Humor: Scott Adams, The Hypnotist

This blog entry is a fan-post about choosing the three best blog entires that Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, has posted over the month of March '12. Arguably, this is also a lazy task. Understandably, this will need some explaining.

Scott Adams is a genius with hypnotic calibre. He can even prove it by producing a certain Certification in Hypnotism that hangs on his office wall, and about which we, the ardent followers of his humor blog at Dilbert.com and elsewhere such as his occasional NYT and WSJ columns, have heard more often than perhaps the issuing authorities themselves. That a certain obscure yet timely reference or reminder of being a certified hypnotist can turn his otherwise benign looking paragraphs into mesmerizing wand of a wizard is something only a certified hypnotist can do (I agree that this logic defeats itself, but I never claimed that hypnotism has anything to do with logic. If you have read Scott as regularly as he writes you have already learned that the secret of his success lies in mixing the two with a secret formula for proportions). If those holding Harvard and Oxford degrees, for instance, were to extracte the similar amount of clout value from those certificates hanging on their walls, they would be owning most of us, all of the land and seas with potential oil rigs by now. But you need to be a good hypnotist to extract value from where there is none.

[Source: wikimedia.org]

It is my belief that in a hypothetical scenario where Dilbert.com and Scott's other restaurant businesses were ever to get into trouble, here lies the promise of a bright alternative career for him. Of course, this is subject to him first deciding to abandon his bid for the American presidency before he actually succeeds. Even if it means American will have to wait longer for a certified hypnotist president.

It is highly likely that there is a scientific term for the approach and process that Scott has mastered over the years for distribution of his verbal as well as pictorial ideas. If you are an expert in linguistics, literature or forensics, feel free to comment. As a layman -a claim that an engineer may make only in exceptional circumstances- the whole product has an experience similar to having a butterscotch pastry. Let's examine how.

Humor is the cake which may sound the least important ingredient, but in fact it is the base of the structure of the pastry. The paragraphs that build the argument in cascading manner are like digging into layers of cream that confirms the flavor in a gradually increasingly reinforcing manner. Clever word play are those crunchy burned sugar nuggets confusingly called butterscotch in spite of them having no intoxicating properties. A sly spin of rejection of a popular belief is the icing and cherry on the top which is the lure for you to dig in. The overall simplicity of the package makes it suitable for many palates. And at the end of it all, depending on your own perception of your mental and physical health, if you end up having a feeling of guilt over a creamy rich diet, you can easily blame it onto being hypnotized to indulge in the first place.

If you are also a regular follower of Scott's journey over the past decade this narration may sound familiar in two ways. In terms of the message as well as the bottle. The later being the style in which the message is being delivered. Internet is silent on any attempts of writing about Scott the way Scott does it. If this blog entry appears to be doing so, it is purely an accident. My limited knowledge about hypnotism suggests that it is all about doing according to the mimes of the hypnotist.

Which now brings us to the main business today of the three best blog posts that Scott has published over the last month. Apparently, the list of all the great ideas that Scott has aired through the giggling belly of the cosmos over the years may become too large to be handled under a single spell on a lazy summer Sunday. Here are my picks:

1. Mar 29 - Gerardo and the Mob: "The public fight starts when the word "responsible" enters the conversation. Responsibility isn't a natural element of the universe. It's a useful but artificial concept, like fairness, that society uses to control its members."
2. Mar 19 - The War on Parents: "Sometimes it feels as if our school system is at war with parents, and winning. The kids are just the ammunition."
3. Mar 9 - The Unaware: "Imagine you're a detective, and you have to solve the case of how incompetent you are. What evidence can you find to support the assumption you have about your own incompetence?"

The other dozen or so totally unmissable Dilbert blog entries from March are here. 

Read More

Kantian Ethics And Human Dignity

“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” - Immanuel Kant (Categorical Imperative. try here)

In this rather short video clipped from the BBC documentary - "Justice: A Citizen's Guide to the 21st Century", Prof. Michael Sandle picks up an ethical dilema from a real-life kidnapping case that took place in Germany in 2002, and bounces it off to a Kantian activist and journalist, and to Peter Singer, the utilitarian Bioethics professor at Princeton University.

A kidnapper of a eleven year old boy of a banker in Germany, after collecting the ransom, is caught by the authorities. When he refused to divulge the whereabouts of the boy, the police threatened him of extreme torture. The kidnapper gave into the threats and confessed to murdering the boy. The German authorities, after further investigation, sentenced the kidnapper with life sentence, while at the same time, the police chief was also prosecuted and sentenced for violating the human dignity of the convict. A judge from German constitutional court is heard defending the police chief's prosecution by saying, "There are certain inherent qualities in a person that the person cannot forfeit even by doing the worst of deeds possible."

Peter Singer, from his utilitarian position, dismisses the whole Kantian idea -as followed by the German court in this case- and defends the police chief's actions. The way the (editing of the) clip suggests, Singer's primary issue with the Kantian thoughts seem to be their approach of non-action, but his position seems to begin weakening when Sandel challenges him by supposing that "let's assume the perpetrator wouldn't talk even under extreme torture, but he would talk if you tortured his 14 year old daughter", would Singer allow that? When Sandle adds more "numbers" into the equation, the utilitarian squeeze becomes even more prominent.

