There is something bugging me for sometime now!
After delivering many talks, conducting several workshops and strongly believing that I have been very successfully practicing time management myself; I’m still not convinced that time management is simply about acquiring and executing a technique or imbibing a unique skill or even a function of strict mental discipline.
Of course, I won’t discard some profound thoughts (and quotes) on the subject-- condemning them as clichéd! But equally—or even more intensely, I feel that the phenomenon of time management has not been tackled at the fundamental level.
Frankly, I did a quick scan around what some of the great people have thought about time—in particular time management and most of these thoughts are in the nature of:
* Time is money
* Wasted minutes lead to wasted hours to wasted days that can’t ever be recovered
* Time waste is the only waste that can’t be recycled
* Past is past, but what is important is present continuous!
* etc…etc
As you will note, any logical thinking individual can’t have any major differences with the kinds of thoughts stated above.
But, my problem is different. In the core, I think, everyone knows the value of time management. As such, time management is anyway not a rocket science, either to understand or to practice—and yet, we have innumerable folk who complain about paucity of time, when it comes to their inability to pursue certain tasks/ priorities in life. Then they look to experts/ management gurus for guidance and what they get in return are a bunch of techniques like urgent v/s important grid, activity charts etc.! They also get pearls of wisdom like 'Time is what we want most, but what we use worst' or, 'Better three hours too soon, than one minute too late'—in reality, words to that effect! These are either profound statements or some are prescriptive statements like 'Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely'.
What is sorely missing in all this is a deep seated insight around why can’t people find ways to manage their time optimally?
More than a decade ago, in one of my flights from Singapore to Mumbai, I was accompanied by a psychology professional. As usual, I struck a casual conversation with him that spanned across many subjects in the world. Finally we got into a discussion around ‘habits’. My opening line was a standard one: ‘habits die hard’ and his spontaneous response was: ‘not really true’— that suddenly heightened my interest in his perspective, which seemed to be more serious and original than mine! He said, ‘including the biologically habit forming chemicals—the kinds that are present in cigarettes, every habit can be changed by the person who ‘wants’ to change it.’ His simple statement was: ‘habituated smokers can’t quit smoking because they don’t want to quit it!’ Isn’t that really true? I’m sure, we all have seen many smokers quitting the long drawn habit overnight—because they wanted to quit!
And then I bumped into this statement by Sir John Lubbock ‘In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is lacking.’
That is precisely my take on time management as well.
Now time for some very short stories:
* A highly successful executive complains of lack of availability of time when it comes to giving required time to his family. When queried, he keeps blaming the professional situation around him—sales targets, quarter pressure et al.
* A college principal keeps feeling he has lost touch with academics, in the face of administrative tasks his role requires him to undertake. He then blames it on lack of availability of time when it comes to doing something meaningful in academics.
* A busy politician has not met his mother for many months. He always wishes to meet her much more regularly than what he has been able to do so far. He says time pressures of his job don’t allow him such frequent visits to her.
* I say I have very little time in my daily schedule to commit for a daily fitness regimen!
Are these problems addressable by using time management techniques or do they need an intrinsic change in the way these people look at their available time?
Isn’t the answer obvious?
And therefore, we have seen:
* A top class missile scientist who heads the nation and finds time to be with children and also write poetry—because he wants to do it!
* A busy premier who was also a prolific writer.
* A superhero and a busy film star writing a detailed communication to his fans, daily through his blog.
* A nuclear scientist and one of the most prominent personalities of the last century found enough time to master violin playing.
* A highly successful business tycoon running charity marathon for 5+ hours at a stretch.
Agreed, all these examples are of eminent personalities, but haven’t we also seen:
* A poor auto driver, working for nearly 12 hours a day and yet finding time to complete his graduation by joining the night school.
* A practicing medical professional experimenting new ways of farming.
* Young college students spending many hours helping noble/charitable causes.
We have many such inspirational examples happening around us. It’s up to us to take a leaf from their book. Else, we have ‘no time’ as an alibi that has withstood for ages anyway.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
No politics, let’s play it straight
The word ‘politics’ is one of the most overused words in corporate life. And while saying so, I’m not trying to imply that ‘political behaviour’ is the least observed behaviour in the world of business!
And now that I have already accomplished my first objective of disorienting my readers, let me progress my thoughts!
It’s a common observation that every one in the corporate community privately and publicly acknowledges the prevalence of political behaviours in their respective organizations. And reality is not far removed from this common belief. In this context, we have to understand that the word ‘politics’ is invariably (almost every time without an exception) used with a negative connotation. We all know the positive/neutral aspects of this word—such as, an academic discipline that is woven around the study of power, authority, state, governance etc. But, my focus today is going to be on the commonly used/understood meaning of the word politics—which essentially means presence of negative/corrosive/counterproductive/manipulative behaviours & processes within an organization.
Having defined the scope of the discussion, let’s now look at the specific behaviours that can be clearly construed as political and possible pointers in coping with such situations.
