imagine a single index number that is transparent, so you can dig down and see how that was arrived at.

Q: And that might involve new forms of information technology where you could run your iPhone over a product and the breakdown would show up?

Yes, at the consumer end you can go shopping with it and use a GoodGuide-like app. You put it on the Webkinz Pink Pony, and you see that, on a scale of 10, it got a 3.5. Why is that? It's because of the chemicals in the Pink Pony, so you don't buy the Pink Pony. You buy another Webkinz toy which got an 8.3. And you do that right on the spot, just looking at your iPhone.

How Can We Plan For the Long Term?

Businesses need to try to peer 30 or more years into the future as they make investment decisions. How can they separate long-term trends and opportunities from the rush of the present? Strategist George Friedman, author of The Next 100 Years, says to look at constraints, not possibilities.

Q: In The Next 100 Years you point out that extraordinary unexpected changes actually happen as a matter of course: Londoners in 1900 likely felt that they were securely in the center of the world, someone in Japan or Germany in 1950 would have had a hard time believing those countries would rebuild to become the second and third largest economies by the end of the century, and someone in China in 1970 would have as hard a time imagining the country would become the fourth largest economy by 2007. How do you go about looking into the future to make forecasts?

By looking at constraints, not possibilities. The most interesting aspect of any political or business decision maker is what he can't do, because of political or market decisions. We spend most of our time eliminating the impossible or the improbable. Many policy makers act as if they had an infinite palette to choose from. In fact they have very few choices. For example, when we said that there would be very little change in foreign policy after President Obama took office, it was based on an understanding that whatever he subjectively may have wanted to do, he had very few options, and that he would basically continue President Bush's foreign policy. We forecast, particularly geopolitically, by eliminating the impossible, then looking at what's left.

Q: You predict the rise of countries like Turkey, Mexico, and Poland in coming decades. What do businesses do with this sort of information now?

Companies need to be looking 20 or 30 years into the future for their investments. That will cause them to identify opportunities that most people think are preposterous, but if you look at countries as if they were companies, rising and falling, you want to identify not those who have already reached the top, where the herd is, but those that are beginning to emerge.

The time to have invested in Germany was in 1950. The time to have invested in China was 1975 or 1980. We speak about 30 or 40 years of emergence. That appears to be a very long time, but in 1975 China would have been a very interesting country to invest in. That was 35 years ago.

Q: Do businesses just need to assume that major political upheaval might render their investments completely valueless?

That's always a possibility. In fact, it's common. I mean, one of the things that interests me about business leaders is that they regard political events as black swans, yet if we look at the past century, the exceptional events have been the major definers of the international system. The Great Depression had far more to do with the First World War than it had to do with any decision the Fed made.

It's extremely important to understand two things. Geopolitical events are a constant shaper of the business environment. And these events have a degree of predictability. The only certain erroneous assumption is to think that geopolitical events will not reshape the marketplace dramatically in the course of an investment. It always does.

In the 20th century, 17% of the time, the United States was involved in a major multidivisional war. So far in the 21st century it's been almost 100% of the time. You don’t have the option of pretending that the only issues are business and market issues, because both of them are constantly being shaped and reshaped by political and geopolitical forces. Any investment made right now in the financial community is heavily dependent on the political process. An investment made in the energy industry is heavily dependent on geopolitical processes. So the option of not taking these into account just isn't there.

Q: Is it something you see companies doing well?

No, I think companies are very poor at making these judgments because they tend to focus in on the economics of the deal, without understanding the manner in which economics is reshaped by outside forces. Many companies made substantial investments in Russia in the 1990s without understanding that the situation at that point was the outlier and not the future of Russia. So many of the investments they made were at risk.

The other problem that businesspeople have is their obsession with relationships. Relationships are crucial, but too many businesspeople forget that as things change the people they have the relationships with may no longer be there or may not be important. It’s kind of like building a business in Los Angeles and being shocked when an earthquake comes. Geopolitical upheavals are constant. If you're going to have relationships, you'd better understand the politics of the situation. War and disruption: that's the way the system works, and it's going to affect you.

Q: Are there businesses or whole industries that are notably more sophisticated in their approach to geopolitics?

Energy is one business that I think is pretty smart. I also think that retail that sells overseas is pretty smart. They tend to think in very granular ways. The companies that tend not to be very sophisticated are those that are running after wage differentials. I'm going to set up a factory in China and make a lot of money because I can produce cheaper. They fail to understand how temporary the wage differential is. They fail to understand the politics.

In general, European companies are far more sophisticated in dealing with their foreign investments than American companies. That's not always the case, but it is generally. Americans tend to assume that all reasonable people will behave as someone from Wisconsin might. I'll give you an example that I think is quite telling. I was talking to someone in China, pointing out a case of corruption when a person got a job and hired all his relatives. The person I was talking with said, "That's not corruption. Who should I hire, if not my blood? I cannot think of anything more immoral than the American position that you should hire indifferent to your obligations. What kind of people are you?" That was a very telling moment. An American businessman looks at Chinese practices and immediately assumes they're corrupt, oblivious to the fact that the Chinese look at Americans and think of them as monsters. The Europeans, I think, are more sophisticated, having been imperial monsters themselves.

Q: When a company comes to STRATFOR, what are they seeking?

Well, normally they would like to know everything about a particular subject. We point out they can't afford it, so we help them focus down on what they do know and what they really need to know. Usually they have a tremendous amount of information—they just don't know they have it. From there we identify very clearly the information they must have to make their decisions. Then we try to get that.

Jaipur: The Hub For Dental Tourism

In search of cheap, reliable treatment, foreign tourists are combining sightseeing with doctor’s appointments in Jaipur

Natalie Shaw has plenty to smile about. A 45-day holiday exploring the palaces and forts of Jaipur and other cities ought to be reason enough, but the real sparkle comes from the fact that she managed to save about 1,920 pounds (Rs. 1.36 lakh) during this trip.

The savings come from her decision to get her dental treatment done in Jaipur. Back home in London, a root canal and teeth whitening procedure would have cost her around 2,200 pounds (around Rs. 1.56 lakh), which was “frightfully expensive”. She had consulted her medical insurance company, which advised her to check out a dental hospital in Jaipur in India. Treatment here cost her only around 280 pounds (Rs. 20,000)!

