Not Bureacracy, But Attitude Is What that Matters

A few weeks  back, I went on a business trip to Malaysia and Indonesia. Now that Air Asia operates very economical flights from Trichy to Kualalumpur, and moreover Trichy being quiet closer to my place, I chose to use the Trichy airport. The new Trichy airport has been beautifully done up.  It has now got an international feel, and as I start to feel proud of this, I happened to encounter as stinking incident with the officer at the airport immigration counter, which I would like to share.

I was accompanied by one of my staff and as it was his first time trip, outside the country he was a bit nervous about the various formalities like the baggage scanning, immigration, customs clearance and security checks.  His fears went right. The immigration officer who called him into his counter to process his passport, started asking a number of irrelevant and meaningless questions, like do you have enough money to travel abroad, have you made currency declaration in your passport and he also started to demean my staff by saying, “you have not even gone to a neighboring Indian state, but you wish to visit a foreign country”.  I was watching all this and at some point of time, I got so irritated by his attitude that I stepped into the counter to the rescue of my staff. I told the immigration officer, that he is my staff and I can clarify all his doubts. It is only after I could show some personal affluence, the immigration officer decided to keep his mouth shut and  clear his immigration.

Now in contrast, to what happened in Trichy I saw something very pleasant and innovative at the Kualalumpur Airport, which is worth mentioning and appreciating. On our return from Kualalumpur to Trichy, we were passing through the Malaysian immigration clearance. At each immigration counter, there was a small board along with 3 push type buttons of different colours. The message on the board read, if you are satisfied with the service of this immigration officer, press ‘green’, if not satisfactory press ‘yellow’ and if you had a problem with the officer press ‘red’.

The lady who processed my immigration, did not ask me a single question. She saw my immigration form, my passport, did her work in less than 2 minutes and returned back my passport with a smile. I was so pleased by her service that in return, I simply expressed my thanks by pressing the ‘green’ button. Perhaps, if there was something like  a ‘pink’  button for excellent service,  I would have pressed that.

Just see the contrast. The work done by the immigration officer in Indian airport and Malaysian airport was the same. They both belong to the same bureaucratic tribe, yet one was able to give a heartwarming happy experience and another a heart aching miserable experience.

 ‘Bureaucracy’  is not so much a dirty word as it sounds. The dictionary meaning of bureaucrat  just says ‘a non elected government official’.  I appreciate that, bureaucrats are keen on following rules and procedures and doing their best to keep the systems in place. But in the first place they should realize that all rules and procedures were formed to ease the handling of people and issues, and not to create untoward hardship to them.

As compared to a politician who is “a elected government official”, a bureaucrat certainly scores higher in my scale. The only issue here is the bureaucrat does more than what is expected of him and the politician does less than what is expected of him. The general public gets irritated, when these bureaucrats make use of the powers bestowed upon them to cause hardship to a common man.

Bureaucrats have got a key role to play in the execution mechanism of the government. If only they could do their work with a proper understanding of their work, with thorough knowledge of the process and with a  positive attitude, they can create a visible difference in the country.

IT IS NOT BUREACRACY THAT MATTERS , BUT IT IS THEIR ATTITUDE TOWARDS THEIR WORK AND PEOPLE THAT MATTERS.

Happy Reading,

D.Senthil Kannan

Article dated Sep'09

The New Generation Homemaker

The days of living in palatial bungalows, with a dozen servants doing the household chores is of no much relevance today. In other words, it is too much a luxury that anyone can afford.  Today people prefer to small houses and manage all the household chores all by themselves.

Why? The simple reason is that, you don’t find servant maids to work on your terms anymore. This type of workers are slowly vanishing  and it is high time, all of us wake up to the reality.

Look at the advanced countries. Do you find servant maids? No. The housework is done by the inmates of the family itself. They use vacuum cleaners to clean the house and washing machines to wash their clothes.

Let me share a real life observation. When I was a team member of the Rotary GSE to Finland, I was staying as  a guest in one of the Rotarians house in a town called Rovaniemi. This Rotarian, is a well to do businessman in that town. He has a big beautiful house. His wife is a home maker and they have two small sons.

On a Sunday morning, as I woke up and was spending some time with these kids, I saw the there was another lady in the house, who was working along with the Rotarian’s wife. They were cleaning up the house, changing linens and doing a multitude of household tasks. It was a marathon work of over two hours. At the end of all tidying up, they both sat together in the dining table and had their breakfast together. I guessed, it was one of her relatives.

