Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

-- Dylan Thomas

MVP

Wow, I like this. This is by far the best representation of MVP I've ever seen. Now you know what I will be using to influence my team!

Source: http://blog.crisp.se/2016/01/25/henrikkniberg/making-sense-of-mvp

Down but not out...

I was watching goals scored by Messi today and it was very inspiring. What I observed was that when everybody else falls and complains about a hard tackle, Messi sees that an opportunity to continue the game and look for a goal. He must be an eternal positivist!

Too busy...

Haha, this video perfectly summarizes my excuse so far for not posting here. Yes, it is a constant struggle to find time for the "right" things. And yes, I do fall prey to something's on the left. And yes my dear friends, that is my challenge for this year!

Renewing/Replenish - Why bother?

I often hear people saying that they just don't have the time to relax. They just can't make the time to renew and replenish and take care of their mental well-being. By renewing and replenishing I mean spending some time calming the mind. To help it relax and sharpen it. Dr. Stephen Cover in his book Seven habits tells us a an interesting story about why we should bother spending time renewing ourselves. The story clearly illustrates the point...

Once a strong and hard working woodcutter was trying to saw through the trunk of a fallen tree. It was very large and even though the wood cutter had been sawing for hours he hadn’t even cut halfway through.

A wise farmer was passing by and he stood and watched the woodcutter for a moment. He then asked the woodcutter “What are you doing?”

The woodcutter was annoyed. He turned towards the farmer and replied “Don’t you see? I am cutting through the tree!” He then carried on sawing furiously at the tree trunk.

The wise farmer replied “You look exhausted. How long have you been working on it?”

The woodcutter continued sawing crazily and said ” Yes cutting through the tree is hard work. I have been working for over 3 hours.”

The wise farmer then said  “The blade of your saw is surely blunt from all the sawing. Why don’t you stop for a few minutes, take a break from this back-breaking work and at the same time sharpen the saw?”

The woodcutter carried on sawing in a frenzy and shouted angrily: “I don’t have time to sharpen the saw! I have all this wood to cut!“

Thud!! And a split second later...

Sunday evening. 10Pm. A cool breeze sweeps the land. The winds are cold and the ground is frozen. A young badger digs the ground and looks for food. The frozen ground does not yield and makes it hard for the badger to dig. She looks out and decides to go for a walk in search for food. The badger stretches its neck to peck... and Thud!! The front tyre of the car hits the badger. A split second later the rear tyre runs over the badger!

This my dear friends was my first experience of running over an animal. I went back home and despite being a non-religious person, I said my prayers for the animal. As a deep sympathizer of animals and their lives, I was deeply affected by the incident. The scene of the badger crossing the road kept coming back to me and I had trouble going to sleep. So, I went back home and looked up about the lives of badgers.

A family or a sett of badgers as it called can comprise up to 13 individuals. Badgers are very territorial and are creatures of habit. They are clean animals, clearing out their home daily, and even make their own toilets at a distance from the living quarters. Sometimes they have separate Winter and summer quarters. During the Winter they can spend days at a time underground, sleeping. Badgers in the wild are rarely seen during the day. Badgers are rarely seen during the day, but go out for food at night. Their favorite foods are earthworms, insects, roots, fruits and berries.


Unfortunately the only sighting that many people have of badgers is by seeing a road casualty. Badgers have no natural predators in the UK since bears and wolves became extinct from our islands. However, badgers do face many threats and all of them from Man.

Badgers can live for up to 14 years, but are likely to die or be killed before they reach this age. Road traffic kills around 50,000 each year, and although this is a terrible toll, populations in many areas remain high. Intensive agriculture and urbanization have more serious effects. But, badgers are not the only victims. Altogether, with estimates of 75,000 foxes and 40,000 deer, some 165,000 animals are killed by motorists each year. Conservationists claim badgers and other animals seen dead by the roadside are just the tip of the iceberg, with as many dragging themselves away to die.


I am certain that nobody really wants to drive animals to their graves. So, there are three points I'd like to make with this post today:

1> Defensive driving techniques, such as driving slowly, honking your horn at animals who look as if they are about to enter the roadway, or flashing your high beams at animals to break the sometimes hypnotic effect of the glare of the headlights can help.

