Deadly “pressure-to-perform” claims another life

A 25 year old with technical and business degrees from IIT and IIM, the top Indian colleges and working for McKinsey, the world’s best consulting company. Everyone would say what an amazing guy. The mental pressure around the two statements is in itself unimaginable.

It is generally accepted that at least 3 years of work experience is required to take up an advanced or Master’s degree and in the case of an advanced business degree more experience is preferred. Academic institutions should assess the work experience and the candidate’s exposure and knowledge of the business side of things before granting admission for business degrees. The guy came straight out of IIT at 22 years and landed at IIM. What exposure does someone at 22 have of business and the ones who have will definitely not take up a business degree, not at 22 for sure. Out of IIM and straight into McKinsey. It is nothing less than maniacal.

It is clearly not just the work pressure that drove him to take his life. The deadly “pressure-to-perform” comes from downstream a long way back. Suicides among students preparing for entrance exam to get into the IITs and among students studying at IITs have been rising alarmingly over the years. That is 5 years of academic mental stress with the added stress of cracking the CAT exam to get into the IIMs and then 2 years of even more academic stress during the MBA program. When he joined for work, he had already spent 7 years of his life in the pressure cooker of intense academic stress.

Work pressure and micromanagement are common in most companies now but would depend largely on the ones managing the projects. Companies like McKinsey hire the best graduates from the top colleges and then the pressure to perform and the toxicity in the work culture is thrust upon them. Now the question everyone would have asked is, why didn’t he just quit and move on rather than drown himself in the mire? Because of social and peer pressure. Can’t someone who has gone through the grind of JEE, IIT, CAT and IIM absorb work pressure and continue performing at his peak? No one would have understood, not even his family. The problem with peak performance is, no one can stay at the peak forever and down the peak could become a free fall very easily and quickly. He was way too young to manage work pressure, push back micromanagement and survive office politics and toxicity.

It took me 10 years and enough exposure of working with international clients to understand how a MBA can add value to my profile and MBA from an international college would be the best to prop up my international work experience. With age and experience comes maturity and the ability to work smarter and manage all kinds of stress. Consulting is no easy job and consulting with McKinsey means working with the top companies in the world. It is impossible for anyone to live in sustained mental stress for a long time and the younger one is the more vulnerable they are to capitulating sooner.

From the time I heard the Dire Straits classic “Private Investigations”, a narrative of the daily life of the not so scrupulous private investigators, two lines have stuck with me.

“What have you got, at the end of the day

What have you got, to take away”

What we will all eventually take with us is knowledge and experiences and not the names of academic institutions where we studied, the names of companies where we worked and the expectations of people around us. Our well being is something only we understand the best. The stress and suicides created by pressure to perform will stop when we realize these simple facts.

Facing life problems from nature’s perspective

I came across this interesting image on a social media post.

In the image, escaping from such a situation is impossible. Now look closely.

1) Snakes do not prey on humans so no snake will lie waiting for the dangling guy.
2) Male lions do not participate in hunting unless the lion pride is hunting a large prey such as a buffalo. A male lion would rather spend its time eating, sleeping or mating rather than wait for the dangling guy who is hardly a prey for it.
3) No woodcutter in the right frame of mind will cut a tree standing at the edge of a river infested with crocodiles and cut in such a way that the tree will fall into the river.

The point here is,
1) When problems come in life, we will feel overwhelmed thinking of all the problems when in reality some problems may not exist at all if we can evaluate the problems with a rational mind.
2) We think some problems in life are like the snake and the lion but they may not be big problems. Problems in life are only as big as we think they are.
3) When there are many problems we do not need to evaluate every problem with the aim of finding a solution for it. Many of the problems could simply go away when some of the problems are solved.

