Here's some food for thought.

A smart shopper can buy a 5-pound bag of Gold Medal flour for 69 cents. That's enough to feed three people for a day - 7,500 easy-to-digest, relatively nutritious, and potentially tasty calories. All for less than 0.7 percent of an average American's income.

Compare this American to one of our ancestors half a millennium ago, a typical person living in the span between 1400 and 1600. Back in those days, less than one-tenth of humanity lived in cities. The most basic problem of material life - the fight to put food on the table - took up the majority of everyone's working time and energy: Three-quarters of human economic production consisted of growing or procuring foodstuffs. Well-nourished preindustrial populations with abundant land double in size every generation, but our ancestors were lucky to see their population grow by 10 percent in 30 years. Back then people were hungry, malnourished, and disease-ridden.

Our ancestors were on the Malthusian edge, where you lack the calories and the nutrients to equip your immune system to do a first-class job controlling infectious diseases, where women's body fat levels are low enough that ovulation is a hit-or-miss affair, and where you spend a lot of time thinking how hungry you are. (Consider the monumental role played by food and big, bad appetites in that era's fairy tales. Now consider the language still used by wage earners that echoes a hungrier time, from bringing home the bacon to being the breadwinner.)

The 7,500 calories in today's bag of flour would equal the diet of a four-person peasant family for a whole day; the difference is that it would take three days of medieval work to afford.

From 300 percent to 0.7 percent: By the bags-of-flour standard, we are some 430 times wealthier than our typical rural ancestors of half a millennium ago. Today - at least for the average American - getting enough calories to stay healthy has dropped off the radar screen. Quite the contrary: The surgeon general has warned that obesity is a literal threat to national security.

Impressive as it is, the steep rise in bags-of-flour wealth probably understates the magnitude of transformation we in the US have already been through. Harvard economic historian David Landes' Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some Are So Poor points out that the richest man in the early 19th century, Nathan Mayer Rothschild, died in his fifties of an infected abscess that we can now cure with $5 of over-the-counter antibiotics. Was Rothschild really "richer" than a guy today in his fifties working behind the meat counter of Safeway and making $15 an hour?

Suppose a group of theatergoers in Elizabethan England had decided one evening that they wanted to see a performance of Macbeth. Queen Elizabeth herself might have been able to pull it off if Shakespeare's acting company had the play in its current repertory. But she was the only person in England who could have done so. Go back before Gutenberg to 1400, and a single copy of a book costs as much as two months' income of a skilled craftsman - the same share of that society's productive potential as $6,000 is today. Even the richest of our late-medieval and early-modern ancestors were appallingly poor. Indeed, the shift in what kinds of goods we can produce may be as big a deal as the extraordinary drop in how efficiently we can produce them.

However, there's plenty to quarrel about in the very optimistic view of the present. There is still famine in the world.

It is true that most famines today have political causes. It is true that the cause of remaining famines is not that food production is insufficient but that the hungry have no land and no income, and if you have no income the market economy doesn't care whether you live or die. But a human race that has surpassed the food-producing capacity of our preindustrial ancestors more than 400-fold per capita ought to have also solved the social engineering problem of using this productive potential to eliminate hunger. A humanity that can produce powerful doses of antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals for pennies should be one that delivers these drugs to the truly sick, whether they live in Buckinghamshire, Brooklyn, or by the banks of the Zambezi.

William Gibson once famously said that the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed. Guess what: The present isn't evenly distributed, either. The human race today has a tremendous degree of wealth and productivity, with an extraordinarily unequal distribution. There are still more than a billion people whose lives look very similar to those of half a millennium ago. Bringing the future to the world's leading-edge cities is a piece of cake. The challenge is bringing more than a few bread crumbs' worth of the present to the rest of the globe.

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Ratatouille is a 2007 animated feature film produced by Pixar and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. It tells the story of Rémy, a rat living in Paris who wants to be a chef.

County of Nice: Nissard Occitan: Nissa or Niça, is a city in southern France located on the Mediterranean coast, between Marseille and Genoa, with 986.903 inhabitants in the metropolitan area at the 2007 estimate. The city is a major tourist centre and a leading resort on the French Riviera (Côte d'Azur). It is the historical capital city of the County of Nice.

The word Ratatouille comes from "touiller," which means to toss food. Ratatouille originated in the area around present day Nice. It was, originally, a poor farmer's dish, prepared in the summer with fresh summer vegetables. The original Ratatouille Niçoise did not contain eggplant (which would not have been available during the same time period as the other vegetables used). Instead, it used only zucchini (courgettes), tomatoes, green and red peppers (bell peppers), onion, and garlic. The dish known today as Ratatouille adds eggplant (aubergine) to that mixture.

French ratatouille may be served as a meal on its own (accompanied by rice, potatoes, or simple French bread). It is usually served as a meal in a lunch setting, with bread. It is often accompanied by a potato dish as a complement. It is most usually served as a side dish. Tomatoes are a key ingredient, with garlic, onions, zucchini (courgettes), eggplant (aubergine), bell peppers (poivron), some herbes de Provence, and sometimes basil. All the ingredients are sautéed lightly in olive oil.

