Tag: empowered society

Redefine failure to succeed.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

You failed at something? Great! Failed at it again? Awesome! Still at it and going to try one more time? Splendid! Well, if you think, I am out of my mind, this is what the life of a crazy innovator, scientist or explorer looks like and if you ever wondered from where does humanity get it’s answers to complex and new challenges that keep popping up- it is this space of learning from failures by redefining as them as they happen! Join me here as we explore what failure really is, why it is good and why failure alone can prepare you for success and when it does that- why that success almost always is enduring and self-sustaining!

The next time you get a chance to visit a library, I urge you to go to a section that tells you stories between the 1800’s and until 1970’s! That is the period where all the magic that we see around today happened- sure enough we did not have the computers than in the way we have, neither did we have the internet nor the so-called smart phones- but what was built during that period in the history of mankind across the continents- remains to be the foundation that has made everything else to stand up eventually! This is also the period that was marked by intense and successive failures, one after the other, day in and day out only to eventually allow someone to keep working on the earlier omissions to come up with the required adjustments to get the answers that were been sought and thereby touch success and create something that would open up a new world altogether! If you ever wondered why few nations are more technologically advanced than some others, the reason again lies in the study of those 170 odd years, the nations which have struggled, failed, got beaten, broken and have risen up are the ones’ who today lead the world and that is perhaps the biggest visible lesson in front of us to understand that Failure does not and it never has limited or stalled success, rather it is the one that has forced humanity out of their comfort zone to search further, look beyond and reach for something new, establish the new normal’s of life almost every 20 years- all of this- we owe to the the bygone failures- its is on those foundations that we have got all of our today built! So why is failure so intense? Why does it get so deep inside and sting so bad? Why do we shy away now, from failure if it is what it is- a motivator in disguise? Well, read on!

The human brain is perhaps the most awesome machine that we have ever come across, even after thousands of years of evolution, every other moment it tends to keep throwing up surprises and we are all but compelled to say, “Well I didn’t know this about you!” Through our evolution, our brains have had to be hard wired for tough conditions, before we established permanent settlements and cradles of civilization. In those formative stages of humanity, failure was equal to death. you see, you went ton hunt a wild boar, the chances would be if you missed the boar, you would be back with some serious injuries (with no remedy at that time) spelling slow and sure death! Likewise if you were a farmer, watching out for pests, and keeping a check meant ensuring food to survive and failure on that bit meant seriously bad news! So this from where the story of why “failure is fatal” became so hard coded and even as humanity started to thrive and prosper the new age sins of gluttony, greed and all their cousins, embedded a sick idea into some person’s mind, “If I don’t do “XYZ” , I fail and If I fail, I am finished”, well sure enough that kind of statement makes sense as long as you are one of those troopers, law enforcement agents, critical member of the society, saving lives and keeping community safe, you don’t hear about a bank teller shooting themselves in their foot , because they misplaced the 50 cent coin right! This is the reason why that wrong notion of “failure is bad” , “failure is the end” and “failure is fatal” got stuck like an unwanted excess postage stamp on the dashboards of our mind and every time we go out to do something, we end up unnecessarily putting ourselves into more scrutiny than what is required, sure enough there are some vocations where one must never throw caution to the wind- you, see you always want your co-pilot doing the checks even as you command the plane, but that’s about it, what you need to know to begin with is that, if there is something really that important, it will come in with its own set of checks and balances either in human form or through the interface of technology that we use and if that doesn’t happen, there are only two inferences, wither what you do- is not important or you have just set yourself up for the greatest learning of your life through failure- for failure is always a step closer to you than success! So what next, how do we know when to keep going and when to stop and choose a different path? Sure enough you don’t want someone to be martyred at the alter of failure pursuing success- it was fashionable back then in the olden times, now a days that’s called being stupid!

The best part is that, like with everything else, failure starts and ends with you- your thinking and your approach, change any of these one variables and you will either alter the type of failure experience or you will hit the jack pot and touch success right away! Let me explain! If you study the life of inventors, scientists and innovators, the singular aspect that you will come across is that they relied on some founding principles of science and observation and persisted until they perfected what should manifest as an outcome to support what science told them in theory! They changed processes, steps, catalysts, ingredients, conditions of the experiment and everything that could have, except the pursuit of the finality of the experiment. Sure enough many scientists ended up inventing, discovering something else alongside what they were pursuing , that became a double cherry in many a case! When it comes to other creative facets likes, arts, literature, visual arts, etc, we all know how many times a writer would have trashed away a copy, a few pages at times the whole book! So what is getting played here? You would heard about why a painter just tore down a brilliant piece- this is the space wherein the finality doesn’t come to live with the imagery that the creator has in mind! This perhaps is the finest point of human exuberance and excellence in terms of pursuing an abstract value to be called successful! I mean a painter could be just fine, leaving the painting the way it is, the art connoisseur would have interpreted the way they would have wanted to and given the dollars and moved on, but that is exactly how it doesn’t work and that’s what separates the masters from the ordinary mortals and the only thing that these masters do differently with their failures is that they use it as their springboard to propel themselves even higher and farther to work on the next idea- as they use the current failure to touch the eluding success that they pursue! By now you must be wondering, if this is all about failures than why do we not fail that often now a days and why aren’t we able to realise the success as we aspire for? Read on!

