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Being Grateful is Being Wise: Afia Mansoor

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

happy-indian-painting

Humans live their lives in a strange dichotomy. Their bodily processes by default are running on a benevolent design that seems to be dictated by positive ness and function. But their minds are predisposed to a negative attitude towards life. 

 

Let me explain.

 

Most of us who have had a chance to study about the physiological processes of the body know that these run on a default system. For most of us fortunately, if we have a sprain our bones work towards healing. The tiny alveoli in the lungs keep letting the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide take place non stop. The pea sized pituitary gland controls several extremely crucial functions like our hunger, sleep, bowel movements without our knowledge. The whole of human anatomy is based on a design that helps us live. How many of us know for instance that the liver is covered with a layer of thin membrane without which we could die because of the friction between the liver and other organs? The body and its millions of processes are designed to work, unless they fall prone to disease.

 

And then modern research has begun to investigate how disease can actually also be caused by how we think and react to life around us.

 

Which brings us to our tricky friend; the mind.

 

This is perhaps the master conductor of our body over which we DO have a degree of control and fail to realize that. For many of us, the mind takes over as a script of its own and keeps playing it and ultimately directing our worldview according to this script.

 

For many us, the script is full of dysfunction, misery, pessimism, fear, guilt, anxiety, bitterness and the like.  Interestingly research has proved that the way we think affects and reinforces our decision and attitudes. For instance, people who have been in stressful situations without coping with them effectively may be prone to a state of mind that refuses to process information accurately in newer situations that demand quick decisions. Their hypothalamus (the part of the brain that processes information and responds to stressors) actually reduces in size because they have been living in a state of anxiety, stress, bitterness or fear for too long.

 

Now imagine a kidney that’s envious of its peer and refuses to do its work. Have you heard of a heart that’s too angry at the gut for occupying more space and decides to take up more space. Does that ever happen?

 

No because the body seems to be in a state of gracious surrender to DESIGN.

 

And if it does happen, it has to be because of how we have behaved, thought and lived our lives. That is when we remove our body from its natural state of function through our thoughts and attitudes.

 

What this means is that if we think and behave negatively and ungratefully, this pattern is removed from the benevolent and positive pattern of LIFE.

 

Consider for instance, how many things can go wrong in your body. Millions. But do they? How many things can possibly go wrong around you in a given moment but do they? Yes you could be hit by a meteor right now but how many times has it happened to you or your loved ones?

 

And so is their a need to worry needlessly about the future that has not even materialized yet? Or of a past that has long gone but you make it ever so powerful each time you delve in it forgetting your present reality.

 

We abuse our systems with a consistent train of ungrateful and unnecessary thoughts. What if the theory about 2012 really holds true? What if my three year old grows up in a recessive economy and does not get a job? What if I end up getting cancer like my neighbor’s niece? When will these awful summers go?  Why did that mean scoundrel treat me so nastily? I feel blekh today. Why me? Why not them?

 

For some the thoughts go on and on and on. I don’t mean to belittle legitimate grief other negative emotions. But shouldn’t they be a fleeting presence in the course of life, like the awful bump and itch on the nose from a mosquito bite? Never mind if these negative thoughts are legitimate or not. They are NOT the pattern of LIFE if they go on for just too long.  

 

Wouldn’t it just be a lot more easier on our systems to let go, to be grateful, to witness function around and in us and let it permeate through our thoughts?

 

Wouldn’t being grateful make us more attuned to what’s in and around us and make us decidedly more strong in living our lives?

 

Da Vinci; One of the most intelligent humans in history, spent a great deal of time brooding on the benevolence in human anatomy.

Da Vinci; One of the most intelligent humans in history, spent a great deal of time brooding on the benevolence in human anatomy.

 

Leading Picture courtesy:

http://sandeep.pixelring.net/photoblog/images/20080216163308_20071128mural.jpg

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Fostering Gratefulness in Children: Afia Mansoor

Monday, August 9th, 2010

happy-children

Young children are an unconditioned species.

 

Meaning to say, they do not carry enduring biases and do not show set patterns of responses to particular situations every time. They also adapt to new situations fairly quickly and have an inquisitive mind that’s open to learning.

 

That’s why it’s very easy to teach children particularly anything including emotional behavior.

