Human Capital Forum

Leadership Institute's Accountability Training Increases Team Performance

2011-03-03T14:10:00.001+01:00

Accountability: Do You Cringe When You Hear the Word?

Do you hear the word accountability and just cringe? Does it make you think of keeping score? Well, for many that is exactly what happens. They cringe, they avoid, they walk away. But really, we all want people that are accountable in our lives and in our businesses.

What does it mean? Accountability is taking responsibility for what you say you are going to do. It means following through. But first there are some things that have to happen in order for accountability to be all that it is cracked up to be. First, there have to be clear goals and expectations. When you have a clearly stated, measurable goal that you as the person responsible understands, then you take that goal on and take responsibility for it. When goals are unclear or wishy, washy it is impossible to be responsible for the goal but it is not trackable or measurable. For instance, if you have a business goal of improving the workplace for staff it is a totally subjective and wide open goal. It is open for interpretation and can look like many different things. What it means to you can be totally different from what it means for your peers or your boss or the owner of the company. Before you take one more step into action, you need clarity. A more clearly stated goal that you could actually implement might be: to improve the workplace by providing consistent, daily duty free lunch breaks. Now you can create a strategy for implementing this. You know that you have to create a schedule, figure out how to free people up and then you can implement. But the goal could also mean, improve the workplace by creating an action plan for each staff member with measurable goals, clearly outlined actions and weekly review meetings. This too, is measurable and actionable. But there might still be questions that you have as you start to implement.

That is part of your accountability responsibility: gaining clarity at the beginning of implementation and throughout. When a new question comes up, ask. Ask for clarity. A workplace that encourages accountability and expects it is one that also knows that there must be room for ongoing communication about goals and responsibilities. Staff must know from leaders that they are allowed and expected to ask for further clarification and that it in no way means that they are not being responsible or accountable. Actually, it means just the opposite. That they are!

Leaders must lead the way to accountability and responsibly by themselves showing that they are open to questions, open to providing answers and they too, at times, will need to ask for clarification or more information in order to be accountable themselves.

Accountability becomes a cultural norm within the workplace when individuals are given the space to take on responsibility and to expect clear communications about each task.

What should managers know of HR?

2011-01-18T17:20:00.000+01:00

Should all line managers have a basic knowledge of HR? Obviously supervisors having subordinates, this implies the management of people. It is therefore imperative that line managers have a basic understanding of how to deal with his/her subordinates in terms of target setting, performance management, motivation, putting the right pegs in the right roles, and an element of emotional intelligence in managing these subordinates. In the Human Resources Management Forum of 12manage you'll find a variety of ideas about this topic.

Recognition and award program- Modern Organization

2008-01-13T15:06:00.000+01:00

Performance and Productivity: The People Connection

In today’s economy, people performance is everything. It is what distinguishes and differentiates top performing companies. It’s not just marketing spin when corporations embrace people-oriented campaigns, such as “The Power of People,” “Your Most Strategic Asset” and “It’s the people.” Businesses are spending millions of dollars to establish, market and support improved human capital management strategies for one compelling reason: Satisfied, motivated and dedicated individuals, teams and partners are increasingly critical to business performance and corporate success.

The message is spreading. According to The Wall Street Journal, “A growing number

of employers suspect improving employee satisfaction will have an indirect but important effect on profit. Management must know its people and work continuously to monitor and modify processes to achieve their satisfaction.”

It’s no wonder corporations worldwide are scrambling to find effective ways to not only attract and keep the best talent, but also to elevate their performance productivity and service levels to new heights. Embodied in this quest is the ability to align individual behaviours with strategic corporate objectives. And, importantly, to motivate and reward those who meet or exceed these objectives.

In today’s market, organizations are trying to do more with less and achieve maximum return on investment (ROI) in their people — all part of a concerted, strategic effort to boost corporate performance. Most companies focus on improving productivity and service levels with their own employees’ first, but wise companies know that their attention must also include the other stakeholders in their corporate success – dealers, distributors, vendors and customers.

Great Customer Service Equals Happy Customers

The average business loses between 10% and 30% of its customers each year. As such, it is imperative that organizations focus on improving customer service because it can have a dramatic impact on the bottom line. For example, organizations that retain just 5% more of their customers will increase profits by 100%. Additionally, on average, satisfied customers tell five people about their experience compared with the nine people who hear about a negative experience. This is known as referrals.

Accordingly, satisfied customers help build brand integrity and corporate trust, and the most effective way to satisfy customers is to make certain that they are served by satisfied and engaged employees.

Note: 1[1] Reichheld, F., and Sasser, W. (1990). Zero Defections: Quality Comes to Service. Harvard Business Review found that organizations, where employees have above average attitudes toward their work (that is, high employee satisfaction), have: 38% higher customer satisfaction scores, 22% higher productivity and 27% higher profits.

Regardless of profession or title, work history or aspirations, the most satisfied employees are those who feel their unique skills and talents are recognized, valued and utilized. Those companies that encourage, enable and reward high performance tend to get more of it. It’s a virtuous circle, and increasingly, it’s a compelling corporate differentiator.

The video below shows a snap shot of the people who’re satisfied by managing their payroll opting different deductions. This is management of payroll to save tax liabilities. Incentive plan is more than that though, it’s quick cash and motivating. People also feel the caring from the Organization side.

A New Generation of recognition based Incentive System

Where traditional human resource-based approaches to human capital management fail to align corporate goals with individual behaviours, a new generation of incentive and recognition solutions is leading the charge toward improved employee and corporate performance. The complete, enterprise solutions offer a myriad of advantages and capabilities compared with traditional incentive and recognition programs. They are designed to consistently reward behaviours that are aligned to corporate goals. And, they are rooted in technology and can, accordingly, change at “Internet Speed” to keep up with the fast paced changes of today’s organizations and economy.

The next-generation reward programs are becoming an industry standard among companies consistently ranked as the most financially successful and most admired. It’s no wonder, since companies placing employees at the core of their plans produce

higher long-term returns to shareholders than do their industry peers. Arguably the most critical aspect of these next-generation recognition and incentive programs involves their ability to align strategic business objectives with the people who will execute on that strategy. A successful recognition and incentive program is designed specifically to support organizational alignment — driving both performance and productivity. They do this by creating a link between the overall goal and individual contribution. People want to be successful and want to be players on a successful team. Accordingly, they need to clearly understand their role in achieving the success. Thus, organizations can build and sustain an organizational culture that rewards top performance by consistently measuring desired behaviours and reinforcing performance that achieves desired results. The new generation of online recognition and incentive programs not only support organizational alignment, but also provide critical enterprise advantages: This reduces Organizational conflicts.

Spur Ongoing, Enterprise-wide Communication

Effective, engaging and informative communication is at the centre of all successful recognition and incentive programs. By leveraging the universal accessibility of online communications technologies — email, Web sites and more — today’s best incentive and recognition solutions communicate with all program constituents in a voice they will not only hear, but also listens. Program communication costs drop substantially in an online program, allowing companies to build better relationships with more frequent, more robust and more effectively targeted messages. Communicating becomes more flexible, enabling program administrators to quickly convey evolving program information or change programs to adapt to a changing business climate.

Ongoing communication of program objectives, successes and milestones are critical to overall program effectiveness. Online recognition and incentive solutions communicate with participants throughout the cycle — from program launch all the way to award selection and delivery — ensuring tight correlation between behaviours and incentives. Incorporating reference content relevant to the program, training tips and quizzes provides a cost effective training vehicle built right into the program. The

speed at which participants receive information also gives the program a sense of immediacy and helps to keep it fresh. Through ongoing communication, companies can affect lasting change, aligning their organization into one culture behind a cohesive vision.

Measure, Track and Analyze

What is the yardstick for program success? Reduced turnover? Improved service? Lower accounts receivables? Increased sales? Reduced costs? What is the minimum acceptable goal level? What is the expected goal level? What is the best-case goal level? Today’s incentive and recognition programs will measure organizational progress along the way. Through real-time transaction processing of all program components and online reports, organizations can begin to measure their programs’ ROI when it matters – in real time. This feature is one of the most important benefits of migrating a program online.

By running programs online, invaluable feedback from measurement, tracking and analysis can be immediately incorporated into the program design for maximum impact, and corrections can be made along the way, rather than waiting until the program ends to see the result. Data can be sorted and reported by any of the program elements – business unit, product line, geographic region, individual person etc. With this level of granularity, it’s easy to see where the program is working well and where more attention or additional training is needed. Management receives information that’s timely and accurate and program administrators can share the successes of a thriving group with those who are struggling to help raise the overall performance of the program.

The insights gained by the real time view of all program components provides a genuine opportunity for more successful incentive and recognition program results, and also for program data to provide strategic business information that can be useful

beyond the boundaries of the incentive program. For example, if sales results of a new product are exceeding expectations, manufacturers can be notified immediately to increase production and avoid disappointing new customers.

Offer Reward and Recognition Parity

Complex psychological theories and business process strategies stand behind successful recognition and incentive programs. Clearly, one of the issues most important to overall campaign success is the belief by participants that programs are fair and treatment is equal. Today’s online solutions can easily provide reward and recognition parity — ensuring recognition programs are consistent across all divisions

and all departments. The enhanced communication capabilities further reinforce how and why awards are earned, eliminating confusion or misperceptions about fairness.

Real time access to their program account history also provides participants with peace of mind and frequently ignites the competitive spirit between team mates. Today’s online programs have sophisticated award tracking and individual account management capabilities. Participants can see a complete listing of all the awards or points deposited into their accounts, as well as a listing of all their redemptions.

Scoreboards can be set up to display results in a myriad of ways – within or between business units, by product line or geographic territory, progress to goal etc. Complex hierarchies can be established for viewing metrics to insure that appropriate corporate guidelines for access to different levels of information can be securely accommodated.

Award Flexibility

With online programs, companies can customize award offerings for specific audiences and in many cases, different geographical locations around the world. It’s critical that program participants not only attach high emotional value to the rewards offered, but also feel the rewards are appropriate for the actions or performance being recognized. Online solutions offer extraordinary flexibility, enabling reward programs to be structured in a variety of ways: Managers can motivate and reward their direct reports and/or employees can recognize one another with peer-to-peer rewards.

Customized global award catalogs are allowing more companies to expand their incentive and recognition programs across borders, and the unique geo-centric assortments offered in the local language are engaging program participants in ways that were simply too cost prohibitive with a paper-based program.

Extensibility

The introduction of technology into the incentive and recognition marketplace has accelerated program launch and implementation cycles – what used to take months to set up, often takes only weeks now. Besides the inevitable expense reductions resulting from a compressed implementation process, companies can now feasibly entertain and execute programs addressing almost immediate business needs, as well as programs of shorter duration. This has important implications for time sensitive programs, such as those geared to launching a new product or clearing old inventory quickly. New programs can be added quickly and inexpensively to address an emerging business situation or target a unique market segment or audience.

Additionally, most incentive and recognition technology available today is built with expansion firmly in mind. Programs are capable of easily adding large, new participant groups to existing databases, or running numerous programs of different types and durations simultaneously. It’s not uncommon to have an annual President’s Club sales incentive program running in conjunction with several different quarterly sales initiatives, and an on-the-spot performance recognition program.

Once a technology platform is in place, additional features and functionality are relatively easy to add without incurring many of the initial start-up costs of a brand new program. Where appropriate, multiple programs can share a single database, eliminating the need for redundant data entry.

Choosing the Right Incentive Plan and Solution

Human capital management promises to generate extraordinary returns for companies that effectively invest in it. As with any new and emerging sector, questions abound about how to evaluate competitive offerings and measure expected returns.

Early Professional Success is only the part of the story……….

2007-12-16T17:47:00.000+01:00

Early Professional Success is only the part of the story……….

While swimming laps, Pavel Etingof thinks about math. The crowds and noise on a city bus do little to distract Allen Knutson from the equations he scribbles on a notepad he keeps handy. Francis E. Su gave up his songwriting hobby to spend more time on his proofs.

The constant devotion of these and other mathematicians to their work has allowed them to produce seminal proofs and impressive results that have won them high praise early in their careers -- all are under 35.

Abel died of tuberculosis at age 26 after solving a 300-year-old problem and discovering what are now known as Abelian functions. Although death cut short the careers of those two men, Albert Einstein lived for 50 years after formulating his most famous equation, E=mc2, when he was 26.

Early professional success is only part of the story, even there are more failures than sccess however. Many researchers in other fields show early promise but typically take more time to make important contributions because of the nature of their work.

But starting at a young age doesn't necessarily mean one's career will end early or that later contributions will pale in importance -- the second half of the legend. In fact, Mr. Simonton found that mathematicians make their best research contributions (which he defined as the ones mentioned most often by historians and biographers in reference books) at what many might consider doddering old age: 38.8. That age is very similar to those he found in other sciences: 40.5 in biology, 38.2 in physics, and 38.0 in chemistry.

"Life takes a lot of time and effort," Mr. Fefferman says. "I think the big jump there came with taking care of babies, taking night shifts. There's nothing like sleep deprivation to make one less than brilliant."

"Doing the great mathematical work requires a hell of a lot of energy," says Mr. Etingof, of M.I.T. and Columbia, suggesting that older mathematicians may not be able to keep up that pace. "Doing mathematics at a very high level is really as exhausting as any sport." We’re talking all about mathematicians here, because at certain level all the science get mixed together and become philosophy of life. Watch this video below.

Many of these forms of public recognition are given only once to a researcher, so "there's an impression that [older mathematicians] have run out of steam," says Mr. Simonton, even if their work continues at the same level.

Doing significant work late in one's career involves seeking out problems that require more knowledge than young mathematicians can have accumulated, according to George W. Mackey, 84, an emeritus professor of mathematics at Harvard. That often means learning about several different areas of math and looking for ways to tie them together, he says. Princeton's Mr. Fefferman agrees, adding that picking up new specialties, while risky, is the best way to avoid going stale.

"In mathematics, it's not a game where the fastest wins," says Edward V. Frenkel, a 32-year-old professor at Berkeley. "But rather, it's more like who can see farther, who can see deeper. That's the one who achieves more."

Mathematics is not a closed intellectual system, in which everything has already been worked out. There is no shortage of open problems. Mathematicians publish many thousands of papers embodying new discoveries in mathematics every month.

Mathematics is not numerology, nor is it accountancy; nor is it restricted to arithmetic. So, isn't it the same like Life, very few could describe it in words.

Pseudomathematics is a form of mathematics-like activity undertaken outside academia, and occasionally by mathematicians themselves.

So if we re-phrase the above lines what Frenkel said it ought comes out like a philosophy “In Life, it’s not a game where the fastest wins, but rather it’s more who can see farther, who can see deeper. That’s the one who achieves more.”

At this point, tell me how many times we've heard this story in our childhood " The Hare & the Tortoise", isn't it sounding the same?

Follow the comments from all the Industry leaders here.

Early Recruitment proves poor Leadership

2007-11-15T10:23:00.000+01:00

Managing Leadership Across The Employment Spectrum:-

I recently came across a situation, where retrenchment happened just because of unwise business projection and deferred implementation development of offshore projects by the top management. It will be obvious by now that development - both individual and organizational - is a strategic activity before it is a training activity. An integrated approach calls for a structure, culture and license for those with strategic HR responsibility to have access to relevant decisions affecting recruitment and selection, training and development, career and succession planning, manpower planning, reward and recognition, and so on. The point of discussion here whether the responsibilities of these retrenchments come to the top management’s lack of leadership or to the poor people who joined early and suffered?

These recruitments also require a spirit of co-operation, rather than a 'silo' mentality which provokes competition between these specialties and/or status-quo. Anything less (i.e. conventional separation of development - conceptually and sometimes geographically) will produce a sub-optimal outcome.

Organizations that have an unplanned, tactical or reactive approach to leadership fail to capitalize on their investment in development. For example:

- They may develop leaders at great expense, and then let them languish in unimportant jobs where their talents cannot be used fully

- They structure the HR function in such a way that one department recruits talent while another selects people for redundancy on the criterion of cost rather than ability

- They fail to deal with poor leaders when they become part of the problem rather than part of the solution

- And as we said earlier, they pour leadership talent in at one end of the employment pipeline, and carelessly let it escape at the other end.

These commonplace scenarios display a lack of joined-up thinking and action. To optimize leadership for the organization, the employment process has to be integrated and consistently managed at all points on the spectrum.

