The Crucible of Statehood

The crucible of statehood

21/10/18

In the words of Abraham Lincoln, when he was trying to cheer up a tired nation to the destiny ahead, the idea “of the people, by the people, for the people” took life.  Many regions which got liberated accepted the model of liberty with their own unique twist.  I wonder what we in our country wanted.  It has become fashionable to say we are the largest democracies, and sure enough we have implemented universal franchise from the beginning of our statehood.  We also have periodic elections and the necessary paraphernalia to administer the process.  Whether as a country we believe this or not, I am sure this idea is a sham played on by the ‘ruling class’ or those who move to position ‘rulers’.  The political discourse is most of appeasement or polarization.  There is ample evidence to this effect, but the facts gets submerged under the rhetoric.

The whole idea of representative leadership – by, of, for – is untenable when people are driven to the extremes.  One of the process which has emerged is that to in the contest of representation it is more easily achieved by pushing people to the periphery.  In any society there will be multitude of issues and a variety of expectations.  Thus, it will be difficult for anybody to understand each problem and the possible solution, and the offering of different aspirants to the leadership.  To integrate all these possibilities and be rational about making a choice is a very difficult path.  One solution to this is create an identity of a party or group, and have a shared philosophy.  But when the driving force is to reach to the top of leadership, philosophies fall by the way side.  This is well understood by the parties more than the ‘people’.  It is much easier for the people to pick an extreme case and ignore everything else to base your support.  Alignment to the case is not necessarily important except for driving the masses.  Thus, around the world we see that people who drive people to the extremes rather than preach for moderation or middle of the road ideas succeed in getting chosen.  This has been a marked deviation from the situation may be just a few years back.  This has driven the concept distrusting any cooperation from any other nation and posturing a combative style.

Productivity Hacks

Productivity Hacks

20/10/18

Over the years I have seen that, as far as being productive is concerned, some things work and some don’t, and this is not a stable feature.  Things that use to work for me, after some time, turn out to be a dud.  This only means that the surroundings and contexts have a great influence on your effectiveness more that your skill and intent, which means, to the extent possible, you should set up your surroundings for getting the best out of your efforts.  A few thoughts on this.

1. Time of the day has a great influence, and this has a tendency to change over long periods (say in decades) but not in shorter periods.  My mornings give good returns for the effort, which means I should engage myself with ‘important’ activities and not trivial and routine ones.  Many a times this is not entirely under my control as schedules (for me) are made by someone else.  But this is not for every day.  Thus, the trick is, when it is under my control (a few days in a week) I must make the most judicious plan and execute.  The important things here are: there must be a plan, it must be consistent – like preparing for a future activity, writing, reading professionally relevant material, etc. which are all individual activities, and the return on which are your personal accomplishments.
2. There are certainly periods in my day when personal effectiveness is at a low ebb. The afternoons are a good example here, for me.  One way to better utilize this time is to schedule team activities when a few members have to get together and work towards some common objectives.  It is ideal when the team size is 3 to 5, but when the size is bigger, this works more like a sermon.  When more than one is involved in an activity, it must be realized that we must measure productivity gains (or losses) of all who are involved.  And this is the reason large meetings don’t accomplish much, generally, since the denominator has increased without commensurate increase in the output.  On the other hand, it is much easier to deliver killer plans, like shutting down of a business or a unit, where the outcome, by design, is targeted for reduction in productivity.  A good example that comes to mind is the announcement of the defacing of currency notes in my country.  The outcome of this meeting through the TV was very effective in the losses of various kinds that ensued.

Productivity Conundrums

Productivity Conundrums

18/10/18

Everyone is interested in productivity, generally of someone else – your reports, team, boss, management, government, parents, spouse, children, students, teachers, etc., the list can go on.  It is an indication of the connected world we inhabit.  Some are also interested in personal productivity.  The problem is that we can do very little to change the productivity of someone else, except adjusting our own expectation.  But for personal productivity, we are told, the switch is under our own hands.  The fact that there are so many gadgets and devices available for adjusting our personal productivity is an indication that so many are interested and working on someone else’s productivity.

My own experience in the failure of improving my personal productivity is not because of the availability or use of tools and techniques, but behaviour pattern.  One important way to improve productivity is akin to making money in a business.  The more frequent you cycle your investment (turnover), the quicker your business can grow rich.  Similarly, the more frequent you cycle your thoughts and actions, the quicker you can progress and improve your productivity.  Just repeating the same actions keeps you where you are.  My problem is that I have too many ideas and not enough follow up actions.  This is a problem I have not figured how to solve.  You can say I have not had useful ideas yet towards this problem. I get too many ideas when I am in the midst of doing some routine actions like taking a shower, driving in a busy road and many such situations.  By the time I have freed myself from such constraints the ideas have vaporized, they are no more in my consciousness.  So I end up filling my days with routine actions, and find myself not have made much progress in ‘important’ things.

As an indicator of ‘interested in someone else’s progress’ it has become routine that people are asked to report status.  Thus, providing data to various agencies has become a significant obstacle to being productive.  In a social network, your safety is dependent on the activities of others more than your own.  Thus, being powerful means you demand productivity from others.  For example, the frequent reporting of your earnings and the costs (tax) for these earnings.

Workplace Harassment

Workplace Harassment

15/10/18

 

#MeToo is the topic of the month, and I chanced upon witnessing a couple of discussions on the topic.  The panelists were all women.

