Intelligence, Talent and Character

I have often contemplated on how connected –or not -are these three attributes of intelligence, talent and character.

A recent detailed story on Ritesh Agarwal had me mulling over this again. Ritesh, for those who may not have heard of him, is that perfect, prodigal son that every Indian parent yearns for. Born and raised in a small town in Orissa, he started coding software at eight. He was one of the young stars selected for the pre-collegiate Asian Science Camp. By 17 he had authored a best-selling book and had become the youngest CEO in India. By 19 he had gotten angel investment and today the company is valued at Rs 360 crore. In the meanwhile, he also got a prestigious scholarship.

But there’s another side to this story. Ritesh doesn’t seem unduly perturbed by what is ‘right’. So he ditched a partner when he got a bigger break. He promoted the company to angel investors, plumping up the actual figures. He had tie-ups with just 30 small hotels, he claimed 3000 because ‘it is done this way’. He lied about several things along the way. When the valuation grew, he dodged his partner to get him to sign away his shares.

As the story unfolded because of a nosey journalist, other lies have surfaced: He never got selected for the ASC. Neither did his book become a best seller.

The angel investors continue to believe in his ‘youth and passion’ maybe because of the money they have put in. But the question here is: Why do we often think intelligence or talent are synonymous with character?

This is typically what parents do when looking for a groom or companies do when looking for salespeople. Let a brilliant academic record come to them and parents often get totally mesmerised. Any character anomaly is condoned or wished away with ideas like, “He will change”. Not surprising that there are as many domestic violence cases amongst the educated as among the unlettered.

This is a familiar note even in the corporate space. Just the other day, a senior professional whom I met, agreed that if a fellow was bringing in good sales, many other fundamental things were ignored.

Now the other way round…

Why should I expect a talented cricketer to have the altruistic character of a Baba Amte? Just because someone is talented, why should he be expected to be the biggest, most powerful voice in every area? But that is typical of human expectation. We expect our stars to be passionate social crusaders and philanthropists besides performing as actors and sportsmen. This is an unfair –and unrealistic- expectation.

So how should one select an associate for any role and what is the weightage that should be given to these three attributes? Also, can any of these three attributes be developed later with training?

If the Alphabet was Patented

Elon Musk, CEO, Tesla Motors was in the news some time back for announcing that his company is going to hand over the keys to hundreds of its patents so as to help the electric vehicle technology develop faster, globally.

This is reminiscent of Tim Berners-Lee who refused to patent the World Wide Web. Or before him, Linus.

And even before that Alexander Fleming who, when asked why he didn’t want to patent penicillin, asked, “Can you patent the sun?”

This note is in a way a continuation of one of my previous posts which revolves around using and controlling knowledge for personal wealth augmentation.

The debate around patents isn’t new. Patenting incentivises research, believes the pro-group. It prevents the development of knowledge that can help humanity at large, says the anti-group.

While we comprehend the patenting of newer, modern technologies in India, we stop agreeing with the concept when a western entity wants to patent say, turmeric. We believe that that is ridiculous because the benefits of turmeric have always been in the public knowledge domain. At this moment we could sit for a moment and think – what if those ‘vedic’ people had laws that helped binding their knowledge into arrangements whereby their future generations would be paid every time someone used a turmeric paste to heal a wound or cure a bad cough.

And as a colleague- a vociferous believer of a non-patented world argues- what of the alphabet you use to write this blog was patented? And you had to pay a fee every time you wrote? Or you paid every time you used numbers? It seems ludicrous when we think of paying for everything we use simply because when this was high technology or higher learning, no one thought of ‘owning’ this knowledge.

The concept of knowledge belonging to the world at large comes from older civilizations where society was above the individual. I recall reading the lines in the book, My Name is Red where it is said- to paraphrase loosely- the ancient cultures have left behind unmatched art because the artist was nameless and egoless. It was the art he created, mostly in the name of his God that made it so spiritual and pure. Individualism, a concept that was incubated in Western societies, he indicates, has lessened the sheen of the nameless beauty in art. The character says that art will no longer be as great if it is recognised by the name of the artist because it involves the individual ego.

There is enough material to read on older, tribal societies that yet follow ancient norms of living as a community above living as individual. The joys and benefits of that living are easy to understand. But of course, it is impossible for us living as we are today to imagine changing our surroundings on their head.

So is there a way to incorporate these ideas in our lives? A simple suggestion was made by a 92-year old Japanese doctor when he was asked the secret of his active and happy life. He said simply: Before the age of 60, work for yourself; after that work for society. The element of looking away from the self and focusing on the greater, common good is suggested one way or the other by all these wise men and civilizations. Maybe it’s time we bring in the element of community service in small ways in our lives. Ironically, this would serve a greater selfish end of probably locating happiness and peace.

IDENTITY AND CRISIS

Who are you?

I posed this question to myself and tried to answer it. The response was something like this- female, Indian, Kashimiri, ex-corporate executive now an entrepreneur…..Other things like age and characteristics followed. I then did a dip stick survey. I asked a few people the question: Who are you? Explain to an alien.

Their responses were interesting. Some people halted at defining their professions if they had changed track or were on a sabbatical. Others fumbled over their religion if they had parents from different religions. But no one doubted themselves at the first descriptor: their gender.

Most of us live in a convenient space where people are neatly divided under two, completely separate genders. While we know the issues of belonging to our gender, we have never given a thought to how it must be to have our gender under a scanner.

