The Indecisive Indian

As an IT leader, I have shared this on many platforms. What has blocked the “Indian” IT brand from reaching the heights enjoyed by Germany in automobiles or the Swiss in watches is the lack of finishing. We just don’t create enough wow for our customers. And this lack of finishing or quality can be attributed to a very large extent to the soft skills of our people. Their lack of ability to many times understand the context or appreciate the culture of the customers they are serving. The most often faced dilemma by a US or European customer when it comes to dealing with an Indian is to figure out whether when and Indian says “Yes”, does it really mean a “Yes” or a “Maybe”. That indecisiveness of whether to say "Yes" or a "No" stems from our "never say die" spirit. We Indians have a very powerful tool called “Jugaad”, which the rest of the World has a very hard time with. Always juggling between different variables in our mind to find the most optimum answer. And given this behaviour the world has not only characterised us as the “Argumentative Indian” but also as the “Indecisive Indian”. 

During all my visits abroad, the one place where this indecisiveness is so evident - and I am sure you will have a wry smile on your face when you read it - is in a restaurant. I have seen that look of horror so many times on so many faces whenever I have walked into a restaurant abroad. I am sure invariably the waiter must think, here comes an Indian and first he will order x and then he will say...sorry can you please change it to y. When they get a clean order, they are so pleasantly surprised that no one has made any changes. 

The reason for this is that we are not used to thinking about all the aspects before we give our decision. Very often, long after we blurted out our choice, the options are still running in our mind. If we have to wipe out this image of “indecisiveness”, we will have to not only appear firm in our professional dealings but also in our social ways. We will need to preplan everything. In our professional commitments, we will have to layout a plan of exactly what we are going to deliver to when we are going to deliver to how we are going to deliver and communicate that in a transparent and unambiguous manner. And when it comes to social behaviour, we will have to plan out our logistics as much as we can. So that when we use a service, we don’t say this and than …..er….sorry that.

Some of us may say…."But why?" What is wrong with that? Well for one, it has created this impression that we must be like this in all our dealing, which is definitely not true, at least to a large extent. 

Cheers!

H

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The experiment of Kanku!

It’s been quite some time that I have written. Though there are many subjects or rather thoughts that I wanted to pen down here. While I have been consoling my self that I will do it before my next travel, that is a lame excuse for having been just sheer lazy to share some new finds. Well, if Amitabh Bachchan can find the time to write, I should have no excuse, so I have taken a new year oath that I will make sure there is one everyday….So I start one from today.

This is a great idea - at least I presume it to be so as I know so little about it - on Education. I was talking to a very good friend and my ex-colleague Murali Aiyer the other day. Murali and I have worked together in CRISIL very closely and he is one HR professional I have great respect for. While checking on how things were with each other’s family, he happened to tell me that his son is doing a stint at this place called Shikshantar in Udaipur. He said it was like an experimental education thing and his son wanted to spend a year there. I wasn’t surprised since Murali himself is a Social Entrepreneur now and someone who does not blindly follow tradition. I decided to check out what Shikshantar is all about. And as yet I know very little, but here are some links to more information on the Organization…

http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/udaipur.html

http://www.swarajuniversity.org/co-founders.html

But what attracted me to the concept is this talk that I found on the internet of one of the co-founders of this unique experiment, Vidhi Jain. Here is the link to the video —>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsBaL2TWMNU

It was amazing to hear that someone had thought so early to keep their child away from the formal schooling system and had been so successful at channeling the energy and curiosity of the child and helped the child find her right talent. I don’t know Kanku, daughter of Vidhi Jain, neither do I know the Jains. But listening to her in the Video has definitely raised my curiosity to visit Udaipur one day and meet Kanku. 

I strongly recommend you check out the video and hear the story of Vidhi Jain and Kanku! 

I am sharing this because we have gone so far from our roots that we have forgotten so many of our basic tenets of life. And when one hears such stories, it reminds us that life is about experiments and questioning our beliefs. I thought you will find this interesting.

Meanwhile, take care until the next time.

Cheers!

H