I came across this link via Balaji's GTalk status message. It was a TED talk on "wearable technology". Some of the stuff is just downright cool. In one of the demos the user projects a call pad onto his palm, using something that looks like a holographic level thing and uses that to call a number. Very "Beam Me Up Scottie" only! While it is cool and all that, I am personally not one for revolutionary changes. I like my changes to occur gradually. I used to be anti-gadgets once, so admitting this is my first step :P But it is definitely something to watch out for. The video below shows the talk on Wearable Technology.
I also stumbled across this video regarding a different user interface called bumptop.
Bumptop can be downloaded here. As the speaker says in the video, the premise of bumptop is to make your computer desktop more like your real desktop, which is cluttered and clumsy. However, the cluttered and clumsy layout conveys information. For example, a bigger pile of something could mean work you are putting off to handle in one time. Or the physical location of the piles on the desk conveys information.
Overall, I really liked it. Found the user interface very intuitive as well. Basically, loved that you could stick pictures and stuff on the wall. You can make a pile of files and throw in a folder as well, just like in the real world.
Check out my "bumptop"ped desktop:
A disclaimer here: Yeah yeah, I am sure there is something in some version of Linux which is either cooler or negates the need for a desktop in the first place. For all I know, there could be some OS which is not only more efficient, it can also cook food and clean the kitchen. But as I have said earlier, one step at a time for me.
I was browsing through the Times of India yesterday and my eyes fell upon the column Swaminomics. I do not follow the column normally, I used to read the centre page of ToI for Jug Suraiya once, but never anything else. However, what made me read the article was the headline: "It's Goodbye Chindia and Hello Chimerica". The article revisits the relevance of the term "Chindia" - China and India hyphenated during the years 2003-2008. Swaminathan points out that the recently concluded G-20 meeting could have been a G-2 meeting for US and China seemed to be the only countries that mattered.
I think the article is on the dot and timely. Perhaps this idea is a well known idea among geopolitical experts, but the point is China has really left us behind as an emerging star. To put it in clearer terms, pre-2008, if someone had asked me to bet on the emerging super powers in say 30 years time, I would have put my money on China, India and Russia. Post the crisis I would put all my money on China. It is not a matter of China growing at 11-12% and we growing at 9% (at the peak) What matters is the thinking in the political establishment. To quote from the article:
"India scarcely matters. It is still a country that instinctively seeks aid and foreign concessions. On the international scene it is a taker, not a giver. China, however, is now a giver. In the proposed expansion of the IMF's lending,China has offered to supply $40 billion, against $100 billion from Japan and possibly the US. India does not figure in this giver's list, it would rather be a receiver."
There are many critics of the US. There are pages and pages written about US and its hegemony. There is some justification to that. But where was the action when the US became vulnerable during this crisis. Chavez can rail all that he wants, but when this crisis hit, did Venezuala emerge as a beacon for the world? Did Chavez or Castro demonstrate the power of an alternative model? The EU also did not emerge as a clear counter. We are still left looking at the Dow Jones and S&P for cues. And the world is rallying on the news that there are signs of economic recovery in China.
The rise and fall of nations is to me, the most exciting aspect of history. If you want to go back and study history, I say, start with post-15th century history. Pre-15th century is important,yes, but the history of various nation states is more interesting and instructive.
Between 15th-16th centuries, Spain, with its "conquesting" sailors and access to riches in South America was the most powerful nation in the world. From the 17th century to World War II, Britain was the most powerful nation in the world. In between, Britain faced a challenge to its supremacy first from the French and later in the 19th and first half of 20th centuries from Germany. Post World War II, with a weakened Europe, US became the most powerful nation in the world. A great part of the credit goes to the visionary Marshall Plan, where the US came up with a huge package for European Reconstruction. In other words, when the older powers were reeling, the US emerged as the financial big brother.
What is important to understand is the following: unlike a corporation where there is a hierarchy which an employee negotiates to get to the top, there is no such hierarchy in world politics. All the global organizations are more or less influenced. The struggle to be the most powerful nation is a simple, Darwinian struggle and the nation that has the resources and is willing to commit them for the fight will win. You can say it crudely like a two-bit gangster would say, "No one hands anything to you. Ya gotta take it" (Jack Nicholson in "The Departed") Or you could say politely that China has a strategic vision in world politics. Either way, the motivation is the same.