The fact of life is that the modern corporate circus is all about risk avoidance, sure enough you want some critical aspects of business to work like that, makes sense- but this has all got to do with technological aspects! The human approach and attitude necessarily needs to be the one that embraces failure, if one wants to taste real success! You see most of our corporate work methods are more based on cherishing success and demeaning and looking down upon failure, so the human mind- being what it is, does what it should- mimic- yes- mimic- because it has seen “X” doing “ABC” to get that result which has the reward attached, so it will just do that so it too can get a chance to get rewarded- sounds familiar- yes, “corporate sales training” is a close resemblance for this! Then why aren’t everyone successful equally- why few fly and others fall, well that is simply because the ones’ who fail, learn, improvise and re-apply their learning- fly, the ones’ who face the wall and are only hanging by the structured corporate gospel, will fall every time they are faced with a negating experience unless they too learn to embrace failure as the first step to reach success!

As organisations become more and more risk averse and want to stay within an allowable band of human ingenuity and creativity- failures are far and few in between and so are the chances to improvise, re-learn and re-apply virgin human thought and that’s why we end up creating newness within what is there- but rarely coming up with something completely new as the earlier pioneers and inventors could! Sure enough, we have a few exceptional minds even now who world on complex problems and are able to come up with something that is path breaking- but again these are those geniuses- who have known to value failure and have always thrived on risking to venture into areas where normally no one would want to- you see, magic and success happens beyond failure and in a zone which is far uncomfortable and alien- a space within the human mind where dreams come alive and ideas take birth through some awesome persistence and application of wisdom!

My final take, seriously, do a retake on the whole concept of failing and failure. Do yourself a favour- just redefine your failure and from there allow the foundation of your success to be built! You will be simply amazed at the new areas that light up, the new pathways that open up and how you begin to see the same age old problems and challenges in a newer and brighter perspective- certainly I am not saying, you will have all the answers to your perplexing problems, but what you will be now armed with will be the right questions that you must ask yourself so that those right questions, bring to you the right answer which align you to the path of your success by digging deep into the learning’s from your failures! If you ever wondered why great things take time, this is one of them, great things and people both take time, for they are required to be forged by the forces of time, people and above all failures that they must experience to bring out the best of what lies hidden within them to serve the greater good of humanity around them even as they go about their lives being ordinary mortals doing some extraordinary service to humanity!

I leave you here, with these thoughts, urging you to embrace your failures and reach your success by building upon the foundation of your learnings through your failures!

Ciao for now, stay wise and stay safe! Will be back soon with another one!

Leadership matters’.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

No there is no mistake in the title, the topic is about matters related to or about leadership. Sure enough this is a blog, so staying within the limitations of the same, join me as we explore the fundamental facets about matters of leadership. No matter which way you look at it, there are always three basic requirements that, anything to do with leadership has to qualify, first there has to be the audience- these can be either the followers or the leaders in the making, next there has to be a contextual setting- a social space available withing the settings of a given society to allow leadership to breathe and live and finally we need to have the leader, you may be wondering, shouldn’t the sequence be the other way around- like, Leaders first then the society and than the audience- well it never is that way and that’s where many people go wrong in understanding what the essence of true leadership is all about, by the time we finish this piece, possibly I would have made my point clear! So let’s explore!

The Audience- The audience is a critical segment to leadership. Eventually leaders arise from the audience (most of the times) unless they are handpicked and forced upon the masses to accept! Whether the audience has the ability to develop followership or has the latent ability to cultivate and create more leaders in the times ahead- depends on who the current leader is and if the current leader has come from the very same audience, then how interlinked and impactful is the association between the leader and the audience. The settings could be anything, it could be a political outfit, a group working towards a cause or it could also be your typical office settings- end of the day- this dynamic equilibrium and the relationship between the audience and the current leader goes a long way to shape the collective future of all those who are a part of this connect.

The Contextual settings- the social fabric. This perhaps is the most important part among the the three elements that go on to make the whole ecosystem driven by leadership to work. Society in general and the contextual settings is nothing more or less than the aggregated truths of individuals in the society (not the average) , it is the truth that holds it‘s ground for every member and when multiple people have multiple truths- you end up getting a net truth that holds good across the board- you may want to ask why not call it average- because average implies that it’s the sum total factored against the number, but this is not the sum total of contextual truths, these are the contextual truths and the only thing that can be perhaps aggregated in the sense of aggregation is the vector of the direction in which these collective truths wish to move! Forward or regress and that choice is empowered by the address who often arises form the same contractual setting and when the leaders is placed from outside into a preexisting dynamic ecosystem, the leader has almost always very limited time to understand and apply what truth and prudence the leader has been able to comprehend and as long as this comprehension aligns with the society, the leader is accepted and accommodated, if the views seem to be foreign, in not time the leader will be ejected! Such is the power of the aggregate truths of a society and the collective truths that a society sees. These aspects go on to impact the aspirational value and direction that the society looks to take ahead and this is where the next bit- The Leadership and its attributes come into play!

Leaders and Leadership- They are the final, though not as important as the other pieces to the trinity of leadership, let me explain. Say you have a person gifted and checked on all personal, intellectual attributes of leadership and seems to the greatest personification of communication finesse, oratory, ideation and vibrance. Well all of that will go to waste if there is no audience and there is no contextual settings in the parlance of a social motive around those attributes! You see, leadership doesn’t and simply can’t operate in vacuum! Leaders and Leadership need and thrive of developing that vital connect with their audiences in the contextual settings that prevail, so that either the leader or the members of the audience are able to influence, impact and create some new value propositions to their present existence so that a path to collective progress and direction opens up! This is where the real essence of leadership lies- about creating, sustaining and developing vital connect with the audience and leveraging that to the aspired progress of the society.

