His bike’s flirting with the 100s and suddenly he realizes that he has been pushing the self destruct button a lot lately. Not a great realization when you are riding at 100 and are only faintly present in the present.  And your hands and legs are frozen. Anyway no brake is going to stop that routine circle until it collapses in its own gravity. But the silence of this moment is deafening and the darkness blinding.

To the cynic every sense is misplaced, even his sense of cynicism. There is that part of him that wants the brakes to be applied, the one that wants to see a sense devoid of indifference, but the breeding is too ingrained now to be killed by simple wishing. The idea of second chances appeals to him, but after seeing though the mask it’s too hard for him to go back to believing the lies. It’s hard to once again remember god’s face when you have been face to face with the Satan himself. But he is convinced it’s the other way around in his case.

And it is this mask less world that he sees all around.   In shattered glasses lying on the highway, the last signs of the genesis of a lifelong disability. In the stoned gazes from the shaded glasses of the new aged diners, trying to remember (forget?) a night filled with disguised sadness. In the mirror of his own urine falling down creating an unfamiliar face staring back at him.

Is it too late for him to bypass the answering machine culture, filled with urgent conversations but nothing communicated? A world he now sees naked in all its brilliant, disgusting glory.

http://www.mindtree.com/blogs/thinking

A awesome outline post by someone I really admire. I know Kalyan Kumar Banarjee needs no introduction. He is one of the outstanding personalities I have interacted with during my time with Mindtree. The post is a nice collation of the different types of thinking and also a brief intro on why “systematic” is not just a buzz word be it any fiend breathing! to running to thinking . I am going to take  the liberty to copy and paste it for prosperity’s sake

1. Lateral thinking (Edward de Bono) - encourages thinking up multiple alternatives, not just going into depth on one - and suggests techniques to do it.

2. Six Thinking Hats (again, de Bono) - helps separate emotional responses from objective ones or distinguish inspired thinking from critical thinking. It also leads to parallel thinking (rather than adversarial thinking) where all criticize together or seek opportunities in a new idea together.

3. Nine Windows - helps us think of super-systems and sub-systems, and thus broaden our perspective. For example, if we are designing a pen, it tells us to think of people who will use our pen, the shop that displays our pen, or the crates that will ship our pens (all examples of super-systems). Useful when we need to focus on multiple stakeholder perspectives, or to understand the customer’s customer. Using this tool, we also focus on the system in the past, and how it could be in the future. Focusing on the past helps us understand why things are the way they are.

4. Systems Thinking - leads to realizing that we are part of a larger system, and the complex interrelationships between causes and consequences, Often, cause and effect are far removed in time and space, so learning from consequences does not always come naturally.

5. Ideal Final Result - helps us think on the ideal result we must aim for, and how we can get there.

6. Resources - triggers us to look for unused and probably free resources, to achieve our goals.

7. Personal Mastery - spiritual leaders and management gurus, all teach this. Covey dwells in depth on this, so does Senge.

8. Disruptive Innovation (Christensen) - well researched theories from the Harvard professor explain the success factor of innovative ideas; predicts when a startup will succeed with certain ideas, and when the incumbent is more likely to succeed.

9. Learning from Unusual Sources - a MindTree initiative, stemming from the belief we can learn from any situation, from anybody, or from any industry. We need to develop the capability to connect experiences in one situation to another scenario where we are looking for answers.

In terms of all thinking leading to innovation, I feel it depends both on the nature of the problem and how you define innovation and hence to expect magic to happen every time is pointless.

But there is one thing that bothers me about the whole concept which is put in perspective by what Peter Senge talks about a fad. The problem with systematic thinking that I have seen is that for most people already in the industry, there are too stuck in their motion already that its hard for them to stop and change their shoes. When they do come in touch with something like this, its more like someone throwing water to clean the shoes while they are running. It goes back to its old dirty self in time. Its hard for it to stick.

I know this rant can be quite generalized to anything new and put into better words with something like “You cant straighten a dog’s tail” but I think this is particularly important in the case of systematic innovation. The gains that systematic innovation can give in a real life scenario is quite intangible. Unless someone comes with with the next google or twitter during a TRIZ or a 6 Hat session, its possible that the incremental gains wont even get noticed, which brings us to the problem of keeping the interest levels up.

This is something I feel most organizations need to address along with trying to introducing systematic thinking and probably what will decide whether the initiative fails or succeed.

While you come to terms with the egotistic insanity of that logic, the fact still remains I haven’t blogged in a while. And now comes the worst part. I just am not able to write any casual blog - Lots of ideas in my head but not the patience or the courage to sit down and blog.

So instead of actually blogging I am going to write a blog about what I want to blog (metablog anyone? ) in the next few day (hopefully!!). Here is what I want to write about…

“CRAP” - A word I have come to love and hate after coming to FMS! (All you ppl who come here with a google alert on FMS or Faculty of Management Studies, hold your horses, the book is not defined by its cover and actually it might turn out to be just the opposite ). **SPOILER WARNING** On a side note but in the same vein, whoever thought “Bridge to Terabithia” would be a movie about childhood loss!! well done marketeers

Aricent - Yeps! maybe something about my fledgling intern-career here (at least what does not come in the NDA! )

And maybe on my new found slightly perverted exhibitionist tendency to twitter (but hey the whole world is doing it!)

