KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTIVITY

Are Groups Stupid?

2012-02-11T03:09:00.000-08:00

There are any number of studies trying to prove reasons for the individual's behaviour in a set of environmental conditions. Many times, the findings of such studies challenge common-sense. Such a study reported recently says that people in groups tend to act in a stupid manner only in order to compensate their conscious tendency to keep their collective esteem.

HR theories have been professing the virtues of team-working, where the individuals' abilities can be exponentially enhanced by creating a group synergy. Modern Social Networking giant groups are projected as the new innovative ways in which millions and millions can group together to create and share knowledge.

Successes of socialising and collective working in umpteen cases only tend to clarify and extrapolate the finding of the above study; may be the group members give up a little on thier IQ but gain enormously through EQ resulting into net positive productivity.

Productivity and Innovation

2012-02-05T02:31:00.000-08:00

NPC has chosen the theme "Productivity and Innovation - Enabler for Emerging Economies" for this year's Productivity Week. Earlier, the Government of India chose the decade '2010-20' as the decade of 'Innovation". Recently, the National Innovation Council, had come out with a report to the People, elaborating the mechanisms through which innovation would be broad based for the benefit of the masses.

An organisation creates standards, systems and procedures through which it hopes to derive continuous productivity enhancements. When its efforts in this process reaches the nadir of a blocking wall, it feels for possible new 'innovative' attempts that break away from those routines that it created in the first instance to practice 'Productivity'. Some of those innovations then lift the firm to the next level of achievements and then it goes about building Productivity practices, procedure and systems around the newly found way of 'innovative' working. Thus the spiral repeats again and again in the organisational life-cycle.

Is it difficult to conceive that the 'conforming' Productivity techniques and 'non-conforming' 'Innovation' techniques can co-exist and feed each other? Absolutely not, if we can look at the 'innovative' spirit of the nature in the depiction of the 'butter-flies', colour-ful, vibrant, exploring, flightful and absolutely free. To reach that stage of evolution, the basic 'worm' had to first 'cocoon' itself into a totally 'disciplined' seclusion and undergo the process of 'absolute stillness' in its nest, which then enables it to set free at the right time to fly around the mother nature.

Without doubt, Productivity and Innovation are nothing but two cyclical forms of the same spirit of human nature to reach higher and higher levels of self realisation!!

CKO Humour

2012-02-01T21:02:00.000-08:00

CKO Paul: Our President declared that the new vision of the company would be "Enhancement of Human Values"

CKO Mani: Admire how much employee friendly he is!

CKO Paul: He concluded saying that to suit the new vision, sales value target per head would be enhanced two times!!

Knowledge is in Context

2012-01-29T07:11:00.000-08:00

The Guru once gave a long discourse about seeking the God, to his disciple. At the end, he concluded saying that one should look for and listen to the God in every living being.

The disciple having enlightened thus went to the market for buying some goods. On the way he found people running heleter - skeleter. A little ahead, he saw an angry elephant running amok with madness and a few yards in front the mahout (coach) of the elephant rushing and warning bystanders to run away quickly to escape from its fury. The disciple remembered his Guru's advice to look for God in every life and decided to stay put as he was convinced that the God in the elephant can do no harm to him. But, the elephant on noticing the poor chap standing just in the middle of his path unmoving, just tossed him with his trunk. The man got severely injured and was taken to the hospital. A few days after, the Guru visited him to ask for his welfare. The disciple complained to him, "Oh Great Master! you told me to look for God in every living being. Still the elephant, instead of protecting me, brought me to this sorry state. Can you explain?" The Master smiled and said, "Yes! But the God in the mahout was ahead of the elephant warning you to move away - Why did'nt you listen and obey to the God in him in the first instance?"

In organisations, knowledge elements are embedded in every person, system, procedures and document. The guru in the KM Department will indicate to you to find knowledge from all of them. It is your job to identify your context and go for the right knowledge that will serve just your purpose.

Sita and Rekha

2012-01-26T00:28:00.000-08:00

Epic Ramayan provides wonderful examples of how following and disobeying rules and stipulations can effect an organisation.

As Ram went over to search for the elusive golden deer, in the forest, a sudden cry in the voice of Ram made Sita get worried over his safety. All her pleadings to Lakshman to rush for his brother's help failed to move him from his bounden duty of safeguarding her. She then forced him by saying that his action may be construed as an evil thought of him towards his brother's wife. When Lakshman finally left reluctantly, he however marked a boundary line around her cottage, 'the lakshman rekha' and tells her not to cross it at any cost. That line provided a burning safeguard when Ravann intended to cross it with evil intentions. Even then, he tricked Sita into crossing the boundary line, thus making it easy for him to abduct her to Lanka. Then, the line failed Sita due to her improper suspecting words against her brother-in-law.

After his conquest of Lanka and Ravann, Lord Ram wanted to show to the world the subtle powers of penance that lied with his wife. He asked Lakshman to lit a pyre of fire for Sita in the pretextest to test her chastity. That time again, Sita crossed the fire lit by Lakshman, but emerged unscathed due to her purity of body, mind and soul. Here, the (fire)line provided great success to Sita bowing to her unstinted devotion to her dear Lord.

Sita and Lakshman's 'rekhas' tell us that following and disregarding of the organisational rules and procedures may result in 'good' or 'bad' - depend upon the nature and intentions of the people involved and the results that are to be derived towards the benefit of all.

Banyan and the Peepal

2012-01-21T20:19:00.000-08:00

Our traditions value and revere all the gifts of nature to the humankind; trees being the foremost of them.

Two kinds of trees are extremely sacrosant to the Hindu tradition - the Banyan and the Peepal. They are otherwise termed as the Queen and the King of trees. Both are gigantic species growing tall and wide to provide shelter to large number of species of birds and shadow to the humans.

The survival instinct of both the trees is a learning lesson to the human enterprises. The Banyan tree drops its branches down and slowly they grow into supporting stems and even if the root gets decayed, the drooping branches can serve as alternate trunks thus enhancing its life greatly. The peepal's seeds are so tiny that even a slight breeze can take them far away and once these seeds find a suitable damp and earthy locations, they can quickly stabilise themselves and grow into new plants.

The examples of Banyan and the Peepal give clues as to how organisations can overcome hurdles of existence and maintain a stable growth towards survival. Develop core competences and drop anchors of them within the enterprise so that they can serve as stabilising trunks to the main root. Also keep generating and spreading out new and innovative ideas at all directions so that some of them can catch the fancy of enterpreneurship and grow into new businesses.

Are not Business lessons available free from trees?

Kolaveri

2012-01-14T21:39:00.000-08:00

At the time of writing this, there are reports and reports of worse for the Indians. Students of India seemed to fare the second from the lowest (Krygysthan) in a worldwide learning contest, surprise of surprise, in maths, physics and english. Another story says that the nuclear safety in India ranks lower to many others. Then, there is this madness around the raving and ranting on the terrible performance of the Indian Test Cricket Team against the Australians and the eternal wait for the Ton of the Tons of Tendulkar. In another page of the paper, majority of the Indian Children are termed as 'malnourished'. And finally, even the Prime Minister seems to have given up in accepting that the expected GDP growth will be only 7% and not 9% as he thought earlier.

Despite all these sad news, there is one incident that still gives a spark of hope - "The Kolaveri" - This rather silly meaning song has broken all the world records in the number of hits on 'YouTube' and the times it got translated into other languages. Presently, most of the mouthfuls are churning "Kolaveri" wherever you go;

That, is the, precise point - With all those depressions not withstanding, the Pongal festival augurs well with the 'boiling Kolaveri' to hope for the better and productive future that is in store for this nation.

W(h)omen

2012-01-06T20:29:00.000-08:00

Professor Stephen Hawking is an excellent scientist who had the credit to himself as the explorer and inventor of many secrets of the universe and the nature. The expert, who turned 70 recently, has revised his earlier opinion and is convinced that even 'black holes' radiate information and knowledge. He had been able to unravel many hidden principles of Physics and solve many puzzles of the science, despite his own physical disabilities.

But, one subject, in which, even the veteran admits his total inability to decipher.' "Women" are the most mysterious, who I am unable to understand', he confessed in a recent interview. Another recent study reported that a woman lies at least 468 times about their diet in a year, averaging more than one per day.

If 'women' can be correlated to the energy that drives the 'mass', it is understandable, that by its own very nature, they will keep changing and transforming eternally. To fully understand them, in that case, one has to be both inside and attached to observe intrinsically and at the same time outside and detached to have the external perspective. Quite difficult task indeed - Hence, I would also join Prof Hawking to admit and wonder 'W(h)omen?' !!

A New Year Beginning

2011-12-31T06:15:00.000-08:00

The Year 2011, that has begone, can be remembered for two major upheavals; world over, the common citizens, awakened by the free information flow and the quest for a better quality of life, raised their collective voice to question the Rulers and the Governments and forced them to respond their rising aspirations; the nature, on its part, possibly fed up with the growing environmental degradation, erupted through a series of catastrophes in the forms of Tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, cyclones and so on.

The coming new Year 2012, would provide a chance for us to learn and gain more knowledge. I recollect at this juncture, the morals of the ancient Tamil Scripture "Silappadigaram", that states i) The ruler who fails in Good Governance suffers at the very hands of natural justice ii) Those who are pure in their deeds and principles are sure to gain high esteem amongst the society and iii) results are commensurate to the actions and omissions one commits in his life. These 'ever-green' wisdom are as 'true' to modern organisations as they were to the 'individuals' lives', thousands of years ago.

Wishing everyone a Productive and Prosperous New Year 2012!

CKO Humour

2011-12-24T04:01:00.000-08:00

CKO Paul: In the new-year function, our CEO talked about the need for "Change Management", but no-one was interested.

CKO Mani: Why was that?

CKO Paul: It is the same talk that he delivers verbatim every year!!

The Trust Bridge

2011-12-22T17:50:00.000-08:00

When Lord Ram wanted to cross the mighty ocean to reach Lanka to rescue his beloved wife, there was the need to build a strong bridge across the sea. He deployed his 'vanar sena', who were no specialists in such technical constructions and had no prior knowledge on the issue. The monkey soldiers under Vibhishan just brought big stones and tried to use them as the base structure for the bridge, they were distressed to see that the stones simply sank to the depth. They then struck on the idea to inscribe the word 'Ram' on each of the stones and with prayer in the mouth, laid each of the boulder on the surface of the sea. To their astonishment, they could find them floating instead of sinking. Thus emerged the 'Ram Setu', the bridge across the ocean to transport the huge army.

In organisations, there are times when every effort towards betterment are not supported by the prevalent culture resulting in the efforts sinking and going waste. At such times, the 'charisma' and 'trust' that the leadership can inspire in the width and breadth of the firm can help restore confidence and provide the spark for a new bridge that can lead from 'despair' to 'determination'.

Action -in-Action

2011-12-17T23:44:00.000-08:00

We are aware that Brahma - Vishnu - Shiva are the three Lords who have the eternal functions of Creation - Upkeep and Destruction. Out of these, Shiva and Vishnu appear in different forms to the devotees.

Lord Shiva is seen either in a 'still - meditative' pose sitting atop the Himalayas and concentrating on the universal confluence. He is otherwise depicted as a dancing 'Nataraj', creating infinite vibrations on those convergent energy, he created, to diverge and form newer and newer universes.

Lord Vishnu is also seen in double form. At one time, he takes different living and active forms, known as 'avatars' and involved in waging wars to destroy 'evil' and re-establish the rule of 'dharam'. At other times, he is protrayed as an eternal pacifist relaxing amidst the ocean, resting in his bed of serpent, doing nothing and just observing the tides of rise and fall of the ocean surrounding him.

In organisations, processes are created, maintained and destroyed on a continuous cycle. Leaders who are the owners of these processes, would be better equipped, if they can visualise the 'action' in the 'in-action' and vice-versa personified in the opposite forms of Lords Shiva and Vishnu.

Organisation Eclipses

2011-12-14T04:02:00.000-08:00

When the combined efforts of the 'Devas' and 'Asuras' resulted in extraction of the divine solution 'Amrit', God knew that it better not consumed by the demons. Or else, it would make them eternal and result in untold miseries to the three worlds. So by tricking them out, the amrit was distributed only to the Devas. However, a rakshas still managed to stick to the end of the queue and gets to drink a drop. The Moon standing by the side raised a swift alarm and the God quickly cut off the head of the beneficiary demon. Due to the effect of consumption of the nectar, both the head and the torso continued to live. The Asuras then protested against the wrong treatment meted out to them. God then agreed to let the two parts live in eternity as the two Planets 'Rahu' and 'Ketu'. Still, to revenge on the'Moon's act to get them caught, they keep troubling him through the eclipses.

