Why companies fail to out-think?

I am running two steps per second and my friend is running at three steps per second. I feel that it should be pretty easier to catch him up in next few seconds and I keep running. I don't focus on the things that I should be doing and I m thinking to beat him. My friend keeps running at his own pace and so do I. After an hour, I find my friend quite a distant apart and no more reachable in two steps. We, the human being, fail to appreciate the importance of daily improvements and we realize the havoc only when the difference is huge. Then, we blame technology, processes, economy, education system, neighbors, society, politicians and everything. When you don't think about future, you cannot have future and in future you will be history.

With this thoughts in mind, I am going to open the book of "Competing for the future" by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad.

How can we give little extra?

While many organizations are working on increasing their employees productivity and ask for little extra, only very few people have the guts to give little extra. They understand the significance of giving - giving little more respect to the teammates, giving little more care that they deserve, giving little more attention to their accomplishments, giving little more thought to their prosperity. All these little extra things when mixed with high volume of authentic willingness, then, leading will be equivalent to parenting and the team will be equivalent to family.

When a leader honestly sign up to work for the elevation of his team, without anyone's knowledge and to everyone's surprise, the team will work for the leader's agenda. But everything starts with little extra things in a specific order - little extra care, little extra attention, little extra feedback, little extra recognition and finally expect the little extra effort. So, you got to give many things to get that little extra effort. But all those little extra things are worth giving.

Before you ask someone, can you work extra, you ask yourself that have you given all those little extra things that you ought to give.

Learned, so what? - Learn to Unlearn

It is almost seven years in Software Industry. When I look back, I made a pretty decent ride learning several new things in my career. Though I feel that I could have done more, it was decent accomplishments. I thought that I was a quick learner but later understood that I learned only what was needed. Anyways, there were no major issues. If there is one lesson, it would be "learning and unlearning".

I feel that the experience is nothing but interrelating ideas and generalizing them, storing them and keeping in memory for easier access, keep expanding this knowledge base and field of application. Once it is stored at a general level, the specifics are no longer needed. You need facts only till you understand or make out ideas/concepts and burning it in your long term memory. Once that is done, you can forget the facts. Only when you understand the facts, the concepts or ideas can be generalized and burnt in the memory. I will go to an extent of saying that this "forgetting" is needed, else, throughout your life you may need to process really a hell a lot of data. This forgetting can be called as "unlearning". So, it is important that you learn and it is much more important that you unlearn it.

Learning and Unlearning makes you a perfect intelligent human being. So, the next time when you are learning, make sure that you unlearn it after sometime :-)

Inspire and Get Inspired

It has been quite a learning after becoming (more aptly made as) a leader and held responsible for someone's work. It is quite easy to get the work done. This was at least what I initially thought. But as the time eroded and when I honestly engaged with my teammates, I started to understand the real meaning of "privilege to lead". While it may be easier to get the work done and for that you don't need to be a leader. Just a manager would do. But the real leader does n't bore people. His agenda is quite simple. Inspire and Get Inspired.

Also, the inspiration has to happen almost without the knowledge. It has to be a daily happening, not seasonal, not occasional. It has to be automatic, natural and spontaneous. When you do that, you will see the whole benchmarks are redefined and the standards keep rising.

Isn't it what you want to do? Won't it be exciting to be in that place? Won't you be willing to create the resonance to multiply the energy? Drawing inspiration and there by inspiring others is a wonderful thing.

I have started to realize "the resonance". :-)

Will the world end by 12-12-2012?

Sometime back, when I was surfing, I happened to visit a site that talked about 12-12-2012. The world is likely to come to an end by 12-12-2012 giving a lot of evidences from ancient history to modern sciences. The evidences are not more than mere superstitions. This superstitious group is arguing about end of this planet and another group tries to give array of counter arguments that the world will not end. After reading an article from this month's Scientific American India, I feel that the world will not end by 12-12-2012 but it may take few more decades, probably 5-8 decades. Why? Read on.

When we compare the population of the world with the population that existed few decades back, it is fair to say that we are exponentially growing. We are likely to hit a spot somewhere higher and as of now it is difficult to predict where it will be. As a result of increase in population, the demand for food and infrastructure is increasing. When we want to live, we will happily kill trees and massacre forests leading to rapid deforestation. Even with the current population, as more developing nations become developed nations, their consumption will also increase which in turn increases the demand for food. So, there are two visible factors that is going to influence the high demand for food. Let us assume the following simple math.

Assume that we double our consumption and engage in rapid deforestation by converting half of the forest as living communities. How can we produce 2X food from y/2 land. There is going to be a big pressure and we will end by increasing the productivity of lands artificially through fertilizers. To our havoc, we will run out of one of the components of fertilizers soon. In order to understand the entire mess that is currently building up, I encourage you to read Scientific American India. In this article, the author gives a clear picture about depletion of phosphorous and how the world will end if phosphorous depletion is not addressed. When you do not have phosphorous, you cannot grow plants and trees.

