1 < 1, 1+1 > 2

In lines with the thought of collective intelligence, there is a very simple concept which can be implemented by NGOs focusing on people with disabilities. Concept is straightforward. The disability a person has is typically in one faculty, be it in the eye, be it in hearing, be it in physical movement. Left alone, or even in groups of people with the same disability, they have a disadvantage. However, group the people of various disabilities together, and you together have the disability issue resolved, and the advantage of teamwork. A visually disabled person put together with a physically disabled person and a hearing disabled person make a great team if specialized coaching can be given on various types of teamwork. Disability hence do not any more become a disadvantage. They will also always enjoy the company of another person and hence monotony of work is gone too.

1 is less than one with the disability. However 1 plus 1 is more than 2 with the collective intelligence, just as in team cycling.

The thought was triggered when I read about a Chinese NGO working with disabled people whose name is One Plus One. I have checked with them if they follow this model. Respond to me in this blog with your views and also if you know NGOs who do this already.

Collaborate to Focus Better

Pranab Bardhan, a professor of Economics, wrote in Boston daily that "activists who romanticize the poor should keep in mind that the horrors of capitalism fade in comparison with the horrors of pre-capitalism". Many times we get lost in our own 'isms', thinking our 'ism well' is the world. With many 'isms' in the world, and each having its rightful place, we are running out of time in getting the pieces together into a master design. A master design where the red 'ism' and the 'green' ism all have a beautiful role to play and make awesome patterns.

The business world has been consolidating quite well in the last many years.This for sure has eliminated a lot of redundancy. Competition between players is definitely what makes different silos create competitive designs. However, in the business world, the paradigm of competition has moved up to extremely high levels of maturity.

If you take technology companies, years ago companies competed in bringing a new technology first to the market. Then when that became level playing, they moved to certain technological advantages within a certain standard. When that layer also became a level playing field, they moved up the value chain of competition to compete on pricing. Then came revolutionary companies who insulted the pricing game by ridiculously low prices which the giants got worried about. Over time, even that layer got leveled. The competition then evolved to service differentiations, which too did not take much time to level. Now the game is all about competing companies collaborating with each other to offer value-added solutions. The game is about cloud offerings where you no longer can live alone. Competition and Collaboration going beautifully hand in hand.

As a response to Pranab Bardhan's article, I wrote that a single brush stroke that paints all NGOs is too large to be real. What is needed is a constructive next step by leading NGO organizations and NGO consortiums in driving the thinking of Collaboration, where all who are focused on the people, be it NGO, be it corporations, be it governments, be it political parties look at optimizations in their own ecosystems, eliminating redundancies and boosting the strengths. The ecosystem, whether local or global, is large enough for everyone to pursue their passion, while still hand-holding and learning from one another.

If the business world is imaginative in this, we better learn from that imagination and apply it to the world that focuses on people - the social world. It is time we moved up the levels of maturity to a level relevant for the people. The business world moved up the layers to focus on the primary motive of their existence, which is profit. The social world likewise have to keep its focus on the primary motive of their passion and existence, which is people. The steps needed to achieve this are obvious, and there are many examples from the business world we can apply. We are also at a time in history, where technology itself is all oriented towards collaboration.

Let's collaborate and work systematically to focus better on the people.

Platform 9 and 3/4

Some people say heaven is right here, amidst us. It's just that human sensory capabilities are not enough to recognize that. True or not, I do not know. And perhaps it does not affect me.

However there is another world which exists right amidst us. A world which was always there but you never noticed. The world around you, you thought you noticed but you never noticed. Through your money, and through your spare time, you even thought you were doing something great in this world. That kid you gave alms, that family you helped construct a house, that school you gave money, that child whose education you support. Well, that was just the tip of the tip of the advertisement of an iceberg. This world is huge.

The world of Platform 9 and 3 quarters (drawing the phrase from Harry Potter) does not believe in photo ops, big funds, publicity. This world does not care about new buildings, new cathedrals, new temples - unless they can give them security and shelter everyday. This world cares about one more person to clothe, one more person to feed at least a meal a day, and increasingly so. This world does not need a big and mindless, big bang technology intervention. This world needs incremental interventions, patient observations for new value adds, and sensitive introduction of improvements, taking care that the last of the least are also not ignored.

