Skip to main content

4th of July, The US National Anthem, and Outsourcing

THE U. S. CELEBRATES ITS INDEPENDENCE DAY TODAY, July 4th. The custom involves the state sponsored fireworks accompanied by songs such as the National Anthem - The Star-Spangled Banner.

[Right: A Ganges-class ship, to which HMS Minden belonged, at war with French Navy in 1806.]

The national anthem, which originally was a poem titled "Defence of Fort McHenry" was written by one Francis Scott Key. Mr. Key, a lawyer by profession, was visiting certain British officials at Royal Navy ships at that time.

The point in case here is that the ship HMS Minden, a Ganges-class ship, aboard which this national anthem is first conceived and written was Made in India. The ship was built by one Mr. Jamshedji Bomanji Wadia, a merchant of Bombay. And by this account of trivia, the Outsourcing relationship, as it were, between the US and India is as old as 1801 when this ship was first built at Bombay dockyard, one of the best ship-building dockyards of the world at the time.

Happy 4th of July!

And, to quote Jefferson's famous preamble for the Declaration of Independence on this day in 1776:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

On a lighter note, below is Happiness with a 'y':

[Above: A scene from a spirited portrayal of "American Dream" in this 2006 Hollywood film "The Pursuit of Happyness" based on the true life-story of Self-made American millionaire businessman and stockbroker Chris Gardner. Will Smith plays the lead role. Smith has also played the Hero in the sci-fi "The Independence Day" of 1996.]

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Change, Catch Words of Consulting II

Continuing from the previous post , following are a few more Catch Words of Consulting: Q x A = E : Q uality of Solution x A cceptance = E ffectiveness of Change. Q is good most of the time. The Key differentiator is Acceptance and Adaptability for a successful Change management. Passive Resistance: is nodding the head, but not actually going to participate in change; civil disobedience of a personal kind; dragging the feet with a smile. Planning vs Plans: D. Eisenhower once said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Planing is so important that PMBOK devotes the largest of its five process groups entirely on planning. See also: Related post: Change, and Catch Words of Consulting I

Clay Christensen: How Will You Measure Your Life?

A tribute to Clayton Christensen, the Harvard professor who  introduced "disruption" in his 1997 book  The Innovator's Dilemma , which, in turn, led  The Economist  to term him "the most influential management thinker of his time."  Even more influential  for some would be his 2012 co-authored book How Will You Measure Your Life? . [try here ]. Christensen  passed away in Boston on Jan 23, 2020.

The Pygmalion vs. The Golem Effect

There are two kinds of self-fulfilling prophecies. They are broadly defined by wiki as follows: The Pygmalion effect , or Rosenthal effect, is the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform. On the other hand is the Golem effect , in which low expectations lead to a decrease in performance. In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life. The theme was in the main stray of many English literary works during the victorian era. One of which is George Bernard Shaw's play titled "Pygmalion" from which Rosenthal effect gets its name. In Shaw's play, the protagonist, a professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. (The pl