I want a glass of water. I will go to the fridge and pour myself a glass of cool water. I want to travel to the nearest mall. I will get ready and move out of the house and take an auto or bus or own vehicle to get there.

What is so simple about the above activities? Why do you think they are simple activities and will be completed without any issues? It is because only one person is involved in all the actions. The expected task is straightforward.

Now imagine that you have to supply drinking water to hundreds of houses. Or that you have to run a transportation company that will serve hundreds of commuters, ensuring a comfortable and affordable ride. Now the complexity increases. Suddenly you will find multiple factors governing the task, and altering the dimensions and efforts for the task. The human perspective will also be altered significantly.

When multiple people are controlling an activity that will impact for multiple people, then it is highly essential that the efforts are vector and tangible in nature. At the same time, accountability is also necessary. This will ensure that the work breakdown is proper and each person knows his or her role. Otherwise what will happen is that while people will clammer for taking credit for all good activities and there will be no head rolling for stuff that goes wrong.

But its a huge task to ensure that the collective effort is focussed. And equally  important is to find out which activity to focus upon and with how much intensity. Thats where proper planning comes into picture. A clear long term vision will certainly help speed up things in the right direction.

Lastly, but equally importantly, there should be no room for any kind of bias, selfish motive or personal gratification. The moment the self takes a higher precedence than the team, the project is indeed doomed.

The above case scenarios look simple enough, and the society should understand what to avoid and how to plan things to make progress. But then why do we see so much inefficiencies in the social circles around us? Why are the government works or sometimes the private bodies for a majority of cases corrupt and inefficient?

Perhaps the answer to most of the questions is that we have not yet understood the gravity and importance of the collective good. Most of us are concerned merely about personal issues. Our tasks are more oriented towards strengthening our own hands.

Without accountability, corporate social responsibility will remain a sham. If social volunteering is indeed a way out, then it should definitely follow some basic protocol. Whenever it comes to the spending of public money, transparency is of paramount importance.

Going back to my original case study and altering the situation a bit. You have to purchase some stuff from the mall. Rather than going to the mall yourself, you call any outsider walking on the road, give him/her access to your money or account and provide the shopping list. You also allow the person full control over how much to spend and on what, The person returns from the shopping spree and hands over all items you had asked for, but of course the spent amount is not revealed to you, or at the very minimum the price breakup is not revealed to you. This specific case will certainly cause lots of flutters in your heart primarily because of two reasons – (i) you aren’t able to control how your money is being used by an outsider; (ii) the choice of the purchased items is not yours; Surely this is not acceptable, right?

Now broaden the scale a bit. As a society we allow outsiders to use the public money collected in the form of different taxes for means that we are not a party to. But surprise surprise, we are not bothered about how these outsiders are using our money!! The outsiders can be anyone – the government, private agencies or the likes. What has caused this sudden change in our attitude towards our own hard earned money? Are we unpurturbed over the blatant abuse of our money because money of others is also being abused in the same way? Is this really acceptable? Isn’t it time we finally woke up? My mom always says that you only wake someone who is sleeping, how will you wake someone who isn’t asleep…

If you want to feel rich, just count the things you have that money can’t buy. There is a very easy way to return from a casino with a small fortune – go there with a large one!

Advertisement