2> Hitting a badger at high speed can cause the driver of a vehicle to lose control, potentially resulting in a serious traffic accident. Drive slowly.

Driving at night is certainly something I will try and avoid. Especially driving on country roads at night.

3> Report to Scottish Badgers - There are several animal welfare agencies that attend to roadside accidents. Doesn't matter where you are, look up online and give these guys a call. Who knows, somebody may be around to save a precious life.

Take care and do your bit.

Food or security

A great video that shows the ever lasting and ever relevant great theories of Harlow and Maslow in action...

Fish in water

Each day we hear thousands of phrases and hundreds of a words. But we remember only a fraction of what we hear. Research suggests that we remember only 1/10th of what we hear every day. I suspect it is lot lesser than that... it's more like 1/25th for me!

So, with so many messages flying around and so much visual stimulation keeping our minds busy each day, how does one convey a strong message and most importantly how does one make sure that the audience remembers the message?

The trick apparently is to make your audience visualize your words by using stories and metaphors. Stories offer a consistent message with a clear beginning and an end and therefore is easy for the brain to comprehend and remember. Our great ancestors realized this centuries ago and encoded their messages in the form of fables. Story telling is a brilliant way of conveying messages - as anybody with kids would know the power of using fables to convey emotions and morals to young minds. You don't have to believe me, see it for yourself here...

 https://www.ted.com/topics/storytelling

Story telling is a difficult skill to master and if you can't think of a story quickly, you can substitute it with a metaphor! Metaphor thinking provides a way to present complex information using simple examples.  Metaphors provide specific frames or lenses for understanding the world and are central to the way we read, understand, and shape organisational life.

One such metaphor that has stuck with me is "Fish in water" - a metaphor used by one of my professors to describe how we limit our thinking. A fish in water swims happily in it's own world and tends to do the same things everyday without realizing what is happening beyond the fish tank. He used this metaphor to describe how we sometimes limit ourselves and limit our thinking. We tend to repeat the same actions and expect the same results. Every action reinforces the cognitive bias and strengthens the forces that tend to support the stereotype - of being a fish in the water. But then, the fish cannot live outside the water. So, the trick apparently is to jump above the water every so often and look below at the water we live in - then adapt accordingly. This by far is one of my favorite metaphors.

Metaphor thinking can help create powerful images and help solve complex problems. Several authors have written about metaphoric thinking. Here are some interesting books that talk about metaphoric thinking.

1. Images of Organizations - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Images-Organization-Gareth-Morgan/dp/1412939798

2. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Metaphors-Analogies-Power-Teaching-Subject/dp/1571107584

-------------

P.S - Next time, I'll be cheeky and rewrite this post as a story :)

Inspirational speeches

One of my favorite inspirational speeches... the true power of storytelling.

"I have a dream" by the great Martin Luther king is yet another favorite. You can find them here...

http://www.diresta.com/resources/articles/how-to-give-a-motivational-speech/

Parkinson's law

I recently came across a couple of laws by a writer called Cyril Parkinson. His book called Parkinson's law - The pursuit of progress presents a very interesting view of organisations. I have not read the myself, but it is on my to read list.

One of his laws says that - work essentially expands to fill the time available. This means that if you have a piece of work that is estimated to take say three weeks, then the work somehow expands and takes the full three weeks to complete. The estimated time to complete primarily determines the pace at which you approach the task. In addition, it also gives you the ability to multitask and allow for interruptions during work. This law is quite an important especially when you are managing projects and it has considerable managerial implications.

If say a PM subscribes to this view, then it unlikely that he or she will believe when a employee gives an estimate for his work or updates the status of his/her tasks. It is a fairly thin line for a PM to tread by.I know some people who live by this rule. At the extreme end living by such a rule can drive behaviors that will be seen as pushy or un-trusting.

The second law of Parkinson called the law of triviality is even more interesting. It is also sometimes called the bike shed effect. Parkinson says that when people are put together in a room and asked to decide about a trivial thing such as the color of a bike shed, they can spend inappropriate time arguing and discussing what color would best work for the bike shed! Committee based decision making typically falls under this category. Imagine sitting in a room and discussing the color of a bike shed! Does it sound familiar? It does to me, I've been part of several such things that have added no value whatsoever. It is either irrelevant or something that is completely beyond the sphere of control.

