Tag: daily life

Fight Fear with Fear.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

As paradoxical it may seem, the fact remains that only fear can be used to quell fear! Join me here for a breezy read through on how this works and why it works and when it works to your advantage and when it doesn’t work to help you!

As part of the evolution of the human race, the element of fear has helped us to survive and dominate, the slender difference between what to survive and what to dominate is what comes only by embracing and understanding the very nature of the fear that you come face to face with! Let me explain, this quick! The evolution of humans from small dispersed populations, fighting to survive the elements of nature, to being able to establish structured societies is noting short of a miracle of human intelligence and the milestones on the way have been knowing when to tame which fear and when to surrender and stay away from the one’s that are simply overbearing and all powerful! You see through the thousands of years, we learnt to defeat and overcome the wild animals and tame much of what the wilds had to throw at us, however few aspects like natural calamities have been ever challenging and even to this day, with the best resources at hand, still we often end up getting caught on the wrong foot! Sure enough there is no “fear” as in the “fear” of dealing with a wild animal while you deal with a flood, but that again will end up depending already on where exactly you are stuck in a flood! On high ground you can click your photos and thank your stars that you are safe, but if you are the one trapped in between fast flowing flash flood streams, the whole dimension changes! So you see, like everything else, fear too has a contextual framework and the first step of overpowering fear is gauging this contextual framework right!

Once you have learnt this bit, you know what you are dealing with, whether you can tame it or not and based on how that unfolds, you have the path ahead to decide how you want to fight the fear that you face, with nothing else, but fear that looks more menacing then the one that you face! You may want to now, ask why should I do that, whys should I deal with fear by deploying a larger fear? Well the answer to that is pretty simple, the only thing that can halt the menace of fear is an opposing and more powerful fear equation, don’t believe, well just look around the world and observe what the governments of the day are deploying to manage their affairs! Yes, fear one over the other, disguised and camouflaged as a rhetoric that blends into the contextual settings of the society that they govern! Well, even if you were to ignore what the government wants to do or not, the fact is that the reason why only fear can tackle fear is because there is nothing else can match the speed, surprise and intensity that fear brings along with it!

Consider this, you are taking a walk and suddenly you are attacked by a dog, that very moment as fear hits you, you have two choices, escape (if you really think you can outrun a dog! good luck on that!) or then with the same intensity try and instill a bigger fear in the dog’s mind!You may ask, want a peaceful way work, well when an animal is about to attack you try talking peace! The essence of dealing fear with fear is more of a mind game, stratagem and being able to accurately gauge the pulse of the fear that is coming your way and devise a counter strategy to overpower and quell the same.

The reason why fear works is because fear is formless, sure enough you know what’s arriving, you may also know how, when and where, but you will never be able to know how and why will you react the way you do when it hits you and this element of fear is what makes it so unpredictable and difficult to deal with unless and until you too have a similar counter strategy with an equal or more overpowering stance! So how do you develop the right amount of fear and how do you know when to deploy it?

The whole world works on the currency of fear equilibrium, small nations fear bigger ones, tycoons scare off mid size businesses , bigger corner offices instill that fear within mid-level workers and that’s how things work- well they do work as long as the amount and quantum of fear- intensity and frequency is calibrated.The moment this calibration goes haywire, fear loses its potency and becomes nothing! Let me explain!

You would have come across that boss or that teacher or that parent, who kept on yelling, threatening, shouting on an ongoing basis, how was your reaction? Well, sure enough the first time you would have got worried, but as you learnt to study and decipher what was unfolding, you would have started to ignore and disregard! That’s because you now have deciphered the intensity, authenticity and intent of that seemingly menacing fear in its reality and discovered it to be really nothing! This is why fear is so over rated! So how does fear quell fear?

When you are able to deploy fear as a counter measure effectively what it does is, it not only stalls the advance of what’s coming your way, but it also reasserts your position on an issue from a place of strength and ensures you get that vital seat at the table when its time for negotiations!

Embracing fear is the first step for being able to deploy fear effectively! As long as you are able to deploy fear in a calibrated measure with visible manifestations, fear will be your slave and work for you, on the other hand if you were to end up using it just as a propaganda tool, sooner or later that bluff will get blown away and you will be left with no defence when serious stuff hits you!

Like with anything else, once you have known how to manage, fear, it no longer baffles or creates that overwhelming mirage, but rather accelerates your journey to reassert yourself and helps you stay aligned on the course to face challenges, overcome them without being fearful about fear!

I leave you with these thoughts, urging you to develop your approach to deal with the fears that come your way, you never know you may be fearing just a large shadow to a small problem!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article! Until then take care and stay safe!

Marketing through fear.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Through evolution, if there has been a singular thread that the human mind has been able to hold on to apart from being creative it has been the thread of respecting and taming fear! Join me here as we take a quick look on how this space of fear- has gone to shape us, what we do as individuals and societies and why the marketing of fear is not limited only to companies that sell products and services, but runs beyond that and is much deeper than you can think! So here we go!

Fear- the most basic of human emotions and something that has gone a long way to make who we are today. Fear certainly played it’s part to ensure that as a species we survived and thrived. Experts have written books upon books on how fear helps and how it harms, so I am not going to go ahead and more to that bit, but this is the base point that we will have our piece anchored upon- the singular fact that fear works and perhaps works too well to ensure that we survive and we thrive.This is why people who do market through the angle of fear- almost always get what they set out to achieve! Let me explain!

The pandemic sure enough has brought the entire humanity face to face with a situation that even by standards of pure science and scientific research is mind boggling and giving a tough time even to the renowned experts in the respective fields of study- but what do we observe as we look around? You have anti-viral clothing- formal wear, you suddenly have anti-viral “x”,”y”, “z” and almost everything from the ball pen that you hold in your hand to the mobile cover that you may have or the humble body wash/ hand soaps all of them have been suddenly transformed into oversight anti-viral heroes sure enough with that golden sly condition of 99.99%*** written and said all over as the choreographed visual sleight is played out! Not to forget the sudden wonder foods that have cropped up which are supposed to keep you safe by boosting your immunity even as you smoke and drink and load cholesterol in your system! I mean really? The marketing through fear angle when it comes to what we consume as humans is not limited to this pandemic alone! Let us jog down the memory lane!

If you have been observant, try and recollect how food was marketed to you- whether it was that milk- for protein and health or those humble oats, that white meat, that steak, that vegan movement, that fish with supposedly the most potent pack of Omega 3 fatty acids or those canned shrimps, to the whole narrative of micro plastics in sea food, antibiotics in meat, pesticides in plants and fruits , to chemicals in formulation…so if you actually walked through this who;e circle- by now- you would have checked out almost everything that you can think of eating or drinking simply because for every one narrative that says you should have it else you will get “abc” problems, there are competing narratives which suggest exactly the opposite which say, if you have this, you will certainly get “pqr”. So finally people do what they can, ignore as much as they can, apply science if they have the time and energy and if it is available with them try to apply age old granny’s wisdom and common sense and get moving ahead in life! The people who get sold into these narratives are the ones’ who are entrapped for ever and it is these masses that are than played over by people who want to sell to them whatever they please to, whenever they choose to and at a price that they command! If you thought this fear led communication is only limited to marketing of products and services or the world of communication, think about it- there is virtually not one sector which is untouched by this malaise! Even Governments play out the same strategy, the only difference being that their playbook gets camouflaged into visual-less,boring and printed pointers (change of rules you see) which are often ignored and missed until the IRS or the tax man in your nation comes home paying a visit to you! Let me explain this space too quickly!

Governments the world over have the big task of managing societies- societies which are at times diverse, cohesive, divisive, polarized, idealistic, plural, liberal, accommodating, welcoming, closed..so on and so forth. The matter here is not about what is right or what is not so right, you need to see in this space, how is your government (if you have one!) working on the entire social fabric that you exist in- what is the story that is has been selling to you- do you or rather did you ever or maybe – do you always get a sense that the government is always trying to reach out to you and tell you something that is not right! Think about it, when was the last time that a leader of a society/ nation took to the stage and said, you had given me “x” time and I had 10 things to provide and this is what I have accomplished! Well, hardly any right? So humans, being humans- it doesn’t matter whether you are just who you are or you lead a nation- when you have nothing to say, they spin a story and since being in politics, crime won’t help, neither will any of the other vices, fear is the only instrument of choice to distract, divert and draw people to a non-issue that either doesn’t exist and if it does, blow it so much out of proportion that, by the time everyone is consumed by it- people are left wondering and saying to themselves, ” What was all that about, anyway”!

Whether they tell you stories of the enemy within or around, whether they paint the picture of climate change (even as they themselves clear forests- unknown to you!) or whether they talk about eradicating poverty- while they sustain and increase their personal wealth- all that approach is to instill fear and sell fear- aggressively or subtly to ensure they are able to manipulate and control and get what they want the society to do and allowing only permissible flexibility to resist/divert or stay non-committal- anytime that percentage threatens to wreck the balance of the social balance- an incident will come to the limelight and very often that just goes on to reinforce the stories earlier sold by marketing fear!

Final words, well, whether it is the promise of that tooth paste in your hands about being anti- whatever or that apparel which assures you 99.99%** of whatever that makes sense or it;s that news about that bad country, or bad people or those Vs Us kind of a narrative- all and each of these nudges are to make you feel vulnerable, unsafe and anxious- because it is only when you are vulnerable, opened up and exposed with a mind filled with self-doubt and confusion- that a marketeer or a government will be able to plant the seed of fear and if you make the mistake of allowing that to happen and you go on to nourish it- well you just end up writing a blank cheque to your life- some call it loyalty, I call that ignorant slavery! So what’s the way around, is there any? If everyone seems to be hell bent on manipulating and conspiring all the time! Read on!

Individual awareness, access to multiple verified sources of information and education are the essential ingredients for empowering people to compare, contrast and discern of what is actually unfolding! Debate, discussion in a directed manner to address an issue or a challenge or a developing problem are all but the next steps followed by proactive implementation of legislative steps to safeguard and govern the society with transparency and clarity! Sure enough seems to be a fairy tale, because the moment this happens, what we have is distributed ownership of society where no one member of the society is more important than the other and everyone is as equal and as important as the other person and this is what a few will never want the many to have access to and hence the story of marketing and selling through fear will go on and on unless you are able to discern at your own level and share that insight around your sphere of influence so that at least a section of the society is able to see clearly what lies ahead and is able to save the day for the many- should the time ever arise! This is the space where new leaders are born and new orders are created!

Remember, fear must be respected to be overcome, but not surrendered to! No one overcame fear by surrendering, people have always conquered fear by embracing it!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article, until then stay safe and stay wise!

Bouncing back and racing ahead.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Through this article, I share with you few basic, common-sense led plain speak approaches which may just help you that bit extra to bounce back and race ahead, whether it is about yourself or about the team that you lead or an organization that you are responsible for, or, in that rare case if you are leading a nation! So let’s see what these simple steps are all about and the kind of impact that they can create, when executed well! Before we move ahead, it will help to always remember that humankind is perhaps the most unpredictable species of all, and at times may end up doing quite the opposite what it’s mind will ask it to do, just to teach someone else a lesson, irrespective of what compounding damage that kind of reckless act may cause, and no where in the animal kingdom, will you ever find any other “social animal” displaying this kind of behavioral disposition, hence, this disclaimer to let you know,there are no easy slides to heaven and why no matter what anyone tells you; rational wisdom suggests that common-sense always holds the foundation to give one an ability to bounce back and keep surging ahead! So here we go…

Through my engagements and shared learnings over the years, there have been few broad and common approaches- which when mapped to individual specificity of a problem tend to provide a more meaningful way through , over or around the problem! Here are a few of them (and yes, these are not the only or holy grail of problems solving!, so keep adding to this what life has taught you and I am sure you will do exceedingly well, at times surprising yourself!)

Measure what matters

Find the “Why” of your discomfort

Be a Realist- Not an Optimist, nor a pessimist

Clarity of Thought and Communication

Plan for others around you as well

Keep milestones close and within view

Cultivate your common-sense

Be grateful and thankful

Keep what you must and discard all that you can

Measure what matters: We live in an era where we are bombarded with information 24×7 across touch points and irrespective whether we are interested or not! In this kind of an environment and the mad rush to stuff information down the throat of people regardless whether they have a discerning mind to understand, evaluate and conclude rationally with that information they are served is perhaps the most paradoxical problem of over indulgence after obesity (which is caused by overindulgence of food- most of the times!). Even in the current crisis that the world is facing, people are bombarded with statistics, number of total cases, deaths, new cases so on and so forth, what point is being missed out is real sensible data, what are the real active cases today? , what is the fatality percentage, what is the percentage of population infected from the total population and importantly what is the severity or potency of the infection! If people had focused on these parameters, over half of the 184 nations would have never gone ahead with the dumb lock down strategies that they initiated in the first place! Hence it matters and always it is only about measuring what matters and is relevant as we deal with problems  in the real essence of it!

Find the “Why” of your discomfort: If you have read “Start with the Why” by Simon Sinek, you probably know what I am suggesting, If you haven’t read that book, do yourself a favour and do read it! One of the most fundamental mistakes that people tend to get into is trying to solve a problem – thinking that “what they are solving is the problem”, truth actually can be far away from that and in few case the people happen to be the biggest problem, because of their limited intelligence and skewed perceptions of the world around them- which is nothing more then defence mechanism to either hang on to their dear job, career or a failing business, simply because they can’t imagine a life without their business cards! Unless you do not come up face to face with the singularity of your problem or challenge that you face and understand that all solutions and remedies begin by altering yourself from within as you try to set things straight, no matter what you say and do, you will end up wasting the valuable seconds of life coming back to the same problem over and over again – albeit with differing intensity but continuing with the broader flavor of distress will tend to remain the same! Once you have found the true “Why” rest assured that will give you enough bearing to keep moving in the direction which will remove you away from the senseless loop and give a sense of forward motion even as you untangle the mess of the problem at hand!