Understanding our evolution through the lens of diet and nutrition

The Community Nutrition Forum (CNF) in my home state of Kerala in India organized a “Webinarathon” in celebration of National Nutrition Month in September. 15 days of 1 hour sessions conducted by expert dieticians and nutritionists about a range of topics such as basics of good nutrition, diet for different diseases and diet for different age groups. I missed the first few sessions but since then have been listening to topics such as diet and nutrition for Alzheimer’s disease, women suffering from PCOS, lactating mothers and adolescent kids. One common factor has stood out in all the sessions. From children to elder people, every category of people has one basic requirement the lack of which is creating a host of health issues in them.

Vitamin D.

Where do we get Vitamin D from? Simply go stand in the sun. But there is a catch. Our body creates maximum Vitamin D when exposed to early morning sun, between 7-9 am. This is why most Indian temples are open till 9:30 am. What happens after 9:30? Sun’s radiation becomes stronger as it gets hotter and we get exposed to more UV rays which in the long run can cause cancer. But simply standing in the sun is not enough. With brisk walking we inhale more oxygen and the increased pumping of the heart sends oxygenated blood to all parts of the body triggering cell regeneration. More oxygenated blood flow rejuvenates the brain which in turn helps improve focus and concentration. Many schools are adopting 10-15 minutes of workouts or yoga before beginning of classes every morning. Circumambulation of banyan trees is common in Indian temples because banyan trees produce the best oxygen in the morning. Most traditions are rooted in science but people would ignore if they are asked to walk for the sake of health but would walk readily in the name of Gods, so Gods have been used to build healthy communities for thousands of years.

The dominant genes in all of us contain genetic information from our ancestors who were active and predominantly outdoor people. Our present lifestyles are in direct contradiction with the information contained in our genetic makeup. Moreover, fats, proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, sodium, potassium, magnesium, iron, etc all exist in a certain balance in our body. Imbalance in one of them can have ripple effect on the others. Such imbalances result in the release of hormones that can do the exact opposite of the so called happy hormones, making people moody and pushing them into spirals of negative thoughts. This in turn reduces our body energy known as prana and when that battery dies we die.

Vitamin D manages a host of body functions and is even said to protect us from cancer. But we are too busy for morning walks. Many people take Vitamin D capsules, unknown to the fact that absorption of Vitamin D through the gut is very less compared to creation of Vitamin D from sunlight through our skin. Then there are people deriding others for walking in the sun because it will make their complexion dark. Pitting staying healthy against looking white and (supposedly) good is not smart and it is born out of ignorance of our own anatomy.

I have observed dietitians advising people to shun junk food completely and eat only healthy food. We resist just like animals when we are forced to change something we like or adopt something we don’t want to. People who like eating junk food, especially the ones in the adolescent age group are going to laugh off such advices. The question here is how did we reach the point of addiction to junk food?

Animals eat food for nutrition and not based on taste. When we see a pride of lions hunting and devouring a wild buffalo, there are two aspects to note. Herbivores extract proteins from the vegetation they eat but protein content is low in vegetation which is why they need to eat a lot to satisfy their protein needs and consequently developed large appetite and large physique. Carnivores eat herbivores to get the proteins from them. Also, lions hunting a large animal means every member of the pride can eat to their full and they don’t need to eat again for some days. Hunting is an exhaustive and risky affair, zebra’s hind leg kicks have broken jaw bones of lions and starved them to death.

Our taste buds are far more in numbers and far more evolved than that of animals. Our preference for taste grew with time and this is how we started using spices. There were times when food was made with the balance of nutrition and taste, like the biryani. What changed those dynamics was the industrial revolution, concept of money and office jobs. Working for long hours became the norm and there was no time for sumptuous meals. This heralded the emergence of a new food industry, the fast food industry. Food items that can be prepared quickly, are tasty and can be eaten fast or on the go became the need and the fast food industry catered perfectly to the new dietary requirements. A large proportion of fast food items are fried and deep fried, have milk products such as cheese and butter and adding a sedentary lifestyle with little to no exercise has become the recipe for health disasters.

