In a spot contest checking on how many mobile numbers one remembers, I will get stuck with just one number - that is my own. It is a little embarrassing to figure that I don't even remember near and dear ones telephone numbers nowadays. While on travel, I just can't get myself tomemorize hotel telephone number or my desk number at work. Predominant operating rule is - if you know how to get it, that's enough. Why waste precious (?!) mind space to store such temporary data? Adopt Gajini style.
After years of softening of the grey cells, imagine if one has to go through an examination that has memory recall based evaluation technique. Of course, I did step in to such courage zone activity of going back to school and successfully completed my MS in Management Systems (BITS Pilani + SPIC collaboration) after clocking 8 years ofwork experience. Now sitting on top of 14.5 years of experience, even if its open book style of evaluation, I wouldn't fancy my chances of finishing a paper on time leave alone talking about getting a respectable score / grade!
Though may be a bit extreme, I seriously think growing kids should not be exposed to the new age way of living out of search engines feed. Else it will lead to shallow learning / research. Such "take it easy"approach will not facilitate "connecting the dots" to see a bigger picture / macro form / synthesis.
Whatever be the domain - technical or soft skill or spiritual, I sincerely think the approach to learning is important. Choices are absorb or digest or assimilate; gain chitchat or information or knowledge or wisdom. As kind and varietyof information one receives explodes, everyone needs to evolve a synthesis based content leadership skill if you will. Absorbing everything like a black hole without connecting it to overall life experiences or proven learnings will just result in overflow and waste one's time and energy.
As you would have figured out by now, I do take few things really seriously (for a change!). I am a big fan of structured thinking, systems and frameworks. Humble submission is in order - I am not living it yet; but definitely this occupies a great deal of my mind share.
My dream is to innovate a beauty, timeless classic and create history. Anything short of that, it is not worth indulging in and a waste of time.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
I Talk
Ever seen a person who seems to be blissfully unaware of "modesty" as a trait and indulges in a lot of "I" talk? It is ok to tolerate if someone else is all song and praise for an individual assuming it is all merit based and at right level. But for an individual to go on a trip of his/her own achievements, I think it takes a little extra conditioning - may be due to person is in high spirits or constant reinforcing of greater than others kind of feeling or in top down communication or lack of competition or plain old senility.How do you deal with this kind of imposing behaviour? Cotton plugs to ears. Let me know if you have other innovative approaches.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Plug 'n Play AND Eject on time to Play it Free!
Imagine the power of all the restraining forces - be it constraints, bonds, beliefs, responsibilities, moral duty, society pressure, comparison cripple, your own past decisions, consistency in our day to day decision making!
Depending on who we are and the journey taken so far, we have implicitly or unknowingly slowed down the speed of our action train. Thought train may race miles ahead creating a divide between wannabe plane and what-u-can-be plane!
Many people think and get excited by just being aware of wannabe plane itself makes them young mentally despite their biological age. But true to their self, they may feel like a martyr.
Imagine decision making power without having these. This limitless freedom can only be obtained by doing limited enjoyment of the present assets, limited leverage of current relationships! Be limited to be limitless! A kind of disassociated association.
If only we can tune our mind to do such "plug and play and eject", it will give us a lot of power to experiment new paths and our reach will be limitless. We can play the game free from any clutches.
If this sounds too quixotic, least that we can do is to revisit all the "I cannot do this because..." statements and be aware of the gap between the 2 be-planes!
Depending on who we are and the journey taken so far, we have implicitly or unknowingly slowed down the speed of our action train. Thought train may race miles ahead creating a divide between wannabe plane and what-u-can-be plane!
Many people think and get excited by just being aware of wannabe plane itself makes them young mentally despite their biological age. But true to their self, they may feel like a martyr.
Imagine decision making power without having these. This limitless freedom can only be obtained by doing limited enjoyment of the present assets, limited leverage of current relationships! Be limited to be limitless! A kind of disassociated association.
If only we can tune our mind to do such "plug and play and eject", it will give us a lot of power to experiment new paths and our reach will be limitless. We can play the game free from any clutches.
If this sounds too quixotic, least that we can do is to revisit all the "I cannot do this because..." statements and be aware of the gap between the 2 be-planes!
Take it Easy - Dil pe math le!
Everyone I guess goes through this transformation in AI management at some point from being totally not organized to some form of organized way. I am here to share my journey on this.