In organisations, management development techniques are designed to keep the good and productive practices alive and wasteful actions to be eliminated. Despite these, we witness counter productivity measures manage to trickle in and sometimes even find leadership support. They then cause organisation eclipses sporadically. The Best of the leadership should keep an eternal vigil that such eclipses do not permanently darken the sparkles of light that exist in the workforce towards organisational objectives.

Target Contents

2011-12-09T19:06:00.001-08:00

Looking at the frantic pace of arguements for and against control and censorship of content on the web and social networks, I am reminded of the mythological story in the Mahabharat.

The disciples of Dronacharya, the Pandav brothers had shown the same dedication to learn from their master. Yet, Arjun was his favourite pupil. The brothers so complained to him as to why he is showing partiality towards Arjun. He promised to clear their doubts through an experiment. All of them were taken to a nearby garden. They were given the task of targetting a bird sitting on the branch of a tree. One by one they were called and asked to take aim. As Yudhistir took aim, Drona asked him, "What are you seeing?", "Master, I see the garden, the tree, the leaves and the bird" replied the elder brother. When he finally shot his target, it missed to strike the bird. One by one, the other brothers repeated the same story and missed to hit their target bird. Finally, the master asked Arjun, "What is that you are seeing?". He replied, "Great Sage! I see only the bird and nothing else" as he took the aim and then hit the bird straight. Drona turned to everyone and exclaimed, "Are you now convinced as to why Arjun is my most liked student!"

In the modern day internet-web battlegardens, there are contents galore, that would provide the sight of trees, roots, branches, leaves, flowers, birds and more to the onlookers and users. It is the best to restrict our looks to only the target birds, ignoring everything else, just like Arjun did.

Jiyo without Geo-Engineering

2011-12-02T20:56:00.001-08:00

The Hindu mythology has described various instances where human beings could change the nature's course dramatically. Nalayini was a sincere wife who came to know that her husband was cursed to die on sunrise and she boldly ordered the sun not to rise in the horizon so that her husband's life can be spared. The Sun God had no alternative but to obey her due to the sheer spiritual powers she possessed out of her 'pativrata'. Her feat could be reversed only by the God almighty who granted long life to her partner before the earth could get the warmth of the sun rays.

All of us on the earth are now facing a similar predicament which the citizens of the earth faced millions of years ago, due to Nalayini's adventure. Our eco-system which is our constant partner is in danger of being burnt out due to increasing threat of the global warming. The polluting gases that are getting spewed by our modern civilisation are hindering the free flow of the heat to and fro from the sun to the earth and endangering the living beings. A dramatic thinking to solve this problem is being reported in the name of drastic "geo-engineering" techniques like spraying the clouds with sea water or by covering massive portions of the globe with reflecting shades or sprinkling sulpher gases to prevent the Sun radiation from entering our globosphere. Only, no one is sure of the side or after effects of such radical geo-engineering attempts; it may produce much more tremendous harm than it is able to solve.

Innovative thinking like the massive engineering designs to totally block the Sun from heating up the earth may be a viable fantasy, but it may be more practical to have millions of humans with the tenacity of someone like Nalayini's die-hard spirit to go about green-ways of living so that can keep the global temperatures withing limits and there would be no need to block the illuminating rays of the Sun.

Human Behaviour Software

2011-11-27T22:20:00.001-08:00

The report about the intended Patent of Microsoft for the Software to monitor Employee Behaviour, sets me thinking about the plus and minus of such attempts. As per the report, a software will track of each of the word uttered, body movements and interactions with the bosses and others and provide an analysis of the employee behaviour. It would even monitor the key strokes and commands he performs on his computer machine.

The idea of machine based monitoring gives the freedom to the organisation to keep performance scores on the traits of the people and provide an objective assessment, may be that has been the purpose of the patent.

On the other hand, no knowledge worker would just like to be assessed based on his mere words/body gestures/keystrokes as his ability to perform is based on his emotions, attitudes and initiatives more than the physical activities. It might be difficult to straight jacket human behaviour through such machine based software.

Can Artificial Intelligence go about evaluating Natural Intelligence is the question that can be only answered from the future feedback to such new attempts?

e-(nthusiastic) Learning

2011-11-24T02:19:00.001-08:00

Well, there is this news of scientists discovering particles that can travel faster than light thus posing serious challenge to the modern physics. On another domain, the experience of conducting a course over the distance - video conferencing mode provided an equally stimulating times.

The "Knowledge Management" course conducted through the e-learning technology, covered enthusiastic participants from India, Bangaldesh, Iran and Thailand, sponsored by the APO. The course was a terrific blend of theory and practice with the participants themselves analysing success factors of KM in famous organisations and working out future challenges in their KM journey.

There had been historic evidence of distance or physical barriers not being a constraint to the enthusiastic learner. Abhimanyu learnt battle tactics while he was in his mother's womb, even when she was asleep, and Dhridharastra learnt the Mahabharat contest from the narrative Sanjaya, though being blind. In the current times, we have the e-distance learning technologies to carry the message over thousands of miles over the IT platforms.

The three days e-learning course was an interesting experience where synergy could be made breaking national boundaries in the search for KM excellence. (A typical interesting experience was that I had to make the speeches facing the camera and the screen with the local participants listening from my back and still there was that connecting interface for a perfect alignment.)

Productivity and Emotions

2011-11-20T03:14:00.001-08:00

Productivity in organisations have been taught as the systematic elimination of all wastage around operations. "Doing things rightly" is stressed to the hilt and all attempts to deviate from laid out standard practices are scoffed at.

In the traditional history, there have been mention of many rulers, being had the tendency to part with the tax payers' contributions as gifts to their subjects. Despite their profligacy, not many noticed them as any great performance or admired them as a role model. Some exceptions are the Kings "Paari" and "Began" of the early Tamil origin. What did they do create these remembrances?

King "Paari" once toured his city on his huge Chariot, and on the way observed a small creeper plant "Mullai" struggling to spread as it had no standing support to hold on. Moved by its plight, he then and there, left his chariot by its side to let it grow on the huge structure. This spontaneous act earned him the name of "Vallal" - the eternal donor.

King "Began", while taking stroll in the palace garden, saw a peacock shivering in the cold and unable to stand the severity of the weather. Quickly he drew out his most adorable and expensively crafted shawl and wrapped it around the shivering bird.

"Paari" and "Began" had obviously not done the most productive way of their duty to safeguard their subjects, even if they are non-humans. Paari could have simply ordered a small stick to be stuck next to the creeper or Began could have asked his gardener to put the bird in its cage - that would have simply solved the problem in the most efficient manner. What made the difference to their approach was the spontaneity of the desire to at once redress the subjects' problems, even if that means sacrificing their immediate authorities and royal possessions.

Productivity, then, is just not the mere actions of material improvements, but also the emotional attachments of the leadership to see them through!!

Knowledge Flows, The Nation Grows

2011-11-17T20:37:00.001-08:00

During my initial years of consulting times, we used to work for the giant oil producers of the nation, ONGC, for assisting them in Condition Monitoring of their plant and equipment. One striking feature of our observations that time was the tremendous knowledge possessed in specialist operations and maintenance by their fields personnel, but still the poor performance of their fixed assets. Information and knowledge hardly flowed inter department, not to speak of intra-departments.

Decades later, it is heartening to note that a specialist knowledge management initiative "Gnanodhay" has been started in ONGC to harness and leverage their workforce capabilities and experience through technology. Interesting more will be the efforts to capture the endangered knowledge and expertise of those aged persons likely to leave sooner the organisation due to retirement.

Let us all wish that the "Udhay" of knowledge that has begun at ONGC never sets and continues to shine!!
After all, when "Oil Knowledge Flows, the Nation Grows"

Work as Motivation

2011-11-12T23:02:00.001-08:00

It is a common irony that organisations try to induce workforce motivation through various rewards only to realise the folly that those same rewards become a matter of right and fail to create any productivity rise, rather become a source of acrimony and conflicts.

A famous saint in Bengal used to organise SatSang Bhajans and observed that there are very few audience who voluntarily participated. He thought of a novel way to attract crowds to his prayer hall. He used to place his disciples at crowded markets near his ashram. They would, in turn, induce people to visit the prayer hall shouting "Bhojan is happening! Bhojan is happening! it is free!" ( In Bengal, the 'a' is pronounced as the 'o'). People who get induced with the intention to have good food visit the site of the mass-prayer and invariably get absorbed in the chanting of the Bhajans, overtaken by the devotional spirits. Even after the singing and praying gets completed, they would have so overwhelmingly satisfied with the spiritual enlightenment, the thought of satisfying their pallets would have been completely forgotten. All of them would return to their homes as completely fulfilled souls.

In organisations too, the rewards for motivations should be so designed that even if targeting the lower needs of monetary attractions in the initial phase, they should invariably transform the needs of the workforce to derive self-actualisation through the richness of their 'karma' of doing work to reach the larger objectives.

Leadership Visibility

2011-11-09T03:03:00.000-08:00

In a story of Lord Shiva, Goddess Parvati once asked him as to why he keeps away from Kailash everyday, during the whole of the daytime. Lord Shiva replied that he has to take care of the diet needs of every living being and so he has to work the whole day to see that no one goes hungry. Parvati wanted to test his capacity on this statement.So one day, just before he leaves the mountain abode, she picked up an ant and put it in a container and closed it tight. Later, She confronted Shiva on his return, "Oh! Lord! Have you completed your task of seeing to it that every living being got its share of food today?". Lord Shiva replied in the affirmative. Then the Goddess said "No! You forgot to feed one living being today" and opened the container in front of him. She was surprised to see the Lord smiling and gently saying "Dear! Please have the patience to carefully look into the box". She peeped into the container, only to notice that it was a special one gifted by her father for her wedding ceremony and contained a sugar coating inside. The ant inside was comfortable all day by licking and consuming the entire coat of the container. She realised that it is not possible to hoodwink the Lord who has a special third eye from ably completing his karma.

Leaders in organisations have the task to feed to the wants and resource requirements of the workforce to make them motivated all times. They should be innovative enough to identify normal and out of the box ways to satisfy all types of people and all types of genuine wants of them so that the wheels of the firm keep moving all times. There may be instances wherein some unseen 'Shaktis' may hide their vision and goals to fulfill these objectives. But if the leadership has the 'Shiva' effect in them to see through the invisible, ultimate success would be theirs.

Work-Life Balance

2011-11-05T22:07:00.000-07:00

Productivity when interpreted as the 'efficiency' parameter alone, makes manufacturing organisations to conceive of 'intelligent' machines and assembly lines and 'robotic' human beings. The conflict between the shop-floor work to be seen as the 'best practice' with 'zero' time-wastages and the human workers' expectations for his professional life to be 'educating' and 'entertaining', many times lead to the invention and reinvention of many management practices.

"Lean Manufacturing" practices have been considered to be the right solution for productivity in the shop-floor and Maruti, a giant automobile manufacturer has been considered to be a pioneer in it. The report on the recent disturbances amongst their work-force, brings once again to the forefront the question of the right way to strike work-life balance amongst the blue-collar segments.

Shop-floor and Assembly line productivity may be enhanced through the conventional cycle time reduction techniques by identification of all wastages in the worker-machine interface and ruthlessly and systematically go for eliminating them. But when the inflection point is reached, further improvements are sustainable only through 'knowledge productivity' techniques wherein attempts should be made to emanate innovations by letting informal collaborations and motivations through emotional-sharing.

One more instance, to emphasize, that 'Productivity' is to be viewed from the work-life balance angle to keep it sustainable.

Vigilance Story

2011-11-02T08:31:00.000-07:00

The Vigilance Awareness Week is in progress and people are much more aware about the evils of letting dishonesty prevail in public life - thanks to the large public awareness campaigns of civil society recently.

A story in this regard is worth recollecting: The children of a village used to play near a garden. A snake used to live in the same garden. As its routine of searching for prey was disturbed by the kids' plays, once it severely bit a child and injured him. Afraid of the snake's potential to harm, the children stopped going to the park for playing. A saint happened to visit the village and observed that the children don't gather to play. On knowing about the venomous snake, he promised that he would reform it so that it does not harm anyone. He went to the garden and by his power of penance, summoned the snake. He taught him the goodness of non-violence and took a pledge from him not to bite anyone in the future. On his assurance, the children once again started gathering at the garden and playing.

