QUEST FOR PERFECTION

COSMETIC ENGINEERING – The Beauty Trap

A Parable – A Teaching Story on The Quest for Perfection

Food for Thought and Implementation

By 

VIKRAM KARVE 

These days everybody wants to be “perfect” in all aspects – have a “picture perfect” body, shapely figure “perfectly sculpted” in all dimensions, look “perfectly beautiful”, have a flawless complexion, be absolutely “perfect”, and to achieve this goal some are ready to do all sorts of things, exoteric, even esoteric, maybe even go under the scalpel.

Here is an apocryphal story, a parable, Cosmetic Engineering, which highlights the sometimes detrimental ramifications and manifestations due to the quest for perfection. 

Once there lived a Goat – an ordinary looking goat - who lived wild and free in the mountains.

One day while grazing in the forest, the goat saw a Giraffe, and the goat said to himself, “I wish my neck was as long as the giraffe.”

Lo and Behold!

The goat’s neck suddenly became as long as the giraffe’s.

Delighted, that he could now see far and wide, the goat saw an eagle flying high in the sky.

“I wish I had wings like that eagle,” wished the goat; and instantaneously, wings appeared on the goat’s body.

Thrilled, the goat flapped its newly acquired wings, when he suddenly he spotted a tortoise.

The goat admired the beautiful hard shell of the tortoise, and said to himself, “I wish I had a strong hard invincible body like the shell of the tortoise,” and instantly his wish was granted – the goat’s back turned into the shell of a tortoise.

The goat felt ecstatic and impregnable, till he suddenly saw a Cheetah speeding across the horizon running at high speed.

“I wish I had legs like the Cheetah,” the goat wished, and miracle of miracles, the goat’s legs immediately became like the Cheetah.

Now the goat was truly overjoyed, on cloud nine, till he saw the enchanting sight of a beautiful peacock with majestic feathers dancing magnificently.

“I wish I had gorgeous feathers like the peacock,” he wished, and in a jiffy the goat’s wish was granted, and the goat now had dazzling copious plume of colourful feathers.

Adorned with the neck of the giraffe, the wings of the eagle, the shell of the tortoise, the legs of the Cheetah and the feathers of the peacock, the Goat felt jubilant, supreme, regal, on top of the world, and strutted around grandiosely in majestic pride.

A Hunter passing by suddenly saw this unique stunning creature and he marvelled for a moment as he couldn’t believe his eyes.

The hunter gawked enthralled and mesmerized at the bizarre and fascinating creature he had never seen before.

After looking spellbound at the fantastic “Goat” for some time, the hunter recovered his wits and decided to capture this exotic priceless gem.

So the hunter cast his net, caught the “Goat” and sold this amazing “never-seen-before” and “one-of-its-kind” exclusive creature at an astronomical price to the zoo.

Large crowds gathered at the zoo, and everyone gaped in awe at this astonishingly exotic creature, fascinated by the awesome sight.

The exotic “Goat” spent the rest of its life in captivity locked up in a cage, weeping and crying, and he wondered why even those other ordinary goats, his erstwhile fellow brethren, who were wandering about freely and unnoticed in the zoo gardens, did not recognize him. 

Tell me, Dear Reader, isn’t it better to be satisfied with yourself, accept yourself as you are, be happy here and now, wherever you are, and be content with whatever you have got.  

VIKRAM KARVE

Copyright © Vikram Karve 2010

Vikram Karve has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

vikramkarve@sify.com

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Force Field Analysis: Management of Implementation

FORCE FIELD ANALYSIS and EFFECTIVE IMPLEMENTATION MANAGEMENT

By

VIKRAM KARVE



Implementation is the phase between a decision and its realization.

Implementation may be placed in a continuum in which interaction takes place between those who seek objective and those on whom action depends. The importance of implementation is undeniable because it is a struggle over the realization of ideas. Effective implementation overcomes the gaps between intention and promise, aspirations, achievement and performance, and prescription and reality. Implementation comprises the ability to achieve specified ends by chosen means.

