Jasmine is a sweetheart. She has the best relationships with
all her maids. They love to work with her. In fact when we moved here, it was a
difficult thing for her maids to now search for new jobs. They love her and
want to work with her. Jasmine treats people like they should be – like people.
With dignity and respect. When we moved out Jasmine gave away a lot of things
to the maids. Including extra clothes, cupboards and what not. We even gave
away random old electronic hardware lying around. Sure we could have made more
money simply selling the stuff on ebay but Jasmine and me both reckon that
probably there is more value to be derived from them using it than me getting a
couple of thousand for old loose stuff lying around the house.
She also treats them well, feeds them, gives them tea and
generally takes care of them. So for every Sunday when Jasmine wants the old
maid to come and help her around the house, she comes and then refuses to take
money from her for a couple of hours work. It’s funny to see Jasmine trying to
force them to take money and them running away.
We learn by observing and I learnt how to treat other humans
from other people. My dad, my wife, my bosses and my friends. This is not
something that can be learnt from moral science class in school. You have to
experience and be willing to learn. Different people teach us how to handle
different incidents. As I grew up I was a bit confused on how to treat people. I
had compassion but around me was an India divided by huge chasms. The gap
between the have nots and the haves was wide and there seemed to be an atmosphere
of mistrust. Servants had to be kept an eye on, as they could steal and one
should not intermingle too much. I think slowly as we began growing out of our
disparities we learnt to deal with people.
Possibly also I learnt to deal with people as I grew up and
there was no real economic change as I see it. Whatever be the case. I learnt
to deal with people from other people. I do remember that being a training set.
How to deal with sweet people and how to deal with irritating people. How to
say no, how to cajole and how to reward. Jasmine has taught me a whole lot of
all the people. She doesn’t try and influence people, she doesn’t try and push
them, she just is. She just does what comes to her and people get influenced by
her. They love her and work for her.
What may be my style? I am trying to hard or trying to less
or the fact may be that I am trying, while Jasmine simply is being herself. I don’t
know. But I do know that I try to treat people in way that I have learnt works for
me. This is also basis how people have been with me. I see and I learn.
Learning is an everlasting process without a time line and
structure. In fact structured learning is amongst the worst ways to learn. It surely
tries to accelerate learning but it leaves much to be desired. I was talking to
Jispa the other day. She goes for the international curriculum at school, which
is far more advanced than what I had in school. She has critical thinking, an ability
to reason and a freedom to write her mind. Her exams are more on experience,
perspective rather than memory and rote. It’s lovely. But it’s only as lovely
as the teacher makes it out to be. Awesome teachers make the classroom and the
subject more interesting and the irritating ones make the subject boring. Some
try and only explain how to attack the question paper and write things that are
designed to get marks. There goes the studies.
That’s the problem with a structured education – it seeks to
impart and then measure. While measuring it seeks to rank. To rank it needs a
certain set of guidelines, schemes and structures for uniformity. There – we have
reached a point where the twain are at odds with each other. It is now by
definition doomed to failure. Should I learn for marks or should I learn for what
I want to learn. I am screwed.
Yesterday with a friend we were discussing education and
courses. My view was that it’s asking for way too much to get a child to figure
what they want to do by the time they are 15 or 17. I didn’t know what my
calling was till I was at least 25 years old. How can we ask for choice in
these circumstances, so early of them? But the costs are high of wrong choice
and the pressures, real. How does this work?
Forget. Right now I am trying to solve the leaking roof in
the dry area from the flat above. It’s fun trying to decipher the leakage
source, especially when it involves flooding that balcony with water and being Sherlock
Holmes. Then taking a few calls and trying to be intelligent about things that
you are so not really trained to do. Why didn’t we have carpentry, woodwork, masonry
and other such base skills being taught in schools? A few classes of PT rubbish
could have clubbed into this and we could have all been better off. The
mechanics of a car, the innards of a toaster, the joy or raising a farm. Real
life skills that allow you to work with your hands and give you immense
satisfaction. Thye could have atleast taught us basic gardening, if not growing
wheat. Or even now, a simple course on growing strawberries on the roof top
garden… ok even parsley or basil growing would have been fun.
But this is not to be. I had a shitty education only
redeemed by the fact that amazing women and a few amazing men wanted to teach
as that was their choice. They loved us and we loved them back. They spoke to
us, explained and inspired us. I am so happy that over that last 16 years I have
done my little bit to alleviate boredom in the classrooms. Some little joys. In
the process of helping people discover themselves, I discovered a whole lot
about me. A WHOLE LOT.
