"Between the idea and the reality, Between the motion and the act - Falls the Shadow...

The horizon beyond which the imagination unfolds its veil, the sky which ends with a nihilistic echo in the vacuum (the space), the depth of the ocean where the light fails to penetrate, the degree beyond which the water tends to transform its form……..only to drive the engine which marked a revolution in the history of the mankind.

An extra degree which lies between the water and the steam, an extra degree which can run a turbine, an extra degree which changed the course of history, an extra degree which marked the change of an era. This extra degree is nothing but the shadow between all what is accomplished and what is still to be accomplished. Life is a journey and this journey continues because there lies no shadow between the two opposite desires to live. What could be better example to this thought other than the “myth of Sisyphus” . In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was punished with a meaningless task to pick the rock back at the top of the mountain as soon as it rolls down, only till eternity. His life seems really meaningless until Albert Camu (an existentialist philosopher), pours down the idea of imagining as if Sisyphus were happy with the work he does. He enjoys every moment of his work and thus the entire thing doesn’t seem meaningless to him. The idea is that there is nothing in this world which can be categorized and kept in the labeled basket. What holds true for one may not be true for the other. The interpretation may differ with different context too. There always lies a shadow between the truth and truth. Interestingly truth also changes with contingencies.

Life remains untouched with this shadow and the real change takes place when there is a light to displace that shadow to a different location. That light can be internal or external. What could be better than the self interventionist light which enables the change and ensures the shadow being lost? Sometimes, we need others to help us cross the threshold and make a change. We seek light from others to serve our purposes. Well, whatever may be the source of light, the goal is to remove the shadow and realize our objective by action.

This action and inaction of the shadow is a continuous process. The shadow never dies. It only changes its shape, location and appearances. This implies that change is a continuous process and nothing changes for the final. There is no final stage and therefore, there is no permanent shadow or the light. Change is only to realize that it serves the most beneficial purpose in a given situation. But again, even the idea of what serves best is questionable as there is nothing which is final or the best. Hence, the quest for the best is a continuous process and is unfathomable. And so is the change because the change is always sought for the best and the best doesn’t really exist in actuality. Thus it implies that the shadow can never be reduced to nothing. It only smartly changes its position. In my view removing the shadow is a true analogy to the “Myth of Sisyphus”.

The shadow is like the horizon which seems to be a limit but in fact it opens in to an eternity. Change is nothing but the mere action to touch that horizon and thus is an unending process. According to the Gestalt`s theory the whole is the sum of its parts. Now the question arises what is the whole? The idea of the “whole” amounts to the universe and therefore what we call whole is actually a part of that eternal “sum of the parts”.

Nevertheless, as the subject Organization Design suggests, the change can be applicable to the parts if not to the whole. All the so called great deeds have happened because the heroes have been able to cross the threshold of their negative emotions. Had Gandhi discarded the need to serve the country, he wouldn’t have been able to pressurize the British crown to knuckle down. All the great men e.g. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther king junior, Abraham Lincoln etc had put on a little extra effort and changed their contemporary socio-political milieu. Their valour lies in their action. Had the thoughts remained and had they not been able to overcome the shadow, their names also would have had lost in oblivion. Hence, between the thought and action lies the shadow. And for a better change to take place the shadow has to be overcome.

In the Holy Geeta when Arjuna asks Krishna when he had to face Bhisma during the war, that how can he overcome his emotions and shoot him. Then Krishna says that duty is the foremost thing. Do your duty and don’t worry about the results. Likewise we humans always face this dilemma of emotions while performing our duties. This dilemma is what shadow is and it can be overcome only by being focused towards our penultimate Goal.

In corporate world the Organization change is an action towards the fulfillment of the Organization`s mission and vision. Hence it is bound to take place with changing market or else it shall be left to its doom. There had been few examples in this regard e.g. Jack Welch changed the entire structure of General Electric in the late 90`s because he was sure of the Goal of the organization i.e. its growth and sustainability. It can be implied that Jack Welch had been instrumental in overcoming his shadow and acted positively in this regard. Other examples include Wipro technologies which changed from a mere vegetable company to one of the largest IT companies in India. Walgreens also changed itself from a restaurant business to drug store houses. Had their CEO`s not overcome the shadow, they would definitely have doomed.

