Tag: connecting humans

The virus is not the problem.

~ PA ~ 3 Comments

Many a times, intellectual hallucination and unwarranted cerebral diarrhea leads to aggravating problems rather than solving them and when you try to use the method of applying “collective wisdom” of “empowered group of self proclaimed experts” who have not solved the current problem but something else earlier- we get served what we deserve- More Chaos! This short piece is about understanding how humanity has this unique ability to end up screwing up simple things and create complex problems which tend to become an altogether different problem from the original one! So join me in unraveling stupidity, dumbness and over-rated “specialists” who seem to have answers for all problems that get created while trying to solve the original problem, which remains unresolved!

When the coronavirus problem began, the least I was expecting was a scientific and rational response to meet the challenge and deal with it, but as I look back, what I realized is that more and more people (who are especially in-charge of devising strategies to deal with the situation) have been more dumb and stupid than what their so-called qualifications and experience suggested! Consider this to begin with- The fact that was established way early into this episode of the virus onslaught was that it is contagious and it spreads from people to people when they are in close proximity- within 2 meters of each other- great! so now we know what to avoid- than why the hell do we need to lock down cities, nations and ruin the whole economy of the nations? If there is scientific evidence on how the virus transmission occurs- the common-sense led approach would suggest- have protection, maintain the required distance- whether 2 metres or 20 metres and that’s about- Let the world be what it is! Why do you need to lock down- take way livelihoods- create economic anarchy and destroy a working society? Effective, sustained and persuasive communication in all possible languages and across mediums reinforcing the need of social distancing would have done the needful! Don’t believe me- well , your choice- so can you explain why even after the lock down has been enforced why in few countries the cases keep rising? Well, the answer is simple – Humanity is all about being social and if you ask people not to do something, they will end up doing exactly that- albeit in way that you can’t find out easily! Hence if the messaging would have started with the moral high ground of what one should “Do” rather than “Don’t Do”, things would have been better accepted and hence implementation would have been far more meaningful and so would have the been the results!

Now, if you were to ask the “Coronovirus” what it feels like today, after unleashing mayhem and wrecking the global economy, this is what the Virus would have told you, “You know what, I am simple virus- I hopped onto humans (accidentally or intentionally- you find out!) and found it fun to be here, anyways not many youngsters welcome me that well- so I hardly get noticed- but the oldies do hate me- hence they show their dislike to me by getting sick- and well- that is dangerous for me- because than even I can’t survive- if I they suffer so do I! I never wanted to be within humans any case- I was having fun in the animal kingdom for so many million years! I don’t know how I landed up here! Why is everyone blaming me for economic collapse, I am no banker- I a am a Virus- I may make people sick!,I have nothing to do with economics! You mishandle and misunderstand on how to treat me- how can you blame me for that?! I never asked you to shut down cities and lock everyone in their houses- If people manage their immune system well- by eating well and have personal hygiene- there is nothing that me or any of my cousins can do anything nasty with any of you!

A lot of the problems of the world that we are facing today even as we battle the pandemic is really not about the illness, neither it is about when the vaccine will be available or not, it is far more simpler and I have kept on saying this over and over again! Common-sense deficient decision making is not only ridiculous and foolish it is outright dangerous and fatal! Unfortunately the irony of our times is our so-called experts have all the answers for this pandemic- as if they got killed or survived the last one caused by this virus! The real sane experts on the other hand have been suggesting incremental steps to experiment and deduce in a calibrated manner on- the-go, so that we learn and know what works and what does not in a measured way, rather than creating the global melodrama of the Big bad Lock Down and as if once the Lock Down is lifted we will have the birds singing and spring will be back! This myopic, risk averse and dumb thinking by group of so-called experts has put such a severe strain on all other sections of society that nations will sooner or later feel the shortage of healthcare workers, law enforcement officers and all those who are involved to maintain sanity as fatigue would simple overwhelm them, because they are humans first and no Human being in the entire history of mankind has never won a battle with no definite deadline in sight! If and when societal fatigue sets in, it will rob societies off the very building blocks that define who they are and thereby make each step towards recovery even more harder and difficult, something that will even take time to convince people that everything is safe now! So you may ask me now- If the Virus is not the problem than what is the problem?, and people are dying- so the virus must be real?

Well sure, the virus is real and people are dying for sure- but what is that the people are dying off? Are they really dying only because of the Virus or is the Virus creating biochemical challenges within their bodies which have become fragile because of existing illnesses that is causing the deaths? What are the facts around this? what is the real picture?How many got treatment late? How many were misdiagnose? How many were accidentally killed during experimental treatment? We may know some answers and some we may never know! But this is where the crux of the matter is- Science says that there has to be evidence, predictability, repeatability for things to play out exactly the same way for same set of conditions- well does it work with a virus – the answer is yes and no- yes if the virus is the same and no if the virus – which is a living microbe- mutates! The Influenza virus- cousin of our Coronavirus visits most of us every year- in one form or the other, not all of us die, we struggle and recover- our struggle is proportional to our immune system’s response and wisdom of the healthcare providers! When one of these two factors break down- we have a problem which actually can put us at considerable risk and this is exactly what is being played out in case of the Coronavirus too!

The real problem is the way we are handling the problem- the real problem is “The Problem Definition”. If the Coronavirus has given all the scientific evidence of how that poor little things wants to move from one human to the other, we just need to avoid and break that path- the answer is social distancing- personal hygiene- that’s about it! Personal Hygiene is a private matter-one may say he has brushed his teeth and would not have been doing so for last whole week- you can’t help someone who has a psychopathic mind! Likewise social distancing, like I said earlier it has a lot to do with common-sense- why would you allow a stranger to stand close to you within 2 metres- why? I mean Virus or no Virus- why would you normally also be comfortable with having some stranger sneaking up so close to me, forget about that person coughing, sneezing or even breathing into you face? I mean why? If you say well, that never happens, you manage a high level of personal hygiene, you eat well, you don’t mix with strangers and random people- well than that’s great! so where’s the problem? You just blocked all entry points to the Virus! So what has the Heaven sent lock- down got to do with any of this? Why should you be penalized from taking a walk in the park, walking you dog, picking up your grocery, going for that long drive? Why?

When this pandemic shit is over in a few weeks from now, as the world sits back and thinks about it and as stories will be told to kids who are now under 10-12 year old- they will laugh their hearts out and say it on you face- How come were you grown ups so dumb? Why did you do what you did? Was it really needed? and trust me none of the “so-called” hyper anxious- doomsday centric- “specialist” will have an answer for the virus- well by that time it would have changed itself to be our friendly neighborhood virus which will be kept under check by popping a pill and not Locking ourselves down!

This current pandemic has more to do with the problem of mishandling a crisis and making a bad situation worse more than anything else! t’s a text book example of all that one should not do, during a crisis like this! When problem definitions fail, right questions are not asked and knee jerk- copy-cat solutions are adopted without understanding the contextual realities of life, we set ourselves to a bigger secondary disaster- which at times can outweigh the benefits, making the cure wore than the disease and leaving the original problem unresolved! History is replete with examples when great wars have been won and lost because the challenges were misread or misunderstood, political fortunes and businesses have been created and destroyed all because of incorrect assessment of the gravity of the contextual settings! The problem is not always the “problem”, the problem sometimes is the “way that a problem is perceived and defined” which ends up becoming a bigger disaster than the real challenge at hand! What could have been done, you may want to ask?

Well, simple and straight- social distancing, access to personal hygiene and keeping away risk groups from social arena! That’s about it, three steps implemented well, you have won more than half of the battle! No need for intrusive surveillance, lock downs, travel restrictions and unwarranted narratives! The real challenge with this overly simple solution is that “so called specialists” thrive on making a complex problem even more complicated to earn their brownie points and plain spoken truth gets discounted for unscientific gossip! Until this fixated fashion that “complex problems can only be solved by complex solutions” is not thrown away for good, humanity will keep on suffering from one or the other reason! Simplicity, Plain speak and Common-sense based approaches are the arch enemies of the “so called, know it all, specialists” and that is the real threat, more dangerous than the virus and these threats ensure humanity keeps getting hits by shit in one form or the other from time to time, just to have their inflated hollow egos well oiled!

I leave you with my thoughts here, grab a coffee, take a walk by yourself or walk your dog , eat well, stay fit and rest assured no matter what the “expert” says trust your common sense! Animals have survived with the virus for millions of years and humans have dealt with more nasty visitors coming from mother earth to us than the one we have now with us! So stay calm, and stay wise!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another piece, until then keep that gray matter ticking and learn it well- Simplicity Works and that’s the way of nature!

