Month: February 2024

 

It is no surprise that most of us are the way we are. Trying to be people pleasers. To fit in, conform, adhere, comply. Norms, society and culture would have it no other way. Our education industrial complex (tailored purely for scaling in most cases) only fans the fire. Look at the vocabulary in use there- standard, uniform, grades, test, class, exam…top down with a vengeance with little heed(forget sensitivity) for individuality. And this is unfairly lopsided all the more in the case of the fairer gender.

 

The motivation to maintain the status quo is so huge that it is almost an aberration that we manage to make progress at all. As author and podcaster Glennon Doyle quotes on the courage to be yourself: “Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.” Yes, as they say charity begins at home.

 

The joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet others’ expectations and start trusting the voice deep within us is magical. It is a release. Like the floodgates have opened up and you are on the path to discovery of your best desired self.

 

We remain in denial. Wallowing perennially in our own discontent. Stigmas and taboos are not allies ever in any case. We do a brilliant job actually of hiding our discontent from ourselves. The emotional labour we invest in being the best mother, daughter, wife, father, son, husband, colleague, friend, sounding board etc is beyond tenable. And if R&R were to be your goal( I mean rewards & recognition) in the form of feeling more alive, think again. The tangible trade off is that it comes with us feeling weary, overwhelmed, underwhelmed, stuck and in a state of deep impasse.

The provocation here is to ask” are we bringing our full self to the table of life? “. Are we at home with our aging bodies, anger and heartbreak, anxiety and enthusiasm, are we trusting ourselves setting boundaries that we can manage and unleash our fullest, wildest instincts so that we can look at the mirror and confidently claim ‘ here I am, in true blue, full protein form‘.

 

It is no coincidence that the braver we are, the luckier we get.

 

There is a firmly entrenched mythology around ‘ creative genius ‘ which over indexes on individual brilliance, divine intervention and the magic of the subconscious. This rant is an attempt to take that perception head on.

 

We have been spoon-fed the notion that creativity is the province of genius — of those favored, brilliant few whose moments of insight arrive in unpredictable flashes of divine inspiration.  And if we are not a genius, we might as well pack it in and give up. Either we have that gift, or we don’t. Remember Archimedes Principle, the ‘ Eureka Moment ‘. Let’s attempt to demystify the myth around creativity and give it some relevant..well..buoyancy.

 

As the world’s most creative people have discovered, we are enticed by the novel and the familiar. The brain is considered the laziest organ in the body. So, there we are in familiar territory when it is not taxed, when the processing is almost on default mode. There it is said in communication strategy to adopt the mantra, ” the brain remembers what it least expects, so deliver the unexpected “.  The novel in that sense is a different novel altogether. The quest for the ‘ shiny new object ‘ is where it originates from and concludes post the ‘ after glow ‘ having worn off.

 

Both at a personal level and at a professional | business level, the probability of ‘mainstream success‘ is at the sweet spot that exists between the familiar and the novel. By navigating what author Allen Gannett describes as the ‘ creative curve ‘, the point of optimal tension between the novel and the familiar – everyone can better engineer mainstream success.

 

A classic example is when the famed Ben & Jerry’s ice cream brand launched a ‘ lavender ‘ flavour of its ice cream. Despite the fanfare and the brand salience, the product was a colossal flop. Stepping back and understanding customer insights and thinking led them to think a little differently. The most familiar flavour of ice cream is vanilla.  The team at B&J decided to go back to the market with a flavour that combined both vanilla and lavender. i.e the familiar and the novel. The product was a runaway success.

 

Layering the novel atop something that is familiar leads to better acceptance, adoption and affinity and the chances of success multiplies. You don’t have to be born with Superman like super power to achieve great artistic or entrepreneurial heights. Neither do you have to rely on mysticism or LSD. Creativity and the potential of high success is intuitive and accessible to all. Just find yourself at the happy intersection of the familiar and the novel.

 

The doctor attending to a patient is expected to spend a certain amount of time( validated as the right amount by the culture we inhabit) with her patient.

 

Uber Eats or Deliveroo or Careem etc are expected to deliver food within a certain amount of time- read the right amount of time.

