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Simple Habits & Ideas for Forward Thinking
The Read Aloud Club
About Vishakha Singh
Elon Musk and First Principles Thinking
November 28, 2021 November 28, 2021 by Vishakha SIngh1 Comment on Elon Musk and First Principles Thinking
Some words enter our lives with authority and stay there as if there is only one meaning, one context. Now just look at the word, "Elon Musk." It is a name I know, but it is also a personality that resonates with different meanings in different people's heads. Take the case of him asking his Twitter followers whether he should sell his stock in Tesla? Now, who does that?
Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock.
Do you support this?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021
He may have done his tax calculation earlier yet he went on to Twitter to ask if he should sell stocks. Millions of people voted. Not everyone understands wealth gain tax, the policies, the stock market, its functioning yet the voting must be done.
You could have one or many word associations for Elon Musk. Weirdo, Bold, Maverick, Genius, Wealthy… it need not be just one. But what comes to my mind is that he is a practitioner of The First Principles Thinking. He not only practices it, but he also brought The First Principles Thinking into the limelight years ago. In today's habits for thinking, let me bring your attention to the concept.
During a one on one interview with TED Curator, Chris Anderson, Musk reveals this missing link which he attributes to his genius-level creativity and success. It's called reasoning from "First Principles."
Musk: Well, I do think there's a good framework for thinking. It is physics. You know, the sort of First Principles reasoning. Generally, I think there are — what I mean by that is, boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy. Through most of our life, we get through life by reasoning by analogy, which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations.
It is not that Musk coined it. The thinking style is an old framework of a mental model. Aristotle, writing on First Principles, said:
In every systematic inquiry (methodos) where there are first principles, or causes, or elements, knowledge and science result from acquiring knowledge of these; for we think we know something just in case we acquire knowledge of the primary causes, the primary first Principles, all the way to the elements.
Later he connected the idea to knowledge, defining the first Principles as "the first basis from which a thing is known."
First Principles Thinking is a way to break down a problem into smaller bits and question every assumption associated with it. Once you do the exercise and remove the assumptions, what remains is the bare essentials. Now, these essentials can be looked at in a new light and will give birth to innovative thinking.
Elon Musk illustrates it through an example:
Somebody could say, "Battery packs are really expensive and that's just the way they will always be… Historically, it has cost $600 per kilowatt-hour. It's not going to be much better than that in the future."
With First Principles, you say, "What are the material constituents of the batteries? What is the market value of those material constituents?"It's got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, some polymers for separation and a seal can. Break that down on a material basis and say, "If we bought that on the London Metal Exchange what would each of those things cost?"It's like $80 per kilowatt hour. So clearly you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell and you can have batteries that are much, much cheaper than anyone realizes."
In the case of product-led discussions, it is simple to break down the exercise into smaller parts- as one can focus on each input unit that goes in the making of that product as illustrated in the battery example. But how do you apply First Principles Thinking in a subjective situation? It is easy to remove one petal after another of the flower to dissect it but how does one unfold layers of a subjective issue like 'the beauty' of the flower?
Let me explain this to you. Three weeks ago we were in a workshop for 'Show, don't Tell' communication at workplaces. 'Show, don't Tell' is a tool used in descriptive writing where the writer is encouraged to illustrate the details through words, encouraging her to show and not just tell. So for example to show 'he was nervous' could be shown like- 'he couldn't stop biting his nails.'
Show, don't tell is one of the fifteen habits in the course SHIFT. This mental framework not only empowers users with effective communication tools but also hones thinking skills by focussing on detailing.
In the workshop, we had an exhausted participant who was not able to adopt Show, don't tell in his work. His writing reflected a lot of telling and less of showing. In peer correction, he received the feedback- 'go deeper'. It has no meaning unless applied logically. This is how we used First Principles Thinking in a subjective field like thinking to write. We helped him break down the framework of the 'show don't tell writing assignment' into smaller pieces by identifying the essentials that were needed in the writing piece. Firstly, the structure of the writing and secondly the content for the description. The structure can be detailed further – like two or three paragraphs, closing statement, etc. The content needs to be broken further into smaller details like the adjectives and the verbs. Can we now elaborate on each of these adjectives and verbs and see if we get closer to the objective? The participant who had started at a sub-zero level of writing skills ended up being a confident communicator. To work on his problem, he disassociated himself from the statement – 'not a good communicator' to 'the problem at hand in a structured manner ' and through The First Principles reasoning, was able to improve.
In creative thinking and innovation, a subjective process, reasoning by First Principles helps open up more areas to look up for ideas and innovation.
The mental model, First Principles Thinking, is an effective strategy to induce creative thinking in solving problems. To bring this framework into practice, one has to look at two steps.
Step 1: Breakdown the challenge into smaller chunks
Step 2: Check if each chunk can be further broken down
Step3: Address each chunk with a fresh approach
Elon Musk's style of challenging assumptions exhibits a First Principles Thinking approach. You may have your descriptive phrase for him but what you cannot deny is his ability to think in a unique manner, courtesy First Principles Thinking.
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Nykaa and the hedgehog concept
November 7, 2021 November 7, 2021 by Vishakha SIngh1 Comment on Nykaa and the hedgehog concept
I used an entire hour on the flight to clean my whatsapp. Delete images from the groups, exit unwanted groups, delete chats that were no longer relevant, blocked some spam messages etc. That was like Diwali cleaning my whatsapp. As the aircraft touched the ground and the network was back, there were umpteen messages again, mostly of Diwali greetings and then there was this one, a special one:
The sender had a couple of queries regarding the forward thinking course SHIFT and had messaged me through the website contact page. The concerns I heard and yet didn't help her with answers, were her own doubts related to age/work experience and if her profile was fit enough to attend a forward thinking course. To clear someone's self-doubt, one can help only by showing the path, but the bridge has to be crossed by the person herself. That is what I did, I showed the path and left the conversation. By evening, she had paid for the upcoming course cohort starting 19th November. She had crossed the bridge herself and seeing that I smiled, 'Tum hi ho nayaka'. (You are the heroine of your story)
It is not my line, it is a beautiful line borrowed from Nykaa's ad1.
Kahani koi bhi ho, tum hi ho nayaka
As the nayaka of her own unique story, each woman in the film charts a journey fraught with challenges to achieve her own success. The film journeys through hardships of women like a biker who tries stunts, a mountaineer, a rapper in hijab, an entrepreneur and some more. This is what the lady, who had signed up for the course did- she created her own storyline.
Nykaa got its name from the word Nayaka, the heroine. But if I had to relate Nykaa to an animal today, it would not be a beautiful, strong, graceful animal but it would be a small animal with a cone-shaped face, short legs and body that is covered with porcupine-like quills, the hedgehog, the one that remains focussed on its mission. In today's Habits for Thinking, let me introduce you to a 'Good to Great Companies' concept by Jim Collins, called the Hedgehog Concept. That is what Nykaa is, a hedgehog.
The Hedgehog Concept is developed in the book Good to Great. A simple, crystalline concept that flows from deep understanding about the intersection of three circles: 1) what you are deeply passionate about, 2) what you can be the best in the world at, and 3) what best drives your economic or resource engine. Transformations from good to great come about by a series of good decisions made consistently with a Hedgehog Concept, supremely well executed, accumulating one upon another, over a long period of time.
Are you a hedgehog or a fox? In his famous essay "The Hedgehog and the Fox," Isaiah Berlin divided the world into hedgehogs and foxes, based upon an ancient Greek parable: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."
Those who built the good-to-great companies were, to one degree or another, hedgehogs. They used their hedgehog nature to drive toward what we came to call a Hedgehog Concept for their companies. Those who led the comparison companies tended to be foxes, never gaining the clarifying advantage of a Hedgehog Concept, being instead scattered, diffused, and inconsistent.
Here are three circles of the Hedgehog concept explained:
1. What you can be the best in the world at
(and, equally important, what you cannot be the best in the world at). This discerning standard goes far beyond core competence. Just because you possess a core competence doesn't necessarily mean you can be the best in the world at it. Conversely, what you can become the best at might not even be something in which you are currently engaged.
Example: Gillette – could become the best at building premier global brands of daily necessities that required sophisticated manufacturing technology. Notes: Gillette ability to manufacture low cost, high tolerance products, ability to build global consumer brands.
NYKAA: Could become the best in cosmetics shopping.
Just some of several initiatives that the company has taken to become the best: a) understand the customer cosmetics shopping journey- customers like to read blogs, reviews etc. before buying a product. Nykaa has focussed on creating content both on its platform through customer reviews and outside on the internet space through influencers, videos etc. Nykaa has a strong ecosystem2 which includes Network, TV, Beauty Book, Army among others. There are >1,350 influencers; YouTube based platform has >1m subscribers; 3.1m members are in the peer-to-peer community. b) catering to the sachet market: Nykaa understands the market and has made available samples and mini product sizes for sampling and consumption.
2. What drives your economic engine?
All the good-to-great companies attained piercing insight into how to most effectively generate sustained and robust cash flow and profitability. In particular, they discovered the single denominator—profit per x—that had the greatest impact on their economics. (It would be cash flow per x in the social sector.)
Example : Gillette-Shift from profit per division to profit per customer reflected the economic power of repeatable purchases e.g. razor cartridges.
NYKAA: Strong Unit economics, a key differentiator3
While most e-commerce players in India have been burning cash to acquire new customers and drive adoption/ penetration, Nykaa stands out given its strong focus on unit economics. At an Ebitda level, the company has been making steady progress with break-even achieved in FY19, and since then, Ebitda margin expanded to 6.6% in FY21. With growing scale, Nykaa also achieved PAT break-even in FY21. A high Average Order Value, good intake margins and focus on assortment over discounting are the key factors that drive Nykaa's strong unit economics.
I remember visiting one of the first stores of Nykaa, in 2015 or so. This one was at the airport. Barely stocked with some perfumes, the store was barren of both products and customers. Over the years, not just that store but several other stores came up. Had it been a focus on profit per store, it would not have survived even a few months. Focus on unit economics has been a great strength for Nykaa.
3. What you are deeply passionate about.
The good-to-great companies focused on those activities that ignited their passion. The idea here is not to stimulate passion but to discover what makes you passionate.
Example: when Gillette executives made the choice to build sophisticated, relatively expensive shaving systems rather than fight a low margin battle with disposables, they did so in large part because they just couldn't get excited about cheap disposable razors. "Zeien talks about shaving systems with the sort of technical gusto one expects from a Boeing or Hughes engineer."wrote a journalist about Gillette's CEO in 1996.
NYKAA: Customer experience:
Nykaa, from its early days and unlike other market places, initiated stocking of inventory to manage customer experience for timely, quick delivery and for authenticity of products. "We didn't want to be a discount store," Falguni Nayar said in an interview. "We'd rather sell the right color of lipstick at full price, than the wrong shade at half off which would make the buyer unhappy within minutes of wearing."
