SBenegaL

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  • Cognitive Dissonance

    In the last blog, we attempted understanding Attitude using the ABC model. In today’s blog we take a situation and understand the underlying issue and how it is handles in real life.


    Assume you are a salesperson who strictly believes that selling damaged goods to customers is an unethical behavior. For the day, you have been posted to the TV section of the show room; you know that a specific model (the last in its model currently available) of TV is damaged. A customer approaches you and asks for the same model and to be delivered immediately. How would you react?


    There are many responses you could take to a situation like this, some of these are: you might refuse to sell the TV, or you could rationalize saying that the defects in the TV are those that wouldn’t harm the customer who doesn’t know about it and move ahead to sell it or any such approach. Invariably in any stance the behavior that you have adopted creates some form of “dissonance” or “discomfort” that is the result of a conflict between the “attitude” and “behavior”.


    Cognitive Dissonance is a state of tension that is produced when an individual experiences conflict between attitude and behavior. It originates from our attempt to be consistent in everything that we believe in and do. We prefer a consistency between our attitude and behavior.


    As manager, one would need to understand cognitive dissonance since the employees who work with them and find themselves in situations in which their attitudes conflict their behavior. If there is a sudden shift in the behavior of an employee, might possibly be due to the attempt to reduce dissonance. In extreme cases it could also lead to one quitting the job.

  • Kannada Naadina kathe – Punyakotiya Kate

    People of Karnataka are generally accommodating and peace-loving, was wondering why this might have been the case and eventually seem to have made a connection. Do look at the following video.
    For those who haven’t got the jist of the video, here is a short summary:
    “A cow on its way returning home is stopped by a tiger. It negotiates its exit with the promise that it would return to be eaten by the tiger  – once it feeds its calf. It indeed does as promised. The tiger feels guilty of having though of killing such a truthful being and spares the cow.”
    This song was one which lingered pretty early in my ears – made part of the curriculum under the syllabus recommended by the Karnataka State. I think this was part of the syllabus in 3rd Standard or so… and had been so for over 25 years I guess!
    The message of belief in truth, being non-violent, doing your duty with atmost faith etc are all embedded in it.

  • Education – We inherently know what to learn!

    I found this floating in the Facebook world and this sparked off a thought! – Could we make education really personal. I guess there are multiple dimensions of this, and it would be worth exploring these in a series.
    Albert Einstein possibly put this statement out of his own experience! Especially his early childhood when he was considered a good for nothing kid! But today we consider him as one of the many geniuses who walked on the planet.
    As humans, we all possess an inherent urge to “learn something”. This “something” could range from the standard courses taught in college to just what we find around – could be art or just a simple skill too.
    Most likely, we donot know the source of this inspiration that comes to us – exciting us about the “thing” we intend to learn… The question then is – “If we inherently know what excites us to learn a specific thing, why shouldn’t we think of personalizing the learning process?” 
    Recognizing that individuals are all different, like different things, learn different things at different paces should be the bedrock on which we should develop our learning systems. Education though broad-based, should be flexible to give the necessary space for students. 
    An interesting perspective it to allow the diversity itself to be a guiding factor in the process of educating oneself. Constraining and creating a rigid mindset could be detrimental to the education’s cause of broadening one’s horizon.

  • Looking at an enterepeneur as a farmer! – An interpreation of entreprenurship

    Entrepreneurship is really a hot topic of discussion. There are various forums that discuss about it. I tried super-simplifying this by equating it to farming! But in reality there are many analogies that we could think of when this comparison of start-ups as plants…
    Beginning with this blog, I attempt to try drawing parallels between plants/farming/ etc and the world of entrepreneurship.

  • Looking at an entrepreneur as a farmer!

    Many aspire to be entrepreneurs and start firms that eventually become part of their “identity”, i.e. an entrepreneur acts as if there is no distinction between the firm and the individual running the firm. You might have possibly guess where I am heading to in this blog…So just hang on…
    While an entrepreneur is the one who grows and manages the firm/enterprise, it is very important for an entrepreneur to be able to distinguish oneself from the firm. 
    As an analogy, we could look at the entrepreneur as a farmer who passionately tills the soil, sows the seed, takes sufficient care to see the crop grow and finally harvests the crop. An interesting question to ask here – what would happen if the farmer begins to think that the crop he grown and (s)he is one? Yes, you may not be willing to harvest what you have grown!
    A sense of attachment to the firm, with the ability to detachment is a key to being able to act in the best interest and with the right spirit. It is the attachment, which is the passion aspect of an entrepreneur, helps put in all the energy and enthusiasm one holds towards the hopeful dream into action; but the detachment enables one takes an arms length view of the venture at hand and decide with potentially the best interest what is to be done.
    The key, thus is really to look at the process of venture creation and growth with a “farmers” mindset than being the crop itself!!! What say?
    There are interesting extensions of this attempt of being able to equate the firm one sets up to plants; I would love to explore this aspect over the next few blogs. Stay tuned is your are interested in thinking about this.