Time went by and after some years, the same saint happened to pass through the village. While crossing the garden, he found to his surprise that the snake which was once upon a time a terror to the village populace, lying in pitiful condition, injured all over. He stopped and enquired with the snake as to the reasons for this disaster. The snake replied "Oh! Learned Saint; you took the pledge from me not to bite anyone; now the children are fearless about my presence and keep attacking me with stones and sticks at every opportunity. See where my promise of non-violence has led me to!!". The saint exclaimed smilingly, "Nagraj! I restrained you only from biting any one. No one prevented you from threatening the ill-minded attacker with a forceful hiss and the majestic raised hood. That way no one would have dared to come near you and your troubles would not have been arisen at all; hereafter, do not hesitate to pretend to attack your adversaries, though not causing any deadly harm through your biting"

The moral of the story: All acts of potential deterrence against dishonesty are more lethal as threatening than punishing.

Knowledge Gender

2011-10-28T22:06:00.000-07:00

Hindi friends need to classify even inanimate objects into masculine and feminine to pronounce them. As a non-hindi person, I was wondering as to whether 'Knowledge' is to be bracketed as 'Male' or 'Female'. The boys say that knowledge is 'girlish' and girls are adamant that it is 'boyish'.

Let us see their arguments:

Girls - Knowledge is Masculine:

Knowledge is Power
Knowledge keeps going places
Knowledge is useful only when it is in Action
Knowledge is not respected if not able to produce wealth
Knowledge has to go a long way to realise the 'beauty' of wisdom
Knowledge needs to be sufficiently stimulated to make it perform
Knowledge ages quickly

Boys - Knowledge is Feminine:

Knowledge is secretive - difficult to decipher
Needs 'Make-up' to make Knowledge beautiful
Knowledge easily mingles with those of same category
The Knowledge you want to keep secret easily gets leaked out
One needs to spend capital and revenue to possess Knowledge
Knowledge can be 'possessed' as a patent
The 'knowledge' that you got looks outdated quickly and the external 'knowledge' looks better.

Manufacturing Growth and Employment

2011-10-25T23:28:00.000-07:00

The Modern Society requires manufacturing and service sectors to grow in tandem so that each can feed on the other for faster growth. India had seen in the recent past, a deviation that its Service Sector grew faster and Manufacturing has been a laggard.

The recently declared Government's Manufacturing Policy attempts to rectify the anomaly by targeting Productivity and Growth to the Manufacturing sector. The policy aims at an ambitious 25% contribution to the GDP and employment creation of 220 million jobs.

The National Investment and Manufacturing Zones (NIMZ) envisaged to propel the manufacturing prowess would need enormous Knowledge Sharing and Productivity augmentation efforts. The document elaborating the collaborative efforts to bring together investment, infrastructure, skills and Government policy supports to enable a clean and green manufacturing is a commendable exercise.

Let the new policy lead to manufacture enhanced Productivity and Prosperity to the Nation!!

Diwali Delicacies and Directed Productivity

2011-10-22T21:50:00.000-07:00

The festival of Diwali is approaching, celebrated by the Indians as a succeeding event to the Dussehra, signifying victory of Good over Evil. The Diwali, as per certain traditions, is the celebration with the lights marking the arrival of Lord Ram back to Ayodhya after his victory over Lanka.

The Diwali festival invariably provides happiness and gaiety with fireworks and delicacies of food items and sweets. In the households, preparations are made well in advance to tidy up the looks and spruce up the homes. The housewives take pains to prepare varieties of sweets and savories for the occasion. However, the first item to be prepared much before the rich in sugar and oil items, is a traditional ayurvedic paste comprising of various herbs and ghee to prepare the stomach for the onslaught of sweets and snacks. The home-made medicinal paste comes in handy for the persons of all ages to balance the digestive organs before and after the consumption of rich varieties of festival foods.

Organisations have also the knack to celebrate various achievements against their targets. These celebrations manage to provide various rewards and incentives to the workforce. Such give-aways should always be accompanied by well-laid out mechanisms to direct the enthusiasm of the beneficiaries to productively utilise the benefits and not fritter them away in wastages. There should also be follow up plans to balance the ill-feelings and contradictions that may arise if different sections of workforce feel that they are not judiciously treated in awarding the rewards.

Let the organisations not only celebrate, but also learn from them!

Happy Diwali to all!!

e-Health through KM

2011-10-18T06:04:00.000-07:00

In the current programme that I am conducting on KM for Govt organisations, there have been many discussions on the positive effect of KM implementation in the Health Service Sector. Examples of the Harvard Medical University had been sited as the best example of K-sharing for the medical sector.

Interestingly, a news report, now claims that the spread of Typhoid could be exactly mapped and controlled in Nepal using Google Earth and K-Mapping of the disease causing factors.

Looking forward to many such examples of e-nhanced health through KM.

Ozone or '0'Zone

2011-10-16T05:47:00.000-07:00

The last one year has witnessed enormous numbers of natural disasters, ranging from tsunamis to cyclones to earthquakes and floods. The destruction caused by these disasters have threatened humans across the continents, from Japan in the East to USA in the West. In the middle Indian continent, there are now protests and agitations by the common men to forego even developmental comforts like better power supply for the risk reduction through abandoning an almost completed nuclear power plant.

Adding to these fears, there is this news item, that the Ozone layer over the Antartic as big as ever. The depletion in the Ozone layer are supposed to cause extensive damage to the earth's ecology, ranging from global warming to health dangers out of the excessive UV radiations.

Global Productivity concerns can no longer restrict itself to only economic and social considerations. If Ozone depletion may result into '0'zone on the earth, it is time we integrate "Green Productivity" into all of the Productivity endeavours.

A silver lining in the cloudy situation, is of course, the contrasting report of another set of environmental scientists, who have claimed that the feared Sea Level Rise has not at all happened and the coastal nations and cities of the world are as safe as ever. Let such hopes and the Ozone make our world a 'safe' zone.

History is Biology

2011-10-12T21:42:00.000-07:00

Sometimes ago there was an advertisement slogan - "Geography is History", and then that Company went into the "History".

Our Body and Mind keep registering actions and reactions ever since our birth. Sometimes there are pleasant experiences - Family protection, love and care of near and dear ones, enjoyable food, company of the learned, enlightenment and learning from repositories, security of the society and so on. Alternatively there are hard times - illness, injuries, worries, sadness, stress and strains, verbal and physical onslaughts and so on. The steady state phenomena of our body and mind at any point of time is the resultant history of both the pleasures and pains experienced biologically.

In organisations too, the build up of its actions over its life time creates its body and mind. At some times, the organisational systems are nurtured and directed to produce vision, values and goodwill. Other times, the energies are digressed towards internal contradictions and contests. The status of the firm at any point of time would be the emergent coefficient of its historical actions, in-actions and mal-actions.

So, History is Biology in ourselves and the Organisations!!

Leadership Dual Role

2011-10-09T08:10:00.000-07:00

Hear out! It's one more temple practice of the South; In all the famous and large godly abodes of the South India, the God is worshipped in two forms; 'Moolavar' - the main deity and 'Urchavar' - the deity who is taken out in processions. The Main deity is fixed in his Garbagraha and never ventures out. Devotees have to go into the temple sanctorum to have his darshan at scheduled times. All the decorations and chanting his names are done inside his home. Contrasting this, the 'moving deity' is decorated in different forms and styles and taken out in various chariots around the temple, at the times of auspicious times and celebration times, to be blessing the devotees who happen to pass by him in his procession. While the 'Moolavar' is always powerful, the 'Urchavar' derives his strengths while he is being in the interface with his devotees.

In organisations, leaders also need to play the dual roles of 'Moolavar' and 'Urchavar'. The leader while being stationed in his office, should provide fixed direction in terms of Vision, Mission and Goals to the workforce. He should use his powers to attract the workforce to visit and engage with him to derive inspiration whenever they are in need of guidance and support. Simultaneously, he should also keep moving over to the workstations of all levels of personnel and participate in their achievements and provide encouragement for the successes. In this role, he would be able to visualise as to how his people are able to convert his Vision and dreams to ground level actions and derive success for the firm.

A dual role leader will be the real people winner.

Vijay 10ami

2011-10-05T22:33:00.000-07:00

The 'Vijay Dushami' day is the most auspicious for the believing. It signifies the mythology of Ram winning over Ravann or the victory of Good over Evil.

Why 'Dushami', denoting '10' is connected to the signification of positive things?

Ram, the son of 'Dus-rath', left the Ayodhya Kingdom, causing the demise of the king father. The Lord, in the end, slayed Ravann, the 'Dus-Mukh' to retrieve his wife, Sita. The story of Ramayan is the eternal battle between the Good and the Evil, beginning and ending with the two men signifying '10'.

The number '1' denotes existence and '0' denotes conscience. Together they represent the Universe. '1' also stands for matter and '0' stands for energy. Together it revolves into eternal creation and destruction.

In organisations, '1' is the the physical presence of men-material-machinery resources. '0' will be the intangibles, 'values', 'principles', 'objectives', 'goals' and 'vision'. Without the '1', the '0' loses the potential for action. In the absence of '0', the '1' will lose direction. Together, they can lead the firm to 'Vijay' or 'Victory'.

Happy Vijay Dusjami Day to all the believing ( and the unbelieving as well)

Incentives - Non-Productive?

2011-10-04T22:53:00.000-07:00

It is festival time and rejoicing people everywhere. Government also encourages its workforce to be cheerful and spending during these times so that happiness is visible all over.

No doubting the intentions of the Government, when it announces special incentives to its employees during the Dussehra / Diwali festival times. To its people whose work can be quantifiably measured, it calls the incentives as "Productivity Linked Bonus". Good that it signifies the intention to reward better productivity.

However, taking cue from the previous nomenclature, there is another one called "Non-Productivity Linked Bonus" to those employees whose work can't be quantified. Virtually it sounds as if non-productivity is getting rewarded.

It is time that a more positive sounding name is found for the Non-Productivity Linked Bonus - or is it there an indirect admission that many of those getting these benefits are non-productive?

Getti Mezham

2011-09-30T21:34:00.000-07:00

In South Indian marriages, the ceremony is not complete without the 'Nadaswaram', a musical instrument performance throughout the function. The artists render various musical compositions from morning to evening with the 'wind-pipe' instrument and guests are entertained to their serenity apart from the joy of meeting friends and relatives and blessing the newly wed couple. Apart from their regular duty of playing music, the vidwans-artists of nadaswaram have a major task: to sound "Getti Mezham" - strong drums to signify the important milestone times - like tieing the sacred thread (kaappu) on the groom's and bride's hands, the performance of 'kanyadhanam' - gifting the daughter ceremony, mangalyadharanam - tieng the symbolic marriage necklace and so on. The idea is to attract the attention of the visitors present as well as the devas - the sacred spirits who get diverged in various directions to the specific important times and events - with the high pitched music. In the process, the newly wed couple get the unified blessings of every one present.

Tradition apart,there needs to be regular "Getti Mezhams" in every organisation. It is normal for the workforce to get used to the routines of practices, processes and deviations that are usual to an organisation's time history. Over a period of time, people may tend to believe 'rules' as 'exceptions' and vice-versa. It will be the duty of the leadership to sound the strong drumbeats to awaken the managers and workers to the 'success-results' of the 'improvement stories' and 'performance-bleeding' of the 'bad-deeds'. Reinforced by the faith in the leader to help them tune into the twists and turns of organisational happenings, the workforce would be able to perform better and enjoy a musically pleasant career.

Managers - please don't fail to equip yourself with the task of sounding timely 'getti mezhams' in your jobs!!

In God we Trust; In Society we Distrust

2011-09-23T21:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I was talking to a group of executives on the subject of "Knowledge Management" and it ended with the usual question & answer session. "People to People" Trust should be the root of all knowledge sharing and collaboration - everyone agreed in consensus.

Contended with the outcome of the session, I was returning home from the office. As my journey back home crossed many vantage points, I noticed various public campaigns:

Inside the Metro: "Do not touch any unattended object looking like bag, brief-case, toy etc. It could be a bomb".

Near the Railway Station: " Don't accept any eatable from your unknown neighbouring co-passenger. It could be a toxic poison"

Next to the Market: "Houseowners! Do not trust strangers and let out your premises to them without verification; they could be terrorists"

Near the School: "Children are advised not to talk to any unknown people; they could be kidnappers"

Well! it seems that we still have to go a long way to create a "Trusting Society"

Leadership Carrier Strategies

2011-09-18T00:09:00.000-07:00

In Hindu mythology, the Gods ( and the Goddesses) have different carrier vehicles (vahanas) to transport them. Interestingly, all these are in one living form or the other. In organisations, leaders use various strategies to make the workforce perform. Can there be similarities between the two unconnected practices? Let us spread our imagination:

Lord Shiva uses the 'Bull (Nandi)' as his carrier. Shiva is the embodiment of 'inaction' at the same time he is also the eternal terminator. The Bull signifies both these qualities, patience and the brute, embedded in one. Leadership who looks for total transformation, comprising of terminating the past and beginning of a new, in their workplace have to adopt a patient educating phase followed by a brutal change over of the few left-out unwilling, much like the bull.

