Saturday, November 29, 2008

Incredible November and the Pack of Cards!!


November, 2008 will go down in the history of the world as a month which taught mankind how illusionary and transitory size and scale is. November brought with it, one of the biggest hurricane the corporate world had ever witnessed in the financial meltdown and also made us witness to one of the most the horrific terror attacks in India. Somewhere, a common theme between the collapses of very different empires is that of lack of controls, discipline and processes. It is all a result of the games our mind plays with us. The fall of empires is an outcome of allowing the mind to run wild.

Let us connect this with something we do everyday. Crisis management is about creating a simpler and focused regulatory environment which is efficient, quick, consistent and reliable. Be it related to financial or human security regulation. If you look at it objectively keeping emotions aside, I think it is about clearing out all the “Unpredictability & unreliability” that exists in the way we currently tackle our situations of crisis across forms & scale in India. In a model such as this, controls come in without making the whole deal look bureaucratic. Technology takes over the role of controls and doesn’t allow leaks. This is exactly how successful business processes get built too. Responsible organizations control their minds. Or they go down like pack of cards. (Lehman Bros, Merrill Lynch)

That brings me to another performance metric, which is reliability. Reliability is essentially a testimony of inherent strength. Superlative performance one week and down the next doesn’t get us too far. *(Kudos to the clinically consistent approach followed by NSG throughout the rescue operation). If you go to see, every stakeholder wants to see an expected consistency in performance levels, and here the stakeholders are the citizens of the country.

We have hugely challenging times coming up. As I have already said, “The insanity of extremism is over…but the insanity of polity will start now!” and we must collectively suppress it in its attempt to polarize us using their age old disguised sympathetic vote bank politics, especially in times of general elections looking large on the country. Times to come are going to challenge our grit, reliability and determination as a collective dynamic emerging society. Let’s look at this adversity and turn in into a positive opportunity to bring about a lasting change. The youth of our country have enormous power. Let’s give it everything we’ve got and get this period so right – like never before!

Remember we want the systems to be reliable, consistent & effective. Let’s ourselves be that. Let’s not be shooting stars. They sure look good, but they shine for a few seconds and later get relegated to National Geographic episodes. It takes a real sun to rise every morning – tear the clouds apart, chase the darkness away and say, “Sun, good morning, may I shine on you?” and do so every morning. Lets rededicate ourselves to our purpose of life with rejuvenated vigor. Let’s do, what we do best, a little better. Let’s not be terrorized by the losses of money and men. Let’s unshackle ourselves from the misery of cynicism and let’s free ourselves from being called the victims time and again.

C’mon India, It’s time to make that journey towards change. Let’s answer all the difficult questions together, and tell them… “Yes, we can……”

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