The time factor is critical in the implementation phase of a project. Contingencies characterize implementation in several ways hence interactive and dynamic elements are vital to implementation management in order to forge links in the causal chain connecting actions to objectives with a view to minimizing the discrepancy between what actually occurs and what was envisaged.

Implementation is not self-executing. It is not a process that follows automatically once a program has been formulated. Implementation requires the presence of an action-forcing mechanism. Implementation is a control task; it needs to be dynamic, flexible and adaptable to changing situations.

Breakdowns of implementation represent fundamental failures to translate meaningful ideas into effective action. Despite taking initiatives and using rational methods, on many occasions implementation is swamped by constant pressures of unpredictable problems and crises.

It is important to distinguish between non-implementation and unsuccessful implementation. In the case of non-implementation, the program is not put into effect as intended. Unsuccessful implementation, on the other hand, occurs when a program is carried out, but fails to produce the desired results.

Implementation seems vulnerable to the domino effect in that when the initial phase is troubled the implementation failure tends to transmit itself to later phases.

Once implementation dynamics are set in motion, they become vulnerable to adverse or diversionary forces which pull them away from their original design. Hence, a cogent implementation schedule and specific techniques are necessary to move from the realm of intention to the ambit of reality.

Force Field Analysis, a technique developed by Lewin, is useful in designing and executing the implementation process. Force Field Analysis is a technique for systematically reviewing the elements working for and against a proposed course of action. It assumes that in any situation there are both driving forces and restraining forces that influence implementation.

Driving Forces are those forces that facilitate implementation. Restraining Forces impede the implementation process – they tend to restrain, dissipate, decrease or negate the Driving Forces.

For successful implementation it is essential to push on and overpower or immobilize the restraining forces, or try to transform the restraining forces into driving forces.

From the Human Resource (HR) perspective the Driving Forces include Participants [people who recognize their responsibility in the success of implementation], Movers [people who remove obstacles to implementation when they encounter them] and Shakers [people who recognize an opportunity and will make implementation happen] and the Restraining Forces may comprise Spectators [people not interested in implementation], Protectors [of Status Quo], Doubters [of the way the implementation is being done], Worriers [who are afraid of failure] and Switchers [people who abdicate and “delegate” their implementation responsibility].

Before embarking on implementation you must determine the driving forces and restraining forces and formulate a strategy to tackle them; if you rush into implementation without proper analysis, you may get frustrated and not know why.



VIKRAM KARVE

Copyright © Vikram Karve 2008
Vikram Karve has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.


http://vikramkarve.sulekha.com/


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CATWOE Model Soft System Approach

Click the link and read the article on Soft Systems Modelling

http://vikramkarve.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/06/a-human-activity-soft-systems-model-for-managerial.htm

Regards
Vikram Karve

Hurry Sickness

HURRY SICKNESS - Causes and Cures

By

VIKRAM KARVE





A central element of lifestyle management is the skill to creatively balance achievement and work success with leisure activities, family life and social involvements. Another critical aspect is the ability to feel comfortable at work and at home and to enjoy the experience of whatever is being done at that moment.

But nowadays, most of us are obsessed with getting results or completing one’s task. When task completion becomes more important than enjoying and understanding the work or activity one is doing at the given moment, a sure victim of “hurry sickness” is born.

The resultant constant sense of urgency is the trap of hurry sickness. One rushes to “get things done” to the point where it becomes an obsession.

Breaking this syndrome requires that you learn to enjoy experiences for the pleasure they give. When you gain pleasure from an experience, there is no need to get things done painstakingly. Enjoy experiences, not rewards, and things will get done automatically without any constant stressful sense of urgency.

Hurry Sickness , as defined from a psychological perspective, is “A pervasive and progressively urgent need to complete task in order to obtain rewards at completion without regard for other aspects of the work experience and by using maladaptive time strategies.”

They key causal factor in hurry sickness is the progressive need for task completion. Enjoying what you are doing is neglected with a morbid urge to getting it done as quickly as possible, no matter what the activity.

