Repurposing - why is it becoming critical?

Repurposing is the process by which an object with one use value is transformed or redeployed as an object with an alternative use value. It is becoming increasingly critical in today’s context.

Why? There are multiple contexts , a few of them i will list below.

Creation of any object or a product or a platform is costly , painful, challenging with uncertain results. When the results are not realised, should the costs and efforts go waste?

Building the initial object or product or platform in a way that it can be re-purposed for another industry/another use case/ another market means the costs are not written off altogether. With a little effort and cost, the product can become useful another way . Pivoting is so common today in ecosystems that repurposing is a key planning attribute in any product design.How easy it is to re-purpose when you want to pivot?

For an individual, certain skills/attributes and experiences are relevant in only one area/industry/role. Certain other skills and experiences can be re-purposed to other areas/functions/industries/roles. This re-purposing makes the individual more marketable and relevant.

For a platform serving a product/service/market segment, the ability and ease of serving another is a critical differentiator to scale.

Re-purposing is a deliberate, critical intent in design that is well worth institutionalising.

One habit that helps in 1000 ways

The number of ways /areas this helps is just too many.

The habit is to ínquire’.

Most people are not comfortable asking questions. They might offend the others, dont know what to ask, dont want to look ‘stupid’ ….

Many are not comfortable answering. They dont know the answer, dont know whether answer is right, dont want to look ‘stupid’ or take the questions personally that someone is judging them.

Its the inquiry that leads you to the truth. Its the inquiry that helps you look at alternatives, evaluate/validate the current one and remove noise.

Its the inquiry that helps you reject projects /investments/approaches that are not worth your while, focus on the one that can stand scrutiny and move forward. It helps you get to the truth and reject falsehood. It helps you get better/smarter/closer to your goal.

Do not assume that the one questioning knows the answer. S/he may not and want to learn. Or want to look smart. Or want to be busy /noticed…..

Neither should you assume that the one questioning has a better idea. They may want to verify their idea/view point/perspective.

Anyone questioning you is helping you. If you are questioning yourself, you are helping yourself.

Thats the habit that helps you in 1000 ways.

Data is Business - The attention seeking kid

While traditional business processes get automated once and are tweaked periodically for enhancement, Data is more like a constant attention seeking kid.

Even in an agile world, the business processes change at a slow pace. But a data driven business changes almost daily. Why?

• Everyday there are new insights to be found,
• new data sources become available,
• new signals to be targeted,
• new experiments to be tried
• and the feedback comes in a 24 hour cycle or less.

This makes data driven businesses to be constantly tended to, try mutliple things in an iterative fashion to get to better results all the time. ‘ Use as needed’ Cloud resources make this easy and almost imperative since the competition must be doing this all the time.

When booking.com does 20000 experiments in a year to tweak everything to see what will move the needle in desired direction, it is thanks to the cloud based data driven business that makes it possible. There is no set business process /specification to be automated.

It is a continuous discovery of better business outcomes, powered by data driven insights!!!

Failing in the 'Right' things

When you try something first time, failure is a given. What matters is if you are failing in the Right things.

Now what is the right thing?

One that is impactful and strategic. You do not want to fail on things that are neither impactful nor strategic. While every failure has a learning, failing on the wrong things means the failure is not worth it.

When someone asked Einstein why he failed 1000 times in making the light bulb, he said “ i did not fail 1000 times. There are 1000 steps to making a light bulb!”

One of world’s most successful hotel booking company Booking.com does about 10000+ experiments annually to see what works and what will improve the key business outcomes. while some of those actually improve the outcomes, there are 1000s that fail. But without those, you will never know what works!!!

Suits and Sheets

Your first reaction to the title? Suits is self explanatory and sheets are spreadsheets!

Here is a story. A brilliant innovative idea starts taking shape in real world. Products are created , offered ,fine tuned and they find traction. First customers, word of mouth and a business is born. As market grows, copy cats emerge and price realization drops. Bottom line pressures kick in. The sales teams are now pushing. More features get added to get incremental dollars from the same customers. Costs get added to cover the surplus.SUITS and SHEETS push for more revenue and margins.

The genius of the original ideas is replaced by factories and numbers. Customers are now bombarded with a fat product that they don’t need , mostly.

An upstart reads the scenario well. Radically better alternative in a new business model has taken shape and has changed the rules of the game.The original firm first ignores and then wants to either buy or copy the upstart. But it’s no longer the lean/ mean creature it used to be.

