Vibration Analysis Level 3 Certification

Just about completed conducting the level 3 certification course. The course was held at the Power Management Institute of NTPC, Noida. 19 participants attended the course and challenged the test, which was at the end of the four day training. Lot of learning and exchange took place and at the end of it all the participants felt empowered.

I always like to come back to PMI as I have done for the past three years but don't know how far I would be able to continue because of my failing health. It is always a great experience to learn!

System Thinking

System Thinking is nothing new. It was there for years. We find evidence of this in Mayan civilization.

Click this link to learn more on this:
http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=7633

Continuing Education for Engineers

Engineers play with concepts, physical laws and economic laws.

But while interacting with engineers from industries I find that most of them have forgotten to play. And the primary reason is that the subjects of Physics and Mathematics, the bedrock of engineering are not taught properly in the formative years. And therefore these subjects are forgotten after the first few years of an engineer's professional practice.

The good news is that the interest can be revived again.

While Physics is to taught through physical models, Mathematics must be taught through physical and graphical methods.

In that way people easily remember the concepts that empowers them to play and create new things and solve existing problem.

That is what engineers are meant to do well enough to serve society.

Going for Innovation is scary business

Now-a-days it is fahionable to talk about innovation. Most companies dream of turning their well oiled regular company into a classy innovative company about which even their competitors would discuss in a hushed tone that would ooze with respect.

All that sounds exciting. Very exciting, if I may say so. But the reality is something quite different. Most companies even with a lot of honest intention and effort fail to take off in the innovative direction.

And why is it so? There are many reasons. Here we shall highlight the most important reason.

To my mind the most important reason is the 'initial fright'. Innovation essentially involves 'change'. Over time most of us feel happy, secure and contented with what we think and do regularly. The feeling of security comes from routine and not from sudden disruption or changes. But innovation is all about disruption and changes in the way we think and go about doing what we think and know to be right. It is then natural that our mind detest sudden changes and therefore revolts. At the back of the mind the very thought of learning something new all over again is unnerving.

So how do we handle this 'fright'? We may effectively overcome such fright in three ways.

The easiest is to keep trying slowly and go with the flow. Changes automatically happen provided we keep thinking how or what we might do better.

The next way is to remember the adage 'Forgetting is more important than Learning'. We simply can't learn because the mind doesn't like to forget. Hence the mind has to be trained to forget our old ways of doing things.

The third way is by far the most difficult of the three. Only a few of us can achieve it. I call this third method as 'Playing and having Fun'. In this method we just enjoy doing what we do and take it up with the spirit of play. The play brings out the new concepts and ideas to enjoy better. And sooner or later we develop new ideas and concepts to do things in a better way. The best thing I like about the process is changes, even very disrupting changes, tend to happen effortlessly.

So why not enjoy and be happy.

Signing off for now,

Yours,
Dibyendu

Bottom up

Over the last 30 years of my professional life I have come to realize that the heart of any improvement process lies right at the bottom of the traditional organisational chart, i.e. the workers.

I understand that the word robot means the worker. So they are supposed to work with their hands and not supposed to use their mind or their heart for that matter. So treat them as another extention of the machines they work with.

When such an attitude is carried around for a long time the bottom dries up. It is no longer attractive to even look at. Management fails to pay the right attention. And over time the organisation goes into the red, little realizing that all the stored energy and talent needed for renewal and transformation lay in that often neglected place.

So there is an urgent need to improve the lot of the bottom. This may only be done through education, coaching and mentoring. Otherwise the bottom would sooner or later suck in the organisation.

So we now have a plan. We are helping Tega to open a technical training institute where school drop outs from nearby villages can join to learn some basic skills to get employed in industries.

It would help the drop out who would, otherwise, have nothing better to do. It would also help the industries and society at large.

The institute would start from October.

Mr D Bhattacharya made a fine observation -- Most people walk into a work area with a blank frame of mind. They have no clear idea about what to look at. Then they accidentally pick up on something and try to either spin a long yarn out of it or try to create a storm over a cup of hot tea. This is how most people spend their day in the workplace.

