इंसान बौड़म क्यों होता है?
An ocean of thoughts,earlier this blog was named as "Indian Sociology..my burst and commentary". This is because it was meant to express myself on some general observations clicking my mind about my milieu...the Indian milieu. Subsequently a realisation dawned on that it was surging more as some breaking magma within . Arguments gave the heat to this molten hot matter which is otherwise there in each of us. Hence the renaming.
box बुद्धि, इंसान की बौड़मता
Advance automation work environments and the causes of failures of the conventional Indian managerial style
Imagine working on a product-tanker ship , with slender crew on board , just 17 or so, and of multinational denomination.
In your understanding, what type of leadership and the management style will serve best to operate such a ship?
And now imagine if you have to do training and teaching all the time with those 17 crew instead of the regular Planned Maintenance Schedule jobs. How easy or difficult would it be to you?
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The leadership and the management style of an Indian is usually derived, in my thinking , from the models of a tea-estate plantation manager .
Tea plantation was the first industrialized activity ever done by the mankind. It is to be remembered that our country, India , is the biggest producer of Tea in the world. The European traders came to India as mariners, via sea route, for her riches of the spices. Tea, a small shrub, is also one such spices which caught the interest of the European traders, but at that time it would be found only as some wild growth in some remote forest place. The British, as they realised the potential profits that tea could bring to them, decided to grow tea as a domesticated farm product. That would mean that now the native indians were required to be domesticated too, to work as the Industrial farm labourers, who could be used for the growing of the tea. Indians , until then were casual "villagers"(the non-industrial persons) with their interest confined to the agricultural fields and the soldiery work. "Villagers" were the people who did not know what it was like to work for any interest beyond the service of the agricultural fields and the king, as his soldier . An industrial labour gives his service for the interest centering around money, whereas a casual villager works merely to fill his stomach and to save his life from the fury of the king,
It took the British to coin out the money and to cultivate interest of the villager type Indians in that money in order to make the Industrial labourers out of them. The domestication of the lifestyle and the cultivation of interest in money of the villager Indians was not an easy challenge before the British. The mechanics of domestication of the people was same as the sheep-and-the-dog tactics used by the shepherds. A more aggressive natured person was picked from the Indian people, and then reigned in , ridden like an young colt, who may in turn , use his aggression to control the large mass. This young colt was the classical tea-estate manager.
So, what kind of leadership and the managerial style leads to the production of the Tea in such large volume ?
A traditional Tea estate manager , in my views, was and is, a very cunning, deceitful, manipulative , exploitative person who abused the illiterate Tea plantation worker - physically, economically and even sexually at times, which perhaps led to the rise of the Marxist ideologies among the masses where ever Tea Plantation was being done at an Industrial scale. This observation may perhaps best explain the common factor in why the Left Ideology political parties are dominating in both , the West Bengal and Kerela. The common-factor reasoning is that both are the places where Tea Plantation at an Industrial scale was started in India by the British.
But my interest is to decipher the kind of managerial style - which I would call by a name- the Conventional managerial style- that one should expect from an average Indian. In my thinking Management and the Leadership is something that comes to man , both in the Natural format , and the school-trained polished format.
Therefore , even if a person is not exposed to any formal learning , it would be wrong of us to assume that the person doesn't have any managerial style of his own. Rather , the question we should seek to know is - what kind of managerial style should we expect from a person who has had no formal lessoning of the different managerial style and the Leadership courseware . This question is more important to be answered, because, as we can see, the informal (or the non-school trained) style or the the natural format style is what is more prevalent and is what is more regularly practiced by the people.
It is here that our Tea-estate managerial style model comes into picture, because this is the closest explanation of the informal model . A basic understanding of how a Tea estate worker accomplishes his task, and a model of how his estate manager deals with him - will give the best picture of what kind of managerial style one should expect from an average Indian .
Indeed one may also explore , through this model, why the Nawabi - The Raja babu or the 'velvet gloves'" leadership style of a Lucknowi person may be loathed by the people of the Tea-estate regions .
