3.47 AM - Social Animal, Tribes, Trusponsive Organizations and other stories...

Editorial - Tribes

In the primitive cultures people lived in small tribes. And I am talking about somewhere between 300,000 years ago to some 12000 years ago, give or take a 5000 years. So we lived in small tribes for more than 250,000 years. We would roam the world, conquer the Himalayas, travel from Norway to Korea, Europe to Australia. Eat what we find, sometimes potatoes and mushrooms, other times fish and hare. And then we invented agriculture. We would like to believe that we tamed rice and wheat… Or did we?

How do we domesticate a wild animal and make him a pet? We tie it something around where we live, we feed it, we teach it neat tricks and it dies in our house after leaving a few offspring. And the cycle continues. Now think about agriculture. Once we invented agriculture, we were made to leave our tribes. We live in a much smaller family than the tribe that we used to have. We were tied around where the wheat or rice grew and were not allowed to roam. We were fed what grew and were taught neat tricks and finally we died at the same place, leaving a few offspring to tend the farms. So who domesticated whom again?

Strategy - Trusponsive Organizations?

There was a time when business used to come to IT with a "requirement" and IT would build a system over the next 10 months that would meet the "requirement". Three things will happen. One, some of the requirements would be met (if we are lucky…!), Two, due to some misunderstanding, some of the requirements would be not be met. Three, and most importantly, requirements would change.

It is just unreasonable to expect that the requirements would remain the same for 10 months and we all know it now. If you are one of my readers who don't, well, you are reading the wrong article.

And that's why everyone (whether they are in or out of IT) hates IT. Either IT delivers too late, or they don't deliver at all. And that's the truth. We get paid to do the wrong thing. Don't get me wrong, the intent is to do the right thing. Problem is the definition of "right" keeps changing more and more frequently.

So what's the solution? Trusponsive IT Organization. Yup, it is not a typo. It is a term that I have coined (Look it up and you won't find the word anywhere except here). It means Truly Responsive. It is not possible to be a Trusponsive IT Organization if IT responds to business requirements. It is possible if IT IS the business. Treat IT as a service provider and you are doomed. Because, in this dynamic age of rapid change, there is no time to respond. You have to be the change.

Look at Fintech. We have digital wallets and soon physical currency will be a thing of the past. There is algorithms that help us decide which investment instruments we should invest in. Today, I can forget my wallet at home and survive days in a tier 2 or even a tier 3 city with just my phone in my hand. Technology is defining how business is done in the finance industry.

Look at tech in healthcare. Censors improve quality of manufacturing by ringing alarms and sending notifications if environment of the manufacturing unit changes. Digital devices help in controlling human trials and double blind studies done to test experimental drugs with real time monitoring. Through datamining it is being discovered that even tests that failed and patents that were rejected have the potential to work as a different drug by just looking at the unexpected side effects that they created. So a failed cardiac medicine, if it had an unexpected

pain killing effect, could turn out to be a successful pain killer.

Hell look at agriculture. They are putting up censors in farm fields to monitor humidity, temperature and pests. Again, tech changing the way things are done.

The Business can't afford to go tell the technologists what they need. They need to rely on the technologists to come and tell them what they need. Treat IT as a true partner, a part of the business that takes strategic and tactical decisions about the business along with rest of the business functions and what you have is a Trusponsive IT Organization.

And why IT, Trusponsive applies for everything. Finance, HR, Legal, Learning and Development even Facilities Management. I only talk about IT because I have spent the last 20 years doing IT. But apply this concept to your area of expertise and you will see that it fits.

Having said that, it is not technology that drives business. No sir, it is people. And I am tying everything back to the tribe. Technology may be changing , but it is people who think of how technology can be implemented. Technology itself cannot think of digital wallets for fintech, wearables for healthcare and censors for farm fields. At least not yet. One thing I have learnt in this business is to never say "never". People play a quintessential role.

