Leadership and other blah

It seems that sanity of human life revolves around having ego. Without it, you'd probably have no sense of insecurity about your self worth and therefore have no motivation whatsoever to do anything. Ergo, you just sit and die.
This ego comes in many sizes and forms. By pareto, 80% of people have egos of the size of Taj Mahal - meaning they see everyone as a competitor and therefore are ready to be manipulated.
The other 20% - again by pareto - are the ones who are just happy to be. The ego that they have is the size of a pea - meaning they just get along and live in the present. Of course, the intent is not to find out where one fits. The intent is to debunk some myths, chiefly, leadership.
We are told to be leaders, we like leaders, especially in areas where we want things to happen and have no control over but are affected. While leaders should be from 20% (ideally), they mainly come from the 80% due to the entire ego-philosophy. Hey! if I don't have an ambition to lead someone, why the hell would I do it anyway.
Point being, you can cry your ass out about senior management, bosses, political leaders and other people who are out there deciding your fates, realize that (a) you are doing the same in your own territory; or (b) you are least worried about it.
There are preachers aplenty who talk about Leadership, thinking clearly, communication and other blah. Remember, you are born to do something. If you don't do it you will feel insecure and be the 80%. On the contrary, without thinking twice, if you take the plunge and achieve what you set out to you will never have to worry about being a leader.

Money

Money is a wonderful construct created by humans. As with anything human, it has its own fallacies and capitalism is bringing out more each day.

I believe that to ensure that any human design is flawless it needs to resemble the way nature tackles the same problem. E.g. if animals feel cold they migrate, whereas humans build houses and kill other animals for clothing. Now if only we could find out what polar bear's skin is made of, replicate the chemical composition and create something, that'd not only be bio degradable but more aligned with nature.

By this yardstick construct of money is obviously flawed chiefly because it makes you think you or your skill is worth more or less than other person's skill. If we have to align with nature, a tree is as much important or not to nature as is a creeper. Also, given the circumstances even a tree or creeper adapts and survives. Same is true of animals. Humans on the contrary need to feel important. Somehow we have linked survival instincts with ego. Ego leads to thinking of self-worth and that leads to invention of money and its distribution. Of course, since ego is a feeling so it can be said that people born with more ego are the ones who are highly insecure about their chances of survival in the world. Ergo, people needing/wanting/desiring more money inherently afraid of life itself.

Nature's focus is primarily to get you to do what you are born to do. Everything else is noise. Money or no money, you are born to do something. Because money is linked to a feeling, make that feeling of self worth strong by doing what you are born to do. Once this linkage is strong, ego need not come to play and money still falls into place.

professionalism

The definitions are changing and right in front of my eyes - a guy who completes 10 yrs in professional life.

• It started with looking like an executive meaning the entire drill of suit/coat/tie, then went to dressing "smart" and now in my office people wear jeans all the time.
• It started with having a desktop, then having a laptop, then having a data card and now if there is no need, my team "assumes" that they will be working from home/guest house/hotel/wherever
• It started with having strict rules of using internet and while porn is still a no-no, everyone realizes that social networking is a force to reckon with

It is time to accept that there are no 2 identities of a person - one that works and one that enjoys a personal life. The boundaries are falling, which means a single identity, that much less complexity and that much less hypocrisy.

Companies that are embracing this change are going ahead full force and why not. While every type of person is accepted, work is paramount and the more it is aligned to your personality, the satisfied you are with your job. Less HR work and obviously less frustrations. Plus company benefits from your individuality.

For an organization there are many challenges - right from HR policies to Systems management. But the simplification starts at leadership. If work becomes paramount and people themselves self select for a job, life becomes that much easier.

an emotional angle

Emotions are an essential part of being human. We feel good, bad, sad, angry, happy, awesome and so on. Never ever I thought that I would feel something so good, so great, so awesome and yet it does bring a sense of content.

Love may be the most talked about, exploited, marketed and abused word in the world, but as an emotion you cannot beat it. I am away from the family for close to 10 years now. I am away from my home for 4 days now. The pull is so strong at times that whenever I see, or hear anything about "staying away", the heart starts another song. Its like a melody only I can feel.

To quote my favorite ghazal:
"Kahan maykhane ka darwaza ghalib, aur kahan waayiz,
Bas itna jaante hain kal wo jaata tha ke hum nikale"

The levels at which Ghalib sensed love can only be known if you feel that kind of love every second of every hour of every day of your life.

Action has reaction..

Action has equal and opposite reaction. So true and yet so unbelievably undermined, ignored and most often forgotten principle.

