Posts

by on

Inheritance has played a big role in how kingdoms evolved and civilisations sustained. People passed on their wisdom to their future generations and created a sustained momentum of progress. The progress was largely confined within the family, a great medical practitioner will pass on the knowledge to the kids and make sure they memorise a lot of things and do not pass on the trade secrets to others. Slowly greed took over and instead of greater good, personal wealth and wellness took top priority. This is when territorial population got slowly disrupted by invaders who learnt to break the fragile unity and encouraged personal growth by turning people against their allies and eventually they also fell prey to invasion.

virus-1913183_1280

We think the world belongs to humans, it does not. It belongs to microbes. They are everywhere, in huge numbers and very very resilient. They are inside us, outside and have even learnt to live in hostile conditions. I also read in the newspapers about bacteria developing antibiotic resistance and quite difficult to treat if people get these resistant strains. I was curious on how bacteria develop resistance and stumbled on an article which explained about ‘Horizontal gene transfer‘. Bacteria do not just inherit the resistant genes vertically from their parents but also from other types of bacteria, virus, fungi (the list goes on) which may not even be virulent.

Learning and co-operating with others is what makes someone resilient along with their peers, this is what I inferred from my readings about horizontal gene transfer. If we concentrate only on personal growth and well being then it is just a short amount time before we lose out to groups which learn together. Personal growth is useful only when others around us also grow and sustain that momentum. There is a nice story about growing good corn, a farmer shares the quality seeds with neighbours to make sure cross pollination happens with healthy corn.

Winning alone and winner takes it all is a greedy task, it pushes people into damage control mode and work in transactions. People won’t remember us for our transactions, there is nothing to reciprocate in a transaction. It looks like we will not have a resilience building horizontal gene transfer equivalent for humans. We may eventually fizzle out of existence trying to outsmart each other.

by on

Recently I read an article about NSA’s efforts in identifying Satoshi Nakamoto, who created bitcoin and remained elusive. NSA had spent a lot of resources at its disposal to create a writeprint to for billions of texts around the world and zero in on Satoshi.

Fingerprint plays a huge role in investigations as they provide a reliable identity which is difficult to change, before that identity was based on photographs, height, mole marks etc. So the quest for fingerprinting grew and now it is possible to get voiceprint, writeprint and can work on anything to create a unique signature about a person.

privacy-policy-2499720_640I read about this first in Simon Singh’s Code book, the book talks a lot about how cryptographers had to constantly be on the run to come up with new techniques just to be broken by cryptanalysts who find chinks in the armour, it is a never ending game. One of the interesting reads was about a fingerprinting technique called fist, which is a style arising due to the telegraph operator’s way using the telegraph key. While the messages were encrypted, the operator’s fist gave away the identity of the german troops and by radio frequency analysis the location was also identified. The messages which were encrypted was of no use to the British, but the location and identity proved to be vital  which was invaluable when there were no satellites.

I never took privacy and security seriously, but the more I read about and hear from friends the more insecure I feel. If someone is determined enough and have resources at hand, it is going to be an easy task to violate someone else’s security and privacy. More and more tools to break will be freely available and new technology is going to make current military grade encryptions cakewalk to break. If we need privacy we need to keep running, there is no place to hide.

p.s. Also read about ‘Dolphin attack‘ which takes vulnerabilities to new levels.

by on

A young businessperson Tamizh (/ˈtæmɪl/) drives to office everyday, the commute is hard and energy draining in peak traffic, when reaching office there has to be a break to cool down and bring the mindset back to work. Tamizh wakes up early morning, checks email, talks to counterparts in other countries and gets a head start for the day even before leaving for office, even during the drive to office the mind does not switch off from work; after a few near misses in traffic due to preoccupation at work, Tamizh decides to hire a driver.

Each driver is unique in driving style, some drive very fast, some keep the occupants comfortable, some drive very economical, some of them race the car. One can only observe a part of a driver’s characteristic when the owner is around. When the owner is not around, it is not possible to understand how they drive. Tamizh is an enthusiast and a very careful & possessive car owner; it was very hard to give the keys of the dream car which was bought after years of hard work.

The attachment to the car did not end there, Tamizh ended doing back seat driving most of the times unless there was an ultra important work related call to be done. Pothole impacts and sudden manoeuvres by the driver were followed by harsh reactions from Tamizh. Eventually both Tamizh and the driver lost their cool and parted ways. The cycle continued, Tamizh was never able to hire a long time driver; there was no way to have an easy commute and save that mind-space.

Scenario 1:

The driver does not notice a speed breaker and jumps over it delivering a bone jarring thud inside the cabin. 

What should be the reaction?

A: Start noticing every speed breaker that might come up on road and warn the driver from there on.

B: Yell at the driver for being careless and complain about the expensive repairs that needs to be done if driven around like this.

C: Mostly the driver knows it is uncomfortable and damaging to vehicle to jump over a speed breaker, conversation is necessary only if it is repetitive.

Scenario 2:

You want to reach somewhere very quick, but you are also a fuel economy freak.

What will you do?

A: Let the driver know when to shift gear and what rpm they should be to achieve best possible pace and economy.

B: Keep complaining to driver that either we are going too slow or wasting a lot of fuel at every opportunity.

C: Choose what is needed, speed or cost and let the driver do the rest. It is not worth the mind-space spent on saving one of them.

Scenario 3:

The car ran out of fuel when leaving for office for an important meeting one day.

How do you react?

A: You always check with the driver that there is enough fuel before leaving for a trip. You never forget to check for fuel or tire pressure whenever you board the car.

B: You freak out and make sure the driver’s day is ruined so that they dread doing the same thing again.

C: Ask the driver to help you get a replacement transport, let the driver know this is not acceptable as it has huge impact on business in an assertive way.

Scenario 4:

You are on a weekend trip to a nice hill station, your driver on seeing a particular road tells you that is unsafe to take your sedan in that road.

What do you tell the driver?

A: You tell the driver that you will teach them on how to drive in this road, give metre by metre instructions.

B: You let the driver know it is your car and you decide what road to take.

C: You are on a leisure trip and not worth the risk, the driver is a professional who drives all the time for living; better to trust the driver and enjoy the trip to the destination.

leader-2206099_1280

Managers & Leaders I have observed often fall in A, B or both A&B responses. They are big time back seat drivers. These are the people who could spend their mind-space on more abstract, complex problems instead of engaging in managing down activity. People who are handed down orders do that downwards and also pass along the stress. It is too contagious that the entire org ends up managing down which means each one either telling the others how to do or yelling at for not doing the what they are told to do.

Imagine all the brain power and productivity if these minds were focussed on managing themselves and their work, it is easily one level up. I am routinely involved in working in software projects which by nature have ambiguous requirements and a fast ever changing complex technical landscape. What worked well a few years ago is no longer valid, it is very very hard to manage down.

Yet many leaders in large organisations want their companies to be agile Agile and they adopt the manifesto but half heartedly so that none of the instruments of managing down never leave their hands. I could not resist sharing this link here, http://www.halfarsedagilemanifesto.org, the author of that page should have been hit hard by this phenomenon.

What about small organisations and startups? Barring a handful, a majority of them manage down. My way or highway and type B responses in the above scenarios are more common. It takes a great deal of maturity to let go of control and move up which pays off a lot in the longer run even if there were shortcomings in the short run. Those who understand this build empires, others continue to barely manage their territories.