Suresh Dinakaran's Blog

 

The doctor attending to a patient is expected to spend a certain amount of time( validated as the right amount by the culture we inhabit) with her patient.

 

Uber Eats or Deliveroo or Careem etc are expected to deliver food within a certain amount of time- read the right amount of time.

 

How long should an undergraduate degree take? If you are in N America, four years. Most other places, three years. The default of the right amount of time has already been set. It is done and dusted. The script is already hard bound. Just be the actors now.

 

Learning to play the violin or a new language. Coming to terms in using a new software program. Looking around for a new home. There are set expectations on time to be invested in each of these, an informal validation that the culture has taken the initiative on.

 

In an highly commoditised world, spending a similar amount of time like all others would mean reaping( or under reaping) the same benefits as the rest of the tribe.

An alternative scenario can come in the form of either of the below:-

 

– Spend considerably more time than the rest in something which is way beyond the set default. In the process, extract a significantly better outcome.

-Spend far less than the rest which is way less than the set default. And use that time to unearth alternatives and processes that benefits everyone, something that the rest is overlooking.

 

Under indexing or over indexing through well intentioned time hacks can create significant positive changes in the culture. Explore and discover those possibilities rather than be at the mercy of the diktat called the ‘ right amount of time‘.

 

Its worthwhile here to be understanding Howard Gardener’s Theory of Multiple Intelligence 

 

If the definition of a leader is someone who catalyzes positive change, then every organisation needs all the leaders it can get. Sadly, the idea of leadership that predominates in most organisations has been hopelessly compromised by bureaucratic thinking.

 

For us to move forward on this rant, let’s go back in time a bit. During the early years of industrialization ( the Henry Ford era and all of that), administrative competence was scarce, in serious short supply. The workforce multiplied rapidly between then and the outbreak of the second world war. Who was going to wrangle this fast growing herd of employees if not a cadre of newly minted managers? Some of today’s most renowned US Universities jumped into the pit to help, namely the Wharton School @ Univ of Pennsylvania(est 1881), Harvard Business School (est 1908) and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business(est 1925).

 

Drip by drip, a corpus of management knowledge began to invade the zeitgeist. General Electric opened its famed management academy in New York. The then Chairman Philip D Reed was to make GE the world’s best managed company. A worthy goal. Let’s not forget that it was management magic that turned labour and steel into locomotives, turbines, generators and washing machines.

 

By the time it was a couple of years before the millennium, management was no longer considered the mysterious or prized exceptional activity. Fatigue had set in and the novelty had worn off. Thanks to the work of seminal thinkers like Peter Drucker, principles and practices of administrative competence had found its threshold level.

 

By the 1980’s, management had become passe. Universities and management consultants needed something new to sell. A product upgrade, if you will. The dice was rolled and they landed on the shiny new object called ‘ leadership‘.  They asked their clients, why would you want to remain a mere manager when with the right training, you could become a valiant leader? Just give us a week or two of your time, a few thousand dollars and we will convert you into a happy amalgam of Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and Alfred Sloan.

 

Today, more business books are written about leadership than any other topic, so it’s easy to forget the relative novelty of our obsession with leadership. Despite the ubiquity of the topic, if you Google ‘ leadership model ‘, you will get more than a billion hits. That said, there’s little evidence we know how to grow leaders, or that most of those who claim to be leaders deserve the title!!

To be fair, leadership training is seldom focused purely on administrative skills. Today, in a multi-week program at a leading B-school, there will be modules on AI, Blockchain, Neuroscience, Generative AI, IOT, and the Gen Z workforce. Contemporary leadership training also emphasises ‘ soft skills ‘ that affirm the values of authenticity, empathy and mindfulness. Unfortunately, all these become superfluous in a bureaucratic cage match. Back on the job, there is little in the organisation that reinforces introspection, humility and honesty and not much they can do to change the fact.