If you believe in something, you choose to believe in it. A main factor in that choice is the feeling that choice gives you. Satisfaction, joy, happiness and at times deeper emotions, like love, trust. In short your choices of believing (or not believing) lead you to feel better about yourself, at least for the moment, or at most your entire life.

Guilt is one of the primary factors that makes us take those choices. Right from the day you were born the guilt just starts to enter your life. First the upbringing, then your own guiding thoughts ensure that if there is something making you take a choice, guilt has a lion's share in that decision making.

Guilt's cousin is anger. They don't have to go hand in hand, yet they do. Ever seen parents controlling their kids by means of beating them up? Yup, that's anger stemming from guilt.

Now if you believe in choices, you will always be guilty because you think you made those choices.

Love, the all pervasive feeling, the attraction, the passion and the care, the feeling that cannot be defined by words at times, very ironically doesn't need a choice. Its right there. Ever seen a kid making sand castle, sunrise, sea, birds, flowers. See there is no choice to be made. Your senses are already spellbound. The feeling is out of this world and yet it seems to be emerging from somewhere within us.

So the only choice you have to make is are you going to act or feel? Remember, the choice you make is also an act and every action has....

IE9

Writing this blog from IE 9. well I think not using IE9 on win7 means you are not using most of the features. But still the question lingers, why would I switch to this if I have chrome or firefox? esp chrome when it is :

1. much cleaner with a ton of tabs

2. faster. I just don't understand why IE team fancies loading time. Its about page rendering as well.

3. has already done what IE9 is now doing like larger space for website content, HTML5 support etc etc that IE9 touts.

Well, realized that browser is a red ocean. what will it take to create the next bunch of internet browsing app??

PS: published this from Chrome.. somehow the button didn't work. Also why aren't they showing the status bar?

Positive journalism..

One of my classmates at ISB and hopefully a friend as well has started an initiative "Better India". It is a very good initiative, and I for one have been a protagonist.

India today needs something like this to develop a sense of purpose. Unlike the countries we get compared to (with an exception of China), Indians carry thousands of years of baggage. This baggage comes with a price in that we still carry the "suspect" and "doubtful" gene with us. Therefore as a society we have become over cautious of anything.

Added to this is the cultural degradation that has happened for about a thousand years. And I am not talking about Western influence. The aspect of being open minded and having faith in knowledge / learning has long been forgotten. Now its just money that matters. We can argue the reasons for this as well, but the results are not conducive to a better India. Ironically its money that is the root cause of this degradation as well.

It is really chicken and egg problem. But the power of a positive mindset doesn't need reiteration. We are what we are and all humans have limitations but there always a beginning. And it all begins with trust. We have to trust that positive mindset and open mindedness will bring the right opportunities for Indians to make this a wonderful place.

Is it just me or...

I generally hate trashing somebody. I am of the opinion that there are views and opinions and which is why world is an interesting place. I also believe strongly that that is how world exists. Although somehow I am realizing that maybe there are some thoughts that need to be trashed completely. Here are some:

• Showing emotional appeal to have people buy your product has been taken to an extreme. I mean for God's sake its an ad for popcorn. Why do you need to show puppy love and child angle with some "ta-ti-tu-te"? Its a popcorn. Ultimately, its a FMCG and therefore it will be picked up by a random guy for random reason and all the company has to do it is to keep them on shelves! Have you ever seen ad for Joshi's Chiwda? No! Because its right there and tasty and they need not.
• I am all for tourism. I am all for preserving the culture. And because it helps a lot of people to earn an honest day's living. But to show people what they already know, doesn't create a large impact. What to do? Show that India is already beautiful. For God's sake we have a billion people, can't you employ and pay people to take care of such things. Better still have Aamir Khan endorse for Citizen watch or something like that.

The list is endless. At times I feel do people really know what advertising is supposed to do? Actually every time I see an ad like that, I feel there is an overpaid MBA sitting there and giving gyaan on whether he wants "share of mind" or "sex appeal" or some such crap..

Ad-ios... I say!!

User behavior

At work, we abuse this word. But I am really interested to find out the motives behind following behavior:

• When people post something in a public forum for help, are they complaining or are they REALLY seeking help? Is this an elaborate form of "get it out of your system"? Does it also tell about "how perfect I am"?
• When people generalize is it because they hate that quality in themselves?
• When people communicate, is it the need to show "I know" or is it "I want you to know that I know"?
• When people proactively take initiative, that they are the most "irritated" by it or because they want to show that they are?

I read a lot of self-help books - is that because these people want to help or they want help?