There is so much to learn from everyone and everything. A
few years ago when the founder of the bank I worked in, was given a kabaddi
team to own and manage, he turned to the marketing head and he in turn, turned
to me. I jumped at the opportunity. I had in my team a marketing resource who
was ready to work on it with me. Later on, I migrated him full time into the
team and now is the CEO of the team. Yesterday when I met him at the match
venue, it was amazing to see him grow into an independent manager and he had
managed through the force of his strong will and extremely amiable personality
to run the fortunes of the team around. While being a part of this team’s
journey and process, I too learnt a lot about the complex business of sports
and the even more complex business of talent management.
When the coach and the captain are at cross roads who do you
back? The answer is not so easy. When you have to choose one, who do you
choose? The Indian cricket team was at this dilemma some time back. They had a
captain who was young, aggressive and energetic. A player who might finish as
one the greatest ever and a team who was moving into a brand of aggressive
cricket, not seen by Indians before. This cricketer, Virat was given a free
hand and he set upon destroying and rebuilding the team in his aggressive
mould. He was the first captain we saw in a long time who decided to play 5
bowlers in a test match. This is serious aggression. The norm was to go in with
4 bowlers so that you can pack an extra batsman. Batsman typically help you
consolidate your match while a bowler is what you go for when you want to force
the game. Batsman react and defend and then wear down the opposition to win you
the match. A bowler in a test match plots to get the batsman out and win the
match. Bowlers are the artillery and batsmen are the moat for a test match.
Then news filtered out from the dressing room that the
captain was not getting along with the coach. The coach was Anil Kumble,
possibly one of the greatest players of the game. He was not too long ago an
aggressive leg spinner with a different bowling style and was India’s go to man
in any match situation. Leg spinners are an aggressive wily breed. They have
deception, flight and variation; plus they love getting hit. The more a legspinner
gets hit the more he loves it as that increases the chances of getting wickets.
Also Anil Kumble for the first Indian test captain to start giving it back to
the Aussies real hard and in Australia. He took on a side that was being built
in the aggressive mold by Ganguly and then pushed it over before turning it to
his successor. He added discipline, team work and aggression to the team.
Then immovable object met unstoppable force. When Virat and
Kumble sparred, the board was forced to choose. They choose Virat. Kumble was
asked to leave and another ex indian captain, known to leave a lot to the
captain was taken in by the team. Which is the mot question. Who is the boss?
Is it the coach or is it the captain. Cricket is different from football. In football,
its not that important to have a great inspirational captain. You cant really
control the pace of the game and strategize while at play. You practice set
pieces and then the team executes them on the field. Cricket is almost all
captain. The captain makes a decision every ball. He has the ability to set the
field, make bowling changes and give instructions to the bowler every ball. He
can decide to force the pace of the game or slow it down. He controls the
batting order and keeps the strategy flowing. A captain is integral to the team
and the coach has limited role to play while the match is in flow.
Kabaddi is also a bit of that. Every raid or defense, the
captain controls the team on the mat. My kabbadi team is in a similar dilemma.
We have had our share of captains and coaches. The moot question is facing us
right now. Who is the boss? The captain or the coach. Who is the boss? We face
this dilemma in office as well. It’s the work ethic versus the personality
ethic question. Who is right?
The role of the star player is to perform but within the
strategy of the coach. In kabaddi the coach very clearly told the star captain
– don’t attempt the bonus against the corners, there are ankle specialists
there. The captain promptly went and did just that and got out – twice. So now
what happens? Who gets the boot? The coach or the star.
There is no easy answer to this. I have my answers but I
also know in my heart that they are not so black and white, and definitely not
easy. It comes from a perspective of the immediate ambition or long term
health. My answer is easy – you have to know what the system that you are
trying to create. To me the right answer is that the coach is the absolute
total authority and that he manages the team and the strategies and that he is
the right person in such situations. I have always believed that process over
personality in the long run. But that also means that I have by definition
removed the personality from flourishing. That is a serious mistake to make. If
you remove the personality then all you get is clones who are designed to
simply follow orders and commit themselves to the process. This is the start of
the bureaucracy. Look at me. I want the process for everyone but I want
personality for myself. Such a two faced ass I turned out to be. Personalities
are important as they take society forward, they take companies forward, they
break norms and they challenge status quo. But Process is important it brings
predictability to the process and they have the ability to give consistent
results. The theoretical answer to this that the coach’s job is to put in a
process that people follow but also allow personalities to emerge and flourish.
There, so easily said. But so difficult to follow through.