The nature of the resources has changed with time, pre WW II it was guns and tanks. Now, it is economic might. During this crisis the most powerful nations in the world were on their knees begging for money. If you had the money and were ready to twist some arms, the prospect of jumping to another league was there.
At this stage, a qualification is necessary. I am not saying that just because China aspires to be a superpower, we must too. There is no need. Especially, if China had been somewhere far away, near Australia or something, we could have said, "Good for them" and gone about our lives. And just because they are neighbours does not mean we too must strive to equal them every way. Swaminathan's point of Chindia being dead is right on. If there were delusions in that direction, they must be disabused of. My point is: while crises are tough, and unfair to many, they create cracks in the power structure which the underdog or upstart can exploit.
Much to my own surprise I have not felt the compulsion to spew my thoughts out in the blog, given that I am lazing around at home. As the astute reader may have wagered, the reason for that is simply that I have had no "blogworthy" thoughts. I have fallen into a comfortable rut. Just like Newton is said to have got the idea of gravity by seeing an apple fall, I suspect he would have got the inspiration for the First Law looking at how slothful he became when he came home for the vacations. A body in rest, indeed continues to be in rest unless acted upon by an external agent! Three cheers to that! Will someone get the beer for me?
Of course, a large amount of my time is spent in front of the TV. And in all that time I have made some observations. One of them has to do with anchors on various news channels. Interestingly, the girls of CNBC-TV 18 - a Finance News channel - are way, way prettier than the girls on Channel V! First of all, I see only one female VJ on Channel V and even the girls on V's reality shows can't hold a candle to the CNBC TV 18 girls. There is of course, Shereen Bhan, who to put it politely, is a real looker. Mitali Mukherjee is almost perfect, except she does not have a photogenic smile. There are a couple of other cuties - more like trainees for Mitali's and Shereen's roles. I never get their name. Of course, even Mitali and Shereen come second when compared to Erin Burnett and Maria Bartiromo. A note here. All these anchors really know their stuff. Yes, there is the occasional faux pas and Erin Burnett is known for a couple of them, but they are very very good, no arguments. From a news perspective, I like the Indian team. They are balanced and do not over-reach. There are times when Erin and Maria seem to give their spin on the news, instead of giving the news first and then talking about it. But over-reaching or not, Erin and Maria are clearly the top guns.
So, here are the issues. Has the designer label wearing, fin. sophisticate babe become the flavor of the season? Will they stay? Has the punk'd out rebellious rocker chick gone out of fashion?
Sun Music. Seriously, where do they get these anchors? There used to be talk that one of the reasons for Actor Dhanush's popularity was that he looked like the Average Arumugham on the road. His was not the perfect-jaw-boned, chiseled-body image that Bollywood actors projected, hence he connected with the masses, film reviewers argued. Well... the producers of Sun Music seem to have taken that to heart and appear to have a policy of picking people who do not look smart at all. One moment. When I say smart, I do not refer to physical looks. I mean, smart - well groomed, well turned out, people who wear dresses that suit them. Add to that, all the male anchors want to do the "Boy Next Door/kalaichifying" image played by Vijay in Ghilli.
But what really irritates me is the tremendously unrefined manner in which all of them speak. This is supposed to be cool. Please! Of course, if you ask the studio executives they would say, this is what the masses want. Probably, if you go and ask the "masses" they would express a yearning to listen to good Tamil!
The Old Judge finished reading the book and let out a sigh. He had been postponing an unsavory task for far too long. He stood up to walk to the old mahogany desk, but turned away and approached the window. He started pacing the room nervously.
The room was luxuriously furnished and filled with books. The room had a signature smell. The smell was an oddly pleasing combination of the usual smell of old books and the smell of moth balls, and the smell of wood polish and the smell of dust. There were hardly any visitors to the den, but the few who had had the privilege instantly recognized this smell to be the one people associated with the Judge. Society women had long speculated on where he procured his enchanting flavor of perfume.
The Judge of course, was oblivious. He was an odd man for any age, but he was positively an anachronism for his. Early on he had taken a policy of minimum social contact as well as banning newspapers from his house. He was steadfast about neutrality and treating the case as per its merits. Instead, he read and read and was truly one of the few polymaths in a time of specialization. He had written monographs ranging from religion to chemistry. However, in the last few years he had conceded defeat to the era of specialization and mostly stuck to the social sciences.