“That’s when I decided to come to India. For the money that I would pay my dentist in London, I could afford air tickets as well as a holiday package,” says the advertising executive, whose entire holiday, including the dental treatment, cost her Rs. 1.45 lakh (about 2,042 pounds).

She confirmed her appointment with Dr. Balvinder Thakkar at his Jaipur Dental Hospital six months before her visit last November.

In between weekly sittings, she saw most of Rajasthan, Goa, Agra and Mount Abu. “The sittings were planned in such manner that she could holiday and cover as many places as possible and come back in time for her treatment,” says Thakkar.

Tourists like Shaw “pick out a destination for travel and plan their appointment with a dentist in advance. Over the years, this arrangement became more formal with tour operators making dental care a part of their package and the phenomenon came to be known as dental tourism,” says Naresh Jadeja, president of the US-based International Wellness and Healthcare Travel Association (IWHTA). The association is a collaboration of hospitals and medical professionals that helps provide information on medical facilities across the globe.

Kerala and Goa have been dental tourism hubs for decades. Now Jaipur has become a surprise addition to this list, with about 15 sophisticated hospitals coming up in the past five years.

Here the dentists too double up as travel agents. “The hospitals plan patients’ tours across the country and help with local guides,” says Thakkar. He too has set up a travel agency and is a sales agent for Palace on Wheels, the luxury tourist train operated by Rajasthan government. “We have also set up a farmhouse where we provide accommodation for our patients, should they desire so,” he says.

Many of the big hospitals have tied up with insurers abroad and tour operators locally. They also advertise abroad in newspapers and magazines, and on Web sites.

Why foreigners find India and Jaipur so attractive is because of the high cost of dental treatment and the long waiting lists associated with government health schemes back home.

A study by the IWHTA says that close to one-third of the people in the US do not have dental insurance. “Even the insured struggle because a surgery could cost anywhere between $3,000 and $15,000 per tooth and the insurers pay only $1,000 to $1,500 per year. Only bare minimum treatments or procedures are covered under insurance and not costly, cosmetic or laser dentistry surgery,” says the report. The case is similar in the UK and in most parts of the Western world.

A 2008 survey by Intuition Communication, a UK-based consultancy that specialises in medical tourism, showed that 90 percent of the respondents wanted to go abroad to avail cheaper dental care. Seventeen percent of those interviewed also said that the National Health Service (UK’s public health care system) waiting list was long and if they needed quick relief, they’d prefer going abroad.

While no official figures are available on the size of Jaipur’s industry, Thakkar says, “Dentists in Jaipur have earned over Rs. 8 crore from tourists in the past one year alone.”

Jaipur is an unlikely destination to emerge as a hub for dental tourism. It didn’t have a single dental college until 1983. Other destinations like Kerala and Goa get more visitors/patients because they have a stronger and older heritage in dental care. Kerala, for instance, treated close to 10,000 foreign patients last year, according to an estimate by Thomas K. Paulose, a leading dentist. The unofficial estimate for Jaipur is a mere 2,000 over the last five years. Dentistry as a profession has been in existence since the 1950s in Kerala. Plus the state has a massive population of non-resident Indians who, for several decades, have been getting their dental treatment done during visits home.

Why Madhu Kela Moved Out of Reliance MF

Madhusudan Kela earned a formidable reputation as a stock-picker and built Reliance into India’s biggest mutual fund. And then he had a rethink

O

n a warm Delhi evening in 2006, star fund manager Madhusudan Kela and his trusted lieutenant Sunil Singhania were at a dinner with the promoter of food processing company REI Agro. The firebrand duo from Reliance Mutual Fund was considering an investment in the up and coming firm. The company had also arranged their visit to the factory the following morning. But as the dinner progressed and the chat kept coming back to REI Agro’s future plans, Kela became more and more excited. He asked the promoter if they could visit the plant immediately after dinner instead of the next day. Taken aback, the entrepreneur nevertheless said yes. So it was around midnight that Reliance Mutual Fund decided to make one of its most daring bets.

Passionate. Impatient. Instinctive. Crafty. These are some of the adjectives that the mutual fund industry knows Madhu Kela by. He is the man who built the equity funds of Reliance MF from Rs. 13 crore in 2001 to a record-breaking Rs. 40,000 crore in 2010, helping the fund house become India’s largest in the process.

For awestruck rivals and happy investors, he was the Enduring Atlas, the titan who held up the heavens for all. A man who had the nose for multibaggers much before anybody else did.

Like the time when he had a chat with a Kingfisher airhostess on a flight from Delhi to Mumbai. That led him to do more research on the sector, and he decided to invest in SpiceJet. Or when he took a close look at Adani Enterprises in 2006 when it was just a trading firm and bet on its future. Or even the investment he made in Jindal Steel & Power in 2003 and saw its market capitalisation zoom by 40 times within six years.

Over time, Madhu Kela became the embodiment of smart stock picking and hundreds of thousands of investors trusted him with their money. He became the icon of ‘bottoms-up’ investing, picking scalable long-term opportunities with the help of rigorous balance sheet scrutiny and intense research of corporate plans. Under his watch, Reliance MF beat ICICI Prudential in a neck-and-neck race to the top spot in asset size.

But then, why has Kela suddenly changed his investment style? Why has he left the mutual fund to work at Reliance Capital, its sponsor? And why is he furiously hiring industry experts from across multiple fields, employing one even to study inflation exclusively?

Clearly, there is something fundamental that is changing at Reliance Mutual Fund, the lone trillion-rupee fund house in the country.

Four months ago, in an extremely silent move, Kela moved out of the mutual fund to Reliance Capital as chief investment strategist. It took a while for outsiders to notice this change, but when they did, speculation flew thick and fast. It came at a time when the Anil Ambani group, which owns the mutual fund, was negotiating a settlement with the market regulator over charges of misusing funds raised abroad. It also came at a time when its flagship equity fund, the midcap-focussed Reliance Growth, had begun to underperform the stock market.

Only when Kela began work at his new role, the contours of the change became clearer. Kela is turning his own investment philosophy on its head and is chiseling a ‘top-down’ approach as against a ‘bottoms-up’ one. This means studying the macro swings in the economy and industry and spotting multi-year trends that will yield investment opportunities. It is what the best international fund houses do. But this also requires casting the net wide and hiring domain experts. Exactly what Kela has set out to do.

