Tag: human mind

Three steps to sanity!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Given the kind of crazy times that we are all living by, whether be it our work, homes or the social nonsense played out on the news channels every day, there could be no no better time, to get our hands on the master key to sanity and try to move away from what doesn’t serve us and stay aligned to what helps us become the better version of ourselves with each passing moment! Join me here as we try to understand why sanity is, almost always just three steps away form you, no matter what the situation!

A lot of what, unfolds around us is simply unimportant and whatever little around is important, most of the time doesn’t pass the test of the context! So you wake up in the morning, go on to grab your cup and switch on the television just to realise how dumb society has got and how glorified nonsense can be played out on millions of screens, just because someone is ready to pay for that kind of shit! Although, one may argue, so what’s the big deal, you can always go ahead and switch the idiot box off, but given the way our brains play the fool with us, this option is deceptively tough to implement! Social compulsions, confirmation biases and that aspect of self-imposed non-productive small talk forces people to switch on the idiot box- like a drug addict high on their favorite drug- these enslaved people go on to consume the garbage played out on the screens, because that is what grabs social entertainment value- kind of talk needed to get going in those social encounters when you are keen to impress! Sure enough this also speaks about the kind of social circle you are a part of, but to be very honest when we have the very battle of existence going about- no matter where you are and how high or low you are in the socioeconomic fabric, there will be this damaged aspect of society which you will always have to come to face- what remains in your control- the amount of exposure you want to have and that will go on to determine- the extent of progress or regress you encounter! The truth about societies is that, each one of them are playing out what the master demand and who these masters are- whether many or few- goes to create the script, direction and length of what gets played out and how much nonsense will be allowed or checked! You may be wondering if this is what it is, and this is how societies eventually are, is there anything that you can do? anything at all to gain some relative control to dodge this minefield of under-serving scenarios which add little value to you and on the contrary end up sapping away every ounce of what you have and who you are- to try and end up making you one of the many- rather allowing you to be one of a kind – an unique jewel embedded in the crown of a flourishing society! What is that can be done?

Well, there are three basic and simple steps, if you choose to walk upon, irrespective of what the temptation, you will almost always be able to hold on to yourself and stay clear of the corrosive influences that seem to always come your way!

Awareness- Creating an awesome amount of awareness about yourself to begin with and of what’s around you alongside an innate ability to observe- not see- is what will help you to sieve what matters from the clutter that’s coming your way! Awareness works only when you are assertive about who you are, you know what you seek and you are firmly in control of what you think and feel- this certainly like everything good and nice will come at a price- not every person will like you and neither will you be comfortable being around everyone that comes your way- what is important here is unlike the ignorant earlier self- once your awareness levels are fine tuned- you will have a strong reasoning and belief system to stand by you for all the decision that you take- whether to engage with a person or not, whether you want to take up that assignment or not, almost everything that you do or plan to do-will come from your alignment to your core beliefs, values and awareness that you go on to build and sustain on an ongoing basis!

Lens of Context- Once you have reached a decent understanding about who you are and what drives you fine and what drives you crazy-not to forget the who’s- the next step is about applying the Lens of Context! As you increase your awareness you will realise, that not everything that you see around, serve you now, later or anytime and a lot of it, really a lot of it- is always something about which you can do nothing- not now- not tomorrow- the only thing that you can do is- if that aspect begins to be an existential crisis for your personal self- is leave the place and get out of the way- unless your life is aligned to the the very cause of fighting this out! Say, you live in nation wherein you don’t agree with the political narrative- your ignorant self- will get into the bitching mode- which is what the majority of less aware people would do- does that serve you or the society- absolutely not- what do you gain? A few more beers, few more smokes, occasional heart burn, arguments, raised blood pressure and everything that doesn’t seem to help you! So how would a person who displays awareness behave- well simple- see what the facts are and make sense of what it really is and what it is been shown to be- next- analyse what is that you can do or not do- and by doing or not doing how will the unfolding events impact you? So once you begin to deploy your awareness and frame it to the lens of your context- you will know exactly how much attention each aspect that comes your way deserves and you get a choice to act- and how you act- is the final step which ensures you stay sane! read on!

Act with Calibrated Ownership- “Calibrated Ownership” is one word here, as long as you you deploy your awareness, through your lens of context and act with calibrated ownership- you will begin to rapidly evolve- disconnecting away all that is clutter and adding up and building upon all that empowers you to provide and share what your awareness brings forth! Calibrated ownership is different by the sense that you need to have ownership in the right proportion to the context and the level of awareness you may have developed around it! Consider you come to know that there is a need of an animal sanctuary around your place- that is awareness- you may have the place and fund for that- thats the part of understanding the context-calibration comes when you know how much of what you are doing is enough- that is when to stop- at what animal types and how many!

Only when individuals learn to know you they are- It is this collection of aware individuals that goes on to create an aware society/ nation and that helps everyone to focus on what serves the community and also helps them act with necessary prudence- collaboratively, with a purpose that creates and adds value!

If you ask me, the best way to know the health of any society is to study who the recent philosophers have been in the last two hundreds years and if there are any living legends around who have the ability to show the way but stop short of directing what to see!

Awareness, context and ability to act with calibrated ownership will ensure that you spend your valuable seconds on what creates value for the next one and will count your breath to give life to some great cause that serves you, the society around in a way that remains as your signature when you are long gone by- do it well and you end up being an icon- you decide not to enact and do anything- you will fade away in the crowd of humanity. Nothing is right neither is anything wrong- its your life and its your choice and its the choices that at the end of it make us who we are and will always be!

I leave your here with these thoughts, urging you to start working on your awareness, your contextual settings and that managed ownership drive!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article, stay wise and stay connected!

Patterns are everywhere.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Leadership Void.

~ PA ~ 2 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avoid the pandemic of errors.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

As the world begins to open up once again, we will be served front row seats to the ingenuity and dumbness of humanity is equal measure! The only worrisome part being that dumbness looks funny as long as it does not hit you hard and where it hurts the most! Join me here as we take a look at what is this pandemic of errors all about and can we do something about it and yes, what is it that we can do?

Irrespective of where you are in the world the chances are that you would by now completed around 150+ days either working from the dis-comfort of your home or you would have been waging a war with the limited resources available at your work place (you included) and to all of this add a top layer of diminishing intelligence on an hourly basis!– Well we have just got setting up ourselves for untold misery- and whether this misery translates into 2$ getting debited form your bank or a few millions wiped off– really depends on bad is your karmic debt! So what is really unfolding here? Why would suddenly a functional and orchestrated society falter and run into a myriad of errors and operations take a beating? Well read on!

As trainers, managers, practitioners of human resource management, behaviorist we have all heard about the theories about habits been formed and destroyed over a period of 21 days (some agree and few disagree), the placebo effect and so on and so forth. The whole Covid19 onset and the unwitting response mechanism has virtually ended up playing havoc with our brains (leave the mind out for now!) causing physiological alteration leading to health issues which extrapolate into behavioral problems with time and few of them could manifest like loosing the span of attention, hyper anxiety and so on and so forth! Not to forget these broad generic indications are further amplifies or subdued based on intrinsic traits of individuals and when you end up having a bunch of wrong individuals with a developing problem- it within no time will blow up into a society wide degeneration and read to all that one doesn’t want to see unfold in any neighborhood! Yes, those dark alleys from where normally we never wish to pass by- talk about crimes pertaining to physical harm, scams and allied manifestations which are nothing but an indication that the society has got consumed by the problem and rather then finding the path ahead or a solution, resigns itself to ways that serve the Now rather than the Tomorrow! Let me explain!

The chances are that by now, you too would have felt the change coming into your patterns of approaching people and issues that come your way. You would have perhaps noticed that you don’t speak that much now, your choice of words has reduced, perhaps your answers are more crisp, more in one liners and possibly also as single words, chances are that we you do speak- you seem like you are never going to stop! By now you would have also started to think about whatever happened to those two hour long meetings, why and how are the meetings for the same cause been wrapped in under 30 minutes! If these evolving patterns within your work areas were not enough just reflect on the experience that you are getting as you walk into restaurants, stores, dial into call centre agents, across the board you will see a common pattern emerging- the pattern of falling and failing quality of conversations, commitments and engagement! This seems fine as long as it deals with these vocations that I mentioned, but think about like in the case of the banks, aviation, armed services, political class, bureaucracy- these are the sections of societies for any nation that alter and direct policy and if these sectors begin to witness rampant failure and collapse of systems – people and process- you can imagine the outcomes! Already the world has seen multiple incidents of industrial fire accidents– like in India, in Beirut, the recent Oil spill near Mauritius– Somewhere this failing engagement of people is certainly a contributory factor in these and many other such incidents and that’s why it becomes very crucial to correct and stem this issue right now! So how do we go about this before this behavioral trait assumes some chronic proportions and suddenly we start to live in a society where erring becomes the new normal (like living with the Virus has become one!)? Read on!

When societies are hit hard by, what I call this a Sledge-Hammer event or episode- say like a building collapse, a terror attack or a war- the initial reaction of the society as a whole is to freeze and individuals within the society race to secure what they can as they can based on who and where they are in the social scheme of things! Next, as the initial shock is absorbed, people start to emerge and check what can be salvaged and what can be re-started and operated and what can’t be-In case of the pandemic of this virus- this empowerment unfortunately went into the hands of the governments- and needless to say- based on their acquired level of incompetence- many of them ended up complicating an already fragile situation and the whole world ended up being plunged into an economic melt down from a health crisis and the best part- none of them were solved! It is against this backdrop that as people begin to gain their connections back through work with other people- they are greerted by surprise- albeit an unwanted one- the same people who seemed to be compassionate and warm are now suddenly cold and blunt (if not rude) as yet! Speaking about compassion well that’s on thin ice right now, across the world!

So as people begin to re-connect with an already compromised social setting coupled with rapidly diminishing competence (as in many cases the way of working would have altered and the new way may not be suiting everyone equally!), as a society we are yet again setting up for another disaster on the making! Poor listening, poorer cognition and analytical ability and a colored contextual setting will only create more forced errors than anything else and that will translate into losses of unimaginable magnitude putting at times even nations at risk, not to forget people and their lives! Solution to stop this?

Well, start at the start go back to the basics! As it is a human problem, trust the specialists who deal or have been at the helm of dealing with human behavior. These folks and the HR specialists are the ones’ who can make a difference between an organisation thriving or diving as things begin to heat up! For their intervention and sensing of the state of mind of their employees alone will ensure that their organisation is as error free as humanly possible and when this approach is replicated across the board, a society is safeguarded and trust is put back into the whole space (earlier then one would have thought)! If there was ever a time when HR was vital and critical for organisations, it is now! Perhaps there has been no better time across the globe for people to seek People specialist to safeguard individual sanity and protect business interest which cumulatively run into billions of dollars the world over and that is what keeps the world moving, apart form astronomical factors! So how does one go about it?

Start at an individual level, perform an HR audit of yourself- seek what has improved and what has lost its shine- see what you need to get it back and then stay around that focus area and keep walking ahead. When teams come into picture, it is vital to know what each member of the team has been through- the personal cost- and how that may alter re-engagement patterns within the team knowing the construct of the team and the individual temperaments in the team, solutions like re-shuffling of teams, re-jig, breaking down, disbanding, or creating anew- all and any of these strategies could be deployed to ensure that personal hues don’t end up coloring a team intent and goal which in these times of hard to come business is that last thing that any organisation will need! Finally once the Individuals are aligned and the team is, its all about refining the top of the pyramid- the people- the process- the goals and the paraphernalia associated with that space. This whole exercise then goes a long way to eject errors- both people and process related, stem them across levels and ensure that as the re-engagement continues to build within the organisation and externally- the trust element is reached at earlier levels quickly and then the pandemic discussions really are left restricted only to that up of tea and all other engagements and conversations get aligned to business challenges and solutions therein!

Although this “pandemic of errors” statement looks comical and innocent, don’t be fooled by the grave risk that it brings along to each one of us and societies across the world- irrespective how progressed we are! It just takes the grave error of misjudgment of one person to bring an airliner down or one piece of miscommunication to start a brisk war between nations or just one misunderstanding to turn tables of a political tide and thats how errors can end up doing some serious damage! These forced errors, sure enough arise from different challenges that individuals face- and there are certain ways and means to address those and people have been doing that all the time- so I will not get into the details of those aspects here, the only flag that I wanted to raise through this piece was that, All is not well in the Human Fairyland and all of us need to be looking over the shoulder of the next person around us – not because you don’t trust that person- but simply because that person is probably too self-consumed and fatigued to even know what’s unfolding and his intentional or unintentional act will end up having consequences for you- at times they may end up being more damaging for you than the person who sets it off! You may call this a prophecy or call it an anxious rant, but the truth is that the current hard stop that the world got sold into, will cause more damage over the next 18 months, unless we are genuinely looking over each other!

I leave your here, for now, take some time to reflect and sieve through the errors that you think are lurking around and within you and get into the proactive pest control mode now to have a peaceful time ahead!

Ciao for now! Stay wise and stay connected! Guys subscribe here and to my page on FB so that you don’t miss any article!

Risks of personality worship.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Societies have their own life-cycles, and every society learns what its life- cycle is, usually the hard way! Through modern history, we have seen the demise of the erstwhile kingdoms- whether that was because of experiments in different types of governance models like democracy, communism, dictatorship, autocracy or the hybrid models which picked elements of different governance models (while becoming none); normally societies ended up accelerating their social collapse, but in a few cases retained their character, intrinsic value to survive, reforge and rise again and this space where societies collapse and rise again is the space of personality worships- because the whole social drama that unfolds- no matter where you live, it is almost always about personality or the competing personalities that are offered the platform to lead and provide direction to the masses! Join me here as we try to understand why personality worship could be or rather is a risk that every society must weigh well before limiting it’s exposure to the same!

As Individuals, we like it when we get ready solutions for the problems that we are facing, irrespective of the fact whether these are chronic or one off cases. Very often the people who have the ability to wield this power are the ones’ who provide us with solutions and make our lives easy (at least that is what it looks like to begin with!). This is where the game starts and this is the grand stage of personality worship! Whether it is the politician that you like or despise, that boos you adore or that team mate you can count upon- or anyone for that matter whom you count on- you are knowingly or unknowingly getting into the trap of personality worship, and while this looks innocent and divine, it could end up being quite the opposite and many nations around the world have lived to tell those horrible stories of personality worship gone too wrong! So how does this all start…well here we go!

As we go about our daily chores, we often want to leave a few vital decisions to someone above us! If you are working with an organisation, you are looking forward to your boss- he is looking forward to his until you reach the CEO through the chain of command and the CEO too looks up to the board to whom he is answerable who basically have the stakeholders- which includes you too! So you see, even in a corporate set up as we work, at the levels of competence that we have been entrusted with, every now and then we will leave out that odd blank to be filled up by our bosses, not because we can’t do it, but rather that’s a fail safe mechanism to ensure everyone doesn’t end up doing everything causing chaos that can ruin the organisation or ends up creating more competition from within! It also ensures progressive development of competence and thereby assures survival and growth for all those involved in the creative process. Likewise when it comes to the larger social fabric, it is the domain of the politicians, the bureaucrats and the whole official machinery of a state/ nation that goes in to make our societies progressive and safe. When we start allowing personality worship to creep into this space, we end up creating unprecedented situations and eventually have no one else, but ourselves to blame at the end! You see, if you ask clowns to lead then… you are part of the circus and no longer an audience! So why is this so damaging how can we change this or rather balance this?

Since time in memorial, right from the times of the Kings and Queens, personality worship has been the order of the day! Certainly it made sense because all power was concentrated there and with no other way around, it made sense! So based on the personality worships Kingdoms progressed and regressed, each time the worship was offered to a right person- the Kingdom flourished and at other times if the worship was offered to a nut case who had become a King by possibly killing his own people- well the Kingdoms regressed and failed on their own weight! Sure enough, there are no more kingdoms to be managed, but if you carefully observe the whole ecosystem around you, it is nothing but the aggregation of kingdoms (leaders) in almost every field that you choose – whether it be business, politics, security, work areas, the arena of sport, medicine, scientists, each of these sectors- what I call as little kingdoms- all have their own “worship” models and as these are worshiped the societies arrive at worshiping a taller and unifying personality who is worshiped even by those who are worshiped below him! So where’s the problem you may ask? All looks fine right? People having role models and those role models having theirs and then all these role models choose a grand role model? So all should be great and in-sync right? Well, sadly it doesn’t work that way and that is what sets up this space of “personality worship” for failure! Read on!