 

Raising children to be grateful human beings has lifelong consequences. A grateful nature reflects an optimistic and positive mindset and such an emotional response is far more capable of dealing with ambiguous, challenging, dangerous and dynamic events. People who think positively are also able to move past trauma far sooner than ones who dwell on negativity and depression.

 

happy-child-2

1.     Encourage the child to say thank you and sorry at appropriate occasions. Doing so, will help the young one to accept the fact that good things come to us because others have been generous, and therefore it must be reinforced.

   

2.     Expose the child to the outdoors. Let him play in water, grass, sand, etc. Point out the beauty in nature to the child and appreciate it together. This will teach the child to be grateful for his visual senses. Show the child intricate details in a leaf, the designs on a bug and the majesty of a rain cloud to make him aware of the minutiae and the gigantic.

 

3.     Teach him a word that expresses appreciation each time he likes something around him or even on his plate. It could simply be a loud ‘WOW’. 

 

4.     Take the child to a zoo or sit with him through a wildlife exploratory film and explain how each animal’s physical attributes are suited to its role in the eco system. Do not call any particular animal ‘ugly’. They’re all beautiful if you observe them long enough.  

 

5.     Switch off the television while having food. Encourage the child to appreciate his favourite food verbally. Ask him what he likes about it, how does it feel in the mouth and what the aroma is like.

 

6.     Encourage the child to feel different textures and appreciate their difference. Tough fabrics helps us stay protected against harsh weather and soft ones make us feel cosy.

 

7.     Encourage the child to listen to fine music and appreciate it together in any way that comes naturally to the child.

 

8.     Every night ask the child to tell you what he should thank God for in his life. The answers should be different each time. You will see a boost of creativity in your child as he appreciates a great variety of things from candy to the cousins he has.

 

9.     Read out or make up stories which run around the theme of helping others. Grateful people have enough themselves to be able to help others.

 

10.                         Teach the child to take care of nature by encouraging him towards gardening. Gratefulness comes in big spurts when kids see seedlings sprouting, flower forming into fruits and ‘hungry’ plants devouring water!

 

11.                        Encourage your child to give away food, clothes or anything that can help someone else.

 

happy-child

 

As you go, you’ll learn more ways to encourage gratefulness in your child and be taught by his fresh approach in return!

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The Trellis of Sustainability: Engaged Stakeholders - Afia Mansoor

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

trellis

 

Engaging the stakeholders of an organization is crucial for ensuring its sustainability. Engaged customers, employees and even industry rivals make up a cohesive trellis on which an organization can grow securely.

At the very beginning however, it is important to analyse how an organization views its stakeholders. Are stakeholders the means to achieve the end of results or are they the end themselves; securing results as they grow?

We at Schuitema profess strongly that for any organization to flourish, its stakeholders must be viewed as an end to the means of results. The focus of the organization must be to serve stakeholders indiscriminately. And, the process leads to remarkable results.

How to Serve the stakeholder?

The foundation of serving stakeholders lies in giving them significance. And giving significance is really about giving respect to the other. Giving respect in turn, achieves stakeholder engagement in extraordinary ways.

When a stakeholder, for instance the employee, is recognised as the goal of the game, the focus of the organization switches from what it can get out of the employee to what it can give to the employee. That, is also the essence of social responsibility.

There are two important ways that an organization can serve its employees:

1. Affirming the Individual:

Schuitema’s Care and Growth Leadershipâ„¢ Model advocates that an individual working for an organization must be cared for. This care goes beyond the immediate results the individual is supposed to secure for the organization. So the individual is not just a toolkit, but a human being with aspirations and emotions.

Telenor, our client for the Care and Growth Leadershipâ„¢ Model has practiced this philosophy in interesting ways. The company invests a huge amount of money in gauging employee concerns, aspirations and responses to work demands. A survey called IVC (Internal Value Creation) is managed by an external party and asks employees questions about their work/life balance at the company or how their work has been made easier by their bosses. The company adjusts its own dynamics for employees according to these responses – thus realizing the benefits of the hard work behind the survey.

Recently Telenor Pakistan also initiated a campaign where employees submitted true stories of how they lived the core values of the company. Even though most stories had nothing to do with work, the company appreciated the best responses with a view towards affirming the individuals working with it.

Telenor’s management believes that since steps like these have been taken to give significance to the employees, the company has been earning accolades for being one of the best employers in the country. And, the company is also doing very well from a business point of view. No surprise there for stakeholder engagement proponents.

grapevine

2. Keeping the best interest of the individual in mind:

Serving employees in the best possible way also includes treating them appropriately in a given situation.

