On Panchatantra

"The Panchatantra is a collection of children's stories, like Aesop's fables." 

This statement is false. 

Neither in its original design and intent, nor in its structure, is Panchatantra a set of children's stories. 

Panchatantra is a treatise on statecraft that uses animal stories as pedagogy. 

The animals are used as metaphors of human characteristics. 

The stories are neither childlike nor non violent. They encompass every element of human emotions and interactions. There is deceit, violence, death, flattery, coercion, persuasion, betrayal, et al. 

The Panchatantra should be read to understand statecraft. 

If that holistic view is of any use to you, the National Book Trust has a book that has all the stories of Panchatantra, in order, with the lesson attached to each. 

There is also another book that just lists the suktis or sutras in order. You can also refer that one. (Different publisher). 

None of the sutras is useful by itself. It has to be viewed in context. Which is why, when I tried to read only the sutras book, it was not as useful. But read with the context of the stories, they made a lot of sense. 

What games teach us

A year or two ago, we created a game in the family, to participate in a Board game making contest. The game did not win anything, but in doing test play and refining the game, we all loved it so much that it became a regular in the family. 

Its a trading game based in the SIVC. There are traders and producers, about 7 types of commodities, regulated markets that display the buying and selling rates of the commodities being traded on that day in the market, and of course, free price negotiation among players, ability to add warehouses and factories, get a trading license or a factory license, some protectionist laws that protect domestic producers against price hedging by traders in the home port, and some regulation around how many ports a player might visit in each game play, so that monopolistic players do not develop and every trader, big or small, gets the same trading opportunity in every turn. 

Over the last few years, I observed that while 4 of us play the game, everyone has a very different playing style and strategy. But what was amazing is how closely this mirrors our real life business and investment decisions. 

My brother focuses on commodities that are high margin, but low value, so absolute wealth generated is lower, but they are regularly traded at all ports, so they are high frequency trades. In real life also, he tends to enter businesses that are high margin, high volume, and he has patience, just like in the game. He uses his cash wisely. 

My son bets on a single commodity - it has high value and high margins, but low liquidity. In real life also, he only picks up blue chip stocks and sticks with them. 

I, on the other hand, keep cash rolling. So, i make moderate profits on each trade but don't have the patience for the big kill. I also always keep a diversified portfolio of commodities on my boats. My real life investments are also low risk, high liquidity, and low margin. 

Interesting, isn't it? 

Have you ever learnt something about yourself or another person from a game? 

The Human is not a resource

The most distinct difference in the Indian and Western schools of thought is the systematic dehumanising of people. 

Employees are not human beings. They are human resources. 

Patients are not human beings. They are cases who must be treated, not according to what their bodies are telling them, but what studies done by pharma companies on thousands of people have told the doctor to do. 

In India, on the other hand, we do not ask for "2 stone cutters" - we ask for Suresh and Ramesh. In US based companies, we ask for "2 desk traders" or "2 Java developers" or, worse still, "a gastroentrologist." 

People are not labels. There is a difference in the way each of them does their work. The whole point of close management is so we know each person's unique abilities and nurture them. If the system encourages us to view people only through the lens of their label, it is, essentially dehumanising the person. 

The Indian vaids do NOT depend on pharmacological studies. They write their own histories, depend on their knowledge of the herbs, and learn from the accumulated wisdom of other doctors, not pharma companies. 

The way modern medicine is structured requires pharma companies to do these mass testing and trials. But to dehumanise the person sitting next to you in favour of these studies, that is systemic denial of human individuality. 

You can register but...

 

Thumbrule: You seek value, useless products seek you

Let me tell you a secret.

I have read some great books. In fact, I have read some rather exceptional books. And seen some great cinema and content. 

Because, I ignored the reviews and the bestseller lists. 

The most striking examples I can think of are a murder mystery based on an Indian sleuth, and a series of books about an African ambassador who is also a good sleuth. The plots were borrowed sometimes, but the reading was rather refreshing. 

And Bodies in the Library. Bhaas ke Natak, which is totally gripping. 

All these books, I would not have read, if it wasn't for the fact that: 

A. I go to the bookstores and browse books myself. 

B. I patently ignore all recommendations and bestseller lists. I have said this earlier - most good writers are not good marketers, and vice versa. You will be sad to know that the first series - based on a lady Indian sleuth, is no longer in print. It was a series of 4 books, and when I tried to look for more books by the author, I realised that there were 4 books, but they were out of print. 

Long ago, we decided that the job of a search engine is to find the best content on the internet and present it to its users. It is not our job to apply to the search engine and hope that they will include us. 

Apply that principle to life - go looking for value. It is your job to seek value. I cannot overstate this. 

 There are two kinds of professionals. They are: 

A. My-best-effort

B. Whatever-it-takes

Let's say you are looking to party on Friday night. The boss calls you and asks you to submit some test results by Saturday noon. 

Here is how the two professionals will respond to that: 

A. My-best-effort

"Sure, no problem!" 

Then you go on and party the night away, forget all about the test results. When your manager messages you at Saturday 5 pm to check if you have uploaded the test results, you say something like, "Hey, not yet." 

You then get to it on Monday, in a business as usual mode. Apologies are for losers(Meaning, you do not apologise because there is nothing to apologise for) and if entire projects can get delayed, why cant simple test results be delayed by a bit? Whats the big deal? 

B. Whatever-it-takes 

You tell the manager - "I am sorry, I am meeting friends tonight and have plans this weekend. The earliest I can get to this is Monday afternoon. Will that be ok?" 

The manager thinks you have a bad attitude and gives it to the my best effort person. On Monday  morning, it lands at your desk (on account of Hey-Not-Yet) and you give a timeline of Tuesday afternoon to submit the test cases. 

Monday 1600 hours you realise this is going to take longer than that and you gave a wrong estimate. 

You then work to complete it, submit it by Tuesday afternoon, and never give a wrong estimate on a task like that again. 

7 questions to get to know the organisation

The mandate is to have an exploratory chat with people across levels and locations to "get a sense" of the organisation and how different people view the company. 

As an HR consultant working with Indian companies, this has been a standard ask. Clients want us to do this exercise in addition to any data gathering exercise that we might anyway do. This qualitative exploration helps us too. 

So, here is my secret set of 7 questions to get to know the culture of an organisation. The first question is what is called the classification question in research: 

1. Tell us about your career trajectory.

This question helps us set some parameters – functional area, total experience, education, tenure with Fateh, etc.

2. What is the best thing about being here?

3. What is it that, if changed, would make this organisation greater/better? 

4. If you had to use 5 words to describe this organisation, what would those be?

5. If you could make one change to the business model of the company, what would that change be?

6. If you could make one change to the culture of the company, what would that change be?

7. What would you never change about the company?