After some time the Rotarian’s wife, introduced me to her by her name and said she has come to assist her with household work. I did not get a clue. I gently asked her, whether she was her relative. She replied again, that she had come to assist her. I thought she did not understand my question and left it there.

After sometime, the strange visitor left the house in her nice new car.  The Rotarian’s wife, then came up to me and told, “Actually, she is our servant maid. But you see, people here don’t like to be called servant maid, and that is why I told you that she had come to assist me”.

I was in for a cultural shock. The house owner and servant maid having breakfast together. Is this OK with you? If you are not, be ready for it.  Whatever happened in the Western countries a decade back is happening in India, today and surely this too is bound to happen.

There is another choice. Get into automating your household, as much you automated your office or your factory. These are the days of washing machines, vacuum cleaners, microwaves ovens, motorized wet grinders and dishwashers.

Well, most of the city dwellers have got into this lifestyle. People living in small towns, still prefer the comfort of servant maids to do these odd tasks. I have heard people saying, the rice batter for making idlis is softer only when hand ground; the dirt in the shirt collars go away only with hand washing; the dirt in the wall corners, does not come away in the vaccum cleaner; microwave is only good for heating, it is not good for cooking; the dish washer is not good to clean indian style stainless steel utensils.

If it does not work to your expectation, my suggestion would be to write a letter to all these companies from who you bought these modern home appliances and inform the limitations of the gadgets they have sold and ask them to improve upon the technology. They will certainly work on it. Just like how all these inventions came about owing to human necessity, similarly, pinpointing the problems would give scope for improvement of the product design.

Perhaps all of us bought a vacuum cleaner, when the Eureka Forbes salesman convinced us buy one, but then it was put in the rack of useless things. It is time to take it out and get it working. Using of equipment is a skill we need to learn. It is just because we did not take time to learn to use it, that we are experiencing so much inconvenience. Like a saying goes, “a bad works men often blames his tools”. Just like how, sweeping the floor with a broom is a skill, cleaning the house with a vacuum cleaner is also a skill.

Also practice the habit of doing small things by yourself, rather than depend on a servant for each and everything. To start with, teach your children to clear up the mess they created. Ask your children to clean their food plates, before and after a meal. These small habit formations, will go a long way in helping them in the future.

Well, it is entirely your choice. A choice of convenience over convention. Well, it is better to accept it by choice rather than having to forcefully adapt to this lifestyle, in a later stage.

Happy Reading,

D.Senthil Kannan

Article dated Aug'09

Expectation Vs Reality

Disappointment, Frustration, Anger and all such related feelings, stem out of the same root cause. The root cause being, that many a time the reality does not match expectation or in other words the reality falls short of our expectations.

Let us examine the truth of the above statement in light of a few illustrations.

Your child is very intelligent, but somehow he does not score good marks when it comes to his academics. Every time, you hope he would score better next time, but the marks never seem to improve. In spite of your constant advice stressing the importance of marks, you do not see any visible result. You are disappointed.

You start a business venture, trusting one of your good old school day friends, who you have known for years. You have been pally pally all through your life. At some point of time during the course of business dealings, there is a misunderstanding between you and your friend.  He behaves very differently. You are shocked. His careless behavior leads you to a big financial loss.. You feel cheated. You feel betrayed. You experience disappointment.

One of your newly appointed manager, is able to show tremendous improvement in your sales volume. Your business starts to boom. You feel like a lucky star and start building so much faith on him, that you delegate most of your work to him and move into your comfort zone. All of a sudden, he hands over a resignation letter, because he is got a better package somewhere in a foreign country. You feel helpless. You sense a fear of your business future. You never thought, he would quit all of a sudden. You are disappointed.

Does any of this situation , sound similar to your experience. Well many of us would have had some unpleasant experience of this sort.

The expectation was we wanted our child to score good marks, our friend to be trustworthy, our staffs to be faithful, but in reality things did not happen the way we wanted it to happen. Repeated disappointments leads to frustration and this frustration leads to anger. Is it not? At the end of the day, we are either angry with others or angry with ourselves.

All external anger, when given a deep reflection will boil down to internal anger. We will realize that it was our mistake to trust someone or expect someone to behave in a way that according to our perception is right. But they were their own selves. And as always they will have their own side of the story for the purpose of justification.