The cycle repeats.

Gross Domestic Nothing ( GDN)

In the movie 'The Hummingbird Project’, the waitress wants to know how the new fiber pipeline that goes from Kansas Electronic Exchange to NYSE ( enabling data transfer times of 16 milliseconds) will help the lemon farmers in Zimbabwe whose shares are being traded. The project owner responds that the ‘ Zimbabwe farmers are irrelevant variable in the equation’!

A great many human endeavors of the current age tend to result in nothing concrete. The examples are many:

1. The huge number of derivative products cooked up by the Wall Street only seem to create high trader bonuses and market volumes while resulting in huge losses on balance sheets (e.g. Deutsche Bank) , big bank failures and job losses
2. The multiple social media platforms like Snapchat,Facebook, YouTube, OTT platforms like Prime, Netflix et al keep people busy watching inane videos and posts which they would have otherwise spent in being productive.
3. Billions of selfies do not seem to generate anything concrete either except traffic accidents and depression
4. Ultra cheap data plans are causing people to glue themselves to the pocket screens without any purpose.
5. Fake news,fake products and fake posts are resulting in fixed elections, wasted money and emotional outbursts.

As George Carlin says, is this the best we can show to aliens when they visit us , as proof of our evolution???

Skill a Robot cannot master

As algorithms start creating news stories ,movie story lines and other seemingly creative pursuits, it is important to look at specific skills that a robot cannot master , at least anytime soon.

Here is a skill/attribute that transcends age, geography and other traditional barriers. It’s a skill that comes to humans at a very very early age and unfortunately we tend to lose it over time.

Since there is no formula to execute this skill, it must be difficult for a robot to master this.

Enough of prelude. We are talking about curiosity. The innate trait to question the current, explore ,try alternates , find new answers and blaze a new path.

Child is never afraid to discover, explore and satiate the curiosity. As a child grows society conditions it to routines, expectations, boundaries,traditions and the set ways of doing things.

Over time the individual loses the energy , ability and interest to be curious. This makes the individual actions routine, predictable and automatable. That’s a downward spiral.

Never stop being curious. It helps you enjoy Disney movies, discover new ideas and things ,helps you find answers and the truth!

When was the last time you got curious???

Frustration Tolerance

What do Innovators , Rocket launchers and Sales people have in common ?

Number of setbacks.

While Politics of sale, market actions, client dynamics give nasty surprises to sales people, complex technologies/ideas, market timing, money challenges frustrate the innovators. Best scientific brains work for years on a rocket launch only to see it fall into the waters /explode for reasons not known/factored in.

Do you need a bigger case for frustration tolerance? Is it a skill or an attribute? How does one develop/acquire it?

While nobody wants a setback, they are a given. They happen more often than people expect and can derail the passion in an instant. While the first one might be tough, one must plan/expect/ be ready for the subsequent set backs. Just look at the numbers.

Whats the ratio of a sales call to a signed deal ?

Ratio of Startups to survival to Unicorns?

Ratio of rocket launches to success?

These are not odds. They are the reality one needs to be prepared for.

Every setback provides you learning opportunities but still is a setback that you need to recover from. And that needs the disposition called Frustration Tolerance. The attribute almost calls for dispassionate analysis and pivoting that is so critical not just for you but for everyone else involved.

When you plan a project or an idea next time, plan for few setbacks at the minimum. Otherwise you are daydreaming!

What do Innovators , Rocket launchers and Sales people have in common ?

Number of setbacks.

While Politics of sale, market actions, client dynamics give nasty surprises to sales people, complex technologies/ideas, market timing, money challenges frustrate the innovators. Best scientific brains work for years on a rocket launch only to see it fall into the waters /explode for reasons not known/factored in.

Do you need a bigger case for frustration tolerance? Is it a skill or an attribute? How does one develop/acquire it?

While nobody wants a setback, they are a given. They happen more often than people expect and can derail the passion in an instant. While the first one might be tough, one must plan/expect/ be ready for the subsequent set backs. Just look at the numbers.

Whats the ratio of a sales call to a signed deal ?

Ratio of Startups to survival to Unicorns?

Ratio of rocket launches to success?

These are not odds. They are the reality one needs to be prepared for.

