Some years back, I had a Divisional head join the team.
The guy had impressed the recruiting board with his talk of ‘track record’ and ‘ideas’ about how he planned to transform the business. When I got around to have a chat with him, he seemed to be all humility and spoke of his own self development through working and learning from me. But several subsequent events seemed to indicate that at the sniff of a challenge, his self-serving shield would go up, a lot of talk about blaming the environment and others in the team would emerge but not much action on the ground. In the meanwhile, the company kept losing competent and productive staff as well as customer accounts; his oft repeated declaration about ‘brickwalling’ them did not seem to be working.
To me it appeared that the Divisional Head did not know what he was working to develop; he was definitely not working on his own leadership. When I again had a chat with him, what came up were several blames. ‘That he had not bargained for the kind of work he was now being expected to do.’ ‘That I was failing to support him adequately.’ ‘That he was stuck with incompetent team members.’
In a nutshell, the job stank, I as the boss stank and the team stank! I did not have the heart to ask the guy that if the world all around stank, could it be that he himself was the problem?
How many of you have faced a similar situation at the workplace? If you have, have you wondered what one might need to do to transform the situation?
The world can shift when one shows up with authenticity and with humility.
Transformation:
When we see ourselves as the problem, we can be the solution too. We need to spend more time working on our own selves rather than trying to fix others.
Do we have the expectation that our team members should be the harbinger of good news and developments? We need to lower that expectation.
Empathy is a strong word; being empathetic is easier said than done. Nonetheless we need to practice putting ourselves in the shoes of others and seeing the world through their lens.
Gain the realization that others do not really humble us; we humble ourselves.
Show up as a servant leader. A leadership style that enables everyone in the organisation to feel empowered and thrive fearlessly as his / her authentic self.
Say ‘Thank you’ to three persons in a day. Look them in the eye and be specific. If someone is not around, send a thank you email or Whatsapp or make a call.
A way to grow one’s Leadership is through introspection. One needs to look back into one’s past and identify all that which contributed to one’s Leadership and performance development.
This may sound easy but it is not. As we move through work responsibilities and the corporate hierarchy, we tend to develop our own plethora of ‘what we believe made us succeed’ mechanisms consisting of inauthentic facades, assumptions and ‘need to impress the other guy’ behaviours. We also hone our survival instincts. So, when we do get down to ‘looking into our past’ and identifying all that which contributed to our development and growth, we tend to see stuff distorted by our facades, beliefs and impress the-other-guy behaviours.
The way to grow one’s leadership through introspection is to do the following practices.
Ask yourself, ‘Who were the people who changed you?’
When I thought about this question, I could identify two individuals.
The first was a senior colleague at the start of my career as an Assistant Mechanical Engineer in the Indian Railways. The quality that my colleague brought into our relationship was one of sunny optimism and a natural instinct to mentor without a self-serving mindset.
The second was my boss in Voltas Ltd, where I was handling HVAC projects. The quality that he brought into our relationship was one of down to earth openness and transparency.
I realise today that what allowed me to grow through the above relationships was to try and inculcate a non-self-serving mindset as also authenticity through openness and transparency.
Ask yourself, ‘What kind of people did you gravitate towards?’
When I thought about this question, I could again identify two individuals.
In my tenure in the Indian Railways, I had two workshop foremen report to me. The first was a kind of a ‘yes man’ guy. He made me at once comfortable through his unquestioning loyalty; he would do exactly what I asked him to. This was a great relationship for maintaining status quo about situations and other stuff.
The second was a guy who was a ‘shop floor rebel’. He would usually give a counter viewpoint to most stuff I would suggest, and at times speak uncomfortable truths based on his own past experience and arguments. I would often ‘see’ his approach as unwillingness to accept my authority or trying to prove me wrong. I would feel upset.
This did not seem to be the kind of relationship I would be comfortable with or gravitate towards at that point in time. But I realise today that the person who allowed me to grow was this ‘rebel’ guy as he shattered my comfort zone and forced me to look at uncomfortable possibilities.
So how might you grow your leadership in today’s disruptive world? How might you foster such growth in your team members?
