188 - Monday Musings - Good guys can finish first

188 - Monday Musings - Good guys can finish first

It is difficult for any observer with even a small cricketing bone in him in India and outside, not to be swayed by the Sachin-mania that has swept them like a typhoon. They can be broadly be classified in the following categories - The cricket enthusiasts, The worshippers, and The pattern makers.

The cricket enthusiasts are the purists within this lot. They adore the 'Big' little man for the sheer cricketing genius that he was. Their love for Sachin was nothing but a personalization of their love for the game. What better way of expressing their love for the willow or the cherry than idolize the one man who almost became larger than the game itself! In praising Sachin they praised cricket and their love for it. They loved him because he took the game to levels higher than what he inherited. But make no mistake - they loved Sachin because they loved cricket and not the other way around. 

The worshippers loved him for what they aspired to become but probably fell short of. Sachin represented the Indian version of the 'American dream' if there is one - A middle class Indian who aspires to make it big by the dint of his hard work in the right way, An 'Aam Admi' who wants to raise his future to a level where matters of existence do not faze him anymore and allows him the rare luxury of doing what he loves. The worshippers were in awe of Sachin because he had demonstrated that such a thing was indeed possible. He represented what they always wanted to do and become. His God-like following was perhaps less to do with his cricketing genius but more to do with what he came to represent for the 'aam aadmi' - a metaphor for unbridled aspiration even in the face of scarcity. In an icon hungry but icon scarce country he offered hope. 

The pattern makers are intellectuals who try to solve the non-sporting aspects of Sachin the person and his meteoric rise. They explore, amongst other things, how Sachin's rise coincided with the rise of India along with the liberalization of economy, how Sachin represented the rise of youth power in the face of a geriatric leadership, how he heralded a silent aggression in an otherwise lukewarm dressing room so on and so forth. They will continue to draw such patterns. 

What do I like Sachin for the most? Given the cubclist that i am, of the many things i admire about him the one thing that keeps coming back to me is that - 'Good guys can finish first'. Sachin's rise to prominence and stardom is unblemished. His humility and personal disposition is unquestionable. In 24 long years, despite his dizzying stardom, there is absolutely no question about his integrity. Even his worst critic knows this as an ablsolute truth that he owes his success, riches, and iconic status to nothing and nothing but merit. In the corporate world where it is so easy to be disillusioned as many have, for right reasons or wrong, and where everyone is in search of the secret of making it big, that is such a reassuring conclusion. 

Guru

187 Monday Musings: A walk in the graveyard

187 Monday Musings: A walk in the graveyard

I am midway through a book "The art of thinking clearly" by Rolf Dobelli. It is not an earth shatteringly original book, though it sits pretty in that comfortable area between original research and common sense. It has a collection of a hundred common biases that prevent human beings to make perfectly rational, logical and objective decisions. It is an easy read and everyone should read the book to at least become aware of the ubiquitous nature of biases that we are susceptible to.

The first bias outlined by Rolf is called the "Survivorship Bias' which says that 'people systematically overestimate their chances of success'....and that we should 'guard against it by frequently visiting the graves of once promising projects, investments and careers....it is a sad walk but one that should clear your mind'. This bias stayed with me for quite some time, for it is not strictly a statistically provable bias, but probably more like a folk wisdom.

We are sure of things more often than not only of what we want, but also how we want it and most importantly why we want it. Life is governed by certitudes. May be some of us care to admit not being sure of things in our personal moments, but continue to maintain the charade of surefootedness. It is not difficult to see why such certitude is the norm and expected behavior. We derive our place in the sun - at workplace, families and society by being sure about things. This is most pronounced at workplace because being sure pays for your groceries. Organizations do not like tentativeness in circumstances and people. They demand guarantees and certitudes. Hence that is what they get. Sometimes authentic and at other times manufactured.

It would all be fine except the survivorship bias. 'Visiting the graves of once promising projects, investments and careers' provides a sense of proportion. I 'knew' of this but I 'felt' the enormity of this wisdom only now. I bounced it with a friend and he assured me that I am now officially 'middle age' or suffering from mid-life crisis. I checked the public view on this bias with a few more and realized the following. One, if you are young and have had no major failures or struggles so far at work or relationships, then you are going to dismiss this bias as humbug of the weak and/or old. Two, if you are not that old and have had a mixed bag of successes or failures, then you are most likely to identify with this wisdom. If you are not that old and have missed the bus in your career or relationships or were particularly ill fated to be dealt with more than normal bad hands then you will use this bias as the 'scientific explanation' of your bad fortune - and then order another drink. Finally if you are old, irrespective of your successes at work or relationships and are by and large mature then you will identify with this bias as one of those things that we must remember, just when we are planning to conquer the world.

