Active inertia

On 14 July, The Economist published an article on Active interia. In this article Donald Sull, an associate professor at London Business School talks about how managers often get stuck in a rut, so when an entirely new situation arises they revert to old responses. Active inertia, Sull says, is “management’s tendency to respond to the most disruptive changes by accelerating activities that succeeded in the past”.

This article is so right on. We've all seen this happen time and again. The challenge is how to get management out of the rut and make them think out of the box, take risks and innovate. I wish Sull would have offered some solutions.

Youssou N'Dour Africa's ambassador

Youssou N'Dour is indeed one of the best African ambassadors. His crie de coeur for Africa in the form of music and chanson is so powerful that moves you to tears.

Last night I attended one of his absolutely superb concerts. His voice, the power of his messages, his engagement with his compatriots and his people moved me to tears.

The world needs more Youssou N'Dours! The world needs more committed people, more people who believe in integration and progress.

Youssou N'Dour is considered an icon and he is one. Hopefully he'll become a role model for many many more.

May God bless him and give him strength to continue his remarkable advocacy work for his people and his beautiful continent - AFRICA

Consequences of under investing

Who has not heard "there is no budget this year for this activity" or "you have to do more with less" or "resources need to be diverted to another area"?

When we hear such edicts, we try and layout the pros and cons of the proposed cuts. How many of you out there have been successful to convince your leadership that the proposed cuts will undermine corporate operations and under-investing in certain areas will have dire impact in the long run? I bet not very many.

It goes without saying that no matter where - even on Mars for that matter - there is waste. It goes without saying that we should work toward rationalizing spending and that we should spend money in an intelligent manner and for activities that add value. However, any organization needs to undertake a set of activities to ensure its business continuity.

A common pitfall of leadership when making cuts, is to make the cuts in service areas and shift resources to operations, without realising that when operations has more money to spend, their demand on services will increase. What ends up happening is a "Catch 22" situation. Services do not have money to cater to the needs to operations, so operations does not get adequate service. The end result the entire organization suffers.

Now, how can we get this very simple and elementary message across to leadership?

Different types of leadership

Recently I was reading an article on different types leadership: command leadership, manipulative leadership, paternalistic leadership, contingency based leadership, and values based leadership. The description of the manipulative leader was one that I am sure everyone has come across: "manipulative leader has greed or personal gain as a driving force or a major motivation, and will use deceitful methods to achieve their goals". Who has not come across one of these!!!

The good news is that history shows that manipulative leadership, as advocated by Machiavelli, "often succeeds in the short term [ but ] almost always fails ultimately because expediency cannot be concealed forever"

So if you are a victim of a manipulative leader, get back your life in hand, react and know that its days are counted!

Those who are practicing manipulative leadership, you need to read Joseph S.Nye's new book called "The Powers to Lead" to understand why you have to stop practicing Machiavelli. There may be still some chances of redemption for you lot and who knows you may end up having some followers! Although most probably you will have to work extremely hard to regain respect and trust.

Pausa di reflessione

What a relief not to see the face nor hear the voice of Italian politicans for 48 hours!!!!! Since the political crisis in Italy which brought down the Prodi government, the Italian public has been subjected to incessant and continuous 'political debates'....... They have been subjected to yelling matches and insults of various politicans......

What a relief to turn on the TV on Saturday and not see their faces nor hearing them yelling and insulting each other.... Would not it be nice the 'pausa di reflessione' lasted for eternity!

Philanthropy: The beginning of the end of development

It is great that Microsoft, Dell, Google and other big private sector movers and shakers want to join the global battle of fighting hunger and poverty. The question we should ask ourselves is how can they and how will they reconcile their quest to make money and profit with serving the most needy..... Will pumping in money solve the problem? Will parachuting inappropriate technology solve the problem? The answer is NO!!!! What they need to do is not DO IT ALONE, but in partnership with those who have been in the business for decades....... They pledged to work with the UN, civil society and the NGOs, but will they and if they do on what conditions? Their conditions?

It goes without saying that with the entry of foundations in the development arena and their with big bucks and lots of them ,the balance of power will and has changed.... but will it be sustainable? Gates may have recruited the creme de la creme from the development world, but will these top people be able to and given the space to implement sustainable development...... or will they pursue the photo opportunity, press and media coverage and be forced to put those who they are supposedly serving on the back burner!!!
All this public action is great. People have to be made aware of the plight of the 1 billion poor people. But to really and truly help the 1 billion poor people, we need structured, thought-through, sustainable plans. These plans need to be developed with the poor people and their organizations.

A thousand splendid suns

I just finished reading Khaled Hosseini's second book - A thousand splendid suns. I wonder why Hosseini does not spend some time and energy telling the world about the wonderful and rich history, tradition and culture his country.

As Hermann Hesse said: "And even the unhappiest life has its sunny moments and its little flowers of happiness between sand and stone", so does Afghanistan!