Tag: human

The Bucket Effect.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

I sure know it’s a Monday morning, but what stops us from sparing a few minutes to drive some sanity through the insane lives that we get served on a platter! Whether it is the dumbness that you are fighting off, or brilliance of a mind that keeps you on your toes, each one us at all the time is dealing with some mental energy to the best we can and at times this space is easy and at other times this is what bogs you and me down! Join me here, as we get to decipher what really saps us and what really excites us and what is that we can do (if there’s anything we can!) to ensure we spend more time around staying excited (of course in meaningful ways!) rather than being sulking and wondering at what will hit us next! So here we go!

Choose any society, any nation, you will find the same gradation of humanity- the rich, the poor, the intelligent, the dumb, the right aligned, the left aligned, the non-aligned and sure enough, the “I don’t know who I am and what I am doing” types! What this basically signifies is that, since the times that humanity has been developing on constantly evolving, if there has been any one thing that has always been there until this day is the “Inequality of contexts”, you see no matter how much those government’s or the corporate HR teams keep shouting about “Equal opportunity” the fact is that ends as long as you have the physical resemblance of being a human! So unless you want to be loading sacks or doing some job that calls for mechanical or physical abilities, that whole crap around “Equal Opportunity” means really nothing, simply because each one of us have “Unequal Minds” and for the sake of argument, even if we were to assume of two people having the identical minds the deployment and execution of what is held within the mind will always differ! So that’s as far as fairness of humanity goes in any direction- basically no where! But why should this intrinsic societal disparity emerge?

You see, as human societies evolved- the fruits of labor were not shared through a AI driven model, they were done in as primitive and as human ways as possible, the mightier (either through the mind or through power) always have retained the most and this continues till this day, if you thought it doesn’t happen in your corporate world or the governance model that your nation follows- you will be off target by miles! Even the performance management systems and reward mechanisms through organizations are almost always skewed in favour of the owners/ majority stake holders (right or wrong, doesn’t matter), likewise with governance- you will always find leader’s personal incompetence rewarded by the office that they agree to hold! A case of rising to their levels of incompetence! So where does all this lead us to? Well that is the space of what I call as “The Bucket Effect”- where societies and the people living within end up getting calibrated to the levels of agreed incompetence! If you are wondering if this is good or bad and how this impacts us, well read on!

If you imagine our world to be one large bucket and we have within that different buckets resembling the different social groups that we have as nations and then further smaller buckets based on whatever social stratification that is followed within there. Now you and I are among one of the many drops of water or honey or whatever you want to call that liquid and this is from where contextually you and I do what we do- whether it is inheriting the way of life, belief’s, the pursuits that we end up with, whether they be of self expression, creative, work, vocation whatever that all is – is within the bucket that you and I are in to begin with! It is only as you begin to outgrow your bucket that then you begin to nudge others around within that bucket through your value- creative or nuisance and soon enough you are seeking routes and ways to jump into other buckets (read societies/ nations) where you think, you will be more welcomed and will possibly have a better way to creative self expression that you want to manifest!

This is the long and short of all human strife and struggle, the need and urge to be known, to pursue fame, opulence and indulgence- some of us are able to achieve that space within the buckets that we are in and a majority of humanity lives and dies in the same bucket, praying on the death bed- that if there’s a next life perhaps we arrive in more aligned and meaningful bucket (which seems to be from your point of observation) and the show just goes on! Few of us end up overgrowing our buckets to an extent that we can control and dictate the rules of the bucket- read- business tycoons and the political class and then we have those odd few who are lucky enough to jump across to another bucket- read societies/ nations through migrations/ asylum and actually end up realizing the dreams and aspiration simply because that bucket was more aligned to what the individuals urge of self expression has been! This is the essence of the bucket effect and the story of entire humanity as simplified as it can be! So what next?

Well, if you have understood, the story so far, the singular point is that, “don’t sweat and struggle for what is not”! Once you know your bucket well, and you know where you reside in that bucket, it will be clear for you to know whether you really have the potential to grow within the bucket, control the bucket, outgrow the bucket or change the bucket and once you have known intrinsically, what is the potential that you hold within, you will be able to progress just fine by calibrating the right amounts of efforts for that to happen, because any more will not make any difference and any less, you will be alone responsible for being where you are!

A lot of struggle and wasteful effort is only because people don’t calibrate who they are to what they aspire to be! No one is questioning the human ingenuity, but unless aspirations and desires are calibrated you and I end up standing on the shores hoping for the waves to cease! Calibrated pursuits whether they be for work ambitions or creative expression, as long as they fall in line with an individual’s ability, the bucket that one is in, sure enough people will be able to reach their aspirations, touch the skies and etch themselves in human history! If you observe, a lot of stories of success within buckets and those of across buckets are almost always of self- expression and creative excellence- whether it is the field of arts, science or technology, unless the foundational spark of uniqueness is there, the story of human growth- collective and individual will stall and stagnate! Buckets- societies and nations which fail to nourish these human pursuits more often than not regress and those who nurture them always progress!

I leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to take some time off and reflect to figure out which bucket are you in and where you are and what is that you can possibly achieve within that bucket or by being in some other one; human life is too limited to have wasteful pursuits that don’t add up to anything either for yourself or for the society that you are in! Sure enough, you may not have got to choose your first bucket, but you can make a choice either to make the best within it or change your bucket as and when you can!

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

Be In the “Now”.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

You have had books written, best sellers written, seminars, team games, outbound programs, workshops and what not around this concept, yet so much of humanity continues to struggle to stay “in the now”! Join me here as we take a fleeting look around this subject and try to decipher if this is really a meaningful approach and if it is so, why and when does it work and when does it fail! So here we go!

To begin with, we must understand and try to decipher from where do the references to the whole concept of “Be in the Now” some in to play! Well there are two broad areas, one is that this concept is not as modern as it seems and there are references to the value and attribute of “being in the now” across different forms of faith, religious writings and belief systems in one or the other way across societies all the time, in fact all the great progress that societies have made have been when “they have been in their now” and whenever they have lost focus and raced far too ahead or regressed far too back, societies have faced problems! But I will leave this ancient civilizational aspect here for now, simply because all modern day approach to this concept banks of this old wisdom albeit with a twist to suit the modern times and societies that exist and needless to say adding a touch of further improvisation or confusion based on who is communicating this message! But what is the real content and message of this space?

