The Hindu Business Line : To lead and to succeed

The competitive edge will belong not to those who use computers but to those who know how to inspire more productivity and excellence from each individual. More on becoming better people in a knowledge-based world.

LESSONS to lead and succeed in a knowledge-based world are what Denis Waitley packs in Empires of the Mind, published by Positive Paperbacks (www.nbrealey-books.com) .

According to President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, this is a `must read to become better people', and Stephen Covey has rated the book as `so beautifully expressed'. "Consider the computer's impact," says Waitley.

"Designed as a tool for managing complexity, it also adds complexity, just as new freeways add more traffic." How?

"The computer enables us to sort, store and retrieve material with ever-increasing speed. But the faster data can be analysed, the faster decisions can be expected."

So? "Competitive edge will belong not to those who use computers but to those who know how to inspire more productivity and excellence from each individual." Knowledge is portable because of advances in computing and telecom.

Ever tried `content analysis'? It is patterned after World War II intelligence-gathering methods, explains the author.

"Naisbitt Group researchers now scan 300 daily newspapers, clipping articles about local concerns. Together with the texts themselves, the number of column inches devoted to various issues helps predict basic trends."

That digital convergence is making job disappear, in its traditional form, is a dreadful line. "Average size of the effective organisation is plummeting."

And it is less of a hierarchy, and more like a web. What's the difference?

"In a hierarchy, your title or position determines your power; in a web, it's what and who you know... your relationships are crucial." Don't let Empires slip out of your hands.

Bar-coded below the eye

When Naomi Klein, author of No Logo remarks, `Brilliant and hilarious' about Max Barry's "Jennifer Government", there is little option but to check it out. The novel, published by Abacus, is a political satire that is `caustically funny'. A key character is Hack. He sees two agents in an office, and "one of them had a weird smudge underneath her left eye, like a rectangular bruise. No: a tattoo, a barcode tattoo." How bizarre, but that's the one on the cover page. Then, there is Violet. "She powered on her laptop, snapped in an RJ45 connector. `Do you want to give me a login, or should I do it the hard way?'" Then comes `an ordinary employee password' in Violet's way. "`I can crack it if you want me to.' ... `I'll ghost your machine. User is `applicant8,' pass is the same.'" So there's nothing holy about user name, after all! "Applications began streaming into Violet's laptop, transforming it into a standardised, centrally managed ExxonMobil PC. While she waited, she glanced at the beige box humming behind her. It had the dimensions and aesthetics of a refrigerator: a Hewlett-Packard Unix machine. `This is your server here?'" Moral: Servers are accessible like fridges, not safe like safes. "Violet glanced at the hub, a squat, plastic box routing traffic between the server and PCs. Its green lights were flashing. `So my virus is getting transmitted to the server.' `No, not your virus. Its signature. Big difference.'" Some misunderstanding, perhaps, because soon enough from each PC there is the chik-chik-chik sound. "`Disk activity.' The machines crashed together. Each computer beeped simultaneously, rebooting."

Many hundred pages after, again Violet, this time barging into a room: `Hi, I'm with I.T. I'm here about your computer.' `The e-mail problem?'" It's like trying a well-worn forecasting technique: "You want to do much more than you are now doing." And the answer would be, `Yes.' But Violet means business. "She pulled a disk out of her pocket and pushed it into the drive slot. `What's that?' `New drivers,' Violet said. It was a 600,000-word dictionary, and it cracked Wendy's password in about two seconds." Faster than cracking open peanuts?

For Asians, logic is foreign

Distance is history, but we still think differently. Why? Richard E. Nisbett discusses the question in The Geography of Thought, published by Free Press (www.simonsays.com) . He delves into the `profound cognitive differences between Westerners and East Asians,' a study that is essential if we have to coexist, working for one another. If you are working on computer languages, the chapter titled, `Is the world made up of nouns or verbs?' may be of interest. Nisbett discusses objects vs relationships: "Categories are denoted by nouns." It is easier to learn these, rather than verbs, he explains. Once learnt, "the label is then available for application to any other object having the set of properties." Does that sound similar to a discussion of some object-oriented language? How is it that Easterners have relatively little interest in categories, asks the author. Orientals find it hard "to learn new categories by applying rules about properties," perhaps because "ancient Chinese philosophers had little use for categories and were more interested in part-whole relationships and thematic resemblances than in category-member classifications." Languages involve verbs too, and they're about relationships. "Learning the meaning of a transitive verb normally involves noticing two objects and some kind of action that connects them in some way." While the Westerners are more prone to seeing the world as made of "static objects" that can be grouped into categories, their Eastern counterparts see the world "much more in terms of relationships". We pride ourselves on our computer skills but we have too little to showcase as world-class software. Are we good in slogging at data entry, but not so much at coding logic into programs? "Integrally related to the lack of interest in logic in the East has been a distrust of `decontextualisation', that is, of considering the structure of an argument apart from its content, as well as a distaste for making inferences on the basis of underlying abstract propositions alone." A book that can reveal to you the secrets of the complex software that keeps working silently in our heads; but be ready for some rude shocks to what you have always thought to be right.

(Books courtesy: Fountainhead fhbooks@satyam.net.in)

Tailpiece

Cop: "You were driving on the wrong side of the road!"

Motorist: "Oh, I work in a call centre, you see."

Books2Byte@TheHindu.co.in

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