Having worked on ships which had very lean level of manning , my views are that such ships can be handled only when the crew members are already well-trained , post-beginner level , whom I would like to refer to as the "professional". The idea in my usage of the word "professional" can be best understood by comparing it with the terms "amateur " or the "beginner".
So, these ships are the ones where a shipping company can obtain the best profits only when they have spent enough towards the crew salary so as to pick the most "professional" level crew members from the labour market.
This theory about the selection of the crew for a slim-manned ship goes well with the level of automation that the ship has been provided with. The shipowners may never obtain profits from their spending on the automation technology unless they operate the ship as per the standards that they have conceived in the design and the construction of the ship . Advance level Automation is a very useful means of saving the potential losses to the ship owners from factors such as delays in time, improving the efficiency with respect to the manual operation. Automation, thus, saves losses to the ship owners from the crew inefficiency related causes. Such crew-inefficiency related losses occur in terms of training of the crew, Supervision , the overtime component of their salary , and such on.
But the Automation comes with another price tag of its own. That, the skill standards required of the crew to operate the automation of ships must be of the "professional" level. Otherwise the Automation will start working just the opposite of what it is intended for.
Now that we know that the crew of leanly-manned automated ships is having the skill of the standards designated as the "professional" level, try making a guess what leadership style should be the best style to be practiced on such ships ?
To put the question more straight - which is the best style of Leadership to be practiced in an environment where the workers are suppose to be of "professional" level skill standards ?
I was working on ships where the Company , the ship owners, discouraged the practice of giving overtime related salaries altogether .
Now, that makes the challenge of Managerial style even more straight . But this handicap on the manager gives a hint to our query of the working style of the manager .
When the crew is not expected to be given a reward in term of the overtime payment, the answer is that the shipowners want the crew and officer to work only within the defined framework of the the Standards Operation Procedure or the SOPs. The crew, whose skill level is Advanced enough , is expected to know how to execute out their task. The only issue is that they only have to do their tasks while keeping within the framework of the SOPs, which means without any expectations of the extraneous reward such as the overtime allowance.
By the way, what does it speak about the ship owner's idea of what is the overtime payment ?
The shipowners think that the Overtime payment is a "rewarding and a punishing tool" given to the person in managerial role for no good reason because that way the overtime payment is often crookedly secured by the crew, but which is a loss to the ship owner's pocket. On ships where the crew is known to be of the skill level of "beginner /amateur "; and that the overtime payment system is practiced, it is observable that the overtime "reward/punishment" system works - more often- to destroy or damage the machinery , which the crew is habituated to do for creating an artificial justification ploy for not conforming with the pre-defined framework of the SOPs .
Now that is a complex truth to understand. But we must take out time and apply our minds , to think it out.
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More about the tea-estate managerial style : -
The conventional , tea-estate style of person in a managerial role , has an in-built cultural attitude where a cat-and-mice game is played between the workers and the managers, somewhat like the tom-and-jerry show . The worker have a cultural skills to skive off the task, to fail the task and to blame the cause of failure to something that the manager is supposed to be responsible for.
And the manager bear their cultural skills to identify some person whom he may put as a guinea pig - to send out his message of discipline. He knows it, culturally, to how to humiliate, insult, demoralize and to discipline the selected guinea pig person.
The game sets on by itself in any work space where there are sufficient Indian people are around. It is during this psychological game that the human values, (the human considerations for a fellow human) are also used as a coin to hit out against each other . Within this managerial work environment, a manager who allows for the humane consideration to his worker is seen as emotionally weak to have succumbed to the coin thrown by the worker at him.
Since, in the tea-estate managerial style , the human consideration are , inter alia, used as the attack weapons , therefore , the manager is expected to be hardened , and often cruel or even inhuman in his ways. Obviously ,the Lucknowi style, where Tea is not grown, but merely sipped and enjoyed, such a managerial style is loathed . But , in turn , the Tea-estate managers who are from the plantation regions of India, see the Lucknowi 'velvet glove' managerial style itself as impotent , powerless , and inefficient.
