What If You Had to Start Over Again This Year!

Imagine: Your all achievements, relationships, experience and past memories are wiped out. And you are given an opportunity to start it over again. 

Ask yourself following questions:

• What would you do this year?
• How would it be different this year?
• What would you change?

Most people would definitely like to change at least something small, some people might like to change everything. 

I think this scenario gives people a permission to, if just for a moment, disregard the problems that they might face in bringing that change; it might be in the form of a resistance that they might face or the fear of failure.

Ideas to Ponder: "Expiration Dates for Charities?"

NGOs are defined by the World Bank as "private organizations that pursue activities to relieve suffering, promote the interests of the poor, protect the environment, provide basic social services, or undertake community development".

But isn't this definition too Utopian? 

To answer that question, lets see some figures:

Ideas to Ponder: The Walk from "no" to "yes"

In today's post, I have covered learnings from Willian Ury on how to negotiate in tough situations. William Ury, author of well renowned book -"Getting to Yes," offers an elegant, simple (but not easy) way to create agreement in even the most difficult situations -- from family conflict to, perhaps, the Middle East in a TED talk. Watch the video:

CATCH-22: IF HE GETS SMARTER, EXECUTE HIM?

Recently I came across a journal named ETC! There was one very interesting story in it based on catch-22 phenomenon. Here it goes...

By: ROBERT WANDERER

THE SUPREME COURT decided in 2002 that it’s unconstitutional to execute a murderer who is retarded. The ruling was in the case of Daryl Atkins of Virginia, who scored 59 on an IQ test in 1998. That state put the cutoff for retardation at 70.

Ideas to Ponder: "The man who dies rich dies in disgrace"

|"The man who dies rich dies in disgrace." ~ Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie Was very right in saying the above line. And these lines didn't come out of his mind, but from his heart...

Many billionaires have realized the same: Bill Gates and Warren Buffett were in China last week to promote philanthropy, and they are expected to come to India in April. They are busy in creating a huge movement among billionaires of the world, for creating world's largest possible philanthropic fund! They are asking these billionaires to donate about half of their money for something which is greater than their lives. 

Here are some facts on India's billionaires:

• There were 127,000 Indians with more than $1 million in investible assets in 2009, and they were collectively worth $477 billion. (Asia-Pacific Wealth Report 2010) 
• Forbes magazine shows that India has a record 69 billionaires. The 100 richest Indians are worth $300 billion.

We still don't know on whether this act of giving by billionaires is a pure act of giving or an act to salvage their emotions from the feeling of exploiting their own society for creating this wealth over the years! Because, if we simply look into the facts then we will find that, most of these (Indian or others) billionaires  have created their fortunes in areas like —real estate, mining, retailing, telecom and oil. And all these areas have been weakly controlled by any governing agency. 

India is country with very huge income inequality, were withing a 1 Km. radius we could find people with income gap as huge as million times! Whatever be the reason behind this income equality existing in the society, one thing is very clear —This philanthropic move has the potential to do something in very short time what no government in the underdeveloped countries like India can do in years by themselves.

Point here is the way this philanthropic sum is going to be invested. And there is no better investment in the societal future than the investment in education. Recent government spending figures say that, Indian government spent about $8 billion in education in the year 2009, and if we make an assumption that the 100 top billionaires of India (having wealth ~ $ 300 billion) donate about 10% of their wealth, then total philanthropic sum comes out to be approximately $ 30 billion! Which is enough to invest for coming 4 years in education, beside the government investment at present levels. It can impart a big boost to the social upbringing, even greater than what government could have achieved with the same level of increase in its spendings; considering the fact that most of government investment is generally consumed by corrupt cockroaches present in every part the country.   

It is Fourth of the many posts that I have written under "Idea to Ponder series" (you can visit all of them here). Stay updated, get updates via email: Click here.

Post written by Anshul Gupta. Follow him on twitter.

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More Recent Posts:

• Ideas to Ponder: Ignoring Expert Judgement
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Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error

Post written by Anshul Gupta. Follow him on twitter

To err is human. Yet most of us go through life assuming (and sometimes insisting) that we are right about nearly everything, from the origins of the universe to how to load the dishwasher. If being wrong is so natural, why are we all so bad at imagining that our beliefs could be mistaken, and why do we react to our errors with surprise, denial, defensiveness, and shame? 

In Being Wrong, journalist Kathryn Schulz explores why we find it so gratifying to be right and so maddening to be mistaken, and how this attitude toward error corrodes relationships—whether between family members, colleagues, neighbors, or nations. Along the way, she takes us on a fascinating tour of human fallibility, from wrongful convictions to no-fault divorce; medical mistakes to misadventures at sea; failed prophecies to false memories; “I told you so!” to “Mistakes were made.”

A Balanced Approach to Problem Solving: Elephant Analogy

|"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail."

~Abraham Maslow

Post written by Anshul Gupta. Follow me on twitter.

Let me explain, what is an Elephant Analogy?

It is basically a way of looking at things, which is quite narrow in its scope. The analogy with the elephant is that; once a person what asked to identify the parts of an elephant, by touching them one by one.He was not told that its an elephant neither he was allowed to see it. When he touched the leg of the elephant, he said, "It's a pillar!". When he touched the stomach, he said, "It's a wall!". And when he touched the tail, he said, "It's a rope!!!". But when he was allowed to see, nevertheless it had to be an elephant!

Similarly, Consultants tend to suggest solution and then try to fit that solution into the given problem, without truly understanding the problem from its roots. When you go to a marketing consultant, he would suggest a marketing strategy, when you go to a SCM consultant, he would suggest a SCM strategy, and if the SCM consultant is into IT, he would make sure that you end-up implementing a new ERP software!

My whole point is that, there is a need to perceive an elephant as an elephant and not through its body parts. In the absence of an integrated approach, different stake holders look at the same problem quite differently. This leads to chaos, confusion and people pulling in different directions. Many problems that are encountered today are the outcomes of this narrow sub-systems thinking. A transformational change of mind-set would look at the problems in its totality. This will lead to a balanced approach to development.

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