A project manager is responsible for completion of a project by taking responsibility of planning, procurement, and execution of a project. When organizations undertake projects that have a defined scope, defined start and a defined finish regardless of industry they succeed in business. Project managers are original point of contact for any issues or discrepancies arising in a project; their agility makes or breaks a project. Project management is the responsibility of a project manager. This individual seldom participates directly in the activities that produce the end result. The project manager’s role in a nutshell, is the overall responsibility for the successful planning, execution, monitoring, control and closure of a project.

Cochin airport made India proud because it created a record; it’s the first airport to run on solar power since August 2015. The airport has photovoltaic (PV) panels laid across 45 acres near the cargo complex. The airport can avail 50,000 to 60,000 units of electricity per day through these panels which is sufficient for all its functions. This has technically made the airport “absolutely power neutral.” The implementation of this 12MWp solar power project cost is to the tune of Rs. 62 crore and it took six months to complete. It has been set up by Bosch Ltd., Bangalore, and has a capacity to produce 18 million units of power annually. This is one of the successful projects run in India.

When ambiguity arises even big brands make mistakes and, unfortunately for them, those mistakes often end up in the headlines making them famous for wrong. Sometimes a project can be executed perfectly but eventually fails because it is the right project introduced at the wrong time.

For a Government of a nation, disaster management is considered as a big time project. On August 29, 2005 hurricane Katrina raced across the Gulf of Mexico and made landfall in New Orleans, Louisiana.  When it was over, a category 5 storm had  broke the levees which  flooded  eighty percent of the city, killed  1,500 people, and left over 80 billion in damages.  It was the costliest natural disaster in the history of US. What followed was a project failure of enormous proportions.  It failed in planning, it failed in execution and it failed in meeting even the most basic needs of those caught in the middle of this tragic disaster. While the circumstances of disaster management failure were certainly different from those surrounding more conventional project failures, there is, nonetheless, an opportunity to look at Katrina as a project and to reflect on how lessons from this tragedy could help prevent failures in more conventional projects.

Effectively managing any project, especially one responding to an emergency situation, demands an open communication network from top to bottom.   But in the Katrina project that network was never created. Instead, a cumbersome, limited, and indirect system was responsible for an information logjam of major proportions.  The project manager Federal Emergency Management Chief Michael Brown was unwilling to share information with other agencies and that some information never even got to his command center which included White House, Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA), and Department of Home Land Security DHS, Louisiana State officials, New Orleans Officials. Perhaps the most dramatic example of the communication failure was that it took 24 hours for the White House to confirm that the levees (embankment built to prevent the overflow of a river) had broken.

The successful project managers put the right people into the right places. The biggest ability of project manager is to pick the right people for the right job. Efficient project managers plan way in advance; they put all processes in place to carry it out. They posses mastery in scheduling and the insights brought from good scoping. They make decisions based on scientific data. They keep data to back up and always they have alternative backup plans with them. They also understand that perfection is an ideal goal for which to aspire, but it is an unrealistic end for every project. Also, in a project you will have the good, bad and ugly because different people have different approaches to delivering a project.

Steve Jobs was a great project manager. He changed the technology and design industry in ways that most people could not even dream about. He succeeded because he shared his vision clearly with his team; he worked closely with development team to push boundaries of technology. He understood the need of market because he was closely watching the market; he fulfilled a previously unmet customer need. Steve Jobs was enthusiastic; enthusiasm is one of the qualities a project manager must have. Jobs met and exceeded expectations of his stakeholders. He brought innovation in supply chain and operations. Most importantly, he had unbelievable imagination and vision with a focus on the product and he knew importance of time. A project which goes on lingering loses its significance. Steve Jobs was extremely passionate and fearless when it came to growing Apple and while many actions in his career were controversial, he had an extraordinary ability to push his people to the limits without going overboard.

Some of the key variables a project manger needs to understand and implement are that he/she needs to deal with scope of a project, time, cost, quality, and risk. Unrealistic timelines and costs, overly optimistic forecasts, blurred end result, mistakes in tracking milestones of the project mar the project badly. Projects fail when parameters are not designed; also, bungling communication and deficient prioritization are dangerous.