So, without being supersititious, we have found another reason why the world will end. We are creating a big mess for the future generations and making this planet unsuitable for living.

Freedom Moves to Custom Domain

It is over six months that I am blogging sort of consistently. The amount of readership is more than what I expected and hence I thought that it will be a good idea to move to a custom domain. A couple of days back, I registered the domain "grabyourfreedom.net". It took a while for me to make associated changes and the blog is now ready. The blog which is previously accessed through "http://grabyourfreedom.blogspot.com" can be accessed via "http://unstuck.grabyourfreedom.net". The previous posts are still intact and nothing changed drastically and in fact for you the change will be seamless. If you are reading the posts with the help of feeds, now you have get subscribed to new feed. But for folks who subscribed to receive posts via email do not need to do anything (hope that is good news).

Thanks for all your support. Please do write to me in case if you face any technical glitches in accessing the website/blog.

Summary:

New Web : http://www.grabyourfreedom.net

This Blog: http://unstuck.grabyourfreedom.net

Saga of Entrepreneurship

Some fifty years back, the organization wanted their people to obey their orders, they want their employees to think but not to outthink their bosses. They typically did not like if the questions were asked and they liked to get only answers and most importantly the answers that are liked by them. When the world economy is in recession and more Gen Y get into the organizations, these leaders are overwhelmed by the number of questions asked at them and the people seem to be "egoistic". Few years from now, there will a substantial change in the way we work. Even today, the way we work is changing - the concept of "managers" is slowly replaced by the concept of "entrepreneurship". The organization no longer like to have managers who can only do "managing stuff". They like to have people who can take risk, who go an extra mile simply to explore and interested in the learning.

When you are a manager, you will think within a boundary but when you are entrepreneur you think without a boundary and your boundary is the horizon. The organizations have become risk appetite in terms of investment and returns. Now, they are trying to change their employees' thought process and attitude. The word "work" is often replaced by the word "business". I believe, the word "entrepreneur" nowadays not only applies to people who start their own venture but also to people who work for organization and take risks. The word is not used in its real meaning but as quality or way of doing something.

So, moving forward, we will be seeing more of entrepreneurial spirits in the organization and I believe that will innovation in management or next level in management evolution.

Human Brain - Reversed

I worked in Network security and the interest towards security led me to read about application security and reverse engineering. Reading reverse engineering is exciting and reversing a software is a great experience. Reversing a software is no means a small thing but even multiple times harder is to reverse a complex system - the brain simply because "software" is created by man but "brain" is not created by man (though human is responsible for creating a race, no one yet has created a fully functional brain and it is nearly impossible). The brain, weighing roughly three pounds has a lot of mystery. The scientists are trying to figure out the potential of brain and most important try to reverse the brain.

At one side, the biologists are trying to study brain as neural circuitry and another front scientists are also studying brain to improve relationship, leadership and emotional intelligence. The study of brain will help us to understand how the brain works and most importantly how the brain learns. This will help us to properly educate the kids and grown ups. I believe the study of human brain and understanding it will be more challenging and rewarding as well. John Medina, in his book, Brain Rules, says that the human beings are smarter rather than being stronger and the history of human evolution also proves that we are smarter and hence study of human brain is very important and it can lead us to next level in human evolution.

Survive in Hard Time - Connect with your people

Assume the following scenario in 22-Apr-2009. "We are now in tough times and this is the right time for us to optimize and so we are going with cost cutting. We cannot afford to be complacent and we will emerge strong post recession. The time we invest, the strategy we chalk out and its execution will decide whether we will emerge stronger". Just fast forward your time machine. Can you guess what they will say once they economy recovers (and if they exist).

You are in 22-Apr-2012 and again you hear the same voice. "We emerged strong, we did something which is innovative and it made us to be here. We are ahead of the competition". I believe, most of the corporates, if not all of them, will be on top of the world and beat drums that their strategy worked. In a real sense? No, says many professors at famous business schools. They say that most organizations ride the waves because of either of two things - Co-incidence or luck. They just happened to be there with probably a strong balance sheets, they were able to withstand the recession and as expected post recession, the economy booms and they start to build their balance sheet again. Their profits erode in recession and booms when the economy comes to normalcy. This is how most corporates work.

Then what the heck that this strategy does. Why often leaders confuse their people about strategy. Why dont they be meaningful? How to thrive well in recession. It is fairly simple, "deliver more for less". How can you make it? Just connect with you people and make them understand your perspective. The employees may think that why the hell he/she needs to deliver "more for less" unless one gives the perspective. It is imperative that leaders, irrespective your designation, interact with people (not just CEO, VPs). Connecting is quite different from forwarding emails, connecting is quite different from a monologue. When you try to connect with people, the first thing you got to do is understand their problems, respect their opinions, reject their opinions with due dignity and above all have guts to take blame and do not shy away.