The word here is “personality” and “worship” and knowing humans the way they are these personalities are something else as they start to plot their individual paths to progress and by the time they arrive at that position where they are being worshiped they have already transformed into something else which none of the people worshiping below are aware of at any level! So this is like you meet your college friend 20 years down the line and expect him to be the same person who kept asking you for your notes or drink! Well that never is the case, is it ever? With time, people change and personalities transform, in fact they are continually forming and evolving each day, moment to moment! Sure enough the intrinsic value systems seldom undergo a rapid or intense transformation, so a principle of non-violence will almost always stay unless a radical event has come visiting an individual, but beyond that all and everything will change! This is where the problem of personality worship begins and manifests into a complex problem based on how deep the worship model has entrenched, the quality and severity of its impact! Let me explain!

Consider, you lead a nation, you have the power, influence and needless to say you have your followers and the model for your personality worship is intact and working- now if something were to happen to you- you will see the whole model coming crashing down- even if there’s a replacement and someone else takes the place to fill in the void left by you- as the whole model is based on personality specific element- specific to you-the moment the personality is gone, the whole model collapses and unless the next person is available to step in with an equal or perhaps even a more powerful personality worship model which is already working, the nation risks to be throw into anarchy and chaos! Because as stakes increase, complexities do and with that the desire to get the intended results irrespective of the cost! If you are thinking, this must be happening only in politics and what has that to do with office and individual lives, well think again! Do you remember the last time a whole unit was thrown out or resigned or left to join the competition or start something of their own? Well yes, isn’t it- so this is how it manifests at the corporate level and of course not that everyone has to leave and go, even as they stay within the organisations that “personality worship model” tends to impose push and pull effect on an ongoing basis- which manifests in different ways- way of working, corporate bitching all of that gets influenced and directed by the nature and quality of ongoing tussle between the competing personalities and their worshipers in the confines of the corporate world!

This personality worship also plays its role in our homes, too- whose the favorite uncle?, which grandparent, Mum or Dad- whose your favorite so on and so forth! Sure enough the contextual settings of this space are more rewarding, positive and safe then another discussed and actually provide a foundation for individuals to pivot and keep the hustle on in the other realms! Now if you have psychopaths in your personal space- well dude, then you really need some help! So how do we stop this personality workshop from consuming us, becoming a threat or wiping us off and what can we do about it?

Well the only deceptively simple and perhaps the only way to stop and stall any and all kind of personality worship is about celebrating the action more than the actor, it is more about empowering actions and the process rather then the people! The moment you do this, you do great service for one and all, you take off that unwanted load to be at all times awaiting for a consent, approval and secondly you create a powerful stance to send out a signal that what is being evaluated is the work, the task and the impact and not necessarily how it has been done by whom? No, I am not saying disregard the process, I am saying discount the personal touch- like if you are applying jam to the bread, you have only two surfaces and you can do it as many times as you want- but the end result will be jam speared on two sides of a bread piece- there can’t be any other outcome so the empowerment is about applying the jam and not who applied the jam! Think about it! The more your empower processes over people you ensure that you can stall and arrest unwanted personality worship and the nuisance that it brings along with it at the right time!

Of course, great leaders and pioneers in every field and every space must be celebrated and worshiped but that has to be done aligned to the work and the actions that they took when it mattered the most and not just worship because you have been asked to do so! You may get a tiger cub and treat it like a cat, but as it grows, it will only treat you as a tiger should!

I will leave you here, think if you have been worshiped or you worship and eitehrways what is that whole worship about, is it about that person’s work, actions, courage, innovation, resilience, some virtue or is it just that plain vanilla fan following of the college days- so that the cherry on your cake looks a little bit more red!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then keep thinking and worship what matters and not who matters!

Masked smiles & Altered lives.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

As ironical it may see, but we live in the age that we have no other choice but to wear that smile of ours, albeit masked, but we need to wear it anyways! The challenge- to be sure to smile at the right time by knowing the smiles behind the other masks! As organisations and societies emerge from the shadows of the pandemic, what is going to be very important is the re-connect that we bring about, person to person, how that re-connect happens will go a long way to decode how societies emerge- whether they are more cohesive then ever before- with an overdose of empathy or whether they deteriorate further and the society continues to be masked not only to keep the virus away, but also to keep humans away form each other! Join me here as we explore what’s unfolding and what is that we can and cannot, do about it!

All of us know this very archaic statement about “humans being social animals”- I guess this age old statement has all the words in the right order! The last one is perhaps the most crucial one that we keep on ignoring, that as humans we too are “animals”. Needless to say when the social fabric of societies undergoes unintended or at times crafted stretch beyond an allowable limit; we see the animal manifest within the societies that we move about. This animal element then could be the individual, the community as a whole or the leadership that directs and builds a pathway to that effect! How this helps or harms the construct of the evolving society is really another story, what I really want to discuss is what perhaps is evolving behind the masks and why that space is so very critical to manage and measure the altered lives that we will encounter as we move ahead!

Even as a layman, if you think about how we tend to connect and communicate, perhaps even before the spoken words- it’s often the smile that either welcomes us, keeps us at a distance or ensures we don’t waste our time in the place that we have found ourselves in! That is the power of the smile- a crooked thing which apparently sets everything straight! Now with that formidable (and in some cases even infectious) smile staying hidden behind the veil of the mask- it’s going to be anyone’s guess what the encounters of the future are going to end up like! In all probability people will resign themselves to the virtual smiles through the digital connect of video calls, rather than the earlier in-person warmth! Sure enough, the smile is but a component of human interaction and not the complete interaction so why bother if that’s masked? Well if you want to learn more, do get in touch with an expert for Non-Verbal Communication or someone who excels at Body Language and they will be better equipped to tell you the art and science of what happens when people cloak themselves up and we are unable to read the vital cues- sure, no one will possibly get killed- but given the diminishing intelligence that people have- you never know!

Go back to your normal working day, perhaps some time last year, before all this nonsense of the pandemic crept up- what do you see, rush hour hustle to reach your office or business headquarters, that pooled cab, those conversations, those jokes, that stiff upper lip- which was possibly cracked opened by another smile from a perfect stranger on the subway, that laughter and those moments of stress through the meetings- which were well read and relaxed by a ill times joke- all these and many such instances were only possible because all the cues were given away by the presence or absence of a smile! Certainly wearing a mask, in the given context is vital to ensure you still remain in the present and don’t figure as a number in some morbid list, but with the masks on, and the decoding becoming tougher by the day, as people get more and more tough business situations to deal with- what’s going to manifest is primarily more and more curtailed, truncated conversations- limited engagements- which are just to the point of meeting business objectives and that’s about it! This will leave out the human completely and knowingly or unknowingly each one of us will become a part of this- cyborg kind of setting wherein our conversations increasingly become limited, referring to spread sheet column numbers, diagrams, percentages, etc. etc. and no one seems to be bothered about what’s happening within the person with whom they are engaging- good or bad- intentional or unintentional- well contexts can be many and reasons too could be valid or invalid- but what is certain is that, these engagements will end up stamping out the smile and remain focused on the masks rather then the smile behind will leave and this will eventually leave an unalterable mark on the development and engagement of human collaboration in the times ahead! For some sectors it may help, yet for other it may harm progressively stalling the spirit of collaboration, trust, interdependence which are vital for a few things, no matter how much automated we are or aspire ton be! So how do we go about this? Can this be stopped? How do we cope with this?

To begin with the earlier we realise, as Individuals, Societies,Communities that the whole essence of being a human is about being together and for each other- is when this menace can be altered and we can rescue humanity from being turned into a primitive level of cyborgs wherein all of us just end up being extensions of our digital presence by work, position or influence! For this to happen, we need to see what seems to be cloaked away in plain sight! We have been told about wearing the mask- sure enough do it- but no one asked you not to smile- no one asked you to become curt- no one asked you to loose that warmth in your voice- so re-create that- so what if its all coming from the filter of the mask- so be it- put that extra pep in the effort and ensure that your personality and it’s vibrancy is able to come out shining through the physical mask and that physical mask doesn’t end up becoming a psychological mask that subdues your brain, your power to assert, communicate and express yourself- don’t ever allow that to happen because no one is asking you to do that and no one will ever nor can anyone ever! This clarity of knowing that physicality of the mask to cover and protect you has and cannot have any bearing on your ability to express and assert yourself is of fundamental importance! The human brain is a little funny, the moment you create imagery and demonstrative influences around it- the mind games begin and then the whole response or reactive mechanism is nothing but how strong you rationalization, scientific approach and common-sense is! The moment you unwittingly add even the smallest element of emotion to this unfolding drama, all hell will break loose and you will end up not only masking your face, but also your mind and your ability to think!, playing straight into the hands of those who are possibly directing your society right now!

So, to keep it simple, remember your faces is masked not you! The more you succumb to the emotional melodrama through the forced down narratives chances are that you will end up thinking or rather begin to direct your ability to think in the direction which serves the interest of everyone else but yourself and you will just go on to prove the points like a few of the social influencers are trying to right now- like you know, “work form home” is awesome, “sabbatical is a great time” and so on and so forth! Remember, we are in midst of not only a pandemic, but a global reset and all the unfolding narratives that you see near and far- are all competing for only one thing- no not the cure for the pandemic- but for deciding the direction of the altered society as it emerges out of this pandemic! Think about it- do you really think that it would have taken a pandemic for global MNCs to spare a few dollars on home furniture and ask employees to work from home? Wouldn’t it have saved them millions of dollars by not having to pay rents or build those awesome buildings with great infrastructure to begin with (which they sold so often & so brashly as they attracted youngsters at campuses and in the competing firms to come and work from them)? Think! So what’s the plan? Read on!

Being a blog, I wouldn’t want to get into the intricate details about what the social directors aim to do and why, whether thats right or wrong, that’s not the point! The whole point is to tell you all just one thing, guard your face but unleash your smile! Even if you are masked, when you smile, the mask will give away that vital cue and that is the essence of being human and being connected with each other- to look after each others’ back and collaborate as we navigate the uncertain times! If you ask me, this time that we are witnessing is the modern equivalent of the ice age, unless we stay connected, communicative and wise, our individual weaknesses will end up empowering the greed of a few to stall our creative abilities and take away the very freedom that we cherish so much to be who we are by exercising the choices that we have- in the society that we live about!

Altered behaviors, will sure enough be there and we may alter our behaviors as we go along, nothing to complain about that bit, but what is essential and fundamental is that any and all altered behaviour must be a result of our human connect and the empathy that we hold within and not because of some social dictate that has been pushed down our throats! Take a moment and read again, if you need to, but this is the most fundamental difference and this alone will decide if societies will progress or regress they come out of this pandemic! Our choices and ability to choose have to remain intact as they weer before, as I keep saying our face is masked not our mind- as long as you remember this one thin- rest assured all your actions will be aligned to the right path of individual progress and when many of us do this, society will move ins a directions which serves the greater good to many rather then ending up serving a few and short changing ourselves in the bargain!

So, if you ask me, what are my final words here, keep that warmth glowing behind that mask- your face may be covered but nor are your eyes and neither is your mind- let that smile flow as it normally does, let the eyes express and the voice radiate the warmth and genuineness that you have for your fellow humans! Unless we make a resolve to stay connected even as we adorn the masks, re-connecting anytime in the future will be too little too late- because by then we risk ending up becoming a complete digital extension of that video meeting room ID number and everything human about us will be at a grave risk!

I leave you here, with these thoughts, urging you to wear your smile (albeit behind your mask) and always remember: That human connect is vital and no matter who says what, don’t let anyone mask your thinking and your mind- for there resides the power to change your today and your tomorrow!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay safe, and smile! 🙂

NEWS and social alignment.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

I am pretty sure, with the seemingly unending work from home crisis, the entertainment played through the news channel is the last thing that anyone of us would have ever wished for and neither it is something that our rational mind is ever comfortable with- It doesn’t want to know- you know! Join me here, we we try to make sense around the nonsense played out in the garb of journalism and news broadcasting the world over; depending on where you are the chances are you are been treated to either a binary or a multicolored spectacle of narratives and ideologies, each trying to win your mind and heart so that it serves the purpose and even if it doesn’t the channels end up being the ultimate winners in this game of mind control. Nor am I complaining, neither am I suggesting to hold a moral high ground- because each one of us is equipped with a base level intelligence to know that magic tricks no matter how creative, scintillating they seem to be, never have found the solutions to the real world problems! So let’s move ahead and make some sense of the noise that has entered our lives!

Sure enough, I don’t own a media house (and I am so thankful I don’t , in these times!), but let’s try to understand as layman and observers how the whole aspect of NEWS has ended up being where it it today- cluttered, noisy and divergent! Before you jump the gun, like with every vocation, we have had pioneers, innovators and those rare breed of selfless geniuses even in this space. But as they were very few of them in the long period of evolution of the NEWS space, the risk it got to the business was unlike for any other business! Hence unlike the earlier formative days of coming to life, the business of NEWS today, is the business of building and crafting narratives played out to a certain audience for a specific agenda– helps a few times, possibly harms a lot!

With the advent of science the earlier phase of industrialization, as printing technology and inks became a reality the possibility of recording developments, documenting what was unfolding around saw an explosion of sorts as far as growth was concerned, add to that the access to education and being literate (we will come back to this towards the end), it changed the dynamics of societies the world over and with every passing year form then on we have add more and more literate people- resulting in more access to documents- documents which were not merely books of fiction but records of governance which now became records of accountability that could be held up to challenge when governance failed and appreciate as it flourished. To this evolving scenario, we had multiple pathways of the human mind coming up- philosophers, sociologists, psychologist, politicians, innovators, business tycoons- every segment of the society through this access of the printed world- wanted to create a mark of their own and gain what is important- control and as the communication media changed from print to radio to TV and to the menace of the online in the last 30 odd years- the mad craze for Control- Control of narratives has never been as fierce as we see it today- to the extent that groups and individuals are happy to sabotage companies, governments just to have their narrative win over the others! With so much happening around- you thought that the print world was always and only limited to the great works of art and literary classics that propagated the value of the essence of being human and need for collaboration and sharing! Well, as they say, as the coin is flipped, one side retains its polish and the other hits the dirt, the one that shines is what holds the power, control to drive the narrative and with that the hearts and minds of the people!

Through the last 100 odd years, the concept of NEWS- that is sharing information about latest development within the societies across regions, continents and the world in general evolved and through its evolution the wise people who owned this machinery of news curation and dissemination realized the enormity of the power that this had to influence, direct and control social behaviour, opinions and attitudes. This perhaps, if you ask me was the turning point in or recent history as humanity learnt to leverage on the power of this medium to further pursuits of greed- either political, capitalistic or both to serve a few masters while doing dis-service to the others!

From being a mirror that reflects and shares the happening as they really do, the world of NEWS suddenly has become on “Mirror Mirror on the Wall” kind of magic- wherein every person that seeks is, is served as per who that person is! This is where our modern day societies have ended up being- a society where every individuals truth is a different reality, hence we have created societies which are intrinsically more divergent rather being cohesive and the apparent cohesion gets ripped away in no time as some uneven pressure is applied to the social fabric either through policy change or some mis-communication! Guess what holds the key to correct all these imbalances that are created by this new magic mirror- yes- NEWS again! So what is really happening here? Is there anything that can be done to regain some level of rationality and sanity?

As I said earlier, power and ability to move masses in a direction of ones’ choice is perhaps the greatest high that rulers ever get! Whether its a kingdom that you are a part of or a nation that has elected representatives ( whatever form they come in), the fact remains that people at the helm of providing service unto others, are driven by motives- when that individual motives of the people in power is not aligned to the larger motives that the society aspires for, is where the problem begins and and then narratives are created and crafted in quick succession to ensure that the narratives of the leaders override and prevail over all other narratives and thereby as the divergent voices get drowned in the noise of the people who drive the mainstay narrative. Things rapidly alter and how that manifests largely depends on whether that overriding narrative has been used for the larger good even while serving self-interest or whether only the self-interests of the people who drive the narratives are being served!