Taking a walk a day keeps the doctor away, because both physically and mentally it keeps you fit. The early morning walk is power packed with first rays of the sun which are the reservoir of energy, which is why people who take their morning walks are most energetic, productive and cheerful throughout the day. We all are aware that walking helps from helping lose weight, getting de-stressed to lowering blood pressure and reducing risk of many chronic diseases. Walking shores up your bones. It can stop the loss of bone mass for those with osteoporosis. Walking lowers Alzheimer’s risk. A study from the University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville found that men between the ages of 71 and 93 who walked more than a quarter of a mile per day had half the incidence of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, compared to those who walked less.

For women post menopause, 30 minutes of walking each day reduces their risk of hip fractures by 40 percent. Walking supports your joints. The majority of joint cartilage has no direct blood supply. It gets its nutrition from synovial or joint fluid that circulates as we move. Impact that comes from movement or compression, such as walking, squashes the cartilage bringing oxygen and nutrients into the area. If you don’t walk, joints are deprived of life-giving fluid, which can speed deterioration. Just a caution for what is called a brisk walk: it is a relative term, since “brisk” for some, is either slow or quite speedy for others, depending on levels of fitness. One measure to quantify brisk walking is “steps per minute,” and 100 steps per minute is considered moderate intensity or brisk walking. A precious advice to all is: listen to your body, your body keeps giving the signal for slowing down, warming up or speeding up.

Walking is free, all it requires a good pair of shoes. Besides great physical benefits, walking improves creativity in human.

Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple, was known for his walking meetings. Jobs used to invite people to walk with him, various matters were discussed during the walk and post walk decisions were informed to the concerned people. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has also been seen holding meetings on foot because he believes that pacing back and forth on occasion has tremendous good ideas coming to mind. A new study by Stanford researchers provides an explanation for this. Creative thinking improves while a person is walking and shortly thereafter.  The study found that walking indoors or outdoors similarly boosts creative inspiration. The act of walking itself, and the environment is the main factor. The study found that creativity levels are consistently and significantly higher for those walk compared to those who simply sit. Walking helps improve learning, memory and cognition.

Albert Einstein the great theoretical physicist and father of modern physics, who was also a prolific writer of non-scientific work, often felt like he needed to take a long walk on the beach to introspect and work out complex problems in his head. He was advised by his doctors in the late 18th century that living by the beach to improve overall health. Einstein used to love his beach walks, because it helped to solve a lot of complex problem.

Friedrich Nietzsche is known as one of Western culture’s most influential philosophers. And he did much more than just philosophize. He was also an accomplished classical scholar, professor, poet and avid author. The secret of his creativity was – he used to walk each day and during those walks he used to get inspirational thoughts, on which he created classical writing.

Charles Dickens is known for his attention to detail in his lengthy novels. A lesser known fact is how Dickens got to know London inside and out- twenty-mile-long speed walks in the middle of the night! His walks served him for more than data-gathering. Dickens claimed that writing didn’t come easy to him and it put him under immense stress. He would go on five-hour-long walks to relieve this anxiety. His walks grew so long that his friends thought he was mentally ill. After writing from 9 in the morning to 2 in the afternoon, he would go for a long walk almost a 20- or 30-miles. This was routine for him. When Dickens couldn’t sleep at night, which used to happen frequently, he would go strolling on London’s streets until dawn. Dickens walked so much that his worried friends felt he had a mania for walking. But clearly, the walking worked; Dickens was prolific, writing more than a dozen major and well-regarded novels, several short story collections, a few plays, and even some non-fiction books.

Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher, empiricist, and pupil to Plato, conducted his lectures while walking the grounds of his school in Athens. His followers who quite literally followed him as he walked were even known as the travelers. Really, it’s so inspiring to know the great minds utilized the cognitive benefits of walking while thinking, and it’s so incredible. Imagine walking with your teacher, while listening to his teaching.

It’s so very inspiriting to know that the poet William Wordsworth walked nearly 175 thousand miles throughout his life while preserving a prolific writing career! He managed these two seemingly opposing habits for two reasons. First, for writing poems requires shorter time than novels but poems require rhythm, which he would get with his style of walk with a tempo.   Second, Wordsworth’s walking was writing, in a way, he believed the act of walking was inseparable from the act of writing poetry. Both writing poetry and walking are rhythmic, both acts engaged meter (meter is a unit of rhythm in poetry, the pattern of the beats. It is also called a foot) and walking is counted in the unit of meter. Wordsworth needed to walk in order to write.