Dietitians have to understand the short and long term adverse impact of eating junk food and prepare totally new diet charts with healthy food items that can reduce the adverse effects of junk food. Fast food has become an integral part of the global food industry and junk food an integral part of our diet. Restaurants in India heat oil for deep frying a variety of vegetarian and non vegetarian food items in the same oil, reuse the same oil the next day and add fresh oil to it. Every food item fried in such oil is junk food for me. Dietitians have to accept this reality and evolve with their diet plans accordingly.

I have had problems digesting meat from my childhood so I never liked eating meat. My great grandfather was a Brahmin so I used to think my dislike to meat was genetic till my mom told me that she ate very less meat during her pregnancy. This is when I realized being not used to meat from my mother’s womb could be the primary reason. My friends keep telling me the need to eat meat for meeting my protein requirements but I believe everybody’s nutrient requirements are different based on many factors and my body may not have similar protein requirements like others.

Precision nutrition is an evolving and exciting area of study where one’s DNA, microbiome, and metabolic response to specific foods or dietary patterns are analyzed and evaluated to determine the most effective eating plan to prevent or treat disease. According to many religions, each human being is made up of genes from 7 generations. Considering 7 generations of genes on both father’s and mother’s side of each one of us, we are all made up of genetic soup and our genetic structure must be as unique as our fingerprints.

They say the way to someone’s heart is through their stomach. Healthy hearts are the key to our overall health and dieticians are best positioned to ensure this. The need for healthy diets are on the rise in every aspect of our lives so dietetics is an emerging field with immense potential. Looks like dietitians have a major role to play we move towards our next stage of evolution.

Why are we scared of animals?

This rat snake scaled the neighbor’s wall and lay there long enough for me to do its photoshoot.

When I sent these photos to my contacts on Whatsapp, majority of them sent me gawking emojis in fear. So why do we fear snakes?

Animals attack other animals primarily for food, protecting their offspring, self protection and in rare cases rescuing a fellow animal from its attacker(s). Snakes do not prey on humans so they will never attack us unless for self protection and protecting their eggs. Snakes live in human settlements for two reasons – to prey on mice and for dark and cold areas inside and around our houses to lower their body heat and digest their food. We should be more wary of urban cats and dogs than snakes because they can chase and bite us. Wild cats like tigers and leopards prey on us but attack us only if they are able to drag our body away from the spot because the smell of fresh blood and meat attract other carnivores. Lions hunt as pride which is why they do not show this behavior.

But there is an oddity in us that is not in animals – fear. In nature there is no emotion called fear. Animals running away from their predators is not in fear as we commonly believe. They run to save themselves and their only purpose is reproduction. Nature imposes population control so to stay as dominant species animals need to reproduce as many as they can. We are the only beings on the planet that live in fear of its own kind. We have created the emotion of fear in animals by encroaching and destroying their habitat and hunting them for the purpose of hurting them. Cows graze on wetlands which are snake infested but snakes rarely bite them and move away from them. Snakes bite us in self protection because we tend to kill them at every possible opportunity. Snakes have poor eyesight so they rely on smell and instincts to determine what is prey and what is a threat. Similar is the case with urban street dogs. Through smell and instincts they understand the ones among us who are hurtful to animals.

I was afraid of snakes for a long time because I was taught to be scared of them. Many snakes simply crawl away or warn us in different ways when we get close to them. Some don’t but they stay far away from human areas. We get into conflict with animals when we think we are entitled to walk anywhere and do anything we want. The planet belongs to all living beings and are entitled to live out their lifetimes if they survive in nature.

Life lesson from my dad’s passing

Its been a month since my dad’s passing and as mom and I continue to reminisce about his life and reconcile with his loss, I am realizing that life has taught me an important lesson.

Both Dad and his younger brother were tall and heavy and both had acid reflux issues (thanks to their maternal genes). But how their health unraveled took two contrasting roads.

1. Extreme acid reflux can simulate cardiac issues and this happened for both. Cardiologists did angioplasty on uncle but treating arterial blocks do not stop acid reflux. Uncle lost faith in treatment. Bypass surgery was recommended for dad after 20 days so I figured if he can survive for 20 days, his health can be managed without surgery.

