Certainty the deity, Uncertainty the chant - 2014 as a reverse process?

In 2014, several stereotypes were challenged. India’s mission landed on Mars, at a cost unimaginable in developed nations. A teenager won the Nobel Peace Prize. We also saw violent intrusions of physical boundaries and the vagaries of the human mind. Civilian planes were downed, went missing and lives go unaccounted for because of people choosing to fly. Storms like those in the Kashmir Valley worried many. Winter chills from the polar vortex affected Canada and North America.

The rouble crumbled, and the popular representations in geographical zones started to demonstrate momentum in India and the Middle East. Japan’s low electoral turnout may inefficiently hide frustrations of a proud collective. Despite a revolutionary Pope and a rising of e-commerce, there are fewer jobs to go around in 2014, than in 2008. Despite more stringent laws women and children are violated in mindless circumstance.

If this were the context in which we end 2014 what is striking for me?

I feel challenged on account of incomplete inward realisation and the outward means by which we advance our causes. To quote a more articulate view “We know that, for better or worse, humans are incapable of rationally resolving theoretical debates outside of the institutional framework of the sciences. If we’re out on a limb, you guys are clinging to twigs. And now that science is making real inroads across the humanities, that annoying empirical breeze you feel is about to get a lot more gusty.” So wrote R Scott Bakker of the debate between views from Thomas Metzinger and Graham Harman. You will recall my mention of the phenomenal self model earlier.

While the philosophical chatter may appear much like ether or feel like flake to those not invested in critical enquiry, much of what happens around us in the real and physical worlds are now up for scrutiny. Perhaps the language of categories and prejudice may be closer to your preference in understanding how and why people take sides in an argument. So here’s what may make matters explicit. Consider facts reported by Partners Against Hate, who infer that Addressing Youthful Hate Crime is an Imperative.

·         33% of all known hate crime offenders are under 18.

·         31% of all violent crime offenders and 46% of the property offenders are under 18. 

·         29% of all hate crime offenders are 18-24.

·         30% of all victims of bias-motivated aggravated assaults and 34% of the victims of simple assault are under 18.

What do we do, when, in the name of religion, creed, language or race, workplaces are blocked for outcomes and energy? While, I am not in command of facts that parallel those of Partners Against Hate, here are a few probable trends for your consideration.  

·         Of all known injustice due to prejudice, offenders are rarely identified at the workplace.

·         Of all  injustice at the workplace,  voice is most exercised only when monetary reward is lower than expected by the ‘victim’ in the situation. 

·         For most ‘surprises’ during a compensation and benefit revision, expectation setting and goal setting are taken for granted.  

·         Workplaces project the language of diversity. Yet, ‘mind-set’ professions such as Quality Management (QM) and Human Resource Management (HRM) are rarely  experienced as integrators.

·         Of known sources of error and workplace injustice, work design and organization design are rarely seen together as the source.

Which in a rather curious way, brings me back to the role of bias in optimism.

I’m glad I was introduced to the work of Yuval Noah Harari, who as scholar of history, brings to us a  possibility in his book Sapiens. He argues that the greatest myth we’ve lived with for thousands of years is the Agricultural Revolution. The agricultural revolution has not reduced man’s efforts, but only compounded it. Instead, it is crop and cereal like wheat or rice that domesticated homo sapiens. Surviving and flourishing over millennia, they’ve made us dependent on them. They’ve domesticated us on this planet! (what a contrarian appeal to our senses).

We may’ve thought we’ve domesticated cattle. But the cowbell’s new forms like the cellular phone and hand-held devices now aided by the stealth of technological prowess, seem to muddle our thinking. Being is even more majestically challenged than we may readily acknowledge.

We’re hurtling into an age, where spiritual and intellectual honesty may be difficult to reconcile.  I find forms of that reconciliation ruling the roost in organisational debates too.  Let’s just count some of these tensions here.

