Ego and Fear : two sides of same coin

What we call as fear, is actually our ego that comes in our way.

Just think of it. Many times we stop ourselves from doing something. eg. trying out new outfit, trying to learn new skills in the classes, trying to pick up conversation with strangers, going to new places etc.. the list is long. We call it as our fear. We feel its ok to tell people “I am afraid of picking conversation with new people” or ” I am afraid of going to music class”. We even say ” I don’t know if I would be able to do it”, “People will laugh at me”.

On the face of it all of these excuses look like ‘being afraid of’ syndrome.

But think little deep. Why do we have this fear. What are we afraid of?

We are actually afraid of losing our ‘position’. We think of ourselves as somebody, at some position, in some particular place in the hierarchy. We have reached that position due to our current characteristics. If we have to learn something new, try new outfit, we are looking at ourselves from our ego point of view. We bring the lenses of our position and we don’t want to disturb it. We don’t want to upset the applecart. Why?

Because we think of ourselves as ‘somebody’ at our subconscious level. ( I am not an expert in psychology, these are merely my observations).

Now bring yourself at the ground level. Think you are nobody and you are learning this new skills, trying our new thing for your benefit. You have your strengths but you don’t have to defend your position. Take out your ego and make yourself humble… all your fears would be gone. You would feel free and you will become happier.

Ego comes in way of having peace of mind. At the extreme level when we say ‘ I am afraid of height or of adventure sports, we are actually afraid of death. Why?

If coming in this world was not in our control, death is also not. We have not brought ourselves in this world, ‘someone’ else, then why cling onto the notion of ‘I’?

If we work towards removing ‘I’ from our life, I think, we would become happier.

Stop that innovation

While reading the news on Apple and MS’s results, one whacky thought came to my mind.

If these two IT companies along with IBM, HP are close to $100Billion in annual revenue each, then top 25 IT companies put together would be making $1000 billion annual revenue. There is a great race going on to growing these revenue faster. And there is a greater race for bringing ‘innovation’.

The other side of this revenue is consumers and enterprises are spending at least $1000 billion in buying these stuff made by these companies. Every year we are spending more money on these stuff. What is the primary reason for fast growing sale of Apple like products? Primarily we are buying new stuff every year. We are getting lured by so called innovation or new features.

The thought that came to my mind, if Apple, for example, does not come out with iPad3 or iPhone5 or Microsoft does not bring newer version of Windows or Oracle, IBM , CISCO all decide not bring any new features for next 2 years, what would happen?

My feeling is that they would stop growing but they would still collect $1000billion between them, but may be extra $100Billion (10% of $1000 billion) that consumers and enterprises would have spent to buy ‘innovation’ would not be spent on these products. If you take this logic further and apply to consumer electronics field, I guess we could help consumers in saving upto $500 billion from spending.

And then we create a system of channelizing this money into projects that are meant to save people’s life, make food available to each and every human being on the earth and help create more equitable place, we would be right thing.

If companies do not bring out these so called innovation in consumer IT and consumer electronics, world would not be poorer. My mobile phone, 6 years back, had made as happy as iPhone made me. So if there was no iPhone, I would still have been happy and talking to people. But today me and people like me are eagerly looking for newer version of iPhone and iPads with wallets in hand. Does it make sense? Does it make any world any better?

Please stop this innovation.

What I want my children to learn

“The knowledge and information that our children are getting through formal education system, is it good enough for them to face the rapid advancements in science and technology?”

“Are our kids getting ready to face the rapid changes in social structure?”

“Are our children developing the solid foundation to be successful in globalised world?”

As parents of two under-teen children, my wife and I often go over these questions. Our discussions move around the education system, type of schools, curriculum etc. The fact that we often go through these discussions shows that we have yet to get satisfactory answer.

We realised that we are trying to find the answer in wrong place. School or curriculum system’s mandate does not include getting children ready for the new world. We have nothing against the education system – it is doing its job. We have nothing against the schools – they are teaching the curriculum that is prescribed by the board of education.

However we all agree that it is not good enough. Challenges are of different kind.

When I look at their curriculum and books and compare with the advancements in every field, the gap is yawning. In the coming years what our children are learning in schools would be outdated by the time they go to college. Our children are going to find so much of gap in what they know and what they are expected to know when they go out in the real life that it is going to baffle them. Till 10/15 years back the transition from education system to real life was quite smooth.

The challenges are not going to be only in education, they are going to be in social life as well. The contours of social circle have already changed. When we grew up we and our parents had an idea of the social structure we would be entering in and we were groomed accordingly. With the virtual societies and online social networking we do not know how the societies are going to be shaped by the internet world.

