How often do you hear VOC

Given an opportunity, which air-conditioner would you buy: split or window?

Would you buy 'split' at the price point of the 'window' unit?

Of course, I would go for 'split' at the price point of the 'window' unit. Less noise at lesser price! 

But I've not done so yet.
Not because the split unit is not available at the price point of the window unit but because I've been on a search for a split air-conditioner of which the diffuser is small enough to fit into the opening for a window air-conditioner. I am yet to be delighted on such an offering.

Like in most houses provision for a window unit is a given. 

Same isn't the case for a split unit which actually needs a smaller hole, much smaller than one for the window unit. Is it a design-flaw or is the exclusion itself by-design?

Whatever may be the case but above paragraphs have some Voice Of Customer (VOC) hidden in there that has potential to differentiate an offering. 

1/ For a builder-developer and an architect by providing a hole for a split unit at construction stage itself. This is to avoid the wastage of breaking the wall open for split unit.

2/ For an air-conditioner manufacturer-designer by making diffuser of a split unit small enough to fit into the opening provided for a window unit. This will create an opportunity for increased sale of the split unit.

From the configurations (see figure) of a typical manufacturer, you may find that none of the diffusers of the 'split' unit fit the 'window' width that is about 660 millimeters (standard). Of course, this is not until someone makes it to fit into the window and makes the customers aware of it thereby pulling 'window' unit customers to buy 'split' unit.

There are many opportunities if marketers and designers choose to innovate by mining into VOC such as above. Differentiated offerings as above could be possible by simple frugal innovations though many real innovations themselves are possible with frugal expenses on R&D if at all.

"How often do you hear VOC?"
Jokingly many reply: "Hardly any! Because she (customer) doesn't speak!"

Although this is fit to be a whatsapp reply, part of it is certainly true.

Customers are difficult to get to speak. Hardly any tell you what they want.
Fewer know what they need although they want to design their own life.
So somehow both the above types get rid of you by filling in the blanks in customer satisfaction survey forms in order to comply to your request. Analysis of such 'tick-marks' on the forms adds a little value if at all. 

If at all any of them do (speak), hardly 4-out-of-100 that are not satisfied with the offering, do so to complain reluctantly.
Rest leave without telling the supplier and join hands with the competitor.

Knowing this well some excellent companies capture VOC proactively.

Komatsu for instance fitted GPS-enabled software (KOMTRAX) in their equipment so that their engineers can capture and 'visualize' customer problems, needs, etc. in real-time as also they can value-add to their operations by updating them on their equipment utilization, etc.

Toyota for instance, fitted micro-phones in their new car models during test marketing so that they could capture 'feelings and expressions' of their customers that could be built into the product before commercially releasing them as competition to their own current models.

So do you have guts to cannibalize your own products before your competitors do?

Can't you make your customer speak, capture it, and build it into your offering faster than your competitor just as the Komatsus and Toyotas did?

Why not? 

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder:

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-1)
Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-2)
Functional-Aesthetics
WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling
How To Make A Difference
Nauseous Communication Gaps
Judge If It's Paralysis-By-Analysis
Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy
Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !!
Strategise To Achieve Targets Daily
Does recognition really matter
Customer or Custo-Mer ?
Experienced A Delightful Payment !
An Experience of Heart-and-Soul
Do you keep curing your brand ?
A customer gets what s/he deserves: Shoddy Quality!
Listen to iceberg of VOC to acquire customers
Do You Force Customers To Quit
Should one care for value ?
Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms !
Do You Ask Right Questions ?
Talk In Order To Listen! 

Forgive Or Don't?

Forgiveness is the Economics of Heart..
It Saves the Expense of Anger
The Cost of Hatred
The Wastage of Peaceful Moments &
Gives You Profits on Smiles..

The above whatsapp that I received gives the message to: Forgive And Forget!

True..!
Lovely tangible and intangible cost-benefit analysis it offers.

But it's difficult for me to forgive someone slapping me, arriving from the 'blue', apparently for no reason. One shouldn't tolerate itunless of course it's sensed as a God-sent one.

In the latter case my action is to Forgive. In case of the former it is to: Forgive But Don't Forget. Because history 'says' if you do (forget) and stay indifferent, more 'slaps' come back in search of you for 'no reason'.