Initially I used to be proud of myself of not having to write anything down because I thought I never postpone anything actionable. If something was there to be done, it will be done then and there, here and now - kind of world. This is the best situation to be in and may be the challenge level of tasks I attempted to own and do were within my capacity to promote that mental make up. I even used to brag about this to others that how can you not reply to something soon after reading it; or keep a backlog of unread mails. That's preposterous proposition then.
From here, as you shift from being an individual doer to a managerial role and/or when you expand your interest to many other things and/or when you enlarge your social circle and/or offlate become active in the new buzz of social networking, you tend to be inundated with too much of traffic than you can manage. It becomes too much of a pain to cull out AIs, manage your must-read or catch-up list and things accrue just like the stuff you keep.
At times, to do away with the guilt feeling I do some Bulk shift delete action on all the subscription based mailers. So much for keeping one updated with latest technology trends, industry happenings, favourite open source projects etc...
On AI management, I have observed something wierd. Obviously there are going to be various islands of priority with which your AIs will evolve. Besides work, my other buckets are - financial, personal, family, leisure, read-list, household, automobile and various sub-categories under these.
Doing this creates an awareness first and then a kind of weariness of looking at ageing AIs. But recently I had an experience of few really long pending AIs being knocked off just like that without much of effort from my end. Suddenly it looks like nature has decided that the time has come for one to help Ramesh Sriraman to be out of that AI/trouble. A helping hand shows up and eases the situation.
I really don't know how to explain this - power of sub-conscious mind or one just needs to talk about the problem and it will be solved or every dog has its day or something else... My learning out of this is to take it easy; a time will come for everything to be cleared. Dil pe math le, yaar.
Initially I used to be proud of myself of not having to write anything down because I thought I never postpone anything actionable. If something was there to be done, it will be done then and there, here and now - kind of world. This is the best situation to be in and may be the challenge level of tasks I attempted to own and do were within my capacity to promote that mental make up. I even used to brag about this to others that how can you not reply to something soon after reading it; or keep a backlog of unread mails. That's preposterous proposition then.
From here, as you shift from being an individual doer to a managerial role and/or when you expand your interest to many other things and/or when you enlarge your social circle and/or offlate become active in the new buzz of social networking, you tend to be inundated with too much of traffic than you can manage. It becomes too much of a pain to cull out AIs, manage your must-read or catch-up list and things accrue just like the stuff you keep.
At times, to do away with the guilt feeling I do some Bulk shift delete action on all the subscription based mailers. So much for keeping one updated with latest technology trends, industry happenings, favourite open source projects etc...
On AI management, I have observed something wierd. Obviously there are going to be various islands of priority with which your AIs will evolve. Besides work, my other buckets are - financial, personal, family, leisure, read-list, household, automobile and various sub-categories under these.
Doing this creates an awareness first and then a kind of weariness of looking at ageing AIs. But recently I had an experience of few really long pending AIs being knocked off just like that without much of effort from my end. Suddenly it looks like nature has decided that the time has come for one to help Ramesh Sriraman to be out of that AI/trouble. A helping hand shows up and eases the situation.
I really don't know how to explain this - power of sub-conscious mind or one just needs to talk about the problem and it will be solved or every dog has its day or something else... My learning out of this is to take it easy; a time will come for everything to be cleared. Dil pe math le, yaar.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Too much too soon!
Whatever is the reason - may be I look too young for my age! or I may not have the mature looks for others to relate to my claim of achievements or I have garnered experiences, learnt lessons ahead of time - I have had this feeling of 'too much too soon' on a handful of occasions.
If one looks at ideal time and age to do a certain thing, there is cost to pay for faltering on both sides. If you fail to achieve on time, there is a lot of worry and frustration depending on the comparison group, soceital pressures, your own outlook towards things and the entire mix. On the other hand, if you achieve things earlier than the usual time, its not all good and great cheer either.
Looking at this differently, there are well understood hierarchies giving natural stepping stones for every goal - be it for learning, for capability enhancement, for personal career growth, for organizational growth, for wealth creation, for family development, for self realization. One has to go through those stages in a complete fashion and take utmost care not to jump the hierarchy.
Doing a brownian movement hopping here and there across the hierarchy can lead to swiss cheese holes and will show up poorly on some evaluation account - if not externally, definitely when one does introspection.
There are many man made maturity models that define the hierarchies and then there are natural evolution that exist out there. In natural hierarchies, there is a vast scope for maturity within each of those stages and they may not grow to next level at all for a lifetime making it nearly impossible for this too much too soon syndrome to happen. One must learn to crawl, then to walk and to run kind of thing.
