Tag Archives: dear leader

The Corporate Quicksand

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The Corporate World- swanky glass-fronted buildings, CCTV’s and security guards, luxury cars and SUV’s gracing the parking lot. Marquee IT companies, big name consulting, MNC & Indian private sector banks and insurance companies, sprawling industrial complexes and OEM’s. The Aura and Smell of Success. Ticking all the boxes in the corporate report card- stock prices, market share, profits and branding.

What about the employees who inhabit this world, especially at the middle-management and junior levels. Obviously revelling in their success, thanking their stars and counting their blessings, right? Not quite. There is some starkness behind all the glitter.

Even a few years ago, corporate culture was reflected by a Mission statement. To be the trusted partner for customers: the preferred employer for employees: to protect and advance the interests of the shareholders. Some sense of balance was achieved for all stakeholders and this profoundly influenced the work environment.

Yes, the promoters have invested money in the business and expect a good ROI. They are not here for charity. But the pendulum has swung so much that it is now all about enriching the share-holders. In a competitive market, the customers do figure prominently in the narrative. But it is the employee who actually makes things happen on the ground who lurks insecurely in the shadows. Pause. Some may shrug and say change is inevitable as the Corporate grows big.

It is the time of hands-off Management. Targets are assigned for the various business verticals. Monitoring is done on a daily basis. It is common to get WhatsApp messages at 10 pm at night demanding the day’s results. Workdays are structured around review meetings , con-calls and video-conferencing. There is a cascading effect of pressure on the front-line team. They become the TARGET. The language used can be colourful and intimidating. The middle level executives off-load on them after getting roasted by their bosses.

Perhaps People Management is now looked upon as a weakness. An unproductive area to invest time and energy in. They are being paid well and are expected to deliver always. Never mind that it is these people who have strived to build the brand, joined in the daily grind to ensure the Company’s success. Of course, no Company or even an office can afford to carry dead-weights. The inefficient and the incompetent, the trouble-maker or the unethical will have to go. All this, in the context of normal times.

Listening is no longer the norm. It is a one-way traffic down the line. Not so long ago, leaders used to tap into the ground realities. Find time even for a fresher employee. Go on joint calls. Discuss problems. Find solutions. Encourage. Motivate. Be there during difficult times. Leaders have now mutated into Bosses. They take their cue from the top man and nobody wants to step out of line. Voices of Reason have been drowned out by the noise and rattle of this passing bandwagon. Except the inner coterie, no one knows when their time has come. It is a Catch-22 situation. It definitely gnaws at the souls of the well-meaning professionals.

Where everything is reduced to hard-nosed business numbers, politics and sycophancy thrive. Reliable sources told me about an organisation where the top honcho liked to be addressed as the Supreme Leader or the Great Leader in mails and adulatory speeches. Even PPTs made by the senior management were buttressed with his quotes. Shades of North Korea, what? The world is really getting smaller.

There are Bosses who openly take pride in being ruthless. Survival of the Fittest. Any wonder, that the survival instinct kicks in? As the old nursery rhyme goes, “Yes Sir, Yes Sir, three bags full Sir.” The good men and women within an organisation who are still respected and can make a difference have also thrown in the towel, for now. Their energy has been sapped. They cannot take on the System. The days of think tanks and brainstorming on good ideas and initiatives have long gone. And the sad thought is that many youngsters imbibe these trends and attributes as the lessons of management.

Employee No. XXX has to reach office before the appointed hour. Out-Time is very flexible especially if you are saddled with a bad-boss or are down the food-chain. Not good for your professional health if the Chief thinks of you as a work-shirker. Including travel time, many spend a good 12 hours plus on the job. Add business tours and travels. With very little quality time for family and friends, work-life balance has been reduced to the classic corporate Lip Service. Stress at work plus less time with family makes for a toxic mix. Kids can easily grow up as strangers and it takes a heavy toll on a normal married life.

A fair number of such workers pride themselves on being workaholics. Sincere, dedicated- with whole-hearted involvement. But workaholism is a disease, an addiction which does a lot of harm to the individual. Other than the bad impact of Stress on health, this misled person can never evolve or grow- missing out on many slices and joys of life. Dr Abdul Kalam’s observation is pertinent for the current corporate climate, “Love your job but don’t love your company because you may not know when your company stops loving you.”

Some of the more savvy Corporates are tinkering around without rocking the boat. One hears of good initiatives like mandatory leaves, work from home facilities, cultural events, yoga sessions and the like. But the broader narrative remains unchanged. Monday Blues have become very common. Enjoying work – a disappearing experience. Things have become very clinical and mechanical, impersonal and a tad cold. It is all about NUMBERS. The human touch has been lost.