Lord Ganesha travels on the 'tiny mouse (Mooshika'). It is an illustration of his ability to convert the enormous problems of his devotees into negligible size (Shoka Vinashakham). Here is a tip to organisational leaders that they can endeavor to dissolve large constraints through simple and continuous improvement steps(akin to Kaizen).

Karthikeya uses a 'peacock (mayura)' to fly over and take rounds of the mother earth. His carrier signifies beauty and elegance. There are leadership strategies in organisations that communicate and execute well thought out plans through attractive motivational campaigns. These provide attraction and awards to keep the workforce in high spirits, just like the peacock carries the Lord to the peaks of his mountain abodes.

Lord Vishnu's vahan is 'Garud', the eagle. It can fly at very high altitudes but keep its vision focused on the tiny spots on the earth to look for its prey. The saviour God has professed in Gita, that though he remains untouched by the actions and results of his subjects, staying away, he is simultaneously at the same time focused to provide them with life-saving energy of sustenance. Here is a strategy for the leaders to keep focusing on the continuity of the business, while keeping a constant hold on its long term vision.

Goddess Shakti rides on 'Simha (the Tiger)'. It signifies the strength and energy to destroy evil forces. Where inefficiencies and wastage abound in organisations, leadership may have to use the ultimate destructive strategy to penalise incompetence.

Many are the varieties of Vahanas of the Lords, so are the variances in the strategies of Organisational Leadership Strategies!!

Fleecing or Fulfilling

2011-09-13T07:19:00.000-07:00

Organisations face good and troubled times and they try to adopt different strategies to overcome the problems. There are two different stories from mythologies from opposite corners of the globe to remind us as to which strategy will work.

There was Midas's story in the Bible, which tells about his greed to achieve quick wealth. He prayed to God that whatever he touched should turn in to gold and stood adamant despite warning that it may lead to more misery than happiness. At last, when the wish was granted, he was wonder-struck with his ability to change every item into gold with his simple touch. Alas, only he realised later that even those of senses and emotional needs, like food and relations also turned into lifeless gold robbing him of all his joys.

In Krishna's story of the Hindu Mythology, we were told about 'Kusela', who was strikingly poor and was coaxed by his wife to approach his childhood friend, the Lord Krishna, to help overcome his poverty. Kusela just carried a little bit of 'poha', his friend's favourite snack and when the time came to ask for a gift in return, remained silent, satisfied with the courtesy that he got from his once upon a time accomplice of the Brindavan. However, when he returned to his town, he was overjoyed to see that the Lord had bestowed upon all riches to his family, without even asking.

So organisations that serve their customers sincerely, even that amounts to fulfilling simple desires, get rewarded to their liking. But those firms which try to fleece profits through unscrupulous means end up losers in the long term.

Teachers' Day Thoughts

2011-09-03T23:03:00.000-07:00

Out of the three celestial rivers of Hindus, Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswathi, the last one is not openly visible to us in the present times. It is supposed to be the 'Sukshma' stream completing the energy of the confluence of the three.

Teaching profession, signified by the Goddess Saraswathi, is also not openly respected as the "Education" sector seems to have been taken over by the 'Lakshmi' worshiping commercialists and "Shakti" worshipping bureaucrats.

Earlier, the 'Teacher' had been considered as the 'first' among 'equals' of divine powers. In the scriptures, there had been umpteen examples of students volunteering to offer strange and stringent "Guru-dakshinas", without even a speck of hesitation. These offerings ranged from cutting off own 'thumps' to laying down 'lives'. The Gurus who had transferred 'knowledge', 'wisdom' and 'skills' to their pupils, looked though, for no personal benefits and were happy to be immersed in the bliss arising out of their 'vidya- dhaan'.

On the occasion of the "Teachers' Day", it is the need of the time to relearn the importance of "Knowledge Transferers" - The Teachers - and start respecting the hidden stream of "Saraswathi" within each one of us!!

ANNA W(inner) Voice

2011-08-28T03:14:00.000-07:00

Anyone who had been watching the phenomenal new uprising of people's movement through the leadership of ANNA, in the last two weeks, had the opportunity for new learnings. Leaders, Followers, Politicians, Executives, Policemen, Volunteers, Students and general Public, all participated in the interesting demonstrations to emphasize probity in life and the need for effective laws, rules and conduct to enforce the same.

Regulars lessons apart, an interesting essence of ANNA's decision making process was noticed by me. When the doctors examining him regularly showed signs of nervousness in the mid-course and recommended 'hospitalisation' or 'drips' for him, ANNA came out with the declaration that he listened to his 'antaratma' which dictated him to continue fearlessly. Behold, the next day, the doctors found him more healthy than the previous times.

By the end of the second week of his 'satyagraha', even many of his close colleagues and well-wishers again repeatedly appealed to him to give up his fast as many of his demands have already been projected in the public domain forcefully and can't be ignored in the future law making process. Still, ANNA continued with the same enthusiasm, propelled by his inner voice, and the Government and the Parliament which was earlier reluctant to change their slow way of working, suddenly gave in and discussed the matter thread bare in the people's representative house. All these while, ANNA's health was as steady reinforced by the strength provided by the purity of his 'inner consciousness'.

Standing tall from all other learnings - 'listen attentively to your inner voice, like ANNA did, every time, and you're sure to become a Winner'

CKO Humour

2011-08-23T03:24:00.000-07:00

CKO Paul : I have realised that there is just a PC difference between Communication and Governance!

CKO Mani: Can you please explain?

CKO Paul: Well! The Communication efficiency is plagued by 'SPAMS' and Governance by 'SCAMS'!!

The Enemy who's Invisible

2011-08-21T07:16:00.000-07:00

The thousands of humans of all shades and profiles, widely varying in age, profession, region,religion, language pouring on the streets of cities of India having different scope and expectations. Some are fed up with the menace of corruption that forces them to live a life of fear and dishonesty. Some are stressed beyond limits to stay up to the limitations of a fast changing society where consumption is worshiped and conservation is neglected. Some are aghast at the temerity with which leaders of various hues make promises to come to power and break them without even a hint of remorse. Certain groups are worried over the tough future where opportunities are limited and their prospects are uncertain.

However varying are the thoughts of those who have come out and shouting slogans, they are all against a common invisible enemy - "The Greed". As the Lord whose birth is being celebrated now said in the Gita - "Whenever 'adharm' and 'evil' exceeds the bearing capacity of 'dharmic deeds', there comes my 'avatar' to set right the balance" - May be this is the time to collectively support the 'honest' to fight out the 'Greed' and restore balance and peace!

KM Competency

2011-08-17T07:49:00.000-07:00

For a new-born child, language speaking is an impossibility but skill of swimming comes with natural ease. For the grown-ups, physical skills take enormous practice compared to verbal conversations.

Competence is thus a contextual realisation and will differ from individual to individual. KM is the underlying philosophy that knits the culture to share and grow amongst many of the present generations. But, how much effective are the competence and skills that have been systematically developed in those who would like to practice KM in their day to day is still an unanswered question.

We have made a small beginning by planning and implementing a systematic KM competence development through a structured training course. With the sponsoring support of Asian Productivity Organisation(APO), and with the mentoring support from Dr.Ronald Young, a certifying course on "KM Competency" has been initiated for the future practitioners of KM. The participants for the past two days are not only understanding the thoery behind the idea of taking KM towards the organisational vision through individual, team, organisational and inter-organisational levels, but also practising the KM tools that would help them achieve this competencies.

Wish such KM Competency programmes are standardised and applied in many more organisations for the development of Knowledge and Productivity!!

Noble Ways to Raksha Bandhan

2011-08-13T04:31:00.000-07:00

Today is to celebrate "Raksha Bandhan", the exhilarating spirit of bondage amongst brothers and sisters. While the sisters cherish the eternal protection offered by thier brothers, the shower of unconditional love and affection is unforgettable for the brothers.

Mythology again provides us glimpses of what type of "Raksha" and "Bandhan" are relishing and where they can go wrong.

In Ramayan, the sister Surpanaka complained to brother Ravan, that she got humiliated by the prince of Ayodhya and demanded revenge. Ravan, in the false pride of satisfying his sister with a suitable gift, abducted Sita and imprisoned her. The wicked brother-sister relationship ended up in destruction of their entire kingdom and lives.

In Mahabharat, the sister Draupadi, prayed to her brother Lord Krishna to protect her pride, when she was insulted by Dushashan indulging in disrobing her. Her abject surrender and love made the Lord to cover her with eternal supply of robes and prove her purity to the world. The sacred brother-sisiter combination proved to be the ideal support for the Pandav brothers to regain their lost kingdom.

Let the Raksha Bandhan supply and reinforce the noble brother-sisiter bondage!!

Economic Crisis - US and us

2011-08-06T22:27:00.000-07:00

For the first time in the history, the credit rating of "USA" has got downgraded by a well known rating agency. By all 'Standards', the 'Poor' grading by the Standards&Poor to US is having its impact on all parts of the world. The Indian Finance Minister has however reassured that, the sub-continent may not catch the cold even if the US sneezes as its priorities are different and its strategic choices have been kept safeguarded through prudent policy regimes.

Just before the Mahabharata war was to begin, Duryodhan and Arjun went to meet Lord Krishna to seek his support. As the Lord was sleeping, Duryodhan entered his chambers first and waited at his footstep for him to wake up. Then entered Arjun, who took a place near his head. On waking up, Krishna saw Arjun first then Duryodhan. On knowing that Duryodhan and Arjun, in that order, entered his chambers to seek his support for the war, he declared that he saw Arjun first and later Duryodhan, hence he would let Arjun choose first amongst himself and his army as the support. Arjun chose the company of the Lord and Duryodhan subsequently was very glad to think that he was left to choose the massive army of Dwarka to help him win the battle. In reality, the choice of the strategic support of the Lord proved to be the 'turning point' of victory for the Arjun's Pandavs and the despirited Yadav army without its mentor had no use for the Duryodhan's Kauravs.

At times of crisis, it is better to be following the first rather than the first and be having the best strategic mentors to guide you rather than the host of fire-fighters. Wishing the best luck to the Indian Finance Minister in these testing times!!

Economy Appl(i)ed

2011-07-30T02:54:00.000-07:00

The news report that "Apple" has now overtaken the US Government in cash reserves has lessons to be learnt for applied economists.

Apple, led by its innovative chief, has used its creative designs for the modern mobile citizens to integrate with the digital world and in the process has reaped enormous profits. The US and other Governments, still bloating with the bureaucratic dominance are suffering from excessive debts and worrying about recovery mechanisms.

Knowledge Economy of the future would require many more Steve Jobs and 'Apple's to create innovative alternatives!!

God's Particle or Principle?

2011-07-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

Two separate reports to think about the role of God!

One, where scientists are bumping upon some peculiar patterns in their experimentation with sub-atomic particles thus providing hopes to trace the mysterious 'God-Particle' - the base of mass in all matter.

The second, where human aberrations are leading to wanton destruction of life and peace through terrorist means, that go against the fundamental Godly principles of human co-existence.

Whether it is the 'matter' or the 'mind', Godly intervention is the needed one to explain the peculiar happenings of the present times!!

Looking for Tsunamis Up in the Sky

2011-07-17T05:02:00.000-07:00

Scientists have reported a new finding that deadly Tsunamis can possibly be forecast using airwave signatures kilometres up in the sky. They have found such a correlation created by the recent Tsunami strike at Japan.

Our scriptures have always been emphasizing the deep inter-connect between the panch-tatvas - akash, vayu, agni, prithvi and jal and the excessive display of any of of them can leave a domino effect in the other. May be this is a new beginning to look for predictive solutions for the disasters of one type in the characteristics of the other.

May be Next time a valcano eruption may well be forecast through the seismic waves in the earth and and an earthquake through the change in the current patterns in the sea!!

CKO Humour

2011-07-11T21:53:00.000-07:00

CKO Paul: Our company has managed to find a new way to satisfy the Corporate Social Responsibility Targets!!

CKO Mani: Please tell me so we can also do the same.

CKO Paul: We have mandated all our employees to manage their social networking accounts with complete responsibility.