Managers with strategic responsibility for development need a remit that enables them to aware of, have access to, have influence over, and work closely with, their HR colleagues, on a range of decisions and systems affecting leadership, rather than taking spurious decisions on recruitment and then retrenchment.

Issues arise at, or approximate to, place on the employment spectrum (i.e. phases in people's careers that call for optimal HR management). Besides having development programmers at an appropriate career point, other considerations include:

1. Are we clear what leadership we are going to need?

2. What leadership talents need to enter the system?

3. How can the most talented leaders be allocated the most important jobs?

4. Should newly developed leaders receive a change of job following an intensive training program?

5. What criteria are used to assess the effective practice of leadership?

6. How is good leadership defined, recognized and rewarded (and bad leadership 'warned with positive feedback')?

7. What criteria are used to assess suitability for promotion to senior leadership positions?

8. What provision is made for successors?

9. How does leadership talent escape unplanned, as well as formally exit, the organization?

Responsibility for Leadership Development

The above perspective calls for a fresh look at who is responsible for leadership development strategy and what that responsibility comprises. In summary, the need for co-ordination across the employment spectrum means that all HR professionals, but especially developers, have an interest in ensuring that leadership talent is appropriately:

i) Defined

ii) Acquired

iii) Recognized

iv) Developed (Trained)

v) Utilized

vi) Appraised

vii) Promoted

viii) Rewarded

ix) Retained

x) Terminated

Underpinning all these steps is a clear definition of what effective leadership looks like. This needs to be accompanied by clarity and determination to address poor and unacceptable leadership.

If the organization is getting any of the above steps badly wrong, or if there is inconsistency in policy, then leadership (at the level of the overall organization) will fail however well individuals are trained educated and known as talents or process owners.

Producing Leaders

2007-08-31T18:36:00.001+02:00

Today India is passing through difficult phases. In the absence of good leaders, India is unable to stop its exploitation. The biggest sufferers are common men.

India is unable to harness the benefit of globalization and technologies. On one side when our parliamentarian are unable to give us direction, The Time of India is busy in searching leaders, I feel the need to write about producing leaders in the midst of leaders to lead leaders. In this country, where everyone is a leader, is it so difficult to find a real leader? Or there are some other problems which no body wants to touch.

In this tired time when country appears divided on even N-deal, I always feel proud to remain focused and innovating. I have done this with my focused efforts earlier and I feel that anybody can do this. Most of the necessary steps have been narrated in my latest book “Unlearn Before U-learn”. I am happy that my own book is able to provide me direction.

At this time when everything appears to be in shambles, we need to create wisdom domain to appreciate the happenings.

Today when I hear the people from Harvard who wants to create a 100 million leaders in the next 20 years and coming to India with hope that they will build their fortune here among English literate Indians, I feel sorry for them, not because I doubt on their capability but on ignorance of our educated leaders of society to rely heavily on imported ideas. I feel sorry on western thinkers too because I do not think they will be able to make Indians fool for long time.

The problems of India are different. The solutions for the problems are different. They have to be understood in right perspectives in different environment. Even the leaders in ET (Economics Times) failed to realise the importance of these differences.

It is good that John Kotter, Professor emeritus, Harvard Business School, took a break from traditional academic writing to pen a book called Our Iceberg Is Melting with the aim to take leadership to the masses. I do not know how far he has been able to create leaders in USA which is still struggling to find feet in Iraq reminding the fallouts of Vietnam but he wants to make leaders in India where people are still struggling to come out of the clutches of communism and other isms.

Unfortunately, we have many of Indian institutions which always remain happy to encourage such foreign thinkers. India has made deBono, Stephen Covey, Jeffery Sach etc. and now John Kotter. One Chenai based theatre group has created a play out of the story. What an ignorance and bad luck for Indians? This is the way we have kept Indians innovators away from seeing the light of the day. Indian excellences have remained deprived due to proper audiences.

It is said that Kotter took early retirement at the age of 54. I feel surprised on the decision. What is this early age to retire? I took retirement at the age of 44 to write my book. Is it something great? He says that Harvard is an elitist institution so he could not get satisfied with Harvard way of working. He wants to create millions of leaders and he is doing this in India.

John Kotter says, “Traditional management books of the kind published by the Harvard University Press were not the best way to do it.” And I fully agree with him here. That’s what I have also done. I have written a book not in traditional way or established ethos or topics. I have written the book which India and Indians have to take some time to adjust with. When Indians are busy in learning, copying and following, I talk about unlearning, creating wisdom domain and becoming own creator. I think I have given right thing to society at right time. India needs my book. Indian needs my ideas. Hope many Indians can get the benefit of my efforts.

I know creating or floating ideas for Indians are not new. We are masters but when question of authenticity of information and creating direction based on the complexities of the present comes, it becomes the challenge. Even Ramdev is unable to Intuitionalise his work. He is more or less working on hearsay rather than a solid research and furthering them. That is where we fail. I have tried to create that and I am happy to shoulder the responsibility of my ideas.

While management is about promoting stability, consistency and order and efficiency, the purpose of leadership is to bring about useful changes. But the problem in today’s India is that no body is talking about changes in a big way. If we want significant results it can never be achieved by incremental changes, there is a need of Herculean changes. How many leaders are there to understand and accept these needs?

A meaningful change can never be achieved by few gods like individual at top but we have to have many hanuman like individuals at bottom who can take lead to achieve and convince changes. We need people who have knowledge, wisdom and caliber to change. We need people who have courage to face changes. We need people who can create wisdom to make change. We need people who have courage to reach to top and not get consumed at lower level. We need people who have courage to remove traditional top people. We need courage to speak up against traditional value systems. We need change.

Leaders can not be produced by searching. Leaders can be produced by raising expectations, removing barriers, encouraging creativity and generating value. Leaders can be created by consciously acknowledging the individuals efforts. Leaders can be created by keeping oneself free from trivialize. India needs to respect their talents. Indians needs to be aware of their responsibilities. Leaders will emerge once excellence prevails. Leaders can appear from society.

Intellectual Slavery

2007-06-03T07:52:00.000+02:00

We all are aware about slavery. We are concerned about it. We try our best to remove the slavery from society. I feel that the slavery we fight to eradicate is generally physical in nature. We have achieved success up to some extent in providing freedom. But, today, I am going to talk something new. I think most of the physical slavery had been or exists as a result of a different kind of slavery and I call it as ‘intellectual slavery’. In this blog, I shall talk about it.

The concept of this slavery was emerging in my mind since long. Fortunately I grew up in a society where wisdom is ignored for traditions; knowledge is taken as an easily available item, education means a tool to get a job etc, thinking of intellectual slavery was natural for me.

The concept of intellectual slavery could be traced in many areas. But for any major reaction, one needs some catalysts and I got a catalyst when Manmohan was forced to say that Rahul is Uttar Pradesh (UP) future which became headlines of many Indian dailies. I was trying to find the exact reasons and why people do it even at very high positions. This topic may be a subject of research of a lifetime. It may not be possible to get clear conclusions in small blog.

But as I have done it earlier, I have defined many emerging areas for the thought provoking missions, I shall do again. The society can never emerge successful through conventional ideas. That’s why everybody talks about innovations. I try my best to find some innovations in my day to day life. This has been exciting experience for me so I try again to explain.

One more similar incidence and another statement of Manmohan Singh, which has been taken wrongly by media without flashing their own faults, my perception started changing. I started thinking about intellectual slavery.

How Intellectual Slavery makes you Non-professional?

Intellectual slavery is as distressful as physical slavery. Here again, I shall take the example from recent events happening in India.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must be a disturbed person now-a-days. Out of his total 529 speeches in 1095 days (three years as Prime Minister), the speech of 24 May 07 at CII annual general meeting has been noticed by entrepreneur, educators, economists, thinkers, media personnel and others. Almost all are blaming him for one reason or the other. Some are blaming him for his inefficiency, misdirection, wrong perceptions and contradiction in his approach while some are blaming for his desperation to be effective in Indian politics. What a compulsion to be the Prime Minister of a country like India?

The lines which created furor in the elite circle are stated as “resist excessive remuneration to promoters and senior executives and discourage conspicuous consumption.” Media just took the words ‘conspicuous consumption’ and started exposing PM’s economic intellects without taking cognizance of the next sentence where PM talked about media. I think that media of developing world also passing through intellectual slavery. Has media ever blamed their professionalism on the front page of dailies? Media personnel and media need to look within. That is one issue of the recent episode.

But I think different. The reasons of speech of 24th May have nothing to do with his profession. Professions have its principle, theory and histories. But individual has no such obligation. PM has its own limitation as human being. And it came in the open- wide open. The vulnerability is exposed due to the lack of wisdom domain. I have my own reasons to explain the lack of wisdom domain at such high level of individual life.

Once upon a time, PM said: Creating wealth, creating jobs, business is bridging social divide. Why did he forget his own words? Can somebody forget his basic professional concepts?

Because of intellectual slavery, Prime Minister Integrity is at stake. I am a simple soul but can understand the growth economics because I have personally experienced and observed them since last twenty-five years. The thing which PM is talking is not a professional idea but a loss of his personal integrity. Today, India is rising with more than 9%, the mission and objectives need to be redefined to meet future challenges.

How Intellectual Slavery Contradicts Your Wisdom?

The case of intellectual slavery could be observed with many executives, CEOs, managers or leaders. It spoils your professionalism. It diverts you from your missions. It impacts on your integrity. It can happen with anyone if not very careful like it happened with PM.

In one part of his speech, PM talked his basic understanding. “I clearly stated that the guiding principle of our Government has been to ensure that, while sustaining higher rates of economic growth, the improved performance of the economy must contribute to employment generation, poverty reduction and human development. The aim of each of our flagship programmes is to ensure that growth is more equitable and that it empowers the most deprived of our citizens”, said PM. How an individual loses his integrity to talk something else? The speech is a good example of intellectual slavery. This has contradicted not only Manmohan ideas but government too.

Everybody in this country knows that flagship programmes have been implemented to prove that Gandhi is still relevant to Indian society. Poverty can never be eradicated by such policies. As an economist, Manmohan must know this but he is trapped between profession and loyalty where loyalty wins. All these go at the cost of continuing poverty in India. All these go on at the cost of basic ideas of economics. The emergence of such words from such an appointee raises question on the integrity of individual. This raises the existence of intellectual slavery in my mind. In a country like India, professionalism is the slave of social opportunities.

Public Displays of Intellectual Slavery

When I was in IIT Mumbai, I used to analyze the speeches of PM, President and others to find out wisdom and the directions of nation. Today after around fifteen years of research, I personally find the ridiculousness of misguided statements. I found this when Singur occurred, Nandigram burnt or now Rajasthan burning. Who forced people especially youth to become tribes in this fastest rising economy? It is an abundance of contradictions. I find plenty in this country. I could find plenty in the PM speech delivered on 24 May 2007.

PM said, “If those who are better off do not act in a more socially responsible manner, our growth process may be at risk, our polity may become anarchic and our society may get further divided.” What is he talking about? We have palaces open all over the country where poor keep visiting on daily basis. Has any anarchy taken place? Today in the era of information age when TV signals reaches to slums free of cost, what our finest economists talking about? Is he talking about his slavery?

In this country, there is a ruling class in spite of democracy. Few individuals and families have taken all the citizens for granted. That’s how Lalu appeared, Jayalalita wins and a Maya appeared without support of bigger institutions. The ruling family should not take politics for granted. But will PM garner courage to speak against establishments? What could be the reason of anarchy of our polity? Certainly it can not be the issue which Manmohan is trying to convince us.

PM rightly said, “The electronic media carries the lifestyles of the rich and famous into every village and every slum. Media often highlights the vulgar display of their wealth.”

Media is a live example of Intellectual Slavery. Is Media listening?

But the problem in this country is that media never flashes these lines. Media need to behave with responsibility. But who will tell media not even Prime Minister? From where our famous elites of this country get time to attend marriages, dinner parties, Iftaar parties, and other trivial functions of society. Who is to be blamed for this? Media people are also human being with aspirations.

In his ten commandments for the industry, PM said, “promote enterprise and innovate, within your firms and outside.” But what about government, are they doing any innovation? India needs social innovations to achieve the desired growth and they must come from government through various policies but instead of innovations, government is relying heavily on outdated policies like reservations and subsidies. Everybody including PM, Sonia, Mashelkar, etc talked about innovation but where is innovation? Who will bring social innovation in this country?

PM almost contradicts himself when he said, “I firmly believe that the creation of wealth is the only way of addressing the formidable challenges of economic transformation that our country faces. And wealth can be created only through enterprise and creativity.” Starting from creation of infrastructure to SEZs, government has been unable to set course of policies direction. The wealth creation is becoming difficult propositions.

Why talk about Prime Minister, other ministers are also issuing contradictory statements. In the name of inclusive growth to satisfy the managerial instincts of Sonia and Rahul, everybody in ruling class does one thing and talks something else. They think something and act differently. There is hardly any coherence in the thinking and action of our policy makers. This is the biggest intellectual slavery of a democratic nation.

Do not Leave Intellect to Chances

Manmohan must be missing Narshimha Rao today. It was his fortune that Rao was the Prime Minister when he was Finance Minister. Rao gave the direction to this nation and to Manmohan Singh too. The work done by Manmohan in Rao regime can not be forgotten because of the courage and professionalism of Narshimha Rao.

Today when Sonia is at helm, it appears that Manmohan who was a successful economist to steer the economy of the country has become the lost identity with lack of ethics and loss of professional integrity in discharging his professional responsibility. Proficiency of professionalism changes with the change of the boss. Can you leave your intellect at the mercy of others?

Manmohan Singh has become a good example of intellectual slavery along with the journalists who depict the events and issues wrongly.

How to Come out of Intellectual Slavery?

Instead of Ten Commandments, our policy makers need to follow few critical steps of unlearning to avoid contradictions in their lives.

1. Maintain professional integrity
2. Ensure Knowledgeable bosses
3. Avoid intellectual slavery
4. Create wisdom domain

Follow some steps to enforce your intellect and create wisdom for life. Running behind making others happy neither makes you happy nor others. You have wisdom. You force others to follow.

Why are We Rich and Unhappy?

2007-01-17T08:01:00.000+01:00

Becoming rich is one thing but getting happiness is entirely different ball game. World economy is growing but not happiness. People are becoming better off but feeling worse. This is a very common problem. It has always been a challenge to find the exact reason. The reasons are being searched in this article.

Once upon a time, the results of market capitalism was generally agreed to make people better off. Nowadays that is not clear. A number of economists and politicians think that it ought to be doing something else: making people happy, says The Economist in an article titled Happiness (and how to measure it).

I as a technocrat feel that the reasons of happiness can not be easily traced by economist, politicians or other professionals. Earlier technologies and inventions were not impacting the society in a big way at one time. But, the inventions of last few decades have changed these old beliefs. The changes which have taken place around the world in last few decades are mainly due to electronics and Information Technology. So, the reasons of happiness can only be found by some technocrats who have seen the growth of electronics and IT. The world will have to accept this new dimension.

Growth Charts

With an annual growth rate of 3.2% per head since 2000, the world economy is heading towards notching its best decade ever. So, in this situation, 6 billion people of the world will have to face a different world order. The changes are new. The resources available are different. The accessibility is different. The connectivity is different. The borders, languages and regions are becoming irrelevant. The quests and means to find job, earning money and making social circles are changing.

Now David Cameron, the latest leader of Britain’s once rather materialistic Conservative Party, has espoused the notion of general well-being (GWB) as an alternative to GDP. In the US, meanwhile, inequality, over-work and other hidden costs of prosperity were discussed in mid-term elections. In India on the name of common man, government tries to find the reasons why prosperity not spreading widely. The developing world is struggling to provide basic amenities. The reasons of finding happiness amidst prosperity remain a burning issue.

There has always been a good discussion among the people of developing world to talk about the unhappiness of the people of developed world. People again got a point when a survey data reveals that affluent countries have not got much happier as they have grown richer. The same thing may happen or is already happening even in developing countries. Luxuries have become the necessity. Management of richness remains a challenge. In addition, it remains a challenge to bring the masses what elites have always enjoyed. Once, you get the most starved things take for granted. The process is unending. In all these different situations, the questions remain that how to achieve happiness?

In Search of Happiness

In my point of view, happiness becomes very complex in the midst of growth. As growth becomes exponential, the situation becomes explosive. In these circumstances, there is a need to look at things differently. That is what I am going to do here in this article.