When the cure is worst than the disease.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Continuing with our rant on how stupid, dumb and mind-numbing decisions are being taken on a routine basis- all around us, this short piece is an attempt to see how we may eventually end up harming ourselves more by deploying half -measures, knee jerk reaction and imitation strategies, even as we try to do away with responsibility, accountability and ownership and use of meaningful scientifically validated rational actions! This is a journey to explore what it looks like from within in a typical case of “When the cure is worst than the disease”! So let’s roll!

To make it simple, we will see the different scenarios with increasing level of complexities which go show you how hurried diagnosis can actually make the cure worst than the illness! So here they are,

Anxiety Driven Disasters

Conformity Seeking Disasters

Information Led Disasters

“Always Agreeing” Disasters

Anxiety Driven Disasters: As the Coronovirus decided to embark on a world tour, educational institutions were caught off guard, the ones’ that were not technologically ready, needless to say suffered the most and this is where from where we get our first learning lesson! A few schools in India faced this, even as the different state governments urged schools not to ask for fees until the sessions for the next year began sometime in June/July; schools required to pay their staff so that they are able to retain their talent (which by itself is another subject altogether!). So when some parents (who yet refuse to believe that we are living in a cornered space) who had paid the fees and yet others who showed willingness to pay the fees, were told that you can pay later as schools will take time, they cam back with a boom to the schools saying, “Why can’t you go online and start, we can throw that money at your face, this is not done, we work in IT companies, we work from home, students can study from home”, so on and so forth… This trigger sets us up to the point from where everything now starts to rapidly go downhill! Well, the schools being who they are, ramped up fiercely, put extra time, teachers worked extra hard to get the content into the online format to ensure it stays meaningful and relevant for the students on this new medium and the parents were informed that, the schools were ready to start online sessions on time and that we can move ahead! This is that golden moment when the same parents who were ranting all through for their child’s loss of education etc etc, came back to the schools and started to say,” How do you expect a child in Grade I to have a laptop and use it?”, “I can’t lend my laptop for such a long time, I have office work!” So this is how shit manifests! 

If only, the  parents had not decided in haste, caving  in to their anxiety of  “What do I do with my child, who is free and I don’t know how I can add value to the Child’, and  completely outsourced their kids to schools and institutes, this episode would not have manifested, likewise only if schools had the conviction and authority to let the parent’s know that, “They know more about Education” and would have not heeded and given in to the parent’s anxiety, all this colossal waste of human manpower and ingenuity would not have gone to waste! Well there is certainly a lot of good stuff which will come through all this mayhem, but if you ask me this is a very elementary  level or rather a limited damage scenario emanating form a mismanaged crisis! If you are wondering what are do more damaging scenarios look like, we have our next type..waiting for us..and probably playing out near you even as you read this article!

Conformity Seeking Disasters: This is by far, one of my favorites because it is possibly the simplest to explain! The pandemic is a live example- The brash, blatant and unwarranted lock downs, shut downs, and whatever you may be calling them around the world have just ended up playing to the people who would have wanted the things to manifest the way they did! If you step back for a moment and maybe rise high- and take a bird’s eye view – you will understand- what we are dealing with is a virus attack- which has spread across different regions, nations, cities which are different demographically and socioeconomically as well, the one size fits all solution (read Lock down- which was in all probability planted into the minds of a few to be replicated by others!) has been needless to say a more bigger disaster then the virus- wiping away livelihoods, incomes, businesses and all chances of revival and hope in an unprecedented global meltdown much worse then the disease! You can pick and choose a nation of your choice, check the average number of daily deaths ( before Covid19- say for same time last year) and check them now- you will have your answers! If you are wondering why nations and leaders can get way laid- well the simple truth is – we all have evolved from Chimps and as the saying go, when uncertainty hits, it’s but natural to imitate and do what someone else has done- because if that has not harmed the other chimp, I too will be safe, hence as the first nation marketed “Lock down” as the holy potion for victory, others blindly followed, getting into a traps- which for some nations has been far far worse then the actual impact of the virus spread by itself! These episodes set off another set of economic disasters- which will run parallel to the primary challenge and will end up exhausting further the rapidly depleting and diminishing intelligence within societies to recover from the mayhem of a health emergency and financial emergency!

Information Led Disasters: I have touched this topic in my last article, this is played out more in the arena of businesses, because they thrive on their decisions both strategic and operational through important cues and visible indicators coming out through governments and regulatory agencies- so when the governments are all caught up in their own shit of “Conformity Seeking Disasters” any and all direction coming from them to businesses will be at the best confusing and contradictory- which in turn becomes a fatal blow that takes away even the remote chance of businesses surviving by trying to innovate and suggest alternative course of actions to revive and stay relevant! Businesses soon start to imitate each other, “what’s happening within my sector?” they ask, “What did they do?” in hushed whispers everyone is asking each other and then the conversations start, OK, “They have a turn over of xxx, they laid off abc, so I have a turn over of yyy so I will layoff pqr!”..Well this madness really has no sense because in this climate of Information (read Mis-Information), different contextual realities and race to Confirm and facilitate Capitalist greed, there never seems to be another way to get things done and so the death spiral among businesses starts, the result, well unemployment yes, but more importantly loss of Human Talent which comes biting back as a fierce competitor in a few short years and by then the people who have taken the decisions today are all but irrelevant and there is a new set of people grappling with this new unwanted competition for no fault of theirs! So well yes, this is one more aspect when impulsive, short sighted, best described myopic, unwarranted and unchecked haste creates a long term problem which is greater then managing a few businesses or sectors and ends up being a larger socioeconomic societal or national level problem!  

Always Agreeing Disasters: When crisis hits, even battle hardened, officers will tell you, they need on their team people who can speak their mind – to anyone – certainly respectfully- but one must say what they intend to- they must speak- courageously enough even when authority seems to be faltering and making decisions either in haste, impulse or on facts which are unverifiable and lack credibility- either because of the content quality or the source! When nations are run by people who lack courage, conviction, vision and simply don’t dare suggest or question authority on the scientific rationale behind decisions being taken- it is all but certain that the future is doomed because it will always continue to hand around over the horizon which never is reached and which can never be touched! Whether you have been part of a corporate that had called for a meeting of all your unit/ SBU CEO’s and all “agreed” (read “YES” people)  to cut costs and have people thrown out and calculated mathematically, myopically without understanding “Who” was being ejected out (the person- the experience- the competency angle) – it’s just a matter of time before the people who acted in such haste and impulse get the taste of their own medicine! Very often within the corporate corridors- the so called “CEO’s” (many of which I have found to be struggling with the true essence of that designation label and are nothing more then glorified managers at the very best!) act in haste and then later regret for what unfolds in due time- rarely do they get time and space to do damage control and many of them fade away into corporate obscurity with no future reference or direction like a satellite turned off and set on an endless revolution around the Earth for no joy! If you think this is bad, well when you amplify these kind of mishaps pertaining to “YES” people at governmental level especially if they are part of the strongest nation on the Earth or part of the largest democracy- just imagine how horribly wrong things can go when you have “YES” clan advising every critical aspect of  national security, financial wisdom, healthcare, social justice, growth, business environments, environment, think of an area and then just imagine how horribly wrong things can go! and yes when do go wrong, as they usually will go with a decent predictable timeline- the events that unfold make national and international headlines!

Well, I will leave you here, giving back your solitude, think and feel what you are witnessing, wherever you are, whatever  you may be doing, perhaps you are a national leader or a school teacher or a doctor or a pilot or a business leader or the average person who works for a living, take a step back, see the kind of decisions that are coming your way  or your are obliged execute;  try to decipher their source and the coded messages within the narratives; that alone is the way to salvage your today and safeguard your tomorrow to ensure that no matter who says  what, “The Cure mustn’t be allowed be worst than the disease!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another piece!

The story of large shadows.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Hey! hope you are fine! Well if you are able to read this now, I presume you have put the worst behind you and are now preparing to make sense of all the chaos and uncertainty that surrounds you and intrudes you through the various intelligent sources that you have- your whatsapp, your google and your network of networked friends and well wishers! Well this piece is to make some sense of the chaos around you and help you to find one way to inspect and make sense of all that is been thrown at you or will be coming your way over the next few weeks, so here we go!