The Old Judge mused on his life. It was true that his name was a by word for integrity but it was also equally true he could afford these eccentricities as he had been born rich. At various times, he had seriously thought about what it was to be a judge. Did being a judge require moral purity on the judge’s part? Definitely, in religious works, the judge was a man higher than men, a man who possessed superior character and wisdom. However, in today’s world, the judge was a man appointed by a process, based on a test. Character was required no doubt, but everyone knew that the judge was no Man of God. He could be a man of character and wisdom but it was enough if he was a competent and consistent interpreter of the law.
While human beings constantly engage in activities that are questionable but not blatantly illegal, a judge could not be expected to do that. For often, the definition of Judge did carry on outside the court and the personal actions of one appointed as Judge were usually interpreted as “the right thing”.
The motivation behind this chain of reasoning would have seemed strange and intellectually fascinating to an outsider but to the Judge it was based on a pressing reality. While everyone knew the Old Judge of today, no one seemed to know of the wayward Old Judge in his young days. At that stage, he had been known to patronize localities that would cause scandal in the press. The Old Judge sometimes bitterly regretted the moral high ground he had seized. Yes, he had seized it as an ambitious man. Seizing the moral high ground placed him at an advantage in his profession. Integrity was the defining quality, not brilliance, and he had played it well. Of course, this did not mean the Judge was not smart. He was, extremely.
But he hated the moral high ground. It seemed as if he analyzed every action of his extensively and previously simple joys, gave him happiness no more. He could not, for one, frequent the delightfully decadent cabarets his city was famous for.
He was about to sentence a man to death. In his role as a neutral interpreter of law, it was a mundane matter. The evidence was overwhelming; it was an “open and shut” case. But the man had been poor and was not particularly bright. He really was not a hardened man, he was genuinely remorseful. The Judge knew the feeling. A feeling of impotence arising from situations beyond his imagination drove him to over react to an insult and he ended up committing his heinous crime. The man’s story reminded the Judge of one incident which had caused him many a sleepless night.
The Old Judge had embarked on a long travel when he was a student. His father had furnished him comfortably with money. As was his wont, he had squandered money in some disreputable places and there was no way he could account for his spending. One night he found himself sitting outside a railway station, shivering, contemplating what to do. The Judge had a strong spirit, so, nothing drastic occurred to him. He was thinking of what jobs he could do when a drunken man slumped beside him. The man was quite intoxicated yet he continued to swig. He staggered up to vomit but ended up vomiting around. The Judge walked away disgusted by this man.
He walked around the station twice. He came back to his old spot, to find the drunken man sprawled out on the platform. He looked at him for the man did not look like a bum. His dress was old, but the pieces of clothing were well chosen. It occurred to the Judge that the man could have obtained it from a second hand auction or as a hand me down. He still had taste to wear them in that manner.
The man seemed to be unconscious. He took the cask from him and drank the whiskey. He felt like a thief but the whiskey felt delicious in the cold. But he stepped away in shame, for he still felt bad for drinking without permission. After some walking around, he again came to the place where the man lay. He saw his wallet jutting out. He looked once, turned away, shocked that the thought passed over him. Then he reached for the wallet thinking he would have a look and see who the guy was so that he could contact his dear ones. He took the wallet and immediately darted to a dark area nearby. Unable to see anything, he edged towards some light from the station.
The Judge opened his wallet to see fresh notes. Then a strange thing happened, something he had tried to analyze and justify for years. He just snatched the money, placed the wallet back and ran.
It was as simple as that. Robbery.
As the sun dawned, remorse overtook him.
Perhaps, his family in the village needed this money and they would starve.
On the other hand, maybe he himself had been a thief. For a responsible family man would not have got drunk like that.
What if it had been a one off? Would his family die?
Maybe he was a drunk and wife beater.
Whatever he was, the man would tell the police.
But there were no witnesses.
What if there had been one? He came from a respectable family. All he had to do was to wire home, maybe his parents would have suspected, but they would have still given him enough to be respectable.
He actually sobbed for a moment. Then ran back to the station to the spot the man had been. The man was gone.
This incident troubled him for years. Had he acted out of self preservation? What is right? Hurting someone is clearly wrong. He had actually been waiting for the comeuppance and when karma did not extract its price, he went into penance.
Then he sighed. Let us, for a moment, suppose that this information was to get out. Would it then void his decisions as a judge? For clearly, had he not shown poor judgment? Had he been penalized for his misdemeanor he would not have been a judge. Yet, he was going to sentence a man to death, simply because he had tricked society to give him that license.
