Emergent Nirvana - The Dialectics of Living with Honor.

1st Jan 2012. We call it a start of a New Year. But I can't understand what is so new about it? I can't feel the coming of a New Year. It is so disconnected from Nature. Nothing much has changed in Nature. I still feel the cold. I don't see new leaves bursting forth to clothe the naked trees. The sun is still mellow in the northern hemisphere. The days are still shorter than the nights that induce me to sleep more than I do in summer. But the darn clock on the wall would not let me do any of that. I would have to get up and run and rush playing our daily games by the rules that we (my friends and I) have set up. I would have to adapt to the timepiece and all the routines that are entangled with it. I am continually caught out of breath in the vortex of meaningless rituals into which we are desperately trying to breathe life into to create the inauthentic lives we live. I am not allowed to adapt to the rhythm of nature as per my own natural tendencies and inclinations. But still we keep shouting hoarse asking people to follow their hearts and save Nature and adapt to her ways to prolong our continuation of life on earth.

Wonder as to why we have gradually synchronized with thousands of mental concepts and constructs that we formed with impunity and fancy aided by a system called formal education much of which goes against basic human rights that might have otherwise allowed us to live like members of the human race. For whom? For what? For whom the bell tolls? What is so special about the human race that makes us believe that we are separate from nature?

What made us follow thinkers and leaders who till date haven't been successful to create the 'desired future'. Are we still continuing our nomadic journey through the heavily inhabited deserts of our unkempt minds in search of the 'Promised Land'. Where might be this land? Whose land is that? The Capitalist got it wrong. The Communist got it wrong. The religious teachers got it wrong. The scientists got it wrong. The Gurus got it wrong. The Governments got it wrong. The lives of common men and women continue to be crushed and even the thin line that is left behind after their death is mercilessly obliterated by the grinding wheels of our 'structured civilization' that takes no cognizance of such events and phenomenon. We are still no where. Our food, clothing, shelter, living, meaning in our lives are all threatened. That surely isn't civilization.

Where did they all go wrong? I think it is our ritual of honoring the false concept of rise of the 'individual' based on the belief of a 'self identity'. Therefore, we want to improve ourselves. Therefore, we search for definite traits of a creative individual. Therefore, we are madly searching for so called 'leadership traits' that make us better leaders. Therefore, we define ourselves, the things that we see around us, the factories, the organizations, our love or sense of belonging, in fact everything around us. And then we define what is good and what is bad and what is desirable and what is not so desirable and what we must do to improve ourselves and what we must do to get richer and better. And how might we teach others the same. We are so concerned with being an individual. All these are simply 'false'.

This is a lie that can never be supported. We simply can't live alone. We are never ever alone. We live in relationships -- with other humans, animals, plants, objects, the energy fields that fill up the cosmos or the universe itself. And as the nature of the relationships change they evolve in terms of strength, quality and complexity. Caught in the web of numerous relationships we are constantly being modulated and changed. Our choice, therefore, lies in the way we pay attention to those various relationships, constantly responding to the pulls and pushes of those relationships, living for those who bring meaning in our lives and learning from those modulations in our relationships. It affects our collective mind, health, learning and living. Death is experienced in the closure of a relationship giving birth to a new one or strengthening an existing one.

These relationships are teeming with thousand possibilities of every kind that we need to care about, provided we learn from the continuing dialectics contained in each relationship. It allows us to see truth in different perspectives and dimensions -- all valid but never totally encompassing. It brings in the possibility of the 'excluded middle' as the real possibility of creative living or living as a real member of the human race. 

Since it is all about relationship in the dialectic mode it is not about improving ourselves and making ourselves better, stronger or richer. It is all about improving one or many relationships that entangle us. We are as good as the web of relationships itself. The individual improves through the dialectic motion exhibited by the relationships one is entangled in.

We can't live the path unless our web of relationships becomes the path itself. There is no shame, guilt or fear of being such a changing path informed by the nature, quantity and quality of the connected and interdependent relationships. This is because the path is constantly evolving to new states of becoming through its constant movement shaped by dialectics of the relationships. The path goes nowhere in any linear fashion but evolves to the subsequent stages. We can only be the change by remaining open & attentive. There is no manipulation. We don't play a zero-sum game. There is no need for any personal ambition to excel since all improvements are matter of co-creations. The relationship evolves or gets stuck.