However , the work environment that I am referring about -- the slim-manned ship having crew member of multiple nationality , a barriers come into play when a traditional tea-estate style manager is put into it. The ideal relationship between the worker and the manager must be centered around the willingness, and the sincerity of the commitment made to each other. But the cat-and-mice game tea-estate managerial style is filled with insincerity.
The tea-estate manager is not acquainted with the ideal of sincerity. Neither does he know how to honour the free-will of a person. Being crooked comes as naturally to the tea-plantation manager as is the poison to a serpent. But a lean-manned, hi automation level ship can hardly afford insincerity of the crew and the officers.
राजनीति अस्त्र और कूटनीति अस्त्र अलग होते हैं
राजनीति अस्त्र अलग होता है, और कूटनीति अस्त्र अलग। ये दोनो ही अलग किस्म के अस्त्र होते हैं।
मगर शासन शक्ति तक पहुंचने के लिए दोनों अस्त्रों का प्रयोग करने में महारथ चाहिए होती है।
राजनीति अस्त्र का प्रयोग होता है जनता को लुभाने के लिए । कूटनीति का प्रयोग होता है विरोधियो को हराने के लिए।
चुनाव प्रक्रिया आजकल कूटनीति अस्त्र का मैदान बन चुकी है। evm के प्रति लोगो की आशंका कूटनीति का पायदा है। फिर, वोट की गिनती की प्रक्रिया, vvpat की गणना, चुनाव अधिकारीयों के राजनैतिक झुकाव, ये सब कूटनीति अस्त्र का अंश बन चुके हैं। मीडिया से wave बनाना,court से अपने पक्ष के फैसले दिलवाना, यह भी अंश है कूटनीति अस्त्र के।
भूखी,गरीब, अल्प पढ़ी लिखी समर्थक भीड़ इन सब कूटनीति अस्त्र को कटाक्ष करने के लिए तैयार नहीं होती है। वो सिर्फ नारेबाजी करके, और या फ़िर मोटरसाइकिल पर पार्टी के झंडे लगा करके काफिले बना कर रैली करने के ही काम आ सकती है।
जबकि भाजपा के समर्थकों में बुद्धि से ताकतवर sales और marketing रणनीति में महारथी भीड़ है। कभी LED टीवी बेच कर, और कभी मोटरसाइकिल बेच कर वोट कमाए जाते हैं।
विपक्ष कूटनीति अस्त्र में बारबार कमज़ोर पड़ रहा है।
Exit Polls चुनावी प्रचार का हिस्सा ही होते हैं
ऐसा कैसे की बिहार चुनावों में exit poll के नतीजे राजद को बहुमत होने का इशारा कर रहे थे, भाजपा गठबंधन को अल्पमत,
मगर जब असली नतीजे आये तब उल्टा ही हो गया। जबकि ज्यादातर राज्य चुनावो में exit poll उल्टे ही रहे हैं, भाजपा गठबंधन को ही बहुमत मिलने की भविष्यवाणी करते रहे हैं।
दरअसल, इस बार exit poll भी चुनाव प्रचार का ही हिस्सा है, जो कि वोट पड़ जाने के बाद किया जाता है। exit poll का प्रयोग बिहार चुनावों में लोगो को डराने के लिए हुए है कि यदि राजद आ गई तब भाजपा समर्थको के संग क्या सलूक हो गा ! चुनाव अधिकारियों में भाजपा के समर्थक अधिकारी लोग हेरफेर करके भाजपा को जिताने में लग गए।
बाकी हर बार दूसरे राज्यों में exit poll का प्रयोग होता है भाजपा के हक़ में wave बनाने के लिए कि यदि बहुमत कम पड़े तब आसानी से पार्टनर मिल जाये।
राजद के पास समर्थक वैसे भी गरीब, भूखी जनता थी, जबकि भाजपा ने तो शासन शक्ति के भीतर अपने समर्थक बैठा रखें हैं।
The problem with the courseware on Managerial Leadership
The single biggest problem that I see in the courseware on leadership and managerial style , particularly the caselets type, like "Capt Dayal- old man with valve gloves" and "Chief Engineer Swamy , man with iron fist" , is that these caselet studies entrap the minds of the learners instead of helping it to open out.