So how do we survive this? Well it’s deceptively simple, depending on where you are, chances are there could be anywhere from perhaps 20 odd to over 800 channels broadcasting NEWS by the minute and to that, not to forget the online players, news syndicates, news aggregators, its a big party in a sense! Now that you have only 24 hours in a day, and have that need to win your daily small battles ranging from getting the grocery to paying your bills to safeguarding your income to taking care of those weird mood swings of all the members that you deal with- pets included! Sure enough, the last thing that you want to do and should ever do is flip the switch of that idiot box or your latest smart TV and get stuck on some ranting, screaming and yelling for some cause by a few people who have been agitated by all that- the first thing that you need to do is evaluate- How much of what is been ranted off, actually impacts you now or forever- and if that’s not worth your time, just flip the channel and if it does, listen, get a complete picture, research on other conflicting narratives and then take a scientific rational and informed decision in the way you can- bitching, frowning and sulking doesn’t help anyone especially if the context is something that will impact you! Needless to say if you have ever noticed that these sold narratives are often loud, nosier and are almost always accompanied by a dash of fear mongering or an undercurrent of hate which basically strives to create a division within the social strata (because that serves the political maneuvering).

Well, given the limitations of a blog, I really don’t have the space to get into intricate details about how and why you should try to retain your sanity and control over the narratives been served to your every evening prime time! But what all of us can surely do is (depending on what role and impact we can create in the society that we live) we can choose the amount of time that we can spend to understand and decode the narratives and then applying our own rationality and wisdom see if that narrative fits what we observe and even the slightest deviation is an indication of something not being right and that almost always is perhaps the first sign of curated narratives been driven down the society. Not all of us will have the power to change or stop that, but each of us, as individuals have a formidable power to change the outcome by doing what is right rather then getting sold into the narrative! In case you happen to be one for them, who are empowered by sections of the society to voice your views and narratives than, the more you do it with logic and facts, higher are the chances that a powerful counter-narrative will be created and that gives society a decent choices to evaluate and make a informed decisions as it deems fit in the contextual settings that may be prevailing!

The whole aspect of NEWS creating narratives, draws power from the inertia of those who can create equally powerful counter-narratives! It seems strange, but well at times fact is stranger than fiction! It never really matters what is been said, who is saying what they are saying or what is the method of communication adopted- whether we have anchors yelling, howling, screaming on the channels or we have fist fights breaking out in the studios as part of a planned script- the most important part here is- what is that you and I choose to do as we witness this, when do we say enough is enough and when do we begin to apply our rational, scientific and logical mind to what is been told to us to be a problem and we actually are able to see what the problem really is! As more and more empowered individuals begin to do this diligently, slowly but surely change happens and in no time will you see all these unproductive nonsense loose its acquired sheen, because all of that drama only works- when there is an audience for it and importantly a paid audience! The show of the clowns ends when the circus halls are empty!

There is no point, raising fingers, for or against anyone- because eventually all of us come from the same societal bucket and if you think that the waters are stinking, well that‘s a time when the society needs to come together more than ever to do an agreed, principle based change to correct what’s gone horribly wrong! Think about it! You always see political class and every media channel having divergent, opposite and at time useless views about every thing- whether someone asks or not- but when it comes to the question of existence- like an act of war or a pandemic like the one we are facing now- all of them (thankfully!) come together to stand uniformly behind the nation that they come from! This act tells you something, apart form the fact of people being patriotic, it also shows you what the real priorities are and why all else is nothing but a drama played out for the audience of a nation, directed and produced by …well … you people are smart…go check for yourselves!

I leave you here with these thoughts for now, think twice before you decide to consume everything that’s laid in front of you; gluttony too is a sin and in the modern times that we live, its poisonous enough irrespective of the golden cup that it comes in!

Stay wise, stay safe, rationalize and apply your intelligence empowered by your wisdom! Ciao for now, will be back soon with another piece!

Simplifying Success.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Well before you jump to any conclusion about what this article is about- let me right away help you with that bit- read on if you agree, believe and want to understand why “success” is a mirage, the way it is largely talked about- and in reality has more to do about “you” and “what you end up doing with that “you” part of you! Well don’t get confused; success is nothing more or less, but the story about you- me and each one us- success is about how we calibrate our existence and aspirations in the contexts that we are provided with- at times by choice and few times by compulsion! So, join me here and lets understand what really “success” implies and how you can do what you can and must do; importantly also what you mustn’t do!

As individuals we would have defined success over a million times by now! Whether we started that with our first essay at high school, debates during college elections or that typical Monday morning corporate rant about the progress and work of the organization or the team that you lead or are part of – virtually every day of our life- we are introduced to some story of success and the barometer of that success interestingly keeps changing! Well yes- What you measure as success matters, but importantly what also matters is how are you measuring what you measure and are you really measuring what matters? This I believe is perhaps the most important questions that we must pose to ourselves to first understand what is our definition of success and it’s only when that self-definition of success is congruent and aligned to the one that defines success for the form you work at or the business or cause that you live for- that magic will happen and eventually you will end up touching and experience success the easy it is meant to be!

As we look around the world that surrounds us, the person making a quick sale of burgers is as successful as the top-end fashion store down the lane, or the investors in the stock market or that off politician who lives to keep his promises! To begin with everyone’s success is everyone’s individual and contextual truth! So any comparison even between two or more people doing even the same things doesn’t really make sense for the simple reason that no two people are the same ever- even if you were to ask them to draw a simple circle on paper- both of them would do it the way they see a circle or more appropriately the way they are able to express the circle! What matters is how well the same person is able to get the circle more and more right with each time that he keeps at it and that is yet another real measure of success! It’s never about the other person- it all starts with the individual and ends with the individual for the simple fact that no two individuals are the same and each one us brings our personalities into whatever we choose to do- irrespective whether we serve a burger, sell a diamond or make the buck in the marketplace! It is always about how well we can keep doing what we do- over and over again and if that is scientifically reproducible and has finesse- is what success is really all about! You may want to ask me right about now, isn’t success about being above everyone else, lead the race, be that “number uno” and all that crazy stuff? Well, my question to you right back is – Who told you that?

The whole problem, like many other things with humanity is- these “acquired beliefs” were right from the time you show some abilities of cognition, each and every person around you starts to corrupt your amazing brain and the pure grey cells with the whole unwanted dose of “being better than”, “he did that/ she did that”, “you know what” all these kind of narratives and many more like these and what we end up doing is set our brains and ourselves in the trap of always seeking to know where we stand vis-a- vis “someone! Now, this someone could be your co-worker, boss, junior, that vegetable vendor, that beggar on the street, that business tycoon or that sly gambler- well what we end up programming ourselves into are these paranoid comparison seeking machines- who always seem to be anxious to wake up every morning to see how much gain or loss we have ended up doing to ourselves because of “others”! The moment we see we are better off (rather we assume and perceive- which is a different malaise altogether!) than a few or more of the “others” around we are relaxed and feel confident about ourselves for no real reason and yet at other times when we see more tycoons or that odd school friend who suddenly seems to have hit the jackpot of his life- we are left wondering and end up making ourselves feel more anxious and uncomfortable ever thinking what a low life we are (which again in many cases could be far away from what the reality is!). The important fact that perhaps no one told you or possibly you have forgotten to record and etch is that the “other” really don’t give a f**k to what you think, perceive and how you end up feeling about yourself by looking at them, for they continue to do what suits them and that’s the reality of life! Each of us, works to what we can, to the best we can and there’s nothing more and beyond that can be added to this fact and this is the foundation that we all stand upon, whether we like it or not; we build on the foundation that we stand upon- this depends on how we reflect within and how we cherish and aspire to build the structure that we desire! No one ever built a great monument by emulating an existing masterpiece! Know that for now and always! So how do we about knowing what success really is for us as individuals?

Start from the start! Whatever you choose to do- has to originate from within you- Self-Awareness is perhaps the greatest master-key that each of us have to our own lives! It is about not only knowing what all you can achieve given the contexts that you operate within, but rather it’s also about what you must leave out, when and how much is enough- that is basically knowing your trim level! Another important aspect to work towards your success is stop looking for role models- yes I heard it- you are probably thinking I am out of my mind – but this is a fact and the quickly you learn this the better for you and your aspirational part for your ever elusive success! There are a hundred reasons why people become successful and trust me when they do- not one of them want to tell you the whole truth and their real contextual settings around what made it possible- because that is where the secret lies- that bit is perhaps the most ordinary and non-glamorous stuff and it has a perhaps the biggest potential to rob away all that unwanted attention that people end up getting because”few” perceive and create the “noise” about them being “a success story”! People who cherish success from the confines of the social compulsions- and entrapped in the conformity bias- will always do whatever it takes to camouflage the ordinary as some extraordinary bullshit and weave fiction within the threads of reality to create a mirage which doesn’t make sense but people are made to believe because that billion dollar worth mansion makes everyone believe what they see and this is the space which you really don’t even want to get into unless you too want to end up complicating your success story for the times ahead! Let me explain this bit!

Consider this, you come across this person who has become a burger legend- suddenly you have his details all across the tabloids, the local TV channels, radio stations, the social media everyone is going ga-ga- about this sensation who seems to be in his mid twenties and then you have that amazing PR and talk show and that paid- talk show- going all across the nation- where this person speaks how he got inspired by the humble burger! (I mean really?) and then goes on to tell how he walked down the pavement saw a kid who couldn’t have a burger because it was expensive and that became his mission in life! (I mean..whatever!) Further then it cuts to the present- so I worked hard and here I am! Well, how does this shit sound? Inspiration right- now let me tell you what would really have happened! He would have used his rational brain to sense a business opportunity to sell burgers at a specific price point and went to meet a few investors, or a bank ot to his rich uncles (who are obviously hidden from the star gaze) borrowed or begged that money and started a store and which was going to be profitable (read success- for this person) and that’s about it! So now this narrative got a bit low key, boring and non- engaging right? Well, yes, it is and this is the fact of life! Success stories are always more than what meets the eye and unless you train your rational mind to dig and see what is beyond the obvious, all that you will end up doing is end up comparing yourself with fairy tale characters and end up living and being successful in a non-existent world! Don’t fall prey to the trap of believing what is said, shown and sold because “AB” or “XYZ” said or showed or awarded- use your grey matter and rationalize what you see and limit yourself to the stories and the contexts that matter and are relevant to you within what you want to achieve and as you want to define your “success” everything else is pure crap of nothing more than entertainment value! Remember, each one us goes to the heaven we construct- no one else’s heaven or angels are coming to your funeral!

Humanity has reached a pivotal point, wherein a globally connected society has started to turn onto itself to facilitate greed, narratives and ideologies that serve a few and end up harming many! The whole smokescreen that begins with the “very need to define success” is a big illusion! Think about it rationally, if as humans we are different, emotionally intellectually and even as we understand, perceive and communicate- irrespective of all other things around- why and how can “success” be calibrated to a few and pre-decided formats? The answer to this question lies in the annals of societal greed and mass manipulation through coerced narratives to drive societies in a direction that a few want and these “few” unfortunately are the very role models and those aspirational characters that many of us would eventually succumb too, unless we fail to see what really is beneath and around this big smokescreen!

The “few” are and will always remain anxious about everyone else around because of two primary tings; firstly the largely ordinary part of their “extraordinary” success story- the worry of that being exposed and secondly there being a complete lack of depth to do anything worthwhile in the real essence of it! You see, when innovators have faith in the solution that has been devised they collaborate and share and move ahead together with a team and partners so that the benefits reach far and wide and can be adapted to suit and serve the varying contexts around the world- case in point renewable energy sector! A brilliant example wherein harnessing the bounties of nature has crossed boundaries and that has enabled empowerment like nothing else! Sure enough not all regions have been able to benefit to the same extent- but that largely has had to do with the ability and competence to execute a brilliant solution more than anything else! Remember, “real success” never remains within the confines of the “few”, it seeks a pathway and reaches the multitudes, who are then able to empower themselves by adapting the richness of the solution in the contextual settings that suits the given society! So what’s the takeaway? Simple…

“You” are the foundation of your success and stop developing/relying on what you see, are told and what you perceive- everything may or can be a mirage! Your heaven is what you see at your funeral and no two people ever go to the same heaven even though their funerals may be alike! Your “truth” is your reality and this contextual setting is the essence to decide how high, how far and how fast will you be able to surge ahead and when you will stall with the idea that you have! Remember, the idea is never extraordinary, it is the method of application and execution of an idea that makes an ordinary one into an extraordinary success story! It really doesn’t matter what your definition of success really is, it could be that 5$ a day or that 5000$ an hour bit, what matters is how much of it comes from within you and how much of it do you really own and control; because even the greatest idea and thought will be undone once that control and intrinsic value which comes from within is lost! Stop the unwanted and unwarranted comparisons, be aligned to who you are, what you aspire to be and work to the best of what you can be given the contexts that you are set up within and against and once you have this core alignment synced in- you will touch your aspirations and taste the success as you should- irrespective of what others say or as they perceive what you do!

I will leave you here, grab your drink, reflect within and seek who you are to begin with to seek what your aspirations are and from there can begin the story of your success in an original way!

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

Practise the Pause.

~ PA ~ 7 Comments

We are all but prisoners of our own doings and undoings! The times that we live in, even after the abrupt brakes that the global pandemic has applied to our routines, a majority of us still want to rush right back to the “earlier times” and in all that hurry, the world seems to be cutting corners with everything that’s related to bring about that erstwhile sense of normalcy! Whether it’s about the new vaccines that are been developed, the medicines been given or the new so called adapted way of the working that corporates are hinging upon- these and many more such developments all around us display the one common thread- The Inertia to Practise the Pause, which will end up setting us up for even more complications tomorrow for uncomplicated scenarios of today! Join me here as we try to make sense about the value of this simple approach and why it matters now more than ever before!

As humans, we are slaves of curiosity! This has been the holy grail for all the development and all the accidents that humanity has ever witnessed! As individuals and societies we have been hard-wired to observe, reflect and simplify everything around us so that it creates an ease of existence for us- whether it’s automation, development across various sciences that make our suffering lesser and create more value to our lives or whether it’s about the plethora of gadgets and technologies that impact us every second-all of these, in fact most of these are a reflection of human genius and restlessness with regards to making life easier, though not simpler anymore! and this is that fleeting moment where the “pause” lives which often gets trampled upon and ignored on an ongoing basis- the result- is the world that we have around us!

Over the last 200 odd years the rush of humanity to create value and ease of life driven societies, has brought in some amazing breakthroughs which few times have put us in direct conflict either with nature or amongst ourselves as societies and nations! This further deepens the crisis as this international competition only ends up creating more imbalances and thereby does away with any possibility of practising the pause – to have an organised and planned approach to life! The result; we end up having nations racing against each other on all the wrong parameters! Do you ever recall being in your school and being rewarded for walking into the classroom with the longest knife? No, I hope so, then why do you think nations pat themselves for every nuke that they ever built? Well nations are eventually nothing but an assembly of people who at some point in time were school children, isn’t it? So what’s gone wrong, why have our priorities changed so drastically, that we simply ignore and are ready to seek ease of life at any costs- even if that cost, risks annihilation? What is it? Well the reason is the missing “pause” not convinced? Well fine, let me explain!

What has changed within the framework of global societies and communities in the last 50 odd years has been the pace at which people want to reach their definition of opulence and success! We live in times when, getting two meals a day is a sign of opulence in some remote corner of the world and in the same moment at yet another place, it could be the ability to net in a wonderful diamond for a few millions dollars! So you see, as divergence within human societies, and nations widens the definition and story about being successful and well off changes and this is one of the core reasons why the holy “pause” is trampled upon and ignored by the millionaire and also by the seeker of the meal! Unlike medieval societies there simply isn’t enough cohesion of gratitude to care and share left anymore, for another belief (which may or may not be entirely true) tells humanity that resources are limited and not indefinite hence those who have access will get an access to them and those who have that access alone will race ahead! This aspect too, plays that vital role- another reason- as to why we ignore the “pause” and why we can’t stop this ever widening societal divide across nations and even within nations!