Let me take you back to your childhood, you would have at some point in time, played with candles and studied how they cast shadows and also experimented to scare the daylights out of your friends! As a matter of fact what we are facing today is no different form this seemingly inconsequential episode! You may find this thought to be very simple, certainly it is a simple thought- but simplicity of thoughts does not mean that you discount them or simply brush them off as not been valid! That is the prime fallacy of the conformity bias wherein as a society we have evolved over time where we have started to believe that if ideas and things are not complicated they are not worth it, well actually the fact remains that the converse is more apt and more true! As societies have evolved and as we have evolved through work and education this constant and never ending one upmanship and pursuit to show that “I am better then the other” had laid the foundation to our own detrimental fall in the coming times! This whole pandemic episode is one such example- Well, one may argue that WHO (World Health Organisation) said this and said that, the question is what was your common sense asking you to do?! Possibly many nations wanted at first instance to shut off their borders but didn’t do so, just because they were afraid to not confirm to the global standards and when these global standards turn out to be grave errors of judgement, you get what we have just got served; A pandemic which was purely meaningless and avoidable with unwarranted loss of lives and misery to millions worldwide!

Our approach in the modern day has been about being ever connected in an ever complex society which has laid to an overdrive of dependence- let’s call that over-dependence! This over-dependence on each other works well as long as things are good and pleasant and the tug of war of commerce ebbs and flows as it should- the moment there is additional strain on it and one of the partners feels or thinks that they want to nudge a bit, the whole ecosystem will fail and with it everyone gets hurt! Even before the pandemic, not many may recall, the world economies were struggling to find ways ahead and were attempting to see what best way they would want to have their nations navigated as the next few quarters were starting to look rather more unpredictable! What the pandemic has ended up doing is, it has provided a hard stop to global economies, put them in suspended animation for the initial first few weeks and now, unless there is a measured and calibrated response from all nations in a sequential manner, the results will work in favour of a few and will be counterproductive for few others, which side you will fall into , will largely depend on how self-reliant, robust and intrinsic strength of resources a nation has over the others!

If you were to now extrapolate this aspect to your workplace scenarios you will perhaps understand how these similar dependence value systems would already have played out and will come up as organisations begin to come up with coping strategies and building BCP (Business Continuity Plan) measures which are more robust then the ones that they possibly already have in place! One important thing that businesses would have found through the sudden hard stop would be the plain simple fact – that either they have had misplaced dependence, duplication of processes and unwarranted complexity of chain of command and a fragile span of control! Needless to say, businesses will move swiftly to rectify these aspects even as they commence joining the loose ends and at the same time there will be new design elements evolving with regards to organisation structure and systems which will ensure that, next time such an event unfolds on a global level, and there is a need of another hard stop that will have minimal or negligible impact on their way of work and this will be achieved through only two ways- Investment in the right technological processes and the Right People at the Right Places!

The current events unfolding the world over have exposed, if you may say so the vulnerable aspects of governance, be it at the governmental levels, businesses or even how Individuals manage themselves through a crisis! This vulnerability relates to the long shadows that we talked about as we began  this piece. This vulnerability of the long shadows like in the child’s play comes from ignorance and feeds on fear- fear which is rooted in ignorance and a strong risk averse mindset! The only way to dispel this fear or mitigate it, before it consumes one and all (just as it has during this global pandemic showdown) is to fight the war of ignorance through knowledge and cure the fear of uncertainty by illuminating the hope within each one of us! Unless we are able to lead directed and focused approaches to dispel our ignorance and lack of knowledge and rely to depend on existing confirmations and norms that have worked well in the past for a pleasant tomorrow, we will keep getting surprised from time to time and these surprises at times may not be very pleasant to say the least!

So the point here is, the shadows that play within  your mind, reflect what is lacking and that is the direction where the mind should be lead to in a calibrated and focused manner to seek wisdom and do away with fear of ignorance which allows the shadows to be bigger then the problem or the object by itself! It is this approach alone that can answer many a situations whether that be the routine mundane task at home or the more complex challenge of saving humanity from the grips of a so called pandemic! I call it so called, because as I mentioned earlier, when ignorance is wheeled around the world what we end up getting is not a solution but more fear and ambiguity! When we wheel around the world a focused message of action and hope that’s when there will be enough light to dispel the shadows of ignorance and keep them at bay – behind the light in front of you and that is how it should be always!

Ciao for now! I will leave you with these thoughts for today, will be back soon with another piece and do let know  what next you may want to read here!

 

 

Teaming up post isolation.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Well, yes this is going to be perhaps the next biggest challenge for the corporate world (apart from assessing business loss and deciphering business strategy) for the year ahead! If there is anything else that’s going to override the corporate agenda for the next 6 months- it is going to be how well an organisation has been able to re-boot their people and get them back at similar levels of performance (if not better) in the shortest possible way and this is the arena that we explore in this short article…so let’s go ahead!

As the world comes out of the enforced hibernation, the isolation would have already done what it can do with the psyche of people irrespective of how high they would have been in an organisational set up or how more or less important their position would have been- If there is anything that one should take away as a critical learning from this worldwide shut down, it will be one singular thing that this has been an event which can be termed as “The Great Leveler” An event which has the insane capacity to bring everything to a common ground and then present those involved a choice- to re-build everything exactly same as before or re-build in a more resilient way so that instances are better dealt with in the future! As people walk out of their homes and residences and lead their way to the offices- there will be a million thoughts running through their minds- these will be stories of unfinished work, exposed incompetencies, failure of teams, missing of deadlines, missing out on opportunities and in very few cases it will be about realignment of personal priorities- all of these and many more such thoughts would be playing out loudly in the realms of the mind and this is what will be witnessed in the opening few weeks- teams which seem to be together but look to be lost! It is from here where an organisation can make the vital change either to re-build and re- boot or carry on and falter and resign to earlier complacency as if nothing ever happened! This happens to be  precisely the space  and time ,that trained specialists who understand and decipher human behaviour will be needed and deployed to help organisations navigate these initial few critical months!

So depending on what the size of an organisation is, what it’s services/products are and what are the intrinsic value systems that have been (whether they worked in these times or whether they too need a change), all of these will be part and parcel of the effort to bring back the buzz within the corporate corridors. Given the fact that this is a blog, we will touch more aptly to the broader generic aspects that each organisation will need to and should address and leave out specialist domains pertaining to the likes of Executive Coaching and Mentoring out for now! 

Once the people are back, regardless of the size, the organisation will have to take a stock and find how they “seem to be” , look out for changes and any random behavioral deviations that are being displayed- these can be done by cratering smaller groups and having those much fabled High-Tea sessions or for smaller employee base it could be one-on-one’s with the trained HR specialist to gauge what an individual has gone through during this period of isolation. Any of these methods deployed are good as long as it helps the organisations to come up with a team efficacy score and identify if any damage has been done which will need additional support or attention- this again could range from re-alignment of few people from one team to another and at times could be as important as relieving  a team lead of the team’s responsibility! Surely enough no one needs to do this by doing a big bad corporate wide announcement but this has to be done subtly using a human touch with a genuine purpose of knowing and validating the mental health of an individual- consider this you are an aviation firm and now put what I said above in context- get the seriousness of the situation? Good!– Likewise it is important that organisations do this first step because anything and everything that corporate will go ahead and do for team building, team rejuvenation and those kind of efforts will only bear fruit, once an in-depth assessment has been done to figure out what kind of exact interventions are needed and then come up with a plan which is effective and has a timeline for the organisation to be able to measure the effectiveness of the intervention as well!

Once the validations are done, the next step could be using the most apt technique to get teams back to performance levels which they were at when the momentum was broker- people normally don’t agree but the fact is all target and achievement driven tasks normally have a rhythm- these rhythms can be either extrapolated to the rise and fall of revenue, attrition , breakthroughs or acquisitions – all this will vary and will largely depend upon how simple of complex an organisation is and what its business goals and revenue expectations are! So the next step becomes important – in this context- as the performance is trimmed to acceptable level before they got distorted and immediately followed up by pacing up or dialing down the rhythm which will put it on course to build on the found momentum and race ahead as needed by he organisation concerned!

Although this looks deceptively simple and easy, this will be perhaps the most difficult of all the steps and will call for serious efforts from an organisational level, as the primary challenge will be of getting trained HR specialists and interventionist who have this innate understanding of the human mind, which will be critical to create a mental heath map for the organisation. This mental health map can go a long way to know the risks and strengths and thereby ensure that the organisations are not further jolted on their path to recovery because of human performance issues related to the impact of the isolation period!