At a high level I would like to classify these behaviours as :
1: Acts of Commission: i.e. active factors
2: Acts of Omission: i.e. passive factors
One small note before I proceed further. I’m not suggesting in any manner that the Active factors are more serious than the Passive ones. Their impacts can be same or different, depending on the situation but will rarely depend on which class they fall in. To demonstrate this point, I would like to take an example from our great epic The Mahabharat. We all know that the Pandavas were manipulated by the Kauravas into gambling and eventually losing everything, with the help of all evil machinations of their maternal uncle, Shakuni. Dhrutarashtra, the father of Kauravas did not play any role in enticing the Pandavas to continue to gamble, but was aware of the decaying situation at every stage. In this example, the players who exhibited political behaviours were the Kauravas, Shakuni and Dhrutarashtra. The first two actively manipulated (Acts of Commission) and the third passively participated (Acts of Omission) by remaining silent, when just one word of command from him would have stopped any further rounds of unfortunate events that led to the great war of Mahabharat! Such can be the destructive power of the Acts of Omission!
What are the Acts of Commission?
This class-name is self-explanatory. Hence, let’s jump straight into the types of behaviours that fall in this category.
Although I have no specific order in mind while presenting existence of these behaviours, Gossips come to my mind as the most predominant one in this category. Gossips, though some times can create some common-interest groups within the organization, they still prove to be overall acting against the organizational interests. Main reason being, lack of accountability/responsibility on parts of those who actively take part in such informal gossip sessions—even though many times their belief is that they are doing it in the best interests of the organization! Let’s say an organization has a very senior manager whose professional and personal behaviours are not in consonance with the stated values of the corporation. Invariably, such behaviours lead to silent gossips within those employees who would like discontinuance/immediate stoppage of such behaviours but have no courage to escalate to right levels! Inevitably, as gossips progress, they enrol newer and newer employees and the whole chain leads to ‘morale erosion’ within the organization.
Rumours are equally (if not more!) destructive. They don’t spread on their own. They are spread through ‘active carriers’ or the ‘rumour mongers.’ The essential difference (whenever there is one) between the rumours and the gossips is that there is almost no occasion when the rumours are actively spread with an organizational interest (even ostensibly!) in mind.
Enemy is out there is a standard plank used very commonly by the managers. It is a very cunning and convenient way of managing people. Essentially in this approach, the managers continue to impress upon their reporting folks that the world outside their department/section is out to harm them and therefore call for unity within the department/section/function! What a terrible way to ensure unity—that is clearly against the spirit of inter-group harmony and organizational unity.
Shadow boxing or latent lobbying is also a commonly observed negative behaviour. The manipulative individuals within the organization create surrogate voices and proxy objects through their bosses, colleagues—literally anyone who they can influence. One example will illustrate this pattern. The Sales Head can’t stand the Production Head—both personally and professionally. And he has neither the ability nor any will to constructively confront him. So, typically what he does is: speaks to the Logistics Head, Procurement Head—behind-the-scene ganging-up begins here. Once he has some people on his side, he then goes on to induce them to take some action that he influences. At this stage, the Sales Head influences the two other Heads to go to the CEO and speak adversely about the Production Head. A classical hi-tech way of playing this game is via using that avoidable feature in the email called the BCC! My readers, who extensively use emails for their day to day (existential!) communications surely won’t need me to give even one example to stress this point about the BCCs. We all witness it's misuse day in and day out!!
And then one can see equal examples of ganging-up by the majority. In total defiance of all diversity and inclusion principles, people do come together on the basis of majority segments they belong to—be it regional, gender or indeed functional. To my mind this is another dimension of bullying by using real, virtual, acquired (or at times even perceived) positions of power. Suppressing views, voices and opinions is an extremely political behaviour. Punishing any kind of dissent--no matter how compelling the dissenting argument is or how passionate the dissenting person is about the organization’s well being and progress—is so counterproductive that continuance of such leadership behaviours can seriously affect organizational effectiveness and morale. The problem gets further compounded when managers reward and recognize employees for individual loyalties rather than for their organizational contributions! And a real debacle happens when managers promote their personal favourites even in selecting folks for rewarding individual loyalties!!
Hiring and promoting clones is yet another type of anti-diversity, cocooning-in-one’s own-comfortable shell type of a syndrome. This is their way of establishing consensual behaviours and proactively avoiding potential dissents—although many a time constructive dissents are more robust and productive in the long run than the weak consensus.
When cocooning assumes larger proportions it gives rise to creation of fiefdoms, silos and turfs. Politics spreads across organizations when people restrict others’ movements and initiatives by putting artificial boundaries and drawing virtual lines of control. Power, authority, control, defense, attack, protect are some of the key political words that rule people’s behaviours when these games begin on the corporate turf. And most importantly, when such barricades are unnecessarily created, people respond in a competitive language even when not necessary—and even worse, collaboration effort made to go beyond the battle lines is treated with contempt within the ‘camp’ and such behaviour is, often times, even discarded as one that is devoid of courage. Such is the power of negative political forces within the organization!
Democracy, in the modern day living, is a key word in any governance. Modern day managerial styles can’t therefore stay away from this magic word. Anything democratic is good and non-democratic is bad—is the maxim managers would like to be seen to be following. But the catch is—you can be recognised as democratic, only if in actual practice you are one! And there lies a problem. We can see cases after cases of democratic facade nicely standing in front of autocratic citadel of power! It’s precisely this gap - between the stated position and observed behaviour (difference between 'saying' and 'doing') - which can be yet another way of identifying political behaviours within organizations.