But all I see today is people thinking about what is and not what is possible. And I know it is difficult to do deliberate thinking out of the box. And we are not the only ones doing that. The first cars that were commercially produced had fake horse heads glued in

front of them, just so people feel at ease. The laptop keyboards still have the QWERTY keyboard which was originally designed for the typewriter so that the steel arms that are used more often wouldn't clash and jam. We don't have metal arms to type letters in a laptop any more. But we still have the QWERTY Keyboard, even though most of the new generation never learned to touch type on a typewriter. We have a nasty habit of thinking about innovation with an old frame of mind. The only way out is to deliberately throw away all assumptions.

To create a trusponsive organization, the tribe must wander and roam. It must cover new ground. Except this time around, the ground isn't geographical. The question then is, are you allowing your tribe to wander enough?

Fitness - Deliberate Practice

The human body and mind is designed to be lazy. Why? The reason lies in the prehistoric times. Food was scanty and energy was precious. So we were designed to find the most conservative, efficient and lean method of doing anything.

So if you feel like slumping in front of the television eating fatty foods, don't blame yourself. Blame the 250000 years of starvation and struggle. Your genetics still think food is scanty and make you lazy.

Thankfully, we developed a brain. We know for a fact now that food is not that scanty. And if we don't change our ways, we know for a fact that the thing that will kill us is not out there anymore.

Now even when you work out every day or doesn't mean you are not being lazy. And that's the interesting part. The best example I can give you is driving. When you are driving, are you driving deliberately? There are times when you reach from home to work and you don't even realize because you were thinking about work, vegetables that you need to buy or that cute new intern that joined finance last week.
Don't blame yourself, once you have acquired the skill to a manageable level, your brain is designed to put it on the backburner so that you can perform it with minimal effort without losing any energy, so that you can focus your energies on more important things (like that cute new intern…!)

Sounds ok, but the problem is you are not going to get to the next level of skill (beyond manageable) if you allow yourself go to the back burner. You will have to beat the primitive instincts if you want to become the best you can ever be. Every single day your body will tell you to do what it has been designed to tell you. And every single day you will have to beat your body, your mind to do what is required to become the best that you can be.

How you ask? Three points.

Humility: It is very easy to become a victim of hubris. Think that you are too good and stop practicing and losing it. No matter what the skill is, if you stop practicing, you stop being good at it. Fitness, specially. I respect people who look fit because I know they have work hard, through days when they didn't feel like, stayed disciplined and sacrificed those beers and desserts to get where they are. Because, if you stop practicing, you lose it quick.
Step Out: Look at yourself from time to time. Introspect. Are you really good? Are you making consistent progress in your fitness goals? Are you where you should be / could be? Are you achieving your potential?
Focus: Escape the back burner. If you keep running every day, keeping pushing the same weights every day, keep playing the same sport every day. You will notice you don't get tired or feel sore any more. You are not making progress any more. Focus and be in the moment. If it gets easy, raise the bar. Change the workout style, workout program or the whole workout itself. Increase the intensity. Change the intensity or change the sport. Challenge yourself every day. The back burner is your biggest enemy. You think you are working out. But you really aren't. Sure it is better than slumping on that couch in front of the television. But if you don't watch out, you will never get to that elusive next level.

Markus Aurelius, The Roman emperor, the philosopher, practiced Stoicism. His personal diary was later published as a book called "Meditations". Stoicism is very close to what I call deliberate practice. Look it up. If you are interested in the secrets of personal excellence and expertise, you will find it very interesting.

That's all folks...!

I hope you liked this issue. I always want this to be a two way conversation and I absolutely love it when readers write back. In fact, I would love to publish you on this if you would like to share your experiences, thoughts, ideas.

This is my personalized conversation with you. A creative way to stay in touch. And I don't want this to become spam for people who cannot relate to it. But do feel free to forward this if you think someone may benefit from it.

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