If you think these questions are simple, think some more. Maybe I am the guy who is confused :)

Trust and Information

Trust is a very deep emotion. The words 'I trust you' are single most powerful words that one human can say to another. Of course, like any other emotion like love, joy, trust is also a word but when said has a power that no other emotion has. It is the single most important word in that encompasses a lot of positive emotions in it. The word positive qualifies anything that makes a human's life less unhappy.

Trust is a complex emotion, an integration of sorts of all the various emotions that are much easily felt like happiness, sorrow, anger etc. Trust is not felt directly but in an indirect fashion. If you can open your emotions in front of another person, you show trust. Then again, what you show establishes the level of trust. On one end of the spectrum is the 'social' aspect of trust where you maintain a guard about what you speak and what you don't. On the other end of spectrum is the place where you keep your head on someone's lap and get irritated because you did lousiest of mistakes and can blame no one. We all lie in between this. Complete trust is difficult to achieve because at times even we are not sure about our emotions.

Trust always makes things positive. If you trust someone, you bring out your negative energy and try to make sense out of it. There is a biological aspect and physical aspect of it. They both can be summed up as follows - your mind has a tendency to go to lowest energy state. The biological aspect is simple - rest now to save energy for tomorrow's disasters. The physical aspect is linked to electron theory of Bohr. Summing up, your brain will try to simplify things as fast as possible, provided it sees that it can come back to a state of rest. If you are with someone you can trust, thoughts ease out and clarity comes faster. Conversely, people who have the most clarity, trust their instincts to be relied upon in absence of any adversary.

Amount of Trust in a society directly affects state of society. As the quanta of trust increases, it means that more and more people achieve a peace of mind which leads to less restlessness and hence less aggression, less violence and a peaceful society. The converse is also true that in a peaceful society, more people will tend to trust each other than societies that are unstable in nature. Volatility in societies are largely hereditary. Ultimately body does what it needs to do in order to survive in an extreme condition. Although, when things get better, we don't break that habit and worse pass it on for generations together. Clans and tribes still exist, even though I am writing this blog over internet.

Information has a direct implication on trust because the more dialogs happen in a society, more trustful it becomes. This can be directly extrapolated from how one human trusts another. It is a positive spiral. One thing that information technology has provided is easy access to information that can be accessed from anywhere. We have telecommunication revolution of sorts going on and Google has opened doors for billions of people to transmit their thoughts. And yet, Iran is going against IAEA support to build Nuclear Enrichment plants. Why?

Because even though information is exchanged, we are still in that same genetic makeup of self survival. All information exchange wants to happen to ensure that personal benefits take precedence. While that'd have been good if personal benefit has a correlation with societal benefit though it turns out that Power and Trust don't go hand in hand.

The choice that every human has to make is this - do I choose to trust or do I want to make sure I am in control? Now I don't say it's bad to have control, all I say is control yourself because when you start controlling anything other than yourself, you start losing trust.

The fall of 'Complex'

The root of all restlessness and aggression is a complex. By definition, complex is " a combination of emotions and impulses that are rejected from a person's awareness, but influence the behaviour". It is imperative that complex lies at the heart of all our aggression. If we don't have a complex, implying that we don't reject our emotions, there is not much reason for a lot of emotional turmoil.

Why did I choose this line of argument to start with? Because right now the world is in a transformational mode. The transformation is with respect to assuring a person's individual identity. The signs are everywhere and now with technology it is becoming even more prominent. Because now there is a way to express one's idiosyncracy without hesitation.

Groups and socieities have been an integral part of human evolution. I don't think it will ever go, no matter how empowered people get or feel. There is always a need to inform, communicate and discuss. This is what connects people, forms basis of relationships. The fault happens when this relationship suddenly becomes bigger than the people involved, such as is the case with societies today. Society empowers humans to be their individual self. This feeling is lost somewhere. Lack of accountability and responsibility are key offshoots of over dependence on society.

Before the 90's information was sparse, and in hands of the few. There were newsmakers, media and followers or general people. The information technology changed that, and today whoever has an internet connection is pouring in to the information available. This is liberating and revolutionary.

Suddenly you are not shy to be what you are. While you can maintain a dual identity, you are sleeping much better in the night because your internet avatar is really what you are. Emotions are free at last, and do not need anyone's judgment or decision to see the day of the light. Complex goes down, even if by a small percentage.

Transformation is happening. Our societies will evolve as the humans who form it evolve. Empowerment is contagious. Argumentation decreases as everyone has one version of reality. Action increases as everyone realizes that they alone can actually change themselves. Information plays a near-revolutionary role here. And so does Information Technology.