These first steps will be very critical to ensure that organisations end up spending and investing their available resources on the right teams and people. Any effort that organisations make to circumvent this process of slow assimilation of individuals back into team environments will eventually back fire sooner or later- but it certainly will!

Of course I am not suggesting, everyone will be psyched out or delusional or hallucinating as they come to their workplaces, but it is worth remembering a fact that 21 days is a long period in anyone’s life- given the fact that we don’t live forever ;If there have been islands of calm and silence encountered by individuals in these solitary times- they would have either nourished or damaged depending on the path that an individual would have decided to undertake during the time of this unforeseen and forced clamp down! As these individuals with personalities altered come back to work- they will need another 21 days – minimum- to apply their altered personalities to an environment which these changed personalities will find a little out of place- The alteration here will be the key- if the alteration reinforces their beliefs and values- the homecoming will be easy and quick; if the alteration has been a complete change of beliefs and value systems- you will more often then not see them struggle or leave the workplace in the coming few months! The initial steps that I discussed above will be critical again to know which one of these steps an individual is likely to take!

So people, I leave you here for now, with these thoughts for you to reflect upon and plan ahead, whether you lead a team or are part of the team, or the specialist who will be given a lot of work in weeks ahead- well have your coffee for now and start gearing up for the times ahead- as they say- the bend in the road is almost over and we are going to hit the straight patch and we better be ready and geared up with all the tools and the mind that we have to ensure we make the most of it, as we emerge out of these ambiguous times!

I will be back soon with another piece and should you or your organisation need that intervention that I talked about here, you do know how to reach me!

So ciao for now and keep writing in with your thoughts and suggestions!

 

The complete circle!-A journey from Lockdown to Meltdown to Rising of the Phoenix.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Even as I muster enough courage to share with you; as I see the things- as they unfold- by the time I complete this article, there will be more hundreds of positive cases across the world- most of these people will survive and few of them will not be able to make it through it! This senseless loss of lives, coupled with an economic crisis unlike ever before- is in a way preparing humanity for something, that we have never been ready for and in all probability, every few years these instances may come back haunting with different scales and intensities as the world tries to re-adjust to a new order- An economic and geo-political order! This quick piece is to try and imagine how the next few months will unfold and possibly provide an anchor hold so that we know which way to steer the ship of our lives as we begin to move!– So let’s go!

By the time I am writing this article, China from where all this began, is already more or less back to normal- which implies that production lines are buzzing, people are working and it is a normal day in the nation! Well, I don’t have anything personal against them (apart from the tense diplomatic connect that India and China have always had), but being an Indian we need to take care and watch our neighbors! This pandemic is a classic case wherein a neighbor decided to do “pest” control which has gone horribly wrong and who these “pests” are; perhaps only time will tell- or may be the world may never know!  So as the instance moved ahead- the global community saw the initial stages as an internal matter of China and felt relaxed –To an extent that even WHO took time to go through the processes of definition – whether it should be an epidemic or a pandemic and by the time all these great leaders and wise people with all the cutting edge resources at their disposal realized what was unfolding- it was too late and eventually every member state of the UN finally has been hit by this pandemic! 194 nations have confirmed cases on their territories! This scale has never been the case earlier ever in recorded human history! This brings us to the next stage- The Lock Down

The concept of lock down is not new, during wars this is the first step that every nation will initiate so that all available national  resources of a nation are used for the defence or for attacking the other nation as the case may be! Makes sense- but with this pandemic – this decision- kept getting delayed- we may never know why!- and even as people were aware – to a reasonable extent that the virus was very aggressive and contagious with a greater affinity to the older or medically compromised population– nothing was done to flag it off- just imagine- with the first cases coming to light somewhere as early as December- even until March second week- international flights were operating! I mean which world leading organisation in the right frame of mind would not have instructed the IATA and ICAO to ground all airlines worldwide in February 2020 itself? Why drag it to such a point. To add to this- This initial delay also cascaded into allowing communities within nations to roam around their land- with no concern and  it was these two basic acts of neglect and disregard that have brought the world order to the stage where we are today! The lock downs also as matter of scientific validation  are effective only when they are done with some reason- like cases being reported from an area may be a borough, town or a city- in those cases lock down makes sense- but when you have not been able to manage a planned approach- panic sets in (even if you are a government) and you will take irrational steps which translate into nation wide lock downs! These in turn end up doing more damage economically – which far outweigh what the Virus could have done even in a worst case scenario! Especially when the Virus has a mortality rate less then 3%! Stage is set for the next step- The Meltdown!

Even before the pandemic set in the world all across- was jittery with massive trade wars compromising and threatening billions of dollars in the global market, with workers being laid off on an ongoing basis in developing worlds and with this getting more and more unpredictable , it was perhaps time that the world was racing ahead towards an economic re-boot! The whole promise of digital economy, again a core element of the global narrative (don’t forget digital money is no real money- it is just an electronic interface which is showing you a number which is being honored as long as the state is allows it!)and its aggressive push was always looking out for a big and bad excuse and this instance happens to be a perfect alibi! Confused- well, let me keep it simple- right now- if all citizens of any nation were to Q up and decide to withdraw all their money at one go , same time- any and every nation will simply fail as it will never have those many paper bills to provide everyone with what is being withdrawn! It is as simple and complicated as this! So what we can now expect in the days and months ahead? well read on…

The Meltdown stage will see many rapid developments, based on the laws of each nation- one common thread that you will eventually see coming out after this carnage will be that every sector (any sector for that matter) will be left with lesser then 5 or maximum 10 global players for those sectors. These will be the ones’ who will decide how they will shape their products and services from their respective zones and align them to the new ways that already have been planned by respective governments- most of them will wear a cloak of opaque transparency- you will be able to see only if you know what to look for! These business arrangements will then be the foundational step of humankind as a global community starts to play role to the larger conformity bias of the new developed and evolving societal order and those who will be found to be outliers will either be ejected or eliminated and that’s for sure- the people running these systems will want to run the way they have planned it and irrespective of the government’s will have and have always had the power to over-ride and manipulate governments the world over!These large scale behavioral changes brought about in human societies across will tend to shift focus of people from being the careless consumers that we have been for some time now to more mindful and responsible consumers- so as the dip in consumption happens- we will move into a space of rising costs of services and products- to meet custom needs and infrequent purchases! How this gets played out will depend on the type of government that each  nation has-more importantly in the garb of the pandemic- almost all nations have executed their own acts which in turn have given immense powers to the government of the day and power- is a double edged sword! During this stage of Meltdown- Human behavior will see alterations like never before- remember these lockdowns have been closer to 21 days and 21 days is the magic number to alter human habits- people will end up being more anxious- stress prone- resilient- calmer- aggressive- confident- depressed- all of these and many more such hues will emerge depending on how an individual is placed within a start of the society and what is the intrinsic strength that one has to deal with these global showdowns! Towards the end of the meltdown- when the conqueror and the vanquished become clear on the horizon- the remnants of this episode will begin to piece together the path ahead and it will be the proverbial Rising on the Phoenix that will follow next… 

The proverbial rising of the Phoenix will be slow, planned and designed to ensure that only those who qualify to be within the scheme of the things will be held on to- others who have not been able to conform to certain standards will be left out to defend for themselves ( In this will lie the seeds of the  next great global crisis!). In the following months, people will want to naturally break free and travel (because that will be the natural psychological trigger – which will help people again believe that they gain have regained control- there will be surging rush to travel (but all these travels will be majorly restricted to domestic arenas) and even as airlines companies merge and continue to be on borrowed time- as it were- the initial three- six months will see this- the really challenge will start after that as few sectors will be buyout- globally- which will be finance, travel, wellness,  healing, spiritual tourism,tourism and hospitality- leaving these aside practically everything to do around the consumer side- whether it is the FMCG or the FMCD or even the Automobile sectors will all see a downward spiral with an apparent no end to their crisis- A criss which has on a way of their own making!  Workers will have to make a choice to either seek monetary security and give up on aspirational attributes and agree to live life in a prescribed manner or create affluence by being a disruptor and challenge the establishment on an ongoing basis. Apart from this self-employed and  the business class will have toe sure they remain agile and nimble for overcoming all and any challenges that may come up  (which will indeed) with unpredictable speed and timing– this will be vital as businesses will be then necessitated to comply to fall and align with specific groups and sub-groups of the new business order (which will be sold to them as the the concept of “ease of business”) Altered behaviors will create a further rift between the affluent elements and class of the society and the deprived and the so- called middle income group will have to take call to either move upwards or decide to stay low! The whole world will seemingly move to a two class society based on economic affluence! Compound this with growing digitisation through digital currency and digital surveillance (which will be told is necessary because of what has happened) will be the final nail in the coffin of individual liberties world-wide and whether the governments of the day say it or not- Big Brother will always be watching you! I won’t dig deeper into this aspect because it will take us to another topic – which we will discuss some other day or other time!