This ever widening and ever growing divergence among societies has ended up creating individuals who are continually pushed to believe that “pause” and “time to reflect” are only meant for the philosophers or saints who are disconnected and disengaged with the world and its realities and trust me nothing could be more dumb than this! In fact, it’s often the people who practise the pause and who invest their time for reflective thinking are the ones’ who come up with those clutter breaking simple yet powerful interventions for societies – through policies, governance or business or just be by being who they are- wise and empowering individuals! So what is it like “practising the pause” and how does it really create a difference?

The pause is all about initiating a delay to the action that you have agreed to take and this delay is all about running through all the ramifications of the actions that you have taken, are taking and will be taking until that moment when you are into the pause! Sounds cryptic and challenging, well yes its is a bit challenging but once you develop a way to naturalise it- it will become your identity and align itself to the way you begin to think naturally in everything that you do! Whether it’s the next time you want to honk your car or want to shoot that missile to an enemy target! The pause helps you get clarity and absolute reassurance that what you have been deciding to do, what actions you have taken and what you propose to take are the best ones that “You” can apply given the contextual settings that you are operating within! remember this, the pause is perhaps the most powerful yet the most underrated tool that one has which can provide some amazing clarity and sense when it comes to dealing with ambiguous and conflicting scenarios and very often you will find, people who are in those kind of high pressure chairs often deploy the delay once they have practised the pause and these moments often become the turning points in world history! Do read up some war stories from WWII and you will possibly know what I am referring to!

You will often find people who practice the pause are the ones’ who can influence- whether they influence five or five million is another story- but that is the relevant part- the ability to influence outcomes which will be lapped up by society and nations in some cases as the elixir of tomorrow and as a promise from the leader! The pause becomes very important once individuals begin to ascend in their ability to influence people! The higher one rises, the greater the need to practise the pause and more often is it required! As people rise higher, complexities and their frequencies increase and thereby it becomes more like an ATC dashboard wherein alternative scenarios are put on pause and released in a choreographed manner to ensure that there are no disasters made and everything that is in the moment is directed safely to the pathway that it must be!

The pause helps uncomplicate situations and scenarios by deploying the allowable delays so that outcomes can be weighed and the one with the least negative impact or the maximum leverage can be voted in for! There are situations when decisions of the pause too, need to be wrapped in in a few seconds- like if you are a fighter pilot in a dog fight with an enemy plane and than there are those scenarios wherein the pause can be extended for months or years before a wider understanding and consensus is developed to avoid any backlash and unwanted unrest- yes you guessed it right- this is the realm of the political and bureaucratic class! So, in a way even the pause works only when it is timed right and deployed right- the pause and the delay, but what is more important what comes after the pause- If the pause has been used for direct thinking in the manner which serves the greater good, the results post the pause will be reflective of the same and if the pause has been just a freeze fright and incapacitation to take a decision or even think straight that will also end up showing up through some great disasters and accidents wherein the major contribution would be the incompetence of the human mind to act eitehrways more than anything else! It is the pause which has saved the day for many pilots to land safely when the magnificent planes have failed partly or completely and it is the same pause when not utilised effectively that has caused catastrophes or air disasters like never before! The pause too, hence is a ambivalent weapon- use it to your advantage for ensuring your well being and of those that anchor upon you or you can be as reckless as you wish to be, stifle away the pause and and unleash chaos for yourself and those around you!

Like everything else, the pause is only as good as the individual deploying it and that richness of the individual is eventually the construct of the society that the person comes from! What we feed into the society around us comes back to us eventually in one way or the other! When society pauses to reflect, introspect and deploy action, it creates a whole generation of people who are anchored to core elements, values and rest assured are naturally inclined to act with deliberation and caution to impact in a positive manner through the pause! On other occasions, when societies have not got that kind of space to operate, the results can be mixed or at some other times even more damaging and detrimental!

I will leave you here, or should I say, “I will take a pause now”, grab your coffee and allow your pause to work wonders for you and those who rely on you! Who knows the next pause that you embrace may be the hug of life that alters and changes the direction for your future in a way that inspires many!

Ciao for now and I will be back soon with another article! Until than stay safe, wise and yes, pause and deploy!

Success through disruption.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Scholars and historians may not always agree on all the things that have been ever said or recorded, but the one thing that all of them will always agree upon is the singularity of the fact that- All great success and progress of humanity has been through or amidst disruption and more importantly, the greater the disruption that humanity has been hit by, even more greater has been the resurgence and the pursuit for success to ensure that humanity lives to its name of being the most adaptable and intelligent of all species on the planet! Ironically enough- it is often the dumbness and stupidity of the same species that lands humanity in tight corners to begin with! Join me here as we explore how and why success through disruption seems to be so refreshing and exciting even though it may at times charge a premium as as as far as the price and cost at which such a success eventually manifests!

I you see through the last 300 years of world history, it has been sprinkled with long periods of calm with ensuing periods of unrest, war and chaos in between- Importantly at any given time, there always has been one region or area of the world which has been in a flux of unrest (for whatever reason) and strangely enough this small pocket of unrest always has gone to dictate what the whole world should focus upon and thereby all efforts of humanity would be automatically aligned to resolve that space or pocket of oddity and with that would come in the rush to seek success by any means or ways just to get that pocket of the planet into the – normal way as seen and perceived by the majority! Needless to say, as soon as the leaders of the world would resolve one pocket of unrest or uncertainty there would be another few developing and this never ending cycle goes on like a perpetual machine along with it- creating and destroying lives, livelihoods and economies- all of this ever happened with a singular plan to have perpetual success for a select few at all times even as the rest are left ever struggling through their chaos and turbulence to seek his ever elusive success of calm and peace which seems ever away from their view point- at times for reasons of their own making and yet at other times because of situations are simply beyond their control and are in fact designs of someone else!

Through this fog of chaos, if you carefully observe, success has embraced those societies and nations which have held their ground for the core values that they stand for and have not relented even an inch in what they ever believed and what they thought was the greater good for their people! What works for societies sure does work for individuals and that is why when individuals (who are the basic element of the society) bring in resilience and that desire to be successful, magic happens and times of disruption provide the perfect contrasting backdrop which ensures that even ordinary success (during other times or times of peace) ends up becoming stellar performance worthy of awards and accolades! This very element of being able to get attention and getting noticed is what makes success earned through disruption and that’s why disruption is a blessing- as long as you are anchored to what you seek! So how is success through disruption different than other times? Read on!

In the normal course of times, when everything is settled and things are all fair weather, many people want to try many things and thereby- irrespective of the individual cases of merit- that never ending competition to even seek attention- fails many efforts and at times even the best of the best! You see, attention seeking techniques can be manipulated without checking or validating the real merit that a particular story warrants- don’t believe- watch any news channel you will know what I mean! Next, this clutter of attention seeking behavior then further dampens the genuine interest that actually propagates and drives success!This vital step ends up creating false starts- where wrong projects or stories get highlighted and races ahead only to succumb on account of their own intrinsic failure of having no depth or merit! When the seas are calm you have many ships out there heading for the harbours and it is these crowded harbours that create bursts of attempts for success- in any which way- that goes to undermine individual talent, intellect and impact that any of those ideas can ever have in the real sense on the society or a nation!

On the other hand, when the weather is adverse, you have very few mariners out there and rest assured they are the best of the best, for they have learnt the art and science to tame the storms, at times through prudence and persistence and at other times, through costly lessons of having borne the brunt and re-build themselves all over again to take upon the storms and tame them all over again! It is these pioneers who believe in what their thoughts are , ideas are even in face of seemingly adverse contextual settings, that hold the key to create impact on societies and nations in big way- for the simple reason that- they are ready to venture out when there is not much of crowd! Hence the very few who do venture out get all the attention and support (if needed) to deal with the challenge at hand and get a ready audience who is eager to hear what their ideas about the new definition of success is!Not to be surprised then, it is these very ideas and these very ideators who then wear the hat of the pioneer to direct societies and nations in a direction that suits and defines their success!

Ironically enough, since there is much less competition even among pioneers during times of distress, that even the most average idea and thought ends up being a heroic one and this extent of paucity of alternatives either builds a strong and intelligent society or creates an even deeper sink hole purely depending on the merit of the idea and the definition of success that it brings along with it!

So in a way, if you see, times of disruption are perhaps the best times that one can eagerly await for when it comes to put forth a clutter breaking idea or thought and weaving a new narrative for success- something that makes the oder and earlier narratives obsolete and makes the new one aspirational, desirable and likeable! So what are the kind of ideas and who are these ideators and how do they possibly manage it? Well here you go!

To begin with, more often than not these ideators are someone like you and I,the normal people that you come across through the routine of your life! These are really those ordinary people who have an extraordinary ability to see something of value even as majority of us tend to frown and keep complaining about- how the normal has changed! These people have the intrinsic ability to see the new normal and embrace it long before we understand it and even as majority of us are struggling to adapt! Next and more importantly, these people are great readers of their contextual settings and know the gaps very well and carve out ideas that fit those gaps- whether these are product related or service oriented in such an amazing way that- it all looks simply natural and something that society was possibly ever waiting for! I am sure, if you look around you will find a number of such ideation cases which have been very recent but seemed so very natural the moment they got activated! Finally, since there is a genuine dearth of courageous innovators who have the ability to mix, simple, powerful solutions and communicate them through their charisma- success- real success is far infrequent than one would have thought! Even among the pioneers who come in shining armour during desperate times, only a few survive the turn of a decade and hardly any a generation later- unless and until their ideas have been foundational and potent enough to withstand the onslaught of time and ever evolving human intelligence!

Well, if I have to kind of wrap the things up for this article, here is the crux, embrace disruption and be thankful for it, for you may never know which part of your easy life that you live was a consequence of an earlier period of rapid stress and disruption- which was heeded to by some amazing pioneers and their ideas luckily for you and me, tuck long enough to make our lives that notch easier and bearable to live! Disrupted times are times when there are very few people on the stage of the world and that ensures that each one of them gets their chance to fame and glory-who succeeds and who doesn’t largely depends on how great, simple and powerful the thought is, how well that resonates with the contextual settings of the time and how effectively the whole package is communicated to the society to make it desirable, likeable and successful!

I will leave you here with these thoughts; hopefully we are yet somewhere still in the flux of our current times; perhaps few moments over your favourite drink and who knows! magic happens and you may be the the one who comes up with the next simple, powerful and compelling idea that writes in a new narrative for the society to embrace!

Ciao for now, I will be back soon with another article! Until then stay wise, stay safe and embrace your contextual disruption!

The only thing that matters…

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Well, as you get ready for your weekend during these times, what better way can there be, to urge you to spend you weekend in knowing and discovering that, there are really only a very few things that will matter or that ever matter and it’s always wise and sane to know them and stay anchored along them! Join me here to know what this is all about and why these are really the only things that matter!

Our lives are always filled up completely to the the brim! Irrespective whether that filled cup makes sense to us or not, that’s what we get to handle each day of our lives, that filled cup is at times you work, at times its your family and some other times its your network/ friends/colleagues or all those areas that you tend to stay invested! Well there can be nothing right or wrong about that, each one of us is free to choose what matters and how much priority one gives to which area of ones’ life! The real trick though, is being able to understand and appreciate the depth and quality of the things that you consider to be a priority for yourself and re-check if thats really what you want the cup of your life to be filled up with completely all the time!

Well you may be working for yourself or for someone else, many a times, this space contributes the major part as far as keeping our cup filled up goes, the question here, is what are you really doing? Are you really sure that you want, your work area to dominate and take up so much of volume in the cup that you hold? Is it really worth it? Look around you what are you coming across (not necessarily now, things have been the same way for a long time, only now they are becoming more and more evident!), pay cuts, job losses, realignments, new loyalties, shut downs, all this even as you had your cup filled up and put in your efforts at an individual level and did what was right throughout- no questions asked, yet when the time arrives, you are the first one to face the shock? Why do you think this develops? If this is an area that is so important for your cup? How can it become redundant so sharply and quickly? What have you missed? Hold on your thoughts here and read on as you will be able to decipher the same we we move ahead!

Let’s explore the other aspect which goes on to complete your cup, your network, in few cases this part often takes up more space than the work part, yet few other times, there is a heady cocktail between this space and the work space- at times because of the nature of the work, some other times as an occupational hazard- which if not managed can evaporate both the elements of the work and network form your cup rapidly even before you realise! But wait, how does this network really help you, I mean if say there’s no work, does this come to your rescue- as in not helping you get back the work that has gone missing- but as in being there for you! How many of your networks can stand by you like a mountain- not helping you with the money or the next break- but by just being there? Well if you haven’t got any of these type of mountainous network elements standing by you, then sadly enough, you have just added additional baggage to your cup which occupies space- adds to your wright and actually does nothing to enhance the favour of your cup! So that’s so much about your network element within the cup and yes, you can sure enough weigh and read through other elements like friends and acquaintances through the same lens,the people who say they are there and then disappear as if they never existed! Now let’s move to the final elements of your cup!

The family area which takes up again the decent volume of your cup! Well, now depending on the originality of the contents and how they play out with regards to the flavors and intensity, either you will get a cup with an additional dose of vanilla or have a cocktail of tastes- leaving your mind tipsy and brains fried all the time! Well, since it’s about the part of the family, you too are equally responsible to what you end up getting in the context of tastes that come back to you! If you have been able to provide the right conditions, temperature and ambiance, the flavors will always resonate that and if you haven’t; well might as well prepare for what you have done- whether intentionally or unintentionally! Needless to say this element overrides all other elements in your cup and has the potential to unleash havoc or create great balance depending on its own intrinsic character! But did you notice, even as your cup is so filled up and has all elements that you ever can ask for or think about- you know what’s missing here? Its You!

You may argue, that all other elements in the cup are but an extension of who you are, certainly they are, but they are your extensions- you- perceived by the others and not the real you! This is where people struggle the most and tend to get waylaid easily as they rush through their busy lives holding to their cup of life- not realizing that what they hold and are managing is what the world exactly wants them to be- not necessarily who they really are or want to be! This fundamentally folly is what makes many of the lives around us a struggle- simply because we are living lives- not of what we should be because of who we really are but rather because of who we are perceived to be, by others whom we have ended up collecting around us either by intention or by accident! So is there any way around this or further to this, can anything be done and if yes, whats it?

The only way to go around this and the only wise way, is to ensure that “you” end up filling as much as volume you can in the cup that you hold and let this volume be filled up with “who you really are” and no matter what comes your way- ensure that you don’t loose that element- because once you have anchored yourself to who you are- You will then automatically gravitate and end up attracting other elements of family and network circles based on who you really are and not end up becoming “who others want you to be” (which is possible only when you end up adding others to your cup before you could add yourself)!

You see, once you have developed a refined sense of understanding who you are, what ticks you and what ticks you off, you will be in a better position to connect to spaces, people, things and pursuits in line with what is helping and growing you- intrinsically rather than monetarily. Monetary growth no doubt, is important, but when done and pursued in divergence of all your founding elements of your life- family, network, work and yourself often will end up draining you in the long run and over time instead of making you stronger will end up making you weak and susceptible to the ravages of time and other powerful competition that you face which possibly are growing on virtue of their own internal core alignment!

What really matters is how well you have been able to craft the idea of who you are and how well do you want to execute that idea into the world with allies who are around you as network circles and families because of who you are! Once you have achieved this zen like space, trust me nothing at all will bother you- neither the ups and downs of your business neither the layoffs or the firing of the jobs that you are engaged with, because once you have connected within and know you worth well enough- these out worldly aberrations will not be ever strong enough to slow you down or knock you over!The only thing that matters is, how well you are connected with yourself and that one singular reality is what will help and empower the right things, people and contexts gravitate towards you!

I will leave you here, urging you to grab that cup and reflect on one simple point- How well are you connected within and how much of “you” is present in the cup of life that you hold so dearly close to you at all times!

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

Intellectual Fatigue.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

The human brain is as amazing as anything there is in the universe! the only organ in the entire body, that can play the fool with you and offer you respite and nightmares in equal measure as you deserve them!This article is about trying to learn more about the human mind, the manifestation of intellectual fatigue and its’ about possibly learning to stop – when we must- because going about our daily lives with a tired and fatigued brain can cause more harm than you can ever imagine! This is about understanding how we end up possibly tiring our self (much of the time without a reason) and if there’s anything that we can do about- the tired brain and the manifesting intellectual fatigue!