Gain mastery about how to succeed in a business environment that is constantly changing and being disrupted. Do this free module:
The reign of the dinosaurs had long ended. Snuffed out by an unlikely asteroid strike. A fifteen kilometers wide piece of Iridium laced rock had struck near present day Mexico, creating a ten times wide crater and unleashing lava, ashes, smoke and gigantic waves around the world.
Though the mass extinction event exterminated most of the flora and fauna on the planet, the continental drift and shifts continued unhampered for millions of years thereafter. The active planetary crust led to the Indian land mass smashing into the Eurasian land plate. The resulting crumpling and buckling at the collision point led to what came to be known as the Himalayas, a veritable abode of the Gods, the tallest mountain range in the world. An awesome creation standing testimony to Earth’s inner energies.
The permanent glaciers and ice formations led to glacial water bodies being formed. This is how the lake came into being. Situated at a height of 18,000 feet within the mighty Himalayan range, the lake acquired a mystical aura for all men and religions who passed by. The waters remained mostly frozen due to the height and the overwhelming presence of the Dongmar glacier which nestled it. Thirsty men and animals could not quench their thirst. And so it came to pass that a Guru was passing by when he too felt the mystical aura of the lake. He put his hand in the lake and Lo and behold! The water stopped freezing and became available for all to quench their thirst. This subduing of the Dongmar glacier’s frozen might by the Guru gave the lake the name of Gurudongmar. The second highest lake in the world with water that no longer froze.
**
The Man was indeed getting on in years.
As a child, he had been precocious and so had been nicknamed. ‘Buro’, an old man. He was now precisely that, replete with the mindset of the elderly. Over the years, he had acquired a liking for travelling and seeing the world. Age had dimmed the eyes somewhat, but not that inner passion to set forth and discover new places.
When the Man first heard about the wondrous lake of Gurudongmar, his heart urged him to travel. His brain though was more circumspect; it counselled, “My dear chap, are you crazy? You suffer from vertigo. What might happen when you go up all those torturously winding roads?” His friends too cautioned; they related dire tales of folks collapsing from lack of oxygen in a no-Man’s land with medical facilities hard to come by.
“But when a Man makes up his mind, he is not made for defeat. He can lose out, even destroyed, but not defeated.”
The tug of war between thoughts continued. But the die had been cast, the travel plans stood finalised. Came the day of travel and the Man set forth armed with some basic medications, a quiet resolve and some raucous misgivings. A flight, several car rides through mountainous roads into the Himalayan kingdom and the day of reckoning arrived.
“This was not the time to think of what was not there. It was the time to think of what one could do with what was there.”
Six in the morning and after nursing a cup of hot tea, the Man set forth for his rendezvous with the lake.
The slow wafting mist seemed in perfect harmony with the biting chill outside the moving car.
Passing through the last army check post, the vehicle climbed to the Kala Pathar, black stone viewpoint.
The fresh snow from the previous night lay in gay abandon. The white mist drifted upwards, a curtain rising up from the snow flakes and into the low hanging clouds.
As the old man stood watching the shifting views of the Kala Pathar blackness through the whiteness of the entwining gaps in the mist, it seemed like a ballet being performed. Was it the Universe sending him a message of hope?
“Every day is a new day. It is better to think it would be lucky. So when luck does come, one would be ready.”
The climb towards the lake had begun. It was not on roads cut out on the mountainsides which the man had been used to. It was on a rising terrain with no roads or markings to provide a direction. It was all down to the driver and the vehicle, their combined experience and strength to negotiate the path.
And then, all of a sudden, the heavens opened up. Sunbeams splayed and sliced all around. The climb had now reached above the level of the clouds and mist, a surreal moment. The old man nibbled on slivers of ginger; he had been advised so by some friends. A final swerving climb over barren rocks and the vehicle stopped on a mound from where the lake could be seen.
The stillness of the blue waters seemed to beckon. ‘Come, partake of my mysticism.’ The sun shone in all its splendour. Was it trying to discover that mystical aura with all those reflections? At the far end of the waters, part shrouded by rising mists, towered the snow laden glacier. As the old man stood transfixed by the wondrous surroundings, the tug of thoughts took over. Was this the place where divinity was born? What made the pristine barrenness so unworldly? Was it the glacier with its whiteness, or the water with its blueness?
