Category: Concepts

Fashion is cyclic

Fashion is cyclic and so is life. I was once asked in my college viva as to why fashion is cyclic ? I did not know the answer and responded that it may be because the world is round. Later when I clarified with my professor, he said I was partly right. He said fashion is cyclic because the choices are always limited for everything in life. Once we reach the limit , we tend to follow a repeat cycle.

We can examine this hypothesis from different angles. Let us first look at fashion itself. If we take hairstyle, we have the option of having long hair, medium, short hair or no hair and then we revert to long hair. If we look at our pants. We had tight fitting pants, bell bottoms, parallels and then we may revert to tight pants. So, we notice that all aspects of fashion is cyclic.

If we examine this from HR practices in an organisation, the story is not very different. If we look at rewards and recognition practices, we had high level of differentiation and focus on individual rewards. We then moved to a hybrid model to balance individual and team rewards. Finally, we denounce individual differentiation and feel that the best way to go is team rewards. The story of the bell curve is testimony to this theory as well. Today the same organizations which kept bell curve as the way to differentiate performance assessment have started moving away from the same.

Now, let us look at life. As they say in common parlance, life has come a full circle. We go through bad times and after years of struggle, we feel we have got over the ridge and some good things start to happen. As we ride the crest, we again see the clouds of trouble approaching us. Life is never a straight road. It has a lots of twists and turns and it is up to us to develop the resilience to deal with the uncertainties of life.

Even nature teaches us the cycle of life. We have a great monsoon and a bumper crop for two years in a row. We feel the world is green and food and commodity prices drop. Then we have a severe drought and huge losses to farmers. This is followed by high inflation and escalating food prices. The following year again we have a normal monsoon and life seems to limp back to normalcy.

One of the lessons I have learnt in life is that it is unpredictable. You face a trough, when you expect a crest and vice versa. One has to develop our patience and perseverance to deal with ups and downs. Our ability to bounce back and deal with both with equanimity makes us a winner in life. We need to realize that there is always a sun rise after every sun set. Hence, there is no need to despair after a trough but be optimistic that a crest will soon follow.

Every thing in life goes round and round. We have to develop the ability to be comfortable with the circles in our life. It is a continuum and for every dark and cloudy day, there will be a bright and sunny day that follows. If we develop the ability to deal with the breaks in between, we become victorious in life. It may look that the dark and gloomy days never end for us. The sun looks to never shine for us. But, herein we need the patience and the gratitude that we are better off than millions of people around us in the world.

Life is a full circle like in the floral decoration of the photo above. Let us learn to deal with it.

S Ramesh Shankar

Millennials…

Who are Millenials ?

Social scientists have given various age brackets to identify “Millenials”. It is broadly agreed that all those born between 1980s and 2000 would belong to this group. This is a social cohort with specific behavioural characteristics. While there is a lot of talk on the concept of dealing with multiple generations in organizations today, it has been so even in the past. The only difference could be in the radical behavioural shift of this cohort as compared to the past.

The first distinguishing characteristic of Millenials is that they are very clear in what they want to do in life. They are confident and ambitious and define their own path. They are not worried about what society thinks of them. They can deviate from time tested paths and carve a road of their own choice. This makes them difficult to understand as a cohort as individual behaviours may not necessarily reflect the behaviour of the group as a whole.

The second unique characteristic of this group is that they are technologically savvy. The mobile phone is ubiquitous in their lives. They easily adapt to technology and make the best use of it. Sometimes you do get a feeling whether technology determines their behaviour or they manage technology that way. They are well versed in technology and know how to use it to their best advantage.

The third nature of this cohort is they are restless. While being impatient for results may be a good idea, it may make them demotivated very fast. For eg., if they post something on social media and do not get many likes within minutes of their post, they get disappointed easily. This impacts their work and their life. They want to achieve success in half the time of their seniors. While it is good to be ambitious, it may be necessary to be patient for results.

The fourth quality of the Millennials is they have a lot of ideas. If their ideas are channelised and they are guided properly, they can achieve results much faster than their older generations. I have always felt energised in the company of these people. They challenge you all the time but are also willing to be challenged in every way. We need to have a participative style of leadership to deal with them.

The last quality which I admire most in this group is their ability to take risks. In my class in college, hardly one or two students would venture out to start a business after completing our professional education. In this generation, more than one third of the class wants to start something of their own. They are willing to work hard, put forth their ideas and are not afraid of failure. On the contrary, many of us do not have the guts to do that even today.

As in the photo above, this duo is full of energy and they only are looking to channelise the same to bring out their best always.

I have enjoyed every moment I have spent with this generation. It is not right to imagine that they have arrived from a different planet and behave differently. It is true their goals and aspirations are different. They have clear goals, willing to take risks, adapt to technology faster and are impatient for results. If we are willing to channelise their ideas and create a supportive environment, they are bound to succeed.

It is up to us to learn from them and lead them into a brighter future.

S Ramesh Shankar

Luck versus Hard Work

One may always be in a dilemma if luck or labour is needed for success in life. We hear stories of both categories being successful in life. On the one hand, we hear of many successful people, who work their way up in life through dint of hard work and perspiration. On the other hand, we also meet people, who are at the right place at the right time and catapult to success due to sheer luck.

One is always in a dilemma whether luck or hard work is the mantra for success in life. If I have to look back at my life and also the experience of admiring successful people around me in all walks of life I would say that hard work is the foundation for success in every aspect of life. Hard work is necessary and luck can supplement hard work but not the other way around.

Sometimes people get carried away by some rare examples of lucky people achieving success. It may be true that some people are indeed lucky and they achieve success not because of their efforts but because of their luck. This in my view would be more of an exception than a rule. It is like some people having great health right through their life and living in their nineties inspite of smoking and consumption of alcohol on a daily basis. If one concludes based on these examples that smoking and consuming alcohol every day could help us lead a healthy life, this could be misleading.

One of the reasons why many people do not consider hard work as important for success in life is that we tend to notice people only after they have become successful. We are not privy to the hard work and the challenges many of the successful people go through before they become famous. A good example could be that of a sportsman or woman. After they become famous and earn a lot of money through advertisements and endorsements, we tend to believe that life is so easy for them. We do not realize how many hours of practise they would have put in day in and night out before attaining the glory in their chosen field.

This is equally true in every aspect of life. We see famous sportspersons, actors, singers, dancers, corporate honchos and others being successful in life. They lead a life, which many of us may envy. But, we do not realize the trials and tribulations they go through before they become successful in life. They burn the midnight oil and fail many times in their attempts before success greets them.

In life, we need to work hard and if we are fortunate for it to be supplemented with luck, we could be happy. Hard work is like our daily meal. It has to be healthy, full of vitamins and regular. If we get a desert once in a way, we could be happy and that could be the supplement of luck with our daily meal. I cannot imagine we becoming healthy only by eating desert every day. So luck can help us like a catalyst but cannot substitute hard work in life.

Another important lesson in life is that we need to patient to be successful. Every process has its time limit. We cannot expect to have a child in less than nine months in a natural way. We cannot expect the monsoon to last in India for more than 3 to 4 months. So, everything in life is defined by time. We need to put in our best efforts and wait for the time for it to ripen and deliver results. Sometimes we are in a hurry and hence we end up disappointed.

It is like we tend to visit a temple one day before the exam hoping that God will bestow us with luck even if we have not worked hard enough for the exams.

Lets work hard and hope luck smiles at us on the way.

S Ramesh Shankar