We live in an era, where information is constantly evolving by the second, things change, contexts keep shifting and the mind is exposed to one new truth after the other, without any real time to explore the underlying causation and we are ever driven into a mode to course correct our approach to life, as we learn new things about the situations around us and this loop is driven more tighter by the intrinsic urge of “wanting to get control over our now” and this is the space where all complexities begin to get created and this is where simple things end up being complicated and we begin to add unwanted layers to existing problems- which at many times are nothing more but a passing phase!

The last two decades, have seen a literal explosion when it comes to access to information, knowledge and resources. As humans, we always have been aware of and as societies we have always strived to gain the upper hand when it comes to dominance of knowledge. Go by the number of patents files, the copyrights, the IPR’s all will tell you the same story- the urge and desire to dominate and control knowledge empowered bu human ingenuity which is propelled only by a fit mind- which is not tired and never defeated! This is where we arrive at a fundamental paradox, the abundance of information and knowledge causes intellectual fatigue at the one end while the same resources end up creating innovators and ingenious scientists among us- so what’s really happening? How can the same contextual set of information create two different results- one productive and progressive, while the other being withdrawn and regressive? The answer to this lies in the simple trick of keeping your mind lighter and in- the- moment (NOW) at all times! Let me explain!

When our mind is glued to the onslaught of information with no sense of direction/ purpose, the endless onslaught does noting more than tiring up our minds. At the same time if we are training our mind to seek a specific bit of information/knowledge for a limited period of time and for a particular objective that has been thought about- the same mind operates like a de-cluttering tool and blinds out everything else and gets going to the specific area of what you seek! So like a fine blowtorch the mind is sharp, intense and focused on a small area, unlike being diffused and blunt over a wide area- not knowing what it is supposed to do! This basic difference on how we use our mind either leaves it eternally fatigued or keeps it razor sharp and alert at all times- waiting to be unleashed for the next assignment! So now you may want to know, how to avoid this fatigue in the first place? Do we necessarily have to be always be alert and aiming for some invention? Well no, you don’t have to slog that hard to ensure your mind is healthy and not fatigued! You don’t need to be racing for innovation marathons either, what you must do is- keep things simple and be in the now!

The constant pressure to like/comment or wave at something over the social media space, that urge to contribute to opinions and pass judgement over the seemingly innocent cups of tea- creating half baked views about people and things (who really don’t care who you are and your views anyways don’t make a damn difference), instances like these and many more such episodes end up feeding our minds with an uninterrupted supply of intellectual garbage- and once your input is compromised- needless to say the output will be of a similar order and in the process ends up damaging the equipment- your brain! Remember that old saying- Watch your thoughts, they become your words- and watch your words for they will become your actions and so on and so forth- basically what you think and what you focus on thinking is what you will end up becoming and if your thinking is cluttered and tiring- you will never have an ounce of enthusiasm left to even pick the next grocery bag- forget about leading yourself or teams or organisations! Cluttered minds- are often the most tired ones’ not because they have been constantly at work- rather they have been grossly abused and put to action and think over- almost everything and anything that is around except what is relevant! This is the real reason why our minds get tired or fatigued- It’s not by doing what we want to- but more often it is by doing what we don’t want to , need to or are forced to do- the way we don’t want to!

Tackling Intellectual fatigue can be done by a simple process of alignment! Once you learn to align your thoughts and your approach to the contextual settings around you, with a definite purpose and you have clarity in how you go about your life- automatically the needless clutter will vaporize and you feel lighter and will surprisingly find that your mind too feels energetic! As you create a routine to stay focused to the purpose driven approach that you have and as all your thoughts and actions align to this approach- you will see – you won’t have time for gossip, that social media presence (which never really produces any worthwhile results) and hence with lesser non-productive stuff to deal with, your mind has enough energy left at all times to rise to the occasion and perform at things that really do matter and contribute to the alignment that you have chosen! This approach however must not be mistaken akin to someone to get serious with life- no way- this is about – creating an approach wherein you are aware and invested in your present time- so that you know how much of what to soak in and what to let go and what time- this ensures you have a lighter mental baggage to carry along at all times and as you travel light- you can adjust and harness the power of your minds as the situation at the hour demands form you!

At the workplace intellectual fatigue can manifest from areas and dimensions beyond one’s control, it could be as simple as doing what you don’t like- too easy or too hard or it could be the over riding manifestations of other people dynamics that play out- which seem to continually overplay and dominate the focus or approach that one plans to take- all these or any of these overbearing circumstances can make one feel mentally tired and eventually this reflects through work- lack of focus, mistakes, arguments, etc etc and this often results into the individual being ejected form the system! The way and perhaps the only way to arrest Intellectual fatigue from cropping up at the workplace is – having the right minds at the right places- (not right people). You see, we live in a hyper dynamic work arena and even if we were to have the right people but with the wrong minds- that is more than enough to trigger the fatigue syndrome and if we are speaking about close knit teams than this intellectual fatigue is as infectious as it can be! Sure enough you will be able to replace the old people with new minds across the team levels but you will still not know what hit you- because you will think you always had the right people- the only problem being you had the right people for sure but not the right minds at the right places!

The human mind, is amazing and in a way has a mind of it’s own! The fact remains that a tired and fatigued mind- doesn’t help anyone- nor the owner, neither the people around, a vibrant and energetic mind is always ready to pull off the incredible even in adverse times and provide respite to one and all for a greater good! This is the fundamental truth and the reason why we need to take more efforts to ensure we don’t end up tiring our precious mind for mindless things and the digital garbage that lies strewn across the digital landscape! Use your mind like it should be! If it’s a precious gift that you have, use it like one, if that’s the most potent weapon that you have, use it like one, if that’s the hope you have for humanity and the society you live in- use it to further that cause! Remember the mind is never fatigued when it is used with purpose and direction, it thrives & improves with challenges/ uncertainties and risks; it begins to experience fatigue when the surroundings are unbecoming and too junked for it to exist and operate!

I will leave you with my thoughts here; do think, if you experienced intellectual fatigue and what was it like- and why was it! I am sure whatever that reason would have been, your mind would have helped you to steer away from that clutter to ensure you keep progressing on a path of self- empowerment through an alert and vibrant mind!

Ciao for now, I will be back soon with another article, time for a coffee break! The mind needs one!

Harness your “superpower”!

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

Well, this is about sharing with you, what we perhaps all have, tend to overlook or possibly try to not use it the way we should be using it! Yes, this is about discussing the “superpower” that each one of us has within us; at times we are aware, yet other times, we are unaware and this singular difference between being aware or not, puts us on the pathway to easy success or success through struggle and detours! So join me here, as we try to understand the concept of “superpower” as I see it. Who knows, it may just end up being that aspect, which you always waited for; which may make your life that bit easy!

The most common mistake that people do with the thought of having or not having “superpower” is that it has to be massive, large scale or something that can alter and impact lives around the world- well the fact is. that it doesn’t have to be this way all the time! You see at times, your superpower can be only as much as to ensure that you don’t get killed! Surviving- don’t trust me, ask a war veteran- they will tell you why being able to survive is more than a superpower in the theaters of war! Like everything else, your “superpower” has to be set in the right contextual frame of your life, for you to recognize it to begin with and next use it!

I don’t want to get into a trap of trying to define what “superpower” means, you are good enough by yourself to factor and measure that bit (as it has to be seen the reality of where you are in terms of the circumstances that impact you!). What I can certainly tell you is that, the easiest way to discover the “superpower” that lies within you, is by knowing at the attributes/traits that create the differentiation between you and everyone else!– As we grow up, live our lives around, friends, family, colleagues all of us hand over generous badges or titles to us based on what they perceive us to be, someone may calls us, “smart”, someone may address us as a “hunk” yet another may address us as a “genius” or a “blessed soul”, there could be an endless list of these kind of quoted addresses, but hidden within these, are the first clues of what your superpower may be! The superpower- that we hold within us- has a funny way to it; whether we realize it or not, it keeps manifesting itself through our behaviour, especially at times when we are cornered or in a tight spot! Let me explain!

Have you ever observed people, the successful ones’- who make everything seem like a breeze, maybe you have seen that ace sales manager, who hits the numbers every quarter without fail, you would have seen that bank teller, who has that great eye for detail and speed to move fingers and crunch number insanely! Perhaps you met that ace recruiter, who read you like a book and ended up giving you that career break which made your professional life accelerate ahead! If you have ever met any of these aces, you will notice one thing, they bring their superpower to work and their superpower may never have anything to do with what their work is! You see that, awesome sales person would have been gifted with a personality which has been applied to the work, which came as a blessing! A naturally aggressive nature was met by an equally tough challenge to crack deals! Needles to say as the superpower of aggression got direction and purpose and was supported and developed- it only helped to propel the individual’s career and professional achievements! Likewise the bank teller, would have harnessed the “superpower of attention”, when it was rewarded by a profession, that too excelled and provided an opportunity for the individual to apply this superpower at work! That odd recruiter, would have used the superpower to read people, that intrinsic superpower ability to connect, counsel and help people which got amplified as the opportunity of working as a recruiter became a reality! I can go on giving more and more examples like these,across fields, vocations and subjects, however, the singular common factor that remains and confirms across all the people that I have studied and come across is –“The ability to know ones’ superpower and put it to use in the right contextual frame of time and space”

The question, now is, how does one know what their superpower is, well that’s really deceptively simple! I say, deceptively simple, because, unlike attributes/qualities your superpowers will qualify as superpowers only and only if they are able to serve other through you and not serve you by tapping into others! Consider this, you have this individual who has a great memory, can play songs over the guitar one after the other, without missing note or jumping the string, now how can this person use this ability to uplift themselves? People will often make a mistake by suggesting that playing the guitar is the superpower, well nope, sorry to disappoint you, you may further argue it is about playing the guitar well, well nope- when you play a guitar or any musical instrument you do it to play well, I mean no one plays a guitar to wreck the strings or torture the audience, so what is it?, you may ask, well, in this case, it’s the “Intrinsic qualities that an individual has within, which help that person to play the guitar well- which are his true superpower!“

We are a planet with over 7 billion people and each one of us can pretty much do what the other person does, like say, driving, walking, running, jogging, reading, writing, playing some game, working at some place, doing those jobs with job titles comparable and interchangeable the world over, similar businesses, similar products,services, that’s what is all around us and that’s what living on the planet is all about! Magic happens when we are able to bring from within us, our superpowers and apply them to whatever we choose to do! Perhaps you want to jog or run- you apply your superpowers- you end up becoming an athlete, you apply your superpower of patience and calm to your knowledge of medicine- you become that “ace” surgeon, you add that superpower to number crunching to your vocation- you are poised to rule the financial world! So you see, its never about doing the job well, it is always about getting into a job or a vocation that you can do well by applying the superpowers that you may have within!

The good thing about these superpowers is the fact that, they never go away, they are with us always, waiting to be tapped and used when the time is ripe, hence you find people flourishing and hitting their professional peaks at different times of their lives; by the time a CEO of a private firm is retiring perhaps its the dawn of youth for someone aiming for the high chair of the Prime Minister or President of a nation! Superpowers are essentially the traits and attributes that we have, these can be tangible and non-tangible- see few traits are easy to observe, record and reproduce- say like being good at numbers, ability to memorize, ability to manage and excel at complex science or technological developments, there are yet areas like music, art, creative arenas where the superpowers are not necessarily even and occur as flashes of vivid bursts of creative excellence, when there is consistency developed in these areas you have the icons of the respective field of arts/creative spaces walking amidst you!

As a coach, one of the major roles that we play is to help people realise their own potential and their superpowers, we don’t plant anything, we hold a mirror which allows the individual to reflect and see for themselves with clarity- what they are, who they are, what do they hold within and who they can become by doing what! Once this basic foundation has been established then it is just a matter of time, that people are able to start making progress and move in the direction which remains resonant with their core strengths and traits! You may want to argue, if that’s the case, why aren’t everyone equally successful? The answer to this as I said earlier is simple, if people continue to walk along the way they are meant to and practice and play to their intrinsic strengths and attributes in the right and nurturing contextual settings- we have what is called as an “event of congruence” wherein abilities, potential and opportunities all come together to allow an trait to be applied and developed“, when all these variables are at the same place and time and in-sync it unleashes the complete potential and provides an opportunity to excel way above average and this is the place where masters and leaders are created! If you change one-only one variable around this space of congruence and create a confrontational or non-conducive environment around. even the most gifted talent/person around you will falter and you will see an immediate dip and drag in the output and although people will survive and endure their ability to reach the zenith will get severely impaired and stand limited by the extent of the circumstantial disadvantage created by the time and space around!

The “Superpower” locked within each of us is a statement of who we are and what we can do and wish to do, as long as it serves the greater good of people around you, it remains your “superpower” , the day you try to self-serve yourself with it, rest assured you will feel begin to feel your shine fade away within you! The best part of your “superpower” is– It is your’s and it doesn’t come or go, if you change jobs, move places or eat more or less! It is intrinsic, it’s a statement of who you are and what you bring to the table- the way you do! So you may have millions of similar people doing what you do, but your superpower ensures; you can do it like the way you do it and no one else can replicate that, just as you can’t replicate them! Humanity has ever been as creative it has been and also as destructive as it has been as people harness their superpowers the right and wrong way- the balance of societies and civilizations changes and it all start from an individual and their intrinsic “superpower”!

I will leave your here, giving you time to reflect and assess what are your “superpowers” and let you imagine, how you want to put that to use to serve the greater good of the society around you! Always remember, your “superpowers” are often who you are and what you eventually become!”

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

Connected gadgets and disconnected people.

~ PA ~ 2 Comments

As the world starts to pull up itself from the shadows of an ongoing pandemic and tries to grapple with the severe economic melt down which has come along with it (no the virus didn’t cause the economic meltdown; how we dealt with it, caused it!). As humanity we are flirting dangerously with a strange alteration in human behavior for the first time in over hundred years- this new changed behaviour- of being connected with the world through gadgets and not people! This article tries to explore the aspects evolving around it and what perhaps may eventually manifest from this new trait! So let’s explore and get our grey matter working!

Even before the pandemic broke loose, we have been living in an era where we have had technology uncomfortably in-your-face kind of scenarios and with the latest slew of people tracking applications required- few optional and few mandatory, our connection with the digital- virtual world has got far more creepier than you think!As individuals more and more of us wait for an opportunity to get online- whether it is to check the weather, the status of the pandemic, the latest update on the neighborhood or just to know if people still like you over your social media handles! The reasons can be many, few valid and few as dumb as they can be! Any aspect of technology and online driven compulsiveness may be essential for one individual and the same can be an absolute disaster for another, it all depends on- who these individuals are! Say if you are a successful artist and want to stay connected with your follower base through some short videos or pics, it certainly works and perhaps works pretty well to uplift morale of your followers- if you carry that kind of an infectious and inspiring persona, but what about if you are that odd one who has been struggling and these times have made your struggle that bit more spicier! Well, for an individual who is already at logger heads with time and space an overwhelming experience over the virtual world can be really dangerous and make a person withdraw or become over-expressive in ways which may not help, especially during these times, when the vital people connect is, all but missing!

Add to this the latest fallout of the lockdowns the world over- organisations and business have been quick to announce policies and measures asking people to work form home! Now what this has ended up doing in majority of the cases, is create an even more challenging work space for individuals! (unless you own a 5 room apartments- where perhaps two rooms can be occupied by the working members of the house, one by the kids and one by the pet that you have, not to forget even the kitchen is held hostage either by your maid or your in-laws or parents as the case may be!) You see, as long as people went to their offices to create value or destroy the existing value at their work place- all that got played out away from the watchful eyes and ears of your spouses, parents, in-laws, kids and pets. Now that people are working form home, or anywhere that they are (but not at workplace) people around – family and friends- get a first row seat to individual personalities and complexities like never before! All that verbal abuse, emotional tantrums, abrupt meetings, calls being cut, truncated, work that never seems to end, a lunch break that never seems to happen and a weird situation which just stays to hang on- like forever! Earlier even if you had a bad day at work- people would dissipate much of that negative energy by the time they finished their commute and reached their residences- now when all that negativity has lad home in your residence- needless to say there will be unwanted reactions and behavioral patterns erupting with closed confines of your home as well! Add to this that extra element of not being able to talk to reach out to your colleague at office for guidance and counsel- like it used to normally happen- a short break- a cup of tea or coffee on the way back or that 45 min quick beer to plan for the next day to counter what would have unfolded this day- you just end up getting stuck and consumed with your work- with no real cut off in the real sense of it!