Be a Realist: Not an Optimist, nor a pessimist: As much as thinking negative, being hopeless, constantly nagging, cribbing and sulking is bad, dancing about and fiddling away meaninglessly as if everything is always great and you are experiencing heaven even as the world around you is turning into a hellish nightmare, can be far more damaging to a point where people start to actually doubt your mental construct and frame of mind- whether you are displaying psychopathic behaviors or have a complete hard disk failure!  The whole challenge with the “Stay Positive” movement around the world has been that few of the so called masters have ended up making it a big joke unto itself, I mean you may have an individual being diagnosed with terminal cancer and you want that person to stay positive? or a person in a terrible terrible financial mess and you want that person to believe that  all will be glad stay positive? Shouldn’t it rather be asking these people to first understand what the situation is then help them rationally evaluate what are the meaningful solutions that are available to them so that they can lead the time at  hand in the most productive manner so that their pain is comforted and there is a sense of achievement in the way the simply carry out their day to day chores or start ton re-build their financial credibility one day at a time? Certainly let’s not even bother to talk about the “nothing will be good ever- ultra-pessimistic way of thinking- that is painful even to write here forget about thinking that way! Having a true assessment of the situation in a given context (which comes from deciphering the “Why”) and mapping it to ones’ individual abilities and competencies is the only way to make the best of any situation that comes your way! Nothing more and nothing less! Staying real, pragmatic and exhibiting courage to confront and deal with the granular reality of the moment will alone help one move ahead and simplify ones’ ability to know the real challenge within the fog of ambiguity!

Clarity of Thought and Communication: This is of utmost important, especially when you are dealing with others and others are looking unto you for guidance and leadership in crisis, whether it is a small crack team that you manage for an assault as an officer, or whether you lead a team of 100 professionals which are working to meet team objectives- the sooner you can provide or rather continue to provide clear communication (which can only occur once you have ample  clarity of thought). This clarity has be at all levels, what is expected, what is being asked and what is been provided to have the tasks accomplished- this all can only be manifested when there in intrinsic clarity of thought about how the team is being led and what is the shoreline that has been earmarked to anchor the team – if required. When Leaders provide clarity at this level- the same is resonated down the line and that makes the jobs of the leaders a breeze and that sets up the team and the organisation for a fast recovery to everyone’s surprise! Importantly, the sensible and impactful communication pieces are Realistic and don’t share misplaced optimism and unwarranted pessimism! 

Plan for others around you as well: Very often when crisis hits, the first and natural response is to make oneself safe and have your immediate responsibilities (family) accounted for, likewise when it is a team that you lead, you are the leader for that unit of your’s and it only makes sense that you lead, guide and provide for you teams like you would for your family in the way and manner that is aligned to the organisation culture and ethics! No one is asking you to become a cult leader or go out of the way and pick up fights with senior members for your team, the point here is to be responsible and accountable so that even in worst case scenarios wherein you need to have a few members offloaded, that whole process remains dignified, so that if ever you need them back, they will be happy to oblige and join you back! This approach of being emphatic, sensitive, and accountable to every member of  ones’ team should be intertwined in the soul of the leader and that empowerment of the soul must be used to take calls and decisions which make sense and serve the larger good!

Keep milestones close and within view: Often people- leaders like to share milestones- what will happen in next one year, three years, five years, well good- nothing wrong with it, but real fact of life remains, that even if the leader remains (which by itself is a miracle- because people leave even at leaderships levels around 3-5 years) there will be new people in the team on an ongoing basis- and each time you have new people – if you were to make the same presentation, it will end up being routine for some and “wow” for few others! The only way to beat this type of  meaningful shit is, spell the broader strategy few times through the year, make it a decisive point and revisit that only when you need to and through the course of the journey have meaningful milestones which are more relevant, visible and actionable- perhaps having monthly or quarterly ones’ that keeps everyone updated, everyone feels involved and everyone gets a sense of forward motion! This will un-complicate whatever you try to pursue and keep enough cohesion to make things easier so that even when hurdles are met, the team knows what needs to be done to overcome them!

Cultivate your common-sense: Human mind works well as long as it is sharpened and that sharpness only comes alive and working when we are presented with compelling cornered spaces and challenges which have no routine parallel! This is where, trusting and following your common-sense, gut feeling becomes all the more important! You may have tons and tons of data and metrics to deduce and take scientific decisions, nothing wrong with that as long as you are choosing one robot over the other or one product range over the other, but the moment decision making starts to impact people without bringing in the human element in the framework, disaster can strike! Consider this, currently many firms are laying off, announcing wage cuts (as if doing a favour that you still have a job), but not releasing, where will they get that very talent back which would have been nurtured, trained and developed over a period of time to meet the organisations exacting requirements in coming times?, Sure people are aplenty and so is talent, but the time needed to retain and re-equip which will be dangerous lost opportunity (in the hands of a right competition can spell a disaster for the business) and can cause severe unpleasant business damage! Even more funny is what does the wage cut say? Does it suggest that an individual was paid more then  their real worth or does it say that ones’ worth has gone down or does it say that the hiring strategy was astray to allow that kind of omission to occur and pay someone what they were not worth of in the first place? What is the messaging that is being sent out? The only and only sure way of doing away with all this unwanted nonsense is cultivate common sense so that even rational decisions; when and as they are forced upon can be routed through the test of common sense and than action can be taken once these decisions stand the test of common sense! 

Be grateful and thankful: This simple exercise will work wonders for you as an individual or as leader of a team, be grateful for what you have- as you start the day, your mind, the resources that you have access to so that you can go ahead an weave the magic that you need to, playing your role and discharging your duties so that you keep creating the subtle difference which matters and keep the momentum going in the forward direction! Being thankful helps, it helps you to begin with so that you know what you could have achieved or not and what is that you are able to achieve or not with the people and resources around! Once you have reached this space of being grateful and thankful, and you begin to rub off this simple yet powerful thought within your team, you will see magic happen as the narrative will change from what is not there to what can be done with what is there!

Keep what you must and discard all that you can: If life is a walk, a marathon or a race, depending on how you see it, in any case, it will always make sense to reduce the baggage! De-Cluttering will help you individually and also as a leader! Knowing what to carry along, what helps and letting go off  things and people that harm and obstruct is the key element to ensure that you are able to bounce back fast and in time to make the most of an approaching wave which can propel you further ahead and give you that much needed early mover’s advantage as businesses race to be the first one’s to re-engage with their clients and customers!

I will leave you here, perhaps you want to add a few more elements, remove a few, the choice is your’s; for you alone know what is the contextual reality of your world and these are but beacons which can help you to glide along safely without running into mountain faces and odd weather, so that as you embark to your climb, you have all the power you need from the people on your team and the machine that you have! 

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

When the cure is worst than the disease.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 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!

Moving forward through turbulence.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

The world provides ample opportunities to learn and reflect; as long as we are ready for it! When humanity faces ambiguity, it has always relied on the founding bedrock of established and proven approaches to overcome the challenge at hand and then move ahead! This short article I bring forth a few of them – the easiest one perhaps and the most simple ones, which when practiced at an individual level are potent enough to see you through most of the turbulent weather that life may have in store for you and ensure that you stay on your flight path to the destination of your choice! So let’s race ahead!

Anchor your anxiety: Whether it is the pandemic that you are dealing with or it’s after effects, as we deal with problems large or small, one needs to remember to stay in control and one of the easiest way to achieve that is to “Anchor your anxiety”. Anchoring your anxiety comes an Individuals ability to clear the clutter and see through the smokescreen that the mind is presented with. It is only when this has been done, that one can see beyond the chaos, what really does exist and more often then not, the proverbial devil is nothing but a figment of an overthinking mind which has gone into a steroidal overdrive of imagination! Once you figure out the fact and clinically cut that away from the fiction created by your mind- you have done a great service unto yourself by anchoring  your anxieties- unfound fears of things not going your way, rather going a way which can be counter-productive to your desires! This is the crucial first step, if you want to remember that way and always begins when you start to wonder, “Why is this abc person or  pqr event or incident, bothering me so much, what is the real “why” behind the apparent reasons that are projected over to the mind.

Trust your Intuition: Your Intuition is your internal compass- this keeps  you in good shape and no matter what the weather seems to be across your windscreen, as you keep moving ahead, it keeps pace with you and plays the role of a much needed early warning mechanism. This further ensures that you always have an inbuilt and  working risk avoidance or risk mitigation system at hand to overcome the odd            bumps or incursions that tend to creep up into your path! These odd bumps or incursions can either come with a fair degree of warning or at times appear out of the blue! Either ways, if you have a working and tuned Intuition, that can do real wonders for you and ensure that you are able to overcome most of the times and continue to stay on course to your planned destination, may be with some unavoidable yet meaningful detours on the way!

Choose your route:  Experienced mariners and navigators have one thing in common, even if they rule two different realms of transport, they are experts when it comes to charting their course in their space! They know exactly when to cruise, when to slow down and when something is safe enough to take that risk or when it is wise to move around and take a longer path, if that ensures that they will reach the destination! Likewise when stuck by uncertainty and ambiguity, even though it may seem difficult and unclear at the beginning to chart a course or look ahead, once you start forcing your mind to seek direction from the clutter that it first seems to see, you will eventually start to get a sense of clarity and direction which will help chart the course which at some times could be as simple as what you decide to do tomorrow and at times can be a compelling detail about how you want to keep moving ahead.

Break the routine: The human brain is an amazing machine, yet it has it’s own lethargy, when it is presented with similar conditions over and over again and it tends to start assuming things and that can be dangerous– if you want to know what I am talking about- well just consider remembering these few things- how many lace-holes does your shoe have for the lace to pass through, or how many teeth do you think you have! Well the point that I want to make here is that, the brain gets easily bored with routine and then starts to play the game of assumption and these assumptions then start creating non existent demons, eventually leading to complete ignorance to real issues and not being able to dig deeper and see through what is being presented. A break from routine upsets the predictable pattern that the brain would have been tuned into and thereby helps it retain it’s optimum alertness levels as it normally should! This alert brain is vital as you strive to move around and over through turbulence!

Re-build yourself: As long as individuals stay invested in themselves, no matter how big the problem seems to be, they will always be able to find a way to overcome and keep going ahead! Re-building oneself is like carrying out that engine overhaul or that complete strip down maintenance of the building or your bungalow, where you remove all that is rusted, ain’t working and replace it with what you require moving ahead and what you possibly did not have as yet! Perhaps, new gadgets, tools equipment, areas so on and so forth, likewise when it comes to U, you will have to see what is holding you back and check what you can possibly do, to eliminate all that is working against you and holding you back and add up all that will help you! Certainly this is easier said then done and this has to be an ongoing exercise, irrespective how calm your journey appears to you at the moment! This re-building is all bout adding skills, wisdom, street smartness and components of perseverance in the new emerging contexts that you start to feel as you continue to move ahead.

Make your journey too a destination:Unknown to most if us, travel detours and turbulence are an opportunity to learn, practice and get familiar with something that we would have otherwise missed out. Having a mindset to explore every moment of the journey will do two things, firstly it will make every moment an unique destination unto itself and secondly the learning that comes to you through these moments will definitely come in handy as you keep navigating and charting the course of your life! Still unable to get this bit, well try and recall the last time you have  shared a chat or an idea with a stranger on your flight or on the train that you boarded, what kind of stories did you hear and what is the story that you shared;was that a learning and uplifting experience or was it counter productive. Like wise when mariners and aviators chart their course and when they do hit the rough odd patch, as they will some or the other time, they apply all their learnings to ensure they keep everyone safe and even as they come out of the odd space, they have yet learnt something new either about the problem or the way they handled it! This way the learning goes on and each of those moments becomes a captured moment- a destination unto itself!

Focus on what matters: Whether it is the theater of war or the scene at a fast paced workplace, with multiple things simultaneously developing and popping up with passing time, and the mind being fed with more and more information very second, the ability to take reasonable and rational decisions gets even more challenging and the only way to manage this and ensure that this clutter doesn’t fog your thinking is to stay focused on what really matters! You have to develop a dynamic approach to ensure that you receive the most critical and vital information that is relevant to the contextual moment of time that you are transiting, because one moment later that information in all probability will become redundant and you try to apply that content a bit earlier, chances are that a preemptive assumption may put you into a more grave situation and precipitate unthinkable complications for trying to rush through by assuming what is not there and what would have possibly never manifested! Timing is the essence here and staying focused on what really matters in the contextual moment of time is the key! Through your journey, you will be hit by an onslaught of information nuggets, some wise, some useless, your ability to judge and pick and choose at the right time will eventually determine the quality of your judgement and the resulting action will speak volumes of your success or missed chance in an equal measure!

Learn to “Let it go”: There will be times when you will have to simply let go of things, consider this, you are a pilot and flying into an airport and the weather near the destination airport has suddenly changed over the last 20 minutes and now there is no way that you can land- so what do you do- well nothing- but divert to your next secondary airport. Now in this case if you were to try to go against and execute a dangerous landing well, you would have landed with a certain degree of risk, but the cost of risk is too big to allow for someone to even try that! Many challenges and odd patches are similar that we face, whether it is the moment where you are supposed to speak up to you boss, your government or people in authority, what you need to understand is the singular fact that fighting battles and wars which have a pre-determined outcome is never a wise strategy!-Learning to choose and pick your battles is of utmost value and knowing when to Let off is even more valuable! The lesser the baggage you carry, lighter will be you journey moving ahead! 