Google Wave -- this is wayyyy too much..

I think this is going to change the way world collaborates because:
- In our minds, we don't differentiate between wanting to talk, and wanting to share information. Yeah, we don't and this tool will make it easy for us to be ourselves!

- In our companies, we use whiteboards and want to transfer that to documents. we also want to talk, share etc. Again here it is to solve all that in a way that's intuitive.

yes this is intuitive and this is big... welcome to the new world of information sharing.... GOOGLE WAVE...

The journey

From my last post, I will continue on the journey part. Every creature on the planet is born with the map of its life. You can understand this concept better if you see Nat Geo documentaries. You may not believe this but in Amazon, there are fishes who lay their eggs on low lying leaves of the trees and the male fish actually knows when these eggs will be fertilized to be brought back to the river. You think someone taught that fish that? No. It knew. And believe me we all know.
Humans have been given a far more sophisticated tool to tread through the map - the brain. The brain is an immensely complex organ that works as a decision making center for our body to tread on that map. Therefore, whatever you are doing right now, is precisely what you are supposed to do, given the choices you made earlier. Bad, good, right, wrong is all that this brain is experiencing and making you believe of that choice. Could there have been a better path? Maybe yes, maybe no. Could you have taken another path? No. But can you reach to that ultimate goal? Yes, because every form of energy in this world has a tendency to reach stable state. And so is true for your soul too.
Net-net, whatever you are doing, wherever you are, in deep shit or in penthouse, you are there because you needed to learn something from the choice you made. What you need to understand is this - deep shit and penthouse are least important, why you made the choice is what gets you to the state of peace.

Ultimately....

I have been thinking about this for a long time now and I guess this gives answer to a lot of my questions. Of course, I discovered them myself and therefore instead of linking to a credible personality, I will be doing the honors to write it. :)
I have spoken, in a purely philosophical terms, to many people about destiny, super consciousness etc. There are people who believe, there are who don't and in-betweens too. I sure do believe in destiny. And here is some food of thought on that topic.

1. According to Vedas (vedabase.net), the ultimate destination for all human beings is to be one with the supreme power or 'chaitanya'. Having said that we are all given several lives to travel through a part of that journey. We are also given means to complete that part of journey aka body (including the mind, which is mostly governed by one's genes).

2. This journey is what The Secret author Rhonda called as travelling from Seattle to NY only knowing the next 100 meters or so. Thats exactly it. You know where you have to get to, only you have to see only next 100 m at a time.

3. We have a choice, all of us, whether to follow our inner self which by the way is meant to take you through the "straight-line" path (meaning shortest distance). Unfortunately, in today's world we choose to be driven more by external factors than internal. Therefore we sometimes are incapable of making the right choice and therefore the path just elongates.

4. What do I mean when I say "inner self"? Well don't worry, I am not telling you to do Yoga or meditation. You KNOW when you make a choice against your will and when you don't. Seriously, just think about it and your mind keeps it stored. Negativity in one's personality is a resultant of this. Bottomline, you are perfectly aware when you do against your will.

Inner-dope: Ultimately, its trust. When you trust that this travel will only have situations, circumstances and people who were meant to come to your life and have a purpose, you become peaceful. Only thing you got to remember - go by your own discretion.

Recession ... a theory

Everyone knows we are in midst of a recession. A lot of economic textbooks and newspapers would have educated you on how a "cycle" works and about "boom" and "depression" too. So let's forget about all that. Lets talk about basics.

Capitalism works very well with democracy for a simple reason that the more choices people have the more they will demand. The more people demand, the more there are choices and so on. I hope this convinces some of you. A very few of you who think "well there is got to be a limit to what a human can ask for", well guys there is none. And I am guessing the few of you who thought are either from India or China or are very above 50 years of age. Don't ask me why.

In the history of mankind, human beings have evolved in their thinking and their capabilities. You have reasons to think that its not actually a human who is empowered but there are accessories to empower her, well ultimately the objective of empowerment is achieved.

Money has been defined and redefined itself. From just being an instrument to buy and sell stuff, it has become an industry in itself called Finance.

So I told you about 3 things : Capitalism, Evolution of humans and Money. Lets take our argument further with these 3 things.

Human beings essentially like to fulfill their needs. Obviously, the more of us are there the more choices we want to have. So basically there is enough "market" for some of us to go ahead and capture. Now why would I want to look at a set of human being's needs as market? Because I got to live and good old barter doesn't exist. So I choose to use something called as Money. Money gives me options to buy anything I like and I go "Ooh! I have choice to buy stuff". The more money I have the more choices I can demand.

