“SPECIALISTERNE” (TS - 05)

First time, I read about “SPECIALISTERNE” was in an article written by Gareth Cook ( A Pulitzer prize winner, a Columnist for Boston Globe) in New York Times.

So, what exactly “SPECIALISTERNE” is? “SPECIALISTERNE” is a company based in Denmark, which uses the services of Autistic people.  In his article “The Autism Advantage” Mr. Cook, mentions about the Company and how it manages to select people with autism and help them grow. The Company was founded by Thorkil Sonne (his son Lars was identified with Autism) who realized that corporations often look for people who are intensely focused, are careful in execution or with special skills and these exceptional skills are possessed by some of the gifted autistic people.

His realisation was correct and this can be read in an article written by Celeste Biever (in New Scientist - Savant skills may be widespread in people with autism), where she mentions that autistic people have “Savant-like skills, such as astounding memory, perfect pitch or the ability to multiply very high numbers together, …” In the same article it is stated that a study of 100 autistic adults shows that one third have skills which are superior to general population.

However, all these years, most of them were either shut within four walls of their houses or end up being failure in various facets of life with a tag “Unfit for everything”. Mr. Cook has rightly pointed out that if market can forgive peoples weaknesses, then they will rise to the level of natural gifts. Here our ability to effectively use the skills of autistic people has failed miserably. Paul Collins has rightly said “Autists are the ultimate square pegs, and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that the hammering is hard work. It's that you're destroying the peg.” 

When we turn around and recollect our visit to various institutions, how many of us see people with autism, are given a chance to work with us. From my recollection, I have seen none over all this years.

The Danish meaning of “SPECIALISTERNE” is “The Specialist”. 

To have better perspective on how “SPECIALISTERNE” has impacted please follow the link:  

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/magazine/the-autism-advantage.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Love is wise, Hatred is foolish (TS - 04)

A visit to archives launches the path for future. A similar excavation of the bygones and their significance for the future descendants forces us to inspect contemporary requirements. 

One of the noted philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell had given an interview to BBC program Face to Face on April 1959.

The interviewer, Freeman, at the end, requests Russell to offer message to future descendants. The message is reproduced here which is very much valid today:

I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral:

The intellectual thing I should want to say to them is this: When you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed, but look only and solely at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say.

The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple. I should say: Love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other. We have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way, and if we are to live together and not die together we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.

The intellectual thing is applicable in all aspect of work where facts are missed and our perspectives are added to the work.

And the crux of moral thing “Love is wise, Hatred is foolish” is very much applicable today as we have become less tolerant as members of the society.

Once, John F Kennedy spoke about French Marshal Lyautey:

“The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!'”

Bury hatred and plant love.

Read ( TS - 03)

Interaction with movie goers about a “Classic” movie elevates in them the yearning to hunt and watch it, at any cost. However, in case of “Classic” books, we will have to agree with noted author and humorist Samuel Langhorne Clemens (*) “Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read.”

The challenge in persuading an individual, verbally, to read is comparatively easy against the effort required in writing down the importance of reading. Convincing through an article requires listing down of instances i.e. leaders, drawn from business fraternity, and their passion for reading.

Occasionally this difficulty of writing about reading gets simplified when one accidentally reads article like “For those who want to lead, read” by John Coleman (appeared in HBR blog network). The author has stressed the benefit by cataloging business luminaries and their avid reading style. Following paragraph from the article, justifies it:

“According to The New York Times, Steve Jobs had an "inexhaustible interest" in William Blake; Nike founder Phil Knight so reveres his library that in it you have to take off your shoes and bow; and Harman Industries founder Sidney Harman called poets "the original systems thinkers," quoting freely from Shakespeare and Tennyson. In Passion & Purpose, David Gergen notes that Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein reads dozens of books each week. And history is littered not only with great leaders who were avid readers and writers (remember, Winston Churchill won his Nobel prize in Literature, not Peace), but with business leaders who believed that deep, broad reading cultivated in them the knowledge, habits, and talents to improve their organizations.”

The above paragraph will surely instill the importance of reading books, which are unrelated to our every day professional engagements. Further, it takes to a journey i.e.

“To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.”

A C Grayling, Financial Times (in a review of A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel)

John Coleman has listed down few tips to develop the habit of reading and enriching oneself. To read more follow the link:

 http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/for_those_who_want_to_lead, read.html

(*): pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens is Mark Twain.

In darkness, the responsibility for communication is no longer mine (TS - 02)

The above statement will evoke harshness over the speaker, if stated in front of an august audience. However, the same statement transforms to higher magnitude when identity of individual is revealed as Rachel Kolb who is deaf since birth.

My introduction to Rachel Kolb came through her article “Seeing at the Speed of Sound” appeared in Stanford Magazine (March / April 2013). Rachel is a Stanford Graduate and a Rhodes Scholar.

The article by Rachel raises importance of understanding the world of deafness and the challenges faced by them.  She truly makes us understand what Edward T. Hall has correctly stated “One of the most effective ways to learn about oneself is by taking seriously the cultures of others. It forces you to pay attention to those details of life which differentiate them from you”.

