The Art of Self Management – Akkineni style

“My only ambition is to do my duty in this world as well as I am capable of performing it, and to merit the good opinion of all good men.” - George Washington, on the eve of his election as President, 1789

This quote sums up Akkineni’s actions of his life time and hyper active professional life of seven decades. Akkineni – Legend par excellence with discipline, dedication and determination achieved pinnacle of success in his chosen field Cinema. He entertained, influenced and inspired generations of Telugus with his histrionics on screen and self discipline off screen. He redefined success in the field of Cinema with his inimitable style of self management. Even his son Nagarjuna quipped that he cannot maintain such high standards of self discipline. As somebody rightly said, the highest art of Management is self management. If you cannot manage yourself somebody will manage you. Akkineni never allowed others to manage him. But he molded his life to attract success beyond limitations and became a beacon light for future generations. Let us examine the style of self management of Akkineni which made him Everest among his other fellow actors.

Self discipline: This is the top most quality which we can observe in the life of Akkineni, which made him stainless personality in the glamour filed. He acted with more than 60 heroines in his reel life without having a single rumor to his account. You can compare his sterling quality with the present genre of heroes and heroines who attract rumors from the day one of their entering the film field.

Knowledge: He is a school dropout from 4^th standard, his communication is not up to the mark and he said once that even don’t know how to say ‘namaskar’ to the people he meet. From this level he developed his knowledge of the field, mastered the ways of the world, read widely and recorded his own experiences as ‘Akkineni Aalochanalu’ which is a reflection of his mastery over the human psyche and unpredictable behavior.

Skills: Any art is a form of communication with the audience. His art of communication as an actor is also not up to the mark to attract the attention of audience when he entered the field as youth. He cannot speak a single word in English. He doesn’t know how to communicate effectively with people around him to get the things done. But, during his course of professional journey as an actor, he developed all the skills required and set high standards for the people to follow in future. He is fully aware of the fact that image combined with soft skills are the key to success. We can observe this from his selection of films he acted with exceptional mastery over his art of expression. He mastered English language and developed his own style of communication which amazed the world. His stylish of English accent and expression made many wonder about his ability to grasp anything with élan and his determination for self development.

Attitude: He has seen ups and downs in his professional life and faced continuous failures in his acting career spanning more than seven decades. He is positive to the core, maintained high degree of winners’ attitude and never say die attitude. His attitude made him Legend and towering personality among others. His progressive attitude made him unique personality as an Atheist who believes in action and nothing else. He lived his life like a saint actor who detached himself with the result of his actions. His practice of detached attachment to the core with the visible world is unparallel and reminds us Lord Krishna’s words in Bhagavad Gita ‘Karmanyevaadhikaaraste maa phaleshu kadaachana’.

Ability to deliver: He worshipped his work till his last breath. He debuted with ‘Dharmapatni’ and completed his work in his family production ‘MANAM’ along with his son and grandson before he breath his last. He never left his work in the middle and completed in all respects before his last breath. This shows his dedication and respect towards his work.

Resilience: Some of his films failed to attract the attention of box office though he liked them. Baatasaari is one among them where his histrionics amazed the whole world including Bollywood. He never hanged on to his failures and always believed in moving ahead leaving his failures to analysis for critics which shows his resilience when a film fails at the box office.

Competition and competence: He never competed with anybody in the field but set his own standards observing people around him. His mother advised him not to compete with NTR as his acting abilities in mythological roles are supreme and unmatched. He selected roles which suits his physique and voice. He has shown his competence in historical and devotee’s roles such as Chanakya, Jayadeva, Tukaram and Kshetrayya. This has made him class apart among others and kept him in good stead along with NTR.

Strengths and weaknesses: He knows his strengths and weaknesses as an actor and honed his abilities accordingly to create his own base of fans for decades. Ones a fan of ANR is always a fan of ANR for a life time. He never disappointed his audience compromising with his acting abilities. He has always presented his best on screen which received high acclaim from actors like Devanand and Dilip Kumar. He always realized his weaknesses compared to NTR and always avoided and rejected roles politely which doesn’t suit his personality.

Team spirit: He is a team player and always encouraged his co-actors to give their best when they are over-awed and over whelmed with his presence on the sets. He knows pretty well that film production is a team work and one has to catch up with the team to attract success and accolades from audience.

Simplicity: His simplicity is another attraction which endeared him to his fans and audience. He is simple in his attire in public and always wore Khadi though he never claimed that he likes Gandhi and Country much more than anybody else. He is a man of action and not just futile words.

Mentoring: He always listened to his mentors like Ghantasala Balaramayya, Dukkipati Madhusudhana Rao and many more. He developed his career on the foundation of their valuable advice. He scaled new heights in his career to become Mentor for many in his reel life and real life also.

Action Leader: He is a thought leader as well as action leader and determined to walk the talk. He is the first who took initiative to shift Telugu film Industry from Chennai to Hyderabad. He announced to his producers that he will work only from Hyderabad and those who wish to engage him have to come to Hyderabad. When an actor of his caliber and pioneer of industry gave this clarion call, the whole industry slowly started moving to Hyderabad from Chennai. This has made Telugu film industry firmly settle in Hyderabad and helped the industry develop in Andhra Pradesh. No doubt, he is a visionary with a missionary zeal.

Investmentor: He invested all his earnings in the field which has given him everything. Not just bread and butter but also name and fame to lead and succeed. This made others to follow him and invest in studios, recording theaters, dubbing studios, film processing labs and many ancillary industries which helped industry sustain its progress in Hyderabad.

Akkineni is an icon with a difference who continues to inspire generations for his self discipline, dedication, determination, acting abilities and entrepreneurial excellence. It is really greed to ask for his kind of tribe more, I hope a wish to this extent may come true which inspires future generations about how to achieve pinnacle of success in one’s life time.