Oxford University, considered one of the toughest universities to get into, invariably challenges potential students with interview questions that push them to think on their feet, think independently and laterally and show an ability to apply theory thereby showing their real ability and potential.
Some of the questions are:
a) Is violence always political?
b) Does 'political' means something different in different contexts?
c) Why do lions have manes?
d) Why ladybirds and strawberries have red colors?
e) In a world where English is a global language why learn French?
f) If the punishment for parking on double yellow lines were death and therefore nobody did it, would that be just and effective law?
Compare this with the Indian education system that is geared towards rote learning rather than cognitive development and imagination.
Junnaid was a remarkable saint and a Sufi master. He was constantly learning and getting enlightened from numerous interactions he kept having with people whom he acknowledged as his masters.
Here is one of his stories.
One day, when he went into a small village he saw a little boy carrying a lit candle. The boy was obviously going to the small temple of the town to put the candle there for the night.
Junnaid asked the boy, "Can you tell me from where the light comes from? You have lighted the candle yourself so you must have seen. What is the source of light?" The boy laughed and said, "Wait!" And he blew out the candle in front of Junnaid. And he said, "You have seen the light go. Can you tell me where it has gone? If you can tell me where it has gone I will tell you from where it has come from."
Left me wondering -- where did the flame come from and where did it go? Any guess?
The first part means 'to accumulate knowledge' by various means and methods.
The second part which is at the bottom represents a child in front of a door. That means in order to learn one must be blessed with a child like curiosity and innocence.
Now we shall examine the second character.
The second character stands for 'constant practice'. Understandably there is no substitute for hard work and constant endeavor to practice and hone a skill to perfection.
This character is also made of two parts.
The upper symbol represents 'flying' showing a bird developing its ability to leave the nest. So it means 'being on one own and being a leader too' signified by one's ability to leave the nest.
The lower symbol or the second part of the second character represents 'youth'. This is an important benefit. With constant learning, rediscovering and reinventing oneself one probably never ages mentally and psychologically -- perhaps even slows down biological aging.
When we put all the four parts of the two characters together they holistically mean -- to learn one has to be like a child accumulating knowledge in bits and pieces, which is then followed up by constant practice with the strength and perseverance of youth in order to come up with something original like 'flying' (signifying ease and competence of some skill gained) to become leaders by leaving their nests and making their presence felt in the world through their own ability.
However, the most important thing in the whole issue is to become like a child. Christ's teachings also reflect the same when he says, “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”—Matt. 18:3
Constantly learning is indeed the 'kingdom of heaven', which is symbolic in the sense that in heaven none grows old, which is just the same as what the Chinese meant by 'youth' (inability to grow old while learning).
The process of learning can therefore be divided into three parts --
a) Accumulating from a teacher (accumulation of information, knowledge and the path to self mastery) b) Self Study (to be the child at play with whatever one is interested to master) c) Dialogs with peers and friends and application in real life (constant practice, refinement, development of leadership and the abilty to stand on one's own feet).
There is an old saying in Bengal, which runs something like this: One person is insignificant; Two together make something creative/worthwhile: Three persons collaborating make things complicated: When four get together things turn chaotic.
Needless to say governments, parties, organizations, teams, communities, online communities are complicated and chaotic. So, what do we do? Naturally, organizations are always wary of chaos and therefore want to bring in order through rules, regulations, regimentation, hierarchies etc. This is the common way.
But even with all that in place, leaders still want to feel the pulse of their people, want to keep a tab on what is going on around them, listen to stories, build culture and many other things. How do they do that?
They dance with Complexity as a partner. They keenly listen to its music. They follow its steps. They feel the passion and sense its self organizing movement. Then they either copy the steps of complexity. Or they take charge to lead complexity. Or improvize and innovate on the way. But in no case they try to overpower complexity or play rough or be sly about it or ignore it. They dance cheek to cheek with complexity.
Let us see how great and good leaders go about befriending complexity,
Here Mr. Bill Gates and his wife are seen in one of the remote villages of Bihar, India. Both of them are now highly involved in philanthropic work in India. However, as expected, they know very little about the country and its culture, which they must learn so as to bring meaning to what they are doing. Hence, they immerse themselves in that learning environment.