The reason I remembered this today is because I am going to pick up a bike this weekend. And yes, it is for me. I was wondering if anybody wants to suggest what color bike I should pick up? And what color should I paint my bike shed ? :)

-Sandeep Kowshik

The Countess of Chester

A few months ago I got a great opportunity to do a consultancy project with the Countess of Chester Hospital. I traveled to Chester with three other project mates and stayed in the on site accommodation provided by the hospital. The Countess is a fairly big hospital and has a staff of a few thousand people. Through the project I got to meet and interview quite a few people across the organization - radiologists, pharmacists, senior consultants and even the executive board members. Our final presentation to the exec board and the CEO went really well. Our work was highly appreciated and was very well received by the exec board. It was a great experience, a lot of learning and I thoroughly enjoyed working with my team at the Countess.

But the point of this post is really about the NHS. I have been in the UK for about five years now and touch wood I've never been admitted to a hospital. So my view of NHS in general was really colored by people around me. Some positive, some negative. But my experience of staying and talking directly to people across the Countess has completely changed my view. I found people at the Countess to be passionate, committed and very caring for the patients. People were very friendly, welcoming and always greeted each other with a smile. I don't know about the other NHS hospitals, but I was totally impressed by the professionalism and the camaraderie in the Countess. I am sure the other NHS hospitals are equally good if not better than the Countess.

NHS is really a great gift to the people in UK. In comparison, the Indian medical system is slowly heading the US way and soon the hospitals will become un-affordable for the poor in India. It is already very expensive in India and it troubles me to see the almost extortionist attitude in the medical system. It is appalling that the Indian system is failing to learn from the failures of the US medical system. NHS on the other hand is a great equalizer, it provides great medical facilities for the people irrespective of social class. Surely it has its own shortcomings and challenges. But I am certain that it can and should be addressed and fixed. I hope people support the services of NHS and help to preserve such a good medical system. And all I want to say is... I have new found respect for the NHS!  

Dr. E. Deming - Out of crisis

Dr. Edward's Deming they say is the father of quality revolution. He is credited with the creation of Total Quality Management (TQM) - the industry buzzword before the Lean & Six Sigma movement.I don't know much about TQM, but I know it failed and people will look at you suspiciously if you use these words! Nevertheless, the principles of TQM and the words of Deming are highly respected in quality circles. 

I found a brief summary of his book online and added his book immediately to my Amazon wish list! Here are some of the ideas discussed by Deming in his book - Out of crisis. It's  a great read.

1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for massive inspection by building quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership (see Point 12 and Ch. 8 of "Out of the Crisis"). The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company. (See Ch. 3 of "Out of the Crisis")
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
11. a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
    b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
12. a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
    b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia," abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective (See Ch. 3 of "Out of the Crisis").
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job. 

The conveyor belt

I am a big fan of Lean, Toyota Production system & Theory-of-Constraints. It's a shame that I haven't written much about these things here! The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker and The Goal by Eli Goldratt are probably the best books I've read on Lean. These are life changing books. Certainly for me, it has changed the way I looked at a lot of things in life. For instance, day to day things like McDonald's drive through, queuing system in subway, visual guides in hospitals, pizza delivery, supermarket shelves, overflow hole in hand wash basin (poke yoke) are some simple day-to-day examples you see in daily life. Principles of Lean can also be used on the software floor. Agile for instance has its roots in Lean software development developed by Mary Popendieck .& Tom Popendieck.

I can go on and on about Lean, ToC and Agile because I have spent considerable time thinking, doing and implementing these principles. I have even attempted to bring it back home and use it in my house! For today, I wanted to share the video that started it all for me. I don't know about the origin of the video or the context in which it was shot. But this hilarious video can be used to explain just-in-time, constraints, kanban, conflict & even management styles!  Hope you enjoy it too.

Mistakes

Somebody forwarded me this "tiny-teensy" list of mistakes to avoid!! Is sharing this online a mistake as well??