This is something Dutee Chand, 18, has been dealing with. And has had the biggest shocks of her life connected to. This June, she won two gold medals at the Junior Athletics Championships. She was set to compete in the IAAF and Commonwealth Games when on July 12 her world began to crumble. The doctor at the Sports Authority of India called her, conducted some tests over three days and told her, without giving any explanation, that she couldn’t compete. She first thought she may not have cleared the drugs tests. But she knew she had never taken any drugs.

What she didn’t know is that she had a condition medically known as hyperandrogenism. Due to this, she produces more of testosterone, the ‘male’ hormone, than the average woman. So she was barred from competing as a woman.

It would feel strange if your gender identity was questioned, even more if you were not allowed to do your work due to it. Interestingly, in science there isn’t even one marker that conclusively separates male from female. Every woman produces male hormones, men produce female hormones. The gender as we recognise is a blend of many factors in many nuances. Let’s say, there’s no litmus test for defining a person’s gender. Most of us fall in the range where we ‘appear’ like men or women to everyone else. But in sports this is put under the scanner quite intrusively.

Does an unclear, gender-specific appearance of a person make us judge them beyond their work and behaviour?


Do leave behind your answer.

HOW TO SHUT SHOP GRACEFULLY

It’s probably for the first time that I read a newspaper piece on how to close your business correctly and ‘gracefully’ as the headline proclaimed. The case being studied was that of one of Mumbai’s oldest mobile service providers which has one million customers.

The opinions of business owners, professors and industry executives converged on the following: 1) Being fair to all stakeholders- company management, promoters and employees. 2) Being fair to vendors and customers. 3) Transparent and honest communication with every one of the above 4) Placement of assets- both physical and human- in other companies.

So while it worries about its own reputation, does a company have to think of all this too? Why? That’s because, as one commentator says, lenders do not forget. How you close shop is indicative of how you manage and can adversely affect the fortunes of the other companies of the promoter or promoting group.

While all the above speak of the business side of the story, there is also the business of honour, the ‘right thing to do’. They suggest: Distribute the remaining funds among the stakeholders so no one feels cheated or short-changed. For the same reason, they say, give good reference letters to employees, absolving them of the responsibility for the shutdown.

The ‘right thing to do’ mostly means that stuff that won’t bring you down legally but you will think about it when you introspect.

I can remember over a decade back the debacle of ABCL, the Amitabh Bachchan-promoted entertainment company that became a basket case, taking down with it many people’s money and reputation. He was clearly safe legally and the company could have easily filed under BIFR and saved itself a lot of bother. But Mr. Bachchan felt that he was morally obliged to returning people’s money because he was the big reason they had invested. He went back to work- starting with KBC- and returned every paisa. So the story goes.

On the other side, around the same time, were innumerable cases where companies that weren’t doing well wanting to shut down. Promoters were forcing Voluntary Retirement Schemes down employees’ throats, making a joke of the purpose of the schemes. There were companies where employees agitated and cases may still be stuck in courts all over. Labour unions were fighting battles for them but I am not sure how many got resolved.

How to behave with grace when the chips are down always makes for an inspiring tale. And most often, it is led by character, not law.

SOCIAL NETWORKING WORKS BUT.....

Almost hundred years ago, Hungarian writer, Frigyes Karinthy, based his short story called Chains on what can today be recognised as the power of social networking. The story works on the premise that a person like you or me can be in touch with any other person among the 1.5 billion that inhabit this Earth through a chain of five people, each person using only his social contacts. This means I may be only four people away from Barack Obama or Roger Federer.

It’s an interesting thought though nobody has tried it out. And it is pertinent in this era of growing social networking. How far does social networking take you or work for you? Everyone has many more friends on Facebook than they’ve ever had in real life. Just a personal observation- albeit with no formal data to back up- is that people who are more reclusive in real life seem to have many more FB friends. If I only look around, the most effervescent and social extroverts I know have limited FB activity but some quiet mouse may have a surprising number of ‘friends’. So does such a platform give you a chance to build relationships which can have a long-lasting, positive effect? If I think back, I have made friends online but I have never tested those ‘friendships’ for anything so far.

Or let’s look offline. Social networks- be they school and college alumni organisations or professional ones- seem to have something for us to gain and share. We share experiences and some people seem to have the acumen to get business from such fora too. If nothing else, you always feel a sense of belonging, a context for your existence. It’s always encouraging to learn that there are others who may be interested in how you do a training session or what the hurdles in writing code or selling medicines in remote areas are. You also learn from other people and they get to know you.

But there’s a short side to it. Social networks can put a pressure on you to be like everybody else. Groups can lead to ‘groupism’. You may feel the obligation to conform.

Again, the white-collared workers, the managers and the executives, don’t seem to network to negotiate the best business as we see in say, taxi and factory unions or the village groups haggling for higher returns on their land the government wants to buy.

So is the kinship of this bracket only skin deep? Does it not perceive power in group strength? What do you think?

Thank You for Calling

Last week I called my credit card company. I had been charged for a late payment and I wanted to get that reversed. The gentleman who answered my call told me that I had been charged because my payment came in late. “But I dropped my cheque in before the due date!” I protested. His answer was nothing I expected.

His answer: “The payment should reach us by the due date, not your cheque. A bank takes three to four days to clear a cheque is something everybody knows. So you should have dropped your cheque in accordingly.” This was delivered in a condescending, soft tone after which he told me that he could do nothing about reversing the charges.

I reeled under this bolt of “customer service” for some time. After I recovered from it, I realised I had to understand two issues about the customer-seller relationship: 1) How much can/ should a seller expect a customer to know? 2) If the customer is at fault technically, who should pay for it?