After sufficient ‘leadership bashing’ let’s look at some other active political behaviours that are rampant across the entire organizational hierarchy.
Cover your B*** strikes to me first. People demonstrating these traits invariably propagate atmosphere of distrust amongst colleagues. For every action that they take, they either shift ownership of the decision behind the same to someone else, or they don’t act until they are formally instructed to do so. In either case, if something goes wrong, they create a prior alibi. Apart from seriously damaging trust, such behaviours erode the entrepreneurial and risk-taking appetite of the organization.
It has always amused me how the following two types of behaviours, which are really exactly opposite to each other, have a similar negative effect on organizations. One finds many employees who literally have maniacal focus on delivering selectively negative messages and there are equal number of folks who avoid confronting negative issues. Slightly deeper perusal of this point will lead us to the conclusion that both these create the same political effect within an organization. Active and repeated negative messaging (Acts of commission) spoils the fabric of authentic relationships, while confrontation avoidance (Acts of omission) leads to communication breakage that also leads to spoiling of relationships! It is only proper for me to highlight one more shade around confrontation and that is confronting people and not the issues. As we observe quite frequently that when the individuals are questioned around their ideas/suggestions they become defensive. They construe such questioning as questioning of their individual competence and not the ideas in reference. Now, let’s look at the other side of the coin. Those who are questioning: are they really constructively critiquing the ideas or they are being judgmental about the people who have advanced those ideas. Quite commonly, they are passing judgments about people’s capabilities, and therefore the resultant defensive behaviours.
Having touched upon major Acts of Commission let’s now take a quick look at the Acts of Omission.
In this regard what else can precede over succumbing to authority? Silent sufferance is nothing but a major cause for the destruction of organizational peace and harmony. Dhrutarashtra’s example above throws some light on this point, but not fully. The world has seen many benevolent regimes being highjacked by the overambitious despots. This couldn’t have been possible without passive participation of the silent majority that succumbed to the authority. Corporations are no different. There is enough evidence to show how employees have chosen to ‘fall in line’ leading to ‘cultural crises’ with far reaching proportions.
Logically the next one in line is ‘procrastination’. This is little different from the point above and even more widespread. People do not need managerial browbeating or indeed any external force to get into this kind of behavioural pattern. They just do it out of either their inability to take decisions/stands or sheer inertia to act or unwillingness to take on any responsibility/accountability. All this creates ‘decision/action voids’ within organizations—and guess, who benefit out of it? Of course, those who are actively looking for manipulating every situation to their advantage. I underline the word ‘their’ advantage and the ‘organizational’ advantage. Could they have asked for a better situation than having such procrastinating accomplices?
And finally, written communications are at the core of corporate transactions. Passive passengers know it well. They, therefore, just don’t commit to anything in writing. They are averse to making commitments that are objectively verifiable at a later date. Effect? Yet again, ‘trust collapse.’
In summary: The journey to ‘organizational change’ has a major milestone called ‘behavioural awareness’. And hopefully, the thoughts presented above will help us synthesise our past actions in way that we can weed out what may constitute ‘political’ and reinforce the ones that will strengthen ‘apolitical forces’ in the organizational stream—a dream each one us should cherish and chase.
And now that I have already accomplished my first objective of disorienting my readers, let me progress my thoughts!
It’s a common observation that every one in the corporate community privately and publicly acknowledges the prevalence of political behaviours in their respective organizations. And reality is not far removed from this common belief. In this context, we have to understand that the word ‘politics’ is invariably (almost every time without an exception) used with a negative connotation. We all know the positive/neutral aspects of this word—such as, an academic discipline that is woven around the study of power, authority, state, governance etc. But, my focus today is going to be on the commonly used/understood meaning of the word politics—which essentially means presence of negative/corrosive/counterproductive/manipulative behaviours & processes within an organization.
Having defined the scope of the discussion, let’s now look at the specific behaviours that can be clearly construed as political and possible pointers in coping with such situations.
At a high level I would like to classify these behaviours as :
1: Acts of Commission: i.e. active factors
2: Acts of Omission: i.e. passive factors
One small note before I proceed further. I’m not suggesting in any manner that the Active factors are more serious than the Passive ones. Their impacts can be same or different, depending on the situation but will rarely depend on which class they fall in. To demonstrate this point, I would like to take an example from our great epic The Mahabharat. We all know that the Pandavas were manipulated by the Kauravas into gambling and eventually losing everything, with the help of all evil machinations of their maternal uncle, Shakuni. Dhrutarashtra, the father of Kauravas did not play any role in enticing the Pandavas to continue to gamble, but was aware of the decaying situation at every stage. In this example, the players who exhibited political behaviours were the Kauravas, Shakuni and Dhrutarashtra. The first two actively manipulated (Acts of Commission) and the third passively participated (Acts of Omission) by remaining silent, when just one word of command from him would have stopped any further rounds of unfortunate events that led to the great war of Mahabharat! Such can be the destructive power of the Acts of Omission!
What are the Acts of Commission?
This class-name is self-explanatory. Hence, let’s jump straight into the types of behaviours that fall in this category.