I will cut my thoughts here for now, but the key takeaways, are somewhere mentioned above and hidden away in plain sight for you to think further and reflect upon; based on who you are what is that you want to alter, how and why and ensure that you will be able to stay relevant for the times ahead! This pandemic was the excuse that the member states were waiting for a re-boot- a re-boot to set new rules of engagements with each other and flex muscles at that level. Needless to say, we will be impacted at the levels where we are and we will need to choose how we flex and make the most of the emerging stations without breaking or exhausting ourselves- intellectually, emotionally and physically!

Given the limitations of a blog; I will leave you here with these thoughts for now, grab a drink and see how you lived through the Lockdown- how the Meltdown is impacting you and How you are preparing for the phase when the Phoenix begins to rise over your horizon and what you will do about it to ensure you ride the right wave and stay afloat for long times to come and prepare yourself for the next crisis- which at this very moment is being developed! More on that some other time!

Ciao for now, Stay at Home, Stay Safe, Always keep Social Distancing and importantly stay wise and don’t get killed by dumbness! Will catch up soon with another piece!

 

What to expect as people emerge from the lock-down!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

As we emerge out of the demonic shadows of the pandemic, you will find that the world has changed a big time, for good or bad- well this will largely depend on how your lock-down period was and what were the contents of  your isolation! Irrespective of whatever it was- you will be a changed person for a lifetime and may that be for the good and greater well being of yourself and everyone around you! This piece is a quick one trying to share what are the emerging shades and colors of human behaviour you will get to see around as the world begins to gets ready for business as usual in a few weeks from now!

You will probably encounter what I call is the “Butterfly syndrome” well not everyone, but the usual “social and ultra extroverted types” will be the ones’ who will display this. These will be the ones’ who will go from desk to desk and check if all is well and so on and so forth! Well, folks, I am not going to tell you if this is a wise thing to do or not, I leave that to your own figment of imagination! (as a Coach I am largely indifferent to how people behave- much of my focus is to see if their behaviors are aligned to the outcomes that they aim for!). But in a way these people with the “Butterfly syndrome” are the ones’ who have walked into the event and walked out of it with relatively the same levels of IQ and for them coming back to the routine is akin to waking up to reality (they forget all the torture, stress and challenges that the lock-down would have presented). This is good in a way but the problem is that they also forget the vital learnings that are needed to have a meaningful life ahead as they go on to embrace the world- full speed ahead with their selective amnesia!

The next broad display will be from people whom I like to call the “Reversed Polarity syndrome” As the name suggests these people will display completely opposite behaviors then what they were before the break off from the routine– you will come across cases wherein a person who has been a known introvert- suddenly is getting colorful and is too much into everyone’s face at times and borders on actually ending up irritating others (this irritation would normally have more to with lack of content for the right contexts as the person tries to overdo the extrovert’s role- not knowing when to shut up and when enough is actually enough!). On the other extreme other end of the band you would have an otherwise vibrant and chirpy individual suddenly transformed and metamorphosed into a deadly silence, displaying a matured behaviour which would generally be not congruent to their age! Now whether this will be good or bad- depends on multiplicity of factors like who they are what they do and the kind of job that they do etc. etc.; The best part of all this, is the fact that people who will display these traits- with time, will elastically come back to their natural zone; even before they realise it, they will be once again their authentic self! Even they will find it hard to believe that they did behave the way they did in the initial days after coming back (which will fun for some and embarrassment for few others)!

Then you would have that pristine balanced lot- right there in the middle- as if nothing happened- will go on as usual as if they are just back from a vacation and their conversations will all loop to things- like- during the work-from-home I had sent you that mail on Saturday at 5 pm and that other mail earlier on Friday at 3:30 pm) and people are left dumbfounded- “Wow, this person is God in disguise-even as the earth and society seems to be falling apart- you have this smart person- rattling off the data, numbers and also sending out plan of action for days ahead! Cool!

Apart from these superficial aspects- there will be however, a lot of serious stuff playing around the minds of the people all the time for a good long time- this could be as long as few weeks for a few of them it can be a lifelong challenge depending on how an individual would have soaked the episode in! These things and episodes will be played out in the deep confines of peoples’ mind all across the world- these will be what I call as “Automated Response mechanisms” which will evaluate every act and every action in light of how vital or trivial it seems to be in the larger scheme of things- read ones’ life and what one wants from it! Of course not everyone and all people will be able to have this space of their mind ticking around this- But this will be reflected and shown by people who actually have used this space of isolation to seek and find their real urge and have got their priorities of life right during this time in isolation, for some it will mean reinforcing their beliefs and values in what they have been doing so far and for few others it would be throwing away and walking away form all that they were doing and head to pursue something totally new with a refreshed approach and work towards what their new priorities are now! Whichever you look at it, it certainly assures a positive outlook for the individual, but that may not always work for a similar experience for the  organisation that an individual works for unless the supporting ecosystem within the organisation echoes the same!

These and many such evolving patterns of acquired behaviors will play out across offices and work places at all levels and these interplay will lead to new synergies trust behaviors and in few odd cases will lead to fall outs and complete rejigs of value systems and individual alignments vis-a-vis- the work place mandates! Importantly after spending an excessive time through the work-from-home scenarios- there also will be realignments and re-calibration of inputs and efforts that are provided by individuals at their homes with an aim to calibrate these inputs against outputs that are being perceived and experienced! You will see instances of where people want to spend more time at home, you will come across instances where people start to work late more often, you will see people wanting to travel more often or less often- all this will be in a nutshell reflective of how the excess time at the home front went by. There will be multiple reasons and again a hue of colors and shades of different personalities working with or against each other as well- and honestly that is befitting for  another article altogether!

Whatever it is, folks, trust me the period coming up, certainly promises to be rich, colorful and entertaining, which will offer a window into the human mind and behavior like never before! I am also quite sure none of us want another global crisis just for studying changing behavioral patterns- certainly not me! But then, this is perhaps among the  few positive fallout of a crisis, next only to that of saving lives from the clutches of certain death!

I leave you here for now and will be back soon with another refreshing article. Do keep writing in and do let me know what is that you want me to write next about and yes; stay calm, wise and safe always! If dumbness and stupidity gets you dusted- well nothing can be paradoxically as painful as that would be! Ciao for now and will catch up soon!

 

The aftermath of a pandemic- The way global communities will change!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Whether you in self imposed isolation or into an isolation because someone unwittingly gifted you the virus- whatever the case is- the fact remains this is perhaps the biggest opportunity in your life- where you have your employers paying you to think further and beyond for your own life! (unless you are working for yourself or you have got those gifted employers who are tracking you by those sinister cameras on your laptop- to check if you are indeed working!). This article is not about checking what could have been done or not and what is being done- it is about trying to unravel the scenarios that will come to play when all this dust settles in the next month or two and the new world order will have reset priorities – for almost everything- how businesses are conducted with whom, how people travel and how they stay connected, where the opportunities are and who will eventually benefit from all this mayhem until the next big episode which will dawn upon us! – Which certainly will- but of course – no predictions here on the timelines for the moment! So here we go!

To begin with, take a moment to reflect how the world was just before this pandemic started to become one. In terms of the health of the world economy- Majority of the top economies across the world were in dire straits for one or the other reasons with each nation slipping away into ever-increasing fiscal deficit (this is one way of simply telling you that each nation has been living beyond it’s capacity to create and spend wealth- either through internal or external borrowings!). Next, what are the major events that happened as this was breaking out- withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan- Trade deal with China and Brexit. Now with global economies under pressure and still scratching their heads individually as nations and as collective groups of the G7, G20, ASEAN, You pick a block and you will see a trend that there have been meeting of each large trading or business block during the period preceding this pandemic. Well I am certainly not trying to suggest anything here, but these are facts and these meetings did happen and they did happen before this “pandemic”went live! Now hold your thoughts on this right here and let’s move into another space for the same timeline- just before the pandemic!