1.       There’s tall obeisance to ‘uncertainty’, and yet stock markets punish for the lack of ‘certainty’.

2.       There’s much ado in the name of complexity, and yet simplicity is touted even if end effects are about oversimplification.

3.       There’s praise to the intangible yield from human resources, and yet there are perhaps fewer jobs thanks to technology.

Insight of 2014? When fantasy and optimism make heady confluence, it is fueled by inter-subjective beliefs dispersed widely in a society or civilization. That is to say, that socialization enables the stability of beliefs that hold up the myths of our existence. This is fodder to revolutions!

Stereotype to be challenged? Corporate or institutional impact on our belief structures. This is not about Coke as a want and water as a need per se. This is not about ideology, religion, philosophic slant or cult activism as much as it is about relevance of our actions to our wakeful lives.

How may we influence our beliefs such that what we experience at work on a daily basis is a reflection of our faith in each other’sabilities to revere and serve each other? Will such be the accommodation we make for people we may call neighbors, family and community too? 

Love has not tired yet

So much is made of issues such as religion, taxi driving and civic safety. I am most reminded of male overoptimism as we attempt to make sense of ‘news’ that we get. Even the barbaric mass murders of school children in the sub-continent seem only to have sent that momentary chill down our spines. Leonard Cohen has a song on Faith that has a contemporary prophetic appeal. Sample lines..

“The blood, the soil, the faith
These words you can't forget
Your vow, your holy place
O love, aren't you tired yet?
A cross on every hill
A star, a minaret
So many graves to fill
O love, aren't you tired yet?”

Indeed, presence in a moment of dire stress and bringing the other person to that wavelength comes from a rare and dynamic awareness. Like Viktor Frankl did with his prison officers. Human will, inner deep bone gifts of clarity and our attitude to crises. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” wrote Frankl in his book Man’s search for Meaning. I thought I met a few such people over the last few weeks of December.

A 4 am pick-up to the airport is often a curse for a worn out taxi-driver. But there he was 10 minutes ahead of schedule. Knowing a name helps, I thought when he called and spontaneously broke into Malayalam. I asked him if he had enough rest, and he said, he had just got up from sleep as his driver had gone on leave. So, what on earth was a pastor doing behind the wheel I thought as he cruised into a steady gear. “How did you know that?” he asked. “Well, I was informed by the cab company”. “Oh, no. They registered my name that way?” A few more turns under street light and he opened up. “I do not like to go begging for alms for spiritual service. So I set up a few taxi runs, so that we generate our own money to run medical camps and run a couple of schools in remote areas. My drivers need rest, and I pitch in like I did today. They know we’re building a mission”. 

On another pick-up and drop in another city, I got a multi-utility vehicle, (kind of upgrade from a sedan), and the driver was another enthusiastic livewire. “So where do you stay?” I asked him. “Sir, this vehicle belongs to the owner, who works for a software company. He wanted a trusted driver. So, since I am from his village he asked me to take care of the car. He stays down the coastal road”. “So, where do you stay?” “In this car,” came a prompter response this time. I knew I was onto something. 

“I wash up at the Central Station or at the airport wash-rooms”. “So you eat in hotels, I presume!” I volunteered. “Yes, usually, between rides, whenever I feel hungry”. “What about your clothes?” I queried, as he sported a chauffeur's look atypical of his tribe. This question brought a proud response from him. With a modest swish of his wrist and opening up his fingers from the sturdy steering, he said “I give my clothes for laundry twice a week”. And his village connect? “Sir, I go home by bus once a month. My wife and daughter are my life”.

On my last trip home from the airport, the Regional Transport Office (RTO) halted the cab I was in. When pulled onto the side, the sentry politely asked me for 5 minutes from my ride to verify papers of the driver. In 3 minutes the driver was back from the patrol vehicle of the RTO. When I asked him what it was about, he said, “Sir, this is a registered vehicle, and there was no problem. But the recent incidents have meant that the government is keeping closer checks. That is all”.

Just a few examples of how the organised web-enabled taxi industry in India has many an endearing story behind the wheel. 