Serving and giving significance in an organization should not be misconstrued to mean management that is soft on all issues; including accountability. For instance, if an employee, despite having the Means (infrastructure, tools and systems required to do the task) and Ability (knowing how to perform a task and why it needs to be done) to deliver, shows consistent poor performance against the specified standards, then it is in the employee’s best interest to be held accountable for the lack of performance.

A workforce that feels accountable towards performing and has been given the means and ability to work, is an engaged team. No wonder that in many government sector concerns of Pakistan, where holding people accountable for their performance is often a low priority issue, workforce can be disengaged and do not act in sync with the objectives of the very organization they work for.

These two criteria form the foundation of the trellis of engaged stakeholders – who in turn spell the organization’s sustainability.

 

 

The article was published in Triple Bottom Line - A CSR Journal on 25 June 2010. Other insightful articles from the journal can be read from the website: www.tbl.com.pk

Photos Courtesy:

http://www.uncommoncloth.com/.%5C72%5Ctrellis_full_72.jpg

http://www.kristinbennettart.com/fresconuovo/grapevine%20firescreen.jpg

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Dr Happiness shares more Wisdom!

Monday, July 19th, 2010

sofia1

Sofia Kauko-Valli is a Social Entrepreneurship teacher at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. Due to her keen interest in areas of Happiness and spirituality, she runs a Happiness Clinic at her university and coaches people professionally on how to be happy!

We carried an article earlier on Sofia revealing the secrets of happiness. Now she talks about forgiveness, mindfulness and healing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

poetry How do you believe a fractured society can heal itself?

To me it all starts with you and me. If we want to heal the society we need to become the change we want to see and in a sense we need to rise up and take 100% responsibility for what is, even if it was handed to us by other people. I

It is important to understand that we are not isolated from each other but that we are part of a whole. If someone else is suffering it is not their problem only, it should be ours too because we all are connected to each other. I think healing follows when we stop thinking about ourselves only and about what we can get out of events and situations and start concentrating on what we can do, what we can change and what we can contribute to.

Although it may seem that the change is very slow in the beginning I think the breakthroughs will come quickly as more and more people become aware and concentrate on their own piece in the puzzle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What aids forgiveness?

I really love this question. For me forgiveness was a really hard thing for so many years. When I felt offended I could not imagine forgiving the other person because I felt it was so unfair - they would not get what they deserve and they would get off the hook somehow. It took me a long time to realize that holding onto offence came with a high price, namely growing bitterness. I reached my personal breakthrough when someone defined unforgiveness as - drinking poison and expecting someone else to die. How true that was. While I was simmering in my grudges the other person went happily about their life not maybe even realizing they had been an offence in the first place.

The other thing that really helped me was to understand my own need for forgiveness. I have come to the conclusion that it really is easy to forgive if you understand that unforgiveness only hurts your own life and concentrate more on your own walk than on the faults of others.


What is mindfulness and how can one achieve it?

To me mindfulness is all about being actively aware and present in the Here and Now. I don’t really know how others describe it, but to me it is all about presence. I think for many people, especially those who have adopted the western crazy lifestyle, being present with all of your senses, soul, spirit & body is really hard. The mind has a race on its own. Either constantly rehashing some past events and situations or thinking about what will be in the future.

In a sense we are never in the present as part of us is constantly somewhere else. Being mindful to me is very healing and invigorating. Achieving mindfulness is also easy although it takes some practice. You can do it anywhere, in any kind of situation. The most mundane tasks - like washing dishes by hand - can be made into a mindfulness exercise. The point is to captivate your thoughts, to silence them and choose to be in the here-and-now experiencing what is going on with all of your senses. For instance, if you have a habit of worrying you can tell yourself that you will most certainly worry on Tuesdays between 1 and 2 pm and let go of the worry thoughts and come back into the Here-and-Now. It takes some practice but finding a place of just being, being without judgments or expectations, just experiencing what is, is well worth it.

So often in life we seem to forget that we really were created to be human beings - just being alive and aware, instead of always doing something, always trying to achieve something.

Is success in life linked to spirituality in your opinion?


Yes. I think so. Spirituality to me is all about finding meaning and purpose in life regardless of what form the practice of your daily spiritual life takes. The most successful people seem to know this and really live a life that is in line with their strengths and values in life. You could say that they live authentic lives. To me spirituality is also about connection - being connected to oneself, to other people around yourself and to something far greater than oneself, whatever you like to call it.