Apparently, the answer isn't easy. Though, uneasily perhaps, it seems surprisingly easy to relate to the effects of using man as means rather than respecting his human dignity as ends, with the experience where man seems to witness the everyday world being used as a commodity, that includes himself.

A follow-up question could perhaps be: Could Kantian ethical thinking give back humans -as utilitarian means- their dignified end? 

• See also:
• Go here for details of the BBC documentary "Justice: A Citizen's Guide to the 21st Century" by Prof Michael Sandle.
• Try here for Kantian resources at Online Library of Liberty.
• Try here for Peter Singer's page at Utilitarian.net.

Read More

Humor: Sheldon's Prayer

Theoretical Physicist Dr. Sheldon Cooper Sc.D. has hardly anything to do with this post except for an optimistic allusion toward his positive delight at throwing a monologos tantrum such as this in any of The Big Bang Theory episodes preferably not named as the same suggested title.

You see,

All metaphysics, of/for every
sectarian-/semi-/secular-/pseudo-/anti-religion's theory seems to thrive
on this evolutionary blindspot
in the cognitive process;
Hit by unreferenceable 'knowing';
And admixed with confused human imaginations.

Read More

Cheers to Life!

7th May, 2011
David Hume’s Tercentenary had been in good attendance. New York Times writes:

Saturday [May 7th] is the 300th birthday of David Hume, the most important philosopher ever to write in English according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Hume's philosophy has inspired a significant branch of cognitive and analytics philosophers and thinkers over the last three centuries. His theory of "Problem of Induction" has stirred many debates. Most recently, it has been assumed by Nassim Taleb as one of the core concepts of his "Randomness". Many credit Sir Karl Popper’s comprehensive response to "Problem of Induction" as the penultimate insight into reality of the modern society.

• See also:
• Related posts: Cheers to Life!
• Go here for New Your Times article, and here for WP entry
• Go here for more philosophical musings at Cognition & Culture, and here for Times Higher Ed feature
• Recent podcasts: Go here for OpenUniversity, and here for PhilosophyBites

Read More

SKR, Education, Three videos, and "3 idiots"

EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE THERE COMES AN IDEA THAT has at least three beautiful things together: holistic relevance, sincerity towards applicability, and honest and bold presentation. Such ideas carry an element for illumination and invokes belief in the audience.

Let's listen to Sir Ken Robinson (SKR). The Professor of Education has thus far given two of the best and most popular TED talks (see below). His ideas on the challenges of modern Education systems across the world, and possible solutions through paradigm shift have been path-breaking (including, earning the professor his knighthood).

When the idea is larger than life, it is often easy to miss the whole picture while focusing on the point if delivery of the idea, beautiful that it mostly is. For this reason, RSA Animation has done a great job in the video below in creating a sort of "skeleton key" based on SKR's RSA speech - Changing Education Paradigm. Within a couple of minutes into the animation, it is most likely that one gets reminded of some of the ideas that got reflected in Raju Hirani's recent bollywood script "3 idiots", that made the film immensely popular.

• See also:
• Go here for the official website of Sir Ken Robinson, and here for his wikipedia entry.
• Three videos: 1) TEDtalk-Do schools kill creativity? (Feb 2006, Monterey CA, ~20:00m), 2) TEDtalk-Bring on the learning revolution! (Feb 2010, LA, ~20:00m), 3) RSA lecture-Changing Paradigms (~55:00m)
• Go here for various publications, and here for the list on Amazon.com

Read More

HBR: Most Popular Articles of 2010

AN EXCITING YEAR IS DRAWING TO A CLOSE. Coming full circle of seasons it is winter again while the haven freezes over and a friend messaged from Leh in north-western Himalayas, "Its -15.4° C (4.2° F) here. Expect snow typing." I am almost sure it was meant to read "slow typing".

HBR on their part collectively published some 1000+ articles over the last 365 days. Recently, one of the editors listed the top 10 most popular articles among them (try here). Listed below are the five articles that I liked most.

1. Why I Returned My iPad by Peter Bregman
Peter Bregman stands in a two-hour queue-for-a-gadget for the first time to get his hands on iPad on its launch day. And within days, he is hooked. In this I-fear-I-might-loose-boredom post, Bregman talks about returning his iPad to Apple because it was "too good". He writes, "It's too easy. Too accessible. Both too fast and too long-lasting. For the most part, it does everything I could want. Which, as it turns out, is a problem." Because, he feared, he might loose his boredom, and hence, creativity. Go here to know why. [Tags: Managing yourself, Time management]

2. 12 Things Good Bosses Believe by Robert Sutton
Coming from Sutton’s popular book "Good Boss, Bad Boss", this short article is more of a link list where the items in the list go on to become articles in themselves. Some pretty common-sense stuff that sounds too apparently recognizable and one might just nod one’s head through it without the real attention or much effort in remembering it. That’s where the associated articles come in useful. Go here for the first branch of the tree. [Tags: Managing people, Leadership]

