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Start : 11th December, 2020.
End: 06th February, 2021.
Added P.S. : 22nd February, 2021.
[LINK] to the presentation sent as a pre-read for the session. Following is the verbatim correspondence to provide backdrop to the presentation.
Thank you for inviting me. While I will be showing up, my showing up is representative of work of my colleagues at Social Synergy Foundation, a non-profit registered in Mumbai, which works with other non-profits. We are not sure of what we do, so long ago we decided to use an elastic term called organisational development. We could have used anything else but this one rhymed better and had bit of a vintage taste to it.
We are practitioners who work with other practitioners who have spent many more years doing what they are doing. The vagaries of time do take their toll, and ironically, leave little time for thinking and demand much time for acting. Being forced to exert constantly is after a fashion tiring for our clients as well as us, more so because chances of error reign high and when you have something someone has spent years building, errors matter.
But act we must. We have therefore always tried to seek an answer to the question : how should one act? Its search necessarily leads one to accept what our forefathers knew well but which has well-nigh evaporated from the life and language of today. They knew that first principles matter and that is all that matters. They also had the intellect to lay claim on meaning in things common-place. Today, we have all been groomed, and groomed well indeed, to maintain the person and lose the 'persona'. Or, as a cartoon in a financial journal satirically depicted : "a husband, staring at his phone, tells his wife, 'My algo says I love you' and the wife blushes all over."
Your invitation to the session was an excuse to re-trace the outline of this "anomaly in acting" with a sharper pencil. The enclosed presentation is not a presentation per-se but a pre-read : something that the fellow is expected to read and ask questions on. I will dutifully show up at the appointed hour and await for your fellows to pose questions. Their own homework will dictate how the class shall work.
The presentation has pedagogic value : thus, by necessity, it is explicit on somethings, hinting about some others, revealing of wide openings and pivots, and absolutely silent on a few. The method of vocalisation therefore may surprise those who may be planning to skim through the presentation on their hand-held electronic device with a cup of coffee in another. Its length at nearly 200 slides is not reflective of the complexity of content, but the unavoidable fact that what is most simple often requires careful enunciation and deliberate repetition. The barrenness of most slides should also ease the strain on the eyes.
A word of caution : those who will try to interconnect the parts will be frustrated. Similarly, those who wish to find one central idea, or a group of ideas, too shall encounter misery. Those who wish to fit it into a systematic logical mould will also rue their time. The best way to read something like this is to at least make an attempt to remember each of its parts, even if it is not possible to comprehend them outright. Most of what my colleagues and I have gathered through the years is being alert when something was said and then leaning on it when the time came, sometimes after several years.
As an example, one of the things said in this presentation was what I heard back in 2008 in an off-hand conversation and which became lucid when putting this presentation together. If the writer (or assembler) could wait 13 years for the dust to settle, surely the reader wouldn't mind biding some of her own time.
The typographical and grammatical errors remain my own.
P.S.: Material supplied to introduce the speaker.
Kushagra is part of Social Synergy Foundation, a non-profit of like-minded individuals concerned with preserving the work and experience of grass-root civil society organisations that trace their roots to individuals and ideas which evolved in the creative and intellectual ferment of the 70's, 80's and early 90's.
This follows from their desire to apply their skill to what generates enduring value. In their view, civil society offers the most fertile soil to associate with real value creation. While the dirt and noise of today hides the treasures of the past, for the persistent soul it offers many a chances.
Like his colleagues, he has drifted into civil society through a process of elimination : by avoiding or moving out of what did not seem to make much sense by asking two simple questions : what not to do and who not to become. In this he, and his colleagues, are helped by their close experiences in the world of business and finance.
There is no deep sense of purpose or meaning which ties together the 15 years he has spent in management consulting. His objective, like that of his colleagues, is quite primitive : to earn one's share of the good without reducing another's.
He counts himself terribly fortunate that his parents inculcated and encouraged a natural curiosity to not only understand how things work but why they work the way they do, and to learn to love language, especially one's own mother-tongue. Most importantly, they taught him, by their own example, love of routine physical household chores, not being dependent on anyone in managing one's own affairs, and paying close attention to detail : qualities, which more than any qualification, continue to yield steady dividends.
This interaction of his with you starts from self-evident truth : we are what we are trained to be. To change oneself, one must therefore be willing to train oneself, the most difficult of all enterprise, but also the most rewarding.
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