198 Monday Musings: The Catch

198 Monday Musings: The Catch

It is difficult to remain untouched by the feverish pitch of the coming parliamentary elections. This time like no time before, the method in the madness reveals itself from behind the cacophony of voices. The electoral madness and its actual outcome notwithstanding, the run up to the elections have become increasingly corporatized. The stamp of the 'marketing think-tank' behind the campaign is unmistakable - which brings me the point of today’s musing that all vision selling is less an intellectual act of creation but more the mundane act of selling. 

I see three distinct strands of electoral positioning so far - and each one of them will have equivalents in the corporate world to take note of and lessons from. 

First the 'Old wine in the old bottle' - the Congress's attempt to create a promise where none exists. It fails to trigger imagination because of the corpses of the unmet expectation lie everywhere. The die has been cast now and their promises of the future shall be judged by the images of their past performance. They had their chances and they must realize that they cannot manufacture the reputation of performance through imagery and propaganda. As Alyque Padmse said 'The fastest way of killing a bad product is good advertising'

The second is the BJP campaign of 'You gave them a chance - now give us'. This is more a TINA - There is no alternative pitch, the case of pitching for 'we are relatively lesser evil'. There is no imagination, no original proposition, no vision per se that might fire the aspirations that paints the picture of a new ideal, but an appeal for an anti-establishment wave ridden by an ‘angry young man’ tactics. This is the nature of the permanent protester whose only method is to talk of the disenchantment with the establishment, but not offering a coherent and powerful vision of the future. It is nothing but a 'better' version of the past.

The third, unfortunately the only one who offers this is the AAP (why is this unfortunate is something that deserves another musing) - a bold new vision of the future, something fundamentally and radically different from the past, that has a better chance of dealing with the challenges of the future. It may not be clear and definitive, but has the promise to shake things around. Even in partial success it is a better bet than trying to fix the old. 

Corporate leaders and I do not mean the CEOs here, but the middle management fall in precisely these three categories. Middle management is where the things rot more often than not. This is where vision meets execution, or rather where it does not meet!

The first kind are those who have played their cards, often miserably so, but who at the beginning of a new year want the teams below and around them to give yet another chance to their moribund plans. They want their teams to respond with passion, energy and commitment even though the corpses of poorly thought plans, half baked initiatives and horrendous follow through lie everywhere. 

The second kinds are those who are waiting in the ranks to usurp the throne, plotting and planning in the shadows, cynical and sarcastic with the current scheme of things, but who do not anything new or substantial to offer. They can at best offer how to 'tinker with the carburetor' to make it marginally better, but have no clue about the 'new engine' needed to drive into the future. Obviously most of them are blissfully unaware of this, but wishful thinking is still not a crime, is it?

The third kinds are needed but are rarely found. Middle management is also not the best of places to be in, for it is sandwiched between the thinkers and the doers. They do not have the power of the top or the insurance of the bottom. They are also most susceptible to existential angst and disillusionment that is rampant in the corridors of the corporate world. However this does not takes away the crying demand for them to not only have a vision, as different from the organizational vision that shall infuse a new lease of life in their functions. They are either caught in the web of only talking about the big picture, leaving the dirty job of execution to the lesser mortal, or they get too involved in the small tasks abdicating the need for a big picture thinking. The precarious balance between plumbing and philosophizing remains elusive.

The plumber must find time to have a philosophy or else he might die a plumber. The philosopher must find opportunities to plumb or else he might become unfit to even plumb. What a colossal waste both shall be!!

Guru