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? 

Between Neutral Anxiety and Positive Anxiety? How do you Innovate for Awesomeness?

When it comes to Innovation, would you be cautiously optimistic for fear of slipping into academic fundamentalism? Did you not pay homage to the fundamentals during your education years?

I was on this cusp of reflecting the Monday 8 July, 2013 meeting of the CII Innovation forum. That is when a lucid, evocative and utilitarian perspective came in from Intuit’s Vijay Anand. Embedding emotional appeal within Lean process improvements has largely eluded the Indian IT services businesses, despite the rich opportunity potential to fill that experience economy market. Is it because Intuit is a product company that it has been relentlessly innovative for almost 30 years?

Well, this is not an advertorial for Intuit, but a stimulus from which I hold out a premise that may appear as symptoms of competitive myopia in service businesses. The Tofflerian Third Wave was to be about service economy proliferation or penetration with knowledge flows and momentous delights. What could be the deterrents that prevent providing customers with positive emotional experiences throughout the customer relationship journey?

Intuit’s example provides simple check-points, like the following:

1.       Do you deliver customer benefit?

2.       Do customers use your product / service for the benefit you claim to provide?

3.       Do customers recommend your brand proactively?

Delightful service or awesome client experiences could materialise if

1.       The customer experiences benefits that he or she ‘cares’ about

2.       The customer accomplishes his organisational or personal need with ease or reduced effort. Your offering will work with other stuff your client lives with.

3.       The customer demonstrates positivity through prompt use, showing or telling others of your offering or actually buying more of your capacity.

4.       The customer is able to justify his or her delight in your offering in advocating your capability, not just his or her intelligent investment in you

Sounds simple, and even reads ordinarily possible. However, the capacity to identify the benefit your customer cares about begins with your own emotional bandwidth. What latent need of the customer would you have discovered during the prospecting phase? How do you nudge your client to value your offering without breaking rapport?

Tough one, admittedly for engineers from India to design to a vision that provide you the Love Marks of the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Visualising the Customer’s benefit is also about addressing the riskiest assumption of your capability to serve your client. Innovation is the process where your leap of faith on this assumption will be the one on which you are willing to stretch your known capability. That is where you get leads into what the client is also willing to risk on in terms of behavior to meet your value in discovery mode.

A critical fallacy in this paradigm could be equating customer ‘advocacy’ with a commodity that has a shelf-life in terms of inventory and scale.  

Advocacy that arises from authentic customer delight is a value realization episode. The value is however impermanent.

In itself, the sentiment of advocacy has potential of perennial nature. Suspending the accretion of value could however, cast shadow over perceptions of your service capability. We all know how emotionally draining a service recovery could become. We also know, how desirous feelings of delight are.

In closing, as adult learner, I tie my observations with a knot to an idiom the illustrious Shombit Sengutpta led his firm with - Emotionality trumps Functionality, perhaps even Rationality! So, how would we render Authenticity? If you do not experience authenticity in the bonds between your own team workers, what chance does your customer stand of experiencing awesome service? Let me know. 

Errors in Judgment of Behaviors

There is much conversation on the role of biases in cognition. However, the source of bias and the detection of bias are both in our own selves. Some contemporary errors in judgment are possible, and knowing them better can help us clarify issues for our own benefit. Here are a few.

1.       Need for Recognition Vs Publicity

With the advent of social media, the logical adequacy of online clicks has fuelled an appetite for recognition and mutual admiration. However, the boundary between the netizen’s desire for publicity and the internal need for recognition may go unrecognised. So, you count your chances of finding a producer of bitumen approaching your eyeballs via the net.

2.       Narcissism Vs Self-Assurance

The story of Narcissus is incomplete without its moral. It is about finding our image in the eyes of others. Self-assured people not only accept themselves as they are, they know that they see the world as they are and not as it is. Self-assurance is knowing that independent of oneself, there is no ‘knowing’ of the reality without the self. Narcissists know no reality more than their own selves construct.

3.       Online Followership vs Thought Leadership

There are many ‘followers’ on the online network Twitter in the English reading world. Oprah Winfrey and Amitabh Bachchan  are attractors. However, in contrast, it is Eckhart Tolle and the Dalai Lama that command my respect on the same network. Getting online is no panacea to dealing with our emotional, analytical and spiritual essence. Perhaps, Dersu in Kurosawa’s film may never have needed online followership, and his indigenous wisdom of nature a thought leadership that neon flickers and laborless keyboards seldom grace.

4.       Non-hostile conduct vs ethical conduct

See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil seems a cascade into inaction at times. In rushed inference, it could mean to many that a steady abstinence from interaction could be a safe-mode of non-hostile posture. It is easy to miss the ethical tangle here. Voice is a gift that when used could express anguish, hope and joy among other emotions. Silence does not confirm consent. It does not accrete competence in ethics either.

5.       Respectability vs Necessary Norm

Total cockalorum. A little man with a high opinion of himself, that’s what a cockalorum is. It is a derisive title. In societies where face or honor is a matter of great sensitive value, people seek respectability regardless of the merit of the occasion.  Social norms demanding respect could overdo the substance by which respectability can endear. 

Being Alive past Illusion and Misery

That man is a social being is a familiar quote. However, the Society of Jesus produces those gems, that are rare. Anthony D'mello SJ is one such remarkable soul. I was told of him 3 years ago by Richard McHugh SJ.

I was spurred to buy his title Awareness - The Perils and Opportunities of Reality, from Bangalore's Sapna Book Stall. Published by Doubleday, it is a constant companion book.Quite likely that other titles by this exceptional thinker and being would be more than spirituality.


While reading him I thought the parallels between his utterances and that of Osho Rajneesh were so close. However, after going through the videos I realised that he is an Original. He is in the Minority of One, his Spirit at least. He died when least expected. Dick as we call Fr. McHugh mentions Tony's name with fondness, gratitude and sorrow. It was only this week,that I realised how dutifully, passionately and lovingly, someone has curated some video recordings of Tony D'mello's talks. Here are some of them...

Attraction is blind, not Love. Love is a Decision. The first statement is that of Tony D'mello. The latter from Dick. Dick whetted the concept through experiential reflection as also the rigor of scientific examination. Dick went on to become the first person on the planet to have a Doctoral study on Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). Dick studied the Masters of NLP, interviewed them, studied under them,  and studied about them. Michael Hall was his dissertation panelist. Dick's industriusoness is an easy contrast with Tony's flowing intuitiveness. Tony's spontaneity and facility with linguistic and tonal expression a clear clue to clear sightedness and insight. 

Dick refers to Tony as a friend, teacher and colleague in service. Just as Gestalt seems to be a field that stayed at it's premises before it's phase transition to something as more comprehensive and wholesome as NLP, so did Tony pass away before he could combine with the compassion of Dick to create something of a legacy in well-being.

Tony's works are nonetheless unique. The thought stream he represents would appear like a processing of decades. It is fundamentally uplifting, an invitation to reprogramming our lives. 'Cravinglessness' is a state of insight as much as freedom. Ambition brings tension, whereas energy in work is that which is delightfully participated in. As a student of life, I find this stream of thinking more than a relief. It is an exercise in the framing of premises about life. It is a paradigm, that if you catch, others will likely be infected with enthusiasm and liberation from untested dogma.