Travel and tourism- This sector too had been struggling for long for some or the other reason- whether it was the plane manufacturers, hotel chains or the average traveler- who again have been shifting and changing their travel patterns for the last two years because of economic indicators (which in turn have been equally shifting and dodgy on an ongoing basis). This complete lock down and a clamp down of sorts again has come as a blessing in disguise (whether by accident or by design- perhaps we will never know). To this add a slew of other sectors which have suddenly announced to produce chemical compounds, instruments, equipment’s- all aimed to fight this “pandemic”(some of these companies have never had their core competency in the longest time in history- for what they propose to manufacture and offer!). Now all these business will use their respective laws of their land to rejuvenate, re-boot (read- government write off’s on loans, waivers and job losses). Now hold this thought and try to think and see what your intelligence is saying to you! (I may be wrong- well the whole point is to make you think!)

More importantly, this is going to alter the hardwired approach that people have always had towards dealing with each other as societies! Ironically densely populated societies will emerge as more isolated and even more disconnected after this all ends and will end up being more self-centered (read selfish and self-serving) then before. However, the communities and societies across the developed world will find a new reason to practice heightened care for other members of their societies and emerge as more connected and and more empathetic then before! This will partly be because the way communication around the “pandemic” has been propagated and dished out! Human brain too, being what it is, will trick people form one segment of societies (which have high densities) to follow the norm that distance is good and will factor this into everything going ahead (anyways much of the human societal interaction and engagement has been shallow and self-serving for the longest times of history). When it comes to societies with lesser population density- the human mind  will play the other way around- it will reach out on the note of empathy and care (as few number to a sparse society) will trigger the part of the brain where duty of care, respect and mutual affection (with now available access to medication) will ensure that health and wellness emerge as the top most priorities of those societies and will go on to reflect in every choice that they make- whether be food, travel, fashion or whatever element you want to choose!

Well, since there is a limitation to a blog, I can’t go on picking every space and zone of human lives and possibly discuss how I think those will be altered- but wherever you are and whichever society class you are a part of – you will see all this playing out right in front of you! In the times ahead- based on which society you are specific aspects will become costlier- say you belong to societies with high population density- travel, medical costs will go up and since this societies will get hard wired to social distancing and start becoming withdrawn even data costs will start to rise! Before anyone realizes access to transport, travel, data and healthcare will end up being costlier at least by 40% then what it is today- by 2022. This will further make the society withdrawn and fragmented within- and based on what type of a government you have- it will just help the people in power to gain complete control, which  will finally rest with few people who will have a greater advantage to influence and navigate a fragmented society to a point  that they want to! As far as societies that have fewer number of people- well they will be more resilient and will give away a lot of baggage and make the governments feel lighter- once these people start to take more care of their individual health- recurring health costs will start to come down and as these societies already have ongoing capped prices for utilities and services- there will be a flattening of the service costs to societies and people in these societies will be in a more advantageous position then the ones’ those have higher densities!

Eventually, in the smoke of the settling dust, from this episode; billions and billions of dollars worth of money and resources will change hands and ownership, simply to ensure that the world order remains sane (the way “they” want it) and to disallow “anarchy” (as “they” see it). This is just a step away and anarchy sets in  once world leaders start to believe that they will not talk to each other! (which thankfully doesn’t seem to be happening at least for now!). If you are wondering who these “they” are- Well I leave it to your wisdom- possibly you are working for one of them in one way or the other at this very moment- as have generation before you and possibly after you will!

I leave you here, and hope you use this time to reflect on how you are changing and what are the changes that you will allow and not allow so that when the freeze is over, you emerge as a better version of yourself- that is the only hope that the world has for now- that each one of us emerges as a stronger and better human being from this ongoing war!

Ciao for now and have your coffee- if nothing else- it will keep you warm and alert! I will be back soon with another piece and that will be on discussing the probable mental health challenges that we face in times ahead!

 

 

The isolation advantage!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Well, in the context of what’s happening around the world, for now, “isolation”, may be the only word that is so respected  and feared at the same time! So even as nations battle it out there using all the tricks that they have in their book- one common thread on all this happens to be “keeping distance” and “isolation” as much as possible- well certainly that’s the way and perhaps the only way to fight contagious diseases from spreading (we learnt this as students of grade four, I guess), until we have the vaccines in place. But still what’s important to observe and study is how the human mind is coping up with or loosing it, as social interactions are restricted and at times when Isolation becomes the norm! This is about knowing how amazingly we the see the best and hope even in the darkest and most trying times! So here we go!

We all know about humans being “social animals” and have learned this at school (and even if we have not been to any), through the mere fact that we are related and would have a dozen of first cousins and over two dozens of second level relations, merely reflects how human society has evolved through the last three centuries! As the promise of resources (read food, water, shelter and safety) grew over the last three centuries, humans have resigned themselves to the comfort of community support for all situations good and bad– whether it is a community fun fare, marriages in the little town tucked away far from the city, political representation (unless you are yet being ruled by kings/ autocrats) or it is about saving lives in face of natural calamities and being there for one another when disaster strikes! This is more or less how we have always been and this is how it is supposed to be – irrespective of all the differences of ideologies and pressures acquired by a society by virtue of the urge to control and dictate- this fundamental thread of being able to look out for one another for good and bad and expecting nothing in return ( and you always thought only animals are wired like this!).It has always been so and it is again, we humans who have from time to time either ignored this or played even this to our advantages!

Looping back to the times that we are experiencing right now, the induced isolation, through self-quarantines and medical quarantine worldwide to protect ourselves and the ones around is throwing up some strange strategies to cope with this new dictate of the ruling governments! There are some communities which even under lock-down situations have managed to connect through human voice and music (even as they stay isolated), there are yet who have possibly sought refuge to engage and interact online, so that they feel and stay connected, yet others roam about as if nothing happened ( and these are the gifted ones’ who have always remained in self- imposed quarantine either because of their lengthened intelligence or completely extinguished cognitive ability- either ways it’s helping the world for now! More strange have been those instances where few- really handful few- who have mustered the courage to escape and run away form quarantined zones! So what are all these behavioral attributes saying about us and the human mind! What are we now evolving into as we face and overcome this global menace which is requiring us to manage social distance and be unto ourselves- how will this help or harm the future of our societies?

Human brain seeks companionship and that’s how it is hard-wired – you may be the most eclectic of yogi’s or saint’s seeking divine bliss- but even for you to tell the world that you have attained it- you will still need someone to speak to about it! So when you put people in completely unnatural situations- the first involuntary reaction is of disbelief- “No this can’t be happening- not to me- the medical guys have made a mistake- they are idiots- It can’t be”, this is followed by a quick realization of the next point- “well what if they are right and I am not taken care of – I may not exist and I may be well on my way out of the planet and the end up being a statistical number!- This powerful thought then overcomes the initial disbelief and shock making co-operation possible and then resigning oneself to the orders from perfect strangers who call themselves whoever they are-doctors, paramedics, you name it – The simple promise that you will be fine and safe by doing what we say- is such a powerful statement that almost 99% people will comply and pay heed to what these strangers are saying(In different context of history though- read dictators- it is exactly a similar response that has ended up having more people killed then cured!).The remaining 1%, well yes they do exit and these are the one’s who will end up doing eccentric stuff- running away, not following rules, not taking medicines, playing dumb- intentionally and unintentionally- they do this not because they want to – but simply the situation has become so overwhelming to their minds that they no longer can cope with it and hence neither have a trusting bias or a doubting bias (if you have one of these biases you can be managed and cured by developing an alternative narrative- but when you keep switching fast between the narratives- you end up becoming a living nightmare for the world – far worse then the battles against a virus! So what’s the way ahead and how do we make most of a situation which gets labelled as “Isolation”

One way, is to change the narrative from the word itself-instead of calling it Isolation- Call it “Time for personal investment”- a time to invest into yourself – to develop your personal strengths, learn to do away with your fears (demons in your head) and your weaknesses, a time to pursue something your daily routine and rush of life kept you away from (as long as it can be pursued within the confines of being isolated- I am not suggesting someone to pick up a guitar and arrange for live concert- rather pick it up and upload a video online!). This “Me time” can be used to assess your priorities in light of the new vulnerabilities that the world is bring to you- maybe you need to move to a new place- maybe you need to reassess the job you do – maybe you need to learn how to be strong and focused by yourself to keep you safe and maybe its time for you to realize that “Life cant and should not be taken for granted”! Once we flip our view of isolation and start to fill it with the books we needed to read, the films that we wanted to watch, the chats that we wanted to have with our friends, the peace that we would have wanted to hold within or as simple as the afternoon nap that you wanted to have in so many years- just seek what was amiss from your busy life and let this curse of isolation be turned into a blessing in disguise and use it to your advantage so that we the crisis is finally over and you emerge- you emerge as a person changed for good – who now values each moment of life in a more meaningful and mindful way- and possibly by then you know what wise issues you should engage with and when you should walk way from what doesn’t make you feel enriched and a better person!