 

How long should an undergraduate degree take? If you are in N America, four years. Most other places, three years. The default of the right amount of time has already been set. It is done and dusted. The script is already hard bound. Just be the actors now.

 

Learning to play the violin or a new language. Coming to terms in using a new software program. Looking around for a new home. There are set expectations on time to be invested in each of these, an informal validation that the culture has taken the initiative on.

 

In an highly commoditised world, spending a similar amount of time like all others would mean reaping( or under reaping) the same benefits as the rest of the tribe.

An alternative scenario can come in the form of either of the below:-

 

– Spend considerably more time than the rest in something which is way beyond the set default. In the process, extract a significantly better outcome.

-Spend far less than the rest which is way less than the set default. And use that time to unearth alternatives and processes that benefits everyone, something that the rest is overlooking.

 

Under indexing or over indexing through well intentioned time hacks can create significant positive changes in the culture. Explore and discover those possibilities rather than be at the mercy of the diktat called the ‘ right amount of time‘.

 

Its worthwhile here to be understanding Howard Gardener’s Theory of Multiple Intelligence 

 

If the definition of a leader is someone who catalyzes positive change, then every organisation needs all the leaders it can get. Sadly, the idea of leadership that predominates in most organisations has been hopelessly compromised by bureaucratic thinking.

 

For us to move forward on this rant, let’s go back in time a bit. During the early years of industrialization ( the Henry Ford era and all of that), administrative competence was scarce, in serious short supply. The workforce multiplied rapidly between then and the outbreak of the second world war. Who was going to wrangle this fast growing herd of employees if not a cadre of newly minted managers? Some of today’s most renowned US Universities jumped into the pit to help, namely the Wharton School @ Univ of Pennsylvania(est 1881), Harvard Business School (est 1908) and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business(est 1925).

 

Drip by drip, a corpus of management knowledge began to invade the zeitgeist. General Electric opened its famed management academy in New York. The then Chairman Philip D Reed was to make GE the world’s best managed company. A worthy goal. Let’s not forget that it was management magic that turned labour and steel into locomotives, turbines, generators and washing machines.

 

By the time it was a couple of years before the millennium, management was no longer considered the mysterious or prized exceptional activity. Fatigue had set in and the novelty had worn off. Thanks to the work of seminal thinkers like Peter Drucker, principles and practices of administrative competence had found its threshold level.

 

By the 1980’s, management had become passe. Universities and management consultants needed something new to sell. A product upgrade, if you will. The dice was rolled and they landed on the shiny new object called ‘ leadership‘.  They asked their clients, why would you want to remain a mere manager when with the right training, you could become a valiant leader? Just give us a week or two of your time, a few thousand dollars and we will convert you into a happy amalgam of Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and Alfred Sloan.

 

Today, more business books are written about leadership than any other topic, so it’s easy to forget the relative novelty of our obsession with leadership. Despite the ubiquity of the topic, if you Google ‘ leadership model ‘, you will get more than a billion hits. That said, there’s little evidence we know how to grow leaders, or that most of those who claim to be leaders deserve the title!!

To be fair, leadership training is seldom focused purely on administrative skills. Today, in a multi-week program at a leading B-school, there will be modules on AI, Blockchain, Neuroscience, Generative AI, IOT, and the Gen Z workforce. Contemporary leadership training also emphasises ‘ soft skills ‘ that affirm the values of authenticity, empathy and mindfulness. Unfortunately, all these become superfluous in a bureaucratic cage match. Back on the job, there is little in the organisation that reinforces introspection, humility and honesty and not much they can do to change the fact.

 

Leadership training tends to be stratified( otherwise how will elitism come into play?). Hierarchy dictates that at the excutive level, it is ‘managing the organisation’, at midlevels on ‘ leading the business ‘ and at lower levels on ‘ leading your team ‘. This hierarchial approach is based on the absurd assumption that lower-level employees are unable to think beyond their own role or limit.

 

Leadership and hierarchy are conjoined twins and disentangling it is a long way off. When an organisation refers to ‘ leadership team ‘, do they mean everyone in the organisation who can also make amazing things happen? Certainly not. It refers to the dozen or so EVPs who sit atop the pyramid. The reality is that many of them on the ‘ leadership team ‘ are not leaders at all. In the true sense and sanctity of the word. Neither are they a ‘ team ‘, if by that you mean a group of selfless souls united around a common cause.

