Author: Suresh Dinakaran

 

If you are in any big city, you will see scores of people hurrying to their respective places of work, getting onto the commute bandwagon in the morning, beating the blues to get to where they need to. On time.

 

The same applies to a creative person at work, hurrying so that she can deliver the project on time to the client. The state of mind at that time is to ignore all distractions and possibly do some deep work so that deadlines are respected. Alternatively, if the deadline is not sacrosanct, the state of mind is far at ease(probably bringing in avoidable procrastination into play).

 

The situation is no different at airports. You are either reaching early and battling dwell time to kill the extra hours or minutes that you have or you are in a frenzy and stressed enough to make it your gate and board on time.

 

Hurry and stress seem to be co related. They need not be. Rather than see hurry as a dependency, as a crutch, as an excuse, the lens to wear can be to look at hurry as an asset. To unearth the best version of ourselves, to deliver the art that we are capable of and for bringing the version of ourselves to the fore. To fulfill on promises made. Use hurry to take that leap, sidelining the distractions that dominate our lives. Hurry has the power to be an ally, an asset, an ammunition. Switch that power on or off based on your need.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

 

If you are like me and given a few exams or tests, you would have encountered the popular multiple choice questions where the question is followed by a choice of potential correct answers. To make it a little dodgy for the test or exam takers, there is also a choice given ‘ none of the above ‘.

 

I think None of the Above gets us thinking about how we “other” people in our lives and how society teaches us to turn away from the unfamiliar.

 

Probably the choice is easier. Rather than stand for something and back it, you take the route of being against because that is the easier choice. None of the above absolves you of responsibility in a way because there is something on offer without being on offer if you know what I mean.

 

So, life’s exams will throw up ” None of the Above ” or even ” All of the Above ” as choices- that said, it is up to us to direct our responsibility in the direction we need to.

 

 

 

IQ and EQ have been part of the nomenclature for aeons now. And EQ over the past few decades have won pride of place in our scheme of things and is considered the bedrock for sound and progressive leadership. That said, the Covid-19 threw up a new necessity since a lot of organisations and individuals were caught like a deer in the headlights. And that was the crying need for adaptability. AQ(Adaptability Quotient) is certainly the new kid on the block.

 

Kids have the greatest sense of agility and adaptability. They can go from petulant and sad to happy and effervescent and switch contexts in an instant. As we grow older(and mature?), adults struggle with this. As we grow older, our ability to reconcile and thrive in a new situation or context diminishes. The law of diminishing marginal returns begin to apply. That is because we have not made such effort to change the default. The good thing is that with deliberate practice, we can change the muscle memory setting and enhance our adaptability quotient.

The same applies to organisations too. In an always on, dynamic and unpredictable zeitgeist, where the next new normal is being continuously disrupted, organisations that have agility and adpatability as its prized assets, are the ones likely to survive and thrive.

 

 

I remember when I was growing up and the reluctant cricketer in me and the generosity of my elder brother were always at loggerheads. He wanted my bat and pad to be close together while I remained happy with doing what I always did, inspite of the fact that it closed the door to newer, better, correct options.

 

I suspect status quo is the domicile of comfort. Playing safe. Of being deliberately in a state of impasse when change is resisted. When it is looked at with suspicion. As they say, when your fist is in a tight clench, little do you realise what is slipping through your fingers. And mind you, a lot is. When a toddler is crawling, it is only a natural preamble to her walking- she has no intent to remain in crawling mode forever.

We hang onto the coat tails of what was. At the cost of exploring what could be. We are afraid that whatever we have gained or whatever we have accomplished could be lost should we tread a new path. Our status, the connections we have made and the competence we have earned, though interim, is cherished and therefore protected with all vigor and rigidity. And we shut shop. Letting go becomes difficult.

 

Emotional enrollment is the bedrock of learning. That is what mentors, coaches, leaders are looking for when in the quest to moving the needle from ” what got you here, won’t get you there ‘. “Ignore sunk costs” is the critical lesson of useful decision making. More on this in an earlier blog post here.

