I often felt how time seemed to slow down when I visited my grandparents’ house. The pace of life seemed so much more relaxed in the smaller towns. Of course it helps when we are the out of town visitors once in a year, pampered to a fault. We would often visit the “native” town during the summer holidays. My grandparents lived on the seaside so the weather would invariably be hot and humid during the months of April and May. The freedom of the mind as kids would tell on us as we would be completely impervious to the heat, power cuts and even a supposed shortage of water supply! Those were the days of endless cricket matches – played with a rubber ball and a make-do bat. The wooden planks lying around the yard, the dried coconut tree leaf would serve as cricket bats good enough for us to re-live the latest exploits of Mohammad Azharuddin and Venkatapathy
Musings
General thoguhts that do not fit in any of the other categories
Service Invisible!
Checking into a hotel, I look around the lobby area. I notice there are neat bonsai trees on the counter top, a few pots around the region, plush sofa sets. Minimalistic, modern and clean. Not many people mulling around, all looks good. We walk up to the room and the corridor is clean, the room is impeccably maintained, well aired, the A/C, TV work and importantly, the bathroom is neat, dry and clean. We walk down to the restaurant and once again, the ambience is neat and well kept. It all looks very impressive. The next morning, the story continues – the cleanliness is maintained. I notice janitors and cleaning staff only once in three days of my stay at the hotel. I have moved in and out of the room fairly frequently and uniformly, there is a sense of cleanliness right through. The cutlery at the restaurant is always clean, the plants always look impeccable, the newspapers in
Smart cities
It was interesting for me to note that the Economist, in its Sept. 7th edition, had an article on “Clever cities – The multiplexed metropolis”, touching on Smart cities as the cities of the future. New cities can plan and develop along the lines of smart phones by relying on computer networks and grids to Operate, Administer and Manage governmental tasks. It would then be possible to gather data and have it made available online for people to use in ways unbeknownst as of today. Gamification of some of the processes within the city ties in wonderfully if the smart cities do come into existence. Indications are that some cities are already implementing a few concepts. The corresponding potential pitfalls were captured in the Bruce Willis movie – Die Hard 4 in which the bad guys take over a city’s online grid system causing wide spread chaos. Of course, in a secure network and process, the bad day never comes
Honesty – a casualty?
Honesty is the first aspect that builds trust between colleagues at the work place. While I insist on honesty being paramount, it is quite remarkable to see how it stands to be one of the most compromised values that one holds. At the risk of being pessimistic about values, I do believe that honesty becomes a by-stander when it pressure is on and the delivery of products are at risk. Far too often have I seen honesty about the product quality, about timelines and processes being fudged underneath words. The power of a word is more powerful than a sword, as the cliche goes. True enough. Meetings and written exchanges between people are powerful reminders of this cliche. Of course, as a “realist”, circumventing honesty at a sufficiently high level is termed as strategy. So it is a strategic move when India does not discuss the CTBT treaty (if I remember correctly) in public while it is being signed. It
BBMP Gamification
The current system in Bangalore – splitting the city into multiple wards with a BBMP office in each ward works very well in terms of distributing the span of control. I believe that competition helps improve performance. Usain Bolt would not be training hard and running at his peak if he were not challenged by his competitors. Even in the corporate world, competition breeds innovation and superior performance. Google out-thought Microsoft in the early 2000s much like Microsoft out thought its competition in the 1980s and 90s. The challenge in our case study is to inculcate a feeling of pride and competition between the BBMP wards. Taking off from the gamification example in my previous blog post, I think that BBMP wards should be players in a different sort of game. One in which they are graded on their key performance indicators and this system should be visible to all citizens. Each ward in-charge is accountable for the results that
Mithun's Musings 