This is just a suggestive hedgehog4 concept for Nykaa. It takes years for companies to find the right hedgehog alignment. When asked how do we accelerate the process of getting a hedgehog concept- Jim Collins replies- "It is an inherently iterative process, not an event. The essence of the process is to get the right people engaged in dialogues to ask right questions guided by three circles."
The Hedgehog concept is not only applied for companies but also for individuals. It is not a strategy but it is a reflection tool that helps one understand what one can be best at.
I feel that I was just born to be doing this/ I get paid to be doing this/I look forward to getting up and throwing myself into the daily work
A Hedgehog Concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best or a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at. The distinction is absolutely crucial.
Falguni Nayar, the nayaka of Nykaa, crafts the path of a success story. The Hedgehog concept, very similar to Ikigai, stands true for both companies and individuals. The framework to reflect, build, reiterate a growth path is a necessity for both an individual and companies. This is the path to growth, this is the path from good to great.
This Diwali, this festive season, like the lady who signed up for the course, like Nykaa, remember to be the Nayaka of your own story!
1Brand: Nykaa; Advertising Agency: Sideways
2,3Excerpts from Nykaa IPO: Growth and Profitability Need Not Be Mutually Exclusive by Jefferies dated 18 August 2021.
4I, the author of this piece, have not spoken to anyone from Nykaa before writing this piece. The Hedgehog Concept for Nykaa is based on my years of observing Nykaa, conversations with people in the industry, secondary research that is interviews and equity analysts' documents.
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The MILK Crate aka Silos Challenge For Leaders
October 30, 2021 February 9, 2022 by Vishakha SInghLeave a Comment on The MILK Crate aka Silos Challenge For Leaders
Adventure, as you and I know it, is an experience that is very unusual, exciting or dangerous. Still, it is bewildering to see, men and women, adults in their bodies, childlike in minds, taking adventure as their mode of entertainment and risking their own lives. Take the instance of the Milk Crate challenge that has become a craze in some parts of the world and in many parts of the digital world.You take up the crate challenge, make a video, post it online and see you and your friends failing it, others get compelled to take it too. It is not like the ice bucket challenge where it was easy to put a bucket of ice over your head. In the Milk Crate challenge, plastic milk crates that are used for milk distribution and sale are stacked on top of each other in a staircase pyramid fashion. The person, who takes the challenge, has to climb up on this high podium of crates and then climb down from the other side. As the challenge started trending on social media, platforms and doctors raised an alarm on the dangerous impact of the fall. The chances of falling and failing the challenge is very high.
Why it is guaranteed to fail? As explained in a video by Wired, unsupported columns go through a sudden horizontal movement called Buckling.
Column buckling is a curious and unique subject. It is perhaps the only area of structural mechanics in which failure is not related to the strength of the material. A column buckling analysis consists of determining the maximum load a column can support before it collapses.
Buckling refers to the loss of stability of a component and is usually independent of material strength. This loss of stability usually occurs within the elastic range of the material.
A simple way to demonstrate column buckling is to hold a ruler at either end and to push your hands toward one another. The ruler will buckle at the center.
In today's Habits for Thinking, I am urging you leaders to spend some time on thinking about the presence of silos in your organisation. Silos, or columns in the organisation, especially in large organisations are independent teams not interacting with each other.
The Silo Mentality as defined by the Business Dictionary is a mindset present when certain departments or sectors do not wish to share information with others in the same company. This type of mentality will reduce efficiency in the overall operation, reduce morale, and may contribute to the demise of a productive company culture.
Sounds like a Milk Crate challenge, isn't it? It is true. Independent teams are great for organisations but independent, uncommunicative teams are a burden on productivity. It is an invisible force that exists to create resistance and leads to falls and failure like in the Milk Crate challenge, that can be extremely harmful for the business. Silos do not appear overnight in an organization. Organizational structures are designed to deliver key results. Organisational structures can be functional like marketing, sales, technology, delivery etc. The structure can be consumer facing if there are several product lines in a company like in banks – credit cards, consumer loans, corporate banking, SME etc. In new age technology driven businesses, the role of a product manager is to bring together consumer facing teams and backend engineering teams aligned to the business goals. The organizational structure is not designed to create columns or silos, it is designed to deliver results but yet, the teams create silos. There are primarily two reasons for it: culture and leadership teams. In today's Habits for Thinking, I am bringing your attention to the Milk Crate Challenge in your own organisation, to look for the existence of these unsupported columns or silos, to assess the buckling load and to strengthen it.
Accept the Challenge:
1. The SILOS Challenge: Leadership and Unified Vision
It trickles down from the top. The pressure applied at the top leads to buckling of the column- the horizontal movement which brings a fall. It becomes critical to have a unified vision for all business heads and leaders. The integrated approach drives down the message and keeps the integration support between several teams too. A unified vision not only brings the leaders together, keeps them together too.
2.The SILOS Challenge: Cultural brokers
To launch Times Now as the first news channel from the group, an entire new business unit was created within the Times of India group. The team, designed as an independent unit grew, moved into a new building and started rolling the business. As a beginner it needed support from the parent company across several departments.One of my functional roles was to manage and forge alliances between the old and the new business teams. Today, I would give a name to that role 'a cultural broker.' A cultural broker is someone who understands the cultural differences of the two teams in an organisation and is able to forge alliances for the benefit of the two set ups. Product managers play that role between departments with an eye on the goal.
3. The SILOS Challenge: Communicate often
Open office space encourages a lot of informal communication within team members but what if there are separate floors for separate departments. Removing physical barriers like seating, creating watercooler moments for interdepartmental teams are some simple tools that can create frequent communication. More communication, formal and informal, leads to understanding of each other, builds empathetic inter team relationships that becomes the support for the columns.
There are other ways of creating inter department communication opportunities.Training and learning brings people together for the common goal of the business.
4. The SILOS Challenge: Removing data silos
Dependency on data and information to drive business decisions is critical. As data dependency grows, so does the protection and ownership of that data. Often, this creates data silos between leaders and teams. Data silos mean an incomplete view of reality. This could lead to bad customer experience, slower pace of change and roadblock to innovations.
Friction that makes teams less collaborative slows down the pace of the organisation. Data silos can be handled through software platforms which can create relevant access for different teams.
Column buckling, the bending of a column or the failure of the column, is not related to the strength of the material. You take a steel ruler in your hand and put pressure from the top and the ruler will bend. Similarly, independent teams, in their own respective area, are very strong performing teams. But like column buckling, if teams are not supported with each other, buckling of one column or one team can crash the growth of the organisation. Organisational silos are like columns in a physical structure and can be supported by four pillars, pillars of Leadership and unified vision, presence of cultural brokers, focus on inter- team communication flow and relevant data access to teams. Invisible forces like silos are a real challenge but can be handled.
http://shift.habitsforthinking.in/
First Laugh, Then Think
October 3, 2021 October 3, 2021 by Vishakha SInghLeave a Comment on First Laugh, Then Think
To explain a joke is to kill a joke, and to translate a joke is to mercilessly kill a joke. I am not good at either explaining or translating. How can one be, if one is the subject of the joke all the time. Just last week, I sat in the cafe I have been frequenting almost daily in the past few weeks with my son and introduced him to one of the people there as the owner. Son asked, "Really? He keeps such a low profile, Mom. Doesn't look like he is the boss here." "Exactly, that's why I am showing him to you," I whispered. The place is called Amiel Gourmet. The manager is called Immanuel. Amiel the owner, Immanuel the manager,Amiel, Immanuel…el…el so the shortcut in my head mistook Immanuel as Amiel, the owner, until I had to save Immanuel's number in my phone when I realised my blunder. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Thank God my son had left before this realisation. So you see, if I have to translate a meme to explain to someone, I might as well feature in it. That will be more impactful.
A meme on the internet based on the actress Sara Ali Khan.
(Sara- means all/full. Aadha- means half. Dher Sara means – many.)
We don't have fun filled twists and turns in work life, definitely not in the online world, away from colleagues, in work from home environment. It is all straightforward, rectangular boxes on the screen, sometimes just the dark rectangle with the video off (the most common excuse beingpoor network) and the ones with the video on may be sitting in knickers and jackets. Life is like that. Hidden fun. Knickers in combination with jackets. Baby starts dancing on the bed, switch off the video. Spouse comes angrily at the disturbing child, and you switch off the video. Eat food. Must switch off the video. Mess under the table but a neatly, color coordinated bookshelf behind. Small joys but hidden joys. One wonders, is it more joyful because it is unseen, undiscovered, unheard. Memes, jokes are not rocket science. Joke tellers are. With the eyes that see the unseen, ears that hear the unheard, they write lines that extend the laughing lines. They bring notice to something mundane, something not so obvious yet something that is all around.
Like the sounds of cats- the purring, chirping, chatterting, trilling, tweedling, murmuring, meowing, moaning, squeaking, hissing, yowling, howling, growling and other modes of cat communication that Susanne Schotz brought attention to. Who would have thought that writing down a paper on cat communication would win you a prize, a prize with a name that has Nobel in it and is given by a real Nobel Laureate. Susanne Schotz with two other colleagues won the Ig Nobel Prize in Biology for analyzing cat- human communication. Quite a cat!
Whoever wrote the phrase curiosity killed the cat would fear Schotz. She took the cat to kill her curiosity. Her curiosity of how cats communicate and her research on twilling, trilling, moaning, spurring etc got her a prize, a prize that stands for awarding, not-so-obvious, curiosity.
If you are amused, or confused or humored, that is exactly what the organisers and judges of the Ig Nobel Prize would like you to be. In today's habits for thinking, I am bringing your attention to a secret ingredient, the joy of chuckles, smiles and impromptu laughter. The joy of humour at the workplace.
There is nothing as coveted and revered as the Nobel Prize. To create a parody on it is a serious business. What is Ignoble prize? Ig Nobel Prize, (a play on the words ignoble and Nobel. The pronunciation used during the ceremony is /ˌɪɡnoʊˈbɛl/ ig-noh-bel, not like the word "ignoble".) — a parody of the Nobel Prize. It is awarded every autumn to celebrate 10 unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. While the Ig Nobels don't necessarily address the world's most pressing challenges, they do represent the curiosity that is an intrinsic part of discoveries.
The annual ceremony at Harvard University recognizes research that "makes people first laugh, then think," says Ig Nobel Prize founder Marc Abrahams, who along with a panel of experts evaluates thousands of nominations each year. Theawards are presented by genuine Nobel laureates at Harvard University.
For example, staying on the subject of cats, one of the winners was: Are cats liquid or solid? Seriously?
Yes. 'Can a Cat Be Both a Solid and a Liquid?' was inspired by photos of cats tucked into glasses and buckets. The researchers used mathematical formulas to conclude that active young cats hold their physical shape longer than older felines.
Screengrabs from Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony 2021
As bizarre as it can be.
