Intellectual Weak Sauce

Not infrequently, we run into arguments that can be stretched to a point where persistence / loudness decides the winner, not the rationale.

As a country with both claims as well as aspirations of greatness, it is important for us to be able to spot weak logic and overcome it to focus on results. Here is how I spot them.

• Recommendations of inaction or delay. e.g., 
• "let's wait for some more time, I'm sure X is doing something about it", 
• "this is not the solution, let's find an alternative", 
• "we need all the facts, let's get them first", etc.

The dead giveaway here is that a timeline or specific replacement action is missing. Often, the action is also someone else's responsibility (who is not present there) or better still, a collective responsibility!

• Role-playing someone else (esp., the judiciary or police)
• "we need proof.. where is the proof?"

• Shifting the responsibility
• "Let someone take the lead, I'll support",
• "It's not our job, let's mind our business", etc.

• And finally, the cost of action / benefit of action pseudo arguments
• "We can't change everybody" (huge effort / impossible),
• "This whole system is corrupt, there is no use of even trying", etc.

These actually sound reasonable since they are valid in certain other circumstances. They assuage any guilt feelings and avoid immediate unpleasantness. This is why they're so difficult to spot as well as overcome.

This is a follow up on what I wrote a few days ago - on the wrong kind of tolerance.

The post evoked a lot of strong responses. Mostly along the above lines.

The wrong kind of tolerance

This is about the recent violence we've witnessed in the context of the Jat Reservation Agitation in Haryana. Clearly a lot of the vandalism, looting, arson and raping was done by people and for reasons that have nothing to do with Reservation for Jats.

Who are these perpetrators?

Are they not someone's sons, brothers, fathers, husbands and neighbors? If they are, then how are they able to get away with such behavior? When they return to their homes and villages, doesn't anyone know or censure what they did?

That brings me to the topic of silence. Of tolerance of the wrong kind. 

For far too long, we've tolerated and rationalized bad behaviors from people too close to us. It's only youthful energy. How could we complain about our neighbors or their sons when the rest of their family are close friends? What if they come and attack our own family? We should mind our own business!

The reasons are many. As we shake (or nod) our heads indulgently, these perpetrators grew up among us, continued in their evil ways and have now come to shape the brand of Haryana.

This is a deep-rooted malaise.

It cannot be rooted out by mere police action, even though such action is required as a corrective measure. If we are to prevent recurrence at some time, we need to re-examine our values and systems that have shaped the lives of the perpetrators as well as entire societies that have allowed them to go this far. We need to make fundamental adjustments in aspects of our social fabric. We need to learn to consciously and actively discourage anti-social behaviors.

Meanwhile, there is a price to pay. Everybody pays it, not just the perpetrators. This is the price of the wrong kind of tolerance/indulgence. The price of being silent - either out of fear or indulgence.

Some people will move out. Some will remember their scars for life and let those scars influence their decisions. There is a "Global Investor's Summit - for Haryana" being planned in a few weeks. How many investors will reconsider their plans for Haryana?

Haryana will pay for what its sons did. 

It is unfortunate that ordinary Haryanvis should pay, but it is the only long-term sustainable way to mobilize the society to apply long-term corrections.

Haryana has been close to my heart for many reasons. Yet, today I have decided to withdraw from all things Haryana. It is likely to hurt me more than Haryana - at least in the short term. But I'm not going to stand by and watch silently. I'm not going to rationalize away the sufferings of the victims - they're not my relatives or friends; but they're fellow human beings. I'm not an activist, but I'm not going to let that stop me from expressing my distress in a material way.

Will you join me? Will you express your intolerance of this in a material way (not mere words)?

How many more shops should be looted and burned before you will be moved to act? How many more daughters and sisters should be raped before your heart will move sufficiently for you to express more than mere moral support?

IoT meets Advertising meets OTT

It is the year 2016. Yes, it is near future.

Your toilet seat is a thing on the Internet!

It comes with "enhanced visual discovery of new products". That's right. It inserts ads on to your phone as you're reading, well... in the morning.

Twitter introduces an enhanced advertising version of tweet tags that won't cut into your 140 chars of awesomeness. Your toilet seat uses this to now intercept your tweets with strategically placed "tweeted from the awesome ItsaThing toilet seat" tag. At first you try to opt-out, but the advertising lobby is clever. You give up.

After a few friends' toilet seats auto-retweet, you begin to like it too.

You make new friends through retweeted conversations from the toilet seat.

A Telco launches a ZeroTariff plan for a competing ItsaDifferentThing toilet seat - and starts silently blocking all other seats. You choose to buy those ItsaDifferentThing toilet seats. Out of your own free will, of course.

Welcome to 2016.

Freedom, Independence, Education and Literacy

In a free world, we are all free to be just the kind of idiots (I mean "perfect people", of course) we like to be.

Not your definition of perfection or hers. To each of us, just our individual, personal and intensely "right" perspective of perfection. I mean we each are free to be the perfect idiots of our choice. Free to even scorn the other perfect-but-different idiots.

Provided, we are independent enough to be really free.

As in, for example, my NGO (no, I don't really have an NGO) needs funds from this particular source, but "hey, we haven't sold our souls, you know... we are being pragmatic, looking at the larger picture, being apolitical, neutral.. " and so forth.

Now that (if) we are independent, what could we do with our freedom?

I know! We could eat up as much as we can at the buffet table, and for good measure throw away the rest (tragedy of the commons). But hey, we are free, right?

However, if we were educated (not to be confused with being literate), we would have a bit of enlightened self-interest. Not just self-interest, but enlightened (worth the emphasis) self-interest.

On that happy note, I propose that we rename all our "Education Departments" as "Literacy Departments".

I mean, who are we fooling? Though I know a few enlightened people trying to guide syllabi towards education, we are indeed chasing metrics and reaping the... benefits. The metrics are biased towards literacy. Period.

Pitfalls in chasing success

We've all read about "sustainable growth". Many Management Pundits have warned us (yes, on HBR too) quite often that chasing quarterly results exclusively could lead to unpleasant things.

Chasing a metric is quite tempting. Choosing a metric to chase is far more difficult. Often, we choose and chase only those metrics that are easy to measure / understand.

This afflicts nearly everyone. Project Managers, Consultants, Sales Persons, CEOs, Governments, Non-Profits, ... the list goes on.

How many new customers? How many sales dollars?

How many Conference Speaker assignments? How many followers?

How many members? What funds collected so far?

The problem is that they actually look like the right metrics to chase. May be they are, for some.

It might be worthwhile to step back and ask: "What exactly are we trying to achieve?" and resist answering in the same terms as the metrics above. Validate that answer. Then chase that vision or goal... not the metrics.

Let the metrics be an indicator of how you are progressing towards the goal. Not become the goal by themselves.

I should perhaps give some examples. But I wonder whether "being clear" is what I want to do. Perhaps I should just let you find your path.

Innovation is dangerous

Yes, innovation is sexy, but only after it succeeds and gains some popularity.

Until then it is not just hard, it can be downright dangerous to your morale.

It is easy to mistake innovation to be merely coming up with a new idea, new design or a new way of doing something. Yes it is the starting point, but for it to succeed, the idea/design should be implemented and shown to be delivering the promised results. Often, it is a proposition fraught with unforeseen complexities and stiff resistance that tests your mettle.

Surely there are design and implementation complexities to be overcome. The bigger the problem you are trying to solve, the longer it takes (usually) and the harder you've to work.

Then there are the status-quo-ists and doubting thomases aplenty. They question your ability to deliver and the veracity of the idea. Why not simply let things be? Where is the need to change? How do we know that the result will be better?  If all else fails they can always fall back on this popular argument (familiar to UID proponents & opponents as well):

"Has any one else in the world done it before? If it were such a good idea, obviously someone else would've done it. It wasn't. Ergo, it is a bad idea!"

The situation is indeed loaded in favour of the critics. Predictions of doom and gloom are often self-fulfilling. They demotivate the innovators, erect barriers through misguided followers and in general make the innovators' life tougher than it already is. Either the innovators give up; or redirect energy from solving problems to countering the critics. Either way the critics win often enough - for the environment to foster more critics than innovators.

Tough as it is, when you do reach the goal, the rewards are most satisfying. This applies to entrepreneurship too. The similarities are many, though the two are not entirely the same.

The question for the innovators therefore is:

Do you have sufficient self-belief, resolve and inner-strength to persist against all odds and reach the exalted state of success and sexiness?

Then there is a challenge for all us:

How can we turn the environment around, build a culture that forgives failures and encourages the innovators and positivists during their work -- not just after?

No doubt, there is a need for checks and balances. Just that it is far too skewed against our good at this time. It is time we restored a semblance of balance in favour of progress.

Enlightened self-interest

... drives voluntary, sustainable and scalable compliance. 

The alternative, more often practised is a framework of policies, rules, regulations and enforcement. In addition incentives, subsidies, etc., are often included in the policies - creating a carrot and stick combination.

This is considered a time-tested way to drive desirable behaviour. Governments and the private sector, both embrace this philosophy.

The problem is that it is neither sustainable nor scalable. The larger your target audience, the greater your carrot-budget must be; and the greater your enforcement effort too. People openly flout the policies because they can get away with it when there is not enough enforcement. Incentive systems almost never enough and are routinely subject to fraud & gaming behaviours.

Stronger laws, more enforcement and more incentives have their limited role - but to depend only upon them is foolhardy.

The better route, that of driving sustainable change through creating enlightened self-interest is too easily dismissed and far more difficult to embrace mainly because it takes far too long to implement and see the results. This is a big deterrent when the leaders are under pressure to produce quick results and win brownie points.

Enlightened self-interest comes from education (not just literacy or employability), analytical ability and a good values.

Of these, the value system is the most difficult to explain well. Stories of "good vs evil" often drawn our mythology and religion hardly inspire the television and computer-gaming generation even in primary school. Abundant exposure to "real life" flouting of norms (yes, most parents and teachers are guilty) builds early cynicism and dismissive attitudes in children. The essential elements of - and case studies from - the management of commons serve this purpose better, but are hardly ever taught. It is a lot of hard work to make people (and children) understand and appreciate some things; far easier, to lay down the rules and demand unquestioned obedience.

This has been practised for generations now that even our teachers will need to dig deep into their reserves to overcome deep-rooted cultural blind spots and find their own reasoning skills.

The adults will need to find their own way out of it - through wide-spread discourse and personal conviction. Not easy, but the only sustainable way.