Ramification

" Fauji Kids "

2011-03-20T12:33:00.000-07:00

- You were born in a Military Hospital (sniff..sniff..ahaan..ahhan,that smell, all MH smells same)

- Half your toddler years were spent being looked after by Bhaiyas ( no second thoughts..can’t forget their names)

- You went to school either on Bhaiya's cycle or in a Shaktiman (the ultimate powerful modified school bus)

- You know what a shaktiman is. (No! it isn’t the TV serial about half man and half machine starring AB look-alike)

- Olive painted Jeeps and Jongas don’t excite you (reason..arrae yaar..actually they were your regular mode of transport)

- The only alternative to the Central School was the Army School (KV’s and APS you can count them on fingers..Army School..naam tho suna he hoga)

- You always called Kendriya Vidyalaya Central School (god even today that sounds better compared to else)

- Your entire family could survive in one room temporary quarters during transit/ transfer (ahem with 25 trunks, wooden crates, the dog, the bedroll and two bhaiyas flitting around)

- The smell of Brasso & shoe polish was regular staple (hhmmm…early morning while dad getting ready..aan yaad aa gya)

- Mess was not what you created in your room, it was where you went every Friday for the free "english" movie (oohh…you can’t miss this..bhai bhandus..n..n.n..first booz)

- The "English Movie" was very often a western and you couldn't follow a word! Sometimes you just went for the samosas and the local drink that they insisted was Cola (and your eyes searching crowd for the one..your one…cough cough..)

- At the end of the month your dad had to pay for many pink slips (pink slips yaar…ask dad..showing how many samosas and local drinks that they insisted was Cola you had consumed, fact is they never missed any!!!)

- You attended many May Queen Balls before you knew what Miss India was (ohh your can’t forget the faces..well I tho still remember all)

- Your mother regularly got dressed, perfumed and disappeared for the Ladies Club.

- You knew towns like Mhow, Wellington, Deolali, Bhuj, Lansdowne (the fauji areas..with which you fall in love everyday…everyday)

- You weren’t a millionaire but hey you had Swimming, Horse Riding, Squash, Tennis and Golf (cantonment area rules)

- You thought the main reason to have a Golf Course was to have a Holi Bash. (not those 18 Hole pot)

- You can still take one quick look at the epaulets and figure out the rank (ya ya My dad is commanding bhai relax…chest puffed and chin up)

- You discussed Wednesday’s Chitrahaar in the Shaktiman while going school (with padosi fauji chic..wohi wohi)

- You can still recall the special & particular smell of the CSD canteen (a special prize for the correct concoction - mine is - it was a mix of Hamam Soap, Ponds Dreamflower Talc and Surf I think also in some corners it had overtures of Brooke Bond red Label as well)

- Your vacations were a package deal consisting of D-forms, Dad ki jonga and Army Mess ka karma (luxuries and comfort guaranteed with 5 star treatment)

- All vehicles mysteriously appeared or disappeared from a vacuum called "EMPTY"

- When "CO UNCLE”!! Was happy he took the unit out on picnic and when he was GLAD he organised a "PAGAL GYMKHANA” and then everyone got GLAD!!

- No one commented on the dressing sense of any body, "Olive Green trousers and Brown Shirt Angola"

- Every house had a settee (which looked more like a narrow coffin!!) Made out of condemned ammo cartons, sarkari blankets and an old embroidered table cloth.

Finally when Papa retired it took Mom about 12 years to get rid of the "KABAAR " that had been accumulated/ hoarded over the years to include about 30 to 40 wooden boxes all painted black, 14 Brass Mementos which looked like Knights on horses, Old Cannons or some sort of imaginary work of modern art which looked more like flashes of Lightening ( the concept of which only Papa could explain after two drinks!!) , Eight or Nine empty Brass Shells which bhaiya used to brasso every time we had someone visiting our house, Four sets of Naga Spears, Five types of Dahs, Two Khukris, One Mizo Bow and about 20 Arrows, Fishing Rods ( the hooks had been hidden by Mom long ago lest some brat managed to get them inserted into his hand or eye!!) eight "Machchar Danis" and 32 rods/ bamboo sticks, Two World War II helmets, One Parachute, about Two High Alti Parkas, Three "chustis" , Papa's 18 pairs of shoes, One shiny green coloured Great Coat, Ten fungus eaten leather belts , Moth eaten sarkari Balaclavas, one High Alti Sleeping Bag, Two Mattress Kapok, Key chains made out of M14 Anti Personnel Mine Safety Clips, One Pack 08 and about four FS Packs, Web belts, One pistol Holster, One cowboy hat, One "Barah Bore Bandook", one .302 Springfield Rifle whose ammo is no more available and has become a nuisance to get rid of !!, Four Daggers, about Five walking sticks , Two sarkari canes, One Swagger Stick, One "chabuk" !!!!!, One Leather Crossbelt, about five Whistles, Thirty KGs of Hazen Cloth in various stages of decomposition !!!! , about 80 KGs of Drift wood, almost 400 White coloured Stones that were picked up from some godforsaken riverbed in Sikkim to be used one day for Landscaping of the Garden after retirement, 60 to 70 Flower Pots, 100 Meters of water pipes ( in bits and pieces), One unused fish aquarium , 50 Meters of Cable WD, Old Blanco Cakes, One Folding Camp Cot, One folding Camp Chair which has the nasty habit of injuring the hands of any inexperienced person trying to open it. Two Namdas, about Four to Six rusted dog leashes still attached to rotting dog collars and not to forget the JHOOLA that was made long ago after taking a lot of obligations of the "Work Shop Uncle".

We are still proud of what we got and are aware of the sacrifices our parents made, toiling honestly and with fullest integrity. It steeled us to give our best and feel grateful for every additional comfort we receive. We know that ours is a culture apart which millions of Indians would want to experience and are highly envious about.

We like to be a free spirit, some don't like that, but that's the way we are. We are not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist; we are willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.

" well done Army kids, you are the best and the products of the best upbringing, you make your parents proud and indeed the Army proud of you "

- Surya Kant Jena -

soorajkiran1@gmail.com

" e m o t i o n s "

2011-01-02T21:10:00.000-08:00

For a weirdo geek like me, inactions needs to be rationally explained, some how I am not good at forgiving or at forgetting, but yahoo I am harmless. I am not good at saying sorry, strange but my ego doesn’t allow me to do so, and people I am attached with know it very well. I avoid attachments, making friends, trusting the presence of omnipotent/ divine. Dark or black attracts me, the feeling of power and the fact that you are the one, “only one, alone”. I like me without my shadow, the only and only real companion of mine, believe that my mother was right when she said, "actions speak louder than words," and "that life goes on, that I count too;" that if I start to get frightened and think of running, I need to consider that maybe the words and actions I'm hearing seem inconsistent, and to run in the opposite direction if it hurts because these things isn't supposed to hurt.

Years ago a colleague left the organisation (Vertex) I was working with and went to work for the organisation I was trying hard to join (Google), so to speak, during a time of great personal challenge and difficulty for me. I was hurt and felt betrayed and unable to trust her. Months later we began working together again. But for me, every subsequent interaction with her occurred within the context of "I can't trust her." No matter what she was saying to me, the background commentary in my head ran, "She's not telling the truth, be careful, watch out, you can't trust her."

With my inbuilt curiosity, research analysis of such human behavioural psychology states, "the unsaid is the most important part of language when it comes to performance," they write. "What's already there prevents anything new from happening.” a human performance and development company, describes the phenomenon as "already-always" listening. It's counterproductive listening, in which you're not really listening to the other person at all. Instead, you're listening to what the voice in your head is saying about what the other person is saying. He or she gets trapped in the prison of your prejudice i.e. trapped in your "listening" and can never show up in another way to you.

Two weeks ago, that colleague of mine and I got on the phone with a trainer schooled in the dynamics of these phenomena, and we each stated what our "already-always listening" voice told us when the other person was speaking. For me it was, as I said, "I can't trust you." For her, it was, "You think I'm a commodity, and you don't care about me as a person," which is the signal one would get from a person completely preoccupied with a sense of distrust. How could there be any space for me show concern about your life when I'm constantly worrying about being attacked from behind by you? It would be like the bull saying to the bullfighter, "You don't show any interest in me personally."

Even more interesting, my colleague revealed that, years ago, before the original incident happened, she'd felt the same way and that I didn't care about her. So it surprised her enormously to learn that I had felt hurt and betrayed when she left. I didn't even notice her, she believed, and certainly wouldn't consider her departure any kind of disloyalty.