 

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Schuitema Heroes - Akhtar Hameed Khan

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

india-banyan

Some people realise their purpose in life earlier on. They keep striving for it for decades and their struggle yields fruit as they themselves age or after their worldly departure. But their earnest struggle leaves a legacy for generations to come.

 

Akhtar Hameed Khan was such a man. His deep desire to serve, his wisdom, humility and knowledge, and his perseverance bore fruit in the later part of his life. And yet his legacy continues to affect the lives of the impoverished masses all over the developing world to date.     

 

 

In 1980, Akhtar Hameed Khan at the ripe age of 66 founded the NGO called Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi, Pakistan as a participatory development initiative. The project changed how the world saw the concepts of micro credit, rural development, community organisation and grassroots change.

 

Akhtar was born in 1914 to a wealthy noble family in India. As a young boy he was encouraged by his mother to read famour Urdu and Persian poets. He took keen interest in philosophy, literature and history and was inclined towards Sufism.

 

He served as a British Government Civil Servant before the partition took place. Before long he resigned from his prestigious job as according to him, ‘I realized that if I did not escape while I was young and vigorous, I will forever remain in the trap, and terminate as a bureaucratic big wig.’ To understand the lives of the common people better, he worked as a labourer and a locksmith in a little village in India for two years.

 

akhtar-hameed-painting

 

He went on to teach in Delhi and took up the same vocation when he came to Pakistan. He was posted as a Principal of Comilla Victoria College in East Pakistan (presently Bangladesh) in 1950 where he founded the stellar Comilla Cooperatives that used enterprising ideas of microfinance and other participatory models for rural development. The initiatives were a network of interdependent programmes that depended on community’s will and intent to change their lives.

 

They included the establishment of: a training and development centre; a road-drainage embankment works programme; a decentralised, small scale irrigation programme; and, a two-tiered cooperative system with primary cooperatives operating in the villages, and federations operating at sub-district level.

 

Under the Comilla Co-operatives scheme, Dr. Khan also introduced microsavings. Initially the villagers could not grasp the concept, and Arthur F. Raper wrote of these villagers in his book: “‘What does the man [Dr. Khan] mean — telling us [villagers] to save?’…‘When we tell him we are too poor to save, he says that is why we must save.’” Raper went on to write in reference to said scheme: “The savings in the early days appear tiny indeed. During April, savings of the first seven agriculture societies ranged from Rs.12.00 to Rs. 65.00. The per-member monthly savings ranged from Rs.0. 60 (12 cents) to Rs. 2.65.”

 

Crediting Dr. Khan on microcredit, Louis A. Picard, Robert Groelsema, and Terry F. Buss wrote in their book entitled, Foreign Aid and Foreign Policy: Lessons for the Next Half-Century: “The village small cooperative loan system set up through Comilla was a forerunner of the Grameen Bank, now considered a major breakthrough in terms of microcredit.”

 

His work at Comilla earned him the Ramon Magsaysay Award (some call it Asia’s Nobel Prize) and an honorary doctorate of law from the Michigan State University.

 

When Bangladesh was formed in 1971, Akhtar moved back to Pakistan but continued his advisory role to development initiatives in both Bangladesh and Pakistan. He also served as visiting faculty at the Princeton, Lund, Harvard and Oxford Universities.

 

The Comilla Cooperatives however failed after Akhtar’s departure. After a few years only 61 out 600 cooperatives were working due to ineffective internal and external controls, misappropriation of funds and stagnation. It also led Akhtar and the later pioneers of micro credit to introduce some level of internal control into micro credit initiatives formed later on.  

 

akhtar-hameed-khanUnfazed by Comilla’s lack of growth, Akhtar established his Orangi Pilot Porject (OPP) in the impoverished slum periphery of Karachi with a view to help the people change their lives themselves.

 

The project initially focused on creating a system of underground sewers, using local materials and labour, and succeeded in laying hundreds of kilometres of drainage pipes along with auxiliary facilities. Within a decade of the initiative, local residents had established schools, health clinics, women’s work centres, cooperative stores and a credit organisation to finance enterprise projects. By 1993, OPP had managed to provide low-cost sewers to more than 72,000 houses. The project subsequently diversified into a number of programmes, including a people’s financed and managed low-cost sanitation programme; a housing programme; a basic health and family planning programme; a programme of supervised credit for small family enterprise units; an education programme; and a rural development programme in the nearby villages.   