Brotherly Consultants

2011-07-09T03:30:00.000-07:00

The epic 'Ramayan' depicts many illustrative qualities of various relations. The significant part of 'brothers' in one's life can be understood from the Tamil proverb "One having a (younger) brother does fear a battle". In "Ramayan", we observe two brothers, contrasting in their actions and compellingly similar in their spirit, Lakshman and Vibheeshan.

Lakshman was only a step brother to the Ram, but his steadfast attachment and devotion to his brother made him forego all his personal wants in pursuit of accompanying and assisting Ram wherever he went. He was Ram's body and soul guard in times of great stress and tensions during the forced stay in the forests and the great battle at Lanka. His singleminded devotion and steadfast defence of his brother's welfare provided the major cause for the glory that we celebrate to "Ram's" story.

Vibheeshan was the direct brother to Ravan, but parted company with him when he could not succeed to convince him to change his evil ways. He joined the opposition army of Ram and provided the vital details of the armoury of Lanka and also caused the slaying of Ravan through narrating the place of the root of his Prana Shakti. Though apparently going against his brother's welfare, Vibheeshan just did the right thing to liberate Ravan from his sins at the hands of Lord Ram.

Organisations, in the times of turmoil, will need 'brotherly consultants' of the form of Lakshman or Vibheeshan. Consultants of the 'Lakshman' type will stay with the workforce and assist, demonstrate and activate the system to perform on a continuous manner. 'Vibheeshan' type consultants on the other hand identify deficiencies, in-effectiveness and contrast them with the better practices of the competitors. Either way, they help you to improve your productivity.

Organisations of the present times would need brother consultants of the nature of "Lakshmans" and "Vibheeshans"

Mo+iva+ion

2011-07-01T22:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes back, there was a report which suggested that the awfully threatening pictures and the messages on the cigarette packs, aren't that effective to deter the die-hard smokers; rather some of them get a thrill to do exactly the opposite through those deterrents. Now, we have this news which says positive motivating texts gently reminding a person at the right time can indeed coax him to refrain from his temptations.

We know that even common sense knowledge needs to be repeatedly brought to the cognition of the practitioner, to be productively and effectively implemented. However, the positive and motivating actions can be more appealing than the negative and punitive actions. More oftern, in organisations, we find orders and dictats to 'share' knowledge simply ignored, or at the most 'pretended to be followed' , while appeals and actions to touch the emotional contentment leading to more 'voluntary sharing'.

Here's one more instance to substantiate the Positive KM Share -Philosophy!!

GO(o)D Learning

2011-06-24T01:35:00.000-07:00

In my recent visits to various temples in Tamil Nadu, I happened to observe a new interesting practice of the devotees. Many of them, after a 'darshan' of the main lord, on their return bend to the ears of the Lord's Carrier, sitting in front of the Lord's chambers, and whisper something to him. It was an interesting sight to see more crowd queueing before the "Nandikeshwar" than even before the Lord "Shiva" in some places. Curious to understand the reasons behing this new practice, I enquired with someone. He explained that those devotees believe that their whishes whispered into the ears of the Lord's favourite will be quickly communicated and favourably granted and fulfilled by the main Lord.

In the corporates of modern times, we can always find most trusted accomplice(s) to the top bosses and everyone prefers to keep these accomplices in good company. It is common-sense knowledge that the wants communicated through such intermediaries have higher successful completion chances than those made directly to the top leadership.

Is it that the Gods of our times are 'reverse learning' from their 'Bakthas' the management practices of the current times?

Share or Retain

2011-06-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

A rather long abstention from the net-world was caused by my vacation to south India. During this time, I had the opportunity to visit many temples, some of them being extremely popular, some not quite well known and situated in remote corners.

During one such temple visit, I had the pleasant opportunity to have the 'darshan' of the main deity "Lord Shiva" from very close quarters. The mind reminiscent from the opportunity and the peace engulfed soul from the prayers were filled with the bliss and waiting to showcase to the outer world. There appeared a few beggars asking for alms and I happily obliged doling out a few coins to each of them. Just then, one of my distant uncles came and remarked to me "I would like to caution you on a not-to-do action at any cost. Never give away anything to anybody just while returning after prayers in a temple. If you do so, you are giving away all your 'blessings' that you earned by praying to the Lord of the temple." Knowing his temperament for long-lecture advices, I just nodded in silence and let the instance pass out.

In retrospect, I am stille wondering, if we can earn all those "Punnya" by just offering prayers at a temple and keep it all to ourselves by not donating it on our return, why those so many poor chaps stationed all their lifetime in those temples and still struggling throughout in thier life-times??

Children as source of Wisdom

2011-06-11T21:58:00.000-07:00

In our traditions, Children are identified with the embodiment of "Wisdom" and there are many fables connecting Children with various forms of 'Knowledge Acquisition'. True to the proverb, that "Child is the father of the man", there has been a mythological reference to the Child Lord Karthik teaching his father Shiva the true meaning of the eternal mantra 'OM'.

On this day of "Internal eradication of Child Labour", let us strive to remove the physical strains on the millions of children all over the world, in forcing to do scores of hard tasks for poor wages. We should rather use their wisdom to develop them as Knowledge sources who can help the future of the Knowledge Economies of the Globe.

Message and the Messenger

2011-06-03T01:20:00.000-07:00

With Swami Ramdev making a clarion call to end corruption, through Satyagraha, the stage is set for one more tumultous week, after Anna Hazare awakened thousands of hearts a month or two ago.

Our age old scriptures like Vedas and Upanishads never had been identified with any individual creator and the message they delivered were kept in high reverance than their anonymous creators. For thousands of years, our culture has taught us to respect values like Truth, Knowledge and Honesty irrespective of the mouths of individuals who happened to profess them.

Is it the travesty of the changing times that we tend to tilt towards eulogising the 'messengers' than believe in the simplicity and the common sense behind the 'messages' that they try to propogate? While there is no arguement to the fact that we need 'charismatic' leadership to enthuse the 'followers', the success of the 'mission' equally lies in the 'mass' of individuals who would live and die for the cause that is not only good for the self but also for the society.

Success to the messengers like "Anna" and "Baba" would equally rest on the commitment of each and every individual to imbibe and practice the 'message' rather then just worshipping them in aweful reverence.

"Naam" to "Name"

2011-05-28T23:09:00.000-07:00

When one recites the reverant "Vishnu Sahashranamam" that contains salutations to the Lord by calling his names in thousand ways, he might not have understood the importance of variations in the names. People like me having a typical south indian name would know as to how your name can be twisted in innovative ways - "Krishanan", "Krishan", "Krishnn","Kiruttinan","Krishn" and so on.

It is no surprise that people simply want to change thier names as it is possibly the simplest and painless change as other changes like habits and attitudes can be a quite challange. So it is for the Governments to earn quick revenue incomes, as reported in this interesting news report. For reasons varying from Neumerology to Caste Consciousness to Smart sounding fashions, there are thousands of people wanting to change their names at the drop of their hats. By encouraging these feelings, ailing state finances can rake up plenty of tax income to up their financial health.

What is special in a "name" or the changed "naam"? - now we know there are millions of "Panam" (cash) in those changes!!

Animated Project Success

2011-05-20T23:57:00.000-07:00

Our plant earth is an interesting culmination of various forms of lives. Animals and Humans make an excellent combination in the realisation of the bliss that surrounds us in our life. Organisational behaviours have two sides representing the animal and human forms. The epic Ramayan provides an interesting slideshow of how animal behaviors when integrated with human emotions can help in execution of organisational functions.

Lord Ram had the support of three animal-human personalities in his historic journey from Ayodhaya to Lanka to destroy evil forces. They were Jadhayu, Jambhavan and Hanuman.

Jadhayu, the vulture bird personified as human, fought Ravann with all his might when he hijacked Mother Sita over the skies. Even when his both wings were cut off, he focused single-mindedly to keep alive till the time Ram arrived and gave him the directions where he should lead in search of his beloved.

Jambhavan, the wild-bear personified as human, was the ace-strategist for Ram's monkey-army providing guidance and counselling in the war against the wicked. He was known for his enthusiastic counselling to Hanuman reminding him about his real powers that were forgotten in depression. His just-in-time advice helped the monkey-general to cross the mighty oceans to reach Lanka in one giant leaping flight.

Hanuman, the monkey personified as human, was the able solider of his Lord carrying out any and all impossible tasks for the sheer delight of devotion to his leader. He could move montains, cross oceans and burn cities just for the sake of winning the battle of justice on behalf of his master.

In organisations, every project leader should be careful enough to select and deploy Jadhayus, Jambhavans and Hanumans as his team members, to achieve success. Jadhayu members would help you keep the focus towards the final goals and align the various activities towards those goals. Jambhavan members would provide counselling and strategies to make the team members motivated in achieving their fullest potentials. Hanuman members would toil from earth to skies to accomplish the assigned tasks to the satisfaction of the team leaders and to the completion of the projects.

If we can imbibe the lessons from Ram's three animal-human companions, achievement of highest project productivity can never be a problem.

Jugaad Patents

2011-05-16T21:07:00.000-07:00

The operators of the famous RTV charetered buses that ferry office employees in the metro city of Delhi are known for their innovative spirits to squeeze out higher productive returns from their meagre investment in their carriage space. In the outset one wonders as to how a vehice specifically christened as 'Rural Transport Vehicle' has been paraded as the convenient transport medium in the metropolitan urban city of Delhi.

To add to such spirits, the owners of these buses, have made many 'jagaadic' additions like in-situ fittings of seats welded over the battery boxes, engine bonnets, spare tyre fitments and so on to make more and more passengers get accomodated. Some even have small plastic stools kept under the seats, that can be fished out and laid on the aisle paths when the number of people to be carried goes higher.

With our daily witnessesing the advent of thousands of 'jugaad enterpreneurs', it is no surprise that the Government is trying to modify the patent laws to facilitate registration of what can be termed as 'Jugaad Patents'. Under this proposals, enterpreneurs of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) can apply for registering their utility ideas that helped them overcome productivity problems, like the one who used the washing machine as a lassi-churner or some farmers spraying Cola drinks to kill pesticides. Given such official recognition and encouragement, no doubt, our huge human resources can produce scores of "Perfect Jugaads" that are patentable and presentable to the world.

CKO Humour

2011-05-15T07:13:00.000-07:00

CKO Paul: In retrospect, we weren't careful enough in promoting "Knowledge Cafes" as KM techniques in our company.

CKO Mani: Why? Did your "employee food bill" went high?

CKO Paul: No! It was that many of our employees left and have started 'Restaurant Business'!!

Whirlpool of violations

2011-05-07T05:05:00.000-07:00

Organisations that aim quick results sometimes begin with the habit of small violating behaviours of norms. As they relish those ill-earned bonuses, there runs the stream of higher and higher breaking of just and decent behaviour in search of further goodies, and in no time get caught into a whirlpool from which there is no escape.

In the epic Mahabharat, the episode of Shishupal's destruction amply reflects this phenomena. The foolish king, out of his hatred for the Lord, starts insulting him through verbal onslaughts, deriving momentary pleasures. The Lord cautions him that he, being the benovalent, will tolerate his insults upto a limit of a hundred times only. However, Shishupal, complacent that he can as well stop much before the limit set, goes on and on and loses count of the number of bad words mouthed by him. As he crossed his limit, gets slayed summarily.

So firms better look out for such self destructing phenomena! You may unwittingly get sucked into bad times through repeated mistakes which you might consider as minor and can be reversed at any point easily!

Modern "Knowledge Eyes"

2011-05-04T03:23:00.001-07:00

During the Mahabharat, King Dhridharashtra wanted to have real time news of the battle, and since he was blind to see anything, his charioteer Sanjay was equipped by the Lord with "Knowledge Eye". Thus was borne a method of remote transmission of round the clock news from the 'action scene' to the 'interested'.

Thousands of years since, a new system of making and sharing news is transforming the world. As per this news report, the preference in which the billions reach and share the 'news' have been drastically changed. The various social networking platforms over the net are lighteningly faster to reach the news, thus are preferred by the modern netizens.

Can we say the "Knowledge Eyes" of the present times lie in the billions of the nodes that form the digital network connecting the world?

Apple's Day Keeps All Competitors Away

2011-04-30T22:49:00.000-07:00

The news about 'Apple' being the second largest 'wealthy' company in the world, is not a surprise. With its 'innovation' a day, Apple has managed to keep all the other ICT competitors like Microsoft, Nokia, Google etc at bay.

Most of the popular 'Apple' products begin with an 'i' like i-phone, i-pod, i-pad and i-tune. The 'i' possibly stands for 'innovative' and that is how the customers across the world are willing to wait endlessly for an 'Apple' product in a market where the tech gadgets become obsolete every yesterday.