Although I have no specific order in mind while presenting existence of these behaviours, Gossips come to my mind as the most predominant one in this category. Gossips, though some times can create some common-interest groups within the organization, they still prove to be overall acting against the organizational interests. Main reason being, lack of accountability/responsibility on parts of those who actively take part in such informal gossip sessions—even though many times their belief is that they are doing it in the best interests of the organization! Let’s say an organization has a very senior manager whose professional and personal behaviours are not in consonance with the stated values of the corporation. Invariably, such behaviours lead to silent gossips within those employees who would like discontinuance/immediate stoppage of such behaviours but have no courage to escalate to right levels! Inevitably, as gossips progress, they enrol newer and newer employees and the whole chain leads to ‘morale erosion’ within the organization.
Rumours are equally (if not more!) destructive. They don’t spread on their own. They are spread through ‘active carriers’ or the ‘rumour mongers.’ The essential difference (whenever there is one) between the rumours and the gossips is that there is almost no occasion when the rumours are actively spread with an organizational interest (even ostensibly!) in mind.
Enemy is out there is a standard plank used very commonly by the managers. It is a very cunning and convenient way of managing people. Essentially in this approach, the managers continue to impress upon their reporting folks that the world outside their department/section is out to harm them and therefore call for unity within the department/section/function! What a terrible way to ensure unity—that is clearly against the spirit of inter-group harmony and organizational unity.
Shadow boxing or latent lobbying is also a commonly observed negative behaviour. The manipulative individuals within the organization create surrogate voices and proxy objects through their bosses, colleagues—literally anyone who they can influence. One example will illustrate this pattern. The Sales Head can’t stand the Production Head—both personally and professionally. And he has neither the ability nor any will to constructively confront him. So, typically what he does is: speaks to the Logistics Head, Procurement Head—behind-the-scene ganging-up begins here. Once he has some people on his side, he then goes on to induce them to take some action that he influences. At this stage, the Sales Head influences the two other Heads to go to the CEO and speak adversely about the Production Head. A classical hi-tech way of playing this game is via using that avoidable feature in the email called the BCC! My readers, who extensively use emails for their day to day (existential!) communications surely won’t need me to give even one example to stress this point about the BCCs. We all witness it's misuse day in and day out!!
And then one can see equal examples of ganging-up by the majority. In total defiance of all diversity and inclusion principles, people do come together on the basis of majority segments they belong to—be it regional, gender or indeed functional. To my mind this is another dimension of bullying by using real, virtual, acquired (or at times even perceived) positions of power. Suppressing views, voices and opinions is an extremely political behaviour. Punishing any kind of dissent--no matter how compelling the dissenting argument is or how passionate the dissenting person is about the organization’s well being and progress—is so counterproductive that continuance of such leadership behaviours can seriously affect organizational effectiveness and morale. The problem gets further compounded when managers reward and recognize employees for individual loyalties rather than for their organizational contributions! And a real debacle happens when managers promote their personal favourites even in selecting folks for rewarding individual loyalties!!
Hiring and promoting clones is yet another type of anti-diversity, cocooning-in-one’s own-comfortable shell type of a syndrome. This is their way of establishing consensual behaviours and proactively avoiding potential dissents—although many a time constructive dissents are more robust and productive in the long run than the weak consensus.
When cocooning assumes larger proportions it gives rise to creation of fiefdoms, silos and turfs. Politics spreads across organizations when people restrict others’ movements and initiatives by putting artificial boundaries and drawing virtual lines of control. Power, authority, control, defense, attack, protect are some of the key political words that rule people’s behaviours when these games begin on the corporate turf. And most importantly, when such barricades are unnecessarily created, people respond in a competitive language even when not necessary—and even worse, collaboration effort made to go beyond the battle lines is treated with contempt within the ‘camp’ and such behaviour is, often times, even discarded as one that is devoid of courage. Such is the power of negative political forces within the organization!
Democracy, in the modern day living, is a key word in any governance. Modern day managerial styles can’t therefore stay away from this magic word. Anything democratic is good and non-democratic is bad—is the maxim managers would like to be seen to be following. But the catch is—you can be recognised as democratic, only if in actual practice you are one! And there lies a problem. We can see cases after cases of democratic facade nicely standing in front of autocratic citadel of power! It’s precisely this gap - between the stated position and observed behaviour (difference between 'saying' and 'doing') - which can be yet another way of identifying political behaviours within organizations.
After sufficient ‘leadership bashing’ let’s look at some other active political behaviours that are rampant across the entire organizational hierarchy.
Cover your B*** strikes to me first. People demonstrating these traits invariably propagate atmosphere of distrust amongst colleagues. For every action that they take, they either shift ownership of the decision behind the same to someone else, or they don’t act until they are formally instructed to do so. In either case, if something goes wrong, they create a prior alibi. Apart from seriously damaging trust, such behaviours erode the entrepreneurial and risk-taking appetite of the organization.
