I thought of sharing peculiar inferences from some of my observations. They all concluded that common sense is something very rare to see or I can say the most uncommon.
A few years back I participated in a management game where we - a 20 member team were asked to say numbers from 1 to 100. Each person says the next number to the number said by the neibour but whenever the number has 3 in it, or if it is multiple of 3, the member needs to clap instead of saying. We failed to complete all 100 numbers continuously even after 5 attempts. The observation is that every person says only 5 numbers in this process, and he or she knows what is going to be the next number to say (by adding 20 to the number he or she said). There was no need to look at what each member was saying. All he had to do is saying his number (which he already knows) once his neibour finishes. After 2 attempts I proposed this, but there was such a strong reluctance that one member said it was quite confusing.
Same is the observation in the traffic. If every driver looks at front and right of the vehicle while driving, will there be any confusion? But if you say this, everyone says how can we forget left and rear ? What is the guarantee that the others also look at front and rear? If we needed to be safe, dont you think we need to look everyside? All are valid points but is it difficult to start when the traffic guides say this is the practice? Did we all learn driving properly? If not, can we atleast show common sense that it is less likely to meet with accidents if all our focus is limited only to Front and rear instead of all sides? If you look at 4 sides there is a possibility that you always miss 3 sides anytime. If all of us practice what traffic guides say, you may miss only 1 side that too partially. You still need to look at rear if you want to stop suddenly or if you are taking a turn, but not always. And I didnt invent this. This practice was what is taught and documented.
Third observation is about how we treat the sincere people. In any business how do you plan for your profitability? Take a case of Credit card services. They look at the costs of defaulters along with other costs like service costs, sales etc, while calculating the profitability and decide their charges accordingly. To make it more clear, they put the costs of losses from non-payment of customers and try to recover from the revenue received from other (sincere) customers. So if you are making punctual payments you are also making the component related to the loss from the other defaulting customers. Do you get any reward for being punctual or loyal? Not sure if every vendor rewards you. But it is sure you paying more for other's faults.
Similar is the case about how we look at punctual people. If I schedule a meeting to start at 10 AM, I may find only 50% of the people joining sharp at 10.00 AM. What is my default action? I will request all the people to wait for 10 minutes till others join. Who benefits from this? the defaulters who join late. Where as the punctual people are at loss. Did we ever acknowledge this
?
What happens in our domestic dealings? My wife attends my son more than the daughter because my daughter compromises and understands what we explain, but my son is adamant and wants what he asks. What are we conveying in this process to our daughter? Did we try to acknowledge our daughter's understanding behavior and reward her? In our case may be Yes, but we ourselves are not able to digest if she also refuses to compromise some times, and that was when we acknowledged her good characteristics and ask her not to deviate from them :)
There are many losses in our life at various degrees when we do many things just by not thinking and blindly following the patterns. Probably if we start thinking the world may change.
A few years back I participated in a management game where we - a 20 member team were asked to say numbers from 1 to 100. Each person says the next number to the number said by the neibour but whenever the number has 3 in it, or if it is multiple of 3, the member needs to clap instead of saying. We failed to complete all 100 numbers continuously even after 5 attempts. The observation is that every person says only 5 numbers in this process, and he or she knows what is going to be the next number to say (by adding 20 to the number he or she said). There was no need to look at what each member was saying. All he had to do is saying his number (which he already knows) once his neibour finishes. After 2 attempts I proposed this, but there was such a strong reluctance that one member said it was quite confusing.
Same is the observation in the traffic. If every driver looks at front and right of the vehicle while driving, will there be any confusion? But if you say this, everyone says how can we forget left and rear ? What is the guarantee that the others also look at front and rear? If we needed to be safe, dont you think we need to look everyside? All are valid points but is it difficult to start when the traffic guides say this is the practice? Did we all learn driving properly? If not, can we atleast show common sense that it is less likely to meet with accidents if all our focus is limited only to Front and rear instead of all sides? If you look at 4 sides there is a possibility that you always miss 3 sides anytime. If all of us practice what traffic guides say, you may miss only 1 side that too partially. You still need to look at rear if you want to stop suddenly or if you are taking a turn, but not always. And I didnt invent this. This practice was what is taught and documented.
Third observation is about how we treat the sincere people. In any business how do you plan for your profitability? Take a case of Credit card services. They look at the costs of defaulters along with other costs like service costs, sales etc, while calculating the profitability and decide their charges accordingly. To make it more clear, they put the costs of losses from non-payment of customers and try to recover from the revenue received from other (sincere) customers. So if you are making punctual payments you are also making the component related to the loss from the other defaulting customers. Do you get any reward for being punctual or loyal? Not sure if every vendor rewards you. But it is sure you paying more for other's faults.
Similar is the case about how we look at punctual people. If I schedule a meeting to start at 10 AM, I may find only 50% of the people joining sharp at 10.00 AM. What is my default action? I will request all the people to wait for 10 minutes till others join. Who benefits from this? the defaulters who join late. Where as the punctual people are at loss. Did we ever acknowledge this
?
What happens in our domestic dealings? My wife attends my son more than the daughter because my daughter compromises and understands what we explain, but my son is adamant and wants what he asks. What are we conveying in this process to our daughter? Did we try to acknowledge our daughter's understanding behavior and reward her? In our case may be Yes, but we ourselves are not able to digest if she also refuses to compromise some times, and that was when we acknowledged her good characteristics and ask her not to deviate from them :)
There are many losses in our life at various degrees when we do many things just by not thinking and blindly following the patterns. Probably if we start thinking the world may change.
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