One thing that managers keep telling their people is communication and bringing up the issue at right time and with due sensitivity. Isn't it not important to connect with people when their morale is down or when their life is at stake? It makes sense even in good times but it makes more sense in difficult times.

When you do that, your people will automatically deliver more and you will also leave a legacy.

Intellectual Curiosity - Questions Matter !

Intellectual curiosity is the one of the factors that tells whether we are moving in right track. If you look at great people, they always asked good questions and the guys who answer the questions were average guys. It takes a great deal to ask sensible questions than answering some ordinary questions :-). For example, many scientists were ousted from schools because their teachers thought that they were asking non sense questions. But those teachers failed to understand that the very same curiosity later drove them to learn more things and to see things differently. I feel that answering a question is pretty easier when compared with asking relevant, meaningful, thought provoking questions. Though a child is immature, everyone wants to be like a child and everyone prescribe others to be like a child. Curiosity makes the different, isn't it?

Sometime back, I hovered over Internet and landed on the website of Jim Collins and read his biography. After a while, I was reading "The Greatness Guide" by Robin Sharma in which he emphasized the importance of being "under construction". When I reflected the words of these great people, I felt that there was a great advantage in being a life long student constantly looking out of opportunities to learn the knowledge and unlearn the ignorance. This is an wonderful state of being and signifies the growth of any person. Awareness follows thinking, awareness gives us intelligence and intelligence helps us to find answers for those complex questions. Only when you ask questions, you understanding expands and that shows that you are moving in right track.

So ask questions, don't bother if you don't answers, but eventually you will find it. Any thoughts?

Decision Making, System Thinking, Scenario Planning

I have been reading the book on system thinking by Gerald Weinberg rather slowly. I have not read more than first few pages and even the first few pages opens up a lot of opportunities for thinking. It makes me to think a lot. I try to apply system thinking theoritically to many aspect of my life. I feel system thinking is a natural thinking. I understand, we, the human being have the capability to be a system thinker. It is purely our fault of not realizing our ability and we prove that "The fish is the last one to see the water". As well pointed out by Gerald Weinberg, the rapid industrialization brought in wealth but hazardous second order effects of pollution and global warming. The rapid development of crops have produced good amount of harvest but gave us inorganic food leading to genetic effects. While the fast paced world is focussing on the first order results, it fails to observe and act on the second and third order effects. This gives us enough evidences that we are not learning from our mistakes and failing to correct ourselves. I strongly believe that when the decision making is good, all the other things will be good. Recently, I have read a short write up about scenario planning or scenario based decision making and how it helps in making wise decisions. I feel that scenario planning is subset of system thinking. Here is my view on both system thinking and scenario planning. Read on.

Amidst the unprecedented recession of our generation, no one will deny that we are witnessing the second order effects high leverage and heavy risk appetite and the first order effects of a systemic failure. No one would have thought that they are merely betting on something which is overvalued multiple times or on things that does not exist at all. I am not sure whether we will learn anything from this recession. I don't deny the fact that some organizations will be creating a document or at best will be writing a software to protect themselves from a failure. However, I seriously doubt whether we, as a human being, will come up with a learning which we can apply the lessons learnt to some other problems and use them for better decision making. I doubt because we fail to appreciate the importance of system thinking and only the system thinkers can stop such failures.

The effects that we consider second order are the effects that are not thought about. The world does not even care about the second order effects and goes to an extent of not giving importance to be aware of those second order effects. But these second order effects reaches a tipping point and becomes much severe. Only then the world realizes its significance like the recent recession. If you want to explain with a real world example, who thought that poverty will to lead emergence of terrorism (I am taking about Naxal in India) . The terrorists are the second order effects of poverty. If you want to fix terrorism, fix the first order effects that is exploiting people and poverty. So, the system thinking should play a pivotal role in any decision making process may it be at policy level or at strategy level. First criteria for a decision maker is to be a system thinker.

The next thing that will be cropping up in upcoming months is the concept of Scenario Planning. I believe the system thinkers and scenario planning experts are likely to play a very crucial role in building a modern society. Scenario planning is a kind of analysis where the future is built and the study will be made on the impact of the decisions in that future. For example, if you are taking a home loan from a bank, the banks will consider what will happen if the person loses the job, what will happen when the land values drops. I believe, when the entire world is newly build and modern economy emerges, the scenario analysis together will system thinking will play a crucial role in making wise decisions. I would like to see a world that thinks. It is the thinking that will bring prosperity not just investments. :-)