Archives for July 2020

Life is like that

2020-07-15 By Sachin Leave a Comment

I went today to buy my customary newspapers – cost TT$7.

I had a twenty-dollar bill and some singles, so I took twenty-two dollars in the hope of getting a ten-dollar bill and five-dollar bill as change.

On paying, the shopkeeper returned my two dollars.

Me: “Oh, I wanted…”
Shopkeeper, cutting me off: “I know exactly what you wanted!”
Me: “I guess I can’t get it, then.”
Shopkeeper: “Life is like that.”
Me: “I suppose it is.”

If I can’t always get a small thing like change in the way I want it, why should I expect it for far more significant things?

Check your expectations.

When I had my small health scare a few months ago, I thought it had allowed me to gather what was truly important. But even after that, I’m still struggling to figure out what I consider truly important.

While the politically correct answer would be my family, if I were honest with myself, I would say that they’re not the most important thing. It feels weird to say, but I need to be honest. I do think it’s essential that I provide for them, I just don’t believe they are the most important thing.

But if they’re not, that what is? I’d like to say myself, but even that is not true. I consider myself an ends to a means, but not the means itself. I don’t feel wrong about that one.

I feel as though truly accomplishing something significant might be it, but this seems like such a big thing. Not to mention the odds of failure is pretty close to 1. So maybe I could find something not so big to be my most important thing.

I guess family is it for now then.

Over managing time

2020-07-13 By Sachin Leave a Comment

I don’t like to waste time. I choose how I spend every moment of it.

I like to know that I’m in charge of how I spend my time. Spontaneity is not within me. Someone calling me up out of the blue and saying let’s do something is going to get a “no”.

During the day, I schedule how I spend every hour. I get frustrated when things happen that throw off my schedule. The only thing I don’t plan is when I need to take a shit. I use that time to browse social media.

The thing is that I don’t feel overly productive. I still have challenges completing tasks and ensuring that deadlines are met. So time management is definitely not an issue for me. The problem, as it usually is, is how that time is spent.

If you’re not spending the time on your most important items, then it doesn’t matter what you manage your time doing.

Who is providing the greatest value?

2020-07-12 By Sachin Leave a Comment

During the COVID-19 lockdown, only essential workers were being allowed to come out to work. And who made up the bulk of those workers – grocery workers, bank tellers, garbage collectors, and other front-line staff. These workers are some of the lowest-paid persons in the organisation that they work, if not in the economy.

There is a contradiction here. If these workers are so vital that they were deemed essential, then why aren’t they paid as such. Or is it that we want to call them “essential” but what we mean is that they’re “expendable”?

With growing inequality, people have been questioning the high pay of many people, and rightly so. I often wonder if the high compensation of many CxOs and other senior managers are warranted.

This is why, more and more, I’m starting to come around to the concept of a Universal Basic Income (UBI). UBI is where the government provides a guaranteed minimum income to all citizens without any strings attached. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but it probably has the best overall outcome of the wellbeing of the population.

Now, this wouldn’t shift the question of value, but it would change people’s thinking about jobs and the salaries they’re willing to take for them. If people don’t need a job to survive, then they would be more willing to avoid a job unless there are more significant incentives to take it.

Now UBI is more complicated than that, and I am not in a position to discuss at this time. But I do believe we need to relook our entire economic system and the values system that embodies it.

Pushing against the tide

2020-07-11 By Sachin Leave a Comment

Personal change is hard. It’s even harder trying to change an organisation’s culture.

I hear many companies talk about culture change because they need to be doing things differently. What they mean is changing the way people act. But they try this without looking to change anything about the organisation—no change in the processes or the policies in place.

What this says is that they want the people to behave differently, but don’t want to change the environment that currently governs how they are supposed to act.

This is why most culture change initiatives fail.

Now some of the efforts may cause some short-term changes just by brute force, but soon the behaviours revert. The status quo is a fierce force to fight.

In my organisation, I see efforts for change fail, but that’s because there’s no change in policies or procedures. And efforts to change them falls flat. There is just little buy-in from the people above to drive the change.

