How do we deal with Identity and Access Management for moonlighting employees?

Whether we like it or not, moonlighting is here to stay. The causes of the moonlighting effect are easy to understand: 

A. We now know that when the going gets tough, organisations can and do fire employees with no warning whatsoever. 

B. When the profits are good, the executives get the fattest bonus checks, but when there are losses, employees get the pink slips, not the managers who are responsible for PnL. 

Therefore, we arrive at the following axioms: 

A. Loyalty as a concept does not apply to the employer - employee relationship. It is a work for pay contract. 

B. An employee cannot rely on their employer for financial stability. They have to ensure it themselves. 

C. For a mid-level employee, the only resource they can deploy to earn the secondary income is their own skill. 

So, moonlighting is a legitimate response to conditions created by myopic employers. Because it makes common sense, it is here to stay. 

How do organisations prepare for moonlighting? 

Contrary to what we might think, moonlighting is not that dramatic a phenomenon. Our part time employees and freelancers have always been doing this - offering their skills and expertise for a limited time per day and getting paid for it. 

So, on the HR side, we have finally been able to create a policy guideline that will allow organisations to offer moonlighting as a legit business and employment practice (happy to share that if you'd like). 

But, what do we do about Identity and Access Management? 

And this is where it gets really tricky. A moonlighting employee presents a potential incident and data leakage vulnerability. 

How do we, as organisations, proactively create policies that will allow employees to use technology to remain productive, while managing the organisation's risk? 

How are you doing this? 

Morning Thoughts from the EJ program

 The politician benefits less from our ignorance, and more from our indifference.

It is ok to not know. It is not ok to not care.

Even if, our future does not include this country.

Our genes always will.

We will always be known as Indian Origin.
There will always be people back home celebrating our every win.

Things being an entrepreneur has taught me

 1. Kindness - I now know how hard it is to get from one day to the next, and how lonely. So, when interacting with a solopreneur business, I am kinder as a customer. 

2. Bias - I have always bought from smaller businesses. Now i do that even more consciously. 

3. 

Haq, Halaal, and Haraam.. what this means for livelihood

A Gurdas Mann song has this chorus line - 

Roti Haq di khaiye ji, paanve boot polishaan kariye 

What does haq di roti mean? 

Haq means right. 

Haq di roti means livelihood earned through honest means, to which one has legitimate right. 

Halaal and haraam are two words that are also extensively used in North Indian conversations. 

Halaal ka paisa is money earned through honest means, by doing hard work. On this money, one has Haq. 

Haraam means earning through dishonest means, by doing wrong things. 

One of the things that we heard often at home, from everyone was: 

The money earned through someone's tears is only spent on the hospital and the crematorium. 

This means that if someone does manage to amass a lot of wealth by unfair means, that wealth will not bring happiness to the acquirer. Karma will find a way, such that the money will be spent on illness and death. This means that either the person, or their family, will suffer ill health that has recurrent costs. 

Over the years, I have found this saying come true sometimes and not so much at other times. 

But the advice does exist and is given as a warning to growing children, so they may be inspired to earn their money through honest means. 

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.