A bright light dawned over the situation. Everything instantly made sense, and ever since that call, the "I can't trust her" background chatter has gone silent, and I see this colleague as a human being, not as a threat. Consequently I am able to show interest in her as a person. Our interactions have been richer and more productive.

Imagine this kind of misunderstanding multiplied across the range of relationships in any knowledge enterprise, and then multiplied by the number of years for which it has gone on, and consider the losses in productivity. So often we talk past one another, distracted by the voices in our own heads, unable to listen to what other people are saying, let alone what they might be feeling, all under the pretence of communication.

Now throw technology into the mix. We used to be able, at least, to feign "communication" face-to-face. But, more and more of us work virtually. We did not speak by phone or meet one another face to face until nearly a year after we began working together. Imagine the already-always listening that could develop inside the ambiguities of our e-mail exchanges: "Does she like me? Does she think my writing is smart? I don't think she does."

Modern "communication" tools just make things worse. We get on a free conference-call service with four other parties to begin discussing a major deal. We've never met one another. We don't start off the call trying to get to know anything about one another. We just jump into the agenda, because we're all busy. It's voice-over-IP, so the audio quality is degraded to begin with. Three of the people are on cell phones with lousy signals. One is on a headset, which makes her harder to hear still, and she's driving, so she's distracted. Another is on west coast time: It's early, he's at home, and the dog is barking. Two are using the speaker feature on their cell phones, so they sound like Neil Armstrong calling from the moon. Someone keeps dropping off and coming back on but no one knows who. No one can tell who's going to speak next, so people talk over one another jockeying for talk time. None of this is far-fetched. You and I get on conference calls like this all the time.

Opinions begin to form really fast in our heads: "Wow, what an aggressive jerk." "Why's she so uptight?" "That guy can't string two coherent words together." And then we all say, "We communicated by phone." No, we didn't. We did something by phone, but it definitely wasn't communicating. We didn't learn anything about the realities of one another's lives, about one another as people, or about what others' motivations or needs are in the deal. And on this basis we are supposed to begin a healthy relationship. It's absolutely inhuman.

Combine the perils of communication technology with our predisposition not to want to talk about the stuff that's in the middle of the room, and you have a perfect storm of anti-communication. It is the source of all misunderstanding, and misunderstanding is the source of 99% of our problems.

To me, there is no more important issue in business, or in life, than this, because it is the issue that underlies all others, and the good news is, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to fix it. Fixing it is as simple as the phone call my colleague and I had together. Whether it's in the construction of a conference call, or considering that there might be a point of view other than our own, the answer is very simple i.e. " human beings just have to be human to one another "

The best advice always is to not follow advice, try life by yourself, taking risks and learning daily from all around you. We are all on a pilgrimage, whether we like it or not and the target, or goal if you like is, "Death". Get as much as you can from the journey because in the end, "the journey" is all you have.

Trust me it's, " e m o t i o n s " with each space between those alphabets justifying . . . . .

This is some-what like, sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask "where have I gone wrong?" then a voice says to me, "this answer going to take more than one night"

- Surya Kant Jena -

soorajkiran1@gmail.com

" Social Networking "

2010-12-28T01:10:00.000-08:00

Username: omnipotent_updated_addicted@socialnetwork.com
Password: omnipresent

With 21st century booting in, the expressive human lives across the globe are getting hyphened with, 'icons, status updates, like, comments, etc etc'. Web Sphere has become, 'the dynamic place' competing with human imagination. With each typed alphabets finding words, filling in with sentences, and resulting paragraph with click. Google termed such weird mathematical algorithmic web sync behavior as, 'Spider Web Networking'.

Social networking is the most significant business development of year 2010, cling the resurgence of the automobile industry. During the year, social networking morphed from a personal communications tool for young people into a new vehicle that business leaders are using to transform communications with their employees and customers, as it shifts from one-way transmission of information to dual mode of interaction. That's one reason Time magazine just named Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year.

A year ago, when I was addicted to orkut.com, many people poked fun at Facebook as a place where kids shared their latest party news. Today more than 600 million users worldwide are active on the site. The most rapidly growing demographic is people over forty. More than 300 million people spend at least one hour a day on Facebook. Approximately two hundred million people are active on Twitter in spite of-or because of-its 140-character limitation. Another 100 million use LinkedIn. None of these social networks even existed at the beginning of the decade.

Corporate Gods like IBM's Sam Palmisano, PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi, Apple's Steve Jobs, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, Carlson's Marilyn Nelson, and Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria are all active social network users. Why? Because these social networks are a unique way of broadly communicating real-time messages to the audiences they want to reach. They can write a message anywhere, anytime, and share it with interested parties without any public relations meddling, speech writers, airplane travel, canned videos, or voice-mail messages. Now their words are much more authentic and can be remarkably empowering with the reach. Social networking is also flattening organizations by distributing access to information. Everyone is equal on the social network. No hierarchies need get involved.

The biggest threat presented by social networks is to middle managers, who may become obsolete when they are no longer needed to convey messages up and down the organization. The key to success in the social networking era is to empower the people who do the actual work, designing products, manufacturing them, creating marketing innovations, or selling services, to step up and lead without a hierarchy.

Consumer marketing companies are lining up to use these networks to reach their tailored demographics with highly personalized messages. Already they are revolutionizing marketing by shifting dollars from purchased media advertisements to building their own outlets and content. Kraft Foods, for example, is now one of the largest publishers of food-related materials. IBM is launching thought leadership communities. PepsiCo uses social networks to reach millions of social entrepreneurs in lieu of advertising at the Super Bowl. From a leadership perspective, social networking is making authentic leadership a reality and a necessity for 21st century leaders. You can't hide on your social network when you're revealing who you are and what you really believe. Transparency is essential here.

Even more important, this new phenomenon is enabling business leaders to regain the trust and credibility they have lost over the last 10 years. That's why social networking is the most important business development of the year.

" Social Networking should improve your life, not become your life "

Anyone listening..hello facebook...tweet..tweet..yo hoo Orkut..damn this sites I tell you!!

- Surya Kant Jena -
soorajkiran1@gmail.com

" Ramification ": India, "Education Loan @ 12% but Car Loan @ 6% "

2010-12-21T03:00:00.000-08:00

" Ramification ": India, "Education Loan @ 12% but Car Loan @ 6% "

India, "Education Loan @ 12% but Car Loan @ 6% "

2010-12-19T20:27:00.001-08:00

Password: *****************

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Subject: Incredible Super Power, “India” hahahaha....

This is one of those emails that flood my Inbox every morning, but was different from the rest, it made me laugh aloud and ponder hard at the same time.

India is:

nation where Pizza reaches home faster than Ambulance, Fire brigade and Police!
nation where you get Car Loan @ 6% but Education Loan @ 12%!
nation where Rice is Rs.4 but Sim card is Rs.50!

and again ironically a nation where people standing at a tea stall reading an article in a newspaper about child labour can be heard saying, "Yaar, bacchho se kaam karwane walo ko tho faansi pe chadha dena chaahiye"and then suddenly they shout, "Oye, Chottu 3 chai la dae!"

This really sums up the pragmatic and entrepreneurial spirit of India that is being celebrated across the globe. Several books, case studies have been dedicated to this by business schools in the US and Europe.

What make the point perhaps even more forcefully blunt are the two news snippets below:

1. According to the World Economic Forum’s Business Competitiveness Report for year 2010-11 India has dropped two places to rank 59 because of lack of education, health and infrastructure. At the same time, China has overtaken two countries to rise to number 27 in the rankings. In stark contrast to its poor competitiveness, India is seen as an attractive destination for FDI. It is second only to China in terms of top destinations for foreign capital. Listen to any fund manager selling his unique product with a pick of diverse Indian companies; they make equities in India sound safer than my Fixed Deposits in the Reserve Band of India.

2. All these highlight the contradictions that somehow come together in India but elsewhere might lead to doom and failure. You might ask, “Do corrupt and ineffective governments or lack of infrastructure have no role to play in the growth of business?” I am told by corporate bigwigs that the government in India is entirely decoupled from business! So are we to forget that IT became the poster child of our economy because of the government’s economic liberal policy for that industry or that the auto industry in India was protected for years helping our domestic manufacturers to come up to speed with international brand quality?

What should one make of these paradoxes: would you bet your money on India?