“I have always looked at a company’s individual financial parameters and never really bothered about what is happening in the outside world,” Kela recalls in an interview with Forbes India. “But the 2008 crisis affected our portfolios and that is the time we decided to concentrate on the macro factors as well.”

A Salesman Par Excellence

Early in his career, Kela clearly showed his ability to see the big picture. A commerce graduate who also studied management at Mumbai University, he spent several years in the ‘sell side’ of the markets before defecting to the ‘buy side’ mutual funds.

Kela was instrumental in setting up the institutional desk at brokerage Motilal Oswal in the Nineties. “Madhu Kela managed to earn himself a reputation as a sales person because he used to put himself in the shoes of the fund managers and work closely with the research team,” says Ramdeo Agarwal, director and co-founder of Motilal. “There was an excellent relationship between the sales and the research team and Madhu was passionate about the business.”

His success at Reliance largely comes from the team he built in the early 2000s. With a ten-minute talk, he convinced Sunil Singhania, then of Advani Share Brokers, to join him. They often hunted in a pair, mainly through the vehicle of Reliance Growth.

One of their biggest bets was Jindal Steel & Power. In 2003, the doyen of the group, O.P. Jindal, had not yet got the market recognition that his companies later earned. The fund managers saw a gap between reality and the perception of the management by the market. They picked Jindal Steel & Power when its market capitalisation was a mere Rs. 300 crore. Their view was that profits will grow by four or five times in the following years. But they were in for a pleasant surprise. Profits went up by 40 times and market capitalisation rose 200 times in the next seven years. The P/E multiple moved up from 3 times to 15 times.

The Kela-Singhania team hit another home run when it invested in liquor company Radico Khaitan at a time when the business was a loss-making proposition and investors typically avoided the sector. They made 15 rupees for every rupee they put in. Similarly, with Pantaloon, they earned five times their investment.

Being the Boss

Unless you manage the context in which your team resides, there's no way that your team can be successful

Nineteen years ago, Harvard Business School professor Linda A. Hill wrote the first edition of her book Becoming a Manager, detailing the experiences of several first-year supervisors who were making the daunting transition from star performer to novice boss. Since then, she has found that the now-classic book is popular not just among newbies but also among leaders with decades of experience.

"I've always been surprised by why on earth they're reading a book about becoming a manager," Hill says. "What I've come to understand is that many of them never really made the psychological transformation from being an individual contributor to being a manager, and it really resonates with them when they read the book. Many of them are not fulfilling their potential. They're well intended, but a fair number of them derail or kind of get stuck." will specifically targets that audience in her new book, Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader, cowritten with Kent Lineback.

"This book was written to benefit experienced people who are trying to go from good to great," Hill says.

Being the Boss describes the challenges that good bosses face as they endeavor to manage themselves, manage their networks, and manage their teams. In short, being a good boss is about much more than wielding authority.

"I've seen so many people get that wrong," says Lineback, himself a former executive. "They think authority defines them. I've had bosses who had to resort to saying, 'I'm the boss!' And when you get to that point, you've lost it."

In the following interview, Hill talks about the difficulties of striking a balance between management and leadership in the age of globalization and remote offices.

Carmen Nobel: Your book discusses three imperatives for becoming a great leader: managing yourself, managing your network, and managing your team. What are some of the issues inherent in each of them?

Linda Hill: It starts with using yourself as an instrument to get things done. And because you're the instrument, you've got to know that instrument very well and use it appropriately, so that your imprint matches your impact. We talk a lot about what it really means to be the boss. For instance, although you do have formal authority, you don't want to have to rely on that too much to get things done.

Managing your network is in the middle of the book, before the section on managing your team. That kind of throws some people because when you think about being the boss, you mostly think about the people who report to you. But unless you manage the context in which your team resides, there's no way that your team can be successful. So you have to understand the political dynamics, you have to understand how to build a network with peers and bosses, and you have to set the right expectations for your team and the right resources. We really think that's at the heart.

The last piece is your team. That's about all the complexities of what it means to build a team—a team is different from just a group—and how you think about managing the performance of individuals. We also talk about preparing for the future—that managing isn't all about today, it's also about managing your team for tomorrow.

Q: You include a chapter called "Don't Forget Your Boss." Managers often fail to realize their role in their relationships with their bosses. What do they need to keep in mind?

A: It's common to let the person up the chain be most responsible for whether you have a healthy relationship, but you're equally responsible. If you don't manage that relationship right, your team is not going to be able to do what it needs to do.

Powerlessness corrupts as much as power. You shouldn't feel powerless with your boss. That's not the deal. You have to figure out the sources of power you have to influence the boss. You also have to see the boss as human and fallible in all the ways that you're human and fallible, and figure out how to deal with the reality of who that person is—rather than the ideal of what you'd like that person to be like. There are really bad bosses, and you can't be naive or cynical about this. It's hard to be successful with a bad boss, and sometimes success means figuring out how to get out of that situation. But before you decide that's the deal, you need to take responsibility for the relationship, because it's definitely two-way. I'm building on the traditions of [HBS professors emeriti] John Kotter and John Gabarro, who [in 1980] wrote an article about managing your boss, which was very radical at the time. (http://hbr.org/2005/01/managing-your-boss/ar/1)

Today many people have multiple bosses, and we also discuss the challenges there. One of the most common missteps is to deal with the boss who's closest to you physically and treat your relationship with your other boss as out of sight, out of mind. So we talk about how you have to manage the priorities between those two bosses and how to negotiate what will be your priorities, given their priorities.

Why Ashok Soota Quit MindTree

Officially, the MindTree co-founder wants to start a new venture. But insiders point to decisions gone wrong and cracks within the top management

Ashok Soota had always been proud of the fact that all the 10 original founders of MindTree, the Bangalore-based IT firm, had remained together, through thick and thin, for the past 12 years. That’s why employees, analysts and even his board members were stunned when chairman Soota, 70, sent out an email on January 28, stating he would no longer be part of the company from March 31, 2011. Even more intriguing was the fact that the announcement came through a direct email from Soota and not through the firm’s communication department, as would have been the norm.

Something had gone horribly wrong at MindTree, widely seen as a poster-child of the New Economy in India. One of the first venture capitalist-funded IT services firms in India, it had a blue-blooded cast of senior IT professionals from companies such as Wipro, Cambridge Technology Partners and Lucent. Soota, the grand doyen of India’s IT industry and then Wipro vice-chairman, was the prize catch — and perhaps the reason why MindTree received a premium valuation from its two seed investors, Walden and GTV.