 

Leadership training tends to be stratified( otherwise how will elitism come into play?). Hierarchy dictates that at the excutive level, it is ‘managing the organisation’, at midlevels on ‘ leading the business ‘ and at lower levels on ‘ leading your team ‘. This hierarchial approach is based on the absurd assumption that lower-level employees are unable to think beyond their own role or limit.

 

Leadership and hierarchy are conjoined twins and disentangling it is a long way off. When an organisation refers to ‘ leadership team ‘, do they mean everyone in the organisation who can also make amazing things happen? Certainly not. It refers to the dozen or so EVPs who sit atop the pyramid. The reality is that many of them on the ‘ leadership team ‘ are not leaders at all. In the true sense and sanctity of the word. Neither are they a ‘ team ‘, if by that you mean a group of selfless souls united around a common cause.

 

Radical thinking is the need of the hour to change this default. We need a bunch of hacktivists across organisations around the world. Deep change comes from the fringe, people who are not bothered about the spotlight but are willing to put themselves in the firing line.

 

When we finally abandon the myth that a big title makes you a leader, and when the HR function stops playing to the top of the house, then our approach to leadership will finally catch up to the realities of the twenty-first century.

 

 

 

The bank of time has finite deposits. We live with the belief that there is always tomorrow. But very soon our tomorrows will run out. The power of now( also a classic book by the same name written by Eckhart Tolle) is under utilised as we move sub consciously from one distraction to another leaving little scope for deep work that matters.

Perhaps the best way to move from distraction to traction is to make a To-Do-List and alongwith that make make a To-Not-Do List and time blocking which helps in distilling the important from the unimportant. Offers you the time to do deep work.  Time blocking is a preferred route adopted by people like Bill Gates, Elon Musk etc to do intense work of the highest importance.

 

It’s hard to change anything unless our motivation is strong enough. Before we can deal with our addictions to distraction, we need to uncover our motivations first.

 

If you’re living in your inbox or reacting to an ever-expanding to-do list, it is time to recalibrate our motivations. Because your real competition is your distraction.

 

As James Clear mentions so eloquently, “The more things you have, the more things you have to manage. Simplicity isn’t merely cheaper, it’s easier.”

 

The Lukla Airport ( also known Tenzing-Hillary Airport, is a domestic airport and altiport in the town of Lukla, in Khumbu Pasanglhamu, Solukhumbu District, Koshi Province of Nepal).It sits on a cliff with a two-mile drop. Some call it the most dangerous airport in the world. All that the pilots(and you) have to do is zip through a tight valley and land on the 0.3-mile runway without going over the edge, Mission Impossible style.

 

But this is where you land if the intent is to get to EBC(Everest Base Camp) and Climb Mount  Everest. Those three words are enough to take the wind out of anyone’s sails and scare even the best of us. And if you’ve ever looked into what it really takes to make the climb, it’s no wonder it’s so often used as a metaphor in the fashion that it is.

 

From the airport, you trek for ten days to get to base camp as you start acclimatizing- you know, so the lack of oxygen doesn’t take you out. You toughen yourself by doing ” up and backs ” to and from base camp, increasing your levels of altitude in increments, so your body can take oxygen. Mind you, thin air is no joke.

 

The trip takes an average of 8 weeks in a finite window during monsoon season , during which the jet stream and 100mph winds don’t blow you off the mountain. There’s also the spiritual aspect of the climb. In the Himalayas, local Buddhists believe that the mountains are inhabited and controlled by mountain spirits. Most follow an unwritten climbing code, paying respect to these spirits. So you meet with a lama– a holy person whose role is to draw upon a higher power and ask for the mountain to grant you safe passage. Traditionally, the lama places a necklace on you for protection while on Everest.

 

Once you start the climb, you will face other obstacles. Oh, what was that? Icefall? This is a fancy name for a glacial crevasse– which itself is a fancy name for a big hole in the cliff you are climbing. As the weather shifts, part of the ice river melt and re-freeze, creating gaps- or crevasses- of around one to three feet wide, leaving a gaping hole where you are supposed to walk.