1) How much should be expected of a customer in this case, for instance? Can a customer not confuse “due date” with last date for deposit of cheque rather than receipt of payment? We always tend to look at the story from our side. So a customer feels he has already “paid” when he drops off the cheque. I think a seller should take the trouble to understand this and issue the ‘due date’ accordingly. Holding a customer responsible like this, almost chiding him for being as stupid as to not know even this much about simple banking rules can only make him go away, not come to you. And can’t such a slip happen easily? Instead, just issue the due date four days earlier. To presume that your customer knows what is common knowledge to you, can be potentially dangerous. Doctors do this often. They presume you know when the pills should be had. I can recall a doctor I went to once saying that I should’ve known that if I felt nauseous, I could  have had a Domstal! It was my mistake- the patient’s mistake- to have not known it. Not his to have actually forgotten to write it.

2) The second part is trickier. In this case, how much does it cost to ignore this claimed error? And up to what point should a seller absorb the implied cost or loss? I had to tell this young man that I had been issuing cheques and dropping them off just the same way for over ten years that I held the card. Nobody had said this to me before him. He still did not feel the need to get politer. He only transferred me to Marketing.  The next gentleman calmed my ruffled feathers, quickly sorted the matter out and deleted the charges. He probably checked out that I had a clear history of payment for over a decade. He also probably knew I had, like any customer of my profile, another three or four cards in my wallet.

Letting a customer get the benefit of doubt and requesting him to issue the cheque a little earlier would have gone a long way, I think. His training should include this customer empathy. His training should include the learning that he has his job because customers pay their bills mostly on time. The polished pronunciation and accent is less important. Training should include teaching him not to make a conversation into an argument. His success lies in concluding the chat as quickly as possible, not proving to the customer that he is a fool.

Listening to a customer gives you the direction of progress. If he had listened to me then he would have heard that his bank had no drop box anywhere close to where I lived. If he had probed further, he would’ve heard that I now use another card more frequently because it allows me to make online payment transfers. But he wasn’t interested.

So end result: I use this card very rarely now. And I wasn’t surprised to learn that this big, international bank has had a tough run globally over the past few years with business slipping away. Maybe many others have been left disgruntled before me too.

Make a Left or Take a left?

My colleague, Charubala, who steers the language division of our little company, can talk endlessly on language. Her interest in observing how English is used by people of different generations, nationalities, backgrounds is very engaging. I will share a few nuggets with you here today.

One trend she observes in American users- people who like to simplify English and bring more logic to its confusing syntax, grammar and sentence structure- are the most forward in ‘verbing’. In our language programmes we encourage people to use verb forms of words to shorten sentences. The American users have taken it way forwards and made verbs of nouns that never existed when English for us meant British English. We all already know and often use ourselves, words like ‘access’ and ‘extract’ as verbs, even though they continue to shock classical users. So we now say, “I can access this data easily.” The classical use would be “I can have access to this data easily.” When I was in school I was taught that ‘extract’ could be a verb when talking of say, juice. You can extract juice from sugarcane but you couldn’t say that a poem is ‘extracted’ from a book. You had to say, “This poem is an extract from the book…” That’s obviously changed. Younger people may even be surprised to hear about such ‘primitive’ uses of words.

Some of the newer verbs she has been reading about are ‘helm’, ‘chagrin’, and strangely, ‘reverence’. So sentences from American publications and newsletters can read like “He helms this company.”/ “I was chagrined to hear about the delay.” / Today is reverenced as SuperBowl Day.

So then is there anything like wrong English? Languages undergo changes with changing social scenarios and shifting economic power. If the language is used alternately by an economic superpower, it is seen and recorded as a ‘change’ in the language. So we recognise American English as different from British English and then there’s Australian. The spelling too varies and an Indian language professional needs to know both the variants. But Americans can barely recognise British spelling and British users don’t enjoy American spelling. They like to use ‘programme’ and ‘colour’ and ‘manoeuvre’ among a myriad other words. Indian English, with its sheer growth and significance, has established itself in the literary world though business place English in India is largely American. But in India we tend to use a mix of British and American spelling, quite unknowingly. So most Indian users prefer ‘program’ but yet choose to use ‘neighbour’ instead of ‘neighbor’. We use ‘forward’ instead of the British ‘forwards’ but interestingly we use ‘backwards’ like the British do. So an Indian speaker will say, “Let’s take this discussion forward.” But he is most likely to say, “Let’s not move backwards.”

And amidst all this, how do we look at it if users of non-English speaking countries use English differently? Well, that certainly is counted as a mistake. Don’t you agree?

English, our Friend or Foe?

Excitement has taken over at least some parts of the country with the victory of the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi. People are joining it in droves because they see hope of a new world. But it may not be such an easy path to beat. The ‘old world’ will always pull the strings backwards. Just recently, a leading UP politician again brought up an issue that gets flogged intermittently- English and its use in India.

Mr Politician vows that he won’t allow English to be used in Parliament. He rakes up again the language-is-culture issue. Through the berating of English, he hopes to come across as patriotic and supportive of the great Indian culture. I think that many people would agree with a few things: Beating up English proves nothing of your patriotic credentials; allowing English in the work place or school in no way means doing away with India’s beautiful, varied culture of a myriad languages; English is the language of the world.

If the argument against English is that all parliamentarians don’t speak it then probably someone needs to tell us which one language can bind Indians together. The truth is that if we favour Hindi or any other Indian language there’s enough reason for others to fight for their mother tongues to get that status. But English is as close to, or distant from, any part of India. It is for us to decide whether to make it our friend or foe.