Sure enough, how the audience responds to a leader is a very dynamic process and that equilibrium decides the pace at which the society advances or regresses. When leaders create more followers than more leaders, the society is always taking two steps forward and one step backward- simply because the whole pivot if that societies tomorrow hinges on a single person and should there be some not so welcome development with that individual, the whole social fabric comes falling apart like a pack of cards! Knowing this fundamental fact (alongside the other technical ones) you will find large organisations and corporations and people who matter ], always have a succession plan by them- that plan is precisely meant to uphold societies should there be a glitch in the leadership delivery and as that manifests you have the next able people stepping in and ensuring that the continuity, direction and momentum of the social progress is maintained even against strong odds! This magic also happens beyond the corporate walls and when that manifests, you are really witnessing leadership that is in action to create more leaders and add value, progress and clarity of direction and purpose as a given on an ongoing basis!

You may want to ask, if this is what it is, than why does it get complicated? Well, this is what the principle is and sure enough this is what the broader aspect of leadership is, but what I have not got in here is the range and depth of human emotions and thought process- these parameters are very potent and have the power and ability to fail even the greatest leaders once the followers or the social ethos begins to feel something else even as their thinking may be aligned! You see, when leaders fail to connect through their hearts and allow only the minds to connect- they set themselves up ultimately for their own downfall. The society then has to ask only one question- are they going down with that leader or rather would they dump that leader and connect and engage with another one- who possibly has the ability to keep the heart first and allow the mind to follow later! This is also the folklore of the corporate world of leadership disasters! Organisations often end up hiring leader to drive and deliver on a task (the mind part) without noticing how that is going to impact the personal connect for a team or among teams (the heart part), the result, either objectives are met and people leave or objectives aren’t met and people leave- what stays common is people will leave if the leader does not share the heart before the minds are sought! So what’s the great plan to ensure leadership thrives, the audience thrives and the contextual settings are also kept safe?

Deceptively simple and effective,Leaders arrive as the time comes. Leaders do not seek permissions, neither do they take approvals, when they see what is unfolding they will act and when they do act, one important thing that they ensure is that they act by remaining transparent and share one strong message- all goes well credit is yours’ and if we hit the wall- It’s me! As leaders emerge with this mindset to take charge and create narratives that help and provide more to the social settings around them- they influence, inspire and soon enough start to lead in the essence of the word “to lead” and as they do, based on what is that they lead (a nation, a social group or an office team) they either create followers or leaders). As long as leaders do all of this by being connected with the audiences through their hearts and minds- communication, language, clarity everything gets aligned and the social fabric gets stronger and more robust and leading too becomes simple and effective, something very similar to leading an attack platoon- there is clarity of objective, communication and purpose.

What is that you should choose to be? A Leader or an Audience? Well actually both, no matter who you are, where you are and what you do or don’t, at any given time in your life you are wearing the hat of a leader for some aspect of your life and for other aspects you are the audience (even as you may want to lead!). A a parent, you are the first leader that your kids have and no matter how badly you want to lead your nation (given the circus you witness everyday), the chances are you may be perhaps nothing more than a disconnected and un-engaged audience- with some feeble engagement only if you are still courageous enough to make your voice heard- knowing nothing will change!

This is all folks, for now on leadership matters’. The truth is each one of us is leader, the depth, width and span of that reflects how much of acceptance and accommodation we have earned as individuals within the people that move around and how much of ear we have to the ground to know what really matters and amplify that so that our audiences are able to look upto us and create more leaders than followers, because the true essence of leadership is creating more leaders! Always!

I leave you here for now, take some time to reflect on what kind of a leader you have been, what kind of an audience you have been and perhaps its also time to know if the contextual settings are still what they weer or whether its time to change all or few of these variables to ensure your journey as an empowered individuals is racing ahead in the directions that you have always aspired for!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another thought initiator! Until than lead- if not anything or anyone- start by leading yourself!

The makings of a banana republic!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

As the world races from one election to another, one political narrative to another, what better time to actually explore if you and I are part, cause or effect of a banana republic in the making! Join me as we explore, to understand if we are where we should be or we are in some grave tight spot and if that’s the case is there anything that can be done about it? Except the high handed bitching and tea sessions wherein ideas are born and buried with no real consequence or intent!

All banana republics almost always start with an utopian concept- which wisdom says is pure shit, but for reasons varying from society wide ignorance, to war of the narratives everything in between colludes and ends up presenting the chosen path to be THE path and this how the disaster starts to unfold! More often than not banana republics at this stage are always enslaved to what I call as “Sway of the popular idea” These ideas can actually promise everything and anything, but what people tend to overlook is the fact that, these promises are completely useless and never what is actually required by the people! You would have seen recent examples around the pandemic as nations raced to develop strategies, you had everyone becoming an overnight expert on Virology and Viruses – irrespective of what qualifications people had or not- everyone had a brilliant idea (almost short of a Nobel Prize for Medicine) and every two weeks that idea resembled to be as dumb as the originator of it! In that space few wise people across the world gave this brilliant thought of shutting down the economies world wide and ended up transforming a health emergency into an economic one! So you, see examples like these and others are rampant everywhere and this is perhaps the first indication that the society where you are is racing ahead to be a ripened banana republic! So what gets societies and people to this zone?

Ignorance and Indifference- these are perhaps the the most fundamental of attributes that cause societies to become banana republic in their won way- at times – sections of societies pertaining to a particular service area end up becoming a sham or at times whole societies end up becoming one happy-go-lucky tribe and needless to say when that happens- anarchy sets in. The indifference and ignorance however manifests when societies are failed by people who are supposed to lead them and more importantly that goes a long way to speak volumes about the quality of leadership that a society has been exposed to not for a few moths or years, but in many cases for decades and generations! If you look around and want to see the singular thread that binds all progressive, non-banana republic societies it is the quality of leadership! The quality of leadership alone ensures that elements and constituents within society never end up being indifferent or ignorant- whether members of a society like something or not, their being vocal and visible about an issue is at the core of a vibrant and thriving society!