The awards are not for the best or worst, but rather to highlight research that encourages people to think in unusual ways. In 2010, Sir Andre Geim was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics for his work with graphene, thus becoming the first person to have received both a Nobel Prize and an individual Ig Nobel.
First laugh then think
A sense of humour is beneficial because it allows for new concepts to be entertained, writes The Guardian. Today the "butterfly effect" is well understood: a small disturbance like the flapping of a butterfly's wings can induce large consequences far away. Yet the image was meant to be a joke, dreamed up by the organiser of a conference when the father of chaos theory, Edward Lorenz, failed to come up with a title for the ground-breaking paper he was to present. Instead, one was invented and "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?" was humorously accepted.
Laughter is a serious business:
There are comic artists that have built castles on laughter of others. Itis a serious business to create memes, crack jokes, do stand-ups and deliver crackling statements. Comic columns whether Dilbert or RK laxman and many others use humour to leave a thought.
Using humor to bring attention to something has been a serious business. Bewakoof, the apparel brand, has built an empire of more than 10 million customers who have engaged on the basis of humor based social media interactions and merchandise.
In today's Habits for Thinking, the attention is on the humor, the subtle humor, the not-so-subtle humor and the gargantuan laughter. Each one brings some meaning to the workplace. Like the butterfly effect in the research that earns a name by being a subtle title and the Ig Nobel Awards that are not so subtle in humor, these layers of joy add more fuel to the curiosity.
Being foolish, being humorous and bringing humor and foolishness is a sign of intelligence, a sign of curiosity, a sign of growth.
Steve Jobs said in his famous Stanford commencement address:
Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.
On the back cover of their final issue (The Whole Earth Catalog, a magazine he loved dearly) was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
First laugh, then think.
Managing Monkey Business through Interventions
September 18, 2021 September 18, 2021 by Vishakha SIngh1 Comment on Managing Monkey Business through Interventions
No, not monkey business but monkeys create actual business. A morning walk in the outskirts of Bangalore, near the airport, took me to acres of lush green grape vines sprawling a few meters above the earth trained meticulously on trellis. A peek inside the vine and you see green and dark bunches of grapes facing downwards, getting ready to be plucked in a few weeks. A glance above the vine and all you can see is meters of plastic net covering the plantation. Why? To keep it safe from monkey menace in the area. A quick Google throws up a list of vendors who have become experts for providing safety nets for monkeys, whether at farms or at balconies. A not so monkey business, a real business for many.
Monkey business, the phrase that stands for silly or mischievous behaviour, must have struck with Netflix engineers when they designed a system to play mischief with their own network system. They called it Chaos Monkey. Chaos Monkey, Netflix's resiliency tool is responsible for randomly terminating instances in the network to ensure that engineers implement their services to be resilient to instance failures. Chaos Monkey, a successful tool available now since 2010 is based on the concept of Chaos Engineering.
Chaos Engineering is a disciplined approach to identify failures before they become outages. By proactively testing how a system responds to failure conditions, you can identify and fix failures before they become public facing outages. Chaos Engineering lets you validate what you think will happen with what is actually happening in your systems. By performing the smallest possible experiments you can measure, you're able to "break things on purpose" in order to learn how to build more resilient systems.
Chaos Monkey, monkey-like randomness and mischief and the plastic net that covers grapevines are instances of interventions to prevent the systems and farming from failure, especially from monkey-like, random attacks. Interventions to bring in behaviour change have a similar effect, prevention from wavering away from the goal.
Our work life is replete with randomness, activities and distractions that derail our performance. Most of these activities are not well defined but are as random and mischief as a monkey that destroys the productivity crop from time to time. Reasons like work overload, fatigue, communication gap with the boss, non clarity in the goal and expectation, non cohesive team etc. could deviate from active performance. Not just external factors, individual habits and way of thinking can also be a deterrent to optimal performance. These external and internal causes and aberrations can be seen as monkeys attacking the system and can be tackled through interventions. In this Habits for Forward Thinking article, let me bring your attention to psychological interventions that help one achieve goals, personal and professional.
What are interventions? Psychological interventions are any set of strategies that are used to change behaviors, emotions, or cognitions to produce a personal change leading to higher functional results.
Interventions in Sports:
Sports personalities are the ultimate example of human level performances. Here is an excerpt from a research paper of Interventions in Sports performance to help you understand the significance of interventions:
"Psychological skills training" is a term that "was coined to describe techniques and strategies designed to teach or enhance mental skills that facilitate performance and a positive approach to sport competition"
The paper talks about, 'When researchers and practitioners are developing psychological skills training interventions it is important that they make a clear distinction between psychological qualities, psychological skills, and psychological strategies. "Psychological qualities" are the characteristics or attributes that facilitate optimal performance, and they can be experienced to varying degrees (e.g., high and low self-confidence; Holland, Woodcock, Cumming, & Duda, 2010). "Psychological skills" involve the ability to regulate psychological qualities, such as the ability to maintain self-confidence (Holland et al., 2010; Vealey, 1988). "Psychological strategies" are the interventions or the methods used to purposefully teach those psychological skills and qualities (e.g., thought control; Vealey, 1988).
The psychological techniques that have been most widely used by sport psychology practitioners, and the focus of most intervention research, are imagery, goal-setting, thought management and self-talk, and physical relaxation.
Interventions in Education:
Schools, especially ones with a focus on the mental well being of students, have a team of special educators to identify, intervene and nurture students for their optimal performance. Interventions are designed to help students that have a slower learning process than their batchmates. Interventions are also designed to make bright, gifted kids in the class to outperform his or her own achievements. Interventions are not necessarily only meant for corrections in behaviour, they are also designed to bring enhancement in performance.
Interventions in Worklife:
Interventions, as the name suggests, is a set of sequenced and planned actions or events intended to help the organization exercise its effectiveness. Intervention purposely disrupt the status quo. As quoted in a note from McKinsey, "Many L&D functions embrace a framework known as "70:20:10," in which 70 percent of learning takes place on the job, 20 percent through interaction and collaboration, and 10 percent through formal-learning interventions. These percentages are general guidelines and vary by industry and organization. Today, L&D leaders must design and implement interventions that support informal learning, including coaching and mentoring, on-the-job instruction, apprenticeships, leadership shadowing, action-based learning, on-demand access to digital learning, and lunch-and-learn sessions. Social technologies play a growing role in connecting experts and creating and sharing knowledge."
At corporate levels, interventions can be designed to work at the organization level for example- declaring a 3 day long weekend to battle fatigue of the organisation or interventions can be personalised at an individual level like a planned conversation session between two people affecting each other's performance in a negative way. To adopt diversity and inclusion, L&D teams are strategizing interventions to bring required behaviour change at a cultural level.
Interventions need not be addressed only by psychologists. Team leaders, managers, human resources team, anyone willing to understand the problem can identify the need for intervention. You and I, any individual, if feeling stuck in a situation can look for intervention as a measure to step out.
There is a word of caution. Too much intervention or bad timing or a bad strategy of intervention can be harmful. In such cases, one must remember, sometimes doing nothing is an intervention too. There is a word for overdose of intervention- iatrogenics– when a treatment causes more harm than benefit. As iatros means healer in Greek, the word means "caused by the healer" or "brought by the healer." Healer, in this sense, need not mean doctor, but anyone intervening to solve a problem.
It is in human nature to react to a situation and take action. If the net outcome result of intervening is negative, then one must refrain from intervening. Doing nothing in some cases to keep a net positive result is an intervention too. At the same time, too much intervention is almost like putting a thick black cover instead of a net to protect the grape farms from monkeys. Thick cover will stunt the growth by stopping sunlight and air and thus kill the plants, so does wrong intervention strategy.
Planning and designing interventions are like preparing to manage monkey menace. Some are small, some are big, some come as individuals and some come as barrels. Interventions, like the net, or chaos monkey of Netflix, prepare to become resilient and let the growth prosper, before the menace becomes the outage.
It is not a monkey business to manage monkey menace.
Habits for Forward Thinking is your place to grow. Read more here.
The Phenomenon called Pradeep Guha
September 11, 2021 September 12, 2021 by Vishakha SInghLeave a Comment on The Phenomenon called Pradeep Guha
'Etsy' said the Facebook representative and a few heads turned towards me. It was mid-morning on a sunny October day in San Francisco, nearly a decade ago. The IAA* Indian delegation of twenty people were seated in a small room at Facebook headquarters with a bright orange wall on the backside. As a part of the delegation,I was attending a session by Facebook's Paul Adams on building communities. It was 2012, when the words 'digital communities' appeared like precious jewels in our conversations, in small quantities. Building communities as a business model was new for the world and Facebook was showing the path, in action and in presentations. The speaker was then head of Facebook planning and had just released a book titled 'Grouped' on communities which we later received as a gift.
Led by Pradeep Guha, IAA had organised a digital tour for the CEOs to the USA to visit and learn from the big tech companies. The 2012 digital tour was the second initiative from IAA and I had onboarded the delegation to visit Microsoft, Youtube, Facebook, Google, Twitter.
That October morning, at the Facebook headquarters, in the middle of a talk by Facebook, I had earned a special spot in Pradeep Guha's thoughts. Before the start of the tour, in Pradeep Guha's Mumbai office, sitting across his large wooden table, I had requested him to include a visit to the Etsy office too. A listed company, Etsy is dedicated to building small, home grown businesses and has been building communities since its inception. Those days Etsy was not widely popular. PG was not familiar with Etsy but he took interest in my conversation on Etsy. So as the Facebook speaker talked about ETSY as the leading example in building communities, Pradeep Guha, sitting at the centre of the table, leaned forward and gestured a thumbs up to me. And, the heads on the table turned in my direction on this rare appreciation coming from him. I was suddenly noticed. Etsy had marked a respectable spot for me in his mind.
Pradeep Guha at Microsoft, Seattle, 2012
IAA- India Chapter delegation at Big Tech Companies. 2012
In today's Habits for Thinking, I want to bring your attention to the phenomenon called Pradeep Guha. To the unknown, you can read about Pradeep Guha in the tribute written here and a lot over the internet.
The Curious:
Techcrunch Disrupt is an annual event held in San Francisco for the tech startup world. It not only showcases new ideas but also the making of ideas, successes and failures. I had described the event to PG and had recommended him to attend it. One fine morning in 2019, I received a message from him on how excited he was to attend it. Curiosity fuels learning and he stayed at the top of knowledge by attending not just Techcrunch but also Singularity University and some other courses. A sharp thinker feeds his mind with new knowledge. He makes efforts to attend courses to learn and unlearn, no matter his age or designation. This is what Pradeep Guha maintained. It was not just an Etsy moment at Facebook, PG made efforts to learn the new from across fields and continents. He displayed curiosity with a proficiency that lacked any arrogance, the arrogance that becomes a second nature for being successful for a long time.
