‘An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen’.—The Peter Principle
Work, drudgery, routine, appraisals, promotions, jealousy, mistrust, suspicion, scheming, manipulation, trials and tribulations, See I told you before, I don’t care, you will do as I say because I am your boss, POLITICS! These are typical phrase. We think we have WON, because we have come out of a so called stifling atmosphere and walk into another place that initially seems to have an open atmosphere, that quickly emerges to be stifling. Some stick around and get rewarded for loyalty (sic) and not ability, and those who get awarded for ability have the luxury of not being loyal, for they will be in demand.
We love to blame our bosses or authorities or organizations for the culture, work atmosphere, paper work, systems, process, procedures and so on. Yet there is something called a hierarchy in organizations, despite the fact that most of them want to claim that they have a flat structure. All of us aspire to be at the top, and why not, because we have all been trained to think line leaders, like winners.
Three Books on Business Humour may make you think otherwise
Laurence Peter gave the management world a great phrase – Peter’s Principle! He authored a book too, in which he propounded that all employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence within an organisation, at which point it is too late to move them down or sideways.
Managers reach their level of incompetence by being promoted until they fail to do well in their current job. The message for employees unsuccessfully seeking promotion, then, is that they may be at their level of incompetence already. The final promotion, the one that takes each individual from a level of competence to a level of incompetence, should not, however, be taken as inevitable.
He has classified failure into two kinds: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought. Fortune knocks once, but misfortune will try again and again. There are two sorts of losers—the good loser, and the other one who can’t act. Our focus is obviously on the good loser, and not the other kind, and hence another justification for the title of the book itself.
Another one is about Parkinsons Law, that says Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. As a result, companies grow without thinking of how much they are producing. Even if growth in numbers doesn’t make them more money, companies grow and people become busier and busier. This comically exposes bureaucracy (bosses) for tortuous administration (systems) and the pointless shuffling of paper (documentation). Look at it closely and you will find that it is not difficult to detect incompetence in organisations; many people have cause to complain about it not only in their working lives but in their daily lives as well.
Scott Adams and his Dilbert cartoon focus on themes of failure, incompetence and fear of being caught failing or being incompetent. How positive?
Is success directly proportional to winning?, then everyone who is promoted is successful, and if so, he follows the peters principle, and rises to his own levels of incompetence (loser).
Friday, August 20, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Chess-Stress-Mess-Cess
Chess is the game of life, when you get into troubles (stress), you encounter problems, and your approach either compounds it, or solves it to lead you to another trouble that is going to emerge as a problem (mess). For all this you always pay a price (cess).
Two people sitting opposite one another and staring at some 16 pieces for hours together, as if a bout of paralysis has struck their tongue, meditating with open eyes, and the neck craned at almost 30 degrees, to determine who will emerge as the eventual winner. How boring is what one thinks, when viewing the game from outside. Be a part of it and play with an equal, and this can be akin to a game of stratagem.
You have five different pieces (Queen, Rook, Bishop, Horse, and Pawns) that can move in three different ways (Straight, diagonal, and crooked), fighting to protect the supremacy of a single piece – the King. In pure percentage terms 6.25% being served by 93.75%.
Digital Divide they say, Urban rural, or Call it the consuming class, or Purchasing Power or, Developed and Developing Nations. The minority few rule the majority many, and history is replete with examples that talk about revolutions or uprisings or movements that dethrone regimes, rulers, nations.
In `The Challenge-Response Theory of History’ developed by Arnold Toynbee’s research on: A Study of History, found that every civilization began as a small tribe or group of people that was suddenly faced with a challenge from the outside, usually another hostile group of people. In business, the equivalent is usually aggressive competition and unexpected reversals in the market place.
To respond effectively to this external threat, the leader had to immediately reorganize the tribe or group if it is to survive. If he makes the right decisions and takes the right actions, the tribe would rise to the challenge, defeat the enemy, and in the process, grow and become stronger. But in growing and becoming stronger, the tribe would trigger a confrontation with another, larger hostile force or tribe, thereby creating another challenge. The Chess-Stress-Mess-Cess syndrome
As long as the leader and the' tribe continued to rise to and overcome the inevitable challenges confronting them, they would continue to survive and grow. By continuing to grow through successfully rising to the unavoidable challenges, even a small tribe can eventually became a kingdom and then a large civilization, controlling vast lands, treasures, and people.
Much of what was discovered in the life cycle of those empires is applicable to the rise and fall of businesses, large and small, and to individuals. The lessons he discovered apply to your personal life as well.
For every King, there are 15 pieces, for without them the king is nowhere, and without that King there is no meaning to the 15 pieces. Now the perspective depends on what you want the king to be – A loser, because he is dependent for his security on 15 other pieces, or A winner, because without him, the fifteen pieces are just a piece of plastic or wood and there is no game.
Two people sitting opposite one another and staring at some 16 pieces for hours together, as if a bout of paralysis has struck their tongue, meditating with open eyes, and the neck craned at almost 30 degrees, to determine who will emerge as the eventual winner. How boring is what one thinks, when viewing the game from outside. Be a part of it and play with an equal, and this can be akin to a game of stratagem.
You have five different pieces (Queen, Rook, Bishop, Horse, and Pawns) that can move in three different ways (Straight, diagonal, and crooked), fighting to protect the supremacy of a single piece – the King. In pure percentage terms 6.25% being served by 93.75%.