With my very limited understanding of the ever dynamic financial world, I fear I will soon succumb to the seduction of the Indian markets. Endorsement comes from UK Prime Minister’s faith in India becoming one of the key powers of the world, and Nobel laureate Economist Thomas Friedman saying, “if India were a stock I would definitely buy it”. As time comes to decide whether to put my money on India, I must turn to hard data.

It comes from the Euromonitor report suggesting that consumption in Emerging markets, including India, is only going upwards and that number of households with an annual disposable income of $10,000 and over will more than double from now to 2020.

Now, concentrate and analyse:

Expenditure pattern across developing nations is predicted to look something like this; housing at 21%, and the same as food and beverages, transport at 12% and alcoholic drinks another 10%.

Interestingly, personal care, jewelery, watches, finance and “miscellaneous” goods and services show a healthy 10% share of spend. Leisure and recreation will grow by 100% and India will lead in communications with a 150% rise in sales in the next decade as mobile phones drive the industry.

As with everything in India, here is the caveat, with a slug fest among 16 telecom companies in India there is no money to be made in the sector.

Interestingly, despite dramatic shifts in consumption by 2020, average per capita expenditure in Emerging markets will only be around $6,000, compared with $20,000 in the US and the largest Western European markets.

But millions of Chottus will continue to oil the wheels of commerce in India and I am hoping my bet would have paid off.

India shining? yeah...yeah...!!

- Surya Kant Jena -

soorajkiran1@gmail.com

" Learn, Unlearn, and Relearn "

2010-12-01T23:51:00.000-08:00

Amused and thinking hard at how amazingly people are different from each other, skipping the physical composition.

The way they think, the way they behave, the way they react to situations, the friends they make, the values they have, the priorities they have, the way they treat other people, even the way they treat themselves, and to the extent they live.

How does a mundane human being decide to live his/her life?

Is there a formula to it?

Perhaps there really is a formula. Each one of us has a formula by which we live our lives. A practically proven formula derived over the years by umpteen observations, experiences and experimentations, overlooked mistakes, slapped lessons, and etc etc learnt from these experienced/ missed mistakes.

The most mind-boggling part is, this derivation keeps changing as the years pass by, and no two people have the exact same derivation.

It's a continuous process of improvisation, change, flexibility, and adaptation. We add certain ingredients, we taste then remove some, some work out, some result in explosions, and then finally we come up with a suitable derivation. Suitable for our life at that particular moment, because come tomorrow, it may change.

Hell, I know life will metamorphic for sure.

Here are a few ingredients that go into the present formula of my life now and then:

“Never forget that the most important people in your life are your parents”

“If you love and trust, do so completely”

“Accept people for who they are”

“Take your job seriously, some day you will want to look back at it and be proud”

“Play hard but ensure safety”

“Be nice to girls, they won't always understand you. Understand that”

“There may be certain people who dislike you and piss you off, but for each of them, you have ten others who love you”

“You can't possibly love everyone on the planet, its okay to not like some people”

“It's okay to be angry, hurt, and jealous and negative at times”

“Invest in your friendships, they are precious, and you have to work at them to make them work”

“Travel more, there's a lot to be seen, and there isn't enough time”

“Money is important, save some of it”

“Be polite but sometimes firm”

“If you are in a position to help someone in need, don't think. Just do it. You have no idea how fortunate you are just to be able to help”

“Love people around you, but be prepared to steer your ship alone in a storm”

“Never miss an opportunity to surprise a loved one”

“Don't let anyone hurt you without your explicit permission”

It's true; no one has yet discovered the one magic formula that would be applicable to everyone to live that 'perfect life'. Perhaps I guess because there is no such thing as a perfect life or perhaps because we need to create from scratch, our own little perfect lives, with our own little imperfections.

The best advice always is to not follow advice. Try life by yourself. I'm just a man that has gone in the direction of his personal legend, taking risks and learning daily from all around me. We are all on a pilgrimage, whether we like it or not and the target, or goal if u like is, "Death". Get as much as you can from the journey because in the end, "The Journey" is all you have.

- Surya Kanta Jena -

soorajkiran1@gmail.com

Management, " Arts or Science "

2009-10-06T04:56:00.000-07:00

I used to think ants knew what they were doing.

Ants aren't clever little engineers, architects, or warriors after all—at least not as individuals. When it comes to deciding what to do next, most ants don't have a clue. "If you watch an ant try to accomplish something, you'll be impressed by how inept it is," says Deborah M. Gordon, a biologist at Stanford University.

How do we explain, then, the success of Earth's 12,000 or so known ant species? They must have learned something in 140 million years.

"Ants aren't smart," Gordon says. "Ant colonies are." A colony can solve problems unthinkable for individual ants, such as finding the shortest path to the best food source, allocating workers to different tasks, or defending a territory from neighbors. As individuals, ants might be tiny dummies, but as colonies they respond quickly and effectively to their environment. They do it with something called swarm intelligence.

Where this intelligence comes from raises a fundamental question in nature: How do the simple actions of individuals add up to the complex behavior of a group? How do hundreds of honeybees make a critical decision about their hive if many of them disagree? What enables a school of herring to coordinate its movements so precisely it can change direction in a flash, like a single, silvery organism? The collective abilities of such animals—none of which grasps the big picture, but each of which contributes to the group's success—seem miraculous even to the biologists who know them best. Yet during the past few decades, researchers have come up with intriguing insights.

One key to an ant colony, for example, is that no one's in charge. No generals command ant warriors. No managers boss ant workers. The queen plays no role except to lay eggs. Even with half a million ants, a colony functions just fine with no management at all—at least none that we would recognize. It relies instead upon countless interactions between individual ants, each of which is following simple rules of thumb. Scientists describe such a system as self-organizing.

Consider the problem of job allocation. In the Arizona desert where Deborah Gordon studies red harvester ants(Pogonomyrmex barbatus), a colony calculates each morning how many workers to send out foraging for food. The number can change, depending on conditions. Have foragers recently discovered a bonanza of tasty seeds? More ants may be needed to haul the bounty home. Was the nest damaged by a storm last night? Additional maintenance workers may be held back to make repairs. An ant might be a nest worker one day, a trash collector the next. But how does a colony make such adjustments if no one's in charge? Gordon has a theory.

Ants communicate by touch and smell. When one ant bumps into another, it sniffs with its antennae to find out if the other belongs to the same nest and where it has been working. (Ants that work outside the nest smell different from those that stay inside.) Before they leave the nest each day, foragers normally wait for early morning patrollers to return. As patrollers enter the nest, they touch antennae briefly with foragers.

"When a forager has contact with a patroller, it's a stimulus for the forager to go out," Gordon says. "But the forager needs several contacts no more than ten seconds apart before it will go out."

To see how this works, Gordon and her collaborator Michael Greene of the University of Colorado at Denver captured patroller ants as they left a nest one morning. After waiting half an hour, they simulated the ants' return by dropping glass beads into the nest entrance at regular intervals—some coated with patroller scent, some with maintenance worker scent, some with no scent. Only the beads coated with patroller scent stimulated foragers to leave the nest. Their conclusion: Foragers use the rate of their encounters with patrollers to tell if it's safe to go out. (If you bump into patrollers at the right rate, it's time to go foraging. If not, better wait. It might be too windy, or there might be a hungry lizard waiting out there.) Once the ants start foraging and bringing back food, other ants join the effort, depending on the rate at which they encounter returning foragers.

"A forager won't come back until it finds something," Gordon says. "The less food there is, the longer it takes the forager to find it and get back. The more food there is, the faster it comes back. So nobody's deciding whether it's a good day to forage. The collective is, but no particular ant is."

That's how swarm intelligence works: simple creatures following simple rules, each one acting on local information. No ant sees the big picture. No ant tells any other ant what to do. Some ant species may go about this with more sophistication than others. (Temnothorax albipennis, for example, can rate the quality of a potential nest site using multiple criteria.) But the bottom line, says Iain Couzin, a biologist at Oxford and Princeton Universities, is that no leadership is required. "Even complex behavior may be coordinated by relatively simple interactions," he says.

Inspired by the elegance of this idea, Marco Dorigo, a computer scientist at the Université Libre in Brussels, used his knowledge of ant behavior in 1991 to create mathematical procedures for solving particularly complex human problems, such as routing trucks, scheduling airlines, or guiding military robots.