The truth is, it is difficult for anyone to match our expectations. Expectations often lead to disappointment at work place, at family and amidst friends.  We expect our close friend to remember our birthday, but he may not call up. We expect our staff to be self motivated, but very often find ourselves pushing them to do the work. We expect our home to be always clean and tidy, but our kids throw up their things, all over the place. As an end result we end up with so many day to day disappointments, that life gets really frustrating at times

I am not advocating that we should not have trust, faith or expectations on anyone. But what we need to look at is the limitations of the people, from who we expect and manage our expectations accordingly. Your trust in people should be based on the tried and tested method. We need to assess their ability, their interest and their integrity before we could set our expectations on them.

Expectations are like a seed planted on soil. Before we plant the seed we should know whether that particular soil has the potential for the seed to grow into a tree. Once we are convinced and sow the seed of expectation, we need to water it with words of motivation and appreciation, and provide the sunlight of affirmation and confidence. Eventually, we will realize that more and more of our expectations, start to turn into reality.

In short, people management is nothing but expectation management.

Happy Reading

D. Senthil Kannan

Article dated July 2009

The Silver Linings

There is a beautiful English phrase, “look for the silver lining in the clouds”. I am actually witnessing a number of such silver linings, recently.

An unfortunate road accident, in Madurai ring road highway, had left my wife’s right arm fractured. The first silver lining was that, the accident did not kill any of us, nor any one in the car in which we collided with. As my wife was whining with pain, at the moment of the accident and I was trying to reach out to my relatives  through my mobile to get her transported to the hospital, one passer-by – a young gentleman cared to stop his car and volunteered to take us to the hospital. We took his help and made a quick exit from the accident spot. Here, was one more silver lining.

In just a day after the accident, my wife got operated and had a steel plate fixed in her arm to reconstitute the bone structure. With many relatives and friends visiting us at the hospital, we found a lot of solace. The feeling of being cared for and being important was another silver lining.

We mentally got prepared for a month long rest and healing time. There were just two issues which created a lot of unrest to us. One was the PALMS Summer Camp which was scheduled in the first week of May and the other one was the proposed family cum friends overseas trip to Thailand and Malaysia, which was in Mid May. After some contemplation, we decided to postpone the PALM Summer Camp to the last week of May. The holiday tour we had promised our kids, was the only concern left, unaddressed. With little worry, we told the doctor about our foreign travel plan. We had no clue that the doctor would give us a green signal. He said, that she will be perfectly alright in 10 days and she can travel anywhere, provided she takes a little precaution.  It was now a matter of our own choice. It was a great mental dilemma, whether to go or not to go.  Normally, any one would opt to cancel the trip and stay back. With mixed feelings we took a bold decision, to go ahead with the tour.  The decision turned out to be good. We enjoyed a great holiday abroad and came back recharged with a great feeling of accomplishment.  If we would have stayed back, we would have undergone more mental agony and depression. The tour created a positive mindset. The focus on pleasant experience made the painful experience minor. This again was a silver lining,  I should say.

It has always been me, telling my wife to do this and that. Now that she was unable to do many things, I not only had to do all my work by myself, but also had to assist her to do her work. However, I felt it was a great opportunity for me to serve her and pay back a little of her care. I realized how much, I have taken her for granted. We never realize the importance of electricity until there is a power cut. Similar, was my situation. This realization, I feel is one more silver lining.

I have read these words quite often - every experience has got something to teach us. This experience indeed taught us a lot. It helped us to realize the value of each other and the value of  our own life. This I think is the greatest silver lining of all.

Every one experiences difficult moments in life. It is the ability to bounce back fast that really matters.  We were able to bounce back fast, not only because of the miracle of modern medicine, but also owing to the love, care, support, motivation and prayers of our family members and our close set of friends and relatives.

Happy Reading,

D.Senthil Kannan

Article dated June 2009

How Much Customer Oriented Are You?

Recently I went out shopping for a mobile phone, for my dad who is 77 years young. For long, he has deserted himself from all personal techno gadgets like computers, mobile phones etc. By some surprise he became interested in having a mobile phone. He gave me a list of specs, that he needed in the phone.  The list goes like this. As he has some hearing difficulty, he wanted the mobile phone to have a loud ring tone and a high pitch headset volume, so that he could hear clearly. As his vision is weak, owing to his age he wanted the phone to have numbers in the dialpad that are large and visible, so that it is easy for him to key in the numbers. He wanted the phone to have a camera and a music player. He also insisted that the phone should be long enough to stretch from his ear to the mouth. And of course he wanted it to be a very easy to use handset, with not many commands and options. To top it all he gave me a shoestring budget of Rs.7000/-.