Indeed, love has not tired yet.  May the year 2015, thrive on it. 

Milk of Value : Entrepreneurial Nectar

More than 20 years ago, I found fancy with a line of curiosity. It was this. What do entrepreneurs do to make their firms ‘professional’? If we had answers to this question, we would know what new entrepreneurs could do to scale businesses, grow revenues and provide employment to India’s teeming millions.

I was amply warned. “You’re going after a tough problem”, said my research guide. College friends and scholars said “entrepreneurs don’t give that time for us researchers in real life”. Suffice it to say, I persisted. I came close to the phenomenon of my original question. I was fortunate to present the linkage between Entrepreneurial Orientation and Learning styles at the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India. Prof. Dwijendra Tripathi’s words for me were very encouraging. He announced at the panel, that my research was at once ‘exploratory’ and ‘intuitive’ in design. But that is another story.

Let me first say I am glad I at least tried with the resources I had to meet with Dr. Verghese Kurien, whose memory today is commemorated as National Milk Day in India. On one of my trips to Village Bhat, I took a detour to Anand, where my mother’s cousin and her husband had served for years in social service and community health. Their local knowledge helped me at least see the utilities of the place and the rural economic engine. Folklore has it there, that Dr. Kurien impressed a Swedish delegation enough that he too was seized by the opportunity in reciprocation. That his cousin Ravi Mathai was IIM’s first founder came a distant second in reasons for the Amul Story. For some reason, the cause was so overpowering, that some of Dr. Kurien’s approaches were domineering enough to keep away middlemen and their support systems. In hindsight, the ‘situation’ he experienced may have had clues to his style, and the survival of the institution beyond his lifetime!

I saw some entrepreneurs from up close. One was Clyde Cooper, the dashing and energetic Managing Director of Blue Dart Express. He probably slept less than most professionals, and when at work, had the attention of an eagle. To pass Blue Dart’s Personnel Policy Manual through him was an experience in itself. When I saw the draft return to me via my supervisor, the affable Vasudevan Srinivasan; I was in for a ride of my lifetime. With bold red upward revisions of per diem allowances for drivers of inter-city surface transport trucks, I realized; Clyde paid more than an opportunity cost to operationalize his ‘fleet’. He knew operating realities from up close. In another instance, the grand big-hearted Homi Mistry took me to witness the entrepreneur’s dealing with ethics. He asked me to accompany him to a consignee’s address. He took a letter from Clyde explaining how a shipment was wrongly passed through the operations hub, due to poor vigilance, and a compensation amount was given to the consignee. Clyde was not a mere perfectionist. He set standards, despite infrastructure constraints through example and untiring consistency.

I visited Narendra Kumar Dhand, the creator of this unique firm called Parishuddha Sadhan Yantra in Ghaziabad. An engineer from California, but at heart the patriotic Indian, he set a shining contrast for manufacturing firms. His firm had no unions. They created India’s finest CNC machines for clients such as Mico-Bosch, and other automobile giants. Sensing my zeal, he gave me 90 minutes and more in interview. The lasting impression I have of him is his generosity of character. To endear an industrial worker in a restive manufacturing cluster required extraordinary compassion and focus. Extended further, the practices on the floor spoke for the mind-set of their products. Quality circles for continuous improvement, meant that the intrinsic worth of employees, irrespective of their educational backgrounds was core to the sustenance of the organization!

Another entrepreneur I only had a peep of was the indomitable spirit - Rohinton Aga. Suave, commanding in respect and empowering in accountability, his writing spoke more for me than any direct experience. But his wife Anu Aga witnessed a summer project I did during my post-graduation at Thermax. In those little interactions I had then, I realized that running a scaled up enterprise, was not just about ethics, professionalism and commitment, but also about integrating several roles in a life time- spouse, son-in-law, leader, industry spokesperson and influencer of business policy.

