A Warrior’s search for Synchronicity

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

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.

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)

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