How ?
The courseware captivates away the thinking of the learners to see the leadership roles from the two frames alone -that of 'velvet gloves' attitudes and that of 'iron fist'.
Many uninitiated learners will get induced through the courseware , to think that the Motivation, which is an important role in the leadership, is done by way of acting soft and Humane, which then is the way to get the job done .
Here lies the trouble.
The courseware tends to send a message that behaving human considerate should bear a selfish motive - that of getting the job done . A shallow thinking learner may fail to see that the human-considerate behaviour is expected to be done without selfishness, by all the sources of moral values - the religious philosophies and the society. And as a result , the uninitiated learner may cultivate a kind of a highly sophisticated but pathological mind within himself wherein he would start to conduct his considerate, human-side with another person in a very selfish manner , that the receiver must reciprocate in terms of his sweat.
Such an immature learner, through the courseware , may be tricked to think that if his human-considerate side is not being reciprocated properly by the crew members though his labour, then it would put a black mark on his leadership abilities . And in such a situation , he would need to switch to the iron-fist conduct , wherein , in future it would become legitimate for him to stop granting the human considerate needs to his crew , no matter how grave the situation may be.
The course material may bear impact on the mind of the crew as well in their off-classroom learners role , wherein they may become immunized to the grants received of Human-value considerations. The crew may start to think that every time a master or a Chief Engineer is acting with a velvet glove, then there is a "leadership"-related selfish motive hidden underneath it. The mere knowledge that this the course material on the leadership has these contents will be enough to set a psychological "insincerity" game between the active learners of the course and the off-classroom learners !
The biggest victim would be the humanity itself , wherein , many of the the unmindful active learners may become truly transactional while giving human consideration to each other.
And a large part of the off-classroom learners may begin to objectify the grants that they may have received. and then act psychopathic on occasions .
The insincerity may become a cultural-attitude , between the classroom-learners and the off-classroom learners. The transactional type relationship would pervade through the society all over.
In my views , the caselets should also send out the lessons that leadership should not cultivate a highly transactional relationship lesson within the learners, in regard to conducting oneself with human consideration with the fellow seaman . One must not forget, in his haste to practice his leadership courseware , to act human with the subordinate in a genuine and sincere manner.
Also, the Motivation function should be prevented from becoming trapped with the 'velvet gloves'" conducts and the "iron fist" conducts .
In my own experiences at sea, where i have worked with slim-manned crew, just around 17 or so , on product tanker ships, and of multinational denomination, I believe that cultural barriers , understanding the cultural Mooring of the people , is more important knowledge in order to get the tasks onboard the ship accomplished .
In my thinking , a free, willing and a submissive person is the best type that we can have on board , both in the leadership roles and the followership roles.
The common mis-knowledge that courseware on leadership and the managerial style brings about with it is that it teaches that the leadership personality should be dominating type , and the followership personality should be submissive type. Consequently, the courseware advocate and promotes the proverbial wolf-and-lamb combination , wherein more mishaps occur on ships , misconducts and inter-personal troubles are reported on board, and the unwilling , reluctant crew is seen on ships which results into more of Machinery failures due to improper maintenance, under the effect of crew or the officer Playing truant from work.
The real challenge on board , in my view, is to get the free-willing persons on board, those types who would be ready to contribute their sweat on their own motivation . Towards this, a soft natured officers are important to be present in the senior capacity whose conducts with the submissive crew should not put off the latter.
Filipino crew, i see, are more submissive and high -rated in their sincerity towards work . This is perhaps because of the religious -cultural upbringing that they receive.
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By pitting the humane behaviour of the velvet gloved Captain Dayal against the cause of his self-anxiety that he is losing grip over the crew,
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