Decades ago, doors of Sydenham commerce college got 'banged' on me. When some close some do open. Some for the better. Those of Ruparel college opened with many more thereafter. 
The 'slap' proved to be God-sent!

In engineering college, someone ridiculed my looks. I learnt to differenciate among Functional, Aesthetic and Functionally-Aesthetic look/s.
The 'slap' proved to be God-sent!

There were many more 'slaps' even in my professional life. Sometimes due to inadvertent mistakes. All of those made me stronger and wiser.
The 'slaps' proved to be God-sent!

Day-by-day, I've been trying to get WISER to know the difference!

P. S. You may take a tests of wisdom for the 'slaps' in case of situations in the blogposts listed in the end.

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder: Please do consider leaving a comment or sharing this post.

Tolerate Once, Twice, Thrice? 
Functional-Aesthetics 
WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 
Take Habits For A Ride 
How To Make A Difference 
Big-Be Or Bug-Be ! 
Make checklists your friends  
Drove To Hell ... Almost ! 
Nauseous Communication Gaps 
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 
Raam or Krishna-Shyam: Tell me Hey Raam! Will It Work Here?  
Some Moron ! Some Great !!!  
That's How Morons Work
You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable 
Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass  
Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy 
Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation
Tolerate Once, Twice, Thrice? 
Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture 
IQ-EQ-or-SQ: What-is-more-important?
Do you know a Best-Career-Plan 
Take your career in fast lane!
Succession-Plans In Fast Lane!  
In-a-problem? No-problem! Dwell-a-while!
Success-or-failure! What-do-you-like? 
Do you exercise your choice meaningfully 
Do You Ask Right Questions?  
Overworked? Tension? CPU of the mind hung-up? 
No Time? Micro-Meditate!  
Talk In Order To Listen!  
Eternally Happy! 
What You See Isn't What's Made 
Am I 'Short-sighted' or 'Long-sighted'?  
Deity is in the eyes of the beholder 

Functional-Aesthetics

"Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression." Evelyn Waugh English Writer. 

The concept in this blogpost was triggered by a picture that I saw painted on a wall of Rail Museum in Mysore.

It said: Way to Maharani (Queen) Saloon!

At its first sight, I was reminded of a term usually misspelled in India, Saloon for Salon: the term for a barber's shop.

I wondered what had the painting to do with the rail exhibits. In the wildest imagination, I could think of its links, if at all any, with the hairdressing of Queens of the dynasties in palaces of Mysore and around.

I found myself wrong after looking around for a while. I found the real Saloon. A part of the rail carriage was exhibited there. It was devoted to seated relaxation combined with a dining table: The Saloon!

Anyway, let me take an about-turn now. Let me expand on the thought that occurred to me at the sight of this picture at this site.

Why do people go to a salon: a barber's shop?

Some go for their Functional 'Needs'.
Some go for their Aesthetic 'Wants'.
Some go for "Functional-Aesthetics": This is the term & the concept that had instantaneously occurred to me then at the sight of the painting.

I 'googled' for the term "Functional-Aesthetics" and giggled that it didn't exist.

What is Functional-Aesthetics?

Typically a haircut that's acceptable with reference to military norms is functional.

Actually long hair can be unhealthy as well as dangerous, both in military as well as in other contexts. In military setting in particular, additional reasons of their typical haircut could be to preempt accidents due to long hair, its maintenance, distractions or undesired attractions due to them if stylized, as the case may be, in the warfield. The functions that it is expected to serve makes it a functional haircut.

A funny haircut acceptable only to a small group of trendy people as a fad could be termed as purely aesthetic one. It's generally acceptable as a style for its funny aesthetics more than for the function that it's expected to serve if at all.

On the same lines, a haircut typically acceptable to school norms could fall in the category of Functional-Aesthetics.

In short, 'needs' that stand the tests of an acceptable system's logically acceptable judiciously balanced norms or standards or criteria could be termed as Functionally-Aesthetic.

'Wants or desires' that go beyond such logical norms or criteria could be termed as Aesthetic more than Functional, with reference to a given system. 

A style that adds substance to the function (that it is supposed to serve) without any extra cost to the offering nor to the ecology may also stand the test of being Functionally-Aesthetic: A shirt for instance bought for its extra-large pockets or additional pockets unconventionally located on its sleeve, say, in order to eliminate carrying an extra hand-bag. 

