Category Archives: Life

Norton Juster’s ‘Phantom Tollbooth’ is just such a timeless delight. I discovered it when I was studying in New York University, got a used copy of the book from my favourite bookstore – Strand Bookstore. It was about the adventures of a boy named Milo who went into some kind of fantasy land.

At one point, Milo meets a boy named Alec who belongs to a group of humans who grows downwards. So Alec actually floats in the air because his head is where it is at the level of his full-grown height. Alec thinks Milo is a strange type of human because ‘his perspective changes as he grows‘. Because Alec’s perspective is always the same (‘the grown up view’) through his life.

At the end of some further interactions and adventures, Milo decided he’d like to continue seeings things as a child, because it’s not so far to fall. The interplay between the literal and figurative meanings of words throughout the book is brilliant and the story has so much practical wisdom about reality which we never quite escape from in life.

And yes, I think as we grow, we become afraid of falling, we think so highly of ourselves. Yet the more we want to be put on the pedestal, the less we are willing to try, take appropriate risks, and some day, we just decide to stop thinking altogether and just follow. Because we imagine, there are ‘guarantees’ of what comes at the end if we’d just follow. That tends to be where things start to go wrong.

Picture your 19 year old self. You always wanted to be a [fill in the blank], and you worked hard for it. You took the right subjects, had the right co-curricular activities, checked the boxes on leadership positions and met your number of hours of community service. You met the conditions; or maybe not.

Maybe there were some hidden ones because you didn’t get into the course. Maybe they shrank the cohort in your year and you were excluded as a result. Either way you took a gap year. It was a good time, to gain exposure and experience new things. Suddenly there were new possibilities. The field or career you wanted maybe wasn’t that attractive anymore. But you’ve vested so much. You apply again to the course. You’re so tired, there is so much pent-up tensions.

Nope. Rejected. You didn’t get into [fill in the blank]. Now, that’s liberation. Go lead your life. The life where you are not working for something guaranteed, where you are taking risks because you care about the process of growing, of learning, of being better rather than ‘being someone’. Live the life where you’re defining your own standards and making yourself accountable rather than trying to live up to others’ standards and always feeling like you’ve to justify your worth or abilities to others.

Our practice begins with the imperative that we embrace a different pattern, a pattern that offers no guarantees, requiring us to find a process and to trust ourselves. As Susan Kare, designer of the original Mac interface, said, “You can’t really decide to paint a masterpiece. You just have to think hard, work hard, and try to make a painting that you care about. Then, if you’re lucky, your work will find an audience for whom it’s meaningful.”

Seth Godin, The Practice

If yesterday’s posts put some tension in you and a sense of unease, today’s quote is to ease that. Let us learn to trust in ourselves; and find the right story to tell ourselves. This is why I started my coaching practice.

A lifetime of brainwashing has taught us that work is about measurable results, that failure is fatal, and that we should be sure that the recipe is proven before we begin. And so we bury our dreams. We allow others to live in our head, reminding us that we are impostors with no hope of making an original contribution.

Seth Godin, The Practice

This, is so brilliant. In many ways. So I add no more words to this blog post so you can focus on the quote.

The thing about putting a group of people in charge of standards and creating standards, is that you risk desiring to create standards for everything. It’s like suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and wanting to make sure everything is so spick and span. And they may lose sight of what standards are there for. Who are standards supposed to serve?

Should they be serving a nation? Should they be there to allow regulators to generate revenue through audits/inspection? Should they be serving an industry? To keep new entrants out and maintain some kind of tacit collusive oligopolistic market structure? Should they be serving the customer? But what about those who are not yet customers but could potentially be once the standards are flexed, tweaked?

Every standard seeks to exclude. That’s the reason they exist. So are we serving the wider society when we exclude? Who is benefitting from the standards, and who is helping to perpetuate the standards? Should we allow monopolies to change a standard in ways that benefit themselves? How can we ensure they put back what they take from the society?

I think these are more important to consider for those who are put in charge of standards. It’s not just about convening committees and putting together paper work.

There’s something neo-colonialistic about standards. After all, in my last blog post, I talked about how Qin Shi Huang who first unified several ‘kingdoms’ in China to form the first proper large dynasty in China actually used standards to help him rule. And from an economic perspective, standards can have some kind of effect of creating some cartel or monopolistic effect but we can agree that the social benefit outweighs the social costs so proper state intervention or some kind of non-profit structure on these standards association or organisations would help.