The advent of technology, innovation and disruption has added to the woes and the grim picture. We have to accept the inevitable. Technology will reduce costs significantly and bring efficiency and convenience of service delivery. The customer also stands to benefit. AI, Bots and Blockchain will dramatically change many of the routine operational processes across industries. But the manner in which some Industry Chieftans, whose words matter, are projecting it is both immature and insensitive with no regard to the collateral damage. Use and throw. The thousands who contributed to making a Company a brand are reaching their shelf-life. No plan B, no up-skilling, no re-deployment, no re-structuring. Tough times ahead. However, the Board is only fixated on market share, valuation and profits. Not on the Greater Good. Not on adding the blessings of their own team to the Balance Sheet.

I remain optimistic that the pendulum will swing back. Good Sense will prevail. Creative CEO’s and CXO’s will buck the trend and revive the balance and fairness embodied in the Mission Statement triangle referred to earlier. Also, a Salute to the few who are not scrambling onto this gravy train. The OUTLIERS. Who continue to acknowledge the contributions of their Team Members. Knowing that a good work environment itself guarantees productivity, consistent results and success.

But for now it’s SHOW ME THE MONEY. Surely a big consulting firm can be persuaded to bestow on the Company- “The Best Company to Work For” Award.

Communism- A Utopian Fallacy

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The Red Pantheon

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were the co-authors of the Communist Manifesto which goes back to 1847. It defined the principles of the new political party-the Communist party.  Both were Germans, political theorists, philosphers and revolutionaries in the guise of social scientists. But it was not until the Russian Revolution of 1917 led by Lenin did this dogma shake up the world, dominate the 20th century geopolitics and culminate in the prolonged and bitter cold war hostilities.

A communist state became a State that was administered by a single party- guided by the Marxist/Leninist/Maoist philosophy.

The doctrine quickly took over Eastern Europe, conquered China and parts of Asia, spread to Africa and Latin America with Cuba becoming a flag-bearer and a flash-point. Think Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, North Korea, Congo, Angola, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Chile. The footprint grew rapidly.

The charm of this philosophy lay in its egalitarian, utopian, humane, and idealistic welfare promise. A better socio-economic order. Remember the oft quoted definition of communism- “a theory or system of social organisation in which all property is owned by the community or state where each person contributes according to their ability and gets according to their needs”.

Even the academia and activists in Europe were swept away by the fervour. There were secret societies at Oxford and Cambridge affiliated to the Communist ideology in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Remember Kim Philby, the spy who went into the cold in the 60’s.  Also the romantic idolisation of Che Guevera, the bearded guerrilla whose face continues to adorn T shirts around the world.

Independent India was not immune to the charms of this ideology. Nehru was a huge admirer of the Stalinist 5 year plan and the heavy industries model. Many politicos, bureaucrats, professors, economists, authors, social activists fell into line. West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura had communist govts. The southern state remains a bastion. We became an ally of the Soviet bloc despite our non-aligned pretensions. Remember Tashkent Files.

Despite the collapse of communism in the early 1990’s, the rosy narrative continues to hold its grip. People who continue this storyline remain comrades dedicated to the movement.

Let’s look beyond the spin.

Hitler continues to be the poster-boy of genocide. But what about the millions and millions brutally killed by Stalin, Mao, the Dear Leaders in North Korea? The horrific stories about the Gulag prisons in Siberia surfaced in the early ‘70s.  Why do these guys not talk about the vicious Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia? Millions died and disappeared. Remember Chairman Mao’s famous words- “Power grows out of the barrel of a gun”, put into practice during the infamous ‘Great Leap Forward’ and the ‘Cultural Revolution’. His portrait continues to adorn some of our universities and political offices. Lenin, Stalin, Mao and later Castro and Chavez are the pantheon of great leaders. All cruel dictators and proponents of an authoritarian, violent ideology. They continue to be deified. Their present-day followers continue to hold forth in a patronising way- as intellectuals, human rights activists and social reformers.

The Naxalbari movement took root in a village near Siliguri in 1967. Led by Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal it heralded a peasant revolution. It did lead to substantial land reforms- equitable distribution of land to the landless and enumeration of farmers. The loyalty dividends were such that the Left Government in West Bengal lasted from 1977 to 2011. But then the Naxal movement degenerated from its noble high to a violent, underground movement which holds sway in parts of Chhatisgarh, Orissa and Maharashtra. The AK series rifles and IED’s are provided by China and Pakistan. An interesting review conducted a few years back revealed that young tribal recruits were enamoured by the uniforms and the guns. Then they lord over their communities and detonate the mines which kill thousands of our security forces. Another interesting dimension is that they have metamorphed into a mafia-like business syndicate. After all, power grows from the barrel of a gun.

What then about these state-contolled economies? How do they fare now?