The official version behind’s Soota’s exit is that the board had worked out a succession plan for a while now and Soota wants to start a new venture after leaving MindTree.

The inside story is different. Over the past three years, after the 2007 IPO, cracks had begun to develop between the members of the internal board over the strategy and direction of the company, the individual roles and different leadership styles of three senior founders on the board and the division of responsibility between Soota and Krishnakumar Natarajan, CEO and MD.

At the core of the conflict lay MindTree’s lacklustre performance. In the first five years, MindTree met almost all its targets. Sudhir Sethi, founder, chairman, IDG Ventures India, who served on the MindTree board in his earlier role as general partner with Walden, says he never saw any differences between the founders. Soota was in control and business was doing well. MindTree crossed $100 million in revenue in just six years. When it went for a public listing in 2007, its IPO was oversubscribed 103 times.

Soon after, performance began to slip. The firm had set a target of $231 million in 2007-08, but managed only $192 million in revenue. In 2008, it suffered a huge loss on mark-to-market provisions, dragging profit after tax down by 55 percent. On April 1, 2008, MindTree’s 10th anniversary, Soota announced an ambitious target of $1 billion by 2014. “With such a strong and large founding team, growth expectations are higher,” says Sethi. Yet, between 2008 and 2010, revenues stayed stagnant at $270 million.

In October 2009, as the head of strategy, Soota spearheaded a foray into making mobile handsets by acquiring the India R&D centre of Kyocera Wireless. MindTree had never managed a products business before but Soota hoped it would add $100 million in revenue before 2014. However, the investments required to sustain the business were five times more than the $10 million the company had budgeted for. In October 2010, the company aborted the products business and said it would focus only on services. Apart from the money it had sunk into the project, the company lost about $3.5 million in restructuring costs and also had to let go of some people.

But more than money, the company’s reputation took a hit. In its report, brokerage firm CLSA Asia Pacific slammed the board for showing poor judgment in entering the business. This setback may have widened the growing chasm between vice chairman Subroto Bagchi and Soota. For a little more than a year, Bagchi had been quarrelling over the fact that the company’s M&A strategy (six between 2004-2011) was sucking up a lot of the management’s bandwidth and taking attention away from the core business (Disclosure: Bagchi is a columnist for Forbes India and declined comment.) At one point, things came to a boil with Bagchi offering to move out of the company. Other founder members on the board (Krishnakumar and S. Janakiraman) said they had never felt comfortable with investing in the products space, but hadn’t said anything out of deference to Soota.

In an email response to a questionnaire, Soota said, “The decision to enter the phone product business was debated and became a board approved project… As market conditions changed and risk levels increased, just before an overseas visit, I held a meeting in August where we identified closure of the business as an option. On my return to India in mid-September, I drove a series of notes to the board which led to the closure decision.”

Meanwhile, there was a buzz that Krishnakumar was looking to start a new venture. (He too declined comment.) Insiders say he was unhappy with the lack of freedom. In 2008, as part of a succession plan, Soota had handed over his operational responsibilities to Krishnakumar, keeping strategy (including M&A) for himself. Soota was going strong as executive chairman.

After MindTree announced the closure of the mobile products business in October 2010, the responsibility for setting the company’s strategy and the planning process shifted to Krishnakumar. Soota resigned three months later.

On the issue of sharing responsibilities with Krishnakumar, Soota said, “Over the past three years, my operational involvement was reduced considerably and the only areas reporting to me last year were strategy and MindTree Foundation. The CEO and I used to have ongoing discussions on what else I could pass on to him.”

It isn’t clear just how Soota’s moving out will impact the firm’s future. But the crisis is far from over. The company’s share price has fallen by 30 percent in the past one year. But Sethi says he still remains bullish about the company. “If there is one company that I know can break out of the mid-tier crisis and get to a billion dollars, it is MindTree. They just need to get their focus right.”

A lot of shareholders and 10,000 MindTree employees will be praying that’s true.

To Tell The Truth

"Who did this?" asked my teacher. Thirty children tried to think about not only what they had done, but also what our teacher may have found out. "Who did this?" asked my teacher once more. She wasn't really asking, she was demanding an answer. She seldom became angry, but she was this time. She held up a piece of broken glass and asked, "Who broke this window?"

"Oh, oh," I thought. I was the one who broke the window. I had not done it intentionally. It was caused by an errant throw of a baseball. I was working on my knuckleball. It needed more work. Why did it have to be me? It wasn't really my fault. If I admitted guilt, I would be in a lot of trouble. How would I be able to pay for a big window like that? I didn't even get an allowance. "My father is going to have a fit," I thought. I didn't want to raise my hand, but some force much stronger than I was pulled it skyward. I told the truth. "I did it." I said no more. It was hard enough saying what I had.

My teacher went to one of our library shelves and took down a book. She then began walking towards my desk. I had never known my teacher to strike a student, but I feared she was going to start with me and she was going to use a book for the swatting.

"I know how you like birds," she said as she stood looking down at my guilt-ridden face. "Here is that field guide about birds that you are constantly checking out. It is yours. It's time we got a new one for the school anyway. The book is yours and you will not be punished as long as you remember that I am not rewarding you for your misdeed, I am rewarding you for your truthfulness."

I couldn't believe it! I wasn't being punished and I was getting my very own bird field guide. The very one that I had been saving up money to buy. The money I feared would be going to the school to buy a new window. I wore out that book trying to match the live, flying birds to their depictions in that field guide. The book is gone, so is my wonderful teacher. All that remains of that day is my memory and the lesson my teacher taught me. That lesson stays with me every day and it will echo forever.

To Let Go

To let go does not mean to stop caring,

it means I can't do it for someone else.

To let go is not to cut myself off,

it's the realization that I can't control another.

To let go is not to enable,

but to allow learning from natural consequences.

To let go is to admit powerlessness,

which means the outcome is not in my hands.

To let go is not to try to change or blame another,

it's to make the most of myself.

To let go is not to care for,

but to care about.

To let go is not to fix,

but to be supportive.

To let go is not to judge,

but to allow another to be a human being.

To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,

but to allow others to affect their own destinies.