In Bill Gates own words, "learning from partners and community members in Patna, Bihar. Incredible start to the day…"
And why in the world is he doing that? Could he not have asked his well paid people to do that for him? They would have loved to send him a detailed report complete with facts and figures supported by photos, videos and what not. Obviously that would not work for him. Human interactions are very complex in nature and that complexity can't be fathomed to any degree of reality without deep observation and learning through direct experience such as this.
Is Mr. Gates alone in such Observation Based Learning through deep immersion?
No, it seems that other great business leaders keep doing this on a regular basis trying to learn within a given context.
Here is another photo that shows Sir Richard Branson practically doing the same thing with his staff located at various offices.
The idea is not to straighten out complexity. The idea is not to find order in the complexity or avoid complexity or formulate rules to bring about simplicity. The idea is to befriend complexity to grow and develop by learning from it through direct experience gained through deep immersion and observations.
This brings us to another idea: How do organizations build upon such direct experiences of learning? They can do so through sharing such experiences on a common platform for others to learn and develop on the ideas gained. We call this social learning which uses Enterprise 2.0 platforms to harness the power of complexity and chaos to drive the organization in a self organizing and may I add creative manner.
Best platforms are those which are run on this idea of building on observations, ideas, deep immersions and learning not those who focus narrowly on retaining the heirarchical structure of work as the meaning of work is now undergoing a serious redefinition, the most useful I find is 'observable work'. Such platforms enable Culture Based Design for long term sustainability of an organization.
We now have another name for it. Seth Godin calls it Idea Tourism.
And why would this be so important?
Because money hardly brings in good ideas to sustain but good ideas rake in a lot of money to progress and sustain.
So, we need not be afraid of complexity anymore. Complexity is our partner in our progress not an impediment. So,....
Complexity, Shall We Dance.... since the 21st century belong to the tacit. Or is it?
This great story demonstrates a fundamental emergence in our lives. The old ways of thinking and managing simply wouldn't work any longer.
The 'science' and practice' of management as we know of it today were originally invented to solve two very important problems, which were:
a) How do we get ordinary folks do complicated and repetitive tasks to achieve a standard of efficiency and standardization to optimize profits?
b) How do we make our way through a complex web of processes to deliver goods and services to our clients? The complexity arose from scaling up of operations meant to generate ever increasing volume of goods and services that could provide more profits and subdue competitors.
In order to do that we created lot many logical rules and regulations. The number of rules increased with the degree of operational complexity. Then we trained and made people follow those rules to achieve the magic numbers that could produce more profits that are constantly under squeeze.
With our present thinking we understand that such management thinking does not work well beyond a certain degree of complexity. Why is that?
So far we focused on objects that played any role within business cycles of production and consumption. Sometimes we focused on machines while at other times we focused on people or customers. And yet on some other occasion we forced our attention onto suppliers and quality or we looked at increasing inventory levels. We never quite saw the whole in one breath. What we clearly missed out was to observe the relationships between objects in a given context. What we chose to do instead was to focus wholeheartedly on objects and their functions and properties without taking into consideration the context in which they operated. We failed to realize the importance of interdependent relationships between all things that simultanteously arise and abate in the system in a "wholistic" manner.
What happens when we fail to see relationships?
Let us take two objects that are related to each other. Then the possible relationships that can exist between them are four [2 to the power 2 gives us 4]. As we keep increasing the number of related objects it keeps following the same power law [2 to the power of n, where n = the number of related objects].
It is then easy to imagine the exponential rise in the number of possible relationships as the system becomes more and more complex. How can such exponential behavior be controlled and regulated by a set of linear rules and regulations? Since that is clearly not possible to do so it exposes the unscientific nature of our so called 'scientific' management thinking.
This flaw is clearly depicted in the video. As the number of cars increased along with the rise in the number of pedestrians and cyclists the system soon reached a critical point of complexity beyond which it was not possible to regulate the traffic flow, reduce the number of traffic jams and keep accidents in check. Even the logic of operating traffic lights represents a part of the growing rules and regulations to contain the menace of slowing traffic, snarling jams and terrible accidents without much success ofcourse.
So, what did the new management thinking do? They drastically reduced the number of rules and regulations to one simple rule - "give way to pedestrians and cyclists first". The result of such a brilliant move is amply demonstrated in the video.