Finally, where do I stand on this or better still where do I want to stand on this? I want to go for the final assault with all my might - want the victory badly enough and then go for the walk in the graveyard. 

Guru

Monday Musings186: Bias for Inaction

Monday Musings 186: Bias for Inaction

Any cubclist worth his salt will tell you that a 'bias for action' has been dished out as a panacea and as his corporate karma more number of times than any other corporate sermon ever; others include 'think out of the box', 'being proactive/creative/innovative', 'I don't know how but just get it done' et al. 

The phrase 'bias for action' in the corporate corridors was made famous by Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghoshal in their book 'Bias of action' - and although the book itself never promoted wasteful action or frenzied overaction - this phrase snailed its way into the lexicon of business managers who usually used it to mean 'always be doing something'. In good times act because a semblance of work has to be shown and in bad times keep up the act to let others know that you are not sitting idle but trying to solve things.

I am sure action is good - but purposive action is better. Action must not be for action sake. It must be for the sake of a preferred outcome, after having satisfied oneself that the action will indeed lead to the desired outcome. Otherwise and till such time such causality is established, it may be wiser to do nothing. Considered non action is more powerful than mindless action. 

Non-action is not the same thing as inaction. Inaction means you are not doing when something can be done. Non-action means you are exercising a 'choice' - of not doing anything when you have both the inclination and the ability to do something because you believe on the basis of information and wisdom that not doing anything is a better thing to do. However in today’s frenzied context that may be a terrible thing to suggest. All around us there appears to be a premium on doing something or the other, keep taking some initiative or the other (I call it the 'initiative overdose'). Considered Non-action is misconstrued as intellectual lethargy or lack of application, that is surely not going to attract encomiums. 

Research headed by Michael Bar Eli at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel studied how the goal keepers should defend penalty kicks. He concluded that based on the two factors that influence the outcome of a penalty kick - one the distance a goal keeper can jump on both sides, two the time available for the goal keeper to respond (.3 seconds), it makes eminently more sense to stay still rather than jump on either side.(http://www.scienceofsocceronline.com/2009/04/penalty-kicks-by-numbers.html) - that is considered non-action than non-purposive action. Yet goal keepers jump either side more often than not because it is better to appear losing a goal while doing something rather than just standing there. 

There is merit in purposive, passionate and perseverant action. There is wisdom in purposive non action. Sometimes it makes sense to dig in your heels, cover your head and let the storm pass. There are two billion dollar questions around this conundrum - the lesser evil is to know what the time for purposive non-action is, the greater evil is to know how to answer your boss when he hollers at you "why the hell don’t you do  something". 

Guru

Monday Musings 185: New wisdom in old knowledge

Monday Musings 185: New wisdom in old knowledge

Sometimes things make sense only across time, when you connect the proverbial dots. 

More than a decade back I had read a seminal book 'Yuganta' by Iravati Karve. The book came recommended through some colleagues who were active in the area of human behavior while I was this wannabe who carries the drinks while the good ones play. The book, originally written in Marathi and winner of Sahitya Academy award, studies and analyses the central characters of Mahabharata, as if they were normal human beings and not heroes in a religious text. For those who are fed on one standard interpretation of Indian epics, this book will be thought provoking at best and sacrilegious at worst.  I did not understand much about the book because it did not align with my standard understanding about the lead characters based on the popular discourse. For example Yuganta lays a large part of the blame for the war with the selfless Bheeshma - in the many injustices he did and the many he condoned or let happen, only to fulfill his own vows. Yuganta describes the character of Kunti detailing her contradictions, some of them not very kind. Finally, and the one which had the maximum shock value for me at that time, was this seemingly preposterous suggestion that Vidura may be the father of Yudhisthir. The shock value of the whole book notwithstanding, I read Yuganta and forgot about it, more because i did not understand it, never realizing that it was such a celebrated book. 

