Every school kid wants to grow up and become an adult as fast as possible. One of the presumed benefits of adult life is freedom from the daily chores of studying. Little does a school kid know that as he ages this disliked activity can take more of his time. For me, now that I am a teacher, this is definitely true. More so, as the courses that I teach keep changing regularly in every imaginable way, from design to content to delivery.
Growing up is not an easy process. One has to go through many inflictions caused by societal requirement. But how much change can one handle in a lifetime? Consider the initial days of apps that are today the lifeline for most of us. For those of us who were adults in those early days it was not an easy transition and even required some help. Trying to relate this experience to my students in a class I asked them if they could recollect the days without the Internet or the cell phone. Most had blank looks. These are generation Zs, who have seen nothing but frequent changes in their lives. To them, eager to jump on any such opportunity, change is a lifestyle.
Change is a function of time. There are both positive and negative aspects of change. We deteriorate physically and mentally after an initial threshold. This is the law of nature. Many changes are induced by human activity such as new things created or existing processes reworked. Andy Grove's book titled Only the Paranoid Survive is about the experience of a company through the changes. Written in 1997 it is about the journey of Intel from being a maker of RAM to the making of Microprocessors. There are companies that failed as they were not able to adapt to changes. Changes have always been a part of our life since the beginning of time or as much as we can look back. But the rapid and discontinuous pace of change these days requires a different kind of adjustment. Come to think of it, the world today is about two millennium years of age since when Jesus was born. Add another two millenniums before then to accommodate the likes of Homer, Socrates and Zoroaster. This is the span of human history on this planet. Earlier than that, we theorise on the basis of drawings in caves or hardened fossils. James Webb telescope has found holes in such theories regarding the origin of universe at the beginning of time.
An induced Change requires an agent for promotion. Not all such efforts succeed. Microsoft failed to enter the world of cellphones. Any such failure is expensive. But, the overall effect of changes is positive and it takes the society forward. Nineties was a tumultuous period of change when the corporate world was ablaze with new gadgets, reworked processes and deviant ideas.
Unfortunately, there were many evil doers who exploited the euphoria of the time, later termed as 'irrational exuberance' by Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Fed in those days. As the regulators basked in the sunshine of 'exuberance' many stocks nosedived, the reason being greed on both sides, the sellers and the buyers. Hence, the rules of governance had to be reframed. Basel standards in banking are a follow-up reform due to much notoriety in the banking sector.
We are now at the threshold of a technological breakthrough as quantum computing gets mature and artificial intelligence spreads in daily activities of life. With the lesson learnt from the past 'exuberance' we hope that the world will be saner in handling these developments. That way the soul of Hammurabi, the first proponent of ethics in business, will rest at peace.
It is said that charity begins at home. The corporate world today rubs our lives at home and hence the principle applies as much at office as at home. Applying such principles at work can sometimes be tricky due to personal overlapping. Consider an example. Suppose, the next of kin is the beneficiary of a corporate decision. In spite of being overboard throughout the process, it is possible for a disgruntled party to raise questions on due diligence in the process. Some fuzziness can always be found between doing good and seen good done. The reason for unhappiness can even be personal. Yet all questions must be answered. Unfortunately, it is very lonely at the top.
As we debate in the classroom on the effect of changes over time such as Keynes and Friedman, Regulation and Deregulation, Open-sky and Close-sky, Floating and Regulated rates, there are mixed reactions. The questions thrown at the students come back with the reply, Depends. Of course! How silly of me.
chowdhury.igc@gmail.com