Reaching There

I have always wondered what makes people successful in their lives. Although most of us relate success with only our professional lives. But our lives are a mixture of personal and professional achievements as well as failures. Both of these aspects are so interrelated that it is impossible to prioritize one over the other. There is always a need to see and continuously evaluate an holistic views of our lives.  All around us are people that we admire for their success. The success is not limited to monetary amounts but includes all possible roles we play during our lifetime. Success is about being a caring parent, an eager student, a loving son, a doting husband, a courteous clerk, a helpful manager, a great dancer, a passionate artist, a hard worker or just about anything we do in our lives. In all of these roles there a few similarities that stand out among other that all these "successful" people share. So what do all of the successful people share among themselves?...

Inside an Actors Studio: Steven Speilberg I recently watched Steven Speilberg's interview on James Lipton's Inside the Actors Studio (on youtube!). One of the biggest piece of adivce was his answer to how he direct child actors in his movies. There are quite a few movies in which his story was told from a point of view of a child (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Empire of the Sun). He answered "I don't treat them like children I treat them like my peers". He further added that the moment he begins treating them like children he would become the overbearing adult. This gave me an indirect lesson on how manager or a team leader should treat his team members. He should treat them like individuals who have their own individuality, personality, aspirations and emotions. He should respect their existence in the team and listen to their opinion with a "porous" mind. The reason I used "porous" mind because such a listener gives the oppor...

Revenue Management (Source: www.wikipedia.org) Please donate to Wikipedia.org. Yield management , also known as revenue management , is the process of understanding, anticipating and influencing consumer behavior in order to maximize revenue or profits from a fixed, perishable resource (such as airline seats or hotel room reservations). It is a method of price discrimination wherein a firm charges different customers different prices for goods or services which are otherwise identical. A typical example is airline tickets. For three different seats in the same row different passengers would have paid different amount depending on conditions like their seat preference, time of booking etc. An interesting article was published in NY Times recently about how airlines are charging more for "that extra leg room". It is another innovative way to understand the consumer behavior and improve revenue for the airlines. Here is the link for that article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/...