Ambiguous goals

I have been having several ideas for the last few months but have written about hardly any. So, here I decided to at least write briefly about a few. Ambiguity is rooted in almost every move of our daily routine. Here are some questions I have..

Ambiguous goals - Every time we set our goals, we deeply rely on our resources and instincts so much that we rarely give importance to how we actually set our goals. I wouldn't call it a mistake that we do as it gives us a chance to reflect back on how we would have done better. Learning from experience (and not mistakes)! Here are my examples -

1. How does GRID operate? When I founded GRID, I thought I was very clear with my goals. GRID would work on agriculture, education and rural technologies; and myself being comfortable with the educational sector (just a feeling that I could do something) made that my immediate priority. I went ahead and discussed my ideas with several people and many seemed quite interested. We conducted competitions, workshops and held discussions in schools and with teachers in varied schools and have had a good response almost everywhere. We were approaching someone or were being approached, thought over what they needed (our thoughts), packaged it into some workshop or competition and then delivered it. However, today after 4 years of work and thought behind me, I have this doubt - did I get it right? And I started pushing my ever reliables, Anirudh and Sneha, to think. What exactly were our goals? Who was our target group? What was our strategy? We seemed to have played around with those according to our convenience.
2. What made IKC the ultimate goal of IViL? This issue involves a lot of us and I don't speak for them. The idea of setting up IKC at Natham was thrown up Prof. JBL at a time when IViL had energy in the form of new members and a laboratory in the form of Natham. It came at a time when many questioned why we were still sticking onto Natham. IKC was meant to be the perfect answer from a technological institute group for the rural people's needs. It was meant to facilitate a knowledge exchange between us and the people there. A perfectly running IKC was meant to be our stepping stone onto exploring possibilities in other villages, in a way saying GOOD BYE to Natham. After going through few of the reports prepared by the MSI students, IKC for me had a great vision and if achieved would be one of the best accomplishments of the group. As we went into the discussion, planning and implementation stages, we forgot to ask questions - Is this needed? (I don't remember any of us discussing whether IKC is needed) Is this the best way? (Much of our planning and implementation were never synchronized, leading to a lot noise in the group) Where does this lead to? (Many of the problems with the IKC were not surprising) And finally the big question - What did we learn? We had problems in answering every question. We were so obsessed with the idea of getting it running and then getting out of Natham that we never cared to think of those. I feel we as a group lacked clarity in what and why we were doing.
3. Where is SciTour heading? Another group, another idea, another time. SciTour was launched on Jan 1st, 2010 to publish articles to help people enjoy science.

In all of the 3 cases above, I feel we lacked clarity in what our goal was. We were just doing those because we felt that we were good at it. Is that the way to select to do something? Today I would say NO.

I feel it would be much better for us to set our goals first and then do everything that requires to be done to achieve those goals. In case of Natham, had our goal been to help it become a socially, economically, environmentally and culturally a better place to live in - we would still be there in Natham trying to get more people to use toilets, more kids to go to schools, more of the SHGs functioning, work with the farmers to build sustainable and profitable agricultural processes and get people to mingle with each other breaking down the caste barriers in the village. Alas, that isn't the case. When I look back at my journey in the last 4 years and interactions with different people - much has changed. I have learnt a lot from these experiences. However, somewhere deep inside I know they are mistakes (and not experiences).

--buddi

0225

16 - 11 - 2010