People are basically good

When time and again, randomly chosen sets of people end up in similar situations, it just goes to show the importance of structure and systems in creating enduring excellence.

An educational institute is an ideal location to study this behavior. The senior batch shares the legacy of the institute with the juniors in terms of parameters like inter-committee rivalry, how nobody really appreciates their work, how they have been wronged, etc. A year down the line, the wheel turns a full cycle and the new senior batch pass on this legacy. No real harm, one might argue, as long as the 'work' gets done. But the issue is deeper than that - absence of negatives should never be construed as satisfactory as it precludes the synergies that mostly result between people who are allowed to flourish in a conducive environment!

It's the same story elsewhere - the structure, system, processes, guidelines and incentives need to be aligned towards the goal, rather than being put together in an ad-hoc manner. A small and relevant example - I just read an article in the ET which said that the crew of the leading low-cost carrier in India willingly gave up home-drops and agreed to cleaning up the washrooms of the aircraft resulting in several tangible benefits for the organization. Because of these reasons and many more, they're back in black this quarter, on-time performance has improved and amount of lost-luggage has halved! How was all this achieved? Through a successful combination of SSPGI mentioned above. What was happening hitherto? The employees of this organization (which was naturally experiencing a large churn-rate) were rooting for the organization to fail!

In the absence of a conducive environment, people and functional units feel victimized, engage in petty politics and effectiveness goes for a toss as it is seldom the focus. If all the energies of the different functional units are not aligned in the same direction, you shouldn't be surprised with persistently far-from-optimum outcomes. Resources are lost in trying to fix the blame and other meaningless pursuits, rather than utilizing them in moving towards the goal. I'd say that focusing on these basics is a precondition for true and lasting success, and the applicability of this principle is universal.

This leads me to the title of this post and my intuitive feeling - people are basically good. It's the SSPGI that matters the most for the vast majority of the populace. The more these SSPGI are in touch with reality and the more they are aligned towards the desired outcome, the greater is the chance of success given any comparable random set of people!

What about the rest of the populace? Well, they are the true leaders and path-breakers. Think of any great person who made a difference to this world - they're sure to have contributed to putting the optimum mix of SSPGI in place :)