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BENEATH THE SURFACE12/11/2023 I am watching the news regularly as soon as the October 7th massacre in Israel happened. I have read and watched some very objective and critical analyses of the Israel-Hamas war and I believed that there's more to the propaganda stories in the media today. For example, alliances and allegiances shift easily. As Egypt and Jordan do not want more headaches in their territories if refugees spill easily in their borders. Majority of the Arab nations want an end to the war but they themselves wash their hands on the obligations and responsibilities such as not supporting, funding, using their bases for terrorism, to name a few. Morally apprehensible actions that violate international law should be condemned, no buts and ifs, and yet even that is not heard across the region. What we see here is a double-standard as what most learned and informed analyst would say. If Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, or Iraq were being bombed to dust, nobody gives a damn in the Arab world. But if an Arab is in conflict with the Jew, hell will come down on earth. Behind all the condemnations on Israel's military action, the Arab region and some of them, the champions of the Palestinian cause are better off without Hamas or any terror organizations that are a threat to regional peace and security. Governments do not want to be heard siding with Israel and therefore undermining the public opinion of their population. They want to keep in power as long as possible but benefit from another country's efforts to rid of their 'problems.' The extremists encamped on many sides of these issues are laughing at the world. What does this got to do with business, leadership, and life? For all the talk about a certain policy, program, or actions by management, know that it's not what is heard, it's what's seen by staff, employees, and the public. Behind the scenes, what intentions and assumptions are used to make decisions? What resources are being deployed to ensure effective implementation? Who is saying what to whom? Are communications as clear and unconvoluted as possible? Who is not keeping pace and what can you do about it? Ask yourself this question, "What is really going on here?"
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DERISKING11/27/2023 When failure is inevitable, politicians, policy-makers, executives, and leaders of organizations try to belittle their efforts so as not to appear a failure. That what they have done is a soft launch, an experiment, pilot, a test-case, so on and so forth. This happens in so many situations where the first few efforts are being calibrated based on a possibility of failure, not of success. De-risking becomes the favorite word these days. But in the broader sense, de-risking is the other side of courageous work. If you hedge against failure, you will instinctively become protective of what you have, therefore you will play not to lose. But if you play to win, derisking increases its value to you and what you're trying to accomplish. It creates more success conditions because you're aware of the possible traps and pitfalls but yet, moving forward with greater resolve. Derisking shouldn't be used if trying is not even an option. If you want to derisk, why not just hide under the covers and wait for a better day, which is in my book, you may have to wait for a long time.
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PREMATURE FAILURE3/9/2023 You must have heard many times of the term "premature success." Well, there's also what I call premature failure. Premature failure is when you just started to fail and not when you have failed and tried hundred of times but didn't find an ounce of success or simply an opening for a reiteration. Premature failure is giving up way too early when in fact, the pains of any early startup or journey or first few steps are always longer, harder, and perseverance-required than in any other stages. It is just what it is. An indication of something that must be done, evaluated, and relaunched again. Realistically our concept of failure is flawed in a sense that we always have high expectations of our initial actions. We allow this momentary discovery elude us of the benefits of the real results that come after many tries and retries. We see a well-polished book and we thought that the author must have written it in one go while watching Netflix or a new app that we install in our tablets and phones had been imagined and developed with a matter of months just by talking to friends. We seldom see the behind the scenes of product development of many companies whose tasks is to lower customer barriers to acquiring, using, and marketing their product for them. We often don't look at how the after-office hours of business would look like when this means revamping everything that they think great about their product to build a better one. Start-ups know this by heart. But the non-profit sector doesn't, not even those who are serving a purpose-centred mission. There is an idealistic notion that they should be successful at their campaigns because they have lofty goals. That the public should be donating more, supporting more, the government giving more budgets because the needs are greater and that squares a lot of the wrongness in society. When that didn't happen, they blame it externally rather than look within their own limitations. Honestly, this idealism leads to regular failure. Regular failure is what we need. Regular failure is premature failure. Regular failure becomes the necessary ritual to attain the next level of competency. The culture in the purpose sector should be stripped away from idealism to pragmatism. Regular failure is under appreciated. Premature failure is not the time to make a direction-changing course of action yet. Ask more questions and listen attentively to market signals. Go back to the drawing board and recalibrate. Stay in the learning mode until you get it right. And when you get it right, do you really want to change course? |