A needle pricked the cheek. Then some more. Shaken out of his stupor, the man looked around. The hitherto gentle breeze had gained in strength. Crested by a whirlwind, tiny pebbles and dust particles chased each other in an ethereal dance. As the needles borne by the wind swayed through the onlookers, a soft murmur of protest could be heard. The old man slowly turned and moved back towards the waiting vehicle.
In Learning…….. Shakti Ghosal
Disclosure: The Old Man in the post is the author himself.
Acknowledgement : ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ by Ernest Hemingway
Sometime back, at a ‘Learning & Development’ elective course I was running at Indian Institute of Management Kashipur, one of the participants came to me for a discussion.
“ Sir, you have been emphasizing again and again about the need to have a lifelong Learning mindset. You have also been mentioning about the criticality of the L & D template to remain relevant during unpredictable and disruptive situations in terms of one’s problem solving ability and initiatives. Don’t you think these two aspects are contradictory to each other? “, he said.
This intrigued me. I asked, “How so? Could you clarify some more?”
The participant explained, “In my MBA program, we are learning concepts and tools which allow us to make sense of a business situation and solve problems. They have stood the test of time. But what you have been advocating is to seek completely new way of looking at things to solve problems in uncertain, fast changing environments. So whatever we are learning in our MBA Course would no longer work. To me, that is both scary and disheartening”.
“Well, It is YES and NO”, I replied. “ Your domain knowledge would always continue to play a role. It would be something like a searchlight which will show up a situation in a particular manner, highlighting certain aspects but hiding others. However, the L & D funnel which you would master in our course should allow you to do a Learning Needs analysis in terms of desired outcomes within a shifting environment and spot the needed L&D strategy. In other words, the superstructure that you would need to build on top of your domain expertise would be your new learning need tactics”.
***
We remain dis-satisfied and uncertain about how to face emerging situations and challenges. Be it on the professional front or may be in our personal life.
“Winning in a disruptive world” would mean succeeding in a business environment that is constantly changing and being disrupted. By new technologies, new competitors, or other factors that can disrupt traditional business models. So, what does one do to win?
The human mind loves continuity and certainty. These allow us to make sense of what we see as stuff we are familiar with. This is why we, our sense making brains, detest change and disruption. For the latter take us into uncertain and unfamiliar territory. We thus like to lull ourselves into believing we are living in a stable world, a world which we understand. We handle new and unfamiliar aspects by distorting and force fitting them into the mental model we hold of the world.
If you have seen the movie, Matrix. It is like living in a never changing, make believe world as the protagonist Neo was doing even though the real world was totally different with its own equations and challenges.
Neo’s Make Believe World…..
Neo’s real world….
So if we are to draw some lessons from the story of Neo in the matrix, ‘Winning in a disruptive world’ would require a mindset to embrace change and adapt quickly to new circumstances, as well as a focus on innovation, creativity, and agility.
I invite you to dwell on the following questions.
What are the questions we need to answer in the exploration ‘making sense’ stage of our Learning & Development cycle?
How do we align the outputs of the ‘making sense’ stage with our critical analysis of the emerging situation?
How do we carry out a decentering exercise between our domain expertise and the gaps thrown up by our critical analysis?
Sometime back, at a two-day Leadership Development program that I was running for Larsen and Toubro Ltd (a heavy engineering and multi-business conglomerate in India), a participant came to me during one of the breaks and said:
“All these techniques which we are learning seem to be of little value to me. I am faced with a different kind of problem. My boss has a strong controlling impulse. It is usually his way or the highway. It seems to me he believes this mindset is what has helped him reach his current position. So even if I try, there is never a win/win situation for my boss vis a vis me. What should I do?”
@ L & T Workshop
As I stood there listening to him, several thoughts came to mind. I asked him whether he was okay to delve into the issue some more.
We need to start exploring. We need to ask, ‘What is that which our ‘controlling boss’ would really like to control and change?’ And even more important, ‘What is that we ourselves are willing to let go?’ For ‘letting go’ could be the start of getting back in control.
Could we try and meet the ‘control freak’ half away down? For instance, certain relationships and one to one interactions could still be kept under our control. This realization itself can give us a sense of empowerment.