Last year I read another book based on Mahabharat, called 'The difficulty of being good' by Gurcharan Das, the famous ex CEO of P & G, writer and now columnist. This book also looks into the epic more from a pragmatic standpoint and what it can teach for day to day living, rather than as a reverence seeking religious book. If Ramayana is utopian, then Mahabharata is practical. The book makes us see human imperfections in their true glory and concludes that 'Dharma is subtle' and that it is fundamentally difficult to be good. I have my own views on what is not good with the book, but I give full credit to the author to have attempted a scholarly dissection of the most popular Indian epic which has been rendered stale by looking at it as a monochromatic narrative, frozen in time. It tries to put some life in the epic by viewing it from fresh lens, something Yuganta had done many decades earlier. 

Now comes the third dot, which incidentally is the trigger for this musing. Although I have not seen even one frame of the new Mahabharata on the telly, my better half has - and what she has seen, she has liked it, to an extent that she was moved to talk about it. She found the new Mahabharat 'refreshing', 'more balance for the characters - that each character is presenting his/her point of view' and hence 'we see those characters in a new light'. Kudos to the script writers of the new Mahabharata that they have injected some freshness into a stale tale to an extent that the ordinary viewer is able to discern a difference, see those characters in a new way that she has not seen them so far. 

The point of this musing is twofold. One is that it is time for me to read Yuganta once more. I think I am more prepared to understand the book and hence the epic. The second and the more important one is that we must reinterpret all our epics. We must not only read more and more interpretations of them because there is a lot of work that has happened on critically analyzing them (read the banned-in-DU essay "300 Ramanayans" by AK Ramanujam), but more importantly we must read them ourselves and create our own narratives. Some of these epics, in most of the core religions of the subcontinent has enough and more to consume our lifetimes. If not for the esoteric satisfaction of metaphysical development, then for the mundane joy of reading an old story and understanding it in a new way, these epics must be read and re read. Who knows what they might tell us this time.

Guru

Post script - the cubiclist in the corporate world is a worm busy in its survival. He has the industry report, the competitive analysis, and the monthly review presentation to read. The epics can wait – and by the way so can his life.

Monday Musings184: The inanity of company taglines

Monday Musings184: The inanity of company taglines

LG, the Korean company changed its famous tagline 'Life is good' to 'It is all possible'. As a common consumer who is not trained in the science of crafting company taglines, it appeared to be unimaginative at best and a counterfeit at worst. It did not take me long to realize that it reminded me, and not without reason, of another famous tagline by the footwear giant Adidas, 'Impossible is nothing'.  A little bit of research on the subject also revealed that ABN AMRO BANK has used a tagline 'Making more possible' and Huawei a technology company in Asia is using the tagline 'Make it Possible' or yet another case when HP invent claimed 'Everything is possible'. Frankly there might be verbal jugglery and a distinction of semantics in each one of them, but for the layman on the street, me included, they appear all the same, or least suspiciously similar. What were the creators doing while crafting these lookalikes? Weren’t taglines supposed to be boldly original, thereby differentiating companies in a boringly cluttered market? 

Another example, though not as grotesque comes to my mind, this time a little more subtle. Shahrukh Khan exhorted all of us to 'Thoda wish karo, Dish Karo' in a commercial which wanted us not to be satisfied with less. The intention was to push us 'satisfied with less' morons to want more. Kareena Kapoor has been tugging at our heart strings these days by saying 'Pyaas badhao', again with an intention to want more, desire more, ask for more. Nothing connects the two product lines but clearly the tagline writer looks likes he was 'inspired'. Curiously Shahrukh Khan in yet another ad has also said 'Chalo Paint Karen', suspiciously similar to the Dish TV ad. As I remarked earlier this category is not shamelessly same as the first category but subtly similar in the construct and the imagery.

We know that imitation is the best form of flattery, but guess the taglines of companies by design are supposed to be different. I also wonder at times what is the exact role that these taglines actually play in the success of a company or a brand or is it something that is nice to have. Is it a statement of intent that guides the company in its day to day operation or is it nothing but the worm that attracts the fish to the hook? AIG spoke about 'The strength to be there' before it went turtle and what a deadly combination of hilarity and irony was the Lehman brothers tagline 'Where vision gets built'. I wonder why Enron said 'Ask why’; because that is exactly everyone else is asking since it sank without a trace. 

So look around, in the companies you work with or have worked with or plan to work with - how much these taglines mean to them and how much meaning these taglines have for the day to day decision making. And if you are not the serious kind, then keep looking for and keep enjoying the inanity of some of them. 

Guru 

Monday Musings 183: The anatomy of atrophy

Monday Musings 183: The anatomy of atrophy

Everything begins as a movement, becomes a business and then ends up becoming a racket. 