There are various books on human psychology and managerial philosophy. There are plenty of write-ups on how to learn the important characteristics which all successful people possess or are supposed to possess. There are books on thinking, dreaming, meditation, yoga and so on ….there are volumes written on these aspects of human activities and personalities. But are there any books written on what you need not do. What you should not learn? What you should not work on? There is hardly any research on these aspects of human complexities to understand what you are supposed to UNLEARN if you want to belong to the category of successful and happy people?

Everybody talks about one or other trait to be developed. How to acquire characteristics of successful people? How to learn lessons from the success? People join various institutes to learn these traits. There are many teachers or so-called preachers who are willing to enhance your capabilities to learn more and learn fast. They are ready to teach you some more human traits besides what you already have. They are also ready to tell you what are the most necessary qualities that you lack. They teach you how to develop positive attitudes. They do not feel shy in telling that the only thing you ever lacked in life is a positive attitude. She becomes a big failure in spite of her great learning. How the happiness will emerge amidst lacking?

Even with the sharp rise in social and economic growth in the poorest parts of civilization, the growth has never been homogeneous; rather, a huge benefit has gone to few individuals or families and meager benefits to the remaining individuals and societies. Is it any surprise if the world’s 500 richest people have as much wealth as the poorest three billion put together? Even in the developed nations, if the changes are not monitored on a regular and constructive basis, the society or even the country could suffer and would suffer more in future. Such suffering has occurred at the individual level. This has been witnessed in the life of an organization. This is being observed in the nation build-up. Fast changes taking place in various aspects around the world have to be integrated into our policymaking process to harness the benefit for the human being, organization and nation. That is what Microsoft did. In the 1997, in the first CEO summit, they declared the objective for the next ten years as ‘friction free-capitalism’, in the 2006; they changed to ‘friction free-innovation’. Individual, society, organization or even nations have to keep ‘unlearning on a regular basis’ to reap the benefit of civilization.

Unlearning Past to Achieve Happiness in Present

Learning is not at all a solution but many a time, these are the big problems, because you will have to unlearn, whatever you have learnt, if it is not good for your future. Unlearning will be more difficult than learning. But you do not have any choice. You will be forced to Unlearn. So Stop Learning, Rather UNLEARN or LEARN TO UNLEARN before it is too late to unlearn. It is time to concentrate and know more about your Unlearn Quotient (UQ). (UQ is based on the critical factors. These factors work as a theory of human growth.)

Your UQ will take you ahead more than others. Your UQ will pave the way for your better future. Your UQ will reduce the contradictions and ambiguities of your life. Your UQ will show you the path to achieve next generation of time management. Your UQ will be the measurement of your happiness.

The beginning of the 20th century was the year when the major emphasis was on learning, while by the end of the century, the year could be defined as ‘How fast and how much can you learn’. But the 21st century has started with the critical need of unlearning. The years could well be defined as ‘How fast can you unlearn’. Unlearn was not found in earlier dictionaries, however in the recent ones, it has been explained and elaborated on in detail. As per Encarta, Unlearn means discard something previously learnt like an old habits, try to forget, put out of one’s memory or knowledge. Oxford English Dictionary writes, Unlearn - verb - aim to discard (something learned) from one’s memory. Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines it very suitably to meet the present day requirement of understanding unlearn. It says that unlearn is to make an effort to forget your usual way of doing something so that you can learn a new and something better way.

19th century - Limited Learning
20th century - More Learning
21st century - Unlearning

Learning and Unlearning Dilemmas!

I define unlearning as an extension of learning. Unlearning means to remove, discard, forget, and leave undesirable things from minds. Unlearning means keeping mind free from unwanted information, deleting irrelevant data from memory and having more free space in minds for future thinking. Unlearn is the process of removing something from your priority list of doing things. Unlearn is the way or path to move from self-defeating methods of performing something to different methods, leading to the road of success. Unlearn is the method to prepare a list of parameters to discard from life for a better life. Unlearn is the preparation of futurist steps for a successful life. Unlearn is the challenging age old traditions and customs which are keeping a human being away from even basic amenities. Like you put up efforts to learn something good, you need to put efforts to unlearn something bad. Learning can be done through various methods, similarly unlearning can also be done through some other methods. It is important for all of us to learn more about unlearn to live a better life in the 21st century.
Irrespective of the country or place, individuals will have to unlearn to have more happiness in life. There are few factors which are essential to achieve the tough task of happiness.

Theory of Human Happiness

The necessity of unlearning is basically to satisfy the various needs of human beings. However it is necessary to know seven critical factors (SCF) to achieve the objectives. I have personally experienced and implemented these factors since the last thirty years. With critical observation of self, family, developing society, reading and seeing the developed and developed world, I have concluded that these seven critical factors as ‘theory of human happiness’. In the first instance, the factors may not appear as critical as any postulate in the development of scientific theory, but once critical analysis is done then the importance and effectiveness can be understood and appreciated. The seven critical factors are -

1. Thinking and Action – In search of truth. How could you think and act correctly? Is it easy to find truth?
2. Aspirations – Goal of life! Are you capable enough to decide about your goal?
3. Sex – Human Relationship. Relationships are the most complicated aspects of human growth. Sex is at the core of all the human relationships.
4. God – Ethics and Behaviour. God makes you a gentleman or gentlewoman otherwise you remain a demon. Understanding God is essential for human growth.
5. Parents – As you sow so you reap. Parents are responsible to sow a seed of growth. Are you sure of your correct seed for growth?
6. God Father – Sense of security. Th human is a fearful creature. Always look for a godfather for your growth.
7. Wisdom Domain – Knowledge Source! Life without knowledge is hell. Create wisdom domain (WD) in this world of Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO).

The details of all these seven critical factors have to be monitored on regular basis. It is important to know that how these are keeping the human progress restricted. Once these critical issues are clear, we would be in a better position to understand and analyze happiness.

No amount of money or position can make us happy. Life needs few basic things for smooth journey. Unlearning has potential to bring normalcy and contentment back to anybody’s life.

Consultants: Business Booming

2007-01-15T16:07:00.000+01:00

KI Woo of The Nation talks to three leading consultants from Deloitte, Human Capital Alliance, and the Boston Consulting Group.

In the never-ending quest to improve shareholder value, most Nation Top 1000 companies are constantly looking for ways to optimize their processes and procedures.

To help them achieve their overall goals, consultants have been swarming all over Thailand offering the latest cutting-edge business processes and procedures. Armed with these strategies, Top 1000 companies hope to continue being dominant players in this market and at the same time become global-class competitors.

Apirak Jatukanyaprateep, a partner of consulting services at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Jaiyos Co Ltd said that his company has been helping many Top 1000 Thai companies revamp their organization with Business Process Reorganizations (BPR).

“To optimize shareholder value, many companies now realize that they must conduct extensive BPRs to ensure that their business processes and procedures are at optimal global standards,” he said.

A company’s operational efficiency he said has become a major determinant of global competitiveness. “Companies must have processes that allow them to deliver global quality products and services at the most competitive prices,” he said.

Finding effective leaders is also critical for building a sustainable Nation Top 1000 company. As the Thai economy continues expanding, top- flight managers capable of effectively leading Top 1000 companies are in constant demand.

Edwin Sim, CEO of Human Capital Alliance -an executive search firm in Thailand- said that his company is often asked by Nation Top 1000 companies to find new leaders that are capable of taking the company to the next level of competitiveness. “The executive structure of Top 1000 companies has changed immensely in the past decade,” he said.

Many multinational companies, Sim said have in the past decade gradually localized their senior management. “Many companies today recognize that leaders who grew up in a local environment and have attained the necessary large-company business leadership skills have a much greater chance for success,” he said.

Sim added that today many young Thai business professionals are spending their formative business years developing skills and relationships overseas. “In the future, many of these young professionals will be heading major companies in Thailand,” he said.

With Thailand continuing to hold its own as a foreign direct investment destination, Sim said that although most new companies that come into Thailand may initially build their operating platforms with overseas senior managers, almost all of them have a general plan to quickly localize their operations. “In the past decade, Thailand has developed many capable senior managers who are cross-culturally sensitive and possess the skills to operate global class companies,” he said.

These companies, he added are constantly seeking advice from executive search consultants such as HCA. “In an expanding economy, top-flight senior managers are always in demand,” he said.

Another important subject Thai businessmen discuss today is how best to handle change and remain competitive.

On a recent visit to Thailand, Carl Stern, Co-chairman of Boston Consulting Group told The Nation that keeping our organizations vital and competitive has become a perpetual battle. “Companies have to reinvent what they do and how they do it almost constantly,” he said.

Leaders who run businesses today, he said can never relax and if they want their companies to be vital, they themselves must also be vital. “If they are able to secure some competitive advantage, it will also paint a very large bull’s-eye on their backs,” he said.

Consequently, leaders must never become complacent because today’s business environment, Stern said is increasingly unforgiving. “It has become mercilessly efficient, yet also faster and more complex as globalization and rapid changes in supply and demand take hold,” he said.

According to Stern, in the past many leaders believed a company could enjoy a profitable long-life if it could gain competitive advantage during a business’s growth phase and held on to it while the business matured. “Today we know that when a business matures several things happen,” he said.

Market segments today, he said are increasingly becoming finer and the resulting segmentation allows competitors to attack maturing and often successful businesses. “It very difficult for one competitor to serve all segments,” he said.

As a result, Stern said business has turned into a never-ending fight for survival. “You now seldom see an end-game that includes a long period of stable competitive relationships for mature businesses once growth has slowed. Today you can never have it nailed,” he said.

Consequently consultants such as BCG are always asked to provide cutting-edge solutions that can even help revitalize successful companies.

One of the most difficult tasks for any leader is guiding the organization through today’s ever-continuous changing business environment. Stern said that there are many overriding reasons why companies find it difficult to change. Surprisingly, many companies, he said simply misperceive the consequences of any on-coming threat. “How could Sony as a leading TV brand miss the whole flat-panel revolution,” he asked.

Sony, he said believed so much in it market-leading Trinitron TV that it didn’t believe anything better could be built. Stern said Motorola completely missed the digital age because its engineers really believed that the market didn’t know what was best for itself,

Some organizations, Stern said are able to perceive a threat but don’t have the capability to respond. “The change is so overwhelming that they simply don’t have the heart for it,” he said.

Companies that want to succeed in today’s fast-changing competitive environments, Stern said must engage their employees early. “You need to enlist the whole organization to be alert to change,” he said.

Secondly, companies must know how to separate the wheat from the chaff by focus on one or two critical challenges each year and then focus the organization’s attention on them. “Doing this well, requires constant focused communications on one or two issues,” he said.

With the Thai economy expected to continue growing at record levels during the next several decades, consultants such as BCG, HCA, and Deloitte along with many of their cohorts will undoubtedly continue to offer Thai companies ever-changing cutting-edge products to ensure they maintain their competitive edges.

The Nation

Understand Politics Over Dying Regional Languages

2007-01-12T09:19:00.000+01:00

Politics over dying regional languages is an universal phenomena. The problems can be seen from Africa to America and from Indian continent to Russia. People need to be conscious to stop exploitations. Future is not going to tolerate to the people for the attachement towards regional language.

I am fortunate to have sufficient education to understand the growth contradictions of society. Especially, when I am trying to find the reasons for individual development, my education and experience helps me to look at the problems differently. I am convinced about the fact that the regional language plays a very significant role in our overall behaviour, relationship, habit and personality. It is not very difficult to find the people with regional accent at any platform in India. But these regional languages have no future in global village. Let us study why regional languages have no future? We will look into different aspects like education pattern, class struggles, professional options, and unification of languages.

Changed Education Trend

The trend is universal. All countries including India are suffering from this problems. There is a need to eradicate old education system to give way to new one with due emphasis on global languages across the world.

“I have never allowed my schooling to interfere with my education,” said Mark Twain, commenting on the lack of fun in learning in schools. Today with all the multimedia skill sets, you need a different kind of education. Life is fun and education must be focused on enhancing fun rather than making a school or education a prison. The depth of any subject you choose has increased tremendously. You as a human cannot go on learning to enhance your capabilities for a better life. There is no end of information or even knowledge to acquire. Today, you need to get educated to have a good and enjoyable life. Schooling is becoming a thing of the past. Now-a-days, people are forced to talk about unschooling. The educated and learned parents are not concentrating on course, syllabus or school. They are concentrating on other human or environmental activities.

School children need not go to library to search for books all the time. Sitting comfortably at one place at home, café or even a shopping mall she can access complete list of libraries at just one click of the mouse. And whole set of encyclopedias are available at a much cheaper price. It is not necessary that she spends Rs. 40,000 to 50,000 to have the entire set of Encyclopedia Britannica at her premises; she can just spend Rs. 1000 approximately and have the original Britannica displayed on the computer monitor. Internet and other media have made knowledge accessible at your finger-tips at a much lower cost. Children can have access to information so fast and easily as never before in history. But the only constraint is the language.

Class Struggle and Language

We must understand the age old class struggle to evaluate the importance of language. Today, the whole of Indian continent has one of the biggest enemies of development and it is its regional languages. People are killing each other. Leaders in Assam, Maharastra or Karnataka are doing politics over it. People are dying for language affections. Language is dividing the networked environment developed by the growth of Information technology and telecommunication. This division has engulfed every walk of life. This division can be seen in politics, society and even in corporate world.

The struggle of class is not exclusive to Indian environment. Even US is discussing this issue on regular basis. Oprah Winfrey show is a typical example. She does not hesitate to discuss on latest issues disturbing people like class, language, sex, relationship and so on. In one of the show on class, she discussed that how people of different class can be categorized even the way they speak English. English is a global language and people have to understand this. In India, this discussion is very old but still not matured. Today I would like to remind all my friends who are religiously attached to their regional languages to get detached immediately to have a better and successful future. Language is the biggest hurdle in your global outlook.

For more information on Oprah Show, you can go to the website as below

http://www2.oprah.com/tows/slide/200604/20060421/slide_20060421_350_102.jhtml

The main question comes, is anybody interested to fall behind and see others moving ahead? I do not think anyone intentionally would like to do it unless compelled by the situations. Let us create a situation where we do not creep at later stage of our life.

Professional Options

The horizon of professions has altered drastically. The technological and economic changes have made profession a new domain altogether. Few years ago when beauty shops came in the limelight hardly anybody had an idea that it would emerge to be such a big profession. Today it has matured. Many ladies and gents are working in these shops. Similarly, other professions like modeling, stewardship, journalism, fashion designing, entrepreneurship, catering and hospitality management, tourism jobs, services industries and so on have emerged. The sudden emergence of call centers, BPOs (Business Process Outsourcing) and other IT related services have changed the concept of working in society all across the world. These services have such manpower-intensive jobs with high financial stakes that it will almost delete the concept of the Gandhian philosophy of Charkha and Chakri. The requirements and search for jobs has to be done based on the latest craze and availability. The expertise of English language remains at the forefront in all these professions.

People cannot afford to rely on the old concept of government jobs or other conservative and conventional jobs. The new generation and the guardians of the new generation have to move from conservatism to look for better and progressive appointments. Today, organizations are not finding suitable educated people in cities. Jobs are moving to smaller towns and villages. Once, it reaches small towns and villages, the educated boys, girls, housewives, househusbands and parents will be forced to change the concept of job-search for their benefit and the benefit of the society. The unlearning of the old conventional jobs has to be done on a priority basis. With, this it brings the necessity of learning a global language to move ahead. It is not the question of getting the job today; it is a question of complete cultural shift.

Earlier, jobs were restricted to agriculture, law, engineering, medicine, management etc. The majority of the people were dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. But, now people will move to cities to get the basic facilities. As per, United Nations estimate, by 2030, 50% of the human population will live in cities. The global language will play its role in a new emerging society.

Trying to get government jobs is the old concept now. Few educated people could get government jobs. Very few will join the loss-making public sectors to have secure jobs. Gone are those days in this fast developing professional environment. The concepts of hard work and joining a profit making company have evolved. The open economy and market has given freedom to join multinationals. It has given freedom to select professions. People change professions like their clothes. Companies are starved of people. People have a luxury of choices. The changes have to be felt, realized, soaked, conceived and understood. Whoever has done this, unlearned the old trends and fears, is enjoying the fruits of growth. The fresh IIM graduates are on auction like the eligible grooms of Andhra Pradesh. Be proactive and chose the professions of the time.

