Learned helplessness

is a condition of a human being or an animal in which it has learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance to which it has been subjected. You can read more about the experiment done on animals here.

According to Dr. Richard Pestak, learned helplessness plays an important role in stress.

There is nothing more stressful than dreading unpleasant experience that you have no control over. The result can be paralyzing sense of futility, helplessness, and stress related anxiety. The solution is to decide if you can reasonably expect to bring about a change in the situation. Certain things you will not be able to do anything about. But instead of giving in to a state of learned helplessness, change the one thing that you do retain some control over: your own attitude towards the stressful situation.

The opposite of helplessness is optimism, ‘an Explanatory style’ which is “a psychological attribute that indicates how people explain to themselves why they experience a particular event, either positive or negative”

Another danger which can contribute to Learned helplessness is being around the naysayers who add to the ‘gloom and doom”. Warren Buffet recently talked about it in the CNBC saying, “Fear is very contagious. You can get fearful very quickly, but you don’t get confident, you know, in five minutes. You can get fearful in five minutes, but you won’t get confident for some time.”

So in a time when a lot seems beyond your control,

From our recent HR News and Views newsletter:

Workplace bullying in much more prevalent than recognized or even acknowledged. In an age, where aggressive behaviour helps achieve results, where workplace pressure is at an all time high in terms of responsibilities and deadlines, it is all to easy to cross the boundaries and becoming ‘ruthless’ and a ‘bully’.”One in four are bullied in the workplace” is a statistic stated on the Andrea Adams Trust , UK based charity dedicated to addressing workplace bullying. The Trust, named after Andrea Adams, a broadcaster and journalist, who first coined the term and published a book called ‘Bullying at Work’ in 1992. Since then, various studies done across Europe, America and Australia reflect significant levels of workplace bullying that should make HR professionals and senior managers to address issues arising out of it.

What is Workplace bullying?

Continue reading here

From our current issue of HR News and Views:

It seems that the old adage, “It is not what you know but whom you know” is being proven true through mathematical models now. To modify that a little bit, what you know will give you the starting point and who you know will enable you to be truly successful. Your ability to leverage on your social networks decides whether you would make it to the upper echelons in your career.

The reason why organizations are paying attention to “Social Networks” is because flatter organizations and cross functional / geographical collaboration has resulted in people increasingly relying on personal networks to collaborate and to get work done effectively.

From an organization point of view, if the premise, “everybody is interdependent” holds true then it becomes important to recognize the network patterns that high performers leverage on to succeed. Technology has enabled Social Network researchers to measure and study how their success can be duplicated by others.

So what exactly is Organizational Network Analysis?

To read the entire article, go here

Dear Readers,

Thank you for making the time to visit this blog. I have been sporadic in my posts especially the last few months, so I am grateful to those who do visit this site from time to time.

Thank you especially to John Nielson of Charthouse Learning ( The FISH! Philosophy ) for sending the most readers to this blog. Click Here to read his blog.

In the new year, I hope to write more thoughtful and regular posts and invite fresh perspectives from guest bloggers.

I look forward to your comments and feedback through the Contact Us page. I have still not found a solution to the spam comments.

Wishing you all a Great Year ahead…lots of Fun, Happiness, Peace and fulfilment..both at work and home.

I would not have written about “The Emperor of Scent” by Chandler Burr here but for the debate that often come up - The Specialist Vs the Generalist.

The “Emperor of Scent” is about Luca Turin, a scientist who offers a new theory of smell. He arrives at this theory based on his ability to draw on his knowledge of various disciplines such as chemistry, physics, biology apart from his powerful ability to smell! His theory does not find acceptance from the scientific community largely because of the lack of understanding of multi-disciplines. To quote from the book;” the biologist said the chemistry was wrong, the chemists said the problem was the physics, and the physicists said the problem fault lay with the biology.”

Sounds interesting and all too familiar from the meetings we attend in the world of Business! I believe that the future calls for skills that require us to have a deep understanding of domains beyond and above our areas of expertise. It also calls for an ability to see opportunities and make connections.

The need for being multi-disciplined is best said in the words of Luca Turin as it appears at the end of the book:

“Metaphor is the currency of knowledge. I have spent my life learning incredible amounts of disparate, disconnected, obscure, useless pieces of knowledge, and they have turned out to be, almost all of them, extremely useful.Why. Because there is no such thing as disconnected facts. There is only complex structure. And both to explain complex structure to others and, perhaps more important- this is forgotten, usually - to understand them oneself, one needs better metaphors. If I was able to understand this, it is because my chaotic accrual of informaton simply gave me better metaphors than anyone else.”

“My father always said if you translate a proverb from one language to another, you pass for a poet. The same for science. Work strictly within one area, and its diminishing returns, hard to make progress. But translate a concept from its field for use wher it is unknown, and it is always fresh and powerful. In buying outside, you are doing intelectual arbitrage. The rate limiting step in this is your willingness to continously translate, to force strange languages to be yours, to live in between, to be everywhere and nowhere.”

From the rapid changes in the way business is done to the new skill sets that are being required, never before has so much been asked from us as individuals, as employees, as entrepreneurs, as parents and as teachers. Familiar boundaries are vanishing; new ones are being drawn only to be erased before we have understood what they mean!

While we know and understand conceptually the need to embrace change, to come up with radical solutions and think out of the box, how often do we do it? Does our way of thinking constrain and bind us in fixed ways and patterns? Is there any person who has not faced “This is how we do things around here” and more often than not accepted it?

Read more here

2004 ended on a solemn note with the Tsunami taking a heavy toll in this part of the world. While Singapore, the country where I reside has been spared, Tamil Nadu my home state in India has been ravaged.

This blog was the best thing that happened last year and with it I had the pleasure of meeting a great bunch of people across the globe including some great, passionate bloggers.

I am thankful to you, dear readers for your encouragement. Thank you for making this blog possible.

In particular, I would like to thank Gautam Ghosh for sending the maximum readers to my blog.

I hope the new year brings peace, harmony and joy to all.

The recent Boston Consulting Group?s 2004-2005 Senior Executive Survey on Innovation shared the following preliminary findings from the study:

Another recent report on Innovation has been brought out by the US Council of innovation tilted “Innovate America” is worth a read for anyone who is interested in finding out how Innovation is going to shape the future. [Via Chuck Frey's Blog]

I particularly liked this idea from the report

21st Century Innovation Opportunity ? the Hydrogen Economy

The potential of a hydrogen economy to address major challenges facing America and the rest of the world is capturing the imaginations of consumers,
researchers, government and industry.

Why hydrogen? There are many compelling reasons. According to Larry Burns, Vice President, Research & Development and Planning for General Motors
Corporation:

If you are not sated yet, go on to read about the World’s Top Ten Greatest innovators according to Dave Pollard’s at his blog

It?s all about being able to differentiate.

Check out this r?sum? of Alexandre Gu?niot.

Via Tom Peters website.

• Deepa