CSR in the backdrop of the on-going financial downturn

Festivity and benevolence has a deep rooted connection. During Diwali season when a lot being discussed about low business, I was wondering how it has affected the philanthropic spirits of the people. I know someone personally who used to donate new clothes for the children of an orphanage besides other assortments, could only manage to send 20 boxes of sweets this year. This is just one tiny example of the slowdown impact, I am sure experts are observing the trend on a much bigger scale. The question is- whether this downturn will impact the CSR budgets of the socially responsible? I have been reading some articles and following the views and arguments related to this discussion. While some thought leaders argue that companies would invest less now, others stand firmly that those companies who have a true and deep commitment towards CSR are the ones who have been able to integrate this into their core business functions. Such companies would not dither in fulfilling their community commitments in future also. CSR is not anymore an endearing add-on but it is a part of ingenious business strategy for most organizations.

Though cost effectiveness is the buzzword today, I lean towards the latter perspective: I think CSR - as long as it embraces employee welfare, corporate governance, business ethics, transparency, strong sustainable community initiatives that enhance the consumer base, create a balanced and inclusive development, among other key elements, will be sustainable.

I feel CSR is not something to be done when businesses have resources in excess; rather it is a day-to-day activity and a way of running a responsible business. When the business model is such that the economic value of CSR is as clear as it can be, one does not require smooth market situation and booming economy to follow the laid down strategy. So in that sense, during the economic downturn, CSR might possibly move away from the charity-driven community initiatives to actually sustainable and responsible business practices that hold the company in good stead be it in good times or bad.

The time to panic is now!

For the past few months, I've been reading about, thinking about and worrying about the horribly dismal state of the world today and towards where it is headed. Let me try and summarise some of the things that are happening all around us at this very moment:
Human confidence around the world seems to be plummeting to an all time low. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become such humanitarian nightmares that no one seems to know how to clean resolve. Despite the spread of the much touted US style capitalism and democracy further and wider than at any other time in history, the number of people who do not have access to the bare minimum amount of food has risen glaringly to nearly 1 billion, or almost one sixth of the world population. Global warming is creating freak weather systems all over the place - we've all experienced it. Delhi just had an amazing summer without the normal 'loo' winds that normally sear the flesh, the ice caps are melting faster, the frequency of hurricanes and typhoons has grown up to an unprecedented level, sudden floods in some parts and droughts in others, fishermen returning home with smaller and smaller catches. The world also seems to have reached peak production on its fuel of choice with consumption outstripping new discoveries. Oil prices have fluctuated from highs of around $140 to $67 a barrel in the past few months. Food prices have gone berserk in the past couple of years. Grain, once so plentiful it was often left to rot in piles on the ground, is suddenly in short supply, driving feed and food prices through the roof. The fertilizers and chemicals needed to maintain high grain production are in short supply and prices are at record levels. In the US, foreclosing on people’s homes and anti depression medication have become the only remaining growth industries.
So what's wrong with this picture? To me the obvious and glaring problem is the complete absence of panic for the right reasons that I see all around me! Instead of worrying a great deal as one united planet about some of the things that I have just mentioned, what are people around the world worrying about? All the usual stuff, business as usual. How we should save the financial services sector or help bankers save their bonuses; why Sarah Palin would blow up $150,000 of the Republican campaign budget on her wardrobe; whether the Congress party in India was clandestinely responsible for inciting Raj Thackeray as a political tool against the Shiv Sena; how Christianity or Islam would one day convert / wipe out all other religions so that only those who accepted the one true Trinity / God were left on the planet; about sending machines to the moon, building nuclear weapons or stopping others from doing so etc etc ad nauseum! People need to realise that these are not the important concerns of the world anymore and leave them immediately. It doesn’t really matter whether the US leaves Iraq in 6 months of 6 years because it’s not a subject worth wasting precious time and effort on. Right now, it’s time for all mankind to come together and fight the common enemies – those that have the capability to threaten our very existence as a species.
And that is why I believe that the time to panic has come. There are times when a cool head and a calm approach are exactly what are needed. For example, when financial mayhem strikes global financial markets, the last thing we should to do to try and fix things is to panic the public and cause a run on banks! But this is different. This time I believe panic is just what we need to break out of all the denial, wishful thinking, inertia, media spin and political cowardliness. I think that public panic is the only thing left that has a small chance to shake things up and get those who need to worried enough to finally get off their comfortable backsides and start thinking of solutions as if their lives and all of ours depended on it.