In Houston, for example, a company named American Air Liquide has been using an ant-based strategy to manage a complex business problem. The company produces industrial and medical gases, mostly nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen, at about a hundred locations in the United States and delivers them to 6,000 sites, using pipelines, railcars, and 400 trucks. Deregulated power markets in some regions (the price of electricity changes every 15 minutes in parts of Texas) add yet another layer of complexity.

"Right now in Houston, the price is $44 a megawatt for an industrial customer," says Charles N. Harper, who oversees the supply system at Air Liquide. "Last night the price went up to $64, and Monday when the cold front came through, it went up to $210." The company needed a way to pull it all together.

Working with the Bios Group (now NuTech Solutions), a firm that specialized in artificial intelligence, Air Liquide developed a computer model based on algorithms inspired by the foraging behavior of Argentine ants (Linepithema humile), a species that deposits chemical substances called pheromones.

"When these ants bring food back to the nest, they lay a pheromone trail that tells other ants to go get more food," Harper explains. "The pheromone trail gets reinforced every time an ant goes out and comes back, kind of like when you wear a trail in the forest to collect wood. So we developed a program that sends out billions of software ants to find out where the pheromone trails are strongest for our truck routes."

Ants had evolved an efficient method to find the best routes in their neighborhoods. Why not follow their example? So Air Liquide combined the ant approach with other artificial intelligence techniques to consider every permutation of plant scheduling, weather, and truck routing—millions of possible decisions and outcomes a day. Every night, forecasts of customer demand and manufacturing costs are fed into the model.

"It takes four hours to run, even with the biggest computers we have," Harper says. "But at six o'clock every morning we get a solution that says how we're going to manage our day."

For truck drivers, the new system took some getting used to. Instead of delivering gas from the plant closest to a customer, as they used to do, drivers were now asked to pick up shipments from whichever plant was making gas at the lowest delivered price, even if it was farther away.

"You want me to drive a hundred miles? To the drivers, it wasn't intuitive," Harper says. But for the company, the savings have been impressive. "It's huge. It's actually huge."

Other companies also have profited by imitating ants. In Italy and Switzerland, fleets of trucks carrying milk and dairy products, heating oil, and groceries all use ant-foraging rules to find the best routes for deliveries. In England and France, telephone companies have made calls go through faster on their networks by programming messages to deposit virtual pheromones at switching stations, just as ants leave signals for other ants to show them the best trails.

In the U.S., Southwest Airlines has tested an ant-based model to improve service at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. With about 200 aircraft a day taking off and landing on two runways and using gates at three concourses, the company wanted to make sure that each plane got in and out as quickly as possible, even if it arrived early or late.

"People don't like being only 500 yards away from a gate and having to sit out there until another aircraft leaves," says Doug Lawson of Southwest. So Lawson created a computer model of the airport, giving each aircraft the ability to remember how long it took to get into and away from each gate. Then he set the model in motion to simulate a day's activity.

"The planes are like ants searching for the best gate," he says. But rather than leaving virtual pheromones along the way, each aircraft remembers the faster gates and forgets the slower ones. After many simulations, using real data to vary arrival and departure times, each plane learned how to avoid an intolerable wait on the tarmac. Southwest was so pleased with the outcome, it may use a similar model to study the ticket counter area.

When it comes to swarm intelligence, ants aren't the only insects with something useful to teach us. On a small, breezy island off the southern coast of Maine, Thomas Seeley, a biologist at Cornell University, has been looking into the uncanny ability of honeybees to make good decisions. With as many as 50,000 workers in a single hive, honeybees have evolved ways to work through individual differences of opinion to do what's best for the colony. If only people could be as effective in boardrooms, church committees, and town meetings, Seeley says, we could avoid problems making decisions in our own lives.

During the past decade, Seeley, Kirk Visscher of the University of California, Riverside, and others have been studying colonies of honeybees (Apis mellifera) to see how they choose a new home. In late spring, when a hive gets too crowded, a colony normally splits, and the queen, some drones, and about half the workers fly a short distance to cluster on a tree branch. There the bees bivouac while a small percentage of them go searching for new real estate. Ideally, the site will be a cavity in a tree, well off the ground, with a small entrance hole facing south, and lots of room inside for brood and honey. Once a colony selects a site, it usually won't move again, so it has to make the right choice.

To find out how, Seeley's team applied paint dots and tiny plastic tags to identify all 4,000 bees in each of several small swarms that they ferried to Appledore Island, home of the Shoals Marine Laboratory. There, in a series of experiments, they released each swarm to locate nest boxes they'd placed on one side of the half-mile-long (one kilometer) island, which has plenty of shrubs but almost no trees or other places for nests.

In one test they put out five nest boxes, four that weren't quite big enough and one that was just about perfect. Scout bees soon appeared at all five. When they returned to the swarm, each performed a waggle dance urging other scouts to go have a look. (These dances include a code giving directions to a box's location.) The strength of each dance reflected the scout's enthusiasm for the site. After a while, dozens of scouts were dancing their little feet off, some for one site, some for another, and a small cloud of bees was buzzing around each box.

The decisive moment didn't take place in the main cluster of bees, but out at the boxes, where scouts were building up. As soon as the number of scouts visible near the entrance to a box reached about 15—a threshold confirmed by other experiments—the bees at that box sensed that a quorum had been reached, and they returned to the swarm with the news.

"It was a race," Seeley says. "Which site was going to build up 15 bees first?"

Scouts from the chosen box then spread through the swarm, signaling that it was time to move. Once all the bees had warmed up, they lifted off for their new home, which, to no one's surprise, turned out to be the best of the five boxes.

The bees' rules for decision-making—seek a diversity of options, encourage a free competition among ideas, and use an effective mechanism to narrow choices—so impressed Seeley that he now uses them at Cornell as chairman of his department.

"I've applied what I've learned from the bees to run faculty meetings," he says. To avoid going into a meeting with his mind made up, hearing only what he wants to hear, and pressuring people to conform, Seeley asks his group to identify all the possibilities, kick their ideas around for a while, then vote by secret ballot. "It's exactly what the swarm bees do, which gives a group time to let the best ideas emerge and win. People are usually quite amenable to that."

In fact, almost any group that follows the bees' rules will make itself smarter, says James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds. "The analogy is really quite powerful. The bees are predicting which nest site will be best, and humans can do the same thing, even in the face of exceptionally complex decisions." Investors in the stock market, scientists on a research project, even kids at a county fair guessing the number of beans in a jar can be smart groups, he says, if their members are diverse, independent minded, and use a mechanism such as voting, auctioning, or averaging to reach a collective decision.

Take bettors at a horse race. Why are they so accurate at predicting the outcome of a race? At the moment the horses leave the starting gate, the odds posted on the pari-mutuel board, which are calculated from all bets put down, almost always predict the race's outcome: Horses with the lowest odds normally finish first, those with second lowest odds finish second, and so on. The reason, Surowiecki says, is that pari-mutuel betting is a nearly perfect machine for tapping into the wisdom of the crowd.

"If you ever go to the track, you find a really diverse group, experts who spend all day perusing daily race forms, people who know something about some kinds of horses, and others who are betting at random, like the woman who only likes black horses," he says. Like bees trying to make a decision, bettors gather all kinds of information, disagree with one another, and distill their collective judgment when they place their bets.

That's why it's so rare to win on a long shot.

There's a small park near the White House in Washington, D.C., where I like to watch flocks of pigeons swirl over the traffic and trees. Sooner or later, the birds come to rest on ledges of buildings surrounding the park. Then something disrupts them, and they're off again in synchronized flight.

The birds don't have a leader. No pigeon is telling the others what to do. Instead, they're each paying close attention to the pigeons next to them, each bird following simple rules as they wheel across the sky. These rules add up to another kind of swarm intelligence—one that has less to do with making decisions than with precisely coordinating movement.

Craig Reynolds, a computer graphics researcher, was curious about what these rules might be. So in 1986 he created a deceptively simple steering program called boids. In this simulation, generic birdlike objects, or boids, were each given three instructions: 1) avoid crowding nearby boids, 2) fly in the average direction of nearby boids, and 3) stay close to nearby boids. The result, when set in motion on a computer screen, was a convincing simulation of flocking, including lifelike and unpredictable movements.

At the time, Reynolds was looking for ways to depict animals realistically in TV shows and films. (Batman Returns in 1992 was the first movie to use his approach, portraying a swarm of bats and an army of penguins.) Today he works at Sony doing research for games, such as an algorithm that simulates in real time as many as 15,000 interacting birds, fish, or people.