Mahatma Gandhi has very famously said, "Recall the face of the poorest and most helpless man whom you must have seen and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of use to him? Will he be able to gain anything from it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny?"

Now this does not in the least mean that there is no place of big dreams. In fact there is place for big and bigger dreams and visions. It is just that these dreams will have to be firmly rooted on the grassroot needs, existing patterns, and taking off from there. The dream has to be from the eyes of a weaver who sees the disjoint patterns and creates a beautiful canvas connecting them. The dream has to be of incremental impact, and may that increment be minor or major. The dream has to be of optimizations, of efficiencies, and evolving from the rich experience of the countless people who have dedicated their lives to grassroot work, respecting the opinions of people who have dirtied their hands.

A dream, a vision in that direction which evolves from the wonderful people who are already there and their wonderful experiences, a weaving that connects them to the wonderful world of technology, the philanthropic world and the other familiar worlds in the platforms around us, and a humility to patiently and systematically build up towards realizing that vision - such a dream can transform the world. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes hand holding. It takes respect. But it will work, through its own gestational period, into beautiful creations.

Platform 9 3/4 can then be the heaven they say is amidst us - a heaven our human senses can recognize and feel.

The Beauty and Efficiency of togetherness

"No man is an island, entire of itself,

Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee."

There is nothing more profound than this, which was penned by John Donne in the 16th century. Yet how far as humans we have drifted away.

This is true in every aspect of human life, and all the more in any venture that the human being is part of. We love to glorify individual achievements, individual leaders, individual role models. Yet any of these individuals would admit like Isaac Newton did back in the 17th century that "if I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of the giants.

This generation perhaps is a little more blessed than the previous, with the powerful peer to peer exchange of ideas and opinions, thanks to the Web 2.0 and 3.0 avatars like Facebook and Twitter. How about taking this further into organizational design and design of human interactions?

Too much of precious time and energy is wasted by wonderful human beings working in isolation. The same is true even with the devices and technology thrown around. The same is true with many bandwidth hogging applications whose intelligence is centrally driven. The same is true with many organizations who waste precious human time and energy and even physical bandwidth from across the world since the so called 'intelligent decision maker' sits in one part of the world. So many smart phones being still used as simple voice devices, with the processor power and other capabilities wasted away. So many high power computers still being used as word processors, or at best as Skype machines. So many smart human beings still being used for much less skilled work. The absence of an overall view. The absence of respect for the power in your neighbour. The blind eye towards wastefulness. The absence of respect and recognition of the person next to you!

In the topic of social foraging, they say, the solitary whale would join the group of whales to maximize its probability of effective hunting. Or it is said that many ants work together so harmoniously as many cells in a human body, that the group of ants become an organism by itself. Now that is a beautiful extension of what is natural. Cells working together in a body, parts of the body working together in creating the collective intelligence, and people working together in achieving many times more as a collective organism of people.

This needs careful design of this collective organism. You can't just assemble a few cells and expect it to work together most effectively. You can't just put together a few human body parts and expect it to be an intelligent human being. Now if these things are pretty obvious, why is it that we do not so carefully knit together the organization in a similar fashion, where as creators of this organization we have clarity on what is needed and then assemble the right body parts? After knowing the theory of diffusion in propagation of innovation for many years, why do we not carefully apply this in organizational design.

I am sure many do, yet many more don't, since they are busy figuring out how their own names can be glorified. I wish away the days of glorifying the individual as much as getting amazed at the power of a carefully designed togetherness. I wish away the days of glorifying individuals as great social changers as much as that amazing well knit group from across the globe who together made a difference, a difference that stays. I wish away death thereby, since while John Donne recognizes the loss of a piece of me, I am excited that there is no death of this collective organism since new cells, new parts, new human beings, new creatures take its place in the lasting design. I hope this thinking makes a difference to the world around, where we would go back to the drawing board to design beautiful patterns of the collective organism for making a difference. It is much more than rallying behind one leader, it is much more than a few slogans together. In fact it is none of these. It is in creating a different world of patterns where the individual is no more.