The damage that mankind has done to the amazing gift that is our planet in the past 100 years or so is so completely criminal as to be almost mythical in its scope and scale of rape and pillage of the Earth’s resources. And I believe that it's reaching an inflection point in history. Unless we can think of some very, very fast and furious global manner in which to sit down and talk to one another about what we are going to do about the future, we are going to leave behind such a terrible world for our future generations that they will rightfully have nothing but hate for us.
I believe that we are heading at an alarming speed towards the most jarring social, financial and ecological calamity of the past 700 odd years. Nothing like what's coming has happened since the killer plague raged across Europe in the mid-1300's, annihilating one out of three human beings there and very nearly succeeding in pushing Europe back into the dark ages.
Yes, in my opinion, what we’re about to face is that serious and it's that frightening. Human beings have all become immune to showing consideration for the sustainability of this wonderful planet which has made life possible and fed us, bred us and allowed our species to flourish over the millennia. Instead, we've become addicts of the quick, the easy, the cheapest and the short-term fixes. That's because short-term fixes are great at addressing immediate problems, despite the often obvious finite nature of the resources required and the negative impacts such quick fixes almost always produce as byproducts.
However, I believe that there is a silver lining and, ironically I see it as a byproduct of the current global financial crisis. For the first time in recent history, something has happened to shake up the rich and the super rich of our world! All other crises that have occurred around the world in the past have mainly affected the poor and the disenfranchised - the rich were always insulated by what they could buy and their trappings of wealth. But this time they have been directly hit. The whole gigantic financial castle in the air that had been created over the past few deregulated years has suddenly dissipated into the stratosphere, leaving behind very little to show for it other than the amazingly creative brains of those same super rich people. And we all know that they are bright enough to realise that this time, when the doo-doo hits the fan, no one will be left untouched, not even them.
So I believe (and fervently hope) that it’s now time to panic. It’s now time for those same geniuses, who until now have used their colossal cumulative mental faculties to create immensely complex abstractions in the form of intricate financial products and services, to join the rest of us and start thinking about some of the more important issues concerning the world we live in. And I believe that they will, for if they do not, we and all living and non-living things on this planet are forever doomed.
Please read this woman if any of you are by now thinking that I am either hyper reacting or have started going completely unhinged or if you still believe that things will all be back to normal once the markets settle down: http://www.vandanashiva.org/ and an interview with her at http://www.alternet.org/environment/85433/

Telecom Regulation – Effectively Blocking the Pesky Calls

You are in the midst of an important meeting, and your mobile rings. The display shows a number that you do not recognize. You don’t want to pick up the call. But it could be important, perhaps from your child’s school. You excuse yourself, pick up the call and say hello. Good Morning Sir (or Madam), I am calling from the XYZ Bank and we have an excellent scheme….you get frustrated and angry, call the caller names, threaten the caller not to call again, and say you would sue them, and disconnect the call.

Back to the meeting, you are still seething with anger, and not at your best for a while. This can happen in your home city, or travelling with in India or even when travelling abroad. And pay huge roaming charges for these unsolicited calls. If you happen to be travelling to the US, you could even be woken up with these calls due to the time difference. Sounds familiar? There is hardly anyone amongst us who has not faced such a situation almost on a daily basis!

See the Times of India, page 5 of October 23, 2008 (Delhi Edition). Even a Delhi High Court Judge is frustrated about pesky (unwanted) calls. See http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Delhi/HC_to_ICICI_Bank_Face_the_music_for_making_unsolicited_calls_/articleshow/3629951.cms.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) launched the launched the Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications Regulations in 2007 which was then amended in 2008. This provided a facility to the mobile users to register themselves in the ‘National Do Not Call Register’. Marketing companies are supposed to keep checking this database and update their records so that they do not call these people.

