boredom strikes

These are a few of the things I am so bored about .. I don’t want to hear about them ever again :

1.       Not another promotional feature on “Ra-One” seriously SRK have you made such a Dud !

2.       Not another picture of a ‘baby-shower”. Give us a break guys, India is the 2^nd most populous country in the world. Yawn !

3.       Not another ‘chappal’ thrown at Kejriwal and his team, literally and figuratively. Mind your business guys and let them hunker down and do their job.

4.       Not another one of liz hurley’s marriages. Common both she and Shane are now has beens !, Shane dear, please do sign the pre nuptial contract unless you fancy living on the streets !

5.       Not another picture of handcuffed Lindsay lohan … guys now who is she ?

6.       Not another photographic moment of our ‘PM in waiting’ sharing the meager meals of a poor family … please spare them… they need to be able to eat the next day too.

7.       Not another India vs. England cricket match. Ok the English cricket team does score .. but so much of cricket ? who pays??

Reduce Indirect taxes and increase the net Direct Taxes

We all know what are direct taxes, those which are collected directly by the government, from individuals and corporate, but what about indirect taxes? Those are taxes that are passed on to the consumer. That means even the poor citizen who buys a Rs. 5 packet of biscuits is paying taxes. I have thought about this often and I feel this is unfair. We must spare the poor in our country this tax. What is the benefit of this tax. I think such taxes should be very much minimized, or abolished all together. The reasons are

1. The very poor in our country should not be asked to pay this tax. Indirect taxes do not distinguish about paying capacity. If we should have indirect tax, the government should only tax the luxury goods and the addictive and harmful goods. Restaurant being taxed is ok, infact the fancier, upscale restaurants should be taxed more.

2. The other thought I have is around the absolute apathy of most of Indian citizens towards government property and its maintenance. I believe this is also in some way linked to our tax system. If the poor do not pay direct taxes, they assume that roads, drainages ect are free and they do not have to pay anything to get these. Hence they have a propensity to misuse these. They do not realize that they do pay a lot of taxes indirectly.

 Instead, I recommend that we reduce indirect taxes and increase the number of our citizens who have to pay direct taxes. It can be a very nominal amount, but all citizens above a certain threshold of income should  pay direct taxes. This will increase equity in our tax structure as well as make us a country of more responsible citizens.

Judging vs. Accepting

This has been a life long struggle for me. A tendency to unconsciously judge others. Put them into boxes. Lately it has become a conscious process. This resulted in my working on the same. I write this blog to share my learnings with others who may have the same challenge. What happens when we judge others? For me, the main realisation is that , one , of course they know that you are judging them and who wants to be judged? Judging others comes in the way of forming relationships and great friendships. Judging others comes in the way of genuinely enjoying others and helping others. But why do we judge? I have struggled with this answer, and I have come to the conclusion that we judge others because we judge ourselves. We judge ourselves against an ideal which we have formed in our minds, often created by society which includes our parents, teachers and other significant others. If we want to stop judging others we need to stop judging ourselves first and accept ourselves. This is most difficult but most liberating. This is what great leaders are about.

Experience Vs. other

Organizations are risking entry into tomorrow’s business arena using yesterday’s business thinking. Why else would most recruitment advertisements still mention ‘x number of years of experience’ as the number one  requirement? Have we even thought about the fact that the way business was run even 10 years ago is so dated today? And what is very new, hot and current today may not even exist 5 years from now? Then of what use is experience? It is now time to change the selection criteria. Today more emphasis needs to be on expertise, core knowledge, an understanding of the fundamentals in the area that a person chooses to work in. For an IT professional, it is not about the language, but a core understanding of technology, programming logic. Similarly for a pharma professional, it is more about a deep knowledge , understanding and appreciation of the science behind her work.  The other important ability is the ability to learn , the curiousity to know  and the willingness the fail. So will organisations now modify the selection criteria please and work a little bit harder to identify the right person for the job. Looking at numbers of years of experience is an easy way out !

Talent Development – One Size does not fit all

One of the most important elements in development of Talent is to identify the learning style of the individual. Some of us may learn best through class room teaching, some of us may like to learn at our own pace through online learning programs and books, some of us may learn through small group discussions with experts, some of us may learn through one on one coaching. Some of us may learn only  by doing and job rotations, small projects, job sharing, job shadowing may be the answer for such an individual. Once we identify this, we can have a more focused approach to development and optimize training dollars. Increasingly, talent development  in organisations has to be tailored and customized to meet individual requirements and this has to start with how we learn. ‘One Size fits all’ is wasteful and ineffective.

On Society and Values Erosion

It fills me with pain to read about the two CWG athletes who have tested positive for  steroids. Why have we become such a corrupt society? Why this erosion of values ? Where does it all start and where will it end? Does it start at the womb, where with growing prosperity we now believe that it is ok to select the sex of the child ? Does it start with the KG school admissions where huge donations are given to secure a seat? Does it multiply in schools where teachers do not teach in the classrooms but charge exorbitant amounts in private tuition classes where they teach what they were anyways supposed to teach in school and they were getting a salary for that? Does it have to do with the rampant quota system in our institutes of higher learning with 50% & more reservations in colleges where even into the 21^st century we continue to recognize the caste system over merit. Is it that our society is slowing forgetting what is merit? Is it to do with the alarming increase in the gap between the haves and the have-nots in our society? Is our definition of success as being rich and famous quickly forcing us to let go of our century old values of truthfulness , integrity and compassion? If society turns such a blind eye to cutting of corners and falsehood all in the name of becoming rich and famous, how can we hope to keep our organisations clean? How can we introduce those values into our organisations which are slowing becoming alien in our society? Is it possible to expect an employee to be a different person for the 8-10hrs he spends at work every day and a different person the rest of the time? Is it fair to expect a leader who has been a product of the education system which disregards merit to suddenly recognize and reward only merit in an organization? The time bomb is ticking for us as a society and as a culture. India has historically been known as a country which had taught the world to raise above materialism and embrace the one spirit. Slowly but surely , we are becoming a very poor country. Increasingly we have nothing to offer to the world.

Leadership development & Indian Education System

I have recently come across a very interesting research study on Indian business leaders vs. global business leaders with specific focus towards their tendency to search for information. The study mentions that whereas global leaders score at 15.34 on the information search scale, Indian leaders score at 2.72. I think this happens due to our education system which does not encourage study from multiple text books for a subject or topic. We usually have only one text book from which we are expected to memorise the answers and reproduce the same during the exams . Indian business leaders also scored low of 6.41 compared to 20.63 on ‘Concept formation’. I believe this too can be attributed to the way we are taught. In schools we are expected to repeat what is given in one single text book and the important process of applying thought to what we read is bypassed. When we come into organizations we find that these ingrained habits are setting us up for failure. How do we unlearn these habits? Indian leaders also scored low on ‘influencing’, this too can be attributed to our education system which encourages individual contribution over team work. Hence the need for learning the very important skill of ‘influencing’ is never felt by most of us. Dare I say that the best leaders from India will be those who would have participated in team games at the school level.