Make your own lemonade: As the saying goes” When life gives you lemons, squeeze them and make your own lemonade” Your intrinsic ability to see a challenge clearly and knowing how to crush it completely to your advantage is of prime importance, fighting with the same problem over and over, eventually may make you fall in love with the problem and succumb to it- whatever that may be, but once you learn to deal with a challenge with intent, focus and a will to crush it completely once and for all, you will see how liberating that feeling is- when you know that you have possibly not only cleared away a threat permanently but also have created a strategy to deal with it if it ever resurfaces in the manner and the intensity with what it would have earlier fostered!

Believe: Believing in yourself perhaps is the one of the final things that i have on my list! The ability to have faith and self- belief is vital for one to be able to cover come challenges and turbulence and let me tell you this is not about misplaced optimism or a gung-ho macho approach, rather it is a deliberating and slow non glamorous approach which depends only and only on all the accumulated experience and wisdom that you would have gathered to make those critical decisions in a crisis which eventually ensures that you either live to narrate the story or go down in history with your final moments being constructed on the theories that come up based on circumstances! This belief within you must stay and remain- always- this is the only attribute which can either ensure you that you sustain and overcome the turbulence or loose out at the very end moment and end up vanquished even as success and victory was within your reach!

I leave you here, with these thoughts, for you to reflect and think what are the other things/ attributes that you can think of and which perhaps may be more relevant for you in the unique way that you approach world! As I said, this is not the “Know it all” and “Elixir of Success” this is merely a starting point to start getting collected and identify what are the aspects that help you and what are the things that harm you- so that the next time you hit that odd patch, you know exactly what to reply on, how much and what not to run after!

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

 

Adapting to a new way:The human factor.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

The best thing that happens when disasters strike; everyone and anyone suddenly becomes an expert and has definite answers to “what could have led to the disaster”, but rarely is there an answer ever found even from the certified experts about the “Why” part of it-  why was it allowed to develop into something that it would have and why were the early warning mechanisms either absent or why did they fail! Well this  piece looks into the human aspect of what people can expect coming their way and what could be the possible ways to navigate these times! Whether it is about an Individual, a business or a nation- People are at the very foundation of everything that we do, no matter what you say otherwise and if the people story begins to fail, in no time you will have failing Individuals who will translate into failed societies, resulting into a full blown humanitarian crisis!

As Human Beings, we have evolved through the years to survive, prevail and better our societies- immediate and the next with a single purpose of making life as comfortable as we can- how  we go about doing that- largely depends on the other aspects of demographic distribution, climate and opportunities which are heavily moderated by the agreed society type and governance models! Mankind has been a witness to many large scale potential wipe out events- whether they have been wars, famines, epidemics; but each time eventually societies have emerged out of the challenge, albeit changed and stronger- for the better or worse- well that is left for you to decide- because the answer to that question directly relates to who you are Individually are and how much impact do things bring upon an individual and what the Individual then decide to do with it- React or Respond! This time will be no different, but since the scale of the event has been global- there will be deeper scars and the time to heal will be longer then usual- which in itself will end up leaving fractured communities and societies as the unwarranted byproduct of the healing process! At the core of bounce back, will be the choice of behavioral attributes that will make the difference between successful adaptability and an ever going struggle to cope up with the new ways and developments!

Whether it be work, private lives or the grandeur of business and public life, as we move ahead and out of the current global slow down, Individuals who display a saintly level of patience and perseverance especially when they are occupying leadership positions will be able to thrive individually and put their teams and the businesses on a super fast growth trajectory, sure enough, contextual settings will matter, if a nation is sinking it really doesn’t matter whether your business strategy is a prize wining one or not!  What this singular grain tells us is that, as humans, we will want to move ahead and calibrate our surroundings to the known levels of familiarity and feeling of being secured at the earliest to begin with, which will be rapidly followed by an intense period of observation and social change which will tend to do away with everything and anything that does not serve its purpose in the new systems and designs of work and life that societies and individuals will now begin to adhere to! Whether this works to the help or harm an Individual or a society will largely depend on the intent of the governance model- which way they would want these steps to move- whether to expand and settle to close to earlier expressions of freedom and access or whether they would want to have a restricted and controlled environment for the next 12- 16 months with an aim to go by the maxim citing, “To Err on the side of Caution”!

To put it in another way, businesses that value people and are able to evaluate qualities exhibited, the value systems displayed with fine prudence will be able to hold on to the most prized and coveted Individuals-who  in-turn will play a pivotal role to drive the business ecosystem. If there is a slight error of judgement in evaluating people and their attributes, as businesses emerge from this disruption, the ones’ who have made bad choices with regards to people will suffer even more greatly in times ahead and will end up loosing any advantage that they would have built in the earlier stages as they will no longer be managed by gifted and professional individuals!

Among the Individuals who will be able to steer themselves and all that they lead (whether a business or a community), patience and perseverance will be the two fundamental pillars, which will be worth their value in Gold which they will be able to utilize in the changing times, even as they demand  consistently evolving individuals. These leaders will be able to sustain and manage the tantrums and discord that will come their way through eccentric or sporadic human behaviors and  complicated business environments with ease and confidence which will further propel their cause and ensure that the lives that they influence and lead are aligned to the all important growth mindset!

People who have been natural introverts or calibrated extroverts will be able to tide over the changing dynamics with more ease as compared to extroverts who belong to the sub type of social butterflies-who thrive on meaningless interactions- which are good to see and observe but carry no valuable content or quality of engagement! Needless to say irrespective of what type you belong to, having a thinking and rational mind which anchors on science and common sense will be of prime importance!

This also happens to be from the anchor point of history- that moment in our lives, where across the layers and maze of society, we will witness that two distinct patterns emerge! The first one will be a set wherein Leaders will create more followers and the second one where Leaders will create more Followers- which of these sets becomes more powerful over the other and takes the popular lead will end up deciding the future fabric of your social engagement and the way we are able to move about doing business, and thereby creating our limiting beliefs and new bench marks of societal confirmation biases for the next decade or so! Which one of these approaches is right or better over the other, well largely depend on the contextual settings of the society, what my understanding is that, Evolved and literate societies will create more Leaders and this will provide these societies to emerge rapidly once again as “Thought leaders” and thereby consolidating their dominance around the world as Nations which create and set standards for the other nations to follow!

I will leave you with these  thoughts, so that you can take them  further and reflect on your experiences; possibly devise strategies that align with your Individuality, reality of you and the group that you lead! So that as we emerge in the times ahead, collectively as a society, we are still able to hold on to the promise of togetherness, even as some of us may agree to have more Leaders and yet some of us may agree to have more Followers! The fine line remains, that Humanity must and should prevail in spite and despite of everything and everyone else!

Ciao for now, will be back with another piece soon, until then stay safe, keep your mind anchored with wise thoughts and remember, humor doesn’t harm!

 

 

Leadership-Calibrated by Incompetence.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 3 Comments

Whether you are in India and wondering what more worse is in store for you, or whether you are in the USA and have been through the process of social suffering and social mourning, irrespective of what your individual story is, right now, perhaps since World War II for the first time, Humanity is held at Uncertainty, which is nothing more or nothing less then the reflection of Incompetence of Leadership at the highest visible levels within the societal arrangements that we have adhered to as humans over the last 60 years, and perhaps this is the reason why the evolving changes will question and possibly topple existing rituals and arrangements in the months and years ahead- some may help and yet a few may harm! Join me as we try to make sense of the clutter and chaos and understand what the noise is all about within the moments of deafening silence that we get to hear every now and then! so here we go!

The current crisis – so called crisis (if you ask me) is a stark reflection about how something that could have been better managed was allowed to slip away and run free and unleash havoc in no less then 184 countries when the virus was at is peak! I am not going to use this article from the point of view of who did t, why and all of that political rhetoric, the focus here is, “Why did world leaders react the way they did” even as details (no matter how insignificant and ambiguous they would have been) began to emerge about the ferocity and damage potential that this virus was capable of.  A part of the answer lies in the fact that our world is an ecosystem of delicate and fine balances, like an orchestra all the different musicians and creative geniuses come together to play not one tune but their different tunes and just make it audible enough to know us who is out of syn and who is in the fold of the developments, the current episode has been so bad that it has turned a global orchestra into a big mess where every player has ended up not only playing their tune but also has ensured that the other one can’t play and hang on to their own tunes! This, I call “acoustic dissonance”! A space where no one is listening enough for anything specifically and whatever that is getting played is being accepted!

Leader’s decisions are understandably calibrated to the limitations of what they are asked to govern and manage. The problems start when they begin to govern and manage not from the mandate that has been provided to them or the positional power bestowed unto them but from a space to imitate and replicate what is being done elsewhere and when they start to find their answers in the same problems which are being resolved elsewhere; completely forgetting that the contextual setting of a same problem will have a differentiated impact based on the context of the other place and the specificity that it brings along with it! So  to begin with,why does this happen?

Unlike the golden age of emerging nation, new world and economic order that we have witnessed between 1950 until 1990s, the digital age has hastened everything and created blanket formulae for everything and everyone, whether it is a job that you need  or the vocation that you need to pursue, there are templated pathways to success and failures, and of course, when it comes to politics, there are dynasties and legacy handovers- but not all of them necessarily are mature or wise like their earlier generations! What all of this leads to, is a sum total of failing competencies across the social fabric, with citizen pressure low and misplaced with regards to their priorities, aspirational quality of governance, for life; the governing arrangements reciprocate by doing simply what is being just asked and aspired- and completely doing away with any visionary effort to preempt or proactively mitigate any foreseeable challenges- these aspects are then exposed as the next disaster strikes and then each element of this failing incompetent social fabric is rushing to help each other- something which could have been avoided in the first place!What’s worse as soon as the challenge is overcome, the social fabric falls back to the misplaced notion of comfort that all is well, until the next time bomb sets off, which in all probability is hidden in the current challenge and is already ticking off as this one is being managed! So now the question, can we do something about this?

Well the answer is a Yes and a No, the modern day social issues are unfortunately driven by individual greed and disease of wanting more and more with no end in sight, when this amplifies across society, it’s a hopeless situation which keeps repeating over an over again like a never ending spiral death dive unless there is a radical shift in the leadership model which is able to stall this dive and align the whole critical mass of the society for a greater and higher cause and purpose by leading from the front! This is where true leaders emerge and that’s why Leadership experts and Human Behavioral specialists  often say, True Leaders emerge from the Crisis even as Pseudo Leaders create the crisis in the forts place! This alone is the hope and promise which can pull failing societies and individuals from a never ending self defeating death spiral and align them to a higher purpose and direction for the larger good!

Leaving the larger governance issue here, if we see what happens within our work areas, it is no different; every organisation grows to the limits of the Incompetence that is displayed by their leaders and the limiting beliefs that come along with it! This is why you see the churn that you see when individuals decide not to work with Mr. A , B or C or for a Company X, Y , Z- this has largely to do with this simple underlying fact, which gets camouflaged and distorted in the disguise of team meetings, restructuring, formation and disbanding of SBUs so on and so forth! Another quick way to see if you are facing the Incompetence challenge at the work place, just make a note of hoe many meetings you are part of and what real world difference have those done to you as and Individual or your team or the client (who actually pays for your in-office entertainment sessions!). The moment you do this, your next decision will be either to chart a course for your growth within the firm because things are still manageable and repairable or you will get busy planning your exit strategies! Most of the organisations suffer not because the people are ineffective, it is largely because the direction and quality of leadership is severely compromised which simply doesn’t allow people to either contribute enough or has them disarrayed in all  other directions then what they should be focusing upon, thanks to the element of Self-Obsessed- Self-Driven – Megalomaniac style functioning! So how does an individual navigate around this and stay safe from being drawn into this trap of Incompetence?

The simple approach to avoid Incompetence traps comprises of really basic stuff! Firstly you may like to start by saying “No” to that undue promotion, designation, money, incentive which, heart in heart you know is not right and not worth what you are! Well yes, this seems idealistic, but that kind of introspection and being brutally honest with oneself is the foundation to ensure you don’t get entrapped into the world of Incompetence! Importantly to execute this strategy you need to have a design for your life and value system in place which provides you beacons and alarm systems to ensure you stay ion track and calibrate your growth, progress and monetary success by staying away form incompetence traps all along! Next what you can do is remain “Authentic” no matter what the compulsion and temptation, don’t disguise to what and who you are intrinsically not, if you cant tolerate dumb people, ensure you study the collective IQ of the team that you are supposed to work with or lead, rather then ending up with increased anxiety and hypertension, this first step can ensure a lot of unwanted explanation and white noise in your life is taken away in the first instance! Lastly learn to create clear protocols and keep you expectations right! If you want to travel faster then Mach 2 you need to be on a fighter plane and not on a commercial airliner, so be sure you are using the right framework and contextual settings which allow you to get what you expect as long as you continue to provide the inputs that are required to receive your expectations! This list is not exhaustive and there can be more and more nuggets of wisdom and plain speak that can be added and created to suit individual personalities and contextual settings and that is the most important aspect of life, since we are all unique individuals, could be similar in a few ways perhaps but necessarily unique, each of us requires a unique solutions to a seemingly similar problem because the contextual settings are always going to be different and that is the key to steer clear of Incompetence around us!