All status quo generates a need to change from within. Only sometimes the need is felt just in time but most of the times it is late. All status quo germinates an ecosystem of vested interests, however much the system raves and rants about the authenticity of intent. Hence the forces of self preservation will keep change at bay. There in hangs the tale. Change from outside is rarely peaceful and the change from within is often late. 

Every religious system began as a movement to reform the status quo and soon it became an oligarchy, spawning reformist movements as a response, over time meeting the same fate. Reformist movements needed reforms. There goes a Zen story that captures it so beautifully. Disciples of a wise Zen master were searching for truth in a jungle and soon it became a competition as to who will discover the truth first. A disciple came rushing and shared with disappointment that someone had found truth first. The Zen master replies with nonchalance, “do not worry - they will make a religion out of it - and soon the truth will be lost". 

Economic systems which promised El Dorado are nowhere to be seen and those which are still around are struggling for acceptance in the puritanical form and shape that they were conceived. Communism is buried in history and capitalism is a prisoner with the capitalists. If the former had the hypocrisy to deal with the latter has cronyism to battle. Both began with great intent, but got corrupted along the way, like a clean spring from the mountains acquires silt and mud as it flows down the plains. 

Organizations begin with fancy vision, mission and value systems and soon become a caricature of itself. More remain a pale shadow of the promise that they had shown than the ones who blossom to their potential. It takes only a few years of blinking to let the innards get corroded. Academically organizational processes, systems and institutions are supposed to keep a watchful eye on this degeneration, and yet there is clear evidence of all of them failing - sometimes dramatically, and at other times corrupting the fabric like a silent malignancy. Individuals gone berserk can bring even the most sensible organizations to its knees over time. Soon everything becomes a sham, a charade, an act - and ultimately a racket. 

This seems to be an ageing process. Is it natural atrophy, which is the way things will always be? Will things become a racket only because only then it will give birth to the chrysalis of reform? As Peter Senge, a systems thinker says, "Things become worse before they become better". 

God - why are there always more questions than answers? 

Guru 

Monday Musings 182 - The someday list

Monday Musings 182 - The someday list

A friend of mine introduced me to this phrase the other day - what it means is the list of things that we want to do but keep on postponing it for some reason or the other. The modern day cubiclist is a work in progress of guilt and unfulfilled list of things to do. A random conversation with a score of such cubiclists will reaveal to you that it is not an isolated case worthy of being quarantied and treated in isolation, but a pandemic which does not kill but leaves you in state of permanent suspension, bereft of imagination and joie de vivre. This is not to say that the life of the cubiclist is all that bad, but there it is not all that hunky dory either. The drugery of the powerpoint can be lethal. 

Each has his own someday-list which they so ruefully talk about, usually when they let thier guard down aided by the therapeutic effects of a few beers. Some want to do more music, some a little bit more of painting and yet others a bit more travel. Some want to read a bit more, some want to watch some great movies and yet others want to excercise a bit more. Some want to do thier own thing and yet others, like me, want to do nothing. Nothingness has great virtues. 

Whatever it is that they are aching to do someday, is both a liberation and thier greatest bondage. It does not allow you to enjoy what you have and currently do as much as you can, and yet not having it keeps you going in the hope that some day lady luck will shine and you shall reach the El dorado of your dreams. The underlying assumtion is that you will live happily thereafter, but that is another story. 

Each one has his own script that he uses for not being able to do the stuff on the someday list. The most popular of them is not having enough time. Long commutes, late hours and ever increasing domestic chores is a grim reality leaving no time and energy to do what is a springboard to the soul. The less you do them, more acute is the void, which means you do it even lesser. The fall in the abyss is long and hard.  However it is also true that most of the time lack of time is a ruse, a master script on self deception.

The second reason is lack of opportunity. There are a lot with amateur talent which can be chiselled with a little amount of care or who missed doing thier stuff in thier prime because of thier own reasons. The genuine ones amongst these require the most empathy, for the wheel of time cannot be turned back. We must only nudge them to reclaim whatever they can at this stage. There are enough and more tales of late bloomers around that have the potential for inspiration. 

The third type are waiting for enough money in the bank to be able to embark on the journey for which they think they were born for. There is never enough money in the bank to give you that security to jump. Ask me! This is the second worst script of self deception after the no time deception. I can personally vouch that the real reason is often lack of initiative and courage. 

The someday list can either be an inspiration, that eggs you on, replenishes the fountain of hope or it can be an albatross around your neck. 

Guru

By the way, have you ever compiled your someday list.