Recently, it was time for annual festival of Jagannath Rathyatra in India. Ahmedabad too had a Rathyatra. In the Rathyatra festival, a chariot carrying Lord Jagannath is toured around the city. It is said that God comes to see his/her devotees on this perticular day. It was a great feeling to be a part of this festival. One sees happy, dancing people all around. With the lords chariot come many other shows such as bodybuilders, bamboo fighters, drummers etc. Other than this one can see a bevy of people running around to organize everything from water, food to crowd control.
Yesterday, I found myself deep into this spectacle after a long pause of 12 year. Among many delightful things, I noticed how organized this event was. There were supposedly more than 20000 people on the narrow streets of Ahmedabad. But there was a feeling of resposbility shared by people all around me. They were contributing in their capacity for the success of this event and having fun at the same time. It was as if there was an invisble force moving them towards service. I wondered then why we do not have the same sense of duty towards our nation or myraid other things such as environment or water management or our parents.
I feel service to an unknown force which is considered beneficial is more convincing than something which is not as mysterious.
Nation as a concept seems to be abstract or hard to grasp. Its benefits are yet not clear to Indian society. Nation has mystery but it is not perceived to have power over destiny of people. And so people ignore it.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Looking things from others perspective. How?
Why billions of dollars in aid package for resolution of humanitarian crisis end up doing nothing or something quite opposite? Why kids listen to their parents but do things totally unrelated? Why couples never seem to 'understand' each other and squabble all the time? Why people always seem to do things which we have no clue about? As if they are in their own little worlds, doing their own unconnected little things, in their own ways. The answer to all this is that they are actually in their own world, doing things in their own ways.
We all see world through our own lens or in other world, we have perspectives. It is also true that perspective are strongly linked to culture (culture: a set of beliefs and values imparting us a distinct pattern in our way of working). And people belonging to same culture have similar perspectives. Those who want to make an impact on people or a group have to deal with looking things from others point of view. It is something leadership should be adapt in doing. Because leaders have to deal with bringing people together on a common objective. It is not possible to bring people together unless they understand what leaders are talking about.
The more important question in understanding perspective is not why we want to do so but how we can do so. It is hard to see things from others point of view. Recently, in a seminar given by a well known design company representative, I learned a few tricks.
Designers have to understand others perspective all the time. They, after all, most often designing products for people. Designers have to understand the need of the product from the users perspective. In order to make a successful product, designers have to see the product from users eyes. But they do not always have opportunity to experience what other people are experiencing. So the key question is how you can still see and feel what others are seeing and feeling. The major insight offered here was that we still can understand others perspective through collective observation followed by contrasting interpretation. According to the designer, we tend to interpret as we observe. This practice does not allow us to go beyond our own way of thinking and doing. What we instead need to do it to make pure observations first without assuming anything. Then combine several contrasting observations (this is why diversity is necessary in deign company) to interpret observations.
The orator offered many examples of the process. According to one of them, a company making fishing net approached the design company for advice. The fishing industry was facing the problem of declining sales for a long time now. This company wanted the design company to help understand the underlying reason for the declining sales. Design company took the assignment and made a team to observe the buying pattern of families in Walmart. The team made pure observations and then met to discuss and interpret the data. They found from their observation/interpretation exercise that in most cases father and son due come to purchase the fishing set. However, when they come to fishing sports section of the Walmart they are met with a disarraying set of choices in the fishing sets. Most of the folks do not have deep knowledge of the fishing equipments and therefore, they feel baffled by the large number of choices. In such situation, fathers end up moving to other section and usually buy other sports equipment which seem simpler to choose such as football, tennis racket etc. The team successfully extracted conclusion from this experience and made a simple fishing set containig all needed things for fishing.
We all see world through our own lens or in other world, we have perspectives. It is also true that perspective are strongly linked to culture (culture: a set of beliefs and values imparting us a distinct pattern in our way of working). And people belonging to same culture have similar perspectives. Those who want to make an impact on people or a group have to deal with looking things from others point of view. It is something leadership should be adapt in doing. Because leaders have to deal with bringing people together on a common objective. It is not possible to bring people together unless they understand what leaders are talking about.
The more important question in understanding perspective is not why we want to do so but how we can do so. It is hard to see things from others point of view. Recently, in a seminar given by a well known design company representative, I learned a few tricks.
Designers have to understand others perspective all the time. They, after all, most often designing products for people. Designers have to understand the need of the product from the users perspective. In order to make a successful product, designers have to see the product from users eyes. But they do not always have opportunity to experience what other people are experiencing. So the key question is how you can still see and feel what others are seeing and feeling. The major insight offered here was that we still can understand others perspective through collective observation followed by contrasting interpretation. According to the designer, we tend to interpret as we observe. This practice does not allow us to go beyond our own way of thinking and doing. What we instead need to do it to make pure observations first without assuming anything. Then combine several contrasting observations (this is why diversity is necessary in deign company) to interpret observations.
The orator offered many examples of the process. According to one of them, a company making fishing net approached the design company for advice. The fishing industry was facing the problem of declining sales for a long time now. This company wanted the design company to help understand the underlying reason for the declining sales. Design company took the assignment and made a team to observe the buying pattern of families in Walmart. The team made pure observations and then met to discuss and interpret the data. They found from their observation/interpretation exercise that in most cases father and son due come to purchase the fishing set. However, when they come to fishing sports section of the Walmart they are met with a disarraying set of choices in the fishing sets. Most of the folks do not have deep knowledge of the fishing equipments and therefore, they feel baffled by the large number of choices. In such situation, fathers end up moving to other section and usually buy other sports equipment which seem simpler to choose such as football, tennis racket etc. The team successfully extracted conclusion from this experience and made a simple fishing set containig all needed things for fishing.
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