As humanity evolved, societies realized through their way of living, what worked and what did not- there have been wise philosopher’s through the ages who went on to endlessly observe and record of how human behavior impacts the surroundings and when does work become meaningful and meaningless, when does it create value and when it doesn’t, when does thinking change into day dreaming and when does ambitions become mindless hallucination! As the wise people kept getting better and better through their observations around humanity and human enterprise, as kingdoms and empire got built and destroyed,as societies became opulent and bereft of opulence, one thing that stood out singularly was the fact that- all intelligence, wisdom, thinking and enterprise will be wasted unless and until it is executed- even if the result is failure- for from there alone will it be possible to improvise further again and again until success- that is- the desired result can manifest and see the light of the day! For this to happen, it was important to not only bank of knowledge (which basically is all but the past) and be able to apply that to the current context of people and resources for a thought to fructify into something meaningful (read intelligence). This is indeed the simple and real essence of being “In the Now”, the ability to apply Intelligence on the acquired knowledge to solve a challenge that provides a solution to alter something that is there in the “NOW”!

So, you see, “Being in the Now” is more about being connected with the realities and truths around, needless to say each one’s is going to be different and meaningful and the inability to decipher that bit leads to perceptions and more often than not we take those snap decisions/ judgements in all that we do paying heed to these perceptions- which are not always what the truth is and this is where the divergence commences and people begin to struggle to remain in the “now”! Human societies the world over whenever have portrayed creative excellence through art or science- always were slow and not as fast paced as we have them today and if you look carefully the quality of creative excellence (which is supposed to be the epitome of human expressions) has all but deteriorated inversely proportional to the acquired pace that a society or individual has got hooked up to! More faster you go, the less you are able to think right and that is why, so many “experts” wanting you to attend their workshops/ seminars and basically tell you to “slow down” , unless that is not done, neither can you meaningfully connect your acquired knowledge to the available intelligence that you have and nor will you be able to pursue anything meaningful with any contextual clarity! So what next?

Well, simple, don’t waste your money attending “Be in the Now” workshops and seminars unless you know what you are getting into! You will emerge just as you went in! Unless an individual or societies make a directed effort to attain a specific goal and unless they deploy their intelligence while engaging it with the available knowledge- staying in the now- will become fruitless and the mind will have no other option but aimlessly either wander into the bygone’s or get consumed into some futuristic hallucinatory thought process!

For “Be in the Now” to work effectively and on an ongoing basis, it calls for much discipline and effort until it becomes your natural orientation. It is only when you begin to get ample clarity of what serves you and what does not, does magic begin to happen! It is an exercise in de-cluttering your life like nothing else, doing away with meaningless and un-serving family, friends, talks, thoughts, aspirations, desires each and every of them, some are easier said than done, but this is critical, unless you free your mind from the accumulated garbage of life around you, it will almost always function at sub optimal levels, leaving you always struggling between your past- present and future and hence your wanting to be “In the now” will always seem to be elusive and stressful!

The “now” can be empowering only if it is deployed and worked upon in the way that takes you closer to your meaningful aspirations! Once you have decently de-cluttered your life, your mind will have more band width to deal with what is around you- your ability to observe and inference in the “present” will acquire a completely new level of potency and that is how you will begin to know that you have arrived “in your now”. You will start to see meaningful patterns- that nourish you and at the same time you will be able to identify patterns that seem helpful but are actually robbing you off vital time and energy for no real reason! As you continue to work and move ahead with this kind of awareness and ability to sieve through fleeting moments with a sharp focus- you will be able to stay more and more in the moments that you behold and deploy the best you can at all that you do- whether it is your office desk job, the novel that you are writing, the painting that you are at or perhaps just the travel you are embarking upon or even may be that meaningful dialogue at business or that time with qualified friends and family each of these elements will begin to create more value and in return you will be to create more lasting value!

I leave you here with these thoughts for now, so that as you race ahead for your much awaited weekend, perhaps you will be able to think about “how you want to be in the Now” and for what and in case you are the lucky one who already has been practising and thinks is “in the now” , well make it more potent, is all that I can say! Human lives are nothing more than fleeting moments- what we are able to create through them goes on to signify many different things at many different times in different contexts- there is nothing right or wrong about how you choose to live- what is wrong- is not correcting when you know you can and you should- especially when you have options around you that can amplify your creative excellence further, and one such potent approach is being meaningfully and intentionally, “IN THE NOW”!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another piece, until then stay wise and stay plugged into your today!

Choose a finish-line.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Whether your are running for the presidency of a nation or for that coveted corner office with a panoramic view or simply wanting to clear off something that you are in the midst of; each one of those instances will have their potency and meaningfulness only and only if there’s a defined finish-line to what you choose to do and it is often the essence of those finish lines that goes on to define what that journey was all about and whether it was the realization of the aspirations with which it began or was it another living nightmare all of that will only be defined by the finish-line- that you choose! Join me here as we take a quick look into how and why finish lines are so critical and more often then not more important then the journey or even the results that one begets as they go about it! So here we go!

Ever since we have been kids, even as we go about living the lives that we have got, knowingly or unknowingly we end up working our way to one finish-line unto the next and that journey in a way also takes us to our graves- sooner or later, well that depends a lot on what you do during that journey that you have decide to be part of! Let me explain! Much of humanity is about following the norms laid by societies that we live in(whether we like it of hate it, there’s really only son much that often people can do about things and when you do stand out- there are only two outcomes- If you are a powerful outlier- you are termed as a classified idiots/ an oddity and left alone and if you happen to be one of them who can be walked over- rest assured you will be a door-mat in a blink of an eye! You see, societies are built to conforming standards and it is only as long as people are conforming that societies exist and one fundamental part of this whole societal conformation crap resides in the space of the preset and predefined finish-lines!