 

What makes the project really special is that it is solely funded and developed by the community itself. The people are the stewards of their own destiny. 

 

The model has to date been applied in South Africa, Chile, Central Asian states, Nepal, Sri Lanka, India. In addition, the model is being studied in Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines, Japan and other First World Academic institutions for further applications.

 

Akhtar Hameed Khan died in 1999 at the ripe age of 85 and left behind a wonderful, sustainable legacy of service.

 

Read on about the Orangi Pilot Project in our post:How Slum Dwellers Changed Their Fate - The Orangi Pilot Project

 

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhtar_Hameed_Khan

http://www.oppoct-microcredit.com/Dr.%20Akhtar%20Hamid%20Khan.htm

http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2009/10/06/remembering-dr-akhtar-hameed-khan

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How Slum Dwellers Changed Their Fate - Orangi Pilot Project Pakistan

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
 
A entrepreneur making incense sticks at her home in Orangi

An entrepreneur making incense sticks at her home in Orangi

When a society starts to decay, the rot starts to infect every level beginning from the individual. When the implications of the rot become clear enough, the individuals begin to say that a change is needed at the top!

 

The milkmen who sell milk mixed with polluted water and chemicals, the shopkeeper who religiously sweeps the dust off his shop into the sewage drain close by, the grocer who judiciously sticks inflated price tags onto old stock that he got at cheaper prices, the lady who shoves her way through the queue everyday insisting she does not have time, the family that steals electricity to avoid paying bills, the fuel pump manager who stops sales anticipating a price increase… all of them are quick to blame the system and believe only an ethically and morally upright man at the top with an iron fist can change the scene.

 

It never occurs to them that a society thrives on the good intent of the individuals determined to keep their own conduct fair and straight. Ordinary individuals can help change a system from the very level of the common folk that sustain it. The Orangi Pilot Project in Pakistan that was initiated by the late Akhtar Hameed Khan some three decades ago is a shining example.

 

Orangi – A Mega slum

A typical Pakistani slum drain

A typical Pakistani slum drain

Orangi was a squatter community in Karachi; the biggest city of Pakistan (the third most populous city of the world). Back in the 1970’s it was a slum area with no sewage system and fresh water, no road network and appalling living conditions. The area had a migrant influx after the creation of Bangladesh so that about a million people were packed together in an area of 32 square kilometers. Some sources even state Orangi to be the largest informal settlement in Asia. The population mostly consists of people running micro enterprises from home, low-income white collared job holders and others serving wealthier neighborhoods as maids and servants.

 

Squatter communities crop up in Karachi when migrants from other parts of the country acquire cheap plots of land for living, from wealthy land owners by paying bribes. The land owners never legalise the transaction and hence the community never gets recognized as a settlement by the government and receives no services and utilities.

 

The fate of the town changed with a man named Akhtar Hameed Khan made the people of the area realize that THEY could solve their problems themselves.

Orangi - how it changed

An Orangi street before the Project

An Orangi street before the Project

The Orangi Pilot Project initially focused on creating a system of underground sewers, using local materials and labour, and succeeded in laying hundreds of kilometres of drainage pipes along with auxiliary facilities. Within a decade of the initiative, local residents had established schools, health clinics, women’s work centres, cooperative stores and a credit organisation to finance enterprise projects. The people built everything with their own money and even built the facilities themselves, learning everything in the process.

The street after sanitation works

The street after sanitation works

 

By 1993, OPP had managed to provide low-cost sewers to more than 72,000 houses. The project subsequently diversified into a number of programmes, including a people’s financed and managed low-cost sanitation programme; a housing programme; a basic health and family planning programme; a programme of supervised credit for small family enterprise units; an education programme; and a rural development programme in the nearby villages.

 

The beauty of the OPP model is that it does not require large funds, foreign or local, or expensive imported expertise and is totally indigenous. The models of the OPP and the Orangi Charitable Trust (OCT)  are being replicated in numerous settlements in Pakistan, both in Karachi and other urban centres, and their principles are being applied to development programmes in South Africa, Central Asia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and India. The OPP Research and Training Institute receives training groups not only from these countries, but also from the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Japan and the First World.