The TRAI website gives data of how many people have registered, how many times marketing companies are using this data, etc. It also gives procedure of how complaints can be filed, process for enquiry, etc. However, there is no data about how many complaints have been filed. What happened to these? Was any penal action taken on anyone? You can see more details at http://www.TRAI.gov.in/TRAI/upload/Regulations/73/regulation17mar08.pdf.

However, the calls keep coming! Everyone who I know is still getting these calls. And most of these folks have registered themselves on the above ‘National Do Not Call Register’.

Who wants to get rid of unwanted calls?

The marketing companies? Obviously not, they are looking for business. So what if someone is getting disturbed, or already has a credit card or insurance from the same company that is calling now!

The TRAI? Yes, but they seem to be helpless beyond creating the regulation. It is just too messy and prolonged affair to register complaints, process them or impose any penalty, if at all it can be imposed. The penalties mentioned in the regulation do not seem to be any significant deterrent anyway.

The mobile companies? Of course not. They generate revenue from these calls. If they are lucky, they can collect roaming charges too. The telecalling companies are big institutional customers for them. They must be having high level account managers for them!

The mobile users? Yes of course! But other than registering on the ‘Register’ or getting angry on the callers, what else can they do?

There are two objectives of this article:

1. Send email to TRAI. Say that you are still getting unsolicited calls. As them to do more. Their email addresses are trai@trai.gov.in and trai@del2.vsnl.net.in.

2. Both these email addresses given on TRAI website bounced today! So please print this article and send it by post to them: THE TELECOM REGULATORY AUTHORITY OF INDIA, Mahanagar Doorsanchar Bhawan (next to Zakir Hussain College), Jawaharlal Nehru Marg (Old Minto Road), New Delhi - 110 002.

3. Forward them the url of this blog. Because this article is suggesting a way in which these calls can be stopped in a big way.

A New Solution to Stop those Unsolicited Calls

TRAI enacts a new regulation that requires mobile operators to implement ‘Stop Unsolicited Calls’ feature on their telephone system.


This is how the ‘Stop Unsolicited Calls’ feature would work.

i. When you get an unsolicited call, you press a pre-determined sequence, say #007 on your phone.

ii. As soon as this sequence is entered, the telephone system recognizes that this is an unsolicited call, and it creates a log in the system which notes the telephone number of the caller, and other details.

iii. As soon as the telephone system sees enough evidence of unsolicited calls from a telephone number, they send an automatic warning to the user, asking them to stop. And inform TARI simultaneously (say through a shared database).

iv. Even after this, if the caller persists (you will know because more people would be pressing #007), then TRAI automatically refers this to the Consumer Court, which will automatically impose a significant fine, say Rs 25,000 on the caller.

v. If the caller (the company whose employees are making the unsolicited calls, and not the employees) is caught in a situation of being referred to the consumer court a 2^nd time, the fine could be higher, say Rs 50,000. For the 3^rd offence, it could be Rs 100,000. And after this, imprisonment of of 1 day for the promoter or managing director or proprietor.

vi. Even a simpler solution could be that once a caller is identified as unsolicited caller, then the service to that number is automatically stopped. The next step could be to stop services to all telephones registered to the caller. And share this data to all other mobile operators so that no one provides service to such a caller.

This system would work because it is efficient and effective. All evidence (call records) is automatically being collected. There can be no mistake. Courts do not even need ‘hearing’ as everything is fool proof. No one can drag their feet because it would hurt their business.

It would also work because it works in the internet world. There was a lot of spam earlier. But with efficient solutions like ‘Stop Unsolicited Calls’, the spam has reduced significantly. When you receive email or invitations on email, if you click ‘This is Spam’, then it ‘hurts’ the person who sent such an invitation. There is still some spam, but relatively low. The same thing can happen here too.