3. The Best Cover Letter I Ever Received by David Silverman
This remains one of the most popular articles of 2010 even though Silverman actually published it the year before. The answer to the question in the title is rather sarcastic. Silverman doesn't want people to waste time over writing cover letters, and explains the reasons in this post. Go here for this short and sweet post, and go here for his preceding and popular article - How to Write a Résumé That Doesn't Annoy People. [Tags: Career planning, Hiring, Business writing]

4. Define Your Personal Leadership Brand by Norm Smallwood
Smallwood published his book around personal branding about three years ago. This article provides a decent synopsis of his overall ideas. Targeted at leaders in general and consultants in particular, this five-step approach is a good lead to put the basics in place, and to build upwards from there. How different this is from developing and grooming a leadership personality? Well, I suppose a "personal leadership brand" is short-lived in comparison, and like most products, it carries a shelf-life and an expiry date. Go here for your own branding tips. [Tags: Personal effectiveness, Leadership development]

5. Six Social Media Trends for 2011 by David Armano
Published earlier this month, this forecasting post talks about the six likely trends that we could encounter in '11: Social media integration in corporate policies, Cheaper devices and faster connectivity, Facebook reigning over Foursquare for more business-friendly services, Social media schizophrenia and Identity crisis, Google to "strike back", and finally, Integration of brands in Social media e.g. Apple + Twitter = Ping. Go here for Armano's blog post. [Tags: Social media]

Read More

Book: "Inside Steve's [Jobs] Brain"

WHILE READING "Inside Steve’s Brain" (sic) by Leander Kahney I got reminded of the following anecdote:

This diplomat from the East was deputed to their embassy in Washington DC, in the United States. Having come to live in a Western country for the first time, the little man decided to pick up the holy book and began studying it in hopes of getting acquainted to the new culture more thoroughly. After a while when he met with a professor of religious studies at one of the colleges in New York, the humble man pronounced his predicament that after reading through the book almost three times over, he couldn’t figure out any religion in it.

Nothing could be more illuminating in terms of human mindsets. For example, to an Eastern mindset that is used to live a life with abstractions and of elemental powers, such as the dance of the Shinto priests who proudly claim to have no theology; or with millennia old traditions of having religion a part of the daily routine as naturally as sun-drying the woodblocks with Indian sandalwood to gain aroma out of stove; understandably it could be a difficult comprehension in considering a given narration about a certain ruling family of a given tribe of Levantian peoples as a dictum of mainstream and organized religious practice, with due respects that it being the most successful, loved and practiced one in our contemporary world.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL, the world's largest IT company by market cap) fan following has attained a sort of a cult status for some time. And perhaps a similar experience could be derived by a business oriented mindset trying to approach "Inside Steve's Brain". It is a book that tells the story of an individual’s work-life, sketchily and at time contradictorily, and irrespective of what the text claims on the cover the book makes it rather difficult to draw business lessons out of it – unless one counts ‘gospels’ among them, akin to God’s word that cannot be challenged. The writer hardly makes any attempts in drawing his own conclusions or opining about certain event, or the controversies, or the specific products, or even the fallouts. Whatever is being said, is said by somebody else, and there are references quoted about them, which seem to come straight out of Google search results.

One can’t afford be judgmental about this being either a work of fiction or a factual biography; for anyone hardly knows, let alone understands, “The Holy Ghost” Steve Jobs (cf. pp112). The book takes off fairly well, and evidently Kahney has worked on “Forward” and the first chapters. But the landing is rough – from an iPod design studio to directly into acknowledgements is rather abrupt and bumpy. The writer should have cared to close the loop - summery pages would be an asset here. Towards the last 10% the reader gets a bit tired; suggesting that the writer was tired by the last couple of chapters.

But one must consider reading this book. At least for its entertainment value. It should also make a good companion for Pirates of Silicon Valley (try here). And most apparently, should sugarcoat the bitterness of the aftertaste of other fictions like iCon (try here). Initially, the title suggested that the book is a collection of leadership lessons, if not psychological analysis, about this enigmatic personality at the helm of Apple Inc. It turned out to be a gross error of judgment: First, there cannot be leadership lessons here, for Steve is not a leader in the classical sense of modern leadership. (In the contemporary sense of classical leadership? A "Great intimidator"? Perhaps yes, like many Generals in the army with their typical command-and-control leadership). And secondly, it is most likely that any attempt of psychoanalysis would end up in a lawsuit.

Apple products speak for themselves. Almost anyone who likes to love, hold and showoff a piece of electronics knows that a visit to the nearby Apple Imagine store does the trick. This book might just make that experience more enjoyable. On the other hand, if you are tech novice, looking for a practical yet well-built device and haven’t been to any Apple experience, the book might help you take the plunge and contribute toward your loss of innocence. And one would actually love Steve here before it start getting a little irritating, and then one is left to looking for his or her own reasoning to continue loving. Mostly, one finds one.

For that, Kahney deserves credit and appreciation for sure. And then, also for sticking his neck out and going all out in praising the man he adores.

Go here to check out the book at Amazon.

Read More

TED 2011 Prize Goes to "Anonymous" J R

TED PRIZE IS AN ANNUAL AWARD INVOLVING USD 100,000 AND SUPPORT TO AN IDEA TO CHANGE THE WORLD. The 2011 prize has been awarded to someone only known as JR. It is believed to be a French photographer and artist, who anonymously painted and created installations on the walls of the world – mainly the urban slums. Known as "pervasive art", JR took help from urban volunteers to create black & white paintings on large urban walls and highlights the burning issues of the city and the region.