The co-creation would depend upon recognizing reality through detached application of discrimination.

Such co-creation would be creative only when it flows from insights gained from a situation.

Such co-created evolution would be about actions that spring from the depth of choices made by the elements with the web of relationships fuelled by the collective will power of the relationships.

It is about harmony, melody, dancing to the rhythms of nature and enjoying the freedom of flow that comes from being centered in the middle of the dialectic play of energy fields within relationships.

Our collective ability to negotiate increasing complexity of such collective evolution would depend on whether the relationships bounded by space, energy fields and time acquire the --

Right Dialectic Mindset of viewing reality

Right Centering, Attention & Intention

Right Will and the power of communications

Right Practice

Right effort to co-create, design and facilitate the higher and complex evolution of relationships

Right Learning

Right Living

Right Actions to bring forth into reality the lessons learned from living the relationships

I call this "Emergent Nirvana" that has a rhythm of a collective moving through cycles and exhibiting patterns, which gives us the power to design our own lives centered on co-evolving relationships developed through co-operation, collaborations and co-creation.

To be this path of Emergent Nirvana and to live this path we would be our own Gurus where the existing relationships would offer us the necessary lessons of Relevance, Resilience and Reliability to be the change and evolve to increasingly complex planes of a fulfilled existence.

Rapidinnovation -- A case study in Organizational Development & Change

The Backdrop:

A ductile iron pipe factory operates in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India. It is a joint venture between the famous Tatas and Kobutu Pipes of Japan. This factory is run by Japanese managers and supervisors and even some Japanese operators. They provided the technology, set up the plant, run the operations on a day to day basis and guide the Indian workers, supervisors and managers too.

The problem:

Ever since the Japanese installed their plant, 3.5 years ago, productivity never went beyond 50% of the rated capacity and quality rejections hovered around 10%, which they wanted to bring down below 5% level.

The approach taken by the Japanese managers:

They took their usual approach to analyze problems one by one. For that they employed all of their famous quality tools plus a mix of TPM and TQM approach. Huge amount of data were collected, to which one executive jokingly commented that data collection has generated so much paper that it could possibly cover the whole of Kharagpur

They tried their methods for the last 3.5 years without any success. Neither productivity nor quality improved by even 1%.

That is when the Chairman of the company invited me over to show him some 'magic' (he always jokingly refers to me as a 'magician', since he experienced my method 7 years back as a MD of another company)

Application of Rapidinnovation

My approach to the issue, that is application of Rapidinnovation, ran something like this:

Step 1: create an internal team focused on improving reliability and resilience of the organization to face this challenge. The team was a mix of junior, middle and high level executives. Fortunately I found this combination has an advantage of accelerating change.

Step 2: was to initiate them in the new thinking process and solving problems. Taught them my all time favorite method of Improvement through design, named Rapidinnovation -- a) make them see the connection between all problems. Obviously, not all problems are to be tackled one by one. Only the critical nodes are to be address to resolve the issue holistically b) Show them the unity of the opposites to take the "creative middle" c) Minimal invasion or change based on the principle that a small change creates the desired change in the system both quantitatively and qualitatively. d) How all processes and phenomena would naturally negate their present existence to go back to the previous one hence developing a method of spotting changes and adapting quickly in a given situation. The focus was to creatively strike a balance between 'reliability' and 'resilience'.

Two significant ideas of the approach were.

a) The design changes appeared seemingly insignificant. Extremely small changes (pivot points or lever points -- a lesson I learned from Judo). Now I call this Minimalist invasion surgery.

b) No specific attention was given either to improve productivity or quality. In fact not a single quality problem was addressed in the entire engagement. The changes had a holistic effect -- i.e. small changes had their effect on the whole (principle of interdependence)

Step 3: was to work out a few problems directly for them to believe that the method of problem solving and improvement works. That is what I term as the Non-Process in problem solving i.e. -- Examine things in isolation and then see them in their own environment (interdependence, interactions and the 'struggle'). Objective is to help things continue their 'struggle' to be in the 'creative middle' of everything.