All the inventions, discoveries, philosophies are investments for the transformation or change so that the society is able to invent more, discover more or think more for its benign interests.

The change is unending as well as self serving in nature. The adapting change tends to survive and vice versa. Hence utmost care has to be taken while deciding the change process which is to be undertaken. The real challenge lies in analyzing what change has to be brought about so that the change nourishes the growth and sustainability of the organization. The capitalistic mode of production since its inception has undergone numerous changes, for e.g. the shift from the commoditization of the labor to participatory environment in the present scenario. The rise of the personnel department and further the human resource management depicts the positive change that has taken place with changing environment and the need of the hour. Today, we talk about human capital and “people first strategy second”. It was not there before. It happened because today there is a need to enhance productivity through human resources as all other factors of productivity for e.g. technology, labor supply etc remains almost the same amongst the rival Organizations. There always existed a shadow between the philosophy of human resource management and its implementation. This is also an ongoing process and will continue till eternity.

Thesis and antithesis gives rise to synthesis. Needless to say how dialectical materialism in Marxian terminology depicts the change in terms of evolution of the ideas. Between thesis and antithesis lies the shadow. The shadow is toppled up only to enable the synthesis, for e.g. Marxism and Capitalism have synthesized to give rise to the present human resource management and it’s also an ongoing process. Interestingly, the evolution of ideas is continuous and therefore the change is again a continuous process.

In a nutshell I would like to summarize the whole essay by reiterating that change is a product of the action on the shadow which lies between the two subsequent thoughts. Unless one has not crossed the shadow the idea to jump to the next level is almost next to impossible. As famously used words by the great French warrior, Napoleon Bonaparte that the word “impossible” itself says “I m Possible”, we can say that the words “I m” is the shadow which has to be overcome for a positive and productive change to take place.

A quest.....

In the midst of the midnight hour as I walked down the lane to the campus, I was lost in the profound sea of interrogation and the waves of uncertainties. It is not surprising as they often come to me more especially in the times of solitude. I stirred my conscience as I went by and looked at the sky in to the space and gazed the moon. It was bright and beautiful.I wanted to look beyond that brightness but it didn’t really allow me to. Perhaps, the eyes are incompetent to look beyond. Perhaps, they didn’t want me to.

But a few drops of dew did add to the sea as those questions visited me again. I felt as if they waited for that particular moment to come. I wondered, who are they, where do they come from? Do they live in the “Dhabas” of the metros where a helpless minor works all day long so that he/she could ensure his bread and butter the next day, or does it come from the pessimism of all those young people who simply try to keep aloof hiding behind the curtain of pragmatism? The youth, who are suppose to be the leaders of tomorrow, who are suppose to shoulder the burden of a Country still struggling to free from the chains of neocolonialism?

“Nothing can be done”, I was shattered and could never dare to forget those haunting words which were not merely words but the hope of a youth from one of the premier Institutions of education. I saw the courage gradually succumbing to the duress of helplessness. Youth; the hope of a nation, of the poor, of the exploited and all those millions of people who believe in their prowess, in their ability to change the status quo and bring about a revolution of the progressive ideology in the society.

Far across the realm of idealism perhaps, the reality is as horrifying as this. The individualism is manifesting itself in the alienation from the society and its values. Is this the kind of society we are aiming for? I don’t know the answer. Do you??

Human Resource???

The naked dance of an ism, unfettered from all sorts of moral edifice. Though, it masquerades itself with the much idolized concept of “Human” yet blatantly inconsiderate and callous towards the simple little emotions that constitute human values in actuality. Quite a few from that school of thought may argue in affirmative about the worth of the human values, but I think they need to understand the underlying objective which has been very obvious in the recent economic crisis when thousands of employees have been retrenched and whose lives have been sacked, indifferent of their well being in particular. I wonder about the ism because it does demonstrate diversity in the form of inequality, manifesting itself in different shades of the society i.e. the rich and the poor, the high and the low so on and so forth. However, it does have one single parlance and i.e. of maximum profit with minimum investment.