 

Better will remain a slippery slope should the idea be to rever the status quo. We will find a thousand ways to maintain the narrative of security, entitlement or culture( people like us do things like this).

 

The ebbs and flows in our lives can be better managed. Are you defending sunk costs, sticking with projects simply because that’s easier( remember that domicile of comfort called the status quo) than leaving them behind? Which flows could be improved with focus and effort?

 

The decisions we make today( read probably hard choices) can lead to better outcomes later. The present(today) is a present(gift) and real but we still spend most of our lives living in later.

 

The other evening around 9.05 pm I get a call from an over enthusiastic sales person of an AI in Marketing company. No preamble, no polite enquiries but cutting to the chase with a sense of entitlement that cried out aloud ” that I am obliged to take his call, irrespective of the time, the context or what have you “. That is not it. When I asked him that is this a time to be making a sales call and how disappointed I am at being subjected to this unwanted intrusion, he had the audacity to tell me that it is company policy and it is NOT his responsibility to check on primary courtesies. Even when I reassured him that I will never do business with his company, he kept on saying that he is ‘doing his job ‘.

 

This is a classic template of the mindset of most(there are some exceptions fortunately) corporate customer acquisition | service personnel where they love doing either or ideally both of the below:-

 

– If at all possible, evade responsibility

– When you can, get it over with

 

So, when things go wrong and you want a response, it normally is this refrain ” It’s out of our control “.

 

There’s a flip side to this which is a far better alternative. Think of what you ‘could have ‘ done under the circumstances. Instead of hanging on to the coat tails of minimum legal and compliance, run away from the responsibility and under deliver and disappoint the customer( and lose her forever), explore what the maximum you can do to understand, empathise and resolve the customer’s problem. Like owning up and saying, we could have done better. We could have informed you and given a true update on the ground situation instead of hiding behind the customary ” there was a technical glitch “, ” it’s another department that is responsible ” etc etc.

 

So the next time you say ” let me escalate this to my manager “, actually do it, send good advice upstream, follow up and offer the customer perspective to find a solution and not follow the call centre script(designed to ensure customer problems are not resolved).

 

It is simple- organisations who win the race are the ones who are going way beyond the minimum( read this example of what happened with the Titanic to understand the gravity of what can go wrong when you opt for the safe and minimum), the ones that figure out that they could do it.

 

What could you do?

 

Tension is what keeps the plot moving forward. The old Hollywood paradigm of ” set-up, conflict & resolution “. Once the characters get a chance to connect, most of the tension disappears.

 

Our love affair with the status quo is overwhelming. Ever since meetings became part of business| corporate life, the power dynamics and the hierarchy determined where the head ( person with the most power) would sit, The HIPPO’s( Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) voice has remained the loudest with not much opportunity for the lesser franchised to express their opinion and not much leeway for either new information or new way of thinking to seep in. So much water has flown under the bridge but things remain the same to this day.

 

Things are not much different with political debates, town halls, fireside chats etc. We have microphones, broadcast TV, social media and live streaming now but the organisers are yet to figure out that they can out a cap on the amount of time allotted for each individual ( or switch off the microphone) and the most boisterous, the obnoxious, the loudest still get away without too much heed for real data and ground reality.

High school and university graduations are no different. You can date back 75 years or more and recognise the same old, same old, rinsed and repeated time and time again. Old wine in old bottle. If thought through well and if the shackles of status quo are to be shrugged off, these occasions can become truly memorable and inspiring moments, but alas, it is not to be. The more things are supposed to change, the more they remain the same.

 

Weddings and funerals are community events that have hung into the coat tails of the status quo fastidiously- yes, the scale, especially that of weddings- would have changed, but not much else.

 

Considering that email replaced good old snail mail and had the potential to bring in incredible engagement, not much has changed since we started using it first almost four and a half decades earlier.

 

Why this obsession with running hard to stand at the same place? Is it herd mentality? Is it wisdom of the crowds? Birds of the same feather flock together? The comfort in being in a SOS( Sea of Sameness)? The inability to get new thinking on board and bridge the chasm? The fear of losing out on well entrenched connections? 