Could we ‘let go’ by avoiding reacting when we are being pushed to accept the controller’s point of view? Acknowledge what we have been told and then explain what we plan to do, why we have decided so and that we are willing to take full responsibility of the outcome.
The above exploration would allow us to create our action steps in the matter, thus elevating our own control of the situation.
‘Becoming a leader’ does not arise from knowing techniques or aping what we see great leaders do as they exercise leadership effectively in varied situations. Leadership and Performance is very little about what we know, it is almost all about how we see. ‘How we see’ comes from our ability to shift our perception through developing a contextual framework for our own selves.
“Language of Man here is defeated by the language of stone.” – Rabindranath Tagore
A visit to Puri in Odisha can never be complete without a trip to the Konark Sun temple. Having paid our homage to Lord Jagannath in that iconic Puri temple in the morning hours, we had the afternoon available for going to Konark.
A surprisingly good infrastructure exists in terms of road access from Puri as well as the upkeep of the Konark Sun temple complex. Getting down from the car in front of the long walkway, I had my first glimpse of the famous temple in the distance. The tiled pathway, overlooking gardens and the Konark temple information Centre (which incidentally has a wonderful audio-visual show about the temple and its origins) lead to the temple.
Standing there, as I looked at the ruined structure, my mind’s eye brought in the vision of an enormous chariot with its giant wheels and horses, a resplendent Sun seated as the charioteer, taking flight across the sky. The word Konark in Sanskrit is a sandhi, a combination of two words: Koṇa, which signifies a corner andArka which refers to the Hindu Sun God, Surya. Built out of stone seven and a half centuries back, the temple is an intricately carved, giant chariot of Surya, replete with ornaments, twenty-four giant wheels and pulled by seven horses. Throughout history, different cultures and lands have referred to ‘crossing the seven seas’ for a travel around the world. In India, it is called, ‘Saat Samundar Paar’. Did the seven-horse drawn chariot of the Sun God signify that it had the motive power to circumvent the world?
The temple external walls are sculpted with intricate and jewelry like miniature details. The carvings range from Hindu Gods and Goddesses, nymphlike apsaras, nature inspired motifs, day to day living and cultural activities of people ( Artha and Dharma) , animals, birds and sea creatures along with some depictions of the life and times of the king. Ernst Binfirld Havell, the English art historian and author, writes that the Konark temple is “one of the grandest examples of Indian sculpture extant“, adding that they express “as much fire and passion as the greatest European art” such as that found in Venice.
As I looked at the lengthening shadows of an evening sun, I envisioned the year 1756 AD when Vice Admiral Charles Watson of the East India Company navy accompanied by Robert Clive, was rushing to Calcutta to take back Fort William recently captured by the Bengal Nawab, Siraj Ud Daulah. Spotting the Black Pagoda, as the Konark Sun Temple was known then, along with the White Pagoda, the Jagannath temple near the then coastline ( which has since receded), Watson would surely have been relieved that their destination at the mouth of the Bay of Bengal was near.
History indicates that the Konark Sun temple was destroyed by invasions and natural calamities. Over time it ceased to attract the pious and the faithful. And like the other famous Hindu temple at Angkor Wat in present day Cambodia, the Sun temple too disappeared under dense forests for a long time prior to being rediscovered.
What remains most intriguing however is the highly erotic sculptures interspersed amongst the aforementioned carvings. As I stood there looking at the sculptures, it seemed that eroticism held sway over all else. The carved in stone figurines displayed sexual engagements and coitus in varying positions. I saw several of the chariot wheels depicting different sexual postures. What I found astonishing was the uninhibited depictions of polyandry, polygamy and lesbianism.
As I walked way, I was beset with several thought trains, trying to make sense of such brazen display of sexuality in a temple made to worship the Sun.
Was the displayed eroticism a deliberate attempt to increase sexual activity amongst the population in the 13th century? I had read somewhere that Buddhism, the prevailing religion in the land of Kalinga, preached abstinence which over the centuries, had led to a declining population. Had the King thus ordered the seductive carvings to stimulate carnal desires in his subjects?
Could it be that the depictions were a result of the sexual longings of the thousands of artisans tasked to work on the temple carvings for twelve long years, away from home and family?
