May the fables be told from recent times

A few definitions to get things into perspective:

A fable is a short story, typically with animals as characters, conveying a moral.

A kingdom is a piece of land that is ruled by a king or a queen. A kingdom is often called a monarchy, which means that one person, usually inheriting their position by birth or marriage, is the leader, or head of state.

Over the years, development in trade and technology ‘pushed’ monarchs to improve or acquire skills to stay relevant. Sounds like a need per survival of the ‘perceived’ fittest theory, but our fables have celebrated the ‘ability to acquire’ too irrespective of the outcome.

Call it uncertainty or insecurity of the times ahead, but in the times of monarchy, succession planning was thought of pretty-early in life. Heir was put into a training program much early in childhood and fables formed a crucial part of successor’s development. They spoke about experiences, value adds, valor, behaviors, failures and triumph to help human process the information received through experiences and take decisions on the go. I have consciously put failures first because that is what we expect more of during the times of epidemic.

Fables have been a mode to express an afterthought (note - may or may not be the same every time) that led to a positive outcome. It is important to appreciate that the correlation was never well researched through. We never told fables around pattern of actions that led to those morals and then the ‘possible outcome’. Without that pattern we could never really come up with a starting point to build an algorithm, an algorithm that can help commoditize the moral, a starting point to perhaps predict an outcome. And that is how fables give one a flexibility to be ‘happily ever after’ irrespective of the situation one experienced or a role one played. One could be a poor farmer and be a ‘happily ever after’, one could be an aspiring student without a possible reach to best of the education system and still be a ‘happily ever after’ by taking an alternate path to acquire a skill, one could be a lady fending for needs of the house without any formal knowledge and be a ‘happily ever after’.

Let’s fast forward from the time of monarchy and ponder over the topic most sought after these days i.e. the future of skills. Let me attempt to summarize plethora of information on future of skills. These are the skills that are hardest to understand and systematize, and the skills that give — and will continue to give —humans an edge over robots. While technical proficiency is an obvious and evolving need, it’s critical that people also cultivate so-called “human skills,” And they should feel that they can use their own brain power and experience to actually mold their jobs as we go forward, to adapt at the pace of change.

To my mind it’s a vicious circle of the skills needed during an age. It’s a cycle repeating itself from the times of monarchy, or perhaps earlier than that. But we are certainly in the need of fables of ‘current times’ that people can relate with. We need new age heroes (not super-heroes, kings or queens) to help build those non-systematic skills. Can we crowd source fables from the real-life experiences we all have today? Fables from not just the wins but losses too (that we seem to have more of today)? Can the bed-time stories for our kids be borrowed more and more from such fables?

Once upon a time there was a queen, queen of her little shop that sold bakery items. The epidemic hit and her ovens cooled off………but she persisted because she could take online baking classes! Something she never thought of before.

Once upon a time there was a king, king of his family with a wife, two kids and ailing mother. The epidemic hit them, and he lost his job………but he survived because he never considered any job small (a phenomena that hit us in widely spreading corporate culture).

Reference:

https://hbr.org/2019/09/are-you-developing-skills-that-wont-be-automated

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/kingdom/

Art of being ‘Simply Put’

There is one type of categorization of people: Too Theoretical/ Too Task oriented (Practical in other words). Both can demean one’s calibre if tagged so, but how does one really achieve the middle path (ideal path as one will understand?)

I have been thinking about it a lot of late i.e.  how do I decide for myself whether I am too practical/ too theoretical? And which is better to adopt, and under what circumstances?

Luckily I watched a movie today, and loved it for the heroic acts of protagonist trying to rescue a little girl separated from her parents who belonged to the neighbouring country. The challenge was not only to overcome the hurdles posed by the two countries at war, but also to be at constant fight with self against the deeply ingrained values and beliefs. He kept on re-iterating to self that he couldn’t do anything in hiding.

He appeared to be too innocent to actually achieve his objective with that belief since crossing the border is a humungous task, especially when the two countries are at war, when there is so much miss-trust in the air, when there are so many examples of blood-shed and apathy from either side.

However, think of it in a ‘naïve’ manner – isn’t it just about taking a small step and be on the other side of the artificial ‘line’? Well at least the movie turned out to be like that when the actor got successful in crossing the border by simply telling the truth and clarifying what his intent was. It obviously took lot of courage and trust to be able to do so but he ended up  being successful.

And I got lured to apply it at workplace. Don’t you feel it happens often in a team set up that even before it gets on to the actual task, each individual build his/ her own version of how complex the work is going to be? There are so many pre-conceived inhibitions that completing a particular activity looks like an impossible task.