The need for task completion extends to non-work involvements as well (for example, activities like eating, playing, romance, making love, sex, leisure, having fun, loafing, taking a stroll, recreation, leisure, sports, pastimes, hobbies, holidaying, exercising, lazing around, dozing, enjoying music, cooking, gardening, doing nothing) and interferes with the enjoyment of these experiences because of the persistent inclination to hurry up and finish it off.

Getting things done has become such a strong need because the payoffs or rewards for completion have assumed primary importance. Your work experience has taught you that rewards always come at the end of the activity after you have put forth great effort to achieve a goal. You do not realize that happiness is not a destination but the manner of traveling.

Not only do you feel a sense of personal satisfaction from your achievements, but tangible rewards, such as promotion, cash incentives, awards, and advancements are given to you as well. With time, these rewards have become clearly linked with your self-esteem.

Each time you “succeed”, your ego, your inner self, sends a message to you which says, “You have done well. You are a commendable person because you succeeded again.” Your need for this kind of reassurance has become stronger than you would care to admit.

Time-Urgency quickly becomes a strong internal driving force towards task completion. Your life becomes a frenzy of completing one task after another. You are obsessed with time and wasting any of it becomes almost a mortal sin.

You strive to maximize your productivity by using time ever more efficiently, but you also have a sense that you are controlled by time and you don’t like it. Time is both your challenge and your enemy. A telling sign of hurry sickness is that even while relaxing, you constantly fight the time-urgency that causes you unrest.

Another way to seek to increase your output is to adopt maladaptive time-strategies. These questionable tactics do help you get more done over the short run, but you pay a heavy emotional price.

You now do everything faster, you have learned to “multitask” or “double up,” to do two or more thing at once, and you are constantly preparing for what is coming next before you are finished what you are doing now. The insidious trap is that you get something done quickly even when there is no reason to get anything done at all!

Because of your emphasis on task completion, you focus on finishing without regard for other aspects of the experience. In short, you have lost the ability to enjoy yourself while doing anything because of your incessant drive to get to the finish line. Because of this change, you have lost the ability to emotionally rejuvenate yourself. Chronic fatigue and pessimism are symptoms of this malady.




SIGNS AND SIGNALS OF HURRY SICKNESS


Here are some behavioral signs and signals that indicate hurry sickness:


1. Eating.

You now eat in the office while continuing to work or you just skip meals altogether. You multitask while eating. At home, you finish meals well ahead of everyone else and eat in bigger bites without savoring the taste of food. Sharing pleasantries at the table is minimal because you cannot sit long enough. Ask yourself – are you eating mindfully and relishing every morsel of your food?


2. Sex.

Relaxed and romantic sex and love-making is but a pleasant memory. The frequency has reduced and even when you do indulge in it, it is a quick encounter and you are off to sleep or on to some other “important” or “urgent” activity. Sex is less spontaneous and more mechanical these days – it has become another hurry-up-and-get-it-done-with activity. Worse, you often indulge in “faking it” in order to get it over with in a hurry so you can quickly get on with the more “important” and “productive” things in life – your “high priority” activities!


3. Communications.

Your communication patterns now focus squarely on the negative. Feedback to others emphasizes mistakes and failings and you rarely compliment or offer sincere support to anyone these days. You don’t take the time any more for pleasant chat with family and colleagues. You make demands instead of working cooperatively with others or team-building. And hey, are you on your cell-phone most of the time?


4. Leisure.

You put aside less time for relaxation and you enjoy it less when you actually try to relax. Time-off is now more of a hassle than it is worth. When you sit still, you feel uncomfortable almost immediately. You have lost the ability to “do nothing” – it’s difficult for you to loosen up and enjoy an idle hour relaxing, doing nothing. [Ask yourself why you work – reflect, contemplate, and realization will dawn upon you that the primary reason you work is to be able to enjoy your leisure, so why aren’t you taking a vacation every day and learning how to enjoy your leisure with full awareness?]