Back to importance of walking: a recent study has found that changing the way you walk can change your mood and boost happiness. While it’s long been known that our mood can affect our posture, as people who are sad often slump their shoulders, and those who are happy tend to have a bounce in their step, researchers have found that the reverse is also true. A slumped, sluggish gait might indicate sadness or distress, while someone with a bounce in her step is clearly in high spirits. But after walking for few minutes, mood boosts up.

Just 30 minutes of walk every day can increase cardiovascular fitness, strengthen bones, reduce excess body fat, and boost muscle power and endurance. It can also reduce your risk of developing conditions such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, memory loss and some cancers. Research shows that regular walking actually modifies the nervous system so much that the walker experiences a decrease in anger and hostility. Walking helps increasing social life, because you get to know new people around – a neighbor, or a good friend, with whom the interaction helps feel connected. What are you waiting for? Put on your shoes and go for your walk because all truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.

Usually you will see that brilliant people are curious at hearts. Curiosity is an important trait of successful people. Thomas Edison, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg are all curious and observant people. Richard Feynman the man of Quantum Mechanics was especially known for his adventures which came from his curiosity. These people at their core are very observant; they notice things with a difference and are drawn to interesting things.

When we are curious, we see things differently; we use our powers of observation more fully. We sense what is happening in the present moment, taking note of what it is regardless of what it looked like before or what we might have been expected of it to be. Curiousness keeps us alive and engaged. It helps us increase our capability and helps us in embracing opportunities, in making new connections, and experience moments of insights and meaning. All of this provides the foundation for a rich, aware and satisfying life experience.

Curiousness makes our minds active instead of passive. Inquire, ask questions, observe, and search for answers. Since the mind is like a muscle which becomes stronger through continual exercise. More questioning brings newer ideas. It seems Mozart’s mind was so curious that he would keep experimenting with notations to produce newer symphonies – at times in one sitting in a single act of inspiration. He would edit or rework on his compositions also in one sitting. Great artists, scientists, engineers, doctors, executives, entrepreneurs are all curious.  Ayn Rand also has quoted that curious people are creative at heart and when they get hyper creative it leads to achieve success.  In her words “There’s no doubt about it – your hyper creative mind operates on a different level. You listen to people around you who long to rejuvenate their creativity.”

Curiousness opens new possibilities. We see new world which normally is not visible. I strongly believe that the life of curious people is far from boring. There are always new things that attract their attention. Bill Gates proposes the corporate world a different approach, where the businesses using its technology & resources get into the field of philanthropy directly. He urges the businesses to explore the unexploited business opportunities available in the sub-saharan African countries and thereby improving the lives of the less privileged people. He urges the corporations to donate huge amounts of money, resources or employees time for those who cannot afford it. By doing so, they get ready to take chances and look at different alternatives. What would the businesses get in return? Recognition as do-gooders which will improve the company’s reputation and in turn improves the profits. What should this be called? Maybe we could call it Creative Capitalism.

Curious people most importantly keep an open mind. They are ready to learn and relearn. I think curious people except realities more easily. They are ready to accept possibilities of change. For Dr.Homi J Bhabha – the nuclear man of India using thorium rather than uranium shows his in-depth study on nuclear power and his ever curious mind which kept working wonders for India’s nuclear power. He is credited with formulating a strategy of focusing on extracting power from the country’s vast thorium reserves rather than its meager uranium reserves. His thorium focused strategy was in marked contrast to all other countries in the world. The approach proposed by Bhabha to achieve this strategic objective became India’s three stage nuclear power program.

And notably people with curiosity don’t take things for granted. For them learning new things is fun. Learning is an unending process. All you curious people out there – try to pick a book on a new subject, surf internet on a new topic, watch diverse topic program on television, make friends from diverse areas than yours  and let it feed your mind with the excitement of a new world.

It is extremely important to invest your time, efforts, money, and energies in the specialization of your choice. Many of us are good at many subjects. And, many of us try to get adjusted in an area of specialization and try to ‘fit’ into it all through our professional lives. Specialization is a specific area in which you can make a career. When you chose a profession which gratifies your passion, you are the most fortunate person on earth. And, therefore, it is a wise decision to invest in a career of choice.  When we get career in which we find our passion our existence becomes very fascinating.

As Confucius said, “choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.” It’s great advice, but it’s not always that simple. It is very difficult to figure out what we love, and how to change that liking into a career. There are many elements one needs to weigh before entering a job. A friend of mine who is very knowledgeable in the area of finance; he has loads of information in the stock market, banking, FDI, accounting, behavioral finance so on and forth. But he does not like to talk and does not like elucidation of concepts. Now this gentleman is a lecturer in a college. Because he does not like talking too much and explaining things in details, he obviously does not make a good teacher. Very few students attend his lectures.