By demonstrating the power of self-organizing models to mimic swarm behavior, Reynolds was also blazing the trail for robotics engineers. A team of robots that could coordinate its actions like a flock of birds could offer significant advantages over a solitary robot. Spread out over a large area, a group could function as a powerful mobile sensor net, gathering information about what's out there. If the group encountered something unexpected, it could adjust and respond quickly, even if the robots in the group weren't very sophisticated, just as ants are able to come up with various options by trial and error. If one member of the group were to break down, others could take its place. And, most important, control of the group could be decentralized, not dependent on a leader.

"In biology, if you look at groups with large numbers, there are very few examples where you have a central agent," says Vijay Kumar, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. "Everything is very distributed: They don't all talk to each other. They act on local information. And they're all anonymous. I don't care who moves the chair, as long as somebody moves the chair. To go from one robot to multiple robots, you need all three of those ideas."

Within five years Kumar hopes to put a networked team of robotic vehicles in the field. One purpose might be as first responders. "Let's say there's a 911 call," he says. "The fire alarm goes off. You don't want humans to respond. You want machines to respond, to tell you what's happening. Before you send firemen into a burning building, why not send in a group of robots?"

Taking this idea one step further, Marco Dorigo's group in Brussels is leading a European effort to create a "swarmanoid," a group of cooperating robots with complementary abilities: "foot-bots" to transport things on the ground, "hand-bots" to climb walls and manipulate objects, and "eye-bots" to fly around, providing information to the other units.

The military is eager to acquire similar capabilities. On January 20, 2004, researchers released a swarm of 66 pint-size robots into an empty office building at Fort A. P. Hill, a training center near Fredericksburg, Virginia. The mission: Find targets hidden in the building.

Zipping down the main hallway, the foot-long (0.3 meter) red robots pivoted this way and that on their three wheels, resembling nothing so much as large insects. Eight sonars on each unit helped them avoid collisions with walls and other robots. As they spread out, entering one room after another, each robot searched for objects of interest with a small, Web-style camera. When one robot encountered another, it used wireless network gear to exchange information. ("Hey, I've already explored that part of the building. Look somewhere else.")

In the back of one room, a robot spotted something suspicious: a pink ball in an open closet (the swarm had been trained to look for anything pink). The robot froze, sending an image to its human supervisor. Soon several more robots arrived to form a perimeter around the pink intruder. Within half an hour, all six of the hidden objects had been found. The research team conducting the experiment declared the run a success. Then they started a new test.

The demonstration was part of the Centibots project, an investigation to see if as many as a hundred robots could collaborate on a mission. If they could, teams of robots might someday be sent into a hostile village to flush out terrorists or locate prisoners; into an earthquake-damaged building to find victims; onto chemical-spill sites to examine hazardous waste; or along borders to watch for intruders. Military agencies such as DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) have funded a number of robotics programs using collaborative flocks of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, schools of torpedo-shaped underwater gliders, and herds of unmanned ground vehicles. But at the time, this was the largest swarm of robots ever tested.

"When we started Centibots, we were all thinking, this is a crazy idea, it's impossible to do," says Régis Vincent, a researcher at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. "Now we're looking to see if we can do it with a thousand robots."

In nature, of course, animals travel in even larger numbers. That's because, as members of a big group, whether it's a flock, school, or herd, individuals increase their chances of detecting predators, finding food, locating a mate, or following a migration route. For these animals, coordinating their movements with one another can be a matter of life or death.

"It's much harder for a predator to avoid being spotted by a thousand fish than it is to avoid being spotted by one," says Daniel Grünbaum, a biologist at the University of Washington. "News that a predator is approaching spreads quickly through a school because fish sense from their neighbors that something's going on."

When a predator strikes a school of fish, the group is capable of scattering in patterns that make it almost impossible to track any individual. It might explode in a flash, create a kind of moving bubble around the predator, or fracture into multiple blobs, before coming back together and swimming away.

Animals on land do much the same, as Karsten Heuer, a wildlife biologist, observed in 2003, when he and his wife, Leanne Allison, followed the vast Porcupine caribou herd (Rangifer tarandus granti) for five months. Traveling more than a thousand miles (1,600 kilometers) with the animals, they documented the migration from winter range in Canada's northern Yukon Territory to calving grounds in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"It's difficult to describe in words, but when the herd was on the move it looked very much like a cloud shadow passing over the landscape, or a mass of dominoes toppling over at the same time and changing direction," Karsten says. "It was as though every animal knew what its neighbor was going to do, and the neighbor beside that and beside that. There was no anticipation or reaction. No cause and effect. It just was."

One day, as the herd funneled through a gully at the tree line, Karsten and Leanne spotted a wolf creeping up. The herd responded with a classic swarm defense.

"As soon as the wolf got within a certain distance of the caribou, the herd's alertness just skyrocketed," Karsten says. "Now there was no movement. Every animal just stopped, completely vigilant and watching." A hundred yards (90 meters) closer, and the wolf crossed another threshold. "The nearest caribou turned and ran, and that response moved like a wave through the entire herd until they were all running. Reaction times shifted into another realm. Animals closest to the wolf at the back end of the herd looked like a blanket unraveling and tattering, which, from the wolf's perspective, must have been extremely confusing." The wolf chased one caribou after another, losing ground with each change of target. In the end, the herd escaped over the ridge, and the wolf was left panting and gulping snow.

For each caribou, the stakes couldn't have been higher, yet the herd's evasive maneuvers displayed not panic but precision. (Imagine the chaos if a hungry wolf were released into a crowd of people.) Every caribou knew when it was time to run and in which direction to go, even if it didn't know exactly why. No leader was responsible for coordinating the rest of the herd. Instead each animal was following simple rules evolved over thousands of years of wolf attacks.

That's the wonderful appeal of swarm intelligence. Whether we're talking about ants, bees, pigeons, or caribou, the ingredients of smart group behavior—decentralized control, response to local cues, simple rules of thumb—add up to a shrewd strategy to cope with complexity.

"We don't even know yet what else we can do with this," says Eric Bonabeau, a complexity theorist and the chief scientist at Icosystem Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "We're not used to solving decentralized problems in a decentralized way. We can't control an emergent phenomenon like traffic by putting stop signs and lights everywhere. But the idea of shaping traffic as a self-organizing system, that's very exciting."

Social and political groups have already adopted crude swarm tactics. During mass protests eight years ago in Seattle, anti-globalization activists used mobile communications devices to spread news quickly about police movements, turning an otherwise unruly crowd into a "smart mob" that was able to disperse and re-form like a school of fish.

The biggest changes may be on the Internet. Consider the way Google uses group smarts to find what you're looking for. When you type in a search query, Google surveys billions of Web pages on its index servers to identify the most relevant ones. It then ranks them by the number of pages that link to them, counting links as votes (the most popular sites get weighted votes, since they're more likely to be reliable). The pages that receive the most votes are listed first in the search results. In this way, Google says, it "uses the collective intelligence of the Web to determine a page's importance."

Wikipedia, a free collaborative encyclopedia, has also proved to be a big success, with millions of articles in more than 200 languages about everything under the sun, each of which can be contributed by anyone or edited by anyone. "It's now possible for huge numbers of people to think together in ways we never imagined a few decades ago," says Thomas Malone of MIT's new Center for Collective Intelligence. "No single person knows everything that's needed to deal with problems we face as a society, such as health care or climate change, but collectively we know far more than we've been able to tap so far."

Such thoughts underline an important truth about collective intelligence: Crowds tend to be wise only if individual members act responsibly and make their own decisions. A group won't be smart if its members imitate one another, slavishly follow fads, or wait for someone to tell them what to do. When a group is being intelligent, whether it's made up of ants or attorneys, it relies on its members to do their own part. For those of us who sometimes wonder if it's really worth recycling that extra bottle to lighten our impact on the planet, the bottom line is that our actions matter, even if we don't see how.

Think about a honeybee as she walks around inside the hive. If a cold wind hits the hive, she'll shiver to generate heat and, in the process, help to warm the nearby brood. She has no idea that hundreds of workers in other parts of the hive are doing the same thing at the same time to the benefit of the next generation.

"A honeybee never sees the big picture any more than you or I do," says Thomas Seeley, the bee expert. "None of us knows what society as a whole needs, but we look around and say, oh, they need someone to volunteer at school, or mow the church lawn, or help in a political campaign."

If you're looking for a role model in a world of complexity, you could do worse than to imitate a bee.

