Partial dichotomy…!!

There are times in the lives of every human being when they have to face one or the other kind of dilemma in their lives. The Oxford English dictionary defines ‘dilemma’ as “A situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two or more alternatives, especially ones that are equally undesirable.” The word has been derived from Greek where ‘di’ implies twice and ‘lēmma’ implies premise. The initial occurrence of this dilemma starts in human life as early as from infancy when a child has to decide between the laps of parents or relatives, different food items etc. The choices made at this stage of life are instinctive and impulsive in nature and are generally made at the spur of the moment. But one should also note that the choices made at this stage are free of biases and prejudices which accumulates in human mind as one grows up physically and stores memories of one’s lifetime, interpreting them from time to time as per one’s intelligence, emotional and spiritual quotient, multidisciplinary information stored in mind at the time of making the choice and the understanding of outcomes in most of the cases. A dilemma, thus infuses a state of indecisiveness in an individual for a time being. The time taken to make a choice or take a decision varies from individual to individual on the basis of the factors mentioned earlier.

However, as one grows up, owing to the growth of neural networks and increase in the ability to absorb and capability to process complex and diverse information and draw inferences from them, a healthy individual is expected to make logical, scientific and rational decisions. Again, as I earlier mentioned, time plays a crucial role in making a fair, unbiased and rational choice on major instances unless and until decision making as a scientific process, is being taught to individuals from early stage so as to reduce the dependency on time. Generally, lesser the time available to make a choice, greater is the probability of making a wrong choice or committing a mistake. Thus, there exists an inverse relationship between time available to make a choice and an unbiased, rational and scientific choice. Under certain circumstances, the decision to be taken becomes more important than the correctness of the decision. For example, in a theater of war, there may be a situation where a commander has to decide between whether to order an attack or not with very limited information at his disposal, but then, he has to make a choice as indecisiveness goes against the standard operating procedures. In such a case, decision to be taken is more important than the correctness of the decision and the choice of the commander at that moment cannot and should not be judged through the lenses of rationality. Whereas in some cases, where the time pressure is not acute and the liabilities at stake are lesser, the tools of scientific temper should not be ignored while taking a decision or making a choice. Let us try to understand a few such situations through different examples.

Mr. Rajagopal, the business head of a large scale manufacturing company is overseeing the turnaround of his company by introduction and replacement of product lines, phasing out of legacy systems and digital transformations taking in its place and organizational restructuring. We can easily understand that his company is undergoing a change management and as we all know that change is very painful and is faced with resistance most of the time. Mr. Panda, the general manager of productions in the company has a history of excellent performance, the production of the company as well as the productivity of employees have increased manifold since he joined. He, therefore, has been a personal favourite of most of the SBU (Strategic Business Unit) heads who were there before Mr. Panda took over the responsibility of business head. However, Mr. Panda displays a freestyle and autocratic nature of operation and is being seen as someone who does not like to hear “no” by most of the employees. Mr. Panda gives individual targets to mid and junior level employees on a daily basis and looks to it that that the targets are achieved by the end of the day. Mr. Kulkarni is the general manager of quality department in the same business unit who is acknowledged by majority of employees as someone with an “eye for detail”. He regularly conducts training sessions for the juniors of his department, has taken initiative in creating a knowledge sharing platform, believes in giving and receiving to and from his colleagues, both seniors and juniors. He explains the tasks to be undertaken throughout the day to his juniors at the daily morning meeting and utilizes the platform to understand the grievances of his juniors, bottlenecks, if any and then takes the pain to document the problems and improvement initiatives, if any, offers helping hand in removing the bottleneck(s) and appreciates the performers on a regular basis. However, the quality department is regularly being accused by Mr. Panda of blocking dispatches, citing quality issues and he has been able to convince the top management that the quality department, under the leadership of Mr. Kulkarni is a hindrance to productivity improvement. Mr. Rajagopal, is now faced with the ‘selector’s dilemma’. There is only one slot for promotion this year for the department of operations and Mr. Panda along with Mr. Kulkarni are the contenders. What should be his consideration for the parameters of performance? Should he give preference to efficiency or effectiveness?

Let us take another example, Ms. Sharma, who lives along with her husband and a two year old daughter in an urban nuclear family and has taken a sabbatical from her career after the birth of her daughter is thinking of getting back to her career of a customer service manager in a reputed Enterprise Solutions company after the two and half year break. Work-Life balance has become a major issue for her. On one side, there is a pressure on her to prove herself as an efficient professional after the two and half year break. On the other hand, owing to the cultural norms of the prevailing society, she has to prove herself as an equally efficient home maker and a mother as well. She has to compete and prove her mettle on the professional front to ward of any skepticism and sympathy arising thereof and at the same time discharge her assumed responsibilities as a mother and homemaker on the personal front. She has to fulfill her own expectations of herself and to some extent, of the society as well. There is a conflict between her aspirations, necessities and personal wish and a balance has to be struck in between them. Ms. Sharma is also faced with the ‘selector’s dilemma’. So, what should she give preference to? Family or work? And how should she handle the criticisms, both at the professional and personal front? The conflict is both intrapersonal and interpersonal and is real time.