Paradoxically, a functionally-aesthtic offering to be on the right path of evolution should truly lead to multi-functionality in its usage with minimalist use of resources while at the same time simplistic-to-use, maintain & facilitate eco-friendly disposal as a part of its total lifecycle. 

Functionally-Aesthetic offering in general should 'sell' more in the longer run than purely Functional or purely Aesthetic one. Because it offers value; because it offers Total Quality to all its stakeholders. On the contrary, rest of the offerings necessarily need marketing 'push' & overselling too. Or in its absence, the purely Aesthetic may fail to exploit its full potential. 

A Lesson!

If you mindfully observe, you may find that the Mother Nature and its every design itself is Functionally-Aesthetic both in its form-and-fit. It's intelligently crafted Aesthetics! That's why everything natural from food-to-fossil is pure, beautiful, lean, value-adding and valuable. Hope human race strives to maintain it that way. Hope it draws a lesson or two to learn from (it) and invests its finite time in adding value to life rather than destroying it by incorporating the unwanted waste under the disguise of so-called Aesthetics.

Only way to do so is by arresting unneeded human activities and unwise choice/s for want/s that create a materialistic world. Spoiled choices in particular take one away from being Functionally-Aesthetic: The choices that are far from being sustainable!

Here's a MaiKu© poem while on the subject:

On way to queen's saloon
Imagination took off in balloon
Finally landed Saloon in Salon

©MaiKu Is My-Haiku
Freely ideate it's poetic rhymes
Any objective topic it chimes

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder:

Do You Celebrate Mean-or-Green

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-1)

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-2)

Should one care for value? 

Do you exercise your choice meaningfully

What You See Isn't What's Made

You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable

Wish To Be Planet-Friendly?: Save! 

Less With More And More Gets Sore

Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy

Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation

That's How Morons Work

Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass 

WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling

Eternally Happy

Eternally Happy: परमानंद

Beware Of Political-Presentations

At the time of elections they do two things.

One, political leaders make new promises without timeline to their election manifesto. Their tenure is supposed to be presumed as timeline without any commitment from the politicians. Tenure for National and
State level is five years.

Two, they show their performance as 'achieved' without making any reference to measures of the last manifesto: Measures such as what was promised, how much, of what specifications, within what timeline.

It's but natural that fake statements make up for their speeches. They manage the 'show' by 'show'ing sundries such as facades of rail-station's entries, an escalator here, a footover bridge there, etc. They put their 'best foot forward'. No reference to whether that was a priority nor whether it was in the corresponding election manifesto.

Sometimes the projects 'show'n as complete happen to be the ones that were begun during a couple of tenures before the current election. The one that was supposed to have been completed in the first tenure itself, got delayed until the third or fourth tenure and hence became eligible to be 'show'n.

It's like a local train that was supposed to reach destination within a couple of hours but eventually reached after a couple of days. Smart voters do not turn blind eye to that.

However the current politician does take advantage of marketing it as his own achievement. Credit grabbing! Funny part is sometimes out of their enthusiasm they even end up showing pictures of a rail-line of a railway station as 'achievement'. That had anyway been existing their for ages.

Although this might appear to be a bit of an exaggeration that's the way Indian political presentations are; aesthetic than functional. Look at newspaper advertisements and publicity material during election-time if you don't believe this.

What a good presentation be like?

A good presentation should be a no-presentation at all. 

Real work doesn't need 'presentation'. The surroundings, the workplace (Gemba) itself and each real-element of the process (Gembutsu) 'speaks' the 'dynamism' of the change in realtime (Genjitsu).

If for instance a presentation is needed for commercial reasons, as a checklist it should contain business like dimensions such as before-after pictures of improvements and achievements till-date, period-to-date (PTD), year-to-date (YTD), month-to-date (MTD), week-to-date (WTD), etc. 

Not only it should contain recognition and review of planned versus actual 'results' but also a log of the 'roles performed' and efforts taken during the 'means to the results'. The achievements be compared with promises in terms of productivity and quality-of-life measures, timelines vis-a-vis promises made with corresponding priorities.

I think even a hundredth of candidates won't be able to contest elections if they do so. That's why they don't do so. Rather they make it a 'political-show'.

Story in some corporate houses is no different. Sometimes their 'presentations' are 'better' than politician's ones especially during appraisal times.