Or were the erotic creations deliberate to strengthen the spiritual and divine belief of the devotees coming to the temple? Was the seemingly random display of eroticism, scattered amongst other displays of Gods, nature and public life motifs, a trigger for the observer to choose his/ her path between ‘dark’ attractions of sensuality and depravity vis a vis the brightness of spirituality?
Finally, could the differing displays be based on the age-old belief that each one of us would attain Moksha (release from the cycle of rebirth), that final desired state, only once we have fulfilled all our earthly duties and participated in the cycles of Dharma viz. spirituality, Artha viz. wealth and Kama viz. sexual pleasures?
Does the Konark Sun temple offer a perspective of our life as ‘lived in the moment’, cycling as we do through Dharma, Artha and Kama without the attachments of what is right or wrong, good or bad?
**
Postscript:
Back in Puri, I was watching the Sunrise next morning from the balcony of my hotel room.
Sitting there, as I soaked in the solitude, the morphing hues of the sunlight, the occasional bird chirps and their flights, I seemed to sense that all was well with my world.
As the sun rose in the sky, that solitary boat on the calm waters, seemed to be following the light. The sight brought to mind those immortal words of the Beatles:
I built me a castle With dragons and kings And I’d ride off with them As I stood by my window And looked out on those……
I walked leisurely on the pedestrian path.
Walkers and tourists milled around me, like me all moving at a leisurely pace. No one seemed to be in a hurry. A family led by Dad with the son on his shoulders passes me in the opposite direction. Just in front, a group of giggling young women were taking a barrage of selfies. It seemed one or the other was not satisfied with the result, be it one’s expression or the way the long cables and the end tower showed up in the photo. A quick joint review, some more giggles and someone in the group would volunteer to take a new selfie. I watched this microcosm of humanity flowing around me.
It was a beautiful sunny morning which had prompted us to venture out on a spot of sightseeing. I was on the pedestrian walkway of the legendary Brooklyn Bridge. Below me on both sides were the motorways with cars and SUVs moving in either direction between lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.
One had glorious views of the New York skyline as well as the leisurely flow of the East River below. To the right one could spot Governor’s Island and in the distance the Statue of Liberty. But as I stood looking around, my mind’s eye wandered off to another unforgettable vision involving the Brooklyn bridge. Powerful searchlights frantically flashing, sounds of helicopters, people jumping off the bridge into the waters below as a terrified News Reporter announces that all of us are going to die! One of the most emotional scenes from the blockbuster ‘I am Legend’ in which scientist Robert Neville (Will Smith) tries to evacuate his wife and daughter from pandemic ridden Manhattan, only to see them die as another helicopter crashes into theirs in the chaos. In the background, the Brooklyn Bridge is being blown up by military aircraft to contain the spread of the disease.
An iconic film showing visuals of an iconic bridge.
A hundred and forty years old structure, the Brooklyn Bridge was the world’s first and longest steel-wire suspension bridge at the time of its opening. What further distinguishes the bridge are the pair of gothic towers standing tall on either side, holding the steel wires in place. Legend has it that when the lead engineer and architect Washington Roebling, became sick and bedridden, his wife Emily, who knew nothing about engineering or architecture, took over the project. For the next ten years, till the project got done, she studied Engineering design and project management on her own and became the first person to cross the bridge upon completion. The following was said about Emily and the Brooklyn bridge:
“…an everlasting monument to the self-sacrificing devotion of a woman and of her capacity for that higher education from which she has been too long disbarred.”
A sad reminder of the fact that during Emily’s time, women were not allowed into Engineering institutions in the US.
Having walked the mile long stretch of the Bridge, we stepped onto the roads of Brooklyn. The neighbourhood in which Neil Diamond had grown up six decades back. With his baritone voice and wonderful songwriting capabilities, Neil Diamond has been my favourite pop and country musician and singer since youth. The singer reminisces about his childhood in that wonderful number, ‘Brooklyn Roads’:
‘Two floors above the butcher First door on the right Life filled to the brim As I stood by my window And I looked out of those Brooklyn Roads……’
Neil Diamond
The place we were walking through had the curious name of DUMBO. I was left wondering whether it had anything to do with Disney’s Dumbo the flying elephant. Or was it about some presumed dumb folks who might have resided there in the past?
