Sunday Posts

I am in India. I have forced myself into a 'discovery' trip - sitting across the table with potential customers and partners to understand if our ideas have any validity. This has been enormously valuable, as it should be. I have now lived through the rituals of being challenged, rejected, questioned and occasionally supported - the usual rite of passage of product creation! I am exhausted but full of ideas, and I think I know what to do next. As it was necessary, I came with an open mind. Like a start-up, I came not to 'sell' but to 'learn' [I have always taken Steve Blank's point seriously: Start-ups are learning organisations] I was not pitching, I was connecting. Coming to India after a gap of two years, I wanted to know everything that is happening, that is important. Even when people were telling me that there was no market for my idea, I was eager to know what other ideas were there. I wanted to step out of my comfort zone to step into the other perso...

Culture eats strategy for breakfast, Peter Drucker observed. And indeed so: Strategy's rational aims and goals are all too often frustrated by ways of seeing and doing things in an organisation. Yet strategy gets so much attention and effort - and, indeed, one hires those fancy strategy consultants - while culture is seen as that soft thing that one can't really define, one can't really measure and ultimately, one can't do anything about. But culture comes from somewhere. It is not a given, an environmental factor that one has to live within. This is possibly the second misconception about culture, that it is an extension of the host society. Indeed, there is that influence of the host society, but an organisation's culture is just that and no more. While the host society supplies some of the precepts, an organisation's culture is a man-made thing, driven by the Founder or Senior Managers and shaped by the 'strategy' of the subordinates to live wit...

It only seems natural to hire people who fit the organisation's culture. In fact, the most common excuse for executive failure is the inability to fit into the culture of an organisation. We all have our own stories about colleagues or bosses who were complete misfits and caused havoc. However, a recent post on Linkedin presented the downsides of hiring for culture and that is this: That it breeds conformity. Seen from this perspective, hiring for culture is another 'corporate creep' that at least the Start-ups must avoid, as the objective of a start-up as an organisational form is to confront the status quo. I have observed in my life with the start-ups that while many, most of them, want to change the world, they don't want to change themselves. While their motto is to upturn entrenched industries and introduce new ways of doing things, organisationally and structurally, many start-ups are derivatives of some defunct organisation of the past. This is human: We a...

Education will be transformed by technology, but not until the technologists have fully appreciated the Culture question. This is EdTech's blind spot. Culture is 'soft' - it is hard to capture in a spreadsheet - and yet Education is a 'cultural activity', deeply embedded in the society that surrounds the learner and constantly informed by its history. Tech, on the other hand, at least in its modern, global, incarnation, wants to be culture agnostic: Its quest for scale is intricately linked to its ability to operate culture blind. The EdTech businesses fail to account for culture for more reasons than just its inherent claim for scale. They also assume technology is used in an uniform way, despite all evidence on the contrary. The users almost always adapt technology to their own purpose, rather than changing their habits to suit what the technologists originally intended, but such ideas are not welcome in technology circles addicted to the idea of 'ha...

There are people who would proclaim 'End of Capitalism' as each new crisis breaks, only to be proved wrong. Just as Marx did in his time, they see this end coming in every war or revolution, and indeed, in big and small financial crisis - from great depressions to currency crisis to stock market crashes. They see germination of an alternative from the triumph of socialist agenda in Vietnam or Venezuela, or a general apocalypse in climate change or a Russian face-off. In short, they seem to expect a definitive, episodic end of capitalism. But nothing yet has come of it. 'Capitalism', the beast these thinkers aspired of killing, has only come back stronger, proving its resilience through defying the odds. Stock markets that went down went up eventually, financial crisis dissolved into stability, revolutionary regimes decayed into business as usual and the apocalypse failed to arrive. Ironically, as it defied misplaced expectations of its demise, it seemed Capitalism...