The most important task therefore, even before you start rolling any task to the team is to simplify it and that is where the maximum hard work needs to go. Yes, Simplicity takes work but the end result is a focussed team that knows exactly what to do in the simplest manner. And that simplest is what I would call the middle path! – Neither Too Theoretical, nor too task oriented, but ‘Simple’ that otherwise requires the maximum understanding of a subject, and a detailed planning too.

Quoting the two geniuses below, the same has been valued both by a philosopher and a scientist that may perhaps highlight the value of simplification in two mutually independent fields

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated” – Confucius

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough” – Albert Einstein

So simplify for yourself, your business, and for your audience. It cuts through the noise and great results follow.

 

What is in the Name? Well, Everything!

A young girl, new job and it’s her first day in office - all on her own after a week’s induction program. Smartly dressed in her well ironed formals, here she enters with a confident smile to deliver her best. I am the HR business ‘partner’ and 'we' will deliver our best, she tells herself with all the excitement. 

(We – here refers to business and support together and there is a reason why this has been kept in bold, will be clearer to you as we move along)

Take 1 – Time-Camera-Action!

Here she opens the laptop and the first mail that she sees reads something like this –

“Hope you are fully into action now. I want to get this report in 2 days’ time as I can’t let my business suffer! You guys need to gear up quick please”

‘My business’? She repeats…..n whoosh goes her “We” perception and now it becomes ‘they v/s us’!

Take 2 – Time – Camera – Action!

Tring Tring…rings her landline and with all the excitement she picks it up “Hello Good morning!”
The other side speaks “O hello Good morning and welcome to the team. I am your business head and have been looking forward to meet you. I have many pain areas to share with you and I am sure we will partner well to overcome those! Welcome to the team, also tomorrow is our business review – do join even if you don’t understand everything at the first place”

“O well thanks a lot! Look forward to see you!”

Hell yes! I have a job to do now! She beams

Both the above scenes are just a 2 minute takes and will never get noticed in our fast paced office lives but do you notice the impact it can have on the minds of young people/ new joiners in any organization? And that builds into forming the culture.

On one hand when we are stressing so much on mental harmony that organic food is becoming part of our lives and Yoga is being recognized as International Yoga Day, does our adult working group really need the fancy ad-hoc outings, dinners, team building meetings to deliver common results? I wonder, and this thought somewhere gets deeper seeped in when I talk to my colleagues, friends and acquaintances.

We really don’t need to spend so much of money and time in organizing big events to get people out of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. (The prisoner's dilemma is a canonical example of a game analysed in game theory that shows why two purely "rational" individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so). We need simple interventions on the floor that can work magic.

ü  Learning from schools, may be the trick our teachers would play with tired kids on middle of the day. Sit/Stand/Sit/Sit/Stand! And kids would burst out laughing. Also, making two extremely opposite kids sit together so that they can build tolerance if not friendship. What is so scientific about it?

ü  Let’s push back a little more into history. We have heard about big battles with huge armies on either side. What led to the strong mind-set that people from all the teams (archers, shooters, and wrestlers) would get ready to lay lives for the king? Was there any team building intervention? I feel it was more the feeling of oneness with the goal and oneness with the spirit to achieve that. It was not ‘you v/s me’ but ‘us v/s they’. How did that get developed? By walking together along the tough terrains, by helping each other out in camping, cooking and by fighting enemies. That would gradually develop into a trust that one will be taken care of by the team members if injured/ even dead.

Simple daily chores can bring in such sense of connectedness, and then why not apply it in day to day corporate lives?

Discover and experiment in on the Spot Employee Engagement with your teams and see the change.

The Idea is, that when a sales department hears about ‘Human Resource’, it doesn’t feel it’s yet another enabling department (and needs to be pointed out for all wrong doings). It is the scenario when one department doesn’t simply nullify the contribution other department has to make and acknowledges to the quees What is the name (of department)? Well, Everything!

Big Data Check: Are you into a Rubik’s Trap?

Well I am little anxious in writing this one down, because I fear being seen as someone deviant from the HOT trend – the trend of Big Data. For those still untouched by the term - ‘Big Data’ is extremely large data sets that may be analysed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to human behaviour and interactions.

The bug is so strong inside me too (that explains why I should be anxious in writing this) that I fear when I may lose the sense of it reaching the tipping point and instead get into the RUBIK trap i.e. the analysis which is

• Redundant
• Unwanted
• Blind
• Isolated and only meant for
• Killing Time!

Let me bring in some lighter context. Last Friday 
, I visited one Chinese restaurant, and trust me, I had a hard time analysing and choosing from the various options available on the menu. The ingredients put into the dish sounded exotic, but the detailing was too much that somewhere the dish itself lost its essence. I got into the zone of cutting apart the dish to analyse and find out the exact ingredients, quantity and which one tasted better, and whether it actually did match with the list on the menu? Frankly after a hefty bill payment, I was left hungry. I should have rather gone to a local joint and had my ‘chowmein’ recommended by many of my friends. Oh! How I lost my purpose in between!