‘And report cards I was always Afraid to show
Mama’d come to school And as I’d sit there softly crying Teacher’d say, “He’s just not trying He’s got a good head if he’d apply it” But you know yourself It’s always somewhere else’
I learnt that DUMBO was really the short nomenclature for ‘Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass’. Ironically, the neighbourhood today is home to a large number of technology start-up companies with the earlier warehouses on the riverfront converted into quaint eating houses and pubs overlooking the waters.
A bridge, a musician and a neighbourhood came together as legends for me that morning. They came with tales that were anecdotal, possibly unverifiable but nonetheless remain ingrained in my mind.
The water cascaded down the black granite sides, flowing as rivulets before disappearing into the small squarish void in the center. As I looked at the flowing water, juxtaposed feelings pulled in different directions. A feeling of melancholy and sadness about the flow of our lives which was perhaps never to return. But also a feeling of peace and acceptance, an emotional cleansing about all that was not right, maybe would never be right.
From the corner of my eyes, I could see the Oculus, that majestic steel ribbed white wings about to soar up into the skies. The reflections on the nearby glass towers seemed to be heralding a brighter, more vibrant tomorrow. A tomorrow in which peace and acceptance might run the winning lap.
I was at the site of the two World Trade Center towers in Manhattan which had gone down in the September eleventh attack more than two decades back. The black granite square pools with flowing, falling water had been built as memorials to that event. The Oculus served as the integrated transportation hub built for the Path and Subway trains.
Oculus Transportation hub at the World Trade Center complex
As I stood there in contemplation, the place was a tranquil and serene island in the midst of high energy Manhattan life. Did the flowing water suggest a life force embryo just below the surface? That somehow brought into our thoughts those who had perished in the attack, their names etched on the sides serving as the only reminder? Or was it that the simplicity of the slow cascades into the void which could never be filled (as per the memorial architect Michael Arad) allowed their ‘absence (from our living world) to be made visible’?
**
My memory went back to that day decades ago.
It was evening. I was in the office and had called a colleague to discuss an operational issue when he excitedly mentioned about a disaster in which an aircraft had crashed into one of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers in New York. We spoke about the incident for a couple of minutes and wondered about the low probability of an aircraft crashing into a building.
Returning home after office, I switched on the TV only to see the news headlines flashing all over, ‘AMERICA UNDER ATTACK!’ In the interim, a second aircraft also carrying passengers had slammed into a second WTC tower. Burning from the aviation fuel of the colliding aircrafts, both the towers collapsed. A third aircraft had crashed into Pentagon, the US Defence headquarters in Washington DC. Due to the time zone difference, what was evening for me was really morning hours on the US Eastern seaboard where the attacks were taking place. Close to three thousand people died in the attacks.
What seemed at that point in time a senseless act of violence led to a fundamental shift in the way US saw the world and how its foreign policy would come to be defined. Over the next two decades, US would engage in conflicts aimed at crushing terrorism in various parts of the globe. From demolishing Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan to the Iraq invasion and removal of Saddam Hussein to confronting the self-styled Islamic State in Syria.
I think of our world today. The actors have changed, the issues have shifted but the conflicts remain.
**
A couple of days back, I heard the tragic news of the Texas shooting in which a teenager Salvador Ramos armed with a gun entered an elementary school and senselessly shot and killed nineteen children and two adults. The carnage was a deadly reminder that even the world’s most powerful nation is unable to protect its children in their innocence.
My granddaughter has been going to a play school. She loves going there. For us, the school is a safe haven that nurtures. I agonise when I think of what might be passing through the minds of the parents and grandparents of those children whose lives were so brutally snuffed out even before they got the chance to blossom. Like me they too would have had complete faith in the safety and security of their child in school.
I muse. What is that which leads to some folks inflicting injury and death on others? I sense that this arises from an extreme psychologically aberrant mindset. A mindset which shifts into viciousness from its inability to accept ‘we versus they’ differences. So it was with Osama Bin Laden, so it is with Salvador Ramos.
An all-powerful state like the US does possess the weapons and technology to wage war against the enemy without.