  • GOD and the notion of Uncertainty…

    The nothing of GOD is extremely intriguing. All of us have different notions of the Generator, Observer and Destroyers (GOD) based on our own experiences. Yes I said Experiences – read on to see why I make this claim. 
    One of the comments on my last blog on the trinity of Hindu Mythology and the possible purpose behind the design mentioned – 
    “Wonderful Article 🙂
    Reading this, I could not help myself but think
    these gods are man-made; they represent what our ancestors thought a
    wise idea worth sharing. However, the mystery is not solved yet. I just
    wanted to point out, I personally feel there is nothing divine and
    supernatural about gods as they have been portrayed for millenia!”     
    – Anonymous
    The comment got me thinking about why the notion of divinity and supernatural ability might have been attributed to GODs. I think I possibly got the answer! or may be not! However this is definitely an interesting thought – worth sharing. 

    Scientific Thinking which found its feet has been built on the concept of reasoning. The ability to question and associate a cause and affect relationship has definitely served the human society well. The near exponential growth in the number of invention, and its commercialization that has quickened the pace of economic growth and gotten more CERTAINTY into our lives. 
    Extending this, the possible origin of the notion of God, then has to be on the other extreme – when one feels or experiences UNCERTAINTY. These two observations sort of reinforce my interpretation.
    1. The first one is definitely from my own personal experience of facing uncertainty which is so much a part of the entreprenuerial journey.
    2. The existence of a high belief rate in God in the lower economic strata of society!
     Let me try explain this observation a bit elaborately:
    As an entrepreneur and you will realize the complexity of the issues that (s)he faces from various directions and the limited cognitive ability wouldn’t be completely enough to handle this. Even effectuation strategy, which through its principles provides a very very effective way to handle this entrepreneurial uncertainty, acknowledges the role of surprises (Lemonade Principle). In handling such a high uncertain situation where the distrution is unknown and hence a risk cannot be associated requires one to be positive and optimistic all through – and also believe in the strength of miracles. Miracles that just emerge when you least expect it – while some could attribute it to luck, it could also be attributed to the ability of God to influence things in one’s favor. An extension of the above claim where this relation of uncertainly in business and a religious bent of mind can be seen in most businessmen being devout to a specific deity.
    I also extend this uncertainty to the economically weaker sections of the society, where people have no idea where their next day’s meal would come from! The physical strength, minimum skill and the effort of these people is all that they would need to rely on in being able to sustain themselves on a day to day basis. This is possibly one of the reasons why this section of the society is highly susceptible to religious conversions – when there is a slightly better quality of life could be expected!
    PS: The above is just a thought that I put across and would appreciate your  feedback on the same.

  • “Remote Culture” – Get up and change it…



    A short while after I woke up today morning I checked my facebook page for some inspirational quote, and lo! I found this.
    I have been thinking of the declining willingness in today’s generation to bend their back! and feel this quote kind of helps me put these thoughts together. 

    All through my childhood, growing up as the only child to my parents it seems to me that my parents should have logically pampered me. I thanks them today for the emphasis they put on hardwork and patience. I increasingly find this emphasis on hard-work becoming a rarity thesedays. 
    Most of the students I interact with have grown up in with a lot more attention from their parents (unlike the old Indian kids where the parental attention was divided between almost half a dozen kids!). The higher attention typically translates to parental attempts in ensuring the kid almost everything (s)he wants! Beginning to rely completely on the “remote culture” as I call it. An extremely easy way to get things done – almost at the click of a button!

    While this parental attention is great, the repercussions begin impacting nearly a decade and half later, when they are either doing their graduation or are in their work environments. The certainty that was so much a part of the growth years, all of a sudden seems to disappear and the harder realities of life which require one to stretch and get the better of oneself takes over. 

    The reactions of the individual in these situations is to either accept the new norm and retain the current pace of activity, or to try and push and may be eventually give up. The major issue is when one stops experimenting and exploring and eventually morphing to be ready for the challenges of everyday life.

    If there is someone who can change what we want to change it is us alone.

  • Lord Ganesha – Deepawali’13 sketch

    The long Deepawali holidays gave me some time to sketch a Ganesha. Feeling happy having done it after more than 5 years! Here is a low resolution scanned image of the same:

  • Know-how: Realize its a team game, not an individual show anyways!

    It is never a one man show! Just that the team effort is evident in some, while in others it gets hidden or camouflaged.

    Most tasks that we do, is repetitive! We rarely find exploratory problems – i.e. problems which requires one to test various scenarios out, not as a survey or an assumption analysis, but actually exploring to see if something works.  The first time one starts of on any activity, the learning curve is exponential, almost everything is uncertain, one never knows what to expect next!