A well prepared Ratatouille requires cooking the vegetables in separate stages, and then combining for the last simmer. First, the eggplant is cut and sautéed at a mid-high heat until browned. It is then removed to a bowl lined with paper towels to drain. Next, the peppers are sautéed until just tender, and the zucchini, which cooks much faster, is added near the end of this sauté. These are removed to a bowl. The onion and garlic are then sautéed lightly. When they have cooked, the tomatoes are added. Seeds and peel are removed from the tomatoes before use. This mixture is cooked down until the tomatoes are soft and cooked. At that point, the zucchini and peppers are added. In a careful preparation, a separate casserole should be oiled lightly. Alternating layers of the eggplant, then the tomato/zucchini/pepper mixture, are put down. This is simmered for about ten minutes, while basting the top with the juices. Excess moisture is removed if necessary, but not the flavored oil.

- Wiki

Banking Ombudsman Scheme

The modern use of the term began in Sweden, with the Swedish Parliamentary Ombudsman instituted in 1809, to safeguard the rights of citizens by establishing a supervisory agency independent of the executive branch.

For Banking complaints and related help please contact The Reserve Bank of India:

http://www.bankingombudsman.rbi.org.in

The Reserve Bank of India announced the revised Banking Ombudsman Scheme with enlarged scope to include customer complaints on certain new areas, such as, credit card complaints, deficiencies in providing the promised services even by banks' sales agents, levying service charges without prior notice to the customer and non adherence to the fair practices code as adopted by individual banks. Applicable to all commercial banks, regional rural banks and scheduled primary cooperative banks having business in India, the revised scheme will come into effect from January 1, 2006.

In order to increase its effectiveness, the revised Banking Ombudsman Scheme will be fully staffed and funded by the Reserve Bank instead of the banks. Under the revised Banking Ombudsman Scheme, the complainants will be able to file their complaints in any form, including online. The bank customers would also be able to appeal to the Reserve Bank against the awards given by the Banking Ombudsmen.

The new scheme provides a forum to bank customers to seek redressal of their most common complaints against banks, including those relating to credit cards, service charges, promises given by the sales agents of banks, but not kept by banks, as also, delays in delivery of bank services. The bank customers would now be able to complain about non-payment or any inordinate delay in payments or collection of cheques towards bills or remittances by banks, as also non-acceptance of small denomination notes and coins or charging of commission for acceptance of small denomination notes and coins by banks.

The Reserve Bank had first introduced the Banking Ombudsman Scheme in 1995 to provide expeditious and inexpensive forum to bank customers for resolution of their complaints relating to deficiency in banking services. The Scheme was revised in 2002 mainly to cover Regional Rural Banks and to permit review of the Banking Ombudsmens' awards against banks by the Reserve Bank. The Banking Ombudsmen currently have their offices in 15 centres.

The Reserve Bank is also in an advanced stage of setting up an independent Banking Codes and Standards Board of India to ensure that comprehensive code of conduct for fair treatment to customers are formulated by banks and adhered to. The Reserve Bank of India had announced setting up of the Board in its Annual Policy for 2005-2006 announced by the Governor, Dr Y V Reddy in April 2005.

What sort of disputes can the Banking Ombudsman consider?
The Banking Ombudsman can receive and consider any complaint relating to the following deficiency in banking services:

• non-payment or inordinate delay in the payment or collection of cheques, drafts, bills, etc.;
  
• non-acceptance, without sufficient cause, of small denomination notes tendered for any purpose, and for charging of commission for this service;
  
• non-acceptance, without sufficient cause, of coins tendered and for charging of commission for this service;
  
• non-payment or delay in payment of inward remittances ;
  
• failure to issue or delay in issue, of drafts, pay orders or bankers' cheques;
  
• non-adherence to prescribed working hours;
  
• failure to honour guarantee or letter of credit commitments ;
  
• failure to provide or delay in providing a banking facility (other than loans and advances) promised in writing by a bank or its direct selling agents;
  
• delays, non-credit of proceeds to parties' accounts, non-payment of deposit or non-observance of the Reserve Bank directives, if any, applicable to rate of interest on deposits in any savings, current or other account maintained with a bank ;
  
• delays in receipt of export proceeds, handling of export bills, collection of bills etc., for exporters provided the said complaints pertain to the bank's operations in India;
  
• refusal to open deposit accounts without any valid reason for refusal;
  
• levying of charges without adequate prior notice to the customer;
  
• non-adherence by the bank or its subsidiaries to the instructions of Reserve Bank on ATM/debit card operations or credit card operations;
  
• non-disbursement or delay in disbursement of pension to the extent the grievance can be attributed to the action on the part of the bank concerned, (but not with regard to its employees);
  
• refusal to accept or delay in accepting payment towards taxes, as required by Reserve Bank/Government;
  
• refusal to issue or delay in issuing, or failure to service or delay in servicing or redemption of Government securities;
  
• forced closure of deposit accounts without due notice or without sufficient reason;
  
• refusal to close or delay in closing the accounts;
  
• non-adherence to the fair practices code as adopted by the bank; and
  
• any other matter relating to the violation of the directives issued by the Reserve Bank in relation to banking or other services.

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Perhaps his most important contribution to Western thought is his dialectic method of inquiry, known as the Socratic Method or method of elenchos, which he largely applied to the examination of key moral concepts such as the Good and Justice. It was first described by Plato in the Socratic Dialogues. To solve a problem, you would ask a question and when finding the answer, you would also have an answer to your problem. This led to the beginning of the Scientific Method, in which the first step says to name the problem in the form of a question. For this, Socrates is customarily regarded as the father of political philosophy and ethics or moral philosophy, and as a fountainhead of all the main themes in Western philosophy in general. (The method may have been suggested by Zeno of Elea, but Socrates refined it and applied it to ethical problems.)