Beware: Take a close look at the 'other foot' as well since the 'best foot forward' can be deceptively attractive! A way to do it is believing your eyes than ears. Make deep diving at the real-site (Gemba) 'to see changes' as primary rather than 'hear' presentations away from Gemba. 

Create awareness to compare 'what-was-planned', 'what-it-was' with the improved 'what-it-is-now' and 'what-it-could-be' next. And then present it with their timelines and multi-dimensional (holistic) measures.

Bring out vividly 'what-changes' were driven at root-cause level in order to make the change sustainable.

It does motivate, recognise and reinforce desired behavior of the people who matter if one measures achievements with correct reference lines. 

Otherwise it's sure to promote fire-fighters while demotivating the fire-preventers: A culture of promoting fire-fighting rather than fire-prevention! 

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder:

Elections on anvil for voters' will

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-1)

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-2)

WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling

Discrimination-is-Cremation of Law-&-Order (Part-1) 

Discrimination-is-Cremation of Law-&-Order (Part-2) 

Discrimination Cremated! But How Long? 

How To Make A Difference

Big-Be Or Bug-Be !

Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation

Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture

That's how some business partnerships work

Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !!

Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms !

Talk In Order To Listen! 

What You See Isn't What's Made

ABCD of India Shining

An Experience of Heart-and-Soul

Bapu's smile!

Courteously asking for 'tea or coffee'!

Issue of token for work within a minute of entry at security gate!

Prabhakar's speedy response to take car for quick touch-up!

Warm get-up of the cool waiting room!

Job done in a couple of hours although (the paint touch-up was) with a little less of finesse. Generally a dealer would take a work-shift including a bit of waiting due to Sunday rush. Of course it was a planned visit so scheduling the job was easy for them.

Being a Kaizen student, I expressed desire to take a study tour. It was quickly acceded to.

Customer does expect such activities to be performed of course with 'aesthetic-smile' that competition has 'forced' upon suppliers in auto sector in particular.

He 'pays' for the 'standards' alongwith for the Technology, Tools, Materials, etc. anyway that all paraphernalia  management does employ from 'outside' i. e. from the material world. They even don't forget to put a 'smiley' foot-mat that says 'thank you'.

But what one can't forcibly employ is the evidence of heart-and-soul, the 'inside',  while performing above kind of trivial looking but relevant activities as duty (that predominantly need human interventions).

If one passionately enjoys it as a play it gives pleasure to self and hence for others. Inevitably it adds value to self that no one can snatch away from. The 'player' looks beautiful then.

For that 'beauty' to happen the leaders at workplace must enjoy the work themselves. They must enjoy their own work of - leadership by demonstration, - pouring heart-and-soul in playing their own role, - recognizing those colleagues and subordinates who do so,  - employing 'telling' tactics if 'selling' fails to those who don't do so so that they don't spoil others who do.

Hope such Heart-and-Soulful experience doesn't fall back to Heat (the customer First) and then Cool her!

With that consistency then not only will the 'player' look beautiful but also s/he will make the workplace look beautiful!!

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder:

How To Make A Difference

WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling

Experienced A Delightful Payment !

Take your career in fast lane!

Succession-Plans In Fast Lane!  

Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy

Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation

Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture

Tolerate Once, Twice, Thrice?

Some Moron ! Some Great !!!

That's How Morons Work

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-1)

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-2)

A Ride To Hell

Will It Work Here?

You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable

Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass 

Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy

Prevention: The Best Cure! ... Is it really so?

In-big-problem? Wear-hats-to-solve-it!

Dead-ends Pluck, Innovators Plant

The company had continued to make losses in succession for a couple of financial years. Top team was mulling over ways and means to communicate austerity measures for the coming year.

The company that was used to flaunting bashes and liberal appreciations in spite of losses was finding it difficult to communicate the U-turn it wished to take that too in the annual function.

Among many ways suggested during a brainstorming session one idea was to stop giving and taking bouquet.

Someone objected saying how could they carry out recognition of 'achievers' without bouquet.

The debate went on and finally President of the company agreed to an innovative alternative of giving a sapling in place of bouquet. Not that the idea was new but for the company it was: a paradigm shift.