2. Both developed swelling on their hands and feet. Uncle’s condition was apparently not treated. Dad’s cardiologist kept asking about his bypass surgery and ignoring the swelling. So I googled to find out why the swelling was happening. Any issue that affects the working of the heart reduces blood flow to other parts of the body. When kidneys receive lesser amount of blood the body assumes there is not enough water so kidneys start accumulating water, first on the feet and then on the hands. The condition is called edema. Finally when water enters the lungs it becomes pulmonary edema. Then the only treatment left is bypass surgery. Dad’s cardiologist was trying to force bypass surgery on him by leaving the swelling untreated. I immediately changed the cardiologist and consulted a nephrologist who prescribed a diuretic which forces water in the swelled up areas to be released from the body through urination. Uncle refused bypass surgery, water had to be pulled out of his lungs, he developed paralytic stroke and eventually passed away.

3. Dad reduced salt intake drastically after misunderstanding cardiologist’s instruction. I was unfamiliar with the ensuing condition but realized something was wrong with him. Took him to hospital for checkup and found his sodium level freefalling. In another two days he would have had ended up in coma.

4. Dad’s new cardiologist advised me to treat acid reflux at home and not to take him to hospital as acid reflux bouts can seem like cardiac issue and he would end up in the hands of cardiologists.

For the past 10 years, I have been mostly at home and especially in the last 6 years, largely due to market conditions. This gave me the opportunity to try doing different things which led to starting a home based cloud kitchen and in a way fulfill dad’s lifelong ambition to start a restaurant. I forced dad to go to the gym which improved his health drastically. When he suffered stroke like symptoms I chose to take him to a physician nearby who checked him and told me his nerve functions were fine and he was suffering from weakness due to muscle loss caused by protein deficiency. Though he fell a couple of times nothing happened to him and mom and I ensured he never fell down again especially in the bathroom. Broken bones never heal completely in old age, restrict movements which reduces immunity and makes body vulnerable to other diseases. Dad had normal blood sugar and I ensured all his body organs were working well and his blood pressure, essential elements like sodium, potassium and magnesium and vitamin levels were normal. Circumstances prevented me from pursuing a career in medicine but my fundamentals in biology and human anatomy are strong and I read a lot on both.

I did not earn a lot of money in the past 10 years but I was able to save a lot of money on dad’s treatment. If I hadn’t been at home. he may have underwent bypass surgery which could have ruined his health. Most importantly, he was able to live a disease free life, eat and do everything he wanted to and go peacefully. I could not have bought him this with all the money in the world. Is it possible to become successful without having a lot of money and everything that comes with it? I guess it is.

Obituary of my dad

It has been a week since the sudden demise of my dad (at 72 years) and through our bereavement mom and I have had a lot to contemplate about his life. As a person, he was outright, outspoken and honest, a little too much for his own good. As a caring son and loving husband he was peerless and as a father he was borderline maniac. Nothing I did ever impressed him. He always believed I could do better. Grow more than his 6 foot 90 kg frame for starters. I have been literally hounded and abused for being a poor eater. Other than a chronic acid reflux issue and vitamin deficiencies, he was disease free. All organs, blood sugar, blood pressure, essential elements like sodium, potassium, magnesium were stable and in good condition. In 2021 he started going to the gym but loss of protein made him quit. This post is not to eulogize his life though.

Dad and his mom were endowed with extremely good genes. Grandma was also completely disease free. Both were addicted to sweets and drinking sugary water of Indian sweets and still their blood sugar never went up. Grandma went silently in her sleep in 2010. After a bout of acid reflux, dad developed slight respiratory problem and I took him to hospital. ECG, brain CT scan, chest x-ray all came out normal. He was given sedation to sleep and was sleeping soundly when silent cardiac arrest took him, just like his mom.

What I have learned from their lives is, as they grew older they found happiness in two things. They were able to eat and do mostly anything they wanted (dad had to take medication for acid reflux). Both dad and grandma loved animals and both kept in touch with the people they loved. Dad was a jovial man and loved cracking jokes all the time inside the house and with his friends, even the ones from his childhood days in Calcutta. Many of dad’s friends are far younger than him but all crazy like him.

