Humans are Perishable Commodity !

I believe humans are a perishable commodity – it may sound crazy or scary; but the reality is that all of us humans have a clearly defined expiry date.

Many people would continue to live in the myth that they are going to live and be there forever and keep many things and knowledge to themselves.

Hardly we plan for who will replace us – most of the times the planning is financial planning in terms of insurance and management of money.

In organizations – this is called as Succession Planning (which is hardly done in a systematic way in most organizations). Be it business organizations, political or educational or not-for-profit. It is needed for every one. It is needed at national level, regional, city/town, smaller organizations, families etc.

There are umpteen examples in recent times which has shown how nations, organizations and people have suffered because of lack of a long term view or a systematic succession planning. The situation in congress party in India is a good example; so is the political situation in so many countries like US. This has lead to large scale impact – not only on those organizations but also on nations and large number of citizens. There are many good educational institutions which has gone down the memory lanes as critical people are not there now.

There are many organizations, whose business suffers badly when key people leave them (because of any reason) – they never imagined that our loyal (critical) employees may leave or fall sick or even die. They lived in a myth that people are forever. Few companies like GE and Google have been able to manage this process of succession planning well and are still surviving decently and doing well.

The process is simple – 

• Identify Critical Positions in any organization through Critical Position Audit – 
• Define the competencies needed for these critical positions – 
• identify who could replace the current role holders – 
• conduct assessment of these people on defined competencies and 
• then groom the short-listed ones for the critical roles.

This process can be applied to any unit – companies, political parties, not-for-profit, educational institutes and even smaller local organizations. Its not a one-off activity – it has to be part of a culture and must be driven from the top (either by the Board or by the CEO). It has to be impartial and must be conducted in fair manner.

The large sudden changes happening across the world including India and creating surprises among all can be attributed to no long term planning in terms of Succession Plan. This will have quite a negative impact on people across globe.

Its better to start as early possible ; than thinking we wish, we could have !!

PS: Don’t try at home as Some relationships can’t be replaced through succession planning – like your parents J

Why people get into Whirlpool and remain on first levels of Maslow Pyramid!

Maslow presented the above Pyramid in 1940s and then did lots of research on it. The first four needs were identified as deficit needs: i.e if the needs are not met, they make us uncomfortable and we work towards fulfilling them.

The last four needs, were named as growth needs.

He also arranged them in a hierarchy such that we are motivated primarily by a need only if lower level needs have been met. Thus, before one is motivated by cognitive or self actualization needs, one should have taken care of basic deficit needs like physiological, security, belonging and esteem. The needs are defined as

1.    Physiological needs: These are the basic animal needs for such things as food, warmth, shelter, sex, water, and other body needs. If one’s basic biological needs are not met, he or she would continue in this level and will not try to move to next one.

2.    Safety needs: Once the physical needs relatively satisfied, the individual’s safety needs take over. These needs have to do with man’s yearning for a predictable, orderly world in which injustice and inconsistency are under control, the familiar frequent, and the unfamiliar rare. This need for consistency, if not satisfied leads to feelings of doubt and shame.

3.    Belonging & Love needs: After physiological and safety needs are fulfilled, the third layer of human needs is social. This psychological aspect of Maslow’s hierarchy involves emotionally-based relationships in general, such as friendship, sexual intimacy and having a supportive and communicative family. If one finds failure in having such close relationships, then they have problems of dealing with others.

4.    Esteem needs: All humans have a need to be respected, to have self-esteem, self-respect, and to respect others.

5.    Cognitive needs: Maslow believed that humans have the need to increase their intelligence and thereby chase knowledge. Cognitive needs is the expression of the natural human need to learn, explore, discover and create to get a better understanding of the world around them.

6.    Aesthetic needs: Based on Maslow’s beliefs, it is stated in the hierarchy that humans need beautiful imagery or something new and aesthetically pleasing to continue up towards Self-Actualization. Humans need to refresh themselves in the presence and beauty of nature while carefully absorbing and observing their surroundings to extract the beauty that the world has to offer.

7.    Self-actualization needs: Self-actualization is the instinctual need of humans to make the most of their abilities and to strive to be the best they can.

8.    Transcendence needs: Maslow later divided the top of the triangle to add self-transcendence which is also sometimes referred to as spiritual needs.

When we look around we find that many of us or for that matter most of us struggle to remain in the whirlpool of first 3 levels at best and rarely we see people who move to level of self-actualization or Transcendence.

Then who or what is to be blamed for this??

On exploration you will realize that the kind of issues and lifestyles we are facing in India; don’t let you move out of the Whirlpool of getting the basics of life – water, air, simple life requirements. Once you move out you face issues such as poor roads, poor traffic, lack of infrastructure, un-civic behavior of people, un-called politics at work-place etc. With this you are always struggling to manage these challenges and get stuck! To add to this is complicated governmental processes and systems of taxation, legal, police and basic life management – so you waste your time here too. In a day - the real productive time is vey less and we are consumed by that. 

So we can blame all factors external to us for our stucked-situation in first few levels of Maslow Pyramid – Answer is NO.

We are also to blame for this – as we are part of this system and society and get entangled in all and do not try to come out. There is fear and then there is a race to get more and not to fall behind in materialistic gains. We fall for greed of many houses, many cars, higher power and many gadgets and then we are stuck forever! Having aspirations and dreams is not bad; but falling in trap of materialistic world, could harm. 

Once you meet people who have moved to level 7 and 8 – you will realize that they are not saints who have given-up everything. They are the one’s who manage self ; rather than being managed by environment or system around us.

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Answers to all the issues is known to most of us – but we have a fear to act and during this time moves on and by the time we understand the realities of life – its too late. So its simple – Think and Act !!

Youth mobility in flatter world !!

Youth account for more than 50% of global population and are the future of each society, nation and the world. The diversity in the world provides opportunity for innovation and learning but many times creates conflicts and differences among people as they do not understand each other’s culture and practices well.

As Martin Luther King Jr said “One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.”

Education’s focus remains on providing knowledge and the real life skills or practical skills are left to each student and youth to gain. With the world becoming flatter and people being aware of other societies through internet and social media the challenge for youth is to understand cultures in deeper perspectives to survive in global work or business situations.

Many countries are taking initiatives by providing global mobility opportunities to youth to learn and apply the learning in their own context; however, a large part of youth lack these skills and understandings and are lost when they are exposed to newer cultures. In real term even the societies are not open to learn these proactively and in this Flatter World – there is a situation where conflicts are becoming internal as the tolerance to each other is becoming lower.

Research has shown that Youth who have been exposed to different cultures and countries perform better and they have better career opportunities. Many organizations including World is Flat B.V. (www.worldisflat.nl) are working towards creating Global Citizens and helping youth to go for international internships, voluntary programs, and cultural immersion programs to develop global skills.

Young people who experience mobility are more adaptable, because they strengthen the skill of change and adaptation to the environment, broaden their social networks and intercultural competences, and are more employable. Learning and applying good practice from different fields they contribute to the improvements in their home environment. Stronger tolerance, active citizenship and the construction of a common identity also benefit the countries and the entire international community.

In Europe and western world, the understanding about eastern cultures and Asia is quite low and same is vice-versa. More people are visiting different countries more as just tourists which give them just a superficial. To perform better in the flatter world, youth have to develop high level understanding of different cultures, work styles, people preferences and create a better connect with each other. This will not only help them to perform better in their working or business life but also create a better world where youth with empathize with each other in a better way and create a positive world!