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? 

Phase transition - Learning and Development myths that may die soon

Don Tapscott, famed authority of the net era economy made some startling observations. The prospect of Facebook’s demise or Google’s fading out may seem remote today. However, when he treats industry data in longitudinal time analysis, he interprets it through institutional ecology, a paradigm that sociologists have used to explain industry behaviors.

When he alerts us to the crunch of talent required to make the next wave in technology, he is also implying a maxim that we have failed to recognise. CEOs and their executive teams have a larger than life influence on their corporations than they actually do.

Communities in organisations are the basic unit of sense making and action today. This is accentuated by the information that technology relays itself at break-neck speed. But our necks support more than information. We seem to miss that perception on the highways and lowlands of our neural pathways.

It is the myths of learning and development teams and their leaders that needs visit. Some myths that come to my mind include the following.

1.       Development will occur in steps of a learning ladder. Producing leaders at each step of the ladder is vital to an organisation’s longevity. Leader development and leadership development are the same.

2.       The environment inside the company can be tamed through propaganda as like in pasteurized learning, with every power constituency represented on the pulpit.

3.       The business environment outside the company influences employee behaviors less than leadership calls for action within.

4.       Ambiguity and complexity can be simulated in structured experiences at off-sites in ways that will visit the learner, even if remotely. A best practice is wisdom in motion. Like a list of 10 learning formulae.

5.       Volatility and uncertainty have a shape and form that learning and development teams have figured out in advance for leaders to aim at in break-out groups. A next practice is the product of reduced anxiety. 

6.       Training for skills and knowledge will ensure behaviors of value year on year.

7.       Perspective and Insight have no value in facilitation, especially because the solution that emerges is not with the facilitator.

8.       Mind-set is the employee’s problem, and a developmental lab the corporation’s solution.

9.       Expertise and example are with the technologically savvy.

10.   Behavior is not caused by organisational structure, process or design.

The above ten on my mind, for now. Where should I introspect the most to keep learning for effectiveness?

Poetry in the life of Social Media - Maiden Attempt

I thought I should slowly distinguish personal writing from professional scripts in blogosphere. I was particularly impressed when I read Deepa Bhalerao's poetry that she proficiently pens on Facebook. While that is not flattery, I am putting up a piece I wrote over the weekend to give a different complexion to my blogposts. Will also like to write blogs of professional nature on our upcoming company website - more when that comes up..

In the meanwhile let me know how this reads...

The narcissist pervades the media

In search of an adoration sublime

The realist scrambles in wanton hysteria

Both creatures numbed in their climes

This world has its chasers of fantastic dreams

Market-worship, shaman-rituals all yearning for eternity

Then the unexpected surrender in delirious screams

Like refugees - to love they turn, awash in hope of serenity

The mist of cold and the gasps of dust twitch the skin in between

Seasons of moods, and tears and laughter intervene

Remote from the awakening unseen

The insight that emerges in awareness within

Prayers sung for a patch of wieldy sanity

Are drowned out by acts of untamed futility

The poet’s eye scans for the pen of verity

That will ink upon the pad of reality

Frivolous nerves renting its moments

Snatching away at shards of Eternity

Meaning it seems will make its advent

And simply emerge in resilient profundity