He came to the conclusion that he always came to - laws never prevented crimes for the criminal never really thought of the punishment when he committed the crime. A society bereft of spirituality would always find a way to beat the law. However, the organizations responsible for promoting spirituality, the religious organizations, seemed to promote everything but spirituality. And herein lay the conundrum he had grappled with for his life.
I have been following your blog regularly, though, even I do not know why. The blogs are long and rambling. The sentences are jerky and have too many commas. In addition to that you choose to inflict upon us some "art". Despite that I follow you, because like me, you too like to start sentences with "Basically". (Psst... Are you Tam-Brahm?)
I beg to ask a question. I find it difficult to maintain a sunny disposition. I feel blue whenever I think of myself. How is that you cope with the existential dilemmas that come upon one like waves on the shore that leave only to return?
Yours, Feeling Blue Male, Dustbin near Independence Park
Dear FB,
I am touched by your insightful letter. Basically, the fact that you observe so much indicates either a) you are an astute observer or b) you really ought to find a job. Anyway, coming to your problem many people think alcohol is a way out of the blues. I would advise otherwise. I used to resort to alcohol once. Yes, in the good old days, when I did not know of things better, I used to swig Old Monk with Pepsi a la rickshaw-puller, as I did my homework. But, I do find a definite correlation between developing what is cutely called a "traffic police mama paunch" and the perusal of alcohol. Ergo, with much sadness I have cut down on the habit. (sigh)
In the absence of -OH beverages, what then are the options? If you can read this blog, you can access the internet. Hence I recommend Youtube videos of the kind below to "beat 'em blues".
Exhibit A
(I got this video through Raghav :))
Of course, before you cluck your tongue in disapproval, you must know that I believe, in the manner of Bertrand Rusell, that the intellect while giving man many advantages gives one singular disadvantage; it makes him anticipate sadness and when that sadness transpires he still, paradoxically, feels sad though one would expect him to feel happy for having anticipated that sadness. Hence, when negative thoughts enter, I resort to means that drain the blood from my head to judiciously allocate it to other parts of that body that may use it more fruitfully. Seeing the wholesome goodness of two babes cavorting away to a kuntry song in itsy-bitsy clothes is indeed the meaning of life. (Tears of Joy)
{joke} It is said that Nayanthara visited her tailor and gave an order for a dress. By mistake her kerchief slipped out. When she came to collect the dress, she found that the tailor had made the dress out of the kerchief and such was his honesty he also gave some bit of the cloth that was unused. {/joke}
Thanks for writing in. Not that I give a Rat's Arse.
I find that in addition to being an engineer and worshiping Pink Floyd I also love Monty Python. Will I get laid before marriage?
Yours, Very Anxious, Male, Computer Club
Dear VA,
No. But you, son, have known a rare pleasure that few men know of, so take that you biker dudes! Now that you are not going to get laid, why don't you spend some time on "A Bit of Fry and Laurie". In some parts, they are even better than the Pythons!
Exhibit B,C, D:
Thanks for Writing In. Not that I give a Rat's Arse. ____________________________________________________________________
If you have any such profound questions on life, relationships, academics then fire away to the following address:
Subject: Dear Middler c/o middlergivesaratsass [at] gmail [dot] com
(read as middler-gives-a-rat's-ass)
If on the other hand, you need money from Africans or male enlargement pills just check your spam folder. ____________________________________________________________________
*This was too one of their sketches though I am not able to locate the video now
The last three blogs of mine have been kind of heavy, preachy and long. So here is one that is light, short but still preachy.
One of my favorite pastimes is watching videos on youtube. I discovered Goodness Gracious Me, some good music and most recently, the American Talk show host Craig Ferguson. I find Craig Ferguson spontaneous, warm, great with expressions. More importantly, his brand of comedy is markedly different from the usual galaxy which includes Letterman, Leno, Colbert, Kimmel and many others.
Anyway, I happened to see an interview of Paris Hilton by Craig.
Paris looks stunning, the flowing blond hair, the red frock-ish outfit, just gorgeous. However, I really got irritated by the way she spoke. Let me clarify one thing. One has heard and read a lot about Paris. But I think she has potential. For one, I do think she can look like a heiress when she puts the effort. And I have seen videos in which she has tried different things. (Not those, you pervs!) But this interview put me off. I strongly disapprove of this "umm... yeah... I umm.. well, yeah" kind of talk. The body language is put-off-ish. The giggle comes across as artificial and disingenuous. The school girl giggle, few people like it on school girls, but on a woman it is just not nice at all.