It has always amused me how the following two types of behaviours, which are really exactly opposite to each other, have a similar negative effect on organizations. One finds many employees who literally have maniacal focus on delivering selectively negative messages and there are equal number of folks who avoid confronting negative issues. Slightly deeper perusal of this point will lead us to the conclusion that both these create the same political effect within an organization. Active and repeated negative messaging (Acts of commission) spoils the fabric of authentic relationships, while confrontation avoidance (Acts of omission) leads to communication breakage that also leads to spoiling of relationships! It is only proper for me to highlight one more shade around confrontation and that is confronting people and not the issues. As we observe quite frequently that when the individuals are questioned around their ideas/suggestions they become defensive. They construe such questioning as questioning of their individual competence and not the ideas in reference. Now, let’s look at the other side of the coin. Those who are questioning: are they really constructively critiquing the ideas or they are being judgmental about the people who have advanced those ideas. Quite commonly, they are passing judgments about people’s capabilities, and therefore the resultant defensive behaviours.
Having touched upon major Acts of Commission let’s now take a quick look at the Acts of Omission.
In this regard what else can precede over succumbing to authority? Silent sufferance is nothing but a major cause for the destruction of organizational peace and harmony. Dhrutarashtra’s example above throws some light on this point, but not fully. The world has seen many benevolent regimes being highjacked by the overambitious despots. This couldn’t have been possible without passive participation of the silent majority that succumbed to the authority. Corporations are no different. There is enough evidence to show how employees have chosen to ‘fall in line’ leading to ‘cultural crises’ with far reaching proportions.
Logically the next one in line is ‘procrastination’. This is little different from the point above and even more widespread. People do not need managerial browbeating or indeed any external force to get into this kind of behavioural pattern. They just do it out of either their inability to take decisions/stands or sheer inertia to act or unwillingness to take on any responsibility/accountability. All this creates ‘decision/action voids’ within organizations—and guess, who benefit out of it? Of course, those who are actively looking for manipulating every situation to their advantage. I underline the word ‘their’ advantage and the ‘organizational’ advantage. Could they have asked for a better situation than having such procrastinating accomplices?
And finally, written communications are at the core of corporate transactions. Passive passengers know it well. They, therefore, just don’t commit to anything in writing. They are averse to making commitments that are objectively verifiable at a later date. Effect? Yet again, ‘trust collapse.’
In summary: The journey to ‘organizational change’ has a major milestone called ‘behavioural awareness’. And hopefully, the thoughts presented above will help us synthesise our past actions in way that we can weed out what may constitute ‘political’ and reinforce the ones that will strengthen ‘apolitical forces’ in the organizational stream—a dream each one us should cherish and chase.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Dear Jagdish,Nandu,Ashwini,Anand,Surendra,Nasir and Hemant..Thanks a ton for your comments--some of them were sent directly to my mail id. I appreciate your engagement.
And Mr.Pandit...I fully endorse your views .Yes,Maslow did think hierarchically higher needs are addressed only after the lower ones are satisfied..but in real life you have many notable exceptions that don't follow this path. Another observation I have--more related to countries such as ours--where individuals slide down in the need hierarchy after retiring from economically active lives!That's a pity-able truth as well.If need be,let's explore further.And thanks for your time and effort..Cheers...Abhay
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Ayurvedacharya’s commentary on ‘life management’
Very recently, in fact just mid last week, I read a very interesting synopsis of a discourse or let’s call it a speech. It was delivered by an Ayurvedic scholar-- Ayurvedacharya. We will call him the guru, for the sake of brevity.
Generally not being inclined to any subjects in his area of expertise, after almost inadvertently browsing through the headline capturing the guru’s key message, I was about to switch to my favourite page. But somehow my eyes froze on the clipping. And there was nothing very attractive about the headline itself. In fact, it was a benign advice to the lawyers, in whose gathering this speech was made-appealing them to maintain their mental health in the face of intellectually challenging and intense environments they constantly work in.
But, something made me read the whole report. And good I read it!
Leave alone being any authority in spirituality, I can’t even claim to be a serious student of it! Yet, what was presented as a reportage of the speech set me thinking.
So, what was the essence of the speech?
The Acharya (guru) said that anna (food),vastra (clothing) and nivara (shelter)are the means of livelihood—mere living(he calls it ‘upajeevika’). And he further went on to say that prem (love),maya (affection),bhakti( devotion),shradhha (faith) and samadhan (contentment) are the means of life(he calls it ‘jeeviaka’ ).The readers already know that any word prefixed by ‘upa’ signifies subservience. Therefore, in this particular case, upajeevika is subservient to jeevika i.e. the guru is making a clear distinction between life and livelihood by denoting the latter as qualitatively subservient.
And, why did I get attracted towards what is seemingly a very basic, commonsensical thought?
Simply because, on the cursory reading, it looked like Abraham Maslow restated after good 60-70 years, but one more read and it actually made me think that what was being stated was quite different, more insightful than Maslow’s theory of hierarchy of needs!
Let’s quickly understand what Maslow said. He said humans have multiple needs and they keep getting those fulfilled in a hierarchical way. Basic(he calls them physiological) such as food, clothing, shelter and then moving up(in steps of hierarchy) all the way to self-actualization.