I will leave you here, allowing you to think and reflect on your share of experiences with incompetence and what you could or did do to either help it or stop it and whether you are zoned out or zoned in within the entrapment of Leadership that is Incompetent!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another piece, Do keep writing to us on topics that you want to learn and share and do let us know if you or your organisation needs assistance to mitigate your Leadership crisis! 

 

 

 

 

The story of large shadows.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 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!

 

 

Staying relevant by being future ready.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

It’s a breezy Saturday, and what better time to unwind and start plotting your bounce-back strategy- the world has been closed for a long time and now it has no other option but to open up and be prepared to face the collateral damage for opening up, because closing up will be far more grave and disastrous by many aspects! But wait, what do you think the world is opening up to? On one hand we have reports of lay-offs, job losses and uncertainties across almost every major sector as I type; across the continents so what is it that you want to get ready for? Where are you heading for a all dressed up when no one is throwing a party in the town! Well this piece is about doing a quick take of what our ecosystems will begin to look like as we start to gather ourselves as individuals and societies and workplaces start to revive and more importantly what is that Individuals must do ( at least what I would suggest) to ensure that the next time this kind of shot comes back paying a visit- you have a better and sane strategy to deal with it rather then staying locked in and in all likely hood getting killed by anxiety and uncertainty (by aggravating your other health problems) then the actual pandemic itself! So let’s roll…..

Whether this pandemic was an accident or an intentional act, we will know for sure in the coming few months from now (which will offset another round of chaos irrespective which way the finding goes); what is important to reflect upon is the fact that across the world- most of the large economies were already feeling intense financial pressures for the last 7-9 months- for varying reasons from regional to global socio-economic equations- the point to note here then is that a financial meltdown was imminent, the pandemic played the role of a catalyst to accelerate the downfall and make it more intense and deep through all the countries that it managed to sneak into! As I did mention in one of my previous articles, when the Art of Distraction is at work- everyone of us has been caught up seeing the stocks fall, the prices go down, jobs being lost- but what we fail to notice (thanks to the directed and opinionated media presence all over the world) is while stocks fell, someone picked the sell off, as people got sick, few companies were already in the race to provide medications- as if they knew it was coming! Well, life has one common thread across irrespective who you are and where you are- that thread is- There is always more then what meets the eye- and well I will leave this contextual build for the article right here- because this is the point where the most pressing question now needs to be answered – What next!- What can an Individual expect and what should an Individual do to remain relevant and future safe in an equally uncertain world that we all are heading into for a few years at least! So let’s unravel the simple solutions to this seemingly complex problem!

Let’s explore a few techniques that as an Individual anyone can and should practice to stay relevant and future proof, no this is not The List, these are few which through my engagement with youngsters and observations, I felt were the most defining and important ones to ensure that Individuals are able to keep riding over the turbulent waves that times ahead will keep sending across to them over and over again like it has been happening for the previous generations as well, the only real challenge being, in the connected world you really don’t know who sneezes and who catches cold that fast!

Stay Authentic: Even as the world media and everyone around you always seems to go ga-ga over “THE PEOPLE” to look up to syndrome- well let me tell you what, they are not telling the world what shit they have been through and what rules were bent or broken to become who they are! Allow fascination to be what it should be uplifting at the most and inspirational at the least and leave it at that! We are around 7.5 Billion across the world and if even Twins are different psychologically , there must be a good reason why nature would have wanted to us to evolve the way we did by retaining a strong sense of individuality read authenticity which is  deep rooted to the concept of The INDIVIDUAL SELF! and reflects inwards like a eternal internal reflection! Being Authentic begins with A refined sense of awareness about oneself and everything and everyone around you. It also involves the ability to be assertive about Who You are and wanting to be Who You are irrespective of the social confirmation biases and all the pressures and temptations of the modern world! Easier said then done- sure it is – but this is the first and foundational step to keep yourself relevant always and for all times ahead!

Define your unique skill: This has to be better then I can make cup cakes or I can sing or I can drive, This has to sound like, I am that Ace Pilot that you always wanted to fly with, or that Surgeon you can trust for your open heart surgery or that scientists you can count on to decipher scientific jargon and provide solutions to perplexing problems, that teacher who inspires and motivates that co-worker who creates a legacy of either a process or work or  technical know-how that becomes the gold standard for doing what people do! This is the second step, once you have learnt to be authentic about yourself, this will come naturally to you effortlessly , because once you have known who are, you will make no mistake in deciphering What you can set out for! You may also want to access my other article on this subject here.

Define Success: As trivial as it may seem, but this is the key to ensure that you sustain your journey and efforts and don’t get burned out or blown away because of exhaustion, not knowing when to stop or falling into the never ending trap of human greed which comes in coveralls of almost anything that you can think of- Being the Best, being The biggest, being the largest, being the xyz… well don’t confuse this with being or not being ambitious- I mean once you know who you are and what you are the you ought to know what is that you can achieve hence these statements of “Being xyz in front of the world” simply don’t hold a chance to come back haunting to you and distracting you into another level of complication! Knowing what success implies to you as an individual will only come through once you have completed the first two steps of knowing yourself and what your intrinsic skill is!

Chart your Course: To reach the success that you have defined needless, to say you will have to plan the road trip and chart a course, importantly because this is about “you” You alone will be able to select and select options through trials and error for there will simply not be an template that will fit your requirement as long as your definition of your authenticity, skills and success are unique! We all may be similar in terms of abilities as human beings on the broader subset of things, however when it comes to deploying ingenuity and innovation, that is where the great differentiation happens and this alone is the ever dynamic action point that keeps you either on track to your definitions or steers you away from your pursuits when your thinking mind starts to waver in face of worldly compulsions and confirmation biases! This stage happens to be the real test of time and for someone to walk through this path and keep walking on this path it is a constant battle of choosing and letting go of opportunities that life presents every moment- those which resonate with you and help you stay on course will blend in perfectly and those that don’t help you will (if acquired) start to create dissonance and lead to a drag even as you strive to keep the forward momentum! Knowing when to rest, when to divert, when to halt (for the moment- practice the pause!) and when to race ahead are all the secrets and skills that need to be learnt and applied on the go- how well they blend in or not makes your journey then either smooth or that bit turbulent!

Be a niche: Whatever you may want to choose, finally this is the mantra that you need to know well, you will have to create a niche – an unique place for being who you are by doing what you choose to do, like I said in the beginning, you may want to be that Ace Pilot or that Brave officer- The adjectives used here are intentional for they define the pursuit of the niche that you would have gone for and this makes you simply indispensable and in fact as time progresses this value goes on increasing evermore for the simple reason that this niche that you choose to hold becomes a perfected and mastered art form- which can be possibly copied and replicated but never will anyone else be able to master it to perfection and execute it precisely like you can and these two are the unfailing hallmarks of enduring success no matter what is the niche that you choose to build for yourself!

Well I will leave it here for you to perhaps add a few more foundation attributes to carve your future ready better version, given the limitation of a blog, I will put a stop to my thoughts here for now! No matter what you add to the list and how you decide to follow and carve out your pursuits, the golden success for Life’s pursuits is , “Always keep things simple, the moment you see complexity growing- you know at once this is a trap wherein a lot of people are trying to drive home a point by representing something that is not needed and keeping away what is much needed! Well, keep thinking around this and I will be back soon with another article!

Ciao for now, stay safe and stay connected!

The UV(Unique Value) challenge ahead.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 3 Comments

As work places the world over begin to come back to life and kick start the much awaited and needed meaningful life cycle for each one of us-few things would have changed already or will rapidly transform in the first 90 days, as operations begin to gather speed, this piece is about exploring on such facet and what to expect and how to manage what is likely to come your way! So let’s roll ahead…

Before we try to ponder on how things may impact us going ahead, it will make a lot good to understand , what really happened as activities were halted globally in a planned/less planned or unplanned way!Since we are dealing with only facet of the human aspect we will try to limit our observations around that one central piece and move ahead.

Humans by and large end up either ending up in the space of being employment generators or employment receivers and then we have the small segment of businesses consultants/ Individuals who are both generators and receivers unto themselves. As activities came to a halt, multiple things would have dawned at all levels! In some cases the real face of human value systems/ belief systems and Individual priorities would have far superseded the collective cause of managing a workforce or a team at a small office or vice-versa. This break in continuity, at one end would have manifested through massive layoffs/ unemployment that has been written all across the world; Ever since this unplanned halt in routine came into the picture! So what has happened here- Well one  may argue that the business viability was cut short and since there were no mechanisms to cushion the offset of losses (which seem to be astronomical) there was no other way but to close the shutters and let go off people– well ok- hold this thought for a minute and we will address that later as we move ahead.

Another scenario that too has played around the world has been the overarching concept of “We are in this Together” (Even as I hate this thought -as much as I can because it simply defies any rationale sense!). In this space, people have not been impacted that bad, governments, agencies, employers and everyone that you can think of, have come ahead and collaborated to ensure that people aren’t left to the elements and are being ensured that they have a wage and a lifestyle that they can still as yet hang out to- albeit by a slender thread and as soon as things are better, the turnaround will be rapid and directed! Well this scenario for obvious reasons seems to be the best way ahead- why not- it talks about higher societal virtues , duty of care and for ensuring everyone has indeed, had a fair chance to fight this time through and move ahead. Now that we have seen both extremes of the spectrum above, let’s amylase what people are actually doing in this time that has been available to them!

People being who they are would have used this time available for themselves either to waste it and let it rot as usually they do while being busy to slog like slave for making someone else rich or they would have put it to some good use or wise use depending upon the cognitive abilities, opportunities and the immediate flexibility of the societies in which they thrive! Broadly speaking we have two sets of people around the world right now in a lock down/isolation whatever you want to call that- The firsts set is working as diligently they normally would have – striving to balance the challenges of working from wherever they are in whatever conditions they are and making a point to see how best they can add value and keep contributing in their way to ensure the business that are working with or for remains afloat as much as possible! The second set has basically turned this whole episode into a endless meaninglessness vacation which doesn’t seem to end (Unlike the hotel property- you don’t have a pre-set check out date) so these folks who believe in the maxim- “Anyways everything is going to get tougher so while we have this time, why not binge and indulge into personal indulgences and give a damn to what tomorrow ushers in!”. Finally we  have a smaller segment of interesting people (irrespective whether they are the employers/employees or consultants/Individual businesses) who have used this time to realign their life priorities/ work definitions/aspirations/belief systems even as they have continued to work and contribute to what they have been doing! Knowing the facts about where the world is rocking around for now, now you may want to know how all of this will get played out as things begin to open up! Well let’s read on and remember the previous line for that has a big secret within it!

As the world comes out of the shadows, thanks to automation (AI) and some good serving of Common-Sense there will be rapid and quick realignment of businesses and individuals- Those who have been toiling through this phase will come up with fast decisions translating into large scale visible actions, whether it is reallocation of staff to other facilities of a large conglomerate, whether it is about training, re-training,  or whether it is about adding anew product and rolling it off within weeks, you think of a scenarios and probably you will see an example playing out- especially where the businessmen and the employees have been working through this tough phase diligently one day at a time and have had a road map for the future irrespective of testing times and uncertainties! These in some cases will also lead to decent amounts of lay-offs but what will be unique to this phase is the fact that Quality of the people getting laid-off will have a story to tell. In all probability this will have many people from the second set who were on that un-ending vacation and didn’t care for the world- well, as the law of reciprocal karma; the world will also care less for them  and that’s what will get played out in the end!

The rare collection of individuals  (whether employers/employees/consultants) who would have spent this time for thorough introspection and realignment of themselves to their cause using the Unique Value that they intrinsically hold; will be the eventual trail blazers and will play a vital role in setting up the next benchmarks of quality and process development across businesses! It will be this small segment which would have analysed and seen how each other member on the team has been functioning/ not functioning where the disconnects have been and where the strengths are and what can be corrected and what must be weeded out immediately to safeguard the business! This may look like a simple task that any manager would have anyways done- but what is different here is that for the first time perhaps in a long long time- there is no space for personal biases for being played out through those intense team meetings and “one on ones” within the confines of office meeting rooms -because whether teams and individuals have worked or not would have been captured through  a documented trail of emails, messages from collaborators and clients alike which are more telling and in-the- face to sum up quite a lot then any findings from over a 100 internal meetings  that one would have participated in! It is also in this segment that one will also see many wise people alter the course of their calling to something different, bigger and better then what they have been currently doing and this mutual separation from the routine will enable to open up new vistas and opportunities from human thinking, innovation and commerce to be built around that space!

So what is that will create that differentiation which will make or break an opportunity for an Individual? Well the answer is UV – The Unique Value that Individuals would have been able to demonstrate as they worked through challenging times and ensured that their tasks and jobs are delivered as they had been promised and the objectives were realized in the face of extraordinary challenges! It will be these UV’s when applied by businesses, teams and Individuals alike that newer avenues with far greater depth, clarity and purpose will begin to emerge from existing businesses to provide an opportunity to build new systems and businesses! 

These UV’s, will enable organisations become healthier by being leaner, directed focused and purpose driven, knowing well now that they do really have a duty of car, hence instead of boasting about an employee strength of 1000, organisations will change the narrative to a family strength of 100 which would imply an employees strength of 250! Likewise Individuals who would have found their zen by being flexible would possibly want it to stay that way so that their creative outcomes remain unique and well appreciated- this then would also work in favor of the businesses!