Writing is indecent exposure and I guess what I am about to say also reveals something about me. Well, what the heck. My favorite women characters in American sitcom (in order) are Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Elaine, Patricia Heaton's Debra and Cobie Smulder's Robin Scherbatsky. So, I looked at the video of Julia Louis-Dreyfus' interview with Craig.
She is a billionaire heiress too. But she starred in such a plain Jane role in Seinfeld and her bits for Saturday Night Live are also pretty good. Most importantly, since she is not being "cool", look at the folksiness, the ease with which Craig and Julia banter along. Must be the upbringing which makes all the difference.
(I finally ended up profiling Peter Drucker for the course. It is damn hard to profile someone and frankly, this is not my usual style. At some places, I admit, some sentences are contrived and affected. Also, it was a 2700 word essay which I have edited a bit. But despite all that, I think it is a pretty entertaining read and it is my first attempt at newspaper type writing. So ... here it is)
Adventures of a Bystander
Life and Times of Peter Drucker
Peter Drucker is widely considered the “Father of Modern Management” after the publication of the book the “Concept of Corporation” in which he predicted the rise of corporations as the dominant form of organization in the post World War II era. The book borne out of a study of GM also brought in vogue the “Management by Objectives” paradigm. With time he was credited with the predictions such as the decline of the command and control form of management - characteristic of the assembly line approach - and the rise of decentralization. He also predicted the rise of Japan as a modern power and a credible alternative to US. Some of his predictions which came in for criticism such as his assertion that top management pay should never be more than 20 times that of rank and file appear to bear significance in the light of recent events in the financial services world. Interestingly, Drucker predicted the decline of the R&D system in the US characterized by the creation of a number of PhDs, post-doctorates and the competitive research grant process. There is little data to support that prediction and the American R&D system continues to be the most envied in the world.
Given his phenomenal predictive power and status as a thinker ahead of his time, the objective of this essay is to glean insights from his autobiography “The Adventures of a Bystander” to explain his subsequent success in life.
The context under which Drucker grew up is vastly different from ours. He grew up at a time when formal degrees were optional. When Drucker was researching on GM in the early 1940s, he got access to biographies of everyone of the senior management easily except one. He figured they were hiding something about him and when quizzed it turned out that the person in question had possessed a PhD. Apparently everyone else had risen from the level of clerk or mechanic and it was considered de rigeur to rise to a top position without “manly” experience! Drucker’s career involved a lot of transitions which would be hard to imagine today. After finishing high school, his first big job was with the Daily Frankfurter General Anzeiger. There he rose quickly upto the post of senior editor, partly due to the fact that a whole generation had been wiped out due to the First World War. He did a part time doctorate in Law while at Franfurt. Increasingly repulsed by the rise of Nazism he decided to move to London. There he found a job with a merchant bank. This experience helped him financially but more importantly it earned him some good connections, but after some time, he decided to move to the United States. His first shot to fame came with the publication of the book “The End of Economic Man” in which he alerted the American audience to Hitler’s Final Solution.
He brought out his next book while a faculty at a place called Sarah Lawrence. In the book “The Future of Industrial Man” he recognized the increasing role of corporations. After joining the faculty at Bennington University he was looking to write an indepth analysis of a company – from the organizational structure to the operations. When he approached industry, he was rebuffed by suspicious executives. His break came when GM approached him to do a book. The book “The Concept of the Corporation” laid the foundations for management as a modern discipline. It also made him a consultant to many top businesses, launching a separate career for Drucker.
Some themes emerge from this. It is no doubt that Drucker’s growth was characterized by the written word. However, he was not a writer of fiction. The interesting thing is that Drucker’s interest lay in human affairs, how humans behaved in the structure of institutions that are imposed upon them. However, that neither fits economic theory nor does it fit political theory. So unknowingly, he ended up creating his niche – management – which did alienate him from both the fields. It is tempting to speculate on why he thought the way he did. Drucker grew up in a Europe that was still debating on how society should be organized. Young men were still pre-occupied with debates over the superior ideology – Communism, Socialism, Fabianism etc. Therefore, when Drucker came to America and looked at American society, the notion of the corporate as an alternative to these ideologies would have occurred. However, to develop into the formal system that he eventually managed, required ability.
