Necessity to "Think" and "Think" long

Amidst global economic recession, there are many areas that undergo transformation. People started to think and the thinking is response to shock due to recession. People are thinking about spending and they are going small - small apartment and small pizza. While the lower in consumer spending may impose a threat, I believe "the small pizza" is going to be healthy over a longer term. As long as the small pizza gives me nutrients and satisfaction, it is always good. The next thing that organizations should work out is how to survive and do business in the changing business environment. The companies should rethink, be attuned to changing environment and customer spending patterns. Being attuned to changing environment is more relevant now as the current change is rapid and huge. I remember reading in one of the articles that with the current environment even "the change is not permanent". The change is changing rapidly fast.

When you think in short term and that too for a low paced change, the strategy will not be sufficient even for few years. So, it is absolutely essential for organizations to have holistic view of uncertain environments such as climate change, government policies, economic growth, globalization with protectionism, rising prices, the roles of developing economies and many more factors. With the whole a lot of uncertainty, we, the human beings, either renounce modern life and go back to jungle or "think" properly and "think" keeping centuries in mind. Think to work with nature and not against it for simple reason that nature creates man and man is part of the nature. Nature knows how to "check and mate" something when it goes beyond a point (learning from the first chapter of GST by Gerald M. Weinberg)

Example of thinking long term. I m currently reading "An Introduction to General System Thinking" by Gerald M. Weinberg. It is so easy to think now about climate change and water depletion. It is impeccable and needs great foresight to think about climate change some 25-30 years back when the book for written. One needs to have great brain and great heart to think like that.

Worldclass Reference Points - Fight with them

Today, my friend Rajkumar and I had to attend another friend's marriage and as usual we talked about something, some mediocre people who always expect that the world should/will revolve around them (sharing our miseries). Neither they speak convincingly nor think thoughtfully. It was utter waste of time and probably be used to chew one's ego. If you make earnest try to drive home a point, I bet you will fail rather miserably. Silence is the language that you should speak.

Next we have talked about two thoughtful people. When Rajkumar talked Gerald M. Weinberg and James Bach, both of us were excited, spoke passionately and striking the thoughts in resonance. When you argue with thinkers either you become a student or become a teacher and there will be solid learning for both (On a contrary, when you have difference of opinion with mediocre people neither you nor the other will have any learning).

Today, my friend Rajkumar taught me an important lesson "Fight with worldclass reference points". Teachers are all around, Worldclass reference points are all around, you got open your eyes to see them. Thank you Raj.

Collaboration is injurious to growth

1. "Whole is more than sum of the parts".
2. Together, we can do great things

and you can find so many decorative statements and words with hidden agenda. Collaboration and Team work have been misunderstood by many people. Let us take the first statement "Whole is more than sum of the parts" with an example. When you have ten people and if all the ten people work as a team, the team is likely to produce better results. Fair statement. When you have ten mediocre people and all of them show mediocrity, won't the result be uber-mediocrity?

Next, we need understand that each one of us are not always foolish and not always intelligent. In every decision, we show enough immaturity before appearing mature and in some cases we never appear mature simply because we never think sufficiently and we hardly go deeper. When someone says that he understood, it really means that he has started to understand.

With a blurred vision and improper thinking, I don't think collaboration will be a useful exercise. Thinking is fundamental. Without thinking, it is like erecting building with foundation. So, collaboration without thinkers and the decisions made by pseudo collaboration are going to be simply waste of time (now you know why politicians make bad decisions :) ). Being able to think, think right with systemic view, understanding the deficiencies in one's thinking are primary ingredients to even think about collaboration. Getting ready to collaborate had to start well before collaboration. "Being able to think" is required condition to get started with collaboration. Collaboration of non-thinkers is injurious. Remember the story of Paramartha Guru and his disciples.

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.