In fact I think it’s impossible to do it. The problem is this is so easy and
apparent in hindsight. Hindsight. It is impossible to see it coming when you
are leading the pack in a certain direction. This is the bleeding edge of
leadership and team dynamics. How to allow mavericks to perform within
bureaucracy – consistently. Now that I look at myself, I don’t understand what
I am. I am a personality and a process guy all rolled into one. I want process
but I also know that personalities exist and for a good reason. For myself, I
allow my personality to flourish and manifest in various situations at various
points of time. But at the same time I firmly believe in the power of process
to make things work. The ability to constantly follow a norm and a pattern so
as to get the efficiencies of scale and predictability. The plan must work.
Like a bowler who consistently bowls a nagging line outside the off stump to
irritate the batsman more than getting him out. Or a batsman – like me who was
not so good in the A team but played a 45 over match. Here we scored heavily in
the 20 over but lost wickets and I got my batting as the 8th or 9th
batsman in the 22nd over. I batted like a joker and refused to play
any shots as my job at that time was simple – bat out the 45 overs and tire and
frustrate the opposition. That’s process and personality for you. I made the
process of shutting out the game and not playing my natural style for 23 overs
my personality. Process over personality.
This is one of the yo yo issues. As I said before, the cop
out is to say – know when to use what. Or even better – the process must allow
for mavericks to be within the process and shine. All this is easy consultant
speak and impossible practical implementation. Managing people is an art and
science at the same time. That’s why at different times, different people
emerge as ideal leaders. Some do well in a crisis and some do well in peace.
The trick is in understanding one from the other. Not in selecting one from the
other – just a simple understanding. Because no matter what you select the odds
of selecting eth right one is like tossing a coin. You have no real clue on
what is really going to work. In hindsight it all comes out insightful and
there are learnings to take on board. Going in – it’s impossible to know what
to do.
Yet the belief for me is – process still counts. Push for
process as without it you are doomed to fail. You cannot scale and you cannot
build consistency. As for personality – at all times look to nurture
personality. Allow for idiosyncrasies. Allow them to grow without disrupting
too many people. They can disrupt the process but not the people alongside.
They are important as they are the only ones who can bring about meaningful
change. The others follow. Both have their own place in the sun. Balancing the
two is a fine act. There comes the tyranny of ‘or’ versus ‘and’. Very few
people can manage ‘and’, for the most of us it is an ‘or’ choice. That’s why
when people manage ‘and’, magic happens. That’s why we have so few of these
cases and that’s the reason when it happens, history gets rewritten.
As I have grown older I have realized that I am an ordinary
mortal soul in the universe. I may not be destined for greater things. I am a
simple father setting in motion a set of things for others to build out of. I
see no greatness and I have no pretense of one. It will be difficult to do /
achieve anything spectacular. In office, I am sure there are 30,000 people who
love to be one day reach my level. But that is not greatness or anything to be
proud of. It’s a passage of time with common sense.
When I was much younger, I shudder to think of what a hot
headed dumb bum I was. Now I know I am a little less of it. I may still be dumb
headed but at least I have the wisdom to acknowledge it and hence learn from
it. Can you really change so much. I don’t know. May be not. May be you can
reduce the intensity but when your guards are down you will again show your
real side.
This does sound like a little bit of a depressed post with
little hope for change. I don’t mean it to be thus. It is a reflection of the
little mental setbacks that I am getting these days, I guess. It’s just a way
to make up for the optimism that I have exhibited in some of my past posts. I
think I have written, rather naively about the belief that people can change
and that managing people is a simple equation and a question of behavior. I
guess it’s not. It’s far more complex than this. People will not change so
easily and the group dynamics are far too complex than anything else. Possibly
right now, I am in a zone that says, that the answers are complex and that
opposites may not reconcile so easily.
Eesh. I now understand why older men are wiser and
understand discretion to valor equation. I am growing older and the only wiser
thing I know is that no one can really get much wiser …hehehe.
The last lecture someone asked me about the posturing that
India Pakistan was doing across borders. There was a terrorist attack on a
military base in India and India retaliated by conducting ‘surgical’ strikes
across the border on alleged camps. Uff… that was just the thig to get me
started off. A long short history about right wing governments versus leftists
and the centers. How right wing governments thrive on conflict and the perceived
threat perception from an outsider.
I just explained how the marketing theory will typically
right wing governments. Why there is always some escalation of conflict that
rallies a population when right wingers are in power. For some reason – there was
Kargil war after which in the election they could cobble up a majority for a
relatively stable coalition.
In the second term
there were the ‘attacks’ on the Indian Parliament. Some believe that these were
staged.
