Smart? It’s time to redefine?

 Scene 1: (Pattern 1)

Tring! Tring! Alarm alerts at 3 am. A job seeking campus student, revises the portions till 7 30 am which is a byproduct of more than 3 or 4 years of hard work day by day. A quick breakfast to give respect to the biological needs, applying all the dressing etiquettes, expected by the job market for an interview (at the cost of parents postponement of basic needs), blessed by the responsible eyes of the father and concerning hands of the mother and smiling innocent wishes from siblings, the kid goes to the venue on the day of final campus interview.  Standing in front of the hall, the job seeker observes tension and books in the hands of fellow mates and last minute preparation. He or she go through a feel which cannot be explained. 

It’s a blend of fear, responsibility, positivity, concern, confidence, sincerity, commitment and discipline. He or she is being asked technical questions and all other questions which is a standard interview template and finally gets the response “We will get back to you”.

The kid completes the interview and life pushes into the open market for next level progress and he or she keeps trying more and more .Let’s give a pause here for the purpose of demonstration of the desired objective. (May be if you read this in your lonely travel or lonely environment and you went back to nostalgia requesting you to thank me.)

Scene 2: (Pattern 2)

Tring Tring!  Alarm alerts at 8 am after a late night party. A student switches on high decibel music and enjoys the breakfast and goes to the same campus recruitment venue. He stares at other fellow students who are in tension and mockingly smiles at them.  For the purpose of the demonstration let’s assume he had the technical question paper in his hand or accessibility to collate all anticipated questions the day before as he was able to receive it through known sources or he had the support system to enable it. He clears the interview confidently with all positivity and comes out with success.

In the two scenes above, for the purpose of argument and discussion let’s question who is seen as successful based on outcome or results. For all practical reasons the success is attributed to scene 2 individual. (Let’s not question on consistency and longevity as of now).

What made the individual in scenario 1 have that commitment and positive fear?

It’s his or her assumption that system is fair and provides a level playing field for all. He or she works hard to build his or her foundation competency and waits for an opportunity to prove it. So he or she assumes that there is a fair competition and this generates a positive fear to compete with integrity.

What made the individual in scenario 2 have super confidence and relaxed attitude?

It’s his or her ability to crack the system, its loop holes and get through it based on different proportion of individual’s capacity.

When one in few violates the standard process, it’s an integrity issue. When many violates the standard process according to their strength and proportion, when the outcome is also socially accepted it becomes a common phenomenon. No one will dare to pin point other as everyone is not clean, except the proportion may vary.

In my personal opinion, may be, to survive and justify the democratization of violation the term “SMART” was invented & celebrated as approved success formula.

In my view one can’t use smartness in learning, growth and experiencing the basics of anything by efforts. Any learning and real growth demands hard work, commitment, dedication and time consuming. The world is so urgent and fast that it demands output with minimal learning with minimal time frame.

In my view smartness is not maximum output ((Success) with minimal learning efforts or minimal efforts by deviating the standard operating protocols of a system using the power to violate.

Unfortunately when society started to accept and celebrate such success repeatedly, collectively society is only focusing towards generating and building such means of the power so we can become more powerful to violate and bucketing under “SMART” victory.

This is the social transformation and there is a radical shift in focus on basic values. Instead of working hard to build the competencies to compete, the focus is shifted towards generating and building means of power to violate, break the level playing field.

The misconception of “SMART” work with democratization & acceptance of deviations to maximize output (Success) without proper learning efforts or investments in building values will lead to only shallow & superficial growth of a system. The system can be economy of a country or growth of a business or an individual’s growth.

May be this is also the reason for debating the change in mindset of the new generation and millennials. The phenomena of “Instant Gratification”, “Motivational Shift” etc are all the byproduct of what they see as rewarded behaviors.

It may look like system is very stable and progressing as all the stake holders of deviations are holding on to themselves as self-defense.

In my personal view it’s time for “TRING TRING” and let’s redefine “SMARTNESS”.