And yeah about the title, after escaping gravity sooo long ago, it seems my flight though the space of words has been withheld by the gravity of a near by planet curiously and famously represented by 3 letters. Guess?

Now lets see how much of all this actually gets done by next week!

Breeze trapped in her hair
Moon lit on her face
Each step she took
Pulled me with a hook

A girl with dreams
It was hard not to fly
She held me along
On a heavenly ride

We flew along
Shared a single soul
The music of the hearts
Made them one whole

Looking below
I saw a new world
She taught me to discern
The hell and the good

But all of a sudden
There was pain beyond measure
I searched for the cause
But felt a lost treasure

The hearts ripped off
Shedding blood and a stain
And all left behind
Was a piercing pain

As I watched her vanish ahead
My swollen eyes held a tear
And it rolled down as I realized
It would be there forever

Our team “BridNBees” <representing FMS MBA(MS)> (please direct all wisecracks and taunts for this name to amuliee)  , ruddie,amulie and I , just won “Treatise - The International Thought Challenge” an online debating contest for teams from all around the world (well, at least 2 international teams were there for sure in the final rounds ).

It involved around 5 rounds where you had to write for and against different topics related to sustainable development.  In addition to blowing my own trumpet (which I think I have already done here to a nauseating level :P), I also want to write about some of the topics that we debated about in different rounds and express my views on them.

Round 1

We had to write a essay extolling the virtues of sustainable development , which we did in roughly 30 minutes after procrastinating the whole day. Frankly before this debate “Sustainable Development” was just a buzzword for me to use and gain brownie points in a GD. Not claiming that it has changed a lot, but I do think that I look at the word with more respect and also are more attuned to the various trade off’s associated with it.

Round 2

Universal education is the most disintegrating and corroding poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction.

Our Stand: Against

Opponents : IIM Lucknow (Hosts)

This is actually something I had started writing looong back (June 07) and saved in my blog drafts. But finally it is going to get a chance to flirt with google bots. Originally a Hitler quote, it had me scrambling to understand what exactly it means, but once I got the meaning , it got easy to defend. Among other core issues with universal education most people have the problem of who actually decides what right and this is what I think was as the one of the pillars of our stand. We felt that it was a problem with the pedagogy than with universal education.

To take an example from science, a teacher teaching the gravitational theory can teach in two different manners the entirely same concept. She/he can present the theory as one that is accepted universally, the explanation embellished with the story about Newton and the apple or she/he can teach the same theory as an example of the scientific methodology of understanding the world around us. One that involves , observing the phenomenon, proposing a hypothesis, trying to validate it with further experiments, modifying or rejecting in case of inconsistency or accepting it as a theory in case of agreement of further observations.  By doing the latter the pupil is free to believe in what he believes at the same time equipping him with a rational way to analyze the universe.

(Irrelevant observation #2,438 about girls : if you have 2 gals as your team mates “he/she” automatically becomes “she/he” after reviews and any change to saner language gets u beaten up :P)

Round 3

‘Survival of the fittest’ is the only sustainable means for development

Our Stand: For

Opponents : IIM Indore

Extremely dicey topic considering its relevance to political and emotional issues like reservation. But we wanted to start right by dispelling the wrong connotations that the team “Survival Of The Fittest” has especially its perverse wrong equivalence to Social Darwinism. Something to sum up our stand would be “In the natural order of things, the fittest are not those that fight well, but those that avoid fighting altogether, and thereby learn to use resources efficiently” Tony Stebbing and Gordon Heath (Renowned  Ecologists from the Sustainable fold, Green Futures, September/October 2002). Our stand was confused as a tautology by the opposition which we dispelled successfully in the closing round.

Round 4

In the name of sustainable development, the environmentalists pretend that strangling industrial civilization would not consign the world to a permanent hell of poverty, starvation and mass death.

Our Stand: Against

Opponents : SPJIMR

A very wrong and weak topic to debate upon in my opinion, and in fact after the first round ouropponents got confused and started supporting us!!!

Round 5 (Final Round)

Sustainable Development can only be fruitful when it grows up from the grassroot level rather than when implemented as a policy decision

Our Stand: For

Opponents :IIFT Kolkata

Very close debate and our moderator Sidin Vadukut royally screwed our stand but thankfully for us  the judges (or at least some of them) thought otherwise. Actually I also think it was too close to call but the fact that the moderator comments for 1st two rounds were uploaded only 3 hours before the 3rd and final round was a bit of a bolt from the blue. But finally we survived

I would be lying if I said I didnt want to win, but this is one contest where I really enjoyed working with the team on coming up with the write up’s, especially the rebuttals which were like triple decker chocolate fudge for me :P. So the prize was like the icing on a cake that was built with a lot of sweat, abuse(yeah thats what we tend to do in debating ;)) and fun.