In this method, a series of questions are posed to help a person or group to determine their underlying beliefs and the extent of their knowledge. The Socratic method is a negative method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those which lead to contradictions. It was designed to force one to examine one's own beliefs and the validity of such beliefs. In fact, Socrates once said, "I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others."

- Wiki

Credits: Ina Fried, CNET

The poem, titled "Defence of Fort McHenry," was set to the tune of the popular British drinking song "The Anacreontic Song", more commonly known by its first line, "To Anacreon in Heaven," and became a well-known American patriotic song. With a range of one and a half octaves, it is known for being notoriously difficult to sing. It was recognized for official use by the Navy in 1889 and the President in 1916, and was made the national anthem by a Congressional resolution on 3 March 193. Although the song has four stanzas, only the first is commonly sung today, with the fourth ("O thus be it ever when free men shall stand ...") added on more formal occasions.

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen thro' the mist of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream
'Tis the star-spangled banner. Oh! long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation,
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our Trust"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

References: Wiki,

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There is nothing new about the controversy over the use of microphones for giving the azaan, or the Muslims's call to prayer.

Time and again, people in different parts of India, have objected to the use of microphones for azaan. But most state governments have evaded taking a stand on the issue, not wanting to displease Muslim citizens, already hypersensitive about religious matters. A ban on using electronic methods to amplify the azaan would most definitely be interpreted as yet another attack on Islam, it is generally feared.

Yet the irony is that the first ban on the use of microphone for giving the azaan was imposed in Calcutta some time ago by the Communist Party of India-Marxist-led coalition. The party has been ruling the state of West Bengal, of which Calcutta is the capital, for nearly two decades and enjoys the massive support of the Muslim electorate.

Had a similar ban been imposed in a state like Maharashtra or Rajasthan, the government's action would have been immediately termed anti-Muslim or even anti-Islam. But the Left Front government of West Bengal cannot be termed religiously communal by any stretch of imagination.

Recent Indian history has been witness to dozens of bloody clashes between religious communities, taking a heavy loss of life and property, all on very petty issues such as beating of drums in front of a mosque or the throwing of some coloured water on a mosque's outer walls.

A little patience on the part of Muslims would have been of great help in avoiding such uncalled for bloodshed.

If the ban in Calcutta did not spark violent incidents, the credit goes to the new-found pragmatism of the city's Muslims and their ulemas (religious leaders) who have of late begun to differentiate between emotion and reason.

However, despite all the pragmatism, Calcutta's Muslims did not accept the order in complete passivity.

Twelve Muslim organisations went to the Calcutta high court, challenging state Home Minister Budhadev Bhattacharya's ban order. They pleaded that the ban on the use of loudspeakers for azaan was undemocratic and infringed the religious rights of the minority community.

After a few hearings Justice Bhagbati Prasad Banerjee upheld the ban. The judge even refused to modify the orders by allowing the use of microphones for azaans only twice a year on the occasions of the Eid festivals.

According to the newspaper reports Justice Banerjee has been, since then, provided with a police escort and a police picket has been posted at his residence.

Fortunately, no untoward incident has occurred even after two weeks of the judgement despite the subtle instigation by certain Congress leaders such as former federal minister Ajit Panja and the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee Minority Cell chief Idris Ali.

Now how important is the azaan to Muslims.

Namaz (a strict daily five-prayer schedule) is the basic tenet of Islam and the azaan is an integral part of namaz. It is obligatory for every believer to proceed to the nearest mosque as soon as he hears the azaan.

According to the Bukhari, the most authentic compilation of the Prophet's (peace be upon him) sayings and pronouncements, "All those who hear the muezzin's cry will testify for him on the Day of Resurrection."

On another occasion the Prophet (peace be upon him) pronounced that "The hand of the All-Merciful is on the muezzin's head until he completes his call to prayers."

The greatest and most respected muezzin in the history of Islam was Hazrat Bilal, a Negro companion of the Prophet (peace be upon him). Bilal's azaan, specially for the pre-dawn prayer would send believers into ecstasy with its magical, melodious, modulated and absorbing rendition.

From 6 AD till the proliferation of electronic instruments some decades ago, muezzin's all over the Muslim world were held in high esteem. Only such people who possessed extremely sweet and vibrating voice and were specially trained for the holy job were appointed muezzins.

Their modulated voice was only loud enough to have an intimate relationship with the faithful and would engage respectability in its delivery.

Pakistani scholar S N Burney has this to say: "The call for the morning prayer from a distance, without mechanical aid, carries the mystic worlds like ocean waves, now soft, now loud, beckoning Muslims to the path of salvation, treated by their forefathers with great love and devotion."

In recent times, the basic qualities of Islam such as love for fellow beings, humility and patience have been replaced by emotional aggression and ill advised competition in almost every walk of life.

It is a sad commentary on Muslims, particularly those living on the Indian sub-continent, that while the numbers of the faithful visiting mosques has drastically fallen, the number of mosques continues to increase unabated.

If one Muslims sect has a mosque in a particular locality, other sects won't lag. The followers of one god and one Prophet (peace be upon him) insist on having separate mosques for people belonging to different creeds such as the Hanafi, the Shafai, the Humbli and the Razakhani.