When leadership begins to fail people, ignorance sets in first, if not checked, then indifference sets in and once this overlooked, well nothing actually remains about the original society to begin with! Based on intrinsic attitudes and disposition of individuals few people will embrace ignorance as nothing really matters to them, likewise few will try to be indifferent and try to stay focused only on what matters to them! Let me explain, say you have the most challenged sections of the society- these are those people who, even in normal times are struggling to just stay alive- Naturally they will not give a damn to anything because all that they care is about staying alive and that’s how it is- these are the people who bring in the element of ignorance. Next, you have that section of society which has access to what they aspire for and hence that brings in the indifference to all the other aspects developing around because as long as they are not impacted, they would really not care even if the neighbor’s house burns down! No matter which society you are part of, these two sections can drive a sane society crazy to become a banana republic and societies which have an increasing numbers of these two sections of indifferent and ignorant people, reach that stage rapidly with predictable certainty! So what can be done about this, is there some way ahead?

It all starts with the quality of leaders and their leadership. You see, true leaders who inspire, lead and act not only manage to lead and direct societies, but importantly are able to carry along with them each and every section of the society thereby reducing the number of people who tend to be ignorant or indifferent. True leaders rally empathically and solicit participation from every corner of the society that they lead and this goes on to create live, vibrant societies, where discussion, debate and collaboration become healthy and way to live all done with a singular focus to create a better tomorrow for everyone involved! Needless to say, it is only when real leaders are allowed to lead and connect that societies thrive and are kept away form the impending dangers of turning into a banana republic. So how can you and I make the difference?

Well each time you get an opportunity to select a leader, weigh the importance in this context, you want a leader who can direct and lead to a future that is inclusive and for everyone and not for a select few. You want to elect a leader who thrives and believe in individuality and collaboration as well. It is only when unique individuals collaborate that a vibrant society emerges and it is from this vibrance that stories of human progress and growth get etched into the memoirs of humanity! When you and I become the leader or choose a leader, we are not only ensuring our today but importantly we are creating a promise for the future to ensure that the societies that we are living in don’t end up being a banana republic threat we don’t want them to be! Finally, even if they do, we all know how long ripe bananas live and the rejuvenation is always certain, the only problem that, its painful, rapid and complicated, all of which is better avoided!

I leave you here with a singular thought, that whether you lead or are being lead, do ensure that you carry along with you every single person that goes on to make the fabric of your society, vibrant and thriving societies are the only real promises that we can offer to our following generations to continue the advancement and progress of humanity, the way it should be!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until than, stay connected, lead or be lead mindfully!

Collective Intelligence.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

The way that you have been familiar about collective intelligence is perhaps through the ways that it presents itself, like a group think, empowered groups, think tanks, special advisory task forces and so on and so forth. Join me here as we explore why collective intelligence works and at time doesn’t and what is that we can do to harness its seemingly unlimited power of the aggregated human minds!

To understand about why and how collective intelligence works, we must understand what is the whole story about intelligence to begin with! Well, I am no psychologist, but if you ask me what Intelligence means to me, well simply put- it is about bringing together, your experience, academic credentials, skills, competencies all of that to a moment and applying it to overcome a challenge that you are staring at! Sure enough you also require to add in other external aspects like knowledge, information and your own ability to stay wise to the context that you may be living about. So what limits our individual intelligence?

The whole issue with intelligence is that, it is dependent on multiple intrinsic aspects and the most important being- the Quality- the quality of the past experiences, quality of the value system followed and everything that goes on to construct the individuality of the person, needless to say if this quality is average- what is an ordinary problem ends up being an extraordinary challenge for an individual, while the same becomes a cake walk for someone else and that’s how we have end up having intelligent people acting dumb- because they are limited by the boundaries of their own intelligence. Can this be overcome? certainly, it cane be and hold your thoughts as we will visit this part towards the end of this article.

When it comes to collective intelligence, it is about applying the intelligence of a group of people to address something that they are working on or have been asked to sort out! The essence of collective intelligence is that, collective intelligence is only as effective as the quality of individual intelligence of the people in that group! In a way collective intelligence is the net intelligence of the members in a group (not the average intelligence) because when you have very intelligent people or very average/ dumb people coming in to apply collective efforts- it almost always ends up into even more ambiguity! You see the super intelligent group- will spend a lot of time shooting down great ideas (you know how this bit works!) and the average or below average group will go after every idea or thought (hoping something will work!) to hit one crisis after the other! Hence it’s no wonder that at one end of the spectrum you have some amazing minds working as a group and deploying solutions through pure innovation and ingenuity- space exploration, futuristic technologies are all part of this group and on the other end you have those never ending mundane groups which go on to address the routine problems of the corporate world and those meetings just seems to go on and on and strangely enough the problems too tend to keep coming back and back each time disguised as something else! So what is getting played out?

As I said earlier, people get limited by their intelligence and whether you are working on something individually or collectively, this remains! So as long as the horizon of your intelligence is far and wide, you will get into a tight spot, not because that you are reflecting incompetence, but simply because you are trying to venture into something that your intelligence is not equipped to deal with! Intelligence led failures are not because of incompetence, but mostly are owing to not been equipped to deal with what is manifesting- our pandemic is the case in point! No matter how advanced our science has been, irrespective of hundred and hundreds of the best minds collaborating to seek solutions to the menace, even to this day, as I write, we come across new findings and new insights about the virus and what seemed a scientific solution three weeks back, now seems to be all but vain! So how can we overcome this fragility of our intelligence, is there a way? Sure you can and this is how you go about it!