To let go is not to be protective,

it's to permit another to face reality.

To let go is not to criticize, or regulate anyone,

but to try to become what I dream I can do.

To let go is to fear less, and to love more.

This is Good!

The story is told of a king in Africa who had a close friend with whom he grew up. The friend had a habit of looking at every situation that ever occurred in his life (positive or negative) and remarking, "This is good!"

One day the king and his friend were out on a hunting expedition. The friend would load and prepare the guns for the king. The friend had apparently done something wrong in preparing one of the guns, for after taking the gun from his friend, the king fired it and his thumb was blown off.

Examining the situation the friend remarked as usual, "This is good!"

To which the king replied, "No, this is NOT good!" and proceeded to send his friend to jail.

About a year later, the king was hunting in an area that he should have known to stay clear of. Cannibals captured him and took them to their village. They tied his hands, stacked some wood, set up a stake and bound him to the stake. As they came near to set fire to the wood, they noticed that the king was missing a thumb. Being superstitious, they never ate anyone that was less than whole. So untying the king, they sent him on his way.

As he returned home, he was reminded of the event that had taken his thumb and felt remorse for his treatment of his friend.

He went immediately to the jail to speak with his friend. "You were right," he said, "it was good that my thumb was blown off."

And he proceeded to tell the friend all that had just happened. "And so I am very sorry for sending you to jail for so long.

It was bad for me to do this." "No," his friend replied, "This is good!"

"What do you mean, 'This is good'? How could it be good that I sent my friend to jail for a year?"

"If I had NOT been in jail, I would have been with you."

Situations may not always seem pleasant while we are in them, but the promise of God is clear. If we love Him and live our lives according to His precepts, even that which seems to be bleak and hopeless will be turned by God for His glory and our benefit. Hold on, God is faithful! May God bless you this week as you seek His will in every situation.

Strength of a Man

The strength of a man isn't seen in the width of his shoulders.

It is seen in the width of his arms that encircle you.

The strength of a man isn't in the deep tone of his voice.

It is in the gentle words he whispers.

The strength of a man isn't how many buddies he has.

It is how good a buddy he is with his kids.

The strength of a man isn't in how respected he is at work.

It is in how respected he is at home.

The strength of a man isn't in how hard he hits.

It is in how tender he touches.

The strength of a man isn't in the hair on his chest.

It is in his Heart that lies within his chest.

The strength of a man isn't how many women he's Loved.

It is in can he be true to one woman.

The strength of a man isn't in the weight he can lift.

It is in the burdens he can understand and overcome.

Streetsweeper

"If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well."

Simple Prayer

My son Gilbert was eight years old and had been in Cub Scouts only a short time. During one of his meetings he was handed a sheet of paper, a block of wood and four tires and told to return home and give all to "dad."

That was not an easy task for Gilbert to do. Dad was not receptive to doing things with his son. But Gilbert tried.

Dad read the paper and scoffed at the idea of making a pine wood derby car with his young, eager son. The block of wood remained untouched as the weeks passed.

Finally, mom stepped in to see if I could figure this all out. The project began.

Having no carpentry skills, I decided it would be best if I simply read the directions and let Gilbert do the work. And he did. I read aloud the measurements, the rules of what we could do and what we couldn't do.

Within days his block of wood was turning into a pinewood derby car. A little lopsided, but looking great (at least through the eyes of mom).

Gilbert had not seen any of the other kids cars and was feeling pretty proud of his "Blue Lightning," the pride that comes with knowing you did something on your own.

Then the big night came. With his blue pinewood derby in his hand and pride in his heart we headed to the big race.

Once there my little one's pride turned to humility. Gilbert's car was obviously the only car made entirely on his own. All the other cars were a father-son partnership, with cool paint jobs and sleek body styles made for speed.

A few of the boys giggled as they looked at Gilbert's, lopsided, wobbly, unattractive vehicle. To add to the humility Gilbert was the only boy without a man at his side. A couple of the boys who were from single parent homes at least had an uncle or grandfather by their side, Gilbert had "mom."

As the race began it was done in elimination fashion. You kept racing as long as you were the winner. One by one the cars raced down the finely sanded ramp.

Finally it was between Gilbert and the sleekest, fastest looking car there. As the last race was about to begin, my wide eyed, shy eight year old ask if they could stop the race for a minute, because he wanted to pray. The race stopped.

Gilbert hit his knees clutching his funny looking block of wood between his hands. With a wrinkled brow he set to converse with his Father.

He prayed in earnest for a very long minute and a half. Then he stood, smile on his face and announced, "Okay, I am ready."

As the crowd cheered, a boy named Tommy stood with his father as their car sped down the ramp. Gilbert stood with his Father within his heart and watched his block of wood wobble down the ramp with surprisingly great speed and rushed over the finish line a fraction of a second before Tommy's car.

Gilbert leaped into the air with a loud "Thank you" as the crowd roared in approval.

The Scout Master came up to Gilbert with microphone in hand and asked the obvious question, "So you prayed to win, huh, Gilbert?"

To which my young son answered, "Oh, no sir. That wouldn't be fair to ask God to help you beat someone else. I just asked Him to make it so I don't cry when I lose."

Children seem to have a wisdom far beyond us. Gilbert didn't ask God to win the race, he didn't ask God to fix the outcome, Gilbert asked God to give him strength in the outcome.

When Gilbert first saw the other cars he didn't cry out to God, "No fair, they had a fathers help."

No, he went to his Father for strength.

Perhaps we spend too much of our prayer time asking God to rig the race, to make us number one, or too much time asking God to remove us from the struggle, when we should be seeking God's strength to get through the struggle.

Gilbert's simple prayer spoke volumes to those present that night. He never doubted that God would indeed answer his request. He didn't pray to win, thus hurt someone else, he prayed that God supply the grace to lose with dignity.

Gilbert, by his stopping the race to speak to his Father also showed the crowd that he wasn't there without a "dad," but his Father was most definitely there with him. Yes, Gilbert walked away a winner that night, with his Father at his side.

Red Light Special!, The

Two men were in a car when they had to stop at a red signal light. The man at the wheel did not say anything.

The other man by his side, fretting and fuming, said, "The time we waste at these red lights - why, a man could write a book!"

The driver still said nothing.

Finally the man beside him said, "Didn't you hear what I said?"

"No."