A famous physician practices in heart of the city. He is famous for his diagnosis and prognosis. The problem with this physician is – he gets hyper when his patients ask him more than two questions. He feels his patients should listen to him and obey his instructions. He does not listen much to what patients speak; each patient has some or the other question regarding diet, after effects of medicines, life style, sleep etc. He does not like to listen. He breezes into the exam room with his own agenda and hardly has the time to find out what the patient expects. This common complaint his patients have. Therefore, he is considered as a conceited man.

Matching up our personality with a suitable role is extremely vital to our career. In fact it can become a career challenge. Our personality has so many facets; most of the times we fail to break it down into separate traits. And, even if we are aware of our characteristics, it’s important to know which jobs they’re suited for. I mean, how many people know which career is appropriate for which personality type. Often we have knowledge of one or two careers.

The present trend of education in universities is that students study degrees that sound highly, and at times narrowly vocational. Nevertheless, the trend of students opting for traditional subjects, such as History, English Literature and the Natural Sciences, Commerce is not wiped out completely. Many universities still regard themselves as seats of pure learning. I frequently think is it still sensible and desirable to study for love of a subject alone? On a second thought, a person can get trained up in a job rest of his life, whereas the time you spend in university is the only time in your life when you can study purely because you enjoy it.

Look at the recent changes in the global job market people do not shy away from changing and hopping into new jobs. The old traditional philosophy of sticking and retiring from one job is disappeared. In today’s job market very few people experience the stability of working for only one or two employers throughout their careers. In fact, most workers entering their first job today will change career paths at least seven to ten times before they reach retirement age.
With workers hopping from one job to other, more frequently very few companies can afford to invest heavily in into employee training and development. Therefore, more and more employers prefer job seekers to develop their own skills before joining a company. As a result, the demand for workers with college degrees has skyrocketed over the past few decades. I want to bring the point of loving your work, loving your career, doing what you love to do. Then job hopping is out of question.

Therefore, one needs to invest a little time and energy before taking decisions about career.

1. Make a list of your interests.
2. Make an honest list of your personal characteristics and your talents.
3. At the same time, make a list of your limitations and things which bore you to death.
4. Carry out some research about what kind of life style each of your interests might bring if it would turn to a job. Gather details in order to build up a realistic image of those professions.
5. Talk to people who have been in those professions for years. Gather the present trends in those particular professions.
6. Now take some more time and try to remember what you loved as a child. Often, our truest passions emerge in childhood. We stifle our childhood passion as we grow older by real life pressures. So think about what you loved in your childhood, what made you happy – was it mathematics, numbers, puzzle solving, reading stories, making collage, drawing, singing, scientific research, navigation, being close to nature…..what was that made you happy. Try to remember. Getting back in touch with those instincts is an important step in finding your passion.
7. Pease remove the materialistic element from your passion. Please don’t let the financial objective spoil your choice. While we all know money can’t be ignored, but don’t allow money dictate your choices. Listen to what your heart is saying.
8. Discuss about your thought process with your best friends who know you well. Sometimes you might not be able to make up our mind. You might misjudge your own decisions. Ask the people who know you personally, they might tell you when you seem the happiest and what you do most enthusiastically. Their answers might surprise you. Listen to your friends.
9. While choosing your educational programs check which subjects scare you to death, which ones do you find boring, whether you would love wasting your time studying them, Think, think and then decide on the choice.
10. Identify your professional hero. We all like one of the professions; we imagine being in it and hero-worship the topper in it. Whom would you most want to emulate? Reach out to him/her to learn more about how that person got to where he is.
11. In short, think of what you enjoy the most. Focus on things that you both enjoy and do well. It could be cooking, gardening, teaching, singing in opera, acting in drama, handicraft, painting …………… it could be from the funniest sounding thing to very serious sounding topic such as aeronautics or medicines. Don’t bother what others would think of you. Follow your heart.
12. Make a list of the top three or four profession which fascinate you; narrow the list to the top one thing. Keep it handy, review it often, and use it as your jumping-off point when you’re plotting your career move.

The movie ‘3 idiots’ gives the same message: chose a career which allows working with passion, believe in yourself, chase excellence and success will follow you automatically, and most important sometimes be idiotic it helps you to bring in the best in you.