Serendipity and Learning

Yes, why do people scooters on the flyover? We have all seen it. Rental scooters are left on the flyovers. Actually they are left on many random places - on the footpath, in alleys, fallen on the side and I have often wondered, as have you, that, why are people so irresponsible? Few days back my kids asked me; when people leave the scooter in the middle of a flyover, where do they go after that? We made a few wild guesses, we laughed and then we forgot about it. Today evening, I had the pleasure of talking to Keerthi, a cab driver who drove us from the airport to home. And as the conversation progressed, we noticed a bunch of scooters parked in odd places like this and then he asked, "Sir, why do people leave scooters on the flyover?" "And I see a few scooters even in the middle of the airport flyovers. The others I can understand - it is a 200 hundred metres walk, but what about the airport flyover? Something must be there. Is there an incentive to leave it on th...

It has been a great year of learning... Learning from about 15 different companies...Different cultures..working styles...levels of leadership and maturity...business...challenges...people... Putting myself into, no, out of my own comfort zone and working in very diverse environments - from students to startups to established global tech firms to large format workshops to introducing new concepts into the market... What did I learn? The biggest learning for me has been the learning of how to design better. This is no small learning because I am used to a typical school of designing learning interactions - so to be able to throw what I have learnt out of the window (well, not really) and learn another way of looking into it, has been, both, difficult and interesting. Difficult because I really have to activate Type 2 thinking and interesting because once you go that path, I need to still have my divergent thinking hat ON. Having worked with different people, firms as a consulta...

Something struck me as I was working with someone recently. And the person pointed out that the feedback he got is the same thing that we had discussed a few years ago. This despite the fact that the circumstances had changed, the nature of work was different, the culture was different, the role was better, the future was better - indeed every possible dimension of the situation was diametrically opposite to what it was when he first decided to work on the behaviour. And today, few years later, all other things had changed, but the same behaviour was pointed out. Coming close on the heels of the story of industrial transformation - this story of human behaviour struck me as a great example - of how difficult it is to make changes to ones own behaviour and how it is a studied process that takes quite a lot of determined conscious effort. And as I thought about it I realized that I have encountered this many times in my career both for myself and hearing other talk/recount their o...

Appearances are important - in everything. A part of being in business is the appearance of doing business. Exhibit 1: I was travelling in a bus a few years back - and the bus made a halt at some unearthly hour for 'tea'. The tea-shop was a bustling place with atleast 10 buses at that specific point while we halted and I am sure over the night, serviced many more vehicles. For 3 am, the place sure was busy. But what was intriguing was that a biscuit stall owner, right next to the tea stall was busy, incredibly busy arranging his biscuits, moving them a bit here, a bit there and generally appearing busy. And he was doing brisk business. There was no reason to be cleaning the shop at 3 am which in all probability was his busiest part of the day. Perhaps. Exhibit 2: There is this 'pressure cooker' repairman I often see. To be fair, I have seen him handle a real customer just once. At all other times, he is incredibly busy. Walks up and down, cleans the co...

Google boy at work: Think of a car brand. Type it into the Google box -which I suspect is his worm hole for reaching out into other dimensions. Wait for auto-suggest to kick in. Wonder what are each of those suggestions, click them one by one and expand knowledge. Said modus operandi has worked very well. One day, Googleboy was typing Morgan (yes, it is a car company) into the Google box - And google helpfully suggested, "Freeman". With the result, that from staring at cars one moment, Googleboy found himself staring at the pictures of an oldish man in a French beard. Much peevishness resulted from the incredulity that Google could not figure out that Morgan was a car manufacturer and when combined with Freeman, it was a person not a car. And for us, that caused much hilarity...while for Google, that might be some feedback!