English Has No Alternative

In a recent report, it became clear that regional languages have no future. Many languages are dying out because of population movements, cultural oppressions, wars and economic disasters. Experts say as many as half of the world’s 6,900 languages are endangered. In the name of Olympic Games even China is quietly learning English to join the global community.
In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a huge discussion in all the institutions across India whether we should study English or not. Even today, there is great confusion prevailing in India in particular and other developing nations in general. The people have been given a dose of nationalism in terms of languages. But how far is it advantageous? Is it in a position to give you comfort of knowledge? Is it giving you a better life?

You join any professional Institute; you are forced to study in English. There are hardly any good books available in other languages. All the high level professional books are available in English. There is a tremendous difference in the availability of professional books in English and any other language. The local languages are left for the utilization of local ‘tribes’ only, not for the global person. There was a time when there was a requirement of less information and that too in a different mode like books or drawing or painting or any art medium; but, today when you surf the net for the ocean of information, you are forced to learn, think and act globally. You can not access global information in regional language. The people across the globe are feeling the handicap of being attached to regional languages. Many have started cursing their parents and teachers for the failure. People have started questioning the governmental indecisiveness to implement global languages in school. Karnataka is a typical example of this. Narayana Murthy has already questioned the apathy of governments in state and center. A digital divide starts from regional languages. People are being forced to remain deprived.

Language Unification

The advent of technology has forced humanity to think about the concept of unification of languages. Even the famous Nobel Laureate, Rabindra Nath Tagore, who wrote many poems and prose in Bengali, a local regional language of India, was forced to learn and translate his own writings in English to get a wider audience and recognition, leading to the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.

The advent of the computer has given a beautiful tool to humanity. If this intelligent machine is to be utilized then in the years to come, the people have to learn fewer languages. The development of an Operating System is a very difficult and tricky proposal. Once it has been developed and matured in approximately a decade’s time, it may be very difficult to develop with those rich features in any other languages. The availability of www.google.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, indiatimes.com and so on would ensure some kind of unification in the development and spread of languages in the years to come. As the use and spread of mobile devices increase, more unification of languages will be forced upon the human being. When good professional books were not produced in the last century even with the high level printing technology, is there any reason to believe that, operating systems or other software would be produced in any regional languages?

There was a time when people from South India used to fight against the forceful imposition of Hindi on them. The people from North used to get emotional about the language issues. Schools, colleges and institutions had the tremendous task of keeping a balance between the propagation and utilization of different languages. Now the situation has to converge. Language unification should be taken as an international mission to avoid the gaps between different people and to spread a global culture in this world. The spread of one language will put less pressure on students to learn and master it. People will be able to concentrate on more fruitful work for humanity rather than fighting over languages. We must learn from the statement of the famous thinker, Edward de Bono, who says, ‘Language has been a most important step in human evolution. Language is now the biggest barrier to further evolution.’ He writes further in his famous site http://www.edwarddebono.com that language is an encyclopedia of ignorance. Politicians who send their children to Harvard or Boston for higher studies and do politics over Hindi or other regional languages at their native place should not be able to make a fool of large sections of people.

It was the far sighted vision of American policy makers to accept English as national language after British left their land. The two centuries of magnificent development is the result of this policy. People are not killing or dying based on languages, they are focusing on development and better lifestyle. The result of learning English is so obvious, US is able to create Bill Gates and Stephen Covey.

Today, there is no other option than to unlearn regional languages. People need to unlearn their attachments to regional languages. People must keep themselves away from regional feelings. To have global access, global opportunities, global success and so on people need to be a global citizen with the ability to speak, read and write in global language.

Five Steps Towards Excellence

2006-10-21T08:54:00.000+02:00

Introduction

I generally get puzzled when I read editorial of daily. Heavy handed government interventions may have thwarted the growth of individual excellence, but the various systems prevailing in Indian society is just not conducive for the comfortable survival of excelling individuals. There are many disconnect in the caliber of the intelligentsia of this country. They pose knowledge in part and try to communicate frustrations, deprivation and outdated ideas. The growing individual remains confused amidst lack of correct information.

Understanding Misinformation

Is growing individual a superpower to be able to handle this misinformation? I say, no individual is superpower himself. Individual needs support, information and system to grow and become powerful. However, in the prevailing society structure, growing youth is at risk. These situations result in slow death of excellence. It has happened in last few decades quietly and comfortably in Indian society. Will it continue in this century too? This is a big challenge but like others challenge, the situation provides opportunities too.

Examples: In the recent editorial note of The Times of India, editor writes, ‘Individual Indians excel not the country’. This statement is completely wrong. If editor of most favorite Indian daily writes wrong, what impression will the countrymen make for future? How can you visualize present? Is this the reason that life in this country becomes failure? Excellence remains illusive.

Detailed Justifications: The fact is entirely different from what our editors feels, India is a shining example in the world today. Stock exchange index (Sensex) at peak reveals the faith of foreigners on India. India as a brand is on peak in the eye of the world today except few people (editors, journalists, publishers, reporters etc included) who have misinformation like editor of Times of India. India as a brand is famous, successful and proven. However, the challenge in this country is to have access of right information because all khandani thinkers have poor perception of present and almost negligible appreciation of future. They generally talk with herd instincts, which might have worked few decades ago. Today, you need knowledge. You need information. Editors must spend some time in acquiring correct information before they write editorial on famous new paper.

How Misinformation damages Systems

I do not know if editor of Times of India is aware about the front page article of the same news paper in the section of Delhi Times, which reads, ‘Does writing run in the blood?’ I have one simple point. If excellence runs in blood then developing countries have no chance to become developed. Poor people can never become rich. RP Singh a famous Cricketer could have never become the fastest bowler of India. Harbhajan Singh could have never spun the ball to the tune of Indian skipper. Abdul Kalam could have never become President of India. Dhirubhai could have had the gene of Tata or Birla. On one side when editor writes about excellence, how can he say that excellence runs in blood? Editors are communicating disconnected wisdom. News paper must not communicate misinformation. The lack of authentic statement damages the fabric of growing system.

India is a country where most of the people still believe in copying. People follow herd instincts to even excel. I live near tennis academy at Delhi and I find surprising when I see small children of the age of 4-5 years old come from distance of more than 26-30 Kms to take a training of tennis. If Sania in third generation could achieve something remarkable, it does not mean that other will also achieve excellence. If you visit sometime to British Council, there are many small children with their mothers or servants, being forced to read books so that they can become writer. Does herd instinct take to excellence? Herd instincts will never take anybody anywhere. We can never achieve excellence.

India still has 70% population relying on farming. It means that if India has to keep up with the growing economy at more than 8-10%, around 400 million people have to be shifted to different professional activities in urban or semi-urban areas. This means that the large number of future caliber has to evolve from those 400 millions. They will be able to shine only when sufficient opportunities are given to them to excel.

Searching Sources for Excellence

Editors when they compile the paper, they must ensure that they are not pursuing age old conservative ideas to frustrate the today’s youth. If people have to excel how and why society keep concentrating on Khandani individuals. What is the fun in keeping on writing about Shahrukh or Amitabh Bachchan? Why should we show bearded Rahul Gandhi? Why do we waste time and energy in reading and remembering frustrating history? Can they ever inspire our youth? They frustrate them.

What is the fun in showing and writing details about Lata Mangeskar? If we have to produce next Lata for 2020, our media people should search and concentrate on new caliber and fresh faces. Why can’t media concentrate little more on Shibani Kashyap or Jyotsana Chinappa and others? Excellence comes from individual with total backing of social systems. However, Indian media abhors talking or showing excellence in their reporting except at editorial level. If such situation continues, excellence will remain illusive to the people of this country.

Recently, in an award ceremony in Mumbai, Prime Minister said, “Just few weeks back, at a similar business award ceremony in Delhi, I found that more than two-third of the nominees were not even in business in 1991! They were all children of reform, not necessarily children of businessmen.” (The Economics Times, Monday October 9, 2006). Alas, the editor could have read this speech from his own paper and understood the meaning of blood? Excellence will emerge from information and vision.

Difficult but Compulsive Path

Indians have a long way to go. Almost in every field, we are at rock bottom in the world statistics. Infosys might have become a 2 billion company in last 24 years, but just think of any global company. Google is $1,465 Billion p.a., Yahoo is $1,896 billion p.a. and so on. That too, Infosys does 90% business with Western world. We should be thankful to USA and other European countries, which helped Narayana Murthy CEO of M/S Infosys to build a dream for Indians. The minor study of on going success stories in society reveals five simple steps to achieve excellence.

1. Unlearning Conservative Ideas towards Innovation: Indians are still very-very conservative to use new ideas. Indians are very-very emotional to forget old traditional concepts. Because few people talk about new ideas and innovation, it has become a trend to talk about them without believing on them or without having courage to accept them. First of all, our editors or educated class will have to be strong to accept new ideas. Herd instinct will keep Indians away from achievement. Only new innovative ideas may lead to excellence.

2. Selecting Sources of Wisdom: Indian editors, journalists, thinkers, reporters and other professionals all are too busy in enjoying their present glory. It is not very difficult to find them in every party in Delhi five star hotels. You can always check them in any discussions, lectures or meetings irrespective of their interest of subjects. You always find them giving interviews and talks on television. Where do they have time to gain information?

Therefore, is it surprising when all these people talk history only? Similarly our film actors and actresses hardly have time to do some creative work? They remain busy in selling pen, shirt, banyan and so on. Why can not they leave less creative jobs to beginners so that they can concentrate to excel in their own creation? Why should senior achievers remain busy in doing advertisements, receiving awards or doing menial interviews? Where is the time to excel? Individual has to be very selective to decide for a source of wisdom.

3. Ensuring Encouraging Environment (EEE): A normal person needs just few grams of food, clean environment, good society and encouraging company. But above all, we need excellent environment to excel. We need world level competitions to excel. We need support and system to grow. The society must provide these basic amenities. The developments after 1991 have shown many Indians this brutal fact in reality. They are very simple and plain. Excellence will emerge from this simple situation.

4. Excellence is a Necessity: Human beings have reached to almost perfection. A small child can do wonders. A young entrepreneur can defeat matured and professional companies. The success of Google can always be taken a s example. Globalization has not been restricted to western world. Even the communist countries like China have grabbed the concept and progressing leaps and bound. The conscious people all across world are trying to attain excellence irrespective of caste, creed, region and religion. I termed the situation as excellence is a necessity for all human beings.

5. Excellence is achievable: The development of technology has taken the sources to achieve excellence at the door step of every individual. The knowledge is not limited to few selected and fortunate individuals. People are connected with modern technology to the sources of wisdom of entire world. Any person willing to devote some time with open heart and conscious mind can access those information to enhance wisdom. Excellence is not restricted to few privileged class. Excellence can be achieved by any one at any time.

Conclusions

The five steps enumerated above can ensure a surge of excellence in any society. There is a need of openness and availability of resources. The government and institutions need to ensure the availability of resources to all citizens. The other inventions of last few centuries have given the luxuries to every individual while the recent technological inventions have given wisdom at the hand of every child born on this earth in 21st century. The time is not far when excellence will be the common phenomena of a rising society.

Seven Steps To Unlearn Difficult Past

2006-07-24T09:51:00.000+02:00

Unlearning and Making Sense of Difficult Past

A Great Lesson from Indian History – We must behave like a developed nation.

Unlearning hard earned own past

Is it easy unlearning difficult past? I do not think so. But do we have any option? Again, I do not think so. We have to unlearn our past to make sense of our future otherwise future occurrences will look like past history, which I do not think any body from 21st century will like that or even, deserve that. The complexity of situation is a challenge as well as an opportunity. I have narrowed down to seven steps to unlearn difficult past. The steps are simple to understand but very difficult to follow. Very few people get courage to follow and achieve excellence in this life. But before, I discuss about those seven steps, it is important for us to make sense of our past history.

Unlearning difficult past is one of the most painful and cumbersome process. The individual, society and even nations are confused. There is no simple way. There are no easy steps. There is no mathematical solution. There is no scientific method to resolve. There is no straightforward solution. The problems are complex. The problems are complicated. The problems are invisible. The problems are intellectually fabricated. The problems are intellectually subsidized. The problems are not even acknowledged as problems. The real problems have been replaced with mediocre one. The real problems have been kept in the dust bin and secondary or tertiary problems are being flashed and discussed extensively.

Is there any escape?

The energy and efforts and money are spent on solving trivial problems rather talking real issues. The solutions are equally complex. The solutions are not simply workable. The solutions are tough. The solutions need high level sacrifices. The solution needs significant understanding. The solution needs very deep knowledge. The solution does not appear visible. The solution has to be found from the complex atmosphere. The solution demands dedication and patience. Are we ready to accept? Are we ready to devote time? Are we ready to understand? It is a challenge to the people of developing world. It is a challenge for developed world to get reality. It is challenge to developed world to find solution of complexity of poverty. Unless, we understand this, we will never be able to enjoy the fruit of our own wisdom, effort and sacrifices.

Is it so difficult to behave like developed people? I have a very different experiences and conclusions. Indians are not behaving like developed. Even the people with plenty of money and resources are behaving like poor. The rich are behaving meager. The well to do families is behaving like conservative source. The country as a result is suffering badly. The country is unable to get correct direction. Most of the part of the country is behaving deprived. Most of the developing world is confused to understand reality. The people of developing world are unable to get the correct picture to move in right direction. Even today, we are unable to move in positive direction.

Uselessness of History

In earlier times, history used to provide some guidance for future direction. More than 2000 years of human history has compelled human beings to read, write, think and work differently. The picture shown and its writings give a very confusing impression. The moral values of 1835 have no meaning and substance to face the reality of 21st century. The country or rather world is moving in a progressive direction. The sacrifices and efforts of few of the individuals of this country have provided impetus for growth in recent past. Since last few decades, there are plenty of individuals who have excelled in their own way.

The successful people have created their own values. These values have nothing to do with our age old values. Today, when Amitabh Bachaan talk about the family values and force his son to follow his footsteps to give continuous box office failures of 17 films, totaling 170 crores loss (approximately) to the film industry, does not appear convincing. It is ridiculous. Even the person of his caliber is busy in projecting his son as the inheritor on Indian films, what others must be doing? Where is the caliber suffering in the dark tunnel of Indian values? The similar situation prevails in other fields too. What is this moral value? Can this value ever take us to success and confidence?

When we talk about spiritual and cultural heritage, the action of our educated intelligentsia has made us ashamed. Starting from Vivekananda to Gandhi, everyone propagated caste system to prevail. Even today, leadership is confused when they go for strike against SEZ (special economic zone). They are able to mobilize illiterate Indian farmers against today’s development.

VP Singh, Raj Babbar, Lalu Yadav or even Medha Patekar, all join in this mediocrity of wisdom. How do they look their and followers future? Do they think, poor should remain poor for life long? Backward should remain backward for few more generations even in the age of call centers? Scheduled castes and tribes should remain deprived of their basic amenities? Muslims should remain hardcore religious person without even having a glimpse of modernity? Farmer should remain farmer for next few more generation? Time has arrived. Time has come when people can change their status in less than one generation time. This miraculous change can be achieved by any conscious person irrespective of their religion, region or background. The individuals need to understand this. The leadership and policy makers need to understand this. The leadership should make their plan and movement for the development to be achieved in one generation time. Are we able to understand our spiritual and cultural heritage?

Creating Growing Future

We must cherish our culture which takes us ahead. But we need to be cautious with our wisdom. We are not able to understand the ground reality. We are keeping our eyes shut towards global changes. We give a duff ear towards story of growth. We are fearful in taking hard decisions fro our development. On the name of spiritual and culture, leadership is making the masses fearful.

Indian intelligentsia is suffering from historical phobia. They do something else. They talk different ideas. They propagate different values. They project something vague. All these come from complicated past. It is not the fault of individuals. It is the complication of knowledge. It is complication of understanding. It is the complication of trivializm. We must generate wisdom for our future by isolating ourselves from our golden past to reach a conclusive and fruitful result. We should not mix our present with our past. We should never plan our future ideas based on our difficult past.

Golden Era has arrived

If we are able to decline our past from our present wisdom making system, we will be able to make our glorious future. In this complex past and delicate future, understanding the path for success is difficult proposal. In my research for last twenty five years, I have come out with very specific path to be followed to enjoy the development of human civilization. These steps are able to make a platform for successful future.