Our New Education Policy and A World of Possibilites

The recent changes to our school exam system brought about by our HRD Minister Mr. Kapil Sibal is welcome news. What he effectively did was to firmly press the 'delete' button on exams till Class X. It is clearly a 'winner'. Over the last two years the ministry has been trying to do this in slow but steady steps. So, it might not not come as a surprize if, in the near future, we see this happen to Class XII school leaving exams too (we have already done away with Class XI exams).

Apparently, this winning move aims to reduce or remove the unnecessary exam stress that children are subjected to and let them concentrate on learning and realize their true calling in life in a stress free environment. They would then go out into the world and and pursue their dreams to realize their potential and contribute to the society in terms of job and wealth creation.

But is there something more than what meets the eye?

It is a shift in paradigm. For the last three hundred years or so our world is ruled by a ruthless and unrelenting measurement system. We classify and compare things. So a student who gets 92% is better than a student who scores 80%. Similarly a person who earns more is better than a person who earns less. And a larger car is better than a smaller car.  Likewise, an employee who is rated higher by his boss is much better than an employee who for some reason has been rated lower by his boss. We extend this logic to almost everything we see and do. A '34 - 26 - 36' is better than '36 - 28- 38'. A taller person is more appealling than a shorter person (though I believe proportions are always the same). A larger house is better than a smaller house. A larger company is better than a smaller company. A larger tree is better than a smaller tree or a flowering plant (that is why we plant big trees for greening purpose rather than small seasonal flowering plants, which can not only really liven up the environment with their beauty, smell and colour but also create employment for many and create wealth for the nation). 

Intutively, we understand that this paradigm is false. It does not breed operational excellence or innovation -- two of the most dreaded words that industries badly need today to survive and grow. How can we initiate innovation when we tend to measure everybody on the same fixed scale? Innovation is 'disruptive' and would often call for absolutely new ways of seeing and doing things. But our existing measurement systems effectively bottle up new ideas. People are simply too scared to try out. People refuse to engage in serious play and thinking since they don't want to upset their annual measurement ritual. A person who gets used to such measurement systems effectively dies (internally) in a few years and work becomes drudgery -- something to earn the daily bread for the next 30 years or so. Human dignity is grossly compromised. May I venture to say that it is a gross violation of human rights that goes unnoticed!

But man does not live by bread alone. A human being is essentially a very dynamic and adaptive system that yearns for expressing its true potential. Our meaningless measurement system kills all this and more. We are creating generations of robots whose only task is to follow supposedly 'sane' and 'well meaning' 'advices' from seniors, groomed in the same measurement system. Creativity, the essence of human freedom, and free will are  lost forever.

What might happen if we continue to do this? Darwin's prediction might be helpful to understand as to what might happen. He clearly said that it is not the strongest or the fittest that would survive but the species that are most 'responsive' to change would survive and develop. And if this is true then organisations that don't quicky adapt to changes would die. All natural objects (of which human being is one such object) is most capable of responding and adapting to changes. But can this be done in our present organisations? At present the answer is 'no'.

But how do we create 'responsive' human beings in our organisations? Certainly our measurement system would be at odds with this objective. A good response comes from understanding changes, quickly forgeting the usual ways of doing things, thinking about an issue from various perspectives, creating good number of responses and then selecting the best response to challenge the change at hand.

For this to happen we need 'Thinking and Responsive' organisations in today's context. Not the old outdated organisations of yesteryears that depended on the ideas of Taylor, the Christian churches and military organisations.  We simply can't measure people like the way we count our money. To echo Tenneyson's famous poem -- 'their's is not to do and die'.

Surely the top management and the HR departments have a lot of thinking to do on this. It is a challenge that has to be met squarely and effectively. Simply creating weird 'measurement score cards' would not serve the present purpose. How do we make people 'forget' old outdated ways of doing things? How do we make people 'learn'? How do we induce people to contribute through their new thinking and responses? How do we unfold the latent potential of an employee for the betterment of the organisations? How do we allow people to live and breathe like a human being and create better generations for the future?

Are we too late? Perhaps not. The change is now in the air. The old world order is changing. And this is the right time to 'respond' to this change.

A new world of immense possibilities awaits us.

Signing off for now,
Yours
dibyendu de