 

To sum up, you freeze your bum off, the altitude cuts off your oxygen supply, and you face death defying ice-crevasses. I promise, Mother Nature has the most dazzling plot twists(something that celebrated Hollywood screenplay writer Alan Sorkin would be proud of!!).

 

So, do you venture out on a jaunt like this solo? Hell no! You get a Sherpa, someone who has grown up in these conditions and genetically capable of thriving in these conditions and doing a job few else can. You also get an Icefall doctor– a special Sherpa who sets up ladders across ice-crevasses at the beginning of each Everest season.

 

The concept of the Sherpa applies both to attempting to summit the highest point of the world and to all areas of our life. When you pursue your dreams, you need support from other people, you need a Sherpa in all areas of life.

 

So, my rant is that why would anyone in their right mind( or even in their wrong mind), would entertain the idea of climbing the literal or figurative Everest without a Sherpa, a guide, a lama, coach, icefall doctor, or mentor or preferably all six, like a backup band. The role is the same: to provide guidance through life’s opportunities and tough spots. Why? Because you risk death. Literal death, or the death of your dream!

 

So, Who’s your Sherpa?

 

If you are working for an organisation, in a lot of cases, you are feeling ‘ over-ruled ‘.

 

The rant here is that we are not prepared. We labour under the delusion that we must ‘ wait our turn ‘…that we must ‘ work our way up the organizational ladder‘. But the decimation of hierarchies, the deconstruction of career ladders, and the redefinition of Work-Of -Value make that a false- nay, a dangerous- assumption. The idea should be to Grasp The Nettle right at the beginning of every job | assignment. We must appreciate the power that comes with being ‘ powerless ‘… and turn every mundane task into a Remarkable (WOW!) Project.

 

A small aside here if you want to a do a little more deep dive about being powerful or powerless- read here

 

Often times in corporate corridors you will hear this refrain ” But I don’t have the power “- (you can’t see my eyes roll here and I am brought up in a manner where expletives are not encouraged, so I stay quiet). But inside I am flipping. You know why. Imagine, Martin Luther King Jr saying, ” Civil Rights is Cool, but I don’t have the power ” or Mahatma Gandhi saying, ” The Brits stink, but I don’t have the power ” .

 

Now, intellectually, I am aware that ” I don’t have the power ” is a fair but sadly ubiquitous representation of the times we are in. Still talk like that gets my dander up. Sorry!

 

The Power of “Powerless” Thinking– Getting things done is not about formal power or official rank. It is all about Passion + Imagination + Persistence. Imagine you have a seriously cool idea. The very worst thing you can do(probably the biggest waste of time in the world) is to try and sell that idea up the ‘ chain of command ‘. Doing so will only officially remind you how ‘ powerless ‘ you are.

 

So, what is the ‘ chain of command ‘? It is a bunch of people who have been promoted for skillfully adhering to ‘ the certified-pure way we do things here‘. In other words, they are the Designated and Appointed Guardians of Yesterday. For your purposes- as a powerless junior type with a Seriously Cool Idea- the ‘chain of command‘ might as well be a chain gang.

 

What I am encouraging here to do is engage in a direct frontal attack on the Holy Authority of Today’s Bosses. Oops!! The power of the ‘ powerless ‘ lies in what one can call ‘ Boss-free Implementation ‘. In other words: What ‘ they ‘ can’t see, ‘ they ‘ can’t kill.

 

As a lowly person on the organization’s totem pole, powerless to create your own WOW project. But if you look around you will see some non WOW projects that you can re-frame in a way that you remain under the radar for the Boss-Free-Implementation of a Seriously Cool Idea.

 

Every small project contains the DNA of the entire enterprise. In sum, you don’t need an Officially Big Project to attack a Very Big Real Opportunity.