5. Family.

Family members now “report” events to you, but you share little of yourself with them. You and your spouse argue more than you talk. The satisfactions of family life have diminished in quality and quantity. Your impatience is just as strong at home as in the office.



Because you have hurry sickness, your initial tendency is to effect and expedite your “cure” in a hurry too. But this hurry-up-and-get-it-done attitude may actually sabotage your recovery. What is required is patience, perspective and the ability to deal with setbacks in healthier ways.

It is easy to blame hurry sickness on the pressures of the job and what you “have to do to survive” and on the insensitivity of the complex modern world. While each of these perceptions has a grain of truth in it, the fact remains that most of the responsibility for hurry sickness lies within you.

Your drive to get ahead is the real root of the problem and the fact is that you have lost all sense of perspective. Until you accept personal responsibility for your present state, you will not be in a position to confront and reverse the real mischief, damage and harm caused by hurry sickness.

Remember the well-known story of the hare and the tortoise. Decelerate your life a bit, slow down, walk leisurely instead of driving and do not carry or switch off your cell-phone where you can, don’t multitask, do one thing at a time with full awareness and mindfulness and learn to enjoy the experience of whatever you are doing.

Are you a victim of Hurry Sickness? Why don’t you rid yourself of this malady and enhance your quality of life? Sure, you can get rid of Hurry Sickness!





VIKRAM KARVE

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Is "Business Ethics" and Oymoron

IS "BUSINESS ETHICS" AN OYMORON?

By

VIKRAM KARVE



[An article on Ethics in Business based on an insightful model to look at various stages of moral development, ethical fitness for job roles and ethical issues faced in work situations]


When recruiting new people, or promoting/appointing persons to senior / sensitive positions, a number of attributes ( Hard Skills and Soft Skills) like Professional Competence, Managerial Proficiency, Domain-specific or Technical skills, and pertinent soft skills comprising leadership, communication, behavioural and emotional aspects, and even physical and medical fitness are assessed, evaluated and given due consideration.

But does anyone evaluate a candidate’s Ethical Fitness before recruitment or appointment?

No, I am not talking about the routine verification of antecedents or background integrity checks. I am talking of assessing Ethical Fitness.

Ethical fitness refers to ensuring that people are in proper moral shape to recognize and address ethical dilemmas. Ensuring Ethical fitness in a proactive manner will result in preventive, rather than corrective, Ethical Management.

Before launching any inquiry pertaining to the concept of Ethical Fitness, it is necessary to explore the moral dimension. Moral development is a prerequisite to ethical behaviour; in fact, a sine qua non for ethical fitness. Kohlberg offers a handy framework for delineating the stage each of us has reached with respect to personal moral development.

Stage 1. Physical consequences determine moral behaviour.

At this stage of personal moral development, the individual’s ethical behaviour is driven by the decision to avoid punishment or by deference to power. Punishment is an automatic response of physical retaliation. The immediate physical consequences of an action determine its goodness or badness. Such moral behaviour is seen in boarding schools, military training academies etc. where physical punishment techniques are prevalent with a view to inculcate the attributes of obedience and deference to power. The individual behaves in a manner akin to the Pavlovian dog.

Stage 2. Individual needs dictate moral behaviour.

At this stage, a person’s needs are the person’s primary ethical concern. The right action consists of what instrumentally satisfies your own needs. People are valued in terms of their utility. Example: “I will help him because he may help me in return – you scratch my back, I will scratch yours.”

Stage 3. Approval of others determines moral behaviour.

This stage is characterized by decision where the approval of others determines the person’s behaviour. Good behaviour is that which pleases or helps others within the group. The good person satisfies family, friends and associates. “Everybody is doing it, so it must be okay.” One earns approval by being conventionally “respectable” and “nice.” Sin is a breach of the expectations of the social order – “log kya kahenge?” is the leitmotif, and conformance with prevailing ‘stereotypes’ the order of the day.

Stage 4. Compliance with authority and upholding social order are a person’s primary ethical concerns.

