Education : Why and how much

A former colleague of mine is wanting to get back to school after 9 years of work, while I was applauding him for the willingness to go back to a school after so many years of working, set me thinking, why and how much should one study.

As we grow up, many things we do are driven largely by the surrounding and we as a person have no say in most of it till we get to the age of 15 plus. So, the lower KG, upper KG, primary and secondary happens, partly to keep us occupied so that our parents can do what they want to and partly to understand the world around us. In the process, we get labelled as intelligent, hard working, disciplined depending on how much we listen to our teachers/parents. This is the period to explore, if group activities and reality shows (sports) attract us, if science or literature holds us in terms of curiosity, if we develop some idols which tell us what kind of life we will like to lead. Hence, this is that time of life when we should be trying to match our liking to whats available.

Most of us miss this point of understanding what we like, we end up scoring in all the subjects by over stretching and proving that there is nothing that we do not like :( .This confuses our parents further and they insist that we should continue exploring (learning more) further. We move to the next stage and make a decision only when we are forced to - science, arts or commerce, there is nothing that says that they all converge at some stage as our life is not so compartmentalised, yet we make a straight jacketed decision looking at future possibilities of a job and hence a stable career/girl(boy)friend/spouse/life/children etc etc. But what about your liking?

How should one make a choice about what to be educated about. I clearly think, there are two phases - exploration and sharpening. In the early stage, its about finding our true calling, the things that interest us, the things that will make us work on something. Hence, it can be truly broad based. The next stage is about sharpening what we want to do. The education at this stage should be specific, education that will sharpen the skills to do a particular thing in a better way.

Which of these stages is apt upto what stage is unto each of us. At a stage in my life, i was looking to get back to a campus to do an executive MBA, would that have made a difference? If i look back, good that i did not get into it as i was not sure if it was an exploration stage or a sharpening stage. And learning is not always about getting into a campus, it can be just joining a small shop to understand day to day cash management or one can work in a restaurant to understand how an eatery works...

Did i manage to confuse the ex colleague of mine? sure I did.

Cognitive association

While driving back from the office, i tuned into an fm station which was playing a Kishore Kumar song of 70s, a song i used to know but had not heard for the last god knows how many years. As the song was playing, i started singing and to my astonishment, i was able recollect every word and sing alongwith. I started thinking, how is it that i can remember a song so old and never heard for so long but it takes a lot of work to remember Pythagorus theorem. I remember my teacher telling me once, rhythmic patterns are easy for our brain to remember.

What it is that our brain can remember quite a lot things and can store it for so long? I read an article a while back which states, our brain stores data in cells as layers and its tagged in a certain way so that it can be retrieved with a certain stimulus, which in the case of this song will be the tune. I feel its fascinating and easy to compare how data is stored in computers. I am sure even programmers would have used this analogy.

To take it further, if it is true that our brain is a kind of hardware or a data storage then our ability to create associations will be RAM in computer parlance. Can we determine the size of our storage? we start terming people as 500 GB or 1 TB storage... then what about RAM? similarly we start using terms like person with 1GB RAM. So, our bio will read as - engineer, MBA with 500 GB storage and 1.5 GHZ RAM. The unfortunate part is, our hardware can not be upgraded :-(

Coming to cognitive associations, a lot that we make a meaning of is driven by cognitive associations. I feel, our ability to understand and appreciate is limited by expansion of the universe as understood by us. For example, if my brain is not exposed to classical music at all, its very difficult for me to appreciate how good or bad a piece of music is. For us to be able to absorb all that is good and bad, the starting point is about being open to it.

Typically, post the age of 40, you get affected by presbyopia - inability to decipher when objects are kept close to eyes. My feeling is, its as much to do with cornea as with your brain. There is something that is happening in your brain that is not deciphering the signal sent by your eyes, sure, the signal itself is weak but the brain is not able amplify that signal to make meaning out of it. Its here that the RAM comes into effect. Infact, if you do an experiment, keep things that are known at a short distance and see how you can identify them and then keep something that is totally unknown, see how you struggle. This is a clear case of cognitive associations.