A recent study by the NCAER threw up results that most of us would know instinctively. It said that people fluent in English earn 30 per cent more. Yet, only about 25 per cent of students get their higher education in English medium schools in UP, Bihar as compared to 75 per cent in the southern states. Currently only 20 per cent of Indians speak English of which four per cent could be considered fluent. The author of the study says, “Politicians who don’t like English are captains of a sinking ship. Higher education in English helps us get better integrated into the globalised, organised labour market.”

I can vet this. In the training I have done over these years I have had several people say to me that their lack of fluency in English makes them less confident. They say that travelling to other countries for this one reason makes them nervous. I can recall a case where this gentleman- with very sound credentials- refusing a promotion because it entailed going abroad and working in English.

Not surprising then that a country like China is pumping in big money to get its people fluent in English. A few years back, I remember, the Maharashtra government schools had started a course to teach English to its teachers.

We have a historical strength as we have a base in English already. We have plenty of trainable resource here. We just need to support, and build on it.

GIVING AND RECEIVING

Does generosity beget generosity? And does experiencing generosity of others make you more generous?

A bright bubble was burst recently by a study conducted by the Economics department of the Mumbai University when it concluded that it may not be so.

People in the model villages of Ralegaon Siddhi and Hiware Bazaar- led by Anna Hazare and Popatrao Pawar- were studied for their behaviour through experimental games and exercises. These villages have transformed from regular, drought-ridden poor hamlets of the ‘70 to models of co-operative success.

According to economic theory, people are usually self-involved. But prolonged campaigns of cooperativeness can make people more pro-social. These villages have been studies for people from all over the world and have received many awards for successful development.

However, the present experiment showed that while people in these villages had lived through the benefits of co-operative living, they showed a trend of contributing less to the community pool of resources (evidenced in the games they played in this experiment), especially when they had the chance to do so anonymously. The study concluded that a history of experience may not yet produce ‘unconditional cooperation’ in an individual’s value system. To produce results, there had to be a system of monitoring and punishment in place.

That’s sad news.

But then, it’s easy to advise someone else to be generous but we may find very strong reasons not to be so ourselves. How much of our income or time, for instance, do we contribute to public good? How much is ‘enough’ before we start giving to society at large? And do we want at least a ‘reward’ of recognition?

Personal wealth or comfort may not have so much to do with this. A field study of altruistic behaviour in the Netherlands- a wealthy nation- showed that only 5.7% of people under this game-based exercise, donated money that they won as a reward. Here again, the researcher observed, that anonymity of giving, lowered the generosity.

Some religions have charity embedded in their learning and practices. It can be easily observed that people of those religions always feel obliged- and delivered- when they give.

To give is to believe in abundance- that you will not be poorer without that money or time or whatever resource. And to believe in abundance and to live with that feeling is a boon in itself.

Judith Orloff, a psychiatrist, writer and blogger writes, “Generosity is a key element of emotional health and abundance. Generosity accelerates the free flow of everything positive in your life. Of course, when it comes to finances, a good job, smart investments and saving wisely are important. But beyond these essentials, the secret is to be generous, whatever your net worth.

Generosity is an expansive energy. You receive as you give. But you have to expend energy to get energy. Electricity happens from rubbing two wires together. Stinginess is constrictive. If you're on the cheap side, don't worry. But wake up! Realize it's a huge drawback; take contrary action. How? If someone gives you a nickel, give them a dime. Gradually, try to let go of the tit-for-tat mentality, a small-minded approach that sabotages abundance. Be the bigger person -- that's generosity. Also, help people out. Charities, tithing, donations. Give what you can; it doesn't have to be a lot. Feel the growing sense of abundance it produces, an energy which circulates far and wide. It'll find its way back to you. Maybe you'll win a jackpot, or perhaps you'll just feel better about yourself. However generosity plays out, you can't lose.”

So let us start or increase whatever we were doing so far. And not underestimate the giving of time. Maybe I’ll tip that good waiter a bit more and spend a few more minutes listening to my old neighbour’s stories. I will pop more notes into those donation boxes at stores where I shop and renew all the student support charities that fell through because the organisation in question never got back.

I wish you a great year ahead of generosity and abundance. Let us give some more.

Butter Chicken and Organisational Change

What does a young heir of a strictly vegetarian business family do when there’s a minor uprising in his company because employees want to be served meat?

In a recent book titled Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower, an essay titled ‘Butter Chicken at Birla’, written by Aditya Birla Group chairman, Kumar Mangalam Birla answers this very question as he recounts how his group adapted with the times:

When I took over the company in 1996 at age twenty-nine, after the sudden death of my father, no meat was cooked in Birla cafeterias, no wine or whiskey was served at company functions. Seven years later, we bought a small copper mine in Australia. The deal wasn’t a huge one, worth only about $12.5 million, but it presented me with a unique challenge of the sort I had not yet faced as chairman. Our newest employees were understandably worried about how life might change under Indian ownership. Would they have to give up their Foster’s and barbecues at company events? Of course not, we assured them.

But then several of my Indian managers asked me why they should have to go meatless at parties if employees abroad did not. At Marwari business houses, including Birla, the top ranks of executives traditionally have been filled with other Marwaris. I had introduced some managers from other firms and communities, and they had raised a valid point. I was genuinely flustered. My lieutenants were relentless — I had never faced a situation where my own people felt so strongly about something. Yet, at the same time, I knew vegetarianism was a part of our values as a family and as a company — a core belief! I had broken a lot of family norms, but I thought this one was going to be multi-dimensionally disastrous for me.

Fortunately, my grandparents merely laughed when I approached them with my dilemma: They understood better that our company had to change with the times.