- Surya Kanta Jena -

soorajkiran1@gmail.com

- Gender and Politics -

2009-06-11T04:30:00.000-07:00

I will no doubt be dubbed a traitor to my gender, but I consider the proposed bill for 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament as ill conceived, elitist and retrograde. Feminists and women's group have made such a hue and cry about this "historic step in the march for gender equality" that to be against the bill is like opposing motherhood or cricket. If you want to be politically correct you have to toe this line. For that matter I am against quotas of any sort, the only exception being in the case of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes where Indian society has to recompense for the centuries of subjugation, injustice and deprivation towards the Dalits. Once you open the Pandora's box and offer special status to everyone who is not adequately represented in the power structure, there are any number of justified claimants, whether Muslims, the handicapped, the poor and so on. And do quotas really benefit the deserving? Laloo Yadav and Sharad Yadav have a point when they demand a quota within the women's quota for depressed castes.

Otherwise the creamy layer of the female species will hog most of the parliamentary seats. In a recent article in ‘Outlook’ magazine Anjali Puri has checked out the background of the 58 women elected to the new Lok Sabha and come up with some telling statistics. She discovered that 37 of the 58 women MPs – that is over two thirds – are relatives of male politicians, of the 29 new entrants at least 17 are proxy candidates for powerful male figures. Self made women are a rarity. The paternalistic approach of relying on the good sense of the men for women to get their due is flawed.
Most movements for women's emancipation have come about thanks to years of struggle by the women themselves. When the decisions regarding empowering women has to be made by men they will naturally opt for the token representative rather than the most deserving candidate, who would be viewed as a threat to them. (Mamata, Mayawati and Jayalalithaa, for instance, could never be described as token representatives, nor are they likely to win a popularity contest among their male colleagues.) One has only to recall the manner in which Pratibha Patil was chosen for the President's post to appreciate this point. Patil's appointment was heralded as one more victory for womanhood, when she was actually selected simply because the Left and the Congress could not agree on other more suitable male candidates, such as Pranab Mukherjee, and was in a hurry to finalize the name.

Similarly in Vajpayee's regime, Chokila Aiyer was appointed as the first women foreign secretary in the name of gender empowerment even though she was the bottom of her batch and had held only one ambassadorial posting. The real purpose of her appointment was to keep out the best qualified male candidate who could not have been bullied by the PM's Principal Secretary, Brajesh Mishra. There are many better ways to empower the weaker sex rather than the drastic legislation proposed under the Women’s Reservation Bill. The bill as it has been framed proposes a system whereby 180 male MPs automatically stand to lose their seats in Parliament. And since the draft bill calls for the constituencies reserved for women to be rotated, it would mean that a male MP cannot represent the same constituency for more than two consecutive terms. This strikes at the heart of parliamentary democracy where voters can reward or punish their representatives on the basis of the work done for the constituents. And most male MPs question why they should sacrifice for the benefit of women who could well be more advantaged then them socially, educationally and financially-- "the urban par-katis" as Sharad Yadav once referred to them.

If the bill comes into effect non Dalit male MPs would be restricted to contesting only 50 per cent of seats in parliament. Other proposals on how to bring about reservation, such as double representation in some constituencies are equally half baked. The bill will mean in effect that we have introduced a zananna mardanna system in Parliamentary elections as women will no longer be fielded from non reserved constituencies. And women's representation in Parliament would be permanently capped at this percentage. For the last 13 years political parties have been talking about the bill, but it has never actually been put to vote. The process begins with a bang and ends in a whimper. This is because there is a divide between publicly stated positions of some parties and the actual views of their members. If the intentions of the political parties were genuine they should have begun reform on the home front first and offered more seats for women to contest parliamentary elections. But in the last election the BJP and Congress nominated women for only about 10 per cent of the total number of seats. The CPI(M) and CPI had a worse record of around 7 per cent.

Since the three major parties, Congress, BJP and CPI(M), claim to support the bill, there is nothing really to stop the government from getting it passed by Parliament. My hunch is that eventually for the sake of "consensus" the process will be deferred by referring the bill to a standing committee of Parliament. A delaying tactic we have witnessed in the past.

- Surya Kanta Jena -
soorajkiran1@gmail.com

- Think and Think Different -

2008-12-08T04:55:00.000-08:00

Employee "A" in a company walked up to his manager and asked what my job is for the day?

The manager took "A" to the bank of a river and asked him to cross the river and reach the other side of the bank.
"A" completed this task successfully and reported back to the manager about the completion of the task assigned. The manager smiled and said "Good Job"

Next Day:
Employee "B" reported to the same manager and asked him the job for the day.

The manager assigned the same task as above to this person also. The Employee "B" before starting the task saw Employee "C" struggling in the river to reach the other side of the bank. He realized "C" has the same task. Now "B" not only crossed the river but also helped "C" to cross the river.

"B" reported back to the manager and the manager smiled and said "Very Good Job"

The Following Day:
Employee "Q" reported to the same manager and asked him the job for the day.

The manager assigned the same task again.Employee "Q" before starting the work did some home work and realized "A", "B" & "C" all has done this task before. He met them and understood how they performed.He realized that there is a need for a guide and training for doing this task. He sat first and wrote down the procedure for crossing the river, he documented the common mistakes people made, and tricks to do the task efficiently and effortlessly. Using the methodology he had written down he crossed the river and reported back to the manager along with documented procedure and training material.

The manger said "Q" you have done an "Excellent Job"

The Following Day:
Employee "O" reported to the manager and asked him the job for the day.

The manager assigned the same task again. "O" studied the procedure written down by "Q" and sat and thought about the whole task.
He realized company is spending lot of money in getting this task completed. He decided not to cross the river, but sat and designed and implemented a bridge across the river and went back to his manager and said, "You no longer need to assign this task to any one".The manager smiled and said "Outstanding Job O, I am very proud of you."

What is the difference between A, B, Q & O?

Many a times in life we get tasks to be done at home, at office, at play. Most of us end up doing what is expected out of us. Do we feel happy? Most probably yes. We would be often disappointed when the recognition is not meeting our expectation.

Let us Compare Ourselves with:

"B", Helping some one else the problem often improves our own skills. There is an old proverb (I do not know the author) "learn to teach and teach to learn". From a company point of view "B" has demonstrated much better skills than "A" since one more task for the company is completed.

"Q" created knowledge base for the team. More often than not, we do the task assigned to us without checking history. Learning from other's mistake is the best way to improve efficiency. This knowledge creation for the team is of immense help. Re-usability reduces cost there by increases productivity of the team. "Q" demonstrated good "team-player" skills,

Now to the outstanding person, "O" made the task irrelevant; he created a Permanent Asset to the team. If you notice B, Q and O all have demonstrated "team performance" over an above individual performance; also they have demonstrated a very invaluable characteristic known as "INITIATIVE".

Initiative pays of every where whether at work or at personal life. If you put initiative you will succeed. Initiative is a continual process and it never ends. This is because this year's achievement is next year's task. You cannot use the same success story every year. An instance of performance, where as measurement needs to be spread across at least 6-12 months. Consequently performance should be consistent and evenly spread.
Out-of-Box thinkers are always premium and that is what every one constantly looks out for. Initiative, Out-of-Box thinking and commitment are the stepping stone to success.

"Initiative should be life long. Think of out of the box"

- Surya Kanta Jena -

soorajkiran1@gmail.com

" Brutal Truths and Naked Lies "

2008-12-03T12:46:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: This post doesn't intend to hurt any one who might have lied me/others. This is just an introspection from my view point. Please don't take this personally.

Most of us lie on different occasions, either out of compulsion or out of instinct. This post gives my opinion on why people lie and why we don't avoid it.

I'm NOT referring to lies told to our superiors: like student telling teacher why he couldn't finish the assignment on time or an employee explaining his boss why he couldn't come to office the other day. I'm referring to peer to peer lies we use in course of daily business with our friends/colleagues etc. Such lies are often executed with good intention (like Not to hurt the other by telling real truth, which may not be pleasant to hear), however they may hurt more than the bitter truth when you detect that someone you trusted did lie to you.

Consider some of these situations:

Abbreviations

I: myself

R: Respondent (my friend/colleague/relative/others as the case may be)

Case 1:

I: Did you read my blog?

R: Ya. Its good. I liked it

I: Which post you liked most?