People I talk to are surprised that disease free people can die. Prana or the life force that runs through our body is the cornerstone of all ancient healing methods like yoga and acupuncture. More prana means better health and less prana means weaker pulse and weaker immune system making us vulnerable to diseases. No matter how healthy we are when there is no more prana left in our body we die.

Many cultures believe in rebirth after death and rebirth depends on karma of our past lives and the state of our mind when we die. Dad had his share of regrets but I hope a good death in this life will give him a much better next life.

The risk and reward of using AI in stock market

Got invited to a talk on “A.I. for wealth creation in the stock market” at an investor’s meet in my hometown and came away completely bamboozled. The speaker, the CEO of a brokerage firm, seemingly an expert on stock markets had zero knowledge about how AI works. He threw up a few slides on AI that were incomprehensible to the largely local non-tech savvy attendees and then started demonstrating ChatGPT as the way of using AI in the stock market to make better returns. But when he was asked to query ChatGPT to predict the next day’s stock market outcomes it couldn’t.

AI is mostly being used in automation and prediction now. Fundamental to AI is data and data analytics which leads to predictive analytics. The core aspect of AI is machine learning (ML) and there are two basic types of learning – supervised and unsupervised learning. All predictions from continuously changing data such as forecasting stock or trading outcomes and market fluctuations is through supervised learning. Pattern recognition is how AI systems identify patterns in data and then use those patterns to make decisions or predictions. One of the prevalent algorithms used for more accurate predictions is the backpropagation algorithm.

Now, an ideal investment portfolio would be a combination of high risk high reward investments (stocks, mutual funds) and low risk low reward investments (government bonds), the low risk ones to offset potential losses from high risk ones. Better AI prediction models can increase investment in high risk stocks leading to higher gains. But human sentiments and emotions play a major role in stock values and we are prone to mass hysteria. AI has no emotional intelligence so AI prediction models cannot factor in data on human emotions and can consequently lead to huge stock market losses.

Why employees quit jobs because of bad managers

LinkedIn has been inundated with posts about employees quitting jobs because of bad managers for quite some time. While this is true and I have done the same in my past jobs, a good amount of introspection coupled with plenty of reading has helped me understand my experiences better.

The origins of bad managers lies in the history of management itself. Industrial revolution gave rise to manufacturing and we started producing a myriad of items as our needs increased exponentially. Soon we realized that tasks are repetitive in manufacturing and we came up with processes to streamline the tasks. This in turn helped us to create documents which we call as manuals. Workers had to simply follow the steps mentioned in the manuals. This literally meant there was no work to be managed. When manager position was created it was to manage the workers and drive them to increase their efficiency and in turn the factory produce. Deming’s model or the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle embodies this culture of management.

When technology improved drastically and disrupted all industries it too adopted the same form of management, the best example of which is the waterfall methodology in software development. As technology matured it became evident that creating a software product and manufacturing nuts and bolts are as different as chalk and cheese. Also, unlike the erstwhile factory workers who were largely uneducated and followed the manuals and orders of their managers, technology professionals are educated, know what they are doing, have the ability to solve problems and can think out of the box. So the need changed to managing work and getting products out into the market as quickly as possible so that they can be monetized. This has given rise to the Agile methodology. One of the pillars of Agile methodology is self organizing teams that are absolutely clear about what and how much work can be completed in each sprint cycle. Such teams do not need managers, rather they need someone who can minimize/eliminate disruptions to work and can communicate clearly with the team members. In SCRUM, this is the role of Scrum Master.