 

Like most things in life, the meaning of a project is all about…attitude. Is it a chore..or is it a chance– a chance to do Something Great? How we answer that question says everything about who we are and how we see the world.

 

If I come across as Prescribing a Manual for Radicals, so be it. I am not apologising. The message: Getting Things Done That Fly In The Face Of Conventional Wisdom is a Matter of Energetic and Persistent Community Organising, a Matter of Unearthing and Engaging Passionate Others( who previously viewed themselves as…yes…’powerless‘).

 

As Roseanne Barr quoted ” Nobody gives you power. You just take it “.

 

 

 

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.

 

Ubiquitous availability is now the standard. Cell phones never stop ringing. Emails barrage you round the clock. Being available is a 24 X 7 expectation. Burnout is not a badge of honour but that is exactly what is happening because the culture is calibrated that way. People like us do things like this. FOMO is a malaise that is not helping any way.

 

Even our rest times are ‘ active rest ‘ at best. You stop work and your idea of rest is listening to a podcast or reading a book or playing the music of your choice, or watching a movie- all of which needs the mind to use its processing power. These are all fun diversions, a way to switch the mind’s tracks without completely stopping its journey. We are never at complete rest- it is almost as if complete rest makes us restless.

 

The pandemic only accelerated this evaporation of boundaries. There are perks of working from home, but one of the drawbacks is that we have lost one of our last safe havens. 

Taking time to escape isn’t just a luxury – it’s essential. No need to fill in the blank. Use that time(blank) to think, plan, dream. The Republic of Not Enough that we all are willing | unwilling citizens of, will never let you slack. Because we are deeply buried most of the time in our ledger of lack. It’s ironical to know that our best creations and inventions come during periods of slack not when the mind is furiously occupied(or pre occupied). So is it almost an aberration that there is a productivity tool used by many organisations around the world called Slack?  Probably not. Brilliantly counter intuitive branding. 

 

But one thing is certain, we won’t get this time by default – only by design. Complete shut down of all senses, however short a duration it may be. 

 

Listen to the old bray of your heart. Not to the piercing shrill of your mind. “Sometimes sitting and doing nothing is the best thing you can do,” reminds Karen Salmansohn, best selling author of THINK HAPPY.
Only by taking time to think, dream, and plan are we able to discern the essential few from the trivial many in our lives.  

 

As I conclude I am reminded of a brilliant campaign line of the chocolate brand 5 Star– ” Eat 5 Star, Do Nothing “. Don’t dismiss it as a Sweet Nothing!

 

 

 

Einstellung literally means “setting” or “installation” as well as a person’s “attitude” in German.

 

The Einstellung effect is the negative effect of previous experience when solving new problems. It is the development of a mechanized state of mind. Often called a problem solving set, Einstellung refers to a person’s predisposition to solve a given problem in a specific manner even though better or more appropriate methods of solving the problem exist.

 

A phenomena that is very similar to the Einstellung is ‘ functional fixedness ‘. Stemming from cognitive bias, functional fixedness is an impaired ability to discover a new use for an object, owing to the subject’s previous use of the object in a functionally dissimilar context. Little wonder we have the classic bureaucratic impediment called ‘ we have always done it this way‘.

 

It is said that the first step to getting things right is the willingness to be wrong. If you want to do anything significant, be prepared to look foolish. The set in stone defaults blinds us of taking better, faster paths to a desired outcome. Remember that the brain is the laziest of all our organs in our body. Hence Psychology 101 has this to say ” the brain remembers what it least expects, so deliver the unexpected “.

 

You see a lot of advertising messages and marcom initiatives biting the dust because of this default thinking. Inspite of millions of dollars spent.

We favour the comfortable domicile of conviction than the uncertainty of doubt. History repeats itself but somehow we never learn from history. Our brain can be our biggest obstacle and be adamant at NOT looking at other solutions even if they are significantly better.