Today it is possible to find at least half a dozen mosques within a half kilometre radius. Each mosque, however small, has at least three to four loudspeakers hooked to an electronic system.

The azaans, coming from different mosques at the same time, are jumbled in a cacophony and the message is lost. The mystic words are drowned in a deafening noise. Hoarse, crude sounds in the name of azaan now disturb the early morning peace of the sleeping babies, the insomniac old and the sick.

The azaan is supposed to draw people closer to god but if the muezzin does not have a sweet and modulated voice, his noise can have the exact opposite effect.

Burney has an ancient anecdote do illustrate the point. Centuries ago when Islam was still in the process of taking roots among the primitive society of Arabia, a caravan of Muslims halted near a settlement of non-believers.

At dawn, the tribal chief of the caravan took upon himself to give the azaan. Elders advised against it as they had brought with them a trained muezzin. But the chief insisted and his call reverberated through the neighbouring villages and settlements.

The caravan had hardly finished praying when they saw a dust storm closing on them from the direction of the settlement of non-believers. When it cleared, they saw a group of horsemen. One of them, who appeared to be their leader, approached the caravan and politely enquired as to who had called for the prayers.

The caravan pointed out the chief. The leader of the horsemen took out a bag, full of golden coins, and other precious gifts and offered them to the chief. Nonplussed, he asked what the occasion for the gifts was.

The leader of the non-believers answered: "My daughter, old enough to know her mind, has been insisting on converting to Islam for a very long time. We had a lot of argument but she would not listen. And then this morning our gods sent you. When she heard your call for prayers she gave up the idea of embracing Islam."

Yet another anecdote is about Sheikh Saadi, the great Sufi poet and scholar from Iran of the medieval age. Acceding to the Shaikh was a muezzin in the city of Sinjar (now Persia) whose voice was very unpleasing and annoyed the faithful. One day the chief trustee of the mosque called him and said: "To the muezzin employed before you I paid five dinars per month. I will give you ten dinars every month if you shift elsewhere."

Microphones kill the magic of the muezzin's voice. They cannot stir the souls of the believers. While the muezzin's modulated and trained voice provides divine inspiration to listeners, the blaring of loudspeakers simply irritates.

Amplifiers distort even the most melodious of voices into most dissonant notes and scare the lives out of many. Moreover, our watches and alarm clocks and over and above all the fear of god is the greatest instrument to call us to prayers.

We should not forget that religion should soften our hard lives and behaviour. Islam very clearly teaches the principles of adjustment and reconciliation. The amplifier must be replaced by a muezzin whose voice is pleasant, agreeable and trained so that he can pronounce the divine word rhythmically and with cleric correctness.

http://www.rediff.com/news/may/21fuzail.htm

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Why designers need to become leaders, and leaders need to become designers.

Have you ever noticed the difference between a meeting held at a long rectangular table and one held at a round table? The time spent, the agenda, and the participants may be exactly the same, but the meetings are completely different. The discussion at the round table is more informal, the leadership is shared, the communication more personal.

Making further changes in the physical design of the meeting amplify the effect. Eliminating the table entirely and sitting in a circle, removing jackets and neckties—or to promote a decidedly relaxed discussion, removing shoes and sitting on the floor—all predictably shift the conversation in directions that are increasingly open and comfortable, with participation more evenly distributed. To produce these behaviors, nothing need change but the design of the physical situation.

Design may soon become the byword of leadership and management. Because of the growing recognition of its power to affect human behavior, increasing numbers of organization specialists think executives should adopt a design perspective. Management guru Tom Peters says it flatly, "Everything is design."

Why would he make such an all-encompassing statement? To get the answer, we need only turn to the definitions of design given us by the noted graphic designer, Milton Glaser:

"One definition is that design is the intervention in the flow of events to produce a desired effect. Another is that design is the introduction of intention in human affairs. A third rather elegant description is that design moves things from an existing condition to a preferred one. This last one reduces the complexity of the idea, but I like all three definitions. Design doesn't have to have a visual component. Ultimately, anything purposeful can be called an act of design."

But if design is everything, how can it be something special, focused, and usable for leaders? To clarify this we need one more definition: Design is the creation of form. Everything that a manager deals with has form—buildings, offices, meetings, correspondence, speeches, conversations, interviews, networks, schedules, reports, communications, products, relationships, procedures, workflow, ground rules and systems.

But why is form so important? The short answer: In human affairs, form rules. For example, form always wins over content. How you say something dominates what you say. A written message carries more weight than a spoken one, a printed one weightier than one that is typed, which is weightier than one handwritten, even though all the words may be identical. These are metamessages, sent by the form of the message, and they are powerful.

A clear example of the victory of form over content is seen in education. As effective as our schooling may have been, we all tend to forget what was in the curriculum. Seniors at Ivy League colleges, given a multiple-choice test comparable to a seventh grade history exam, achieved an average score of fifty-three. Tried solving a problem in square root recently? We all once could. We just forget. But, as the late social critic Ivan Illich pointed out long ago, we never forget the lessons we learned from the form of education. We learned to raise our hands, obey adult authority, stand in line, take turns, not talk about certain subjects, and many other lessons now indelibly ingrained. Those lessons are not in the curriculum. The form, the ritual, the social design of the classroom, teaches them.