Every setback provides you learning opportunities but still is a setback that you need to recover from. And that needs the disposition called Frustration Tolerance. The attribute almost calls for dispassionate analysis and pivoting that is so critical not just for you but for everyone else involved.

When you plan a project or an idea next time, plan for few setbacks at the minimum. Otherwise you are daydreaming!

Easy vs Urgent vs Right - Part II

This is a continuation of my earlier article on the same topic. Lets dig deep into the rationale for obsession with the Easy / Urgent answers.

1. All tenures have become short : Thanks to Gig economy, Millennials and the instant gratification trend, tenures have become short from CEO down to the lowest level. Everyone is out to an easy answer quickly.
2. Curiosity : The innate desire of curiosity to explore/experiment the unknown, questioning have become a rare commodity.
3. Abstractism: Abstractism as a skill is not being cultivated . Reusable modules/libraries/models/ideas, pre-cooked youtube videos for every topic, wikipedia and social media generated content means many neurons are not being activated.
4. Business of ‘Busy’ness : The need to be busy/’seen to be busy’ has overtaken what is really important.
5. Lack of imagination : And thats simply in short supply.

Unless one is able to overcome the above, one tends to always settle for the easy or the urgent answer and not necessarily the right one!This is a continuation of my earlier article on the same topic. Lets dig deep into the rationale for obsession with the Easy / Urgent answers.

1. All tenures have become short : Thanks to Gig economy, Millennials and the instant gratification trend, tenures have become short from CEO down to the lowest level. Everyone is out to an easy answer quickly.
2. Curiosity : The innate desire of curiosity to explore/experiment the unknown, questioning have become a rare commodity.
3. Abstractism: Abstractism as a skill is not being cultivated . Reusable modules/libraries/models/ideas, pre-cooked youtube videos for every topic, wikipedia and social media generated content means many neurons are not being activated.
4. Business of ‘Busy’ness : The need to be busy/’seen to be busy’ has overtaken what is really important.
5. Lack of imagination : And thats simply in short supply.

Unless one is able to overcome the above, one tends to always settle for the easy or the urgent answer and not necessarily the right one!

Easy vs Urgent vs Right

 Which is more important — Question or Answer? Question. Why?

Its the question that starts the quest into the hitherto unexplored. But why is answer not important? Because there are (atleast) three answers to each question. The Easy, The Urgent and The Right Answer.

Undeniably asking the right question is the most impactful. It opens up areas unexplored, breaks the stereotypes, provides the purpose and motivation. Now let us look at the 3 answers.

The Easy answer: This is the most convenient, easiest and the one with least discomfort. It panders to our routines , familiarity and conventions.

The Urgent answer: This is the answer that we can get to with the least effort , time and pain.

The Right answer: This answer is the right answer thats certainly not easy, not necessarily comfortable , not something you are prepared for, not something that can come quickly. But its the truth.

Do You see What You get?

An ancient Sanskrit proverb says “ Yat Bhavam Tat Bhavati” which means ‘ As you think , so you become!’. Lets look at how this applies in everyday life.

Did you know that a sculptor sees the statue BEFORE he even makes the very first strike on the stone?

Lets start with a simple one. If you are playing a ball game say Tennis, you need to first see where the ball is going to land , BEFORE you play/place the ball there. Unless you see the ball there BEFORE it lands there, you cannot plan your stroke to ensure the ball lands at the exact spot.

Now lets say you are building a product. Unless you see what the product will be 5 years hence, you cannot take actions today in that direction. Granted you cannot see what the world will be 5 years hence but you can certainly imagine what your own product would be.

Thanks to Private Equity /Venture capital deals, many enterpreneurs are able to see beyond a quarter ( many in fact) and make moves that may deliver in the long term and not just the current year. Visionaries like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are commanding outsized valuations not because of their current profit numbers but their longer term view and moves. When the Paytm founder says he wants to make it in the United States, he is not just looking for market expansion. He is envisioning something very long.

You can no longer hide behind quarterly results to refuse to see the view beyond. In everything that you do today, imagine what would it be 5 years hence. Do not stop with the dreaming. Take actions ( atleast some ) which help you steer along that vision.

Like the Sanskrit proverb says, it will surely happen!

Your margin is my opportunity

I am sure you heard this famous quote from Jeff Bezos. What is actionable from this insight?