    This first exploratory learning experience is very crucial to build on… its possible that many brave-hearts who attempted this exploration could resist or resign or repent as a response to multitude of challenges that the situation presented. Team members plays a crucial role in these situations; while the experience could  demotivate the individual, the team members have to play a supporting role – assist and/or appreciate the brave-heart’s effort. Reinforcing confidence is important, else the fear of loosing the brave-heart is very real!

    The second attempt could build on the learning of the first attempt and it would benefit if the brave-heart guides the next volunteer attempting the task. Failing the guidance, the lessons could repeat and is not beneficial overall. If the follower attempting it, is innovative enough, possesses presence of mind and is creative enough and comes in with a knowledge of various technologies, it is would definitely create a leapfrog improvement and not really be a snail-paced progress!

    It is essential to build the team and constantly communicate what is learnt to really be able to leapfrog.

    To help get the abstract into a concrete, let me illustrate using an experience of mine (interested guys read on further… others could skip this):
    We recently organized a cultural event after a gap of 5 years, I still recollect the very first attempt when there was chaos with participants coming in with their request of songs and getting them in CDs (to be played on a music player! – yes not a lap-top) and confusing the person in-charge of the tasks of playing the song to the right dance/drama! The program did go on well, but there were a lot of hic-ups and the person who had volunteered for the task still to this day feel bad about not handling this well.

    Truth be told, it takes great courage for someone to volunteer in an uncertain situation, and the results shouldn’t be taken extremely personal. This was the bed-rock on which I was allowed to try my hand out this year.

    A crucial learning was to prempt the possibility of confusion, but getting all the songs in place, however given the voluntary nature and the spontenity that could arise, it would be difficult to program through the entire event… I alternatively, my understading of technology to be able to reduce the effort and at the same time be able to manage the spontenity that the event gets along with it.

    At the event, I had to only wait for the right indication from the that was anchoring, and leverage surprises taking note of the time gaps/durations to prepare for uncertainties even beyond the plan. The saving grace was that, you can still visualize some amount of surprises and prepare for them.

  • God – Beyond the apparant…

    There are debates all over that try to talk about GOD – where there exists a single GOD, or is there a plurality…
    I don’t take any stance here, but thought this interesting thought on GOD is worth a note…
    Most of us would have heard the acronym for GOD – Generator, Observer, Destroyer, and in the Hindu Mythology, we call these roles performed as being performed by Tridev – Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. Brahma takes the role of the Creator; Vishnu that of the Manager of happening of life, and Shiva the Destroyer who closes life as such!
    These gods are generally accompanied by their consorts – Saraswthy, Lakshmi and Parvathy respectively. Saraswathi is considered the Goddess of Knowledge, Lakshmi the Goddess of Wealth, and Parvathy the Goddess of Power. 
    Combining the Gods with their consorts, we have Brahma who is married to Sarawathy, Lakshmi who is the wife of Vishnu and Parvathy who is with Shiva. If we are to abstract this a bit – would could take the action performed and the corresponding representations we have- Brahma the creator is with Saraswathy who represents knowledge – the underlying implication being that – “to create something new, you got to possess the knowledge. Similarly,for one to sustain and manage an existing set up, finance place a primarily role and that seems to be logic highlighted in Vishnu-Lakshmi as a pair.Also, to get to close aspects or issue that have grown beyond the point of control, use of power become mandatory – possibly represented by the pairing of Shiva and Parvathy.
    Why have these three Gods: Why not have them all in one?
    It is but usual for one to ask, cant all these be handled by a single GOD? Why have three or them and what advantage would it actually get to the table? 
    Very often we find that people who create things fall in love with their creation, they would like tobe so closely associated with their creation that they would no more realize the direction in which the creation is proceeding…it is best done with by someone else who get in an expertise on taking care of things and has the decision of taking the creation in the right direction. In the process of creation, its is always possible that the manager could be so enticed into maintaining that he/she could possibly not realize that the creation has outlived the utility.
    Where one’s responsibility ends the other begins. This however is not to state that they don’t discuss or realize that at places there is a need to collaborate. 
    In fact, Shiva who generally comes in the phase of destruction is also considered an expert on knowledge and learning – from what gets closed or destroyed, it is important to realize that learning are crucial and an means to improve the next cycle…So in some form, even Shiva is seen as an epitome of knowledge accrued over ages and generations.
    Why do the pictures generally show them meditating?

    The tasks these GODs do is very sensitive, if not delicate; and it is important to create a balance between action and involvement at the mental and physical level.  Less said the better – these are extremely high pressure roles!.
    Meditation enable self-reflection, which allows these high pressure jobs be analyzed in a perspective that disassociate the problem from the individual and focus on solving the problem and lesser of blaming it on the individual.