It can be well understood that such dilemmas arising out of what I acknowledge as “partial dichotomies” leads the decision maker to a zone of momentary indecisiveness. The above two examples that I have described can be extrapolated to other situations as well such as making a decision while choosing a course of education wherein one course is assumed to have high return on investment in the long run and another one is not considered as equally rewarding by family and friends and thus there arises a ‘selector’s dilemma’ as to which course is to be selected for further education by the aspirant. Such dilemmas also arise when making a choice between different suitors by prospective bride or groom who are considered equally successful and established by the society.

There are certain aspects which get ignored while making decisions or choices which are considered difficult. So, what are those aspects? During the course of my working with communities, I have been able to identify and filter out the following factors which are major hindrances in decision making. These are as follows:

• Lack of the knowledge of Self
• Absence of a value system
• Identity crisis
• Inability to differentiate between assertiveness and arrogance and
• Nonchalance

Every individual is born unique and when they are not trained by educational institutes and the family system to have a clear understanding of their own Self, their tastes and preferences, their unique strengths and shortcomings, they become dependent on their surroundings and see themselves through the lenses of the environment i.e. the people and circumstances that they are in and are unable to differentiate between the environment and their own Self, both of which are entirely distinct from each other and are independent variables. When the value system of an individual is not defined and is practiced by the individual in his day to day life, he tends to judge the correctness of his choice or decisions going by the majoritarian view which changes from place to place depending on the culture that he lives, thereby impacting his decisions every time he moves on to a different culture even if the circumstances remain the same. Value system of an individual acts as an anchor which prevents him from drifting away in the winds of changing environment. Identity crisis comes into play when there is a transition in the assumed role of an individual in the society, just as we saw in the case of Ms. Sharma and hence, there is also a shift in the societal expectations of the same individual and the individual’s sense of her or his own identity becomes insecure due to the change in their aims or expected role in the society. There exists a very thin line between assertiveness and arrogance. An opinion developed and communicated on the basis of proven and substantiated facts is assertiveness whereas an opinion developed and forcefully communicated which is devoid of facts is arrogance. There are situations when an individual is unable to distinguish between assertiveness and arrogance and ends up being in the zone of indecisiveness for the fear of damaging a relationship. Nonchalance springs up in an individual in the absence of motivation. Motivation of an individual depends on number of factors such as purpose, vision, sense of belonging etc. An individual who is nonchalant does not feel motivated enough to make a choice and ends up being in the indecisive zone.

So, how do we overcome the partial dichotomy of thoughts?

There are certain tools which can be deployed to overcome the state of indecisiveness or making a correct choice arising out of the partial dichotomy of thoughts. The tools or the enablers are as follows:

• Qualitative Metrics

Any organization or an individual for that matter depends too much on the analysis of quantitative metrics for evaluating the performance of the organization or the individual. In the case of Mr. Rajagopal’s organization, the board members relied on the analysis and comparison of historical productivity data generated from the factory to determine the performance of Mr. Panda and in the process ignored other metrics such as the change in employee and customer satisfaction index after his appointment. Change in the average service life of the product is also something which got ignored whenever the performance of the organization was evaluated. As the rework rate and Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) remained more or less constant, there was no substantial figures on the side of Mr. Kulkarni to prove his and his team’s performance which led to the state of indecisiveness on part of Mr. Rajagopal, even though he was aware of the ground realities. So, the lesson learnt is not only the quantitative metrics but also the qualitative metrics should also be considered while evaluating the performance of an organization and individual and the same should be well documented. The same applies in case of Ms. Sharma. She should understand and define her own value system first and then align her choices to her satisfaction indices which is nothing but one of the qualitative metrics.

• Promotion of feedback culture

A strong culture of providing open feedback that lets free and 360 degree flow of communication both from top as well as bottom hierarchical structure should be incorporated and practiced by an organization or an individual. Most of the time, we see a culture of avoidance at organizational and individual level when it comes to feedback and assertive feedback are suppressed for the fear of getting into the bad books of a reporting manager or for the fear of damaging a relationship, as I mentioned earlier. The idea of feedback should be imbibed in an individual since early childhood so that the individual sees feedback and constructive criticism as an opportunity of development and not otherwise.

• Including humanities as an essential part of the curriculum

Humanities, as an essential subject should be taught and reinforced at various stages of academic and organizational curriculum so that the basic human qualities of love, empathy, compassion etc. remains relevant and play an important part in shaping the constitution of mind of an individual, which will automatically translate itself into the practice of a sustainable work and family culture and will pave way for the livability and success of the organization and the individual. Humanities teaches that being a non-conformist is as normal as being a conformist and should not be taken for an act of rebellion. Humanities as a subject of discipline brings in synchronicity between organizational and individual aspirations and then draw a road-map which aligns both of them without taking a toll on either side.

• Self-consciousness

While an individual is found most of the time to be aware of his existence, his name, family background, his designation and his privileges which goes on to shape his personality and determine the level of his ego, seldom it is found that an individual is conscious of himself. The more self-conscious an individual becomes, the more he is able to relate to the psyche of other living beings and as a result brings in a healthy culture in his family and organization, thereby contributing positively to the construction of a better society. Self-consciousness and positive inquiry into one’s own self as a practice should also be taught and reinforced in individuals from time to time both at academic and organizational levels. Self-consciousness helps to discover the purpose and worth of an individual and organization.

Once these tools are deployed in organizational and family life, more will be the probability of reduction in the occurrence of the state of indecisiveness arising out of the partial dichotomy of thoughts and what's more, who does not want a better world!

Have a great time…