The general expectation from every employee is that they need to be at their maximum efficiency during their work timings. Employees have to be fully focused on their work for 8 hours. What this means is, employees have to turn off all other aspects of their lives in their minds as soon as they step into their offices. We know this is far from reality. Our professional and personal lives are not mutually exclusive rather they are intricately interconnected. When employees reach office their minds are filled with thoughts about different aspects of their personal lives and it takes time for them to start focusing on work. The exact reverse happens when they reach home after work. All body functions are performed using blood so when we have food blood is required for digestion. Depending on the amount of food we eat some part of blood from the brain is also utilized in the digestion process. This is why we feel sleepy after a heavy meal. Add to this all the conversations, meetings and other distractions. Taking all of these into account, out of the 8 hours, it is unrealistic to expect anyone to be fully productive for more than 5 hours.

Now, let me narrate why I quit two of my previous jobs.

I wanted to do MBA from my engineering days but didn’t have a substantial reason to embark on it. In a previous job, I joined a customer support project which had a security management system which I had to learn on my own to support and maintain it. In 2 1/2 years, I became an expert on it. After I was sent on an onsite assignment I won contracts for my company to upgrade the security management systems for two of its clients. The IT head of one client was a German and he put me through 3 hours of grueling technical session on the product. I also learned a lot about the businesses in different domains and business aspects of outsourcing in those years so finally I knew why I wanted to do MBA. I wanted to move into roles where I would be engaging with clients, solving business problems and making businesses streamlined and efficient. Meanwhile, a promotion would have made me manager and as the management sat for 5 years twiddling its thumbs contemplating if I should be promoted, they made two glaring mistakes. 1) They never asked me what I wanted 2) They did not define a career path for me in spite of seeing my capabilities and strengths so clearly. In the last project I did for the company, I went for knowledge acquisition to the client’s location which was outsourcing its IT operations for the first time and returned to India to set up an IT support team. The initial days were hard as the client needed support during non-office hours as well. I became sleep deprived and was on the edge of insomnia when I went to a friend’s place one evening after work and passed out after having a can of beer. Then, having beer to sleep started getting repetitive. It was at this point that I fell out with my managers. After working for 10 straight years without a break I realized I had to go do something else and the MBA was staring right at my face.

In another job, the company was known to provide work from home facility to most of its employees. My dad was not well at that time, my work location was far away from my hometown and dad was in no position to be relocated to a new place. Work from home was important so I didn’t mind joining at a lower salary. Precisely at this juncture, company changed its work from home policy, started forcing all employees to return to office and put a blanket ban on work from home for new joiners. The first two months I was on bench and had nothing much to do, third month I was assigned to a project, fifth month the manager changed and in another month the new manager had messed up the project. To add to this he targeted me and put me on Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) in just under two months after starting to manage the project which is unheard of.

In both cases, I did not quit those jobs because managers created adverse situations. They created the triggers which led me to decide to move on. My decisions to look ahead were not because I didn’t want to continue in those jobs or I couldn’t handle those managers and bad management. I already had enough to handle in my life, didn’t want to spend any of my time and energy suffering bad managers and had no stomach to fight to hold on to a job. I simply pulled myself out of the toxic environments they had created. Quitting jobs because of bad managers essentially means out of all the relationships and situations employees have to handle every day, a toxic manager is the easiest and least important one to get rid of. What is interesting though is, on the flip side, employees will brave every odds if they know they have managers with whom they can communicate openly and place their trust. Companies believe all employees can be retained by dangling the carrots of promotions and salary hikes before them. There will come a time in everyone’s career where mental health will assume greater significance than all other incentives.

These managers carry the legacy of factory management in their corporate genes where they revel in imposing themselves on employees and torture them in the name of micromanagement. Companies also believe employees cannot think for themselves, do not know what they want out of their careers and which career path to take so managers are assigned to decide for the employees. This is how employees get stuck in the promotion cycles and become disgruntled when they are passed on for promotions.

There are multitudes of causes and effects behind every employee’s decision to quit their jobs. Managers just light the match stick which results in the fire. Changing the factory worker management mindset is the most important step. Moving from people to work management is another crucial one. Employees spend 8 hours and more 5 days a week in office so they need someone who can manage their work load and be there for them to talk to. Manager mindset and management practices haven’t evolved with time which is what is required to control employee attrition because of bad managers and poor management.