Depending on which part of the world you are, the story of your life will be similar when it comes to: education- where your finish line is either 15, 16 or 17 years of education, jobs – where your finish-line (at the start of your career) is getting to a wage of “XYZ $ per day/per month/per year), if it is about your family life- your finish lines could start with “age of marriage, number of kids, ownership of houses, vehicles, getting old- ensuring your kids stand on their feet….so on and so forth!” So, you see, our lives are basically and intertwined web of “finish-lines” which have their own flavor and when one of them is disturbed- even though that may be a momentary one- you have the ripples felt across the whole web that you have ended up weaving by virtue of begin who you are! The bigger, the better, the larger that you end up becoming in life- farther these ripples reach and it sets off a resonance which tends to keep on oscillating and swaying ever single web associated with some aspect of your life and this goes on endlessly and this is what the real essence of human life is- trying to balance the finish lines and their pathways on an ongoing never ending basis!

You may want to argue that, if this is not life then what is, well sure enough this is life- but my question is very simple- do you really need those many finish-lines to begin with? Think around it- for the one dear life that you have- does it really makes sense to complicate the way we actually end up doing it? What is the point of having so many check boxes and finish lines- when you are going to miss the whole flavor of the journey simply to tick it off your “Life’s to do list” I mean really? Is the story of your life really all about that alone? Is that how you want it? So what is really unfolding around and within our lives- why do we get trapped walking into scenarios where as soon as we pass one finish line, we set ourselves up for another and that never seems to stop? Whys does this happen? Read on!

Sure enough, I am not suggesting you to be any less aspirational or ambitious, neither am I asking you to bury your creative spark and lead a mundane life with no glamour or flamboyance, all I am asking you to do is define and agree to draw the lines so that your finish lines don’t end up finishing you off in the game of endless desires and mindless pursuits! Some of the finish lines that we have subscribed to are more often then not societal and there is hardy anything that you can do about it! Say if you are born in India, then even to think of education anything less then 17 years, would be an unpardonable crime! even if that education ends up adding no value, context or sense to your own personal life and vocational pursuits, but that is what as a society we have given unto ourselves and as yet, we don’t see any light of those aspects changing! Contrast this space to the the more liberal and open societies of the west- where every bit of what one desires has to earner- either through self earned wealth or through merit and the rewards there are instant and longer simply because everyone does not go in for a 17 years of mindless education and people truncate this first finish line of education- simply by being practical and sensible and exercising a choice for their life with regards to this one finish line pertaining to education and thereby straightway avoid all the other subsequent ripples that may arise!

As with education, so with every other facet of our life, whether it is the jobs that we pursue, the kind of family life that we cherish for, the way we define opulence and class, each and every bit of this is nothing else but a disguised statement of what our finish line is and when we say we have crossed it! What largely goes missing is the essence of the effort taken to reach that line and end of it, was all of that really worth it! You see, I have come across hotshot bankers who had a coveted MBA followed by a full time Bachelor’s In Engineering! Well, now if you always ever wanted to have a great career in banking or the business side, even a comprehensive master’s in Commerce or Economics or Accounting Practices provides more than what one would have ever needed to be on the top of the game in that sector! But the societal biases and need to conform ends up pushing people doing all kid of stupid things all the time! End result well a certificate which just sticks in your face- letting you know every now and then the wasted time, money and effort all of what went in to come to a big zero- in the present context that one is in! Sure enough Knowledge never goes waste and no Knowledge is bad- but again the question is if you always wanted to be a banker why would you want to first qualify as a mechanical engineer! Think about it!

When it comes to our office spaces, things are no different, we always want that corner office, many a times the moment we reach there, we want to be actually out of that office! The moment we have that house of our dreams, we realize that our dreams were ordinary! and we embark upon pursuing something else! Well instances like these and many more go on to make those finish-lines eternal even as we have mortal bodies to deal with and needless to say, the story of old age of many people is more about the un-reached finish-lines rather then being able to talk about the few finish-lines that were cherished for reached and enjoyed! So what is the right way around here, what is amiss, how can we be aspirational, ambitious yet content to limit the number of finish-lines that we can speak about heroically in the twilight tears as we wait for our call! Well read on!

Well, if you really want to hear from me on this, you have to start by being Authentic! Unless and until you are able to discern and agree to what you can (really can with the stretch and without it), you will always be hounded by the endless finish lines! It begins from within, within each one of us to know well and really well- about who we are- the essence of being who you are- as an individual as a component of the society that you have got to live in and from that point alone can you deduce what is that you aspire for, why and how much of it can you really achieve and what is that you must do to reach that place and how do you stop and sustain when you reach the pace where you want to be! This simple, yet powerful way of deducing and pondering is the real and effective way to not only have few finish-lines, but also ensure that the ones’ that are there are genuine, meaningful and once you reach them, they begin to add value to who you are and begin to be part of the definition of who you want to be known as! This also allows one to calibrate ambition to reality and ensures that mindless pursuits are nipped in the bud and all available intelligence is used to serve and achieve the meaningful causes and pursuits that one must address to reach the finish-line which now displays the potency to define who the individual is as one reaches that line!

I leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to decipher and read the finish lines that you have passed by and see for yourself how many of them were meaningful and how many of them were futile pursuits! As long as you have your breath there is always time to re-align and re-focus on the finish-lines that matter and stay away and stay clear from all of those which seem tempting but may be outright pointless especially when it comes to the value that they can add to you and for the people around you!

Ciao for now, will be back with another one, until then stay wise, stay safe and pursue the finish lines which make a real difference to who you are and for the people around you!

Be an Artist!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Your life is but a piece of art that you create, by being the artist that you are now, will become and will continue to be, moment to moment! Join me here, as we unravel how artists can teach us more than we think, they can and how that can be a game changer to look back upon what we do, the way we do,what we do and how those choices can get altered, the moment you realize that, you are the one who is going to be eventually recognized for all the achievements and all the brickbats that you ever get in life and how being an artist alone can save the day for you, by learning to deal and engage with things and people around like the artists do!

In the mundane life that all of us are blessed with (apart from the excitement that the pandemic has brought into our lives- whether we like it or not!), everything seems to flow in a sequence and order and is often repeated over some cycle- for few of us these cycles are short/annual and for few others, these cycles of life are longer- occur every few years or perhaps once in a decade- but that is what the whole story of human life is, choose a part of your life- any part- professional, personal, student life, being the young professional at work, or that leader who has been leading that large corporation- whatever that you may be doing and whoever that you might be, the plain fact remains that each one of us is more or less tied down to a routine with a limited flexibility and thereby we end up creating our future instances within the limitations of the flexibility that we allow to govern us! The Artists are the only ones’ who have the ability, the craft and the context to break this monotonous life cycle and embrace multiple truths through fleeting windows of time by practicing their craft and thereby ensuring that they live a thousand lives in one life time and mesmerize us by what they achieve and what they don’t!