The attractiveness of being able to develop standards which other people have to eventually follow is that there are ways to monetise that. It’s like how Champagne can only come from Champagne in France – it naturally creates some kind of monopoly. Whenever we standardise, we exclude because we have made a decision to observe a threshold of acceptance. But the key here is to consider who this standard seeks to serve. As long as the standard serves the public and fosters more innovation, allows people to build things upon it and move forward, without too much cost to society, that is fine.

But mechanisms have to be set or laid down for us to question a standard; because once a standard is entrenched, it is hard to convince the system to change it. Which means if there’s no proper system in place to change it when it becomes somewhat obsolete, it may continue to perpetuate. Finding a way for standards to evolve will allow us, as a society to be able to grow and learn to be able to move forward on the right (new) things.

Standards are great tools to get people to move past something mundane and to fix the number of variable parameters so that we can move forward with things, and build upon what have been decided. Civilisations are made of standards, one step at a time. When the “First Emperor of China” (Qin Shi Huang) unified the bunch of squabbling tribes and formed the Qin dynasty, he started to develop standards which helped not only to unify large swathes and number of people in China but allowed more trade and innovation to blossom.

He standardised the currency units and denomination (they were in silver), standardised the length of axles between wheels on carts (thereby also allowing the government to build road infrastructure which were uniform and standard), ensured units of measurement were uniform in the lands where he ruled. Most importantly, he unified the writing system of Chinese at that point and eliminated variant symbols or ways of writing the same character. This laid an important foundation for the script of Chinese characters up till the modern day.

One may say he produced the standards in order to rule more effectively; others may consider his ability to produce standards to be rooted in his monopoly power as the state, especially one that was formed through de facto power. While one may argue a different length of axle, or a different way of standardising the Chinese characters would have been better; or one may dispute the selfish motive of Qin Shi Huang, one cannot ignore the fact that standards are important building blocks to help one move forward and further.

Same for our personal lives; if we can develop standards that helps us not waste our willpower on the small things, the ones that are insignificant or unimportant, then we can save our horsepower to run greater distances.

There was perhaps an impression that public sector has more work-life balance than private sector where people slog hard to earn the extra dime from the market. Well, I think the truth is far from that.

In most organisations, the extent of the slog really boils down to 2 parameters: load distribution and system efficiency. An organisation where some work especially hard while others are not fully deployed struggles with load distribution while an organisation where everyone seems overworked struggles with efficiency. Of course it is usually a combination of both but simplifying to this 2 extremes allows us to look at working out ways to cope with it.

Load Distribution ridden companies need to improve their resource composition and utilisation. They might be chasing the wrong kind of work. Organisations dealing with efficiency issues might need to improve hiring or their overall system of managing their people.

What has modern capitalism brought forth to us? Choice is one of the big important thing that the market grants us. But for most of the period of great growth in the decades prior to 2000s, the choice was mostly about new things that could be consumed which previously did not exist.

Fast forward today; we might have a tad bit too much choices that new products and services might be there to restrict or reduce choices. Freedom to choose becomes less of a relished freedom when we become compelled to make so many different choices. Do we really need to choose from 1000 available options for our bathroom tiles? Do we really need to have 5 apps for streaming shows?

Are all of these choices making our society, culture and people better in any ways? When capitalism rewards the people who entertain us more than those who bring clean water to more lives, do we want to allow the system to grow without bounds? Should we allow more markets to be regulated and more activities to proceed without profit motives driving them?

In the latest Annual Shareholders’ meeting for Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett and Munger came together to trot out their wisdom for the shareholders and the world as usual. One of the point that came out was about CEOs or leaders in general – but I think more broadly, it is a warning about the narratives or messages that are crafted for the public.

And of course, so they go on every couple of months, and they repeat certain things about their company, and it becomes part of, sort of the catechism. And nobody’s going to go on two months after the CEO has said one thing and say, ‘Well, actually, that really isn’t the way.’ They’re not going to contradict themselves or change course.”

Warren Buffett, 2021 Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Meeting

There are many organisations, not just companies that constantly bellow messages about themselves they want others to believe. The Berkshire Chairman is warning us against the danger of crafting myths that will get perpetuated. Leaders who defines goals for their organisation but do not take time to understand the truth about it will end up being cornered by journalists or media somehow blurt out something positive and aspirational but simply not a reflection of where the company is at.

The company and its staff will then be forced to window-dress the firm to align with what was spoken rather than focusing on the core value-drivers. So if you’re a middle-manager, or more junior, how are you going to respond to your bosses’ myths. How can we confront them gently and guide the organisation back to truth and its core?