Step 4: was to encourage them to apply the method themselves and gain internal confidence and esteem. Here my role was that of a facilitator and a critic.

Step 5: make them think about quickly spotting changes to quickly adapt to improve resilience within the organization.

Step 6: walk the creative middle.

The Results

The results were astounding: Productivity increased by 100% to reach the 100% of rated capacity and quality rejections reduced and came down below the 5% level (i.e. by 100% from former levels) in just under 5 months and the results are consistent over the past 4 months at the time of writing this event. This innovative intervention left the organization with on going benefits for possibly years (that has been my intention in all my previous engagements, which were so far successfully achieved barring a negligible few, 2 out of 50 to be precise).

Appreciation & Comments

a) This is what the Chairman of the company commented:

"Thanks Dibyendu;

I am keeping track of the developments – and the results a lot of confidence that TMKPL would be ranked as one of the best performing cos. in DIP business in the world.

Thanks for accepting the challenge and carrying it forward well.

I had asked Somenath to get across to you about BF opn. ; did he get across to you?

Harsh"

(now he wants the magic for another plant focusing on operation)

b) This is what a senior team member had to comment. I loved it since they see the approach as something that changes 'culture'. (His reference to Reliability Management is the name of my consulting firm RMCPL, solely engaged in problem solving.)

Quote

...RELIABILITY MANAGEMENT is not a problem solving tool, its more of OBSERVING THE PROBLEMS IN A DIFFERENT FASHION AND TOTALLY A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO SOLVE THESE PROBLEMS. It has changed the mind set and APPROACH towards solving problems amongst the team members. RELIABILITY MANAGEMENT IS A TOOL FOR CULTURAL CHANGE throughout the organization which is reflected not only in availability increase of the equipment but also in reduction in the percentage of Rejection and other improvements.

More success will come if we can deploy and involve more people across the organization into this approach.

G Dhar, Manager, TMKPL, Kharagpur

Unquote.

Lesson learned:

Organizational Development and Change Management must always be centred around the reality of problems, challenges and threats an organization suffers from. Then only changes to the way people work happen. Similarly, innovation is also centred around unexpected events that happen in an organization.

A Vision -- The Creative Middle - A life of Non-Fear

On the evening of 10th of December 2011, I was suddenly presented with a rather unusual vision just after my regular meditative session that slowly and carefully unfolded before me.

At first it presented me with pictures of the present reality where a human being controls and captures another and everything he/she has by manipulation of minds. Once the captive's mind is confused and muddled the captor constantly sucks out the life force from the generally helpless captives turned into willing slaves surrendering all they have to offer to serve the ulterior motives of their captors.

The usual attitude that helps such manipulative captors are any of the following:

'I am holier than thou'

'I can have you because of who I am and what I can pay'

'I know more than you do'

'What I am telling or asking you to do is for your good'

'God wants this to happen to you'

And many more of such...

Though the words change, the underlying attitude of 'captors' remains the same. In some way a captor feels superior enough in some way compared to the captive and therefore reserves the unquestioned right to dominate, control, exploit and manipulate their captives forcing them to live a life of real and imagined 'fears'.

We are also constantly confronted by theories of all kinds framed not only to inform us but guide and rule us even through moments of personal crisis. It happens all the time. Whether it is a decision on where to park your money or your car or what to do after marriage or what to eat or how to work, play, live or die or what to study, take care of one's health or how to treat women in our society.

We are surrounded by theories, opinions, ideas of someone or a group of people forcing us to join this group or the other or forcing us to believe in this theory or that or forcing us to become capitalist or socialist or forcing us to be this or that. It is as if we have just surrendered our spirit and will to a conqueror. We have no time to feel, reason and experiment with what we are offered with before we accept it to be helpful or good to us. In most cases we are not presented with alternatives. It appears that we aren't left with any choice of our own. And the truth is nothing has worked well for the majority so far. 

In brief, this is the age where a small set of people take on the responsibility to decide for the majority through their usually deft and disguised manipulative moves. People must be free to decide their own lives and how they want to live it in the way they like to live it owning the consequences of their actions themselves.