“We know this much:
On December 13, 2001, the Indian Parliament was in its winter session. (The NDA
government was under attack for yet another corruption scandal.) At 11.30 in
the morning, five armed men in a white Ambassador car fitted out with an Improvised
Explosive Device drove through the gates of Parliament House. When they were
challenged, they jumped out of the car and opened fire. In the gun battle that
followed, all the attackers were killed. Eight security personnel and a
gardener were killed too.
The dead terrorists,
the police said, had enough explosives to blow up the Parliament building, and
enough ammunition to take on a whole battalion of soldiers. Unlike most
terrorists, these five left behind a thick trail of evidence – weapons, mobile phones, phone numbers, ID cards,
photographs, packets of dry fruit, and even a love letter.
Not surprisingly, PM
A.B. Vajpayee seized the opportunity to compare the assault to the September 11
attacks in the US that had happened only three months previously.
On December 14, 2001,
the day after the attack on Parliament, the Special Cell of the Delhi Police
claimed it had tracked down several people suspected to have been involved in
the conspiracy. A day later, on December 15, it announced that it had
"cracked the case": the attack, the police said, was a joint
operation carried out by two Pakistan-based terrorist groups, Lashkar-e-Toiba
and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
Twelve people were
named as being part of the conspiracy. Ghazi Baba of the Jaish (Usual Suspect
I), Maulana Masood Azhar also of the Jaish (Usual Suspect II); Tariq Ahmed (a
"Pakistani"); five deceased "Pakistani terrorists" (we still
don't know who they are). And three Kashmiri men, S.A.R. Geelani, Shaukat
Hussain Guru, and Mohammed Afzal; and Shaukat's wife Afsan Guru. These were the
only four to be arrested.
In the tense days
that followed, Parliament was adjourned. On December 21, India recalled its high
commissioner from Pakistan, suspended air, rail and bus communications and
banned over-flights. It put into motion a massive mobilisation of its war
machinery, and moved more than half-a-million troops to the Pakistan border.
Foreign embassies evacuated their staff and citizens, and tourists travelling
to India were issued cautionary travel advisories. The world watched with bated
breath as the subcontinent was taken to the brink of nuclear war. (All this
cost India an estimated Rs 10,000 crore of public money. A few hundred soldiers
died just in the panicky process of mobilisation.)”
--
And then somewhere else in the article she argues
“On the basis of this illegal confession
extracted under torture, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were moved to the Pakistan
border at huge cost to the public exchequer, and the subcontinent devolved into
a game of nuclear brinkmanship in which the whole world was held hostage.
Big
Whispered Question: Could it have been the other way around? Did the confession
precipitate the war, or did the need for a war precipitate the need for the
confession?”
Wow. That was two nuclear powers eye balling each other! Let
that sink in for some time.
Now this time around as well, we have some posturing and in the
‘surgical’ strike one army crossed the border, ‘destroyed’ camps and came back.
This was celebrated in the media and everyone in India rejoiced that finally as
a country we have teeth. Jingoism all around you!
And now look at the centrist party. When they came to power,
they implemented socialist schemes with a gusto. Right to education, right to
food and right to employment. The last one was “MNREGA – the world’s largest workfare programme - formed the backbone
of the UPA government’s anti-poverty programme, and may well represent its most
important legacy in the long run.”
- See more at:
http://www.ideasforindia.in/article.aspx?article_id=292#sthash.1WVnU4gw.dpuf”
In the last paragraph the article states “It is no surprise therefore that MNREGA
helped UPA gain re-election in the 2009 general elections. There is detailed
RD-based evidence showing that UPA reaped electoral benefits from rolling out
MNREGA in 2009, and that MNREGA budgetary allocations across districts and
blocks have been manipulated in certain states to increase these benefits. “
So yes in the end, it’s up to you to weigh the substance of the
propaganda and the schemes thrown at you. You can’t accept anything blindly.
I explained all of this to the class. In marketing I keep
teaching, the first thing is to understand yourself and your brand and understand
what it is that you are selling. Similarly if you are a consumer, you have to understand
who is it that is selling something to you. What they seem to be selling versus
what they are selling. Political parties are amongst the most dependent on marketing
for survival. They have to understand their core philosophy so as to keep their
core base intact and after that they go after the fence sitters. Without a
detailed and vivid understanding of who they actually are, no political party
can hope for long term survival. Funnily worldwide the philosophies seem to
converge across three types – viz right left and center. The core principals
are also very similar across. Rights tend to favor minimal government and are
pro-business, while the center tries to lean left and increase governance and
welfare for the underprivileged. The left of course, worldwide is stupidly
rigid and completely veering towards state owned. You can understand world
economics, trade, politics and news through the interplay of these thoughts and
ideals.