The secret of making a phenomenon is to live a life with a growth mindset, to stay curious and to hone the knowledge.
The Contrast:
What is the opposite of grand? Insignificant. To balance the two opposites effortlessly is a magical trait and that is what came easy to the phenomenon called PG. He always came up with a grand vision but stayed true to the most insignificant details in execution of that vision. There was never any room for error in execution of the grandest of the vision. This reflected in all aspects of his work whether it was related to media selling by designing Mastermind or in creation of landmark events or even in maintaining his relationships with the world. He effortlessly balanced the contrast of big and trivial detail. It was neither compromised nor showcased. The balancing of the contrast was a given, it came like yin and yang, always together.
The Compassionate:
Pradeep Guha, the media stalwart passed away on 21st August 2021. On 9th August, I had a message exchange where he wrote to me saying, "All good, thank you." The news of his passing filled me with all shades of emotions, primarily being upset. He had hidden the suffering, at the same time, he had responded. When tributes poured in, all of it had the same tone of how he made people feel very special. Losing him became a personal loss on a mass level. Another contrast. His ability to connect, support, bind with people is an ability less possessed by leaders. I was a nobody in his aura of things but from time to time I received a message, sometimes a gentle scolding for staying quiet for months. His ability to keep people in his thoughts, to make them feel important and needed is a lesson in generosity. It was a construct maintained over the years. Not just colleagues and friends, he maintained a magical vibe with celebrities too. Renowned personalities treated him like their closest pal, yet he asked for a picture to keep the podium well defined for both.
Pradeep Guha and Nandan Nilekani. Kochi. 2019.
Pradeep Guha, the phenomenon, lit the path with his way of life, with childlike curiosity, manlike balancing of contrast and naturelike compassion for people. All we need to do is to keep the lights on.
*International Advertising Association
3 essential tools for leaders to embrace diversity
August 15, 2021 October 19, 2021 by Vishakha SInghLeave a Comment on 3 essential tools for leaders to embrace diversity
'A hand gesture that involves rotating your wrist externally as your thumb, index and middle finger unfurl open." Do you know what it is?
That is the name sign for US Vice President Kamala Harris. Name signs, also known as sign names, are an important component of deaf culture. They provide deaf people with a way to identify themselves and others in conversation, while also representing "a Deaf person's membership in the Deaf community."
The selection of the name sign for Kamala Harris was itself a process done by the community which was inclusive and diverse. Five women- Ebony Gooden, Kavita Pipalia, Smita Kothari, Candace Jones and Arlene Ngalle-Paryani — as Black and Indian members of the "capital D Deaf community"* — felt it was important that the selection of Ms. Harris's name sign be the result of an inclusive and democratic process. Given that Vice President Harris was the first female vice president, as well as the first Black and Indian candidate to fill the role, they agreed that her heritage should inform that process, the women recalled in an interview using interpreters.
How did we pick this particular sign name? I want to explain briefly about Kamala Harris. She did ask people to use her name, Kamala, because it means a lot to her. "Kamala" means a lotus flower. I will explain briefly what a lotus flower means. Purity. Enlightenment. Rebirth. A lotus flower has strong roots that can bore through dirt. The flower shows its beauty when it blooms. I am making it an analogy with Kamala, who appears in the midst of a dark and divided America. She brings enlightenment and purity. Rebirth. Why do we use three fingers? It's because she is the first Black, Indian, and female, and it is represented in the three fingers that bloom. She's not the "first" but has "three firsts." Kamala!
-Explanation on the name sign
A name is an identity. It doesn't matter which language, spoken or sign, native or acquired. A name marks the place of shared culture, of shared values. Deaf people have become more engaged in the process of selecting name signs for hearing politicians and well-known individuals. It is a way for people to acknowledge those individuals "and show alliance with them," said the article in the New York Times.
You create a language to stand in and not out, to come together. You create a name sign to be understood, to include diversity and in this Independence day edition of Habits for Thinking, I want your attention on embracing diversity at workplaces. Embracing diversity in a culture depends on how we think and act.
In today's Habits for Thinking, the focus is on leaders who are increasingly working on diversity and inclusion at workplaces, especially gender diversity. Gender diversity is being seeded through several corporate policies. The workforce is growing with more diverse recruitments, the first step in bringing in diversity. Recruitment needs to be followed by adopting diversity across the organisation as a part of regular life. Providing support facilities to attract and recruit like extended leaves, child care support etc is the easy part of encouraging gender diversity. The tougher part is to genuinely embrace diversity as a culture of the organisation. An embraced diverse culture means everyone has a voice to share, everyone feels heard, everyone belongs to the community equally and everyone becomes responsible for the diverse culture to grow. It is only when people are heard and own a share of voice is when there can be a real growth, growth of people, growth of the organisation and growth of diversity.
Diversity is accepting the diverse opinion and thoughts in a culture. But how does a culture embrace diversity? The culture, unless it is a startup venture, has been around for years, even before the diversity policy came in. To make room for diversity, the culture needs to evolve and that can only happen through a mindset shift of its people. The mindset change has good news and bad news. The bad news is that it is far tougher to achieve behavioural change than creating support facilities. The good news is more and more people are open and ready to be guided for the shift. All it takes is a leader to walk the path of embracing diversity. A leader shapes the culture and the culture can be chiseled through three essential tools to embrace diversity:
1. Show, don't tell to address diversity:
Telling people to embrace diversity is not enough. The leader has to show the action by designing processes that bring in change. The processes that are aligned to the mission of diversity drive should be measurable. One must remember, what gets measured, gets done. Showing is not only restricted to action and processes, showing through visuals is critical too. Women are called 'the invisible workforce' both at home and at workplaces. In large organisations, to enable women to step up for leadership roles, it is important to create opportunities to showcase the faces behind the work. It is infectious, it inspires others to step up and makes everyone feel heard.
2. Language to weave diversity in the culture:
The language that the leader uses acts as a moral compass for the people, influencing how they think, act and feel in different situations. An article in Harvard Business Review talks about how languages shape the organisation. The article states, "Your influence over the behavior of your people is not limited to carefully-prescribed internal communications; it lies in the daily sentiments, conversations and values you share. The best leaders understand this — like Horst Schulze of Ritz-Carlton, who shaped his employee's decorum and conduct with "We're ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen." These leaders used simple, highly motivating and prescriptive words that set the right cultural permission for their organizations. This language, carefully articulated and shared, offers rich opportunities to codify and crystallize what your company is about, and what your company seeks.
3. Shift mindsets through nudges:
Gender Diversity is a fundamental need. It is not only about following a mandated policy. It is a war against generations of societal biases that have made the gap so wide and so large that it is difficult to be ironed out. Deep rooted attitudes about the role of women in society leads to biases like availability bias where you think and react to a situation with what is available as an easy information in your mind. This bias gets ironed out by a disciplined mindset shift. You work on your habits to change your attitude. Behavioural nudges work as reminders at the appropriate time to help in changing habits and behaviours of people, organisations. Read more about nudge here in an earlier article written by me.
A diverse team of women came together to bridge the gap between deaf and non deaf community by assigning a name sign for the first woman of color, The Vice President. Using the first three fingers they not only designed her name sign, they showed the path that the bridge of inclusion and diversity can be made through language. All we need to do is consciously change our habits to think and act in the right manner.
*(a term used by some deaf people to indicate that they embrace deafness as a cultural identity and communicate primarily through ASL)
The magic that makes good to great: Sindhu, Chanu, Deepinder, Falguni
August 7, 2021 August 7, 2021 by Vishakha SInghLeave a Comment on The magic that makes good to great: Sindhu, Chanu, Deepinder, Falguni
"She had tears in her eyes. I told her to think it was a gift for me," PV Sindhu's father lifted her spirits when the semi final defeat to Tai Tzu-Ying on Saturday weighed her down.
"Through all your experiences of ups and downs, did you ever come close to giving up in all these 12-odd years?" asked the interviewer.
"About a couple of times every week,'' answered Deepinder Goyal, in his interview after Zomato's IPO.
The timelines are palpitating with sheer excitement and nervousness floating when history is in the making, whether in the Olympics stadiums or at Dalal Street. Both sports and startups personalities are weaving some magic in the air. It is filled with hope, with ambition and dreams and most importantly it seems achievable. Yes, we can do it.
PV Sindhu won her second medal at the Olympics last week. It makes her the first Indian woman to win two medals at the Olympics. Also, in the same week Deepinder Goyal's startup, Zomato rang the opening bell at the stock market. The event makes him the first startup boy, made-in-India, to reach this high level of success. Zomato's listing is not only impressive because it is the first new-age startup, but also because it is the first company without profits in its books that has pocketed the likes of people. It doesn't stop here, there are more names. Chanu Saikom Mirabai, Rani Rampal, Ravi Kumar Dahiya, P R Sreejesh, Simranjeet Singh, Savita Punia and the list goes on for athletes who have been shining bright at the Olympics. In a parallel startup world, being successfully listed at the stock market is almost equivalent to securing an olympic medal. Zomato is a new age startup that had its IPO recently. The next in the pipeline is Nykaa. Cartrade, Mobikwik and several others are waiting in the wings. It is just the beginning.
From Olympics to startups, the made-in-India story is not a story of fiction or mere skill, hardwork and grit. It is the story of leadership, leadership of not just excellence but where the ambition for the mission and institution, exceeds the ambition for the self. In today's column, I bring to you an understanding of a leadership personality trait that takes goodness to greatness, in both sports and startups. It is called Level 5 Leadership.
Level 5 leadership is a concept developed in the book Good to Great. Level 5 leaders display a powerful mixture of personal humility and indomitable will. They're incredibly ambitious, but their ambition is first and foremost for the cause, for the organization and its purpose, not themselves.
As the events unfolded in both startups and the sports world, it became clearer that how the two worlds are similar in performance and delivery. Like an athlete is developed by a village of experts, startups are run by leaders supported by teams across all functions. An athlete digs deeper inside her for courage, so does the founder. The stories of sports and startups match. The leadership style matches.
Grit and hardwork:
Mirabai Chanu's self-discovery of weightlifting started with carrying firewood from the jungle at the age of 12. To train she travelled 40kms everyday. "At times, she would hitch a ride on a truck or if she got lucky share a tuk-tuk, some days she would cycle, and some days she would come half the way and then walk back home. She never threw in the towel," her mother Tombi Devi said in an interview.
Deepinder Goyal's childhood training was to save himself from terrorists. Here is an excerpt from his mentor and investor Sanjeev Bhikchandani: He was born in Muktsar – a small town in Punjab in 1983. His father was a teacher in a government school. For the first ten years of his life the family lived in the fear of terrorists. As a child he was tutored by his parents that if the terrorists ever came he should tell them that his name was Deepinder and he was a Sikh. That way they would spare his life even if they killed his parents. Thankfully the terrorists never came.
