CHANGING VALUE PARADIGMS

The paper was presented in the First Asian Mayor’s Conference held during November 26-28, 2006 at Dehradun, Uttaranchal, India.

The term ‘changing’ in title does not reflect changes occurring in the values in its passive sense. It is about the action of change that is required.

The context of this paper is the youth. The tagline used therefore is – Youth is Future and Future in Youth. It underlined the fact that no development is sustainable unless the youth is involved in and prepared for it.

The paper attempts to sketch how and what values are changing in the youth today as compared to generation-past. What kind of value change is required by the new generation economy. The paper also attempts to address how the seniors of society could play a critical role in facilitating change of values to make them functional.

The paper is structured to enlist what are some of the influences of new generation economy and how it affects the youth today. Then it talks about some facilitating and limiting values that we see in youth today. Then it enlists some differentiating values for success.

The presentation begins with a quote from Linus Pauling that reads “The secret to having good ideas is to have a lot of ideas, then throw the bad ones away”. This in spirit is relevant both for the audience at the conference as well as the youth in general. No idea is worth rejection unless it has been given a fair try. This also is a critical differentiating value for success. Every idea is good if implemented well and in the hands of right people.

New Generation Economy

New generation economy is not about economics alone. It is affecting our social fabric and cultural values also. We are all aware of the Liberalization, Privatization, Gloablization in its economic sense (LPG). We also need to understand the social and value context of these emerging economic changes. Some of the key changes that need consideration are discussed in the paragraphs below.

The new emerging economy offers immense employment opportunity to people and in a variety of fields, unheard of earlier. This means that the traditional concept of choosing a career like engineering and medicine for the best students is not relevant anymore. Today any thing you do well, could offer you career opportunities – from music to, pottery, design, dance, cooking, social development, writing, photography event management and a whole lot of other such things. Therefore the need is to encourage the youth today to pursue what they like and can do better than others. Anything and everything works.

Globalization also means that the youth today has global aspirations. His desire is driven by whatever best is available to someone else in another part of the world. The satisfaction index has therefore gone up and what one has is no indicator of his satisfaction.

LPG has also brought competitiveness to the fore. Businesses as well as individuals are competitive. The benchmarking with past is not relevant anymore. The benchmarking only with the ‘best today’ is relevant.

Both individuals and business organizations are more concerned about society around them. There is a definite shift in interest to make some positive contribution to society. But fortunately now this is not compromised with less than par performance. They want to perform above par, make their money and then give something back to the society. This needs to be encouraged and nurtured.

The new generation economy has brought knowledge to the forefront. The traditional approach of literacy is not good any more. The concept of literacy had seeped into most of our actions and initiatives. This is reflected in the ‘chalta hai’ way of life. We need to foster knowledge (read actionable knowledge that is better known as skill). Earlier it was thought that once you are in a job, your brush with books is over. Today the new generation economy demands continuous up-gradation of knowledge. Otherwise obsolescence is the order of the day. Technology is outgrowing knowledge very fast. This puts tremendous pressure on learning new skills every day on people who want to move forward and be successful. The nature of knowledge and potential of value creation through knowledge makes it the most important inputs in any organizational context. It is more valuable than any other inputs. This makes talent acquisition, development and retention one of the most critical things in organization.

Changing Value Paradigms

Some of these values are functional and others dysfunctional, some are facilitating while others are limiting their success. The following paragraphs enlist some of the value paradigms that we see changing over period of time.

For example, the overall information quotient is high today. The youth these days are far well informed on a variety of subjects. Their outlook has also become more global leading to global aspirations. The youth today is also highly competitive and it is difficult to satisfy them. This is good in a sense that they keep trying and their goal is always ahead of them. The aspirations and competitiveness could help individual growth. This could pull better performance all the time. On the other hand it also means that if these are not handled well, dissatisfaction could creep in early.

Some of the dysfunctional values seen are money centric approach to life and career. Growth gets linked directly and only to money. This may mean the individual could lose focus of learning as the vehicle of growth and therefore start aging early in life, facing obsolescence. The other such factor is the all pervasive sms culture. Everything in life is getting short and cryptic – be it relationships, time in a job, span of

satisfaction or anything else. Short-term perspective is the rule of the day. No one thinks long term for anything. People live in today and plan also for today only.

Role models are missing from life of youth today. Most of the youth do not have any. For some the role models are those who are seen more on entertainment channels rather than those who are making positive contributions in life or to society. There is a need to project contributing elements as role models. The seniors of the society have to lead this by creating right kind of projections for youth to look up to and follow.

The current crop of youth lacks social skills. The new economy requires enhanced social skills as a pre-condition for success, while our education system does not prepare the youth in these skills. Most of the educational institutes have no curriculum around social skills. A few attempt some inputs but that is highly inadequate. Most of social skills can be learnt in an active way, by indulging in outdoor games. Unfortunately, the youth today is so engaged in TV and PC that they do not go out to play and miss out greatly on learning key social skills. As seniors in family we should encourage young people to go out and play. As seniors in society we should create appropriate forums, tournaments, facilities for young people to go out and indulge in outdoor sports. Apart from developing social skills, it also helps in spreading a sense of camaraderie, such an essential element for a strong social fabric. That anyway is also a critical index of social development.