It is a great sign of maturity for an individual as well as a corporation to understand and accept change. And, above all that, to comprehend whether the impending change will be for the good, the bad or just not be significant enough. Well, the AB Group is today one of India’s “most globalised conglomerates with operations in thirty-six countries in five continents, employing 136,000 people”, as Birla describes it.

But can change always be induced so easily?

Look at this case of Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairman, SBI. The more observant of you must have made a mental note of my error in the previous statement and some of you may have smiled, thinking of how habitual terms don’t spare even the most careful. But I must insist that she has been officially appointed chairman, not chairwoman or the more gender-neutral chairperson. This is no gender bias. Very simply- and interestingly- The SBI Act of 1955 provides for ‘Chairman’ as the highest post in the Bank. To call her anything else would actually require an amendment in the act.

So should such a change be initiated? What sort of a change do you think this would be? A major or a minor change? Something with immediate effect or a general adjustment for modern times? And would it impact Ms Bhattacharya’s position or standing in any way?

Your views are welcome.

I think that while it can be initiated just as a correction to accommodate modern realities. It doesn’t, really, adversely impact her position or that of women in general. It doesn’t belittle her in any way. In fact, I am quite sure, around the dinner table it may have provided just a bit of a chuckle. That women are in these positions, itself, speaks for the general trends in the business place.

So should we bring about change or not should be dependent on the expected impact and the cost of the change. We don’t need to sweat over the small stuff.

A Leader dies; A Leader is Born

The past few days have been witness to inspiring tales of two leaders: One who passed on from the physical world, leaving behind a big legacy of belief in the just; one who has only just begun to rise as the hope of lakhs of Indians who seek an idyll of clean governance and an uncorrupted environment.

One of the most telling picture that caught my attention last week was that of a young white man hugging an inconsolable black woman, mourning the death of Nelson Mandela who died at 95, leaving behind a country that is today fair and just, constitutionally; where blacks and whites have accepted that all people deserve an equal chance. Mandela spent 27 years in prison but stayed steadfast in pursuing his dream-- a dream that benefitted millions of people. His long walk to freedom-----become symbolic of the trials and tribulations that lie strewn on a path that only the brave dare to take- a path that is not yet paved, probably never before even treaded upon. Like the hero of the poem, Invictus, that was dear to him, he embodies the unconquerable one, the one who will stay forever to by what he thinks is right.

Three days later, closer home, Arvind Kejriwal won against Sheila Dikshit in a constituency from where she had won the last three elections. This deceptively dimunitive man led his Aam Aadmi Party to near victory in the recent Assembly elections in Delhi and is poised to form a formidable Opposition. Before he adamantly demanded a country free of corruption and accountability about two years back, all of us would have dismissed this as an impossibility in India. Ha! Governance without corruption? An honest political party? That was a contradiction in itself. But today, we all feel the warmth of that ray of hope. There is a sunny summer of hope within the dark winter of doubt.

True leaders believe. And they refuse to accept defeat. They may look very foolish when they start out or till they see some victory. But they aren’t there to make an impression. Their belief overpowers all other senses. And they don’t look behind to look if anybody is following them or not. People follow leaders because they give them the hope to believe that the impossible can become possible. History is full of such stories.

Our weakness or doubt or fear doesn’t allow us to take that courageous step. But when someone rises and seems to embody strength, we like to be awash with that strength and so we follow. We hope that his iron belief will help us rise to our potential too.

So does a leader start out in life wanting to be one? Unlikely. He or she is just one man or woman who is deeply affected by a thing, so much so that he cannot move on till that is resolved. And he is transfixed with the solution or resolution. There’s always a small start. And then the story snowballs and grows bigger and bigger. True leadership comes with a strong belief that mostly belies common sense or realism of its time. If it isn’t big enough to sound a bit impossible, it won’t make history.

A leader is just always a deeply and morally good person. He embodies the highest values and principles and rises far above borders of corporations, nations, castes, creeds, religions. Everyone wants to quickly claim ownership as if to own that reflected glory. But he is above all that- his spirit embodies mankind. He doesn’t measure his own power or reach. He is who he is. Victory doesn’t sway him; defeat makes him more determined.

This brings us to that endlessly debated question: Can, then, leadership be taught? My answer: Taught, maybe not in the traditional sense. But people can be inspired to challenge themselves, to rise beyond the ordinary and aim to realise their dreams. They can be inspired to think big. If people are taken through such lessons, in one mind among the many in that classroom, the seed of another revolution could be taking birth. After all, every great period or transformation started from that one, small story.

Rules, Once Again

This week’s news has been dominated by the rape assault by Tarun Tejpal, founder-editor of Tehelka, a publication perceived by many as the voice of the wronged. Tejpal did what ‘the bad guy’, the ‘others’ do. Not ‘people like us’.

Right on its heels came the news of a senior official in the Goa Film Festival, making lewd suggestions and harassing a young journalist.

Rape of course shakes everyone up a lot. But news of gross actions- stealing public money; not letting PDS ration reach the poorest of the poor; taking large kickbacks for political and business favours- don’t even surprise us anymore. Scam is no longer a four-letter word for saturated readers.

This brings me back to my previous post on rules and thinking on it some more. How do people break rules- be they legal or social or moral?

When a person feels powerful by his position, he often begins to believe that he is invincible. Professional achievement, a high level of influence in the big circles often makes him feels that there is no need for him or her to follow rules- that rules are for the rest to follow.