It is about doing, what great thinkers, seers and philosophers have always done- Internalize and Reflect. The human brain happens to be is a one of the most potent bio machines- and when it finds no challenge – it goes into a mode- what I call- “Leave me alone” or “Do whatever” and when people start functioning and going about their lives using this mode of the brain- the result is recurrence of same problems in different ways- as the vital, radical course correction is missing which is so much needed to arrive at a different outcome! Similar or same actions will almost and always give the same result as long as the context are the same, only when the thinking alters, will the outcome!

So, the only way, if you ask me to overcome the challenges of limited intelligence, is by expanding your horizon of intelligence and whether you want to do that for problems that you work upon individually or as part of a group. The way to expand your intelligence is by constantly spilling the cup of your mind, emptying it regularly and replenishing it with what’s relevant and recent! We live in an era where we are bombarded by information and not knowledge, unless you align your mind to acquire knowledge that is recent and updated and that serves your area of life and work- your intelligence will always continue to be more hollow than you really know!

Minds that are constantly emptied and replenished are the ones’ that lead and provide fresh perspective to age old problems or are often better equipped to provide solutions to new challenges! Although it looks deceptively simple, the task of throwing away something that you know (when it doesn’t serve you) and making space for something new (for which you have to take efforts) is perhaps the most difficult to do! It’s only when you have gained the ability to direct and manage your mind well, that you will be able to (with practise) see new perspectives and possibly identify the blocks to your thinking mind. When you do this is as an individual and when individuals in a group are able to do this, as a routine and make it natural to have a fresh and vibrant mind on an ongoing basis, a mind that is filled to the brim with what serves and and all that doesn’t make n impact is junked that the quality of collective thinking improves and you can than see groups coming up with path breaking ideas and moments!

Collective Intelligence progresses and fosters only as long as the minds of the individuals that form the group apply themselves to the conscious effort of keeping themselves relevant, updated and in-synced with what serves them and do away with thievery that doesn’t help.

For an organisation, society or a nation to progress, it is but imperative that vibrant thinking by empowered minds remains at the forefront at all times and for that to happen the quality of Intelligence needs to be enhanced with every passing moment by replenishing what helps and weeding out what doesn’t hold up to the present beliefs and the oncoming future!

I will leave you here with these thoughts for now, urging you to reflect on how you are ensuring that your Intelligence is vibrant and what are the groups that you represent and when was the last time, were you able to come up with a vibrant idea that was path breaking empowered by your expanded and updated Intelligence!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article! Until than stay progressively intelligent! Stay safe!

Patterns are everywhere.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Through history, nations have risen and fallen, corporations have been built and have faded away, people have progressed and have got destroyed, if there is anything that remains to be common across all these developments, it is the pattern! No matter what you choose to do or not, whether it is about you or about the other person, almost every manifestation that we come across is but an aggregation of acquired and emerging patterns of human experience and aspirations with a dash of intelligence and a sprinkling of dumbness! Join me here as we try to figure out what these patterns are, how do they look like and if there is anything that we can learn or benefit from them to sustain our lives and guard our sanity!

Societies have always been, but an aggregation of human spirit and aspirations- both individual and collective. It is when the alignment of individual aspirations and focus meets the collective rhyme that a resurgent, vibrant and fast paced society emerges that becomes formidable by virtue of the singularity of the cause. The cause, the inspiration and the aspirations could be what they are- perhaps not everyone else may agree but that is what works for that society and this is what lays the foundation for a pattern. Once the critical elements of the society- the people- their beliefs, the value system- the singularity of their cause, goal are etched into a form- by virtue of their attitude, approach and behaviour and this goes on to create the pattern which then becomes the truth for everyone in that space! This pattern needless to say, is ever fragile and can be nudged about every now and then like a boat that is rocked by the waves- as long as the seas are clam and the rocking is gentle- the society adjusts- pull back- pushes over and realigns itself to what their beliefs are and nothing much else happens- the whole social ecosystem keeps doing what they have been, but when those freak tidal waves come crashing in- even the most firmly aligned societies simply get washed away and either completely disintegrate or are re-formed with a complete new identity unlike anything before with a new set of belief systems, values which the society then believes will help tide over what became a challenge and what can perhaps become a challenge in the future- the accuracy of this belief holds true only until the next big wave emerges and shows what really works! So what ere these waves that keep crashing in and dismantling or tearing up societies? Who causes these and are these internal or eternal?

As societies go about their work- every element of the society creates an allowable limit of what works and what doesn’t- whether it is about religious expression, whether it is about degrees of freedom or perhaps simply the way of going about ones’ life as handed down from generations, all of these are the rooted components of the society and as long as the majority of the members of a society adhere to this, everything seems to be just fine, the problems start as this status quo is challenged by a few to begin with and when this few become the many- society arrives at a tipping point- from whee it can either move ahead or fall back and that entirely depends on which aspect of the society has been challenged, by whom and why! Importantly these events are not random and develop at specific periods of time and manifest in uncanny predictable way- the only problem actually being that, people are so engrossed in the chores of today and the anxiety of tomorrow that they forget, overlook and repeat the mistakes of history and that happens- in proportion to the error- this is how a pattern gets broken and the extent of damage to the pattern unfolds the choices that the society than must exercise to move ahead! Let me explain!