When he was fifteen his parents sent him to Chandigarh to study for the last two years in school. He lived in a hostel – ragging was tough but he survived. Academically he was totally out of his depth initially since the standard of study was far higher than he had ever encountered. But he tried hard and managed to clear the IIT entrance examination. From IIT he went to Bain and then launched Foodiebay which became Zomato later on.
Skill and speed:
Sjoerd Marijne, the Indian Hockey girls team coach, talks about Rani Rampal's skills in a story by Sharda Ugra. The secret sauce, he says, about her physical properties lies in the fact "that she is faster with the ball than without the ball." With the ball on her stick, she turns into an elusive quicksilver with the most minimal feints and dummies, wrong-footing defenders, leaving them behind, earning her extra slices of time. During a training run, Marijne said he asked the faster players to hustle against Rani, press hard and fast around her, but still she slipped through. Later, she told the bemused Marijne, "She might be faster with the ball, but I am quicker with the thinking."
Pandemic lockdown in 2020 had presented a problem for businesses. Falguni Nayar knew it would take some quick pivots and strategic thinking to keep the business rolling. And Nayar didn't waste any time. With operations and logistics coming to a halt, she decided to sell everyday essentials online. "Overnight we pivoted to an essentials-only online store and to handle that we utilised our 70 offline stores across the country to do hyperlocal delivery," says the 57-year-old Nayar. The hyperlocal focus was, of course, because intra-state shipment of products was restricted during the initial phase of the lockdown. "We would match the products ordered online with what was available at the store to deliver to the nearest pin code," she adds, as mentioned in an article.
Like hardwork and determination, skills and speed to execute is an essential path to being successful in both sports and startups. What separates the good to great is the level of leadership that they exhibit. Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great illustrated that long lasting companies are built by level 5 leaders. Level 1 being a highly capable individual, Level 2- contributing team member, Level 3- a competent manager, Level 4- Effective leader, Level 5 – builds enduring greatness.
Level 5 leadership trait that makes them good to great:
It is not that level 5 leaders have no ego or self interest. Indeed they are incredibly ambitious- but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves. For Sindhu, who aspired to get a Gold at Tokyo 2020 faced a setback with the loss in semifinals.
She gathered courage and focus to fight again to earn a bronze, for herself and for the country.
Deepinder Goyal, continues on giving up: "It is about how fast you can pick yourself up and get back." In another conversation he gives a peek into his thoughts while talking about delivery partners. He says, "We are always focused on doing more for them, doing better for them" showing his larger mission.
Nykaa's Falguni Nayyar has carved her own successful path operating in a highly competitive space with giants like Amazon and Flipkart. She has skillfully built the company in a capital intensive space, has made it profitable and brought it to IPO stage.
The unwavering resolve, to do what must be done for the success, no matter how deep they have to dig inside themselves for courage and clarity, is what takes them from good to great.
Level 5 leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results. They are resolved to do whatever it takes to make the company great, no matter how big or hard the decisions.
That is how the leaders have performed and achieved, in sports and in startups. P.V Sindhu, Mirabai Chanu, Deepinder Goyal, Falguni Nayar. The unwavering resolve of a Level-5 leadership to dig to leap from goodness to greatness.
Surviving Availability Bias in Our Decisions
July 31, 2021 July 31, 2021 by Vishakha SInghLeave a Comment on Surviving Availability Bias in Our Decisions
The man behind the counter placed a pair of glasses on my nose and suddenly split his leg wide open, like baby giraffes do. Baby giraffes, whose neck is not long enough to reach parts of a tree, gather food from the ground. But instead of bending the knee, they split wide open their front legs so that the neck can reach the ground. Grown up giraffes also do a split to drink water. It was a Sunday morning and I was in an eyewear store to get a new pair of glasses. The salesman, a tall man, much taller than my five feet six inches, was taking measurements on my selected frame. That moment, when he split his legs to bring his eye level to mine, it reminded me of the giraffe. The man was measuring the centre of my progressive lens. Now to understand the centre, one must understand the way progressive lens are made. Progressive lens are the lens that helps you see clear sight both for far objects and near objects like. But a lens comprises physics. It can't be merged into one. So there are bifocal lens which have a clear line demarcating the lens for far vision from the lens for near vision and then there are progressive, the seamless lens where you do not see a line dividing a far vision, a near vision. Both merge in the centre for intermediate vision. Intermediate vision is where you look straight, not down, not far into an object, at a closer distance like a computer screen. The centre point is significant because it depends on the shape of your frame, how the frame sits on your nose and the centre of your vision. It is the ultimate personalisation in a progressive glass that is a necessity. It is measured by both machines and opticians to arrive at an accuracy level. At the store, I had gone through machine measurement and here I was, in front of the tall, gentle-like-giraffe salesman, in a split position to come down to my eye level. He had made a mark on my glass with a blue marker pen.
This was my second trip to the store, an old chain of eyewear. Nearly six years ago I was here to get my first pair of progressive glasses.The between years, from the first one to this one, took me to a new age, online-offline integrated eyewear retail that had mushroomed all around in the city and screens. They had made the second one for me and were quick to replace my frame and lens when pandemic restricted services. It was all easy-peasy, until a prolonged neck stiffness took me to physiotherapy sessions and I circled back to this eye-wear store to treat my neck. My neck and shoulder have been ruined due to hours of being on the computer and due to the error made in my progressive glass where the centre was not in the centre. It was meant to look at the computer screen straight, while I had been lifting my neck to get clear vision from the bottom of the lens.
That Sunday morning, I had shared this challenge with the optician at the store. They had just taken my eye measurement through a machine. The good part of the machine is that it makes you less judgemental about yourself. Have you ever sat on an ophthalmologist's chair where he tries minutely differing lenses and you get confused which one is the clearest. So in a way it was good that the guys used a machine to measure pupil's centre, eye movements etc through a machine. But it was not enough, as here I was, against a counter, looking straight wearing trial lenses and he, on the other side, in a split position, marking on my lens. He took three measurements. Two differed so he used a blue and red pen to mark it. To verify, he called another colleague- a man of a similar height of mine, to see which one was accurate. The man announced a color. But they were still not satisfied. So they called another gentleman, in a uniform which clearly designated him as a senior of all other salesmen in a crisp white shirt with a tie, while others were people wearing blue. This man had to stand on his toes, in a tippy toe way to be at my level. One color mark on my lens was pronounced the winner. From a giraffe split to a straight standing man to a ballerina tip toe, I had men measuring my lens and it's centre or the fitting height.
Here I was, a customer amongst two-three trained salesmen, perfecting their skill on the progressive lens and reminding me of how my biases failed me.
In today's Habits for Thinking let me bring the focus to availability heuristic. In simple words, a heuristic is a shortcut in decision making.
What is the availability heuristic?
The availability heuristic describes our tendency to use information that comes to mind quickly and easily when making decisions about the future.
Availability heuristic has been extended to machine heuristic. In a study, people who trusted machines were significantly more likely to hand over their credit card numbers to a computerized travel agent than a human travel agent. A bias that that machines are more trustworthy and secure than people—or the machine heuristic—may be behind the effect, said S. Shyam Sundar, James P. Jimirro Professor of Media Effects, co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory and affiliate of Penn State's Institute for CyberScience (ICS). "This tendency to trust the machine agent more than the human agent was much stronger for people who were high on the belief in the machine heuristic," said Sundar.
This is what happened to me where my lack of knowledge regarding progressive lenses coupled with machine heuristic, read trust in technology, led me to ignorance about wrong fitted glasses.
Excerpt from my previous article on :
What is Availability bias: All of us have the tendency to use information that comes to mind quickly and easily when making decisions about the future. Our memory is stronger of things that have vivid narration. This availability of our thoughts impacts our decision making.Studies have shown that victims and near victims spend on insurance purchases and protective action after disasters. Another example is you tend to handover a new project to a team member who has a clean recent record and not to an equally competent member who committed a small error recently. This is something similar to recency bias in investing where one tends to take investment decisions based on recent memorable events.
Availability heuristic in the case of trusting that a new age eyewear company is following all the processes is a natural phenomena. For example, Amazon has made us believe that delivery and return is the easiest thing in e-commerce. So when a delivery is delayed or a return is cumbersome from another e-commerce business, we tend to get upset because our availability bias makes it tough to accept the delayed delivery.
The first step is to understand the existence of availability bias as mentioned above. The second step is to think methodically about it.
1. Ask for Facts to avoid availability bias:
Availability bias means the mind retrieves the information that is easiest to recall. The mind anchors the latest memory. The last event, like a failure of a recent project, can stay in memory and may make you ignore the entire year's performance of a person. In such a case, an effort to take a look at the entire year's report about the performance needs to be anchored around.
A habit of presenting your mind with long term facts helps in clearing the bias.
2. Practice Inversion Thinking to deal with availability bias:
Incase of high impact and irreversible decisions, practice inversion thinking while making decisions. For example, making an investment decision is sometimes colored by availability bias. One example can be the entire team thinking on similar lines. Inversion helps in questioning areas that could have been missed. (Read more about inversion thinking here)
Three men at the eyewear store took turns to remind me that my availability bias, the recall of online and technology trust, didn't let me question my ill-fitted lens. It is a natural human behaviour. It happens with us many times. We think the coach we have for the team is the best and knows the job, because he has been a star coach for so many others. We think that this stock has to be bought during the IPO because it is all over the newspapers. We think of what is available for us to think.
To drink, giraffes first have to splay their forelegs and/or bend their knees, and only then can they lower their necks to reach the surface of the water. To protect the giraffe's brain from sudden changes in blood pressure when it lowers its head to drink, it has valves to stop the back-flow of blood and elastic-walled vessels that dilate and constrict to manage flow. These are survival of the fittest adaptations.
We humans need to have thinking adaptations too to survive. Availability bias is a mental model that needs to be worked upon consciously, through processes, to survive decisions.
SHIFT, the online-offline course, next Cohort is starting 16th August. See the introductory video here. Reach out through this form for details/queries:
July 25, 2021 July 25, 2021 by Vishakha SInghLeave a Comment on Reflection
"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience which is bitterest."
This week, on Habits for Thinking, instead of talking about a topic, let us take a pause to reflect on our journey of 'thinking about thinking.'
Reflection is an essential part of any learning process. It is not just about what you have learnt, it is also about how and why.
Here is a link to a small form with just 10 questions to help you reflect. I look forward to reading your reflections in this journey of Habits for Thinking.
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Every wardrobe needs a show-stopping gown for special occasions. Crafted in a shade of red the brand calls 'Watermelon', this floor-length Cushnie design is made in a fully-lined silhouette with an exaggerated high-leg slit up the front. Highlight the open-back detail with a slick updo and shoulder-length earrings.