Very interestingly, Maslow goes with a surgical precision in defining needs at every stage, whereas our guru slots them into just two parts jeevika and upajeevika, as described above. To me though, two factor classification made by the guru is very profound, because he subtly applies the test of ‘quality’ to the way life is lived. Without saying it in so many words, he distinguishes two types of lives—one earned through employing basic means of livelihood and the other earned through qualitatively superior means such as love, faith etc.
Many thoughts crop up in my mind—some relevant (I think!) and some random(I’m sure!)!
1: Does the root of the way Maslow explains his theory lie in structured and logical manner in which generally any body of knowledge is developed in the western world?
2: Does the manner in which the guru explains his thoughts an obvious outcome of the way, we, in this part of the world, look at life?—with a holistic orientation that is multi-layered, multi-leveled and most importantly with a high degree of simultaneity of all the variables.
Although the two questions above have been structurally framed as questions, I’m sure, the readers have figured out that they indeed are statements!
3: Herzberg(another social scientist known for his two factor theory of motivation) makes a distinction between hygiene factors and motivators, while explaining the human motivational aspects. In short, his case is that while hygiene factors, by themselves, don’t provide motivation, their presence ensures ‘lack of dissatisfaction’—e.g pay—when pay is received by an employee on a pay-day, it doesn’t necessarily motivate him, but when it doesn’t happen, it is certainly dissatisfying for an individual. Whereas, growth and advancement, recognition for achievement are the motivators—i.e their presence itself leads to motivation and satisfaction.
Now the question: Is Herzberg going away from Maslow and going closer to our guru?
Answer, to my mind--‘yes’ and ‘no’. ‘Yes’, because Herzberg at least recognizes simultaneity of the variables. And ‘no’, because he still goes on to make a sequential classification by saying that hygiene factors at best keep de-motivation at bay but it’s only the motivators that have a positive impact.
Finally the moot point: I really find freshness of thought when our guru moves further to say that those who set their life-goal as upajeevika are surely in for leading an imbalanced life both from the physical health perspective as well as holistically. And on the other hand, those who pursue jeevika as their life-goal actually head for life-actualization!
I find this thought very interesting because the guru so easily and seamlessly transcends physical health issues to go into life actualization ones. Truly, a remarkable way of commenting on life with an ayurvedic orientation!
I don’t if all (or any!) of the above makes sense to the readers, but given my excitement about what I read, I couldn’t resist jotting my thoughts down—may be in pursuit of my self actualization!
As always, every comment from you is a welcome one!
Cheers..Abhay
Very recently, in fact just mid last week, I read a very interesting synopsis of a discourse or let’s call it a speech. It was delivered by an Ayurvedic scholar-- Ayurvedacharya. We will call him the guru, for the sake of brevity.
Generally not being inclined to any subjects in his area of expertise, after almost inadvertently browsing through the headline capturing the guru’s key message, I was about to switch to my favourite page. But somehow my eyes froze on the clipping. And there was nothing very attractive about the headline itself. In fact, it was a benign advice to the lawyers, in whose gathering this speech was made-appealing them to maintain their mental health in the face of intellectually challenging and intense environments they constantly work in.
But, something made me read the whole report. And good I read it!
Leave alone being any authority in spirituality, I can’t even claim to be a serious student of it! Yet, what was presented as a reportage of the speech set me thinking.
So, what was the essence of the speech?
The Acharya (guru) said that anna (food),vastra (clothing) and nivara (shelter)are the means of livelihood—mere living(he calls it ‘upajeevika’). And he further went on to say that prem (love),maya (affection),bhakti( devotion),shradhha (faith) and samadhan (contentment) are the means of life(he calls it ‘jeeviaka’ ).The readers already know that any word prefixed by ‘upa’ signifies subservience. Therefore, in this particular case, upajeevika is subservient to jeevika i.e. the guru is making a clear distinction between life and livelihood by denoting the latter as qualitatively subservient.
And, why did I get attracted towards what is seemingly a very basic, commonsensical thought?
Simply because, on the cursory reading, it looked like Abraham Maslow restated after good 60-70 years, but one more read and it actually made me think that what was being stated was quite different, more insightful than Maslow’s theory of hierarchy of needs!
Let’s quickly understand what Maslow said. He said humans have multiple needs and they keep getting those fulfilled in a hierarchical way. Basic(he calls them physiological) such as food, clothing, shelter and then moving up(in steps of hierarchy) all the way to self-actualization.
Very interestingly, Maslow goes with a surgical precision in defining needs at every stage, whereas our guru slots them into just two parts jeevika and upajeevika, as described above. To me though, two factor classification made by the guru is very profound, because he subtly applies the test of ‘quality’ to the way life is lived. Without saying it in so many words, he distinguishes two types of lives—one earned through employing basic means of livelihood and the other earned through qualitatively superior means such as love, faith etc.
Many thoughts crop up in my mind—some relevant (I think!) and some random(I’m sure!)!
1: Does the root of the way Maslow explains his theory lie in structured and logical manner in which generally any body of knowledge is developed in the western world?
2: Does the manner in which the guru explains his thoughts an obvious outcome of the way, we, in this part of the world, look at life?—with a holistic orientation that is multi-layered, multi-leveled and most importantly with a high degree of simultaneity of all the variables.
Although the two questions above have been structurally framed as questions, I’m sure, the readers have figured out that they indeed are statements!