Choose any favorite nation of your choice, and pick one parameter, it could be anything for that matter and study it over a period of time in co-relation to the rise and fall of the society against a measurable metric, say you study rise and fall of crime with regards to opulence of a society- you may think that as societies get richer- crimes increase- well the contrary is actually true! Each time that societies end up creating a huge chasm between the have not’s and those who have- it set up itself for trouble in terms of increase of lawlessness and rise of the crime graphs! You may wonder why should this happen- should there not be more problems when societies are richer and well to do- well the fact is that if societies are well to do and rich across- than there is what- we normally refer to as higher chances of proportionate spread of that richness- so if 1000 people are rich and 300 are poor- chances are that those 300 will be taken care of by the 1000 relatively rich people- but if 100 are rich and 1000 are poor- well you have a serious issue to deal with! Because neither those 100 will be able to help all of the 1000 people and neither they will be helped in a way that empowers them to move out of their rut and progress ahead, which can happen in the earlier case! This was an example where one of the social patterns of a society was touched upon and you could see that massive impact- now we all know that societies are multivariate (that is having multiple touch points) that can be altered or influenced to provide divergent outcomes for a similar situation- so just imagine how crazy it is on a day to day basis for societies to keep moving ahead, regressing back, accepting, rejecting,a accommodating and negating influences, impacts and threats on an ongoing basis! This is what happens to societies the world over- their established patterns are constantly under fire from one or the other space and depending on what that is you will see shifting attitudes, beliefs and behaviors emerging form that society! So what do you think unfolds in your favorite business world?

If you see the corporate world around you, it too reflects pulsating instances of patterns- these emerge from the values, goals, objectives and beliefs of the organisation and it is nothing more but a group of people working together to further a common business objective! So when there is some rocking around that happens within this tightly knit space, you know it’s not going to be comfortable! Well, sure enough this piece is not about why these patters are rocked- but about presenting the fact that everything that is around you and within you will be rocked every now and then and there is a pattern to that rocking. Coming back to the corporate world- one very familiar pattern- annual increments- well you know the pattern of what goes around in those times isn’t it? Flared tempers, quick exits, equally quick replacements, surprises, disappointments and so on and so forth- now when that established pattern gets disturbed- say your organisation decided to defer the increments- now what happens- the pattern has been broken and in no time what you will see is new groups, new alignments and new issues cropping up all across the organisation- some help and some harm! Now you may want to ask- so how often can this happen, well that really depends on who and what the organisation is and what is it’s natural response mechanisms- see like individuals every organisation too has a natural response that comes from its founders/board- either to fight or flee and depending upon what an organisation settles in for- the adjustments and the subsequent manifestations will align it and the people within for that new approach and an emerging personality which is more reflective of the today than what it was earlier! What do you think, when will an organisation pay more- when the markets are going good or will it pay well when the markets are in the doldrums? Well ironically enough organisations tend to reward performers more when the market conditions are adverse for the simple and perhaps the right reason that performance had come in when it mattered the most and that contribution would have anchored he boat and saved it from running aground! When waters are clam everyone is a mariner, it takes real sailors to tame the rogue waves!

Finally when it comes down to the individual level, as long as you continue to do what you have been always doing, chances are you will end up being who you are for – kind of forever, it is only when you develop the courage to break and overcome the routine (which doesn’t serve you anyways) that you will be abe to craft a new pattern, a way, to progress and move what you set out for! Unless the pattern of what doesn’t serve you is not broken and that leap of faith is not taken, you will never know how the new pattern could have propelled you into the next league! The biggest and perhaps the most simplest and effective way to pursue self-development and improvement is to study your own patterns, eliminate what doesn’t serve you and add on what does so that the new cycles/patterns created are aligned to your individual journey and aspirations in the times ahead!

Patterns are everywhere, around us, within us and even in nature and every pattern has a story to tell, once you equip yourself to decipher these and align yourself to those patterns which serve you the most- no matter how strong the headwinds are, you will soar above the clouds and have a steady flight into your future as long as you continue to read, decode and work on the patterns as they emerge with every passing milestone!

Why these patterns come up, the way they do, what they could be, well that’s a long story, maybe for some other time, what is important is, as you start to see the patterns, you will find yourself to be perhaps more prophetic! May be the first one to know, when a government will form or fall, when will markets rise or fall and whether you will reach that corner office or not- and how/when! All secrets are hidden in plain sight of the patterns around you always, you just need to see with your mind and trust your eyes, both at the same time!

I will leave your here with these thoughts for now, will come back with another article, until than ciao! Stay safe and stay wise!

Mindset of a Coach.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

The word “coach” has touched us at some or the point in our lives. Whether it was a sport that you wanted to take up or learn to play some music or wanted to prepare for some tough competitive exam- very often we have been advised to get in touch with “abc” to be coached by them because they are the best! Join me here, as we try to unravel what is that makes coaches unique and so awesome and what is it about their approach to situations that sets them apart which enables them to empower their clients in no time and turn around a situation to their advantage!

Before we move ahead, let me clarify that coaching is not mentoring, you see mentoring is almost always a work setting and aligned to specific tasks or goals to be achieved pertaining to a goal that the work team or the individual needs to reach to either ensure their survival or their team’s existence or for their progress as the case may be! Coaching is about empowering the individuals, not because the coach knows everything and knows all, but because the coach knows that only you have the power to bring about a real change within you and the only thing that the coach does is, tells you how to unlock that untapped potential that resides within you and each one of us! This is the essence of real and meaningful coaching- bringing about extraordinary results from ordinary people by empowering them to take courageous actions and thinking so that they know where to look next and what to see as they surge ahead in life! So how do coaches arrive at this space and can anyone of us practice this too?