But does it possess the conviction and resolve to change the mindset of the enemy within?
It is fascinating to see how technologies originate in response to unmet needs and then go on to transform and impact the world in unfathomable ways.
In this post, I look at two such technology initiatives and then explore how they might evolve and impact us.
The first technology initiative is Germ Pods.
It was early April 2020 and the Covid had just started making initial inroads into India with recorded infections hovering around a couple of thousand. The Government launched an innovative contact tracing and self-assessment mobile App called Aarogya Setu. It became the fastest growing App in the world with more than fifty million downloads in less than two weeks. The App gathered data from positive infection reports on a real time basis and was designed to identify infection hot spots and alert the user about the number of Covid infected people in the vicinity. Government ministries and Indian Airports made it mandatory for all people to register into the App to ensure low risk. Aarogya Setu was subsequently merged with the COWIN portal which was designed to register and update vaccination status at the individual level.
Countries around the world launched similar contact, movement and vaccination status tracing Apps during the pandemic.
As I muse, the import and the transformative potential of the tracing and status app becomes clear. The future would be about a real need to protect and secure the health of oneself and one’s own community. Increasingly, testing for various transmissible diseases, real time tracing and proximity alerts would form the basis of AI based algorithmic analysis to create hierarchies of health risk statuses. In spite of repeated assurances that individual privacy norms would be protected, geographic and digital clusters of such hierarchies would begin to emerge and, in more ways than one, would trample on individual’s privacy and behaviour. These clusters or “Germ pods” would over time become much more than mere health pods. They would morph as digital identifiers of micro-groups displaying differing economic, demographic and social behaviours. Can you imagine what such identifiers would do in the hands of marketing organisations, Government policy makers and politicians?
What thus started off as mere health protecting ‘Germ Pods’ might become somewhat sinister gatekeeping tools allowing individual entry based on constantly tweaked algorithms; they would actually become functionally invisible to folks who do not qualify. Groups would get shielded from public view as well as from one another, as they get into exclusive symbiotic relationships with marketing organisations and the Government. Overall transparency and accountability in a society relating to spreading of resources would take a hit, further exacerbating the ‘have’ and ‘have not’ divide.
My sense is that in the future, the above transformative technology might usher in a societal problem.
The second technology initiative is Personal Learning Clouds.
For some years, I have been engaged in training the next tier Leadership for a large business group in India. While the need for Leadership development programs is acutely felt in today’s VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) environment, the organisation also senses that traditional class room case study-based programs are no longer working to prepare tomorrow’s leaders for the challenges they would face. The training manager thus finds it hard to justify costs relating to such training programs. Last but not the least, the program does not really get ‘owned’ by the participants’ boss and other team members leading to the program learning not getting the needed support for effective application at the workplace.
The pandemic has fast paced the shift of training programs onto Zoom and other digital platforms. My client organisation has started seeing this as a great alternative, cutting down as it does requirements of logistics and physical infrastructure. The participants are able to virtually join in from their work desks or homes with a much shorter lead time.
As I think of the emerging trend, I visualize the birth of ‘Personal Learning Cloud (PLC)’ in today’s rapidly changing and constrained environment. The PLC would be flexible, allowing 24X7 accessibility to learning modules aligned to the need and behaviour of an individual and his team. Over time the PLC would emerge as a networked learning infrastructure. It would not only allow overall lowering of training costs but would facilitate the organisational leadership to offer ‘just in time’ targeted learning experiences for personnel according to his / her role and immediate organisational needs. Finally, the PLC ‘s real time accessibility, relevance and interactive capability would allow the learner’s immediate superior to become an active stakeholder in the process and provide support and accountability.
I sense that over time the PLC would make learning personalized as well as democratized (in terms of access) and would allow organisations a better gauge to measure return on investment and ensure work place application. Something essential to keep the ‘just in time’ PLC based learning relevant in a fast-changing world.
My hope is that in the future, the above is where significant growth and development opportunity would lie.
In learning………. Shakti Ghosal
Acknowledgement:
‘After the Pandemic: What happens next?’ – Document prepared by Ayca Guralp, Instititue of the Future, CA, US.
‘The future of Leadership Development’ – HBR March-April 2019
A New Beginning 