Very few of us, ever realize that we just end up consuming the limited resource of time, irrespective of what we choose to do or not and importantly that is one commodity that still can’t be made good no matter what you say and how you try! As readers’ of my blogs, I am sure that most of you would have at some or the other time spent time in meaningful contemplation, checked what worked, what did not and well left it at that and rarely done something around that- whatever it would have been- eventually after some time- you would have ended up with the same mixed feeling of being directionless, confused, confident, happy and sad all at the same time and well that’s pretty much the story of each one of us around the world as we flow through our life journeys’- one moment to the next- if there’s anything that beats this- it is only the mindset and the magic that can be woven only by an Artist and this is the compelling reason why we must all reach out to the Artist within us- not to escape- but rather to liberate- our thinking, our contexts and our truths and fantasies- for only once this has been done- will you be really aligned to what is the meaningful and real purpose driven meaning of your lives’ journey and that is something that you will thoroughly enjoy, irrespective of that corporate label or not! So how do Artists get into this zone, how can they beat the mundane path and who is an artist really? Read on!

The Artist- is perhaps the most evolved expression of being human- whether it is the dazzling world of celluloid stars, the silver screen experts, the fine painters, the lucid dancers, singers who are soft as velvet, the sculptors who breath life into stones or the ones’ who are gifted enough to mix the worlds of philosophy and science to bring to life timeless innovations, discoveries and much more- each one of them, and all of them are an artist- in their own space and unlike the many of us who have been perennially entrapped into the mundane patters of life- the Artists are the ones’ who are liberated by the virtue of their ability to express their presence through their craft and stay liberated even in the times of utmost confinement!

Consider this, you have that famous celluloid star, the many roles portrayed- which made you emote while experiencing the journey of the character played by the star-in that short span of 120 minutes, leaving you with a variety of emotions, ideas, thoughts, inspiration and what not! Now if that one character played by your star has left you with so many experiences, thoughts and emotions, just take a moment and imagine, what that Artist goes through in their lives’ as they portray and play o over hundreds of such colored characters as part of their craft! How much would all of that script reading, embracing the character must be rubbing off them and how challenging it must have been for them on an ongoing basis to retain who they are – their authentic self- in face of the ceaseless onslaught of all the personalities that get imposed on them as they play to the role! It is the knowledge of this secret that often goes a long way to make these Celluloid Artists so humble, accommodating, down to earth, knowledgeable and humble! Through their study of human characters (some fictional some real) they come face to face with all that could have worked well and gone horribly wrong each time they choose a project and that character ends up being their teacher for them for that period of the project- leaving the star with key learnings and ensuring they stay humble, grounded and grateful for all that they are- for the better could not have been managed and any worse would have been a terrible way to live! This is why real stars are never all that glam and dazzle but on the contrary are all the humble, polite, grounded and selfless- holding on to virtual nothingness, for they know that the more you hold on to- the more tougher it is to surge ahead- unless you liberate yourself from the chains of your current perceptions and entrapment and and all effort to reach a new and better tomorrow- a goal or a place will be in vain- unless you severe the chains of your today that limit your abilities to move ahead on that journey of liberation and seeking something new and better! As they say, what did not serve you until now, will never serve you to get you where you want to be tomorrow! A new future, demands a new version of your thoughts and efforts!

If you thought, being an Artist, was always only about being on the celluloid or silver screen, think again! As I said, earlier, every form of artistic expression is a statement by the artist- painters, sculptors, designers, singers, musicians, writers, every aspect of human expression which embraces creativity and originality is a piece of art and the person beholding that super power is an artist- doesn’t matter whether that artist is widely recognized or not, whether that artist is awarded or not, what matters is that, that Artists has learnt the Art to stay liberated and continue to progress on the journey of creative expressions despite and irrespective of the settings around! These liberated artists and expression of art is the real essence and a vital indicator of the development metric of the society that they come from! How an Art form is respected and how well Artists are treated is a measure to know how mature a society is and how progressive and promising its future can be! You may ask, why is this important and how does this impact you and me- we may not be technically “artists” or are we and we know not about it as yet?

Each one of us, everyone of us is an artist in our own way and right- the only difference between those who make it big on the canvass of the Artistic horizons and us is that we do not pursue the abilities that we have professionally as our lives’ calling and we try to spend most of lived trying to apply that unspent artistic level on mundane things! Let me explain- ever known about that friend who bakes really well, that person who clicks a great shot always and that person who could act and drive you crazy- not allowing you to know when it was real and when it was a joke- well all these and many such incessant are nothing more but those streaks of artistic brilliance that ooze out as the opportunity arrives, simply because we never exercised them, the way we could have and instead settle for the routines of life as they seem more safe, predictable and long term! I mean given a choice between being a painter- who ever keeps wondering when will his next painting get sold and being a creative director at a firm, majority of us would end up choosing the later- not because we are not great or good or there is a challenge with the competency- but simply because most of the times our immediate contextual setting simply don’t allow enough lee way to exercise that freedom and when an assessment of the choice is done, the earlier route seems far more risky than what an individuals risk appetite could be! This is why you will find hidden streaks of artistic flair among the majority of us and give the chance, you will find people around you perform like there’s no tomorrow- simply because they are delivering their art from their soul and that connect is beyond anything and everything! So what’s the takeaway, you may want to know!

Well, the takeaway is simple and clear- You are the Artist of the Art form that you behold- whether you want to pursue it as a professional or allow it to accompany you and embrace you occasionally or whether you want to use it to surprise others occasionally is a choice that you make! Whatever the path you choose to take, as long as you embrace the art within you, the artist in you will be able to liberate you and keep you steady, and progressive in the pursuits of your life- whether you choose to do that by living the one life that you have or by portraying a thousand lives on the screens and the mediums that you can touch! Allow that artist within to lead you and you will be surprised to see how well and easily you are able to do away with mundane routine of life and embrace and live it further and deeper- sharing and experiencing all that you behold within and around by virtue of the artistic flair that you have!

I leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to take that long walk and reach out to the artist within you and embrace the craft that you have, for you never know, you may just get to live that many more lives in the one life that you so dearly hang on to!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay artistic and allow your life to be one great Art Story!

Know the knot.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

As trivial it may seem, do not be fooled, for the humble knot tells a lot about who got it done and who will get it undone! Join me here as we try to fathom this seemingly simple aspect of our life, but has a big message for all of us, whether we are the ones’ putting the knots in, getting them out or simply playing the role of an observer.

Perhaps the biggest playtime for few kids, and I say few kids here, has always been about getting to know the knot and in that process, getting to know a little bit more about themselves! You see the knot is essentially, by itself -nothing, but it rather becomes easy or difficult as a function of the person who decides to have a go at it, either by tying the knot in or by untying the same!

The biggest strength and perhaps the most fragile aspects of the human brain lies in the ability to perceive what is being presented- more often people end up spending their lives battling and waging wars against perceptions rather than focusing on what really the matters are or perhaps ought to be! This is what also is true about the “knot”! People often come in two broad groups, if you ask me, one is the group that simply relishes on creating the knots and untying the knots and you have another one which has no other role but to either avoid the knot either out of ignorance or fear, or just look out for people to help as soon as they realize that they just have unintentionally either created one or untied a knot, which was meant to remain the way it was!

So why is that some people relish the knot, while others avoid? Well, there could be varied reasons for that, but this happens to be the fundamental aspects of human societies and the way we shape ourselves, individually and collectively as societies, this is also what further gets reflected into the advancements and development potential that societies are able to embark upon- societies that have an uncanny accommodating approach to knots – creating them and deciphering them needless to day, race ahead and stay in control of not only their immediate contextual needs of today and tomorrow, but also play a pivotal role in determining the path for the times ahead for everyone else to follow, collaborate and share!

The whole human defiance and avoidance of the “knot” arises because the normal- majoritarian views about the knot across societies have been associating it with a problem- and more importantly as a difficult to solve problem, but the point that majority of these societies end up missing out completely is that, beyond that problem stance lies the real realm of creating something new, unveiling new frontiers by answering questions never answered before! The tighter the knot, the more exclusive the knot, the rewards for finding that answer by untying the knot are all the more greater and satisfying! Need proof for this, check all the discoveries and inventions of the 19th century- whatever field you choose- you will see a singular construct of the relentless pursuits of intelligent minds to answer a question- a pursuit to untie the knot and create history by opening up possibilities that were locked in time of the knot that locked away!

There is another aspect to the knot thought and that is of letting the knot be where it is! You do remember when the knot would have saved the life of someone you know- if you were anytime with the scouts or the national defence guards or some sort of civil defence set up on your society! If you are a mountaineer, who else will be better to know the value of those fluid knots on that rappelling line! Those are the fleeting moments when your life is literally hung on by knots on the line and the flex over the line! If one goes wrong, you are sure to find yourself in some trouble!

Knots, like human virtues have no other layer to who they are and what they are- the only thing that differentiates between a workable and meaningful knot and the odd knot (which is meant to be left the way it is) is what lies within and beyond it, once it is untied! So this brings us to the effort aspect of untying the knot, as I said earlier, only a small portion of humanity will ever want to untie a knot, in the era that we live in, where cutting the line almost always sounds, fast, classical and effective- well nothing to argue on that bit, next time try asking the surgeon do it while your angioplasty is on! Knots that hold value/ contents whose time has arrived are meant to be unlocked and these are the knots that propel humanity ahead- a few risk to solve the challenged at hand and serve the whole humanity- development of cutting edge technologies in aerospace, medicine are all a apart of this space! Next, you have those knots- which are best left untouched and unmoved- for they hold the power to undo everything that has been achieved till that moment- these knots can manifest either as a technology that has a larger double edged attribute or some ideology that has the ability to ruin everything that has ever been created until the moment that they are set loose! Sounds, familiar, yes pretty much they are and in fact it is the fallacy of humanity that as a race we have globally ended up untying more and more of these less serving or rather counter productive knots than the ones’ we should have actually untied! Why we end up doing this? Well, the answer to that lies over the past knots that we have chosen to untie!

If you think everything to do with knots has limitations only to the societal frame, well think about it! Take a pause and reflect into your own efforts at the very intrinsic level and what do you see, what are the type of knots have you been tying up, untying, avoiding, dealing with and how has that effort lead you to where you are in the journey of your life, has that propelled you or has that made you take a detour or has that halted you dead in your tracks to where you want to go! Well this is the space where the knots become very private, real and intense and it is the choices that we as individuals then go on ti make- informed or other wise that ends up us either being served by these knots that come our way or we end up being entrapped within them and then are just left at the mercy of one knot unto the next in a seemingly never ending knotted existence of our life- where the only goal seems to be moving form one knot to the next, while untying none!

Knots, have a character too and that character is a combination of what that knot is about and who is tying up that knot or untying that knot! As the knot gets untied or is let loose, all that character is let loose and how much one is able to manage that aspect goes on to determine what element of that knot will come to play a major role!

Well, given the limitations of being a blog, I would not want to (no matter how much I would have loved to) dwell and deep dive into the different types of knots their manifestations and the whole aspect of either dealing with them or living with them, but I would want to stop short for now, here with a thought- a singular thought that says and conveys only one thing- Know your knots, for which you untie and which you keep closed- determine where you head and what you become and perhaps what you don’t become!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, take a break, grab that coffee and think about the knots as you have time- examine which served you well and which harmed you well, for what you are today is a sum total of all those knots that came your way and all those that are lined up will go on to make who you will be in the times ahead!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Stay safe, stay wise – knotted or otherwise!

Leaders too need help!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

At times when the world stands at crossroads battling multiple uncertainties, depending on where you are, whether it is the still looming pandemic, the economic crisis, social unrest, or in general resentment towards the kind of leadership that you are experiencing whether at your national level or its the crisis of leadership at your workplace,its is of paramount importance to note that there are times when even these very Leaders need help- because even they too are human and in times like these they need it more than ever! This article explores that space of vulnerability that plays havoc with Leaders no matter what they are trying to overcome! So let’s understand for sometime what your beloved leader possibly is facing even as they try to keep a smile, a straight face or that mercurial temperament around them!