Sure enough, office video calls, con-calls, emails and all of them work and work pretty well, but think about it, these tools have been there for such a long time- if these were indeed really that effective- why do you think any major corporations or a business house would have spent millions and millions of dollars to create reputed and state of the art workplaces? There would be some reason right? Well think around that bit when you have time! The fact is remains that, humans always knew the relevance and importance of having place of work and place of residence as two separate locations and it was perhaps a wiser thing to do- ask any innovator or a scientist- they will tell you, many a great things and moments in their lives which proved to be a breakthrough movement either happened at their designated workplace, designated home, or during commute , but never while doing WFH (work from home!) – it never really works!

Importantly if you thought only working professionals are facing challenges, think about it, even kids who are studying at school or colleges are facing and even more crueler scenario! The most badly hit, if you ask me are the school going kids, the youngest of them under 10 years- they have been disconnected from other kids at a vital time of their life when they are supposed to forge, foster and develop the social skills that are an essence of being a human and vital for social engagements and development of the society as these kids become grown ups in the next two decades! But if they have a weak foundation for social engagement set up right now, the ramifications in the long term will never be the ones’ that we desire! You may ask me, but this is just for a year or a few months, how can it impact? well think about it, experts have said, it takes about 21 days for a habit to cultivate and about 10,000 hours to master something that you wish to excel at! So either ways choose your metric and if your kids have been exposed to any of these, rest assured the new emerging behavior of your kids will be not what they had earlier charted the course for! They will unwittingly end up embracing the death hug of technology over the vital compassionate hug of humanity which comes only by being connected with people! We may end up cultivating societal failures and in the next two decades form now , many failures of social engineering/engagement will get attributed to this generation which did not build the vital foundation of social engagement with fellow humans- intentionally or unintentionally! So is there something that we can do about it? Well the answer is yes and no! Yes we can, that’s what makes us, humans special, and No- if the capitalist greed of the top 1% of the world doesn’t stop doing from what it is currently doing; Globally societies will end up driving their young generations into a space where they may just end up being the human extension of technology! We may end up in a space where we don’t lead technology and set the pace for the future, rather get pulled and pushed all over the pace as technology decides how it wants to use/abuse or not use our human services for its propagation! Let’s leave out those 1% and see what we can do within what’s possible at our own individual levels to ensure that we stay connected the way humans should!

Create rituals! Yes, organised rituals at your work desk as you start to crunch you day- and make people to people- non-work talk an essential aspect of this space! Make it a point to use the famed 80:20 principle when you connect with other people- let this 20% of time be used to have that human conversation which revolves around shared values and aspects that go to define and uplift human life! It could be as simple as , “How’s everyone at home?”, to something like “How’s your novel writing coming up?” or perhaps “How’s your thesis going?”, it could be about good times, planing small get- together (law permitting in your space and city), anything but work! Next, make space for those corporate and work life related – bitching calls- no matter whether you are good or bad at the job that you do- you will be a part of this- either creating and leading it or at the receiving end- as long as these remain harmless and don’t impact the sanctity of the work values and ethics, things will be fun and needed to vent out your frustrations where they need to be done! There’s no point breaking crockery at home because you had a bad day- you just end up adding to your won expenses and unwanted next set of complications dealing with people at home! Make an effort and time your exit from the day’s work- this is easier said than done! But, unless you don’t put your foot down, things will not change, remember- the organisation pays you as per the contract that you have signed up for- anything extra that you do- is the loss of the seconds of your life and a windfall gain day-in and day-out for the organization! It’s kind of you work for 40 days of the months and get paid for 30! Limit your screen times to what is vital and essential, stay away from the screens unless you are going to end up someone getting killed! Stop that unwanted urge to keep checking and re-checking that like, comment or views on our social pages and presence, the fact is, trust me it doesn’t matter, unless you are in that fabled 1%!

When it comes to kids, sure enough quite challenging to ask other parents to send in their kids for play dates and all that (depends on IQ levels of the parents largely)! So if you have young kids around in your family or extended family take a few minutes off each day- talk to them and explain to them what’s happening and keep up that conversation and curiosity up and running, for heaven’s sake don’t let a search engine be the answer to all the questions that their inquisitive minds have and if you do this right, they will emerge the other side of this storm – still curious, young, inquisitive and full of life and courage! This us what we need as humanity more than anything else- A resilient younger generation which has been formed and forged by a severe storm, which has not been dented or broken but rather become stronger and even more sharper, the way the things have unfolded around them!

Think again, when you have that compelling urge to stay glued to your gadgets! If you are still reading this, well it’s about time you complete the next few sentences and race back to your family/friends for that quick chat and re-discover the joy of being connected with humanity!

I leave your here, urging you to reflect and decide for yourself, the balance that you wish to cultivate with the gadgets that you command and the people that you cherish!

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

“Guru” in the workplace!

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

As the title suggests, this article is about trying to understand and explore- what really does it mean when we call or refer people that we work with “Guru” and what makes or doesn’t make one a “Guru”. Well certainly enough, you can always say, who am I to take a shot and define this space, well I am not doing that and neither do I intend to do that! This is about reflecting upon the true essence of the word “Guru” and how that can be appreciated in the times that we live in! So let’s begin!

We have all walked through those so called “aces” at work in our work areas, someone good at sales, someone good at marketing, few others ace it with numbers, few dealing with people so on and so forth, but very few and rarely you will find people around you, when you come across them , seem to be institutions within themselves! These are radically different, they may not always have that coveted expensive degree, nor always will they have that infectious personality and neither will they always seem to be all that spic and span – almost ready for the next shoot of a corporate magazine cover! These are the ones’ who hold us in awe, and respect by virtue of being who they simply are and these, my friends are the real “Gurus” that we have around our workplace! I am sure you would have encountered a few, I had the privilege to be lead by a few and that’s what makes our lives all that more enriching!

This is beyond that help your senior provided you with and you repaid the same with an evening beer, this is beyond that odd shift you took up to help that unlucky junior who had a bad bout of food poisoning, it is different from saving the job of that finance rookie who had posted wrong entries on the forbidden side of the balance sheet! So, by now if you are still wondering, if it’s none of this, not the managers, not the seniors, not the work, not the help, not the guidance, then what is it about? Well, my friend to begin with, let’s start by understanding the philosophical concept of the very word that we are trying to understand here- “Guru” – One of the many golden words from the ancient Sanskrit Language from the Indian sub-continent (often referred to as the language of the Gods) , the word Guru primarily has two parts- Gu- which implies Darkness and Ru which implies Light. This word primarily has been used to anyone and everyone who has had a profound capacity and ability to guide and direct the life or people away from darkness and usher them into the area of light! As the old masters say, The Guru never tells what to see, The Guru just tells where to look!

Now, with this new information at your disposal, I am certain your mind has already started to get into an overdrive to possibly evaluate who are or have been your “Gurus” and for whom you think you have been, well hang in there, there is much more to be understood before you actually end up offering the title or receiving the same!

The genesis or the importance of the “Guru” evolved and developed through the rich ancient history of what is today India, back then historically societies, in terms of complexities were far simpler than what we are today and largely worked around the dignity of labour and definition of the work that an individual did within the contextual frame of the prevailing society, so you end ed up being a priest, a soldier or a farmer or a tradesman or a social worker based on the competence that was derived on basis of one’s lineage- well there would have been benefits and adverse impacts around this- but that is not for the current topic. So once you had these defined sets of social class, meant to perform tasks with exceeding levels of competence to rise and ensure the safety and well being of the society- read kingdom, the onus was only on one vocation- it was the Teachers- The “Gurus” were the only people who stood between a society- kingdom being assured a continual supply of aces across the work areas or incompetent people joining the work areas which would eventual result into the disintegration and falling apart of the kingdom- because once Incompetence sets in- sooner or later- collapse will be certain- whether it be an individual- a society or a kingdom!

Now that the onus of ensuring safety and well being of each and every soul firmly resting on the wise teachers, what do you think would have manifested further? Well yes, good teacher’s created good enough students who were able to hold on to the societies and kingdoms for a few generation perhaps and when extraordinary teachers created geniuses among students, their kingdoms had legacies which last centuries and in some cases have left an impeccable mark on the way we carry out our modern live as well- don’t believe me- well think about the India’s National Emblem you will possibly get a hint at what I mean here! The real “Gurus” have always been able to influence and create value for time periods lasting centuries- long after their physical presence has been lost by way of their structured teachings and eclectic followership- with only one goal- serve the larger and greater goal of the society and replenish the capabilities of an individual! So now that you have got the context, let’s come back to the “now” and what do you see now, do you still find an equivalent or a close comparison to these ancient “Gurus” within or around you? May be you do or may be you don’t, either ways, that’s fine-because that’s the irony of the times that we live in!

In the time that we live in, at the most what majority of the people involved in working around glass clad offices experience is the modern day concept of mentoring- that fabled mentor- mentee relationship- well it lasts as long as the objective of the organisation or the task at hand are met, post that no one really cares for the other! Nothing right or wrong with this aspect as this how the norm has been set whether we like it or not! Certainly there are ramifications for this, it works for that specific problem to be solved, but leaves both of them devoid of any learning which can set them up for future failures- as their focus is too focused and entrapped into one specific aspect- without considering the need of learning in depth of the mentee! The modern day office settings have invariably created pressures of work and time which simply don’t allow to foster in- depth understanding, which is needed for the real Gurus to present themselves, as the students too are almost never ready! There is an old saying, which I had read somewhere along, When the Student is Ready the Master arrives! Well in the modern day office where everyone is working from one pay check to the other, this wait of the students ends up becoming an eternal one, sometimes the Guru is there with no students and yet other times, the student is wailing for help with no Guru’s around! So what can be done about this, is there anything that can be really done?

For the Gurus to arrive and the student’s to thrive, we need to consider a radically different approach to work, an approach which thrives on debates, discussions and experimentation- with an emphasis to fail- rather than succeed (sure enough I am not suggesting the organisations to go bankrupt with this approach- whatever is within the limits of allowable failure). The ancient “Gurus” always had a great tenacity to teach through this approach and it worked because no one ever told the student what to do, they were always told what was required as a result- not how to get it done! The student who would have been the most creative and effective in providing the solution, would than be able to set a standard process for the given challenge for others to follow- this encouraged learning, competitiveness knowing well that- there is never only ONE right way and this ensured that students and Gurus alike ever remained humble! You see, Humility is the anchor stone to Learning and applicability of what is being learnt- Without humility, knowledge will just slip away like grains of sand from the fingers of your palm!

Another important way of knowing you are in company of a true Guru- “Gurus are not bonded to their designation/labels/business cards,they have a strong sense of assumed ownership and will jump straight into the challenge at hand and start providing directions for resolving the challenge- this will be needles to say, to the delight of many and the horror of a few others! Unlike the modern concept, people often misread the part tat the “Guru” has to be a senior person- your boss- or someone in the office who is about to get an heart attack or fade away or retire; well it doesn’t have to be that way! On the other extreme end, actually it could be that new intern sitting and smiling away in all glory to your dumbness! You see,- Guru- as the word implies- the ability to dispel darkness and show the light- also has an intrinsic aspect of common-sense woven into it, you don’t always need to have a deep philosophical bondage to it, just because the word and the manifestation of it have such deep rooted civilization tagged to it!

The fact remains though, for the master to appear, there has to readiness among the students!; You see businesses hire based on consideration sets of the services that have to be provided to the society, and unlike earlier times, we have warped workplaces cloaked and hidden away into far too much of incompetence- which is hidden not because of anything else but the pressure of loosing the livelihood– If businesses ensure that incompetence management is an anchor stone of their business turnaround policy- more than ever students will present themselves to be trained, retrained and skilled and for that to manifest, the masters’ the Gurus’s will appear like magic- This simple shift in the mindset of people to deal and engage with incompetence and not negate or hush it up will do a lot good not only to save livelihoods but create finer and sharper work force which in times ahead can unleash new ways of excellence pertaining to their work!

Well, if you ask me, the presence or absence of the real “guru” in a workplace speaks a lot about the place itself! All great places which have created an impact on human lives have been fortunate to have these unsung masters always around- some famous, many not so famous and it is these tiny elements that go on to make a big difference for an organisation to be considered among the best and being THE BEST! Not to forget, there is a “Guru” within each of us, perhaps you may be struggling with what you do, but something within you, can make a whole big difference in someone else’s life! It is about taking those pauses at work and reflect to see, what is that you know and what is that you know- that you don’t know- when you reach this space- you will have the Guru paying you a visit and at the same time you will end up being a Guru to someone else too!

I will leave you here, with these quasi-philosophical aspects around the concept of “Guru”, I have intentionally stopped short of getting into mundane examples of our office lives and will leave all of that for your imagination and experience to play it around for you! What is important is to have the realization that without The Guru- there is no light and without Light there is no Life! The Guru is sometimes within you and at times around you- You just need to seek THE GURU! Yes, I read this somewhere, never forget- The Guru doesn’t ever tell you what to see, but always guides you where to look! Think around this!

Ciao for now, will be back with another article and once again, Here’s Wishing Everyone A Very Blessed Guru Purnima!

Meaningful HR & Business Integration-The way ahead.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Yes, I know what are the first thoughts that are crossing your mind, even as you read the title! No this is not about fault finding with the HR aspect of business neither this is a glorification of how business and HR need to work together and contribute- enough of unwarranted positive shit has been written about that and it seldom works! This is about knowing what really helps or strops from that critical integration from happening and is there anything at all that can be done to ensure true synergy which translates into individual empowerment to the people on the floor and at the desks, irrespective of the product or service that they collectively create!

The genesis of the today’s HR came through the dark allies of the industrialized world, where the given dictum was that the owners of the businesses were out there to exploit available resources (people and material), unfortunately some businesses did live up to that dubious label and with that saw the rise of the union movement which provided the much needed collective voice and put a plug to stop and arrest unwarranted exploitation form time to time across different sectors and industries. Certainly over time, few of these unions too lost their grounding – since they too were run by humans- add to that the element of greed and you have the right recipe to completely compromise business exploits and you reach a point where you really don’t know anymore which side is more wrong! Even as these aspects were unfolding businesses were busy working on scientific finding and technological break through to modernize and make processes and services more cost effective and thereby more profitable and just as businesses learnt to manage products and processes they soon understood that they could also manage people and there is the birth of the modern day HR! Sadly though the struggle of complete end-to-end integration of business and HR has always remained a challenge- at times for the right reasons- where businesses require that sterile distinction or segregation to function and more often than not, because of sheer incompetence either with one of the entities or both of them, in today’s context it is a heady cocktail of incompetence which keep shifting from one end to the other in a cyclical manner which results into a “dynamic yet static space”- hence many a times when you go back to organisations even after few years- seldom things are different! Nothing wrong or right about that- at times that’s what is needed and at times that’s exactly what limits the organisations! So what’s happening here, where’s the catch?

It all starts, with like everything else- right in the beginning, even today, in 2020, there would be hardly a few, maybe less than 1% of entrepreneurs who would want to look at HR as a strategic investment which will provide an ROI to their firm with regards to the qualified talent that it can get in and even more importantly manage and ensure that the ” talent”stays and grows with the organisation- sometimes leading it (at senior level), at times staying in-sync ( at mid-levels) and at yet other times, developing a followership (at the junior level). This foundational mistake of discounting the true value and essence of HR right at the begging- when a business starts afresh, or a new business unit is thought of causes more damage to the entity than anything else! I don’t need to explain I am sure about what price an organisation may end up paying for the wrong people at the wrong time, at the wrong place and at a wrong price! Importantly always remember people are never good or bad, it is their “contextual settings” that either make them shine and excel or dim and fade away! You may have an average intelligent person among dumb idiots and that person may end up looking like an angel to your eyes, out the same person against the backdrop of qualified hotshots from top A schools, you may might as well want to kill yourself for hiring that kind of an idiot! It also than says something about your ability to judge and hire people- well but I will leave that for now and maybe some other write up on that- some other time!

