SAST Wingees

Can passion be taught? – part 1

Can passion be taught is a question that I have thought about for a long time. I am yet to find definitive answers, but it seems that the answer is pretty close at hand. I’m sure you’ll all agree that Passion is one of the key ingredients for success. At the risk of over-generalizing, one could even categorically state that there is not a single person in the world that is successful without being passionate. Myself and Archana Raghuram have been discussing for the past 2 weeks or so about Passion. She described passion as being analogous to drugs in that it is addictive. Excellent analogy. If Passion is such a magical ingredient for a success recipe, is there a way we can teach people to be passionate? This is the question we were pondering. In the organizational context, this could be a great thing – imagine, if you’re able to teach your entire employee population to be passionate about your company’s line of work, your employees could work wonders. Even if you ignore the organizational benefits, if we could teach people to be passionate, lot more people could be successful and the world will be a much better place. When I looked for a definition of Passion on the internet, I found this very apt definition:
One of the seven modes. Its positive pole is self-actualization; its negative pole is identification. In passion mode, one releases one’s energy boundlessly, downward and outward.
The key here is releasing energy boundlessly.
We were exploring a few threads and I will write about the first one and invite your comments. I am also tagging Milind Sathe to write on his blog, which is focused on Excellence. By our definitionn, Excellence can’t be achieved without passion. Without further adieu, here is the first the thread – What is the connection between passion and one’s core strengths/capabilities? Can someone who is not good at a particular skill become passionate about it? For example, if I want to be a musician and I know I’m not good at it now, can I become a great musician by becoming passionate about it? Or should I simply pick the things I am good at and become passionate about it? Please write your comments as always.

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For the love of parrots

Priya Raju is a big animal lover. Dogs and cats and other animals literally take to her. She has the knack for petting them and befriending them. I am mostly in observation mode unless its a really friendly one. Check out her thoughts on parrots and please try to answer her questions, if you can.

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I absolutely love Parrots. The Parrots (Parrots, Budgerigars, Macaws, Lorikeets etc) are amongst the most intelligent birds in the world. Most of them are as intelligent as a human child.

Of all the birds in the world, Keas fascinate me the most. They belong to the Parrot family & are endemic to New Zealand. Their curiosity is lamentable. Completely unafraid of humans, keas routinely break wind-shield wipers off cars to “investigate”. They drop stones on the roof tops of houses, just to see people running out in panic. Nothing is too strong for their powerful beaks. A handful of rogue keas may systematically dismantle your car: and a big bunch of “spectator” keas will sit around, gleefully watching the “fun”.

Keas are reportedly as intelligent as chimpanzees. No wonder there’s much monkey-business when they are around.

Recently, I visited a relative. She had a cage in her balcony, with a bunch of budgerigars (love-birds in India). They looked sad & forlorn. Budgies, as they are commonly called, roam around the length & breadth of Australia. It was terrible to see these parrots in a 4 X 10 wire-mesh cage. There were about 10 of them, huddling together for comfort, hardly uttering a squawk.

When a bird has been in captivity, you can’t just release it back to the wild. They won’t last for a day. Eagles or rooks might tear them to pieces in no time. Not to mention the neighborhood cats.

I’m always pleased to see an animal lover. If ever you get the urge to raise birds, please don’t raise exotic or intelligent birds. If you do, please don’t cage them. Better still: please think about contributing to a well-established Wildlife Society.

Here are my questions.

Question 1:Most religions (including Hinduism) attribute special qualities to human beings. Now that we know birds and animals possess a level of intelligence our ancients may not have contemplated: How special is a human being?

Question 2: What do you think about holding such intelligent animals in captivity – zoo, or otherwise?

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Flashback:

1. I had written a while ago about bird intelligence.

India’s own 911 rising

Updated Apr 23, 2007: Vamsi commented that Apollo Hospitals is also doing this. Thanks Vamsi. See below.

While living in the USA for more than 10 years, i used to often envy the 911 service – emergency response within minutes. It shows how much value is placed on the human life and even animal lives. In fact, once I and Priya Raju were walking around in our neighborhood and we found a cat struggling for its life having been hit by a speeding car. We called the local animal shelter and within 15 minutes, a car had come to pick up the animal, but unfortunately by then the poor thing was dead. Amazing speed of response.