The idea was if you love the planet 'don't despoil it'. Instead 'conserve it's beauty'. If you love flowers 'don't pluck then'. 'Plant one tree' instead.

It was thought to be an effective way to give message so that people transfer such positive attitude in more such behaviors in society, at home and in turn at work.

Not that the latter could happen overnight. But it's sure to succeed if corresponding leadership's efforts didn't fail.

Leaders such as the suggester and the facilitating president usually lead changes with tremendous faith and confidence in themselves. They don't overly bother about followers. Nor do they get influenced by critics. They 'make' changes happen while the conformists 'watch' and the critics 'wonder'.

May be funny for others but I fold my daily-used pullover bedsheet as in the left picture instead of an established practice as in middle picture. It just takes a couple of seconds to do so. Functionally it perfectly works for me. For a very rare aesthetic 'want' though I might do it as in the middle picture. But surely not as in the extreme right picture.

Do try such innovations faithfully. They will save a lot of time and conserve resources for you and others too daily. Be an innovator. Let others keep 'watching', 'wondering' and 'wandering'.

Want Need-Or-Want

Some want money for desires, others for needs

Desires create debt-traps, Needs: rosy tracks

Some want to be social on media for the sake of it, others for heck of it

For some it becomes a friendship boom, for others a deadly doom

Some want alcohol for fun, others need it as medicine 

For some it becomes a deadly gun, For others a beautiful scene

Some want stocks to hoard, Others need on social board

For some it becomes a major misfit, Others a big benefit

Some want wedding on cool air-bed; Need is just a shade 

When the paraphernalia turns into death-bed; Shade appears a rose-bed

Some 'live' for their greed, some for livelihood need

Happiness turns out to be temporary 'Peace', for others a permanent Bliss

Such behaviors triggered a couple of ©MaiKu poems as follows.

©MaiKu-1

Need was to marry
Some wanted it airy
For the couple, cause turned fatally scary

©MaiKu-2

Confusion of Needs-with-Wants
Ceremony full of self-destructive flaunts
Forever the effect haunts

Footnote

©MaiKu Is My-Haiku
Freely ideate it's poetic rhymes
Any objective topic it chimes 

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder:

Wish To Be Planet-Friendly?: Save!

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-1)

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-2)
Functional-Aesthetics
Bust-wants, Boom-needs

Should one care for value? 

Do you exercise your choice meaningfully

What You See Isn't What's Made

You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable

Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 

Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !! 

Less With More And More Gets Sore 

Should one care for value?  

How To Make A Difference 

Some Moron ! Some Great !!! 

That's How Morons Work

Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass  

WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 

Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy 

Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation

Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture 

Tolerate Once, Twice, Thrice? 

Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !! 

Poverty-to-Power of Poetry

Bird that just chirped

Soon-waste-to-eat, Sea-to-drink !

Don't Save Water on Holi-day

Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass

I am a miser!
Fool for others but unconventionally miser or a maverick for myself!!

Who is an unconventional-miser?: The one who follows principles of MISER: Minimize-Improvise-Simplify-Eliminate or Reduce waste. 

In fact my family members have borrowed MISER philosophy from me like a cuckoo brought up in a crow's nest would do. 

In order to REDUCE WASTE, the other day my wife got broken-strap-set of her slipper replaced instead of throwing it away. Actually only left-side-strap from the pair was broken. So she wanted to bring the right-side one back for future use as a backup and thereby REDUCE WASTE further on.

But the over-smart cobbler didn't give her any chance to implement her good intention. May be he wished to protect national pride from her 'miser' attitude. Before even she could complete her request, he chopped off both-side straps in split-second saying it would have otherwise damaged slot in the slipper had he tried to pull it off.

If he could insert new strap in the slot he could have easily removed the old one from it. Naturally because it was a rubber slipper with rubber-strap made of flexible material. Upto my engineering studies I couldn't afford any other footwear than a low-end slipper. So having done similar excercise not less than 100-times, I could have done what the cobbler was supposed to do perhaps more skillfully. 

What is the learning?

This is a case of breaking window-glass and then suggesting to replace it without bothering costs of it to the country's economy. Some businesses do use such a strategy of local-optimization. They take things and people for granted including the country. 