Unless HR is at the table with the business to understand and soak in every aspect of what the grand plan of business is and what’s the whole idea and importantly be listened to- there will never be a true integration! Sure enough in today’s times, even having people stick around at their own positions within the organisations- by itself is a challenge- and that just goes on to compound the integration challenge!– Even today,the normal brief always to HR can look like this- “The organisation would want to have an overhaul or a massive change once a CEO or a A level person moves on or just because the exiting one wants to have the HR do some work!”- you may ask “Why?” well you will almost always never get a sensible answer to that and with no “real HR” to question- the organisation will simply go into an overdrive to reinvent the same old wheel! Everyone will be happy doing that because it keeps everyone in the job and busy- but the fact remains , this unwarranted overdrive often ends up being the classical case of visiting history and needless to say- the results are always the same- “Nothing!” and every few years this nonsense continues and we have people coming and leaving and everything seems to stay exactly where it is! This is the fallacy of the much hyped integration of HR and Business when not carried out in a well thought and objective manner! So you may want to ask how does it look when it works and does it really work?

Well, when done right, HR can empower individuals, teams and business like nothing else can! You may want to ask me now, what is the right way, well the right way is the way of common-sense! If your business is heavily reliant on people and people are the reason for your businesses success or failure and if you don’t start your day without wishing “Good Day” to your HR Head, trust me no matter how big or small your business is, you will falter sooner or later and the reason for that faltering will be the disconnect with your people! So if you are a CEO, running a people centric business , make it a point to throw away your ego( which anyways is good to loose) and learn to walk out of you cabin to spend time with the person responsible for getting you the right people for your team- because when discussions happen here and the more often they do, you will begin to experience magic– magic in terms of the positive rub off that will happen within the existing people across your teams and the new ones that come to join your journey! You don’t need long meetings with endless one-sided communication expressing your dreams, fantasies or frustrations, you don’t need endless boring mails with subject lines reading something like “Form CEO’s Desk” or “It’s your HR” kind of gimmick! All that you need is a simple cup of tea or coffee once a day with the person who is responsible to get the right people for you day-in and day-out!

Now, don’t rush into patting your back, thinking that all the work to hold on to this integration lies only with the CEO’s or the business leader’s the HR leader’s too have to play their part and their part starts by behaving and acting like a business leader- who is leading the business of people! This approach seemingly deceptive but if played right, can make all the difference between having a HR and having a great HR! Awesomeness of HR comes not by knowing the rules and regulations and theories of HR, they do matter, but the real fun happens when HR understands and assimilates the business challenge as if they were their own (because they are their own problems- manifestations which are created by HR!) How?, you may ask, well here’s the simple test, When people leave when you least expect and business suffers, the question “How was this person evaluated and selected even?”, When a person leaves because he gets paid twice and more at the other place- “Why are we paying so less? are we?”, when the person destroys a million dollar machinery because of incompetence- “How did this person clear the evaluation and get in!” Well the lists and situations can go on and on- the fact is a HR disconnected with business problems and business plans is equally liable to fail as the business and what’s more a HR disconnected from it’s business can do more harm than a business that’s’ disconnected with HR!

True integration between HR and Business happens only when there is mutual respect and appreciation about what each of them do and how each one of them contribute to build and develop each other to ensure that the organisation keeps progressing with the right tools, both material and human! Unless Business teams stop discounting HR- assuming they don’t understand or see the point of business and until HR doesn’t stop hiding themselves away in files, operations and social media posts pertaining to job vacancy- this problem will persist! If you always wanted to understand why the HR never called you back or gave you an update for your hour long interview of multiple rounds of hour long interviews- well I presume you would have found your answer somewhere here! A disconnected HR with no insight into business revenues and business action plans- will try and continue the old classical way of reaching out to hundreds of candidates- when it is not required and eventually get stuck when the real time comes to hire- because by then externally the genuineness of the organisation has taken a beating!

There are and there always will be reasons and explanations for every connect and disconnect; some real and some are made up, irrespective of what they are, the fact remains that as long as people are involved and businesses require people, there will always remain a compelling need to to have people specialists and business aces to work together collaboratively in a transparent and purpose driven manner! This alone, If you ask me, this the real essence of integration, driven by purpose and proactive collaboration each playing to their strength, understanding the other team’s requirement!

I will leave you here, with these thoughts, depending on which team you are on- the business or the people team- do reflect on what worked and what didn’t and how can you make what matters work for you and the other team!

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

Mental resilience: The master key.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

This is not an article promising hope or the grandeur of a positive mindset, especially at a time when the real world around us seems to be pretty screwed up!Trust me, the last few months and weeks have unified humanity like never before albeit for all the wrong reasons and what’s even more surprising that even in these times of turbulence and tribulations, people do manage a way to nudge others, at times, proverbially over the cliff! from where they seldom recover! This article is about knowing how “You” and you alone hold the power to decide what impacts you and to what extent, this is the domain of “mental resilience” So join me as we explore quickly how this attribute can come to our rescue and bail us out- through our times, good and bad- irrespective if you are 18 or 80!

“Live to express, not to impress”- This has to be your first maxim, as you try and build your resilience. Getting likes and rave comments on social media is one thing, but if those likes and comments are aligned to and are generated because of an illusion that you have curated and who you really are not, trust me you will land up in some mental shit pretty fast, at some or the other point! There is nothing wrong in craving for social acceptance, fame, name and all the glory that comes with is; after all as humans we are social animals; So what if we wear clothes, get educated and have a society driven and arranged way of going about our world- we still are social animals! What is important is, the fact that all of your cravings and beacons of “see me”, “hear me”, “talk to me”, have to be aligned and related to who you really are– your true self! So if you hate beaches and keep sharing the endless sunsets by the beach, just to get those likes (which you will certainly get), you will end up clouding your brain dangerously and unnecessarily start living an illusion mapped to your pressures of confirmation bias!

“In today’s settings, being a realist helps”- Perhaps a century ago, complications and challenges were still limited and hence the ability to propound “positive thinking” and “sharing the message of hope” were a key to get people back- who would have set a course to their own destruction! In today’s times, with the endless onslaught of information (much of which is unverified garbage- which sadly gets consumed and is allowed to impact our thinking) and societal compulsions rising with each passing day- Unless you develop frame of mind that is anchored on being authentic and real- you will always seem to falter and struggle even as you go about doing even the most basic of the tasks that you would normally do! Whether it is about that luck color suit you want to carry to the board meeting, or that supposedly amazing foreign vacation (which is now a question of your prestige- since you have already committed to your friends- you will be going and posting pics on social media) or that professional focus to hit your business numbers, irrespective of anything that comes in your way..the list is endless- Certainly there is nothing wrong in being ambitious or driven or as they usually call it- passionate (well do check out the dictionary meaning to the word “passion”- I am sure you will start using it less often!); the goof ups start to manifest and people start to crash and fall once they don’t have enough caliber within to deal with the manifestations that they are pursuing! Let me explain…

Consider this, you are a lovely fine, Boeing 737, calibrated to operate at a maximum altitude of say 40,000 feet and cruise at the max speed of 0.9 Mach. Now you suddenly find alongside of you a F-15 Eagle- Supersonic- speed excess of Mach 2.0 and an altitude ceiling of 55,000-60,00 feet, and you decide to race! Well, if you know the fundamentals of aviation and a dash of common-sense will you that- even this thinking is a recipe to a disaster- the two planes are made different to serve different purposes!This is what my point is, “The earlier you realise in an authentic and real way that each one of us (even twins included) different and is born to serve/ follow a unique path to achieve our calling-the better off you will be!” This understanding will save you form burning unnecessary dollars to buy that car, clothes, that house and ensure you stay focused on things and people that make a difference to your life so that collectively you can further value to the society that you roam about! Each of us, is Unique and there’s a good reason- it is the way it is! so bank on being Real- Authentic- no matter who says what- Life will offer you the highway or you will have to create your way- but since your baggage is lessened you will be able to enjoy the views and the journey too as it becomes a destination unto itself!

“You get to decide who impacts you and to what extent”- I remember, many scholars, management experts and “Gurus” of the world saying this, “You are the Author of your life”- You hold the pen and each day is a blank page wherein you alone have the power to write and create what you wish! Well this looks good, but we all know- real world doesn’t actually go that route. There will be people who will walk over you, tear down your most wonderful pages, scribble on your upcoming pages, write **** to you along the boundaries of your page, at times offer flowers and praises too, so basically your book as an author or for any of us- is never only about us as individuals- it is also about the people- the quality of people- that we are connected around with and how they express what they feel and think about us! This primarily depends on how we project ourselves into the world- What we communicate and how that communication is received/perceived- Even the best of the communication, with the most noble of interests can end up screwing you for life- simply because it was either ahead of it’s time and the receiver did not understand it or the receiver was out rightly dumb and you handed away way too much ink and page to that person to waste multiple pages of your life’s book! You think you know of any such book apart from your own life- well don’t look too far- pick up the religious texts of any religion/faith/practice across the world- irrespective of all the wholesomeness and goodness that has been mentioned in them- but what have we inherited ? A planet which is filled with hate and despise for fellow humans! A classic case of the receiver being dumb!

“No one really cares”- Well, this is the fact and a key ingredient to develop and build a formidable resilience! To begin with do you remember how healthy Galileo Galilei was, what were his hobbies, what was his favorite wine? Well, who cares, all that we care about is, his contribution to astronomy and the foundations that were created by him and others to help us understand our immediate universe! So what are his Great-great-great-great-grandchildren doing now? Any idea- well – at least I don’t know! Perhaps you can help me with that!Let’s zoom back to your own life- Remember the last time your boss walked upto you and asked you to go on a vacation because you have not taken a break in the last 6 months! Do you recall, the last time when the HR came up to you and said you are a great person to have on the team and we would like to offer you a double promotion and increase your salary to help you meet your kids college fees? Well all this seems stupid and way beyond reality isn’t it? Well, it is and why would anyone do any of these, because no one really cares! Each one of us is quite busy figuring out and charting a course to our own individual survival at the best, which is often disguised as meaningless milestones of job titles, income narratives, compulsive purchases and social media likes & comments!

If you are working, as long as you help the metrics meet, your job remains- doesn’t matter what equation and understanding you have with your manager- even if you have any- it’s a matter of time that chain of command will break once there is no value getting created within and you will be exposed- with or without the understanding that you have with your boss! Likewise if you are into business, as long as you offer the products or services at a price that is competitive (as perceived by the buyer) you will float else you will sink, irrespective how hot the model in the commercial of that product was! If you are an artist, scientist, politician or a creative force- as long as you serve the purpose which helps others in a way or other you will be rejoiced- the day your findings and approach don’t serve the majority you will be neglected and forgotten! This paragraph perhaps looks bleak right? But that is the truth- the reality- whether or not you accept it- this is what it is! and It is here to stay and outlast it will even after you are gone! The point that I am making here, is pretty simple- “It really doesn’t matter! No matter who says what, the fact is no one really cares for you (apart from your immediate family) and in the times that we live in, you should count on your blessings if you have one! They are the ones’ who will be impacted because and only because of one thing- that your action/inaction impacts their access to quality of life, that’s about it!- and you had started to think about emotions? I mean really?

“Remain grounded and indifferent to the bouquets and brickbats”– This is perhaps the most important attributes that one must have, to ensure you maintain your sanity at least through your life time! The irony of humanity is that even as we are collectively comfortable to be called as social animals, deep within we also seek solitude and aloofness and these diametrically opposite forces dominate us all through our lives- these tend to impact and shape our thinking and behavioral patterns – which further may play havoc- at times leading individuals to take reckless and harmful decisions- sometime recoverable and yet at times completely unrecoverable! The only way to get around this bit is practicing the art of being grounded and indifferent! Ancient text – especially in Hinduism and also across many other religions of the world have always urged humans to remain humble,simple and grounded irrespective whether the times are good- working for them or times or adverse- working against them! This virtue is what helps people gravitate towards each other to build stronger person-to-person contact which goes on to build a formidable mental resilience so that whenever shit happens and disasters strikes- individuals aren’t left to fend for themselves, rather the entire society/unit rallies behind! We can see this in animal kingdoms, when large predators attempt to take down young ones from the prey herd- there is always a fight, an attempt- may or may not work but that resilience is there to try and fight heavy odds and make peace with whatever the outcome may be! This is the trick that helps you manage yourself through whatever life can come offering you!

Another formidable example of mental strength can be found among the officers in uniform the world over! They operate in conditions and challenges that would make many of us outright uncomfortable- forget fighting the enemy- even standing guard would be a big tasks for many of us- but this is what the Forces of any nation are trained on- Mental agility, Resilience and Fortitude- with a single focus- stop the enemy- It is not any of us- then it has to be no one on the ground ahead! Simple, straight, objective and pragmatic thinking! You may earn your incentives this year, next year, then you may not, you may not get them this year, you may earn twice of what miss the year after that- that is what it is and will always be! Not allowing the circumstantial developments cloud your thinking and judgement is another vital element to develop and build resilience!

“Make peace with what can’t be changed”- Like I explained in my earlier paragraph, once you know whether you are a Boeing 737 or a F-15, you will be able to make peace with all that is around you and this will, believe me take away around 75% of all your unwarranted thinking which keeps on playing the “what if” game with you 24×7! This, is easier said than done, but there is really no other way around it, each one of us is unique and we are the best, the very best at what we are meant to be, problems start when we leave that and start pursing everything else but what we must! Finding out “what that is” well, is a story for another article!

I will leave you here, and urge you to build resilience and ensure you create a formidable,real understanding of who you are and develop a technique wherein you have a clearly defined lighter version of yourself for mass consumption and an authentic real version to carry on with the real work and duties of the real world- always ensuring there is safe distance between the two! Don’t forget- at the end of the day- It’s your story and you are the Author! So grab your pen, protect your pages and watch that ink! No one is really watching your show! No one cares enough! Each person is calibrating their individual survival with flashes of real and curated “I am fine” all the time! Harnessing the power of resilience is the only way to foster clarity and keep ambiguity away!

Ciao for now, will back with another article soon! Time for some coffee!

Decoding “ism’s”: Why they work & why they don’t!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Now, before you start making any judgment about what this article perhaps may suggest or not and what my take on the issue of “ism’s” is- well none of this really matters- what is important and what this article deals with are the observed facts – The things as we see and what is the best we can do with what we experience either by accepting, rejecting or remaining indifferent to all those “ism’s” around us! So let’s roll by starting to understand what and who these “ism’s” are!

No matter where you work or who works for you (if you have your own business), which nation you come from, what society you live in- “ism” is a phenomenon which is perhaps as old as human civilization itself! “Ism’s” stands for – groupism, nepotism, favoritism so on and so forth and also makes it presence felt through despise, neglect, indifference and behavioral non-acknowledgement! Like everything else with humanity- by itself – none of the attributes are harmful to cause any serious damage- When these are applied and work in a directed manner, setting off a cascade of imbalances -which more often than not end up harming more people than it is meant to help the few that adhere to the set of the operating “ism” that all hell breaks loose!

Consider this case, say you are a powerful politician with an immense sway and acceptance among the citizenry that worships you like a demi-God. After serving long, your time has come to hang up your boots and offer that position to someone else who can further your legacy- you have a set of loyal workers who have been with you through the years and you have your own kid- that has been showing promise- not necessarily the best of the best among your party (group) what choice do you make? Go by merit strictly- shunning away your own blood- to have a face off at the family dinner table every evening? or stand solidly behind- project your heir to the chair and ask your group members to swear allegiance to the new upcoming order and awarding them with what they want and what you can for this kind act! Well, depending on which part of the globe you are- irrespective of the decision you take- whether you go ahead with your party nominated leaders or place your heir to the chair- you will always be accused of practicing nepotism! This is is the fact of being nepotistic and furthering nepotism- but the counter-point is equally important! Park your thoughts on this politician’s case and we will revisit this towards the end!