 

Academic institutions dealing in development, planning and economics, the world over, study these models and international agencies and NGOs try to adapt them to their needs.

By 2001 the OPP had benefited more than 60,000 families, and inspired thousands of others to work independently. Over 400 collector sewers have been built, and collectively the community has invested some 82 million Rupees (around US$1.4 million) in their sewage system. Community goods and traffic can now move more freely, supporting home-based enterprises and trading; infant deaths have fallen dramatically and health of the general population has greatly improved.

Pakistan's Independence Day celebrations in a neat Orangi street

Pakistan's Independence Day celebrations in a neat Orangi street

The Low Cost Housing Program of the OPP enables improvement in building components and construction technique that benefits more than 2,500 homes in Orangi each year through provision of credit and technical guidance to building component manufacturing yards, training of youths and masons and mobilization of house owners.

 

The OPP Education Programme has benefited more than 700 schools with teachers’ training and start up grants.

The Health Programme has benefited about 300 health clinics set up by the people themselves and has supported more than 500 Traditional Birth Attendants who have been properly trained. The result has been a phenomenal decrease in infant and maternal mortality rates.

The Micro Credit Enterprise of the OPP has supported more than 7000 small business with a credit recovery rate of 93%.

The people have so far invested $2 million of their own money into the works whereas had they depended on the government to do so, the cost would have been $10 million.

Orangi Town is a quintessential example of how the fate of society can change if the individuals decide to have it changed!  

 

 

Read about Akhtar Hameed Khan in our upcoming post…  

 

References:

http://www.oppoct-microcredit.com/Dr.%20Akhtar%20Hamid%20Khan.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhtar_Hameed_Khan

http://www.tve.org/ho/series3/fundingthefuture_reports/returndraingang_pakistan.html

http://www.oppinstitutions.org/bevolutionofsp.htm

http://hopebuilding.pbworks.com/Orangi-Pilot-Project-proves-poor-people-in-slums-can-meet-own-sewage-and-water-needs

 

Photos:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2102/2185891084_d4df26c629.jpg

web.mit.edu/…/examples/orangi-pro.html

http://hamaraorangi.ucoz.com/photo/

http://ipsnews.net/pictures/HBW.jpg

 

 

 

 

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Schuitema on Twitter

Saturday, June 12th, 2010

 

 

twitter1

Schuitema is now on Twitter!

Check us out at http://twitter.com/SchuitemaGroup for the latest posts on the blog, our programmes in progress and words of wisdom!

Schuitema is also present on the facebook as a page and has a resource of articles, videos and updates for you.

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Minding your own Business in a Team

Friday, June 11th, 2010

flamingos-in-flight

The caption above may sound like a joke to team leaders and members alike. After all, a team is all about sharing and exchange. There are no individuals in a team; it’s a cohesive, collective group.  

 

However, minding your own business in a team is crucial for goal achievement too. Affirming the individuality of team members leads to its cohesiveness as a single body that’s far superior than the individuals in it.  

 

Imagine a team of rowers. All of them have been given a set of targets in terms of speed and direction. They have to help steer the boat together as a single team and yet if the boat has to achieve the targets, each rower has to do his bit. Rower A must keep an eye on his own limb movement, timing and speed rather than concentrate on Rower C’s slip ups. Rower C must feel accountable for the slips ups on his/her own part and not blame others for the unique contribution s/he has to make in rowing the boat. This is in essence, minding your own business.

 

Schuitema believes that this ‘minding your own business’ in a team happens when each team member knows exactly what s/he is supposed to do. We call this specifying a team member’s unique set of accountabilities and the collective responsibilities.

 

In an organization likewise, achieving growth and excellence depends on what each member of the organization contributes. In set ups where work flows through a set of people to become results, there is often a sense of helplessness if there are no clear accountabilities and responsibilities. 

 

Accountabilities and Responsibilities:

We define accountability as the unique set of contributions an employee has to make in order to achieve a set of specified goals in a given period of time. The employee is to be rewarded or remonstrated as per these contributions. These contributions are not mutual with anyone else. Responsibilities on the other hand are shared set of tasks that aim towards a specific goal.

 

For instance, when I worked for a commercial bank in Pakistan as a Process Improvement Project Manager at its Service & Quality department, one of my key responsibilities was to facilitate the process improvement teams that were made on a project basis for any particular area of the bank. Once the process was improved the team would present its recommendations and implement them accordingly with the consent of all the concerned departments represented in the team.