Differentiating Values for success

The following five factors differentiate between those who achieve success and those who do not. The first such value is confidence. Successful people are far more confident than others. This is so much evident in youth that come from major cities vis-à-vis those from smaller cities or rural areas. Confidence comes from experience of independence and empowerment early in life. The more empowerment and independence a person experiences, the more confident he will feel in life. These are the two other values that count towards success. The third set of value is initiative and aggressiveness. This emanates from ambition and level of confidence of the person. The more ambitious and confident a person is, more he is likely to take initiative and follow it aggressively. Others will be more compliant and subdued. As seniors we need to encourage initiative by complimenting instances of small successes, helping them create a big picture for life. All this must be supported with focus and commitment. The other important set of values is respect for self and others. It is important to remember here that only those people can respect others who respect themselves. Self respect comes from self worth and high self image. Seniors need to encourage and support the youth in all they do right. The natural approach seen generally is that young growing people are viewed with contempt and are mostly expected to follow a negative list of action/ things rather than showing them a positive list of things to do.

Model for way forward

The following model of SCAN consulting is a highly functional model to show us a way

forward. In brief, it talks about fostering some cultural values based on knowledge acquisition, build a strategy for sustainable development and then align all these elements together. Most of the initiatives and strategies fail because at ground level they appear to be disparate and disconnected. The alignments of strategy with value and knowledge initiatives will provide a strong foundation and make it sustainable.

The first leg of this model is culture. Under the culture critical values component need to be built and developed. Focus is one such value element. Focus on what one

wants to achieve in life. It is driven by strength of conviction that it is right to pursue this dream or desire. A strong and positive self image supports and strengthens the desire to achieve it and keeps focus intact. Another value is to respect knowledge and not age. People should be respected for their inherent competence and knowledge only. Learning and acquiring knowledge are the true indicators of growth. Spirit of competitiveness is another critical value that must be taught and given to youth for positive development of individuals and society both. This must be fostered from an early age in life. Lot of these values are fostered or ignored at home or in immediate society where one grows. Seniors of society, both within family and outside, have a definite role to play in this regard. The author feels strongly that outdoor games and sports are a very useful and active way of teaching these. In sports even the losing party learns to come back stronger next time. These are critical elements of learning in life and very crucial for sustainable social development. It improves participation without selfish motive of winning at the cost of others.

The second leg of this model is Knowledge. Quest for knowledge is very important in current context of economy and society. Those without knowledge are considered a liability. We need to focus on the ability to learn rather than mere acquisition of knowledge. The current model of education that puts emphasis on learning by rote is not good enough. It has to move to a model of learning by ‘understanding’ and developing ‘skills to do’. Social, networking and competitive skills are more important today. These are essential skills for success. Without these three skills no other knowledge is workable.

The third leg of the model is Strategy. This is about action. The author talks about strategy at two levels – structural and process. Structural strategy is about systems and infrastructure. Some critical elements of structural strategy are educational infrastructure and the way it is handled today. We need not necessarily require more of these same infrastructures. We need to improve capacity utilization of the existing resources, re-orient them towards vocational skills development (rather than mere degree accumulation). There are several colleges today where a student does not attend more than 3 classes a day (on an average). Put all these facilities on shift,

reduce number of non-working days and this will automatically shorten course duration and increase the capacity for more people to undergo similar training. Alternatively, create modular schemes so that people could pursue it in modules and build credits toward a full-fledged degree in installments. Every institute formally and informally should expose the youth to successful people in society. An exposure to such achievers, to get to know them, speak to them adds lot of value in terms of creating appropriate role models and building higher aspirations.

On the process side, we have organizing and project management taken as something people learn by default. Majority of projects in the social and government sectors do not achieve desired results. The reason is that most of the people involved in it are not trained in project management skills. For proper urban development, we need to train current crop in project management skills. Everything today is taken as a project and it could all end up with desired results, if they are managed well like a project. We also need to create an environment of result orientation and accountability. This could be built in the youth by setting right examples in social life. Let every act be driven by some accountability and results attached to it.

The youth needs to be enabled to handle challenges in life and contributions to society through enablement, empowerment and coaching. They need to be allowed to grow in an environment of result orientation. This prepares youth for tomorrow and they become positive contributing elements in society. That is the only way to go forward to involve the youth in creating a sustainable social development process. New society has newer demands and new processes are required to create and sustain it.

©Naveen Coomar, November 2006. No part of this paper or the accompanying presentation, either in part of full, can be reproduced or copied in any manner without written permission of the author. Academic references however could be made under intimation to the author.