Writings on the wall, literally.

While the Guardian featured him as "the hippiest street artist" earlier this year, the 27 years old prefers the term "photograffeur", adding that, "If there is one thing I've always taken care of with my work, it's that it's never an advertisement for anything other than the work itself and for the people it's about — no 'Coca-Cola presents'". Fiercely protective of his anonymity, he actually appeared with sunglasses and a hat when the TED organizers first got in touch with him on Skype after the prize announcement. The anonymity is crucial for his work. It allows his to travel freely and take on large projects, and it also helps avoiding the distraction away from his actual work and the main message. Representing people living on the margins, JR's anonymity goes with his philosophy of representing the nameless.

[Above: "Giving Slums a Human Face". Source: J R/Agence UV]

In his late teen years, JR found a camera dropped by someone in the Paris metro and took on photography from there. He sampled various graffiti artists across Europe for a couple of years, and in 2002 started work on his first major project. In 2003, two major photographs were discovered on the walls of Paris and Rome each. "Portrait of Generation" came after three years when the slums of Paris witnessed huge portraits highlighting the marginal population. In 2007, eight cities on either sides of Israel-Palestine border found installations by JR involving photographs of a rabbi, imam and priest. This was the largest illegal exhibition of its kind in Europe. The following years found him in different countries of Africa, South America and Asia (see the trailer for "Women Are Heroes" below).

The coveted TED prize money may not seem as high as other contemporary awards, but the real deal is with the one idea that JR can put forward to the TED community at large towards implementation. TED can mobilize its global reach of motivated individuals, garner large corporate donations through its affiliates, and provide platform for debates, discussions and diffusion of the ideas. JR has been surviving on money generated through various auctions of his art, which goes towards expenses of prints and materials of his various larger-than-life campaigns. The financial aid shall help keep JR independent as he is, and the limelight through TED could inspire similar artists to take up social causes of similar nature. The British celebrity chef Jeremy Oliver was the winner of the prize last year, and his TED 'wish' has been a war against obesity. The year before, former American president Bill Clinton was the winner, and he channelized resources towards rebuilding the health-care system in Rwanda.

When the Ted team reached out to him, JR was in Shanghai campaigning against the destruction of older buildings and habitats of the elderly and the poor. He said that he had learnt of the award only recently and hadn't thought about the 'wish' yet, though it was to be on the same line as his campaigns in the slumps of Brazil, Cambodia, and Kenya. Further, the apparently bigger challenge than deciding his wish would be the impact that such limelight might bring to his anonymity and freedom to operate.

Following are some of JR's "ideas worth spreading":

J R Wins TED 2011 Prize

"Women Are Heroes" - part of the campaign that took place in Kenya: (at YouTube)

• See also:
• Go here, here, and here for pages on the TED.com
• Go here for J R's website.
• Go here for the NYTimes coverage, and here for the feature by The Guardian from earlier this year.

Read More

HBR: What Is The Work Of The CEO?

"The CEO is the link between the Inside that is 'the organization,' and the Outside of society, economy, technology, markets, and customers. Inside there are only costs. Results are only on the outside."
-- Peter Drucker, "The American CEO"

Alan ("A.G.") Lafley TOOK OVER AS CEO of Procter & Gamble in June 2000 when the FMCG behemoth was battling turbulent times. At 6pm on his first day at the office as the new (and first time) CEO he was facing a hostile press conference live on national television – like a "deer in the headlights" as he recalls. P&G stock price that had crashed from $86 to $60 in one day tanking Dow index by 374 points, went further down by 11% at the news of Lafely's appointment as the new chief. The headlines went from "P&G Investor Confidence Shot" to "We love their products, But we hate their stocks." to "Does P&G Still Matter?"

Four years into working hard at trying to turn the tide and leading P&G as the chief executive, one day out of the blue, A.G. decided to give a call to Peter Drucker at his residence. Drucker, 83 at that time, answered the calls himself, and apparently invited A.G. to come over for a chat.

In October 2004, A.G. and a groups of executives spent quality hours discussing the leadership challenge with Peter Drucker at his residence. Drucker made numerous side notes during the meetings, and others made notes of Drucker's advisory quotes and observations. In 2009, before retiring after 10 years as the CEO of P&G, A.G. compiled an HBR article and published a very interesting case study on how he turned around P&G's fortunes to make it one of world's largest consumer goods manufacturer. On the larger part, A.G. credits Drucker for his strategy and success.

In a nutshell, A.G. Lafley notes the following four fundamental tasks of the CEO as per Drucker’s simple and clear observations, with Drucker's comments as quotes:

1. DEFINE The Meaningful Outside –
Determine which external constituency matters most. Your company has many stakeholders, each with important demands. Once you’ve defined your most important external constituency, ensure that everyone acts on that understanding.

2. DECIDE What Business You Are In –

"Equally important—and also a task only the CEO can fulfill—is to decide, What is our business? What should it be? What is not our business? And what should it not be?"

For example, what are your core businesses, and which of them will you grow? Analyze the attractiveness of the businesses you’re already in, your company’s position in existing industries relative to competitors’, and industries’ strategic fit with your core competencies.