Recognizing the importance of form, marketing departments spend a lot of time on packaging their products, often sending a deceptive metamessage that bears little relationship to what is in the package. A box can be made to make it seem as if there is more product inside than there actually is. That sort of practice corrupts the concept of design, and denies its fundamental lessons. Indeed, the most important reason to focus on form is to bring it in line with content, so that the metamessage does not undermine the message, but supports it; so that the embracing context of a project design is congruent with the goals of the project.

Too often that is not the case. For example, simply by its organization and form, a management training class often inadvertently sends the metamessages that leadership can be made successful simply by learning certain skills, or, because of his or her position in front of the class, the instructor is a more effective leader than are the students. Both metamessages are untrue, of course, but because they are never spoken and do not appear in the curriculum, the organizers fail to see power of such metamessages and, unfortunately, they become the main learnings. When the participating trainees return to their jobs, they find the techniques insufficient. They compare themselves unfavorably to the supposedly effective instructor, feeling that they cannot live up to the powerful metamessage lessons they remember, and the new expectations they consequently have of themselves. Frustration, and sometimes abuse, predictably follows. The results are precisely the opposite of the program's goals.

The Profession of Management

The broad ranging discipline of design, with centuries of history, adds to the stature of the manager as a true professional. It provides a substantial antidote to the disenchantment that is beginning to set in among top managers with respect to the dominant management approaches of the past few decades—approaches that at first seem to work, but over time, don't. Performance reviews, extrinsic incentives, accountability pressures, motivational pep talks and leadership skill training are all discredited, as are the simplistic management fads that continue to seduce executives, and then disappoint them. Remember Quality Circles, Management by Objective, Zero Defects, Total Quality Management, Six Sigmas, etc.? Design, because it represents not a technique but a more fundamental posture, looms as a powerful alternative.

To fulfill the high calling of leadership, managers need to move toward a more professional attitude, away from dependence upon the welter of quick fix techniques heaped upon them by most management books and articles. Such a technique-oriented approach to leadership development demeans management. Too many managers already fail to regard management as a profession. They think, how could management possibly be a profession? After all, aren't managers are made overnight when they are promoted from being workers? And don't most succeed? It's easy to see why managers assume there must be nothing in the role that amounts to a substantial profession.

Just the opposite is true. Management is exceedingly complex, and carries major professional responsibility. There is a vast amount to learn about management, but we tend not to realize that these new managers have already learned most of it. They have been on the receiving end of those roles long enough to learn them quite thoroughly. Through long experience, they already knew how to be managerial. Although we are not aware of it, we all have a mastery of roles we may never play.

Nevertheless, the understandable insecurity that comes from taking on what is surely the most complex role in society, that of leadership, makes managers vulnerable to simplistic bromides (like new parents, who have had imposed upon them one of the most complex and difficult roles). Paradoxically, the more complicated the role, the more simplistically society treats it.

Exploring some of the perspectives garnered from the disciplined field of design would help managers develop a more professional stance, less buffeted about by fads. Other professionals—physicians, lawyers, professors, architects—are far less likely to be entranced by trends and fashion because they have a strong professional perspective that guides them through the challenges. Leaders and managers need to acquire that strength of professional perspective, and the discipline of design can help provide it.

The Power of Design

Design achieves its power because it can create situations, and a situation is more determining of what people will actually do than is personality, character, habit, genetics, unconscious motives or any other aspect of our individual makeup. Nobody smokes in church, no matter how addicted.

Design has always had great influence on personal experience and the course of human affairs. We all recognize the inspiration that comes from the architecture of a great cathedral. Stage sets and costume designs enrich the drama of theater. Industrial design of accessories and tools augments our powers and makes our lives safer and more comfortable. Interior design can provide settings to improve sociability. Landscaped green belts contribute to the civility of neighborhoods. Graphic design can shape our thinking and motivate our behavior.

Because it is so powerful, design also has a dark underside. If mindlessly conceived or corrupted, design can produce depressing consequences. The design of cities that plan giant shopping centers can erode traditional communities by forcing neighborhood businesses to close. Massive highway construction can divide and rupture a neighborhood. Kafkaesque office designs of row after row of monitored employees, or maze-like cubicles, can dehumanize. Graphic designs in advertising can be dangerously misleading, promoting unhealthy products or unworthy candidates. Some designers think these bad designs greatly outnumber the good ones.

More than one organization has moved into newly designed quarters, only to discover that the new designs fail to provide for the kind of human interaction it had come to depend upon. Business author Fran Hawthorne cites the design of pharmaceutical giant Merck's new headquarters as contributing to its current difficulties in getting new products approved. When all the research, manufacturing and executive offices were in one place, people interacted more, walked around, ate at the same cafeteria. The CEO would sit at lunch and talk with anyone, blue-collar workers or other scientists, increasing cross-fertilization. "When they moved," she says, "they lost some of the water cooler talk."

In general, however, the news is encouraging. Recently, the design disciplines have received research attention indicating that the physical environments designers create may have positive effects never before realized, potentially reducing all of the measures of despair. For example, studies show that if children grow up in a home designed to permit a view of greenery, they are less likely to turn to addiction and crime and more likely to achieve in school. Such thoughtfully designed environments can reduce the frequency of divorce and other signs of family dysfunction. It is no longer far-fetched to predict that intelligent design will help prevent mental and physical illness, child abuse and suicide.