I leave you with these thoughts on a Monday, wherever you are reading this, no matter how isolated you are, now you know how to make isolation work for you! Remember it is not the Isolation that hurts, it is the fear of missed opportunities and lack of connect that troubles us- because we tend to have a fear of missing out the social beacons (which we normally  use as our glide path as we navigate around society!). Once you have reached deep within yourself and re-assessed your priorities- thanks to the available time through isolation- you will no longer be in search of beacons and will most probably end up being a light house for others in the society to follow!

Ciao for now, grab that drink and stay wise! Run wild  with your thoughts and imagination and pursue your dreams- for this is the time to build upon your strengths, dreams and ideas and these will come alive eventually as you sustain and their time arrives!

 

Learnings from a virus attack!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Even as the world responds and grapples to deal with an onslaught by a visibly invisible enemy- no matter how odd it may look- this episode again gets us back to the same fundamental question (like with any disaster)- “The WHY of it?”

To begin with, this is not the first time that humanity has been hit by nature through a viral route- things have happened in the past too and organisations/ agencies worldwide have provided swift response and made it possible to wage a war to ensure that the crisis ends with minimal fatalities. Each of these battles against the onward march of these seemingly super-bugs has provided ample amounts of learning and takeaways-but for some strange reason- as humans we simply don’t seem to believe what science tells us and we end up at points in history like the one where we are now!

This is not an article that gives us a solution to tackle the Corona Virus (boy- I would be rich real rich!) but this attempts to see what we possibly miss through the rush of our busy lives and why instances like these may continue to strike with predictable timelines and severity as we keep advancing and moving ahead!

What we certainly know is that this tiny virus too jumped from animals onto humans– so the holy question- “What the f**k was anyone doing – in an unhygienic setting around a dead animal?”. What is even more dumb is the fact that – what are the kind of animals do we want to consider having on our plates- and whatever happened to basic personal hygiene- Isn’t that something that we all learnt at playgroup or kindergarten?” Why does the UN (through WHO) need to tell the world “To wash their hands and maintain Hygiene! What does all this speak about ourselves – as individuals and societies – the way we have evolved as Humans- are we becoming more smart by the day or are we setting up ourselves for even more dangers by playing plain stupid and dumb! What’s actually happening here?

Being who we are; arrogant, ignorant, stupid, overconfident- all or any of these- humans tend to put them in harm’s way every now and then- whether it is that casual jay walking across a busy street, riding a bike without a helmet, exceeding speed limits on your sports car, or simple dumb things like- speaking while your mouth is full of food, refusing to brush your teeth at night, binge eating, drinking for no reason- you name it and you will find an instance around you and at times each one of us have been more or less guilty of this! Indulgence- is to blame- that insatiable appetite to wanting more and more and more of everything and anything around you, just because you have the resources to acquire and enjoy- this senseless indulgence is the underlying reason for the mess that we have landed humanity from time to time! You may ask me around this time- well what has this to do with the corona virus- well it has everything to do with it! If reports are to be believed this virus broke through some wet food market and one of the reasons that appeared were possibly an aspect of inadequate handling of meat/food products that were possibly infected and add to that the senseless rush that food markets nominally see ( because we get everything at a lesser price and this small incremental greed of saving that one dollar more by going to a larger market and being ready to buy/sell food products in not so hygienic conditions- what eventually has unfolded is for the whole world to see and understand! It is a classic case of a gross disregard of few people who have put at risk global communities and contributed to early exit of a few lives!- in some cases possibly these poor souls would not have even heard of such a place and any of these unfolding events at a place thousands of miles away from their residence!

In the times of fast city lives, social compulsions and wanting to be conforming with everything what others do- It is but certain that when the wrong role models and wrong practices are picked up and followed- when shit hits those and what you follow; it will hit you too! This again is not limited to only a virus outbreak- this is applicable to almost everything and anything that we do! What this episode us teaches is that – Our Individual value system and common-sense; that internal gyroscope of our mind; (which keeps on telling us always and all the time, “Hey, don’t do this, let’s move out of this place, let’s not buy this, let’s do this over that) whenever it is disregarded; chaos unleashes– it is similar to trying to shut off an ILS landing in heavy rain and trying to land the plane through a visual approach in the blinding rain- the chances are you will land with a bang- and will be lucky to survive! So what’s the answer to all this chaos and is this the last time we are witnessing something like this?

The first part of the answer, a generous helping of common-sense(having nothing to do whether you are rich or poor, educated or illiterate) value systems and inner belief will keep you alive and away from harms way for good- without you having to do anything more then using your brain and applying it for yourself in the right way! The second part, sadly the world will not learn- not that there aren’t any wise people around- in this context the problem is of too many wise people speaking to each other with no one wanting to listen to anyone! As long as this circus continues- you may have billions of dollars and thousands of people as a resource to serve and overcome problems- the fact will remain – that humanity will keep walking away from problem into another! (which would be largely created because of the mishandling of the previous one)- well incompetency – will keep on popping up here and there- as it always happens across large organisations and this in turn ensures that humanity always pays a heavy price – a heavy price for incompetent leadership and lack of common-sense of few people!

I will leave you with these thoughts for now, for you to reflect and really think for yourself- What is that you think you will do from this moment on- not to save the world- but to save yourself and your family to ensure that you do not come in harms way because of the incompetency and stupidity of someone you may have never known!

Keep thinking, stay wise and stay safe! Of course, remember, Personal hygiene is not doing a favor on the world- it is a simple act of ensuring that you don’t end up buying an early ticket for your exit from the theater of the world! If someone said, common-sense is like salt to food, then well makes sense to ensure you use it sparingly and always when you decide to cook up a new dish within your brain! Ciao for now will be back with another piece soon!

Keep writing to us with your inputs on what next you would like to read and to learn more about our structured interventions and consulting solutions for organisations and individuals through our consulting and coaching services! You can reach me at parimal.aluri@simplifylives.com!

Hidden in plain sight!

~ PA ~ 3 Comments

Hello people! Hope you are having a great time trying to make sense of the world as you rush into your week ahead! Depending on where you are on the planet, you are either completely consumed by the outbreak of the Coronovirus, some kind of political upheaval, facing a financial crisis or dealing with a flash flood or an environmental challenge! and If none of these things have impacted you; then you are probably thanking your stars and are wondering what is in store for you! “What is hidden in plain sight” that is heading for you! This crisp piece is a sneak peak into how “We miss-what We see”!

As we go about rushing through our daily lives, what we end up doing inadvertently is missing the bigger picture and the contextual settings of what we see, furthermore add to this fleeting inference the extrapolation that your brain would do (on it’s own- tricking you in a way- based on your past experiences and stored reference points) which will do nothing more then taking you away far away from what the reality is and set you up in a completely manufactured setting which tends to create a narrative that confirms with your liking and comfort! This is the demon that we deal with, the good part- this demon is created by us- the bad part- we hardly know how to control it and when to unleash it!

Having spent close to two decades in areas of Sales, Marketing and HR, lot of my time has gone into dealing with people- yes- “dealing” with them in the every essence of the word! Surely enough- I may not have been that “Best Sales”, or “Best HR” or adhered to any of the society led conformity standards, but (what is important) what I learnt through my experiences being with fellow humans- has been that each one of them- has a story which in-turn has a fascinating contextual setting- which none of us can ever imagine-you would have heard that line, “Facts being stranger then Fiction” and boy, when you get to listen to people how they have moved around and through these contextual settings and the kind of extraordinary things that they would have done to survive and overcome situations- it’s a different universe unto itself!