I started my search for a mobile phone that suits his description. Unfortunately, I could not find any in the market that exactly suited his specification. I spend quiet a lot of time in the internet to see many phone models of different brands, to see if I could find one which satisfies all the requirements. If it had one feature the other was missing, so on and so forth. I finally settled for a Sony R-306, which was the nearest match, I could find.

This shopping exercise made me realize that, while most of the companies are working towards catering to the need of the younger generation, not many companies really think of the senior citizens, who infact have a higher disposable income. While trendy phones with innovative features, such as GPRS, 3G, Bluetooth, instant messaging, PC sync captures the interest of the youngsters, there is a naive segment which needs mobile phone just to talk and stay connected.

Nokia, has been a trendsetter in customization. While I have been wonderstruck by their quick adaptabilty to the Indian market, in terms of offering mobile phones with Indian languages built-in its firmware and dial pad printing, it was indeed a surprise that there are no phones that are customized to the senior citizens.

I have heard that in the US there are specialized stores which stock and sell odd size items, such as  jeans, apparels, footwear, mattresses, cutlery, measuring cups etc which are of odd sizes not available in normal stores. This to a great degree talks about the demand for customized products.

My friend, Mr.Gopi who is a left hander shared a interesting fact that opened my eyes to something that I have never thought of before. He said that the world is not fair. It has created all things  for the right handers only. For example, all ready made shirts have a shirt pocket in the left hand side. This makes it easy for the right hander, to put in a pen and take it out,  but the left hander will find it difficult. Just try it. Is it not true?. Same is true with many more things, like the way buttons are placed in the shirt, the scissors knives, the tea cup handle etc. With around 7 to 10% of the world population being left handers, is it not a huge market we are talking about?. My elder son who is also left hander, is fascinated by the idea and he says that once he grows up, he will create things that will be specifically easy to use by left handers.

The future of  marketing is in customization. The Mc Donalds in India, makes a variety of Veg.burgers, whereas you find just one veg option in the USA. Same is the case with other food chains like Pizza hut and Dominos which serves tandoori style pizzas, in India.

There is a beautiful saying, “Necessity is the mother of all inventions”. It is only when such needs are felt that they are created. Empathy, therefore is not just a good quality but also a wonderful business opportunity. Customization can open doors to big business. Ask yourself, “How much customer oriented am I?”

Happy Reading,

 

D.Senthil Kannan

Article dated May 2009

We are All Equals

The PALMS 100^th programme was a grand gala success. Mr.Maaney V.Paul motivated the audience by his inspiring and heart touching speech. While having a informal chat with him, he discussed on a thought provoking concept called the human layers. I would like to share my reflection on those thoughts.

Human being can be primarily divided into three layers – the physical layer, the mental layer and the spiritual layer.

The physical layer is about our physical appearance, our material comforts and the social status we enjoy thereby. The physical layer differentiates us from one person to another. It either makes one feels superior or inferior to another.

Very often, we describe a person by his physical attributes. We say a short, fat man with a bald head or a dark girl with squint eyes, so on and so forth. This description of our self may not be so comfortable, but that is how the world looks at us. Unfortunately, not every man is handsome and not every woman is beautiful. Many of us find it difficult, to come out of this mind trap, and this to a great extent limits our confidence level. The confidence level ultimately determines our success level, as well.

Then comes the material status, in terms of the car we own, the house we live in , the property we possess and our life style. A man tries to establish his supremacy, in this world through his material status. The ego plays a very strong part in this layer.  If you look at it more deeply, you will realize that this desire has been there with us right from our childhood days. As kids we wanted to possess the best toys and wanted to show off to our friends, our newly acquired belongings. We used to take pride in our material possessions.  Is it not? Having grown up as adults, the game has not stopped. The game is the same, but only the toys have changed; instead of toy cars we have real  cars, instead of the plastic building blocks we own real buildings, instead of those battery operated toys we now like to possess the most modern electronic gadgets like laptop, mobile phone etc.

The mental layer is our second forte.  This is the not only about acquiring knowledge, but exhibiting our intelligence.  We learned and earned a number of degrees and proudly added them beside our name in our visiting  cards, to prove that we were one among the elite few. It gave us a great sense of pride, to call ourselves as an educated person, especially in a country like India, where the illiteracy level is so high. We like to be branded as intellectuals, think tanks, and master minds. We  gain a great sense of satisfaction, winning a intellectual argument and take pride in exhibiting our knowledge, even while discussing with friends and family members.

