Finding Blue Oceans

Today I had lunch with a dashing young Can-Indian IT entrepreneur.  He picked my colleague and me up in his white Range Rover and talked about upgrading to a Karma Fisker to leave less of a carbon footprint and leave more in his pocketbook from the gas savings.  We talked business over lunch and planned tech projects to stabilize our company's manage and store IT services.  I anxiously peeked into my phone to find out if we had a response to a quote for a contract renewal I was expecting, apologizing for my rudeness and stating the reason for my anxiety.  Alex understood.  He talked about lost bids to cut throat margins, diminishing returns on existing contracts and companies waiting to snatch away his flagship customers.  I felt oddly comforted to hear him echo my sentiments.  This was the worst of times.  However, we both talked about moving out of bloody waters where we compete with sharks in gory price wars and finding blue oceans.  I reflected on that age old adage of adversity being the mother of invention and how with every setback has emerged the need to innovate.  So at our little firm we have moved from in-person training to online, from translation to transcription and trans-creation (creating ad copy from Enlish into Spanglish, for eg). Soon we  may launch our online language schools offering tutoring in all languages through our five thousand strong language professionals.  But these will bring in revenues in the future.  What about now?  To which the fortune cookie at the end of the meal said "hope is the stimulant of life".  Also smart companies like Qualcomm and IBM invested in new product and leadership development, and customer centric programs through their most difficult times rather than cut back.  When the going got better, they reaped in spades.  Sigh - we just need to stick with the program and keep looking for those blue oceans.  Oh through all the commiserating I also knew that in facing the pitfalls that I do every day, I can legimately call myself an entrepreneur now.  

Guilty pleasures

I thought that the romance in my mundane life was over when suddenly I stumbled upon this mushy Hindi soap that I can’t seem to get enough of. YouTube be cursed, since I can watch the episodes on it over and over and vicariously experience its thrills. It’s not all bad news. Surely the spring in my step and the smile on my face as I listen to its evocative musical score, set to urdu poetry, is worth something? Other than a short phase, ten years ago, when I drove around town with my rooftop open listening to A.R. Rahman’s songs, rivalling my young Sri Lankan compatriots, I don’t remember being so enthralled over the portrayal of romantic love, where the protagonists pine and unite only to be ripped apart again. Needless to say, I am mystified by this soap’s profound impact on my state of being. I get transported to an era when life was simple and a look meant everything. Is this just a heaping dose of nostalgia with memories of juvenile crushes on boys whose names I did not even know and unrequited longing for life as portrayed in movies where the girl was wooed and courted? Or is it something much more primordial, as has been unleashed by “Fifty Shades of Grey”, whose 100 million strong readership has unabashedly admitted to their craving for the romantic and erotic? Whatever it is I will be glad when this phase is over so I can once again retreat into the comfort of familiar and (pseudo) intellectual pursuits. On that note – here’s a link to something unabashedly romantic for you… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96GVlVD_m78

Market values and moral values

Today I heard this great interview of Harvard Professor Michael Sandel where he explained how market values are replacing moral values in those parts of our lives we considered sacred. In other words, we are moving from being market economies to market societies. How so? In extreme cases, our societies outsource wars to mercenaries, we have companies that provide line standers for lobbyists who do not want to line up to get airtime before congressional committees and we have people who use body tattoos to advertise products and make a quick buck of it. The darker side is in the illegal organ trade or in people paying for prison cell upgrades (where prisons are privately run – really!). The process is insidious and is slowly eroding all our domains. We do not think twice about the commodification of water for example, a natural resource we thought should be readily available to all. Our wars started with one such natural resource oil. The next era of wars would be over water. In short, there were parts of our lives which we did not reduce to dollars and cents. It turns out now that nothing is so sacred. In my business which involves providing language services we experience the pressure of markets every day. We speak about quality and yet we know that price trumps everything, even for governments that purchase service. This is a disheartening trend especially in the delivery of human services. This is not to say we should not be efficient. We should be and lower our costs using technology as much as we are able. However, we need to stand for some breakthrough values such as building local community capacity and providing employment within our communities, measuring a service’s value based on the human rights it protects not the dollars it costs and looking at social impact in the long term of all the decisions we make for short term gains. Can we all make a decision today to stand for something other than market value? Harvard professor on American society: Everything is up for sale | The Raw Story www.rawstory.com Harvard University professor Michael Sandel on Monday lamented that almost every aspect of life in the United

Daughters and Rituals

As daughters grow older and move away they become adults whom you have to get reacquainted with.  Their tastes in music evolve, their friends change, they have travelled and have developed likes and values you did not see in them.  When they visit it is for a short while, a week or two maybe.  A few years ago when things got a little awkward between my daughter and me, we developed rituals.  Things we would do together when she visited.  Now we start her visit with a trip to the grocery store to buy healthy foods we both enjoy together.  I love to surprise her with new and tasty salads and healthy snacks.  This trip I introduced her to quinoa, a new brand of veggie burger and a delicious new salad.  We do early morning treks when we ask each other questions and get caught up with each others lives.  We always end up at Tim Hortons for coffee and Timbits.  There is always one trip to our favorite Indian Chinese restaurant as a family.   I drive her downtown to her friend Laura's for a night out and pick her up the next morning.  I do it because I love the time we spend together during those drives, even though she does most of the driving around town.  We shop at Joe's and Yorkdale, watch Survivor, the Biggest Loser or sitcoms.   She likes to visit the temple once and eat the prasadam.   We order her favorite whole wheat crust broccoli pizza from Pizza Pizza one evening and go out another for beer and snacks at a pub.  If time permits she and I  go to King West and look at consignment and antique shops for quaint stuff.  There is usually one community or social event where she meets up with aunties and uncles she grew up knowing.  Other than that she plays me her favourite music,  gives me clothes that she does not plan to use anymore and gives me advise on how to tackle work problems.  I offer my thoughts on her aspirations.  We have fallen into such a pattern that if i try to introduce something new, she will weigh in on whether or not it should be part of our rotation.   These rituals enable us to just be, rather than think about how to make "quality time".  I help her with her final packing, sending her off with nuts and cheeses she likes and eagerly await her next visit.  

Feeling Inspired

Today I needed some inspiration. It started out as one of those days when I found myself spinning my wheels, faced with threats to my organisation’s financial health as a result of some contract changes. I then thought about my uncle and the iconic business he set up and grew over 25 years (while he was at its helm) to be a forerunner for tutorial colleges in India. Sadly, I had news from home recently that the business he had set up had been taken over by creditors. These are different times. Technology has changed the terms of engagement and outcomes of business. Most are only as good as their operational efficiencies and it is hard to tell if this outcome could have been avoided with him still running it. However, it gave me a moment of pause to ponder over the achievements of an extraordinary man who was a visionary and micromanager all rolled into one. Starting out as a cartoonist, he started his business at age 50 and over the next 40 years it went on to represent the tutorial college for entrance into the elite schools of India. Aptly named Brilliant Tutorials with a logo that sported the hat worn at graduation, it sold hope to hundreds of thousands of young folks, where only a small fraction actually made it to the schools but the rest came out with confidence, knowledge and problem solving skills that they would use throughout their lives. I took the course, while briefly flirting with the idea of an engineering degree! In any event, Periappa (or Dad’s brother) was and will always remain my role model. He coined all the ad copy for his relentless ads plastered all over India’s top newspapers and hand- picked the professors who would create curricula and exams and teach all the courses. Many retired professors thought this a worthy avocation and so it was a win-win all around. During his tenure at the business he faced competition from copycats, since imitation is the best form of flattery, and pressure to constantly innovate. It was the beginning of the computer era and hence of revoluntionary change. He started the first computer skills training schools in India. I recalled today that he never stopped learning, trying and innovating well into his seventies. He demonstrated tenacity in his pursuit of excellence and never shied away from a challenge. Inspired by his memory, I put on my best face and set out today . Fortunately there was much to be optimistic about as it day ended and it may have had a lot to do with how I approached it.

Mothers and the law

Recently, I spent a beautiful Saturday bailing out an acquaintance who was charged. Since I choose not to spend my time in filthy jail cells interviewing society's unfortunate I was not there as his lawyer but as a supporter and potential surety.  The court house was abuzz with a close community of cops, crowns, counsel ( private bar and legal aid) and they all spoke a unique language peppered with words like "remand", "conditions", "first apperance" etc.  It took me a while to figure out the orchestrated fashion in which everything ran, albeit too slowly. While I got lulled into boredom by the tediousness of the process, I was struck by the number of mothers who were there, having perhaps spent a sleepless night following that initial phone call with tidings of the arrest.  What if they had heard their child had shot and killed several people as in the case of the Colarado shooter? The cold and ponderous machinery of the State which had entered their living room in that moment was now here to stay for a while.  They had brought into this world someone  who had taken other lives.  Had they actually missed the writing on the wall ?  Were they blindsided?  Or both?  Or were their kids those true "originals" who have an alternate perception of reality and are just incapable of compliance.  On that day in bail court, the predominant emotions expressed by the moms were disbelief, shame, self blame and guilt.  In several of those cases the blunt instrument of the law had been invoked for relatively "minor offences" bringing the  mother child relationship to a point of no return heralding a wake up or a break up call.  Trust had to be earned again and the terms of engagement between mother and child renegotiated.  Not in the case of this Colardao shooter who is clearly mentally ill.  I sent up a prayer of gratitude for not having to deal with this and for the collective group of parents and  kids who were present that day, to resolve, restore and heal without greater harm to themselves and others.  Parents must take over where the legal system stops.  What role do the state and guns have, you might ask? That's a topic for another blog!

Lessons from my coach

The past 6 months of my professional life were really challenging with a reorg and staff departures.   I thank my coach the amazing Bonnie Flatt for her stern yet compassionate approach in setting me on this path of discovering the leader in me and helping uncover the leader in others.  She held a mirror up to me so I can see myself truthfully and bring honesty and gracious collaboration to all my interactions and relationships.  I am writing this blog, as I near the end of my coaching, so people can support me through this process of growth in the following ways.  Ask me questions about the assumptions I make during my interactions no matter how difficult the conversation.  Point out if i am reacting without first seeking clarification as to why someone is saying or doing what they are.  Demand that I live truthfully without the artifice that comes with maintaining an image.  Call out my half truths and mind traps,  when I try to do things for them and to protect them rather than allowing them to rise to their greatness.   I have come to realise that wisdom is about letting go of the need to keep up the edifice of one's personality and being truthful is simply being present, aware and curious.