Well, I was in the midst of all this. Me, a meagre me,  a jack of all.  More opinionated than informed.  More emotional than logical. More stupid than anything else.   It was me who was nodding most part allowing everyone else to speak the most. 

The discussion flirted around many areas.  How much (if any) the corporates care about and/or consider during innovation process or while marketing it.   The interaction between corporates and universities dealing with innovation and what ethics influence this relationship.  

Some of the following are my takes and understanding on whatever transpired in the discussion. 

Does ethics mean the same to everyone, every time and everywhere?

I doubt.  There is not so much difference between individuals and corporations when it comes to standing up to values. 

Someone in US asked me once.  “You guys drive on the left side of the road right?”.    My answer was  “depends on our my mood on a given day”.

It is absolutely fine if I drive on the wrong side of the road in Hyderabad.  I don’t have to feel guilty about it.   If a policeman ever catches me, it’s just a nuisance.  He must be in need of some money or he is under the pressure from his bosses to meet the targets. In either case, all that I need to do is to quickly settle the account and move on.  But you see, tomorrow is another day, I will drive in the same direction.

The same me,  if I have to land in California next week, I don’t even dream of doing a similar thing there.  Why?  Multiple reasons.  Police catching me is not going to be an easy episode.  Even if they don’t catch me, its not easy to just get out of the car and walk out casually without being looked down upon.  The looks are going to be hard to deal with. They force me to feel damn guilty.  Besides the police and the looks,  it’s going to be extremely dangerous to drive on wrong side in CA to start with.   No one there would expect any traffic coming from the wrong side.  The probability of a head-on collision and me dying instantly has highest probability there.   This fact that “they don’t expect me” on the wrong side makes me feel either guilty, die or pay huge fine.  But the origin is, what is expected in the general public. 

Quite often it is attributed to the inefficiency and corrupt police for the situation in Hyderabad/India. I don’t subscribe to it.  It is not because of the umpteen number of police standing in US and elsewhere that is making the situation better there. It is rather, the conduct and expectations of the general public that is making the police and me to behave the way we behave there or here.

Now, why wouldn’t I bring back the same discipline and guilt while coming back from California to here?  Why can’t I just follow the rules. Yes, I may try that for  a day, a week and a month. But, day after day I find myself being the last one to reach the destination.  Will be a regular loser.   Will be honked from behind.  Will become a laughing stock.  All this for not breaking the rules.   Not sure how long I can hang on to this.  I don’t have to win,  at least, I don’t want to lose because of I happen to have this burden of value system. 

And so, my value system gets base lined based on where I am individually.   Will that be any different for an organization?  Should that be expected?    I would argue and believe that the corporations struggle with the same dilemma every day.

“Child labour is bad”.  Okay, well said. But what age determines childhood?  If an organization has to compete in a specific country where it is alright to employ a 15 yr old (hypothetical).   Should it hold back to its parent organization’s standard of not recruiting younger than 18yrs?  

Open Source?

There was a lot of discussion about Open Source vs captive ownerships of s/w.  To confess, I don’t claim I completely understand the discussion.  The name Microsoft figured multiple times as a poster-bad-boy of the discussion.   

I am not sure what Microsoft are others s/w orgs are expected to do to be good boys.   Are they supposed to open up all the intellectual property rights?  Give out all their code of their operating systems and applications?  

I found the discussion utterly silly.  (Or may be I didn’t understand the context and misrepresenting here).

Well, I can comprehend this argument fully by taking an extreme leftist stand.  Opposing private property.  Specifically the knowledge/intelligence becoming monopoly and private is fully opposed in a socialist system.   Whether you and I agree with such a system is a totally different discussion.  

We all know and aware that we are in a capitalist system. We all own lands, homes, properties and so on.   Once we agree to be part of this system, what is it so surprising about an enterprise holding its own creation?     As long as they are complying with the laws of the land, its entirely up to them to decide.

