Auguries of Innocence - revisited!

There was a discussion recently on how and why naivety and its many dimensions, is unacceptable. To be sure, while it is not to be encouraged, or accepted in its entirety, can't help but think back upon the poem by William Blake, on the Auguries of Innocence!

For as simple as 'ha! la, ta-da!' , the poem brings back to life the cruelties and barbarism against innocent creatures and how they do not augur well for human beings!

Auguries of Innocence
BY WILLIAM BLAKE

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage
A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thr' all its regions
A dog starvd at his Masters Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State
A Horse misusd upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fibre from the Brain does tear
A Skylark wounded in the wing
A Cherubim does cease to sing
The Game Cock clipd & armd for fight
Does the Rising Sun affright
Every Wolfs & Lions howl
Raises from Hell a Human Soul
The wild deer, wandring here & there
Keeps the Human Soul from Care
The Lamb misusd breeds Public Strife
And yet forgives the Butchers knife
The Bat that flits at close of Eve
Has left the Brain that wont Believe
The Owl that calls upon the Night
Speaks the Unbelievers fright
He who shall hurt the little Wren
Shall never be belovd by Men
He who the Ox to wrath has movd
Shall never be by Woman lovd
The wanton Boy that kills the Fly
Shall feel the Spiders enmity
He who torments the Chafers Sprite
Weaves a Bower in endless Night
The Catterpiller on the Leaf
Repeats to thee thy Mothers grief
Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh
He who shall train the Horse to War
Shall never pass the Polar Bar
The Beggars Dog & Widows Cat
Feed them & thou wilt grow fat
The Gnat that sings his Summers Song
Poison gets from Slanders tongue
The poison of the Snake & Newt
Is the sweat of Envys Foot
The poison of the Honey Bee
Is the Artists Jealousy
The Princes Robes & Beggars Rags
Are Toadstools on the Misers Bags
A Truth thats told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent
It is right it should be so
Man was made for Joy & Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro the World we safely go
Joy & Woe are woven fine
A Clothing for the soul divine
Under every grief & pine
Runs a joy with silken twine
The Babe is more than swadling Bands
Throughout all these Human Lands
Tools were made & Born were hands
Every Farmer Understands
Every Tear from Every Eye
Becomes a Babe in Eternity
This is caught by Females bright
And returnd to its own delight
The Bleat the Bark Bellow & Roar
Are Waves that Beat on Heavens Shore
The Babe that weeps the Rod beneath
Writes Revenge in realms of Death
The Beggars Rags fluttering in Air
Does to Rags the Heavens tear
The Soldier armd with Sword & Gun
Palsied strikes the Summers Sun
The poor Mans Farthing is worth more
Than all the Gold on Africs Shore
One Mite wrung from the Labrers hands
Shall buy & sell the Misers Lands
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole Nation sell & buy
He who mocks the Infants Faith
Shall be mockd in Age & Death
He who shall teach the Child to Doubt
The rotting Grave shall neer get out
He who respects the Infants faith
Triumphs over Hell & Death
The Childs Toys & the Old Mans Reasons
Are the Fruits of the Two seasons
The Questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to Reply
He who replies to words of Doubt
Doth put the Light of Knowledge out
The Strongest Poison ever known
Came from Caesars Laurel Crown
Nought can Deform the Human Race
Like to the Armours iron brace
When Gold & Gems adorn the Plow
To peaceful Arts shall Envy Bow
A Riddle or the Crickets Cry
Is to Doubt a fit Reply
The Emmets Inch & Eagles Mile
Make Lame Philosophy to smile
He who Doubts from what he sees
Will neer Believe do what you Please
If the Sun & Moon should Doubt
Theyd immediately Go out
To be in a Passion you Good may Do
But no Good if a Passion is in you
The Whore & Gambler by the State
Licencd build that Nations Fate
The Harlots cry from Street to Street
Shall weave Old Englands winding Sheet
The Winners Shout the Losers Curse
Dance before dead Englands Hearse
Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to Endless Night
We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see not Thro the Eye
Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day.


A good poem to remember in these troubled times!

Black Box Thinking!

At the end of last year, as a new year gift from office, we had each been given a book to read! There were two choices infact, between 'Team of Teams' and 'Black Box Thinking'. I chose the latter, because it sounded interesting and had something to do with developing a growth mindset.

Happy to report, I completed reading it :) It did take me a while, I agree... still, better late than never!

Black Box Thinking is written by Matthew Syed and talks about the importance of having a different approach to failure and re-imagining the concept of failures. The book talks about the healthcare sector in the beginning and the various slip-up's that plague it, in terms of the unreported failures of doctors or nurses, and how those failures, are not really followed up thoroughly as they should be, and used as a learning to get better.

It is followed up by analyzing the aviation sector and how every mistake and every crash has been thoroughly investigated to make improvements in the industry, by using the feedback mechanism of the black box (which is in fact quite orange in color!). Surely, that was not always the case, but over time, the aviation industry has improved by leaps and bounds, so much so, that it has become one of the safest ways to travel. The power of marginal gains.

