Management Lessons For Self & Others(?)

• Don't try to keep others busy for the heck of it.
• If you aren't sure what output you want, take time to decide first, and then let the team work on what you need. If you're letting the team take a crack at it, be moderately open to agreeing to what they put together, with the required refinements, of course.
• If you want something done your way and are not open to debate - say it. It's far more frustrating to be heard, potentially agreed with only to be shot down later.
• Stick to promises made.
• Don't underestimate the challenges your team deals with. There is a difference between belittling and giving confidence.
• In any output, there are must-haves and good-to-haves. Learn to differentiate, and accept not having the good-to-haves every now and then. Not everything is a deal-breaker.
• Ensure that what you convey to the team, is what your superior conveyed to you, lest they have to re-work their output because you weren't sure what your superior wanted.
• Don't insist on outputs whose structure has not been finalized in slides - be prepared to discuss content in Excel. It saves the team a LOT of time otherwise spend on unproductive pointless slide making.
• Slides are NOT the best way to communicate everything.

Diamonds Are Forever

It's been six years since what it stood for, broke. I still remember that diamond ring as vividly as if it were in front of me.
Diamonds are forever.

Of Mourning.

Mourn the living not the dead.

Pain

Different forms.
Different causes.
Same result.
Pain.

There is beauty in it's universality and mathematical incision.

4 for 20130703

1. Mathematics, for making me feel good, and yet insufficient
2. Padmini, for taking care of me, with love
3. Baba, for the little time I spent knowing him before he passed
4. Dad being in the army and all the impact that has had on my childhood 

Of ZMET, Albums, Networks and Mind Maps

Love.

What does this 'symbol' really mean?
I've been learning something called the ZMET (Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique) a patented method of research.
One of it's tenets claims that the human brain 'thinks' in terms of 'imagery' - elements that might be experienced by one of our five basic senses. Visuals, smells, sounds, textures and tastes - these are the fundamental terms in which a human brain thinks.

Sight, potentially the most advanced of our senses, and subjected to the most stimulus, logically takes the precedence, when it comes to how we think.

Love, is nothing but a set of images we associate with it. 

Ask a 5 year old what they think love is, and one is likely to hear elements that stem from their association with their parents.

Ask a 23 year old what they think, and one is far more likely to hear elements that stem from the person they have a romantic interest in, and their relationship with them as it exists, or as they would like it to. One might find many more associations made with the physical manifestations of love.

Ask someone from the 16th century (hypothetically) what they think love is, and one would likely  hear something that I, in todays day and age cannot even begin to visualize, despite the best attempts of TV shows set in that era.

Few early teens would think of hours spent on a landline phone talking to a loved one, when asked to visualize love.
A handful from my generation would think of waiting outside a PCO to make STD calls to a loved one in another city.

Love, is nothing but a set of images in our mind, ever changing, as the data set of images acquired by us, and the associations and mind-maps made, keep evolving. It is a network with nodes being continually added, removed, and the connections modified.

Love, to each one of us, is an entirely different album.
Love, to each one of us, means entirely different things.
Love, to each one of us, seems all-encompassing, while inherently not being so.
Love, to each one of us, seems like a definite, when it is anything but.

Love, as much as it is everything, is also nothing.
Love, as much as it is meaningful, is also meaningless.

Love, may not be what we should be seeking.
Maybe, it is building an exhaustive album that is the objective.
On the other hand, maybe it is finding someone whose album is the same as ours, and evolves along the same path, which is the objective.

What is love?

I am no closer to the answer than where I was when I first started.
I might be closer to realizing that there is no question.

"There is no spoon."

.

Hoping we aren't the bitter coffee you're trying to forget.
Holding on, hanging at the sill. Praying I can climb my way back up.