What lessons management can learn from this? Probably these:
1. As the system becomes more and more complex reduce the complexity of the jobs ordinary folks are called on to do in all possible ways. One of the simplest way to do that is to reduce the number of irrelevant rules and regulations that bind and blind people from performing better. Forcing people to keep their eyes on so many rules is enough to make anyone crazy and make mistakes. For example, by simply enabling drivers not to pay any attention to the traffic signals and policemen but to keep in mind one simple rule greatly simplified their job of driving safely. This then left the drivers free to focus on their goals without getting distracted by a host of unrelated issues. Ease of traffic flow, reduction of jams and elimination of accidents are few of the by-products of making jobs easier and free of unnecessary clutter.
2. Redesign the system so as to reduce the number of relationships one has to negotiate in order to achieve the desired results. This was done by redesigning the roads at critical traffic intersections. By reducing the total number of relationships within a system we can easily convert complex processes to much simpler ones.
3. Managers are then left to keep healthy communications going within the system and focus their attention to fine tune the existing relationships and also think of simplifying the processes further through redesign.
Aren't these three universal management lessons simple enough?
Sheila catches the 7.06 train every morning to Kolkata from Krishnanagar --- a small town in Nadia district of West Bengal. Her father was a jute mill worker. He has been retrenched. Now days jute selling is not a good business proposition. The mill owners have closed their unit. They have started to produce mobile phones instead.
Sending his only grown up daughter to earn some money was not to his liking. He wanted to marry off his daughter.Marrying off would mean they would die in poverty. Marriage proposals were coming for Shiela. Why not? Shiela is educated, fair skinned, strikingly attractive though poverty has taken away the sheen.
Sheila was good at sewing clothes. She used to fashion her own “salwar suits” and also used to stitch clothes for other neighborhood girls. But of course at a price. Her earnings used to rise during the festive seasons. Sheila once had a dream of going for a fashion designing course. But it remained a dream. Now she only dreams of owning a boutique. Her family will not be able to afford the fees. To supplement their family income Sheila started to stitch shopping jute bags which the shop owners give it to their customers on “heavy purchases”. Every morning she goes to the different shopping malls and collects orders for the number of bags to be stitched.
Today also she rushed to catch the 7.06 train. She had a bundle of jute bags with her, ready to be delivered to the different shops. As the local train gathered its momentum Sheila got lost in her thoughts. How much she owed and the amount she has to give to her raw material supplier. She was woken up from her make believe dream world by the sound of a crying baby. She saw a woman trying to pacify her one year old child. The compartment was packed and the weather was hot and humid. Everything was so discomforting. Sheila saw the baby crying profusely. The baby was wearing diapers and a hooded jacket. She smiled and thought --- “the woman is so stupid to dress the baby in a hooded jacket and put on a diaper--- just imitating from the western world. “ The hot humid weather in India which last for eight months in a year makes life miserable for grown ups leave alone the babies. She got her next business idea.
She started stitching triangular shaped cotton diapers for babies. These cotton made diapers could be locked by strings or by Velcro tapes. This became an instant hit. Sheila was flooded with orders. Bulk orders came around from hospitals, nursing homes, maternity centres, individual young mothers and shop owners selling infant garments.
Sheila now has two bank accounts. Her father is now free from depression. Her mother now wears silk sarees. They have fish everyday for lunch. Sheila got back her sheen but she still wants to complete a course on fashion designing.
Today everything would be closed in the state. The streets would wear a deserted look. Schools, shops, offices and even Government offices would be closed.
Why? Are people protesting or rising in revolt like the Middle East and elsewhere?
No, not exactly. It is a day of celebration and happiness. Today is a Public Holiday. India as a nation celebrates this day as a "Day of Knowledge".
This is more popularly known as Saraswati Puja (Puja means offering of love and deep respect). Saraswati is the Goddess of Knowledge representing speech and creative expression of science and arts. Most things in India are symbolic and the image of Goddess Saraswati is not exception to this fact. The image is therefore a metaphor or representation of what knowledge is all about.
Want to know the story of how it all came about?