Today, we live in an era of serial start-up stories, none as epic as the ones I have quoted for their tenure, but gargantuan in appetite and perhaps unrealistic in valuation. I pause to reflect the innocent questions I had about what entrepreneurs do to make their firms successful. Two decades removed, there’s much in the original question to sustain interest, but the context has shifted on several counts. So apart from whole systems that have institutional perimeters or boundaries, there’s also the question of environmental impact and sustainability of livelihoods per se . I offer four questions as spin-off in an entrepreneur’s context.

1. Is the proposition local or global in vision?
2. Is the cause powerful enough and potent to endear commitment of employees?
3. Is the business proposition reasoned enough to summon risks of economic and psychological nature?
4. Is the model of the human being at work and the human being as customer congruent in the entrepreneur’s own estimation?

What has been your experience in these respects? If not a Milk Day, would it be Energy Day or Bio-Diversity day you will be remembered for?

Basic, not base emotions

Often, I muse upon the subtleties between enthusiasm and optimism; risk taking and impulse, self-sacrificing and altruism, and so on. These are fascinating areas of thought, and inferences from a similar behavior may trace back to different origins. E.g. who do you think is more of a risk taker - the cricketer Sehwag, or Virat Kohli? Who is more of the impulsive businessperson - Richard Branson or Vijay Mallya?

If seen from a more coarse, or meta-level, what may be the basic emotions we experience as humans? I am left with what Master Richard McHugh taught us years ago. He said there are four basic forms that emotions take. Our brains are capable of focussing on finite chunks of emotion in given time, and as such, may not process each with similar vitality or intensity in the same moment. Yet, when distilled, there are 4 basic emotions to deal with as below.

1.       Joy – where celebration and the general word happiness exist. This may not be an absence of grief, but surely the discovery of meaning is a great contender here. 

      For me meaningfulness is an necessary reframing of grief at times, as the travails of nature hold up gifts through experiences of suffering.

2.       Grief – where the helplessness in loss pervades, and stymies the senses accordingly to a near foreclosure of options. It is grieving during separation, or death of a loved one that calls for a spirited appraisal of emotional investment. Grief is a coming to terms with nature’s cycles when ends are a renewal or a rebirth of life-forms.

3.       Anger – where not being able to get what one wanted is asserted in varying levels of intensity. Unlike grief, it is a contacting emotion, as the aim one can benefit from in the case of anger is a deepening of one’s relationship with the other with whom we are angry.

4.       Sex – and this is the counter-intuitive emotion. Sex is a procreating drive for most, but it is a life-assertive energy that when repressed causes more ill – physical, social and emotional, than we are willing to admit. Sex as bodily differentiation in gender and unity of species as life-form is slow but essential realization. Deep respect can only ensue from traversing the deep masculine, shallow masculine, and deep feminine and shallow feminine aspects of sexual identity in the same body. It is about tuning in to one’s body and its creative forces. It is also about understanding that repressed from civil discourse, we often confuse this with love – which, in fact is a decision, and more than a fundamental emotion.

Having made mention, it is useful to be clear about love. Love is a decision to give in conscious awareness all of oneself to oneself, and to others who may share in spirit, social relationship or ideology. In this sense, love is not a free flowing emotion. It is not an object of manipulation either. As Osho Rajneesh once mentioned, it is psychologically impossible to love another without loving oneself. Self-acceptance and self-improvement are both components of self-esteem, and impoverishing either reduces the chances of loving others.

Loving others as oneself, therefore is a whole new meaning - a joy to live into!

What do you think?

Go online to reduce the anxiety of impulse buying!

My son rarely has accompanied us (his parents) on grocery shopping. He joined us for this once yesterday. The reasons for it is another story. The reason for my mention is the story that should interest you.

Wheeling the cart around the corner he said, it is better to shop online to reduce your cost of shopping. "Saves fuel and parking costs?" I was curious. "No, it reduces impulse buying - see that lady there - she may not even need it". A lady was staring hard at the goods placed at a place that required no effort to wind through the racks. I was immediately reminded of Paco Underhill's influence on position of merchandise in line with human anthropoid, and his book "Call of the Mall".