So, before I sign off, think well for the remaining “ME” time that you have at hand and be honest in knowing what you are doing with that- because your future will depend on the singular pivot of what you have done with this “ME’ time and what you learnt during this period!

I will leave you here for now, grab a drink and think and reflect so that you can face tomorrow all suited up, one you have realized the Unique Value that you have within and what you to offer as a giver and receiver!

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

Leadership in Crisis OR Crisis in Leadership-what are you living through?

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Over the last two weeks, virtually everyone around seems to have been coming up with the governments, health care workers could be doing better, what did go well, and what was amiss- The only issue I have with this space is irrespective of whether people are praising their authorities of slaying them on the social media for being incompetent, the essence lies in how much does one really know about whats happening behind the scene- I mean how can anyone see a news clip or a media byte for a few minutes and then decide that this is what must be happening and come to a conclusion that we are all fine or we are all but certainly doomed! Well this is exactly what happens when you are experiencing either a situation wherein it is either about “Leadership in Crises” or “Crisis in Leadership”  and that’s making its presence felt through the society that you are a part of and this short piece is just trying to make sense of this! Of course yes, I am not going to be taking names of leaders or nations here, so that I don’t end up placing prejudices in your mind- like it always has been I would want you to decide and take a view of what makes sense to you and in way that goes on to serve you by enhancing your understanding of the developments around you!

When disasters strike they often come with shock and awe, well that’s the case with major sudden natural disasters like flash floods, earthquakes and tornadoes which seem to just appear and disappear on their own terms leaving a path of destruction behind them. It is a similar situation when man-made disasters strike humanity- like mass shootings, terrorist events etc unfold. The  real story begins the moment after the unthinkable happens! It becomes apparent quickly with ample clarity what kind of script is being played out to the world- we will now begin the instance wherein “Crisis in Leadership” begins to unfold. 

Of the many manifestations that are possible, Crisis is Leadership is always earmarked by a deafening silence and inertia in the initial stages. This is the moment wherein the proverbial throat runs dry and the leaders are left to the mercy of their critics for having failed to act/ or rather react in a specific manner to an event- which normally is derived from the majoritarian societal conformity bias! This initial step if not checked in- not only unleashes a chain reaction of ever increasing complications and problems but also creates a powerful distraction in which the real challenge (the event that would have occurred) is all but made secondary and the efficacy and the style of the leadership start to become the talk of the town and thereby begins a never ending bickering game which goes on and one as long as some other powerful stories tend to come up and overshadow these events and narratives!

The next indication of Crisis in Leadership comes when people speak irrelevant, nonsense, mistime the content or begin to contradict each other from the adjacent windows of the same are of operation! You may have by now witnessed examples of politicians like Governors of State and other task force members who have been entrusted with fighting away this virus come up and say things which were completely unwarranted for and make no real contribution towards the progress of attacking the virus and saving  lives- rather, a lot of their rant would have been talking about what they have been doing, trying to do and are hopeful of what they will be able to do rather then just stating the facts like- This is what had happened, this is what we did to fix it and this is what we have planned for tomorrow because this is what we expect! Well needless to say, it is instances like there that even turn disasters into fodder for news channels and media to utilize the moment for their fame to glory for showing how dumb a particular individual was- well as a matter of fact they never wait another second to do a rethink- I mean; wait why would this person behave the way he is doing so- he isn’t that dumb really? had he been done so dumb- he wouldn’t reached where he is now – A position of power and control to dictate terms through a crisis! So whats the missing part?! Well we will get to this bit once we have seen some other examples of how things are really done and what Leadership in Crisis really looks and feel like!

Unlike the above two manifestations (certainly there could be many more- given this is a blog, trying to keep it a bit truncated), when one sees Leadership in action through a Crisis- The whole equation changes dramatically! The very first manifestation of Leadership in control through a crisis is visible by the knowing “who is the face of the leadership”. As long as the face has enough depth in terms of credibility, acceptance, appreciation and connect with the audience in concern, rest assured the masses are at once assured that things are in control and you will find that people are ready to agree, abide and go ahead with the decisions taken by this type of a leader. The second important aspect here, which must be read together with the first point is that the quality, swiftness, clarity and transparency of the decisions and the rationale also are required to go hand in hand along with the face of the leadership. You may have a very pleasing face but if the quality of the following decisions and the content falls through, you will possibly end up finding a new face before you find answers to the pressing challenges at hand!

Effective leadership through crisis is almost and always accompanied by a sustained and ongoing communication dissemination in a measured manner wherein the communication reaches where it should and provides ample clarity about what is expected form the received of that message- like does the person need to take some action, or just be ready for the next instruction or it could be about being provided with details on the progress that has been and what the outcomes seem like over the next few days or weeks!

Leadership in Crisis may be aggressive or may be passive in terms of style harnessed by the leader in question, but unless it is proved to effective through its presence and through its actions; all purpose risks being  eventually lost and can easily slip into the depths of becoming another case of study of Crisis in Leadership!

I will leave you with your thoughts now, see around you depending on where you are on the planet and observe what is that you are witnessing- at the government level, at your office level- what do you see around you- Leaders managing the Crisis or Crisis being complicated further by the Leaders who have been entrusted to steer the ship!

Ciao for now, I will be back soon with another article, until then navigate well, stay safe and if you are locked down, stay in and let your mind wander with thoughts that empower you and help you deciphering some hidden mysteries available in your plain sight! By the way – What type of a Leader are you- what do you think!

 

Dealing with (Mis)Information Warfare.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 1 Comment

Never before has it been more important to check- cross check and re-check everything that gets played on to the television set, the channels that you subscribe to, the search results that come to serve you and not to mention the endless, forwards, messages and what have you! This piece is about trying to make some sense of the information or rather misinformation warfare in which we get drawn day in and day out at times knowingly and other times unknowingly when we tend to forward that last message on whatsapp without bothering to check if the content made any sense to begin with! So let’s try and unravel what really is going on here!

The later part of the last century, was rightly known as the Information Age- If one had the right information at the right time it gave the person/ business or the government of the day phenomenal advantage to lead and race ahead no matter what the subject would have been- whether it was about path breaking research, or best practices adopted over factory floors, or it was about business or governance strategies- You name it and you will find that the last 50 years has always been about “The Best way” of doing things, “getting things done”, “being the best”, individually or collectively by harnessing the power of Information. Till this point it was a linear fight for supremacy – Whoever had the right information at the right time would be the winner, but with technology and the dawn of the digital age- information became available  at amazing speeds simultaneously across the world and there was never a question of any lag or delay and then it started to boil down to who had the first movers advantage, who got ahead first, how fast and what tools and resources were made available for them to make that rapid progress. Well even this was fair, considering you give the whole world community the same information at the same time and then it boils down to whoever has the maximum matter and money to spend and build on an idea! The real drama unfolds now, once people saw that information based challenges are becoming accessible and rapid progress is possible and the concept of  dominance on sectors/ ideas and approaches to lives problems is beginning to get into the shredders, the real game got started – the game of information dominance through spread of misinformation! This is how we have, according to me ushered in the age of misinformation- The age of Information Warfare- A testimony to Human Dominance and never ending Greed for power (all types) and Opulence!

This age of Information warfare thrives on spreading information which makes sense, no sense and cryptic sense- this is done intentionally to divert, distract and keep competitors and people observing you loose their way and get entangled into a information mess in which they remain entangled and by the time they do come out of it- you would have probably achieved your objectives and then it really doesn’t matter whether they have access to the earlier original content or not- because that has become contextually irrelevant!

This new warfare front made possible thanks to the digital breakthroughs that we have collectively been able to make as humanity has proven far dangerous then any nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction! The misinformation business is responsible for almost everything that you see around- on the day to day basis- you would have come across commercials (with the small * of terms and conditions – which is next to invisible) claiming and suggesting things which are out rightly stupid, dangerous and rarely at time fatal- but as they say- the small little invisible * offers protection and the the petitions are always urged to use their collection and individual wisdom-which by itself is a challenge as that is a fast depleting asset! When things do get ugly as usually they do- you will generally have vested interest groups within nations/ communities and across nations who can collectively get into the role of spreading information in a calibrated,weighed manner to do a sinister loop and complete it’s objectives by unleashing public unrest/ strikes/ law and order situations and by the time this is all done the originator and the communication and the real essence behind the malafide act is all but cluttered into an ambiguity of trails, reports and reasons- which often heads no where and then the world is ready for another episode all over again! History is replete with examples when things have become really bad and this ability to spread directed misinformation has at times won wars at the right side of the battle and at times has ended up doing more damage to society at large! So when we know Mis-Information is as deadly as it gets to be- why do we thrive and allow it to propagate- why does it even get a hold?

The answers lie in the fabric of humanity itself- Human societies have long been far away from idealistic settings- there is a rampant inequality within societies, within different segments of a society or even within communities and not to forget the inequalities among nations and blocks of nations! Inequality that transcends all metrics normally considered for determining what should be the definition of Equality!  Inequality manifests in different ways, it could be the inequality between the rich and poor (monetary inequality), inequality of opportunities, inequality of liberty and so on and so fort. The most important trigger comes from the Inequality of opportunity for World Dominance through governance and business. This is by far the most dangerous and the most sinister of all the different malaise of modern societies and has caused more harm then good to each and everyone of us! You may be thinking this has to do with only the intelligence community and the governments- no – this has everything to do with each one of us- as misinformation gets fed into minds which are not that good at checking facts from fiction- the results and consequences often turn deadly and dangerous! So now we know that there is a problem- how do we deal with it! Well read on…

“Practice the Pause” a technique told by many management teachers, the next time you get a piece of information and decide to do anything- absolutely anything with it- think what it is- check from where it is coning- think what is is asking you to do and think about the impact that you may individual end up creating by virtue of who you are- and whether that is needed or not! There will be times when the best thing to do would be nothing! There will be yet another times when you may have to ignore/delete the message and then there will be some other times still when you need to flag the message and the content off to relevant people in time so that disasters are avoided well in time! The challenge though remains to perform any of these actions, first and foremost you must have a thinking mind – irrespective of how intelligent you are or not- doesn’t matter-what does matter is whether you have the ability to sieve through the content and weigh it against common-sense, science and facts of the world! One more golden rule is what doesn’t serve the best and larger good of humanity doesn’t need to be there- If any message that you are to pass on – irrespective of what the source and whatever it is- If it doesn’t help anyone and ends up having more anxiety and anguish to even person then that message is not worth it- might as well bury it as soon as it reaches you!

We live in an age where access to information is a sure ticket to success and hence the converse also hold true- access to misinformation can spell untold misery and chaos at times damaging individuals and at times communities and nations as a whole! The certain way to move around this in-your-face- covert enemy of mis-information is to develop filters through wisdom and knowledge and apply ample common sense to all that you receive- without the screen of prejudice and develop a way to weight the content of information in its totality and then take a call whether it serves or deserves its existence! This kind of mindful approach to content when repeated over and over again will ensure the damages caused by misinformation campaigns world over is as minimal as possible!

I will leave you here with these thought, grab your cup, check your whatsapp messages and think well before you forward the next message! Think- Is it really worth It- Does it add value to the receiver or to you as a sender of the message! If it does go ahead, if it doesn’t delete that crap!

Ciao for now, will catch up soon with another article!

 

Stretched to the breaking point.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

As kids we have always played around with elastic materials in whatever form and shape we may have got them and for whatever different school and college projects that we would have needed them for- and certainly a we start to work to tie up loose papers and materials lying around our work desks and places which required to be clutter free! This article is about having a quick sneak peek into what is so fascinating about “the stretch” and when does too much become too much and what does it look like at the point just away from the snap! I am sure we can together learn a lot and apply to ourselves from the humbles elastic materials that lie strewn across our homes and offices- although lifeless, full and complete of life lessons! So let’s roll on…

The humble rubber band- the lifeline of many modern day households has a unique and enviable place in our day to day lives! What makes the rubber band special is not it’s ability to stretch but rather being able to surprise us from time to time by stretching when we think it can’t stretch any further and snapping away when it could have easily done it’s job! Well, what’s actually happening here is related to the quality of elasticity, the quality of the material and the number of times it has been used over and over again. Any physicists will tell you, for that matter even our high school grade physics lesson can explain you on this front- When the material being used is moderately fresh/ new the ability to remain elastic often is fantastic and it is these new/ infrequently used rubber bands that go on to help us with our most difficult tasks of tying up and looping up things, similarly as they get used and used- material fatigue sets in and the rubber/polymer molecules are no longer able to go back to their original state as much as they were going earlier and that further impacts that their ability to flex further and demonstrate strength- which results into those untimely snaps to our utter disappointment! So what’s the parallel here to our lives? Well don’t you see- the words were all over written earlier and yes, you too would have either used them or these were used to describe your attributes! 

Human mind is pretty much like an elastomer- elastic polymer- we can flex our minds as we require and this ability to flex makes us who we are- social beings.The flexing human mind has been the foundation on which societies and social order has got built and developed over the years and through the centuries! However,like the rubber band, our mind too has its own limitations with regards to it’s intrinsic ability to flex and regain shape and construct- read shape as in the  continuing ability to display intelligence and wisdom. Minds which show a formidable dexterity to seemingly keep on flexing irrespective of the age of a person are a true miracle. Normally ability to flex- displaying how much potential one may have to undertake risks and explore the new limits of humanity will diminishing with age – As age progresses the natural systems will ensure that flexing gets controlled and people become naturally risk averse- this is a hardwired switch through our evolution which was meant to keep us safe from formidable dangers of the bygone eras. But there are these isolated and few sparsely strewn human minds which seem to show no sign of stopping or reducing their limit of flexing and the conversely their ability to take risks and keep on pushing the boundaries of human exploration and human intellect further each and every time they encounter a intellectual challenge- These wonder minds are those of the modern day explorers, innovators, writers, specialists from every field of science and technology that you can possibly think of – These are the people who know how to harness this unique ability of the human mind to flex and yet be itself on an ongoing basis by using some basic techniques- albeit- knowingly or unknowingly! So what are these unique techniques which can help your mind also to flex like those of these geniuses- well read on!