This is possible technically. The solution would perhaps be simpler than implementing ‘Number Portability’ across mobile operators. This regulation is already enacted, and would be available in India with in a few months.

But who will ensure that something like this gets taken up?

YOU. Act NOW. Renowned spiritual leader, H. H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar who started Art of Living says that we usually postpone good deeds (e.g., making a donation to for a noble cause). But do not wait for doing things that are not so good (have you ever postponed getting angry:)

It is simple – (1) Write to TRAI and request them to help stop the spam – send them this article – you can easily email it from this blog, (2) Forward this article to as many people as you know and ask them to do the same (3) You can also request TRAI to fix their email address :)

Lets Make A Difference. Lets (be) M.A.D. Lets stop the Mobile Spam.

Why don’t you share your comments here too? What else can we do for the mobile spam?

Self Appraisals

The posting ‘M.A.D. As A Manager’, got several comments. And these comments showed two things – that this is an extremely important subject, and that there is a lot of room for getting more out of Performance Appraisals. The comments also added more perspectives…the more, the better!

One of the comments suggested that we discuss ‘Self Appraisals’. Here we go, and I am sure this will stimulate more thoughts for all of us to ponder on.

Let us begin by asking what is the purpose of Self Appraisals?

Many a times, we as employees, use it for ‘posturing’, i.e., writing great stuff about ourselves and feeling good about it. There is an inherent belief that if we write something which is not grade A, then the manager may take ‘advantage’ of this and give us a low grade! The other belief, conscious or sub-conscious, is that if we are showing ourselves as the best, it would put pressure on the manager, and he/she would feel compelled to give a good grade to us, because who wants to upset a team member!

Ask any manager, and most will tell you this – that they do have their own assessment about each of their team members, even before they receive the self-appraisals. Please note that managers tend to make continuous judgment about the performance of their team members (they are human too :-) and that this does not depend on self-appraisals that happen once a year anyway. If the manager finds a self appraisal too high compared to their own judgment, they may feel some pressure because the employee is likely to feel upset. So they start thinking about how to convince the employee that their judgment is right. Only rarely would a manager change the rating of an employee due to pressure.

We all know that most companies have a ‘distribution curve’ to which the ratings of a large group must comply to. And this puts a constraint on the manager to irrationally change someone’s rating just because of a highly rated self-appraisal.

The general purpose of Self Appraisal could be seen us getting some form of benefit. It could be in the form of higher rating, recognition, higher role, promotion, reward or award or increase in compensation. These are all subject to the judgment of the manager as discussed above, and may not have a material impact on manager’s decision.

One other benefit could be to use the Self-Appraisal for Introspection, Reflection and Contemplation – sitting quietly, and looking at what worked well and what did not, what I want to achieve and where I want to go, and what changes I can make in myself to increase my chances and speed of reaching there. Such an appraisal would bring excellent results to the employee regardless of what the manager thinks! Because you can actually use you self-appraisal to make things better yourself. And, when a manager sees this type of appraisal, they feel very positive towards the employees and their energies get directed towards helping and enabling the employee in making things better, rather than making a plan to defend their own assessment.

Having looked at data related to tens of thousands of performance appraisals, I have seen that about two-thirds of best performers rate themselves same or lower than their managers! Perhaps, a candid approach to self-appraisals goes a long way in making an employee a best performer!

Being M.A.D. as a Self-Appraiser would certainly give better results in the long term. Why get sidetracked by inflating the self-appraisal, which even if it gives some short term results, will prohibit any long term gains! So the choice perhaps is with all of us in the role of an employee, whether to be M.A.D. or not. If we are M.A.D., we would be Making A Difference to ourselves, and to others around us too. Perhaps this is Leadership too.

As always, you can be M.A.D. too – by sharing your thoughts for everyone to benefit. It would be best if you directly post these on the blog.

What should we discuss next?

