A Warrior’s search for Synchronicity

Loss of Depth

December 18, 2009 · Leave a Comment

I inherited an SLR minolta camera when I was 13. It should have been as old as me (1990). The photometer of the camera was not working and there was no feedback loop for the camera to tell me when to adjust the aperture or the shutter speed to get the intended result. So till I saw the developed photograph I had no way of knowing how my calculations would turn out. As a result I developed an acute awareness of what impact, factors like light, atmospheric conditions (heat or cold) would make on the photograph and how I could arrive at the desired result by adjusting aperture or shutterspeed.

With the advent of the digital cameras all these skills became worthless. You could see the final result the photograph along with the changes you made on the settings from the LCD display. This change enabled all unskilled to become as good as the skilled. What I miss is that acute awareness or oneness I uses to feel with my surroundings and the forecasts I made about the impact, the change I could influence by changing shutterspeed or aperture and the sheer triumph I felt when the forecast and the change I intend came true. The upside is all these skills became democratised and ordinary. Before the advent of excel mathematical geniuses and chart makers were highly regarded for their skills. Excel democratised mathematics and visual display of information a skill that can be acquired by all and sundry.
Personal loss and wonder of a selected group became collective gain and mundane utility of the masses.

A story of triumph, feels like a class war victory. Is it really so?

Who benefits when people use excel, who benefits when people use Canon or Nikon digital SLR camera? Who benefits when people use photosharing sites like flickr or facebook or picasa or Twitter

That question is discussed in Life – How the World became a corporation and how to take it back. What I want to discuss is the loss of depth, the sense of wonder, the sense of oneness that happened as a result of the demorcatisation of the skillset. And when generations go by you lose knowledge even the existence of such skill sets and pass on to a different mindset altogether. That is discussed in ‘Avatar’ by James Cameroon.

When I look at Florence Nightingale’s charts which was used to tell the Monarch that soldiers were dying more of unhygienic living conditions than from wounds from war, I can pitch the skill of Hans Rosling, the celebrity who statistician who does magic with charts on TED stages in the light it belongs. (Nightingale did not have any software or excel)

Similar depth can be experienced when you watch Anupam Mishra’s TED talk

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The Whuffie Factor by Tara Hunt

December 17, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Tara Hunt has done an excellent job at explaining the power of online relationships, need for building reputation online , need for helping out , need for helping people to help out, need for serving a higher purpose and how all these are transforming the world we live in. She also predicts how all this will become part of the job despcriptions of future. There are a lot of stories on Twitter, Craiglist, Flickr, Threadless – all amazing stories of extraordinary avhievemnts of ordinary people

Whuffie infact relates to having a network of people or community to whom we add value to and that value taking a natural turn inorder to serve back. It is realising that it is not about you and it is all about them. In Parallel streams I wrote about 2 streams of people, one going for the beeline and the other trying to milk the network to get things done. In Tara’s world both these merges into one and teaches me, if the beeline does not go through people’s hearts it will not go far.

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Conversational Cartographer

December 1, 2009 · Leave a Comment

That is how Susan Scott describes herself – conversational cartographer. Howard Schultz wrote the book “Pour your heart into it” – How Starbucks built a company one cup at a time and Susan Scott wrote Fierce Conversations – How to build a team one conversation at a time. Fierce conversations are those in which people come out of themselves and become real interrogating reality, provoking learning, tackling tough challenges and leaving enriched. She is a strong advocate of radical transparency (which many political astute fear to death). Leaders in many organisations is afraid of candour. Susan asks, very subtly if you are an organisation which has honesty and integrity as one of the corporate values and encourage open conversations, how can you have 360 degree anonymous feedback and anonymous surveys – why don’t you have 365 days face to face conversations?

I could not resist myself from revisitng fierce conversations again when I started reading Fierce Leadership by Susan Scott and The Secret Handshake – Mastering the politics of the business inner circle by Kathleen Kelly Reardon.

When you are formulating a people management strategy these books could provide valuable insights provided you are willing to be seen, heard and changed

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Life cycle of an idea

November 22, 2009 · Leave a Comment

The idea that stuck to my mind from “In search of excellence” was the abundance of data and intelligent use of software, where you could change few variables and get an accurate estimate, triumphed over long term business relationships to establish new standards of efficiency and decision making. Tom Peters illustrated this through the story of an electric appliances company, if I remember right. Much water has gone down the lane, the data driven decisionmaking is not new anymore and is pretty much taken for granted. Now most of the customers are looking for the human emotional connection anyone has to offer, over and above the correct solutions. Much of the decision making gets weighed towards the emotional connection rather than a rational choice. Very often the question people ask themselves is, “is this the kind of partner I want to be with when I face trouble?”

A very similar phenomenon happened in the world of marketing. When broadcast media was new, there was a strong relevance for ads and the premium you paid for eyeballs. Now the broadcast media is loathed and the Ads despised, because of the overuse of marketing messages. People respond better to genuine human voices and recommendations – this is where amazon and facebook thrives

Each idea has a life of its own. It mostly has more than one life. Each organisation or individual adopts the idea at a different time period and the life of the idea is greatly influenced by the nature of that entity. For example the idea mentioned at the beginning of this post entered my mind 4 years ago and now it has transformed into something new. The same idea may have ruled through many of the organisations for a much longer period

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Endurance – Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing

November 21, 2009 · Leave a Comment

A perfect analogy for the current financial crisis. Unexpected turn of events, test of human endurance in all forms, full of strategic decision making which involves life and death situations, keeping up the morale of a devastated team, several difficult decisions involving sacrifice of dear ones, scrutiny and discipline of available resources and intelligent utilisation of them. A great read at any time.