 

The teams were formed by the request of Business Unit Heads (senior most management tier of the bank) to the Quality department. This meant that the ownership of the process improvement was with the concerned department all along, my job was to facilitate the improvement.

 

My unique contributions included:  

 

·       All the meetings I conducted to explain the team objectives,

·       Ensure that the meetings were effective, regular, relevant and productive.  

·       Explain the quality tools the team would use to improve the cash management process,

·       The follow ups in each meetings from members regarding their deliverables,

·       Getting the improved process vetted from each department concerned, and

·       Making the final presentation to the senior management

 

My accountability was not to ensure the improvement of the process because I shared this objective with the rest of the team. I was also not responsible for ensuring that team members finished their deliverables within the stipulated time, since that again depended on the team members and others they had to get the work processed from.

 

My boss would be completely aware of what I was uniquely responsible for and would explain his department’s areas of intervention to other departments if they queried. Since I also knew my accountabilities specifically, I would not lose sleep over procrastinating team mates or be anguished about the process not taking the shape it was supposed to.

 

My focus instead was on what I could do in the situation alone. I could improve the trainings on the quality tools, I could send reminder emails to members delaying their deadlines, I could ask the team founder to intervene in case his department was getting sidetracked etc.

 

Because of this structured environment, our department was one of the most productive ones at the bank since all of us knew exactly what we were supposed to do in a given situation. We did not have to wait endlessly for what others were not delivering, we would simply move on to the next level of action that pertained to our job description.   

 

This also helped us to stay motivated since we knew we were doing our best to meet the project objectives. And it also kept our department going despite massive organizational changes.

 

  

 

Photo courtesy: www.b-v-i.com

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Training the Mind to be Happy

Saturday, April 24th, 2010

 

 

 

gratefulnessWe discussed in The Dynamics of Depression, that an individual with depression has an altered brain chemistry and even structure. However, this can be controlled and changed for the better if the individual resolves and sticks to a positive change.  

 

 

The key to managing unhappiness is to train the mind towards positive thinking. Friends and family can go a long way in helping an unhappy individual towards optimism but in the end, the individual has to make the effort towards recovery.

 

  

  

Modern science has made great headway in understanding the power of the human mind over body and yet it’s incredible how this powerful mind is subservient to the human will. For all its power, the mind can be trained too ‘see’ invisible stimuli, process sounds differently, increase intelligence and can even be trained to ‘aid’ forgetting trauma!

 

Working with the Attention

 

The thing to understand here is that what really matters is the kind of attention an individual pays to life. For a depressed person, life is a set of situations that bring fear, anxiety, sorrow or guilt. The more an individual of this mindset ‘holds onto’ what s/he wants rather than what is, the needier and unhappier s/he gets. The happiest of people in the world have not lived lives free of trauma, but they have learned to move on by giving attention to the benevolence of life around them. Life goes on.

  

 

The fact that each of our body cells is replaced every three months is testament to that. So in effect when we ‘hold’ onto things rather than free flow, we are torturing our own configuration. The fact that our brain cells can regenerate and help to erase painful memories is actually one of the least known and most phenomenal finds of our time. It testifies to the fact that the Design is Benevolent.      

 

The key therefore to changing the mindset, is how you engage your Attention.

 

A simple and great tool to train the mind towards optimism and positive ness is counting your blessings.

 

 

 

 

Count Your Blessings 

prayerofgratitudeSchuitema uses the ‘Count your Blessings’ exercise in various programmes along with other exercises that help beat the victim mindset and helps one to be more reflective and appreciative of life.

 

We have found that the ‘Count your Blessings’ exercise can bring significant help if youngsters carry it out. In our first Mentoring for Mastery workshop, the young participants were given a large poster sheet each and asked to list down things they were thankful for.

 

The first time that the kids did it, we observed that the listings were rather ‘typical’. For instance, Fakhir Shah the facilitator gave the cue that he was thankful that he was alive. Nearly all the children wrote that as the first item they thankful for. They then moved on to food, family, and belongings.

 

As the list grew longer, and kids stopped peering over their shoulders to see what others were writing, the entries became more interesting like ‘I am thankful that I get to watch movies at the cinema’, or ‘I am thankful that I have been in a chairlift’ and, ‘I am thankful that I can smell with my nose and see with my eyes.’