Why can't we stay right in the middle of opposing tendencies and opposing currents of thoughts where possibilities of all creative movements unfold?

The vision had more on offer.

It revealed to me that the new age would be the age of the 'personal educator'. Learning anything from practical situations would be a matter of personal choice where deep learning that moves from essence to deeper essence would emerge to inform our mindful actions shaping our way of life.

If this is to be so, the teacher and the student would be the same. It means everyone must invoke the spirit of the 'teacher' and the 'student' in oneself. While such a journey might be helped by other educators or teachers who have walked the path authentically, their help and support would be restricted to sharing the learning process illustrated by their real live examples that incents and initiates similar feeling-thinking-learning process in others.

Understanding and imbibing the process of feeling-thinking-learning and using the process recursively to reach deeper and deeper essence of the interconnected but changing whole in order to find solutions for oneself would be more important than relying on the understanding and wisdom of others however lucrative or brilliant they might seem to be.

Soon this turns into a movement that leverages ones strength, which liberates oneself and others to live a live free of fear. How? The personal power of such 'self educated' men and women would attract similar men and women to walk the same path or make the same personal journey. And the process can be passed on from one to the other. 

Other than the process no more principles are to shared or information need to be passed on. Everything has to be learned 'just in time', 'in its own environment' and 'holistically'. No generalizations. No old formulae. No blazing ideals. No constant guidance of enlightened gurus. That is what a liberated fearless self educator would do. Once done, a liberated non-fearing self educator would not hold anyone captive in his/her influence by any means. No domination by any physical/psychic/sub-conscious devices. Each live by his/her own perceptions along with the responsibility of facing the consequences such perceptions bring about. 

It would be a age of infinite collaboration based on mutual respect and trust, self organizing in nature where means of living are self designed based on learning and understanding of one's own 'moment to moment' experience thus enriching the ever changing, connected and interdependent whole of humanity.

However, this would also need a disease free body, a trained mind and a healthy self esteem born out of mindful actions and helped by a learning process to discern the changing reality and acting upon it to live and enjoy a life of 'non-fear'.

What a life that would be -- a life contextually designed (life centric design) by an individual's learning helping him/her to lead a life free of fears.

This is what the splendid vision was....The Creative Middle -- A Life of Non-Fear!!

Is it time for action????

 

The Monkey's Paw

“Your father is in the hospital”. He was playing caroms with his friends. Bappa was trying hard to put the “queen” into the pocket. His fingers became numb. He eased the fingers. The striker ricocheted at the corner rather directionless. He rushed to the hospital. He was late. He is only twenty years. He saw his mother sobbing. His sister was still in her school uniform.

 

Bappa got twenty lakhs rupees as life insurance coverage of his father. How to run the family? He sat at the locality roadside tea shop --- wandering what to do. Some construction workers asked him the way to a particular construction site. Bappa murmured something incoherent. They laughed. One of his friends joined. “I won’t stay in the house.  My mother has made my life miserable. Is it my fault if I do not get a decent job?’

 

Bappa and four of his friends pooled in all their resources. They decided to become builders. They started looking for joint families who on  the verge of breaking; dilapidated old buildings – crumbling due to lack of maintenance; land owners – tenants ever sour relationship; Novo rich trying to sell off their ancestral property and settling at a “posh” locality. Bappa had his hands full. He found a lot of people wanting to sell of their property. In other words handing over the old building and building a new one for them with some extra flats.

 

“Paramount Constructions” in which Bappa is one of the partners has constructed ten projects so far. Bappa has earned an epithet for him--- “building shark”. He has amassed a lot of money but still he buys his jeans from pavement shopkeepers at Esplanade. He does not own a car and prefers the public transport. His wife feels like a piece of furniture in the home. Bappa comes late. Eats quietly and retires to bed. Sometimes wakes up, scribbles something in the pad and goes off to sleep. Wakes up early before other members get up, rushes to the construction site to oversee the work. 