R: Err…I just glanced through…Didn't read in details…They're good

Comment: Now a simple and straight forward answer could have been any of the following:a. "I didn't find enough time to read them" orb. "I read first two lines and stopped as it was not interesting/I'd no time…" orc."The design of blog is good but I have no patience to read all those stuff "But very few people give real opinion.

Case 2:

I: Will you join me for that quiz competition this Sunday at Mumbai, Colaba Navy Hall?
Expected answer for questions of above type is Boolean:
Yes I'm coming orNo I'm not coming. (With reasons being fully optional)
That simplifies the process and I'll be able to proceed with the plan. But many people do not wish to say NO and hence they cause us much more inconvenience by making statements like "I'm not sure", "I'll see", "I'll let you know", "I'll tell you later" etc.This kind of indecisive statements put the other person in great trouble-I can neither count them in and proceed, nor count them out and find an alternative. And most of these statements eventually result in "NO".
To avoid inconvenience of above type I started keeping things formal: This is the deal, this is what is expected from you, and I need your response before this date and time, beyond which I'll count you out and proceed. Though this approach is not appreciated by many, it simplifies the process for me.

Case 3
Background: I came to know accidentally that one of old friends was accessible by a mobile number. But he/she had never given me the number. So I mailed and asked:"Are you /were you accessible by means of a mobile number?"
Expected answer was:

1. Yes I was accessible by a mobile number (mine/friend's/room-mate's) and, (I don't want to give you/I forgot to give you) OR

2. it's none of your business, I'm not bound to disclose.
But when the other person tries to prove that he/she was not accessible by a mobile number, it hurts.
Above are three examples when someone did lie while he/she could spoken out the genuine answer.
So what? What is the big deal if someone tells some simple harmless lies?

Friendship is built on trust and respect for each other. They're no laws applicable on friendship and the disputes arising among friends can't be taken to court unless there's a civil/criminal offense. If someone tells you a simple lie, there's nothing you can do. There's no binding agreement that your friend should speak nothing but truth. Even if you manage to prove that he/she lied, there's no section in Indian Penal Code (IPC) that can be applied in this situation. So what will you do? If you try to fight with your friend trying to prove that he/she lied, you'll only worsen the situation. Technically or legally you have no authority over your friend and you can't get angry either.

Sit back and take stock.

Sometimes people lie because they don't want to appear harsh and hurt you. Their intention will be good but over a period of time this kind of lies will have negative effect(Like telling someone he/she is a good singer while the truth is otherwise. In long run can these lies do spoil you) In these situations if the person is close enough then you may sit and tell him/her not to lie and give his/her true opinion/genuine feedback. In other cases it makes better sense to ignore these lies.

People also lie because they don't want to reject you/your request outright. When they hesitate to say an outright "NO" they choose to kill you in phases. First they buy time in giving their response, and then finally when it turns out to be negative, they give wide range of excuses as to why "they were interested but couldn't make it" When you identify that the other person is just not interested, your best bet would be to withdraw. You may succeed making them say "Yes" but that induced interest/acceptance will be more because of your begging/pressure/force/temptation/threat than from their heart. In my opinion it would be better if we identify this threshold and abandon the pursuit beyond that point. (For example, if someone doesn't reply your mails for months while they're online sending forwards, and doing other activities, the reason simple: They didn't feel like mailing you. As simple as that- It's just a matter of interest than anything else-say time/net access/convenience/workload etc (if Arcelor has turned down Mittal Steel's acquisition deal even after 70% premium, its just that Arcelor doesn't wish to sell itself to Mittal. It's neither money nor anything else)

Third kind of lies is "Damage Control" Lies. People lie to cover up some of their mistakes/previously told lies. Effect of these lies compound fast and a series of unplanned lies can put people in deep trouble. In this situation it helps to make it crystal clear to people that you're not buying their lies and tell them that truth will be their best option.

One more kind of lie is "Ego Lie". People lie just to keep their self esteem high. Like boasting that: "I was on a Trip to Belgium last week" If you prove in front of a group that this person lied (i.e he didn't go to Belgium last week), he/she will find it too hard to digest the insult. Since they're totally harmless, ignore them. But make an entry of these lies, as it may come handy in future.

Last kind of lies are lies told with bad intention. These are hard to detect because those who lie with bad intentions usually come with enough preparations to convince you that they're speaking truth, and takes a while before you realize that they betrayed you. Discussing this kind of lies is out of scope of this post at this moment.

On the contrary I've come across very few people who're extremely honest in their statements and straight forward in their approach:

Consider these feed backs:

1."I stopped reading so and so post after first two paragraphs as it was not interesting"

2. The logic you adopted in this program is excellent but you could implemented it in a much better way

3. I was upset with you for so and so reason, hence I didn't reply your mail last week

4. Nobody likes your formal mails...Why don't you change your strategy?

These kinds of statements are tough to digest in one attempt, and you may not appreciate the person who said that. But when you sit back and analyze you'll no doubt respect such persons because they tell you where you're wrong and what you should focus on. Unless you admit the truth and rectify from your end you can't progress and had it not been for people like this, you'd have never come across your mistakes.

You should treasure your friends who give you a constructive criticism.

A Small Story to end the post:

Four friends had a party previous night and were late to college next day, wherein they had an exam to take. Since they were late they couldn't take the exam. They met principal and requested for the permission to write that exam the next day. On being asked why they're late they told they went to village for cremation of one of their grand mother and on their way back the car had a flat tyre, hence they couldn't report on time.

Principal agreed and next day they were made to sit in four different rooms and question papers were handed over.

It had only 2 questions:

1. What's your name? (1Mark)

2. Which wheel of the car got punctured? (99 Marks)

If you've to lie, you need lot of planning and preparation. You need to maintain consistency in your lie and you may need supplementary evidence to support your lie. If you can't manage these, I advice avoid telling lie and be honest in your words as far as possible. In this information world it doesn't take 007 style spying to cross check the information. Simple analytical/logical analysis of the statements made, and if necessary a quick reference to public/private source of information is all it takes to see if a person means what he/she says. If you lie some one is bound to detect it. One may not make an issue out of your lie or announce it to everyone. But it seriously hampers your credibility and image. The fact remains in some one's mind that you lied and hence can't be fully trusted. Your lie may not create any catastrophe but your simple lies when repeated time and again will slowly spoil the relationship.

Keep in mind you always have an option to say "NO Comments".

- Surya Kanta Jena -

soorajkiran1@gmail.com

2008-07-04T01:51:00.000-07:00

TEN RITUALS OF RADIANT LIVING

1. Ritual of Solitude: Ensure that your daily schedule include a mandatory period of peace.
Explore the healing power of silence and come to know who you really are.

2. Ritual of Physicality: Power of Physical Care.
You care for your body, so you care for your mind. As you prepare your body, so you prepare your mind.

3. Ritual of Live Nourishment: As you nourish your body, so you nourish your mind.
A poor diet has a pronounced effect on your life. It drains your mental and physical energy. It affects your moods and it hampers the clarity of your mind.

4. Ritual of Abundant Knowledge: It centers on the whole notion of lifelong learning and expanding your knowledge base for the good of yourself and all those around you.
Some books are meant to be tasted, some books are meant to be chewed and, finally, some books are meant to be swallowed whole.

5. Ritual of Personal Refleaction: Take the time to think. Get into the regular habit of personal introspection.
Talking the time to get to know yourself, you will connect to a dimension of your being that you never knew you had.

6. Ritual of Early Awakening: Rise with sun and to start the day off well.
Sleep is really nothing more than a habit and like any other habit, you can train yourself to achieve the result you want; sleeping less in this case.

7. Ritual of Music: Never forget the power of music.
Spend a little time with it everyday. When you feel down or weary, play some music. It is one of the finest motivators I know of.

8. Ritual of Spoken Word: Series of mantras that would recite morning, afternoon and night.
A mantra is nothing more than a collection of words strung together to create a positive effect. Mantras accomplish objectives in a powerful way.

9. Ritual of Congruent Character: Take daily, incremental action to build your own character.
You sow a thought, you reap an action. Reap an action, you sow a habit. Sow a habit, you reap a character. Sow a character, you reap your destiny.

10. Ritual of Simplicity: Live a simple life.
One must never live in the thick of thin things. Focus only on your priorities, those activities that are truly meaningful. Your life will be uncluttered, rewarding and exceptionally peaceful.

- Surya Kanta Jena -
soorajkiran1@gmail.com

In the Praise of Failure !!!