I have some brief moments of similar experience at the work place (often I am the culprit too) that we just bring in huge dependance on the data, sub data, sub-sub data that the conclusion drawn could have otherwise been advised by any experienced, or a seasoned professional as they say, in much lesser time. Are we (organizations) stopping to lay any focus on that asset – the power of Blink?

“There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.”

―

Malcolm Gladwell

Or is it that with growing dependance on data we are losing the sense of mutual trust and collaborative risk taking? And gradually losing the accountability too?

The data is definitely required but we should be aware when we reach the tipping point and get involved in our own islodated Rubik’s cubes and end up building complexities in our own world (read work stations).

The topic is too broad for me to make any conclusive statements right now but I can leave you with one thought – when is the last time you took your team out for dinner, away from their Rubik cubes, just for them to have the free mind space to do some intuitive discussions and innovate?

Corporate Sports(Wo)men

 

You know how my dad would describe me? It’s not about my education or awards or the good corporate job I hold today, or just anything else which I presume he should be proud of more. He will always recall “Well my daughter is someone who would ride on a bicycle to school at the age of 6, bravely crossing the traffic chocked lanes and the main roads and carrying her loaded school bag on her feeble shoulders!”

Today it makes all the sense to me and hence the reasons to pen this down, more for myself to never forget the important lessons/ experiences. I am not a great achiever yet, against all possible ‘scales of success’ built by mankind. But more importantly, I feel happy, content and joyful as the day ends every day.

One simple reason why I feel lucky to be part of Generation X in India, and in a middle class ambitious family, is to get to play on the streets with zeal to win almost every time! And I think it continued till the major part of my student life – irrespective of the heat, time of the day, and the nature of sport – yes I have done everything –  be it cricket, kite flying on the terrace in Indian Summers, football, kho-kho, kabaddi , you name it and I would have enjoyed every bit of it. Let me not forget to mention that the teams were gender diverse! Not that I paid any heed at that point of time, but it seems it is a big hype these days – on improving gender diversity at work place.

It’s been almost a decade since sports disappeared from my life almost gradually with higher education, then my first job and then the quest to ‘settle down’. ‘Settle down’ because everyone has to, but now both my husband and I have begun to realise – why do we really need to ‘settle down’ when all we learnt during our formative years was to just craze around. And now we choose not to settle down ever!

And I want to link this thought to our daily jobs too. I wonder why despite the absence of appraisals, bell curves, increments – we end up feeling less joyful than getting screwed or hurt while losing in a particular sport. Why is it that despite all the stress on team building, OD interventions – we end up feeling more isolated than we feel when we have to just run to the ground, together, and make that goal happen!

What changes? What changes between a sports’ field and an office that we actually end up feeling more drained, less excited and perhaps less energetic too when otherwise the materialistic gains are much higher in the later? This is not to say that we should all just hang our coats and run towards the fields but is there anything that can be brought in from the fields to work place/ in our smaller work groups?

I could think of riding on a joyful “CART”. May be you would have read about the same in different writings, but linking it to sports perhaps explains the prefix joyful!

·         Joyful “C”ompetitiveness:  I don’t remember I ever had the feeling of jealousy/insecurity while competing on the ground, yet I had the maximum zeal to win it there! I do notice a brief moment of such competitiveness at workplace too and I have always come back winning in it, leaving the surroundings also so positive

·         Joyful “A”cceptance: Acceptance of failures with equal grace or the sportsmanship as they say. Have you ever fallen on the field and not got up because you are hurt? Pretty Self Explanatory

·         Joyful “R”esilience: When I would get OUT with a ZERO in cricket, the only thought that would cross me – see you when I bowl mate! I just looked forward to how I can turn around the game. I never felt too proud or too grim with the results, but I always ended up feeling joyful and with the zeal to do ever better!

·         Joyful “T”ogetherness: I personally feel it’s a myth that one can create togetherness from team building exercises and building artificial scales of relative performance. Quoting from the recent study referred to in HBR – Neither you, nor any of your peers are reliable raters of anything. I feel I end up doing my best when there are no associated awards for performing well

I am aware that above can be critiqued well with heavy data points on premise of business connectedness, but I feel that at the ground level – it’s how you end up feeling for your job and reward yourself first before someone else puts you on a scale of relativity!

My dad never rewarded me with chocolates or anything for my bicycle stint at 6, he just marvelled and felt elated watching me enjoy my speeding bike! and therefore one of my favourite quotes:

 “Somewhere behind the athlete you've become and the hours of practice and the coaches who have pushed you is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back... play for her. - Mia Hamm