1. Don’t slog, use thrust—Slog will never change your level in life. One needs to keep looking and searching for the required thrust in life. Without proper thrust you will not be able to change level with the comfort and health you need to achieve your goal. On the other hand, slog almost kills the instinct of enjoyment. It is essential to clearly distinguish between slog and thrust of human life. We must exploit slog and thrust accordingly.
2. Avoid Reservations - Reservations creates discriminations which are the biggest curse of a civilized human being. Reservations kill competitions. This almost ensures mediocrity in every aspect of human endeavour. What have we got even after reservation of last sixty years? Backward remains backward. Schedule caste remains Schedule caste. Have they become forward? This needs to be understood by our savior like Mayavati, Meera Kumar or Lalu Yadav. In the real sense people from an underdeveloped society will become forward by creating casteless and reservation less society only.
3. Accept Conversions - More than 400 years of slavery have polluted the mind of normal Indians to think of conversion as a tool for their religious fight. Conversions have been looked upon as invasion. The missionaries are accused of manipulation and coercion while converts are accused of betrayal of his culture, tradition and nation. But if we give a little thought in this direction we realize the severity of problem somewhere else. We are being made a fool of nothing. The United States of America has opened their door for any religious faith people on the basis of objectivity; they have achieved better aim for their country. They have attracted the entire brilliant mind for the betterment of their society. If some society or religion are not in a position to look after their followers there is no reason depending upon choice, people should not get converted. Long back people got converted to other religion just to eat meat and avoid castiest discrimination. Castiest discrimination must be eradicated from Hindu society. This could be achieved by accepting conversions.
4. Cut unwanted roots - Roots give strength, they also give pain. It all depends upon the health of the root. Today when developing countries are moving fast towards developed countries, the people of this generation would not take another 100 years to prosper and grow. If the roots are not growing with individual, the level of roots changes in life. The unwanted roots must be chopped off. Only healthy roots should be preserved so that they give sufficient nutrition to a developing individual and society.
5. Change Places - You go to prosperity, do not wait prosperity to come to you. When we talk about global village, how many dare to take harsh decisions to change the place of settlement from the place of origination. Why do not we take lesson from Gladwell family? The famous American author Malcom Gladwell who gave two mind boggling researched books, The Tipping Points and Blink was born in England, raised in Canada and now lives in New York City. At a later part of life he may be planning to settle in Mumbai. Why should not others also do it?
6. Think Like Develop - The development thrust on the people of this century is hardly giving time to think. They are not able to perceive the changes. They are unable to appreciate the changes. They are not in a position to comprehend the development. They still feel very insecure to feel developed. Time has come and time is ripe for the people of Asian countries especially Indian continent including China to expect unbelievable opportunities in life.
7. Enjoy life - The people from the developing world get embarrassed if they are treated well. There are lots of people in the society to keep feeling moderate, that too generally sad. They feel that fun and enjoyment are egoism. They are the indication of pride and that is bad. Such thoughts are wrong. Such thoughts are self-defeating. They must be avoided at any cost. Life is precious and should be enjoyed. In a develop society, the human being has a privilege to feel happy. Enjoy life to the fullest and have fun.

We are poor, not because we are poor but we are thinking like poor, doing like poor, talking like poor, dreaming like poor, aspiring like poor and so on. Stop doing these. Finance Minister of India Mr Chidambaram in Aug 2005 said, ‘India is not poor’. He is correct. We are rich. We had been poor, not anymore, so think accordingly. Gone are the days, now we must think like rich. When USA has done this around 200 years before, can India do it in this century? Today, India has more than 83 thousand millionaires (In American Dollars) and counting; they must enhance their standard of life. Every other guy should learn to live like more develop. This will provide space for more poor to grab the vacant place of rich as rich become richer. The seven steps will help us to achieve unlearn comfortably. Unlearn past and set course for future!

Defining Democracy for Human Growth

2006-07-10T07:17:00.000+02:00

Human beings have come a long way. Today when we are celebrating Independence Day for the biggest democratic and free country, more than half of the countries in the world are still struggling to define democracy. Two thousand years of human civilisation have made all educated individuals to understand that freedom is the basic need of human beings. Freedom is the desire. It is the pleasure. It forces humanity towards excellence. It allows humanity to bloom. On the other hand, slavery is a punishment. It deteriorates human values. It cripples mental thinking. It distorts judgments. It forces the people to grab suicide bombs. It teaches people to kill themselves. It does not allow prospering life. It compels the people to lose identity. Dictatorship is worse that slavery because it ensures intellectual degradation. The normal slave has physical compulsions but individual in a dictatorship of any form irrespective of the name, ensure mental compulsions. Physical compulsions are less painful than mental one. Mental compulsions does not allow individual to grow. It does not allow individual to excel. It restricts human growth. There is no doubt that democracy is the basic need of human to ensure freedom. On this auspicious night of Independence day 4th July 06, I felt to explain few basic intricacies of freedom which I felt civilization have been kept deprived off. It is important for the conscious people on Internet to be aware about these anomalies in society. These provide better appreciation for the future of individual and nations.

As a conscious person of a democratic country, I found that achieving freedom for individual and democracies for the nations have been the basic necessity since evolution of human history. Human have fought innumerable number of wars. Human have fought many battle to conquer freedom. Today at the onset of 21st century, humans are still struggling to define democracy and freedom. In the information age, when more than one third of the human beings are networked together irrespective of their caste, creed, religion and region, leadership at various levels are still trying to define freedom and up to some extent I feel even human growth. Is it so difficult to define freedom for human beings? Is it so difficult and contradictory to explain freedom? Does meaning of freedom vary based on sex, caste, religion or region? Does level and desire of freedom varies based on education or literacy level of human? Does scope of freedom varies based on economics or financial status of the individual? Why can not human being define freedom for all humanity? Freedom is freedom and it needs to be free from any clutches of definitions. Irrespective of sex, religion, financial status and any other criteria, freedom should be available to all human beings. Every human being should be free. They should have freedom to get education, to chose language, religion, caste, profession, and even nation, to live a free life, to enjoy privileges, to roam around the world, to do things of choice, to get connected on internet, surf any site, chat to any one or anywhere in the world, explore and excel in any endeavour. Is it a big demand? Can human have the privilege to have this much freedom? I do not see much of difficulties for this much freedom to human beings in 21st century.

Is it surprising when Imran Khan, a Cricketer turned Politician of Pakistan, a Muslim dominated country, says, ‘Having a dictator spells disaster for any country. Mankind needs pure democracy.’ Imran is living in Pakistan run by Army General Musharaff. It amounts to some value when Imran demands for democracy and certainly asks for freedom. He is correct to point out that dictator spells disaster for the nation. Dictatorship is a disaster for individual human being. Can the Muslim world and especially all intelligentsia of this world listen? Few intelligent people always try to convince some of the people at some of the places against democracy and freedom. Even in India, we have large number of intellectuals who are sympathetic towards Muslims, are ready to profess the human needs or even national needs otherwise. Is it in interest of Muslims? Can all theses intellectuals get their orientation clear to believe that democracy and that too pure democracy is the basic need of human beings. No body can convince at least educated humans otherwise. Any intellectual can make few of the people fool for few of the time for few of the reason. Freedom is required by every individual. It is just a matter of time. Difference of opinion has to vanish. People anywhere at this age will try to achieve freedom. The availability of free media are going to ensure freedom.

Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Shariff are joining hands not only to bring democracy in Pakistan but now they are joining hands along with other supporting political parties to ensure continuation of democracy. Every few years, Pakistan feels pray to Military ruler and land up having Military dictatorship. Today, majority of Pakistanis are convinced of the need of democracy and continuation of democracy. And for the peace of entire world, there is an urgent need that Muslims have democracy and freedom in their countries. The important point is that Muslims not only need democracy but they need pure democracy. That is what Imran has said and it is correct. There is no reason why Muslim male or female should not have freedom to live a free life, to choose a government, to decide about their future, to get better educated, to have the privileges of 21st century, to enjoy life without veil, to enjoy freedom, and so on. The human desires are unlimited and there is no reason that why part of these desires are not achieved by them. Most of the people from Muslim world see these human privileges on their television, come to know through their news papers, read on Internet and so on. They can not be left ignorant. They are going to conquer them.

The form of democracy has always been a matter of concern for intellectuals. It has always been a choice for humanity. Even Musharraf organized a referendum to justify his ruling when he clinched power. He did it nicely. He is still going strong. But the questions comes, are people satisfied with such democratic illusion? The similar thing could be observed in other parts of the world. In the name of democracy, what happened in Iran or even in Palestine, give poor taste to freedom. In general people have restrictions. We are compelled to think otherwise. Election takes place in some form or other but they are restricted to justify the rule of few individual only. Very few Islamic nations give freedom to female to vote. Very few Islamic nations give freedom to female to get elected. Civilization is still struggling to define freedom in a right way. Even Indian democracy appears illusions.

The United States of America has come a long way in the history of mankind. They have analyzed, rejoiced and enjoyed various forms of freedom. They have solved its intricacies for more than two hundred years. They are celebrating their independence as the form of freedom for humanity. They still argue and discuss the depth of freedom so freely. Even after massive devastation of 9/11, Americans are going strong to pursue their freedom. They are struggling to bring and sustain democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are moving ahead with all its might to spread the democratic form of Governance.

The people of United States have enjoyed the best of everything in this world since more than two hundred years of various revolutionary phases. They have provided to humanity all the technological inventions which took place in the last century. Every human on this earth have enjoyed those privileges for betterment of their life. In spite of caste, creed, religion or region, people of this world have enjoyed invention like airplanes, televisions, mobiles, computers, medicines, vaccines, robots and so on. The people of this world expect something more from all developing world. The people of developing countries need to work for humanity in constructive way rather than destructive missions. They need not to spread poverty, terrorism, war and illiteracy. Can we imagine how to achieve these for prosperity of humanity? Freedom and democracy may be the means.

Today, when USA moves with the concept of spreading democracy and open economy, there is no reason to believe with suspicion. There is no reason to have center page of daily news appear from intelligentsias of developing world with negative analysis Developing world is continue developing not because of developed world but because of developing nature and ideas of leadership of developing world. The message should be very clear and precise. Till the time, any individual is deprived of basic human needs; they are equivalent to a BOMB. The deprivation and frustration may be the reasons of massive violence and demonstration all across the world against Danish cartoons. Why do not we have such massive demonstration for poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, clean water and basic amenities? Old and conservative leaderships are taking humanity for a ride. It is not going to go too far. Human are becoming better informed and better conscious. Leaderships of the world need to take the note of these changes.

Time has come when we involve every human being in the process of governance and avoid the frustration and sense of deprivation among individuals. Democracy may ensure the vital ingredients to provide respect, opportunities and status. Democracy will ensure the involvement of every individual in governance. For the sake of humanity at large, we have to unlearn old and traditional way of Governance and embrace the democratic form of governance.

Managing Individual Impacts on Society

2006-06-18T18:23:00.000+02:00

Individuals Matter

Individual impact on society has not always been fruitful rather many a time it had been catastrophic due to lack of sufficient knowledge and vision. Sometime because of lack of in-depth understanding of social problems, individual efforts had been fatal for the human growth. That may be the simple reason for the existence of regionalism, casteism, discriminations, poverty and so on in the society even after so much development. High level intelligentsia has failed the common people. Humanity has suffered.

It is correct that every vote counts in a democratic set up. It is proven that democratic system is the best form of governance. In democracy, every citizen feels the part of governance. There is a sense of participation. It is believed that the opinion of majority counts. The leaders are forced to take decisions based on the interest of majority of people. The leaders are supposed to take decisions for the betterment of large sections of the population. Leaders are to show the path to communities to improve the lifestyle of people. But in reality, is it correct? Are leaders following the interest of majority in partially educated communities? Are leaders not taking arbitrary decisions? Are decisions not based on individualistic appreciations rather than communities’ opinions? This was amply clarified in the recent strike conducted by the communists’ parties of India. This has happened in past with humanity. This is happening in present to human beings. Till the time, major policy decisions are taken for the betterment of humanity, it is good, and otherwise, it is a heinous crime. In next few paragraphs, I will explain these existing individualistic approaches of the leaders in Indian society. How they have negatively impacted as a deep rooted scar to human societies?

Seriousness of Individualistic Approaches

There is nothing wrong in this information age with individualistic approach. Any individual can have more knowledge than others. Any body can posses more wisdom than others. Ideas are not the slave of background, richness or status. Ideas can emerge to anybody, anytime and at anyplace. It just needs fertile mind and concerned knowledge. It needs a will to unlearn old ideas. But the problems comes when, ideas are generated with some selfish motives. Ideas are propagated with some preconceived calculated impacts. Ideas are generated to keep the majority in dark rather than spreading openness. Ideas are spread to continue developing status rather than making the people developed. The leaders belonging to the Communist parties of India are doing the same. They are calculating their gains in terms of vote to conduct strike. They are planning a strike on the issues where they feel majority of illiterate people will blindly follow them. What is the use of the leaders’ wisdom? During Industrial age, when they used to conduct strike, it was mainly to safeguard the interests of poor workers. But today’s’ information age has brought a difference. There is no need of similar strike to safeguard the interests of poor people. They need not do strike to improve or safeguard the interest of workers. It is not Industrial age, it is information age. The time has changed. The policies have to change. The methods have to change. The leaders of old generation have to understand the complications to unlearn their old concerns, old methods, and self defeating ideas. They have to unlearn their self defeating ways to do politics.

The Communist parties gave a call for nationwide bandh on 13 Jun 2006. Strike had paralyzed Kerala but did not affect West Bengal at all. Delhi faced partial impact. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee dominated the roost. He is showing the color of our political leaders. He is showing the power of individualistic influences on our communities’ behaviours. When he gave a call not to go for strike, the whole of the Bengal understands the importance of work. Bengal needs FDI (foreign direct investment) to improve the condition of poor. Bengal needs FDI to generate employment. They do not need strike; they need investment to protect the interest of their workers. There is a significant change of perceptions. Can one individual change the perception of entire community? Yes it can. But he needs to be the Chief Minister. How important this simple aspect is to be understood by all the intellectual body of the rising communities. It is important to understand the seriousness of these individualistic approaches. You can not do anything with any idea till you have power to empower your thinking. If people at powerful position do not take wise decisions, whole of communities suffers. Can we say that few individual has been responsible to keep the whole of community backward or deprived?

Existing Ground Realities

Case 1

If Buddha has realised the change of situation in 21st century, is it a surprise? How peculiar is the situation? One person of the party feels that FDI is important to alleviate the poverty from this poor country. FDI is required to build infrastructures to empower educated and uneducated people of this country. One individual feels but the party feels otherwise. Party is busy in harnessing vote. Party is busy in doing unnecessary strike. Part is busy in calling bandh. Party is busy in striking against airport privatisation or any other privatisation initiated by the government. There is an urgent need for all the people to understand the game plan of our leaders. It is important for all of us to realise that how these individualistic approaches have kept this country poor for so long. The ideas of the leader at helm have ensured that country does not move in a right direction at right speed. The revolutionary steps by Buddha have shown that it is not the wish of the majority of people to go for strike. It is the wish of few of the less knowledgeable leaders. The strike prone West Bengal can continue working on bandh day. Is it a big surprise? Is individual setting directions for majority?

Case II

The similar situations are occurring in the case of reservation. Just few disgruntled leaders have felt that reservation is serving their political interests. They are not bothered for any further repercussions in the society. They are not bothered for communities’ developments. They are not bothered for backwards or deprived people. They do not feel ashamed in dividing the communities for their gains. Is there any surprise that caste discrimination exists in this society even after approximately sixty years of the departure of British from this land? Caste discrimination is like a cancer in educated society. They have been kept alive intentionally by the few well known leaders including Nehru and Gandhi. They are being kept alive today by their followers. They have kept it alive for their secured status. They have ensured that normal people will never come to know their ill thoughts. They have power to communicate. They have power to spread wrong and selfish messages in a positive frame. They have done these intelligently. Further, VP Singh and Arjun Singh have joined to keep the caste discrimination alive in an educated society. How to understand the motives of such disgruntled and selfish leaders? It is a complex situation. Intelligentsia has failed to find the solution. Intelligentsia has no power to empower their wisdom. They sit in their drawing room and cry. Leaders are taking the poor and deprived for a ride. Few leaders are doing such politics of discriminations even in this information age which are shameful. It is barbaric when government stops the payment of striking doctors of AIIMS. How to judge right or wrong? Who knows truth? Why the leaders are spreading wrong messages to conscious citizens? Even Media is acting biased. But these will not go too far. Such shortsighted leaders and media will have to pay heavy price in 21st century.

How to Face the Challenges?