The Design Perspective

It is a given that managers need to work with individual employees, one-on-one, becoming continuously and intensively involved with their work. Equally important is dealing with constellations of people, such as project teams. From there, consciousness grows. The better managers see that these small groups are embedded in larger systems—organizations, industries and communities. These, in turn, are part of even larger social, cultural, political and physical systems—corporations, cities, and international systems. As they look more intensively at these environments that are so determining of human events, the distinction between the social and the physical systems blurs. They are interdependent. Each has something important to contribute to the other. That ability to expand one's view, and appreciate the forces at work in the larger context, serves as the basis for developing a design perspective.

In certain areas, managers already have a long history of including design in their work. In addition to creating buildings, they have worked with designers to establish corporate identity programs, make open office arrangements, employ color schemes or background music, produce ergonomically correct products, and the like. Few leaders at the top, however, have seen the incorporation of design as central to their management of human relations.

There are exceptions. One is top management's early recognition of the oppressive problems of scale—coping with the overwhelming numbers of people they manage. When eliciting creativity has been crucial, executives have redesigned their huge organizations to create smaller, semi-autonomous units, such as Lockheed's famous Skunk Works, where the stealth fighter was developed, or Xerox PARC, the research center in Palo Alto responsible for many advances in computer technology. Criminologists have long known that rehabilitating criminals is virtually impossible while they are incarcerated in the giant prisons that dominate our current criminal justice system, but when the inmate population is housed separately in units of no more than eighteen or twenty, rehabilitation is indeed possible.

Other examples exist where managers rely on altering form to improve organizational functioning. They take a project team or a board of directors to a resort setting for an intensive, uninterrupted meeting on long-term strategic issues. They establish a ground rule in brainstorming that no judgmental comments can be made, so as not to shut down further development of an idea. They flatten an organization chart to eliminate unnecessary reporting levels, or they redesign the hierarchical structure based upon the abilities of managers to deal with increasingly long time horizons. All these actions qualify as social architecture.

Manager as Social Architect

Because changing situations is much easier than changing individuals, managers who adopt a design mentality think first of the structural issues in eliciting desired behavior. Rather than starting with the most difficult way of operating, i.e. working with the differing personalities and proclivities of their people, they start with the larger environment and work back, if necessary dealing with the more stubborn personality issues last.

Those leaders with a bent for social architecture ask: "How can I arrange this work space to be more encouraging of high performance?" "How can I restructure this group into subgroups that will elicit more innovation?" "How can I establish ground rules for the kinds of meetings and other interactions we have that will make us more efficient?" "How can I design a communication system that will facilitate collaboration among far flung units, creating non-geographic communities?" "How can I design this situation so that my most creative, but most irritable, staff member is less likely to be troubled by, and trouble for, his or her associates?" "How can I organize our team and our workflow so that they are aligned with our goals?" "How can I design a system that gets people the information they need at just the time that they need it without having to work through their supervisors, or go to another building for the necessary document?" "How can I design our organization so that it more closely coincides with the actual patterns of interpersonal trust that exist?"

In a sense, being a manager who identifies with a social design approach is much like being a host. Good hosts prepare events thoroughly. They plan the evening, compose the group carefully, and arrange the seating so that people who might have the most in common or the most to learn can sit next to each other. Once the event begins they make sure that the service doesn't get in the way of the enjoyment. They watch and listen. They lubricate situations by intervening gracefully in conversations. When they detect discomfort among guests they may tactfully separate some people from each other, or add others. In short, they try to arrange the circumstances in which their guests can be at their best. Social design in management is similar. It embodies a perspective that looks first at the larger context of work, and attempts to make structural arrangements that are conducive to the kind of relationships and behaviors that help meet the overall goals.

Curiously, we often use the esthetic term "graceful" to describe hosting behavior, but seldom use such a term with leadership and management. Yet when leadership is at its best we witness a special kind of beauty, sometimes earthy, sometimes elegant, but in its own way, esthetically powerful. The esthetics of leadership are effective at an unconscious level, surely the most important level, but are largely ignored in management discussions, probably because of management's masculine image. Design, however, recognizes no such constraint. To the contrary, it is built on a primary interest in esthetics. Embracing a management by design approach, therefore, legitimizes our appreciation of management along these important esthetic dimensions. Great leaders, like great bullfighters and great athletes, combine form and grace and courage into actions that can only be described as beautiful.

Adam and Eve on a Raft

Ever since the forties, when sociologist William Foote Whyte conducted his famous study of the interpersonal tensions that arise at peak hours in restaurants, managers have been encouraged to think about human relations in systems terms. Noticing waitresses shouting orders to male cooks, Whyte surmised that such behavior violated role expectations of both gender and status, cooks being of higher status, and women expected to be subservient to men. (Remember, this was the forties). He designed a system in which the waitress would write down the order on a small pad of paper and stick the slip of paper on which she had written the order on a spindle. The cook would then take it off when he saw fit, calling the waitress when it was ready. That system of realigning the roles remains in place, although the spindle has largely been replaced by a revolving drum, or by computers. It is considered one of the first uses of system design in the management of human relations in industry.

