This poem is inspired by the book Who Will Cry When You Die? by Robin S Sharma (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/289029). The very title got me thinking about a lot of little things in life and it culminated in these few verses.
Why, do you think birds fly? Why, do you think the leaves rustle?
Do you wonder why the sky is blue, Or why the waves wash ashore the way they do?
Do you get time to pause and ponder, Or stare into the wild blue yonder?
Why do you think the stars twinkle at night, Or why man ever wanted to take flight?
If you wonder why the fishes can’t speak, Or why birds don’t have a mouth but a beak!?
Have you the time to hear a solitary sigh! Or have you ever thought… Who will cry when you die?
Moving up or moving laterally and then up – tomato to’mah’to
You serve the notice, you transition, you work, you serve the notice and so on it continues
What drives us to shift our careers? Is it that we are dissatisfied with our present jobs or is it that we have suddenly adopted an adventurous streak in our otherwise monotonous lives? The answer to this question is often left unanswered by many transitioning employees. The process just seems to move on; you serve the notice, you transition, you work, you serve the notice and so on it continues. The most important thing for anyone to do, whether it be working or looking for work is to undertake Career Benefit Analysis.
The CBA is based on five basic questions;
Why do you want to move?
What are your present perceived obstacles?
What do you expect from the move?
What is your perception of the other side? and
What is your desired end state?
These questions while appearing simple, answer very complex queries which are very basal to our needs and wants. While the Mazlow’s Hierarchy of needs may be nearing obsolescence, needs and wants still drive a human being to do things otherwise considered improbable, if not impossible.
The biggest question that looms large is “What If?”
CBA helps oneself to assess and verify the requirement of transition. This, becomes all the more relevant to transitioning military personnel owing to the little (or in some cases, NIL) contact and exposure to the corporate structure. Transitioning veterans bring to the table a plethora of experience and skill sets. These are accrued owing to the varied nature of posts that they are pushed to handle and the levels of stress they are able to successfully negotiate through their time in the uniform. Most personnel who I have spoken to, reveal a very basal requirement of recognition and upward mobility. While these are very strong decision drivers, basing a transition with only these as parameters often lead to disappointment, soon after the move. More often than not, I find veterans struggling with Transition Anxiety. The biggest question that looms large is “What If?” There are many factors that are out of your control and rightly so. Using CBA, you can overcome transition anxiety to a large extent. CBA focusses on the base values rather abstracted parameters. Analysing base values provides a more realistic understanding of transition thereby easing anxiety.
Life is an amazingly dirty golfer. It knows when you are down and will, without doubt stymie you
Rahul Sitaraman
Another surprising issue that I have come across is Decision Paralysis. Along the way, in my journey to gain understanding of varied things, I learnt a term called “Analysis Paralysis”. When I compared the characteristics of that to Decision Paralysis, it emerges that latter is the uglier cousin of Analysis Paralysis. An oft quoted saying (that I am tired of hearing) is “We will cross the bridge when it comes”. This is such an incorrect statement to believe in, especially if you are thinking about transitioning. Keeping with the same thought, what do you do if there is no bridge, when you finally arrive? Or what do you do if the bridge has been washed away? Life is an amazingly dirty golfer. It knows when you are down and will, without doubt stymie you.
While transitioning military veterans are experts at decision making, this expertise is unfortunately limited to the domains of their immediate work. As military personnel, we do multitudes of analyses and evaluations, that it amazes me, how we struggle with applying a fraction of that to our lives.
CBA is a very useful tool in helping you not only cross the bridge, but also visualise the bridge, anticipate failure situations and arrive at a logical conclusion of crossing it at all in the first place. CBA helps you to overcome decision paralysis and transition anxiety to large extent.
I will write more on this and may have a few interactive sessions, based on the traction gained by this article. I request all my connections to reach out to those they know and ask them, “Have you done a CBA?”
There is a time in your life, when your core needs to move on to sustain; when you feel the definitive urge to handover everything and just sit back. We all have it in us, deep down, buried, undiscovered, but definitely there.