In contrast, you come across so many instances in India, where people are simply left to die because the emergency response is simply too late or no one considerate enough to help out etc. And even if some good samaritan wants to help and takes the victim to the hospital, one would face an endless barrage of bureaucratic procedures by which time the victim maybe beyond help.  You don’t even need to ask what happens to an animal in distress.

Last week i was on the road and i was immensely delighted to watch an advertisement on the airport TV network for what seemed like a 911 service in India from an organization called EMRI.

During the weekend, i checked EMRI’s website and sure enough it is India’s answer to the 911 service. It is currently operational only in the state of Andhra Pradesh and within the year that it has been in operation, it has helped save over 8,506 lives and responded to over 4.75 million calls. If you reside in Andhra Pradesh, you are lucky, and you can find help in an emergency by dialing 108. The agency coordinates with the medical, police and fire departments and dispatches help on an emergency basis.

Interestingly this EMRI organization has been funded by Satyam Computers, one of the key software service providers in India. Satyam’s corporate social responsibility initiative is admirable. Kudos to Satyam for funding such a great service.  Hope EMRI spreads its service quickly to all the states of India.

Flashback:

I had written about my experience at BSNL a while ago and in general about how in India we let the customer drive our workflows. This naked workflow problem is everywhere in India not just in government agencies. If you think about the 911 service, the innovation is mainly around the eliminating the need for the customer to figure out who to call, where to go etc. Hope the 108 service inspires others to cure the naked workflow problem.

Apollo Hospitals: 

Excerpt from Apollo’s website:

The National Network of Emergency Services is operational across 9 cities in the country (Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Pune, Bilaspur, Kakinada and Bangalore). The system comprises 22 emergency rooms, 60 ambulances and over 500 personnel. The network is expanding rapidly and is expected to cover all the major towns and cities in the country by the end of 2006.

Notice that it still says “..2006”. I guess Apollo has forgotten to update its website. Hopefully, they have not abandoned their program to expand it to the entire country! BTW if you reside in one of them 9 cities you can call 1066 to get emergency help. The problem i see is that Apollo’s service doesn’t cover fire, police and other emergency services which the EMRI service covers.  May I ask why EMRI and Apollo pool their considerable resources and expand their services faster to all locations instead of having 2 competing emergency networks?

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The Great Millenial Spitathon

My laments about the Indian cricket team got to her. Priya Raju makes a fine attempt to put an end to my sorrow. What can i say – ROTFL.

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Reading my posts, you might wrongly conclude that I have not a serious thought in my mind. At this very moment, let me assure you, that I’m thinking long & hard about spittle. This is how it all came about.

Ok, close your eyes & think about India’s performance in any sport in the world arena. For every Viswanathan Anand, Shiny Wilson and Leander Paes, we have exactly 99,952,789 talent-free zombies who think they are sports-persons. My husband, a patriot, is deeply distressed by all this. So I decided to fix this once & for all.

Sure, we were doing great in Hockey, Cricket & a few other games. As long as 2.14 other countries were playing it. In such a scenario, a medal or a cup is inevitable. It was almost enough for us to show up on time.

But soon, trouble started. The Chinese, the Koreans, the Americans, the Ukrainians (and the 190 other countries in the world) started playing all these games. Better than us. Totally inconsiderate of them, I daresay. Why, tomorrow upstarts like Vanuatu & Tonga Islands may start playing hockey & beat us pants-down.

Clearly, we need a strategy here. We should go after a sport where we have the natural inclination. No tired old shtick – we need a new game. A game where traits like team-work and discipline are not needed – we mutated & lost those traits ages ago.

We need a new game: a game where – why be humble – we Indians may be the greatest in this planet. I give you (drum-roll, please)……The Great Millenial Spitathon! Exactly what is a Spitathon? Why, the great Indian sport of spitting on the streets, of course.

You think spitting is not a sport? You narrow-minded varmint. You’ve clearly not seen a master in action. The trajectory of the spit, the speed at which it is delivered, the distance traveled – why, the possibilities boggle my mind. Not to mention the spitting mouth action – veritable gymnastics, that will give Nadia Comaneci a complex.