text:
Q: Problems allocating memory in C EDIT 2
Find more info about this problem in my other SO question.
EDIT 1
I have refreshed this post and so therefore the content may be incongruent with the comments made by Alexey, Hicham, Jonathan and Mat.
The below code uses this FFT to assist in onset detection. When the method is called once, everything works fine and I get a nice log of values. When the method is called a second time I get nan or junk. Any ideas?
{
    NSLog(@"Running onset.");
    NSMutableArray *mutableArrayOfFlags = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
    OnsetsDS  *ods = malloc(sizeof *ods);
    float* odsdata = (float*) malloc(onsetsds_memneeded(ODS_ODF_RCOMPLEX, 512, 11));
    onsetsds_init(ods, odsdata, ODS_FFT_FFTW3_HC, ODS_ODF_RCOMPLEX, 512, 11, 44100);
    int i;
    int x;
    bool onset;

    for (i = 0; i < vocalBuffer.numFrames; i=i+512){

        // convert vocal int to double
        double (*vocalData)[2] =  malloc(2 * 512 * sizeof(double));
        for (x = 0; x < 512; x++){
            *vocalData[x] = (double)vocalBuffer.buffer[i+x];
        }

        // init malloc output double
        double (*outPutDoubleFFTData)[2];
        outPutDoubleFFTData =  malloc(2 * 512 * sizeof(double));
        fft(512, vocalData, outPutDoubleFFTData);

        int z;
        // init malloc float fft data
        float *floatFFTData;
        floatFFTData = malloc(512 * sizeof(float));
        for (z = 0; z < 512; z++){
            floatFFTData[z] = (float)*outPutDoubleFFTData[z];
            if (i==512*20) {
                // NSLog(@"PRE POST %f - %f",*vocalData[z], floatFFTData[z]);
                NSLog(@"PRE POST FLOAT %f - %f - %f",*vocalData[z], (*outPutDoubleFFTData)[z], floatFFTData[z]);

            }
        }

        onset = onsetsds_process(ods, floatFFTData);

        free((*outPutDoubleFFTData));
        free(floatFFTData);
        free(vocalData);

        if (onset){
            printf("onset --> %i\n", i);
            NSNumber *integer = [[NSNumber alloc] initWithInt:i];
            [mutableArrayOfFlags addObject:integer];
        }
    }

    free(ods->data); // Or free(odsdata), they point to the same thing in this case
    free(ods);
    return [[NSArray alloc] initWithArray:mutableArrayOfFlags];
}

Log from first time method is called:
2012-10-20 11:22:19.625 XX[4125:1903] PRE POST FLOAT 4.000000 - 7979.000000 - 7979.000000
2012-10-20 11:22:19.628 XX[4125:1903] PRE POST FLOAT 25.000000 - 0.000000 - 861.794861
2012-10-20 11:22:19.635 XX[4125:1903] PRE POST FLOAT 32.000000 - 861.794875 - 248.516144
2012-10-20 11:22:19.640 XX[4125:1903] PRE POST FLOAT 22.000000 - 92.284860 - -190.525833
2012-10-20 11:22:19.645 XX[4125:1903] PRE POST FLOAT 23.000000 - 248.516141 - 37.045593
2012-10-20 11:22:19.648 XX[4125:1903] PRE POST FLOAT 30.000000 - -33.565115 - 7.444437

Log from second time message is called.
2012-10-20 11:22:36.353 XX[4125:3e07] PRE POST FLOAT 4.000000 - 7979.000000 - 7979.000000
2012-10-20 11:22:36.358 XX[4125:3e07] PRE POST FLOAT 25.000000 - 53979063281237364484736793729327605401034441222848177467876829146104162439787488863720409331484927794377967278456986000075570355992521879340404128702782598833969629491268820332191001022225312452183861587484411698307560976546539765760.000000 - inf
2012-10-20 11:22:36.364 XX[4125:3e07] PRE POST FLOAT 32.000000 -

A:  OnsetsDS  *ods = malloc(sizeof *ods);

This code is a little weird to me. This might be better.
 OnsetsDS  *ods = malloc(sizeof OnsetsDS);

I know if you did this in C or C++, *ods could be doing one of many things, all depending on your compiler. It might not be initialized yet, pointing to NULL, pointing to a random memory address with junk data, or even something else.
You can also do something like
 OnsetsDS ods;

and just pass &ods with your variables in many cases, at least in C++. I'm still in the process of learning objective-C I'll admit.