1. Challenges to Educated People

There is serious challenge to all educated people to understand this situation. It is important for all of us to analyze any major steps taken by parties or leaders. We have to be conscious to stop the exploitation. Today when country is rising, it is not the task for poor to become rich; it is an urgent need for even rich to ensure that other poor people become rich so that rich can become richer. No rich can become richer in this rising country unless economic condition of poor improves. These basic requirements to generate richness are not simply understood by political leaders because they are not loosing anything. They are able to maintain their status amidst poor. They are able to win election among poor people. They are able to get vote when the poverty prevails. That is how Lalu ruled democratically the poorest state for continuous fifteen years. Rahul wins election from one of the poorest districts like Amethi of Uttar Pradesh. Keeping poverty and deprivation does not disturb the status of leaders. But shortly, even leaders will feel the changes.

2. Compulsions of Corporate World

Corporate people of India are seriously concerned about these developments. They feel the pain. Today when there is an urgent need to achieve more than 10% growth to alleviate poverty, it is a challenge to all intelligentsia to frame new policies. That is the reason; Sam Pitroda, Narayana Murthy, and others joined hands to speak against reservation. They understand that backward and deprived people have to become rich for this country to make many billion companies. Ajim Premji talked to Buddha to stop strike so that BPO industry can run smoothly. Call Centers and BPOs have generated hope of better future. A disciplined India will be able to impress Western customers so that the companies can generate more outsourcing jobs. More jobs in this country will provide more employments. More money inflow will provide better infrastructure to this cash deprived nation.

Tata has become interested to establish the factory for first dream car of 1 lakh in West Bengal. Buddha has to show results and leadership. He knows very well that how much West Bengal has suffered last few decades. He has to unlearn many of the teachings of his predecessor Jyoti Basu. He is compelled to take unlearned decisions. He has to change his mindset. He has to meet the demand of 21st century to keep himself alive in politics. Why not other comrades are learning the compulsions of 21st century? Other leaders must learn from Buddha compulsion including national opposition parties like BJP. Leaders must understand the compulsions of corporate world to make this country rich. Leaders must do politics of rich nation. Shortly India is becoming developed. No leaders can afford to do politics of poor nation here.

Initiative to curb negative impact from Individuals

It is important for an educated society to curb negative impact from individual on society. The whole set of institution exists to save the interest of humanity. In spite of many systems, the problems occur and society faces the hardship in term of slow progress, lack of basic infrastructure, miserable lifestyle, etc. The individuals sitting at powerful position need to take cognizance of this reality not only for the betterment of humanity but even for them. Nepal is a very current and good example for the rise of common people. The people sitting at powerful position can not take the citizen for a ride for long time. There is a need for all the powerful people whose ideas impact on society need to note five salient points to reduce the negative impact-

1. Always use correct source of wisdom,
2. Never take the innocence and ignorance of common people for granted for long time,
3. Do not rely on your inner strength rather believe on data,
4. Immediately unlearn all conventional way of working or taking decisions, and
5. Exploit information in this information age to create wisdom.

Dream of a developed India

A rich country will not have much deprived people. The life style of citizen will improve. The more rich people will make this country developed. We all must join hands to improve our life free from discriminations, regionalism, casteism and other malice. There is no reason when we talk of development; we do not take better policies decisions. Government must rely on solid information and knowledge to set the direction of growth to achieve the desired result of progress otherwise talking about developed India will remain a dream - Big Dream. Can we keep this rising country developing for long time? If we want to be developed, we have to reduce the impact of few unqualified and uneducated individual to impact our society.

Understanding Complications of Inner Strength

2006-06-14T13:12:00.000+02:00

Searching Inner Strength

There is a serious misconception regarding inner strength of any individual in society. Human growth outside the domain of biological or biochemical remains very-very complex. There are many aspects which have not been given their due in the evolution of human civilization. It would be very interesting to discuss and analyze these aspects keeping human growth in mind.
Inner strength is not available as easily as is presumed to be. Like knowledge, it is also to be acquired or achieved or gained. It does not come to human beings through mere birth. Inner strength remains as illusive as money, position, caste, creed and status. It would be really interesting to analyze those sources from where they are presumed to be originating.

Sources of Origination

In general, inner strength comes to individual from three radical sources –

Inherited - You get close relatives, ancestors, background, close-associates, friends, and assets.

Circumstances and Situations - This empowers you with qualifications, knowledge, experiences, wisdom, and exposures. This results to successes and achievements, and

Human survival instincts - This forces you to acquire love of life, awakening, human behaviour and habits

All three sources are very distinct in nature. It is very important to understand the control of individual on these factors.

Detail Discussions

As it is evident regarding complications, the sources of inner strength need elaborate discussions-

Inherited - Ingredients like close relatives, ancestors, background, ancestral assets are available to the individual as inherited gifts. The irony of human beings is that the person who gets them never realizes the worth of it while the person who never gets them has to create them through very tough measures, which takes many a time a whole lifetime. Even close associates and friends are available to individual on an inheritance basis only. A person born in a backward community gets these entire ingredients mainly from a similar status. The majority of the people remain similar in nature. In the course of their lives, they are surrounded by the strength, weaknesses and aspirations of those people. That is where the question of unlearning comes into picture to reduce the anomaly in the system. The people born in a backward class family have to fight from the existing setup to come out of their hardwired backward mentality before they can do anything worthwhile in life. In real life, one has to face these challenges in an open society. Fortunately, we are born in the era when we are fighting for equality and human rights for each and everyone. All of us are linked by these situations. That is the beauty of life. When we are fighting at the organizational, country or continental level, it is imperative that every individual remains conscious about these developments. A similar problem exists among the people of other communities such as forward or scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, Americans, blacks, Europeans or Muslims, etc as it is found in backward communities. We all have inherited hardwired self-defeating qualities. To have inner strength, every individual from any community will have to understand these anomalies and fight at his/her level to remove them.

Circumstances and Situations - An individual is born in a particular place and she hardly has any control over it. Depending upon her place of birth, she faces circumstances and situations. She can hardly do anything about it. The qualifications, knowledge, experiences and exposures come from these circumstances and situations mainly. So called wisdom comes from this. One tries very hard to achieve wisdom without realizing that wisdom has its own limitations of situations and circumstances. The person acquires knowledge only from the resources available to her.

At times, we are very pleased with our simple success, thinking about self greatness without realizing the contribution of circumstances and situations. We generally think of as free and independent will even though these are illusions. Most of the time, we think and act, even react and are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize. When we are living in deprived and disturbed society, we become too defensive and egoistic on the other hand, while we should have been conscious and more subtle. This results in a situation that if somebody asks a question, we come up with lot of explanations even for the things we don’t have explanations for.

Now, when tremendous opportunities evolve in prevalent situations and circumstances, there are a lot of people in the country who have taken advantages of these developments through proper unlearning. Swaraj Paul must have understood the compulsions of situations. He left his village in Jalandhar, Punjab, in the 1960s and did not come back for the next forty years. He maintained different situations for his successive growth to become one of the biggest businessmen in England. Azim Premji is a brilliant example who built an empire on his ancestral assets through totally new methods and processes. Instead of ancestral business of oil and food products, Wipro migrated to Information Technology and ITES (Information Technology Enabled Services). During the 1980s, when engineering colleges in the country were teaching hexadecimal programming (machine level language programming) on microprocessor 8085 and 8086, M/S Wipro was dealing with computers and software programming. They changed their circumstances and situations to build a separate and progressive empire.

During this period of opportunities evolution, one more very interesting thing happened in India. The people with high calibre, zeal and enthusiasm changed their circumstances and situations consciously. At the changed place, they continued working in a changed environment with a different set of people. They earned professional satisfaction and earned achievements, the whole world recognized them. Chandrashekar, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics and Amartya Sen for Economics were the famous ones. The changed environment have provided immense growth possibilities. Today, in 2006, we can proudly say that Indians have the highest educational qualifications of all ethnic groups in the US. Almost 67 percent of all Indians have a bachelor’s or higher degree (compared to 28 percent nationally). Almost 40 percent of all Indians have a master’s doctorate or other professional degree, which is five times the national average. Today, these statistics makes Indian proud, but just think of twenty years back, people had to take hard decisions to leave their near and dear in this country and settled in a new environment. In better environment, they preserved their caliber and excelled individually. The credit also goes to USA or other European nations to provide healthy atmospheres.

Human survival instincts - There are a few prerequisites for human survival. If those prerequisites are met, then only does the human being grow to adulthood and then think of progress and growth. The basic survival is based on tremendous inner strength of the individual. The further progress and growth has to be based on separate and exclusive factors. Human survival instincts come from within. They are habits, awakening, human behaviour and love of life. They generate a force in human beings. This is the force which contributes in moving life. They help an individual to grow, help an individual to be conscious of surroundings, get educated, and learn all good behaviour and human traits. The inside force is very natural and forceful. If, fortunately, one has these forces in a supporting environment, they help the individual to sustain and at times helps her to grow, but if unfortunately, circumstances and situations are not understandable nor cordial, society gulps up these individuals. The powerful force within itself kills the individual. The individual is not able to exploit these forces. Terrorism is a clear cut example of such futile situations. The society, family, individual and above all humanity become the biggest losers.

Just think of the situation during the era of Brain Drain. Plenty of high caliber individuals remained in the country to avoid brain drain in 1970s or 80s. They were patriotic and disciplined individuals. They were hard working and devoted. They excelled in their field. But if we try to count them today for their contributions, we will find them marginal compare to the contribution made by NRI (Non-Resident Indians). Today, after 30-40 years, when we have one of the finest economists of the country as a Prime Minister of India, he reminds us that it is was not Brain Drain during the Congress rule of the 1960s or 70s or 80s, but it was a Brain Gain. He is correct. Today, a developing country like India is flourishing on those drains which flew in the United States of America, the United Kingdom and other European countries for the last thirty years. The flourishing growth, which we observe today in India and even in Asian countries and we are proud of are those brains. The Brains which were left behind in India must have been rotten, or rather they would have gone down the drain. Those brains in this country are still stinking at places. It is not very difficult to observe and meet such brains in our national news papers articles and media. There are plenty of examples; a good and brilliant brain left behind in the developing country during those periods with all forceful energy in this environment, survival remained a challenge for them. It is important to understand them. It is essential that the force within is preserved in correct environment.

Final Analysis

The sources of inner strength are limited. They have their own inherent limitations. A person has to grow and develop within those limitations. The growth and development of inner strength are generally taken for granted. In a society of the developing world and even developed world, it is essential that we concentrate and harness the sources of inner strength. It is said, ‘Changes provide opportunities’. The changes which I have explained and elaborated in the previous pages must have provided all of us plenty of reason to believe, the availability of opportunities in the world. In society, we have plenty of examples of these opportunists like Narayana Murthy, Dhirubhai Ambani, APJ Abdul Kalam, Amartya Sen and so on. They have taken advantage of changed situations by creating different circumstances. The rising and successful people are the result of improved circumstances and situations. It is important that we remain conscious to create a better situation to generate stronger inner strength. The few important steps can be summarized as follows-

1- Detach from past,
2- Understand and believe on your potential,
3- Enhance you knowledge,
4- Demand for your contribution,
5- Never rely easily on others,
6- Never get evaluated by inferior person,
7- Listen to expert Advises,
8- Always look for new ideas,
9- Review your thinking and actions.

Thinking and actions depends upon so many factors. Once we understand these limitations, we should never take our thinking and action for granted. We should never be overconfident in our thinking unless we have been able to change the ground situations. The confidence and utilization of inner strength can then only be ensured. Feel free to raise any doubts because that will ensure clarity in your inner strength.

Wanted: Global souls to run global companies

2006-06-10T13:00:00.000+02:00

Edwin Sim recently spoke with William Barnes of the Financial Times. The following is his story which was published in the Career Asia section of the Financial Times on March 23, 2006.

by William Barnes, Financial Times

Managers at international businesses must expect to move country regularly. Could this help create a class of cosmopolitan, constantly mobile workers?

Nick Leeson, the legendary destroyer of the 233-year-old Barings Bank, was by his own admission naive, immature and unworldly when he was working in Singapore in the 1990s.

Left unsupervised he secretly ran up £830m in trading losses before he was discovered. Barings was subsequently sold to a Dutch bank for £1.

Raw pride and a reluctance to admit that he was failing stopped him telling anyone about his rapidly climbing losses, he explained in a recently published book.

Mr. Leeson did not claim to be discombobulated by working in an alien environment, indeed he enjoyed the tropical social life. But he has said that if he could put the clock back, he would not have got on the plane to Singapore.

How many of today’s budding global warriors will end up wishing that they too had not “got on the plane to Singapore”?

Until a few years ago the expatriate executive was widely understood to be someone acquiring a building block of career experience that would benefit him or her and the company.

In the last few years the spread of globalization has reached the point where businesses in global markets now expect their managers to relocate with few guarantees for the future on either side. Increasingly these moveable executives will be Asian, particularly Indian and Chinese, as regional domestic Giants reach out into the world.

The old-style western expatriate has not always been appreciated. The 19th century British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, said that when he required advice in handling a foreign country he would ask a 20-year expatriate for his opinion and then do the opposite.

But at least in the 19th century working overseas was considered a high risk gamble at best or akin to taking holy orders. It was rarely – as today – deemed ordinary and easy.

In external appearance most modern businesses, superficially shaped by similar management solutions, tend to look familiar. But the reality is that diverse cultures, histories and stages of development make the intramural corporate experience very different, at least in emerging economies if not everywhere.

Western executives are increasingly attracted by the monetary and intangible rewards offered by ambitious Asian groups. At the same time, established global businesses blithely talk of building up diversified multinational managements made up of staff holding a variety of different values and attitudes.

“Some people love the speed of it, the variety and excitement and the opportunity. But there are others who really don’t welcome this and do not relish what’s going on,” says Edwin Sim, managing director of Human Capital Alliance, a consultancy.

“You have to know what kind of person you are. Modern management is tricky enough in one’s own culture. You need energy, flexibility and a certain toughness to do it in another country,” he adds.

Conventional academic preparation might help an executive avoid becoming another Nick Leeson (who had no formal training), but will probably do little on its own to unravel exotic business practices.

India may be poised to overtake the US as the world’s biggest producer of MBAs, but that doesn’t mean a foreign MBA will be able to spring open business mysteries that remain as delicately localized as they ever were, says Jane McKenzie, professor of management knowledge and learning at Henley Management College in the UK.

“That’s not the way education works. We provide a set of business tools and logical rigour. Ultimately our students have to take what is valuable for them out of the course and adapt that for local conditions,” says Prof McKenzie. “Anyone who claims paper qualifications are a panacea is a fool or a charlatan.”

Academic research has unsurprisingly found that expatriates with the most positive and flexible attitudes flourish best. A PwC Study discovered, less obviously, that almost two-thirds of foreign assignment failures were blamed by companies on the mismatched expectations of their executives.

Manifold factors can cause a clash between an expatriate’s pre-arrival assumptions and the reality, some only tangentially related to the work culture, such as climate, isolation or problems with a spouse.

Findings like this have encouraged some experts to conclude that a cosmopolitan managerial class, effortlessly confident in a multinational environment, must emerge to serve global business. Some argue that tomorrow’s managers will be “global souls” who habitually dabble in multiple cultures, to use travel writer Pico Iyer’s phrase.

The management pundit John Adams has suggested that such future internationalists will evolve while accompanying their parents on overseas postings.

So is a self-perpetuating managerial class destined to run global business?

Perhaps not. Languages and international experience are valuable but not everything, says Anders Lundquist, managing director of Bangkok-based headhunter Pacific 2000. “If an executive is at ease with himself, confident in his expertise and willing to adapt, he can go far. It’s a matter of character and energy, as it always has been,” he says.

A recent study by Erasmus University, Rotterdam, found that if a manager could survive the first six months in a foreign country without undue strain, the chances of eventual success were high. If, however, the shock of arrival was not quickly controlled, executives often became demoralized and foundered.

“The world is everybody’s oyster in the longer term,” says Prof McKenzie. “When logistically there are no management barriers left, we will be left with cultural differences.

“Whoever manages the space between these cultural differences is doing something important.

Posted by: http://www.humancapitalalliance.com

Three Basic Ingredients of Innovation

2006-05-24T06:35:00.000+02:00

India has witnessed three different centuries in its last history-

1. Slave century
2. Xerox Century, and
3. Innovation Century.

The whole of 19th century, I categorized as slave century for India. The country remained under the rule of one ruler or other. British ruled for most of the time in most of the Indian sub-continent. This whole century, I termed as Slave Century of India.