This is no different than staff of an inefficient municipality not bothering about quality of roads that forces wasteful activities such as that of rubbing (puncturing) tyres of vehicles and breaking backs of travellers. In fact, the cobbler behaved indifferently to a complaint made to him later on having realized that he had put two different sizes of straps (number '7' and '8' as can be seen in picture): A quality defect. 

This is what happens in a high-mistrust society where moron suppliers thrive upon number games instead of global-optimization for the larger good.

This is what happens where people-in-power (leaders themselves) discard things as 'old' although they are in good form and fit (aesthetically and functionlly). There 'pride'and 'ego' doesn't allow them to use things 'used' by their predecessors. 

Anyway, that's about what others can do. As a lesson learnt, I have decided to choose (rather bank upon) my childhood skills next time. In generic terms: To do mistake-proofing instead of trusting non-trustworthy morons to get near-perfect service.

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder: Please do consider leaving a comment or sharing this post.

Make It Simpler, Rest Will Follow 
How To Make A Difference 
Big-Be Or Bug-Be ! 
Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms ! 
Nauseous Communication Gaps 
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 
Raam or Krishna-Shyam: Tell me Hey Raam! 
Will It Work Here?  
Some Moron ! Some Great !!! 
That's How Morons Work 
You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable 
Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass  
WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 
Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy 
Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation
Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture 
Tolerate Once, Twice, Thrice? 
That's how some business partnerships work 
Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !! 
Technology in-place, security dis-placed
IQ-EQ-or-SQ: What-is-more-important?
Do you know a Best-Career-Plan 
Customer or Custo-Mer?  
Experienced A Delightful Payment ! 
An Experience of Heart-and-Soul 
Less With More And More Gets Sore 
Should one care for value?  
ABCD of India Shining
Beware Of Political-Presentations 
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 
Hoarders Of Filthy Hoardings

Do You Celebrate Mean-or-Green

My Mad-ness.. Bad-ness.. Goodness ... !

5000 km long queue of trucks full of solid-waste everyday by cities alone?

Wonder how much got added to the normal daily-garbage during a typical Diwali festival-day in India?: The crackers, the aesthetic components of primary & secondary wrappers of chocolates, sweetmeats, etc. gone into garbage!

How much does such madness of generating waste cost?

In 2010, it costed equivalent of Pakistan's GDP i.e. it costed $ 205 billion to deal with just the solid-waste world-over!

How much does other kind of waste cost?: 
I don't know the answer.

How much does land quality get deteriorated?:
I don't know the answer.

How much does such waste impact other environmental aspects such as contamination of drinking water, air, depletion of energy resources used to dispose the waste, etc?:
I don't know the answer.

How much does it cost and will it cost in terms of health issues in future?:
I don't know the answer.

Many such questions rise like smoke!

It may be easier to find answers if the questions are like 'smoke of a fire in seed-stage' kind problems. Unfortunately the smoke is of 'the fire that is already a wildly raging one' that has reached beyond human control. 

Google search may help find the answers. But the answers so far have been inadequate and incomplete! Research had been unable to keep pace with pace of problems rising due to consumerism! Queue of the garbage trucks otherwise wouldn't have been so long equivalent of covering aerial distance between London and NewYork.

By the time Newtons and Einsteins of the world perform difficult part of finding well-researched inventive-solutions, the only proven 'Zero-Garbage' action everyone can easily participate in to prevent waste is to make their celebrations innovatively Green!

Let's celebrate and recognize each such person who celebrates Green, each such day and each such moment that is celebrated Green!

Here's a MaiKu© poem while on the subject:

Rain Goddess lost destination
It's all raining perspiration
Cause lack of Green Celebration

©MaiKu Is My-Haiku
Freely ideate it's poetic rhymes
Any objective topic it chimes

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder:

Wish To Be Planet-Friendly?: Save!

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-1)

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-2)
Functional-Aesthetics
Bust-wants, Boom-needs

Should one care for value? 

Do you exercise your choice meaningfully

What You See Isn't What's Made

You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable

Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 

Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !! 

Less With More And More Gets Sore 

Should one care for value?  

How To Make A Difference 

Some Moron ! Some Great !!! 

That's How Morons Work

Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass  

WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 

Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy 

Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation

Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture 

Tolerate Once, Twice, Thrice? 

Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !! 

Poverty-to-Power of Poetry

Bird that just chirped

Soon-waste-to-eat, Sea-to-drink !