“Doing one’s duty” is the primary ethical concern. Consistency and precedence must be maintained. Example: “I comply with my superior’s instructions because it is wrong to disobey my senior”. Authority is seldom questioned. “Even if I feel that something may be unethical, I will unquestioningly obey all orders and comply with everything my boss says because I believe that the boss is always right.”

Stage 5. Tolerance for rational dissent and acceptance of rule by the majority becomes the primary ethical concern.

Example: “ Although I disagree with her views. I will uphold her right to have them.” The right action tends to be defined in terms of general individual rights, and in terms of standards that have been critically examined and agreed upon by the whole society. (eg) The Constitution. The freedom of the individual should be limited by society only when it infringes upon someone else’s freedom.

Stage 6. What is right is viewed as a matter of individual conscience, free choice and personal responsibility for the consequences.

Example: “There is no external threat that can force me to make a decision that I consider morally wrong.” An individual who reaches this stage acts out of universal ethical principles.

Moral development is in no way correlated with intellectual development or your position in the hierarchy or factors like rank/seniority/status/success. In the words of Alexander Orlov, an ex-KGB Chief, “Honesty and Loyalty may be often more deeply ingrained in the make-up of simple and humble people than in men of high position. A man who was taking bribes when he was a constable does not turn honest when he becomes the Chief of Police. The only thing that changes in the size of the bribe. Weakness of character and inability to withstand temptation remains with the man no matter how high he climbs.” Ethical traits accompany a man to the highest rungs of his career.

In a nutshell the governing factors pertaining to six stages of moral development which determine Ethical fitness may be summarized as:

FEAR – Stage 1
NEEDS – Stage 2
CONFORMANCE – Stage 3
COMPLIANCE – Stage4
CONSENSUS – Stage 5
CONSCIENCE & FREE WILL – Stage6

Before we try to delve into exploring how to evaluate Ethical Fitness, let us briefly ponder on the concepts of Ethical Susceptibility and Ethical Vulnerability.

Ethical Susceptibility is your inability to avoid ethical dilemmas. Ethical Susceptibility is environment dependent (on external factors) like, for example, your job, your boss, colleagues and subordinates, or the persons around you, or even the ‘prevalent organizational culture’.

Ethical Vulnerability is your inability to withstand succumbing in the given ethical dilemmas /situations. It is dependent on your internal stage of moral development in the given ethical situation.

Whereas being in an ethical dilemma is not in your control, to act in an ethical manner in the prevailing situation is certainly in your control.

Ethical vulnerability is a measure of the ease with which a man be ethically compromised, especially in an ethically poor climate. In situations where the ethical susceptibility is high, morally strong people (ethically non-vulnerable) should be appointed and conversely, only in jobs/situations where ethical susceptibility is low should ethically vulnerable persons be permitted.

If the environment is not conducive, a person can intellectually reach stage 6 but deliberately remain morally at stage 4 as he may find that he has to sacrifice too much to reach stage 6. This can be particularly seen in most hierarchical organizations where most smart employees make an outward preference of being at stage 3 or 4 (Conformance and Compliance) in order to avoid jeopardizing their careers, even if internally they have achieved higher ethical states. This Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde schizophrenic moral approach is at the heart of many ethical dilemmas people encounter in their professional lives and may result in internal stress due to ethical confusion.

Whenever two individuals at different stages of moral development interact with each other, both of them try to force or maneuver the other into their own appreciation of the ethical situation, thus leading to conflict. In a formal hierarchical setup, the players in the chain may not be at similar stages of moral development thereby leading to dissonance in the system. Where the ethical susceptibility is high, morally strong people (less vulnerable) should be appointed and conversely, in only such jobs where ethical susceptibility is low should ethically weak persons be permitted.

What is your stage of personal moral development? Be honest with yourself and recall the decisions you made in recent ethical situations. The six stages are valuable landmarks as they tell you approximately where you are and what changes you will have to make in yourself to move to a higher level of moral development. The ultimate goal is to engage in ethical decision making at stage 6. However, the level that you do reach will depend on your ethical commitment, your ethical consciousness and your ethical competence.