We are driven so much by cognitive associations, our comforts draw a lot from cognitive association, so more your experience and create an association, easier for you to get comfortable. Is there a catch there, not sure, its to do with the stages of life, if you have experienced a lot in formative years, easier for you to deal with the world around you in the later part of the life.    

Innovation : A way of life

"We are a technology company, still we are not as innovative as we should be" said the HR head of a middle level IT company, " what is the way we can perpetuate the innovation culture in our organisation? I am pushing my CEO to start rewarding the instances of creative thinking and execution, yet, we are far away from seeing any major innovation".

How can organisations become innovative and perpetuate a creative culture. I have worked in a large organisation for most of my life and in one of its quirks, the same organisation, wanted to get creative. That quirk gave me a chance to be part of a team that created something different, can be called as innovative now.

I have this belief, processes and innovation do not go hand in hand. And, for large organisations to become predictable, have to embrace processes and in the process kill innovation. This sounds too black and white but thats the way it is. Just imagine, in an organisation like bp, a fella in a remote corner of the world, gets up one day, creates a new application, burns down a few things and then bp has to take the pain, with the existing business delivering voluminous profits, bp will not like to take such pain. That's what keeps major organisations away from path breaking innovations.The lure of existing business and profits is too high to let that go away.

Coming back to innovation as a way of life for an organisation, I think, the theme of innovation has to start from the main person in the organisation (call them CEO, MD etc). Unless this CEO tries a few things, fails at some of them, the organisation is not going to become innovative. If it gets into creation of innovation process, rewarding people for doing incremental stuff, the organisation will stay there. This failing at a few things is what i think makes many CEOs stay away from trying.

We were discussing in a meeting about the culture of the organisation - lets create an ethos of innovation in the organisation, pat came the reply, you don't need sales people to innovate every call nor the plant team to innovate the production process, they need to just do it day in and day out and in the process get better at doing the job. Haven't you heard that before, I am sure you have. And goes the story, lets do it better.

Just ask one question every day at the CEO level, how many things i failed at and still survive as an organisation, may be you are on a path of creation of something big.

A tax system : Do we all need it?

A tax system : Do we all need it?

"What is this black money?" asked my daughter, unaware that money is coloured. As the debate raged over the reason for the coloration of money on TV, she kept asking why would someone stash money in swiss accounts and not deposit in India that can be easily drawn.

It set me wondering, why would someone not declare income, deposit in swiss account and let it get blackened. I explained to my daughter, while we all earn income, there are a few who do not declare the same to the government and in the process evade tax. Once that portion of money gets unaccounted, it remains so forever its life unless some amnesty schemes are announced or some loopholes are explored like agricultural earning that is not taxed.

Getting back to the moot question, why would someone not like to pay taxes. Even today, if there is a poll done to get an answer on should the governments tax, I am sure there will be an unequivocal answer, yes. Then, why would we not pay. My guess is, there are two answers - a. we all feel that we can get away with it, b. we all feel that the reason for which we think governments should govern and hence collect taxes, is not happening. There will be a minority that feels the reason a but the large sections of us who pay taxes will also feel b is not happening.

What are the ways in which this issue can be handled, my feeling is, big change will happen if governments improve on credibility. And credibility does not mean doing more, it means sharing more and being more honest about what can be done and then doing it. It will be a slow process but has to be done. Next big thing is about the way you think, my contribution to being used for my betterment. Take the case of income tax, it gets paid to an entity that doesn't seem to be doing anything for me, I have no way to learn, if I pay or not, what difference will it make to my life. Then there are myriad taxes, town tax (property, octroi) and state (sales, land etc). Still, the big direct tax contribution that happens is income tax.

What will happen if we reverse the way we pay taxes, income for the local bodies and then indirect taxes for an indirect body like the central government. I think the payment as well as utilisation will become more direct. It will bring in more money as the people themselves will have a direct control over the contributors and offenders and in any case in India, localised communities work better, eg Khaps.I am sure, we need to do calculations but its also a mental changeover.

One more way of getting more to contribute to taxes is by creating a reward mechanism, currently its so loaded in the favour of stick. Like a frequent flyer program, we should create a tax payer program and link the government service to it, so if you are a highest tax payer, you will get a special treatment for getting a passport etc etc. I am sure there are many ways of creating the reward mechanism.