Well, here lies the key to this discussion, “maximum profit”, an ambition which has no real boundary and therefore is an unquenchable thirst. My cognition fails to understand the symphony of the awesome and the gruesome i.e. “human values “and “maximum profit” going hand in hand. The commodification of human beings has invigorated itself in such a way that it has engulfed everything out of them only to make them a real machine whose worth is valued in terms of mere tangible outputs. Somebody amongst the realist thinkers said that human beings are basically selfish in nature. By and large it is true and therefore, we can imagine the result when such selfish creatures are left to grab the maximum out of any resource, which unfortunately in the ism, is also applicable for the human beings, and hence the name human resource.

I feel sad when I see the human relationships gradually getting transformed in to monetary relationships and resulting in the formation of a less human society. It is already happening in many developed countries across the globe wherein the monetary relationships have manifested itself in to an individualistic society and also gradually stretching its arms in the developing countries. I think that human beings, without the element of human values are just like machines and am afraid that this race for a limitless goal will perhaps, snatch away this invaluable virtue out of them………

Cogito Ergosum

A drop in the ocean, an atom in the universe, an experience in a lifetime may mean nothing when seen superficially but we forget that the real power of the very same single little thing maketh the ocean, the universe or even a life. We tend to see what is existent but at the very same time neglect what is non-existent or at least seem to be non-existent. Stars are bright little objects in the dark sky. A human eye can admire the aesthetics of a bright clear sky with several little twinkling stars. But, unfortunately nobody admires the darkness without which stars have no meaning of their own. There is a need to question things, to look beyond the boundaries, to break away the shackles of the unknown to admire what is neglected, what we don’t know.

Lord Acton said, “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, but do we ever think what makes it true, why power corrupts? The moment we talk about the corruption of power, we make a serious fundamental attribution error to the same. The term power in itself is a very relative concept which depends on the degree or extent of the powerlessness of the people. In other words the concept of being powerful is inversely proportional to the state of powerlessness. When we say one is powerful we also have to understand that the other is weak. So when we question power being corrupted don’t we forget to blame ourselves for the occurrence of the same? We forget that somebody dares to exploit us because we let him/her exploit. Who is responsible?

India, a nation with the GDP growth close to the double digits, a nation ranking 8th in the number of billionaires, the largest demography of an ambitious middle class in the world, a nuclear power and as anticipated, soon going to be the most powerful nation state in the future . Wow! Wonderful!!
But have we ever tried to understand, what does the notion of development is, to a man who is not even sure whether he will be able to get stomach full of food the very next day? The man I am talking about is not a single man but 270 million people of India who live below the poverty line or more than 770 million people who spend less than Rs20 per day ( Arjun sengupta report). I am sure that each and every single man mentioned above looks ahead for a life which is ensured of social, economic, political and above all food security.

Again, who is responsible? Isn’t it we, the common man who definitely failed to check the holders of power to act in the most efficient way, to act for the inclusive sustainable development of the country? Worse things happen because we let it happen; we don’t even bother to question just because it happens to our neighbor. But we forget that even we are also a neighbor of someone. Having 2.4 million places of worship may or may not be bad but having such a number when the number of schools does not cross 2.1 million, is definitely a matter of greater concern.

We talked about the shining star in the beginning and also about the much hyped shining India cocept. Well, although both are shining but there is a fundamental difference between both of them. Darkness for a shining star is a boon but for a country like India, it is nothing more than a mere curse. The agentic state has to be shunned rather everyone has to stand together to prove their mettle and let the contractors of the nation know that we are not and we will never be a mere silent spectator of the whole episode. I, the common individual with you, am an entire population, a single drop which can maketh the ocean of an equitable , just society….Amen