(Well,  some of us in the industry believe opening up will revolutionize the technological development.  That is due to the collaborative nature of it and by exploiting the collective wisdom of many.  We here are arguing that it may be a better “business decision”.  Not evaluating any ethics  here.  And we don’t expect organizations like Microsoft  would have to listen to us let alone agreeing to us)

I am sensitive to the fact that there are a few innovations that are currently proprietary but are needed for the larger causes of humanity.  Imagine an expensive AIDS formula.   Can the world demand the industry to make it available cheaply to all the mankind?  In Africa and in third world?   Question is, on what grounds such a demand be made?   The world chose to be in the capitalist system.  What are they cribbing about it now?   That is where the govts are subsidizing those formulas and making those available to the world.   That is where some of the corporations have their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiatives to address few societal needs.  But again, the CSRs should not be taken any more seriously than me throwing a one rupee coin at a beggar on the street corner.

My Criterion

Lets get it.  Corporations are there for making profits.  Who is surprised?.     That is their purpose of existence.  Their DNA.   Trying to define ethics of an organization in terms of emotions, sentiments, intents and ideologies is not going to take us anywhere.    Following are what I look at to see how much “ethical” an organization is.

Legality

In a capitalist system, we are entitled and have a right to expect each of these corporations to follow the laws of the land.  For example, there are multinational manufacturing industries in India who are apparently not honouring  the unionization of their work force.  The Indian law fully permits the workers to form unions.   Whether unions are good or not, that is to be decided by our own elected leaders and parliament.  Once it’s a law, I expect American, EU and Japan companies to follow the law by dot.  

Conducting business legally is the primary characteristic of conducting business ethically.

Greed

The recent recession has been attributed to the  poor business decisions of some of the banks, financial institutions and such.   Can that be called greed? May be.     Is greed unethical?    Not long ago the whole media, including hollywood chanted “greed is good”.   It went to the extent that the entire development of human race is credited to greed.   Just when the market started falling down, people started questioning that wisdom    How do we understand this greed, again within the same context of capitalist world we are in. 

If I move all my money into high risk investment option and lose everything, it is just my bad luck.   And you trusted me to invest your money along with mine, bad luck to you too.    in all these matters, yes I am greedy, yes you are greedy.  But neither of us are unethical

However, if I have successfully lured you to invest in my fund by giving you misinformation, that’s when I become unethical. 

How does this translate corporates?   Basically identical.  

Corporations trying to steal competitor’s  plans and data,   spreading wrong information to customers,  making wrong promises to employees, customers and investors etc., are all unethical behaviours. 

Trying to make more money doesn’t make them more ethical or less ethical. 

  Responsibility

Do corporations have Responsibility?   This is exactly the same question,  do citizens have responsibility? 

I have the responsibility of complying with the law.  But do I have the responsibility to donate Rs 1000/- to flood victims?    How can you demand me to be charitable?  Corporate Social Responsibility is exactly the same.

The more complicated question would be, what is the responsibility of the corporate against  environment and surroundings.  Even in these matters, there is no point in becoming emotional and rallying against corporations.  Unless they have violated a law.  Its our polity and government that allowed them to operate the way they are doing.   There are allegations that few multi national beverage companies are drying out the ground water and polluting whatever is remaining.    No point in here trying to classify this as ethical or not.   Its the state and central government that have to set the norms.  If they are not complying, take them to task.   

Conclusion

Can we classify all the mankind into good guys and bad guys?   May be possible in Hollywood, Bollywood and Tollywod. Not in the real world.

Similarly, organizations who  balance their greed,   who are reasonably well aware of their impact to their surroundings   and finally  who never would violate any law of the land are the ones respected everywhere in the world.    

Apparently, most fortune 500 companies also figure in the most respected companies lists.   It should not be a surprise.    The ethical behaviour has been proved time and again as a long term business strategy.    We will not open an account in a bank that we suspect will sell our personal details to someone else.  

It would be a futile exercise to have an ideology driven, academic discussions and assessments when we are talking about corporates that lived the test of times.   

This time around, the guy shouted loud  “DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME”.  And he repeated “DON’T EVER TRY THIS AT HOME”.   He sounded serious and concerned.   We the audience standing all around him got attentive.  Everyone paused their respective cell phones and wives (to be politically correct, spouses).   And then the performer said it in even more louder voice.

“DO IT AT YOUR NEIGHOBOR’S HOME”

Hmmm… a big laughter all around.  I heard this joke a lot many more times ever since. But that was my first time I Heard it.  Had a hefty laugh.    The performer moved onto some juggling act involving fire that definitely should not be tried at home.