A: Try using calloc(1, size) instead of malloc(size)

A: you are mixing pointers: *doubleFFTData[b] and double (*doubleFFTData)[2] dont match.
if you want two arrays of 512 doubles :
int b; double (*doubleFFTData)[2];
doubleFFTData[0] =  calloc(1 , 2 * 512 * sizeof(double)); // initialize the array to 0
doubleFFTData[1] = doubleFFTData[0] + 512;

for (b = 0; b < 512;b++){
    NSLog(@"results: %f", doubleFFTData[0][b]);
}
/*and : */

for (b = 0; b < 512;b++){
    NSLog(@"results: %f", doubleFFTData[1][b]);
}

A: double (*doubleFFTData)[2] defines doubleFFTData as a pointer to an array of 2 doubles.
*doubleFFTData[b] is evaluated as first evaluating [b] and then evaluating *.
Since doubleFFTData as a pointer to an array of 2 doubles, doubleFFTData[b] is b-th array of 2 doubles.
That b-th array of 2 doubles, doubleFFTData[b], decays to a pointer, the pointer to 0-th element of the array of 2 doubles. When you dereference this pointer with * you get the first double of the two.
So, *doubleFFTData[b] is equivalent to doubleFFTData[b][0], it gets the first double in the pair of doubles representing a complex-valued DFT point.
That part seems to be fine.
But you aren't initalizing the memory allocated with malloc(). malloc() does not set the allocated memory to any predetermined value as it's not required by the C language standard. So, that memory can contain whatever data is left over from previously executed code or it can be just pure garbage if the memory hasn't yet been used after the PC was powered on.
You don't want to use uninitialized variables. Unless, you're implementing a pseudo-random number generator for SSL or such.

A: /// my comments are with ///

- (void)objcMallocEx
{
    NSLog(@"Running onset.");
    // an obj-c allocation
    NSMutableArray *mutableArrayOfFlags = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];

/// i would prefer to see this, followed by &ods in the call below, and get rid of the free at the bottom
/// OnsetsDS  *ods = malloc(sizeof *ods);
    OnsetsDS    ods = NULL;

/// Q: is onsetsds_init() expecting odsdata as a buffer it can fill?
///   or is it expecting you to be providing it with the address to a pointer that it will fill?
///   if the former, then you've done the right thing below.  if the latter, then
///    what you really need is
///     float* odsdata = NULL;
///   and then pass the &odsdata as the 2nd arg to onsetsds_init() on the next line.
    float* odsdata = (float*) malloc(onsetsds_memneeded(ODS_ODF_RCOMPLEX, 512, 11));

/// onsetsds_init(ods, odsdata, ODS_FFT_FFTW3_HC, ODS_ODF_RCOMPLEX, 512, 11, 44100);
    onsetsds_init(&ods, odsdata, ODS_FFT_FFTW3_HC, ODS_ODF_RCOMPLEX, 512, 11, 44100);

    int i;
    int x;
    bool onset;

    for (i = 0; i < vocalBuffer.numFrames; i=i+512){

/// in the assignment for the loop, you are declaring that you want an array
/// of 2 double* .  but the malloc assignment is more like a single array
/// of 1024 double items.  it seems like what you really want is 2 arrays of
/// 512 double items.
///     // convert vocal int to double
///     double (*vocalData)[2] =  malloc(2 * 512 * sizeof(double));
        double vocalData[2][512];

/// if you absolutely insist on using allocation for this, the closest
/// semantically declaration would be
///     double* vocalData[2] = { malloc(512) * sizeof(double)), malloc(512) * sizeof(double) }
/// or
///     double* vocalData[] = (double*)malloc(2 * sizeof(double*));
///     vocalData[0] = malloc(512) * sizeof(double);
///     vocalData[1] = malloc(512) * sizeof(double);

/// THE FOLLOWING IS PART I OF WHAT'S LEADING TO THE DISPLAY OF "RANDOM" DATA
///
/// now, according to your original declaration, you have an array of two pointer-to-double,
/// but in the loop below, c++ operator precedence means it will operate on [x] first, and then on
/// * .  so ... you are getting what's at the xth pointer-to-double, and then getting the value of
/// of that.  if x is 100, and sizeof(double)==8 and sizeof(pointer-to-double)==4, then you the
/// code below is acting as though it wants to get what's at the memory 400 bytes from vocalData,
/// but if you want the 100th double, you should be getting what's at the memory 800 bytes from
/// vocalData.
///     for (x = 0; x < 512; x++){
///         *vocalData[x] = (double)vocalBuffer.buffer[i+x];
///     }
        for (x = 0; x < 512; x++)
            vocalData[0][x] = (double)vocalBuffer.buffer[i+x];
/// or      (*vocalData)[x] = (double)vocalBuffer.buffer[i+x];

/// if you absolutely insist on using pointer arithmetic for this, the closest
/// semantically correct code would be
///     for (x = 0; x < 512; x++)
///         *(vocalData+(sizeof(double)*x)) = (double)vocalBuffer.buffer[i+x];

/// again, with outPutDoubleFFTData, you are declaring that you want an array
/// of 2 double*, but the malloc assignment is more like a single array of
/// 1024 double items.
/// some of what is correct depends upon what the arg signature of fft() is ...

        // init malloc output double
///     double (*outPutDoubleFFTData)[2];
///     outPutDoubleFFTData =  malloc(2 * 512 * sizeof(double));

        double outPutDoubleFFTData[2][512];

/// if you absolutely insist on using allocation for this, the closest
/// semantically equivalent declaration would be
///     double* outPutDoubleFFTData[2] = { malloc(512) * sizeof(double), malloc(512) * sizeof(double) }
/// or
///     double* outPutDoubleFFTData[] = (double*)malloc(2 * sizeof(double*));
///     outPutDoubleFFTData[0] = malloc(512) * sizeof(double);
///     outPutDoubleFFTData[1] = malloc(512) * sizeof(double);

        fft(512, vocalData, outPutDoubleFFTData);

        int z;
        // init malloc float fft data
        float *floatFFTData;
        floatFFTData = malloc(512 * sizeof(float));
        for (z = 0; z < 512; z++){

/// THE FOLLOWING IS PART II OF WHAT'S LEADING TO THE DISPLAY OF "RANDOM" DATA
/// and, again, according to the original declaration, below, if z == 100 and
/// sizeof(double)==8 and sizeof(double*)==4, then you'll be accessing the memory
/// at the location 400 away from outPutDoubleFFTData when what you really want is
/// the memory that's 800 away from outPutDoubleFFTData.
///
///         floatFFTData[z] = (float)*outPutDoubleFFTData[z];
///
            floatFFTData[z] = (float)((*outPutDoubleFFTData)[z]);

            if (i==512*20) {
                // NSLog(@"PRE POST %f - %f",*vocalData[z], floatFFTData[z]);
/// here, you got the pointer arithmetic into outPutDoubleFFTData correct !!
/// the trouble is, what you stored there is unknown because of the calculations above !!!
                NSLog(@"PRE POST FLOAT %f - %f - %f",*vocalData[z], (*outPutDoubleFFTData)[z], floatFFTData[z]);

            }
        }

        onset = onsetsds_process(ods, floatFFTData);

/// the following isn't going to free what you allocated
///     free((*outPutDoubleFFTData));
/// to do that, you should have
///     free(outPutDoubleFFTData);
/// but best of all is to use the 2-d array in the stack, and then you won't need the heep

        free(floatFFTData);
/// also don't need the following if using the simple array declaration instead
///     free(vocalData);

        if (onset){
            printf("onset --> %i\n", i);
            NSNumber *integer = [[NSNumber alloc] initWithInt:i];
            [mutableArrayOfFlags addObject:integer];
        }
    }

/// here, since you did a malloc into odsdata, the best thing to do would be to free
/// the same variable as well.
    free(ods->data); // Or free(odsdata), they point to the same thing in this case

/// this isn't necessary if you use the code i've replaced above, rather than what
/// you had that is now commented out.
///  free(ods);

    return [[NSArray alloc] initWithArray:mutableArrayOfFlags];
}

A: I think it is much easier and safer to use explicit 2D array notation to access and manipulate your data as is done in the fft code example you refer to.  Declaring as double (*x)[2] and then allocating as a single chunk using x = malloc(2 * N * sizeof(double)) is designed to make this possible while keeping the data optimally localised for numerical work.
Try clearing up your array references in this way and you should be able to track down the uninitialised memory problem that you are seeing.
Also, the line free((*outPutDoubleFFTData)) shows some confusion about just what was allocated.