Just as the material quality of the rubber band is critical in defining how many times it can flex before it finally snaps- the human mind also depends on multiple physiological, biochemical, physical and emotional inputs to arrive at its levels of comfort and discomfort which further go on to deciding how much risk a particular mind is ready to go ahead with! This is perhaps why, no two people are ever likely to come up with an exactly same approach and solution to a problem that they are presented with a problem- even if they both provide the right solution there will be always a difference in the approach to solving the problem and this is what makes us either among the 80% of the general population or makes us fall in the elite group of the remaining 20%. Once human mind is nourished with the right nutrients, few as basic as food, healthy upbringing and getting access to a value setting which is more compassionate and value driven to offer and to provide rather then accumulate and receive- the human mind is almost ready to demonstrate some amazing ability to flex and flex real good to provide cutting edge solutions to make life easier for the individual and the society as well!

A well nourished mind- through food and upbringing is a formidable instrument-an instrument that allows us to expand our cognitive faculties and race ahead with our imaginations- both of which are absolutely necessary to create a new world and address the ever pressing challenges that the modern day world keeps throwing us at!

In scenarios wherein the mind is failed either through nourishment or through other aspects like upbringing or societal confirmation biases or limited opportunities- it looses a great deal of it’s intrinsic ability to flex and when situations arise (as they most certainly will) this failing ability of the mind to flex in an appropriate manner leads to societal collapse either by virtue of a laid back response system and complete inability to flex or a overzealous response which ends up creating more chaos and ambiguity and puts up the entire frame work of the society at a greater risk with no one from the group knowing when to stop or where to stop what has been started!  One good example here could be of a revolution and anarchy- revolution is a proof of powerful minds thinking alike for a specific outcome and knowing when to halt as the outcome has been achieved- all this being achieved by flexing and contracting at different points through the revolution until the end goal is achieved. This is controlled, planned and efficient which works on collaborative strategies and ensures that individual minds are rested and nourished as the long path is traversed to reach the final destination! When we look at anarchy the loose free for all beyond control flex of collective minds all working (mostly out of sync) and to different objectives which overlap or counteract each others’ ends up defeating and ending the limited flex ability that individual minds have in no time and once it is met with powerful and planned counter narratives these anarchic minds come down crashing like a pack of cards! In this world where minds are pitted against mind to win battles day in and day out- it is the unfailing dexterity, endurance and magic of flexing of a nourished mind which will always hold an upper hand no matter what the battle is about or how big the challenge may seem to be!

The human mind also has this innate ability to signal when it is about to give up- whether it is about the powerful human mind which has been flexing all good for so many years or it is about that mind which is a recluse and averse to flexing and will do so only when there is no alternative left- the human mind will at some point in time or for some aspect fail- certainly it will and these failures are those mistakes which then in proportionality of the mistake determine how bad and how steep the fall is! Like any good machine, the human mind provides alarms- there will signs of fatigue- wherein you will simply find it difficult to come up with solutions ideas, newness and ability to think and collaborate with some fresh approach and outlook for old problems or the seemingly minor new problems assume demonic perceptions in the window frame of your mind! Another indicator would be the increasing tendency of not wanting to take up the challenge and seeing if avoidance is working- surely there will be and there are a few battles that have to be won by not fighting one, bit whether this translates into a total avoidance strategy is something that one must guard about carefully- this in the long run becomes severely counterproductive as it tends to rob away all and any risk taking abilities that a mind may have developed in a flash! Finally after nourishment, lethargy, it is the impact of repetition and societal indifference! Every time a wise mind is made to do mundane and routine things which make some or no impact on the society and the contribution is at the most taken to be granted automatically the human mind looses and start to throw away its creative facets of being ingenious and with that goes away a considerable amount of ability to flex and flex at the right time and for the right reason! As societies tend to become more and more conformists, listening to that one person, one value, one goal and one aim- we end up creating and becoming  low-end unthinking human machines which loose not only the ability to lead and crate or innovate but also end up doing dis service to our own self the very essence of who each one of us as an  Individual is!

The health of your individual mind is something that each one of us can take care of must- mental wellness, mental health is the very foundation on which modern day societies stand! It is not to be confused with intelligence or wisdom- that is the content part of it- unless the storage device is properly wired and functioning no matter what you throw into it- you know well enough if the processor is at fault you will end up getting more garbled and ambiguous data out of it!

A mind in harmony, at peace, content, driven and directed with access to nourishment and a conducive environment is the key to the happiness of societies the world over! many such mind are then able to guide societies and such awakened societies are able to direct nations and the world eventually!  Take a pause today and do think  how good  you have been at flexing back and forth and how has that helped or harmed you- know what to hold on to and know what to throw away- A healthy mind is the one which has no boundaries, has no bondage and has no fear and has courage but no arrogance. It is about achieving a sublime stage of being aware minute to minute about all that’s around you and within you and when you have reached these magical proportions of control and dexterity- you are ready to take upon the world and its challenges!

I leave you here with these thoughts, its a lovely Sunday- An Easter Sunday- Have a Blessed Easter Everyone! and I will be back soon with another article! Until then bye and stay wise, stay safe and don’t get killed! 

Fogging out the re-calibration dilemma.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

As communities come together in their won way to assess the extent of damage and start to pick up the pieces and look forward to re-build, a very important question which will be playing on almost everyone’s’ mind- right from the governments to the business tycoons to the ordinary person on the street who awaits the opening of a retail store so that the next pay check can be collected is “How do we now know something different about all that we always thought we knew!” and what do we do about it and how do we move things ahead from here! Well this short piece is about skimming through these dimensions and possibly decipher how things may play out as humanity emerges out of the shadows of a global melt down! So here we go!

Hopefully governments across the world by now have learned a valuable lesson that as the old saying in India goes- “Health is the only real Wealth” and unless nations and societies do not  makes a serious effort to invest adequately and proportionally to ensure wellness and health of its citizens, no matter how many nuclear bombs and missiles they have in their arsenal or how many billions of dollars or gold they have to throw to the world- all of this will become meaningless in a wink as it happened now! This time is a great opportunity for nations to reset their priorities towards investment in healthcare and developing societies and communities which are more healthy! The choice is clear; either governments incentivize building healthy living and working habits so that investment in hospitals is reduced or continue with the age old unhealthy habits and then spend billions and billions to build hospitals and pharma reteach and this then goes on endlessly like a never ending game of cat and mouse waiting for the next mistake to happen and then that allows all hell to break loose all over again!

Business and the big bad world of corporate rat race– well, I doubt if this aspect of human society will ever learn anything from what is unfolding- we may end up seeing more dumb start ups that will go on to sell and live at the expense of why continuing social distancing is the way ahead and why remote working is The way of Working and so on and so forth! If this nonsense s is not checked and put in place- The world will end up having more mentally sick people then the number of threatening viruses you can think of coming from the Corona family! It will do the world a lot good, if for one time businesses become a little more humanistic and develop and build ways of working which resonate with general wellness and create more space and value wherein roles and responsibility are tailored and made to benefit not only the business objectives but also live on to enrich the lives of the people involved in creating those activities! The pandemic has taught one major lesson- A global melt down scenario- in whatever form it comes- doesn’t and will never care if you are rich or poor- these events are great levelers- they will reset everything to a point and from there is a great opportunity for all societies and businesses either to build a more inclusive and human society which is more sensible and purpose driven or loop back to old capitalist and greedy way of driving the things- again furthering the proverbial “rat race” and “neck throat competition” philosophies which will end up looking so falsified and hollow even to begin thinking about in today’s; altered world scenario!

Individuals, depending on how the time of lock down was used or abused will emerge as their better or worse version when they hit the deck to work! Likewise their offices would have assessed and gauged their absence and work through the physical absence in terms of effectiveness and critical contribution; needless to say- there will calls taken and adjustments done! So if you have been one of those people who have been binge eating endlessly dipping into the tub of popcorn or chicken fingers and blessed with an endless supply of booze, well you know what- your long party may just come to an abrupt unpleasant end! On the other extreme end of the spectrum, if you have been one of those silent warriors who has been pushing through all the odds and have helped your client, got that payment and ensured you have stayed on top of your game irrespective of the odds of bad signals, bad support and challenges galore- you may have just helped yourself by staying relevant and by ensuring you have indeed been an asset when it mattered the  most! If you are anywhere between these extreme ends of the spectrum- one end of callousness and other end of being prompt and proactive- well depending on what kind of sector you work in and what is the extent of human value and dependence your sector has you will ether sail through or end up drowning!

Businesses that display a more humanistic approach and be more inclusive, giving and caring will have a greater advantage in times ahead, needless to say those who showed their ugly side and used this as garb to seek undue advantage wither by sacking people or reducing their payout will get their karma back in time – sooner then later and they will to realize that! More importantly however the centre of focus will be the Individual- What the lock down and work through isolation has done to people and how they have coped with either to emerge as strong as before or have metamorphosed themselves into something else for good or worse will also play a big role in either ensuring that their role in the larger game of an organisation survives to get more star attention or they simply vanish off the corporate radar for good- owing to their own inability to cope with the altered work environment! 

Individuals who have been wise to use their time to invest in themselves, will no doubt be rewarded more then anyone else, for it is through their detailed introspection and realizing the depths of their own self they will be able to contribute further and add innovatvely to the new changed world order either by being part of the government, business  or simply by being who they are it is these wonderful people who will set the tone for the next decade and beyond– For a change this will have nothing to do with opulence but everything to do with humanity- The ability of being able to sense and respond to the changed realities of the world in a more human way! 

These, I feel are the ways that the reset will play out across the world at time subtly and at other times in a more direct manner- but rest assured the re-calibration will happen and will be clear and vivid based on priorities set by individuals, businesses and governments who decide to move societies and nations in a direction aligned to their national priorities- the only silver lining being for a change people and humanity will be at the core of these strategies – beginning with global access to health and wellness and going further and beyond! 

I will leave you here, at peace with your isolation and hope you emerge stronger, wiser and more ready then ever so that as the dawn ushers in you know exactly what you are going to do next! Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article!

 

Consequences of “It’s not my problem”.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

We are in the beginning of April and for a change global headlines across the world have definitely changed the predictable formats of politics, business and sports! Although the pandemic- is bad enough- especially if that’s hurt you too close for comfort- It has in a way certainly taught us or made us revise valuable lessons of life!- Costly lessons one must say- but that’s what nature does, when humanity goes on doing what it can with gross disregard! Well, cutting the philosophical side for now, through this piece, I will quickly share with you, what I think are the key learnings from this not-so-welcome episode that we ourselves intentionally/unintentionally ended up inviting to our lives! So let’s roll!

Ignorance is no more bliss: Even as whispers began in late November or December 2019 pertaining to a strange illness developing in mainland China, the world went on their usual business as if that was a problem limited to that specific country, within matter of few weeks- I guess- 6-9 weeks- the picture became quite different indeed- with the world now in a form grip of the pandemic and collectively thinking what can be done! Well, I will not dig deeper more into this topic, I have written quite a few pieces around this, but what it signifies and what the learning here, is that each nation and each society fragment has been over the years so much got used to just keep looking into their own micro-environments that the bigger picture is often lost and that in turn fogs out every essential detail that is needed to run a society or a nation! Not seeing over the horizon and staying locked into your own little window has been the greatest folly of our times! If houses have doors and windows- the residents must be wise enough to use adequate judgement to know when to use what!

How can I benefit from this: As sick as may this sound- this has been the ugly face of the current global crisis- even as nations started to act- react to mitigate and try to make sense of the war against the virus- there were these few elite who have so far being able to profit from everything that has happened around- well, honestly there’s no point begin judgmental about what is right and wrong- simply because that is not how the world really works and moreover one person’s nectar is another’s poison! But we got to see this play out- globally stock markets fell, everyone was selling off what they had at whatever price they could- well this is the story everyone knows- what people don’t know is who bought all of what got sold at such discount value – and how come the people who bought this had enough funds to buy what they bought! Well these are the questions to which may never find answers and  this is certainly the domain of some hardcore investigative journalism!

The “What are they doing syndrome”: This is the most funny and the most dangerous part of the whole pandemic episode-  as nations scampered to make sense of what was unfolding- every nation- big or small- created something called “empowered  groups” or “national co-ordination teams” who were supposed to understand the directions from the supposedly “I know all” WHO and pass it within their own countries- what happened with this was pretty soon before anyone could realise the parent body instead of being a leader to lead, direct and guide the world ended up being a collaborator who simply kind of  aggregates ideas and possibilities- which now has got many nations to a stage to devise what works and what doesn’t work for them through trial and error and unfortunately when it is about illnesses- these trial and errors means and implies loss of lives! This is what is being played out and the only hope now is that we overcome this crisis with as minimal collateral damage as possible. You may call terms this inertia as fear of failure to lead or erring on the side of caution; but always remember indecisive leadership in every aspect and each time will be counter productive, whether you lead a nation or the baseball team in your neighborhood!