Who are leaders? They are not super-humans in terms of any anatomical context, but they perhaps demonstrate their expertise and ability to fare better than the cohort that they are part of and that is why they seem to move ahead within the sub-set that are a group of! Look around you, you will find almost every Leader has emerged as being the best alternative in the context of time and space that the Leader has arrived. Perhaps a few years or decades earlier, this person would have been passed off as an average person, a few years down the line, we may not even have people like them in our consideration sets! Since requirements would have changed and they constantly shift and move to wards the next step of dynamic equilibrium which is so much needed for growth and progress no matter what you choose to lead- a company or a nation or even yourself! This dynamic contextual setting within which leaders operate ends up making them fragile and manifest “Leadership Fragility”! Leaders who are touched by fragility, start to become so much risk averse that at times when they are required to act and move ahead rapidly, they seem to freeze and stay frozen from taking any decisions, small or large and thereby put the whole system that they influence into chaos and confusion! This fragility can occur for multiple reasons- it could be because of the leaders arrived at the control too early- without much experience or leadership baptism, it could be that they were given a wrong picture of the operational space within which they were supposed to hold the fort, it could be they were given a wrong army to fight a battle, it could be that the weapons of change provided to them were compromised and no matter what destiny they try to write, the ink simply seems to vanish away each time and they keep starting again and again! These varying aspects of dealing with day-to-day scenarios at work end up making few Leaders fragile and hence you can find their leadership style reflecting this element- when they are intentional slow, take their time, check and double check and re-check and move ahead only when it is the only and the most necessary option and when every other option has conclusively closed!

Leadership Fragility as a concept also shows the flaws and chinks in the armor of the ecosystem within which leadership is supposed to play its role! It opens up the whole contextual appreciation of team dynamics, ability to see through and develop clear view on strategic and operational preparedness that leaders have developed or have not developed which makes them vulnerable to threats within and from outside their ecosystems!

Normally, we always come across leaders who are accommodating, non-accommodating, easy going or headstrong personalities, but what is important is,instead of jacketing them into any of the singular or plural adjective definitions, we must take an effort to understand the eternal , “Why” of their leadership style and what could have lead for them to adhere to what they seemingly are glued upon with no real end in site!

Leaders are in that odd space within the system of things- which is closer to heaven and hell in equal measure with a caveat that nothing from their experienced heaven or hell reaches the earth (where their team lives!). So when team members look up to the leader- they hardly have a clue of the kind of turmoil that the poor soul is dealing with and the only impression that these earthlings carry along with them is whether their boss was good or bad- because they increment was x or y! When the Leaders occupying such tight spots are not the real “owners”of the business, well, needless to say their lives are as miserable and lovable as you can imagine! Imagine a pendulum which swings far away in each direction- one the eternal core of heaven and the other end the core of hell at the speed of light! When Leaders “own” the businesses, they have one and only one benefit- that is ability to decide when to pull the plug off and leave the business- either shut it down or sell it off and start to toy with something else and start a new life by taking a professional rebirth all over again!

Leaders are constantly shifting between managing the pressures that they meet from above and what they must hold within and pass on what they can while ensuring that they soak up every ounce of pressure from below as well! So needless to say often you find leaders who believe in the maxim Mind over Matter, because that is the only thing that stand between them and Insanity- Their Mind applied firmly to the Matters at their hand!

The next time you start to judge the leader that you are facing- whichever reason that may be- think about it- The Leader may be operating from a point of Strength or from the point of Fragility! There could be plans and strategies which the leader may have devised or there can be mandates which the leader has to simply execute and make them operational! Unless you don’t fathom what is the context from which the Leader is acting, it will be unfair to arrive at conclusions in favour or against the Leader or the Leadership style! You may now, want to ask, so what is that you can do about it or should you really do anything about it? Aren’t Leaders paid and haven’t they signed up for the shit that comes along with the glory that bask in?

Well, the fact remains, they too are human, and like most of us, they too sometimes end up singing up for something which they would have either not understood completely, would not have been told about it completely or they would have misread it completely because of the facts and picture presented to them while handing over the reigns to them as they took charge of whatever that they are supposed to lead! There could also be that rarest of the rare case of “Incompetency” playing out – this happens when Leaders arrive too soon to lead on the scene without having a a clue of what they are supposed to be doing and where they are! More often than not, these people end up blowing up and destroying everyone and everything around them, eventually also damaging themselves!

The only thing that you can do while dealing with the Leader that you face or engage with each day of your life is, to appreciate and decipher the contextual settings and studying what is driving the Leadership that you are experiencing, whether it is the strength derived by the Leader because of who the leader is, or is It the strength derived from the position that an individual occupies, next you must observe the pattern of decisions and the impact created around that- if you see diminishing returns on decisions being taken- you know for sure something is not right and sooner or later you will have a changed leader! Likewise when Leaders act from the space of compulsion- driven by the business owners or stakeholders, often you will see that they too will eventually fizzle out as demands and expectations start to borderline around fiction over ground realities of business and facts! Leaders who also own their business, when they start to act in non-coherent manner it is a clear sign of decay and you can be rest assured that a big change is on the way- which will probably involve a change of hands at the business ownership eventually!

It is not always about the yelling boss or the cheerful happy face boss, it is about the undercurrents that keep these professionals on the edge for the right and wrong reasons that either makes them super achievers or ends up pushing them to cramped spaces wherein they experience their fragility and once that sets in you can see it manifest around the team and all that they lead and influence! Next time when you sit and listen to your boss, take a moment and try to read through the unsaid message and listen to the unmentioned whisper, perhaps your boss needs that extra cup of coffee with you more than you do!

I will leave you here, to explore, experience and think around leadership fragility and the experiences that you would have gathered through your working life; being a leader or by witnessing a leader, no matter what the context would have been, the fact will always remain that even Leaders are Fragile and they need help too!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article! In case you or your firm is looking out for Individual or team Coaching, write in to us today and we will be glad to help you!

Bouncing back and racing ahead.