 

Radical thinking is the need of the hour to change this default. We need a bunch of hacktivists across organisations around the world. Deep change comes from the fringe, people who are not bothered about the spotlight but are willing to put themselves in the firing line.

 

When we finally abandon the myth that a big title makes you a leader, and when the HR function stops playing to the top of the house, then our approach to leadership will finally catch up to the realities of the twenty-first century.

 

 

 

The bank of time has finite deposits. We live with the belief that there is always tomorrow. But very soon our tomorrows will run out. The power of now( also a classic book by the same name written by Eckhart Tolle) is under utilised as we move sub consciously from one distraction to another leaving little scope for deep work that matters.

Perhaps the best way to move from distraction to traction is to make a To-Do-List and alongwith that make make a To-Not-Do List and time blocking which helps in distilling the important from the unimportant. Offers you the time to do deep work.  Time blocking is a preferred route adopted by people like Bill Gates, Elon Musk etc to do intense work of the highest importance.

 

It’s hard to change anything unless our motivation is strong enough. Before we can deal with our addictions to distraction, we need to uncover our motivations first.

 

If you’re living in your inbox or reacting to an ever-expanding to-do list, it is time to recalibrate our motivations. Because your real competition is your distraction.

 

As James Clear mentions so eloquently, “The more things you have, the more things you have to manage. Simplicity isn’t merely cheaper, it’s easier.”

 

The Lukla Airport ( also known Tenzing-Hillary Airport, is a domestic airport and altiport in the town of Lukla, in Khumbu Pasanglhamu, Solukhumbu District, Koshi Province of Nepal).It sits on a cliff with a two-mile drop. Some call it the most dangerous airport in the world. All that the pilots(and you) have to do is zip through a tight valley and land on the 0.3-mile runway without going over the edge, Mission Impossible style.

 

But this is where you land if the intent is to get to EBC(Everest Base Camp) and Climb Mount  Everest. Those three words are enough to take the wind out of anyone’s sails and scare even the best of us. And if you’ve ever looked into what it really takes to make the climb, it’s no wonder it’s so often used as a metaphor in the fashion that it is.

 

From the airport, you trek for ten days to get to base camp as you start acclimatizing- you know, so the lack of oxygen doesn’t take you out. You toughen yourself by doing ” up and backs ” to and from base camp, increasing your levels of altitude in increments, so your body can take oxygen. Mind you, thin air is no joke.

 

The trip takes an average of 8 weeks in a finite window during monsoon season , during which the jet stream and 100mph winds don’t blow you off the mountain. There’s also the spiritual aspect of the climb. In the Himalayas, local Buddhists believe that the mountains are inhabited and controlled by mountain spirits. Most follow an unwritten climbing code, paying respect to these spirits. So you meet with a lama– a holy person whose role is to draw upon a higher power and ask for the mountain to grant you safe passage. Traditionally, the lama places a necklace on you for protection while on Everest.

 

Once you start the climb, you will face other obstacles. Oh, what was that? Icefall? This is a fancy name for a glacial crevasse– which itself is a fancy name for a big hole in the cliff you are climbing. As the weather shifts, part of the ice river melt and re-freeze, creating gaps- or crevasses- of around one to three feet wide, leaving a gaping hole where you are supposed to walk.

 

To sum up, you freeze your bum off, the altitude cuts off your oxygen supply, and you face death defying ice-crevasses. I promise, Mother Nature has the most dazzling plot twists(something that celebrated Hollywood screenplay writer Alan Sorkin would be proud of!!).

 

So, do you venture out on a jaunt like this solo? Hell no! You get a Sherpa, someone who has grown up in these conditions and genetically capable of thriving in these conditions and doing a job few else can. You also get an Icefall doctor– a special Sherpa who sets up ladders across ice-crevasses at the beginning of each Everest season.

 

The concept of the Sherpa applies both to attempting to summit the highest point of the world and to all areas of our life. When you pursue your dreams, you need support from other people, you need a Sherpa in all areas of life.

