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: "When Mistakes are Good..."

One thing as human beings we all have potential to do, and that (as you might have guessed it) is the potential to make mistakes! We commit mistakes no matter how precautionary we are, and to our surprise many times we commit these mistake because of the over precaution we took! I did try to address this topic in my earlier posts, but not to the extent to which I will be addressing here. 

|"It took me a long time to understand that, as human beings, we are bound to commit mistakes (this is something which is expected from us!)."

There are several related questions to committing mistakes, some of them are before committing them, few of them during and most of them after committing the mistakes. Lets deal each one of them one by one...

Questions before committing mistakes:

The relation between punishments and mistakes has very intriguing for most of us. Different degrees of mistakes happens in case of rewards and punishment. For example, When you attach a reward then the objectives becomes -'To achieve more' (no matter what the consequences be), and mistakes happen on the way so be the excellence.


And, when you attach punishment, opposite happens most of the time. 

Ideas to Ponder: "Understand your personality type, but Don't Stereotype!"

People in the research and development area, had developed a psychological measurement tool, which measures the personality type of a person. 

Personality type refers to the psychological classification of different types of individuals. Personality types are sometimes distinguished from personality traits, with the latter embodying a smaller grouping of behavioral tendencies. Types are sometimes said to involve qualitative differences between people, whereas traits might be construed as quantitative differences. According to type theories, for example, introverts and extraverts are two fundamentally different categories of people.

Then some other theorists developed another tool which measures the same stuff, but in a different way. In this tool, people have been classified into six different types: investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, conventional and realistic. 

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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Ghost of Large number of Choices

Post written by Anshul Gupta. Follow me on twitter.

Are we being fooled by large number of choices that we face today? Andy Andrews; an inspirational author and speaker, once said, "The greatest power ever bestowed upon mankind is the power of choice. Choose to persist without exception. Hold fast to your dreams and stay the course, even in the face of exhaustion, rejection, and uncertainty." But that same power of choice is weakening us today while we consider our decision making abilities. Because we no longer have requisite number of choices, instead we have what I call flooding of choices....

For example, we know that in reality there is no scientific difference between Coke and Pepsi, but we tend to perceive them as different. We have so many choices in so many fields that it has now become a major cause of bad decision making. See the video (below) and this point would become more clear:

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