3. BALANCE The Present And The Future –

"The CEO decides on the balance between yield from the present activities, and investment in an unknown, unknowable and highly uncertain future... it is a judgment rather than [a decision] based on 'facts.'" Adding that, "Effective CEOs make sure that the performing people are allocated to opportunities rather than only to 'problems.' And they make sure that people are placed where their strengths can become effective."

Ensure that stakeholders’ near-term interests don’t overshadow your company’s long-term future. Balance short-term investments with investments in resources needed for your company’s longer-term future.

4. SHAPE Values and Standards –

"CEOs set the values, the standards, the ethics of an organization. They either lead or they mislead."

Define your company’s values (its identity) and standards (expectations) in ways that encourage the right behaviors.

• See also:
• Related article: HBR: Managing Oneself - by Peter Drucker
• Related article: "What would Peter do?" – A Tribute at Drucker Century
• Go here for A.G. Lafley's HRB article: "What Only the CEO Can Do"
• Go here for more on A.G. Lafley at "Leading Authorities" website

Read More

Sachin Tendulkar’s Stock Market Run

AUSTRALIA, THE DOMINANT SPORTING powerhouse among the 71 the Commonwealth countries, have invested into researching India’s cricket performance and how it relates to equity trading at Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange of Dalal Street in Mumbai, India. The market cap of BSE stands close to USD 1.4 trillion, and NSE, with market cap of nearly USD 1.5 trillion, is the third largest Stock Exchange in the world in terms of the number of trades in equities.

Australia were dethroned by India from #1 spot for ICC test cricket ranking earlier this year, and are being challenged for their spot for the ODI ranking as the contest is on. And their desperation is evident on the field while the Test Series between the two national sides is currently under way.

As Sachin Tendulkar, the cricketing legend goes on to slam his sixth double century for India, his second against Australia, (and the only International player to ever score a double hundred in the ODI format of the game), the report by the economists goes on to suggest that when Sachin is playing in good form and ends up on the losing side, the stock-market takes an additional 20% hit on the negative side.

Russell Smyth, Head of Economics department at Monash University of Australia and economist Vinod Mishra have the following to say:

"While a win by the Indian cricket team has no statistically significant upward impact on stock market returns, a loss generates a significant downward movement in the stock market.

India's main index, the CNX Nifty, shows that the Nifty index was generally flat the day after a win, but the day following a loss, the index dropped by an average of 0.231 per cent. The drop following a loss was more than seven times greater than the movement following a win.

In the 100 matches in which Tendulkar played and India lost, the average return the day after the match was 0.328 per cent, an 18 per cent higher drop compared to the average drop after losing a match (which Tendulkar did not play).

A feeling of sadness might make investors withdraw from the world and the stock market, thus resulting in reduced trading for a while, whereas anger might make them behave in an impulsive manner, which might involve selling of a lot of the stocks."

Edit: included score details from the 2nd Test match between Australia and India.

• See also:
• Related post: Sach Is Life
• Go here for Financial Times coverage on the Smyth & Mishra report, here for Indian Express coverage and here for Deccan Herald take on the topic
• Go here for report on Tendulkar, 37, and after 21 years on the international pitch, clinching yet another ICC Player of the Year
• Go here for a similar report at cxoadvisory.com linking American NFL Super Bowl with Stock market

Read More

Oct 2 - Mahatama Gandhi at 141

[Photo courtesy: Amitabh Bachchan]

"If blood to be shed, let it be our own.
Let us cultivate the calm courage to die without killing."
~ Mahatma Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948)

[Above] A video clipping of Gandhi's speech challenging Jan Smuts' racist law of segregation. From Attenborough's epic - Gandhi: The World Event.

Richard Attenborough writes in his compilation book:

"[Gandhi's] words struck me so forcibly that there and then I committed myself to attempt to make a film about Mahatma Gandhi - a commitment that changed the subsequent twenty years of my life."

• See also:
• Try http://youtu.be/e3tjIiWIkAQ for the clip on YouTube.
• Go here for Richard Attenborough's compilation book The Words of Gandhi.

Read More

A Thousand-days Challenge

"It is not the mountains we conquer but ourselves."
~ Sir Edmund Hillary

HOW WOULD IT FEEL to be up close and personal with Mt. Everest?

Or to humbly come to face with the Chomolangma ("Saint Mother") as they say in Tibet?

Well, we shall find out in next thousand days or less. Because that's the pledge: To camp underneath the summit of Mt. Everest within next 30 odd months or so.

A thousand days may seem rather stretched, but for a goal such as this, it may all get tight pretty quickly. And needless to say that a much more detailed planning and preparations are required - a whole mountain to surmount in itself before the actual one - mainly towards the physical fitness and mental toughness - as well as evaluating other professional, social and economical commitments and feasibilities. Over the past week or so while the decision over the destination for the challenge has been under debate, some of these aspects have been taken into due consideration. And, that helps.