 

Discomfort or uncertainty are both proxies for progress and the more pattern interrupt(where the conventional Elevator Pitch is NOT about you, but the person that you are pitching to) we bring to life, however contrarian it may seem, we stand a much better chance of making decisions that are informed and contextual.

 

“The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.” ― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

What is Machiavelli’s Theory?

 

Machiavelli’s view that acquiring a state and maintaining it requires evil means has been noted as the chief theme of the treatise. He has become infamous for this advice, so much so that the adjective Machiavellian would later on describe a type of politics that is “marked by cunning, duplicity, or bad faith.

 

Hercules (known in Greek mythology as Heracles or Herakles) is one of the best-known heroes in ancient mythology. His life was not easy—he endured many trials and completed many daunting tasks—but the reward for his suffering was a promise that he would live forever among the gods at Mount Olympus.

 

This rant is neither about Machiavelli nor about Hercules. But, the culture that we live in expects us to be fiercely independent and function like the be all and end all. Invincible or Winvincible?

 

The need we have to knead is to need each other. Be in a state of deep dependence. But the diktat floating around in our society is completely the opposite.

 

Realisation of full potential is not through total individual independence but through transcending the self. It’s about connecting with something greater through altruism, spirituality, and a collective purpose. To be kind, to have hope and to love, ( note that four letter words- they can be a salve too) is a collective responsibility.

 

Mutual reliance is nothing to be embarrassed about. Our growth, our fulfillment, indeed, our very potential, are interwoven with our connection to others.  What should ideally be obsolete terms include self-made, self-help, self-centred. An ‘ever evolving society’ should not sideline our need for emotional connections.

“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”   –  Herman Melville

 

For all those of us brought upon a dose of movies and drama, the intermission is a story waiting to be told. The moving back from darkness(inside the cinema hall) to light, the wait for Nachos and Coke, the unrest in the rest room,  voyeuring posters of the upcoming releases, the quick call to Mom to say all is well…the rush back to the seats and finding your seat in the dark…the mission is on over drive.

 

The show must and will go on. So, don’t miss your cue for a short break. To pause, step back, visualise, soak in, express. Unfailingly, the cast, the crew, or the drama will not come to a screeching halt if you take a few minutes for yourself. Rest assured.

 

We leave people and places and times behind. We encounter new ones. Sometimes we can’t see the patterns or connections, but they are there, between one breath and the next.

 

I read in one of Ozan Varol‘s blog posts that when Martin Scorsese’s film, Killers of the Flower Moon, was released(which runs for a marathon 3 hours and 26 minutes) some theaters in the United States, attuned to the audience’s comfort, introduced a 10-minute intermission. Normally, movies in the United States do not have an intermission.

 

This seemingly minor accommodation sparked a major controversy. Studios quickly stepped in, asserting that altering the movie’s presentation—even with a well-intentioned pause—violated licensing agreements. The intermissions were promptly canceled.

 

Scorsese defended the studios, labeling the intermission as a breach of “artistic integrity.” “Give cinema some respect,” he demanded, foregoing any respect for the bladders of the audience members.

 

The debate can linger on about our resistance to change and ‘ this is the way we have always done it’. Status quo is a comfortable domicile. But, just like ‘ curiosity ‘ that great human trait that got us out of the cave, across the globe and onto the moon, re-imagining the status quo leads to innovation, when we start asking, can this be done differently? And this applies not just to an intermission in movies but also can apply to a business process, a medical treatment or the technique behind your golf swing.

Just like the future happens gradually and then all of a sudden, it is the same with innovation. It doesn’t come with all guns blazing and with bells and whistles. The cheese here is moved slowly and deliberately and aligns with both palette and plate to find the sweet spot.

 

When we are far too close to anything be it art or anything else, it is natural to miss the wood for the trees. A better take away would be to step back, albeit for the interim and let the story unfold itself.

 

Close your eyes. To open your mind.