Laughter aside, I learned, there are a few things you don’t want to try at home. 

I heard this story from car talk 1010.    They had a Volvo car that was accelerating to high RPM without any control.   They suspected the computer cluster onboard to be the problem.   Okay, how can they assert it?   They found a similar Volvo having an identical computer cluster number but from a different customer  awaiting a simple oil change.   aha… they quickly resorted to what they called it a “time tested” method.   They removed the good cluster and placed it in the first car.  

First few minutes the first car’s acceleration came into control.   Excellent. Point made.  Assumptions validated.  Good experiment! Yahooo..     But is that the end of the story?  They can only wish!

Before they could celebrate enough,  the engine started accelerating again.  What happened?  They learned they have successfully burned down the good computer cluster by placing at the faulty location.  They had to buy a new cluster for a huge expense to the unsuspecting, oil-change Volvo customer.

My sympathies to them aside, I learned that there are experiments you want to think before attempting! 

The celebrated father of the systematic innovation Thomas Edison was also not spared.  Few believe, he lost his hearing due to an experiment that went wrong in a moving train.  He supposedly may have caused fire in a compartment.   The aggravated  conductor of the train lifted him by his ears and caused the hearing loss.   (There are also multiple versions of this story).                                                                   

If these were not enough,  look at the Hollywood for all the infinite wisdom they never stop spreading around the world.  Starting from Frankenstein to Jurassic Park and beyond,  there are umpteen number of experiments that went terribly wrong!  You find more disasters created by experiments in movies than the positive impacts created by them. That’s Hollywood for us anyway

What is common in all these stories?

Experiments do come with inherent risk associated with them! Surprise!

Lets see if we can apply this understanding to evaluate idea selection for exploring and experimenting.

Vinay has been my thinking partner on innovation for a while now.  We gulped enough beer discussing, exchanging, arguing, fighting on this subject. He presented some interesting  thoughts on how to evaluate ideas.  

Its the cost of the experiment and the impact of its success are the ones suggested to be used to evaluate an idea.  The impact may be defined as how high or low the fidelity is.  And how many innovation assumptions it can assess/address.  Fair enough.

However, I started to believe that there is a third dimension here that must be considered.  

“Amount of Experiment Risk”  would be my third dimension.

Well, even that “risk” could be a black-swan.  Still one must assess and isolate the risk from the innovation process.  That may mean isolating experiment itself.

How do we do that?   “Not experimenting” is not an option to avoid any potential risk, we all know that. 

There are two possibilities.

1. Pick a different low-risk experiment with lower impact of success
2. Pick a different low-risk experiment even if the cost increases but don’t compromise on the impact of the success

Does it sound very complicated?  Doesn’t have to be.  Most often it only translates to isolating your research/experimentation area from your production area.    If it is a software development team,  we cannot afford anything going terribly wrong on the development environment, the production data and/or compromising any security and hence conduct the same outside the above environment.   

While innovation and experimentation are an absolute need of business today, one must apply caution of not going overboard of putting their business at risk by ill construed experiments.   Experimentation has to be seen as a serious, responsible act.  Never it is a playful activity!

Following is the presentation I gave at AgileIndia 2010 at Mumbai and Bengaluru.    This is based on the same article I wrote and published in 2009 in AgileJournal.

Click on the links for other presentations at Mumbai and Bengaluru. Some of them are real good!

Thanks

-Akki

The next big hurdle that they will have to deal with is, most likely, their established star performers.  Who proved themselves over the years in the organization and/or in this market.    Who gradually went-up the ranks and have become middle to senior level managers.   Most of them are invariably the account managers.

I have extensively quoted my good friend Nagaraju earlier in my article in Agile journal.   I again want to point out where he asked some important and intriguing questions like  the following.  

We are living with “conditioned”, “process freak”,  “control maniac” managers.    That is the reality.   The more successful a guy had been, the obsolete he must have become in the real world today.   Successful professional in this industry is the one who got quickly alienated from programming and other technical abilities and has been made a “manager”.       What percentage of 8 to 12 years experienced (completely in India) can talk about any technology, business, application, emerging areas etc., that are relevant today?    I am only asking the question about those who started as programmers.