=========================================
Mistakes

1. Jump to conclusions about other people’s motives.
2. Get caught up in competition. Strive for cooperation.
3. Describe yourself in negative terms.
4. Compare yourself to others to try and validate your results.
5. Violate your personal values or ethics for any reason.
6. Make excuses for telling lies. Just be honest and tactful.
7. Be rude to others regardless of how you feel about them.
8. Invalidate other people’s feelings.
9. Disrespect yourself or others.
10. Forget to be grateful.
11. Talk down to people.
12. Expect the worst or project negative expectations.
13. Speak in blanket generalizations.
14. Dominate conversations.
15. Try to assign blame. It doesn’t matter who’s at fault.
16. Focus on lack.
17. Put yourself or other people down.
18. Indulge in “pity parties.”
19. Think of yourself as smarter than, or better than everyone else.
20. Keep eating just because it tastes good.
21. Always insist on having the last word.
22. Look for other peoples faults. You don’t want them looking for yours.
23. Snivel.
24. Allow negative thoughts to dominate your outlook.
25. Imagine yourself as sick, poor, unworthy, or worthless.
26. Entertain or dwell on inappropriate thoughts or actions.
27. Harbor grudges or think about getting even.
28. Make lame excuses, just take responsibility.
29. Waste time trying to win an argument.
30. Say “I can’t” because you choose not to.
31. Expect TV to make you smarter.
32. Forget to take action every day.
33. Ignore the needs of others.
34. Say yes when you really mean no.
35. Dehumanize members of the opposite sex.
36. Over commit your time, energy, or resources.
37. Allow what you “have to do” to erase what you “want to do.”
38. Let the media or popular opinion make your decisions for you.
39. Buy things you don’t need just because they’re cool.
40. Forget to smile often and sincerely.
41. Stress over things you can’t control or change.
42. Let work dominate your days off.
43. Imagine you will do it someday. Do it now.
44. Expect others to make you feel happy, satisfied, or loved.
45. Tell yourself there isn’t enough time for a healthy lifestyle.
46. Blame your genetics for bad lifestyle choices.
47. Get trapped spending your free time doing things you don’t like.
48. Make decisions because you’re afraid you might miss out on something.
49. Worry over the personal decisions of others.
50. Focus on or talk about problems.
51. Get involved in things that are none of your business.
52. Avoid eye contact.
53. Say “I told you so” when things go bad because your advice was ignored.
54. Follow fads, trends, or allow others to dictate your identity.
55. Pretend that your reality is someone else’s fault.
56. Invent distractions to avoid responsibilities.
57. Shy away from new experiences.
58. Pretend you know something when you don’t.
59. Be afraid or embarrassed to ask for help.
60. Forget to show appreciation to others.61. Allow your analytical mind to invalidate your intuition.
62. Ignore that little voice in your head.
63. Be too proud to learn from children
64. Worry about social standing, prestige, or popular opinion.
65. Talk yourself out of pursuing your dreams.
66. Think that ignoring a problem will make it go away.
67. Try to convince yourself that the things on this list don’t matter.

In hindsight - 2

Heuristics and biases is a fairly vast topic and there are a plethora of cognitive biases that determine our behavior. What is interesting is that this individual biases can aggregate and manifest itself as a collective organizational behavior.

I came across a brilliant presentation from Deloitte that spoke about the impact of these different biases in organizations. The speaker called it human biases and gave great examples of how these biases adversely impact risk strategy execution. The image below shows the different kinds of biases that exist and threaten change management programs in organizations. So true! It's a great representation of all the challenges we see in organizations day in and day out!

Source: Deloitte DBriefs

In hindsight

Remember orkut? I don't think the millennial's or the generation Z's would know about it. Orkut used to be the social networking site by google before the days of facebook. I used to be quite active on orkut about a decade ago.

In my Orkut profile - about me section, I remember writing about the character of Howard Roark the protagonist of the epic novel Fountain head. Ayn Rand, the author describes Howard Roark as a highly self-aware and highly rational individual. He knew himself very well and had rational reasons for why he liked somebody, hated somebody, what he wanted in life, what he wanted in a relationship and what to say and when to say some thing. In fact, the other characters in the book were also pretty strong headed, highly mature, rational and aware characters. Like every body else who has read the book, I too was heavily influenced by the characters, the story and the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Obviously, different people remember different things about the book and take away different things back into their lives. My world view and my needs at that point led me to admire the self-awareness of the characters which I believe eventually led me to chase "perfection". So, in my Orkut profile I had written some thing on the lines of experience - and I had written about not doing things right and giving it the name "experience"! And I wondered when will I get to the stage in life when I stop excusing myself by saying, okay I got it wrong this time and put it to down to a "learning from experience". In other words, for a long long time I was chasing the "be-perfect" dream. And I always pushed myself to get there.