 

Those who had purchased flats from Paramount Constructions have a lot of complaints. Bappa has promised the moon to the prospective flat owners but did not keep his ever flowing promises. Bappa intentionally forgets simple things like fixing a letter box, an extra circuit breaker, installing outside lights; gates in the entrance of the building. These small things irritate the flat owners. Many a time people are seen quarreling with him. No one recommends his name. Once bitten “thrice” shy.

 

Bappa works on a ‘forward integration plan’. He had teamed up with a furniture making shop, an electrician, a painter and an interior decorator. People buying flats often look for these things to complete their “decoration “of the flat. He supplies the men and materials on an agreed commission from them. Bappa is quite popular among his peers. He gives business to them and they are happy.

 

Bappa’s excellence in work has diminished over the projects. The materials, workmanship, architectural style has all nose dived but still his flats are being sold. Other builders are more than willing to create a market for themselves in the upcoming middle class locality but couldn’t find success. The recession did not have an impact on Paramount Construction. They trudged on. It is a riddle which remained unsolved.

 

Note:

This is really an intriguing case so wonderfully told by Mr. Sitendu De. Thanks, Sitendu, for your your contribution of this lovely story. Hugs!

Be the Hen -- A Metaphor for Mentors

For quite sometime I was trying to find an appropriate 'metaphor' for 'mentoring' till I found the cock, hen and a chick foraging for food at the backyard of a common marketplace.

The picture immediately struck me as the perfect 'metaphor' I was in search of.

The cock is busy pecking the ground for his own food and is quite unmindful of what is going around him; much less others.

But then I see the hen feeding herself in a very mindful manner. She is not only finds food for herself but also periodically scratches the ground to turn up food for her chick to feed on. Thereby she is busy creating opportunities for herself and others.

She was acting like all mentors do. Mentors are busy with their work in such a manner that it creates opportunities for others under their wings to learn, feed upon and grow.

Bosses are like the cock -- always busy with themselves.

Mentors are like the hen -- also very busy with themselves but with an eye for others too!

Counting Money or Contributions?

The task of an owner of any 'robust' business is to simply count money at the end of each working day.

This is because the resource that primarily fuels such businesses is 'money'.

Therefore, the health of such businesses is measured by 'grades' or 'rankings within peer group' and hard financial numbers and quarterly profits.

However the owners of 'resilient' business and entrepreneurs count on a different resource.

Their primary resource is humans.

When the resource is 'human' the currency involved is made up of a basket of stories, narratives, ideas, dialogs, engagements.

Therefore, they count human 'participation' and 'contributions' and at times they count the money gained from such human 'contributions' for a more equitable distribution. 

The health of such enterprises is measured by 'comments' users make about their experiences with owners of resilient businesses and entrepreneurial firms.

 

Education - Social Innovation in CSR

This is a story of social innovation that became a part of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of Tega Industries, Kolkata, India.

Workers' Training is the theme of the story, which started out as an experiment, maturing into a full grown CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) activity.

What prompted the Experiment?

For years we have been led to believe that workers are to be trained in the work they do in the factories. The concept is based on the inaccurate understanding that both work and workers are something similar to machines since a factory tends to work like a machine day in and out. Therefore, their work can be reduced to some simple steps and techniques that are teachable through standardized methods.

Therefore, the courses and training so far imparted to workers have been very dry, technical and often boring in nature, for instance, how to operate a lathe or a press or how to weld and cut etc.

No doubt it is important for a worker to learn the basic tricks of the trade. But somehow on the way we forgot that a worker belongs to the human kind and is not a robot designed to perform boring and repetitive work hours on end. The worker like most humans would want to know the why, what and how of most things and thereby derived the necessary self esteem to live, respect others and understand the interdependent connections they have with others. 

We also forgot that with the growth of technology and innovation humans have become appendages to the machines they work with. That is the design of the machines slowly and surely over time evolved to be free of human interferences operating with some sort of machine 'intelligence'. Examples abound. Humble lathes have transformed into CNC machines. Welding is no longer dependent on human skills of weaving, moving and lifting but on fine controls of welding pugs and automated machines, and so on...

What does that mean?

It means that the tedium of repetitive work has now been taken over by machines liberating the human spirit in search of something beyond themselves. They can now create value through various interactions and dialogs created in the context, employ technology in more skillful ways and understand the why, what and how of things to improve further.