Since then the technology of systems design of operations and workflow, aided by software design and information technology, has had many advocates, and made innumerable inroads into management. In the last two decades, reengineering, business process redesign (BPR) and benchmarking have captured the attention and enthusiasm of mangers, mainly of middle management, and become globally pervasive. Unfortunately, because of its call for the radical redesign of work, doing away with seemingly unnecessary elements, reengineering became associated with impersonal downsizing. Nevertheless it represented a major developmental step in systems design.

Reportedly, reengineering fails seventy percent of the time. That is probably not out of line with most management efforts, and in any case, failures are the inevitable consequences of risk-taking, which itself is highly desirable. But the failures are usually attributed to such factors as operating without higher levels of management being involved in the process, failing to include the views of employees who would be affected, and underestimating the organization's resistance to change. That is, the system design failed to deal with its larger context. Putting it another way, top management failed to provide the necessary environment to support such efforts.

Senior management seldom sees the importance of creating a larger context that is physically and attitudinally congruent with the intent of the system designs, one that would be conducive to the system design's success. In that respect, such technical systems designs are comparable to information technology, in the sense that both have been poorly understood and seldom adopted for its own use by top management. Information technology got its start at the bottom of the organization, serving clerical and engineering needs, and has grown like a monster with almost no leadership from the top. While there are exceptions, a great many top executives, to this day, are still not interested or involved.

Most executives at the top similarly ignore systems design, and its offspring. As a result, neither information technology nor systems design has reached its potential. Seldom has either been employed to advance the strategic interests of the organization's top leaders. But if senior executives begin to embrace the mentality characteristic of senior designers, they will recognize the importance of seeing these developments in context, and will be able to create the larger forms and the appropriate attitudes necessary to sustain them.

The differences between applying a new systems technology such as reengineering, and developing a true design perspective are subtle, but important. While technology is involved in almost any design, the crucial and defining aspect of design is its distinction from technology. In the area of human affairs, technique is usually insufficient, if not counter-productive. If professionals come to rely only on technique, they fail. Design, on the other hand, is an approach, a posture. It uses tools sometimes, but most importantly it brings a different perspective to a situation, one that studies and embraces the larger environment, and gives it new form.

Bear in mind that in discussing the posture of designers, I am describing the approach of the better designers only. Like every profession (management included), the members are distributed on a curve—great, good, mediocre, poor and dangerous. Ask any professional, from any field, to give you the name of an associate they would themselves consult, and you will see how small the group of acceptable professionals is. I refer, therefore, only to superior designers and superior managers, an elite group of which I trust the reader is a member.

New Tool for Social Design

The design of organizations, of societies actually, always follows the available communications technology. When we had to be within earshot of each other we organized into tribes. Later, with messengers on horseback, the feudal system emerged. Eventually the postal service was developed, permitting us to have bureaucracy. The advent of telephone and telegraph brought about the international organization. Along the way, other communication advances such as the printing press, typewriters, carbon paper and xerography, all helped shape the design of organizations.

Now the Internet and accompanying information technology present a completely new way to design our organizations. We are enabled, for the first time, to network non-geographically into small groups, or into larger overlapping networks of any size. We can make new arrangements, and alter old ones, by pressing a button. Contrary to popular conceptions, communication among people on this medium can be deeply personal and highly creative. Opportunities abound for management to build on this radically new base, inventing wired, and wireless, organizations unlike any we have ever experienced.

The implications for social change are profound. This revolutionary technology gives us an entirely new social form in which many of us, perhaps all of us, will live. Achievements in telephonic communication, and in broadcasting, as influential as they have been, have not changed our basic social structures. We still live and work in essentially the same configurations we have for a century or more. Computer-based conferencing, however, makes real the long dreamed of ability to function in global communities.

Although hundreds of millions of people now communicate on the Internet, it is much too early to tell just how this development will affect management practices. But it is already clear that work groups collaborating on the Internet become somewhat autonomous and independent, requiring a more tolerant and flexible management style.

One manager, eager to improve the innovative quality of a project team under his supervision, recognized that potentially important contributions were not being elicited from some of the junior or introverted or otherwise marginal members of the team. He decided to forego most of the regular, face-to-face meetings and instead connected the project members via computer conferencing technology. He realized that the traditional meetings were forcing these quieter members to sandwich their comments in between the comments of more senior or voluble members, and in those circumstances they were reluctant to come forward. But communicating online, at times convenient to them in an asynchronous manner, gave them freedom from that constraint. As a result, the levels of their participation, and subsequent quality of innovation, increased.

The Marriage of Design and Management

Architects usually carry the thought that when they are designing buildings, they are actually designing organizations. They are right in that. They design experiences, not just rooms; situations, not just spaces; relationships, not just furniture; communities, not just real estate developments. Increasingly, they have come to embrace the concept of social design as central to their work. As Winston Churchill said, "We shape our buildings, and then our buildings shape us."

In organization design, the boundary between physical and social design is disappearing. Does this mean that leaders and managers must become architects? Psychologists? Sociologists? Political scientists? Economists? Philosophers? Historians? Yes. Or learn to work with them. Not to acquire their skills, but their perspectives.

The top people in any field always transcend technique. An outlook energizes their work; a viewpoint toward the challenges they face. For leaders to adopt the approach of designers—studying the larger environment, and experimenting, modeling and inventing appropriate forms to meet a particular situation while honoring the needs and goals of the people involved —equips a manager with a different way to solve problems and cope with predicaments.