And the sound effects, the acoustics that go with it – I can imagine an indoor Olympic event near the wash-stand. And there is so much regional variety in spitting. Some states use paan heavily, some chew tobacco, some neither – sort of unity in diversity.

Think of all the other advantages. We don’t need special playing facilities. Any road will do for a practice session, as long as there are other people on whom one can practice. No new-fangled turf, pitch, spiked shoes or hapless coaches to blame our failures on. And there will be so much competition & skill in the country, that the selection committee will be over-whelmed.

You ask me what we should do if the French and the Brazilians latch on to Spitathon quickly & beat us? True, we must be prepared for every eventuality. Never fear, I have that covered – we can nurture 2 other games on the sly. Games where we may have total monopoly in the world: Snotathon & Peeathon.

It is interesting how some things never change with time

Over the weekend I had to buy a gift for a 11 year old kid. I wanted to buy something the kid would like to read, so I asked what type of books would he like. Pat came the answer “Hardy Boys” – Franklin W. Dixon’s popular mystery series.

Nothing ever changes, does it?

That got me thinking about my own childhood and how things really haven’t changed much for the kids. Its almost 3 decades since I was that age and I was heavily into Hardy Boys as well. It was the 3 Investigators series (jupiter jones et al), Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries in that order of preference. I did read a few Perry Masons but those didn’t catch my fancy. On the comics front, Archies, Asterix and Tin Tin used to be huge favorites amongst my peer group. I still enjoy reading these. I can’t say that about Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. I suspect I’ll still like the 3 investigators but haven’t tried reading them recently. Something to be said about the timeless appeal of Archies, Tin Tin and Asterix. Some Mandrake/Lothar, Flash Gordon and other such comics were also thrown into the mix for variety.

Before Hardy Boys

Before I hit the age of “Hardy Boys” I was heavily into Enid Blyton’s famous five series. Whenever I think about Enid Blyton, I have this pleasant feeling. I should say it is the Enid Blyton books that firmly implanted english books into my mind. Before that I would read all kinds of fantasy stories in Tamil and some classic Tamil Muthu Comics series Irumbukkai Mayavi (Man with a iron hand – loose translation) etc. When I was about 7 or 8, I used to read with great interest, a comic strip series in the then tamil weekly magazine Gokulam called “Bale Baluvum Bottle Boodhamum” – loosely translated as Balu and the Genie from the bottle. I’m trying to look for it now in Chennai and I’m unable to find it. I’ll be so thrilled to get hold of a few copies.

After Hardy Boys

Later I graduated to Alistair Macleans, Robert Ludlum (Bourne Identity being my top favorite of his) and some Sydney Sheldons and Irving Wallaces. By this time I was in college.

Once I passed out of college and entered the work force, I somehow lost interest in fiction. I’m heavily into non-fiction genres – lots of books on management. Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger is the most recent fiction I read (although the story is inspired by real life incidents). Somehow the movie never captured the passion for swordfishing that well. Sebastian Junger brings it out in his book extremely well.

Current Interests

My interest in anthropology, history and culture were really brought to the fore by Mark Kurlansky’s Cod and Salt. Later, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse have permanently kindled my interests in these topics. I take a lot of interest in neuroscience lately thanks to Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran’s books Phantoms in the Brain and Emerging Mind. These 2 are amongst the best books I have ever read. Thanks to Archana Raghuram for recommending Phantoms in the brain.

Nothing ever changes, convinced?

Coming back to the topic – it is really intriguing to me that in the age of video games and the internet, Hardy Boys and the likes still hold sway amongst the kids. I haven’t interacted with American kids that much, but maybe someone can throw some light on what the kids there read?

JK Rowling’s Harry potter definitely holds sway I’m sure. Harry is popular in India as well. Overall it points to the fact that there is a big gap in the books available for Tweens and Teens. JK Rowling has masterfully exploited this lacuna. But I think there’s still plenty of opportunity for a new author to come in and appeal to this young population and create the next Hardy Boys.

What does your book reading pattern look like over the years? Does it resemble mine?