It may range from the most serious of things like handing over the reins of your business to your heir or to the most simple of things like giving your bicycle to your child. I never realised, that it never happens in that one swift move, one clean swipe of the blade and it is done…
This handing over, this relinquishing, this Passing the Torch, happens over a period of time. A period so long drawn that you often forget how it started. I do not exactly remember the day or how old my son was; only that I had stopped using my bicycle and it was gathering dust. A small discussion revealed that he always eyed that bike; what was left was to adjust the seat height, teach him about the gear mechanism, and voila!, it has been his ever since…
Today was a day which took this feeling a step further, a step so large that I feel overwhelmed. My son never asks for anything with a tantrum or demands anything without reason; it is always a very gentle “can I look at it” kind of an approach. In a similar way, when going through some club that he would need to join at School, we broached the topic of blogging and creative writing. I told him about this website of mine and he was super excited to see it…
What happened next was something that I never expected. “Can I start blogging too?” was his question. I saw that glimmer in eye, the need to do something creative, the unquenchable thirst to pour out all that would be in his heart. Sure enough, in the next half hour, he had his own WP site and he sat down to do, what I had once done a very long time ago.
Today feels like, the start of a new beginning, the start of something exciting. You can visit his blog at https://iamsiddharthiyer.wordpress.com/
What you are about to read in the following paragraphs is an analysis of the available portals/ platforms based on unbiased and barebones analysis. If you are not comfortable with criticism, do not go ahead of this disclaimer.
First Things First
To all those in a dilemma, let me set things straight, these online coaching people all have the same pattern. They follow three strategies; *Shock and Awe*, *Bait and Hook* and *Bait and Switch*
Strategise to Capitalise
Every business depends on one thing strategy. Without this, the greatest business people would not exist as we know it today. Strategy is important as it provides the business a way to sustain. Sustenance, as we know it comes from “capital”, in simple terms, money. Robert Kiyosaki, in his ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’ series of books, talks about how to utilise OPM (Other People’s Money) and OPT (Other People’s Time). While in all earnest, Robert’s advise was to ensure that people learn how to run better businesses and how to invest better, the world has taken a different spin on it.
I have termed what the world is doing today as STC; Strategise to Capitalise. Companies often start with a set of strategies depending on their field, they, if absolutely essential, pivot. This pivot would also reflect a large portion of their initial strategy. This is where the online coaching guys differ.
Read on…
Three Blind Mice
I like to call these strategies often used by these online coaching companies as the Three Blind Mice
First Mouse – Shock and Awe
They will ask your child to attend a free class in which they will *shock* you and your child with some awesome animations and top class explanations. These are essentially, run-of-the-mill, boilerplate stuff. These may or may not be available throughout the courses.
We will often be beyond words or explanations as to wherefrom do these modules come from. Our children are highly impressionable and learn better through Game Based Learning. This is not something that these online guys have a proprietary hold over, it is something that science has taught.
Second Mouse – Bait and Hook
After you’ve been convinced they will ask your child to appear in an ELKT/EBT/IET (Entry Level Knowledge Test/ Entry Behaviour Test/ Initial Evaluation Template (or) Test). They will tell you that it is to benchmark the kid. This paper will be very tough. So tough that even you will get a few question wrong. This is the first *bait*
After evaluation, they will give you some crap like “custom designed improvement module” or “personalised tutoring approach” or some nonsense that you will feel that your kid is the centre of their attention.
Cut to 6 months later, they will tell you that they want to do an Interim Evaluation/ Assessment. This paper at the outset will be easier than the first one. Plus with the tutoring received, your kiddo will do well. Not that well but about 30-35% improvement will be there. This is the *hook* part.
You will be convinced along with your kid that it is the classes which have made a difference.
Third Mouse – Bait and Switch
Cut to exams (internal or external – doesn’t matter). Your kid may or may not fare as well as they were. This will trigger another load of crap called “elevated learning curve” or “beyond means learning”, anything to justify that your child is brilliant if they continue with them as school exams don’t reflect the true brilliance of our kids. This is the second *bait*. If you fall for it comes the *switch*
Assuming you continue with them and your kid still doesn’t show improvement, they will give you a very logical explanation of how not every child is capable of understanding the standard methods adopted by them and that your child should be part of their “follow up” or “drop” or “intensive” or “repeater” class during the summer vacations
Bottom Line
There are adequate examples of parents running behind these so called “India’s No 1 Online Educator” to get a refund of the fees they were promised.