The rational human being exists somewhere inbetween the matrimonial advertisers flaunting their caste and income and property, and the pathetic spectacle of Brock Turner, a swimmer and a student of an elite university, caught raping an unconcious woman. Being human is thus defined by our capacity to love, to fall in love as well as being loved, and to love well: Completely, committedly and unequivocally, transcending both our animal urges and middle class meekness, outside both the socially mandated and instinctively compulsive. Being able to love is not about pleasure, but about creating happiness. It is not about possession, but about giving away. If you deeply love something, give it away - a wise man once said - and touche! being able to love is to able to give, to surrender oneself for the happiness of the other. I remember my first moment of feeling in love. It was indeed a moment, specific and memorable. To be sure, it was a dream, etched in memory, permanently and not...

There is a conflict at the heart of management - the question of culture. Culture will eat strategy for breakfast, said Peter Drucker, and he, as always, was right on the money. And, yet, culture gets insufficient attention in management practise, although not in management theory. Many small companies, who collectively employ more people than ever, think of the question of culture really as a big company thing.  The underlying view is simple - you worry about culture when you are a big company! It is logical too, because big companies are large, somewhat inorganic entity, having to align diverse elements all the time in pursuit of certain objectives. In contrast, small companies are, well, small, organic entities often consisting of a man and his dog, where the business is defined by the opportunity of the day. The day-to-day reality of the small company makes the question of culture, which is often long term both as a concept and in impact, a luxury. But, the point ...

I come up a lot against the issue of culture, given that I mostly do what one would call International Business, and do so in Education, an area which is so culturally specific that most people banish both International and Business from vocabulary when dealing with it. So, in my day-to-day interactions, I both come across the Not-invented-here syndrome, that anything from a different culture should be rejected out of hand, and its inverted form, that culture does not matter. Indeed, I have a view, and I shall claim to be qualified to have one in this case. This, not just because I migrated mid-life and settled in another country, but because I escaped the entrapment of my native culture by deliberately trying to see it from outside. This, I believe, worked better for me than just reading about culture, which I had to do for professional reasons, and indeed, doing so made me think about the limitations of engaging with culture as a technical thing, a system of acting in a certain wa...

As I work on implementing project-based learning in different countries in Asia, one objection, that this 'idea' is not Asian, comes up all too frequently. Citing anecdotal evidence, my correspondents tell me that the Asian students are taught not to challenge and to ask, and that this approach to learning, built around a passive and respectful learner-teacher relationship, is too Asian to be swept away anytime soon. Correctly, they point out that the Asian students often behave the same way when they study abroad, at least initially, attending the lectures and displaying unquestioning respect for the teacher, trying to photograph every slide, note down every word.  The usual argument is that the same students will start learning differently, if exposed to a different system of learning, should be investigated in the background of these observations. Because, this discussion is not just about teaching methods, but learning: A Different approach to inquiry may lead to a di...

One strand of argument in many developing countries is that western education destroys local cultures and ways of living, and causes misery and destruction. This is at the heart of some of the most potent social debates that are going on, in India and in many other places. Both sides of the argument present this as a black-and-white thing: Either western education has brought all progress, or it has destroyed all good things that ever was. As usual, the truth perhaps lies somewhere in between. Many well-meaning western academics and intellectuals, who have no intent to harm anyone else, perhaps see anything less than wholehearted appreciation of what they do as an act of ungratefulness. After all, 'western science' is primarily responsible for the great improvements in standards of living in the last three hundred years. What's called Western Education spreads the message of scientific progress and rationality, and this has been the argument for spreading it even for ...

How much should one pay heed to cultural issues when planning to deliver education globally? This question has assumed renewed significance as global education is now a reality. Technology has made it possible, financial liberalisation made it desirable. Now, even the last barriers, which were there for mostly political and cultural reasons, are also coming down. Even a country like Bangladesh, which is forever at war with Western influence at home, has now allowed overseas universities to set up shop ( see story ). With a broad global consensus slowly emerging about a regulatory easing of Higher Education, the global online providers never had it better. The technology of delivery has reached a tipping point, the access to computing, through cheap tablets and smartphones, have reached even the remotest parts of the world, and the groundswell of middle class aspirations have far outstripped the traditional modes of supply.  Indeed, there are big hurdles to cross. Chin...