Consider this setting; a sales person who was performing quarter on quarter suddenly seems adrift- seems to have lost the sheen completely and the magic seems to have worn off and with no time to spare(not to blame the organisation here) pretty soon by the end of the ongoing quarter- this person gets ejected from the system altogether! Here’s one such case about one such individual- what had transpired then was rather interesting- so this person- was going steady- in no time- incentives began pouring in and with that started the problem! Being young- lesser responsibilities and an approach that simply refused to prepare for a worst case scenario-the excess cash-at-hand soon became a curse- slowly indulgence turned into full blown addiction and in no time- addiction led to inattention at work- which translated into missing targets and eventually getting ejected! This is what appeared to be – but well- as I have been saying- this is what was seen but what actually happened was this- In plain sight what was hidden- The fact that the addiction had developed on the job while working! The person’s team leads then used to fun at the expense of this person (instead of censuring and discouraging this kind of contra behaviour which violated almost everything- from policy to genuine human value of care!) this was one thing that further reinforced the notion of being addicted and being high at work was fine! and when the fun was over and when the number game began to get hit- no time was wasted by the same team leads (who used to have parties around this person’s addiction) in preparing a case against him for being addicted on the job, missing business objectives and showed the policy clause number 1,2,3 and there went his future with his ejection!

So what had happened here? Well things were hidden in plain sight- Even the HR teams possibly failed to see what they should have ideally picked up (the root cause analysis) and instead believed to buy the story that was sold by the business team leads! Now, why did HR do that- well simple- No organisation, in today’s age has the time, money or resource strength to value individual’s as “Individuals” and the second problem of assuming “anyone can do anyone’s work” (which at times works and most of the times does not!) holds ground. What happened next- well with this person gone – sure enough some good clients left and when the rut continued eventually the team lead had also to go!- A complete collapse of a team in a span of 8 months! Coming to think of it all this shit happened for what?- “Extracting fun at a cost of an individual when it was not warranted and when it could have been managed and at it’s best effort stopped!

Another story- An organisation had hired a supposedly smart person for a client facing role. At the beginning everything seemed fine, and in about two months (as client work began and things started to build up)- this person started working from one mistake unto the next- sure enough competency issues were flagged off (which the HR already had flagged off during hiring- but went ahead because the business said, they will manage it!). This all seemed normal until this point, but this where the fun began (at times literally spooking the people around!). This person started a tell-tale predictable absenteeism which was always accompanied by complete communication black out and radio silence! Subsequently every time that this person rejoined duty- it was an all OK and normal one week then again the same story- shocking still were the reasons that this person started to come up with! (when confronted and asked about complete communication black outs and radio silence while being absent!). the reasons ranged from serial stalking to house breaks to SOS from family to threats for ransom- you name it and everything was on the table! Well, I don’t want to make it more dramatic right now! Eventually things were called off and this person decided to move out of the organisation (for everyone’s happiness!) A detailed calm and probing discussion (on the way out-read exit interview) finally gave away a major clue! This person was having an underlying psychological problem- which translated into getting into hallucinations and escapism every time stress or pressure was increased (read normal work pressure) and this was an ailment for which this person had already undergone a comprehensive therapy few years back and this new place had just compounded and brought that back!

Guess what, it is not only Individuals, but also companies and organisations that start collapsing when we fail to read what is hidden in plain sight– as I write this article a successful private bank in India has triggered off a major stock market crash- the bank just collapsed on account of giving bad loans for last few years (bad loans given to supposedly successful business tycoons and their businesses!) well this is an altogether different subject(though similar) and can by itself be a subject for another article!

Well, to end it here, I leave you with thoughts to reflect inwards and see for yourself what is that you are missing in your plain sight – based on what is around you and in front of you- this very moment! For always remember- What we miss in plain sight- comes back to haunt us – now or later- but surely it does- it may be a blunder as simple as a penny or may be measured in terms of millions of dollars- but our oversight eventually ends up costing us and we having to pay the price!– Whether you end up working extra (because your colleague got fired or your investments get messed up- because that finance company holding your savings just went bust!). The point to remember here is- Always seek What seems to be hidden in Plain sight and keep unwanted-uncomfortable surprises at bay!

Ciao form now, have an attentive week ahead, will be back with another piece soon!

Lost smiles,conversations and diminishing common-sense!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

As the world races ahead, proclaiming technological excellence, with an automation driven solution for everything (except common sense!), one would have expected this to be a great time to be alive! Dig deeper and you would realize how messed up and screwed up all of us are in a grand way!

When was the last time, on a casual stroll you smiled at a stranger and greeted that person, and in process you too were greeted (no staring, stalking or senseless grinning counts in this space- just to be absolutely clear and sure about the choice of words being used).

Our present times reflect a considerable amount of lost faith and trust in fellow human beings- this is again directly proportional to the extent of automation and exposure to senseless capitalism, consumerism and urgining people to participate in the stupid rat-race which has no finish line!

Choose any country on the planet and take an urban mega city of your choice and obeserve the demonstrated behaviour of people towards strangers, forget about smiling, people would be lucky if they were to make an eye contact – most of them would be buried into their smart screens with an omnipresent dumb look on their face all the time! You would see behaviors ranging from mildly unwelcoming to absolutely rude and rarely but sometimes getting on the border of confrontation!

Now, move your location around a 100 mile perimeter to a town or a countryside village or cluster and just see the difference! Well it will be a striking contrast- people have time, courtesy and want to be absolutely sure that they have made your day and you are not lost! (rarely do they know how lost individuals are within themselves!). The fact also remains that great cities are often built and and are a result of the unrelenting toil of people who would have migrated from such small places and have eventually made it their new abode! So the next thought- why do people then change- is this change real or is it something else?

Well the answer has many contours, psychologists would tell you- people acquire behaviors over their intrinsic value systems. The intrinsic value systems are the core of the persona of any person. These intrinsic value systems more often then not set the tone to the patterns displayed by individuals- whether to help or not, whether to strike a conversation or not, to smile or not, to ignore or team up..so on and so forth!

I know this article is kind of being a little slow paced unlike my other salvos, but this one needed a pause in between (the tonality bit) so that sinking-in of thought seeds happens to begin progressive reflection!

Well automation is doing good and screwing up as well-with equal measure and precision. It all depends on which end of the spectrum you are and at what time and for how long!

I had this instance when, once a colleague opened up a weather app on the smartphone and said it will rain as the app predicted. I looked up towards the sky and there was not a shred of grey anywhere, forget the clouds being there or not- well this is how bad our common-sense has got messed up!

We live our life in a way, where a majority believes -all that an apps tell us, what goes viral must be real, what a social site is screaming out is good and true, what the newspaper carried on the front page was the final gospel form the angels; I am not saying these technological advancements are all useless and must be junked or done away with- the point here is that societies have lost the fine sense of judgement and balance when it comes to limit the use of technology in the right way for the right purpose.

I am yet to understand those stupid posts on social handles where couples are telling the world how much they love each other, or if some idiot has got promoted to a President of some cardboard manufacturing or cargo hauling logistics firm or an IT firm or whatever – I mean, really who cares and what the fucking difference does all this crap make to any other random person’s life on the planet- even to the lives of the people you know- you love someone great- let that person know and leave it at that, you got a job or a promotion, let those who matter know and leave it at that (unless you have been elected to lead a country or some shit like that!)

Well psychologists, call this behaviour as an extended form of attention seeking disorder arriving from inability to strike sensible and meaningful conversations- which lead to meaningful relations in real time with real people!

Well people, I will cut this article here, could have gone on and on citing one dumb example after the other, but the whole point is to provide a direction to a sensible and purposeful thinking.

Start by setting “me” times; -a time with yourself to begin with, followed by “authentic” time- to strike conversations with friends and families and make a genuine effort to possibly make that commute a little warm and vibrant for yourself and fellow humans around you (of course yes, in these times of challenges, you must respect privacy of strangers) and be able to connect to new friends and make life a worthwhile experience using appropriate and balanced judgement.

End of the day, when your tombstone is written, no one is going to mention the number of friends you had on a social networking site or how many likes you got for a social post or how many of your videos went viral, what will matter is- How much value you carried with you to your grave and in doing so how many lives you touched and made a positive difference so that it made their journey’s fun and purpose driven!

Logic is good, but common-sense is the holy mother of all hence so hard to seek and even difficult to retain!

At Simplifylives– we touch lives of people and make a directed effort to make that change which will be purpose driven and value driven for times ahead! Until next time……ciao and take care- stay sharp and start smiling!