Sunday Posts

Max H Bazerman and Ann E Tenbrunsel write about Ethical Breakdowns in organizations. They are concerned about the sort of ethical problems that happen with perfectly good people, who are responsible family men and reasonable neighbours, do wrong things. Indeed, there will be corporate greed, cowboy businesses and an eternal hide-and-seek with regulators, but we are to assume business to be a positive force in the society, which can get us out of the current recession, we need to have our faith back average businesses run by average people: That way, this is an interesting essay to read. The authors point to five barriers to an ethical organization: Shall we say five excuses. To their credit, the barriers they cite sound remarkably familiar. It is worth recounting them here, therefore: First, there are Ill-conceived Goals. To quote, "we set goals to promote a desired behaviour, but they encourage a negative one". Edward Demming talked about the role quantitative goal-setting ...

From McKinsey Quarterly: "When Michael Crow became president of Arizona State University, in 2002, the former Columbia University vice provost had ambitious plans to turn the school into a new American university devoted to educating a wider swath of students and focused on higher productivity in cultivating competitive graduates who can succeed in today’s volatile job market. Nine years and a 25 percent increase in student enrollment later, Crow, 56, has delivered big changes in those areas and others at ASU and has garnered a growing reputation as a pace-setting thinker on higher education. He has made strides toward expanding ASU in areas such as ethnic and economic diversity, graduation rates, freshman retention rates, and in the number and intellectual reach of graduates. In fall 2010, ASU boasted an 83 percent first-year retention rate, up from 75 percent in the mid-2000s, and a record enrollment of more than 70,000 undergraduate and graduate students. A survey of...

I have been to many interviews where the dreaded question - what's your greatest weakness (or variations thereof) - came up. This was always a strange, conversation stopping, awkward moment. As an interviewee, this is a moment of judging the mood: Should I be honest or not? I have blown my chances before by trying to be honest. On the other hand, it is that moment when one can look arrogant or plain dumb. I have no weaknesses - whichever way you say it - proves that you are either lying, or completely self-oblivious. For the interviewer, this is an important question. That question establishes power equations in an interview: The candidate can not turn around and say, what's yours? It is the interviewee who has to disclose his weaknesses, he is obligated to have a sense of waekness because he is sitting at the other side of the table. There are some 'strategies' for handling this question, indeed. Some good advice came from this month's Harvard Business Review, whic...

I am enjoying this brilliant summer and spent the last few days not doing much. In fact, I hardly stepped out of my house. I felt a bit unwell, but that was only temporary: The real reason is that I was feeling very tired with what turned out to be a very difficult year already. My obsession with work and consequent 12 hour workdays have their effect, and as do the disappointments with less than perfect state of things. The British government's cavalier tinkering with the international student market threatens to kill the industry off, just when the country needs it to grow up and play a role. My expectations that British For-Profit education will grow up to compete with Americans in a few years time have taken a hit: Forget the Americans, if things go the way it is going, soon the Malaysians and even the Indian Education companies will overtake the British ones. I have done a lot of reading lately, more so for the demands of my MA course. This is my second year into it, and I h...

The impending State Assembly elections in West Bengal, due over next couple of weeks, remind me that I have been writing this blog for more than five years. I suddenly recall my post after the results were published last time, and my arguments that the Communist Party led Left Front remained the best alternative for West Bengal. I returned to this subject often thereafter, given that Kolkata is still home, wherever in the world I may live. My stance rarely changed, though. I maintained, for the most part of the last five years, that the Left Front remained the best options for the people in Bengal. I despaired at the personality cult of the opposition leader and her tantrum-prone politics . I deplored her populist stances over the industrial projects in West Bengal , and wished that her alliance partners, the Congress Party, will abandon her in time for 2011 elections. But, by 2009, for all my affiliations to the left of the centre parties and my dislike of leaders like Ms Banerjee ,...

I received a leaflet on post yesterday urging me to vote NO on the 5 th of May, helping to keep Britain's First Past The Post voting system intact. There is a photo of runners on the finishing line, and the message that under AV, the person coming second may be the winner. Like everything in today's Britain, it is an appeal to my fear: It is based on the assumption that I can be fooled, and misled easily. This informative video from BBC will tell anyone that AV is not about the losers winning, which the right-wingers are trying to establish, but about public having more choice, elections producing results and candidates winning fairly and squarely. It is giving the public more say and MPs less to play with. It will reduce the premium on the kind of dishonest politics of fear that the NO camp is playing. I shall argue that AV reflects the realities of political life in the modern times. Rarely, it is a straightforward choice between two clear alternatives, but many shades of ...

My takeaways (The interesting bits that I noted while watching the video): 1. The User-led Mission Statement: To make people happy for 5 minutes a day! That's cool, and profound, at the same time. 2. Defining the business as the 'Business of Humour' rather than the 'business of photos of Cats' or the 'business of animal photos'. Again, listening to the users at its best. 3. The distinction between Popular Culture and Internet Culture: That there is such a thing. It is indeed different from celebrity gossip and all that. The Angry Birds that make the wave is not to be seen anywhere near the Westminster Abbey on the Royal Wedding day. 4. The definition of Internet 1.0 as 'transactional' - where people went to do a thing - against the Web 2.0 as 'cultural', where people express and connect. In fact, I disagree slightly: I used Bulletin Board services and made friends there, but I get the point. 5. Interesting point about sites, as they grow, she...