"How come?"

"I was talking."

"Whom were you talking to?"

"I was talking to God," he said. "I've been making it a practice every time I get to a red light to pray for one of my friends. It is wonderful how many folks I have on my prayer list and how many I have time to pray for in this way."

Recovering Pessimist's Story

Tonight my mother and I were driving down the road. She was speeding unintentionally as she often does. Now you can guess what happened next. She got pulled over. My mom was really embarrassed. She lives in a small town, and this could cause quite a bit of talk. Anyway, she was stressed and she snapped at me. I was extremely upset. Her comment had really hurt me, after all I was just trying to help.

Now, all you optimists out there are always saying things like "Oh, you can choose to be happy... it's all in attitude and your mind..." Never seemed to apply to me. Tonight however, I learned the reality. Mother's comment didn't really hurt me any. It was understandable, and she was stressed at the time. Meant nothing. I chose to be happy. I like to think of myself as a "recovering pessimist."

Qualities of Survival, The

Several years ago I found myself a long way from home in a small prison cell. As a prisoner of war, I was tortured, humiliated, starved and left to languish in squalor for six years.

It's important that you get a vivid mental picture of this scene. Try your best to smell the stench in the bucket I called my toilet and taste the salt in the corners of my mouth from my sweat, my tears and my blood. Feel the baking tropical heat in a tin-roofed prison cell - not that you'll ever be a POW. If I am effective in these few moments we spend together, you'll see that the same kind of challenges you face as a teenager, a student, a leader, or a parent, are the same basic challenges I faced in a prison cell: feelings of fear, loneliness, failure and a breakdown of communication. More importantly, your response to those challenges will be the same response I had to have in the prison camp just to survive.

What qualities do you have within you that would allow you to survive in a prison camp? Please pause here, think about this question, and write in the margin of this page at least five different qualities necessary for survival. (If you've written faith, commitment or dedication, you've already broken the code.)

As I worked my way through the first several months and then years of imprisonment, I found I already had a foundation of survival tools learned in life from my parents, preachers, youth leaders, and teachers. And the life-saving techniques I used in that prison camp had more to do with my value system, integrity and religious faith than anything I had learned from a textbook.

Sound like your life? The adversities you face in your life can be just as debilitating to you as six years in a Communist prison camp could have been to me. Now here's the test: The next time you have a huge problem facing you, turn back to this page and read not my writing but your writing in the margin. You'll find that the same factors you've written here, which would serve you well in a prison camp, will serve you even better in the challenge of everyday life.

Pragmatism

The disciple was planning her wedding banquet and declared that out of love for the poor she had gotten her family to go against convention by seating the poor guests at the head of the table and the rich guests at the door.

She looked into the Master's eyes, expecting his approval.

The Master stopped to think, then said, "That would be most unfortunate, my dear. No one would enjoy the wedding. Your family would be embarrassed, your rich guests insulted and your poor guests hungry, for they would be too self-conscious at the head of the table to eat their fill.

Pig and the Cow, The

"Why is it," said the rich man to his minister, "that people call me stingy when everyone knows that when I die I'm leaving everything to the church?"

"Let me tell you a fable about the pig and the cow," said the minister. "The pig was unpopular while the cow was beloved. This puzzled the pig. 'People speak warmly of your gentle nature and your sorrowful eyes,' the pig said to the cow. 'They think you're generous because each day you give them milk and cream. But what about me? I give them everything I have. I give bacon and ham. I provide bristles for brushes. They even pickle my feet! Yet not one likes me. Why is that?'"

"Do you know what the cow answered?" said the minister. "The cow said, 'Perhaps it is because I give while I'm still living.'"

Old West Justice

A man in the Old West was being tried for stealing a horse.

You need to remember that stealing a horse in the Old West was a very grave and serious offense. A person could be hanged if found guilty of such a deed.

It so happened that the man whose horse had been stolen had always made it a point to get the best of any person with whom he had any dealings. He had never tried to do anything good for anyone other than himself. Consequently, the man whose horse had been stolen didn't have a single friend in the entire town. The case was tried and presented to the jury.

The evidence against the accused man was pretty strong. After about thirty minutes of deliberation, the jury returned to the court chambers.

"Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?" The judge asked. The chairman of the jury stood up. "Yes we have, your honor," he replied.

"What is your verdict?" inquired the judge.

There were a few moments of silence and then the chairman spoke. "We find the defendant not guilty if he will return the horse."

After the judge had silenced the laughter in the courtroom, he admonished the jury. "I cannot accept that verdict. You will have to retire until you reach another verdict," said the judge. The jury went back into their room to deliberate toward another verdict. No member of the jury had any particular liking for the man whose horse had been stolen. At one time or another he had gotten the best of each of them. About an hour passed before the jury could reach another verdict. They re-entered the courtroom. They took their place in the jury box and the courtroom grew silent.

"Gentlemen of the jury," began the judge, "have you reached a verdict?" The chairman of the jury stood up.

"Yes we have, your honor," he replied. "What is your verdict?" asked the judge.

The courtroom was totally silent. You could have heard a pin drop. Everyone eagerly awaited the verdict. The chairman read the decision reached by the twelve good men, tried and true.

"We find the defendant not guilty, and he can keep the horse!"

The courtroom burst into laughter!

Moral of the story: If you spend your life trying to take advantage of others, never caring about them in any way except what you can get from them or what they can do for you, you will end up a loser, like the man who lost his horse.

If you desire a friend, then be a friend. If you desire for other people to help you, then help other people. If you desire justice at the hands of others, then practice justice toward them.

Regardless of what you may think, the old Biblical admonition is true. We do reap what we sow.

No Time to Brag

Two geese were about to start wouthward on their annual migration, when they were entreated by a frog to take him with them. The geese expressed their willingness to do so if a means of conveyance could be devised.

The frog produced a long stalk of pond grass, got the geese each to grab an end with their beaks, while he clung to it by his mouth in the middle. In this way the three began their journey. Some farmers below noticed the strange sight. The men loudly expressed their admiration for the travel device and wondered who had been clever enough to discover it. Whereupon the vainglorious frog opened his mouth to say, "It was I," los his grip, fell to the earth and was dashed to pieces.

Moral: When you have a good thing going, keep your mouth shut!