It also means that never before in the past 200 years of our industrial age society, workers got opportunities to raise their real self esteem, respect the skill and contributions of others and realize that they and their work are all interdependent part of something much bigger than what they can individually produce.

Issues considered in design of Social Innovation

There were four more issues that informed our design of the new approach to educating workers in the context of of present reality. These were:

a) People learn best from each other and through their own work than they ever learn through teachers. In this process only skillful 'facilitation' helps. For example, in the initial years of computer literacy in India, people learned from each other not from established institutions and officially designated teachers. This is the single most important factor that helped fuel the computer revolution in India till the "burden" of making people literate has now been hijacked by mushrooming technical colleges imparting computer education.

b) At no point of time in the last 20 years has foreign investment – direct and portfolio – exceeded 10 percent of our domestic investment. Our growth is due to our domestic savings which is again predominately household savings. Our housewives require awards for our growth not any western fund manager. It means that if the earning capacity of the workers can be increased in real terms then a company actually contributes to the national growth in ways apparently unseen. To my mind this is the real cost benefit of conducting a CSR activity where for a very small cost both the company and the nation benefit multi-fold.

c) In India, families are organized while governments disorganized. Organized family has been the mainstay of Indian civilization, culture and national wealth. So, can our course be designed to strengthen familial bonds to strengthen the economic base of the nation.

d) As a civilization, Indian culture places a lot of importance on 'learning' to the point of reverence and considered as a prime component of life and living.

With these in mind we set about designing an appropriate course for the workers with an eye to life long learning supported by the company.

The Practical Solution

The structure as it evolved centered around 4 main subjects, which were the following:

a) The practical applications of Science and Maths with an aim for self discovery by the participants in their daily work.

b) The practical application and use of English language with the objective of enhancing self esteem and understanding issues involved in their environment much of which were built on the use of English.

c) Skill enhancement to not only apply computer applications in a practical manner in their field of work but also to assist their supervisors in computer related work.

d) Personality and attitude improvement through understanding and discovering the self and eliminating weakness in personality and attitude through self rewiring of the brain. For this the method of 'graphology' was introduced and applied. 

Anyone willing to undergo the course was registered for the course. The company provided the necessary space and resources. However, each worker invested two hours of their own time for five days a week to undergo the program. The program has three levels of difficulty to master where a year for mastering each level was given to the workers. 

Four skilled facilitators leading 'authentic' lives took up the challenge to engage in movement.

Results

This pilot course is now two years old and the results have been more than astounding. Some of which are the following:

a) The workers self organized themselves to install a new machine in three days time before the engineers of the manufacturer could arrive at site for installation. When the service engineers arrived on the scene they were taken aback by the accuracy of the installation, which would have normally taken them five days to achieve.

b) All the workers showed marked improvement in their performance and quality as evidenced in structured surveys conducted by the company to monitor the progress and effectiveness of the training.

c) Many were found to operate computer applications to keep track of their own work and assist their supervisors in creating and maintaining production records.

d) Many found themselves in the permanent role of the company thus enhancing their pay and benefits that largely contributed to enhanced savings for their families. For some workers the average household 'savings' have doubled in two years time.

e) Large number of small innovations were done by these workers in a self organizing manner.

f) Many reported improved marital and family relationships that enhanced their internal motivation at work and living. There were many specific cases where participants were able to come out of emotional confusion, depressions, emotional distress and stress, migranes, effects of traumatic childhood expriences and personal limitations thereby leading more happier and productive lives.

g) Over 60% of the participants reported increase in household savings in real terms as compared to previous years without any real increase in wages compounded to an average inflationary rate of around 10%. 

h) And 100% wanted to continue the education for more years and even thought of converting it into a personal life long effort.

The moral:

Traditional workers’ training is 'physical' in its form and function. This new program addresses the issues of learning and improvement of work, life and living from the 'mental' and the 'spiritual' planes of human existence. If the results are any indicators, the way it has unfolded; the approach of addressing human issues and problems from the human spirit holds promises to redesign for the better many of our human activities in the future.