So when the world is going bonkers and you have strong ideas
on what is wrong and right and you want to box the crap out of your neighbors,
sure, do so, but think again. Or as Arundhati Roy in the article says very very
nicely – “To hang Mohammed Afzal without
knowing what really happened is a misdeed that will not easily be forgotten. Or
forgiven. Nor should it be.
Notwithstanding the
10% Growth Rate.”
The last line is the hardest hitting one that she has
written. It’s a dig at the right wing which normally is super pro-business and
pro-growth. The growth rate is an important metric on which they win votes and allegiance.
Yes – you have the freedom to vote right, left or centre. You
have and must exercise the freedom to shout slogans, support war, surgical
strikes, place of worship or whatever you want to do in a peaceful non violent
way. You have the right to spew vitriol and choose sides. But all I tell the
kids that I teach – listen carefully, not just to the message but also to the
carrier and the originator? Within this itself there are many, multiple
agendas. Look carefully!
It also amazes me that how much of a pacifist I have become.
From a mother India lover who wanted to join the army and serve the motherland,
I have become a skeptic. The fun bit is that I don’t know when this happened. No
I am not disillusioned with the politicians of the country. That doesn’t work
me up. We deserve the jokers we elect. Public service is very difficult, taxing
and definitely not rewarding (if you are honest). We make life difficult for
the guys doing public service. We believe that all problems come to their
doorstep and we absolve ourselves of any solution. It also doesn’t help that
most people in public service drive their own agendas and their own ways of
doing things. They don’t allow for participation and block everything else. But
yes, people inherently are to blame for the shit they get.
I have been involved with the Swimming pool of the gymkhana
as an office bearer. It is a dam tough thing to do. People have strong agendas
and counter agendas. They don’t help when needed but come across to criticize
whatever you do. I think a few years of public service should be a must for
anyone. Once that’s done you will do a better job of discharging your duties as
a citizen, benefitting the collective whole.
But yes – I have over a period of time become an agno-
nationalist. I don’t care about your nationality or mine. What I care about is
how humans react to one another and treat each other. How people have to get
involved in how they debate and conduct themselves in public. These are simple
and important principals from which I want to draw the line. I love my city and
my country but not in a jingoistic way. I love how my culture and my thought
has been shaped by our geography and our history. I know what I am by knowing
my past. But I also know that I have to shape my future and that of the
generations to come from me. It cannot be shaped by propaganda but by listening
to logic and to question everything. It can come from a deeper understanding of
people and their emotions and their selfish interests. It comes from within. I
have been lucky to be in marketing. It helps me understand the core of human behavior
and their motivations. It makes me skeptic and dreamer at the same time. It is
interesting.
In the aftermath of the terror attacks, Pakistani artistes
are being singled out and have been asked leave the country. Producers have
been told not to take them in their movies or songs. There is enough indian
talent they say.
Here, listen to this absolutely amazing cover by a Pakistani
band. Tell me, if they come to India and play a song, how would we not end up
being enriched? Would we be poorer? But hell, thanks to youtube, they are
broadcast across the world. I just love the song, the cover version which I argue
is better than the original. I love the sitar notes which reverberate through the
song giving it a strong constant sound lending a kind of stirring to the guitar.
The crisp tabla creates an interesting contrast to the more muffled drums used.
The contrast and the richness is there to be heard. Like Indian classical
jugalbandi style, every instrument is given its two minutes of solo with the
rest giving it beat support. This takes a song that was essentially a solo to a
group effort, making it unforgettable. Seriously brilliant.
While watching TV over the weekend, we chanced upon Haider.
Haider is an adaptation of the Hamlet and Jispa with her new found love for English
thanks to her amazing teacher Mrs Ayesha Thomas was keen to see the Shakespeare
adaptation. We had seen Omkara, the Othello adaptation together and now Hamlet.
It’s fun watching the movie with her. I had to explain certain parts of it and
the language is a bit difficult for her to pick up completely on her own. But nevertheless
it was awesome fun. At the end of the movie, we went through Wikipedia to
understand the original story better and therefore to better appreciate the
adaptation. While reading the explanation, I chanced upon this paragraph that
explains all that I have written so far in this blog – “The idea that nothing
is real except in the mind of the individual finds its roots in the
Greek Sophists, who argued that since nothing can be perceived except
through the senses—and since all individuals sense, and therefore perceive
things differently—there is no absolute truth, but rather only relative truth”