I am sure you would have paid a visit to the doctor- at least for some reason- if not for yourself- for someone that you know- possibly for someone you care- What did you do-when you had to make that life changing decision of entrusting your life or the life of someone you value in the hands of a doctor for a major surgery? Did you go by the medical school grades of the doctor? His legacy? His family name and history?What was it? Chances are- if you come from a place like India- where the concept of “Family Doctor’s” is still alive you have generations of families aligned to generations of healers/doctors all for a good reason- that ability to heal and cure runs in their lineage! Well- you may call this unscientific bullshit- perhaps it is- but it works! The chances are that when you want to trust a doctor with your open heart on the operating table- you will find it more comforting to know that the doctor comes from a family of surgeons rather than having a dude who walked out of a medical school last summer with a gold medal! So at times- nepotism is the only pivot of hope, likewise you have lawyers/advocates. Surely- the Jr. Doctor- may not be as sharp as the Sr. Doc in the family line- well that applies to you as well! isn’t it! Intellectual degeneration is the hallmark of humanity and the ability to even retain the same level of intellect as the previous generation is a “wow” moment in today’s era!

Now let’s examine what plays out in the professional settings! Consider this, you have through sheer hard work set up a multi billion dollar empire or perhaps even a million dollar business- it’s time for you to retire- what are the chances that you want to promote that Executive over your own kids and place them on the Directorship of the firm thereby giving them almost the ownership of the firm- Simply because they excelled at their work? not to forget the fact that for all that they have contributed to the firm, they have been rewarded all along with perks and salary for the same all the way? or Do you place your kid on the board and ensure that the “A” team sticks together and follows the rule book by listening to the chair- no matter who is on it! In yet another setting it could be all about that odd film or that web series you want to make with millions at stake and investors gunning for your blood- should it fail, you are toast- what do you do? Go with the safe cast and crew to ensure the project is completed in time and there is a greater awareness and chances of recovering the investments or go ahead by experimenting with new faces and unknown technical teams- just to follow your passion of doing something unique and fresh? Well if that scores a goal- you will remain to tell the story- else you will be in all probability evaluating your options of survival! So does this mean that “ism’s” are here to stay and there is no way around that? Well the answer is Yes and No- Yes- “ism’s will stay as long as humanity walks on this planet and No you don’t have to suffer on account of “ism’s if you don’t want the profits that come with it!- How is that done- well read on!

The safest way and perhaps the only way to tackle and deal with the “ism’s” is to be fiercely self-aware and know more about yourself than you know about the world around you! You see the power to destroy/create or get broken or build comes from within- within each of us- unless you don’t individually allow or empower another person to impact/ effect your thinking and who you are- You are safe and can deal with “ism’s” either by embracing them- be a part of the gang-play your role for a while as long as you are comfortable and gracefully exit when the time comes- like most of them do- without bring bridges and maintaining social relevance! The other way is to Accept “ism’s” is – See them as they are and don’t get entrapped or allured by their power and temptation and continue with your track and approach – Knowing well that your trim levels will arrive much faster and quicker and that you will be eventually ejected from the system earlier than other’s irrespective of what your potential is and whether you are valuable or useless to the people and the set up that you are aligned with! This second approach provides the bedrock to create a formidable seed to downplay “ism’s” and that approach is of “Authoring your own story”. As an option perhaps, not many will be able to exercise this, unless they are ably supported by family and people who matter and care for who “You” are and this scarcity makes this tribe even more ingenious! This is the place that breeds innovators, world-class artists, experts in various fields- from culinary to medicine, from engineering to design! Once you arrive in this space of being able to create and craft your present for a future of your choice- You become indifferent to all the prevailing “ism’s” around you and ironically enough as you taste success- these very “ism’s” will come searching for you to again allure you to their clan so that they can keep harvesting on the exploits of the genius thinking that you offer to the world- by claiming that you belong to their “ism”! So you see finally even success crafted and created by your own merit will draw you back to something that you were escaping- The only difference being that this time- You control the pack and You get to decide when Enough is Enough and no matter what you say or do- Your Indifference – becomes your greatest asset- since you have already learnt the act and craft to create and survive without any “ism” around you!

Being a coach, we learn dealing through our experience with people- The only singular truth that remains is – the fact that- Each individual’s truth is a their own reality to which they will always remain glued- the depth and spread of that truth either makes them all encompassing or self-limiting! There is nothing right or wrong about “ism’s” how we deal with it and what approach we take to deal with it- either makes “ism” work for us and help us or makes it works against us to harm us! The human mind, being what it is- through your life time- at one point the “ism” will your vital need – pivoting on your existence and yet at another time as your purpose is served, you will despise and reject that very “ism” as it never existed! Nothing right and nothing wrong about it! The only important thing being- don’t plan your life aligned to “ism’s- that is a fatal fallacy and can wreak havoc with even the most intelligent minds! As long as you stay focused within and know who “You” are and learn to manage that bit- all else can be dealt with later!

I will leave you with these thoughts for now, to perhaps re-evaluate your priorities and see whether you are entrapped/ fostering or staying indifferent to the “ism’s” around your fragile life!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article! keep those mails coming in and do let me know what next you would like to read about!

Don’t let success fail you!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

“Success” is by itself cryptic and means different things to different people, but what is common, is the fact, that no matter how you want to define it for yourselves, within it lie the seeds of your failure! This piece is all about understanding the real essence of “success” and how to ensure your success doesn’t sow the seeds of your failure! So here we go!

To begin with most of us, when asked , “What does success mean to you?” will go on answering this question with that unwanted grin and start adding all the materialistic attributes that one can think of- money, cash, houses, gadgets, vacations, lifestyle, grandeur, name, fame, recognition, food, indulgence etc. etc. and the list can go on and on- What is common within all the elements mentioned here is that all and each of these manifestations of success are all extrinsic and dependent of multiple variables apart from you! When this aspect is forgotten or lost in translation- shit invariably happens and you end up setting yourself for certain failure, ironically developing from your success and it is proportional to the extent of your success- the more successful you become (hinging on the extrinsic attributes and definitions of success) your failure will be equally noteworthy and iconic! Sounds familiar? Well yes- the stuff that tycoons, politicians and celebrities face right? Well yes, and more importantly each one of us too have faced this, every now and than at the level that we are and proportional to what we have achieved or not achieved in life! So this is what must be focused upon and this is what needs to be fixed! How do we do this? well read on!

The problem with our modern day definition of “success” lies in the fact that it all is entrapped into materialistic bondage! Nothing wrong in earning money, growing your affluence and being able to enjoy the best of what the world has to offer and what your money can buy- the problem is with ending up using that space and that ability to indulge with what you have to define your success which becomes the undoing for many! You would have heard stories of sporting icons, celebrities, business tycoons, who had it all and than lost themselves as they lost what they had (rather what they had- which according to them- defined who they are!). Well, this plays out when people misread and misinterpret “success” as an achievement! Consider this, how would you feel if every time you went to meet your doctor- you find your doctor- throwing a party because he cured ten patients yesterday! or when you visit a store to shop for some clothes and the moment you complete your billing- you find the counter staff breaking out in a gig celebrating their targets! Well, I am certain you would not have seen any of this! So what does that mean? Isn’t your doctor successful and shouldn’t he celebrate the “success” of his patients getting better? Seems aright to be celebrated, right? Even the shop counter staff, knowing they hit the sales figure, nothing wrong if they too celebrated their “success” isn’t it? So why don’t do they do it? Well in the case of the doctor or the counter staff they are practicing what I call it as “Internalizing success” – they know the simple truth- that they are working in the current direction and are sure that if they continue doing what they do- they will keep achieving the results and keep getting better and better- which will help them with building their lives! This is what internalizing success does and the bets part- well it doesn’t bother them much if that odd patient left treatment mid-way or unfortunately died or if they did not hit the sales number for that month! Because they know it deep within that – With each opportunity they give their best and than hope for the rest to manifest and this is what real success looks like- It’s hard work, non-glamorous and intrinsic! They don’t contemplate of stopping work as a doctor or leaving the job at the store, because one day, one event was not working in their favour!

Internalizing success does many wonderful things! First it helps you understand that your success is defined by Who You Are! Real success which clings onto a person always derives its strength from the person and not from the circumstances around the person! Circumstances are like a case of electromagnets wrapped around your working world- every now and then there will be changes and that change of flux around you will drain you of your internal latent potential unless you don’t do way with the habit of large dependence on the circumstances around you! Sure enough they are important- but no reason can be bigger than Yourself and who You are as person when it comes to defining success in the real essence of it! What happens if you don’t embrace success this way around?

Well as long as people define success by aligning it to standards, benchmarks and societal confirmations, there will be an ever ongoing disagreement between Who You Are, What Your Beliefs are, What you actually value and what you paint as an image of what others must see (which comes in as a rider to enjoy that stage success!). Success of this nature, which is measured and calibrated through the lens of the world/society or set standards and perceptional rules of engagement of the sectors that people work in- will invariably fail- once the external factors that fan the staged-success are depleted- either they wane away or they move to a new host- what is left, is an individual with a hollow reality of the staged success and with more questions than answers about themselves! This staged success which is hinged on circumstances and societal influence brings along a hidden baggage which manifests in different ways like, peer pressure, competitive pressure, one upmanship, group-isms and so on and so forth- this compelling need to belong to be recognized and to belong to a section or a select acceptance within the society ends up undoing all that may have been done by an individual and eventually sets up the person into a tailspin of self- discovery where answers simply don’t seem to come by and there are more and more questions as the dive becomes more and more terrifying. The only hope of recovery to come out of this deadly self-inflicting death dive is to “Know Yourself” and Know that Your Success is not dependent on others to the extent that you are made to believe!

True success is always a factor of the Individual- If you have been successful once you will be once again and yet again- certainly there will be spanners in the wheel as you try and move ahead and there will be twists and turns on the way- but as long as you don’t fall into the trap of “compulsive social acceptance”, “confirmation bias” and fall prey to the “be in the group” kind of situation- you will be safe and have a greater sense of achievement when you do and a refined element of learning should you fail- because whatever the outcome maybe- It is then always about who You are and that’s what matters! Once You learn that You alone make the difference and You alone get to decide Who impact you and by How Much, rest assured – you’ve imbibed the right way to “Internalize Success” and sooner or later You will become what You are Destined to be- no matter what the circumstances!

I will leave you with these thoughts, so that you may go head and reflect and see how you have experienced staged- success and true success as you wandered across the world! Always remember- The Final choice rests with each one of us- to define and be defined the way we want us to be! True Success is about us, each one of us and what we can uniquely achieve by being How We Are! There can be no comparison, never, simply because each of us has a different life story and a life path, to narrate and tread upon! All that hinges on others and external factors, will fade away, sooner or later! All that remains is the Belief and Faith within and that alone helps to weave the fabric of your true success- which solely relies on Who You Are!

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

The experience paradox and flawed followership.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Through the last three months, wherever you are, your living rooms would have been flooded with “experts” and people having “experience” and being appointed as advisors, “expert committees” who would have pledged in one way or the other, about not worrying on anything and that they have control and will end this pandemic quick! The fact though remains that the virus is here to stay among us- not necessarily wanting to kill us- unless we have a screwed up immune system- which is because of what we do- what we eat and drink! So who are these “experts” what is all about the magic label of “Experience” and who are these people “followers” whose “followership” qualifies these idiots to lead and make a bad problem worse! Whether it’s a national view, about your immediate community or the work place that you go to, you would have either suffered or have had unwillingly contributed to aggravating problems rather than offering solutions; Thanks to these “experienced” people! Join me here as we try to understand why “experience is over-rated” and why “quality of follwership matters”!

The simplest of facts remains that, “experience” explained the ability to perform a similar or the same tasks over and over again and that made a lot of sense when you needed a shop floor worker to tighten up the screws of physically end up welding joints through a manufacturing process and still it does hold good when key skills are need to perform a task which is routine with utmost precision and accuracy. Surely enough you may want your heart surgeon to have experience because that person would have opened up and closed many beating hearts to ensure they keep beating afterwards too! But the moment you ask the heart surgeon to open up the brain and fix things up! Well, yes, you’ve got what I a m trying to say, you are asking that person to do something which that person has never done before! So you see all that accumulated experience becomes of zero value! Likewise if the welder knows how to work on a particular machine /component and tighten bolts for a particular product type- and now if that person was to move over to a new assembly line- his entire so called “experience” will be of little or no consequence as things change! What remains is competence and skill- A skilled worker or a surgeon- one will always remain- who they are- skilled and competent- but the accumulated experience does not help them solve something that they don’t know what to do with it! The current pandemic that the world is facing is getting aggravated by exactly this kind of disposition where all the governments of the world have assembled armies of “experienced” people who don’t have a f**king clue of what to do and how to deal with what they are trying to solve! – simply because this virus was manufactured either by man or nature just few months back to engage with the biochemistry and physiology of humans! It would have been roaming in the wild among animals for millions of years- who knows- but these changes and the impact is new and what is needed to tackle this is not “experience” but “intelligence” to study and work on solution pathways by studying the ongoing impact so that quick fixes are made available keeping in mind regional, geographical, demographical specificity of each nation and the regions within large nations!

This approach is the only hope that so called “experienced” people can bring to the table to ensure the world emerges from the shadows more rapidly rather than wasting time, money and resources to feed on their egos of misplaced experience which has no or little consequence simply because they have never experienced anything like this before and all their accumulated learnings are a big zero to this new challenge- what remains is the their skill and competence which needs to be supported by available intelligence to over come these situations- which I believe is a different problem of diminishing intelligence and also the fact that these “experienced folks” have never seen a problem like the one they are trying to solve with their limited past experience which has nothing to do with what they face!

This misplaced experience not only is detrimental in situations like of a global pandemic, but when these”experienced” geniuses walk the corporate world, they leave a trail of destruction like no one else and yes, fundamental reasons are almost always same- trying to solve a new age problem with an old age belief system and based on what they would have previously done; add to that the next layer of “flawed followership” which ends up becoming the final nail in the coffin for a corporate meltdown!

Firms hire- people with “experience” not realizing that the problem being faced is unique to the organisation and the circumstantial set around it- yes you can hire for people who show competence and skills to deal with complex situations but that is no way a guarantee for being able to fix the new problem at hand (it may be a recurring problem for the organization- but for the people walking in new – it will be a new problem and with time either they are able to fix it or end up growing avoidance strategies like everyone else around so that the problem stays and grows alongside their careers in the organisation! What’s the easiest way to know if this has manifested- watch out for the words- “This is how it is- this is how it will be!” How to go around this? Well only one way- Always hire for competence, skill and personality- These attributes are at the very foundation of an individual which will tell you whether a person that you want on your team is an all weather solution or a fair weather peacock!

But then why do people have so much of misplaced stress on “experience” well this has more to do with the “Followers” and importantly the “Quality of Followership”! Remember folks we get our urge of being followed and high of leading even as we evolved from being chimps into humans- but the quality of followership speaks a lot more about the Leader than the follower! If you want to ever decide whom you want to to work with- do check the followership for the person! In an ideal and highest form of Leadership- Leaders are meant to create more Leaders and not Followers (Refer- John C Maxwell), but given the short supply of common sense and reducing intelligence- even if Leader’s are able to get high quality followers, I will pleased enough! Look around you, whether it is your office, it’s your city council, your national politics- what do you see- you will see an unfailing pattern- Like attracts Like– That’s the universal law and holds good very much when it is about the quality of Followership! Say you have an intelligent leader- but obviously the followership will be more of intelligent people who are able to understand and contribute to the leader’s cause and actions- those who don’t understand a shit of what the Leader is saying will simply walk away- saying that the leader is an idiot! Well at times it may be true- when Leader’s camouflage their dumbness and call it as intelligence which is lapped up by an equally greater number of dumb followers- who also are believed into thinking that they are wise because they are following a wise leader!

This eternal strife between real and assumed intelligence and the quality of followership ends up serving societies with leaders who now have “experience” and become “experts” who are then entrusted with all our lives when we meet global challenges! Well I am certainly not suggesting that all are idiots, what I am saying here is- the quality of follwership and giving more importance to individual intelligence, competence and skills is much more valuable and meaningful if the world needs to find it’s way back not only from the pandemic but also from a growing economic disaster which will turn into a socio economic problems with law and order connotations in the coming weeks and months!

Experience only helps if you are going to go about doing the same thing again and again the same way as you have been doing it earlier! When contextual settings change- as life changes- what will help and what alone helps is – intelligence, skill and competence which are as intrinsic to every individual just as their blood group and it is all about doing what best they do with it that makes the difference between surviving and crashing during a meltdown event!

I will leave you with my thoughts here, time for a coffee and will be back soon with another piece, until then do think about what leader’s,experts and followership quality have you seen around you and what is that you want to change for the larger good, form this moment on!