Breaking rules is a high. It is used as a symbol of power. So politicians keep flights waiting, bureaucrats don’t move files without monetary fulfillment and media persons expect differential treatment in the most ordinary of situations. A journalist colleague relates how a very senior bureaucrat once told her- “I can change A.M. to P.M”. ‘A.M’ referred to A&M, the magazine she worked for. She was a novice scribe then and this was her first job. He was letting her know what sort of reach he had. Another entrepreneur involved in an ambitious rehabilitation project in Mumbai told her – I’ve paid off everyone from XYZ to ABC.” He was assuring her that the project would take off without a doubt while impressing upon her, his reach. XYZ and ABC were the head honchos of the most influential political parties of those years.

And for a man enjoying the headiness of power, his crime is never too big in his eyes. 78-year old Om Prakash Chautala, five times CM of Haryana, was sentenced to a ten-year jail term on corruption charges along with his son, Ajay, this January. When the police came to his house to take him he asked the police, “But what did I do?”

That the young girl was an old friend’s daughter and a friend of his own daughter did not stop Tejpal. All he said was that it was ‘an error of judgment’ and he would atone for his act by stepping down from editorship for six months. For anyone else, that would be called a long, paid sabbatical. And other, more ordinary rapists are generally jailed for this.

And when they get caught- often exposed interestingly by a much less powerful person- the first reaction is of extreme anger. Then they flail their hands like caged animals before accepting that sometimes rules can be for the rulers too. Tejpal shouted at the girl the next morning for going and telling his daughter about what had happened. “How could you go and tell my daughter what happened?” he said. This, to him, was the graver misconduct.

People argue that quicker dispensation of justice can help bring down crime rates- and yes, this may be true. Regular people may commit fewer crimes but the powerful will always continue to challenge the rules. The association of power with breaking rules is too heady to ever lose its sway.


Your thoughts?

To Obey or not to Obey?

Rules, that is. This question popped up in my mind, once again, as I was on my flight back to Mumbai and doing what I enjoy most- watching people. The air hostess announced landing and requested everyone to shut their machines and devices. The lady next to me, totally engrossed in her iPad since the moment we started the journey, did not pay attention as her ears were blocked with her headphones. The hostess then came up to her and requested her to comply. She looked up and made a few gestures towards doing so. But as the hostess went away, she continued to play the game she was playing. I itched to tell her that she was doing something with potential to jeopardise the lives of everyone in the plane. Her nonchalance annoyed me.

Well nothing so drastic happened. We landed safely. But I continued to ponder over the issue on the long trek out of the airport. To begin with: Why did that annoy me? I thought it was because someone was disobeying rules. Rules are made for the benefit of people, at large. Few disobedient people can cause trouble for the rest of us. If today, you are not allowed to even carry a nail file in cabin luggage as it a ‘potential weapon’, it’s because someone carried weapons at some time and held up a flight.

A rule breaker can cause direct, fatal damage to others. Highways report serious, fatal accidents every day because of motorists breaking speed limits, driving inebriated or overtaking wrongly. The people killed in these terrible mishaps are often those who got hit by such a rule-breaking driver.

Then there are ‘rules’ which are not in any rule book and not punishable offences. Example: Making a queue at a counter – a rule not really written anywhere I think, but socially desired- is defied and disobeyed by almost every Indian. A queue expands horizontally and becomes many queues and everyone is then for himself. If you’re polite or just not able to push, chances are you’ll be waiting for your coffee till dinner time. Just yesterday, I stood with my token in hand at a doctor’s while a lady without a token just barged in and got her work done before everyone else.

And there are rules which defy logic. Until recently when a prominent industrialist fought in court for his right to fly the national flag atop his home, doing so was a punishable offence. But there’s no penalty on selling and buying uniforms, complete with military insignia, for children to wear for fancy dress competitions. If the first somehow insults the nation, how doesn’t the second, I have often tried to understand. Or, how positions of learning and valour- school and college principals, military chiefs, judges and police commissioners-are caricatured, uncensored.

So should one follow rules completely or reason out which ones to follow or simply follow those that can have a punishment attached for non-compliance? I think most people follow the last type. We follow only the rules that have some sort of penalty attached to them. This doesn’t mean only legal rules. People also follow social rules which are unwritten for fear of rejection or disapproval of their social class.

So people comfortably break traffic rules because they know it costs just a bit of money to get away. Littering or breaking queues doesn’t make you encounter an upturned nose or glares from people around as you would face in say, Britain. So those who walk up to bins in New York, just chuck that chips packet on the road when back in India. We are, however, largely conscious of attending religious functions and ceremonies or office celebrations even if they don’t interest us because that can lead to social rejection.

And then again, History is all about those who broke rules, not about those who followed them. The venerated national leaders are those who refused to follow the rules of the Raj; the greatest scientists are those who refused to accept the norms.?

So should we follow rules or not? What do you think?

SUMMER

The Great Bombay Summer has come early this year and has had the whole city panting. And not just that, but the brutality of it is has been felling down even the strongest.

There’s been no respite even in the mornings and evenings. So, for the average office goer, who does at least an hour-long commute to and fro home, this may spell decreasing productivity. Lately I have noticed this in the training room. People are more restless and seem exhausted in the morning too. If they have to commute back from one of those overcrowded railway stations like Kurla and Dadar and the connecting transport is unreliable, the restlessness is even more. They are ready to compromise on the breaks if you could just leave them a bit early so that they can dodge the rush-hour madness.

So what can be done to counter this downer? May be employers can offer efficient transport, at least connections to railway stations, if not all the way home. May be people can work longer hours and take an extra day off instead of coming for half-days on Saturdays. May be offices can give air conditioners as Diwali gifts.