No One Will Ever Know

Karen, Judy and I were the last ones back in the school room after lunch. We put our metal lunch boxes on the shelf above the coat hooks, which were mostly empty. All of the other sixth graders were already outside, playing marbles or hop scotch or jumping rope, since it was a pleasant spring day.

"Look what I found this morning in the storage cupboard when I was getting out some art supplies for Mrs. Eiffler." With a conspiratorial grin on her face, Karen held up a wooden box filled with short pieces of chalk in every color of the rainbow.

"Wow! What fun it would be to write on the chalkboard while everyone is outside." Judy's eyes twinkled with anticipation.

"But Mrs. Eiffler doesn't want us writing on the chalkboard," I responded, already feeling guilty, although we had not yet done a thing.

"Don't be such a 'fraidy cat', Janet. No one will ever know," said Karen, reaching into the box and drawing out a piece of chalk.

"Right. Everyone is outside, so we're safe. No one will tell on us." Judy was already drawing a house with sure strokes.

I reluctantly joined my friends in the artwork, wanting to be part of what was going on, but afraid of being caught. I knew well that we were breaking not one, but two class rules. The second rule was that no one was allowed to stay inside at noon without a written excuse from home if the weather was nice.

Trying various colors, we drew houses, trees and three-dimensional boxes. It was fun! All the time we were watching the clock, knowing that our fun would be over if anyone walked into the room.

Then Judy had an idea. "We're all right-handed. Let's see who can write their name best using their left hand."

Judy and Karen picked up their chalk and started writing. I chose a white piece from the box and wrote my name. The handwriting was a bit shaky, but no one would doubt that it said "Janet."

"I think Judy is the winner," said Karen. "Hers is the best."

"We'd better get this board cleaned off before Mrs. Eiffler comes back," said Judy, eying the clock. She picked up an eraser and began erasing our handiwork from the board.

Everything came off . . . but my name!

In disbelief, I looked at the chalk I held in my sweaty hand. On closer examination, it wasn't chalk at all. I had picked up a small piece of white color crayon which was mixed in with the pieces of chalk.

My stomach churned and my knees felt weak. What would Mrs. Eiffler do to me?

My mother had a saying: "Fools names and fools faces always appear in public places." I never understood fully what it meant before. Now I did! I was a fool, and there was my name in crayon to prove it. And the teacher would be returning soon.

"Quick, let's get some wet paper towels," said Judy, springing into action.

After vigorous rubbing, my name still remained.

"I think I saw a can of cleanser by the sink in the coat room," I said as I raced to find it. Precious minutes were ticking away.

We rubbed and my name came off all right, but in the process of removing it, we left an abrasion on the chalkboard.

Listening for footsteps coming down the hall, we dried the scrubbed area as much as we could with more paper towels and fanned it with a book to remove every tell-tale trace of wetness.

We were just slipping into our desks as the bell rang and the other students began entering the room. The teacher walked in soon afterward.

Mrs. Eiffler never asked about abrasion and maybe never noticed it. But I did. Every time I walked past the marred surface of the chalkboard, I remembered. Oh, how I remembered.

The lesson I learned that day is one I never forgot, even though over forty years have passed since the event. "No one will ever know" is never true. Even if no one else found out, Jesus knew and I knew. Sometimes living with a guilty conscience is punishment enough.

New Pair of Shoes, A

When I got sober my sponsor told me that I had to be willing to change everything about my life -- everything. So, I wore bluejeans and switched to slacks. I wore western shirts and switched to T-shirts. But the one thing I just couldn't give up was my cowboy boots.

I went to my sponsor and said, "Surely I won't get drunk over a silly pair of cowboy boots. I'm willing to change a lot of things, and if needed I could even give up those boots, but it seems so silly."

My sponsor said, "I don't know how silly it is, or if you'll get drunk over those cowboy boots, but I can tell that you are not 'entirely' willing, though."

"Okay, okay," I said. "I'll prove it to you. I'll give up the boots for 30 days just to demonstrate my willingness to God."

So, I bought a pair of tennis shoes, and after 30 days of not wearing my cowboy boots, wearing tennis shoes instead, the strangest thing happened -- my feet stopped hurting.

That's how it was getting sober and giving up the high life. I never stopped to think that the boots were causing my feet to hurt, or the booze was causing my life to hurt. I got willing to give up the stuff, one day at a time, for 30 days, then 60 days, then 90 days ... and my life stopped hurting.

And everyday I do something different, some change in some small way. Maybe I just put my socks on different, or drive to work a new way. Everyday, I try to do Little Things in a Big Way so that when Big Things happen I can handle them in a Little Way.

Napoleon's Greatest Speech

"Why are some days great and others terrible? Is it because of chance or luck?" -- Danielle F.

Good days can actually be created.

In my book, "Yes Yes Living In A No No World," I tell about attending an awards banquet of the Chase National Life Insurance Company. The speaker was the famed author ofThink and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill.

When Hill was introduced it was obvious his age had caught up with him. We all wondered if the octogenarian would be physically be able to give the speech. (He passed away not long after this event).

Napoleon Hill slowly walked to the podium, placed both of his hands on the sides of it, looked out at the audience and announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, I have given this speech hundreds and hundreds of times in my life. But tonight am going to deliver it the best it has ever been given. This is going to be the best speech of my life!"

Wow! It was like a bolt of lightning. I watched 300 adults move to the edge of their chairs and absorb every word like a sponge.

He set a course of action that did not allow for failure. You can do it too!

Little Brown Boy

Danielle was only four when she burst through the front door, having just gotten off the school bus, after preschool. Charging through the living room, she spotted me in the dining room and launched into a speech while she headed toward me. While it was comical to see such a little person behave so dramatically, her outrage seemed real enough that she had my full attention.

"They are MEAN to him!" she raged, her little fist hammering the table top for emphasis.

"Who is mean to who?" I interrupted.

"Those kids on the bus! They are MEAN to the little brown boy!" She looked up at me, hands on her hips, her eyes wide, incredulous. I knew she expected me to right this injustice immediately. It was the first one she had discovered in her very new Out In The World On Her Own adventures.

"They make fun of him and make fun of him and make fun of him." Her golden head nodded emphatically with each repetition. "They laugh at him. They copy the way he talks. They hurt his feelings!" I watched her while I listened. This was something very different for her, this little girl I knew so well. I had never seen her just this way before. I even saw flashes of anger in her green eyes.