~ PA ~ 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.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

Anxiety Driven Disasters

Conformity Seeking Disasters

Information Led Disasters

“Always Agreeing” Disasters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The real story behind the Layoffs.

~ PA ~ 2 Comments

If you happen to be one of those people who have recently been asked to move on with some dignified (according to the employer) monetary compensation and a possible restraining order (that you will not speak negative about the firm for next 12 months), because the world is in a crisis and because your “not so long ago market leading firm” is collapsing and about to perish, this article is here to help you see through what would have happened behind the scenes, so that even you know how much you are really to be accountable (and if you indeed really are) and what does it speak about the modern day “futuristic caring organisations”! So let’s roll!

If you have been used to reading my articles for sometime now, you know it too well, I like to be to the point, simple and clear, no ambiguity, no opinionated bullshit and no creation of unwanted emotional stress, present the picture and leave it for your perception and interpretation based on how kind or unkind life has been to you! There is a good reason why we all as humankind are unique, even twins will be different, one may be absolutely sane while the other one may be a certified psychopath! So from my perspective there are broadly the following reasons that precipitate Layoffs, if you have any more apart form these, feel to add them to these coveted list!

White Elephants and Peacocks

Disconnected Processes

Right Team for all the Wrong Reasons

Incompetent Leadership

Business Led Strategic Opportunism

White Elephants and Peacocks: Well these roam about across businesses and organisations, easy to find, detect and trace! As the name suggests, they exist as long as the senior leadership enjoy their antics and can more importantly afford their salaries at the expense of someone else (that could be public money in case of PSUs or listed companies or money from Investors and parent companies!). Once the senior leadership changes, or has a change of mind (not to be confused with wisdom) they will change the sets of White Elephant and Peacocks with a spooky predictability- that’s why you find that few companies have their white elephants and peacocks getting changed every 2-3 years- it keeps their corporate zoo busy and adds to the meaningless excitement!  These are the ones’ who make most of the routine layoffs on an ongoing basis irrespective whether the economy is up or down, whether we are in midst of war, famine , surplus, whether we are growing at 10% or 1%, irrespective of everything and anything else, these are the ones’ who keep the HR teams busy hiring and firing them on a regular basis, larger the organisation, multiple such instances! You may want to ask me- but why do organisations get these White Elephants and Peacocks in the first place? Well hold this question to the end, once we have completed the other types, you will begin to see a singular thread which possibly will answer all your questions and provide ample enlightenment! So let’s leave this circus here and move ahead…

Disconnected Processes: Processes lead to Layoffs? Well, yes they do, normally you would have read them as “automation led layoffs” sounds familiar now right?, So here the question to ask is, why would an organisation create a pathway of automation without figuring out a smooth transition wherein the number of people are gradually phased out through “normal routine loss of workers”. The answers that you will end up getting based on the type of organisation you are dealing with, will be something like these, “we want to build a futuristic place of work”, “we want to flood the market through spewing out tons and tons of our products-irrespective whether someone wants them or not”, “machines are more reliable then people”, “this SBU doesn’t resonate with the new management’s line of thinking” etc etc. So you may start to wonder, why is it so hard to plan a strategy of 2-4 years duration to embrace automation, re-skill needed labour or workforce and then reuse  excess workforce through re-skilling and re-utilization aligned to the new process? Why do people start coming up with “Job Ads” to hire new people for the new process? Well hold this question, we will answer this towards the end! Let’s move on to the next one!

Right Team for all the Wrong Reasons: Through my experience, one truth that has established again and again is the fact that, Even as people come in all hues and shades of psychological make- whatever one may want to say, People are good.. always good at who they really are!–Everything else remains to be an acquired skill which either develops or fades away depending upon what opportunities are made available or not to an Individual and the Team that one belongs to! Often you will find in some sectors, that when a Head of a Unit leaves, the whole team moves, what does this say? Well if you ask me, it is the classic case of having a right team and asking them to do all the wrong things! Consider, you have  team of excellent communicators and sales professionals and you inform them that they will have to route their sales pitch through scripts and call centre outbound calls and them just keep sending pre-formatted templated emails to prospects- well you know what a true bred salesperson is going to tell you! well yes, he is all likely to ask the senior leadership to “FO” and not teach him how sales is done and managed! Now you may have a valid question, Why do organisations hire right people and ask them to do things which they aren’t supposed to do or make them do things the way it is detrimental to their growth or the process? We will answer this too towards the end…so hold on to this!

Incompetent Leadership: This certainly is the perhaps the most apparent and visible factor as Layoffs happen! Layoffs are almost always seen as Leadership Incompetence and in many cases- most of them that hold good- this is not about the Incompetence of Individuals at the top, that is different, this is about the collective intelligence or lack of it at the top that translates into Incompetent Leadership! One more face about Leadership Incompetence is that the more larger an Organisation, more are the chances of the same getting manifested and more are the pathways of Incompetence manifestation- imagine a debilitating attack on the nervous system from within- that is what Incompetent Leadership does! You may now argue that, how is that when majority of top management comes from famed business colleges/engineering/medical degrees from institutions (which most of us only can aspire to be an alumnus of), how can they be so dumb? or rather incompetent? Well sure enough that’s not how all of them are, most of them would be sane and wise- as long as they are all by themselves- the moment you add them to a team which comprises of similar people and calls for applying collective wisdom- and is trying hard to realize an utopian dream-shit happens and that’s when you start listening, “A” has joined the board, “B” has left the board and so on and so forth! So what, has this got to do with layoffs, well as these leaders struggle with their own collective challenges- they often get lost in a maze of inconsequential things and as this seeps through the organisational structure, the effects start to show and the resulting layoffs happen!

Business Led Strategic Opportunism: This is by far the most often invincible and the real reason behind many layoff stories around the world! This is what leads to creation of compelling PR narratives and creating diversion, distraction and deviation from real issues and this is the one reason which superimposes itself on all the above reasons and plays out choosing one or other type above! Human greed with no end, senseless capitalism and the ability to decide the fate of the majority by a few eclectic minority- when goes wrong- layoffs are perhaps one of the most minor things that manifest, the world has witnessed more murderous and damaging aspects of Business driven greed and Capitalist domination with no end in sight! If you think Conflicts and world wars were fought for territory, well you are right, but partly because each of them weer funded deep and long and that funding didn’t come only from government taxes but also through the invisible hands of the capitalists who favored one side over the other so that when everything settles down they get their pie of the cake to exploit and continue with their never ending hunger for world dominance through wealth creation and managing that!