It is more difficult for one to maintain the position at the top than reaching there. 'Apple' will also be not an exception, with innumerable and equally enchanting techies from Samsung and Sony throwing up surprises in their 'innovativeness'.

To maintain its predominant global position, 'Apple' will need to continue to provide boost to its 'i' that stands for No.'1 in innovation' and not give to the complacence that arises from the other 'i' that stands for 'i-know everything'.

Vision - Small and Big

2011-04-29T01:07:00.000-07:00

Dr.Abdul Kalam, a visionary and former Indian President, is hopeful to reach the 2020 Vision of India to join the club of developing nations. His formula is to grow 'big' with a growth rate of over 11% in our GDP. He also goes on to caution about the need to take the villages, the illiterate and the poor along in the 'big growth' path, what is otherwise known as 'inclusive growth'.

Many times, big 'visions', in the absence of sensible 'leadership' and committed 'followership' may produce by-products of troubles which are of 'gigantic' proportions. We are witness to innumerable hardships to health, human values and environment, many of them could be even 'irrepairable', in the mad rush towards achieving 'leaping' growths and aiming 'big'.

While desiring to reach 'big' heights, one should also agree to the 'balance' that could be provided by 'small' things. A 'small' spare time to watch the nature and hear the 'singing' of the birds in the morning, a 'little' bit of help to 'teach' a small child, a 'bit' of charity to the 'helpless' citizen, a 'split' of smile while troubled with anger and pain - one can find these 'small' 'small' things can combine to make a 'huge' difference to our standards of living and the development.

It is not without reasons, the old proverb says, "those who rejoice in small desires, are the ones who have a big heart".

Is colour of the Internet 'Green'?

2011-04-23T03:18:00.000-07:00

It is the turn of the 'internet' and the IT industry that rides on the 'net' to get slammed by GreenPeace for their deadly anti-green effects. As per their report, the internet as a whole may be more polluting than the entire country like India, taking the energy consumption as the indicator of emissions and hence the tendency to affect the Green Productivity of the 'Planet Earth'. The excessive use of coal-based power by the data-centres and the diesel usage by the telecommunication sector are specifically sited as the non-green practices in the report.

While there is some relevance to the reference of excessive power usage by the massive size of ICT producers and users, we should also look at the 'opportunity' of 'emission reductions', by not resorting to alternate modes of information/communication generation and usage. Just imagine the magnitude of trees to be cut and fuel to be burnt, if all those data that are digitally trafficking every second to be put on paper and physically moved! No doubt, even the not-so green 'internet' will get transformed 'Squeaky clean' if the credits of 'opportunities' are compared to 'debits' of 'energy consumptions'.

In summary, the law of conservation of energy may apply for 'emission' as well, but I would tend to believe that the 'Digital Technology' conserves "Green Productivity" better than any other alternative.

Trans-parent Service

2011-04-21T08:13:00.000-07:00

Today, there was the opportunity to participate in the "Civil Services Day" where a large number of senior Government executives confluence every year and deliberate on the issues and challenges of Governance. Reflecting the common mood prevailing in the outside civil society "Transparency and Ethical Governance" was the major subject of intense introspection in the event.

Some of the wishes heard in the packed hall that listened to well known crusaders of probity in public domain:

All departments should publicise in their website details of tours and expenditures of all senior functionaries including the names of the persons meetings them.

Details of tours and treatements availed by Parliamentary Committees while dealing with departments and government organisations should be collected and put up on website.

Why not video record the various court proceedings and trials and webcast on websites to enable common man to easily folow them?

All correspondence and minutes of official dealings may be pro-actively published in the websites.

It is interesting to observe that the desire for the 'paradigm shift' for 'transparency' is taking place at the apex levels of 'Governance sections' which were once upon a time considered to be the flag-beareres of 'Official Secrecy'!!

Is Face(Book) the index of the (market) mind?

2011-04-18T01:18:00.000-07:00

The enormous personal information and the derived knowledge embedded in Social Networking sites like "Facebook", can be put to create wealth for the "Knowledge Economy" - A Hypothesis often quoted to support emergence of borderless and spaceless net interconnected world. To confirm the reports, Facebook is now intending to create revenues out of its knowledge repository by connecting advertisers to its millions of members to provide them product information suiting the likes and tastes of each one individually. For some groups of people, this would be a side benefit of getting relevant product/market information along with their social touch with their web friends. For some one else, it could be an unwanted interference in their personal practices and lives. Look out for the (market) mind behind the face(book)!!

Lea(r)n - ing Organisations

2011-04-14T02:52:00.002-07:00

What has been the trump card of manufacturing productivity - the "Lean" process is becoming the universal mascot for waste reductions. It comes as no surprise that even the best of the "software" firms resort to "Lean" methods to find ways and means to stay competitive in a cut throat market. That is how Wipro - an already established "Knowledge" organisation and a "MAKE" award winner turns to Toyota - a role model for "Lean Manufacturing", to cut costs and improve its performance.

The "Lean" process is sometimes misunderstood for reduction of workforce and overburdening the human resources. When properly understood and employed, it can squeeze out both the apparent and hidden wastes and boost the profits and the morale at one go.

Wish many more such examples of out of the box thinking "Lea(r)n - ing Organisations" come up and provide impetus to doubting neighbours!!

CKO Humour

2011-04-12T21:24:00.000-07:00

CKO Paul: In our company, we have managed to solve the problem of inter personal conflicts through an innovative method.

CKO Mani: How did you manage that?

CKO Paul: We promote no one so that they can not complain of partiality and bias!!

Election Innovations

2011-04-11T21:42:00.002-07:00

While the veteran Anna Hazare had to resort to the age-old time tested Gandhian method of "Satyagraha" to wage a war against dishonesty, political players in different parts of the country seem to be not constrained for want of tactics. Many corporates can learn a lesson to two on how to woo their customers even in the toughest ever competitive and die-hard markets from their political counterparts fighting elections in many states.

Some of the "innovative" practices of these "citizens' representatives" to come to the rescue of ailing voters through sparing a few "notes" for their votes, even hoodwinking a watchful election commission, as reported in the media:

Issue colour tokens instead, each colour to represent specific denominations and let the tokens be exchanged at appropriate 'place and times' for the real 'moolah'.
Empanel shopping establishments and distribute 'loyalty vouchers' and let people know they can shop to their choice through these vouchers.
If someone owes a debt, promise him that his debts will be paid in exchange for his vote.
Visit the prayer room in the house of the prospect and offer "donations" to the picture of his favourite lord in total 'reverence'.
Shower 'affectionate gestures' to the children in the households through gifts for their 'birth-days' that have either been 'over' or 'forthcoming'.
Wait for the dark of the night or the electricity board to impose the scheduled 'power-cut' to 'promote' the 'distribution that can light the spark in the eyes' of the poor.
If all the above fail, there is always the modern internet technology, through which somebody's bank account can be directly credited.

'Innovation' seems to be the 'essence' of Indian elections!!

Only that we are sure, the common voter also has enough "innovative surprises" he can spring in response!!

Connecting the Unconnected

2011-04-09T07:12:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered that sometimes events that are totally apparent as unconnected can be visualised to be related? In bible, the birth of Jesus Christ was connected to the appearance of celestial star in the previous night on the skies.

As I went through today's news, I could notice two apparently two unconnected events. The first one was that of a rare solar ring appearing in the skies of eastern India due to the rare combination of Sunlight getting reflected through the peculiar formation of clouds in the atmosphere. The second one was that of the Government agreeing to the overwhelming cloud of sentiments of an upraising of the society who are now much aware and willing to reflect the illuminating purity of an apolitical- patriarch leader 'Anna Hazare'.

Let my visualisation of the connections between these two apparently unconnected happenings provide fillip to the aspirations of the new young generation that looks for and deserves a society and the Government that is honest with Integrity!!

Business Ethics or Ethics as Business?

2011-04-01T21:20:00.002-07:00

Business or Governance - there had been growing skepticism about the means adopted to reach the ends. Recent Scams and Leaks have stamped a huge question mark over the manner in which individuals, corporations and institutions adopt discretionary methods for quick gains.

May be the attempts by the premiere institutes of managements to introduce courses on "Business Ethics" will try to inculcate the values of the past to the generations of the future. I strongly feel that 'knowledge' may come from the theory and case examples but 'inspiration' can be only through internal reflections, unique to each individual.

Of course, there is also the danger of unethical business spreading, in the garb of 'Business Ethics'. Whenever there is mass attention to a set of practices, there enters a group of unscrupulous businessmen, trying to cash on the euphoria. They are unlikely to let off "Business Ethics" if they can smell huge profits from using "Ethics" as their business.

Should we not guard the "Business Ethics" from the prowls of "Ethics as Business"!!

Mountainous Problems

2011-03-26T02:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, if the problems are of mountainous proportions, the solutions may be hidden in the way we handle them.

In Hanuman, who lifted the entire Sanjeevi mountain, we find a problem solver with devotion to the cause and presence of mind. His devotion was totally dedicated to serving his Lord brothers - Ram and Lakshman, and he was also quick and common sensed to transport the entire mount when he could not locate the particular herb.

When Lord Krishna used the Govardan mountain as a shield to protect the people of Gokul, against the fury of rains showered by Indra, we find a problem solver who would always be a protector of his subjects. Simultaneously, he also humbled the pride of his opponent, Indra through his feat of lifting and holding the entire mountain in his little finger.

Once the mighty Ravan, overconfident of his strength, attempted to shake the Kailash mountain. Then, it was enough for Lord Shiva to just press his thump to make the entire mass of the mountain choke the life out of the Demon King. Ravan, however, came out of his predicament by pleasing the Lord with his melodious music played on his Veena. So are some problem solvers who would look for out of the box solutions.

Rishi Agashthya, while crossing the Indian sub-continent from North to South, was obstructed by the Vindhya mountains, emboldened by the sight of his dwarfness. By revealing the might of his penance, the sage could humble the mountain and make it give way for his journey. This example shows that problems of huge magnitudes can be overcome with the quality of sheer stamina and resistance.

If you are posed with a mountainous task, you have always recourse to such tunnels of solutions in our scriptures!!

Fukushima Prayatna

2011-03-19T00:21:00.000-07:00

Nuclear energy, otherwise touted as 'Clean Energy', can turn to be the most dirty. We are now witness to one of the most dangerous nuclear incidents, threatening a large habitat in Japan and elsewhere.

Hindu mythology is replete with hundreds of stories where evils tried to attack divinity and humanity with all possible tricks and trials; and every time the believer could come up with a magical solution that matched the problem equally in magnitude and potential. When the Asur Hiranyakasibu got a boon that he would not die in the daytime nor in the night, neither naturally nor with weapons, neither inside nor outside, neither by man nor by an animal, neither on the ground nor in the skies, he felt that his eternity has been guaranteed. Bakth Prahlad could produce out of his devotion the magical solution of Lord's Narasimh Avatar which trangressed all those impossible hurdles to destroy the Asur.

So in Fukushima, the spirited Fifties and the Japanese are trying their every possible trick, using sea water, spraying water bombs from the air, laying power cables, even attempting to cover the entire plant with sand and concrete, to ward away the dangers of the radiation. No doubt, such spirited attempts certainly will produce positive results and the problem will be eventually solved.

In India, we call such hard battles to achieve the goals as "Bhageerath Prayatna" acknowledging the hard fought attempts of Kind Bhageerath to descend the Ganges from the skies through intense penance. May be the Japanese can call such future instances as "Fukushima Prayatna"

Here we call such

Tsunami in the land of the Sun

2011-03-13T03:31:00.000-07:00

The land of Rising Sun - Japan is in the news in this week, sadly, for the nature's fury unleashed on it, the highest recorded earthquake, the massive tsunami and now the suspected nuclear melt in one its reactors.

Disasters, seemingly arriving at much faster frequencies now, though with full of tragedies, still provide us with plenty of learning experiences. Some of my thoughts arising out of watching those pictures and videos of the calamity:

Technology has provided us much improved solace to weather out such natural disasters. It is wonderful to see that there are no damages to structures and buildings in the Capital City Tokyo, despite rocked by such heavy scale shocks. There have also been acknowledgements for the usefulness of the digital social networking platforms where the surviving and the searched for have been able to communicate quickly.
We should also possibly accept the limits to human capabilities to conquer nature, revealed by the unpredictable suddenness of earthquakes and tsunamis despite advances in technology. The sheer magnitude of the energy with which the earth shook and the seas rose, it is beyond any human capability to contain their harm potential. Where human potentials fail, there is the need for spiritual intervention.
We could also see, it is not just technology, but the civil discipline and never say die spirit of the society can make what a difference! The Japanese citizens faced the worst possible damage to their lives, homes and properties with such composure and civil discipline, unthinkable anywhere else.