1. Look at segments that have a wide spread mediocre offerings , that have not evolved much.
2. Look at segments that do not have wider choice for customers. Customers need to choose between 2/3 options and even those are not really options. Remember the limited options might have come about from a string of acquisitions or the segment attribute itself.
3. Look at segments whose players’ margins do not come down even when new entrants come in. Why does this happen? Either the new entrants are not radical enough or do not attack the fundamentals
4. Look at segments which have a number of intermediaries and each takes a cut in the value chain . Also look at value each intermediary adds in the value chain.
5. Look at markets that have traditionally been low on innovation.

These segments will inevitably be attacked from unknown quarters,sooner than you think!

Valley and the Main Street

 Since the unicorns have started killing industry categories, every firm wants to emulate Silicon Valley firms or want to look like one. The differences are too many.

1. Business Model : The Valley models are non linear, asset light, digital natives and cloud first. Risk taking and Pivoting come naturally to them. Growth and customer acquisition first and Profit later. Main Street firms have linear business models, legacy resisting change, Profit first and growth next and technology baggage.
2. Skill Base : Domain skills are more critical in the Main street and technology supports domain. Its the reverse in the Valley. Pivoting related re-skilling is easier.
3. Funding : As most are venture funded in the valley, the accountability is to a smaller set of investors and do not have the quarterly results /disclosure/regulatory compliance pressure as the Mainstreet firms do.
4. Hype curve: As both these are at different points of hype curve, the problems both of them solve are quite different. Some of the challenges that Valley firms fight on, the Mainstreet is not seeing anytime soon.
5. Resistance : Resistance to change for Main street firms comes from employees, industry stakeholders, regulators, channels. Valley firms are able to quickly get off the ground since they are not seen as a threat until its too late.

Its not all roses on either side. Valley firms seem to be poor on fiscal prudence, focus and business acumen while the Mainstreet firms seem to be poor at seeing anything beyond a few quarters , ability to attract tech talent and slow.

Why does all this matter?

You need to consider all the above factors depending on which side you are playing.

Fail More

Reinforcement learning is one of the critical components of machine learning algorithms today. Every right prediction/action is rewarded, every wrong prediction/action is punished. Each reward/punishment tells the algorithm what behavior to repeat and what to stop. Over time , the algorithm works to maximise rewards.

What is critical here? In most situations, there are more wrong answers than right answers. There are more wrong steps and very few /or a single right step. What is key for the algorithm to learn fast? Fail more.

The more wrongs that you avoid ( based on past learning) , the closer you are to the right answer. While you might chance upon the right answer very quickly, the learning happens by finding the wrong ones and avoiding them in future.

Yet this behavior that is so intrinsic to us early in our childhood elludes us later in life. We try to look/plan /be prepared for 100% success at the first attempt . We are woefully unprepared for any other result. Failed project owners are crucified/vilified/taunted. Failed project teams try to hide under the table/ act as if they have committed a crime.

Without the wrong actions, there is no learning ( as we have seen from the reinforcement learning ). Instead of celebrating learning, we are forever scared of failures/ do not prepare for failures. What is worse is that we do not want to start a project if we are not 200% sure it will work.

While such conservatism worked in the past, it may not work now as every industry/business is getting disrupted from unkown quarters. ‘Fail Fast’ is not a buzzword and certainly not an optional!

Easier to Simpler

The next wave of growth will be from making complex things simple. Making simple things easier is done and dusted.

The explosive growth of telecom and internet have enabled the first set of apps to make the simple things easier. Ordering groceries, hailing a cab , booking a hotel room, buying a flight ticket…

Current generation of unicorns have done and dusted all these ideas. It’s time to leverage the new age technologies to simplify the complex. Leveraging technologies such as deep learning, blockchain, Quantum computing to simplify complex problems and make them as easy as making a request to Siri/ Alexa or touching your phone will give rise to next generation of unicorns.

This is easier said than done. It needs a wider different set of skills than before. Deep domain knowledge ,out of box thinking and risk taking, tackling the resistance of the incumbents' well financed self interests…

On the flip side returns are enormous. Unlike b2c platforms, B2B decision making is not strictly by the price and that enables for more profit making platforms from day 1 instead of ‘ buying the market ‘ at huge losses .

The complexities involved ,the value propositions, stakeholders for all quite different. So are the returns!

Half of Plan B and full Plan C

In most projects, Plan A never works.

What works is half of Plan B and full Plan C.

That's it.

Half of Plan B and full Plan C

For most projects, Plan A never works.

What works is half of Plan B and full Plan C.

