Calculating Degrees of Freedom

The United States Declaration of Independence states one of the ‘unalienable rights of man’ as “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”. Looking around though, granting liberty as a right to ourselves and others is a task that is more rare than frequent.

How much control is too much is a question that might sound like another one of bromides but has a ubiquitous debatable manifestation in real life. Most of the parents struggle with this dilemma, tuning their strategy of parenting with their maturity in the role. Most of the couples unknowingly indulge in the incessant tug-of-war of control most often than not paying huge prices for each ‘victory’. Most of the frameworks in society are structured with the skeleton of control, forcing parallel systems to sprout. And most often than not each one of us fight the ‘control war’ with our mind, playing hide and seek with temptations, ego-boosts and our basic instincts.

Organizations and society are the two institutions that can serve as striking examples of the pernicious but invisible consequences of control. Before I was swept off my feet by the beautiful ideas of SEMCO’s leader Ricardo Semler in his book ‘Maverick’, the innocent appearance of the shackles that most organizations bestow on their employees were conveniently ignored. Structures, schedules, guidelines of behavior seemed like an indispensable aspect of being employed. But as Semler succinctly puts “Executives must give up control and trust the power of talent. Only then will that person’s calling emerge”. Having experienced the stifling effects of ‘frameworks’ in organizations I hope one day all organizations can espouse SEMCO’s philosophy of gifting freedom of every kind to individuals so that real talent can multiply instead of dying a death in infancy.

The offsprings of pervasive control in society are plenty and unattractive. As if specially designed to kill merit in the bud, most of the structures force alternate systems and paths with dubious ethics to be born. I was recently watching ‘Guru’, a movie hinted to be based on the struggle and success of Dhiru Bhai Ambani. The fact that the justifications presented for a spirited entrepreneur to adopt grey means for smoothening the obstacles in his path to success seemed so acceptable was almost pitiful. His claims rested on the truth that the chains and handcuffs in guise of innumerable systems almost force a determined individual to explore ways of circumventing those systems. Reel and real life heroes analogous to Robin Hood and self-professed justice dispensing systems analogous to God Father are the illegitimate children of the indelectable acts of control.

Holding a core value that as long as one is not trespassing on the other’s circumference of freedom, each individual has the right to exercise liberty, I might have conveniently overlooked the costs that giving freedom brings with it. Similar to the cons of democracy and capitalism, we will have few who will overstep the line making the exotic dance of freedom seem like a cheap strip show, but we need to operate from the paradigm that views mature adults as adults and not negotiate their right to a life filled with freedom for that of bondage of thought and expression. Because the more we hold the sand tighter in our fist, the more it slips. There is no stopping for merit, spirit and essence – one way or the other it finds an outlet. My spin-class instructor often advices to never resist when you are in middle of an intense physical activity- translating into no clenching, frowning or pursing. If we learn to let go and relax into the moment when every fiber of our body is screaming, we can go a lot farther. In the same tone, we need to let go of the urge to control, whether it be our partner, children, peers or others. If we learn the art of gifting freedom and accepting it gracefully in return, we collectively can go a lot farther.