 Our tendency to dominate others either physically or mentally always prevails.

It is absolutely OK to desire to be rich, to desire a nice life style, to want to look more attractive, to become more knowledgeable, etc. The problem comes only when we say, I want to be richer than so and so….. or I want to prove someone, that I am greater than him in such and such a way. When in the name of comparison, we degrade somebody, we are committing a great human sin.  There is no need to look at somebody as an inferior in order to feel that we are  superior.

It is only at the third layer, i.e the spiritual layer there is no tendency to dominate. In this layer, there is nothing masking your true identity. Here is where we come in contact with our source and realize that we are no bigger than any body else. In this layer, we are no different from a beggar on the street or a madman in asylum. It is the same soul. Every soul experiences the same feelings of happiness, sadness, excitement, depression, fear, pain, anger, jealousy and so on. When we come to realize ourselves at this layer, our ego drops and we realize that we are a part of the whole and we have a responsibility to treat every one as equals.

It is good to often remind ourselves in this layer. Maybe in our daily prayer.  In a state of total surrender to our creator, let us remember this beautiful quote, “Once the game is over the king and the pawn goes to the same box”.

We are born equals and we will die as equals. So when we live, let us respect each human being, for what they are and not for who they are.

Happy Reading,
  

D.Senthil Kannan

Article dated April 2009

Let Us Not Turn Blind, To Blindness

I came across this piece of statistical information, from one of the websites, which I wish to share with you with a fond hope that you may like to consider the idea of donating your eye, after your death.

Eye donation is still not very popular among us Indians, because it involves an action after our death and very often considered a  social taboo.

 “There are currently an estimated 15 million blind people in India. 6.8 million of these suffer from corneal blindness with vision less than 6/60 in at least one eye, and of these, about 1 million have bilateral corneal blindness. If the present trend continues, it is expected that the number of corneally blind individuals in India will increase to 8.4 million in 2010 and 10.6 million by 2020. Of these atleast 3 million can be benefited by corneal transplantation. Thus, to effectively meet the ever growing demand, we need around 150,000 corneal transplants to be performed every year. However, the current supply is only 22000 corneas per year. “

Now this gives a great scope for many blind people to see, if more number of people volunteered to donate their eyes after death.

Of the many type of physically handicapped people, I come across in life, I have had a special empathy for the blind. Eyes are the windows to the world and it is quiet unimaginable to live a life, not experiencing the beauty of seeing God’s creations.

In my school days, I was a member of the Interact Club – the junior wing of the Rotary Club. During this period as a member, I used to visit the blind school on specified days and spend some time with inmates of the blind school. I used to serve their need of communicating with their loved ones, by writing letters on their behalf. As they dictate word by word,           I pen them down in inland letter sheets or post cards and send it out. In these moments, I have been able to experience their pain and emotions, as they share their thoughts and feelings through their letters.                    I 

cherished doing such acts of service, for it  gave me a great amount of soul satisfaction. It is at that age, I decided that I will donate my eyes to a blind person, when I die.

In my first year of college, on my 19^th birthday, I visited the Sankara Nethralaya Hospital at Chennai and informed them about my willingness to donate my eyes. They gave me a form and asked me to fill it up. After which they gave me a small card, which says, “I am an eye donor” with the name and phone number of the hospital. They asked me to retain this card, in my wallet.  It is like carrying ‘a will in your packet’.              I felt as if I have done a heroic deed, on that day. Only a little later in life, I realized that donating our eyes is not in our hands, but in the hands of our family members.

So along with donating our eyes, comes two additional responsibilities.

No.1, we need to educate our spouse and children the need for eye donation and our desire to do so. Because after our death it is they who need to take the action of calling the local hospital to come and collect our eyes. The eyes has to be removed within 6 hours of a person’s death. There may be a lot of emotional turmoil in the family, at that moment, yet they have to be calm and composed enough to willfully discharge our wish, and prove to be the real heros.

No.2, we need to take care of the eyes, we have volunteered to donate, by eating the right food, taking good rest and keeping it in ideal condition, so that it is useable.

Donating our eyes could be one of the noblest act of service we could do, because it can light up someone’s world with infinite possibilities. Let our eyes, that would otherwise be burned or buried along with our corpse, go for a better cause.

If this article could convince atleast a few readers to donate their eyes, I feel I have travelled a extra mile in  spreading the noble cause.

Happy Reading,

D.Senthil Kannan

 Article dated Mar'09