That's it.

Beat the Machine with the Abstract

If you are wondering what skills can the machines not learn, at least in near future, here is one.

As a wise person said, ‘ Jobs of the past were Muscle. Jobs of the current are Brain. Jobs of the future are Heart’.

While algorithms are distilling movie story lines and even creating a movie from an algorithm generated story line, creative pursuits are still some thing that would keep you in good stead for the future.

One such key skills is Abstract Thinking. How does it matter ? For innovation, radical differentiation, problem solving and for many other situations, abstract thinking is critical. It is simply not about thinking at a higher level. It is about elements and their interaction at a level that you are able to explain a complex thing. It is abstract thinking that helps you find gaps/identify new solutions/think different and effect different outcomes.

How common is it? Not so common. If you get mired in details, it is difficult to abstract out and find the picture that you are missing. Abstract also demands that you be comfortable with the fuzzy, uncertain and the vague.

Typically you would find someone who is good with rational ( engineers, mathematicians, accountants, scientists…) or those good with the creative ( designers, painters, visualisers, advertising folks…) but not both. Today’s problems or challenges need both these approaches to make a difference.

It is also one of the skills that a machine may take time to ‘learn’. Or may be not!

The De-coupling Opportunity

This topic needs a bit of context and background.

When businesses generate cash surpluses, suddenly there is a demand by the investors/market to do something with the cash. You give in to the merchant bankers and buy businesses, or build new businesses ( or buy back shares if you have no ideas left. )

Over time, the original razor sharp specialist becomes a conglomerate ( which looks more like a shopping basket). And then the ‘Conglomerate Discount’ happens. It is the discount to the stock valuation for a firm which is spread across multiple businesses ( and hence has thin focus and poor core competency!) . A classic example is how GE was discounted by the stock market since the management attention is spread across multiple unrelated businesses.

Way back in 2000, Jack Trout exclaimed ‘ Differentiate or Die’. Unless you are sharpening your differentiation, you will lose in the market place .

On the other hand, given the shorter business cycles today, the obsolescence rates for current businesses are much faster. So businesses have to find new sources of growth replacing the older ones.

Those are both sides of the coin for the dear reader. The case to specialise and the case to diversify.

Now let us look at the de-coupling opportunity. As someone tries to reimagine an existing industry/market place, one way is to re-imagine the full business model and process. The other ( and perhaps cheaper/less risky) way is to de-couple and re-imagine ONLY a part of the business process. It does not bring radical changes to the market but it would still give the innovator enough incentive and opportunity.

Here are a couple of examples to understand ‘Decoupling’ opportunities.

A market place platform replaces a showroom of limited choices , with multiple choices and convenience. Thus it is decoupling the showroom part of the chain and making it significantly better.

A stock trading app is decoupling the broker/advisor based stock selection to knowledge enhancement and self service based investment management.

Why is it cheaper/less riskier? Because you are changing a portion of the process which makes customer/market adoption easier and your chance of success higher. It is also a prudent way to influence the market when you are small.

Applying Serenity Prayer

This post is not a relegious sermon. Can we apply this prayer to real life?

The Serenity Prayer is the common name for a prayer written by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

How do we apply this to real life? There are many things not in our control, even if we wish to change them. There are some things in our control that we can ( but we ignore or avoid ). For any business or personal problem, the wisdom to know the difference means figuring out what you can change and what you cannot.

There is no point fretting over what you cannot change. There is no time to be lost in changing the things you can to solve the problem. As you brainstorm solutions to the problem, keep this prayer in mind. It will save lot of time and money!

Spreadsheet vs Street Fight

You can analyze all you want, get second/third/fourth…’n’ th opinion/ cross verify etc etc. Ultimately you have to take the plunge. That’s the only way you will know if an idea will actually work. You have to move from Spread Sheet to Street Fight. And that takes a special quality!

You can simulate /scenario play / do sensitivity analysis all you want. It still wont replace the real world. Not everyone has the guts to take the plunge.

1.The 40–70 rule of Colin Powell : Colin Powell, former head of US military forces and former Secretary of State is a well-known and respected strategist and leader. On this particular subject of making tough decisions, Powell prescribes the amount of information that one needs to make the decision. He says that we need between 40 and 70 percent of the total information to make a decision.