I am attaching a mail I got from a friend.  No request from my side, just an assurance that its genuine. Please do read and decide for yourself. Will post a review as soon as I get the book

Dear Friend,
“Unto the Dreams” is the first poetry collection by Binu. It is being published by CLS Books, Thaliparambu. Binu lives in a place near Mullankolli in Wyanad district. He is one of the eight children in a family that lived on farming and daily labour. His father passed away years back and a brother committed suicide due to the inability to pay back the agricultural loans. He is currently staying at the Karunya Nivas Orphanage at a place named Mananthavady.

Binu is affected with the disease named Austio Genesis Imperfecta which is basically the weakness of bones. It is at the age of two that his bones started rupturing. He was under treatment at the Kasthrubha Hospital, Mangalore for a long period. He had to stop his education within two months when he slipped and hurt himself by breaking his leg. Even while moving around through dragging himself on the floor which caused his body to swell up, Binu never let go of his love for the letters.

“Unto the Dreams”, a collection of thirty four dreams of Binu is a rendition of the means of overcoming pain through dreams.. Book is published in English and Malayalam. Price for the book has been fixed as Fifty Rupees. It is planned to send the book via VPP. If you are interested to lend a helping hand to him, please send your complete postal address with pin code to  aksharamonline@gmail.com (K G Suraj) Hope you would open the doors of his dreams to your friends too…. And thanks a lot for spending your precious time to go through the mail.

With Warm Regards,
On Behalf of Binu and his friends
Aswathy P

Binu Blogs at http://binuvinte-kavithakal.blogspot.com/

“…and this chaff and waste which is thrown away in other countries feeds our huge cattle population…” . Since resilience was too big a word for me at that time, this is the line,(image rather, of a bovine feast) I attached to concept most akin to resilience that my young mind could conjure up . And with it, it also gave an important pillar in the value system of my social identification of being an Indian. It was these very forgotten brain synapses that were tingled when I recently stopped at a traffic light and this saw this image.

In these times of great uncertainty, this is one picture that gives great solace to my heart. Why? For to me, it is an epitome of what differentiates us the rest of the world. And to stretch the limits (Literally) it would also be the best picture to answer the question “What will happen to our economy and our people in face of this slowdown?”

For the uninitiated this is the picture of a tyre of one of the typical monsters that ply the road in India. This one is of a yellow variant which reminds me more of Adthoma from spadikam but that’s probably besides the main point here. Now I am no dendrochronologist but I am sure that there are many a stories behind each of that crack and rings which is the result of the wonderful phenomenon called “re-treading”. And this is where we score!

Today people talk about cost cutting, but I think as a nation we took a PhD in it long back. This resilience and cost effectiveness in the Indian culture is not something that has been consciously nurtured up by us, but something that has grown out of brutal necessity. It’s no simple joke when you have to provide for nearly 18% of the worlds population on 2% of its land! And this is something we have learnt to do beautifully.

They say when people are agitated, like by being woken up in the middle of their sleep, they generally start abusing in their mother tongue. Only time will tell that if that in this hour of need, the class of Indians (including me) tainted by western education, who are in a place where they can rewrite the history and redefine world power equations, will be able to fall back onto our core Indian values to see the storms through.

But its these pictures that I see every day in life- from the raddiwalla (scrap-collector) who goes thru hazardous garbage – a work that would ensure a litigation in any other country (legacy code reuse?) , to the truck driver who tries to make that extra buck by offering his empty company truck space on his empty return journey (Reverse-supply-chain ?) that make me believe that if anyone is going to weather out this storm, its gotta be an Indian first.

So my request to Indians trying to cope with the slowdown – Please look around and be inspired!

As our castle stands weakened
Is it the evolved motto?
Or just another trench with no drawbridge
Dug up to shield the peasants
But isn’t it the nobility who fear more?

And for each foe kept out
One more starves to death inside

The end of the chain prescient either as the chain weakens leading to its gruesome death with the just the infamy of being some random thought in some crazy existence, no more bullet points at its epitaph, or as it strengthens bringing the loop to a close, still destined to be forgotten as the result takes the spotlight.  And it detaches. It detaches and you, motionless not by your volition, see it float away into the vacuum of thought.

But nature does not like vacuum. It fills. It fills with the repetitive chain that you tried so hard to escape. Yes the same one, the tormentor from whom you had celebrated your freedom. But no rescue is permanent, you realise, as you fall back into the depth a familiar pit, whose only problem is that it’s just too familiar.  But the chain is stronger as it has grown weaker in your absence, patiently lurking in the forbidden ally of your mind, waiting for you in its solitude.  Should you now re-forge it with the very hand that first made it what it is or should you abandon it. But if only you had the choice.

So you lie near the forge furnace going through the motions, trapped, waiting for the next one to come along, to shackle you in its own length and hide you from the heat and fire of the furnace.

Will it end?