Business Intellects

As we begin this new year, here are some tips on Time Management :
- Manage by planning priorities well, and reduce or eliminate non-priorities
- Ensure you know the value of time and respect it. Be on time for appointments (call ahead if delayed). Don't waste your time or others time. Times flies (but you can still be the pilot) and once lost, cannot be got back like Money. Time is limited (just 24 hours a day) unlike money, and hence utilize it and take care of it for good returns and happiness
- Invest more in Planning it right before executing anything - do a good risk plan (what-if scenarios) so that you are better prepared. As a Chinese proverb goes : " It takes more hours to sharpen the axe than to cut the tree ". Think ahead for contingencies. Planning, they say, is to document the future into the details of the present.
- There is always time for everything important to you but you need to 'find and allot' . "No time" is never an excuse. Distribute the limited time to be more meaningful to you and to serve your purpose. Enjoy the present moment. Make your time, and take your time in things that give you happiness.
- Tomorrow never comes or comes late after many hours, hence do it NOW. Do not regret waiting for another day if you can achieve things today. Achieve more or something else tomorrow.

TREAT TIME with VALUE - it is PRECIOUS. MASTER your TIME through Discipline and Control.

Sridharan Madhusudhanan (Joint Secretary, MEA) said: “Performance and capacity are two different things. It is fair others judge our performance and not capacity. But we make the mistake of taking that performance judgement as a judgement of our capacity. As a result, we stagnate, deteriorate, and sometimes, we give up. Capacity can be nurtured, developed, and turned into performance”
Here he has tried to make some relationship between the two words – capacity and performance. I wanted to elaborate on this by adding three more words and first offering their meaning and then try to find some meaningful relationship between them.
Ability: “Possession of the means or skill to do something, or natural talent or acquired skill or proficiency in a particular area”
Capability: “Power or ability to do something, in short ,capacity”
(Human) Capacity: “Your ability to do something, or the amount of it that you are able to do, in short, your capability”
Potential: “Having or showing the capacity to develop into something in the future”
Performance: “A series of behaviour to accomplish specific results or objectives, or the ability to perform consistently at our best in the environment within which we are operating at that moment’”
You would have heard the corporate term MBO – ‘Management by Objectives’. How many of you are privileged to have a documented set of objectives before you start a quarter or a year to clearly understand and accept that you are supposed to achieve for your team or group or company? Also, an acronym called KRI – “Key Results Indicator”, have you been given your KRIs before to start a time period of work? Mostly the CEOs are given targets to achieve and are supported and reviewed by the board of directors. If the objectives are SMART and KRIs clear and bought off by both parties (you and company), then you can be assessed on your performance against it. Only Performance can be measured through metrics, your ability can be evaluated by tests or other means, but your capacity or capability cannot be either evaluated or measured. Your capability should manifest itself in your performance. You are always judged by impact, not by the intent by which you do things.
For a CEO, the Board of Directors of any profit-making organization would not say (usually, unless there has been a recession year) maintain the same revenue or profits – they would give a target (ex. 20% year over year – YoY) to achieve. Meaning you are not evaluated next year by what you are doing this year – you are usually pushed to the next level, they know you have the “potential” and you have “greater capability” and hence they can expect more from you. This is how promotions in an ideal world should be given as well, the performer (employee) should be performing at his next career level over a period of time consistently for him to be elevated to the next level. For a CEO to perform well YoY, he needs to have a highly-performing team with him- he needs to select his team well to achieve his goals. Same way sprinters like Usain Bolt always are looking at pushing themselves to gain that microsecond to perform better because they believe (and we believe) they have the potential to do so. One cannot sit on your laurels for a long time- one should be constantly improving by getting the right opportunities and performing well in it. As your performance increases, the expectation also increases – either by the company or by the spectators of any game. This is a vicious cycle – once your curve goes from a linear or an exponential rising one to a flat one, it is time to quit.
Almost all government establishments have a stupid criterion of AGE for job promotions which is ridiculous (Time in Job, I have seen many private companies also have this criterion) – by spending an amount of time in a particular job, you are automatically destined for promotion to the next level – whether you even achieved or “able” to perform at the present level is irrelevant.
When you are selected for something (be it a job or a sport), it is already determined by the selectors that you have the required ‘ability’ – this is the basic minimum needed to get your foot in. Just because you have the ability, does not mean you have the capability to do something – meaning, the skills are there, but not being used properly to achieve something useful. There could be many reasons for the same – your boss, your team, your surroundings, your work ethics, changes in family equations etc. You are seen to perform in different environments equally well. Great engineers do not automatically become good leaders. Great batters or bowlers do not become good coaches. This is why we see lots of domestic talent in cricket being wasted when they start playing at the international level – they simply cannot perform. IPL wonder kids become international laughing matter. By constant training, capability or human capacity can be developed and extended – that is why pacers go to MRF foundation to get better, to increase their capability and the NCA for improving their fitness levels.
So, the basic acceptance criterion is your ability. Once in, you need to constantly and consistently improve your capacity to perform better and better, and with that the expectations of you also increases and your potential value also increases, thus pushing you to increase your capability to deliver results.

The education delivery at the school and colleges is going through some disruptive changes globally, thanks to COVID. This semi or complete overhaul was long coming, and we better use this opportunity to sharpen newer ways to deliver education by enabling technology and Internet.
A few thoughts:
- no more big schools with many classrooms - a good lab infrastructure, a few class rooms with good media capability with a huge exam hall, some vocational training rooms, administration rooms and a big playground is what one should have going forward.
- no more standard time for education - may be a shift system, each shift catering to a bunch of classes to be the norm
- Hybrid system to begin with - definitely possible in all metros of any developing countries as well, where students come to school twice a week and other three days have virtual classrooms. Very similar to how the future workplace would look like.
- a great digital library membership for all students - get all reading materials online
- Skill based training - incorporate vocational courses like carpentry, automotive repairing, electrical technicians etc. from middle or high school. All Do It Yourself sort of programs - DIY
- Exam systems to be totally changed - constant evaluation through the year. Work out the 'cheating part' to deliver intermediate exams and tests online and have final tests and exams at school. Make the exams open ended so that students get to apply what they learnt. This is the time to enable this.
- Evaluation tests replacing all competitive tests across the country (esp. India) for Engineering, Medical, Law, Applied science, Management or any other profession which is good for both government and private colleges admission. Takes away the stress from the students. This has to be enabled so that private colleges do not impose more tests for admissions
- Admission to central universities first and then state government colleges and only then to private colleges - this should be sequence so that private colleges do not try to fleece the students to join early before they get better colleges later. Very rampant, misused and waste of hard earned money of parents. During the competitive evaluation, have students give 10 preferences of where they want to get admissions - both government and private.
- enable all teachers to be able to deliver education online in a consistent form.
- Have core subjects and one or two electives that students can choose from middle school.
- Promote home schooling and issue guidelines for the same
No more big campuses, much lesser stress, hybrid physical-virtual classes, constant evaluation through the year, and admissions streamlined. This can be done even starting 2022.