When you do anything with passion, excellence shines through. I have seen this play out many times — an example closest to home is the latest in the series of fundraiser concerts called Aikya that our team at Global Adjustments put together.
Using this concert as a case study, I hope to spark thoughts on what each of us can do in our own spheres to enable others’ success, serve some good other than just our own, and also reach out to high goals.
The beginning
Music was never in my veins. Entrepreneurial passion and altruism were. And my colleagues come from States as diverse as Nagaland, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. They are not just Hindu, but also from the Islamic faith and Christian; yet together they created a bar-raising event based on the Ramayana and Hindu mythology. Aikya is an impossible dream we have been realising as a team, year on year.
How we did it: execution
~ We provide a platform for others’ success: Stalwart artistes may have performed for years on stage, yet they like to work on new and different formats. Aikya makes it possible for them to explore their potential. Music producer, sound recordist and engineer Sai Shravanam, of Life of Pi fame, came together with Rajkumar Bharati, grandson of Tamil poet Subramania Bharati, to put together Aikya. And internally, our team had amazing skills in organisation and creativity that we discovered when it was not “business as usual”. All we had to do was facilitate others’ success. Ours became a natural by-product.
~ Make the purpose of action large and sustainable: The concert is not only a way to show creative energy, it raises funds for retiring musicians who can spend their last years in dignity. The second cause it supports is women’s technical education. When driver Dakshinamoorthy’s daughter passes out of engineering college and lands a job in India’s top IT firm, the knowledge that she owes her education to the Aikya concerts inspires the team to renew their efforts. Doing well while doing good is a motivator that fans the flame of passion and ignites excellence.
~ Reach for the stars, and they will appear. Artistes who performed at various Aikya shows include Aruna Sairam, Bombay Jayashri, Sudha Raghunathan, Sanjeev Abhayankar and Abhishek Raghuram, all of whom have contributed to sustaining the spirit of giving and sharing that the event symbolises.
And so it is that passion, when used with liberal doses of authenticity and hard work, can become a magic potion to achieving the kind of success one could hardly dream of.