The title of the book itself is an insight into a defining characteristic of Drucker – that of the detached observer, questioning, pondering but rarely judging. The chapters in the book are named after people who shaped his life at various stages of his development. Drucker narrates his story through their influence on him. These influential personalities range from his grandmother, to friends of his parents, to men of fame such as Henry Luce (The publishing moghul who founded Time and Fortune) and Alfred Sloan (The CEO of GM for more than 30 years)
What is surprising is that even at a young age Drucker shows an emotional sophistication far beyond his years. While describing the bizarre antics of his grandmother who was the source of many family jokes, Drucker alone is able to go beyond the mocking and perceive the underlying value system that led her to function in that way. On reflecting about it, he realizes that much of her “goofiness” was due to her stubborn insistence on following an outdated value system in a world that was in a state of flux. However, the fact that it was outdated did not mean it was wrong or funny.On the contrary he suspected a deep wisdom and grace behind that value system that people of his own generation lacked and sorely needed.
There is a pattern to the people he admires. Drucker shows a tendency to admire strong and independent personalities. His heroes are eccentric, strong willed, acerbic, rebellious but always genuine and honest to the point of hurting themselves. He speaks of Dr. Hermann Schwarzwald, a prodigious civil servant known to his family. Hermann or Hemme as he is referred to was a crippled Jew with a bitter tongue, who rose to stratospheric heights in the closeted Austrian bureaucracy. Hemme was also incredibly eccentric. Drucker tells an interesting story. Being a Jew, crossing a certain threshold in the services required a discrete conversion to Catholicism. Hemme steadfastly refused even after a letter from the Emperor. But Hemme’s genius was undeniable; hence the requirement was removed expressly for him. After he got the post he crusaded that Jews must come to the post only after ridding themselves of the Jewish spirit! (Hemme considered himself a Confucian!) Drucker accepts these seeming contradictions but again manages to go deeper into a person’s psychology. He argues that Hemme’s behavior was entirely consistent. He rejected the Emporer’s request because it just discriminatory. On the other hand, Hemme himself disapproved of some cherished Jewish values! This aspect is crucial to understanding his success as a management thinker. Ultimately, beyond all the fancy analytical tools developed today, business is about human beings – aspirations, needs, emotions. Going beyond the superficial and understanding the unstated and contradictory human yearnings is key to understanding management and this is precisely what Drucker took out of his experiences.
As mentioned earlier, he looks for models from various spheres of life and is open to learn from anyone who fits this mode. One of Drucker’s earliest jobs was at a merchant bank in London. There he met Ernest Freedberg, an old fashioned private banker who enjoyed nothing more than a good deal, yet maintained the highest ethical and professional standards. There was an incident when Drucker had to check a claim of 80,000 pounds (in 1920s) against his firm. He found that his firm was indeed on the wrong and wrangled a deal for paying damages upto 50,000 pounds. On getting back, Freedberg quizzed him on his actual estimation of the liabilities. When Drucker admitted that the firm was indeed morally responsible for the 80,000 pounds, Freedberg phoned the firm, apologized for the mistake and offered to pay the full sum as damages.
Freedberg also brought Drucker in contact with some remarkable personalities. Drucker speaks of Uncle Henry, owner of a retail chain in the United States, whose lessons on human behavior and business ethics profoundly shaped Drucker’s sensibilities. There is a story of how retail chain owners across the region found that store clerks were pilfering merchandise. While other store owners brough security agencies, Uncle Henry figured there was something wrong with the compensation system and changed that to deal with the problem. Such thinking is of course common place in management today and one can speculate that Drucker learnt these lessons from such personalities. However, Uncle Henry never went to a school all his life.There is also a Dutchman called Willem Parboom whose abilities to spot deals and implement them was genius. Drucker speaks of how Parboom approached the Austrian minister when a crucial industry was going down and offered to restructure the ailing industry, which he did with great aplomb! Parboom too never had any formal education, but he possessed a quick mind and enormous drive.
