unlearning is learning

When we touch a kettle of hot water for the first time, we burn our little fingers, and from then on, we learn not to touch it again. We get a little "smarter" and we tap it to check if it's hot or cold instead.When we eat ice-cream for the first time, we like it, and we don't need to be encouraged to give it another lick the next time.

As we grow, we learn what to do, and what not to do. We go through knocks and bumps, and we learn to avoid them. Our good and bad experiences mould us to what we are today, how we perceive our surroundings (events, people, behaviour, etc.). We see and react to the world through "moulded" lenses, we understand it the way we have experienced it. We put up certain barriers so that we don't burn our little fingers again. Experience taught us to do so.

Sometimes, these barriers that we have placed restricts us from changing, or to see and understand from the other person's point of view, to learn new things, or even to love again. We're afraid that by doing the same thing, we'll burn our little fingers again. That would be stupid, right?

I believe in order to learn, to change, to be a better human being, we have to first learn to unlearn. Stop for a moment, forgive ourselves for the mistake that we've made, and give "it" a chance again. I once read, "Wisdom is between Stimulus and Response". For example, we've learnt that, when someone barks at us, we react defensively immediately, never admitting fault and barking back. Applying "wisdom" would be to give ourselves a moment to think and understand why this person is barking at us, and to choose a better response. It is not about the other person winning here, the other person does not win by you choosing not to respond as aggressively..., just appropriately.It's not an easy task, but it can be made a habit. As I believe, "all that is easy were once difficult".

Learn to unlearn something today, and experience something different. See if it suits you better....

mergers, acquisitions and raw emotions

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A)... i'm sitting in one (merger).
The company which I left a year ago, also is experiencing one (acquisition).
With globalisation, the dynamics of communication is changing, competition is driving businesses to reposition, acquire, merge or go bust.

Businesses exist for two reasons, emotional and profits.
Emotional - the need to add value/contribute to something
Profits - for the business to sustain and grow (the main cause of M&As)

Okay, i'm not going to share my thoughts on why businesses need to change their business models and so forth.... but more about how the change would affect the people

Imagine this,

You may be in the phase of your career where there is going to be an uptake after building a few years of solid foundation, you may have just gotten married too, paying off some debts for the wedding and honeymoon, servicing your mortgage of your newly-wed home.....
At the office, you have your career development plan all mapped out for you, frequent dialogues with your boss, set your SMART objectives......

You arrive at the office as usual, after lunch, everyone receives an e-mail, "we are proud to announce that the Board of Directors have agreed to handover XXX to her new parent, ZZZ...."
The phones start ringing, people start scrambling, all sorts of chit-chats along corridors/breakout areas, the topic of this "new company" will be the topic for lunch for months to come.....

A few weeks go by, your boss either gets replaced in the new business model, or is assigned to another department, you are told to report to him and to do business as usual, but your boss cannot commit to you any longer about your next step..... basically, nobody can promise you anything. Loyalty, years of service... no leveraging here.

You start to imagine the worst or not, people around you start to imagine the worst or not, more speculation, more negative energy, some positive energy, some excitement, some fear.... this is what uncertainty invokes in us, human beings. Your debts, your career, your family, your house, your holiday, basically all the plans you have... are more or less hanging now, just like the development plan you have discussed about at the beginning of the year.

How are you going to deal with this very real scenario?

I miss my coffee talk

I cannot say it any better; I have to resort to plagiarism....

An extract from The Zahir, Paulo Coelho:-
"The most important thing in all human relationships is conversation, but people don't talk anymore, they don't sit down to talk and listen. They go to the theatre, the cinema, watch television, listen to the radio, read books, but they almost never talk. If we want to change the world, we have to go back to a time when warriors would gather round a fire and tell stories."