History Is Not Going To Be Kind To Modi’s Legacy

There is a delightful and must watch Malayalam social satire movie, Pranchiyettan and the Saint that was released in 2010. Pranchi is the colloquial Malayalam version of the name Francis and ettan means big brother. Superstar Mammootty plays the titular role of Pranchiyettan and the film’s background is set in the market of wholesale dealers of rice in Thrissur in Kerala which incidentally happens to be my hometown. From his grandfather’s time his family was in the wholesale business of rice and he got the nickname of ‘ari (rice) Pranchi from his school days. The movie chronicles the desperation of Pranchiyettan to get rid of the ‘rice’ legacy he carries and how he gets comically duped each time. His desperation reaches the crescendo when he is coaxed into shelling out Rs. 1 crore in return for being bestowed with the Padmashri award (an implicit pointer to the fact that awards are now more bought than genuinely given), gets fooled again and the ensuing ridicule he has to face.

Narendra Modi shares a similar dilemma with Pranchiyettan. He has been unable to shake the stigma of ‘Butcher of Godhra’ off his back even after 2 decades, being absolved off the charges leveled against him by the Supreme Court and even after becoming the Prime Minister of India twice. It was obvious that he was expecting the whole of India and the rest of the world to embrace him and conveniently erase his life before he became the Prime Minister from their collective memory. But the stigma of Godhra, now rekindled by the BBC documentary must have left him sore and infuriated to his bones. One question begs for an answer: If he has been exonerated of any crime in the Godhra incident, why is the government banning the documentary so aggressively in India and why are BJP supporters up in arms on the streets resorting to violence to prevent the screening of the documentary?

There is something of far greater significance that must be nagging him or must worry him. He is India’s first Prime Minister from the time India’s (and the world’s) digital age truly began. The portrayal of him as the true and only leader to lead India into the ‘Golden age’ and equating him with Lord Shiva (NaMo) was spread largely through the digital world. The perception battle was won hands down on social media platforms. But the same social media platforms have turned out be double edged swords, providing his detractors the space to question, deride, ridicule and even abuse him. What is noteworthy here is, none of India’s past Prime Ministers have got treated badly like him, not in the past not in the present. There is the element of respect that India’s past Prime Ministers have received, from within the country and globally that Modi has been unable to garner in spite of all his high pitch speeches, photo op sessions and the effusive bonhomie with global leaders. When he boldly proclaimed in 2014 after becoming the Prime Minister that anyone, even a tea seller’s son can become the most powerful leader of the country, he inadvertently lowered his own stature as well as the dignified qualities required for a Prime Minister to have to be respected by the global leaders. 

The stigma of Godhra and his inability to win the respect and acceptance of being the most popular and accepted leader are going to have detrimental effects on his legacy. He should have been mindful of these aspects before elevating himself as the only one worthy of leading the country. History is not going to be kind to him.

Understanding Business Objectives In The Chaos Of Corporate Layoffs

News of layoffs from Silicon Valley heavyweights and the startup world are grabbing headlines and eyeballs each day now. Professional social media platform LinkedIn is inundated with posts from laid off employees expressing anguish at the way they were locked out of company premises and office computer networks abruptly. There are several reasons for what has been happening but it would be better understood by first looking at business fundamentals and other underlying factors.

All companies aspire to grow their revenue and profit margins Year-On-Year (YOY) and this is the mandate of their top executives. Business strategies are created for both revenue generation and cost saving (money saved is money created) based on market analysis and macroeconomic conditions. This results in the initiation of projects which when executed results in the development of products, services, etc which can either be commercialized and monetized to generate revenue or used internally to increase efficiency and thereby reduce cost to companies. Bigger companies will have multiple projects and startups will be mostly working on developing a single product/service. Now, there are business evaluation methods (NPV, IRR) to establish if a project can be successful but there can be hurdles during project execution, introduction of similar products/services and other market changes, changes in macroeconomic conditions and availability of funds that can fail the project and failure of companies in case of startups.

