The Insanity of Indifference....

The more one thinks about it, the easier it becomes to realize that insanity and indifference have a very close, perhaps even a symbiotic relationship.

"Pop" psychology would certainly suggest so.

If we don't care for what happens around us, in our society, and expect things to change on account of some magic wand...then that is surely insane.

So, being indifferent to issues like the safety of our citizens, the quality of education, the values being imparted to children, how we treat our women, our preparedness against natural disasters and the list can be endless...and expecting that our system will change overnight, is, at the risk of repetition, surely insane.

The flip side, is its aftermath.

Indifference, which lets people get away when they say there are different social rules for men and women - i.e women who smoke/drink/swear are morally "easy" and men are "cowboys/cool/macho".

Indifference, which doesn't make us question or protest against grossly flawed behaviour - not treating women with respect, swearing / cursing in their presence, even something as basic as littering in public.

And then, one day, in some form or the other, one ends up facing the consequences of that indifference.

Which, depending upon its harshness, makes one temporarily or permanently insane.

Insane enough to ask many futile questions.

The toughest one of them all perhaps being..."Could this have been prevented had I not been indifferent ?"

Must we not stop for a moment, and think this over ?

Must we not make the correct choice - of action over inertia, of slaying this monster of indifference.

I hope that this new year, we ask this question to ourselves, and choose the right answer - one which we are comfortable with, and can live with without the tiniest feeling of remorse or regret.

Let's not be indifferent any more - because we owe it to ourselves.

Wake up now my country, Hell has dawned !

I start this narration with a religious analogy...an attempt to define Hell...and out of sheer convenience, looking up Wikipedia give an interestingly relevant answer...

"In many mythological, folklore and religious traditions, hell is a place of eternal torment in an afterlife, often after resurrection."

I believe this definition is not entirely accurate.

One doesn't need to die and discover hell - one can simply be born as a woman in our country.

Yes, that statement has been dramatized...magnified in impact to create shock.

Because shock is the only recourse to waking up our slumbering, indifferent nation from this brain dead stupor.

Because now, more than ever, we need to rise beyond criticism and cynicism, and change our attitudes and behaviour - so that women in our country don't go through the hell that Shenaz Treasurywalla described in gory detail. Oh and of course, people have taken exception to that too, by finding fault with her death penalty plea and appeal to "powerful men" to save this country's women.

I am not here to argue for or against the points made by Shenaz.

I merely want to share my two cents on this entire debate, which has started to get coverage in public domain simply because Shenaz shared her horror stories.

Because after reading it, I felt disgusted to the core. Sick, Disgusted. Outraged, mad enough to dream up my own ideas of violent retribution against this tribe of sickos.

Because, suddenly, my father's reasons for worrying about my sister's safety do not feel unfounded at all.

Because my wife narrated her own versions of this behaviour that she had seen or had been victim to.

Because in my engineering class, there was a guy who used to do something equally sickening in crowded places, and would narrate those incidents as one would narrate adventure stories.

And I did nothing to stop it - did not shame him publicly, did not confront him for this behaviour, just ignored it because I felt he was sick in some way.

Because I am father to an 18 month old daughter, whose innocent face, laughter and antics make me smile each day - and I would hate to see her in this kind of situation, ever...

Two years ago, when Nirbhaya happened, when she was not yet born, we thought things would change.That was a pretty gruesome and shocking incident if any.
And yet, two years later. it seems Nirbhaya died in vain.

Because it seems that everyone who raged against the system then was driven by their own thirty pieces of silver perhaps ? No one was really bothered about changing things then, like now.

Perhaps, in a country of 1.2 billion people, life really is cheap.

But in this dismal state of affairs, I don't care what the govt does or doesn't do to make things different..I ask myself what is it that I could do ?

And then I realize that I have the answer...

I recall how I stood one day in front of the Godrej office in Vikhroli, nearly four years ago, waiting for a friend to pick me up. It was a busy afternoon.

And one auto rickshaw driver was having a blazing argument with a female passenger on the fare amount.

I stood by indifferently, though surprised that such a violent conversation was happening in Bombay - this was right at home in Delhi, but not quite Bombay stuff.

I kept noticing that tempers on both sides were getting aggravated by the minute, and yet, no one had bothered to intervene.

And then I saw the driver grab the girl's arm - which was the point where I lost it.

I ran up to the driver and screamed my head off, threatening him with a police complaint and what not...and that is when he backed off, and made his way. The poor girl was stunned, and she too went away silently.

I don't know what came over me that day...but I remember feeling bad that no body on that busy street had bothered to intervene...that I should have perhaps interrupted them earlier...but eventually, I felt relieved that perhaps my action possibly averted a mishap.Indifference from me would have been a greater sin, would have made me a party to the crime as well.

And that is what I resolve to continue doing...

I promise to teach my daughter self defence, give her strong female role models to look up to, and never let her be hesitant or under confident.

I promise I will be more alert and aware of the safety of female members in my surroundings - be it family or work.

I promise to raise my voice whenever I see any obscene behaviour on the part of men, especially in public places.

I promise not to be part of any cheap and gender insensitive conversations, not with friends, not colleagues, no one.

In my own small way, I hope to be able to reduce the impact of this hell - make an infinitely small difference to lives around me...and that is my request to everyone out there...

Let us wake up and act NOW - because each one of us CAN make a difference.

Choosing indifference over involvement will only darken this Hell - eventually, we ourselves are responsible for the kind of world that we want to create for ourselves, and Hell is surely not what anybody wants.

The Best Business Phone - Ever !

