Passion is the most important mantra for a successful life | HT Brand Leadership Series

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Business of Life

Passion is the most important mantra for a successful life

  • Megha Tata
  • 25th Sept

When I was studying marketing, I came across Philip Kotler’s 4 Ps of brand building. As I progressed in my professional career, I tried to identify few attributes that would define ‘Megha Tata’. They are my mantras for a successful life. I call them Megha’s 5 Ps. Here they are:

Passion

My second ‘P’, which stands for prioritization, is extremely important when you have to manage both work and home. Though it is gender agnostic, the overall social system is designed to help men to play these multiple roles successfully.

Though society expects men to play the breadwinning-related roles to perfection, it overlooks if they fail to achieve as much success in any of the other roles they play. However, a woman is expected to manage all her responsibilities with equal efficiency. That’s where women need to prioritize. When a parent-teacher meeting is critical to board meetings, you prioritize that and vice-a-versa. So, you make your own rules.

A lot of us are ‘EITHER OR’ people. But I am an ‘AND’ person, and I constantly prioritize to achieve this ‘AND’.

Perception
It’s as important to manage the perception of others about yourself as it is to manage your own perception. You are what you make yourself to be. If you expect people to think about you in a certain way, then you must behave to support that expectation. I, too, constantly make efforts to build my perception of ‘myself’. There is nothing right or wrong about it.

PR
PR is another name for networking. I believe it’s important to build networks within your industry as well as outside of it. In Hindi, there is one phrase called as ‘Takiya Kalam’, which roughly translates as ‘My Favourite Mantra’. In the context of networking, it is as simple as ‘Baat karne se hi baat banti hai’. When you meet people and talk to people, one thing leads to another.

I strongly believe in networking, and I have actively worked on it. A word of advice here – you have to be thick-skinned about what others think about your networking, especially if you are a woman. Because, when a woman indulges in networking, she is perceived to be taking unfair advantage of her gender.

Networking is not only about going to parties or grabbing a drink at the bar. Women can involve themselves in industry bodies and initiatives. They can have causal interactions with people and later meet them at industry events.

Positive attitude
I am a ‘glass is always half full’ kind of a person. I believe half the job is done if you approach it with a positive attitude. We all have had times in our lives where we have felt completely out of control. However, all you can do is remain grounded. You can control your attitude; you got to be positive.

I manage to stay positive by practising yoga. It helps me in my self-introspection and self-realization. If you are calm and positive, you will start seeing things positively.

megha
Megha Tata
Chief Operating Officer,
BTVI

With nearly 27 years of experience in the media and entertainment industry, Megha has worked as part of the leadership team at Star, Turner and HBO. Currently the Chief Operating Officer of BTVI, Megha is amongst the top 50 influential women in media, marketing and advertising. She has also received Women Leadership award by World Women Leadership Congress in 2014.

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