Deng Xiao Ping who followed Mao jettisoned the Great Leader’s ideology. His mantra was-  “What does it matter if a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice”. Sacrilege! But 40 years later China is the world’s second largest economy. The factory to the world. The capital of off-shoring. Leveraging its cheap labour to power the world’s biggest brands and plants. Benefiting from and eating into the tech-transfer. Transforming this huge country into one of the world’s biggest markets. It continues to be governed with an iron fist by a single party and a strongman at the head. This is State Capitalism- a la Chinese.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has struggled with its economy which is heavily dependent on oil, natural gas and minerals. It has been hurt by economic sanctions. An embarrassing downslide for a country which once was the other superpower. A big climb-down from the rapid industrialisation which took place in the ‘30s and the ‘50s- heavy industries such as steel, minerals, power, infrastructure, aviation, automobile……. Interestingly at the outset many of these factories were dismantled ones from the US and Europe and many technicians from these countries were lured with higher salaries. Meanwhile, the collectivisation experiment in agriculture was a disaster.

The melt-down of oil-rich Venezuela is another example of the collapse of the command economy model. Many Eastern Europe countries are struggling to play catch-up with their Western counterparts.

The contrast between the erstwhile West and East Germanys is glaring. Even four decades after reunification and the pumping in of $2 trillion in aid, wages in the East are 25-40% behind the West and unemployment is almost double.

Cuba has achieved success in providing healthcare and was once rated as high as 25th on the world healthcare index.

In a similar vein the Indian state of Kerala can boast of some of the best medicare and wellness in the country. The literacy rate is also in the mid-ninetees. Yet most of its young population looks to go to the Gulf and South East Asia to secure a better future. The State economy does not provide enough employment opportunities.

The ideal of Marx and Engels did not factor in power-grab, hierarchy or the ills of corruption. The oligarchs who surround and support Putin are virtually the Mafia. In China, corruption is endemic. When big brother is watching and has the power to summarily put one behind bars, the business world cooperates. Russian and Chinese names figure prominently as money launderers in the Panama Papers along with their capitalist brethren from the US, Europe and Asia. Money truly does unite.

What about India? The cut-money scandal in West Bengal to facilitate government scheme benefits has come as a huge embarrassment for the Mamata Banerjee government. But what the media is keeping quiet about is that this was a common practice with the CPI (M) cadres also for many decades. Also that the goon squad of the communist party crossed over en-masse to Didi’s side when the power equation changed.

Moving on from the material to the spiritual, we remember Karl Marx famously proclaiming, “Religion is the opium of the masses”. The communist states officially practised atheism and there were many stories of persecutions. But how the times have changed. Even China has 5 registered religions in Buddhism, Chrisitianity, Protestanism, Islam and Taoism, although the incarceration of a million Muslims in Xinjiang province of China is a major human-rights talking point today. Thirty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain Conservative Christianity has regained its popular hold in East Europe and Buddhism is making inroads in Vietnam and Cambodia.

So am I batting for capitalism? No way!

Let’s travel to the heart of capitalism-the US of A. Dial back to Gordon Gekko and the movie ‘Wall Street’- “Greed is good”, summarizing the complete deregulation of the Reagan years to the recession of 2008 where the US Govt bailed out too big to fail banks and companies. The top-honchos walked away with fat bonuses and salaries. The middle-class and working class people lost their pensions and their employment. Real incomes after the recession were lower than in the mid 1980’s. The lobbying, the quid pro quo and the nexus between Wall Street, the White House, Capitol Hill and even the Ivy League Colleges is stark and there for all to see.

Just 2 other indicators to show the hollowness of this capitalist model. After the undermining of Obamacare, the US has the worst health-care system for its people amongst all developed nations. It should look to neighbouring Canada for inspiration. As for student loans it stands at a whopping $1.5 trillion. A huge burden even for the young college grads getting into the work force. Forcing them to not buy houses or get married. At times, a huge cross to bear for their parents also.

The bitter fight of the capitalists against communism has not earned them a higher moral ground. The McCarthy witch hunt against many innocent US citizens started it all. The Cold-War rhetoric was inflamed to support the US military-industrial complex. More bombs were dropped on Vietnam than in the entire 2nd World War. Scorching the earth through napalm and poisoning rivers are the dark truths that the country will always seek to suppress. I stumbled on the irrationality of it all whilst  watching a  documentary ‘Hunting Klaus Barbie’ about the Nazi Butcher of Lyon. The US Intelligence nabbed this known killer after the war and instead of bringing him to justice used him to dig up Commie secrets for many years. He remained a free man till the mid ‘80s.

Another example is how capitalism has evolved in South Korea. A developed economy with some of the biggest brands to resonate across the world. These few family run conglomerates like Samsung not only drive the economy but call the shots in the highest government quarters. The Chaebol, in a way, runs the country.

And so we wait for the next grand experiment. A happy mix of a welfare state and a free market. Where basics like food, shelter, health, education, public utilities, law, and order are guaranteed, coexisting with entrepreneurship and innovation,  aspirations and wealth-creation.

Let the final word rest with George Orwells’s classic ‘Animal Farm’- the best unravelling of the communist culture and state of mind. What starts of as the Utopian ideal of creating a paradise of progress, justice, and equality where all are happy and free but fatally ignores the universal human weakness for power, control, and greed. Alas, the revolution against tyranny leads to totalitarianism, just as terrible.