A: float *floatFFTData;
 floatFFTData = malloc(512 * sizeof(float));
 for (z = 0; z < 512; z++){
   floatFFTData[z] = (float)*outPutDoubleFFTData[z];
   if (i==512*20) {
     // NSLog(@"PRE POST %f - %f",*vocalData[z], floatFFTData[z]);
     NSLog(@"PRE POST FLOAT %f - %f - %f",*vocalData[z], (*outPutDoubleFFTData)[z], floatFFTData[z]);
   }
 }

Well you allocated memory for 512 floats, but trying to itarate about 513 floats, 0 till 512 are 513, so you run into an segfault

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
International Performing Arts Center
The Full Irish
10 days of contemporary Irish theatre and Performance
Info / Tickets
The Company As You Are Now So Once Were We
Gare St Lazare Players Ireland First Love by Samuel Beckett
Brokentalkers Have I No Mouth
Staged Readings New Irish Plays
Guess Who's Coming For the Dinner by Roddy Doyle
B For Baby by Carmel Winters
Shibari by Gary Duggan
Penelope by Enda Walsh
Samuel Beckett Panel Discussion and Reading
Silhouette Concert
J.E. Murphy Aleatoric Audio Visual Art Installation
May 19, 2013 – 12:43
Germans queued up for The Full Irish
Last night Brokentalker's production – 'I Have No Mouth' ended with hundreds of balloons being released over the audience, this was also the ending of the festival. In the production it symbolised a lightness, a healing of sorts, a sense of coming out the other side of a question, a time to play and hope. It was a beautiful ending to a powerful production and a fitting ending to the closing of the festival. The audience played with the balloons, sending them all directions, the performers did too.
Having performed twice this week with two different casts and directors, having seen almost everything the festival has to offer and having written about it along the way, it is likely that I'd have another Jameson hangover and be a tad tired today.
I don't and I'm not.
Work from Beckett, Roddy Doyle, Brokentalkers, Gary Duggan, The Company, Rachel West, Ciara Goss, Claudia Schwartz, Shauna Tohill, Carmel Winters, Daniel Brunet, Günther Grosser, Chang Nai Wen, Conor Lovett, Judy Hegarty Lovett, John Smith and many many more. The many more include actors, technicians, front and back of house staff and volunteers. And then there is the audience. They came in big numbers with open minds and generous clapping durations. The atmosphere all week was warm and open and excited. The shows posed grim and challenging questions, had audiences choking on laughter, angered some, softened others, there were lengthy conversations and about 'why, how and who?' afterwards over drinks outside on balmy Berlin nights.
There is no hangover, no tiredness, in fact the opposite. A discussion has begun, there is a lightness, maybe even a healing of sorts, a sense of coming out the other side of a question, perhaps even a time to play and hope.
Audiences and performers will play with balloons together again after hard questions and live truths.
Günther Grosser of English Theatre Berlin brought the first ever Irish Theatre Festival to Berlin. It was a success.
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/stage/germans-queue-up-for-the-full-irish-1.1396268
Last few bites…
It's the last day of the festival already. The rehearsed reading of SHIBARI went really well last night. The cast all round were great. Very well chosen for each of the parts, I could easily imagine them working in a full production. It's always exciting (and a little dauntíng) to experience a new cast working with a script that I'm so familiar with being performed by the cast that originated the play. Sometimes it's only when a new cast play the roles that I fully realise what qualities and strengths the play has. Does the humour and emotion transfer from one set of performers to another? Is it extremely different or very similar with the new cast?
The director Rachel West did a great job and I enjoyed that she made a bold decision in creating a visual representation of the theme of the play which grew throughout the reading. Each of the actors had a ball of string that they unravelled and tied as they moved position for each new scene (the play is a series of two-hander 'meetings' where there is a different couple every time). As the reading progressed the patterns left by the string became more elaborate and left the connections between each character hanging in the air, the actors had to delicately navigate theír way through the maze of contacts. It was an extra layer of challenge for the performers but they were more than up for the task and the final Image beautifully highlighted all the references in the text to entanglements and patterns of contact that exist in a city the size of Dublin.
It's been fantastic to be a part of THE FULL IRISH and it feels as though it has been a great success for English Theatre Berlin. There's two more chances to get a last bite of the festival tonight, Brokentalkers have their final performance of HAVE I NO MOUTH and there's a reading Enda Walsh's excellent play PENELOPE. Get in if you can…
I've really enjoyed my time here in Berlin, discovering a lot more of the city than when I was briefly here years ago. I've made some new friends that I will certainly keep in contact with and I'm very much inspired to come back here sooner than later and hopefull bring more of my work again in the future.
Now, I'm off to be a full on tourist for the next day or so, tschüss!
ENGLISH THEATRE BERLIN | Fidicinstrasse 40 | 10965 Berlin (Kreuzberg)
Subway: U6 Platz der Luftbrücke | Buses: M19 & 104
THE FULL IRISH Festival is supported by


retention can gradually disappear by displaying a moving images.
*1:Based on SMPTE 274M standard.
*2:Based on SMPTE RP211 standard.
*3:Not compatible with SYNC ON G.
・ The signal format automatically detected may differ from the actual input signal in display.


text:
Lawmakers Learn of Complaints Just Before Vote
As always, members elected the judges they liked best
On Wednesday, a joint session of the General Assembly elected judges for the state Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals, Circuit Court, Family Court, and Public Service Commission.
South Carolina, as readers of this website know, is virtually unique among American states in empowering its state lawmakers to unilaterally elect judges. The governor plays no part in the process, and the winners of these judicial "elections," in which the only voters are lawmakers, are precisely those who've most skillfully cultivated favor and rapport with lawmakers.
Unlike the arrangement painstakingly devised by the Founding Fathers in the U.S. constitution, South Carolina's is a crackpot system that allows one branch of government to dominate another.
The system's deficiencies were on display yesterday.
Most of the candidates were unopposed, their challengers having (as is typical) dropped out prior to the election. Those candidates were all elected by acclamation with the typical ovation following, although some House members tried unsuccessfully to a get roll call vote for the Supreme Court race.
The only seat with opposition was for Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals. Sen. Larry Martin, the chairman of the Judicial Merit Selection Commission (JMSC) – that's the legislatively dominated commission that screens judicial candidates – informed the joint assembly that the Commission had received two affidavits last week alleging both legal and ethical violations by one of the candidates, Judge James E. Lockemy. The commissioners decided they did not have jurisdiction to investigate since their report had already been finalized.
Sen. Martin moved to postpone the election for that seat and allow the JMSC to investigate the allegations and if necessary submit a new report to the General Assembly. That motion was tabled on a voice vote, but Rep. Mike Pitts then moved to reject the entire slate of candidates. Rep. Todd Rutherford moved to table that motion, and Lt. Gov. McMaster finally recognized and granted calls for a roll call vote. Pitts' motion was tabled 114-41. Lockemy was then elected 121-20, also with a roll call vote.
One other oddity: Judge Lockemy's opponent, Judge Paula Thomas, dropped out before the vote, but House members had not received their email notification of her departure and only heard about it when Sen. Martin explained the situation during the election. She was, however, in the gallery when the vote took place.
Outstanding ethics complaints have rarely if ever stood in the legislature's way when members prefer one candidate over another. And so in the end, they refused even to postpone the vote on Judge Lockemy.
Why? Presumably because they just liked him better.
← Legislative Delegation Knew of Recreation Allegations
Did Members Even Read The Roads Bill Before Passing It? →


We are approximately five minutes drive from Bridport and the A35. Drive through the town centre past the Town Hall and Waitrose on your left, across the first mini roundabout and on to the second. At the second mini-roundabout turn right onto the B3162 signed Salwayash. At Dottery crossroads (after about 1.5 miles) turn left to Broadoak and Marshwood. Continue along this road for half a mile and the farm track to Old Bidlake Farm can be found on the right hand side approximately 500yds before the Broadoak sign. You will find us directly at the end of the track, the entrance into the campsite is between the single storey wooden clad house on your left and the polytunnel on your right.
If you have any problems just phone us and we can guide you here.
We are located directly on the National Cycle Network 2 and the Tour de Manche. If travelling to the West Country by train you can dismount at Axminster and follow Route 2 to the campsite.
Our nearest train station is ten miles away at Crewkerne and Dorchester South is fifteen miles, both with frequent services to London Waterloo (two and half hours). Buses and coaches will take you to Bridport Coach Station, just a five minute taxi ride away.
We are happy to collect you free of charge from Bridport if you have arranged this with us in advance, or for a small charge we would be able to collect you from the train station.
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Not every student can find traditional paths to success. A program designed to reach local high school students with learning challenges at Midlands Technical College offers an alternative avenue.
The Building Occupational Opportunities in the Midlands program provides construction job training for those students and connects them with member companies of the Builders Industry Association of Central South Carolina. Students learn skills in high school and are able to secure jobs or internships with local homebuilders, helping to fill shortages in the Midlands construction industry.
Rivers said MTC and the school districts it's partnered with hope to expand the program beyond the construction industry, potentially to manufacturing and other careers.
"These are students who are not typically completers of career technical education programs, but with this program, they'll already be able to earn their Occupational Safety and Health Administration certification — an opportunity a lot of high school students never have," Rivers said.
High-functioning high school students with disabilities receive a 10-hour OSHA construction credential and a certificate in building construction from MTC, according to a news release from the college.
All of the senior students who completed the BOOM program last year received jobs in the construction industry, and all of the juniors had internships during the summer, Rivers said.
"Those students are very excited to use what they've learned as they get ready to enter the workforce," she said.
The program, which graduated 14 students last year, received recognition from the S.C. Technical College System as the best collaborative program among state technical schools.
Rivers said she hopes to continue to have grant, sponsorship or other funding opportunities for the program in the future.
Parents are thrilled with the program, Rivers said.
The students visit job sites, where they get hands-on training and an introduction to the industry, watching workers in action.
The industry side of the program has been supportive, Rivers said, especially since the program helps fill skilled worker vacancies at the companies.
Hardee said during an awards presentation last month that the program helps fill a community need while providing an opportunity for students.
The BOOM program also won the program of the year award from the S.C. Division on Career Development and Transition and the 2018 outstanding continuing education cooperative program award from the S.C. Association for Higher Continuing Education, according to Midlands Tech.
Rivers said it's her hope that the program will expand, offering more opportunities to more students.


Recognize all the people whose efforts make a difference - employees, customers, vendors and volunteers - with our 25-pack of thank you cards. Stock cards are blank on the inside for a personal message and are packaged flat to imprint messages using your personal computer printer. Pack of 25 cards, includes 25 envelopes.
Quote: The brightest stars are those who shine for the benefit of others.