This strategic led intervention when micro-managing- chooses the timeline for the elephants and peacocks, starts to throw spanners into the operational wheels so that collective wisdom start to falter and even the highly skilled and qualified individuals start to fail collectively! It is this factor that creates imagery of adding SBUs, shrinking units and hiring the best and then without much noise doing away with the best! This is what creates a narrative that wipes off every gain and every note of what Individuals and teams would have achieved in the organisation for the organisation and has the power to play down every achievement in face of some other narrative that is completely opposite to what real facts could be!

You may be a CEO and if you think you drive the business, you are wrong, equally wrong as the last executive who got laid off even as he had given all that the job called for! Layoffs are a narrative which are a dynamic camouflage to a larger purpose which is held close to the heart and mind of the business owner who is in turn dictated by the people who own the ecosystem wherein the business exists! If you think It’s your fault or mistake…think about it all over again! Ask one simple question- If you were really that bad and incompetent- Why would they hire you to begin with! 

As the old saying goes , not all is white and neither all is black- we live in an era that is colorful as it gets and has these specks of grey here and there, at times these grey’s block out everything around and that is the philosophical essence of what layoffs truly are! They are not the measure of the competence or lack of it of an Individual- rather they are a statement of how change is being allowed to come in- Transformation – as they call it- whether that’s a positive experience or not- depends on which side of a table you are sitting and what is the bargaining power that you bring to the table!

I will leave you here, and just to say this- Layoffs are good, like everything else, as long as you know how to make use of this blessing in disguise- be glad that it happened now as it happened for some other time perhaps would have been more painful- As long as you are bound by corporate slavery- Growth is Optional and Layoff is a Certainty!

Ciao for now, I will leave you here with your coffee, to think and reflect and make yourself Layoff proof if you can!  At Simplifylives, we are able to help and guide those who need help during these times with regards to their professional challenges and ambiguity, drop us a mail and we will be glad to assist!

Say no to Corporate Slavery! Embrace Layoffs!

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

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The isolation advantage!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

To change the system,be the system!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

It always is a challenge as a writer, when you want to weigh carefully and share your thoughts/experiences for a new year- but viewing it from another angle- it is perhaps just another routine flip of a calendar and a change of date! So here we go again with some usual wit and humor – even as we go about destroying and rebuilding our only planet! 7 days into the new year, the first blog of 2020, well here we go!

No matter where you want to land on our planet right now, there is strife and chaos all around- much of this has been the result of the ever present web of greed- greed for power, greed for money, greed for opulence and finally the never ending greed for controlling societies! It is in times like these that it becomes all the more necessary to stand up individually and collectively in what you believe in and stand up for all that will serve the very essence of human foundation- love-empathy- compassion and care-unselfish care for fellow humans- never forget it is the only planet we have and if we decide to abuse it and get reckless with it- we do so at our own peril!

Taking cue from recent global developments- around the world- whether that be the political assassination carried out by the US of an Iranian General, the ongoing protests in India(with support flowing in across the universities and colleges from the world) or the seemingly unimaginable and unmanageable wildfires in Australia (still burning as I write this article) or the ongoing global plight of refugees and climate change (which the UN has been speaking about across multiple forums and with a strong coercive tone to ensure that as group of nations we act with greater care and empathy); All of these have a common thread- a thread that reads- that- All of these are issues are a result of a fast failing system which has faltered it’s way for long and lead astray a society and the global community from the real issues and real challenges which need to be addressed. So the next question- fine we have issues and we have problems so what can we do about them? Can we really do something in the first place? Well there is good news and bad news for these questions- The good news first- we can certainly manage a few things well and ensure they are dusted away for good and the bad news is- that no matter what you do- Mother Earth has a plan for herself and if you are sadly in her way- well you are toast!

A simple and effective manner to manage and deal with man-made and greed related issues and challenges is to practice and imbibe the maxim- “Be the system to change the system” easier said then done- but friends that’s the only way around- especially when you are up against a machinery that has gone wrong like a runaway train and seems to smash into everything that was ever created and existed! But seriously how do you go about this- one may say- to get into a system and then effect a change may take long and by then the problems would have mutated to something new altogether– well yes- that can be partly true- but there is a way around this too-“Extraordinary situations call for Extraordinary solutions”– yes and these steps are the very essence that ensure changes that occur are swift and impacting in equal measure or more then the perceived and experienced chaos that is being played around the society in the context of the time and place!

To change a system, you need to first- infiltrate the system at what I call as key points, next in a timed orchestra turn the levers so that system stops, reverses and works twice as fast in the opposite direction to correct what must be and to service the larger cause of human well being! There would be different ways how this could be achieved- a few of them could be with friends along from within and few could be a total takeover from the outside- but whatever route one chooses, unless there is a compelling and larger visible cause that demonstrates clear differences and benefits to the society – no story of change will ever be complete or effective!

When it comes to the different set of challenges as posed by our planet- read climate change- there are two sets of clear distinction- the question to ask is, “Whether an event that is unfolding would have occurred irrespective of human presence?”, now depending on what the answer to this question is- you really know whether this is an induced challenge or it’s just one of those aspects of being in the wrong place at a wrong time- read earthquakes and Tsunamis. As long as this distinction is clear solutions to address the challenges will be coming and they will arrive well in time to manage and mitigate most of the threats whether they are from human activities impacting nature or whether that the planet running away with a mind of it’s own!

Once you answer this, you have ways and paths to choose the next steps to bring about the change that you cherish as a society- To move ahead -towards something that is more amicable and more calming- because it is only in the organised and settled societies/groups that creativity flourishes.The entire essence of human existence through the ages has been the expression of human intelligence through creative pursuits- choose any subject you wish to – but this is the underlying foundation- the very essence of human existence!

Well, I will leave you with these thoughts for now- “Change is always evolving and always around”- It’s time to sit back and reflect upon the change that you want to bring around within yourself and the society around.Possibly delve into how you are going to go about it!

See you soon with another freshly baked idea!