Food for Thought

What do you do if your boss is at a lower stage of moral development than you? Do you masquerade and make a pretence of being at the “appropriate” stage of what moral development and practice situational ethics to reap maximum benefits. This Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde schizophrenic ‘situational ethics’ approach may cause your outer masquerade to turn into inner reality. Do you want that to happen? Think about it!


Is there such a thing as Ethical Fitness? Or is "Ethical Fitness" an oxymoron, not relevant in today's work environment?

Dear Reader, what do you think? Please do let us know your comments.


VIKRAM KARVE

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Information, Systems, and Information Systems

Title: Information, Systems and Information Systems – making sense of the field
Authors: Peter Checkland and Sue Howell
John Wiley & Sons (1988)
ISBN 0-471-95820-4


[Reviewed by Vikram Waman Karve]



Information Technology [IT] is the buzzword of today. IT is ubiquitous; almost everyone is connected with IT in some way or the other. A few years ago, till the nineteen eighties, there were courses in Electrical, Electronics, Communications and Telecommunications Engineering and later in Computer Science and Engineering, but now there are dedicated courses in Information Technology, and almost all Engineers, and even others, irrespective of their specializations, are rushing to take up jobs in IT and IT Enabled Services. The Management guys have also joined the fray and added a “management” dimension to IT by offering MBA courses in “IT Management”.

What exactly is IT? Maybe the phrase “IT” was coined to mark the convergence of two technologies that had been traditionally separate: “Computing” and “Communications” and the confluence of several streams of development including electronics, microelectronics, computer science, telecommunications, software engineering and systems analysis.

There are a large number of books and extensive literature on the content of IT. This book is a significant treatise on the context of IT. The principal author Peter Checkland is a pioneering researcher in the field of Systems Engineering and Management and has developed breakthrough concepts like Soft Systems Methodology [SSM] and written the seminal classic “Systems Thinking, Systems Practice”. The co-author Sue Holwell has a rich and varied professional experience in systems design and implementation, information strategy and communication networks.

This book has eight chapters arranged in four parts. In the first part on “The Field of Information Systems and its Problems” the authors deliberate on the basic concepts pertaining to Information Systems [IS] and Information Technology [IT], distinguish between the “Hard” (objective positivistic scientific) and “Soft” (subjective interpretative) schools of thought in the context of Management Information Systems [MIS], and introduce the reader to the fundamentals of Soft System Methodologies [SSM].

The “meat” of the book is in Part Two whose two chapters elucidate on the application of the developed Information System Management concepts to organizations and describe the “information continuum” – the linkages between data, information and knowledge. Parts Three and Four substantiate these hypotheses with experiential examples from as early as World War II and drives home the point that the evolution and development of the science of Information Systems [IS] owes nothing to computers which did not exist in 1940, makes it clear that IS is not the same as IT, reminds us that computers are a mere means of IS, and cautions us against falling into the trap of “technological determinism” resulting from the prevalent propensity to overly focus on computer-based IT and allow technology to take charge of our actions.

The book is aptly adorned with simple illustrations which facilitate ease of understanding. As the dust jacket says, the book is a work of conceptual cleansing and presents a well-argued account of IS and IT which is both holistic and coherent. I recommend this remarkable book to IT, Engineering and Management students and professionals – reading it will certainly enhance their conceptual understanding of Information Systems and Technology.



[Book Review by Vikram Waman Karve]

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A Paper on Electronic Warfare

Click the link below and read our paper on
DESIGN OF FUTURISTIC ELECTROMAGNETIC
CONFLICT (EC) SYSTEMS USING SOFT SYSTEMS
METHODOLOGY
MODELLING - SYSTEM DYNAMICS (SSM-SD)

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/7003/18881/00871616.pdf?isnumber=18881&prod=CNF&arnumber=871616&arSt=+143&ared=+148&arAuthor=Debnath%2C+R.%3B+Karve%2C+V.W.