 

Time to introspect on why we are sticking to something- is it because it works or because we have always done it that way? I suspect, with much regret,it is the latter!

 

The definition going around is that CAPTCHA helps protect you from spam and password decryption by asking you to complete a simple test that proves you are human and not a computer trying to break into a password protected account.

 

Almost 40 minutes of my time earlier today was on my bank’s online banking site trying to create a new user name and password( because I had forgotten them- vagaries of old age) and at the end of it I was harshly shunted out saying that I exceeded the number of attempts for the day to write the captcha code shown on the screen. How remiss (human) of me!

 

Methinks that the idea behind the captcha code is to make things so convoluted and difficult, that you will never get it right in the first few attempts. And it gets some sadistic pleasure at you having failed multiple times. I know there is an audio option as well(other than the image captcha) but who wants the person on the next table hear the emotionless cacophony emanating from a robotic voice.

 

I’m sure that the team who worked on creating a secure platform for whatever(including the transfer of billions of dollars of transactions) was proud of the hard work they did. As to how hard they made things for the user. So much for user experience. It’s incredibly impersonal.

 

No, I am not suggesting that you change the access process  to typing in ” the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”, but make things that you look forward to doing. Like type in the 5 words that make you happy- fun, comedy, laughter, jokes, friends- make it memorable and engaging rather than have a graphical juggernaut that is designed to fail and discourage you. I am not even going into situations where 0 reads like O or vice versa or 1 reads like I. I understand it is a binary world and o and 1 have to be put in their place. I mean literally only.

 

The same system that is testing whether you are human is completely oblivious of the fact that humanity and technical issues can overlap. To everyone’s benefit.

 

If the busy but blindered tech guys love throwing curve balls at you, imagine the plight of the differently abled who feel all at sea as they get completely shunted aside by someone deciding for them what is important. First suspect, then with great difficulty, contemplate to respect, albeit condescendingly.

 

A captcha that doesn’t work, machine learning that claims to but never learns and systems that doesn’t help the people who need them. Technology that is unhelpful, is still very much part of our zeitgeist, unfortunately.

 

Homework: try reading and filling in the label that is stuck in a remote hard to read and access portion at the bottom of your microwave oven to apply for your warranty online…

 

 

 

Let’s admit it unabashedly- we have a lousy track record of how well we spend our time. Though we all realise that our time is worth something, we, creatures of habit, spend it without intention or foolishly.

 

 

We wouldn’t admit our kid in a school that has a bad reputation or take our aging parents to a medical facility that is suspect nor would we invest our advertising dollars in media that has sub-optimal reach. But somehow we don’t seem to be even remotely prudent about our time and we measure it to a far lower standard.

 

We have reconciled to a default wherein seeming busy seems the dominant choice. Be it doom scrolling endlessly on social media or binge watching on OTT or paying far too much attention to the inbox. And considering that today you might be heading a team, going solo on your passion idea or leading a project- time is all that you have to spend. And productivity does not equate with time spent or you being busy. The real measure of productivity is in the value you are creating, the impact you are making or the lives you are changing for the better. The simple question to answer is did I spend my day producing enough benefit for all the time invested?

Productivity is leaning into things that you don’t know. Or delegating a task to someone who knows. Productivity is focusing on the high-output, high impact work and walking away from the low-output, low impact ones. Productivity is making the right connections that energise and trigger.

 

My only grouse with productivity is that it somehow ignores the seemingly mundane which of course it is not- We now have a packed schedule: washing up, cooking, cleaning, being a sounding board, lending a helping hand, community work, countless video conference calls with people you have ever and never met and at the end of it hiding in bed hoping that history can’t hear you breathing. But this does not unfortunately count for productivity. It has to. People are working harder than ever but a lot of the work does not fall under the traditional sense of the term ‘ productive ‘. They just don’t count on the ledger of human worth because the economy refuses to value them in its reckoning of what does, because most of it has been done in private, by women, for ages, for free. Making breakfast, making the beds, making sure your friends and family aren’t losing their absolute minds is work that matters more than ever and will continue to matter in the coming decades as crisis follows crisis. It is not “productive,” in the way that most of us have learned to understand what that word means, but it is work, and it is really really worthwhile.