Education has ceased to be passion driven and has become just another means of making money. It still stays a passion for the very many teachers who are involved in it, but once they are part of large organisation, their passion is benched by the company’s lust for money.
If you really want your child to excel and join some professional course, get them enrolled in a contact classroom. Give them and yourselves time to realise their hidden potential. If they do not show exceptional results, remember, they were never meant to in the first place.
Every year, top institutes in the country report of suicides by young students who are in the first or second year of the course. Agreed that there are many more factors to what led to that ultimate step, just don’t make parental pressure one of it.
With a few hundred men he takes on the deep, As their kith and kin ashore they sleep; His castle of steel ploughs a new way, As winds howl and the bridge takes the spray
His are the shoulders the burden that bear, The might of the weapon or the red flare; You know not what goes on inside of his ‘ead, As the ship leaves the haven of the roadstead
The engines whine and sizzle and bang, Eight bells and all’s well the Quartermaster rang; He sits on his chair with eyes fixed afar, Lest something escapes the sweep of the radar
You cannot fathom the deep of his mind, Nor the talent the prowess and courage of his kind; With him at the helm, crew knows nothin’ll happn, But it’s lonely at the top, cos he is the Cap’n.
This is a sort of continuation of my previous post. What got me writing this is a pure and unadulterated disgust that I experienced as I drove down to pickup dinner from a takeaway.
Just as I had crossed into an area known to be one of the busiest markets, the very apathy with which hordes of people were moving around made me sick to the pit of my stomach.
Yes.. hordes.. a sea of humans, as far as the eye could see.. I took the better part of an hour to cover just 5 km. that is how much the area was swarming.
To many reading this, the usage of terms like ‘hordes’ and ‘swarming’ could appear distasteful. But, what can you except me to term humans who were hounding stalls and shops like flies on a rotting carcass.
People were moving about with singular focus of their task at hand, oblivious to the ongoing pandemic. Even as the newspapers screamed “India reaches 75 lakh cases”, people seemed less bothered than ever. Praising warriors, showering petals, hammering utensils, singing paeans for those who stood strong all diminish in the acts of absolute carelessness being “executed” by us.
During the initial parts of the pandemic, I read somewhere, “the inevitable will happen, it is not about if it is about when”.
Seeing the scene unfold in front of my vehicle last Saturday, I feel that the when has arrived.
It is an often repeated saying “More you sweat in peace, Less you bleed in war”.
Given the turn of events in the last few months, the situation seems as though no one gives a tiny rats backside about sweat. So much that they are more than happily holed up in their own zones of idealism that reality doesn’t dare knock.
The credibility of a nation rests on its ability to handle any adverse situation. It may be anything, a man made disorder, a natural calamity or a medical situation.. anything. The most unfortunate turn of events starting from November 2019 has proved to all humanity that we are at Mother Nature’s mercy. There seems to be no plan.
A news article few days ago highlighted that a certain country’s strategic stockpile had been exhausted. Not low, not diminishing, but, exhausted. This is downright ridiculous. When asked how this happened, pat came the reply – “ we had prepared for natural calamities, terror attacks but not for something like this”. What seems to have eluded everyone is the fact that actual war kills less as compared to the collateral damage that happens later. More people die of hunger, disease and lack of facilities that are the fallout of a war, than the actual war itself.
So as per the great doomsday pundits and experts, shouldn’t the world have adequately catered for this pandemic? What we are fighting today is nothing short of a World War. A war fought by the entire world against an invisible enemy. And yet, here we are, squabbling like high schoolers, as to who started pushing.
Whoever started it, that fact though not irrelevant, should be shelved for sometime later. I am not saying exonerate the guilty. Draw and quarter them for all I care, but not now. Now is the time to come together as a species. Unite and fight. Forget borders and languages and economies. Shed your egos and fight together. Humans have endured much worse, don’t let our better understanding and superior intellect come in the way of survival.