It is no doubt that exposure to such strong personalities at a formative age shaped Drucker’s character extensively. What is amazing is his extraordinary access to such people. Is that an accident? On the hand, Drucker appears to have unfailingly impressed every employer he worked for. On a number of occasions he was chosen as an envoy or a representative by his ex-employers. Even factoring for modesty, Drucker does not come across as an academic prodigy. Definitely his family’s standing did provide the introduction, but Drucker appears to have built upon it with great success. It is hard to ascertain what exactly that quality was that helped Drucker to gain his employer’s confidence.
One theme that comes up repeatedly in the book is that of learning relevant lessons from history. In this respect Drucker is uniquely gifted in that he possesses a wide reading. His understanding of history and context is genius. For example, even as a young man barely twenty, Drucker gets into an argument with a law student over what can be called the “Great Man Theory”. The law student (who was later to become Henry Kissinger’s mentor) contends that foreign policy is supreme and hence requires a great man at the helm.Drucker counters with the following remark by Benjamin Disraeli. Disraeli commenting on Bismarck’s diplomatic triumph in the Congress of Berlin says that*:
“Poor Germany; Bismarck is old and cannot last long. And then they will try to fill the giant’s shoes with a lieutenant of Marines who will either be timid and not dare do anything or [he would be] so besotted as to believe he can play Bismarck. Either way Germany will be lost”.
From this, he points out that every great foreign minister be it Bismarck, Richelieu (France) or Metternich (Austro-Hungary), though celebrated in their times, sowed the seeds of the decline of their countries simply because their successors could not match up to their brilliance.
I am of the following opinion. Some skills of life can be taught. Arithmetic, writing, bookkeeping can be mastered by diligence, hard work and a set of good learning tools. Some other things like conflict resolution, attitude towards failure and success, attitude towards money arise from the surroundings viz. parents, relatives and peers. Based on this one can feebly speculate on the source of his intuition.
Peter Drucker was born into the lap of education and intellect. Born to a family of civil servants in Vienna, Drucker was surrounded by personalities of immense gifts. His father was a senior civil servant in first the Austro Hungary empire, then in the Austrian Republic. His mother was one of the earliest women graduates in Vienna, passing the exam for the university at a time few women attended university. Drucker narrates of an incident when his mother was the only woman sitting in on Freud’s lectures which consisted of many references that may embarrass a woman. It was undoubtedly an elite progressive environment that he grew up in.
Drucker also grew up in a Vienna where Freud and Jung were discussed on dinner tables. In these conversations, the scientific method was dissected to bits. This was also a time of extreme ferment in the world of Physics. Drucker speaks of a conversation in his house between Oskar Morgenstern and a professor of psychology by name Karl Buehler. Oskar Morgenstern later was to lay the foundations of game theory in a seminal work with Von Neumann. It was this upbringing that gave him the depth to formalize a very fuzzy field such as management.
From such a background, one would expect superior academic and intellectual qualities. It is hence not surprising to see Drucker’s predisposition to intellectual pursuits. Also his brother became a doctor. However, it is interesting that Drucker chose this path and his brother chose the professional path. This gives rise to the age old debate between nurture and nature. While it is of no doubt that being in an intellectually stimulating environment ensured intellectual interests, it does not explain why some people choose to employ their gifts in one field and some in others.
In the preceding paragraphs we saw some aspects of Drucker’s personal development that could have contributed to his success. However, the real question of interest is: If we speculate some reasons could be the secret of his success, will mimicking them ensure success? Can every child growing up in an elite progressive intellectual environment become a Drucker? One can say that children growing up in such an environment are likely to do better simply because we would expect that such an upbringing emphasizes professional discipline. But what about the other Druckers all of whom were in the academic world but yet did not reach this fame? Peter Drucker undoubtedly possesses an intuition that is superior. How does one develop wisdom and intuition? Is it then a by- product of your environment?
In my opinion, the fundamental values that helped Drucker were curiosity and ability to deal with multiple viewpoints. He speaks of personalities very different from himself. Yet, Drucker was able to not only tolerate the difference; he was able to look at the good points. These are lessons every manager must learn. Interestingly, a mind interested in many things can also be accused as one lacking focus, and it is one that he admits in the book. Also, Drucker seems more interested in the moral than the details of the story, and his characters are too perfect and heroic. At times Drucker has been criticized on his interpretation of data. However, what remains is that his unrelenting questioning, polished by a sophisticated upbringing made him uniquely suited for a role such as an advisor or consultant.
A loafer trying to get through life doing as little as possible. At times it becomes a bit hard, being a student at IIM Bangalore, but as they say, where there is a will, there is a way.