There is a lot of talk about freedom and tolerance in Chinese Higher Ed. I remember one English University getting into trouble for letting a student writing a dissertation on Pornography in their campus in Dubai. Tales like this are often told by Indian Academics, implicitly highlighting the freedom that a democracy is supposed to guarantee. And, at one level, that's almost taken for granted - no one discusses whether academic freedom could be an issue in Indian campuses.  However, if one needed an ugly incident to start talking about this, we have got one now. Indeed, the case I am referring to relates to basic freedom of expression, a much more fundamental issue than academic freedom, but without which, discussions about academic freedom is meaningless. An event which brings out a picture of India's campus culture that would undermine the smugness about democracy guarantees freedom. I am talking about the decision of Meerut's Subharati University ( the website ...

A culture of contribution, which most of our organisations need to thrive, is antithetical to the culture of performance that we usually have. The culture of performance is deeply flawed for two reasons. First, because it operates with the assumption that individuals make all the difference. But as computers take over our process jobs, we only employ people to do things that require social and creative activities, requiring what we call collaborative work. Teams, so to say, make difference, not just individuals. When you can't perform, perform alone that is, the idea of performance is not just misdirected but deeply harmful. Second, because the idea of performance creates wrong incentives. The 'me first' culture is deeply embedded in performance, and turns everything into a competitive solo sport. While this is linked to our social attitude towards work and success, the social attitudes are not a given, but just a product of a certain age. In a sense, the failings...

Does anyone care about education in India? Shiksha Bachao Andolon ('Save Education Movement') has just managed to get a book pulped - a cultural history of the Hindus written by American academic Wendy Doniger - because it 'contained factual inaccuracies'. It does not indeed matter that this was on sale since 2009, and sold well. The education of India has just been saved. Somehow, I have been preparing for book burnings in India soon and here is a good start. Indeed, there are lots of tweets mourning the passing of the book, and pointing to the fact that there are lots of people banning lots of different books in India. The most famous being Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, which was presumed to have injured Muslim sentiments. But so is V K Naipaul's An Area of Darkness, for its critical portrayal of Indians. Salman Rushdie's other book, The Moor's Last Sigh, was also briefly banned for alleged likeness of one of the characters with Shiv Sena supr...

Culture, while it is increasingly an issue to be reckoned with in business circles, does not get the same prominence in the discussion about International Education. The reason why business pays heed to culture is perhaps because increasingly the Chinese, Indian and other consumers are 'emerging', and it is no longer the same monolithic world where all purchasing powers were concentrated in the hands of a certain type, Western, consumers. For the same reason, surely, western educators may pay heed to the issue of culture, as the Chinese, Korean and Indian students flock to Western universities.  However, such cultural sensitivities are less likely to take hold in the academia, simply because the demand for an Western education is simply taken as an acceptance of its superiority. Besides, educators usually resist the idea of education being a consumer commodity and see the need to adjust to the needs of different students as a compromise of the standards. And, finally, pra...

In my work, I often act as an interpreter, not of the linguistic kind but of culture. Because the two sides of my working equation are my Western colleagues, partners and collaborators, and my Asian clients, students and customers. The fault lines of cultural cross-overs are therefore very real for me. Besides, I often get to play the role of a reluctant India expert, because of my origins, and very regularly the apologist for the country, when various not-so-encouraging stories hit the press. This could be quite an enjoyable learning experience: With more than fifteen years spent outside India, I am getting used to seeing the country and its quirks from outside. Though I still don't think the way my British or American colleagues would do, I have gotten used to see their point of view. I loved my time in Southeast Asia, and always feel more comfortable dealing with people in that region. So, in a way, this role of go-between is the best I can get, which makes my work, love a...