The author takes us to an excursion, wherein the sight of effort put to understand the turbulence of lip reading, journey of understanding sound is touched upon. Rachel rightly acknowledged the point made by prominent deaf educator Madan Vashishta (deaf at age 11, was farmer for next 10 years and subsequently acquired Ph.D. in special education):

“the rawness of unfiltered contact surpasses even the reassurance provided by translation”.

The article removes our witlessness of believing the life of deaf. Here we have to agree with Marlee Martin’s (only deaf performer to win Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading role i.e. OSCAR, for the movie Children of a Lesser God) statement:

“I've always wanted to write a book relating my experiences growing up as a deaf child in Chicago. Contrary to what people might think, it wasn't all about hearing aids and speech classes or frustrations.”

To truly understand the progress and journey of Rachel please read the article. Link http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=59977.

About Madan Vashishta:

·         First Indian Deaf to acquire Ph.D.

·         Ph.D., Gallaudet University, Special Education Administration, 1983

·         Associate Professor (Part - Time)

Silence ( TS - 01)

Silence symbolizes opportunity to see / think without hearing. Growth gave objects / events / scenarios and ushered lesser of silence every moment. Later, silence was lost, as boredom (aversion to silence) was unacceptable and intolerable.

Slowly and unknowingly, silence got deliberately / compulsorily / forcefully abandoned. Loss of silence created, inability in understanding and feeling, the clarity of truth. In the words of André Maurois “Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life’s nothingness”.

Sojourn stay in nothingness and the truth it spills, instills the thought of escape from Silence.  Surprisingly, it is the moments of silence which bring back the reality of the lost truth. The inseparableness of silence is made to realize by Sri Chinmoy in his poem on silence:

“What you can do: You can criticize silence, You can ignore silence.
What you cannot do: You cannot sit even one fleeting minute In silence.
Yet one day It is you and you alone Who will marry silence
And become inseparably one With silence-sky.”

The Series (TS)

Under the Head TS i will be releasing some of my writings which were published in an in house magazine. These were published more than two years back. 

It contains articles on various subjects.

This will be released with Heading containing the title name and in bracket TS with number mentioned next to it.

The first one will be released today on "Silence".

Individual Fit

An article, in www.star.com, titled “When U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages”, by Todd Rose demonstrated exactly how a grave imperfection was resolved and amendments commenced in 1950’s are still in application.

Selected sections of the article are listed below and subsequently will enquire into the working environment in corporate world:

“Rather than suggesting that people should strive harder to conform to an artificial ideal of normality, Daniels’ analysis led him to a counterintuitive conclusion that serves as the cornerstone of this book: any system designed around the average person is doomed to fail.”

“Daniels published his findings in a 1952 Air Force Technical Note entitled The “Average Man”? In it, he contended that if the military wanted to improve the performance of its soldiers, including its pilots, it needed to change the design of any environments in which those soldiers were expected to perform. The recommended change was radical: the environments needed to fit the individual rather than the average.”

“Rather than fitting the individual to the system, the military began fitting the system to the individual.”

Questions to contemplate by corporates:

·         Recruiters still check whether the person fits into a job environment (description)

·         Questions are tailored around the Job to be performed / ethos of the environment

·         Qualifications and experiences are valued to the core

In other words the individual recruited has to fit into the corporate environment, if one fails then the recruit is considered a non-conformist and if succeeded, recruiter / recruitment methodologies are saluted.

It is time that questions are to be asked why people leave the organisations. Is it because the performance was bad / the ecosystem of the organisation was too rigid to accommodate / allow the new recruit sufficient space to manoeuvre.

There are many reasons why organisation never knows why individuals leave:

·         Exit interview are never conducted seriously, it’s a form filling activity

·         Questions / reasons for leaving never go into database for future analysis

·         Analysis of the individuals left are never correlated to the interviewer

·         Employee exit just like dead is activity best to be forgotten and not be learnt from

It’s time to reflect upon the changes required in the way prospective employees are recruited in the organisation and employees’ exits are handled.

Reference: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html

There is No Excuses

Doping has been a challenge for sports authorities.

At one end establishments endeavor to have a sterile state where all can participate without performance enhancing drugs. On the other end people with lopsided advantages due to physical/biological/geographical benefits are participating and winning the sports events.

Surprising, Maria Sharapova incident highlights the stakes involved in the game and how one has to be careful in avoiding risks which can jeopardise reputation, earnings and future.

The plea for ignorance is unacceptable as Dick pound of World Anti-Doping Agency stated the following:

"No, there is no excuse,"

"If you are running a $30 million a year sole proprietorship, I'm sorry you damn well make sure that you don't do anything that makes you ineligible."

"I think this would wake me up,"

"If you have an IQ higher than room temperature you should stop (using it). There is a test for it and you'll be bounced."

In fact the above statement from Dick pound is a tutorial in risk management.

Source for comments by Dick Pound:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tennis-sharapova-pound-idUKKCN0WB1T3.