 

We found that the exercise is effective if done repeatedly. This was because the entries became more original and subtler towards the end from the copied and crude ones in the beginning. Cultivating gratitude in our lives is therefore a process that needs to be regularly adopted for the mind to be trained to see things with optimism.

Some of our participants appreciated the exercise as according to them, it had set the ball rolling for the mind to think positively.

 

Internalising Happiness

happyIt helps if the blessings that have been listed are felt with all your being to internalize them in your mind.

If you are thankful for having a house with lots of greenery in it, then imagine being surrounded by that greenery. Imagine the bees and butterflies busily doing their work in your garden. Imagine the sun’s light filtering through the trees or he lovely interplay of colours on the leaves before you.

If you are thankful for having running water in your house, imagine drinking it and even bathing in it with rivulets running from your wet hair. In time, you will be ‘present’ and grateful while actually sitting in your garden or taking a bath.

The trick in beating depression is engaging the attention to feed the mind with positive ideas, images and monologue.

If you are persistent, you will begin to feel better and healthier very soon!  

 

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The Dynamics of Depression

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

 

depression-1Psychologists agree that there is a common trait in people who are unhappy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They tend to have a negative pattern of thinking that is often hooked to some event(s) in the past or the future, or in other words, is removed from the present. It could be a desire to look younger, or recalling a traumatic event repeatedly. Over a period of time, this pattern can take cognitive roots and turn into clinical depression.

 

 

 

 

 

Thinking hooked to the past arouses feelings of guilt, resentment and sorrow. While thoughts hooked to the future cause feelings like anxiety, phobias, fear, stress and sadness.

 

 

 The biggest killer of our times, research says, is depression or unhappiness per se. In the U.S.A, one of the most affluent societies on the planet, a recent study sponsored by the World Health Organization and the World Bank found unipolar major depression to be the leading cause of disability in the United States. Prevalence of depression is approximately 1 in 18 or 5.30% or 14.4 million people in USA. (1).

The total annual cost of depression in Europe was estimated at Euro 118 billion in 2004, which corresponds to a cost of Euro 253 per inhabitant. Direct costs alone totalled dollar 42 billion, and comprised of outpatient care (Euro 22 billion), drug cost (Euro 9 billion) and hospitalization (Euro 10 billion). Indirect costs due to morbidity and mortality were estimated at Euro 76 billion. This makes depression the most costly brain disorder in Europe, accounting for 33% of the total cost. The cost of depression corresponds to 1% of the total economy of Europe (GDP). (2)

 

In developing countries where stark poverty reigns with stunning affluence, the figures of unhappiness could be even more alarming.

 

What makes unhappiness particularly dangerous is that it takes root within an individual’s body and branches off into a plethora of diseases that range from colds and flu to Cancer. There is no arguing now that depression has a great role to play in lowering the body’s natural immune system against diseases.  

 

Most of us know that depressed people have chemical imbalances in the brain. To many this seems to be a situation that cannot be alleviated by the depressed individual. Some depressed people start considering themselves as victims and blame their episodes of anxiety and gloom on their brain’s chemical disposition. A startling study however, that has emerged in recent times reveals that individuals with depression CAN alter their brain’s imbalanced state towards balance!

 

Dr Bob Murray and Dr Alici Fortinberry write in their article, “Healing Depression Safely without Antidepressants”:

 

We now (also) know that the brains of depressed people are not only out of balance chemically, they also tend to have a smaller hippocampus, which controls emotions and memory, and a less active frontal cortex, the command-and-decision making center. The good news is that we can “grow” new brain cells in those areas, through a process called neurogenesis. (3)

 

overcoming-depression

Neurogenesis or the birth of new cells in the brain, relieves chemical imbalances and hence chronic depression. Stress, or how we respond to different situations, has a great role in increasing chemical imbalances in our brain.(4)

 

This really means that one needs to ‘train’ the mind into seeing things in a way that moves the attention from stress to relaxation.

 

Read on our next post on Gratitude Journaling to see how this can be achieved!

 

References:

(1)http://www.depressionperception.com/depression/depression_facts_and_statistics.asp

(2)http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17007486

(3)http://www.upliftprogram.com/article_together.html

(4)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurogenesis

 

Image courtesy:

http://www.mazzoldi-best-acrylic-paintings.com/images/Depression.jpg

http://www.mizkatie.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/il_fullxfull.124384286.jpg 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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