From the last few centuries of oppression, the country has lost its own wisdom domain and trivializes the whole issue of innovations. Innovations demand significant chunk of capital to prove and implement the benefit for human civilization. Because of the lack of access to these capitals around these times, the country and its people have lost direction. In 18th century, we worked hard on the path of liberation. The Sati Pratha, caste system, Dalit discriminations and other anomalies of society were handled for the benefit of human beings in general. In the last century, we mastered ourselves in copying from all across the world whether it is appliance, system, music, and culture or even dresses. Last centuries, I call it Xerox Century of India.

The end of the last centuries and beginning of the 21st century has given us dream, hope, capital and circumstances to be the leader of innovations. The glimpses of these leaderships have started from vast and successful working democratic set up of this country. The growth of Reliance Industries, Infosys, Biocon and Wipro, etc., has shown us the leadership. The production of car named ‘Indica’ by M/S Tata is a magnificent beginning. This I termed as Brand Leadership of India.

In the era of information age, we witnessed the mushrooming of call centers and information technology enabled services all across the country. This resulted in the transfer of the large funds from developed countries to developing countries like India. This has given the way for innovations. Innovations pass through difficult incubation phases. Innovations consist of stages like research development, technology transfer, technology absorption, productions of products or systems with significant world class performance, quality and cost effectiveness. It also depends upon its impact on the large section of the population. This demands a huge investment. This demand dedication and sincerity. This demands a devoted team. Today, with the systematic construction of strong infrastructure, India has the resources to venture into innovation.

The innovation needs design. Indigenous design capability is built through rigorous training in technology and design, development, fabrication and production processes through multiple institutions by the use of outsourcing and utilization of available national expertise. Wealth generation depends largely on design phase, which contributes about 60 percent of the efforts of the development of the product. The consideration for the quality of the product has to be built in during the design phase itself. The indigenous design and development capability is the key to acquire competitive edge. It is very important to understand the importance of design capability by technocrats, R&D teams, business communities and industry leaders. This is what the edge in 20th century, developed countries had. The developed countries had resources, manpower and capital to go ahead with innovation. The innovation made them rich. The innovation made them sustain prosperity and development. In this 21st century, India is poised to have this edge over others.

The evolving technological scenario of the world has provided immense opportunities to the people of the developing countries all across the world to harness the benefits. Because of the prevailing circumstances and situation, India is in a position to harness the benefit for the betterment of its 100 million populations subject to if these million are ready to unlearn old conservative style and learn the better way of living life. The innovations will give the tools and means for these effects.

The services industries do not demand a huge capital. There are many entrepreneurs, who have started call centres, BPOs, consulting services and other knowledge base services. These are generating tremendous capital within the country. These capital generations are making more billionaire every year, which will give catalytic effect to innovation. Once innovation starts, this country and its people will have an edge in all other aspects of life. This scenario compels me to call the Innovation Century of India. We need three basic qualities to harness the innovation and development.

1. Global Language – Every educated individual and policy maker of the nation should think over the language issue. We should not leave the regional language for the poor and deprived people. We should try to provide equal opportunities to poor and deprived one also to learn global language. All government run school must teach English language from the primary school to bridge the ongoing gap between rich and poor. The poor also should not feel as their duty to force their children to study regional language. We must learn and ensure other learn the global language. The knowledge of global language will pave the way for a very bright future of developing nation.
2. Discrimination Free Society – Social discrimination has been a critical and prominent part of the human civilization just a century back all across the world. However as the society are developing and educations and prosperity increases, the discrimination between humans is vanishing. But, discrimination is still the biggest challenge to human civilization. It is the biggest challenge for innovation to emerge and prosper. It is like a cancer to humanity. We must make a policy so that all human beings are considered equal. There should be no need of reservations. Have America ever thought of making reservations for blacks to eradicate the drawbacks of black society? Has Africa ever done it? Is China doing anything like this? Indian political bosses also should take a lesson and find some substitute for reservation for backward, SC, ST or even women. We must eradicate discrimination by removing reservation. We should take other steps so that all human treat other human being equal. Reservations remain a biggest source of discriminations in India.
3. Global Thinking – We should not restrict our acquaintances with people of one country, rather we should move across the world. We should be ready to accept caliber from any parts of the earth to improve life of humanity. We must unlearn old ‘Missionary Phobia’. When Bill Gates of Microsoft Corporations fought to remove the ‘visa’ restrictions of the United States of America, there is no reason that we should not enhance the system and improve infrastructures to attract brilliant mind from across the world in various field irrespective of region and religion.

Today, when Arjun Singh as forward and Congress under Sonia Gandhi are playing the game of reservation to keep backward really backward, we all irrespective of caste and creed should discard at any cost. A reservation ensures discrimination and no body wants to be discriminated in this developed world. We all must unite ourselves to crush such game plan. Unless we meet the above three ingredients in society or organisation, it will be difficult to pursue innovation. It will be difficult to achieve innovation. It will be difficult to sustain innovation.

Implementing Theory of Human Growth through E-Governance

2006-05-22T11:52:00.000+02:00

IMPLEMENTING THEORY OF HUMAN GROWTH
THROUGH DYNAMIC e-GOVERNANCE

INTRODUCTIONS
India has witnessed explosive growth in the last few decades through the sustained growth in the field of information and communication technology and these have never been witnessed earlier in the history of human civilization. It took 37 years for 5 million people to have radio. It took 17 years for 5 million people to have access to television. It took 13 years for 5 million people to have access to PC. It has taken only 5 years for 5 million people to have access to the Internet. The Impact of the recent technological changes including Internet has been almost dramatic. The understanding of factors for human capital remains crucial at this juncture.
The advent of TV has shown the truth of life at the doorstep of every child born to this civilization. The child growing in hut in Mumbai or Kolkotta slum today knows and sees from her own eyes that what all exists in the White House. The Panwala from a small town of Nalanda, Bihar in India have a glimpse of the life of the richest man of the century Mr Bill Gates of United States of America. They witness all happenings on the street of New York including the demolition of World Trade Center on 9/11. They see everyday, how the people are living? How the people are having a life? What are the basic means of life and societies? Above all, all these information are available free of cost at everybody reach. Whether water, electricity, road or even schools are available or not, TV and its 365X24X7 broadcast is available to the human being of this civilization. By the time the child reaches the age of 10, they understand what all they are privileged and what all they are deprived off? The challenges on all Government machinery to ensure the build up of basic infrastructure has increased manifold in the changing environment. People have become impatient and they want the change for a better life.
Today when we have to discuss about the scope of e-governance, it is paramount to decide about the critical factors which affects the human being at maximum as well as provide a clear direction for humanity. This paper deliberates on those critical factors which would affect humanity at large in this era of e-governance.

GLOBAL VILLAGE
The people of universe have come closer. People are so close to each other, they were never before. They can learn about each other on the click of a mouse button, they can know about others, they can chat with them, they can hire them across the globe for across the globe assignments for their business proposals, they can view them through their web cam and so on. The people have felt and realised their closeness. You need not to make friends of your class, locality, cast, religion, region or even country; you can make friends across the globe. A person has tremendous chance of going global sitting at home in a distant village in Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh or small village at Nalia or Bhuj in Gujarat with someone in Australia or Canada or USA.
Improvement in infrastructure in terms of telecommunication, metro, roadways, flyovers, multimedia and lot of other innovations have shrunk the distances and made the world a real global village. The privatization and open market economy through out the world have enhanced tremendous competition which have given broad and varied option to the human being to choose a life style of choice. The changes in the global villages have been universal. The changes will surface in social, cultural, economical, religious, nationalism and even individualism. Individual has to think globally to enjoy the fruit of the growth of civilization. The individual of any country whether she is in USA, China, Japan or any European nation, she has to feel globally and think and act global. That could be a reason, why Mr. Bill Gates has questioned the need of Visa restrictions in USA?

HERCULEAN CHANGES
The changes which have taken place in recent times are Herculean. It is beyond human imagination. The changes in the civilization which has taken place in last 100 years could be equaled or even more than the changes which took place in total 1900 century. The person of 19th century or even twentieth century had sufficient time to accept the changes. They had time to study the changes and find the suitability for their life. They used to keep them on trial for a long time and then they used to decide about making them commercial and keeping them for use. In some cases, they used to wait for the practical use of the new invention for generations. The changes which have taken place in last 40 years have hardly given time to human being to breath. They are forced to accept the changes even at their inconvenience and at times physical or mental discomfort. The changes which are expected in next few years will hardly provide any option other than forget the old one especially in few crucial areas.

Housing Conditions - The concept of house in the civilization has changed drastically. Earlier in villages, there were mostly kuchcha houses with few exceptions of brick houses. People were too social animal with very little requirements in and around the house. They were satisfied with four wall concept where they could sit, relax, fight, sleep, produce and rear children, protect themselves from natural disasters and so on. The housing condition has changed almost unimaginable. Today when housing industries being open to world market, Indian in particular and the people from all developed world will have to change there whole concept of housing. They will be forced to change because of inherent compulsions. Today you visit any part of India; there are two kinds of houses. One slum type and other Flat type. We have to select one and that too Flat type of house to provide ICT infrastructure.
Medical and Health care - The kind of medical facilities with the help of ICT which are available to the human of today is something great for the human being. The whole lot of medical facilities is being made available to the people. Earlier people had a different kind of diseases. They had few of them compared to what they are available now. But it is for the betterment of humanity that they are more manageable today. The kind of facilities which have been made available to human in the last few decades, there is a urgent need that the person changes the whole concept of getting treated.
Professional Options - The horizon of the profession has altered drastically. The technological and economic changes have made the profession a different domain altogether. Few years back when beauty shops came in the light, hardly any body had a idea, it would emerge such a big profession for the human being. Today it has matured. Many ladies and gents are working for these shops. Similarly other professions like modeling, stewardship, journalism, fashion designing, entrepreneurship, catering and hospitality management, tourism jobs, services industries and so on have emerged. The sudden emergence of call centers, BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) and other IT related services have changed the concept of working in the society all across the world. These services are so manpower intensive job with so high financial stake that it will almost delete the concept of Gandhian philosophy of Charkha and Chakri. Once, it reaches to small towns and villages, the educated boys, girls, housewives, househusbands and their parents will be forced to change the concept of the jobs search for their benefits and the benefit of the society.
Mode of Communication - Just few years back there was hardly any communication facilities to the people of the developed world. Today the scenario has changed in last ten years. It is going to change further. Initially STD/ISD booths came. People took some time to adjust and realise the changes. They took years to understand the benefits of instant communication. The recent change in the mode of communication has changed so fast that unless we make a drastic change in our whole thinking we will remain aloof from the basic utilization of the available infrastructure to make our life comfortable. With the introduction of IP (Internet Protocol) telephony, the call rate and its availability will change drastically. The introduction of VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) will show a new vision of communication at very affordable price. The sudden introductions in the development of broadband have changed the way we are connected to this world. In spite of slow changes in the Government machinery, the drastic changes are taking place across the technological front. The technology is moving at the speed of Einstein. It will force all Government machinery, private agencies and users to change the way we think to get connected. The broadband will provide instant connectivity to your isolated world in your room to the entire humanity. You will feel the pleasure of getting the world at your feet.
Breaking of languages - In the eighties, there was a huge discussion in all the Institutions across India whether we should study English or not. Even today, there are so much confusion prevailing in India in particular or other developing nation in general. The people have been given a dose of nationality in term of languages. But how far it is advantageous? Is it in a position to give you comfort of knowledge and life? You join any professional Institute; you are forced to study in English. There are hardly any good books available in other languages. All the high level professional books are available in English. There is a tremendous difference in the availability of professional books in English or any other language. Today when you surf the net for the ocean of Information, you are forced to learn, think and act global. The advent of technology has forced the humanity to think about the concept of unification of languages. Even the famous Nobel Laureate, Ravindra Nath Tagore, who wrote many poems and prose in local languages, Bengali was forced to learn and translate his own writings in English to get the wider audiences and recognition, leading to Nobel Prize of literature in 1913.

TECHNOLOGICAL INVENTIONS
Today a simple house needs not only water pipes or electrical wires for its survival or comfort but plenty of other connections. They need gas pipe line in the house so that they need not change the gas cylinder every fifteen days. They need broadband connection to the house for internet connectivity requirements. They needs cable connections to view his favorite channels. They need telephone connection for communication requirements. Can a person ever imagine the list of requirement a simple house needs today? Can these be made available to the people of this generation for the survival? "Early stages of technology--the wheel, fire, stone tools--took tens of thousands of years to evolve and be widely deployed. A thousand years ago, a paradigm shift such as the printing press took on the order of a century to be widely deployed. Today, major paradigm shifts, such as cell phones and the World Wide Web, were widely adopted in only a few years time," Kurzweil wrote in the original essay outlining his famous theory ‘ Kurzweil Law’.

The first 10 years of the 21st century will yield a 20th century's worth of accomplishments.

The kind of changes which are forecast to take place in the years to come will make the human roll on its own invention. The technology which have been adopted in few years time in twentieth century by the human which Kurzweil claims is not really true on ground. The human have not accepted. They have yet to accept for broad acceptability. At times, it appears they have been forced to accept the changes without many options. Otherwise, the human has taken the pain to accept the changes. The person goes to turmoil to accept these technological changes in his normal life. That is the reason of sudden increase in the disease related with hyper tension in normal privileged society. The ten year old daughter when teaches her parents or grand parents, how to surf the net or how to make a call on mobile, it is a trauma to human civilization breaking the generational hierarchy. The twenty years child when become the world’s richest entrepreneur, it changes the social set up. The child is not the father of man only but now the child is the father of teachers, guardians or even boss of a man in real sense.

THEORY OF HUMAN GROWTH
With these introduction and changing technological, economical and social scenario, it is important that unlearn is given due priority to fetch the benefit for the society in general. As Mark Twain said, “Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.” In the changed and complex environment, it is very difficult to define the core issues for the Government agencies or so called e-governance to achieve desired results. It is felt that there are seven crucial factors (SCF) which need deliberation to achieve the objectives.
1. Action and Thinking –In search of truth
2. Fatal Aspirations – Dreaming Big
3. Sex – Core of all relationship
4. God – Ethics and Behaviour
5. Parents – As sow as reap
6. God Father - Support
7. Wisdom Domain – Knowledge source
All these seven crucial factors need be explained in detail through effective communication medium to get better understandings which are keeping the human restricted towards progress. Once these critical issues are clear, people would be in a better position to understand and analyze the effectiveness of E-Governance.

CONCLUSIONS
At the end it is important that E-Governance should be carried out keeping those crucial factors in mind so that they could reach to large sections of the population. The changes in the technological scenario have provided us ample opportunities and tools to eradicate poverty and spread prosperity. The medium like digital, fiber or satellite network could be used to provide connectivity across the country after ensuring the above social requirements and disciplines. The cheap hardware associated with computer peripherals and other devices could be a handy tool for the humanity. The knowledge based system could be developed and spread across the globe to provide advantages over others. Theory of human growth should be given due priority to achieve desired satisfactory goals.

6 ways to reengage midcareer managers

2006-03-12T13:33:00.000+01:00

An article in the Harvard BR of March 2006 by Robert Morison, Tamara Erickson and Ken Dychtwald explores the challenges and the opportunities of reengaging midcareer managers (between ages 35 and 55) in corporations.
Quite a few of these people are either burned out, bottlenecked or bored.
Most interestingly, the authors provide 6 ways to reengage midcareer managers, tapping into their hunger for renewal and a meaningful role:

Give them a fresh assignment, often in a different location or part of the organization.
Offer an attractive internal career change, for example developing a new speciality.
Give them a mentoring, teaching or other knowledge-sharing role.
Give them more fresh training. Do not cut on training for this experienced group.
Offer a sabbatical, taking away cost issues and the fear that this will mark them as less committed than those who don't interrupt their work.
Expand leadership development.

The authors believe it is in the enlightened self-interest of companies to revitalize the careers of these people, because soon there will be a shortage of brains and leadership skills when the boomer retirement wave hits.

How Going Native Could Strangle Your Career

2006-01-18T11:57:00.000+01:00

Edwin Sim recently interviewed with William Barnes of the Financial Times. The following is the story which appeared in the January 12 edition of the Financial Times.

In Thailand, as in other Asian countries, expatriate managers should be aware of the dangers of becoming too deeply rooted in the local working culture.