3: Herzberg(another social scientist known for his two factor theory of motivation) makes a distinction between hygiene factors and motivators, while explaining the human motivational aspects. In short, his case is that while hygiene factors, by themselves, don’t provide motivation, their presence ensures ‘lack of dissatisfaction’—e.g pay—when pay is received by an employee on a pay-day, it doesn’t necessarily motivate him, but when it doesn’t happen, it is certainly dissatisfying for an individual. Whereas, growth and advancement, recognition for achievement are the motivators—i.e their presence itself leads to motivation and satisfaction.
Now the question: Is Herzberg going away from Maslow and going closer to our guru?
Answer, to my mind--‘yes’ and ‘no’. ‘Yes’, because Herzberg at least recognizes simultaneity of the variables. And ‘no’, because he still goes on to make a sequential classification by saying that hygiene factors at best keep de-motivation at bay but it’s only the motivators that have a positive impact.
Finally the moot point: I really find freshness of thought when our guru moves further to say that those who set their life-goal as upajeevika are surely in for leading an imbalanced life both from the physical health perspective as well as holistically. And on the other hand, those who pursue jeevika as their life-goal actually head for life-actualization!
I find this thought very interesting because the guru so easily and seamlessly transcends physical health issues to go into life actualization ones. Truly, a remarkable way of commenting on life with an ayurvedic orientation!
I don’t if all (or any!) of the above makes sense to the readers, but given my excitement about what I read, I couldn’t resist jotting my thoughts down—may be in pursuit of my self actualization!
As always, every comment from you is a welcome one!
Cheers..Abhay
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Musings
A good forth of the last century was still remaining when we passed out of the school. And before we realized it, we have almost completed the first decade of the new century! Such is the velocity of time. I know, I’m going to be joined by many, when I say ‘it almost feels like it happened only yesterday.’
Straight from a small and sleepy town of Maharashtra, called Solapur, one day I arrived into this revered seat of academic excellence—then called Parle Tilak Vidyalaya, now too known by the same name but with a small suffix- ‘Marathi Medium.’ But thinking about it deeply, this suffix has literally created all the confusion. Why? Because, the other part of the school is suffixed with-‘English Medium!’ Lives in our times were relatively simpler—we were just proud to be the students of Parle Tilak Vidyalaya with no further frills!
Anyway, I was reminiscing my school days. The thoughts just meander, every time I indulge in this exercise, knowingly or unwittingly. I get images in front of me of my friends, my teachers, my school ground, my classrooms and each picture pumps-in loads of energy in me. It simply makes me feel like a child. A picture of receiving punishment slaps or may it be a picture of falling in love at sweet sixteen—both energize me no end. And then I think about it more, only to realize that every such moment recreated, appeals to a child in me and reassures him that my clocking-in years in age is just a biological facade! It also reassures me that I can become a child and face life with innocent curiosity and vigour whenever I feel like. Wow, what a liberating sensation!
And then comes THAT day of the year that all of us look forward to for the rest 364 days. My friends will not take even a minute to guess what I am referring to! The day of our yearly school reunion—we fondly call it GTG, short for Get-together. Years have passed since we started these reunions. I have attended many and missed some, but a year has not gone by, when I didn’t feel depressed when I missed one and elated when I made it. This story is universal to one and all of PTV-75…Ooops, I should have said, PTV-75-OLD SSC!
It’s not as if the life has not been interesting post-school days. It is also not my case that I have not made credible friendships post-1975. But it is certainly my experience that the school friendships, which are the oldest, have remained much fresher than the later ones. In those days, all you needed to have to make a friendship was an honest heart-to-heart connection and everything else was irrelevant! Your friend didn’t have to have similar professional interests, similar economic status, similar lifestyle—the kinds of issues that hold prominence in making relationships work at older ages. You also didn’t have any compulsions of being ‘politically right’ in maintaining and sustaining relationships—you either liked a boy or a girl and proposed friendship and when you didn’t like a particular behavior you fought and confronted rather than trying to ‘maintain’ friendship. That’s why it lasted this long and that too in its freshest form!
Leave aside those teachers you fondly remember even today. They anyway have made a major mark on your personality and have shaped you to become what you are today. But try and even think of the teacher you hated the most. Today even he/she will be remembered with a fair degree of fondness. Some people’s contribution takes a long time before it is appreciated by those who benefited by their ‘not-so-apparently-friendly’ behaviors! Some teachers are from that category.
Reading as a habit was cultivated by me much later in life, at least well after leaving the school. But when I look back, it was during those days of school that I learnt why it was such an important habit. My friends will not only recollect the rich library we had, which many other schools of similar stature in those days could not boast of, but they will equally remember the semi-broken metal bag that used to be circulated from class to class so that we could borrow books from school library and return the next week after reading those. What we read didn’t matter as much as the fact that we started reading during those days. It’s a fact that we also read a lot of trash during those days, but equally we grew-up reading some of the better known books of those times a la Swamy, Yayati, Shriman Yogi et al!
Bunking classes more for watching (again mostly trash) Hindi (and sometimes steamy English) movies was as much part of our lives as watching some spirited ones, majorly at the behest of school, such as Dhanya te Santaji Dhanaji, Pavanakathcha Dhondi etc. The point here is similar—art appreciation of later years had its seeds sown during the schooling years!