Either the man made hierarchy needs redefinition or one's own preparedness before attempting to achieve next level success has to be clearly understood to derive maximum satisfaction out of the journey.
If one looks at ideal time and age to do a certain thing, there is cost to pay for faltering on both sides. If you fail to achieve on time, there is a lot of worry and frustration depending on the comparison group, soceital pressures, your own outlook towards things and the entire mix. On the other hand, if you achieve things earlier than the usual time, its not all good and great cheer either.
Looking at this differently, there are well understood hierarchies giving natural stepping stones for every goal - be it for learning, for capability enhancement, for personal career growth, for organizational growth, for wealth creation, for family development, for self realization. One has to go through those stages in a complete fashion and take utmost care not to jump the hierarchy.
Doing a brownian movement hopping here and there across the hierarchy can lead to swiss cheese holes and will show up poorly on some evaluation account - if not externally, definitely when one does introspection.
There are many man made maturity models that define the hierarchies and then there are natural evolution that exist out there. In natural hierarchies, there is a vast scope for maturity within each of those stages and they may not grow to next level at all for a lifetime making it nearly impossible for this too much too soon syndrome to happen. One must learn to crawl, then to walk and to run kind of thing.
Either the man made hierarchy needs redefinition or one's own preparedness before attempting to achieve next level success has to be clearly understood to derive maximum satisfaction out of the journey.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Ignorance is bliss!
Don't know how often people encounter this experience, but I've gone through this a handful of times. With a lot of enthusiasm and vigour, I will start chasing a new idea or concept thinking that I am the one who has thought of it. But after spending some time and by talking to others about your idea, you realize that there have been others who have attempted a similar approach or a variant of that idea that is significantly close to my idea or they are chasing the same end goal as I want.
Current culture of starting with search, posting in a forum or high response alias to get quick answers or atleast a jump start definitely goes a long way to avoid this problem. Still one has to get lucky to get the right answers or atleast right pointers.
Much of one's worries can be simply wiped off by checking doing a quick poll of what others are going through or by observing solutions adopted for similar problems. In these days of public discussion, data and human reach, the worst thing is to assume that you are the only one having that problem. Still there are many people who suffer from "me and my unique problems bog me down" syndrome.
Another point of view to look at this ignorance is that it gives a chance for something new - a new dimension or a new combination or a new insight or a better understanding - to be born.
"Ignorance is bliss" is indeed true provided one stays abreast with rest of the crowd; but total ignorance can be too costly and painful.
Ra
Current culture of starting with search, posting in a forum or high response alias to get quick answers or atleast a jump start definitely goes a long way to avoid this problem. Still one has to get lucky to get the right answers or atleast right pointers.
Much of one's worries can be simply wiped off by checking doing a quick poll of what others are going through or by observing solutions adopted for similar problems. In these days of public discussion, data and human reach, the worst thing is to assume that you are the only one having that problem. Still there are many people who suffer from "me and my unique problems bog me down" syndrome.
Another point of view to look at this ignorance is that it gives a chance for something new - a new dimension or a new combination or a new insight or a better understanding - to be born.
"Ignorance is bliss" is indeed true provided one stays abreast with rest of the crowd; but total ignorance can be too costly and painful.
Ra
Friday, May 8, 2009
Teacher's mindset, aka CLO?
I am sure we all have our glad and sad memories of experiences with teachers. But in this post, I would like to talk about a certain"teacher's mindset" that may be prevalent in a few people outside teacher community as well and there may be many exceptions within teaching community as well.
Teacher's mindset that I am alluding to here is - a firm belief thattheir subjects (or students or victims) do or say or act or basicallylive their life courtesy their instructions. Imagine this in a limitless fashion amounting to pervasive intrusion + control that kind of chokes till the victim just suffocates. You can instantly recognize these people, if they have a high need to verbalize instructions even after they notice the victim does a certain thing autonomously so that they get satisfaction that the work is done because of their instruction(s) only.
I encounter this daily with my mother and felt like a victim many a times. But after being cooked through this furnace for quite sometime, I have started cherishing these experiences once I understood the psychology behind it. But believe me at times it can get to your bones, she is the inspiration for this blog!
When the onslaught happens, take a couple of deep breaths - that helps. Many parents - especially mothers - make this mistake too: unnecessarily dole out same instructions daily even when they know their kids are aware of it and will handle things themselves. Sometimes this external stimuli /moral policing does help on forgetful or preoccupied days. But not on a daily basis.