Navaratri

All of us have grown with Navaratri being celebrated at our homes by our parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, and neighbours. We all have some idea about it, but with time, many of us have gotten away from it since there was no one to explain us the deeper meaning. This week, Navaratri celebrations started all over India. Although I had never done this in the past including my childhood, my wife Vandna and I along with our children have been involved in celebrating Navartri at the International Centre of Art of Living at Bangalore for the last few years. We have just returned from ‘Adhyatma Sadhna Kendra’ in Chhatarpur, New Delhi where Navaratri is being celebrated in the most traditional manner by the Art of Living Centre in Delhi-NCR. It is a most beautiful experience, something we had not imagined.

Earlier this week, the following article was written by H. H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the Founder of Art of Living, in Times of India (Speaking Tree). This gives the perspective, something to which all of us would be able to relate. It takes us deeper, away from what we have seen on the surface.

Navaratri Is Celebration Of The Universe

The festival of Navaratri is celebrated with prayers and gaiety in the beginning of autumn and spring. This period is a time for self-referral and getting back to the source. During this time of transformation, Nature sheds the old and gets rejuvenated.

Vedanta says, matter reverts to its original form to recreate itself again and again. The creation is cyclical, not linear; everything is recycled by nature in a continuous process of rejuvenation. The human mind, however, lags behind in this routine cycle of creation. Navaratri is a festival to enable us to take the mind back to its source.

The seeker finds the true source through fasting, prayer, silence and meditation. Night is called ratri because it brings rejuvenation. It gives relief at the three levels of our existence — physical, subtle and causal. While fasting detoxifies the body, silence purifies speech and brings rest to the chattering mind, and meditation takes you deep into your own being.

The inward journey nullifies our negative karmas. Navaratri is a celebration of the spirit or prana which alone can destroy Mahishasura (inertia); Shumbha-Nishumbha (pride and shame) and Madhu-Kaitabh (extreme forms of craving and aversion). They are opposites, yet complementary. Inertia, deeply ingrained negativities and obsessions (Raktabeejasura); unreasonable logic (Chanda-Munda) and blurred vision (Dhoomralochan) can be overcome only by raising the level of prana and shakti, the life-force energy.

The nine days of Navaratri are also an opportunity to rejoice in the three primordial qualities that make up the universe. Though our life is governed by the three gunas, we seldom recognise and reflect on them. The first three days of Navaratri are tamo guna, the second three of rajo guna and the last three of sattva guna. Our consciousness sails through the tamo and rajo gunas and blossoms in the sattva guna in the last three days. Whenever sattva dominates life, victory follows. The essence of this knowledge is honoured by celebrating the tenth day as Vijaya Dashami.

The three primordial gunas are considered as the feminine force of the universe. By worshipping the Mother Divine during Navaratri, we harmonise the three gunas and elevate sattva in the atmosphere.

Navaratri is celebrated as the victory of good over evil. From the Vedantic point of view, the victory is of absolute reality over apparent duality. In the words of Ashtavakra, it is the poor wave which tries to keep its identity separate from the ocean, but to no avail.

Though the microcosm is well within the macrocosm, its perceived separateness is the cause of conflict. For a gyani or a wise person, entire creation comes alive and he recognises life in everything in the same way children see life in everything. The Mother Divine or pure consciousness pervades all forms and has all names. Recognising the one divinity in every form and every name is the celebration of Navaratri. Hence, special pujas honouring all aspects of life and nature are performed during the last three days.

Kali is the most horrific manifestation of Nature. Nature symbolises beauty, yet it has a horrific form too. Acknowledging the duality brings a total acceptance in the mind and puts the mind at ease.

The Mother Divine is recognised not just as the brilliance of intellect (buddhi), but also the confusion, (bhranti); she is not just abundance (Lakshmi), she is also hunger (shudha) and thirst (trishna). Realising this aspect of the Mother Divine in entire Creation leads one to a deep state of samadhi. This gives an answer to the age-old theological struggle of the Occident. Through wisdom, devotion and nishkama karma, one can attain advaita siddhi or perfection in the non-dual consciousness.