Also in the professional field our children would be working in a globalised environment. They would need different skills to excel in such environments.

To help our children prepare to handle such situations, we need to help them acquire skills. Following is my list :

Ability to learn “how to learn” :
Today’s learning process has a structure which is made up of class room learning and books. And there is an assessment process at the end of it. Most often the learning is guided by the assessment process. As the information and knowledge are changing so rapidly, kids would have to look at many sources of information beyond books and class room. There might not be formal assessment process in place.

Usually our mind processes new information based on what it has learnt, it tries to find the context with the available information. In the coming days, the new information that children would be coming across would be far away from the context of what they have learnt, very often the information would be contradicting what the mind already knows. This information would not be fitting in the mind’s frame of reference.

In such cases I would like my children to develop ability to understand new sources, process such information and learn from it. I would like my children to go through the skills development system that would help them face entirely new scenarios and face them confidently.

Collaborate :
While the education and school systems teaches student to be competitive and zero sum game, its not going to be the only trait that would see them through in the coming age. I would like children to learn how to collaborate and become stronger . The personal growth and learning are going to happen more through collaboration and understanding of communities than being just a competitive person.

Work in virtual teams :
Our children learn how to deal with their friends and people around them on a daily basis. But in the new world we increasingly find ourselves working with the people whom we don’t meet in person. We deal with problems by working with the team members through electronic and digital communications. Very often our decisions are based on our knowledge of our friend or colleague’s background. That is not going to be the case in virtual world where children would have to deal with people and their culture about which they have no idea. I would like my children to learn the skills of dealing with virtual teams.

Leadership through influence :
Today children are learning leadership skills that are oriented towards ‘command and control’ approach. In the new world it is the influence that would matter to become a leader. Also in the coming times, while working in different communities the role of a person would keep changing. The real leadership would come through influence and not through titles. I would like my children to understand the importance of being team player, influencer and a leader.

The conventional education system can not instill these skills due to paucity of time and often due to lack of quantification criterion. But we all know that these skills are important and in coming times these would be the skills for basic survival. I strongly believe that we as parents would have to come forward and create communities to help our children learn these skills along with their regular education system. If you know any such community which is trying to do so, please share here.

Communcation that leaders should avoid

“ I would like to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to meet me. ….”

I would think twice about meeting even if these words come from the God. I smell tremendous attitude in these words and I don’t think it does any good when it comes from the democratically elected PM of a nation. Somehow I felt these words lack humbleness and give a picture of a person who wants to show his position of leadership.

When I read the enclosed news, the first thing that struck me was how leaders forget that they are leaders because of people and followers, they have not come from the sky.  When you are the elected PM of the democratic nation you need to avoid the language that connotes that people are the subject and you are (whatever you think you are).

My intention is not to critise the person or the PM per se or the initiative mentioned in the news item. Actually it is a good initiative and nice way of leveraging social media. However to me it is a lesson as to how leaders need to be careful in their communication. and avoid unpleasant language. I would have drafted these lines as “ I would like to have an opportunity to meet you all”…

What would Singapore gain through OSS

One of the key issues why open source software has not taken roots in Singapore is the mismatch in messaging and perception in what open source offers. Though innovation is the key message as the benefit of open source software, the more dominant message that persist in the country regarding OSS is cost saving. In the society and nation like Singapore where there is abundance of economic wealth and which is more interested in banking on the big brands, why should they care about saving cost and working with smaller companies? The common perception related with cost savings is not positive aspect but of compromise with quality or functionality. Why would a nation which can afford to spend money adopt the products with such messaging.

Though open source software is not just meant for cost saving and it has more positive messages and benefits associated with it, it needs to be communicated.

So what are those key benefits that nations and societies like Singapore should look for in open source software.

Lets us first look at the reasons and benefits the biggest economy of the world – America derived from adopting open source. America and some developed economies adopted open source software to address many challenges that these nations have to address. Even if you have economic wealth the key engine for growth and leadership lies in innovation, pace of development and giving tools in the hands of people to drive growth. As a leader, it is not enough to be in sync with developments, but it is important to set the pace and create tool-kits for innovation.

With the traditional model of software development you can’t do this, in general.

Open source software development model presented America and all those who are aspiring to address various challenges of society and nation with the model that allowed them to drive innovation in a ubiquitous manner. Open source software has enabled collaborative development leading to faster pace. It enabled the enterprises to remove vendor lock-in and set its own (often faster) pace leading to more business. Open source software has fueled the competitive environment challenging the inefficient monopolies which are impediments.

In the same way Singapore should embrace open source software development model to inculcate the habit of innovation, to help drive competitive environment and remove the inefficiencies caused due to proprietary development models in software industry.