A couple of pointers and a bit of background: While Mt. Everest has always been at the top of the list of dearness, Lewis Pugh's recent TED talk gave the final push. And though Mt. Everest is a more complicated and rather tougher ballgame all together, it was nice to read the encouraging post by Matt Cutts of Google from Kilimanjaro. Also, Chris Guillebeau had an interesting post a couple of years ago at his unconventional strategies blog asking to name one definitive place that one would want to visit in the lifetime (thanks Amelia for the link).

Read More

Gartner: 10 Changes in the Nature of Work in Next 10 Years

"ORGANIZATIONS WILL NEED TO PLAN for increasingly chaotic environments that are out of their direct control, and adaptation must involve adjusting to all 10 of the trends (listed below)", observers Gartner fellow and VP, Tom Austin.

In a report published earlier this year titled "Watchlist: Continuing Changes in the Nature of Work, 2010-2020", Gartner says that organizations will need to determine which of the 10 key changes in the nature of work will affect them the most, and consider whether radically different technology models will be required to address them.

The other key message that emerges out of the report's overall analysis says:

Work will become less routine, characterized by increased volatility, hyper-connectedness, 'swarming' and by 2015, 40 percent or more of an organization's work will be "non-routine," up from 25 percent in 2010.

Later next month, Tom Austin is scheduled to speak in London on these trends:

1. De-routinization of Work: Non-routine skills are those we cannot automate. The report argues that the core value that people add is not in the processes that can be automated, but in non-routine processes, uniquely human, analytical or interactive contributions that result in words such as discovery, innovation, teaming, leading, selling and learning.
2. Work Swarms: A kind of work pattern involving a flurry of collective activity by anyone who is available and who could add value, is defined as Work Swarms. The report indicates two phenomena within the collective and apparently unstructured activity: One is that Swarms form quickly, attacking a problem or opportunity and then quickly dissipating. And secondly, Swarming is an agile response to an observed increase in ad-hoc action requirements, as ad-hoc activities continue to displace structured, bureaucratic situations.
3. Weak Links: Members of a Work Swarm may not 'know' each other in the classical sense, or even have a strong or moderate reference. There relationship remains largely temporary, and the report labels it as Weak links. They are indirect indicators which partially rely on the confidence others have in their knowledge of people. Social Networking comes into play at personal as well as professional level that would contribute to Work Swarms.
4. Working with the Collective: "the Collective" are external forces, mainly disparate groups of people tied together by common interests, that are not controlled by the organization but who could impact the success-rate of the organization. Their potential for influence is very high. The report suggests that smart and powerful business executives who live within the business ecosystem which they can not control, will do the market research and come up with ways to work with "the collective" to wield influence in their organizations for their benefit.
5. Work Sketch-ups: Most non-routine processes that could not be automated will also be highly informal and non-standard. The process models for most non-routine processes will remain simple "sketch-ups" which are created on the fly. The practice will evolve over time to be able to identify meaningful patterns of these processes and structure them.
6. Spontaneous Work: Spontaneity implies more than reactive activity. The report says that as in Work Swarms, spontaneous and proactive activities would also emerge, forming its own patterns such as seeking out new opportunities and creating new designs and models. 

7. Simulation and Experimentation: Interface with virtual environment will increase many fold, where technologies such as 3D interfacing with data (akin to the Spielberg film Minority Report) will replace spreadsheets and traditional number crunching. The contents of the simulated environment will be assembled by agent technologies that determine what materials go together based on watching people work with this content.
8. Pattern Sensitivity: This is Gartner's forward looking management strategy approach called "pattern-based strategy". The report argues that the business world is becoming more volatile, with far less visibility into the future than ever before. Organizations will have to create focus groups to identify divergent emerging patterns, to evaluate those patterns, and to develop various scenarios showing how the disruption might play out.
9. Hyper-connected: Organization have complex inter-relationship of networks, with multiple overlaps for a single function. For instance, an IT support function might work well in delivering a service while working in dedicated and isolation mode, but in shared and complex environment with multiple overlaps, networks, and stakeholder, the same dedicated resources may largely under-perform and underachieve, resulting into additional work. The report calls this Hyper-connectedness, and argues that it will lead to a push for more work to occur in both formal and informal relationships across enterprise boundaries, and that has implications for how people work and how IT supports or augments that work.
10. My Place: There will be job roles which are always on-duty. For them, the traditional segregation of personal, professional, social and family matters, along with organization subjects, will disappear. They will work in virtual Work Swarm environment, all the time, across time zones and organizations, and with participants who barely know each other. But the employee will still have a "place" where they work, called "My Place".

• See also:
• Go here for the report on Gartner website (User login required)
• Go here for details on the upcoming summit in Spetember '10 in London where Tom Austin will be presenting these trends.

Read More

HBR: Paths to Power by Jeff Pfeffer

"Power is the organization’s last dirty secret." ~ Rosabeth Moss Kanter

POWER IS REQUIRED IF ONE WANTS TO GET ANYTHING DONE in any large organization. Unfortunately, Power doesn’t just fall into one’s lap: one will have to go after it and learn how to use it. Stanford University professor for Organizational Development, Prof. Jeffery Pfeffer, argues that being uncomfortable with Power Dynamics has cost career promotions (and sometimes, the job) to many talented people from premier organizations and institutes including Harvard and Sloan. Pfeffer offers a primer on why power matters, how to get it, and how to use it to advance your organization's agenda - and thus, in turn, how to furthering your career, not just incidentally.