You do as I Say: This is no doubt, the ultimate weapon that governments, individuals seem to hand out when they have run out of all options- scientific or unscientific. This is that point where you have globally experienced people being asked to be thankful, asked to do this and that for them and they, asked to offer, asked to allow, asked to agree, asked to follow, you name it and you will see examples played out at all levels across the societal fabric! Well the best part of this, not all of what is being asked really makes sense- and  if you survive all this and look back after a few years- you will end up wondering “what the f**k was I thinking”! I mean if are in gratitude, being thankful, it implies we are” that’s about it- what is the whole show about displaying it?!

It’s not my problem: This proposition, if you carefully see is the cause and the effect both! Even as we allowed a pandemic to develop ignorance over-riding on this facet allowed the situation to reach where it is and even as this ends and nations race to fix all that would have got broken through this ordeal we will finally see these statements eventually raising up; nations will say this to world bodies and federal governments will say this to the state!

This fallacy of  this thinking is not our making during the time of a crisis – rather it reflects how we have ended up becoming as humans- individually and as a society! Offices want to have those ritual Birthday Cake cutting on the floor to check off the employee engagement task for the month, not knowing if the person is diabetic or there is a crisis that the person is dealing with in the personal space, companies have numbers  on their dashboard and when decisions have to be made they are simply made (well nothing wrong with it) but again the rationale and logic is what defeats the purpose of such decisions and ends up bring companies back to the same problem in time ahead- sometimes sooner then later! So what do we do?

Well, each one needs to define ones’ own heaven and be comfortable with the hell that one chooses for oneself! But as long as we take ownership- read “total ownership” and sustain an elevated level of awareness and prudence about everything that is happening around us- we have won half the battle- certainly not one individual can oversee and map everything and everyone and each instance around all the time- well, that’s where the whole idea of a team , group, society, community, nations comes in place- this is what “watching each others’ back is all about and this is the essence of ensuring that “Everyones’ problem becomes your problem- not because you have an answer to those problems but because you want to be ready to face it when it hits you with minimal damages as much as possible, until such a time that solutions which are proven and tested are made accessible! This principle when applied and thought through even for the day to day corporate chores that we need to further- makes a great point about always ensuring that we have what we call as individual clarity and objectivity about what is expected from us individually for the role that we play-  and when each member on the team does this, rest assured successful teams will lead to create successful businesses and successful societies which in turn  build a healthy nation! So next time, think twice before you say” Its, not your problem- because it may not be now- but is will certainly be sometime and then it will be worthwhile if you Know something about the problem that you are facing!

Ciao for now, I leave you here with your cup of coffee/tea as the case may be! Stay wise and stay sane, and always remember, just by your existence you contribute and become a reason for all that is fair and unfair in the world around you and  that you experience! 

 

Re-connecting post isolation.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Irrespective of what is being played out now, it is important at the same time to be focused on whats lurking over the horizon, surely enough we must survive for being able to reach the horizon and touch the skies once again! Having said that, it will also be equally important to assess the state in which we reach the horizon-which holds the promise of tomorrow! Whether we reach there bruised and hurt physically or mentally or both will go a long way in deciphering what we end up doing once we are out of this storm! 

On the macro level as governments and organisations/ businesses that drive global narratives will stand to benefit the most from the current scenarios- Unlike ever before citizens have given unquestionable control and authority to their respective governments to mitigate and overcome the health crisis- nothing wrong with this- the real challenge will be once the crisis is over- how many of these governments will be happy to contract back to their earlier self and be okay with unleashing lesser power? Power as everyone knows is undoubtedly a great intoxicator- once you are used to getting high on power/authority and enhanced span of control- the ease and acceptability to go back to your lesser self- is almost improbable- in few nations across the world this will put considerable stress and political dynamics will begin to get altered even before people realise it! (People will be too busy to try to reboot their lives and survive the newer existential challenges and in the meantime these political deliberations will leave them more short changed then ever before- No sooner people figure out and make good with their new normal- whatever that may be- and they bonce back, they will again compelled to rise up and express their displeasure on the changed or altered political arrangements and this will be seen and played out as unrest’s/ protests/ strikes and legal movements the world over- some at national level and yet many on state and local governance levels!

Business firms will play their part to build strong narratives to push ahead new categories ( read old wine, re-packaged for the nth time in a new bottle) across their products and services which will promise to help individuals to have good health at all times and enable them to fight well and get some advantage (with regards to the use of their product/service) to overcome the next pandemic onslaught! This trend will be used by core sectors in the space of food, travel, wellness, healthcare,FMCG, and every other business that has a direct connect with an individual customer and has the ability to develop a powerful narrative to bring about altered behaviors to accelerate the acceptance of their product/service offerings (read global MNCs here). Even as the world of politics and business try to navigate and seek their comfort zone; Individuals – that is you and I will also be waging another war- literally day in and day out and this will be a war with ourselves to understand and set new levels (high or low- will again depend) to interact and communicate with people around us!

Whether it is the office space or a general walk into a grocery store- staying isolated would have done considerable damage to ones’ ability to communicate (no I am not suggesting we would have forgotten to speak or write), there will be in general a dissonance when it comes to choice of words being used while communicating and also the levels of interpretation (which will be at an all time low- especially if you have not connected with the individual during the isolation period!). These aspects even though may seem trivial are essentially the backbone of a connected workplace no matter where you work or whether you have your own business! Workplaces will require to have a planned unlocking of their offices- The interventions to make people begin to talk to each other to seek a level of re-engagement comfort will be critical to assess the business success of organisations especially in cases where teams are involved to deliver services and products! Businesses that practice formal team re-engagement and communication strategies and interventions will eventually have an extra edge and individuals from such teams will seem to be more in control of their daily activities over others, who do not get a chance to re-orient themselves or re-align themselves! Sectors which traditionally have been using large teams to rely on their success – like hospitality, aviation will do exceedingly well in the times ahead- since individuals in these teams have an innate and trained approach to deal with chaos, ambiguity and a formidable ability to bounce back in the shortest possible time! It will be these ordinary individuals who are so good at creating extraordinary magic through their work, who will be at the centre stage of ensuring their companies race ahead and turn around much rapidly then the others!

When it comes to the confines of Individual spaces- this extended isolation in few cases would have helped people realise their own value and perhaps that would have done a big reset to their individual priorities – in simple terms, it will all be about- how they want to spend their time, how much they want to speak going ahead, how much are they going to be listening in times ahead- again small tweaks for an individual but these will create an impact, as these developments resonate with their altered behaviors which in turn will engage with colleagues and others who too would have undergone a similar level of metamorphosis! This is where, new norms will be established, this is that space where new rituals will get created- if the good old handshake before and after that crucial sales meeting has been checked off- it will surely be replaced by something and it will be these new norms, and the ability to adapt to the new ways of working that will define how successful individuals end up becoming in the new altered reality of work-life!

The best part is, there is nothing right and wrong about all the changes and adjustments that the world will see unfold at micro and macro levels- the crux of the matter here is- as these changes impact us as individuals – what we do about those new realities and how we react and adopt them will go a long way in determining if this turbulence in our journey of life has helped us or harmed us! As human beings we have survived and who knows- the largest part of human evolution is undocumented and unknown- It’s quite possible that we have faced and overcome far greater threats then the current one and there’s no doubt that the current threat will be eventually a new normal and it’s just a matter of time!

All in all, I must say, I am pretty excited to see the drama unfold as humanity comes back together and connects even as few Individuals tend to remain in perpetual isolation deep within or refuse to move away from the Lockdown because they have possibly got locked-in to themselves!

I will leave you here, and hope you use this time that you have got to tweak your individual strategies and get ready to face another chapter that life throws at us, post this isolation! 

Ciao for now and will be back soon with another piece! At Simplifylives we are helping Individuals and organisations plan their re-connect strategies, if you think you need help, feel free to reach us at parimal.aluri@simplifylives.com and rest assured we can partner and ensure your journey post isolation is fun and helps you re-gain control faster!

 

 

The dangers of misplaced narratives.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 4 Comments

If you think or rather want to continue to think that “We’re in this together” and “Together we will prevail”, are great things that seem to inspire each one of us- Well, think again, these statements look great, the only problem that I have with them is, dude, I did not sign up for any of this shit! I would have rather joined a UN coalition force to rain down a barrage of bullets on the bad people or signed up for the olive green uniform for my country but to get drawn into a global narrative that is being literally shoved down my throat and placed in front of my face by trying to tell me that I need to contribute and be a part on this- so called war against a virus! I mean, wait a minute, have we really lost it!? A war against a virus, I mean really?! Take a pause and think about it (since you would be either in a quarantine or a lock down), how come one  gets coerced  to contribute to  alter something about which neither anyone has complete  facts- the How, Why and What of it and neither the solution to it!- neither you are a biologist, chemist or a molecular scientist- so what’s really going on with all these forceful patriotic narratives, the clapping, banging, singing all over the world- what’s really happening! Well this is what is called as the “War of the narratives” and this is something that every nation wages at some or the other time, the only difference being this time, all of them are doing it, at one go for one singular narrative- The Pandemic!

History is replete with examples wherein narratives have been created to drive select agendas of individuals who have been able to harness power, position or both and lead societies, nations to the gates of hell! So why is it that even when people, who are generally well educated, aware and have a thinking mind fall into the trap of these gimmicks and symbolism of false narratives? The answer lies in the qualities that I enlisted! Literacy, Awareness and Mind never help when literacy is not equated and filtered through education, awareness is built on prejudice and pre-preemptive assumptions and people even after having a mind, decide to lock and kept it away!

Misplaced narratives are perhaps the greatest invention of human mind! It is no surprise that most of the times they have been used to push through agendas which normally would have not gone through! So why do have them in the first place? Well, go back to history! Each time global communities- whether they be nations or regions have stalled and the governing agencies (elected governments, dictators and whatever fits into this systems that rules over the masses!) have hit a trim level with regards to any vital metric of the society that they govern, it has almost always ended up giving birth to powerful narratives- which essentially were a distraction created for the masses more then anything else! What these narratives almost always did was to lead people in a directed way of seeing at problems or thinking in a particular manner which reinforces the decisions made by the governing agencies! If we go back to the times when the great world wars were fought- you will notice a singular trend- every action that was taken even from the beginning of each of the wars was to do something with a powerful narrative by an individual or group of individuals who had come up with a clever strategy to communicate what served their purpose- to an extent that millions of people- whether soldiers or otherwise felt it a patriotic obligation to get in harms way (especially when a few of those countries were least impacted directly at a time when limited escalation broke out!) Consider Vietnam- the much famed theater of war from where US had to move back and was also the reason why powerful counter narratives were made in way of movies and films to keep sending the positive messages around the war to the general public! Truth certainly comes out, but if it gets mistimed- it looses its essence! This fact is being used and abused by people who govern and believe in creating false narratives!

In our current case, no government sounded off alarms about the deadly contagion that the virus is in the beginning, but as they realized that mistakes were costly- the narrative changed from the governments accepting accountability and responsibility- to telling citizens what to do and enforce a lock down. The lock down in nations where the virus was more aggressive ensured that those who were sick were more or less written off and had no chance of waging a come back as the system was reduced to choose between people when it comes to who lives and who doesn’t- Inhuman it seems and it certainly is- the worry here though is not that world wide health systems can’t cope with this kind of deluge of  sick people- The fact here remains that governments watched every our and every day as the things began to spiral off and decided to get active only when it started to suit their objectives- again not by- being honest and truthful of the omissions and mistakes, but rather by creating false narratives and putting the onus on people for their own life- The over all feeling across the world based on what governments are telling their citizens is “Well, we have a problem and you can alone ensure you are safe if you do a, b, c and If you don’t do this, well I cant guarantee you anything!”

Misplaced narratives work extremely well to serve political and strategic points for governments but in the long run they ruin and completely break down the communication and trust within the social frameworks and end of the day, more often then not end up reducing citizens to some crazy “Citizen ID no XXX”. That’s about it- eventually this is where we all will be heading to and this is what will remain as the reflection of the nation that we belong to . This one number will define how high and farther we get within the context of the society we live in. So you may want to ask me now, if “misplaced narratives” are so bad and dangerous why are they allowed and how do they get a foothold in the first place?

You will be surprised to learn, that individually each one of us and collectively as a society we ourselves are to blame for the extent of false/misplaced narratives we are ready to buy into and agree to! Yes, this is very similar to herd mentality and the overbearing need to comply with “social conformity bias” to be accepted as part of society and not be seen as an outlier or oddity who can be taken out/ ejected depending on what type of society you are going about in! The reason why these things get a foothold is surprisingly our “intellectual inertia” a behavioral attribute wherein we perhaps know what we are witnessing is against established logic and normal universal principles of humanity, yet we decide to do nothing about it- nor say, nor act and well this inaction serves as acceptance in the scheme of things  and misplaced narratives start to rule! Remember Hitler- one person who made millions believe that killing innocent people from a specific community was their greatest duty of service to their nation” well, yes- this is what it is and this is how it can get played out from a worst case scenario point of view- An Individuals delusional thinking and intellectual hallucination and fixation of an idea- brought the whole world to the edge and resulted in sufferings and deaths of millions and millions to an extent that the effects of those are felt even today when you visit towns and places tucked away on the quiet corners of Europe, Japan or other theaters where all hell had broken loose! A simple act of not using intelligence, cognition and displaying inertia at individual levels when reinforced by societies leads to a deafening silence which fuels the development of “misplaced narratives” which eventually end up harming the society which has surrendered and outsourced its ability to think to the whims and fancies of an individual or a group of individuals! So is there no hope around this? What’s the way ahead, are we kind of really doomed?