The flip side, if you may, of this situation is if I catered to all of you, I have a lot of money and ultimately you all start catering to me. Market is ultimately people. If I built a Wal Mart and start giving flexible finance options to buy stuff from me (assuming you are all fools of capitalism), ultimately you are bonded to me for the goods I provide to you. Unless....

Unless you all start looking outside to see if you can serve some more so that you earn more and get rid of me.

Looking at Human development index, only 15% of countries in the world are Rich. So basically these are the people who can "demand" stuff. Unfortunately because they are rich, they are the ones who "cater" too, at times. Therefore, people of Rich countries need to head out and look for other markets. Fortunately there are 50% countries whose Rich populace also needs to be catered. Voila! more demand. Now these Rich people from poor country start to look at their own country for some services. Voila! more demand.

With a Population growth rate of 4% , number reaching 1.3 billion people, India can never run out of demanding people or rather "target markets".

If you are still looking at Obama to provide stimulus package to kick start Indian economy, oh my God, you are looking at walmart to provide you financing to buy stuff from it.

Boundary conditions...

Philosophy has always been my forte. Recently, I am adding to my interest by reading some stuff that is commonly known as Inspirational Literature. Happy that whatever I already believe in is widely accepted in corporate world - only problem, its written by people twice my age ... :(
So one of these philosophies is that our limitations are our own biases. A person can be totally free of these biases/fears and can achieve almost impossible things.
After reading, assimilating and starting to practice this, I found that while a person's capabilities might be limitless, some well-known 'proverbs' have clear boundaries. Some given below -

• The biggest fear in any corporate is about how we shouldn't re-invent the wheel. I strongly feel that this has geographical/relational limit. Otherwise we wouldn't award an American and a European scientist the same Nobel prize.
  
• Innovation is born out of a free mind. One cannot restrict it by limiting it via processes. Another perspective is Google that has well laid out hiring process and culture that takes care that Innovation is happening.
  
• Operational modeling is based on historical data. Ever heard about disruptive technology?
• Customers are always right. I bet they didn't ever ask for an iphone.

And the list goes on... :)

Hope to bust some more myths as I live my life in 'freer' way... of course with no boundaries... :)

Many Lives...

"Many Lives, Many Masters" by Dr. Brian Weiss.. Read it, re-read it and re-re-read it... I think I am spiritually inclined and this book gives me, what can be loosely called as 'kick' ... :-)

http://www.amazon.com/Many-Lives-Masters-Prominent-Psychiatrist/dp/0671657860

Some browsers...

Have been using Firefox 3.0.2, IE 8 and Chrome for some days now... Here is some dope...

Ranked 3 - IE8 ... I know its beta but so are Gmail, Orkut, and Chrome... :) .. Anyways, the point being (a) takes time to load ( I have a dual core processor, 2 Gigs ram) ... (b) the address bar drop down has some psychological issues... it takes time to open up ... :)  they tried to copy firefox but have failed in several ways... 

Something that are good (a) best for intranets (b) color codes tabs opened from inside of one tab 

Ranked 2 - Chrome ... Some people would go all the way to say its the fastest... to me memory consumption and CPU share matters... features are awesome (stretchable text boxes, tab sliders, task manager, default google search, tab crash) but keep it open for an hour and you will see the CPU share go up!! which is why #2

Ranked 1 - Firefox ... hands down the best browser... esp after they introduced this address bar thing on which it additionally autocompletes on the basis of metadata.... very useful feature... e.g. if you have visited sites www.linkedin.com and also went through a university site having linked lists when you start typing linked... it will show both these URLs... tab crashing yet to come but its low on my priority... should have feature right now.... opens up fast, tabs are easy to work with... 

PS: BTW posting the blog from chrome... giving it benefit of doubt maybe... 

N96 vs iPod...

I just read that nokia n96 is up against ipod...
i will keep myself posted on how?

A world of roles and job descriptions....

In my company, every now and then we all get into what we call as "Cross functional meetings".. a bunch from US, some from France, some India, some Israel... and lot of discussion... dialects, "pardon me"s ...

My first time-s:
1. Work with a person and NOT see him/her AT ALL and is a non-Indian
2. Work to plan a release with people who can easily say "I don't care a damn" .. :)
3. Extensively discuss some intricate strategies with someone who is a matrixed manager to me .. and again not seen him AT ALL..

I get uncomfortable at time to live in world of roles and JDs, but the good part is I have nothing to judge the person on other than his thoughts! I guess that creates an intellectual relationship... But then sometimes talking to a phone can become slightly non-interesting...