Once again, it is never in doubt, humanity can repeatedly rise above such temporary setbacks, even be it the combined might of nature, in the earth, seas and the skies!!

Ganesh and Gyan

2011-03-04T21:08:00.000-08:00

Many mythological stories appear to be just outwardly satisfying the sensational tastes of our human brains. But if you can traverse their interiors, there can be found, tremendous wisdom and lessons for right ways of life.

The story of Lord Ganesha is an interesting example- Goddess Parvathi once extracted some mass from her body and converted it into a male child. She asked the child to guard her home as takes a bath inside. Lord Shiva, unknown to the child as his father, was stopped at the gates by the Child, determined to execute his mother's commands at any cost. In the ensuing battle, the child was beheaded by the angry father. As Parvathi later explained to the Lord about her adventurous effort to create the child and his valourous attempts to keep the promise to his mother, Shiva orders his soldiers to find a replacement for the child's head. Luckily, they could get hold of an elephant's head which got transplanted to the child. Thus emerged Lord Ganesha, the elephant headed God, who gets blessed by his parents as the initiator of all good deeds on the Universe.

What lesson we can infer from this age-old story? Parvathi represents 'Shakti' or 'energy'. When the energy transcends into material form, like that of the 'child' created by the mother, it tries to conquer 'space', represented by "Shiva". In the process, the mass undergoes continuous mutation and transformation, signified by the animal-human combination of "Ganesh". This process is the 'mool' or 'root' of all physical formations of the Universe - hence the belief that Lord Ganesh is the God for all good beginnings!!

Worthy Life on the Planet

2011-02-28T20:09:00.001-08:00

What is the worth of our life on this plane? If we go by the estimations of an astrophysicist as reported today, the earth is worth three thousand trillion pounds - equivalent to 200 thousand trillion rupees. That way, each person on the earth can claim about 5500 billion rupees as his asset value of life on this planet.

It is interesting to ponder over the enormous wealth potential the nature has bestowed on us and the desperation in a large section of population to feel worthless.

In any case, Knowledge and Productivity are still "Free" on this part of the universe, to the intensive seeker.

CKO Humour

2011-02-26T02:36:00.000-08:00

CKO Paul: The newly appointed consultant has advised our chief to adopt "balanced Score-card" for performance evaluation.

CKO Mani: Good idea! Did your boss agree?

CKO Paul: Yes! He has now ordered a weighing scale to check himself whether the performance reports of different sections are perfectly balanced!!

Delicate Delegation

2011-02-18T02:20:00.000-08:00

Organisational managers everywhere is hard pressed for time and get bogged down with enormous stress trying to complete too many tasks simultaneously. "Try learning to delegate" has been the saner advice of a few HR specialists. But the process of delegation itself can be replete with surprise bouncers, if it is not done carefully.

One Manager in a large company, used to just pick up persons just based on his intuitive impression of their verbal claims, and delegated serious strategy actions to them. The results have been invariably disastrous and both the manager and the persons who hoped for tall claims ending up in searching for scapegoats to cover up the failures.

In another instance, a senior executive, always did a due diligence of checking up all comptencies of his various sub-ordinates before selecting a person to assign important tasks. But, having done that, he developed cold feet periodically, and time to time resorted to terrible nagging and cross questioning, while expressing serious doubts about the timely or proper completion of the task delegated. Here too, the works ended up in a hell, not able to satisfy the conflicting pulls of the senior's doubts and the independent executing abilities of the junior.

To summarise - "Delegate - You should", but keep in mind "the delicate principles" of delegation to be successful!!

Innovation Blocking

2011-02-04T21:51:00.000-08:00

'Necessity is the mother of invention ( innovation)' so says the age-old proverb. But, even at times of extreme contingency situations, rigid attitudes and systems may play the role of innovation-blocking.

The report on how the traditional ways of thinking and the out-dated rules create hurdles to 'innovations' of reformists in the Europe is just an example to reiterate that many organisations at micro and macro levels continue to be counter-innovative.

Is it not a pity to notice, that people can become extremely 'innovative' only to introduce 'obstructive blocking' of any attempts to introduce 'Innovation and Productivity'. :-(

Tiny Drop of Dharma!!

2011-01-30T02:20:00.000-08:00

Everyone's concern nowadays is drawn daily to the gigantic proportions of Scams, Crimes and dishonesty and violence that are eroding the human values. Medias of all varieties seem to vie with each other through relentless exposure to these wrong doings. Even when we get depressed and distressed to get submerged in such unthinkable magnitudes of human obsessions to convert 'Growth' into 'Greed', there are, still here and there, one or two exceptionally moving representations of the spirit of 'Righteousness'. How else can we explain someone's bravery to stand upto criminals even sacrificing one's own life in the attempt?

The following story is a relevant recollection:

King Yudhistir conducted a great ‘yagna’ and presented gifts to thousands of people. Every Rishi who attended the event praised the king and declared that they had not seen any equivalent to that sacrifice, and gave the rating as ‘Best in the World’. A fox that was golden on one half of its side then entered the Yaghshala and rubbed its other side on the floor. It then described the Rishis as ‘liars’. Taken aback, the saints asked it to explain its funny behaviour. The fox then explained the following story:

“There lived a poor villager with a large family. Due to the lowly earnings out of his peasantry and the huge size of his family members, they were hardly meeting their stomach’s full. No day went with more than one time paltry amount of food for all of them. One day, a saint happened to pass by and on seeing their hut on the way entered their home and asked for some food. That happened to be a cruel day for the family with just ‘one roti’ available for each member of the family. Even then, respecting the cultural tradition of ‘adithis’ desire’ as that of ‘God’, one by one, all members of the family gladly gave away their part of the food to the visitor. The saint satisfied with the tremendous devotion and sacrificing spirit of his hosts, blessed them and went away. The fox which chanced to enter that house that day tripped accidentally on the left over flour from which the food was made and observed to its surprise that the side that rubbed the floor had turned into golden colour.”

The Fox then said “ I am now going to the places of every great “Sacrificial Yaghshala” and trying to rub out my other side on the sacrificial remains to see whether it can also become golden. So far, my efforts have proved only futile, including that of the great Yudhistir’s Yagna! Will you now agree to my ranking of this Yagna?” Everyone including Yudhistir learnt a life’s lesson from that Fox that day.

Well! Even tiny drops of Dharma can end up as oceans of enlightenment for the Society!!

Hail the Republic!!

2011-01-25T03:10:00.000-08:00

Flags are exported to Kashmir
Crores are Hoarded to Switzer

Scamsters are flashed on papers
Sportsters are sold on IPL crores

(CWG) Games provide eternal fights
(Cine) Stars end up in IT raids

Human Rights sealed in Jails
Criminals quick to be free on bails

Hail My Republic - of the naive, by the naive and for the naive!!

Meticulous Strategies??

2011-01-23T05:29:00.000-08:00

It is natural for all of us to tend and live with Nature’s fellow living creatures and creations. Green and Flowering plants provide such a pleasant and soul satisfying feeling that almost everyone wants to grow them in their homes or neighbourhood. We are no exception and despite our busy daily routines, we consider it a homely necessity to maintain a number of potted plants in our balcony. Some of them are rose plants, a few are chrysanthenium and one or two special “Nithyakalyani”, a beautiful herbal plant which can blossom itself in no time with white and blue colour flowers.
To produce the best flowering out of these favourite plants, we water them regularly, provide them with natural bio-manure from time to time. An occasional use of expert gardener to trim and treat them for freedom from insects also is religiously done. But, all our meticulous efforts have so far brought only mediocre results. These wonderfully cared for plants grow very few colourful flowers. Now and then a bud appears and then the occasional flower withers away in no time.
Just that we were wondering about the injustice of these plant queendom unresponsive to our hardwork, in the last week I have been surprised by an interesting development. Seeds of some wild weed spread through the gentle cold breeze have ingressed themselves in our flowering pots. In no time, they have spread, twined and covered major part of the pots and now these nameless wonders are sprouting hundreds of tiny beautiful buds and flowers. It is a tremendous excitement to enjoy those excellent creations of flowers that have infinite variations of beauty in their micro sized arrangement of petals. It just is the right consolation, nature provided, to our worries and surprise that our meticulously crafted strategies to artificially flower out some plants have produced no results.
Is it not a similarity that corporates and organisations plan and attempt meticulous strategies for forced goals and objectives, forgetting that natural and instantaneous potentials within can spring surprisingly much better achievements?

Flying Imaginovation

2011-01-16T01:09:00.000-08:00

The emerging modern times would need really flying imagination and innovation to fire the passions of people. So is this news which sets out stretch---hing limits to flying achievements for the new plane designs, faster, quieter and super fuel efficient!!

Hope this emerges into a super-flyer productive "knowledge technology"

Energy Guzzlers- Symbols of Development or Dark Future?

2011-01-08T21:07:00.000-08:00

At this time of the year, it is extremely cold, deviating from the normal, and all media lamenting the abnormal weather phenomena and its terrible disruptions to common life; the trains and flights are deferred and delayed, the shanty shelters for poor denying even a shred of warmth to the homeless, school children being kept away from their regular classes and so on;

It is evident that 'Environment and Energy' are going to play extreme roles in the coming times as they can make or break our peaceful existence. Productivity Practitioners have already realised the ominous signals and are vouching for "Green Productivity" for sustenance.

Strangely, at the market places, we find consumer preference revolutions that typify western style shopping extravaganzas, which obstruct our path towards 'Energy Efficiency' and "Environment sustainability". Thought leaders and environment advocates are now cautioning about the "Energy Guzzling" shopping malls and entertainment parks that are coming up everywhere to signify the raising economic standards of our developing people. These bright shining show-pieces suck out huge energy and power of our electricity generation.

It is time that we developed development models that would suit to the "Energy and Environment" absorption capabilities of this part of the world or else get caught up in the whirlpool of a future that is "Cold and Dark"!!

The New Decade Surprises

2010-12-31T00:18:00.000-08:00

The global earth has made one more round of the Sun and the new year 2011 is fast dawning. This time, it would be a special beginning for the year, as it is just not the start of a year, but a new decade as well in the horizon.

In the past decade, many innovations that happened in KM and Productivity surpassed our imaginations. As this post is being typed, the news about Facebook overtaking Google as the most visited website has provided the seed of guessing the new surprises that may await us in 2011-20.

Let me hazard some of them:

From web, business, enterprise etc '2.0', the net space will graduate to 3.0 and 4.0 where people and organisations would network not just for their survival needs but enjoy spiritual knits as well.
Instead of one Searching for the 'Right' knowledge, the 'right' solution may flow directly to the Searching 'context'.
The predominance for a 'Green' world may force Productivity methods to integrate eco-friendly technology and systems in all economic-efficiency measures.
"Knowledge Economy" craze may give way to "Peace Economy" to neutralise the stresses and strains of unequal gains between 'haves' and 'have-nots'

Sure! there are going to be innumerable surprises galore sparking from every spin of our mother earth as it begins a new round and repeats around the sun!! As we jointly wait and welcome those surprises, here is Wishing you all a very happy New Year 2011!

Health through the Mouth

2010-12-24T05:33:00.000-08:00

The route to realisation of the absolute knowledge has to traverse the path of Body-Mind-Soul. To say it otherwise, the condition of the Human Body plays a major role in our physical and spiritual health.

It might be a simple common sense to insist upon good eating habits to create and maintain a proper health. But it is often the most neglected, in the sedentary lifestyle imposed upon by the new Knowledge intensive Technology led life.

As provided by the results of these studies on vegetarian diet and good eating habits, which only reemphasize the forgotten "Common-Sense", let us pledge once again to the simple means of reaching to 'Perfect' Health through our 'Mouths'.

CKO Humour

2010-12-19T06:27:00.000-08:00

CKO Paul : We tried to introduce 'on-the-job training' for our people as a major capacity development exercise. But it was not successful at all.

CKO Mani: Why did it fail?

CKO Paul : We found out that most of our people don't have any job with them in the first instance.

JPC - Joint Parliamentary Coma

2010-12-14T21:26:00.000-08:00

The tussle for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) has led to the total stoppage of Parliamentary work in India in the recent session. I remembered a small skit of conversation I prepared for my brother almost 25 years back; it ran as below (now slightly modified):

Public: Nowadays the drama we watch in our parliament and legislatures is more interesting than those of our television serials!!

Politician: Should we not remind you of the eternal saying that “the scenes of this world are nothing but a drama’!

Public: How much we long for our representatives to “practice what they preach”!!