 

So, my rant is that why would anyone in their right mind( or even in their wrong mind), would entertain the idea of climbing the literal or figurative Everest without a Sherpa, a guide, a lama, coach, icefall doctor, or mentor or preferably all six, like a backup band. The role is the same: to provide guidance through life’s opportunities and tough spots. Why? Because you risk death. Literal death, or the death of your dream!

 

So, Who’s your Sherpa?

 

If you are working for an organisation, in a lot of cases, you are feeling ‘ over-ruled ‘.

 

The rant here is that we are not prepared. We labour under the delusion that we must ‘ wait our turn ‘…that we must ‘ work our way up the organizational ladder‘. But the decimation of hierarchies, the deconstruction of career ladders, and the redefinition of Work-Of -Value make that a false- nay, a dangerous- assumption. The idea should be to Grasp The Nettle right at the beginning of every job | assignment. We must appreciate the power that comes with being ‘ powerless ‘… and turn every mundane task into a Remarkable (WOW!) Project.

 

A small aside here if you want to a do a little more deep dive about being powerful or powerless- read here

 

Often times in corporate corridors you will hear this refrain ” But I don’t have the power “- (you can’t see my eyes roll here and I am brought up in a manner where expletives are not encouraged, so I stay quiet). But inside I am flipping. You know why. Imagine, Martin Luther King Jr saying, ” Civil Rights is Cool, but I don’t have the power ” or Mahatma Gandhi saying, ” The Brits stink, but I don’t have the power ” .

 

Now, intellectually, I am aware that ” I don’t have the power ” is a fair but sadly ubiquitous representation of the times we are in. Still talk like that gets my dander up. Sorry!

 

The Power of “Powerless” Thinking– Getting things done is not about formal power or official rank. It is all about Passion + Imagination + Persistence. Imagine you have a seriously cool idea. The very worst thing you can do(probably the biggest waste of time in the world) is to try and sell that idea up the ‘ chain of command ‘. Doing so will only officially remind you how ‘ powerless ‘ you are.

 

So, what is the ‘ chain of command ‘? It is a bunch of people who have been promoted for skillfully adhering to ‘ the certified-pure way we do things here‘. In other words, they are the Designated and Appointed Guardians of Yesterday. For your purposes- as a powerless junior type with a Seriously Cool Idea- the ‘chain of command‘ might as well be a chain gang.

 

What I am encouraging here to do is engage in a direct frontal attack on the Holy Authority of Today’s Bosses. Oops!! The power of the ‘ powerless ‘ lies in what one can call ‘ Boss-free Implementation ‘. In other words: What ‘ they ‘ can’t see, ‘ they ‘ can’t kill.

 

As a lowly person on the organization’s totem pole, powerless to create your own WOW project. But if you look around you will see some non WOW projects that you can re-frame in a way that you remain under the radar for the Boss-Free-Implementation of a Seriously Cool Idea.

 

Every small project contains the DNA of the entire enterprise. In sum, you don’t need an Officially Big Project to attack a Very Big Real Opportunity.

 

Like most things in life, the meaning of a project is all about…attitude. Is it a chore..or is it a chance– a chance to do Something Great? How we answer that question says everything about who we are and how we see the world.

 

If I come across as Prescribing a Manual for Radicals, so be it. I am not apologising. The message: Getting Things Done That Fly In The Face Of Conventional Wisdom is a Matter of Energetic and Persistent Community Organising, a Matter of Unearthing and Engaging Passionate Others( who previously viewed themselves as…yes…’powerless‘).

 

As Roseanne Barr quoted ” Nobody gives you power. You just take it “.

 

 

 

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.

 

Ubiquitous availability is now the standard. Cell phones never stop ringing. Emails barrage you round the clock. Being available is a 24 X 7 expectation. Burnout is not a badge of honour but that is exactly what is happening because the culture is calibrated that way. People like us do things like this. FOMO is a malaise that is not helping any way.

 

Even our rest times are ‘ active rest ‘ at best. You stop work and your idea of rest is listening to a podcast or reading a book or playing the music of your choice, or watching a movie- all of which needs the mind to use its processing power. These are all fun diversions, a way to switch the mind’s tracks without completely stopping its journey. We are never at complete rest- it is almost as if complete rest makes us restless.

 

The pandemic only accelerated this evaporation of boundaries. There are perks of working from home, but one of the drawbacks is that we have lost one of our last safe havens. 