What has my alma mater given me? Some ask this question with a degree of rhetoric, as if everything they achieved in life is self-made! I don’t want to even attempt answering their question, for I definitely know what I have got from my alma mater. Love, affection, knowledge, friendships, great memories worth cherishing forever and the list is absolutely unending. The most precious gift I have received though, is a solid identity. That’s why ‘proud to be a PTVian!’ Having worked globally, lived internationally, tested the fruits and heat of diversity, I value ‘identity’ above almost anything else in life!
Poetry can be written when one is emotionally charged, may be sometimes one can even write pieces of a novel—but how about such anthology of thoughts? Thoughts are antithesis of emotions! So, call it anthology of my emotions, if you like! Thoughts of my schooldays won’t permit me rational thinking, and I’m not complaining. Are you?
Straight from a small and sleepy town of Maharashtra, called Solapur, one day I arrived into this revered seat of academic excellence—then called Parle Tilak Vidyalaya, now too known by the same name but with a small suffix- ‘Marathi Medium.’ But thinking about it deeply, this suffix has literally created all the confusion. Why? Because, the other part of the school is suffixed with-‘English Medium!’ Lives in our times were relatively simpler—we were just proud to be the students of Parle Tilak Vidyalaya with no further frills!
Anyway, I was reminiscing my school days. The thoughts just meander, every time I indulge in this exercise, knowingly or unwittingly. I get images in front of me of my friends, my teachers, my school ground, my classrooms and each picture pumps-in loads of energy in me. It simply makes me feel like a child. A picture of receiving punishment slaps or may it be a picture of falling in love at sweet sixteen—both energize me no end. And then I think about it more, only to realize that every such moment recreated, appeals to a child in me and reassures him that my clocking-in years in age is just a biological facade! It also reassures me that I can become a child and face life with innocent curiosity and vigour whenever I feel like. Wow, what a liberating sensation!
And then comes THAT day of the year that all of us look forward to for the rest 364 days. My friends will not take even a minute to guess what I am referring to! The day of our yearly school reunion—we fondly call it GTG, short for Get-together. Years have passed since we started these reunions. I have attended many and missed some, but a year has not gone by, when I didn’t feel depressed when I missed one and elated when I made it. This story is universal to one and all of PTV-75…Ooops, I should have said, PTV-75-OLD SSC!
It’s not as if the life has not been interesting post-school days. It is also not my case that I have not made credible friendships post-1975. But it is certainly my experience that the school friendships, which are the oldest, have remained much fresher than the later ones. In those days, all you needed to have to make a friendship was an honest heart-to-heart connection and everything else was irrelevant! Your friend didn’t have to have similar professional interests, similar economic status, similar lifestyle—the kinds of issues that hold prominence in making relationships work at older ages. You also didn’t have any compulsions of being ‘politically right’ in maintaining and sustaining relationships—you either liked a boy or a girl and proposed friendship and when you didn’t like a particular behavior you fought and confronted rather than trying to ‘maintain’ friendship. That’s why it lasted this long and that too in its freshest form!
Leave aside those teachers you fondly remember even today. They anyway have made a major mark on your personality and have shaped you to become what you are today. But try and even think of the teacher you hated the most. Today even he/she will be remembered with a fair degree of fondness. Some people’s contribution takes a long time before it is appreciated by those who benefited by their ‘not-so-apparently-friendly’ behaviors! Some teachers are from that category.
Reading as a habit was cultivated by me much later in life, at least well after leaving the school. But when I look back, it was during those days of school that I learnt why it was such an important habit. My friends will not only recollect the rich library we had, which many other schools of similar stature in those days could not boast of, but they will equally remember the semi-broken metal bag that used to be circulated from class to class so that we could borrow books from school library and return the next week after reading those. What we read didn’t matter as much as the fact that we started reading during those days. It’s a fact that we also read a lot of trash during those days, but equally we grew-up reading some of the better known books of those times a la Swamy, Yayati, Shriman Yogi et al!
Bunking classes more for watching (again mostly trash) Hindi (and sometimes steamy English) movies was as much part of our lives as watching some spirited ones, majorly at the behest of school, such as Dhanya te Santaji Dhanaji, Pavanakathcha Dhondi etc. The point here is similar—art appreciation of later years had its seeds sown during the schooling years!
What has my alma mater given me? Some ask this question with a degree of rhetoric, as if everything they achieved in life is self-made! I don’t want to even attempt answering their question, for I definitely know what I have got from my alma mater. Love, affection, knowledge, friendships, great memories worth cherishing forever and the list is absolutely unending. The most precious gift I have received though, is a solid identity. That’s why ‘proud to be a PTVian!’ Having worked globally, lived internationally, tested the fruits and heat of diversity, I value ‘identity’ above almost anything else in life!
Poetry can be written when one is emotionally charged, may be sometimes one can even write pieces of a novel—but how about such anthology of thoughts? Thoughts are antithesis of emotions! So, call it anthology of my emotions, if you like! Thoughts of my schooldays won’t permit me rational thinking, and I’m not complaining. Are you?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)