There is a business evaluation model called PEST which is used to analyze macroeconomic conditions to determine the success or failure of a business initiative. PEST stands for Political-Economic-Social-Technological. PEST was later extended to PESTEL to include Ecological and Legal factors. Ecological can be largely divided into two factors – natural disasters and diseases. Companies have traditionally ignored ecological factors during business evaluations. The first time I came across ecological factor becoming relevant was after the devastating Mumbai flood in 2005. A client that had outsourced its IT operations to a service provider based out of Mumbai asked for a disaster recovery (DR) team to be set up in Bangalore. But diseases were completely ignored.

When the COVID pandemic struck in 2020 and countries went into lockdown, supply chains got massively disrupted. Companies were forced to modify their strategies and operations with immediate effect or close down. As the lockdowns extended, many of the ongoing projects became reduntant temporarily while new business opportunities started coming to the fore. Online home delivery and educational platforms popped up and thrived. Hiring increased substantially to implement and support new projects. It was evident that lockdowns had to end or would cripple economies of countries but where companies seem to have grossly mistaken is in their assumption that businesses would not or take a long time to return to pre-covid situation. My understanding is, if businesses had done their evaluation by considering ecological factors and specifically the factor of diseases and understood the implications, the world would not have had to go through what it had to for two years of the pandemic.

It is well known that majority of projects initiated by companies and majority of startups fail. Companies try to absorb employees in failed projects into other projects whereas startups are left with no option but to let go off their employees. But organizational consolidation amid fears of impending economic recession, disruption caused by Russia-Ukraine conflict and rising inflation and interest rates have resulted in the layoffs we are seeing now. There are different categories of employees that have been impacted now.

1) Employees on bench – Employees who are not assigned to projects or are out of projects and yet to get new projects are assigned to bench where they are trained on new technologies and topics while they continue to receive their monthly salaries. Normal practice is, most employees on bench get assigned to new projects and those who don’t are let go after a specific period of time. When layoffs due to consolidation is initiated, bench employees are the first ones to be affected.

2) New/recent joiners – When projects slow down or become redundant, new/recent joiners get impacted first when projects are shut down or team sizes are trimmed.

3) Senior employees – Yes and no surprises. All companies expect their employees to upskill themselves along with increasing experience and move up the ranks. While it is true that the corporate pyramid becomes thinner with increasing height, employees who choose to do nothing or continue staying in specific roles become redundant with time and replaceable. In a previous job, I have seen experienced people of a specific skill being let go and people with less experience of the same skill being hired to fill up those roles. Senior resources are needed in projects only till the time the projects become stable and all information is documented. Then projects can be run easily with a couple of senior people and team members with lesser experience who need to be paid far less salaries. This is also a way for the companies to reduce expenses and make the projects profitable. Moreover, new graduates are leaving colleges with the knowledge of latest technologies and who need to be paid only a fraction of what the senior employees are being paid. This is also making senior employees redundant and expendable.

Top executives are needed for businesses to ride through the storm so they will not be let go off now. In the recent past, some companies were offering high severance packages for top executives to take voluntary retirement because new and young leaders bring fresh perspectives into leadership roles.

It is important to note here that as employee headcount increases the number of internal staff in human resources, facilities and other departments also increase. These employees play no part in revenue generation and add on to cost to the company. Employee reduction also results in the reduction of internal staff count.

Do we need to fear or worry about layoffs? Lush green forests dries out in the summer heat and just a single spark of fire is needed to burn it to the ground. All that smoke and heat, in turn. rises up and brings rain. From the ashes, life springs up again. Life is cyclic and this is the Universal truth. Difficult times force us to introspect and is the time for reality check. These are the times which help us to understand if we want to learn something new and get back into the market or find our true passion and set our lives in a new direction. Any transition is difficult and no one is living happy, peaceful and stable lives which is what everyone is aspiring for. Challenges will come in everyone’s life at some point in time. Overcoming them and moving forward is what makes us truly successful.