Guess what? Turns out that there is a scientific explanation to this... and it is called "Hindsight bias"! Hindsight bias is an after the event rationalization where you get to the end of an event and tell yourself that you knew all the way along that the event was predictable. When you get to the end of the situation, you regret not noticing trends earlier and not adjusting your behavior accordingly. This belief that you could have foreseen the event is based on the premise that the world around is rational and behaves in predictable order. In a way, this core belief was driving me towards achieving the level of my heroes - the Howards Roark's and the the Dominique Frankon's of Fountain head.

And of course, the world is not as predictable as you believe it is and I never got to the level of my fictional heroes! I only wish I knew this earlier. I wish I had stopped to reflect and learned about this earlier. In hindsight, I wish I was a lot wiser :)

Highway 350

Been a while since I wrote here. Without going into the excuses, because I have really have tons of them, here is the new thing I have learned a couple of months ago.

Apparently, the human mind can think at the rate of 500 words a minute. Which means you as a person can comprehend 500 words a minute. But the rate at which we speak is about 150 - especially my friends from the far far west. My friends from far far east probably speak much faster than that . (try listening to Ricky Ponting or Mark Taylor and you will know what I am talking about). Either way, lets assume that the average speed at which people normally speak is 150 words a minute. That leaves a gap of 350.

This my dear friends is called "highway 350" and we as humans have the tendency to ride this highway at every given possible instance. Why we do that, I have no idea.

So what?

Obviously, the hardest bit is to transfer our thinking from the highway to the slow 150 slip road. And as a consequence we get lost in thoughts and lose out on the words of the speaker. We tend to become poor listeners over a period of time. What's even more surprising is that it is not only when you are listening to somebody talk, it could also be when you are texting/chatting with some body. The suggestions seem to flow even before the problem is stated!!!

What next?

Over the last couple of months, I have been noticing this phenomenon and have noticed even people who are in the profession of listening falling short. The problem is that we tend to generalize and make judgments way too early and it takes some effort to stop ourselves from generalizing and jumping to conclusions.

Believe me or not, I really think I have managed to build a better professional relationship just by being open and by putting in the effort to contain my thoughts and holding my thoughts for a brief while... by being "in the zone" and listening intently. And all I had to do was listen intently, summarize the conversation and re-focus on the needs of my colleague.

Of course, it takes effort and it doesn't come easily. I have managed to repeat it a couple of times since the first experience, but failed quite a few times. I cannot summon the calmness in my mind always, but it is definitely more frequent and much better than before. The challenge ahead for me is to maintain that state of mind and stop myself from joining... the accident prone highway 350!

The dive

Last year, my wife gave me an unusual gift for my birthday. She said happy birthday, I wish you many many more such great birthdays and gifted me a dive with the sharks!

So we went to this place in Edinburgh and I jumped into a big tank full of sharks. The sharks were massive, they were about 9-10 feet each and they look magnificent. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of swimming with these amazing creatures and being a part of their serene world. The sound of silence in the water was pure joy.

..............

Fast forward, a year later a good friend of mine pointed me to a video called Blackfish. It is a documentary about the life of killer wales aka orca's in captivity. I watched the first couple of minutes and knew that the world has wronged these amazing sea beauties. 

Remember Free willy? The orca in that movie was called Keiko. After the movie, keiko was sent to Mexico and it was used for live performances. The small tank in Mexico soon took it's toll on keiko - the constant exposure to air, the unclean water and the shallow tank started affected it's health. Keiko had caught the imagination of the world by then and there was a massive movement called free-keiko movement that raised 7 million pounds to move keiko to a bigger tank in Oregan. After 6 months in Oregan it was moved to Iceland and then released back into the wild. Keiko did not survive for too long, it was seen too close the shore line probably yearning for human touch. It died within 6 weeks at a young age of 27!