Sure they are successful.    What they can talk about is account management.  The best they can do is writing minutes of meeting.   Freak you out with umpteen number of numbers they captured to write a 100 lines of code.   All of those numbers will have fancy names too.     That is a separate language that one must learn.   

They wouldn’t know if it is 100 lines of code or 100 dosas that got produced by their teams.    Truly speaking, something like the FTR (First Time Right) makes sense more for producing 100 dosas than delivering 100 features.   I can go on with each of those wonderful terms and practices.   Some I find utterly hilarious too like traceability

Think of these guys having to endorse Agile!   Do I need to further explain?

• If they want to continue their “successful” career and become group/organization heads, they have to ensure that their competency remains the core of the organization’s business.
• Why would they allow any simpler leaner model proving their role to be redundant (let alone proving them to be a hindrance)
• Even if they are forced to endorse such a model, it is out of their system to trust people on the floor to do their job (let alone joining them on the floor).   There won’t be enough numbers to colour them and make beautiful reports for higher ups.

We can go on adding more to the list. 

Probably it is not the senior managements that have issues with trying new stuff.  It is this middle layer.   They have made themselves completely obsolete to the business they are meant to serve.  It is this crowed that one must face, baby sit, convince, mentor to breath some fresh air in this industry.

Either sticking to what we have been doing or following the crowd around us, we the Indians are not too good at taking "risk".    Be it  BATA,  Honda Accord or CMM, once we start living with, we will not want to move away.  (In lighter vein, may be that’s why our divorce rate is so low )

We are okay walking along with the crowd, even if it is delaying us.  We feel that is better than  taking the risk of trying a new path.

Here is an  article in Hindu Business that talked in lay man terms about  brand loyalty and commitment.   Besides our inherent nature of going with the crowd, this article talked about exit barriers of moving away from brands.   Case discussed here is about  the difficulty of letting to go the mobile number.

"…..Because if they change their service providers, their numbers would also change and that could mean that someone somewhere would not be able to get in touch with them.

Let us then look beyond satisfaction. The fact that the number will change serves as an exit barrier. So it would appear that the presence of a strong exit barrier increases commitment.

However, it can be argued by many people (including me!), that the exit barrier has increased only behavioural loyalty and not emotional commitment. In fact, the frustration at being unable to change the brand may actually reduce the commitment felt to it…."

Coming to Indian IT industry, it is easy to understand that they hardly had to endure any major cultural shift so far.  They may have moved from one certification to other.    But the basics of Indian s/w industry have not gone through any major "cultural" changes.   Specifically, two aspects to note.

• Wanting to have control on every project/team
• Boast the hot certificate to earn next project

These two essentially determine how they earn business and deliver.   Any deviation from these two will form a tough exit barrier.

Any idea is welcome as long as the above two fundamentals are not touched.  Be it Agile or something else.  It is okay if you want to try a practice prescribed by Agile.    But if you try to completely upset those two tenets of how the organizations are run, you are not welcome.

Thanks

-Akki

It is disheartening to see some really good programmers, who studied throughout in English medium not being able to write a decent email describing what he/she has done in a day.   Nor can walk onto the board and explain what is in his/her mind about solving a problem.  Let alone picking up the phone and start conversing with their counterparts in USA, UK, Canada, Australia.

Other side of the coin, I had seen few who studied in Telugu medium (say until high school) yet have picked up great English and became very good presenters.

Irrespective of the medium they studied, there are a few who do not know any good English anyway… yet are very good communicators.   And yes, this is something we have to see to believe.   I had seen people who cannot write a single grammatically accurate sentence but can pick up the phone and  comfortably communicate to their counterparts.

Now, how do we understand this?  What is our exact problem here?

After mulling over this for a while, I started believing that the medium of education is not the issue at all.  It must be a direct result of  keeping an entire generation for the past 15+ years focusing only on math sciences & technology and making them completely unaware of arts and social sciences.

Medium Of Education Is Not The Issue!

Let me explain this taking Andhra Pradesh as the case.  The same may apply at different levels to other parts of India as well.