Powerful people prevail by using various techniques when push comes to shove. With examples from real-life and historical accounts from corporate and national political scenarios Pfeffer illustrates many of these techniques. (Interestingly, Pfeffer analyses Lalit Modi's ascent to great power from the world's wealthiest sporting body to the world cricket arena as one of the case studies.)

In his brilliant article titled "Power Play" in the latest issue of HBR magazine Pfeffer discusses the following basic idea. The article headline reads: "Acquiring real clout—the kind that helps you get stuff done—requires bare-knuckle strategies." Written more as a survival guide for any new 'idea' to progress, Pfeffer identifies personal barriers that the leader has to overcome. The article explains 11-point exercise towards the Paths of Power, acknowledging all along that it is not the ideal world that the techniques apply to, but rather it is for the real world that one deals with, and which is much less 'ideal' and just than all of us may want it to be.

The basic idea of the article is this:

Any new strategy worth implementing has some controversy surrounding it and someone with counteragenda fighting it. When push comes to shove, you need more than logic to carry the day. You need power.

Learning to wield power effectively begins with understanding the resources you control. Money is not the only one. Whatever you have - a valuable network, access to information - can be meted out or denied to gain leverage.

You can also push past obstacles through sheer relentlessness. You should avoid wasting political capital on side issues and dispense with opponents in ways that allow them to save face.

You may find such power plays and the politicians behind them unsavory - and they can be. But you'll have to get over your qualms if you want to bring about meaningful change.

Pfeffer identifies three main barriers that can make you 'your own worst enemy' unless you learn how to get over them and embrace the power you need.
1) The Belief That the World Is a Just Place: Believing in a just world makes people less powerful in two important ways. First, it limits their willingness to learn from all situations and all people, even those they don’t like or respect. Second, it anesthetizes them to the need to proactively build a power-base.

2) The Leadership Literature: The teaching on leadership is filled with prescriptions that reflect how people wish those in positions of power behaved. There is no doubt that the world would be a much better place if people were always authentic, modest, truthful, and concerned about others, instead of simply pursuing their own aims. But wishing that’s how people behaved won’t make it so.

3) Your Delicate Self-esteem: If people intentionally do things that could diminish their performance, they can view disappointing outcomes as not reflective of their true abilities. For instance, told that a test is highly diagnostic of intellectual ability, some people will choose not to study the relevant material or to practice, thereby decreasing their performance but at the same time providing an excuse that doesn’t implicate their natural ability. Similarly, if people don’t actively seek power, the fact that they don’t obtain it doesn’t have to be seen as a personal failure.

In the article, Pfeffer argues that Power is 'exercised' using some of the following techniques:

1. Mete out resources.
2. Shape behavior through rewards and punishments.
3. Advance on multiple fronts.
4. Make the first move.
5. Co-opt antagonists.
6. Remove rivals—nicely, if possible.
7. Don’t draw unnecessary fire.
8. Use the personal touch.
9. Persist.
10. Make important relationships work—no matter what
11. Make the vision compelling.

So, welcome to the real world. It may not be the world we want, but it’s the world we have!

See also:

• Go here for the HBR article page. And here for the HBR IdeaCast podcast page for Jeffery Pfeffer's interview - Telling The Truth About Power.
• Go here for Jeffery Pfeffer's official page at Stanford University.

Read More

Steve Jobs' Presentation Skills Reflects Why Apple is Apple

"This changes everything. Again"

AFTER THE WORLD'S LARGEST PRODUCT LAUNCH EVENT YET, on July 16 Steve Jobs did the press conference following the recent keynote for the world's largest IT organization that Jobs staged for the eleventh year running after his return in '99 to the (then struggling) company he originally co-founded in '76 as Apple Computers Inc.

Over the last two and an half years since the launch of the first iPhone, the competition has grown (and perished) in the smartphone product space. The information hungry, instantaneously reacting, viral population of Social Media 'journalism' was increasingly demanding of this Silicon Valley veteran from 1, Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA, USA.

Apparently, Apple's latest offering of iPhone 4 smartphone with services from AT&T ran into media highlighted issues of a certain "loop antenna" problem where the device was dropping calls if the user happened to hold the device in a certain manner. (Rather interestingly, the same device did not seem to have any such issues in geographies other than the US. where media and service provider coverage were different.)

Jobs presentation at this press release to address the 'issues' was very effective, and some of the key attributes of his presentation skills have been captured below:

Have a laser-sharp focus on audience expectation: "relevancy" runs the highest among people noting, tweeting and blogging in real time during the key presentation events.

Give the audience a pleasant surprise by always having something new: content of the presentation has to be novel or newsworthy. There is no use regurgitating previous press releases or old news.

Forget bullet points - perfect your slide design: design slides with images instead of text, with crisp lines which is not only short and quotable, but even if it's taken out of the context of his presentation, it still makes sense.

Repetitions and consistency: take time to summarize the points, even if they are many. Build intended-redundancy to the presentations that helps drive home the central message.

Evangelize! draw the audience to join the ‘cause’, the main theme of the presentation. If required pitch in the competition with Us-vs-Them scenarios.