Don't Save Water on Holi-day

Take your career in fast lane!

You might have read news items such as "More than 5-lakh appear for entrance tests competing for 50-60 IAS-seats" or "competing for 500-600 IIM-seats" or "IIT-seats", etc. 

IAS is Indian Administrative Services, IIM is Indian Institute of Management, and IIT is Indian Institute of Technology. Their global counterparts could be premier institutes such as HBS (Harvard Business School), INSEAD, etc.

Looking at such kind of news items many join the bandwagon without even caring to check suitability of corresponding professions in longer run. Some with plush jobs in campus placement thereafter find themselves landed into terrible trouble. In the midst of their careers they begin finding their jobs boring and wish to switch careers.

Why do jobs get boring?

During bouts of self-talk over a period of time, the so-called 'successful' careerists find 'something missing' in their 'plush' jobs in spite of a lot of money in it. They begin feeling underemployed although not underpaid. 

This happens because many a time careers get chosen on face-value of their 'lucrativeness' perceived from media's noise. Very few careers get chosen for the 'profile' that revolves around passion. Most get chosen for the 'pay-packet' without bothering about whether the job might turn out to be an enjoyment or a pain later. 

^ How should one choose a career?
^ Should one choose to be a politician, for instance, just because it appears lucrative?

^ Aren't there dimensions other than lucrativeness and 'pay-packet' that should be considered before shortlisting a typical career?

What are the relevant dimensions?

Every individual has some subtle individuality. It may be in terms of a melodiously timbered vocal chord, or an aptitude to mathematics or to orator-ship or passion to some form of art or a combination thereof.

Lucky are those who explore, exploit and enjoy while building their careers revolving around such individualities rather around their passions. Lucky are those who understand that lack of admissions in engineering, management, medicine, and corresponding premier institutes are not an end of the story. There are endless choices that go beyond such conventional narrow career-lanes.

A simple way to find a balance between passions and careers is to first of all find out what one is passionate about. Liking music or taking to it's thrilling beats for instance is different than being passionate about it. 

Passion is likely to be "what you 'love' doing" rather than what you 'like' doing. Eventually if 'what you like' does turn out to be a passion one must possess or be ready to develop proficiencies in the complimentary faculties to make a related career out of it. A passionate fellow about music should critically examine whether s/he is 'already good at' or is ready to put in the necessary hard-work (with smart-work of course) on cultivating her listening faculty or a melodious voice, etc. whatever may be her god-given 'possessions', into a required proficiency (developing & nurturing abilities or skills) to be a music-critic or a singer as a career respectively.

Even if the choice based on faculties does go wrong if at all, being passion-based, the extra efforts needed to convert those into capabilities and capacities might not be much boring. Passion is more likely to make the choice appear as a 'play' rather than as a 'work' or a 'job' (drudgery). Does anyone hesitate putting in heart-felt efforts on 'play-ground', for instance!

However much euphoric beginning it may be, a lucrative-career might wane over a period of time if the job is not passion-based. It may appear lucrative because of market-demand "what the world wants". It gets boring because it's not in-demand rather "not-loved" by self. So after a certain spell in the career, extra efforts called for by the market-demand appear like slogging. 

That's also may be a reason why human resource development (HRD) professionals find it difficult to motivate and align employees, howsoever they may try with the best-of-best pay-packets ("what the world is willing to pay you for"), towards the organisation's own passionate mission.

A couple of poetic lines ('Sher') by me on this in my mother tongue Marathi:
(One from you in English, Hindi or in a language of your choice is welcome)

असे ध्यास तर नसे तासनतास कामाचाही त्रास 

नसे ध्यास तर विषापरि असे अमृताचाही घास

A simple way to find out one's own passion/s is to engage in self-talk in order to zero-in on the activities that one enjoys;

- enjoys doing the most in spite of adversities and lack of appreciation from others,
- enjoys doing even at the cost of forgetting friends, family and food at times,
- enjoys continuously learning therefrom rather than getting bogged down by interim failures, if any, 
- enjoys performing them in newer ways while raising bar for one's own self,
- enjoys while finding ways-&-means to support them even if short of the required resources.

Knowing these dimensions, what steps does one take in order to make her job worthy and thereby shape her own career?