Hired for their “international skills,” foreign executives usually expect a spell in a country like Thailand simply to broaden their experience and add sparkle to their CVs.

What they do not imagine is that the host country might dull their ambition, alter their managing style, and even tie them down.Yet this happens regularly, and sometimes a promising international career is derailed.

Razor-keen MBAs soon find themselves questioning their own logic, checking aggressive instincts and opting for, in Thailand’s case, the softer local style.

The victim may not realize what is happening until it is too late. He or she likes the place and decides, to get beneath the skin of the culture. Time passes and he or she is no longer the bright newcomer bubbling with the latest ideas from abroad.

Soon they find themselves accepting a smaller expatriate package of benefits; then they discover they must compete for jobs with cheaper local talent who, ironically, easily trump their knowledge of the country.

“My strong advice is to be very careful about spending too long in a place like Thailand. You can be trapped,” says Edwin Sim, managing director of Human Capital Alliance, a Bangkok consultancy.

“It takes only two or three years for multinationals to set up a business platform in a country; after that local professionals can run it. In my last nine years recruiting in Thailand 99 per cent of my clients were looking for locals,” adds Mr.Sim.

Until the 1997 crash Thailand was a hot emerging market that regularly reported double-digit growth, so there were reasons for supposing that Thai-specific knowledge would be valued. Executives who have made that gamble may now wish they had opted to become experts in China, which is shaping up to be a global giant on all counts. Thailand is pleasant but its economy frightens no one.

Managers who succeed in Thailand are often those who have been able to adapt themselves to a complex culture where confrontation is frowned upon, where powerful vested interests must be carefully navigated and where a lack of boldness in employees must be overlooked. Yet these conscientious people may find, when they finally look up, that they have lost the will, or the ability, to engage in the rougher entrepreneurial environment of more important business centres.

“The career books are full of glib advice about moving around. The reality is different. Real people do click with a culture, do have ambition sucked out of them,” says George Morgan, former head of the foreign stockbrokers’ association in Thailand and now an independent analyst and investor.

“Companies all over the world also like to bring in young blood that is cheaper, hungrier and more willing. The consequences for the expat can be drastic. It may be more difficult to slide sideways in an alien environment,” he says.

Expats who have chosen to work in Thailand appear united in thinking nothing wrong with choosing a less glittering career path as the price of shunning international mobility.

“If working in completely different culture doesn’t change you then I’d say it was a complete waste of time coming,” says David Lyman, chairman of Tilleke & Gibbins, a large independent Thai law firm.

“If you stay long enough you find that when you go home everything seems duller. Your friends seem more provincial. Suddenly you miss your new home,” says this American citizen who has not worked in the US for four decades.

What everyone who has worked in Asia seems to agree upon is that even in a world of ever-increasing surface uniformity the region remains difficult to understand. Yet even executives who step outside the expat bubble to try to explore their territory will not be saved if their performance does not match their local knowledge.

Lots of foreign managers lost their jobs in Thailand last year, according to Anthony Ainsworth of headhunter Richard Glynn: “There are lots of manager out there on fat expat package riding on thin profit margins. They are very vulnerable when cost-cutting time comes around.”

Ultimately, every executive will be judged by results and any management style will be acceptable if it is in the company’s favour, says Mr. Ainsworth. An “international” career can be partially protected by not surrendering to destructive local ways. “Executives should fight like hell for their own values and standards. Different should not mean worse,” he says.

Age is a factor. Younger, less encumbered executives appear less prone to being trapped than middle-aged managers who have already tasted something of what the world has to offer and may be tempted to extend their stay. Location is also important. Executives in busy centres such as Hong Kong or Singapore are less likely to fear that their value in the job market is sliding.

But executives of any age will find themselves affected by an exotic new environment. American consultancy Revel Miller found that 40 per cent of repatriated managers left the parent company within three years because they struggled to reintegrate or were frustrated over a lack of recognition.

Individual managers can protect themselves by keeping good communications with their parent company.

To be on the safe side experts advise ambitious executives to restrain foreign work tours to two or three years at a time and keep a beady eye on their ultimate objective. If they expect to do their most important work in London then they should spend more time there or in similar centres rather than in Thailand.

HCA’s Mr. Sim said: “The secret is knowing where you want to be ultimately and to work backwards. Choosing a soft lifestyle with an Asian flavour is fine if this is really where you want to end up.”

William Barnes, Financial Times

Posted by http://www.humancapitalalliance.com

A portfolio approach to HRM

2006-01-02T16:23:00.000+01:00

Companies can not afford to have "A players" in all positions. So businesses need to adopt a portfolio approach to workforce management, systematically identifying their "strategically important A positions", "supporting B positions", and "surplus C positions", then focusing disproportionate resources on making sure A players hold A positions.

Mark Huselid, Richard W. Beatty and Brian E. Becker say in the HBR of Dec 2005 that it is necessary to take a portfolio approach to HRM.

A Positions differ from B and C Positions in:

Strategic impact (big vs. small)
Scope of authority (make autonomous decisions vs. little discretion)
Compensation (performance vs. market price)
Effect on value creation (big - small)
Consequences of msitakes (very costly vs. not)
Consequences of hiring the wrong person (very costly vs. easily remedied)

"Today's competitive environment requires a shift from treating everyone the same (equality) to treating everyone according to his or her contribution.

Such a HRM approach would mean that positions and also people are categorized, primarily for the strategic impact they have. A People then get A Positions and their evaluation, development, compensation and succession are adjusted to their special status.

Thais still wary of joining Thai family companies

2005-08-20T17:05:00.000+02:00

I recently spoke with William Barnes of the Financial Times in Bangkok.

Our conversation focused on the topic of professionals crossing the line, from the "multinational corporations" over to the "Thai family led" businesses.

My contrarian perspective, that there are great opportunities for professionals to lead Thai business families, appeared in his feature story on the Financial Times Asian Edition

{please refer to http://thaiheadhunter.blogspot.com for the story on 9 June 2005}

In Thailand, many Thai business families today are led by second generation scions. They all share a similar mission: to become leading players in their respective markets, domestic, regional, and perhaps global. To achieve their mission, they are actively attracting and retaining the best and the brightest professionals from the leading multinational corporations.

Professional managers leading Asian family businesses onto the global leadership stage? Is it realistic?

To answer this question, perhaps it is worthwhile to look at another continent in another era a long long time ago. William Procter and James Gamble (who were brothers-in-law) decided to go into businesses together selling soaps and candles in Cincinnati in 1837. The company they founded, P&G, is widely recognised to have evolved into one of the biggest and most visible companies in the world through professional managers.

Back to Thailand, several Thai business families are already world leaders in their respective industries, especially in the foods and agri sectors.

And yes, these companies are led by strong management teams comprising of professionals from the global multinational corporations.

Posted by: Human Capital Alliance http://www.humancapitalalliance.com

Changing role of HR

2005-04-05T21:43:00.000+02:00

An interesting thought on the role of HR by John Boudreau and Peter Ramstad in the HBR of April 2005:
As organizations increasingly compete through talent, their investments in human capital will determine their competitive positions. Yet HR's way of managing this key resource stands in sharp contrast to how other organizational functions operate. Marketing, finance, and most other functions have well-developed methodologies for generating the information managers need to make strategic decisions. HR, however, often focuses principally on its own performance, carefully measuring cost per hire, the ROI on its programs, and how its initiatives affect skills and attitudes. It's time for HR to shift its focus from what it does to the quality of the talent decisions it supports. (...) HR should be able to help leaders answer critical questions such as:

Where does our strategy require talent that is better or more plentiful than our competitors?
In what new business ventures do we have a strategic advantage because of our talent?
What talent gaps do we need to close in order to keep our competitive advantage?
Where would a change in the availability or quality of talent have the greatest impact?

Do you agree with Boudreau and Ramstad this is the HR function we need in modern companies? If your company is pioneering in this respect, or if you can share a best practice / methodology that supports the above, be sure to drop a Comment!

Why many HR Managers don't make it to the top

2005-04-05T21:23:00.000+02:00

UCLA management professor Sanford M. Jacoby says in his book "The Embedded Corporation: Corporate Governance and Employment Relations in Japan and the United States" that in Japan HR departments have often been springboards to top executive postings - including CEO - as well as to board membership. Studies from the 1990s showed Japanese CEOs emerging from HR more frequently than from R&D, engineering, or overseas jobs. In addition, one-fifth of directors in Japanese manufacturing firms and one-third of those from other industries claimed past stints in HR.

HR managers in the United States become CEOs or directors only very rarely; so why have they reached the top of the charts in Japan? For one thing, the Japanese consider HR a good place to get to know leaders and managers throughout the organization. But more important, Jacoby explains, Japanese HR managers are often generalists who spend much of their careers in other functions, including accounting, finance, strategic planning, production, and sales. In other words, they are well-rounded, Jacoby says. Perceived as a narrow specialty in the United States, HR in Japan is a place to go to get ahead.
Is HR in the US indeed such a narrow speciality? Or are there other reasons why HRM managers don't make it to the top in the US?

Give your employees two years off!

2005-02-15T20:15:00.000+01:00

People are living younger, so we picture them spending more time in retirement. That's the wrong way to look at longevity according to cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson in this month's HBR.
Instead, you should give your employees in midlife a year or two to renew their energy and pursue new passions.

Many will return to their jobs motivated to embark on a second stage of high performance. The few that don't would be gratefull for their new direction. Also this would help to decrease the toll burnout is taking on companies' productivity and morale.

HR strategy towards ADT?

2005-01-06T14:29:00.000+01:00

The article by Edward M. Halowell (psychiatrist and expert on ADD/ADHT) on ADT in the HBR of Jan 05 was highly revealing to me to understand why so many smart people underperform in todays turbulent corporate world.

ADT is an abbreviation of Attention Deficit Trait, and is caused by brain overload. Main symptoms of ADT are distractability, inner frenzy, and impatience.

This brain overload is in turn caused by the hyperkinetic environment in which many executives live and work. Everywhere, managers rely on cell phones, e-mail, digital assistants, computers in the race to gather and transmit data, plans, and ideas faster and faster. Studies have shown that as the human brain is asked to process dizzying amnounts of data, the human brain switches to panic/survival mode and looses its ability to solve problems flexible and creatively. The number of mistakes increases and the ADT-situation gets worse.

It must be concluded that dealing with ADT seems important and the right thing to do, both from a human and business perspective!

What can be done about ADT? Hallowell provides the following advice:

Promote positive emotions (build a positive, fear-free emotional atmosphere)
Take physical care of your brain (sleep, a good diet, exercise)
Organize for ADT (break down larger task into smaller ones, keep a part of your desk clean, keep a portion of your day free of emails, phones, etc, make a daily list of no more than 5 priority items that will require your attention tomorrow)
Protect your brain from ADT and slow down (take the time you need to comprehend what is going on, to listen, to ask questions, and to digest what's been said. Empower an assistant)
Some specific ADT - tricks and exercises (see the article)

More importantly, for us HR managers, this article means we have to think of a strategy towards ADT, to begin with creating awareness. I have started doing just that... Join me and Comment!

Bestselling strategic HRM Books

2004-12-29T15:16:00.000+01:00

Performance reviews are useless

2004-12-02T11:28:00.000+01:00

"He sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them."

Now that we are approaching the end of the year, the agenda's of Line- and HR Managers all over the world are being flooded with appointments for performance reviews and appraisals. For many people, these annual employee performance reviews are about as much fun as completing their annual tax forms followed by a root canal treatment. As a result many of these annual assessments are conducted extremely poorly and often have a negative effect on employee motivation.

Bearing in mind the science of psychology has learned us that people are basically incapable making fair assessments of other people, I believe it is no wonder that many supervisors put off doing annual performance reviews and it's for the better we skip them altogether.

HC evaluation in management practices

2004-11-24T13:12:00.000+01:00

I'd like to recommend an article by Juanita Elias and Harry Scarbrough in Human Resource Management Journal (2004, Vol. 14 Issue 4) that explores the development of systems of HC evaluation in management practices of 11 large UK firms. The authors start by providing an overview of the term HC in business literature, and state it is widely recognised that firms need to develop mechanisms to determine the value of their employee base.
An extensive HC literature has developed in which the authors propose elaborate systems for measuring a firm's human assets. The article does not seek to offer yet another HC model. Rather, its aim is to examine the management practices through which HC evaluation is undertaken. The findings of Elias and Scarbrough are highlighted as follows.

The preference for internal over external (static accountancy-based) reporting.
The diverse nature of HC evaluation systems that exist across UK business.
Exploring the relationship between practices of evaluation and the role and position of the HR function within the firm.
The implications of the HC perspective for practitioners is addressed, arguing that there is no single formula that can be applied to its evaluation.

The authors go on to suggest that the importance of the HC concept and its measurement may lie in its ability to re-frame perceptions of the relationship between the contribution of employees and the competitive performance of the business.

A cool realistic quote by a Head of Learning of a Telco, interviewed shortly after a meeting with City analysts, is the following:

"Judging from some of the market analysts' questions that I've heard this morning, this says to me that they are a long way off from showing any kind of interest in that kind of information [on HC]... There were six or seven priorities that the CEO listed in terms of focus for our three-year strategy. One of them was motivating people. But there wasn't a single question on motivating people. All the questions were about what are the financial returns on this and that and the other, what is your market performance in this area of the business, when will you get this product to the market. Not a single question on motivating people as a priority. So my judgement from that would suggest that market analysts are still some way off the concept of HC being measured".

IMF paper on HC and Economic Development

2004-09-14T08:51:00.000+02:00

An econometric International Monetary Fund (IMF) study entitled "HC and Economic Development" recommends that countries invest in the education of their citizens in order to ensure stable and sustainable development.

"A country that does not invest in education cannot develop," contends the study.

The study argues that natural resources are time-limited riches, whereas the benefit of an educated society never diminishes. The societal education level is an element that directly affects economic development.

The determining factors in how well-educated a country's citizenry can become are the infrastructure of the education system and the rate of attendance. The IMF study therefore indicates that investment in a modern education system suitable for its citizens should be a country's top priority.

The study also reminds readers that there is intense competition among nations. Only those nations with an educated labor force will be able to compete effectively and produce products and services of high value.

No country has achieved sustained economic development without investment in education. But do all types of HC affect growth identically? And which types of schooling-secondary or tertiary-should public policy promote? The paper develops an analytical framework to address these questions. It shows how the composition of HC stock determines a country's development. Hence, promoting the "wrong" type of schooling can have little effect on development. In addition, the paper helps in understanding why empirical studies have failed to find a significant relationship between schooling and growth.
Download the paper. If you're afraid of formulas you'd better skip the last part :-)

Who thought of the term HC? When?

2004-08-23T09:36:00.000+02:00

Somebody asked me who actually thought of HCM and when. What I do know is that in 1979, Theodore Schultz and Sir Arthur Lewis received the Nobel Price in Economics for their pioneering work in human capital.
At Reuters.com I read that the term "HC" was coined in 1961 by economist Theodore Schultz. Typically, the term is used to describe the value of the investment in training, education, health care and the like that organizations (or countries/regions) are making.
Was Schultz actually the first who used the term? Or does HCM have even older roots?

6 key HCM capabilities

2004-08-04T10:48:00.000+02:00

How do leading companies become masters of managing and developing their HC? According to an Accenture ($&*@#, where's the > above the t on your keyboard) Research Note, they target and exploit critical human performance capabilities such as organizational adaptiveness and stakeholder engagement. In fact, there are six key human performance capabilities which have the greatest bearing on an organization's ability to achieve and sustain a high-performance culture:
• Leadership Depth
• Stakeholder engagement
• Adaptive Organization
• Ability to Change
• HC Return on Investment (ROI)
• Workforce Performance
However, developing leadership depth — and that's just one of these six key capabilities —continues to perplex many organizations that are looking for approaches that are both practical and innovative.

HCM, strategic HRM?

2004-06-24T17:06:00.000+02:00

For decades, human resources executives have been trained to build administrative processes that can function "by the book" and within a budget - not to think strategically about how to invest in, optimize or measure the return on game-changing talent. Now that stock prices and market values are increasingly driven by talent and other intangible capital and now that the competitive strength of companies, social organizations and countries are no longer dominated by physical assets and resources, some people say Human Resources Management has become strategic. Often the term "HCM" is used to describe this shift in thinking. Do you think it is about time HRM managers take an economic value perspective towards their role and the function of employees? Or is treating people like investments and as ways to earn money not desirable?