Speechless!

...Wee hours of a sudden chilly Calcutta morning...A busy traffic signal...I had donned the usual ear phones listening to the Radio....I glanced at the traffic lights and started crossing the road on seeing it glow red, when suddenly an SUV (I used to be pretty good with the different makes of cars when I was young, but they suddenly started changing at a rate at which I could no longer keep up) while taking a U-turn slowed down a couple of feet away from me...I took a closer look to find an aged man tepidly crossing the road...His pace was slow and there were two reasons...One, he seemed to be in his late seventies and two, he was carrying a thick chunk of plywood of the size of a table top - pretty heavy and awkward shaped...

A spotlessly clean white Kurta-pajama, an Olive Green half-sleeved sweater and an off-white shawl...he belonged to a well-to-do family. Then why was he......? I crossed the road with him thinking that he would be somebody's father...probably of a girl child who got married and is well-settled with her husband away from her city or country....or of a boy...who made his parents proud by making it big in life...so big that it keeps him away from an aged father who has to buy his own medicines when he falls sick, has to regularly visit the market to buy vegetables, has to (may be) depend on a rickshaw, a bus, a taxi or a driver for a transport.

There is a saying in Hindi which goes :-

Samajhdaar ke liye ishaara kaafi hai 

which means, A hint is enough for someone who is intelligent...

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O je mane na mana     

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Question: Could you give an example, from your own experience, of how leaders should manage failure?

Let me tell you about my experience.

In 1973 I became the project director of India's satellite launch vehicle program, commonly called the SLV-3. Our goal was to put India's 'Rohini' satellite into orbit by 1980.

I was given funds and human resources -- but was told clearly that by1980 we had to launch the satellite into space. Thousands of people worked together in scientific and technical teams towards that goal.

By 1979 -- I think the month was August -- we thought we were ready. As the project director, I went to the control center for the launch. At four minutes before the satellite launch, the computer began to go through the checklist of items that needed to be checked. One minute later, the computer program put the launch on hold; the display showed that some control components were not in order. My experts -- I had four or five of  them with me -- told me not to worry; they had done their calculations and there was enough reserve fuel. So I bypassed the computer, switched to manual mode, and launched the rocket. In the first stage, everything worked fine. In the second stage, a problem developed. Instead of the satellite going into orbit, the whole rocket system plunged into the Bay of Bengal. It was a big failure.

That day, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, Prof. Sottish Dhawan, had called a press conference. The launch was at 7:00 am, and the press conference -- where journalists from around the world were present -- was at 7:45 am at ISRO's satellite launch range in Sriharikota [in Andhra Pradesh in southern India]. Prof. Dhawan, the leader of the organization, conducted the press conference himself. He took responsibility for the failure -- he said that the team had worked very hard, but that it needed more technological support. He assured the media that in another year, the team would definitely succeed. Now, I was the project director, and it was my failure, but instead, he took  responsibility for the failure as chairman of the organization.

The next year, in July 1980, we tried again to launch the satellite -- and this time we succeeded. The whole nation was jubilant. Again, there  was a press conference. Prof. Dhawan called me aside and told me, 'You conduct the press conference today.

I learned a very important lesson that day. When failure occurred, the leader of the organization owned that failure. When success came, he gave it to his team. The best management lesson I have learned did not come to me from reading a book; it came from that experience.

Source: http://faisalmb.com/blog/post/A-Leader-Should-Know-How-to-Manage-Failure-Management-Lesson.aspx