2008-06-21T12:24:00.000-07:00

I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to all today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in 23 years that have experienced between the day and this. I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as we stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential, I stopped other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had realized, and I still alive and I still had a girl whom I adore although no family anymore and I have an old laptop and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I’ll rebuild my life.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing MBA Examination. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I have friends whose value was truly above rubies, still there are many mysteries in my own life which I may never disclose them even to prove myself.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself or the strength f your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of what I did to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only uniquely human capacity; it is power that enables us to empathies with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life proceeded IIPM, New Delhi; tough it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in other blogs. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest days jobs at Vertex India. There in my office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. While in Belgium I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to European Union by there desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of there injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trails and executions, of kidnappings and rapes. Many of spokespersons were ex-political, people who had been displaces from there homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of there government. Back in Mumbai at Amnesty International, I shall never forget the African torture victims, a young man no older than I was who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as a fragile as a child, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness. And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since.
Everyday I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and public trial were the rights of everyone.
And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you’ll remember this ‘once in life a time will come when your attitude, ego, pride will be crushed and people around will laugh but despite of all you can’t tell them the truth, you have to disclose everything to your parents and thus you kicked out of family too, you’ll die everyday cursing and thinking ‘why me?’ "Then you’ll realize all that does not kill, will make u stronger".

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

- Surya Kanta Jena -

soorajkiran1@gmail.com

21st Century Manager

2007-11-02T02:56:00.000-07:00

The Changing World
Over the next 15 years, we will begin to see three different generations in the workplace at the same time, each with very different needs and aspirations. Baby Boomers will no longer dominate and Generations X and Y will play a much larger role. Managers will be expected to manage a multi-generational workforce and acquire generation specific leadership and management skills including managing a generation of older workers who will not retire in the traditional manner. Globally, executives will have to come to grips with a world economy increasingly shaped by the emergence of China and India as major powers and with an Asia fully recovered from the 1997 crash. They will face global labour markets and complex environments generated by offshore and other multi-country strategies.
As a result, executives will need more sophisticated strategies to engage in the global market. They will travel frequently and spend a greater proportion of their careers outside Australia. A sound understanding of offshoring, supply chain management and diverse workforces will be vital. Managers will also need to give serious consideration to developing strong language and inter-cultural skills.
As the actions of senior executives come under closer scrutiny by the wider community, some hard questions are being asked about their role in today’s society. How will executives see themselves in the years to 2020? Our conclusion is that the mindset of executives will undergo a transformation in the way they think about their role, interact with colleagues, consider the basis of leadership, and also address their broader attitude to life.

The Executive Steward
Over the last decade, executives have been strongly encouraged to think of themselves as the owner’s agents, whose role is to maximise returns. This has resulted in a short-term focus as fund managers and, latterly, hedge fund managers have reduced their stock holding times. Many executives (and others) have become uncomfortable with this pressure and argue that their role should be that of a steward who manages for long-term corporate health, cognisant of the competing interests of all stakeholders. A debate has emerged about the rights of shareholders relative to other groups with legitimate interests in a company. Some commentators question whether a shareholder is really an owner of a company at all. Most shareholders have no involvement in a company’s operations, and many hold their shares for a relatively short time. Other commentators have argued that\ shareholders should be seen only as one group of security holders amongst others or even simply as speculators in the future profits of a company. With this shifting perspective on shareholders, executives are likely to be more concerned with balancing and reconciling the interests of all stakeholders in a company, rather than the needs of a particular group. The concept of a single ‘owner’ whose interests are paramount is less likely to apply in the future.
In effect, this will mean an ongoing focus on corporate health with executives building the capacity for strong performance year on year, rather than directing their energies to boosting short-term results. This is not to say that shareholders will cease to demand good returns on their investments - far from it - but it will mean that executives will no longer be rewarded for achieving those returns at the consistent expense of staff, customers, the community or the environment.

From the Cult of the CEO to the Cult of the Top Team
The cult of the CEO has become a worldwide phenomenon over the last decade. Many CEOs are now household names or at least recognisable faces. It is unclear whether this trend will continue. While a CEO will always be seen as the most important appointment in a company, in future greater attention may turn to the team supporting them. There is a steady transition away from traditional ‘command and control’ forms of management and towards more team-based, consultative management styles. Accordingly, analysts and the market are increasingly focussed on the attributes of top teams rather than solely on the CEO.
The growing ranks of Generations X and Y will reinforce this shift. Members of these generations are demanding considerably greater control over their working environments, want open and honest feedback, both upward and downward, and are more willing to judge and reject their working environments than their Baby Boomer forebears. The ‘Cult of the Top Team’ is likely to replace the ‘Cult of the CEO’. This will be a challenge for many of today’s executives, who have risen through the ranks of more rigidly hierarchical workplaces. In future, their success as executives will depend, in part, on their ability to create a work environment in which a top team can flourish. In addition, executives will increasingly be judged by analysts and markets on the quality of the teams they develop and manage.

A Return to Expert Leadership
The decade leading up to 1995 saw the rise of the generalist manager. Regulatory reform had created an uncertain and much less franchised business environment. In this new environment, broad-based skills and the ability to analyse new problems proved more important than traditional experience. At the same time, the ‘job for life’ management generation that emerged after the Second World War began to retire. Cross-industry hires to fill senior positions became common, and talented young generalists were given opportunities to lead. Long experience in a firm, from the shopfloor up, became less important than the ‘smarts’ and general management skills judged necessary for success in a new competitive environment. In recent times, the premium for generalist management skills has begun to decline. In education, demand for specialist management courses has grown much faster than demand for generalist courses, such as MBAs. As generalist management skills become more readily available in the workforce, depth of expertise has become a more defining requirement for senior executives. Executive searches increasingly specify deep expertise in an industry or functional area. The 21st Century manager is expected to possess this expertise, along with advanced communication and team-building skills.
The shift towards experts also reflects changes in the workforce. A more skilled and highly educated workforce will need less direction, and will typically value it less. It will no longer be sufficient for executives to play co-ordination and goal setting roles. They must also be expert in the subject matter at hand or bring deep experience to the issues being addressed. These trends suggest the age of the generalist manager is coming to an end Individual executives will need to consciously build and maintain a coherent body of expertise in an industry or functional area as they move between employers and markets. In order to progress in the future workplace, they will need to establish a sustainable logic to their career paths.
Executives will need to rethink their role in the years to 2020. They will be asked to balance a wider range of interests, under greater external scrutiny. Executives will still be expected to deliver good financial performance, but the results they achieve will also be assessed on the basis of how well they have met a wider range of stakeholder needs. In this environment, executives will increasingly see themselves as ‘stewards’ who nurture the long-term health of the businesses they manage. The age of the generalist manager is coming to an end. In the changing workplace, executives will need to demonstrate deep industry and/or functional expertise as well as advanced communication and team building skills. Companies will increasingly seek senior executives who really ‘know their stuff’.
Executives will continue to receive higher levels of remuneration than their predecessors but they will also have to deal with greater levels of uncertainty regarding tenure and pensions. They will need to spend more time on personal wealth management while at the same time striving to achieve a balance between their working and family life.

In the years to 2020, successful executives will be those who can:

Maximise Opportunities in a Changing World
Maintain an international perspective and be continual learners Be flexible and able to move confidently between different global markets and cultures Reflect the needs and preferences of the ageing Baby Boomers in organisational structures and customer services.

Manage Diversity in a Changing Workplace
Achieve a balance between the management styles required to work with three generations within a single workplace.

Master staff performance measures based on outputs rather than inputs
Gain insight into the motivations of a diverse workforce, and be creative in designing the right incentives to attract and retain talented staff.

Respond to Changing Times with a Changing Mindset
Create work environments where talented teams, not just talented individuals. Maintain specialist skills in addition to general management skills. Value functional, industry and technical expertise. Promote and practice a work/life balance.

"The years to 2020 promise significant change for managers and executives. Most will need to master new skills to address the emerging challenges. Successful executives will be those who can effectively manage three generations in the workplace, create more flexible working environments, optimise individual and team performance, balance stakeholder interests and build and maintain their personal expertise. The bar for success in management continues to rise. Managers and executives will need to maintain their skills of the last decade and to master the additional tools and techniques of the next. To do this, they will require new types of executive education that provide strong general management skills, including interpersonal and intercultural skills, as well as industry and functional training to develop specialist expertise in their fields."

- Surya Kanta Jena -
soorajkiran1@gmail.com