Having once written a book review on Sheena's book "The Art of Choosing", we also are a collective that have foisted a recent political regimen on ourselves in India. But sadly, I have been alerted to the consequence of numbing. And then I saw this one by Renata Salecl on TED. Take a look and see if we we have a passion for ignorance.

The ignorance of not knowing where we are headed is marked by the obviousness of the numbing we are now used to. Like getting up and expecting the world of infrastructure and systematic transportation serving the millions. As of now sales personnel work on clients and earn their incentives from those who may not need a second or third car or smart phone in India!

What Purpose Values?

At a remembrance event for my late brother Philip George at the Loyola School, Pune, Sukratu Barve had a sage like reflection.  He said Philip would ask Sukratu for his opinion on subjects he liked. In reflecting this tendency Sukratu felt that Philip for the scholar he was - respected even others' views of a subject.  This to Sukratu was spiritual.  For a Professor of Physics to state so, there has to be a wisdom from a forever that laws of physics cannot express through symbolic equations or formulas.  Almost everyone there agreed that Philip was a personification of ideal conduct and in Jesuit value, the  'man for others'.

In recent weeks two people who worked with me years ago, asked me for my permission to quote me as reference on their job applications.  It is my reflection in our times, that people make job transition attempts more to preserve the value of goodness in themselves than to see their salaries increase. 

Just yesterday I facilitated a meeting where the HR team were considering the explicit statement of values for their organization. Their context? Designing their role and competency matrices. In the last week,  I was immersed in data that spoke to a varying commitment to values espoused by the founders. Some connections between such dots is but natural.

1. It is the absence of the virtue in a value that makes for its significance than when it is present on paper and missing in its practice. We value things we lose, don't we?

2. Rituals of repetitive nature may actually denude the value than accrete it.  To provide experiential flow,  timing and not time of ritual or ceremony matters. So, it is a systemic value to be punctual in Japan, but it is a matter of magical calibration to time oneself to the leader's message in India.

3. Values that bond humans are fairly universal and could make for connect across organisations.  Organization specific values fall in a cluster that speaks to its character, often promoted by its founders.  

4. The more enduring the value the more elusive it's formalization.  Organizations struggle with method of Influence to espouse and socialize higher purpose values such as Love, Peace and Harmony. Being Clean and Transparent in interactions is the instrumental variant of the more Terminal Value of Purity. Tempted founders may confuse the morality of norms to control cleanliness, when they may mistakenly believe that they aim for Purity through control.

5. Terminal values are seen at first to conflict with base economic aspirations.  Instrumentality trumps transcendent values and is languaged as the world of operations or mundane transcations. This speaks to the character of spiritual religious or social organisations as distinct from business organisations.

In closing, am reminded of how the source of each of these values is our own very selves. While awareness mediates its realization, it is wonderful to experience it. Yesterday, when coaching a client whose overall sales accountability has touched USD $2bn, it was an acknowledgement that the client made that rang the values bell in me. Mindfulness helped my client zone in on management of stress, and it is this quiet confidence from which, the next action steps of transforming the world around the professional begins. 

Often, organizations make such realization a matter of instrumentality. This is a zone of confusion, no doubt, but oftentimes, a willful detachment from inner knowing of one's core makes for a crevice of unease in organizations. Religious or social benefit organizations and business organizations are all susceptible to such cognitive and emotional blocks. 

Triumph can overwhelm

Not sure yet which gender belongs to Mars. Venus is still light years off. The frugal engineering and parsimonious applied science that launched India as a nation through interplanetary space lifted human spirit like never before. 

It is no equation or alloy technology that I can identify with when marveling at ISRO scientists' collective accomplishments. I do not know how to feign such knowledge either. So here's what surrounds me as the overwhelming mood engulfs the nation.