I've seen this behaviour / mindset at play in workplace too. When "convenient", certain team leader will paraphrase what his / her team member said in a meeting to make it look correct or to register as a fact that the input came out of the conditioning, grooming, instruction from Him / Her. "Everything that is said, done out here is because of me!"kind of mindset. Another dimension to this is - there is nothing newthat will come out of the team unless it is from me. Thinking positively, these kind of folks can aim to become of Chief Learning Officers of an organization. Well, that kind of steep ownership is good. Some may clothe this monstrosity in the name of passion as well. But it would really be credible when such steep ownership is reflected to own failures (will you claim responsibility if your student has become a thief, corrupt or immoral?). If you do, well and good. I salute you.
When dealing with such persons, knowing what's at play - the genetic need behind it - is half the battle to tackle them. But only humble consideration I would like those Chief LearningOfficers to have is: while displaying such wild passion, please shower some compassion on your victims (aka students) as well! They can and in fact they do exist and can live on their own mind and mind their ownbusiness as well. No one took the credit away from you anyway, so thereis no need to act out of insecurity day in, day out.
Ra
Teacher's mindset that I am alluding to here is - a firm belief thattheir subjects (or students or victims) do or say or act or basicallylive their life courtesy their instructions. Imagine this in a limitless fashion amounting to pervasive intrusion + control that kind of chokes till the victim just suffocates. You can instantly recognize these people, if they have a high need to verbalize instructions even after they notice the victim does a certain thing autonomously so that they get satisfaction that the work is done because of their instruction(s) only.
I encounter this daily with my mother and felt like a victim many a times. But after being cooked through this furnace for quite sometime, I have started cherishing these experiences once I understood the psychology behind it. But believe me at times it can get to your bones, she is the inspiration for this blog!
When the onslaught happens, take a couple of deep breaths - that helps. Many parents - especially mothers - make this mistake too: unnecessarily dole out same instructions daily even when they know their kids are aware of it and will handle things themselves. Sometimes this external stimuli /moral policing does help on forgetful or preoccupied days. But not on a daily basis.
I've seen this behaviour / mindset at play in workplace too. When "convenient", certain team leader will paraphrase what his / her team member said in a meeting to make it look correct or to register as a fact that the input came out of the conditioning, grooming, instruction from Him / Her. "Everything that is said, done out here is because of me!"kind of mindset. Another dimension to this is - there is nothing newthat will come out of the team unless it is from me. Thinking positively, these kind of folks can aim to become of Chief Learning Officers of an organization. Well, that kind of steep ownership is good. Some may clothe this monstrosity in the name of passion as well. But it would really be credible when such steep ownership is reflected to own failures (will you claim responsibility if your student has become a thief, corrupt or immoral?). If you do, well and good. I salute you.
When dealing with such persons, knowing what's at play - the genetic need behind it - is half the battle to tackle them. But only humble consideration I would like those Chief LearningOfficers to have is: while displaying such wild passion, please shower some compassion on your victims (aka students) as well! They can and in fact they do exist and can live on their own mind and mind their ownbusiness as well. No one took the credit away from you anyway, so thereis no need to act out of insecurity day in, day out.
Ra
MBx
I see that there have been many documented paradigms on this much talked about topic - Management By X, Y Z in the recent past. For example, management by Objectives (MBO) versus Management by Means (MBM), Management by Command and Control versus Management by Collaboration, Management by Situation versus Management by Absolute, True North versus True South, Western versus Oriental, Prevention versus avoidance, Proactive versus reactive, Intent versus Content, Strategic versus Tactical, quadrants versus continuum and the story can go on forever. Just depends on how much one has read and digested.
Another dimension that provokes intense debate is (I may be denting my carrer prospects by saying this, anyway here goes) Management or Leadership! For a hard core bigot, may be these terms may look loaded assuming extra significance. But this post is written in a light hearted fashion with the mindset that after all these are all word play. Com'on - why bind ourselves to expression using a language that has its own boundaries how much ever expansive it may be in its form and reach. So one part of me asserts that one can equally replace the word Management with Leadership and there will be no harm done. What is amusing to notice is that for each certain way of management principle, there is a contrasting style postulated.
In the spirit of innovation, I would also like to add a style viz. Management By Being. Basic idea is to let each entity display its own individual characteristic and evolve in its own fashion. This can also be called Bindaas style. Oh, is this already covered by Management by Chaos? Well, important lesson for all the management gurus who have an impulse to postulate new theories is to research on what is already documented and practised. This in itself will consume life time energies, I think.