Today's corporate environment demands 24 x 7 connectivity, and the once humble, now turned "smart" phone has become an indispensable tool for the corporate warrior. 

This piece tries to define the characteristics of a the "model' cell phone, one that would serve as a trusty aide, an able lieutenant and be up to the challenge of both work and life.The scope is not restricted to currently available models, as the idea is to identify what could have been the best.

The commonest utility provided by the cell phone (apart from voice calls and sms) is that of email. 

So, its a no brainer that a great cell phone must give its user access to email. 

But most phones do that, don't they ?

Blackberry pioneered it, but lenient BYOD policies have pretty much leveled the playing field.

Microsoft had always supported Mail for exchange on Symbian Nokias, and now with its own Windows based phones, syncing office mail accounts is  a breeze. 

Ditto for Apple, Samsung and everybody else - all the major brands are at the same level here.

Email is a tricky little animal though - it contains attachments, is usually long (owing to an unending chain of trail mail), and makes little sense peering into a small screen to be able to read it properly.

It may contain jpegs or videos that may need approvals, or any power points that need review.

Hence, phones with small screens are out.

This eliminates BB, Nokia E63-72, E5 - basically all the qwerty phones. 

Which leaves us with - Windows phones, Samsung, Apple, and the new BB range (not too popular) 

Staying with email - one needs to type, and do so rapidly, without any errors. Same for SMS. 

I believe that its far easier to type on a keyboard than on a touch screen. We anyway spend so much time on the keyboard that a high level of comfort has unknowingly developed between the keyboard and us. True, most touch screen phones do have nice, virtual keys - but losing phone access owing to a damaged screen is a pain I have suffered far too many times. So, keyboards ahoy !

Unfortunately, barring BB Q35, none of the phones meet this criteria (call it whim if you may !!) 

Solid battery backup - a common malaise with smartphones today is that they need to be charged at least once during the day. Frequent travelling would mean that cell phone chargers need to be carried, and the phone may not have been charged.

This leads us to my old favourite - Nokia - the only phone capable of providing awesome battery backup.

A large touch screen - to approve artwork, to look at reports better, review presentations...need I say more.

All the ones except BB Q35 fail to make the cut here.

Camera (front and rear), and storage space - mostly used during quick skype calls or reporting from the field. Most phones do a decent job of this, barring BB - haven't used the new one though.

App support - Google maps, social media, news - most phones have them

So, which model of cell phone combines / combined all of these attributes into one solid device. 

Not an iphone, not a BB, Samsung or a Windows phone.

They were the good old Nokia Communicator and its updated avatar, the E7.

or  

I am at a loss to understand why the plug was pulled on these superb models. 

How I wish Microsoft and Nokia bring this back, in a Windows version ! 

A Crisis of Leadership

Browsing through some articles on turn arounds and leadership by corporate honchos on LinkedIn, I realized that while strategy, planning, execution et cetera continue will always be important, it is leadership which will differentiate how a team of individuals responds to a crisis, and fights its way back. This was prompted by the general overall sluggish macro economic scenario, and conversations with friends on how corporate India is responding to stuff around them.

I am no scientist, or thinker - so I'll just say what I feel my leader should say / or what I would say to my team when things are not going well.

1. Admit that the chips are down. : The citizens/employees are not dumb. They are connected to a internet driven, news hungry, content creating world.They read stuff, they discuss stuff. All of this causes a lot of flux and tends to give birth to unsubstantiated "facts". There are a few smart ones who also tend to cook up new theories to add to the confusion.  But a single, clear message from the leader, admitting that we have a challenge on our hands, and that we need to buck up, signals that yes, the leaders are aware of the problem, they are not sitting in an ivory tower, but are energetically thinking ahead on how to come back.

2. Create a positive & healthy environment : Encourage people, let them not be afraid of speaking their minds and ask questions. More often then not, the grand strategies of boardrooms prove ineffective on the ground because the people driving these strategies do not believe / are not convinced by them. An environment which allows them to freely question and understand stuff (especially since they are expected to drive actions that will help convert vision to reality) - will set imaginations free, and help people understand what is really expected of them, and more importantly, how are they expected to do so. Removing fear of reprisals is another critical element to this.

3.Celebrate the small wins : It is an unfortunate human tendency (acquired thru years of evolution) to highlight and pin point failures / misses. It helped us transition from being cave men to farmers, and then on to various other life stages. However, a company in crisis must consciously avoid making criticism its raison d etre and consciously make efforts to celebrate the small successes. This has a short, positive, morale boosting effect, and enhances the confidence levels of the team, which slowly can trigger a virtuous cycle.

4.Guide, coach and mentor: Senior leaders bring with them the wealth of experience - in some cases,  they would have seen similar circumstances and even been part of turnaround stories. Their guidance and coaching to selected team leadership members on how they can do the small, behavioural things right, that would set the larger teams on the road to recovery, can be a crucial input that really differentiates. Its critical to remember that the teams largely know what corrective actions are required - they just need support, guidance and regular monitoring and feedback to help them deliver the required results.

While most of the above sounds cliched and largely theoretical, it is largely true that most of our leaders today, both business and political, are concerned with getting the larger, strategic priorities right, leaving the job of managing the "smaller", softer aspects to the frontline / regular leadership, which is anyway under the regular pressure to manage operating reality on a day to day basis , leaving them with less of precious bandwidth to be able to really act as change agents. Coming to terms with change and the behavioural shifts required to cope with it require patience, maturity and immense self knowledge - and leaders who can exhibit the right mix all of these, while being able to set a consistent tone thru the system, would have lead their teams successfully.