1. It was a mission, like locusts movements. Locusts have no king, and yet they march in ranks. It was not a campaign where a kingly authority reigned. Yet, the nation willing to be swept beneath the apogee missed this distinction. I am hoping we glean this subtlety sooner than later.

2. Design trumps operations. No matter how marvelous project and program management can get with agile and scrum methods, MoM may not have delivered without a requisite specificity in design phases. Quality cannot be sacrificed even if expense control is a target.

3. Shared context is unconscious value base, and diversity binds it best. It is known that most of the scientific cadres on Indian government rolls come from aspirational histories. The lack of the silver spoon hardwired struggle and survival in resource constrained contexts. The distinguishing competence of these scientists may well be the temperament of method in enquiry, and not curiosity per se.  Both past hardwiring and cultivated scientific temperament fuse together best when language, creed and faith are transcended in long gestation. If removed even by a bit, you may experience jugaad, but not the elegance of robust science.

Well for starters, these are points that I choose over many others. They may seem simple on the surface. But they may well transcend the complexity of rocket science.

In sheer paradox, as a nation, we may have got this mix in serendipity than through science of social psychology or the procedures of conscripted ideology or manuals of leadership code. 

What do you think?

Against the grain?

Recently at least two of my clients requested my assistance in selecting people to positions they needed to recruit into. My OD self stirred in the confidence of the relationship, but raised a question of identity.

Both clients however decided that all they wished were  referrals. They would shortlist and recruit at their will. That was a small relief. But the anxiety revolved around the ability to place and position my request in their mould to people on my social network. However in one case, it was apparent that the client knew a candidate and wished an independent opinion.

I brought on my scientific temperament and asked the candidate to respond to the Harrison's Assessment online questions. That gave me a surer footing in the face to face interaction.

That is when it occurred to me that differentiation by specializations deflect whole person presence in the selection process. That to me is an organization effectiveness window.

So when I gave my sense of a thumb rule, the client's eyes and ears were up. Here's what I mentioned.

25% to social references from professionals known by the candidate.
25% to sound psychometrics especially on person role fit and likely derailers.
25% to candidate track record, of which 15 is self-report, 10 is based on rewards and ratings of others.
25% to the interview method or a slew of selection processes.

Now I have conveyed to my social network that I do not think am a specialist at recruiting. But they liked my trusting them to their ability to refer and do their references a world of good.

What was against the grain, was a learning experience for me. What do you think?

Attributes of Leader Identity and Social media

When social media thrives on pretentious audio-visual blitzkriegs from HR leaders, crises within their firms are more probable. Employees experience the brand far more certainly than creatively projected messages that distance the HR leadership from their own employee bases.

When business leaders  have more of their way than feedback from those in immersive value creation; delusions may overrun the firm' s fortunes. Surely the ability to receive feedback also atrophies with age and time, when such leadership proceeds as if unassailable. Let alone accepting and acting on feedback; communication rarely achieves the intent of the message in such firms.

I have known leaders in the recent past who due to their incomplete apprenticeship with power issues, have reported some of the tendencies as noted below.

1. In the frustration of not experiencing maturity or demonstrable competence, they deepen the divide between decision makers and implementers. Ironically, their attempts to kiss and make up in repentance meets with suspicion and slows the firm down further.

2. Upon initiating change in their organizations, their unrevised power archetype stresses them out. Unable to see their own role in the creation of phenomena they are part of, vulnerability causes more pain than change and they stay away from self-awareness. In hierarchical cultures, they even deny their tension with their investors. In less hierarchical cultures, their openness may be abused by even more insecure power mongers.

Can leaders meet such a challenge?

Surely. This is easier said than done. However, recent sharing from people like Bennis, on judgment and Goleman and Altman on self-awareness help.

It is when fallacious questions are asked that curiosity and self-development are arrested in their tracks. E.g. what's the way to show return on investment on self awareness ? The goal of self-awareness is the goal in itself.

Social media can be an alibi for human resource development. Let us beware. Only when the inward journey is reflected in outward expression is authenticity experienced, irrespective of the medium!