Dreaming big

While listening to Cliff Richard’s song in the fifth standard at school, ‘you are my theme for a dream, yes, you are a very lovely dream’; I got fascinated by the concept of ‘dream’ and ‘dreaming’. While climbing the ladder of life, my fascination has only grown with the concept. Once having stepped into work environment. I learnt how critically important it is for organisations to have a dream. I also learnt that all successful managers had one thing in common; their ability to sell the most important merchandise- their ‘bagful of dreams’.  Any leader worth his salt would know that only the wise follow their dreams.

Dream or imagination is an art of expelling from the reasoning mind, the self-imposed compulsions of reality. Once done, it gives to the manager an amazing ability to innovate and think beyond the unthinkable. Attempts towards reasoning and logic will fail the art of dreaming. An architect imagines a building on the drawing board, which could be a master piece of imagination, the engineers then deliver the result. The dreamer is usually a single individual and the implementers of the dream are many. So is the case with artists, they dream, imagine and put the strokes on the white charts. The Taj Mahal is a dream put together by over twenty thousand workers and no single worker knew what the result would be; only the ‘dreamer’ knew the outcome. So is the case with the Pyramid and all human endeavours, regardless of the field in which the dreams got translated to reality.

Fantasy is not a dream neither is illusion. ‘Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow’ (Aesop Fables-‘The dog and the shadow’) illusions must always be checked by reality. A quality necessary to have for any manager is the skill to turn illusions to dreams, and dreams to reality by totally embracing our each unique internalized inclination. Never should anyone be misled by deception of the mind that provokes the thought all dreams come true. No they don’t. And it is good, that they don’t especially if ‘dreaming’ and ‘waking’ are not in step with each other or are poles apart. A good wise manager would know never to get into a stage where, ‘dreams are the subtle dower, that makes us rich an hour, then fling us poor, out of the purple door.’ (Emily Dickson)

The process of dreaming permits us with moments of temporary insanity, where each of us flies into the realm of wanting to do, where no man has reached. Isn’t star trek, all a dream, but also isn’t landing on the moon, a stark reality. Dreaming is not static. It is a continuous pursuit.  An addictive habit. Dreams must reflect to be loyalists so that they rightly portray our intentions and inclinations. Dreams are a source of happiness, but never to be confused with building castles in the air. Rabindranath Tagore beautifully says, ‘In the drowsy dark caves of the mind, dreams build their nest with fragments, dropped from day’s caravan’ (Fireflies). Everyday experience of life enriches the process of dreaming, it allows for reality to be its closest ally.

Dreams are not to be used as vehicles to validate vanity. They must remain within the ambit of eternal truth. ‘the most important part of our lives- our sensation, emotions, desires, and aspirations- takes place in a universe of illusions, which  science can alternate or destroy but which it is powerless to enrich’ (Joseph Wood in: The Delusions with the Laboratory). Dreams hence are potential  warehouses of hope and achievement. They lead to imagination and which in turn leads to innovation.

The answer to all challenges of new ways to boost profits, enrich job productivity, ensure employee satisfaction and giving confidence to stakeholders lies in the creation of installing within all structures of hierarchy an innovative mind-set.

Innovation is an all-encompassing attitude that permits management to see beyond the now and immediate and look to create further vision. The outcome of nurturing innovative mind is far and wide. The popularity of ‘Ninja Turtle’, originally drawn on a paper napkin in a seven-eleven store in Los Angeles by two youngsters, to our own ‘The Burka Avengers’ is a case in point.

Dreaming allows you as manager to think big. Dreams converted into innovative approach lead to leap frog the market place and move ahead into higher trajectories of performance and recognition. An initiated organisation will ensure that innovation and a related mind set pervades all levels of the organisation. Innovation like dreaming is intangible and intuitive and consequently is representative of a state of mind. To nurture promote and grow an environment of innovation, manager will have to collect as part of their workforce, individuals who can dabble to think on their own. The risk takers think and act. Those with an ability to outstrip the unimaginable are the ones who have created machines that leap into the skies and they are by an intuitive process ingrained with suitable dosage of confidence of such pursuits to be successful. Indeed there would and necessarily too, those who would always like to build a parachute. A risk manager’s job is to mitigate risks and you as a leader, can never find them to even think of doing the undoable. Courage and confidence are ingredients that produce a ‘dreamer’. I have come across managers and even entrepreneurs who prefer to gather around those wouldn’t dare to dream or to think! This attitude, I believe is reflective of an unsure and insecure boss. Their motto will be, ‘I think (dream). You do.’

The potential of dream is infinite. However, while to some,’ dreaming’ comes naturally but to most it is a trait to be acquired through progressive cultivation of thought. Finding a reason, logic, a rationale or a well premeditated thought for pursuance of a ‘dream’ is akin to an attempt to weigh in the kilograms the state and feeling of happiness or even the urge to measure the breeze. There are numerous inspirational quotes of Henry Ford but the most apt to this piece is, ‘whether you believe you can or you can’t – you are right.’

In his celebrated book, ‘Golden Apples’ Bill Cullen says that he wrote the following words of his mother to pursue his dreams,’ it’s never a tragedy to try something and fail, the real tragedy is not to try.’

J. F Kennedy, who in my personal estimation was the last President of USA who said or did anything profound, remarked a few months before his tragic assassination to an Irish public gathering in Ireland, ‘The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.’ Where JFK left, Martin Luther King Junior, prompted the US nation with,’ I have a Dream……’ Wake up to your dream as a leader and get into action.

The mind sees more than the eye can try to see. To use George Bernard Shaw’s words, ‘some people see things and say ‘why’? Other people dream things and say, ‘why not?’ Render your dreams to writing they will with effort over time, will convert to reality. I consider it, a criminal act on the part of that management which fails to ‘sell’ dreams to its workforce.

Don’t despair, don’t regret, and don’t complain, if you can’t dare to dream.

The writer is a senior banker and freelance columnist