I’ve spoken before about bringing change in thinking by first changing behaviours, but this requires that people have the freedom to change. Too many times, I don’t see that happening. It’s like management expects the change to happen simply by will, then get upset when it doesn’t happen.

They keep on making the same mistake time and again. That’s the definition of insanity—doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.

Secrets

2020-07-10 By Sachin Leave a Comment

Today a coworker and I were lamenting about how many people try not to tell the truth about how things like projects or other operational items are going. They’ll all try to put a positive spin to make it sound that all well when in reality it’s all shot to shit.

This happens a lot during audits, where people try as best a possible to hide any skeletons that may exist. The most activity to occur in term of ensuring that almost every control is checked is just before the audit is carded to start.

Now maybe that’s the expectation: that the audit is not meant to catch us not doing the right things, but determine that we know what the right things are. But probably not.

I believe we should try to be as truthful and as transparent as we could be for everyone to see. It will hold us accountable, and as a plus, if anyone sees us struggling, they can provide support before it becomes a problem.

But this is hard for people. No one likes to be the bearer of bad news. So they keep the bad news as quietly as could be until it can be resolved quietly, or can no longer be kept quiet.

But these secrets come at a price. Because we don’t fess up and try to make amends, we never really learn. As a result:

They often don’t help us improve or get better next time. They only help us get better at keeping things quiet.
We often try not to make the same mistake, not by doing the tasks better, but by avoiding it altogether.
If by chance the truth comes out, people will have a hard time trusting you next time around.

So do yourself a favour and tell the truth. If you need help giving bad news, this is a helpful article.

Crushing the small worker

2020-07-09 By Sachin Leave a Comment

At the company where I work, they outsource the janitorial services for the buildings. Recently, they replaced the contractors with another after a competitive bidding process.

I was worried about the workers. Some have been working with that contractor providing services to the company for almost 15 years. But in speaking with one of the janitors, they indicated that the contractor hired some of them to continue working.

However, as the person kept talking, they indicated that they would be getting paid less. They would only be paid for the days they worked: no paid time off or paid holidays. I’m not sure about sick days; I should probably find that out.

This is expected in this case – janitorial services are heavily labour dependent. What technological achievements in janitorial services have been made that would have one contractor operate so efficiently that they would be much cheaper than another.

So in trying to save money by offering a competitive bidding process, the small worker has suffered.

This situation reminded me of an article in the New York Times – To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider the Janitors at Two Top Companies, Then and Now. It talks about the choices that companies make now concerning the workforce that has contributed to the rising inequality.

We are continually making the wrong decisions when it comes to taking care of the most vulnerable in our society. We need to do better.

Taking Offence

2020-07-08 By Sachin Leave a Comment

I tend to say what’s on my mind. Many times people don’t want to hear that.

With the growing political correctness movement and the liberal left, almost anything can be offensive now. Heck, even what I’m writing here might be offensive to someone.

But it’s hard walking on eggshells everywhere people go. Social media has made it worse with the tendency to “cancel” people. Lives have been ruined simply because of bad decisions at a moment that was captured on camera.

People say that if the people were captured on camera that way, just imagine the behaviour when they’re not. But this doesn’t mean anything as people are typically caught at their worst when emotions are high, and amygdala hijack has occurred. Let’s not forget that the camera is often capturing one side of the story, and we often don’t see what led to that point.

People do say offensive things sometimes, and the majority of the times they do not. No one should be afraid to state an opinion, even if that opinion is not liked. At what point do relationships devolve to a place where you’re scared that you say something offensive that sets off repercussions that you never imagined.

As it is now, people don’t challenge the opinion or the thinking, and instead, attack the person, often time seeking to destroy them; a new type of digital vigilantism.

Would we ever be able to drive needful changes if we’re always afraid to offend someone? Are only changes that the majority of people agree with going to be the one that will be accepted? People forget that many things we’re against now were widely accepted in the past. Somehow we’ve gained a new sense of moral outrage at a whole different level.

Free speech is not free, they say. But we certainly can’t have a functioning democracy without it.

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Archives for July 2020

Life is like that

Most important items

Over managing time

Who is providing the greatest value?

Pushing against the tide

Secrets

Crushing the small worker

Taking Offence

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