Interestingly, summer lowers productivity in other parts of the world too, though for different reasons sometimes. I learnt this when I was on a scholarship many years back in England. I was interning in a large corporation. Around mid-morning, I happen to look around and notice that there was almost no one in his or her seat. A girl was asking her boss if he had any work for her or could she step out for a couple of hours and he generously said she could take the afternoon off. I asked a colleague to explain what was happening. He told me that it was, after all, summer. After a cold winter the spring had brought a promise of better times. And then suddenly it was summer and the sun was shining. And everyone who wasn’t in his seat that morning, I discovered, was actually outside, in one of the two pubs just down the road, standing and drinking beer and sunning himself. I went back after lunch and found the office as empty. It stayed that way on every sunny day of the few weeks that I worked there.

HEALTH IS WEALTH

Over the past one year, I have been repeatedly encountering a medical condition among Indian corporate executives that has startled me. Just how far will the effects of lifestyle go?

Vitamin D deficiency. Shows up as excruciating muscle weakness and bone pain. Back ache, joint pain and lethargy are classic symptoms of Vitamin D and D3 deficiency. Left untreated it can lead to other trouble. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with brittle bones, cardiovascular disease, asthma, autoimmune diseases and even cancer.

Bizarre? When I heard it first I did not quite believe it. Anyone knows that the biggest source of this vitamin is sunlight. In fact it is called the sunshine vitamin. So how could someone living in a tropical country, with the sun pelting down for hours and hours, ever get this deficiency?

My old homeopath explained it to me. This is the latest lifestyle condition. People leave for work early and mostly do not exercise outdoor before leaving. They sit all day inside closed and sealed offices. Few modern offices have any sunlight coming in. Fewer have windows that open. People sit in their cabins or cafeterias and eat. Few step out in the day. Then when they set out for home, it is mostly evening time when the sun has gone down. So there’s basically just no exposure to sunlight among the corporate execs. Even youngsters are increasingly suffering from it. Again, the same reason. Children don’t go out to play enough.

Few foods can replace this source. Vitamin D is available in considerable quantities like fatty fish, cod liver oil and eggs besides fortified milk and dairy products. Most of these foods are not consumed by Indians or, at least, not in the required quantities. To add to it, people try being ‘healthy’ by not eating ‘ghee’ or drinking low-fat milk, thus eliminating Vitamin D even further from their diets. Result: A recent study conducted across 33,444 people shows that 65% of women in Mumbai in the age group of 12- 35 years are Vitamin D deficient.

So here we seem to have a growing problem that can easily be contained. People could be made aware of this and take small, easy steps to avoid this trouble. A short walk before leaving for office? A late afternoon walk out of office instead of the tea machine chat? And probably adding ‘ghee’ and eliminating junk food? Of course, many of the usual excuses will pop up immediately to this. Meetings, presentations, no time….can’t help order outside foodstuff sometime or the other.

But health is a good enough reason to find solutions for, instead of hiding behind the usual reluctance to change. And any medical practitioner will tell you that preventive care is better than curative steps. Now don’t you think it’s worth considering at least?

Keeping It Simple

Only last week I was arguing with myself for days about the complexity of life around me, may be with a generous dose of self-pity. And in the most unexpected of ways, I found myself looking into the face of an answer. A very simple one at that, which left no space for my self-indulgence.

The answer came through my colleague. She had just listened to Venugopal Dhoot addressing school children. This is what she said:

I was listening to Venugopal Dhoot of Videocon addressing 700 school children who were there to impress a big media group and get the chance to become journalists for their school newspaper. Dhoot was introduced as the big man of business with a lot of social and community work attributed to him. But he came and spoke with disarming straightforwardness. He was comfortable not being proficient in English. He described his modest background to the students and told them that they were very bright. He spoke and quoted from the Bhagvad Geeta, his biggest source of inspiration. And he gave absolutely simple answers when they asked him cleverly-framed questions.

What philosophy has guided him to do so well in the field of business? He said that Vinoba Bhave was his greatest inspiration and taught him the principle of ‘karma yoga’.

What’s his success mantra? Hard work. Easy to say, hard to do.

What made him think of electronic goods? You must have a passion for what you do. I was an engineer and loved engineering products. When I worked with Toshiba as an intern the video was the latest gadget. I simply wanted to bring it to India.

How did you decide on products as you went along? Products have to be liked by customers. He described here the failure of a prestigious dog biscuit company in a market. Simply, dogs didn’t like their biscuits!

How different are you as a person and as a professional? You cannot have two sets of values. Personal and business values have to be the same.

So how does he predict the markets? I don’t. I know very little. Nobody can predict the markets. Here he quoted his favourite flautist Bismillah Khan who said when asked about his achievements, “Abhi toh teen taal ka bhi gyaan nahi hua hai.”

For a small- town boy who wanted to study literature and play the flute, Dhoot took off in quite an unexpected direction. But life’s like that. He continues to simply perform his daily tasks and follow the path he set upon. No existentialist doubts. No grand, intellectual arguments. Simple now, isn’t it?

Crisis-time leadership

First of all, A Happy New Year to you.

I wrote about leadership last week as a follow up on the previous week's post. Leadership positions sometime come early if you display the talent. But this talent, I said, gets overexploited. In the run of the daily target the young leader is utilised for his skills but not enough may get invested in developing him further. This often leads to the ripe-from-the-outside-but-raw-within syndrome.