Well, as most things in India, the story goes back thousands of years to the era of the Vedas, which most historians agree was around 5000 years ago.
A group of wise sages were travelling all night. Just as the day was about to break they reached a river. The river was gently and rhythmically making its way down the snow clad Himalayas. The water was pure and sparkling. As it gushed over the numerous pebbles it encountered in its way, a sweet tinkling noise emanated. They could see the bottom of the river clearly and were fascinated by the numerous ripples that danced around merrily occasionally catching the glitter of the sun rays as the sun peeped over the distant hills.
They were mesmerized by the whole experience! It suddenly struck them that knowledge had the exact characteristics of what they just experienced. How was that?
They realized that knowledge is dynamic and always changing and flowing like the river. One can't capture it. It can't be imprisoned. If held it soon loses its freshness and flow
They understood that knowledge is a product of numerous ongoing interactions that produced music. The music is only produced by the flow going against the resistance offered by the pebbles. More the obstacles (pebbles) more subtle and more varied is the music. The deep experience provided them the insight that knowledge develops through repeated movements of passing over the numerous pebbles and emerges in a chaotic fashion in the form of waves.
It was also clear to them that the primary source of knowledge was through transparent observable (through all our senses) work that flows -- an understanding gleaned from the transparent flowing waters. Everything was observable but transient.
They likened the occasional glitter of the sunrays ricocheting off the waves to the sudden flashes of insights that create new knowledge.
Such a splendid metaphor remained with them for years before they decided to give some physical form to it so that people recognize the importance of knowledge in their lives and live with a vision or mental image to go for it and develop it for themselves. With this in mind they came up with the splendid image of the Saraswati.
The image of the beautiful lady represents the creative nature of knowledge, the force behind all human activities. .
The swan reminds us of the river and also the sharp discriminating characteristic of knowledge. This is because a swan has a strange ability. If offered a drink of milk with water a swan drinks the milk without taking in a drop of water. It can separate the two. In other words knowledge helps us to discriminate between the real and the unreal.
The musical instrument called the vina (a much older form of the present day sitar) reminds us of the music of knowledge as it flows over pebbles and obstacles.
The symbol of the white lotus is significant. While the whiteness of the lotus stands for stainless purity of knowledge the lotus informs us that knowledge is rooted to reality which might be full of dirt, muck and darkness from which the purity emerges. It depicts the journey called knowledge from the unconscious or unseen or unknown to the consciousness of reality or the known.
It is also interesting to note that the image tells us how knowledge is created. This is shown by the four hands of Saraswati. Her two hands are engaged in playing the vina (Playing and Hearing). It means that the fundamental way knowledge is created is through transparent observable work that flows (remember how the sages could clearly see even the bottom of the river and sense everything around them). The image of the rosary that she holds in one of her hands depicts the need for deep mental reflection and repetition to gain real knowledge. The fourth hand shows a slim volume of documents representing that only a small part of the knowledge can be really documented and read.
The scattering and reflection of the golden sunrays on the waves representing intuitive insights are shown in the form of the golden crown that adorns her head meaning that all intuitive insights come from the mind. And the halo behind her head represents the energy and brightness that emanates from ever increasing wisdom.
So, to summarize:
1. Knowledge is rooted in reality. It then moves from the physical reality to the energy field of playing, listening and engaging in our chosen domain from where it moves to the mental plane which then makes its way to the planes wisdom and enlightenment.
2. Like the flowing river, knowledge can't be captured (it is not an object but waves and a field) since it an on-going phenomenon of the numerous interactions, always changing course and fleeting in nature. Such movement of knowledge is only possible through facing resistance and overcoming obstacles encountered in its path generating the necessary music.
3. A very small part of knowledge can be really documented. That represents the explicit part of knowledge.
4. Major part of knowledge is implicit in nature that is created by constantly playing in a chosen domain, improvisations, repeated practice, deep reflections and sudden insights.
5. True knowledge in any field can be obtained through discrimination between the real and the unreal, between the meaningful and the worthless.
6. Knowledge leads to enlightenment and is the creative force behind all that we do.
7. And above all knowledge must be free and shared to maintain its flow that benefits all. This is the only thing in the world, other than love, that keeps growing and developing in strength and character when shared. It is unending and beautiful but can't be precisely defined or described. The more we try the more incomplete it seems.