Digital Divide they say, Urban rural, or Call it the consuming class, or Purchasing Power or, Developed and Developing Nations. The minority few rule the majority many, and history is replete with examples that talk about revolutions or uprisings or movements that dethrone regimes, rulers, nations.
In `The Challenge-Response Theory of History’ developed by Arnold Toynbee’s research on: A Study of History, found that every civilization began as a small tribe or group of people that was suddenly faced with a challenge from the outside, usually another hostile group of people. In business, the equivalent is usually aggressive competition and unexpected reversals in the market place.
To respond effectively to this external threat, the leader had to immediately reorganize the tribe or group if it is to survive. If he makes the right decisions and takes the right actions, the tribe would rise to the challenge, defeat the enemy, and in the process, grow and become stronger. But in growing and becoming stronger, the tribe would trigger a confrontation with another, larger hostile force or tribe, thereby creating another challenge. The Chess-Stress-Mess-Cess syndrome
As long as the leader and the' tribe continued to rise to and overcome the inevitable challenges confronting them, they would continue to survive and grow. By continuing to grow through successfully rising to the unavoidable challenges, even a small tribe can eventually became a kingdom and then a large civilization, controlling vast lands, treasures, and people.
Much of what was discovered in the life cycle of those empires is applicable to the rise and fall of businesses, large and small, and to individuals. The lessons he discovered apply to your personal life as well.
For every King, there are 15 pieces, for without them the king is nowhere, and without that King there is no meaning to the 15 pieces. Now the perspective depends on what you want the king to be – A loser, because he is dependent for his security on 15 other pieces, or A winner, because without him, the fifteen pieces are just a piece of plastic or wood and there is no game.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Vagabond or Bondages of Time!
Haven’t been there times when you just set off alone or with a set of friends to a destination that you perhaps did not know while starting on the journey. Maybe you joined the herd, or was instrumental in putting together this vagabond experience of being a backpacker.
Haven't you set off on a journey where everything was chance, and the objective was grabbing each chance that came your way – or people who obliged you. That Journey is called LIFE!
That wave of the thumb for a Blind Lift – that brief interaction with the driver, and convincing the person to drop you to the destination or somewhere en-route, and then seeking another mode to reach the destination. As you sit through a lorry loaded with luggage and see the cars whizzing past by you to almost the same destination that you are headed, you envy the other person’s comfort. You seek an accommodation that is rustic, and can make do with whatever is available and comes your way. How exciting, one thought, but when one reminisces – one tends to think, “How Childish?” or “How Silly?”
One grows up, and experiences holidays from a different perspective. You Plan, You vacillate, You make choices. You select the best. All of a sudden you have to drop some, because it doesn’t fit within your budget. Everything right from logistics, travel, stay has to be flawless. Anything that is not in keeping with the experience is seen as intrusive. You complain about the food, the facilities, the service, the people, the ambiance, the locations, the climate and whatever else you can justify as not being upto the mark.
Adapt they say, but we seldom want to. Adjust they say, but we want to be more upright, Be Accommodative they say, but we like to revel in snobbery.
Backpacker versus Planners (Itinerary followers), both have their pros and cons, but essentially represent approach to life. Backpackers are carefree, happy go lucky, optimisers (minimum spending, maximum pleasure), and time for them is near infinite, experience is also infinite. This perhaps represents the herd in real life too.
The planners have a choice to make – for time is finite and hence a premium. , and hence there is a schedule for everything. A designated time for each item to be quantified in a linear fashion. Clockwork precision is prime, and what has been promised has to be delivered.
Both these are two sides of the same coin, but love to scoff at each other for their whims and fancies. In life too, most of us are like backpackers, while few are planners. But let the battle continue in who what to brand the other a loser for their approach in life.
Haven't you set off on a journey where everything was chance, and the objective was grabbing each chance that came your way – or people who obliged you. That Journey is called LIFE!
That wave of the thumb for a Blind Lift – that brief interaction with the driver, and convincing the person to drop you to the destination or somewhere en-route, and then seeking another mode to reach the destination. As you sit through a lorry loaded with luggage and see the cars whizzing past by you to almost the same destination that you are headed, you envy the other person’s comfort. You seek an accommodation that is rustic, and can make do with whatever is available and comes your way. How exciting, one thought, but when one reminisces – one tends to think, “How Childish?” or “How Silly?”
One grows up, and experiences holidays from a different perspective. You Plan, You vacillate, You make choices. You select the best. All of a sudden you have to drop some, because it doesn’t fit within your budget. Everything right from logistics, travel, stay has to be flawless. Anything that is not in keeping with the experience is seen as intrusive. You complain about the food, the facilities, the service, the people, the ambiance, the locations, the climate and whatever else you can justify as not being upto the mark.
Adapt they say, but we seldom want to. Adjust they say, but we want to be more upright, Be Accommodative they say, but we like to revel in snobbery.
Backpacker versus Planners (Itinerary followers), both have their pros and cons, but essentially represent approach to life. Backpackers are carefree, happy go lucky, optimisers (minimum spending, maximum pleasure), and time for them is near infinite, experience is also infinite. This perhaps represents the herd in real life too.
The planners have a choice to make – for time is finite and hence a premium. , and hence there is a schedule for everything. A designated time for each item to be quantified in a linear fashion. Clockwork precision is prime, and what has been promised has to be delivered.
Both these are two sides of the same coin, but love to scoff at each other for their whims and fancies. In life too, most of us are like backpackers, while few are planners. But let the battle continue in who what to brand the other a loser for their approach in life.
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