 

There has been always something obscene about the cult of the hustle, the treadmill of alienated insecurity that tells you that the moment you stop running for even an instant, you will be flung flat on your face. Productivity, or the lack of it, has become the individual metric of choice for coping with the international econo-pathological clusterfuck of the Corona Crisis. 

 

Working is Not Productivity. The message once(and even now) was loud and clear. Relentless self-optimisation was a way to cope, but is it really? Humans are NOT search engines !

Your job is not being busy. Busy is not going to get you what you seek. Busy is not the point. The point is creating value. You get today only once. So would your team. What will you do to make it count?

 

William Arthur Ward once said, “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”

 

If this seems like a mid-week pick me up, you may not be wrong.

 

As we moan and groan about the things and material possessions that we don’t have in this Republic of Not Enough, flip the coin the other way to acknowledge what you have to be grateful for. When in doubt, default to gratitude. There is no better safety net nor a more energising trigger than expressing gratitude.

 

Gratitude begets more gratitude. It plays on loop and affects all involved positively. The ROG (Return on Gratitude) is immense. It could have been a venture capital’s delight considering the IRR it delivers and its ability to scale.Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.

Gratitude is not something that you get choosy about, being grateful for only all the good things you have. It is to be grateful for all of life. If you permit me a bit of wandering into stoicism- In the Discourses, Epictetus says, “It is easy to praise providence for anything that may happen if you have two qualities: a complete view of what has actually happened in each instance, and a sense of gratitude.” On the surface, much of what we’re upset about or wish hadn’t occurred is so objectionable that gratitude seems impossible. But if we can zoom out for that more complete view, understanding and appreciation can emerge. First off, you’re alive. That’s the silver lining of every shitty situation and should not be forgotten. But second, everything that has happened and is happening is bringing you to where you are. It’s contributing to the person you have become. And that’s a good thing. This understanding, Epictetus said, helps you see the world in full color—in the color of gratitude.

 

We have so much to celebrate and feel grateful for especially:

 

-The magical  people in our lives who give us the unstinted support and boundless love we need to make a difference, without bias or judgement and…

– The opportunity to build something bigger and better than ourselves, something worth contributing to. The ability to make connections, to lend a hand, to invent and create. To lead, to show the way, to care.

 

Thanksgiving happens in November but you don’t have to wait!

 

 

We are hardwired for procrastination. In the toss-up between fight or flight, flight, flight is more often the winner. And since the brain is the laziest organ in the body, unless there is active nudging, deferring decisions is a piece of cake. According overt importance to preserving the status quo- irrespective of whether it is actually a state of impasse that you are creating. Happy not to be countering or addressing the friction and inertia that will actually make things better.

 

If you are anyone like me, there are a list of things that you wish you had done but did not. Be it a new job that you did not apply for, the book you did not write or the business idea that you did not pitch to anyone. You always had the ” I”ll do it later ” refrain coming in the way and giving up on the opportunity to make your dent in the universe, your chance to discover the greatness resident within you. As a result, we pass up opportunities to level up.

 

“I’ll do it later.” We’ve all said it, especially when faced with a new challenge or opportunity.Maybe for you, it was a promotion, a chance to lead a project, or a call to step up and make a difference. In the moment, it feels safe and convenient to put it off.

 

But as time passes, that feeling of unease grows. You realize that “later” is a form of hiding, keeping you stuck in The Gap between where you are and where you want to be.

 

What sets universe-denters apart from the rest is their willingness to take action, while everyone else is waiting for “later.”

 

If you want to write but don’t, it keeps you from insisting that people read your mind, understand your gestures and generally guess what you want. The person who most benefits from your writing might be you. And that when it is done NOW, NOT LATER!

 

“You may delay, but time will not.” – Benjamin Franklin

 

You might put things off but sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences. The present is a present. It’s worth extracting from Eckhart Toile‘s seminal classic ” The Power of Now ” where he echoes that only the present moment is real and only the present moment matters, and both an individual’s past and future are created by their thoughts.

 

See you later?