Steps to make 'work' worthy of 'play'ing

Step-1, Make commitment to choose career closely revolving around passion: "what you 'love' doing". Sometimes it may not be late to even switch the past so-called "liked" careers to the ones "you always loved" (and the ones that "the world 'wanted' and is willing to pay you for") particularly after the financial needs at that particular stage of life have been reasonably fulfilled. Be prepared to do so, even if some compromises are called for, both on your ego as well as on your current pay-packet at times.

Step-2, Zero-in on a couple of passions by a conscious self-talk. Key is in zeroing-in on them early enough. Psychometric tests may be useful in analysing your interests. Passions might be so subtle at times that only your parents, close friends, teachers and relatives might be in a better position to discover those. Unfortunately sometimes they tend to 'kill' those by 'advising' through smoke-glasses of their own successful or failed pasts or through (at times the 'self-taught') parental-conventions.

Step-3, Find out whether a couple of faculties complimentary to the short-listed passions pre-exist within. Are those faculties convertible into proficiencies, skills or Goal-abilities (my term for goal-oriented abilities) and thereby the corresponding passions convertible into careers?

Step-4, Without commensurate preparation passion has no destination. 

Put in the required hard-work and smart-work on cultivating the inherent faculties ("what you need to be good at" to do "what you love doing" in order to satisfy the "needs & wants of the world") into the Goal-abilities. Acquire additionally needed-ones if feasible. You may have to work over-time to do so. It's actually a fun-play working-out to heighten your abilities to suit the higher-level of your passion-oriented goals. While at the same time it's frustrating although may be easy to 'work' for the non-passion oriented lower-level goals.

Do SWOT analysis while nurturing with joy the chosen ones as above.

- Identity and polish your own corresponding strengths (S) if already possessed.
- Identity and overcome corresponding weaknesses (W), if any. It's important to allocate more energy on utilizing strengths rather than on overcoming weaknesses. The former is easier than the latter.
- Anticipate and tackle corresponding threats (T), if any.
- Anticipate and make use of every available opportunity (O) complementing the above process and in fact by being conscious to create some opportunities. 

If you are already employed, it might help greatly if you tune up above steps staying there itself in the same job until "the day" to do "what you love" with full throttle. There, in the current workplace, it may be easier to find out possible intersecting points between your interests and that of the current employer's. In that case, perhaps it might be easy for both you and your HRD to convert your current job into the one that you passionately loved and hence badly wanted. Instead, doing this by leaving the 'bird-in-hand' job might put you in tension ultimately resulting in loss of self confidence. Moreover, in the new job not only you may have to invest a lot of time establishing yourself with new "faces" but also you might get taken for granted there.

Step-5, Take an on-going review. Undertake a self-audit in order to check whether the chosen career is getting shaped as desired. Accordingly take corrective actions by going back to step-4 or step-1 as appropriate. 

A caveat: Being objective in deliverables might be more useful rather than merely being passionate and losing sight of the goals. 

Now-a-days people have been talking about IKIGAI as well, the Japanese concept (that means "a reason for being" or the very purpose of life), while planning careers. It may be practised in a structured manner with the steps and tips as elaborated above so as to take your career in right lane as well as to take it forward at a faster speed. 

Hope the tips help to attain the 'need-based' holistic satisfaction rather than mere 'want-based' monitory satisfaction. Former is long-term. Latter is short-term.

Footnotes:
Goal-abilities: Term coined by me for goal-oriented abilities. 

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder: Please do consider leaving a comment or sharing this post.

No Time? Micro-Meditate!  

Overworked? Tension? CPU of the mind hung-up? 
Do you exercise your choice meaningfully 
IQ-EQ-or-SQ: What-is-more-important? 
Eternally Happy! 
In-a-problem? No-problem! Dwell-a-while! 
I am afraid ! What do I do !! 
Fearful-Of-Death-of-Birth
Take Habits For A Ride 
Happy-Birthday-to-Youooo
Do You Celebrate Mean-or-Green 
Big-Be Or Bug-Be ! 
Raam or Krishna-Shyam: Tell me Hey Raam! 
Are You Good If Others Are Bad?  
Want Need-Or-Want 
How To Make A Difference 
Love is Care.. Care is Love !  
Deity is in the eyes of the beholder 
Success-or-failure! What-do-you-like?
Ball-Basin-Team Combine !  Maketh The Smile Divine !! 

Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation