एक रात थोड़ी Insomnia की हुई

शायद थोड़ा कुछ छू गया होगा

एक रात थोड़ी  Insomnia की हुई
करवटों के पन्ने से पलटते रहे
उनमें भीनी मीठी सी खुशबू वाले, कुछ हाल ही के बीते लम्हे
बुदबुदा रहे थे - थोड़े नमकीन खुशबू के भी थे ।।

खुशबुओं में चहचहाहट थी,  एक निर्मल सा comfort भी, और भरके शोखियाँ
बड़ी हलकी सी आंच, चिंगारी पनपने से पहले वाली
और थोड़ी हिचकिचाहट, हया और लक्ष्मन रेखा छुपी हुई थी उन आज़ादियों के पीछे
सब खुशबुओं में था, उन करवटों के पन्नों की

सवेरे किसी ने पूछ लिया की जल्दी कैसे उठ गए, तो -
तो लगा शायद थोड़ा कुछ छू गया होगा

पर अभी तो छूआ भी नहीं



 

P value interpretation of greener grass

Brain is a trickster. As a part of its trick, part of our lives are illusory without us knowing about it. Such is the extent of illusion that every day we read about mad folks, hallucinators and diseased but never realise our own handicap, and our own illusions.

The current context is around interpreting the cliched saying of "Grass is greener on the other side". Given frequency of it's usage, there has to be some truth in this.

When we look at the greener grass - a person who is having hell of a time, or a family having good fun, or a romantic couple, or an employee presenting at a very good conference etc. - we are looking at a set of happy events - very generic events - the events that could have been easily part of your lives. Given our proclivity towards happiness, our brain yearns for it. But in the urge it forgets the statistics. We are looking at a moment in other person's life and extrapolating it to say how good is the other person's life.

Here comes the problem of P-value.  For folks not with statistics background - P value is just a way to measure statistical significance i.e. confidence of occurrence of an event - a measure of have you seen it enough number of times to be sure about it . That moment is a very very small part of that person's life. It's just the tip of an iceberg. The real story lies beneath it. So, as in statistics you need a minimum sample size to be certain about something, Similarly in real life the right conclusion of greener grass could be made only if we have enough and wholesome visibility into the other person's life. Now having a visibility into other person's life is a very very difficult thing - as most of the thoughts, feelings and decisions are veneered under an impenetrable layer of mind. So while we see a man happy with the family, there would be so many other instances where he is in stress because of family. But just looking at happy moments, your brain might trick you into getting a family.

That might be the difference between how successful folks work vs the others. They might have much better control on their brains in terms of P values, and hence take more balanced and informed decisions

The genome of company's culture

It is an undisputed fact that to retain and hire the top talent, the 'in thing' for today's corporate rankings is the company culture. Before, During and After every interview, a good amount of time is spent on discussing the culture by potential and current employees.

For a company or a function in an intermediate and late stage, the culture is already defined, and the focus is on maintaining it and carrying it forward. The system itself throws out the non fitting ones. Its the early stage companies / functions, where the culture is being defined - its being nurtured for future. So an active thought needs to go into it.

Company culture is generally built around a protagonist with the shades of surrounding team. Think of a tea plant. The basic flavor is defined by the raw seed, but the varieties will depend on the soil it grew in, the sunlight it was exposed to, the temperatures it bore, and the rains it weathered. The final outcome would be a mixture of all these factors, but the biggest impact would be of the raw seed. Similarly a big contributor to any culture is one centric personality - and a culture is a vibration of  the rhythm of that person's character.

Any extremity in the world always generate its opposite polarization. This rule applies to an individual's character too, and the response of the world to that individual. For e.g. a supportive and empathetic individual would earn respect of others but would not be able to drive a feeling of fear; a highly action oriented individual might find it difficult to sit in a box and strategize & vice versa. I charmingly call this as your biggest strengths are your biggest weaknesses too.

Now since culture is centered around an individual - it can get polarized too, if left unchecked.  Each extremity in character would drive an ability and a handicap. So if the centric personality drives work through fear, it might be difficult to see self motivated outcomes from the team - all outcomes would be to mitigate the fear. Similarly if the centric personality is very collaborative - moving fast would difficult as it would require every one's buy in before moving. Luckily each of us are unique + have different types & balances of polarization.

What might this mean for companies (lot is still vague, but hopefully presents a framework):

a) If something is not working for the culture, change faster than later
Delays just make matters worse. The pros and cons of the character start settling in the organization culture. When you are trying to negate a con - that will also negate the pro related to that polarization. For e.g. if you are trying to take away fear from a culture, it will show in slowed down results. Now its always difficult to leave a benefit that you have got used to. We get addicted. The team gets used to produce results only in response to certain stimulus. So if you replace that stimulus, short term results will go for a toss. For e.g. You know cutting cigarettes would make you healthier, but its difficult to let go of that short term kick that you get. An organization is a lot bigger beast, and letting go of anything which is showing result becomes difficult and difficult - as a result of which the con side of it keeps getting ingrained further deeper into the culture. So overall the delay in any such decision will increase the probability of NOT TAKING IT.


b) Choose the right polarization (and the right balance) for your company /  - In environments where the future directions are generally not clear - adaptive vs rigid polarisation might be the most critical polarization compared to a polarization based on aggression, fast decision making etc.  An adaptive person would figure out the right mix of other characteristics for e.g. when to be supportive and when to be aggressive, when to be alarmed and when to keep calm etc. Any other polarization would actually limit the ability of organization somewhere in future. Similarly a factory with well defined (not be broken rules) would probably benefit more by a rigid perspective of same polarization.

After narrowing down on the key polarization, hints of other polarizations OR examples of demonstrating both perspectives of a particular polarization could be searched.

c) Change structure to split the centroid of culture in 2 balancing characters with one having a slight upper hand. This is very much similar to "Finding the right co-founder" blogs that you will find around. This particular way helps us overcome the flaw and boon of the extremity that humans generally possess - and smartly using this can help build a high performing and adaptable culture. Just that these 2 characters should actually be balancing - they should be able to confront when the other is going to an extreme.

On exploratory basis, this dilution of power could be extended to more folks. Not sure if it would work. Maybe some kind of hierarchially layered culture might also work

The word 'organization' itself says that it is all about organizing things in different patterns to make them work. 

Feeling normal

Life grows and matures us unconditionally - all of us - in different ways.

Some of us become too busy to indulge in any kind of fun. A simple household chore might be too much of burden. Household routines immersion might make an idea of travel an unrealistic one.  With experiences, we keep hardening ourselves to certain feelings - pleasures and stimulus that have weakened, failed and hurt us in past. Some of us just take a leap of faith, and leave everything conventional behind - unlearning everything conventional. We change. All involuntarily.

So life impacts each of us in a different way - with one constant of change. In parrallel to the constant churn that the change brings, something else keeps building its base layer by layer in disguise - LOSTNESS. And then an out of the blue event - a non influential routine event - inexplicably makes you realize that it has been staring at you for no direct reason. Being committed to moving and changing, we keep pushing ourselves hoping that this lost feeling will go away. It does sometimes, sometimes it does not. It gets very difficult to attribute it to a reason - it seems to fall outside the domain of everyday empirical knowledge. Often we don't have answer to a friend's caring question of "What happened". Maybe we don't know the answer. May be we don't want to know the answer, as knowing it would take us through submerged forgotten thoughts lying in the dark of the subconscious.

The more inexplicable the lostness is, obscurer incidents it takes to make it disappear.

Sometimes just doing a very normal activity might remove your lostness. Like that day when amidst lot of workloads, I took out time for a visit to the spine hospital with my sister, and the shot of wind made me feel normal.

What makes it so incomprehensible? I feel that in rozmarrah of our lives, a base that defines us gets forgotten for e.g. While we are busy in excelling at your work, we might forget that small incident which happened 15 years back when your father sat with you on a pre exam day, and told you not to worry about completing the syllabus, but rather to understand it well - the trait which have stayed with you forever since then - to figure out things in a right way and not worrying for short term results - but then seldom would I think about this particular incident - it has gone into that forgotten base.
Similarly during change - the stimulus is forgotten. Or rather gets buried deep. In fact, change is an urge of obliterating an existing particular response (stimulated by the same existing particular response) and developing another. So while changing, you are trying to forget the very thing which is driving the urge to change. End result - we change, but we forget why we change. And then there come those magic days, when some thresholds cross, and we look to evaluate ourselves again , and the changed we does not really make sense. Remember the person in movies with lost memory. Mind must feel something like that to a degree.

The answer to find yourselves back would lie in digging out the buried. Its a tedious exercise, as it would take you through all the pain and stimulus that made you change. It would be revising your life. I think that's why when we are close to the "base" circumstances, and characters of our lives such as family and siblings - we feel more normal - it probably takes us back to same plane of subconscious where the "base" memories are.

Joke on jokes

Idling around, few of us whiling away the time suddenly realised that it's been a long time that we have had a joke session.

Like those old times when somebody used to come up and say ki "Yaar bahut sahi joke hai, sunata hun. Santa ne..." . And then starts the cascading effect of one narration after the another. That used to be forte and identitiy of some folks - that this guy will come and tell lot of jokes, and make the evening jovial.

Mr. Whatsapp has assumed that role and has robbed that guy of his identity - more or less. It has made a joke of joke telling.

RIP everyday joke telling!!

Random foggy morning

एक धुंध सी में झाँक रहा हूँ
थोड़ा अँधेरा है, और थोड़ा ठण्ड का एहसास
थोड़ी सी नमी है , थोड़ी सी  खराश

थोड़ा कम दिख रहा है, पर गौर कर पा रहा हूँ

कुछ पास वाले मकानों की धुंधली सी रूपदेखा दिख रही है
रूपरेखा जो कुछ ही दिन पहले किसी ने रची होगी, किसी ने  तराशी होगी, और किसी ने सराही होगी
ढाल दिया होगे कल्पना को शख्सियत की साँसों  में

कुछ दूर वाले मकान जो अभी दिख भी नहीं रहे हैं, वह  होंगे तो ज़रूर
उन्ही की बुनियाद पे कल्पना रची, तराशी और सराही  गयी होगी - इन पास वाले दृश्य मकानों की

जब अंदर झांकता हूँ, तब भी ऐसा ही एहसास होता है