"The way he talks...?" I prompted, as if she needed prompting. I sat down at the table and set her on my lap.

"He doesn't talk perfect, but that's just because he's a little kid!" this four-year-old elderly person informed me loudly, inches from my face. She looked directly into my eyes, needing answers. "WHY are they so MEAN?"

My husband and I had been a little apprehensive about sending her to and from preschool ("Headstart") on a bus with many of the kids so much older and bigger and tougher than she was. This was our baby of the family, our sheltered miniature princess, and it was not easy to back off and let her face the world without us for a few hours a day ... Alas, even princesses grow up.

"Do you think they might be doing that just because he's new?" I asked her.

She thought for a minute. "No. When I was new, they didn't make fun of me."

I took a deep breath. "Do you think maybe they tease him because his skin is black?"

She thought for a minute, clearly puzzled. Then she wrinkled her nose and said, "You mean brown?" I nodded and she went on: "Because he's BROWN? You don't make fun of someone just because of that!"

I told her I hoped she was right. She was learning lessons none of us should need to learn. Man's inhumanity to man ... Kid's inhumanity to kids ... Whatever the reason, people can be so cruel.

(Since we were looking into that subject, and since Danielle has a Downs' syndrome sister who rode on the same bus, I asked quietly, "Does anyone on the bus make fun of Shannon, Danielle?"

I'll never forget the look she gave me. My question threw her totally off guard. Her brow furrowed, her nose wrinkled again and she asked, "Why in the world would they make fun of Shannon?" The very idea was ludicrous. Her mother could be so silly sometimes ...

Relief was great ...

But just in case, just in case there really was a flash of racial prejudice or any other mean-streak residing in the preschool bus in our little rural neighborhood, it was necessary to take a bit of action. First, I telephoned the principal and informed him that my preschooler had come home upset because of the way a little boy was treated on the bus. I told him what she had told me, and he asked me to thank her for him, for alerting us to a possible problem, something that needed his attention. He assured me he would look into it and he appreciated Danielle's and my concern.

She was happy. We had done something.

Then, for good measure, she and I sang a song together: a song we both knew very well.

"Jesus loves the little children All the children of the world. Red and yellow Black ('AND BROWN', I threw in) and white, All are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world."

I don't know how the principal chose to handle the problem: I don't know what he said to the kids. But rest assured Danielle kept me posted on Life on the School Bus, and there was not even one more negative incident involving the little brown boy.

A princess had seen to that.

Learn from Mistakes

Thomas Edison tried two thousand different materials in search of a filament for the light bulb. When none worked satisfactorily, his assistant complained, "All our work is in vain. We have learned nothing."

Edison replied very confidently, "Oh, we have come a long way and we have learned a lot. We now that there are two thousand elements which we cannot use to make a good light bulb."

Know When to Change Course

Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers in heavy weather for several days. The visibility was poor with patchy fog, so the captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.

Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported, "Light, bearing on the starboard bow."

"Is it steady or moving astern?" the captain called out.

The lookout replied, "Steady, captain," which meant it was on a dangerous collision course with their ship.

The captain then shouted to the signalman, "Signal the ship: We are on a collision course. Advice you to change course 20 degrees."

Back came a signal, "Advisable for you to change course 20 degrees!"

In reply, the captain said, "Send: I'm a ship's captain. Change course 20 degrees, now!"

"I'm a seaman second class, "came the reply, "You had better change course 20 degrees, now!"

By that time, the captain was furious. He spit out a command, "Send: This is a battleship. Change your course immediately."

Back came the flashing light's reply. "This is a lighthouse!"

The battleship changed course.

How Poor We Are

One day a father and his rich family took his son to a trip to the country with the firm purpose to show him how poor people can be.

They spent a day and a night in the farm of a very poor family. When they got back from their trip the father asked his son, "How was the trip?"

"Very good Dad!" "Did you see how poor people can be?" the father asked.

"Yeah!"

"And what did you learn?"

The son answered, "I saw that we have a dog at home, and they have four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of the garden, they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lamps in the garden, they have the stars. Our patio reaches to the front yard, they have a whole horizon." When the little boy was finishing, his father was speechless.

His son added, "Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are!"

House of 1000 Mirrors, The

Long ago in a small, far away village, there was place known as the House of 1000 Mirrors. A small, happy little dog learned of this place and decided to visit. When he arrived, he bounced happily up the stairs to the doorway of the house. He looked through the doorway with his ears lifted high and his tail wagging as fast as it could. To his great surprise, he found himself staring at 1000 other happy little dogs with their tails wagging just as fast as his. He smiled a great smile, and was answered with 1000 great smiles just as warm and friendly. As he left the House, he thought to himself, "This is a wonderful place. I will come back and visit it often."

In this same village, another little dog, who was not quite as happy as the first one, decided to visit the house. He slowly climbed the stairs and hung his head low as he looked into the door. When he saw the 1000 unfriendly looking dogs staring back at him, he growled at them and was horrified to see 1000 little dogs growling back at him. As he left, he thought to himself, "That is a horrible place, and I will never go back there again."

All the faces in the world are mirrors. What kind of reflections do you see in the faces of the people you meet?

Honesty

Morality may consist solely in the courage of making a choice. Wickedness is always easier than virtue, for it takes a short cut to everything. But over time you learn, you can't make wrong work.

There are always two choices, two paths to take. One is easy. And your only reward is that it's easy. You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.

Work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts will inevitably bring about right results.

You can never lose anything that really belongs to you, and you can't keep that which belongs to someone else.

You always experience the consequences of your own acts. If your acts are right, you'll get good consequences; if not, you'll suffer for it.

Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.

Father and his sons, The

A father had a family of sons who were perpetually quarreling among themselves. When he failed to heal their disputes by his exhortations, he determined to give them a practical illustration of the evils of disunion; and for this purpose he one day told them to bring him a bundle of sticks. When they had done so, he placed the faggot into the hands of each of them in succession, and ordered them to break it in pieces. They tried with all their strength, and were not able to do it. He next opened the faggot, took the sticks separately, one by one, and again put them into his sons' hands, upon which they broke them easily. He then addressed them in these words: "My sons, if you are of one mind, and unite to assist each other, you will be as this faggot, uninjured by all the attempts of your enemies; but if you are divided among yourselves, you will be broken as easily as these sticks."