The book also goes on to talk about some areas where a novice or an experienced person, does not add any value by either's involvement in the system, like for example psychotherapists, due to the lack of follow-up and long lead times, making it a poor example of a system that takes in feedback to make improvements and changes to get better and more refined outcomes.

The later chapters delve into the criminal justice system on wrongful convictions, and the scared-straight program, on cognitive dissonance issues, and blame-games. It introduces the method of RCT (Randomized Control Trials) to test a hypothesis, to be certain our conclusions on an approach to a problem is really working or not, and make changes without feeling frustrated due to failures. It talks about the pit-falls due to narrative fallacy's, intellectual contortions, and many other such errors of judgment which impedes learning, and therefore prone to stagnate the system, than improve it.

The book talks about complex systems, with its multitude of variables and their interactions, which makes it difficult to analyze and predict system behavior, and therefore advocates a fail-fast approach, in which, an evolutionary approach to problem-solving is taken up. This is an incremental change, test, develop, approach through experimentation rather than a grand design. The Nozzle Paradox is introduced and so is the Dyson design approach.

It does not concede that designs are not useful, only that the way to make change faster and learn from failures, far outweighs the achievements we can get by grand designs. In that sense, it advocates to accept the failures in a learning method in a bottom-up approach with a failure-averse approach in a top-down approach and marrying the two in a unified measure. What it really then says, is not to underestimate the power of feedback-driven designs. It gives many examples of Dyson and NetFlix and other such companies, and I can think of even Sony when they started off, having this approach.

Surely we would think 'break-through innovation' might not happen in this way, but it does, through failures again and being resilient to see the changes through till the goal is met. Infact, it goes on to say that you need not worry that you might be going up the wrong way, because those who follow the approach will know it sooner than those who don't!

Overall, it introduces and advocates concepts such as marginal gains, fail-fast, RCT's, pre-mortem's, which can be introduced in organizations and many industries, to make improvements and drive innovation. I found it a good read and there are many concepts to explore further!

Love in the time of Corona!

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Its been a long long time since I got back to blogging, and apologies to my few, but dedicated followers for being patient about it (or did I do you all a favor?!😏). 

I did get many requests to restart my writing, as somewhere, somehow, some of you felt it interesting and related to it :) I thank you for it!

The world is living through a very different time, a time which is going to go down in history, due to its unprecedented nature and its sheer magnitude, affecting almost every country in the world. The covid pandemic has created almost a dystopic world, and a world where our imaginations and meanings of living, have gone through a sea change. 

The metamorphosis has been very quick, from being a busy outgoing world, into a more muted, careful world. Where our handshakes and open waves of laughter and smiles are now made from behind a mask or a screen. In fact, when I think about heterotopias, a world within a world, I wonder if this world was ever imagined, where things are seemingly as they were, and yet not as it was experienced so far. We have found new means of doing things, new means of interactions, new means of going about everyday life. A veiled world indeed. 

If VUCA as a concept was created to explain an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world, the pandemic that you and I are living through, takes it to its limit. There have been numerous statistics, data, facts, explaining it, and I hear there is already a movie getting made and a book being written. I suspect there will be many more books and articles written on this subject and with numerous narratives talking of how things worked, or how they didn't, how fortunes were made, or lost, how the best of humankind came to the fore, as did its worst. In short, it is no less a time, than when stories come out of a war's end. But I am going ahead of myself! We are still in the thick of things, and a vaccine or a cure is still nowhere in sight. So fingers crossed, that we live through this time to experience the other, brighter side, once again!

In spite of the lockdowns and the various restrictions, our work at the office still continues with great gusto, which by the way, included critical R&D equipment transfers between countries (going through customs and transport and the like) installations, and delivering our planned R&D programs on time and with good quality. It indeed called for a different kind of working and coordination, but it was never considered the end! If project management has taught us something, it is that risks need to have a mitigation plan, and those plans can be plan A, B, C...till we exhaust all options! If we need to live through this time, every event and a situation needs to be worked through like a project, covering all aspects & mitigations! And yet there will remain that 'unknown' that will always crop up! Did someone say 'black swan'?!

But talking about the best and the worst, it also brings to my mind the innumerable times we become self-defeating in our outlook, finger-pointing, and the like. We forget that we can't even handle our own matters with consistency or clarity, but want the world around us to be predictable and certain. When it is precisely in these times that we need to be introspective and really work through the problems by standing together (in spite of the social distancing!) and seeking solutions to problems, than become a problem ourselves! Since Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote about love in the time of cholera, I am propagating love in the time of corona (sorry Marquez!). But indeed, what I do mean is to spread positivity, hope, courage and stand by the people who need it the most, and to do something, anything constructive, to get over this! It will never be right answers or wrong answers, only no answers, that will be our end.

Would close with just these words (our messaging through the workforce): Stay Safe, Keep Calm & Carry On. Maybe I would add, and spread the love!