MUSINGS_ON_‘GAME_CHANGERS’

Who are the Game Changers – Strategists? Managers? CEOs? Leaders? Or ….? For me a Game Changer is a person with a vision and clarity about the expected outcome.

Who is that PERSON?

A person,

• who owns the responsibility either at micro level towards family/ business/profession or at macro level towards society. 
• who has leadership qualities not necessarily to lead the teams or groups of people or followers, but to lead one’s own thoughts towards the desired direction with integrity.
• who realizes the need (may be due to surrounding environment or own experience) for a revolutionary change in the system and sets a goal and vision,
• who initiates move towards change,
• who inspires others to transform for betterment and leads by example.

Such a PERSON, possessing the qualities such as visionary outlook, righteousness, truthfulness and integrity, can be a Leader and a Game Changer for any generation. Few such PERSONS across the generations from various walks of life are Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Ratan Tata, Mohammad Younus and Mark Zuckerberg.

• Gandhiji (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi), the person with integrity and righteousness, as the world knows, with his Non-Violence and Satyagraha created a way to agitate and fight for the right, and thousands of people followed him in this movement in making India a sovereign and independent country. He led the masses by leading through example.
• Nelson Mandela - the great South African president and a great democratic leader. What made Nelson Mandela great is, what people saw in him what they sought in their own selves. He established his democratic leadership with a vision and inspired the masses to follow his direction in order to achieve his visionary goals. 
• Saint (Mother) Teresa - her great strength is her persistent focus on the core mission of her organization, i.e., helping the poorest of the poor. She spent her life in helping individuals in extreme need. Her life is the best example that serves as the model for the Missionaries of Charity or Entrepreneurs with a Social Goal. She was unwavering in her conviction, and this is what made her known across the globe.
• Ratan Tata, an exemplar of a leader who is committed to all three important stake holders of a business (shareholders, employees and society) and sticks to the set values and beliefs of his family. A person with core inner values and compassionate outer actions, he demonstrates an evolved, high-level of responsible leadership. Tata group company TISCO, was the first private Indian corporate to initiate and implement the Social Audit in India in 1979.
• Mohammad Younus, in his own words, “Whenever I see a problem, I start a business”, a Bangladeshi social entrepreneur and a leader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance. He is a congenital starter and a legendary leader. He transformed his drive and vision of alleviating poverty from rural Bangladesh by building an organization of 8.61 million borrowers raised from only 42 borrowers, by his initiative. He demonstrated a high emotional and organizational intelligence along with incredible self-belief.
• Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, is irrefutably a leader of this Generation Y, or “Millennials’ and he has proven that desired outcomes can be achieved through hard work. With his charity and donations he set new standards for current generation entrepreneurs, reminding them that they are not just creators of wealth to business but should also support social causes to make the world a better place to live in.

I understand that the following common qualities are seen in these GAME CHANGERS:

• Being truthful to their set goals and vision
• Integrity with which they pursued the TRUTH
• Finding and doing the thing they are greatly passionate about.
• Transformational leaders, who are inspirational, trustworthy and lead by example.
• People who work with people and teams to identify needed change, creating a vision to guide the change through inspiration.
• Having a strong focus on the future and pre-determined outcome, not on the past.
• Charismatic role models and creators of movements.

Promoters of working culture that helps to execute the vision in the most effective way.

All of us can be leaders and game changers. We need not lead the masses; it is enough to direct our own thoughts towards the socially, ethically and culturally desirable path. But what is important is, to have a vision, goal and passion to achieve it.  Most of the times, most of us tend to show limitations or bottlenecks as excuses for our non performance, instead of strengths and perseverance to achieve goals.

GOOD LUCK!