Politician: Won’t you understand that we fight only to make you forget your stress!

Public: Can’t we have the ruling and opposing groups to imbibe “responsible behaviour”?

Politician: Yes! You have it coming! We have collectively decided to mandate prefixing all of our party names with the word - “Responsible”!

Public: How great the loss in lost work time and misdeeds!!

Politician: On the contrary, look into the gains of employment in enabling the investigations and reporting them!!

Well, certain practices, apart from KM and Productivity, are ever green!!

Failed Loyalties

2010-12-11T20:06:00.000-08:00

The virtue of ‘Loyalty’ to one’s serving organisation is changing in the modern times. Present generations are fonder of the terminology ‘Loyalty to one’s own employability’. Even so, Organisations that try to artificially pump up ‘loyalty’ into their workforce often end of losing the battle, let down by those very own people, whom they felt weare the ‘loyalists’.

Even in the distant past, epic ‘Mahabharath’ provided ample examples of misplaced ‘loyalties’ being of no use to the ‘Kaurav’ dyanasty.

Undeterred, Organisations even today attempt to build the following types of loyalties that fail in the longer term.

Inception Loyalists: ‘Bhishma’ pledged himself to be an eternal loyalist to the ‘Asthinapur’ dyanasty incepting from his father king ‘Shantanu’. Organisations try to cultivate similar ‘inception loyalists’ who get associated right from its initial formation.

Mentor Loyalists: Acharya ‘Drona’ was the mentor for the princes of the throne. Similar ‘mentoring loyalists’ continue to stay with organisations continuing their ‘skill transfer’ relations with their employers.

Indebted Loyalists: ‘Karna’ though belonging to the ‘pandav’ clan, was forced to be a loyalist of ‘kauravs’ due to his indebtedness. Such ‘indebted loyalists’ are rather forced to continue with the firms that provided them with material affluence or mental satisfactions.

Tricked out Loyalists: ‘Salya’ was tricked into believing that he was utilising pandava’s hospitality through a clever manipulation thus forcing him to serve ‘kauravs’ to pay back for the favours. Sometimes organisations also trick out competitors’ trump managers to defect to their sides.

Righteous Loyalists: ‘Vidhur’ was an ever upright man always saying the ‘just and correct’ path to the king, but never tried to walk out even when the king refused to listen. Some such ‘righteous loyalists’ continue to stick with their organisations, even when they feel that things are not to their liking.

All those loyalties of ‘Bhishma, Drona, Karna, Salya and Vidhur’ went in vain in the Mahabharat battle as none of those loyalists could stand the fire of the ultimate ‘Dharma’. Oranisations that waver from the ‘righteous vision and mission’ of their dharma are bound to fail despite the presence of host of different loyalties.

Wikis and Wiki Leaks

2010-12-07T00:15:00.000-08:00

In one of the KM learning sessions, I heard two interesting quotes; One was "Knowledge spreads like wikis'; the other one was "Knowledge is leaky".

Wikis were the best tools to let a large audience collaborate and produce collective knowledge. Wikipedia has been the best open source example that showed that millions and millions of net-users can become 'pro-sumers', that is a simultaneous producers and consumers of 'Knowledge'. Its use as a KM tool has been well established.

At that time, I could not much understand the weight behind the second statement of Knowledge being 'leaky'. However, the recent phenomenon of 'wikileaks', being simultaneously opposed by the powerful establishments for letting out classified information and the masses supporting its courageous attempt to exposes of misdeeds, have provided a nice and new connotation to that slogan.

Leaks or no Leaks expect such 'wikis' and 'wikileaks' to spill out more "Knowledge"

Open the Standards Opportunity

2010-11-26T20:58:00.000-08:00

e-Governance is the 'brahmastra' tool in the hands of the Government and the 'kavach' for the citizens to channelise the funds of the development schemes to reach the needy. If the method of e-Governance itself gets complicated in legalities and proprietary patents, the envisaged benefits are likely to be mired in unproductive hassles.

The proclamation of the Government Policy to prescribe "Open Standards" for all e-Governance applications is quite timely that will help in reaching the services at optimum cost to the beneficiaries and inculcate innovation in the technology and systems,

We welcome this "Opening-up" of the "Open-Standards" opportunity!!

National Plan - The Democratic Mechanism

2010-11-18T02:25:00.000-08:00

The Planning Commission of India is the apex body to conceive and monitor National Economic Development. It prepares the central Five Year Plans based on National Priorities and spearheads their implementation.

The conception of the 12th Five Year Plan of the Nation has now begun, and this time, the KM way of seeking and assimilating knowledge of the masses is being attempted by the Planning Commission.

Any citizen can visit their site and conveniently provide his/her vision of the new India and its Plan for the coming times.

If you are one bubbling with ideas for "Nation Building" use this democratic mechanism of the Government's Strategic Body to unveil your dreams!!

Adithi Devo bama!!

2010-11-06T23:31:00.000-07:00

The National Festival of Diwali has groomed the practice of Indian citizens visiting their relatives and friends as guests and present them with gifts. This time, we have an 'Adithi' in the form of the President and the First Lady of USA visiting India promising productive deals to the USA and Indian economies.

The richest democracy and the largest democracy of the world have lot to share amongst themselves, in knowledge, technology and culture. US may provide the nuclear power and defence technology to us and India would like to offer its human potential and intellect for the US Corporate research, education and health services.

For the future of both our 'learning nations', we welcome our special 'adithi dev - Obama'

Cutting the Competition

2010-11-04T05:21:00.000-07:00

Now in the times of 'Diwali' celebrations, it is interesting to recollect a story on Lord Krishna:

Rukmini and Bama, both dear to the Lord, had their homes adjacent to each other and the Lord used to visit them alternatively. The boundary between the two homes was unmarked with various tress and plants separating them. Once, a minor difference of opinion between the two and both asked Krishna to allow a fence to separate their houses. Rukmini, being the senior was allowed to mark the boundary on which the fence will be built. While measuring the length, she found that a small 'Parijath' plant stood exactly in the middle of the boundary line that would have exactly separated the plot in equal halves. "If I allow the plant to come exactly on the fence, the flowers that would be coming later will spread on both sides and that would result in my having to share them with Bama" so thought Rukmini. She wickedly deviated the boundary line to fully cover the plant within her portion. The fence was then made on the crooked boundary.

As time went by, the flow of wind and the occasional storm caused the plant to lean more and more towards the other side of the boundary. So much was its turn that when the time came for the tree to blossom with flowers, the leaves and the flowers were totally in Bama's side while only the trunk was rooted in its original place. No need to guess, all the 'Parijath' flowers went to decorate Bama's beauty and her house.

Many organisations try to adopt Rukmini's intrusive tactics in the garb of "cutting the competition to size", but in the process, end up losing their entire advantage.

CKO Humour

2010-10-30T08:34:00.004-07:00

CKO Paul: Our President is sure that none of those great 'Business Intelligence' technologies of our competitors would have any effect on our companies' performance.

CKO Mani: How is he so sure?

CKO Paul: He is sure that our operations are too dumb to be recognised as intelligible by any BI effort!!

Web2.0- Where Angels fear to tread

2010-10-28T08:09:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 is celebrated as the greatest marketing and social networking innovation by the technologically advanced part of the world. But, when it comes to adopting its potential to business applications, the underdogs, like India and Brazil do much better. A study to measure the web2.0 usage for business has confirmed this new revelation.

The agile business acumen of the emerging economies have been even prepared to adjust to the risks of security posed by the Web.2.0 exposures to unknown networld, still managing to use its low cost advantage to gain productive advantage in various facets of the business.

Where the 'giant multinational corporate' angels fear to tread, the 'ordinary' street corner folks make their ways successfully!!

Truely Knowledge City

2010-10-22T22:25:00.000-07:00

Delhi hosted the Common Wealth Games recently, and to the pleasant surprise of many of its citizens, there was tremendous cultural change in citizens' behaviour, traffic safety and discipline, infrastructural facilitation, safety and maintenance of public facilities, public-administration interface and so on during those times. Even the mother nature was so kind that a pleasant weather was prevailing throughout.

Now there are concerns raised that the city may forget all those 'good things' and may go back to 'bad old days'. Here is the challenge to learn and keep applying the knowledge that got developed for the special event.

I chanced upon this story, in which, the city of Johannesburg has a formal knowledge management effort and encourages Knowledge Champions at local levels to enthuse and transfer knowledge to the general public. Can we hope to learn from such stories?

Communications - Noise or Signal

2010-10-21T08:08:00.000-07:00

In the traditional astrology, the house representing 'Communication ability' and 'Courage' was termed as 'evil' house, as people were expected to talk less and be humble to be identified as 'Good Humans'. In the modern times, it is the reverse, that is, the 'evil' is indeed the way to 'live' to be competitive in the society and more so in business.

Among the various infrastructure fuelling the tremendous growth in India, 'Communication Technology' is in the forefront and a recent estimate has observed that there are two mobile phone connections on an average with every Delhi citizen and the trend is raising day by day.

Sensing the large volume of growth and revenues out of the Communications Services, telecom giants are wooing the common man with all forms of attractions to make him talk, view and exchange voice, picture and text data ceaselessly.

Considering these new developments at both the suppliers' and the consumers' sides, there are still unexplored challenges of the process and technology of 'Communications' from the view points of KM and Productivity. Watch for future developments in the field will steer towards the ability to effectively filter out more and more noise from the signal to achieve "Productive Communications".

Goddess of Knowledge

2010-10-15T22:30:00.000-07:00

In the Indian Mythology, three mighty rivers "Ganga, Jamuna and Saraswathi" epitomised the Hindu spirit. Amongst them, the river Saraswathi signified the Goddess of Knowledge and Learning.

The Navrathri celebrations being held now all over India, symbolises the nine forms of the 'divine shakti', the mother of all creations and the last day is dedicated to the Goddess of Knowledge - Saraswathi.

A significant specialty of the Goddess of Knowledge is that she never carries any arms indicating that to possess the knowledge of the absolute truth is the key to renounce all forms of violence and hatred. She also plays the eternal soothing music with her 'veena' to remind us that science and the arts are complimentary to each other to the acquisition of total 'knowledge'.

On this day, our salutations to the Devi of "Knowledge Productivity"

Productivity Measurement Paradigm - Then and Now

2010-10-13T03:23:00.001-07:00

During my early days of working with the Productivity Movement, the concept of physical measures for Productivity were greatly emphasized. Cycle times, Defect Rates, Efficiency of operation, inventory turn over, Mean time between failures etc were some of the measures which provided clues about how to strategise Productivity Improvement in the shopfloor.

When it comes to human activities which involved more of mental and spiritual efforts, physical measurements as an indicator of 'productivity' may be incomplete or outright misleading. The productive output of a musical archestra cannot be calculated through satisfaction per instrument played - more the number of players and instruments, better the serenity of the outcome.

In the modern business times, the old productivity measurement paradigm needs to be reshaped. An average worker in the earlier manufacturing factories used to carry out physical operations in multiples of 'hundred's. In the present "Knowledge' factories of offices and virtual corporations, an average 'knowledge' worker performs digital transformations in multiples of 'thousands' and sometimes even in 'millions'. Productivity of such transformations cannot be the conventional ratios of output per each input transaction as even a single 'creative or innovative' strike may compensate huge volume of 'spam' flows. In the virtual space of social networking billions of texts and ideas are flowing ceaselessly. Hence Productivity in such situations should follow an exponential correlation to take into account the opportunity to strike 'Gold' apart from counting visible 'pennies'.

Hope the Productivity practitioners manage to conquer this Productivity Measurement Paradigm Change Challenge!!

CKO Humour

2010-10-09T05:40:00.000-07:00

CKO Paul : I think we should learn from the confusions and conflicts of the pre-CWG events.

CKO Mani: We should actually concentrate on the lessons of the successful CWG Games Conduct.

Both : Let us, never - never, get back to our usual "forget all learnings" attitude in the post-games times!!

SWOT and Technology Trends

2010-10-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

The other day, someone was mentioning about carrying out a SWOT ( Strength - Weakness - Opportunity - Threats) analysis to look for cost reduction. While participating in many such SWOTs, I was puzzled by the condition that an 'S" simultaneously a "W" and an "O" was equally a "T". Only the analyst has to turn the context to identify both the opposing sides.

So it is for the modern Technology Trends, the concepts storing and processing your business knowledge and intelligence in the cloud as opposed to captive technology stores within the firm. While the flexibility and convenience can be highly "S" and "O", security and accountability can be "W" and "T".

However, I agree to the prediction that the future technology will devolve into "it somehow happens" from the present "we make it happen"!!