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Parallel Streams

November 14, 2009 · 1 Comment

Stream 1 is where the exchanges are straightforward. There are fixed charges, transparent actions and everyone knows how to get it done provided you are willing to pay for it.

Stream 2 is where, only people with the right contacts can get things done. There are no fixed charges or rules. For those who know it is an easy game. Those who don’t know, need to find some one who knows to get things done even if you are willing to pay for it.

For some, stream 1 is main stream and for others, stream 2 is mainstream.

The ease to thrive in both streams depends what you have groomed yourself for. The rules of the game, tactics and skills required are very different. What many people see as a safe bet is to groom yourself in both streams so that you are well-equipped for both scenarios.

Each of us has an inclination for one stream over the other and that becomes the determining factor of our personality.

People who associate themselves more with stream 1 are more self-centered, see a beeline for actions to be accomplished and go about doing it. They often hit roadblocks, use force, get frustrated, curses, wish things were simple.

People who associate themselves with stream 2 builds their network of actions through different relations and multisided interactions. For them, there are no beelines, there are no wasted interactions. There are only learnings of human nature and niches to be exploited.

However there is a stream 3. They are highly networked and that is all they have got. (courtesy gapingvoid.com)

In Life Inc. How the world became a corporation and how to take it back, Douglas Rushkoff discusses two types of money. One is issued by the Central Bank and the other peoples exchange of services. (like if you baby sit my child I will cut your hair). If you think deep the latter system is more real, the services are more defined and the value goes from end user to end user. It does not go through an intermediary and become taxable or measurable or exploitable by a third party and the token used for the exchange is not a piece of paper or metal produced by a bank, but mutual trust. This kind of exchange questions the very existence of corporations which are outsourced entities for catering to people’s needs on the periphery but really are institutions to strip people out of their ingenuity and use their creativity in a more structured way so that the products could be mass marketed and profits made by few. This structure enables the money to get accumulated to the 10% of worlds’ population.

In all probabilities you might be working for one of these corporations and the skill sets you have cultivated is to thrive in such a corporate environment. You cannot just walk out and expect to learn everything that the other system demands and take life as it comes and it would not help either, because corporations would continue to rule the world. So the question is how can you change this inside out? Bring more humanity and over all well being as a culture into these profit motivated vehicles (like Mohammad Yunus puts it)?

The answer is in creating and expanding your brand value to the place you work. There is no easy way to get there. There is no sure shot method either. It is all about looking around and seeing how other people achieved it (George Lucas, Steve Jobs) and building brand building plan or activity into your everyday existence and overall strategy. (of course based on your strengths)

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Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko

November 14, 2009 · 1 Comment

About 14 years ago I witnessed an executive training conducted by Dr. Prasad Sunderrajan and the most valuable take away for me was the idea that if we continually keep on challenging our central neuron system, by doing new stuff, it kinds of unlocks your creativity. The challenge to the neuron system is more when mastering or changing precision movements. Hitherto in my life I have tried to pursue those challenges in any shape or form I can – like reading/studying totally new subjects, switching platforms of everyday use ( PC to Mac or Sony PSP/Playstation to Wii) and so on. Another revelation from the session was creativity is not restricted to full time artists or writer or performers. It can be any field, it can be in life and it can be in business. So when I picked up this book I had no clue it would be so much in line with my character and also hold a lot more avenues of improvement. Seeing connections between other wise unconnected streams or examples and drawing up analogies, unlocking the potential of our unconscious mind, living a rich inner life all is discussed in this magnificent book. http://www.creativethinking.net/WP01_Home.htm

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Collapse – How Societies chose to fail or survive

October 22, 2009 · Leave a Comment

A brilliant book – relevant as ever.

Interweaving of anthropological knowledge with current challenges involving social behaviour, climate threats, economic collapses – connecting the dots could not be more magnificent.

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Ignore Everybody and 39 other Keys to creativity by Hugh Macleod

October 16, 2009 · Leave a Comment

The hugely insightful and enthralling book about creative choices whether it be career, life or passion after Dan Pink’s The Adventures of JohnyBunko. Both are one of its kind. Johny Bunko with it comic book story telling. Ignore Everybody with its business card size cartoons. Each of 39 keys are worth pondering about and set you on a journey of thoughts. However me being the insatiable book-eater, I could not stop till I finished and was wondering all the while how my friend Aditya would read it one chapter a day and keep the fire burning for 40 days.

Thanks to Seth Godin for having recommended this book on his blog.

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A Colossal Failure of Common Sense – The inside story of the collapse of Lehman Brothers by Lawrence G. Macdonald

October 15, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Amazing story telling by Larry. This is a personal account of a talented insider who worked the floors of Lehman, made fortunes and was fired during early 2008, as he belonged to bear culture while Lehman Management was bullish . Can be read or heard like a breeze, a bit melodramatic, but clearly engaging and informative

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