Truth - Antonym of lie

Recently, I was listening to an old Tamil song which was about uttering the truth. Literally it said something like “telling the truth shows the high moral character” of a person. It set me thinking about the lies that we often utter in our day to day lives. I even wondered whether it is possible to speak the truth always or even most of the times?

Lie is referred to in many ways – casual bluff, blatant lie, white lie, lying between the teeth etc., but whatever way, lie is a lie, I suppose.

The amusing fact is none of us even take it seriously, in Hindi, for example we just call it “pekh raha hain”, casually. If we think about it historically, in our country, there should have been lesser liars in earlier days, even in the beginning of the 20^th century, since, we always believe in dharma and the dharmic way of life. Satya (Kritha) yug, Thetha yug, Dwapara yug should have had many truthful people. If we look at the ancient scripts of India, it says the proportion of dharma is slowly coming down from 100% in Satya (Kritha) Yug to 25% in Kali yug (in step down instalments of 25%). One of the strong reasons for degeneration of truth may be due to this scale down (may be liars also increased in the same proportion between the yugs)

Gandhiji was a great advocate of truth (of course, my experiments with truth did not exactly or literally mean this truth but the higher truth (God)). He would have definitely admonished many of us in the present generation for the liberal doses of untruth in our lives. Many of us must have read the story of Raja Harishchandra and the difficulties he had to undergo because he did not want to utter a lie, and so chose otherwise.

My father used to say that to lie one should be intelligent, since you have to keep track of what lie you told whom, whereas to tell the truth, you don’t need much intelligence since truth will be the same, always.

Probably, the most important point would be can we live without telling lies? There are so many practical occasions where we have to tell one, when at school, college, office,  with neighbours.....in order to avoid someone, saving ourselves from embarrassment, to get what we want etc. Maybe, the most worrying factor is that we do it without even a sense of guilt (often it is the other way round). Nowadays, even in homes the virtue is not being emphasised and children also lie to their parents (I have always hesitated a lot, as a child). Is it because we have started terming the so called truthful people as non pragmatists or impractical people? 

Job and Business – Striking similarities

Many of us who are in jobs, or in other words, work for employers, often think about starting our own business.  I have spent many days thinking about starting or doing business. During one of those days, I started wondering about the difference in doing a job and maybe conducting a business. Of course, differences are many in terms of investment of money, coming up with a great idea and so on. What about similarity? That is an interesting view point, I suppose.

What do we do typically in a business? Sell a product or service isn’t it? Of course, there are other aspects to business such as marketing, hiring people, manufacturing a product etc., but sales or revenue generation is the core.

Now let us look at the parallels. In a job you sell yourself or your skills to be precise. These skills can become obsolete like a product. When it becomes, you cannot sell them, or the value depreciates. There is also demand and supply. Consider this. An aged whiskey costs more, like wise experience in a job comes with a higher cost. In a business it is all about marketing your product. In a job it is promoting your skill set through your CV. You advertise in media for a product and try to sell through dealers/distributors. You display your skills in social media and sell through employment agencies. When your business is not profitable, or, if your business does not appeal to you anymore, you abandon, close it down and start some other. Likewise when your job does not pay you enough or you do not like it anymore, you change it.

Striking similarities? So the next time you think about your job, think about it as a business. With that you will be able to think about how to improve it, and how you can sell your skills, for higher returns.

The Middle Class Mindset

When I was a child, the only class I knew was the class in schools. Later after I completed my college and was about to venture in to the “real” world in search of a job, it slowly dawned on me that we belonged to “middle class”.

I those days, there was only one middle class, unlike now, we have three variants of it, viz.,Lower- middle, middle-middle and higher-middle (strikingly similar to a car?). Accordingly, my house did not have a colour TV (up to 1987), I always saw my mother (a diminutive 4.50 feet something lady) behind a massive manual grinder, grinding dough, for the next day idlis and dosas. So that would mean we did not even have a grinder, mixie and the other common appliances that are part of any household today.

Breaking away from the physical realm and coming to the conceptual and imaginative one, being in business has been one of the earliest thoughts in my life.

In fact, I wanted to start a garage / spare parts shop, immediately after my father's retirement (my father is an automobile engineer).

But my father did not encourage the idea of a garage / spare parts shop but instead suggested tinkering work (where he would do the work himself), after some reluctance.

I can't really say whether his conservative background was holding him back, or lack of funds, or both. However, I remember very clearly that he did come up with the tinkering idea. I was just out of college then, and from a non-engineering background did not have an iota of an idea, what "tinkering" meant.

In my naivety, from a lay man's angle, I equated tinkering of a car to removing dents in a stainless steel utensil and instantly disliked the idea. Almost immediately, I forgot about business and started to hunt for a job and landed up in a job that paid me Rs.600 a month!! (1988). But thoughts about doing a biz used to crop up every now and then, more so, on my low days on the job.

Now, after joining the auto industry, I know that tinkering is one of the most important jobs in a Body Shop, it is very difficult to get good tinkers, and most importantly, there is lot of money.

Now, you might ask me – what is the use of thinking about that after working 25+ years, all the while, having day dreams of starting a business?  

I agree. But that smells of classic middle class! Doesn’t it?

So Many Companies - but are they Ideal ?

After spending quite some years in the corporate world, I started thinking something very basic. What is an ideal Organisation or company? How should it look like ? What should be its structure ? What should be its philosophy, vision ? Whether such an entity is possible in this present world?

But who can stop me imagining such an entity? When there is freedom of speech, then there should be infinite freedom of imagination!

Here I go with my humble suggestions to build an ideal organisation/company (take it or leave it!) :

Mission / Vision: To promote happiness among stake holders, society through business (without proper mission/vision any company tends to lose its way!)  

Structure: Flat structure without many levels - four or five levels not more (MD-Dir-GM_Mgr-Exec) {simple, easy to comprehend, ease of access}

Culture: 1) There is no playing to gallery- No show off, humility to be promoted as a virtue 2) No bossism but mutual respect 3) Employees as working partners 4) Constantly promoting an atmosphere of debate and consensus 5) Employees recognised for their work and work alone 6) Help employees realise their dreams 7) Frank discussion regarding their weaknesses and also helping them in overcoming weaknesses with proper training 8) Inculcate, promote high levels of integrity, transparency 9) No upward delegation ,Genuine empowerment 10) Every boss should make his subordinate grow. To teach, groom, and bringing him up should be his responsibility (Mentor Protégé) 11) Very ethical (is it possible to follow in business?)

Human Capital: 1) Most important resource – “A nation or a company – it is the people who make it” 2) Importance to be given to recruit people who run/finance their homes 3) Simple, ethical, value driven people with an extraordinary attitude and an open mind – Need not be brilliant, but should have enough passion.

Compliance: The rule of law to be respected and followed – 100% (whether it be paying taxes / reporting/ governance…any)

Profits:  Reasonable, Not only book profits but cash profits also

CSR - To contribute to the society sincerely (not just to fulfill mandatory requirements!)

Any takers ??