 

One minute of advertising airtime during the Super Bowl telecast on CBS on the 11th of this month will come at a whopping US$14 Million. And there are scores of brands placing their bet on this 30 seconds or 1 minute to stake their claim in history.

 

A Super Bowl ad has been the gold standard for 40 years, ever since Lee Clow and Jay Chiat( of Chiat|Day ) did the original Mac ad. Directed by Ridley Scott. As a result of advertiser demand, the per-viewer cost of running an ad for this mass audience is actually more than it would cost to run targeted ads at only the people you actually want to reach. To simplify what I am saying, advertisers are paying far more extra to reach people who simply don’t care about your message nor expected to take action. Because the default is easy- there are loads going in that direction, as it is big, Super and easy- let me too be birds of the same feather.

 

In stark contrast, artists like Rihana or Michael Jackson or Katy Perry or Dr. Dre and Eminem and their ilk get 12 whole minutes to perform during the half time. For free.

 

Last year at the Super Bowl, Rihanna danced on a platform suspended high above the field at State Farm Stadium in Arizona.

 

It was her first live show in five years, and she moved effortlessly from hits like “We Found Love” to “Diamonds,” in a red leather corset and baggy flight-suit unzipped to emphasize what viewers suspected was a baby bump. (It was.)

 

Her savviest marketing move came halfway through her set, a moment that made clear why Rihanna couldn’t pass up putting on a free concert in the desert. (Super Bowl halftime performers don’t get paid as mentioned earlier).

 

As she prepared to sing the intro to “All of the Lights,” a dancer handed Rihanna a sleek white makeup compact. Huh? The pop star quickly blotted Invisimatte setting powder from her Fenty beauty line across her cheeks. You can catch a glimpse of this brilliant marketing coup here https://youtu.be/L2n5cpUbj-U?si=Xztyiyx5XsL4p8_V

 

The moment didn’t last five seconds, but the internet went nuts. AdWeek reported the performance earned Fenty $5.6m in media value over just the next 12 hours.

 

The Super Bowl’s primary premise and purpose would be to crown the top team in American football history( aside from propping up the Chicken Wing, chips and beer industry) but, that said, artists who perform at halftime are the biggest winners. In a fragmented cultural landscape, they’re granted the single-largest advertising stage in the world — for free.

 

But the half time shows do more than move albums and inflate streaming numbers. Last year, through her de facto commercial, Rihanna built on her reputation as a bona fide entrepreneur.

 

With so much clout at stake, the slot has become highly coveted. Even when greats like Michael Jackson transformed the Super Bowl halftime experience, not everyone enjoyed the show. It was claimed that his show blended in very well with the orgy of commercialism and commercials that was at the heart of the Super Bowl. No one was complaining especially Jackson as post his performance, sales of his Dangerous album (that he released two years earlier), from barely inside the Billboard Top 100 into the Top 10.

 

Eyeballs are a scarce resource now, if you want them in one place at the same time. The mass audiences that once flocked to television have fragmented because of streaming, YouTube, and TikTok.

A few mass market brands can justify the results (read ROMI) of these ads. The ones who make beer, chips, chicken wings etc. Mass makes sense to those brands. For all the others on the ‘herd mentality‘ train, mass cannot be your ally. Mass by definition is average, or just about. Because the average person has no intent to act, sign up, change or spread the word. Mass is right in the thick and centre of it, in Red Ocean territory, whereas as a brand, the change that you are seeking to make will come from the edges.

 

Rita McGrath, Professor at Columbia Business School, Best Selling Author( with 5 books till date), a highly sought after Speaker, regular Columnist in HBR and one of the world’s top experts on innovation and growth and management thinker par excellence in her book ‘ Seeing Around Corners ‘ , talks about those inflection points before they happen. Her interview in BrandKnew can be accessed here.

 

Birds of the same feather is a trap, where others have already decided where they are going and you hop onto the ride though your direction is totally somewhere else. What are you looking for? Noise or signal?