Will this be able to convert all the coloured money to white? not sure, but definitely some move in that direction will happen.  

the doers and reporters

After having worked in 3 organisations (not too many for a career of 19 years) and having seen many very closely, i have come up with a broad classification of people - the doers and the reporters. I was sharing this classification with a friend of mine, her view was, this is too broad a classification. Yeah, I agree that it borders on clans and not individuals, still, i think for the organisations to grow, they need to understand this classification and the people who fall in these. A reporter is typically a person who keeps his superior updated of every detail that is happening wrt his/her work. And its not about the direction and summarised version, its about each activity and they will need guidance from the superior to carry out these activities. Ideally, such subordinates are suited to a person who is regimental and does not give space to others, infact this behaviour can thrive with such bosses. As these people are more worried about reporting than outcomes, they will never push for the outcomes. Very tough in an environment where the processes are not set and pace is the need of the hour. Some of the large organisations may actually like such people. A doer is someone who believes in the outcomes and will be happy with the broad directions. They go about doing their task and have an inherent ability to hold the information and act on it. They are not worried about sharing all the time as they have confidence in the outcomes. A pairing of doers with reporters will be disastrous as the working styles of both the people are so different. I am not sure one type is superior to the other all the time but overall for the organisations to succeed, they will need to have more doers than reporters. Imagine a reporter at the helm of an organisation, he will have nowhere to go most of the times for guidance and can bring an organisation to a standstill. I have figured out atleast about a few people in our organisation which clan they fit in, the task now is to ensure we make it formal and allocate roles that fit them.

Social entrepreneurs

I had an opportunity to attend unconvention, a convention for social entrepreneurs, run by a seed fund company called Villgro. I had a good time being there, got to interact with entrepreneurs who are trying to create something of their own and take it to the market, someone is trying to aggregate tribals (oxymoron no?, aggregating tribals to make them promote the bee culture so that it can lead to better pollination and also to gather honey in the process), someone has a solution on paid energy (fascinating term, such a contrast to some people who think energy is given) and many more, really energizing stories.

I was there at India economic summit 2 weeks back, a convention organized by World Economic forum that had who is who of the industry and the government sharing their perspectives. i must tell you, I was amazed with the contrast, the unconvention was full of hope whereas the India Economic Summit was full of despair. The who is who of the industry had all that to share which was meant for others to do like what government should do and what suppliers should do, very less of what they can do. And Unconvention was all about what the entrepreneurs can do, they had no crib about the government or ecosystem that does not let them thrive, VCs and PEs to name a few.

I have a bit of a problem though with the term “Social Entrepreneur”, entrepreneurship is all about identifying opportunities and taking risk to get rewarded, making social co exist with it makes it that much tougher. And there is this term called “impact investing”, the only impact one can have of the investment is return but then supposed to mean more than that, when such words get traction from renowned guys, it becomes a catch phrase. I had to tell all that we are accidental entrepreneurs and social is only the outcome.

It will be so good if all the big industries go back to basics and ask themselves why the hell they existed in the first place and what is it that they are chasing now. I am sure they will have very less expectations from others and will make them think inwards.

More the things change

Have you noticed the change in men’s relieving place oflate in five stars? Or is it that I am not frequenting them enough to notice the change earlier.

I was at hotel Trident in Mumbai a week back attending a meeting with very senior guys of the industry. Being there itself was so overwhelming for me, no place for mundane things like relieving oneself. After holding myself for more than 2 hours and increasingly having a fear of bursting of the bladder, I rushed to men’s to get horrified that there are no pots. I was totally distraught but was seeing that a few people are entering and going out and there was this rotten smell interspersed with a perfume. I was not sure where to go to relieve but then rationalized myself that I will watch others and then do it myself.

So there one guy goes, stands infront of a wall and releases himself with a deep sense of relief, must have been in the same situation as yours truly was. I mustered courage and went closer to the wall and found to my surprise a bed of ice cubes laid on the ground with a few places run over. And then, I realized that the hotel has got rid of pots and instead is promoting relieving on the ground with a wall to look at. It reminded me of my village and the school and how we would never worry of others how they feel if we do it.

So… more the things change…