Wednesday, May 14, 2014

State of Me, Life and Others today

On a surprising turn of events, yesterday I found myself relatively free. Attending a function at a relative's office can be quite... well not so entertaining. Sitting there and staring at people's faces and the funny things pandit's do can definitely give time to a person to think. Another surprising event - I was able to stop worrying about work and accounts and accept that whatever happens, I'll be able to somehow manage. 

Both surprises together gave me ample time to think and ponder about the state of my life, its direction and the state of people in this worlds or atleast here in India. While the direction and state of my life is a whole other novel, in this post lets focus on the state of atleast some people in India if not everyone.

So what do I think? Lets face it, with my generation & the incoming generation, the virtue of patience has deroded. Everyone today wants things now and immediately. What normally would take 5 years, they want it in 2. While the need to be speedy is true in some areas like starting up a company and stabilising it with regular revenues.

At the micro level or an individual level there is still need to be detail oriented and have the patience to think, analyse and execute properly so as to ensure a complete and proper execution. Any execution which is very speedy will not be thorough enough and will need a 3nd round of execution which will degrade its value and the people involved will also get bored.

Most things today are superficial in nature. For e.g. the MBA course. Its target population was present after the world wars and during and after the cold wars when people were experts in their fields with little management experience. The course is designed to teach a management overview so as to make them quick managers and enable them to pick up required skills on the job.

Today this course is obsolete. The people doing this course are not experts in any field resulting them in becoming poor managers as they manage a team of people doing work they know nothing about. One cannot manage effectively and optimally unless one knows the field in and out. Which is why every Founder of businesses surviving 5years or more are very effective in managing and performing as they spend enough time understanding the depths of their product/service and the target markets.

What people need to learn today is to have patience, and to keep at it and learn more and more. The 1st 3-5 years of a perons' career life should be spent working in and learning one field or domain. Be it coding, marketing, music, directing, acting etc. It is only after you know the field at depth that can you as a manger contribute optimally to it.

The current societal and corporate structure is optimal from the sense of office productivity and optimal profit levels, but it is a model which is unsustainable.

It will become sustainable, only when society allows individuals to have enough time to learn and become experts and develop intrinsic skills to benefit companies and the society in a larger sense. And when corporates stop demanding individuals to spend 90%-100% of their life and time at work and allow people to grow at an individual level as a person and as well as a resource.

Society will soon break down if we continue at the current speeds at the micro-level. The impatience of being better than the previous year and the previous generation is already eating up people and everybody wants things to change for constant growth. Sustainable growth is possible only through patience, planning, perseverence and hard work.

There is no solution or medicine that one can drink and learn everything. Similarly none that one can drink and become successful. Success comes to those who remain patient and persevere- trying, learning and experimenting all the time.

Whenever you do some work or task. Take a moment, think about what is required and how to get it. Think about what problems you can face and how you should counter them. On finishing, take another moment and do a thorough check of the work done ensuring there are no mistakes. (1) this allows for perfection (2) learning on what all went wrong and how to fix (3) understanding of what is being done, why and how to do it better.

We are all humans and humans tend to make mistakes more often than not. A thorough re-check will allow for proper execution and time to think on what was done, why and how to improve.

So please, work in what you are interested in and dont jump from domain to domaain. Spend a few years working in the same field and get exposed to possibilities. Practice makes perfect, it also makes experts. 

Stay and learn!

All the best!

-> SJ

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