Sunday Posts

I am still at it, working to create a leadership training programme to be developed for and delivered in India. One that fuses Western leadership thoughts to Indian realities, and gives the learners a balanced, open view of life and work. I see this as a goal where all my interests converge - cross cultural openness, a transformation enabled by seeing the possibilities in life and a wider view of what we should achieve in life. I know that India is in the middle of a hectic transformation to a modern, service oriented economy. Where it is falling short, and I know this by experience, is in terms of people - skills and attitudes - that is needed to power such a transformation. And, this, a structured leadership education offering, which meets the requirements of a modern economy but works with the ground realities of India, would surely be helpful. Let me talk about the ground realities of India in the context of a modern economy. One special feature of the Indian economy which everyon...

Recession seems to be booming. Just the roles are reversed: the naysayers are saying that the state of affairs is going to continue and the more bullish ones are saying that the end is around the corner. We are battling the despair with hope, denials with dreams. Things were never better than this, we were never more optimistic - just that no one wants to spend, unless someone has other people's money. Like the government. Today the Bank of England Monetary Policy committee will meet to discuss whether to continue monetary easing, which means to supply more money in the economy. Basically to boost up demand, which seems to be failing to pick up despite all efforts. One can indeed say that overall statistics is looking slightly better now than it was at the beginning of the year, but that was because all governments together pumped an enormous amount of money to keep the things together. Or keep the things going as usual. So, now, what we see in statistics may not be normal or rea...

My Linkedin status update - that failed deals sometimes spark positive developments - brought forth a number of sympathetic comments. Some curious, because I was vague; some sympathetic, from those who gave weight to the failure part, and some cheers from those who did not. Those comments were helpful in cheering me up as well and restored my usual playfulness which invariably comes back to me at my own 'dark' moments. I love this, as I can see my own silliness and afford a good laugh. I am at one such strange moment. I have done it again, dear god! I have again wasted my time in trying to work with a Kolkata businessman, and naively assumed things have changed since I last cared to see. And, I am back to where I was - just that, this time the run was far shorter and my experience helped me confront issues earlier in the life cycle of the project rather than leaving it for later. But, while it lasted, it was a full spectacle of small-mindedness, idiocies and the lack, indeed a ...

I write this sitting in Finsbury Park. Not an ideal day to sit in the open, the sky is overcast and there is a slight drizzle, but then that did not deter scores of others sitting here around me. On the green, an unusual bowling game is being played, by two teams of aged pensioners. I have just finished the meal deal lunch I got from Boots, but decided to stay a few extra minutes here. Just like when I came to England five years back. We landed up in the city slightly ahead of time for appointment and needed to sit down somewhere to eat. We used to have packed lunches of roti and bhaji those days. Susant took me to Finsbury Park, only place he knew around the area where one could have a quiet lunch. I remember my amazement seeing those open air lunch crowd, at ease in such a little square. When you live in a city for too long, it gets into your blood. Like London for me. I remain an Indian, at heart, and care for Indian issues and carry Indian sentiments. But, then, I have lived in...

I am inside a busy Monday schedule, and to my infinite satisfaction, I could start early today. At work at 5:30am, this is a sort of ideal schedule which allows me to synchronize my schedule with my colleagues in India. There is indeed a potential downside: obviously I am expected to work till 5:30 in the evening, or beyond. But then I should not mind 12+ hours workday, never did before, and this is a sort of a make-or-break year when I must do my best to make things happen. One thing I know I got to become far more serious about my future. It is not good enough to be idealistic and say that I want to make change in people's lives. Actually, being idealistic needs more physical effort than being materialistic, because one must meet the material demands of a normal life and then meet the extra ones because one wants to do more. I must admit that I have the usual bengalee laziness - often I shall try to find an excuse to do nothing - and this hinders my material progress and jeopard...

I am still fascinated by how cultural differences taint communication and continued studying the ways they affect us all the time. I have already been through Geert Hofstede and found his work illuminating. However, while I found his studies fairly straightforward and helpful, I had two problems with how he, and his numerous followers who lead the way how Western businessmen think about other cultures, treat the national cultures. I must admit that both these problems are actually acknowledged in the literature. The first is the etic method of looking at national cultures - the fact that the cultures are classified against an external, largely western, framework. I am conscious that there is an alternative, emic , method to see cultures against their own structure, and some work has happened on the Chinese culture using a predominantly Asian perspective. The obvious outcome is the fifth dimension of the Hofstede model, the short-term versus long-term orientation - something plain w...

For a while, I kept my diary private. I wrote it on my blog, but did not publish, with the intent that one morning, when my life has truly changed, I would hit the publish buttons one after another. I assessed the metaphysical qualities of receiving these dispatches from the dead on my email box [and on the email of several others, who love me enough to subscribe to read the junk I write], but thought it would be fun. It will suddenly reveal something I did mean but did not say, something happened that I did not report. These are not earth-shattering events, nor politically sensitive like MI5 mistakenly recruiting AQ sympathisers - so, they can, indeed, be kept private for a while. Besides, there were several other things weighing on my mind. I could not have written about my life without talking about the dynamics of my work. And, other people, who are almost always present by implication. In these cases, reflecting is always safer than reporting, and I learnt that by experience. I ...

Being someone else is too much of a waste of a person you are. The Google quote hit home. My life is more or less about playing out role types set for me by others. Parents, family, friends, all others who I thought mattered - it was always about meeting the expectations. And, so I did - lived a spectacularly ordinary life of meeting expectations. But I fail, as I must. It is never possible to be someone else too well. You can at best achieve mediocrity, and let your senses die, and live somewhat longer. But be conscious and hungry and yet being someone else is a tough ask. Most people - no, no one - can actually do it. Yes, I am back to square one, where I was. It seemed like a big loop, where at certain times I seemed to be on top, master of own fate, but invariably it must turn and I am down again. This is one of those moments. Over last many years, I have not accepted one clear fact, that I have changed. My expectations have changed, the way I behave has changed. I have become far ...

I speak about this every day and thought of making this a public note that I can share. The synergy between training and recruitment businesses appears to be common sense, but it rarely works in practise. I have seen this in a number of training organizations - who see value in adding a recruitment wing as their trainees can find a job - and then expect that recruitment function to compete in the market. I have seen mergers committed on the basis of this common sense expectation, as well as recruitment organizations trying to get into training, as 'our candidates regularly fall short and we must assist them'.  The problem is that this does not work in practise. Well, mostly, because of two key reasons: Bias : Recruitment businesses are supposed to be independent arbitrators of jobs and candidates, but if it is to complement a training organization, it must necessarily operate with a bias, that in favour of students trained. Time : Recruitment is ...

In India, the most distant country in the world is Pakistan. The country we always watch with the corners of our eyes, the one whose mention makes us cringe and the one we almost always wish should never have been. We share a long border, similar food and culture. Pakistanis use a language, Urdu, which originated in an Indian court, Lucknow, and our histories were identical up to 1947. Indians have a strange feeling about Pakistan - most of us believe that we should drive all our Muslim citizens out of India and into Pakistan, and also that we should conquer Pakistan and undo the partition. Also, the ultimate blasphemy in India is to state the obvious - India can not conquer Pakistan, as it is a strong country with plenty of nuclear weapons and missiles, which can wipe out most Indian cities if an invasion was ever attempted. Because of Pakistan, India has a seize within. We remain a country in fear. We always see the world conspiring against us. We have created a permanent schism wi...