He believes that with less than 40 percent of information, we are bound to make a wrong decision. At the same time, if we keep looking for information beyond 70 percent, then by the time we make the decision, it will be so late that others will have taken that decision and moved on. It will be too late!

2.Pivot : In the world that we live in today, the ‘re-imagine’ cycles are significantly shortened. Someone is always thinking of a radically better way to do things and experimenting. It is more critical for you to try something and then PIVOT to what works better, rather than wait forever to try something first time.

3.Fail Fast : Celebrating learnings from failures does not come easy to many. Especially the traditionalists. Like Jeff Bezos said famously “ if I know the result before the experiment , its not an experiment! “ . While no-one plans for failures, do not fear it. Embrace the learning.

4.Create or Critique : Another common conundrum is the fear of criticism. It might be pertinent to know that without creating first, there is nothing to criticize.

5.Agile Design : Design everything to be agile, flexible, variable and malleable. That way , making course corrections is easier and you will have less legacy baggage and can move on quickly.

It takes some special attributes to move from Spread Sheet to Street Fight. And the street matters more , any day!

Why bother with Innovation?

Its costly, distracting,uncertain,fuzzy…. There are more urgent things to do.

Top and bottom line targets, investor pressures, Competitive forces — obviously these need more attention. So why bother?

It might be pertinent to look at Mckinsey ‘s 3 horizons

Enduring Ideas: The three horizons of growth

In this interactive presentation--one in a series of multimedia frameworks--Steve Coley, a director emeritus in…

www.mckinsey.com

First featured in ‘The Alchemy of Growth’, it explains the three horizons in any business . The current, adjacent and disruptive. Optimise the current, grow with adjacent and be ready for the disruptive.

Too many firms have bitten the dust focusing on / being happy with the first. ( Nokia, Blackberry, GE, Yahoo….)

With cycles of obsolescence getting shorter thanks to technology, both individuals and firms need to work on ALL the THREE horizons simultaneously.

Its not a ‘Nice to Have’. Very quickly , it is separating the ‘Haves’ and the ‘Have Nots’!

Limiting Thought

A number of real world factors limit your thought, none of them worth limiting your thought. Why?

Budgets, feasibility, market readiness, customer adoption, funding, skill availability, technology …. the number of factors are quite a few. But none of them should limit your thought,even though they might limit your current execution. Lets try to understand with an example.

Apple products had keychain as a feature for number of years. Key chain is a mechanism to store passwords to accelerate authentication and logging into a Mac etc. Many years later, Apple implemented finger scanner authentication mechanism ( Touch ID). Subsequently face recognition ( Face ID). As you can see , this is a progression of the maturity of authentication mechanism to make user experience better and better. It might be pertinent to note that each of the later features use/leverage earlier features. Did Apple only think of Keychain when it developed it first? No. They certainly had a vision of improving user authentication though they wouldnt have thought out everything related to FaceID.

Not limiting your thought based on current limiting factors , helps you the following ways:

1. You can develop the first set of features/product as close as possible to the future vision to reduce re-work/non-compatibility etc.
2. Articulating the vision to the product teams/partners helps them align/enhance their skills in a timely manner.
3. The unlimited thought also helps you prioritise in terms of where the market /competition is headed and what gives you differentiation in longer term.
4. It also brings clarity to you on what is not worth pursuing, when you cannot see too far with it.
5. A consolidation of these unlimited thoughts is your product roadmap.

In more ways than one, it is a competitive differentiator.

Truth is a Lie

At the cusp of new year, I wanted to share the paradoxes of life that we eventually get to. Here we go.

1. Circle of Taste: Lets start with a simpler one. As kids everyone like the sweet taste ( toffees, sweets, ice creams etc) and as they age, they start liking the bitter ( alcohol , Smoking etc) ?
2. Circle of Maturity: Kids tend to do things that are considered ‘stupid’ by the adults. As adults age, they start doing the same ‘stupid’ things?
3. Circle of Assets : If you follow the billionaires, most of them , after accumulating assets, go on to give the most away. All the time and effort spent on earning and saving, suddenly seems to be the wrong thing to do ?
4. Circle of Rationality : All the education and science are based on logic and rationale over time fail to answer questions and then people tend to turn towards the fuzzy,obscure,abstract things such as faith, philosophy ?
5. Circle of Plurality: We keep looking at multiple things, multiple people, multiple issues and multiple lives. What if the truth is the opposite of the multiples?

Here’s wishing you as you travel towards the lies to the truth!