Today we usher the coming of spring signifying the blooming of the hidden, the latent and the unknown into conscious reality just like the first baby leaves that spring to life after winter. Isn't that what we understand by knowledge?
It is therefore not surprizing for Indians to believe River Saraswati to be an underground river hidden from view only to meet the great rivers Ganga and Yamuna at Kumbh. Another great symbolic abstraction underlying the fact that Knowledge plays between our actions and emotions to elevate us to our true human potential. Those who use it rise to meet their potential. Those who don't are unfortunate.
So do we listen to the music of the spheres and celebrate the joy that is knowledge?
Notes:
1. The video is there to highten the visual experience of this rather deep and 5000 years old philosophy on knowledge.
2. India is probably the only country in the world to celebrate a special day in honor of Knowledge. What a country!
We can ignite the necessary spark of an welding electrode in two ways:
a) Scratch and lift -- go along for a short time and let go b) Touch and lift - just touch for a fraction of a second and let go We do the same thing while developing people. For some, we would have to go along with them for sometime and then let go. For others, one interaction would be enough to create the spark to a fire that keeps burning for life. However, creating that vital spark is important. With traditional education we neither 'scratch and lift' nor 'touch and lift'. We go drumming year after year till the person would have had enough of it and is bored to death. That is why after some years we remember only a few teachers and professors who have made an impact in our lives. The majority goes into oblivion. Undeniably, the traditional approach has its use in the initial years of making of a person. The mistake is that we extend the thought and the process right into the professional period of a person's life. People don't like it. More than 80% of the people I meet want to quit their jobs even in this time of recession. Why? They simply feel that they are no longer learning anything new or exciting in their jobs to keep their vital spirit alive. At the end of the day they go home with a heavy heart and an empty mind. It sucks; killing the spirit to be curious, to be innovative, to discover, to search for mentors, to take responsibility to be awake and learn and fend for life. However, Learning through Social media is quite different. It can ignite the fire in the belly in both ways - 'scratch' and 'touch'. Since it is more dependent on what we search and want in life. We take what we need and not what is thrust upon us. It gives us time to reflect and create meaning. It creates a democratic, egalitarian and perhaps more prosperous societies. Therefore, it is important to ignite the spark that keeps the fire burning for life. So, it does not surprise me a bit as to why fire is so respected and revered amongst all civilizations across the globe. It occupies a special place in our lives. That is the energy when harnessed helps us to achieve anything worthwhile and lasting and build better societies. Social Media is the right means to achieve the end.
This is a beautiful song composed by Oscar winner A. R. Rahaman. But this is a different type of song and music -- having a sort of magical quality around it. At times, it seems to linger on for moments while sometimes it seems to suddenly speed up. This has a profound effect on the listener' mood. As the speed fluctuates the listener enjoys the variation in emotion that the song and music evoke.
How does the celebrated genius achieve such an effect?
He does so by changing the phase between the song and the music. He purposely avoided synchronous behavior i.e. keeping the song and the music in tune or phase. Note that at times the song seems to lag behind the music. That slows down the speed producing a lingering feeling inside us. Going by the mood of the movie that is exactly the composer wants us to feel -- feel the gentle thoughts of love between the hero and the heroine -- therefore lingers the sound through the variation of the phase between the song and the music. But at times when the movie is about some action the effect speeds up by allowing the song to lead the music by a certain phase.
This leads us to a profound understanding of waveforms and system behavior.
Phase difference between two waveforms changes a physical effect. Like for example some of the harmonics or waveforms either lead or lag the fundamental frequency thereby slowing down or speeding up movement of the system as a whole.
This happens in all types of systems whether they be electrical, mechanical or electronics. Technically this is called non-synchronous vibrations that we experience frequently in the physical world.
It is worthwhile for analyst to develop a feel for such phase changes in the system. This reveals a lot about system behavior and its causes.
Listening to music and sounds is an easy way by which any analyst can develop this innate skill and hone it to perfection.
I think Design Innovation matters in everything we do as human beings. In fact, Design Innovation Rules the World!
It is the fundamental tool we have to create competitive impacts, improve the performance of companies, create wealth, create jobs and improve the society as a whole.
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