Allow me to end my circastic note here. Remain happy with the observation we all hava huge set of M or L style repertoire to choose from. I would compare this with fashion - changes too often and cyclical (classic, retro, modern, genX, ). Damn those adjectives. :-)
Another dimension that provokes intense debate is (I may be denting my carrer prospects by saying this, anyway here goes) Management or Leadership! For a hard core bigot, may be these terms may look loaded assuming extra significance. But this post is written in a light hearted fashion with the mindset that after all these are all word play. Com'on - why bind ourselves to expression using a language that has its own boundaries how much ever expansive it may be in its form and reach. So one part of me asserts that one can equally replace the word Management with Leadership and there will be no harm done. What is amusing to notice is that for each certain way of management principle, there is a contrasting style postulated.
In the spirit of innovation, I would also like to add a style viz. Management By Being. Basic idea is to let each entity display its own individual characteristic and evolve in its own fashion. This can also be called Bindaas style. Oh, is this already covered by Management by Chaos? Well, important lesson for all the management gurus who have an impulse to postulate new theories is to research on what is already documented and practised. This in itself will consume life time energies, I think.
Allow me to end my circastic note here. Remain happy with the observation we all hava huge set of M or L style repertoire to choose from. I would compare this with fashion - changes too often and cyclical (classic, retro, modern, genX, ). Damn those adjectives. :-)
Products vs Services
A random thought occured to me to explain this better via a simple, easy to relate analogy. Being in the product business is like trying to invent a new grain or spice like rice, wheat, corn, pepper etc... Being in the services business is like preparing the food out of this... There are so many cuisines around the world that are permutations, combinations of these basic ingredients creating so many flavours to suit climate, taste buds of people around the world. I will try and explode this analogy into deeper meanings and introspection later.
Ra
Ra
Oh, that romantic scratch in my car...
While in the car driving, when I am waiting for the light or in a heavy traffic jam, I am usually busy flipping through FM radio channels or listen to my fav music or make calls. But today morning there was an attention grabbing incident outside. No, not the street propaganda or door to door vote hunt for elections. It was a romantic bike chase.
The girl on her Scooty whizzed past on the right (managing to squeeze through opposite side traffic). The boy got onto the left side of my car and got stuck because of vehicles before him. She gave him that smile with "Hey, I am here ahead; you are behind, what a lazy boy are you?" kind of look. I see that the boy is going through a sea of emotions - joy from the fact that she is interested in him; excited because she is teasing him; perplexed because his eyes are not that adept enough to communicate and he doesn't want to use his mouth to shout above the traffic din attracting others' attention; frustrated because he is surrounded by vehicles and he is stuck. He lowered his neck and peeped into my car to have a brief look at the insensitive fellow Martian (that's yours truly) who is blocking his progress to the Venusian his heart is so fond of!
After 10 loooong seconds of such intense battle, the traffic cleared and he managed to catch up with this sweetheart, but in doing that he managed to leave behind a mark in my car! Yeah, every emotion leaves behind a scar, but if people mind on whose expense / wall the scar is made it would be of mighty help.
Indeed, 'twas good to watch live drama with flurry of emotions in such a flash free while waiting for traffic to clear up. But I am old enuf to know that nothing comes free in this world; so the scar is the price I've to pay I guess. I wish that bloke and his angel all well in their journey of emotions with the hope that they go through it together throughout!
The girl on her Scooty whizzed past on the right (managing to squeeze through opposite side traffic). The boy got onto the left side of my car and got stuck because of vehicles before him. She gave him that smile with "Hey, I am here ahead; you are behind, what a lazy boy are you?" kind of look. I see that the boy is going through a sea of emotions - joy from the fact that she is interested in him; excited because she is teasing him; perplexed because his eyes are not that adept enough to communicate and he doesn't want to use his mouth to shout above the traffic din attracting others' attention; frustrated because he is surrounded by vehicles and he is stuck. He lowered his neck and peeped into my car to have a brief look at the insensitive fellow Martian (that's yours truly) who is blocking his progress to the Venusian his heart is so fond of!
After 10 loooong seconds of such intense battle, the traffic cleared and he managed to catch up with this sweetheart, but in doing that he managed to leave behind a mark in my car! Yeah, every emotion leaves behind a scar, but if people mind on whose expense / wall the scar is made it would be of mighty help.
Indeed, 'twas good to watch live drama with flurry of emotions in such a flash free while waiting for traffic to clear up. But I am old enuf to know that nothing comes free in this world; so the scar is the price I've to pay I guess. I wish that bloke and his angel all well in their journey of emotions with the hope that they go through it together throughout!
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