For everybody’s sake, I hope this problem gets resolved soon, which I am sure is most unlikely, given the track record of how we resolve problems.  Assuming we can solve this, we should come out and say “harassment is part of our culture, take or leave it” or “these (x,y,z) are the indicators of harassment, and if brought to notice, the institution will deal with this in this said manner, and the consequences will be such and such”.  On the question of “we” in this paragraph, should it be the legal system, federal or state level oversight, the institution, the department, etc. I am not clear about, but believe there are guidelines and rules for systems within organizations to be set up and operated.  However, the question generally is, how effective is the implementation of the guidelines or rules, is there only a lip service.

The way the movement has progressed (?) so far, it appears that many important questions have been left by the wayside, which means they may never get addressed.  So, some of my thoughts on these.

• Naming and Shaming: Although I suspect the problem is much more rampant, when the light is shined only on the ‘moderately / hugely successful’ perpetrates, it is unlikely to cleanse the system sufficiently.  Does it mean that only people in certain positions, professions or situations should get justice, or there will be hope for everyone (at least in theory).
• The idea of democratization of justice: There is a myth that since we call our country democratic, guided by a constitution, that activities within its geographical boundary must also conform to this principle.  This is certainly not the case.  Rules within many subsystems, such as a family, need not follow democratic principles.  There has always been a conflict between disciplining children, for example.  When does a state intervene to protect the underprivileged, and say that the ‘right’ of parenting needs to be withdrawn from an individual?  In an organization, decisions that affect all employees are seldom taken collectively by all employees, it is usually a single person who is selected (and not elected) for making that decision.  This is more relevant about effects to the customers and the bystanders (communities).  For example, a company may withdraw a product or service that is in great demand.
• There are many types of harassment, and sexual is most easily identifiable and perhaps easy to correct.  The fact that this has not be done yet only is an indication of the gap between ‘culture’ and ‘change’.  There has been very little impetus to correct this moral problem, but we have been ‘busy’.  Other forms of harassment and discrimination, in many places have been normalized, and will take more effort to correct.

 

The Kingdom of the Accounts

The Kingdom of the Accounts

13/10/18

To begin with, let me clarify that I have nothing against any individuals, groups or organizations that practice accountancy.  All my comments are only in reference to the discipline, as I have perceived from my experiences.  This could be due to my ignorance about the field more than anything else, but these are my impressions which have been shaped from my training in an unrelated field.

In most organizations I have worked one of the guiding principle for any action to be taken or not is driven primarily by the expected approval of the ‘auditors’.  Any mostly, the ‘auditors’ refer to accounting and financial audits.  In other areas the activities seem not to be so much shaped by the audits.  The general principle appears to be that errors of omission are preferable to errors of commission.  One common outcome of this philosophy is that in many publicly supported programs, more often than not, expenditures are below target in terms of money and time.

One of the concepts I find difficult to grasp and come to terms with is the distinction made between capital and non-capital expenses.  This distinction calls for the care and diligence applied to one compared to the other.  There are other distinctions made through nomenclature for these expenses such as non-recurring and recurring, etc.  Such distinction, I suspect, is relevant when one is working under resource constrained circumstance, and the principle of being judicious when spending on items treated investment or whose services are expected over an extended period.  But in reality, all expenses are investments and have finite value towards the planned outcomes.  Alternatively, all activities are for expendable items, whether in short or long term, called as consumables, service costs or infrastructure.  One rarely considers opportunities lost by delay of capital expenditures.  What readily comes to mind is fighter jets and their purchase processes.  But this is just an example of how public investments are made to pay for public good.

Frustration and Adjustment

Frustration and Adjustment

11/10/18

Although I have put the nouns in the title, I am really interested in the verbs, frustrated and adjusting.  Yes, the use of different forms for the verbs, past tense and continuous tense, is intentional.

It is an old cliché that change is the only constant thing.  Although change is inevitable, we always look for ways to prevent change, and the regular advice is to drive change in the direction we want.  The driving part is easier said than done, but try we must.  I think the way this happens is by “getting frustrated and adjusting”. Let me explain.

We are frustrated when our expectation exceeds the reality in spite of whatever effort we may be able to exert.  Many a times the effort may have to come from someone else, and that is so this is a greater cause for frustration.  This is followed by adjusting to the reality of the discrepancy.  This is broadly the play book.  But the quality of these actions – how one sets up expectation to get frustrated and how the follow up adjustment is done drives change, either positively or negatively.  Being creative in setting expectation can be very forceful.  Unless it leads to frustration, i.e., the target is missed, the system is not pushed enough to make progress.  More importantly, adjusting to the frustration can be productive if we attempt to close the gap between expectation and reality.  Again, one could be timid in adjusting which generally leads to status quo or deterioration.

What to write

What to write

10/10/18

Once you make a commitment to yourself to do something on a regular basis the fear of meeting the task creeps in.  The idea of writing is transmitting the thoughts to the medium of recording, whether it is paper, tape or screen.  Thoughts keep floating in and out, with or without our effort, but the more challenging job is the transmission part.  I have always felt that the time ‘good’ ideas hit me, I’m not prepared to transcribe, and when I’m ready to fill paper the ideas have disappeared.  I’m hoping, from what I read from the experts in this field, that getting the memory to follow your instructions will get better with practice, and hence the idea of regular practice.

I think the ideas don’t originate in your mind but they float through.  That is a good omen because then good and bad ideas can come through, and its your job to filter them as per your persuasion.  More ideas come the more we are able to capture them, so that we can spin them into a thread.

Why I write

Oct. 9, 2018

Why I write

Because I must

Not because I have to

Putting myself out there

Makes me think about what can be put

Not necessarily what needs be put

Looking around I see so much filth

To tell me what must be avoided