Image credits and more: Engadget

Read More

Nassim Taleb on Euro

"EURO IS DOOMED AS A CONCEPT", declares the author of "The Black Swan", Nassim Taleb, at a recent interview with CNBC. Adding that "We had less debt cumulatively [two years ago], and more people employed. Today, we have more risk in the system, and a smaller tax base. [...] Banks balance sheets are just as bad as they were" two years ago when the crisis began and "the quality of the risks hasn't improved."

Part I: While discussing the outlook for the global economy with Bob Long (CEO, Conversus Capital) on CNBC, Taleb says, "We have no other solution but to slash debt".


Part II: "The balance sheets of banks are just as bad as they were" two years ago when the crisis began and "the quality of the risks hasn't improved," argues Nassim Taleb.

Read More

Infographic: Labour Cost Disparities

DISPARITIES OF LABOR COSTS: Interesting Infographic showing how long does it take other countries to make the equivalent of US minimum wage of USD 15,080.

Click the image to enlarge

Source: FixR

With respect to India, the calculation considers the Government recommended minimum daily wage which is about USD 2.5. In practice, a common worker shall make double to three times of this amount, which is still very less compared to high cost regions but it would make the ratio less skewed. Further, if Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) is considered, the difference between USA and India costs shall be about 6 years and 3 months.

Read More

Cheers! to Life

Cheers to Life!

Read More

Goldman Sachs Under Siege (For Doing Good?)

FT point out:
- clueless senators falling over one another to score cheap political points but the sense that outrage against bankers in general, and Goldman in particular, has reached unhealthy levels.
- for millions of home owners and investors psychologically unable to admit at least partial fault for succumbing to the madness of crowds and lure of easy money.
- [an older client on the respect for the firm] 1982 when Puerto Rican nationalists bombed Merrill Lynch’s Manhattan headquarters. “Didn’t they know all the money and brains are at Goldman?”
And, finally,
- some even wonder whether the group’s perceived Jewishness has infected legitimate criticism of it with centuries-old prejudices.

• See also:
• Go here for the FT article.
• Go here for a follow up by TT Ram Mohan in ET.

Read More

Fitts’s Law and Usability of Gmail

Fitt’s law (Simplified):

"Put commonly accessed UI elements on the edges of the screen. Because the cursor automatically stops at the edges, they will be easier to click on. [And then] Make clickable areas as large as you can. Larger targets are easier to click on."
The law is rather simple (or, one might argue, too simple to follow all the time). This is basic common sense. Human Interfaces of computer system typically are a subject matter of Fitts’s law.

A FEW YEARS AGO I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY to attend a workshop with Mr. Aaron Marcus. The veteran man is an industry expert on usability and the designer of the original Nokia cell phone’s user navigation system. Cell phones were a niche product in early 2000's and not much data was available to ascertain how users would react to such an operating system of such a hand-held device.

Mr. Marcus had a variety of ideas and principles to talk about at the workshop on the subject of Software systems and their usability aspects. He began his presentation with some of the photographs that he had captured in the fruits and vegetable markets of Africa. He argued that the rural ladies selling these goods were very less likely to have got primary education. However, looking at the grouping and arrangements of goods that they were selling – lemons, figs, chewing sticks and others – one could observe that all of it adhered to some of the basic though indigenous design patterns. The largest objects were kept at arm’s length; groups of smaller objects were kept at the centre; there was a hierarchy around freshness of the goods; and finally, the whole arrangement was then utilized in bargaining and negotiations. There may not be primary education, but there was some common sense.

Mr. Marcus argued that the same basic senses also drive ergonomic of products and systems.

More recently, a few days ago when Scott Adam smacked Google design team for their unintuitive and flawed design of their web-based emailing system Gmail, there was a lot of hue and cry from die-hard Google fans. Dilbert blog was swarmed with protesting comments, unthoughtful that they were in most cases.

Last week, Jeff Atwood picked up the similar thread and did an interesting study with illustrations by citing two examples from Gmail, and one from Facebook. The point is well made. The eject button is surprisingly lost in the woods of the so called Google Operating System. As one of the friends put it, to log onto Gmail after pubs on weekends is asking for trouble – the arrangements and margins between buttons leave no margin for error and your mailbox could be messed up pretty badly when you notice next morning.

A recent illustration by National Geographic Magazine argues that the success of Google Orkut social networking website in India and Brazil was primarily based on is simple design. While the larger user-base in these geographies use low bandwidth connectivity, it is also to be considered that these are non-native English speaking users where simpler layout of the website design shall work better. A lesson the rest of product team at Google may be overlooking.

Mr. Marcus had concluded that in the years to come, the primary selling point of products would be ‘emotional’ triggers and attachment towards that object. “I love this watch”, shall supersede form and function, utility and usability, value and cost of the watch. And that indeed is coming out to be true, for here we are, with Social Media, declaring our likes and dislikes and associating our choice of products around it.

• See also:
• Go here for the clomplete post: The Opposite of Fitt's law
• Go here for NGM survey of Social Media tools
• Go here some of the best Usability tools that employ eye-tracking for current rich media contents of Web 2.0
• Go here for a very interesting series by Smashing mag on Story-telling as User experience. Note that while there is no direct relation to Usability per say, it has the final inkling from the user's side.

Read More