Coaches too are forged by time, knowledge, experiences, observations and the social construct around them, something very similar to what you and I are, the only thing differently that coaches (someone like me) do is, scan the ecosystem around frequently, rapidly and connect unconnected data points, observations and indicators to weave a meaningful imagery of what is really unfolding for the client! Unlike the mentor- mentee association, coaching or the approach of the coach doesn’t get designed to solve a problem with a full stop, it certainly starts with a pressing issue but as that issue is been resolves what really unfolds is a subtle empowering change within the client- which enables the client themselves to rectify what needs to be, so that they are back on track to what they aspire for! The coach is not the expert to solve the client’s problem, the expert is always the client and the solution too comes from the client, the coach only helps the client to find the solution for the pressing problem by altering the approach to the problem and if required bring about certain fundamental attitudinal changes in behaviour and approach to life in general so that, not only is this problem solved, but also there is enough firmness and resolve intrinsically developed to address and prevail over any such incident should it arise again!

If you want to build that formidable mindset of a coach, you too can, you will possibly first need to throw away your ego- literally vaporize it, if you can! Next you will have to come to terms to the eternal reality that no matter how much you know, you will almost always perhaps know nothing each time a new problem crops up or an old problem comes up in a new setting! Furthermore you will have to realise that you are not a sounding board, but rather a sink- which takes away all that does not serve the client and help unclutter your client’s mind so that once the cup of his mind is half empty- that can be filled with thoughts and ideas that can empower them and help them see clearly and move ahead! As deceptively as all this seems, its a tall order, to throw away the very fundamental of human attributes that all of us have, stay aligned to the centre-line and with every word that is shared with the client to know that what has been said , will serve the purpose of the client and is been done without any prejudice or any personal intent of the coach mixed up with it!

Do you remember, your school or college days and possibly you were coached for some sport? Let’s say you were coached for football, what were you then told- how to move every metre on the ground or just where the goal is and what position you are playing at? Chances are you would have been coached the second way- that is what empowerment is- you are made accountable and so that you can relish your success and embrace your failures in equal measure and this is what true coaches do- they help their client reflect inwards to once again shake hands with selves and their abilities and competencies and that’s about it- once they have re-connected within and are more clear about their goal post- the job of the coach is done! Sure enough if there are some tricky patches and some strategic challenges to overcome the coach is always there, but coaching is never about asking people to do something the way the coach would have done it or getting it done in a particular manner! It is always about how the client wants it to be done and the way that is empowering for the client and serves the greater good for all of those who are involved in it! Because the heart of the matter is that the Coach is not the expert of the Client’s Life- The Client is! The coach just has the expertise to help them de-clutter and use the search light effectively and help them focus where they must and help them stay aligned at all times!

The mind of a coach is ever fluid and is receptive to new situations, challenges and every coach knows that every challenge is unique even as the problem may be similar because the people who are dealing with it are unique and it is their uniqueness which directs them to take steps differently which either ends up simplifying things for them or ends up complicating the problem even further more for them! This is where the coach steps in and save the day for the client! The coaching mindset is also about having phenomenal levels of compassion, empathy and endless energy to have focused and directed listening to really connect and not only listen to what is been said but also to capture the unspoken words through non-verbal cues and statements which are presented with cryptic yes & no both intertwined within each other!

More importantly the coach always presents solutions which are specific, unique and tailor made to fit specific challenges by helping the client to breakdown, prioritize (kind of make a hit list) in accordance of urgency and importance so that they remain on the chosen path of progress! This step and process is repeated for every separate factor that a client may want help with and want it sorted!

The mindset of a coach is all about service orientation, enabling empowerment and creating value by aligning the client to their aspirations as long as they make genuine sense and serve the greater good for everyone involved! Sure enough, there are a lot of technical skills, tools and models that coaches use as they go about working with their clients, but the fundamental thing that every coach has, is the mindset of a coach- which is empowering, liberating and serving the client at all times and never even for a second suggesting anything, but waiting patiently to hear the softest whispers of the client and read the unspoken words to really understand what the trues aspirations are and then helping them achieve it!

I wrap it up here, given the limitation of a blog, guess these fundamental thought starters should be much helpful for now! Think hard, think deep and think long about whether you need a coach or you can be a good coach with the mindset that you have and if you seek that liberation and empowerment for yourself or wish to provide it to someone!

Ciao for now, stay safe and stay wise!

The Leadership Void.

~ PA ~ 2 Comments

Whether it’s the corporate world, the ever pulsating world of politics or about leading ourselves, there comes a time, when we experience or get to see the manifestation of the Leadership void. Join me here, we take a look at what this leadership void is about, it is not about having a leader for sure, it is about the reasons behind that and we also explore ways on how we can get this space fixed! This is the same void from where great icons emerge either to serve themselves (salvage of who and what they are) or at times they plunge ahead in the selfless service of the organisations & communities that they are part of- whichever path that they choose to go ahead with- it’s an empowering, enriching experience as long as the new found direction and motives align to the greater good! So where and how does all of this begin?

Whether it is about us, as Individuals, or about us as someone who is responsible to lead a firm or a nation, we will hit that odd patch at some or the other time, for one or the other reason and when that happens, the immediate reaction is to give away the reins- it’s like you have been driving just fine and it takes just those few seconds over your years of experience to change your whole outlook and approach towards driving! This is what creates the void- an incident, an accident, a missed deadline, a compelling commitment, promise, a promise which could not be delivered not because your competence was compromised or ineffective, but because the time that you traversed was meant to create that block at that moment and your reaction to it, is what sets up the void in the first place! In many cases, most of the cases rather, people will recollect themselves and will get their act together and keep walking ahead, so the void doesn’t precipitate further and in no time even perhaps forgotten as new achievements and new positive stories start to be created. There are those odd cases though, which emerge (and it happens when the stakes are high, really high) and hence you see this leadership void being played out in large stages of business and politics!

