Watch Tower Focus
Leadership failures and woes of humanity
Globalization and the new ideas of liberty and rights have brought to the masses several rights together with the idea of compensation for victims. In an era where loss of status and mental agony is considered seriously, there is hardly anyone who realizes the impact and devastation to a vast majority of the human population on the surface of the Earth.
At the global level, a staggering size of the population is struggling to just lead a contended life. With hunger, poverty, homelessness, and environmental degradation at their respective peaks, who is to be blamed for this pathetic global scenario?. There is no doubt that deterioration in life quality went hand-in-hand with technological and social development. The irony of the situation is that the populations fail to recognize themselves as victims, directly attributable to their leadership. The onus is now on the leadership and its effectiveness.
There is scary realization that leadership across times have sequentially failed to deliver, only worsening the situation with time. In a globalized and a shrinking world, actions and inaction of any state leader has repercussions to the world directly or indirectly, either small or large. It is evident that the beliefs, approach and efforts of the leadership brought more pain to the masses with time, than benefits. Now with fault squarely on the shoulders of leadership, the main ideology of this leadership requires to be evaluated. What do these leaders and their coterie believe, that would improve the lives of the masses?. What are the core beliefs they have grown up with?. Are these actually in line with collective, peaceful and contended human existence?
These policy makers at every level have their management lessons in their blood. A fundamental lesson across all management classes is to compete and excel. Thus when these individuals take the reins, they are focused on economic parameters. National metrics of wealth and earnings are to them the mirror of their performance, not the hungry stomachs or the homeless. Today even nations with such excellent economic parameters like the GDP have a massive suffering population. For instance food insecurity, hunger, homelessness, lack of healthcare is on a steady rise even in nations like the US. Time has proved that such approach is a path to ruin.
The fact is that these management lessons are itself against the interests of humanity, is something they would not reconcile with. Today’s world, deeply entrenched in the fundamentals of economics and commerce, desperately want to outdo their counterparts. The main philosophy of management science is self-development for self-excellence. However the philosophy of life that guarantees collective and harmonious living is that self-development must be directed at collective development. When you excel, you have a choice, you can either position yourself on the top or help others at the bottom to rise up. Managers and people leaders unfortunately are attached to the former.
The world population is at a crises point, thanks to past and present leadership. The leadership and the systems they gave rise to, had pushed man into sorrow and uncertainty. Driven by money, profits, technology and their useless metrics, there has been a colossal failure on the part of state and international leaders. Despite the blatant ineffectiveness of these leaders, they never seem to correct their strategy. Leaders need to inculcate philosophy of life and living rather than management lessons into their work. They need to analyze, introspect and take radical steps to reverse the emerging situation. When the Earth has so much to give, why is there hunger?. When the Earth has so much of apples, oranges and peaches to whoever wants them, why have all sections of the population rendered unable to take one.It is the leadership across the ages that have brought us here.
Leadership performance requires to be increasingly scrutinized, given its increasing global relevance. When compensation for factors like mental agony, loss of status, equal opportunity, unfair practices etc are very valued today, the fact that humanity itself was led astray from their righteous contended, peaceful and easy life, is something nobody would be held for.
| Intellectual work Vs. Manual work — Is the current state justified?
With the gradual progress of civilization, man increasingly resorted to mind work, in a constant effort to innovate to provide better for himself and his clan. With the development of civilization and the evolution of professions, physical or manual labor gradually gave way to intellectuality. This intellectual thinking too became to be more directed towards individual interests. The result is what we see today; a hard working, slogging laborer struggling to keep up with life, while a thinking and planning CEO has a high flying life without a drop of sweat on him. So when and why did physical labor give in to intellectuality?. How come manual labor failed to raise its value while intellectual labor not only caught up with it, but also left it far behind. Many people would argue that it is the intellectual work that can bring in development. Yes, intellectuality is the basis of all developments in any field. Intellectual work is crucial and indispensable, but it isn’t harder compared to physical or manual work. Yet mankind gave increasing value to intellectual labor, when the thumb rule defined compensation, proportional to the load or difficulty of the work, and not on the results it could produce. The truth is that mankind had to attach increasing value to intellectual work, by leap and bounds only because it was impossible to benchmark intellectual work. Every physical or manual work could be benchmarked and compensation defined, while this was not possible with intellectual work. Take the story of the carpenter and the beggar. A carpenter once lived by making and selling chairs and tables. People who wanted them came to his house and bought the same. There was a beggar in the same neighborhood, who lived by begging food and money. Some people who wanted the furniture delivered at no fixed cost used the beggar to carry it for them, giving him any food or money for the same. The carpenter, who charged his customers for delivering, too started using the beggar’s services. The beggar became a furniture deliverer. Having the opportunity to interact with the customers, he learnt each ones requirements and preferences, the modifications required, color, look etc.. He saw a kid sitting on the floor and doing his homework; talked to his parents about buying a chair and desk made in accordance to his height and needs.
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