Now there's an interesting blog by Jack Zenger of the Harvard Business Review which takes this thought further. He believes in starting them young but stresses on the criticality of training and the damage possible without it. Do read it at: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/12/why_do_we_wait_so_long_to_trai.html


It is difficult not to look at the leadership issue in the wake of the recent happenings: a gang rape bang in the middle of the capital and nobody from the government stepping forward to take charge and show leadership. Sundeep Khanna writes a super piece in Mint about the leadership of listening; the leadership that needs to have both ears to the ground; the leadership of accountibility. You could read him here: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/3qqdxxcCKHX9MNhK1bAVZM/Leadership-lessons-from-the-mishandling-of-the-Delhi-protest.html

From the last POST

Can you enjoy the luxury of sauntering up the learning curve when what you have to do is to climb up a steep pyramid?

The responses to my previous blog post have been thought-provoking. A plethora of subjects have popped out of the stimulating discussion and I hope to keep your attention by turning the spotlight on each one, one post at a time.

But first let me draw your attention to leadership. There’s no end to material available on this one, I know. But it seems to yet be the missing link in the evolution of many an organisation. While large organisations of traditional industries have their in-built patterns of developing leaders through well-oiled processes, it is the younger industries that draw my attention. Since liberalisation we have been witnessing the rise of industries like IT, ITES, asset management and insurance. These are all people intensive. Their pyramids are very steep- the bases are very broad. Hundreds of hands are required to be at the service counter. These first level jobs are a plenty and need very basic qualification. But on the flip side these businesses are characterised by high attrition. So keeping these teams going, giving them the basic training required and meeting the needs of a huge customer base, all at one time is a trying task. Anyone with a spark can become a manager in a short time. This spark however works against him or her eventually because the seniors think he can handle it, so he may have to chew much more than he can bite.

Take the story a little ahead, a lot of managers climb up with excellent task related skills- where ample training is provided. As they take bigger and still bigger responsibilities the chinks in the armour start to show up. This is more often than not related to their dealing with people. For e.g. a senior manager in an MNC consulting firm says “I find it very irritating when people are slow” or another says “ how can they challenge what I say?”

My observation is that everybody agrees that people skills are most critical for a leader. Ironically the investments in this area are rarely commensurate with this criticality.



The question then is: does building of effective leadership require a certain amount of time? Won’t the required maturity be compromised if the roles change vertically too fast? Does it help the individual himself in his long- term growth?

After all, how sweet can that fruit be that has been ripened in haste. Its colour on the outside may be perfect but its taste may leave a lot to be desired.

I yet don’t know how to react.

At a recent training program at the local office of an MNC I was told unambiguously by the participants: “The rule is clear. If we are told by our ‘white’ counterpart to do it then we just have to do it.” I asked for further explanation before jumping to conclusions. What I was given to understand was that even though the American and Indian offices ostensibly work together, it is understood that one person’s word will have to be accepted over another even at the same designation level. No, that is not done after talking it over but is the diktat straight away.


So what is this?


From the one side the American company may just believe that its local employees are better-equipped to take more suitable decisions than its Indian employees. It may feel that it has better controls this way. It is not so confident about its employees who don’t have the American approach and training. And, it is ready to take the responsibility for that decision.


From the other side, the Indian employee could feel like almost bonded, mute labour. And in such a situation, a designation could become a bit of a joke. The self-esteem of the person who has to work in such a place may take a daily beating. He may stick around but with no interest or sense of pride in his job. Not the best way to grow an organisation, I imagine.


Not surprisingly, I have on many occasions found the energy and morale in this place very low. Lackadaisical time-keeping, initial ennui among participants; unimpressive co-ordination are some of the very unattractive features during the sessions.


So I continue to ponder: What makes people stay in such a work environment? Does the new generation have a completely different, may be a more practical take on this? Am I reacting with the cross of History on my shoulders? Do Indian MNCs have similar, unwritten rules for their employees in the West?


Have you been exposed to this kind of governance, directly or indirectly? Please do share your thoughts.

How Long?

I remember reading an article in a magazine which displayed the grand salaries that young CEOs had begun to take home. The search company executive quoted said that a competent CEO could be taking home anywhere up to a few crores a year. The examples cited were of CEOs who had hopped jobs efficiently. He concluded explaining that the way to grow the pay packet was to basically not stay in a place for more than three to five years. The cases were mind boggling- like say, a 30-something fellow grows from a senior manager to a CEO many times over in less than a decade.

As I talked to people after that, the general opinion that emerged was that you are perceived as ‘successful’ if you move within five years and a ‘laggard’ if not a ‘loser’ if you don’t. Smart people move. That was the essence.

But recently for some material that we had to put together, Charubala and I were going through the work histories of over a dozen industry and public leaders. Verghese Kurien, K.V. Kamath, Lalita Gupte, Chanda Kochhar, Deepak Parekh, Shikha Sharma, Kalpana Morparia, Bharat Patel, Pradip Shah, Naina Lal Kidwai, Vinita Bali, Shashi Tharoor were among others were those we looked up. And this is what we discovered: None of them had changed jobs more than once or may be twice in their careers; they built their reputations as people of reckoning at jobs they held for generally close to a decade or sometimes more; they moved up stealthily in their companies and organisations and grew their roles and profiles within rather than looking for greener pastures outside.

And was I surprised? For a moment, may be. And then when I thought about it more closely, may be not, really. If one defines success with simply what one is able to buy with his salary one needs to jump on to the former bandwagon. But if you want to become someone who stands for a success story and become an icon, an inspiration, then these case studies indicate that you have to look beyond. You may be a smart mover but people do not understand what you stand for, sometimes. On the other hand, leaders such as these are clearly identified with their beliefs to make the brand they choose, to become a success. So in short, you probably have a longer shelf life as a success story if you build the success of other brands besides your own self. What do you think?