As Individuals when we loose that target, we have no other option but to gather ourselves back and again go for it! For example, say, you set a goal to get your self fit and arrive at a weight number in three months. When those three dreaded months are over, you find that you actually have ended up adding a few pounds rather then reducing- so what option do you have? Either begin to ignore and let live be- the Leadership Void impact- or analyse the issue and get going at it again because you know very well that your health is the key to your existence and irrespective of the social appeal that your fit body may get you- the fact remains that a healthy body alone will ensure you walk this planet for those many extra days or hours! Hence when it comes to matters which rare essentially individual and intrinsic, the void to lead oneself seldom remains long and deep and is quickly altered or replaced with some other pursuit and that’s how the story goes on for individuals either from one achievement to the next or one leadership void unto the next!

When it comes to the big stage of business and politics the ramifications can be deadly and intense! Consider this, you have a company whose CEO decides to quit and no one wants to take up that position! Call it acquired levels of incompetence or the complexity of the shit that needs to be managed or whatever the case may be the fact remains that the Leadership Void that gets created when you lead thousands of people- can be far damaging and may have irreversible consequences! When this reluctance of not wanting to be the CEO begins to manifest it starts to send signals which are subtle yet powerful internally and externally about the firm! Employees begin to evaluate if their individual growth is now going to be bottled up, if so how soon and at what level and what’s the economic damage that may come with it ( no one wants ton work for charity or passion- no one does and is they say so- fire them- because they are lying!). Externally vendors, clients all take note and begin to wonder if the problem is more fundamental and start to re- calibrate the competencies and abilities of the firm- few cases leading to law suits and termination of contracts etc. So you see one person’s exit and the inability of anyone else to step in, can cause an impact which is beyond ones’ control but plays havoc with all the stakeholders involved!

If you thought, this looks pretty bad and what could be more worse than this, welcome to politics! When a leadership void is created either by a leader stepping down or being made redundant by the polity (not necessarily form the same political party), chaos ensues! You see, most political parties (as long as you experience some kind of fair and free democratic process of elections in your nation) are evaluated by the voters by factors like the charisma of the leader, the promise, the vision, the track record, the future, the available strength of the team that a party has, level of acceptance internationally and nationally and the quality of views about the social fabric of a nation so on and so forth! So when the leader quits for whatever reason that could be intrinsic or a politically engineered plan; with the leader goes all the elements that were glued on to that party’s purpose and promise! So strangely enough, knowing politicians the way they are, you will find that when shit happens and a political leader quits, even as people may rumble, rush or create lobby groups to stake claim for that chair, the real truth is, everyone is wishing for the same person to come back and lead all over again until a time that there is more calm and clarity in the political waters and await for a time when they would want to make the move when acceptance will seem more natural, like a corporate success plan! In the ensuing period when this void thrives, needles to say the other parties, called normally as political adversaries make the most as the sun shines and are provided with enough of political ammunition that can last for years to come- where they keep on hitting hard on the other party- asking a simple question- That you could not lead your organisation, how can you manage the nation!

So, here it is more about playing to the audiences (the nation) like in the corporate world to the board of the company and the show goes on! When current leaders drop the ball, trust me even that, in a few cases would be a leadership move and if you were that odd person to end up catching the falling ball in a hurry, the weight of that will break your fingers and bury you in a lot of mess than you can ever think off! So the rule says- When leaders pull the brake for no reasons- put on your seat belts and be responsive – not reactive nor proactive! So what can be done about this and how can organisations or even the polity arrest this from manifesting?

It all starts and ends with how sensitive (as in- an acute ability to sense) the people experts are in the organisation or how astute and politically suave the members within a political party are for being able to judge whether a person should lead or not in the first place! Only when this space is analysed in detail with the allowance for failures, setbacks, rip offs , scandals, media assaults and all that you can think of; is when a wise people office of a major corporation or a mature political party will ask someone to lead! It all starts with the individual under the cross hairs to lead and it all ends with that- within the range of the highs and lows once it is understood how much of that swing will remain within the permissible limit- life is a party as long as the rope to the swing is not shredded or ripped off due to the ever increasing burden of the individual who is leading the team!

As long as this first step is fixed and a firm foundation is built around what the limits of leadership are and those are communicated and made clear to the person who leads- things are normally taken care of- most of the times! You see, even leaders are humans and being humans- at some or the point they will break down for one or the other reason and while if it happens for reasons of their own doing like health or some scam, that’s alright and an emerging void can be rapidly replaced and completed, but when that breakdown starts to spread like sepsis and the leader in chief starts to transform into the whiner in chief- that high level sabotage can not only wipe off organisation off the market map but in the case of political parties, end up altering the political landscape of a nation! When Leadership void begins to attain these level of massive unmanageable proportions- you see splintering of political parties and realignment of business units, mergers, acquisitions, stake sales, everything and anything that can be done to ensure that the organisation survives, the nation stays and does not get consumed by the leadership void which threatens to create an unsettling period for everyone around!

A few final thoughts, as I wrap this piece, Leadership Void assumes greater intensity, impact and influence in proportion of who the individual is, what that organisation is or what a political party is in a given contextual setting of a society or nation! The only way to stem this across any of the chosen levels, is about knowing the Individual, the gifts and the curses that the person brings along and how much of what is allowable , manageable and workable to ensure that the ecosystem stays intact when this person occupies the chair! Sure enough there could be, and certainly are, many more details that go on to make sure that these leadership voids are far and few in between and that again depends on the levels of competence of the people across the organisation or within a political party! What we see played out across society is nothing more than the presence or absence of human competence and the extreme manifestation of it, is the emergence of Leadership Void!

I leave you here, with these thought, reflect and seek the competence that you find or don’t within and round you and fasten your set belt, for the void may already be there or on its way!

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