Well the fact remains, if there’s a problem, there is a solution always and this applies to the ability to ward off misplaced narratives as well! The first and possibly the only step is to use individual intelligence and wisdom before you agree to disagree to anything that is coming your way- e.g. If I were to tell you clap for five minutes everyday at 12 pm to become a millionaire in one year- well I am sure giving some kind of marketing twist I will be able to tempt you to try that dumb thing! But if you have a mind which starts to weigh my statement against principles of science, philosophy and common-sense , you will know this is rubbish and nonsense and  you will ask me to shut up! When one voice turns against a misplaced narrative- it by itself is powerful and when you amplify that using the power of social media and create a compelling counter narrative which is based on facts and science- which can be verified and explained in plain speak- this powerful counter narratives are what revolutions and pressure groups are made up of! Remember the Jasmine Revolution, – well that and many such were the result of powerful counter narratives when individual members of society came together and decided to stop misplaced narratives by confronting it collectively in unison with facts and more acceptable solutions!

Misplaced narratives are often the first steps before a nation is planing to change their political framework and these are more often then not tests run with tact and strategy and regular intervals to gauge the mood of the citizens so that any dissent can be stifled- using appropriate force as needed to ensure that the governance agenda- whatever that is- can be met! If you happen to be in any nation wherein you are seeing the political class becoming more and more in your face and in your app or in your life- Well, welcome you are now officially part of a society where a powerful misplaced narrative is completely hiding away from you what is really happening behind the scenes! If you think-all world leader woke up to a pandemic late- well think about it! If they have so many resources and time to mitigate and control the things now- why couldn’t they stop that from ever reaching to those levels in the first place!? No, I don’t need you to answer now, but keep thinking, maybe the “Pandemic is a Misplaced Narrative” and there is something bigger unfolding- which is hidden in plain sight!

I will leave you here with a cup of strong, very strong coffee and wake up  your mind, and try to sieve through the narratives that you have been a witness to and allow your intelligence and wisdom to guide you to unravel which one of those are indeed, “Misplaced narratives and who fast are they racing to impact you!

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

Teaming up post isolation.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 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!

 

Post pandemic-Talent acquisition.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

As unlikely as it may seem, but this worldwide lock down/ slow down necessitating a  reassessment of priorities at global, national and organisational levels will eventually impact the way we go about our lives in a more permanent way- in many ways, then one can imagine for now! This short piece is trying to see what will possibly change when it comes to organisations as they seek talent to meet the new challenges that seem to gather over the horizon ahead!

Depending on where you are on the world map now, either you have emerged out of a local lock down, or are in one in or will be entering into one! Likewise businesses have either started to count their damages, are trying to mange the situations day-to-day basis and doing the best they can for each instance or they are coming up with a business continuity plan to brace for the lock down coming their way! In all these factors, if there is any common thread that runs through (irrespective of the nature of business), it is – The Talent that the business has – the Intrinsic talent pool that an organisation has or that it is planning to build as soon as the situation becomes normal! This will be critical and vital not only for reclaiming business positions and accelerate growth but also to endure a stronger and much formidable resilience for organisations in times ahead when something like this hits next! So what can we expect- well read on…

Automation will get cautious- As strange as it may seem, but this will be a fact, organisations will be forced to look again at the human element and strike a balance between automation and availability of skilled and talented people to ensure that the show goes on even during tough times! Vocations like medical research, pharma research, doctors, paramedics and all businesses that are centered around people and have people at the core of their strategy would have by now understood one thing clearly- no matter what your balance sheet says- If you don’t have the right people during a crisis the balance sheet will continue with a same story which can eventually ending up writing off the business completely off the business horizon!Businesses and Organisations that have anything and everything to do with people- will have to switch their age hold talent acquisition strategies and ensure they have the right balance of experienced- amateur- bright stars and eccentric people at the right time and at the right places within the organisation! This may be an additional burden on the balance sheet of the organisation- but this is the only thing that will stand between the existence and wipe out of the firm!

Methodology of Talent Acquisition- This factor will also see a change, globally where we have a blend of hiring strategies which range from in-house talent acquisition teams to outsourced agencies which can use online -preset forms and test banks to filter and assess talents- well  you will be and should be surprised as these things will change a big deal and no matter who says what- the good old personal interview will be back to the forefront with the only aim of cross-checking and being sure completely that the hiring is right and this is what is needed-especially with regards to personality attributes! The essence of Human connect will be at the forefront, certainly this will also depend on how technically or even in general the interviewer is skilled to be able to make the best use of this opportunity- but well that’s a different story in itself! This person- to person connect will be to check more on the soft skills and other personality attributes more then the technical ones’ because technical things can always be trained and made good but if you have someone who wilts under pressure- well the the kind of investment needed to make that change- is simply beyond the investment capacity of an average organisation in times like these! Moreover as said earlier,the whole space around talent scouring will be wrapped around hiring personalities and attributes who can display specific behaviors whenever crisis hits next for the organisation so that the business runs as smoothly as possible with minimal or no disruption! Need a proof- well even in these times – just see around and think about two to three professions which are holding the fort for humanity- Law enforcement, healthcare workers  and aviation warriors- now what is common to all of them being selected into the profession that they have chosen- yes you got your answer- tough selection measures and training , training and training for instances like the ones’ that are unfolding right now! Trust me, if you run a big business and are always talking about the next 100 million dollars, it is professional attributes shown by these warriors that you want your team members to have! The whole selection process will move ahead to analyse and seek attributes that show steady resilience, patience, calmness and an ability to perform under pressure, certainly technical skills as demanded by a task will be of importance as well- and one more important thing- workplaces will become quieter- essentially you will be seeking people who are soft spoken, speak less and when they do speak- they wrap it up! Days ahead will be difficult for social butterflies in the office environments! 

The Turbulent talent pool- Two things discussed above become possible when we have the necessary  pool available from the immediate society. This fact brings to the forefront the quality of education and the state of educational facilities in a given society. Societies and nations where the quality of education and infrastructure is ready to rapidly develop and embrace new topics and add that to the skill set of the future professionals will see a better fit into the industry demands and this will provide the much needed edge over other competing markets ad players to emerge as a leader ion a given sector! This will also bring about a much needed change on how campus hiring are done and this will impact on how institutions are selecting aspirants for specialized courses- all in all, it will be certainly a step in the right directions- however, as the onus will  squarely shift to quality over quantity- everything in the value chain from education to campus hiring to final placements – the total cost of talent acquisition will see a rise and yes- this will again translate into a new way that organisations would like to operate in the future..which takes u to the next point!

Lean, Mean and Agile- A certain outcome that we all will witness is that businesses will become leaner- they will use a balance (of course will depend on the business as well). Irrespective whether they are process centric or people centric- they will work towards striking a balance between process automation and number of people (the whole idea will be to ensure every business has just enough and just the right people at the right levels and places)- This will over ride factors like age, gender and will solely rely on talent, skills, competence and experience that is needed and what one gets to the position! Organisations will want to move towards an ongoing arrangement with majority of workers – read variable term contracts and will only have critical and fixed assets as part of full time contracts- this will create a pattern wherein people will have to earn their way into a secured access to income- which will be completely driven upon individual competence and skill requirements of the employer! Finally many businesses will build in business resilience through managing and developing robust BCPs (business continuity plans) which will not only be multi-location but also will be across continents and will depend on the nature of business and importance of its operations!

The dilemma  of the talent!- Even as we discussed the various aspects about what scenarios may emerge- one important aspect and perhaps the most important one- The Talent! The talent- who is part of the societal fabric and during this pandemic- is up to something- either neutral and calm, anxious and nervous- or angry and frustrated- reactions can occur in many hues and colors! What exactly an individual has dealt with will go a long way to reinforce some belief systems that they have, while other may get broken apart and yet in few cases new belief systems may emerge-now which of them are right and wrong- is a very complicated call- and solely depends on the individual in that place- one person’s nectar can always end up being anothers’ poison! As businesses engage and start to interact with the talent available around- more and more interviews will end up leavening the interviewer drained and choked (unless they are skilled and wise enough) to know how to engage and deal with people as they emerge from a 21 day hibernation! The talent walking into the Interview room will be wearing layers and layers of psychological protective gear and unless the interviewer does not use the skills of interviewing which are able to build a connect with the talent across the table (possibly over a cup of coffee)- there will be instances of good talent being lost and incorrect talent getting hired! This would have been happening in the past too- but with the changed dynamics of businesses world over- these mistakes now- will end up doing far more damage then ever before! 

Well, knowing the limitations of a blog, I will leave you here, so that you may be able to reflect upon your own work arena and irrespective whether you hire talent or you are the talent- this is the time where, you must be aligning your future with clarity more then ever before- hopefully the isolation that you have already come out of , or are into or will be getting into one, will help you to do a comprehensive navigation check for your professional and personal life and by the time you are ready to rock again- you should be clear about the music you want to dance to and the discotheque that you want to be at!

Ciao for now, I will leave you here and will be back soon with another interesting piece with a more generic topic! Keep guessing! Like always should you want to suggest a topic, reach out to me and drop me a message! 

Staying sane through insane times!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Humanity, never disappoints! The moment you go to bed thinking all is fine with the world- No one is threatening anyone with a war, growth stories are being written around the nations- few true, few fictional ; the next morning, you wake up  to your living nightmare in the form of the news of a pandemic and worldwide economic melt down! Well, this article is more about trying to isolate the real problem from the apparent one (the perceived one) and try to ensure we stay sane and don’t get done by our own dumbness by keeping the reason and behavior blaming the virus aside for some time (unless of course you have tested positive!).

One of the ever perplexing issues with the human mind has been that, it always tries to rush into finding solutions to a challenge that is been put to it!- It simply wants to get that task done and relax! Well, this part is normal; the fun begins it, when it starts to operate the way it has been conditioned to operate by the person who is the owner of this wonder-machine- that is you! Going by the “Who the majority of us actually are!”(Irrespective what our social media handles projects who we want to be or we want to be perceived to be); The way we have programmed ourselves to think; by wanting to be or being at times, fast- quick- rational- irrational- impulsive- brash- well, these and many more decision types come in all colors and hues of the personality that we hold;  which again is another byproduct of the way we have conditioned our thinking! Well- wait- read this sentence again- don’t get confused- but that is a fact! More often then not our actions driven through our thought processes are nothing but an extension of our personality statements which have been conditioned by our brain- based on what we have fed into it as experiences- memories- shades of pleasantness, fear, disgust, avoidance and affection etc. etc! So how do we tame and learn to debug a mind that has the potential to run away with it’s own unfound areas of fear and gross disregard- which can actually make you history in no time!

To begin with, you can try a simple technique- Whenever you are presented with a scenario- try to evaluate and ascertain- what is expected out of you!– Whether you need to do something- if yes, are you supposed to lead someone or follow someone or be doing it all alone, what are options available- which is the one that offers the least harm to you (read risk mitigation) and finally going ahead with the chosen step! The irony here is- this kind of level headed and process oriented thinking needs space, peace and time to arrive at wise decisions- and normally when push comes to shove- normally we end up making bad quality decisions – which are a result of why we tend to be where we are in our lives! Many a times- the best decision is about doing nothing and just letting things be the way are- “There’s never a point trying to fix something that’s not broken!”

Another important thing to remember is to do a PRA (Personal Risk Assessment) whenever you are hit by uncertain situations- whether at home or at work- or in general wherever you are on the map of the world- doing whatever you choose to pursue! This PRA technique has to be simple and operational. This is something that you will have to design for yourself!- As I keep saying each one of us- is fundamentally a different being- we may be similar and aligned to common goals of larger good to humanity in many ways- but the way we can engage and contribute is a value of the Intrinsic ability that we have within us by virtue of many things that go on to make who we are! This ability to come up with a correct, consistent and accurate PRA on an ongoing basis for the small events and large unforeseen events largely determines how we ride the waves and ensure that our ship holds good in stormy weather and calm seas with equal ease! The ability to come up with a refined and good quality PRA, again loops back to how well our cognitive and thinking ability has evolved and what kind of sensible and critical data points we have shared with it to ensure the outputs that we get are actionable sane and safe enough!

Finally, using common-sense along with the supply of intelligence that you may have- is the last line of defence that you have in times of extreme pressure- like the one that we are facing right now!– At a time when the media seems to be in an overdrive- and everything around you seems to be sending out signals of things around failing and falling- It is your generous use of intelligence and common-sense alone which will help you stay away from unnecessary hysteria, melodrama and ensure you do not end up being victim or a contributor to mass hysteria (which more often then not is completely useless, unverified, unproven and unfound!). Make it a practice- to always weigh what you get as an information input- weigh it against the source from where it comes- weigh it for credibility- authority and validity-and finally do check if it really, genuinely makes a difference in your life! Even as we have the virus outbreak across all the nations unfolding- if you happen to be one of those astronauts right now aboard the International Space Station- it will do humanity a lot good if you remained focused on your experiments up there- 440 kms above us- rather then trying to dole out sympathetic verses or worrying about things- on which you have literally no control! The trick then is to control and manage what you can and ignore and leave out, what does not impact you and certainly what remains beyond your effective control!

I leave you with these thoughts for you to think and come up with your own little nuggets of wisdom and value, so that you ensure your safety and sanity and thereby ensure the mental health of others around you!

Ciao for now! Grab your drink, stay sane and stay safe!