Temporary is the new Permanent.

Temporary is the new permanent. Modern social and professional existence comes with high level of temporariness.

Employees, co-workers, neighbours, friends and relationships - all are temporary. In this uncertain, connected, global world, opportunities are not evenly distributed. The unevenness of this distribution throws people from one end of this planet to another, fueling mobility and temporariness.

Foe Generation Z kids as their parents move, their friends change; their teachers change jobs, their classroom changes; their moms and dads migrate, their city and neighbourhood changes.

For young adults, the millennial, they change their work organization, their managers and co-workers change; they break-up, their boy-friends/girl-friends change; their friends change, their place to hang-out changes and then their profile photos and updates change every other day.

And then suddenly one day a stray explosion somewhere changes everything...for everybody.

Coping with Temporariness

Coping with temporariness is both an opportunity as much it is a challenge. It could be incredibly rewarding, at the same time it could also be quite unsettling and at times, even emotionally draining. 

For individuals it could mean better rewards, better pay, global trotting and a glamorous lifestyle, it could also mean loss of friends, loved ones, absence of support system and emotional turmoil at times.

For organization the temporariness in the environment means coping with uncertain business contexts that could mean both blessing and curse; this temporariness on one hand may mean gaining access to talent, it may also means losing them to the accelerated global mobility. 

While organization try to cope up with this temporariness by building flexibility in their business models and of their workforce by improving engagement. 

When it comes to individuals, while those who develop high degree of adaptability are upto the challenge and cope with temporariness, others struggle and at times crumble under pressure. Not surprisingly stress related symptoms are on the rise - some call it the cost of prosperity.

Kids of the Times

It will be interesting to see how today's kids, the Generation Z, are conditioned in this era of temporariness. It could mean high levels of adaptability in them when they grow-up, but it may also mean emotional vulnerability and fragility. Growing up in times such as these, will they ever believe in permanent relationships be it be their personal life, social relations or professional assignments? How will this social conditioning affect them? What role would parents, teachers and society have so that temporariness impacts these kids in a positive way and they do not grow-up to be emotional wrecks. 

Interesting considerations.

Can We Save Our Kids?

I know this comes a bit late but these incidents had left me numb in my senses.

A spate of grave sexual abuse incidents of kids in Bangalore and the rest of the country has left most of us shocked, shaken and in utter disbelief. How could someone stoop so low? How could someone subject the kids to such torture? 

How could the perpetrators of such crime not see the innocence of those kids, the helplessness in their eyes and the pain in their screams? How could they do something as gruesome and as heartless? How could they….

The shock and anger does not subside. 

Worse it comes from people on whom kids put their maximum trust. Sometimes the perpetrator is a teacher, sometimes a school staff and at other times close family members. And even worse it happens at places which the kids thought was most secure - school and home.

Recent statistics (read link) destroy you from inside and  you start to lose faith on humanity itself. 

However we cannot give-up, for the sake of the kids. 

But we have to rise from the ashes and protect our kids, all kids from such demonic cannibals. 

A need for moral revolution is sourly felt. Moral corruption of the society could be devastating.  Unfortunately it is so rampant that the horizon appears dark. Hence moral discourses cannot be the change maker. Often the people who deliver such discourses are the ones who have been found to be doing nefarious activities in the garb of being Godmen.

Then what? Frankly I am clueless...Can we protect our kids? How?

FEAR as a tool for Managing People

‘The image of my physical training instructor at the school standing with a stick in his hand and making us do drills has still not faded my mind’ – one of my colleagues was telling me the other day. We were discussing the use of fear as a tool for managing people. He continued – ‘We used to hate all our drills and exercises just because of ‘Sir’. In fact we never liked him. We used to think that he was really a bad person whose only objective was to terrorize children. However many years later after passing-out from school when I met him, he was not keeping particularly well and was bed-ridden. I had gone to pay a visit to him with one of my school friends, knowing about his condition. I had been kind of forced by my friend to visit ‘Sir’. I was initially very hesitant to talk to him. But as the conversation progressed I understood that he was not a bad person. He too had a ‘heart’. However he had an unhappy life. His only son had left him after college because of his extreme strictness, for his penchant to talk with the stick then with words and to enforce his choices and decisions on him. He lamented his behaviour with his son. But it was too late perhaps. His wife had died a few years earlier. He was all alone. I felt really bad for him. However I still couldn’t reconcile with the image that I had of him in my mind as a physical training instructor…’

Fear works faster than any other tool when it comes to managing people, but it comes with a huge baggage of side effects that does not wear -off easily. Fear may achieve short-term objectives with ease however may not only jeopardizes long term purposes but also become successful in scarring people for lives.

One of the families I know, the children and the spouse of a gentleman are happier when their father/husband is touring or is in the office more than when he is at home. He unleashes fear amongst his spouse and his children and they literally are on tenterhooks when he is around. What a misfortune for that gentleman, I thought…his own family despises him.

Fear is many times also unleashed in name of discipline. I do not think both words are quite synonymous.   In fact fear-based discipline is like a spring that has been pressed hard by a palm and as soon as the pressure of the palm ceases, the spring recoils, rebounds and jumps away. You know what I mean… The effects of fear are short-lived and once the cause of fear is gone, people may answer that oppression with a huge boomerang.

I have often heard moms or dads disciplining their toddlers or kids by invoking fear in them, sometimes of the unknown spirit, sometimes of the monster waiting behind the curtains and sometimes of the stick. The impact many times may in terms of growing kids who are fearful and unsure.

Fear-based management of employees leads to a disengaged workforce who tend to develop the ‘yes Boss’ attitude. A team of ‘yes-men’ puts the company in peril for no one dares to differ or say the truth. Fear rules, everything else fails.

Similarly a country that is ruled on the basis of fear is destroyed from within. History is evidence to the damage that fear has done to some nations. Contrary to that, there is also evidence of nations where individual liberty has been respected and upheld, have marched far ahead of others. North and South Korea are excellent contrast in that respect.

Even when it comes to God, most people fear god and few love him. That is why all these touts and middle agents of religion take us for a ride and make us fight over religion, make us scapegoats in the name of religion and in return make a fortune out of it. Mahatma Gandhi had once said – ‘Where there is fear there is no religion. Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.’

When does fear work?

A person should only fear when he/she does something wrong that dangers or encroaches the liberty of others. Fear should be invoked for correction in such cases but with extreme caution and in very measured doses. That should only to secure the endangered liberty of the innocent individuals. Hence this is reserved only for habitual offenders and criminals.

For correction of everyday normal individuals fear should be the last resort and not the first or the immediate one. Even if some fear has to be instilled then that should be done with care so as to not to scar people, especially children, and should be done with an intent of helping the individuals to be corrected and not for venting frustration.

The end result should be to liberate and not captivate. The latter is something that fear does more often than not and with disastrous consequences.