This is just one story, there are several such stories of orca's that have suffered the loneliness. There are cases of orca's committing suicide due to depression! Attacks on their trainers is another manifestation of their anger against captivity. Surely, we cannot provide them with some food everyday and claim that it is the same as living in the wild!

Here are some facts about orca's in captivity:

- Orca's live in the wild for upto 70 years, and in captivity for about 20-30 years

- The dorsal fin collapse is observed in 90% of captive orca's, the magnificent fin just falls apart because of the effect of gravity and the lack of water pressure in the small tanks

Anyway, the point of this post is that I have taken an intransigent position that I will never pay to watch these animals perform. I will never repeat the shark dive and will never support anything that puts animals in captivity. Coz, remember that at the end of the show you can always go back home... those beautiful animals cannot!

Lie to me...

I am not a big fan of Tele and I don't quite enjoy following any TV series much. My fav channels are usually the news or sports channels and I struggle to follow the friends, the scrubs and the other tv series that people seem to like and follow. Not that they are bad or something, just that I've tried it a few times and I just don't seem to get it.

But, there is one TV series I've started following recently and I am just in awe of the series. It is called "Lie to Me" and is based on the work of Dr. Paul Eckman on human emotions. His book telling lies is a great read, I've probably spent a couple of hours reading the book and his explanation of physiological reactions to emotions is very interesting.

For instance, have you ever noticed people smile during an argument? And the other people involved in the argument get annoyed because they see it as a smirk and not a smile? Eckman's explanation is that for some people anger is a very strong emotion and during an argument, they may not be able to express it well and the body may react by camouflaging the anger with a smile! And the worst part is, the physiological reactions are sometimes beyond your control!! And then what happens is that the entire argument falls apart and the focus shifts to the smirk or smile - depending on who you are in the argument.

Interesting stuff, wish I had the time to explore this further. I would definitely love to get better at understanding and dealing with different people. Anyway, if you can't read the book, try and at least watch the TV series.


Links:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Paul-Ekman/e/B002FSXSVI/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lie-Me-Complete-Season-1-3/dp/B005MI25C6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397864436&sr=8-1&keywords=lie+to+me

2052 - part 3

This is probably my last post about the projections for the world in 2050's. There is just so much data and so many inferences to make, that it is hard for me to keep myself away from it. It is very interesting though, interesting because the current powerful world economies know that there will be a change, a change in power structures and their influence over the world and that they cannot go overboard with their current power status - militarily and economically.

I've read a few papers on the projections for 2050s and all of them more or less paint the picture that in the next decade China, US and India will be the top three economies in the same order by 2050. China will overtake US in the next decade or so and it will be a slow gradual transfer of power to China. It probably will keep the media interested for a while, but the world will probably accept it without too much of a shock. Nigeria for instance overtook SA as the highest GDP nation in the African continent, but that didn't really shake the world. Did it? Not yet probably, not till the common man sees the money (GDP per person) and feels he is better off than people in SA.

Anyway, here is the data from one of the reports I've read (pwc). There are numerous such reports, I'll make a list in the end of this post. The world will be a different place in terms of GDP which equals power!

But but, increase in GDP will mean very little to the poor man on the street. The GDP per person will determine how happy or how sad the people on the street are. In those terms I think the west will continue to do better, probably because there are too many mouths to feed in the east. The following image says it all. The marginal increase in the GDP per person (India for instance) will go away in paying for the high prices of goods and services, leaving the common man not very better off than where he is today.

The increased GDP in the east - particularly India and China will be driven and fueled by increased consumerism. The consumer market will continue to expand and companies will obviously benefit from the demand. But, just imagine the demand on our planet! The west will slowly lose control and I wonder if the growing east and the diminishing west will ever be able to reach a common ground on the impact of consumerism on the globe. It's time to explore the universe and look for another planet!


References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_future_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita#Citigroup_estimates_between_2020_and_2050

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_future_GDP_(PPP)_estimates

https://www.pwc.com/en_GX/gx/world-2050/assets/pwc-world-in-2050-report-january-2013.pdf

http://www.businessinsider.com/goldmans-world-gdp-projection-for-2050-2012-11