The Dynamics of Design

Some designs are endlessly effective. Meetings held at round tables, for example, will never lose their power to distribute participation more evenly. But other design interventions may depend for their power only upon the fact that they stand in sharp contrast to the conventional procedures.

We often forget that almost everything derives its power from its context. A teacher may seem excellent, because so many are mediocre. Honesty is so powerful because it exists against a backdrop of almost constant deception. Similarly, a design may work well only as long as it is different from the conventionality of what existed before. But if it becomes the standard way of functioning, it may lose its power. That is why most new management techniques, seemingly no matter what they are, as long as they are well-intended, work for awhile, and then don't work. And why constant innovation is the continuing requirement of leadership.

Like leadership, design is dynamic, not static. One cannot design a situation and expect it to work indefinitely. Any design requires constant attention and revision, even a seemingly permanent design, such as a house. Seventy percent of new houses are remodeled within three years. Designs involving human relationships are even more in need of continuing modification and improvement. Organization theorist Charles Hampden-Turner reminds us of the relevance for management of the scene in Alice in Wonderland in which the frustrated characters try to play croquet using live flamingos as mallets, and hedgehogs as balls. The flamingos and hedgehogs keep moving. Such is the case with social design. The designs involve living beings, and they keep moving.

Better designers always involve the eventual participants in the design process. There are strong practical and ethical reasons for that. On the practical side, not only do these participants know much that would improve the design, but their involvement makes them more likely to help make the plan work. They become invested in its success.

The ethical reasons are subtler. For example, when managers know how some act or technique or design they are using is likely to affect an employee, but the employee doesn't, the managers' respect for those employees will predictably erode. Knowing that the people are being fooled, the manager is blinded to their genuinely intelligent behavior or creativity. Such deception, therefore, fails in two ways. It harms the deceived, but even more pernicious, it harms the deceiver, through the gradual erosion of respect for others, even for people in general. One solid rule for managers, therefore, is to operate always so that one's liking and respect for employees can grow. That may be the best case for openness in management.

One further caveat. Designs can have unintended consequences, even when they work well. Consider the design decision to establish Casual Fridays at work, where dress codes were relaxed. Although the change was quickly embraced, the executives who made such changes were surprised to find that instead of gratitude from the employees, they were deluged with new complaints and demands. Why not casual every day? If we can make this change, why not some others long overdue? The change produced rising expectations, as almost every positive management action does. Managers, like athletes or soldiers, cannot relax after success, but must be always ready for a quick turn of events, for the unintended consequences and inevitable paradoxes of leadership.

If embracing a design mentality seems a tall order, a major departure from what managers are now doing, perhaps it helps to remember that, in any field, those who are still doing what they were trained to do are obsolete.

Designing the Future

Design has many definitions, but if design is the creation of form, then it surely applies directly to leadership and management. Everything we see and hear and do has form. By its form, everything sends a metamessage. Therefore, everything is amenable to design. If we are going to seriously and systematically incorporate the approaches of social design into management, we have much to learn, and much to invent. But we can do this with the comfort of knowing that we are embracing the perspectives and approaches of an ancient, distinguished and thriving discipline, with greater relevance for the 21st century than ever before.

We should not underestimate the crucial importance of leadership and design joining forces. Our global future depends on it. We will either design our way through the deadly challenges of this century, or we won't make it. For our institutions—in truth, for our civilization—to survive and prosper, we must solve extremely complex problems and cope with many bewildering dilemmas. We cannot assume that, following our present path, we will simply evolve toward a better world.

But we can design that better world. That is why designers need to become leaders, and why leaders need to become designers.

http://www.wbsi.org/farson/com_mgtbydesignr.htm

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The denial came in the wake of statements by a BJP MP from Arunachal claiming China has moved 20 km into India.

The MP said the areas occupied were the Sumdorong Chu Valley and the Asapila and Lungar camps all in Tawang district.

He said that the Chinese were occupying grazing lands used by villagers and other strategic points. The home ministry said India's borders were secure.

Home Ministry MoS, S P Jaiswal said, "We are very alert with our borders and we want to assure that even one inch of our land cannot be occupied by any nation. But this particular issue is a matter related to defence ministry. They will gather all information on this issue and then inform you all."

Earlier China's Ambassador to India, Sun Yuxi, claimed that Arunachal Pradesh as part of his country.

In an exclusive interview to CNN-IBN, Chinese Ambassador Sun Yuxi reiterated his country's claim to the strategically important state and said the border dispute with India was complicated and would take time to resolve.

China cites the Tawang Monastery, one of the last vestiges of Mahayana Buddhism, as evidence that the mountainous district of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh once belonged to Tibet and that India should hand it back to help settle the row.

The dispute over the 3,500-km India-China border led to the 1962 war. New Delhi disputes Beijing's rule over 38,000 sq km of barren, icy and uninhabited land on the Tibetan plateau, which China seized from India in the 1962 war.

China, for its part, claims 90,000 sq km of territory in Arunachal Pradesh.

CNN-IBN

Recent Development:
As of November, 2006, the Chinese Ambassador to India, Sun Yuxi has publicly stated in India: "In our position, the whole of the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory. And Tawang is only one of the places in it. We are claiming all of that. That is our position." India's External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has countered that statement by saying that "Arunachal is an integral part of India." India and China are currently engaged in talks to resolve the boundary question. Last year, both countries signed the "Political Parameters and Guiding Principles" document to peacefully resolve this issue.

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