Taking time to escape isn’t just a luxury – it’s essential. No need to fill in the blank. Use that time(blank) to think, plan, dream. The Republic of Not Enough that we all are willing | unwilling citizens of, will never let you slack. Because we are deeply buried most of the time in our ledger of lack. It’s ironical to know that our best creations and inventions come during periods of slack not when the mind is furiously occupied(or pre occupied). So is it almost an aberration that there is a productivity tool used by many organisations around the world called Slack?  Probably not. Brilliantly counter intuitive branding. 

 

But one thing is certain, we won’t get this time by default – only by design. Complete shut down of all senses, however short a duration it may be. 

 

Listen to the old bray of your heart. Not to the piercing shrill of your mind. “Sometimes sitting and doing nothing is the best thing you can do,” reminds Karen Salmansohn, best selling author of THINK HAPPY.
Only by taking time to think, dream, and plan are we able to discern the essential few from the trivial many in our lives.  

 

As I conclude I am reminded of a brilliant campaign line of the chocolate brand 5 Star– ” Eat 5 Star, Do Nothing “. Don’t dismiss it as a Sweet Nothing!

 

 

 

Einstellung literally means “setting” or “installation” as well as a person’s “attitude” in German.

 

The Einstellung effect is the negative effect of previous experience when solving new problems. It is the development of a mechanized state of mind. Often called a problem solving set, Einstellung refers to a person’s predisposition to solve a given problem in a specific manner even though better or more appropriate methods of solving the problem exist.

 

A phenomena that is very similar to the Einstellung is ‘ functional fixedness ‘. Stemming from cognitive bias, functional fixedness is an impaired ability to discover a new use for an object, owing to the subject’s previous use of the object in a functionally dissimilar context. Little wonder we have the classic bureaucratic impediment called ‘ we have always done it this way‘.

 

It is said that the first step to getting things right is the willingness to be wrong. If you want to do anything significant, be prepared to look foolish. The set in stone defaults blinds us of taking better, faster paths to a desired outcome. Remember that the brain is the laziest of all our organs in our body. Hence Psychology 101 has this to say ” the brain remembers what it least expects, so deliver the unexpected “.

 

You see a lot of advertising messages and marcom initiatives biting the dust because of this default thinking. Inspite of millions of dollars spent.

We favour the comfortable domicile of conviction than the uncertainty of doubt. History repeats itself but somehow we never learn from history. Our brain can be our biggest obstacle and be adamant at NOT looking at other solutions even if they are significantly better.

 

Discomfort or uncertainty are both proxies for progress and the more pattern interrupt(where the conventional Elevator Pitch is NOT about you, but the person that you are pitching to) we bring to life, however contrarian it may seem, we stand a much better chance of making decisions that are informed and contextual.

 

“The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.” ― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

What is Machiavelli’s Theory?

 

Machiavelli’s view that acquiring a state and maintaining it requires evil means has been noted as the chief theme of the treatise. He has become infamous for this advice, so much so that the adjective Machiavellian would later on describe a type of politics that is “marked by cunning, duplicity, or bad faith.

 

Hercules (known in Greek mythology as Heracles or Herakles) is one of the best-known heroes in ancient mythology. His life was not easy—he endured many trials and completed many daunting tasks—but the reward for his suffering was a promise that he would live forever among the gods at Mount Olympus.

 

This rant is neither about Machiavelli nor about Hercules. But, the culture that we live in expects us to be fiercely independent and function like the be all and end all. Invincible or Winvincible?

 

The need we have to knead is to need each other. Be in a state of deep dependence. But the diktat floating around in our society is completely the opposite.

 

Realisation of full potential is not through total individual independence but through transcending the self. It’s about connecting with something greater through altruism, spirituality, and a collective purpose. To be kind, to have hope and to love, ( note that four letter words- they can be a salve too) is a collective responsibility.

 

Mutual reliance is nothing to be embarrassed about. Our growth, our fulfillment, indeed, our very potential, are interwoven with our connection to others.  What should ideally be obsolete terms include self-made, self-help, self-centred. An ‘ever evolving society’ should not sideline our need for emotional connections.

“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”   –  Herman Melville