EAMCET is an entrance test in the state of Andhra Pradesh to get into any Engineering or Medical colleges in the state.  One need to get a real nice rank to get into this.  One is eligible for this test after 12 years of education and last two years must be on the specific areas like Math, Physics and Chemistry for Engineering and Life Sciences, Physics and Chemistry for Medical.    Few lacs of people write this every year and the competition is undestandably huge.   Before the explosive growth of Engineering colleges, it used to be extremely difficult to get a seat in a college.  Every kid and parent would aspire to get a “rank” in EAMCET.  Not getting a rank simply means that the student  is “not good enough”.

The middle class fever for EAMCET resulted in coaching centers.   The coaching starts as early as the kid reaches high school.  Almost 5+ years preparation for a 3 hour exam is not unusual.   Students in last two years would do nothing else but prepare for this test.   There is no dearth for  horror stories of corporate colleges making these kids study from early hours in the morning to the middle of the night.

But what do they study?  The exam has always been conducted in a multi choice objective type format.  Let alone having a test for language/communication in this exam, there is not even discriptive type questions in there.  All that one must be able to do is, solve the problem and pick one of A,B,C or D.  No need to explain to anyone on how you got that A, B, C, D.

While the regular Intermediate course has languages and descriptive type question papers,  they are not given importance.  For example the coaching centers teach languages (English, Telugu/Sanskrit, Hindi) only for few months before the fnal exams.  From what I learned, even that the students will be given specific questions and selected answers to prepare.  The minimal effort required to pass the language exam is what is to be “wasted” .  Because, a good performance in language is no way going to help anyone get a seat in Engineering.    Even those who are not studying in a corporate coaching center, it is still not much different where their priorities are.

(On a side note, similar to languages, the practicals are also completely ignored. Lab and experiments are also waste of time.  While this is also a serious issue, not relevant to the topic discussed in this post)

The state reached a situation where colleges didn’t have students in any arts, commerce and social sciences.  State’s then Chief Minister who earned an iconic image for his technical bias, openly remarked everything other than science subjects  a waste.   I didn’t find any fault with what he said, he said what most in the state he is ruling were believing at the time.

How does all this affect the communication?

Math & Science Have No Emotions

While math and science are the greatest of the aspects that distinguished humans from other species on earth, they fundamentally lack emotion.   They are ice cold.   2 + 2 = 4.   This does not change no matter what mood I am in.  On a day I am ecstatic about my girl friend saying “yes” to me, the day I lost my dearest friend,  this 2 plus 2 remains 4.

Science is brutally static.  It can solve problems sure. But it cannot show any empathy to me!

On the other side take any art.     I can resort to nice music, a peaceful book, a soothing poem etc., depending on my mood.  A poem reads differently depending on my mood. The same song can sound differently at different times.   Staying in touch with art prepares humans to deal with emotions.   While communicating to others, it teaches fine tuning to others based on their reactions.  These are very subtle but certain traits one gets by having exposed to art.

In a world where reading news paper is a waste of time,  listening to music is waste of time,  taking a peaceful walk in a park is waste of time…. where do we get people who can connect to others?

All that we are left with today are our movies.  Even the movie makers realized that the youth of this region never learned to put some effort to understand an emotion on the other side in any form.       Our movie comedy is so raw today, we lost the taste for simple satire or an intelligent joke.   Violence is so violent, unless there is blood all over the screen it is not violent enough.  Difficult to explain that Godfather is one of the most violent movies ever made even though there is not so much blood on the screen in the movie.  The romance and sensuality has degraded to nakedness and vulgarity.  All this is now termed as “mass”.   But the learned termed it as “crisis of taste”.

It is this roughness we developed and struggling from within is what is making us not been able to relate to others. That is our core issue why we are not able to communicate to people around us.

What To Do Now?

Where should we start to “improve communication skills” ?  Every manager in Indian industry faces this problem.  Sending everyone to English classes is the easiest thing to do.  But it does not make anyone any better communicator.

What needs to be done is a new model of trainings.  The personality change will not happen in a short class room session.   Employees must be made to interact with artists.  It may sound silly.  But this is worthy of an experiment.  These companies must enroll some of the writers, painters etc., as consultants.  Make them mentor the employees.  Employee should at least get about 3 to 4 hours monthly interaction with artists.   There are enough writers, painters and musicians that are so poor, would charge a fraction of what the corporates are spending on language trainings and communication trainings.   If my theory is right, it does not matter which language the artist talks/writes.

Any takers??