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 :)

A new type of celebration

It took some time coming, but I finally managed to get my friends to celebrate new year's eve the way I have always dreamed of. (I started preparations really early) I've faced a peculiar predicament - I don't like to go to fancy parties, shell out a couple of grand (specially since I'm a teetotaler) and then end up not enjoying half as much as I could have; but have landed at such events regularly over the past few years... Not wanting to play spoilsport, I've acceded to my friends' plans and have gone along.

Rock Bottom at Juhu, last year, greeted us with throngs of people gushing out of a steamy, sweaty discotheque in the basement as it had gotten way too jam-packed. There was no food worth speaking of, and whatever little there was, was inedible filth. Tulip Star, a few years back, was no different. An overwhelming majority of friends have the same story to share about all such other joints. New Year merry-making is a relatively new phenomenon in India and the organizers are utterly incapable of seeing beyond money, which the increasing number of revelers are increasingly capable of spending in increasing amounts!

This year was lovely - 12 people chez my lovely friend. (Man, is she a gracious host!) Food ordered from outside. A little bit-o-booze to boot. Some pictionary. 3 iPods attached to the amplifier with everyone taking turns to play DJ. Lots of talk, jokes, pranks, jibes and the likes. Off to Natural's at 3 in the night to enjoy ice-creams and shakes. Back home at 6.

Even one of my most pro-fancy-party friends admitted that this was a wonderful experience with such merry and quality time! Kneekey has won! ;-D

Give me a cup of coffee with a friend, any day!

When communications skills contradict probability

This one is priceless - I'm preparing for my last paper tomorrow - Communications Skills, and came across this: "... With these techniques tactfully utilised the presenter has excellent chances for a successful deal. There are equal chances of failure and the presenter should be prepared for the same..."
So doesn't that mean that there are excellent chances for failure as well?!? ;)

The author needs a few lessons in effective communications skills as well as in probability, doesn't he?

I say a written theory-based paper on Communication Skills is about as effective as trying to teach someone flying a plane via e-mail... Ditto for Marketing, HR, IT, et al.

Far, far away from reality.

Words of wisdom...

...are useless. Sermons serve no purpose. The world is very different from the way most of us imagine it to be.

The relationship seems very simple - if you study regularly, you'll do well. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. A penny saved is a penny earned. What is the common link between these words of wisdom and these simple yet ineffective/useless causal relationships which exist in our head in large numbers, clogging our system? They were all made retrospectively and have hardly helped anyone achieve what they try to convey! Aren't they just mnemonics, helping us remember what we intuitively know to be true? They are useful only to those who are looking for something good to read (or want to be seen as reading something good), which reaffirms their accepted beliefs and helps them maintain that they are sane. Additionally, they give (false) hope to some people about a permanent solution to their chronic problems. After all, who can dispute that if you do study regularly, you'll do well?

What I've been struggling to understand is that in spite of the exceedingly pervasive spread of these 'facts' and their astonishing simplicity, why don't people study regularly and let things pile up? Why don't people who want to improve their general knowledge and awareness to the desired levels end up doing so by reading newspapers daily?

The culprit, I believe is the usual yawning gap between perceived reality and actual reality. These words of wisdom and cause-effect relationships are partial truths painting an incomplete picture; in any case, they are inapplicable directly, are deceptively simple and are firmly in the domain of our perceived reality. To make something work, it needs to come from actual reality, whose complete understanding, I believe is beyond the comprehension of humans. What we can get, at best, is a partial understanding of actual reality.

Let me call an apple an apple and say that most people who regularly go to sermons don't practice most of what is preached over there, and whatever little they do practice, they would've practiced anyway. In our struggle to find the purpose of our existence, initially, we look around ourselves and try to discover ourselves and our 'mandate'. When the time so spent gets engulfed by our circumstances or our routine, our search ceases; buried in us, subdued but not dead. This, I believe, is the root and sole cause of dissatisfaction, viz. when we've 'achieved loads' but aren't sure if this is what we set out to achieve. Perceived reality does not match actual reality.

I believe people don't know what to do with themselves; a state of infinite idle time, if you will. Sadly, everyone thinks that they're supposed to know what to do with it! Most of those who do 'know' what to do with themselves are there by default. Many others just continue doing some randomly chosen activities, build their lives and expectations around it, and then christen it their mandate. This is how most people end up filling-up their idle time.

I believe that there isn't a mandate attached to our existence. To be sure, our basic needs should be met, but that is the extent of it. It's akin to us being born as uninhabited cars - we need the petrol and the gas in the tires to run it, but we're not born with a driver who knows where to take it (Sure, we have a system that innately tells us that we're not supposed to bump into other cars, follow the traffic lights, etc.) For many, circumstances come and dictate the direction to be taken and so become the driver of the car. For others, they start in some randomly chosen direction which may be based on herd mentality, emulation of who they perceived as being worth emulating, parental/social pressure, or maybe based on some arbitrary calculations involving the positions of the sun and the stars, and adopt it as their own...

Something worth noting from the above is that it renders the whole 'fatalism' vs. 'self-determination' argument redundant. Aren't those whose drivers are chosen by circumstances the 'victims of fate'? Similarly, aren't those who have 'chosen' their way of life in some ad-hoc manner people who are 'active and determining the course of their own lives'? Does it matter? Nah! Point is, both have accepted their perceived reality as actual reality, which is where the trouble begins.

The reason why I keep laying so much stress on coming as close to reality as possible is that without doing that, isn't life one big random function without any control? On the contrary, when you are close to actual reality, doesn't life become one with control, predictability and with meaning? (nonetheless retaining its unexplained character, which I believe is commonly known as God)

By the way, think about this - all those people who are universally accepted as being successful or great are those whose perceived reality was closer to actual reality than those whose were not, or the 'average Joes'.

I believe a paradigm shift is called for in which we live our lives - one in which the main emphasis is on making effective plans, in establishing and teaching the causal relationships and replacing the whole 'good-sounding-but-not-useful' talk. A quick review of your favorite teachers, people, events, lectures, books, etc. (in short, anything you have considered worth remembering) is that they all made a difference to you.

This is not a sermon or a theory - it's my perception of reality. Call it my experimentation with reality, if you will. I am miles away from complete 'actual reality', and I know it. But the good part is that I know it, and I know that I have to choose the direction in which I want the driver to take me, based on what is important to me :)

PS: The raison d'etre of this article is twofold:

1. An innocuous line I read in my textbook yesterday while preparing for a paper, which struck me as being symbolic of much of what we hear, read and speak - "Good results can be achieved through a systematic approach to manager development and training". A perfectly true sentence, and perfectly useless as well.
2. My own and a close friend's genuine struggle to understand how to go about discovering your mandate!