Cryptography

Any peer-to-peer network (especially the ones we’re going to focus on for the next couple of articles) comes with a set of risks. The most concerning among them are: Confidentiality, integrity, non-repudiation, and authentication.

Let’s take for example a peer-to-peer network between A, B and C. Let’s suppose A wants to send a message to B that A doesn’t want anyone except B to see.

Here, since C is a part of the peer-to-peer network, it might see the message and the message would thus lose it’s confidentiality.

If C sees A’s message to B and modifies it before B receives it, there is an issue with the integrity of the message received by B.

Non-repudiation is the assurance that A cannot deny sending the message to B.

Authentication is the process that let’s B know that the message has in fact come from A and not someone else posing as A.

Well, this is where cryptography comes in and solves the aforementioned problems.

The word cryptography has two parts to it, ‘crypt’ which essentially means “hidden”, and ‘graphy’, which stands for “writing”. Thus, what cryptography does is, it converts your message into a code so that no one else can read it except the intented receiver of the message. The process of converting the message to a secret code, a.k.a, cipher text, that no one can make sense of is called encryption. To encrypt a message, you need two main parts- a cipher and a key.

Cipher is the set of rules that you’re using to encode information.

Key tells you how to arrange those rules (otherwise they would be the same every time and it’d be way to easy to decode the information).

The process of unravelling the code so that the recipient of the message can read the original message from the sender is called decryption.

The are two types of keys in cryptography, namely, symmetric key cryptography and asymmetric key cryptography. We will look into this in a future blog post.

Power of the Good and Kind

Helen Keller once said, “Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it…”, and I never tire of remembering it. Since a young age, I believed in the power of kindness to replenish a suffering individual’s will to fight on. As I grew in age and experience, I discovered there is a scientific basis to this belief too.

With the advent of 24/7 news, we are constantly bombarded with all kinds of horrific news about the capability of human beings to unleash sheer monstrosity on fellow human beings. I had no clue how dangerous that is, until I read Kahneman’s book on heuristics – where he said, human beings tend to overestimate the prevalence of a certain phenomenon if it is broadcast repeatedly in the media. To put it simply, if we hear on the news that a person got robbed on their way home from work, we tend to think we are more likely to experience something similar than we actually are.

We can do the math and see how such a practice among news channels propagates a skewed view of the world – it is exponential.

So how do we counter such negativity? Kindness is probably the only thing in the world that spreads just as fast as bad news. What do people like to hear more? Good news or bad? People may be drawn to bad news at first, but their eagerness and even capacity to constantly hear bad news wanes fast over time and they ultimately take solace in good news. Good news on the other hand doesn’t drive people away.

There are studies that show if you perform a random act of kindness each day, the levels of the “feel good hormones” in your blood are bound to rise: Serotonin – a hormone that heals wounds and makes you calm, Endorphin, that reduces pain, Oxytocin that makes you feel happy. The “feel good hormones” are also released in the body of the person at the receiving end of the kind act. But that’s not even the most exciting part! This is – just hearing about acts of kindness produces the same effect as on the doer and the donee. Now do you get why it’s important for us to be selective about the kind of news we surround ourselves with?

Another curious thing about kindness is that it never goes unnoticed. There are always witnesses to kind acts who become all the more likely to pay it forward. And with enough of us paying it forward, our communities will transform, and hence, our country or whatever or larger identity is. Sounds a little far-fetched, I know. But we can always hope, right? Here’s to kindness and hope.

The Pareto Principle

In 1906 Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto observed that eighty percent of the land in Italy was owned by twenty percent of the population. It was a groundbreaking observation because particularly after that, the world began to see this 80/20 ratio occur all over the world in a gamut of situations and scenarios. It was right there all along, it was everywhere – we just didn’t see it.

For example, about twenty percent of the world’s population control about eighty percent of the world’s income, a person wears about twenty percent of the clothes in their closet about eighty percent of the time, about twenty percent of customers of a business account for about eighty percent of their complaints – this is completely in line with the Pareto Principle – or the 80/20 rule. This is in no way a universal rule as we still can’t predict where it might occur but that does not take away from the fact that it’s a mindblowing phenomenon.

What it can also also be is an extremely effective tool to analyse your own life and be more productive. Let’s look at an example.

Let’s say you have ten things on your to-do list but you’re running late. Using the Pareto Principle, you should figure out what are the two things out of the ten that’ll give eighty percent of the favourable results you want. Once you figure that out, you’d want to spend eighty percent of your limited time and effort on these two things (or twenty percent of the things), and not feel stressed about the rest eighty. This also means that even if you couldn’t complete most of the things you wanted to do, you completed those that you’re most interested in, or most talented at.

But it’s also important to bear in mind that the specificity of the numbers is not the point of our focus here; sometimes the ratio at play may be 90/10 or 60/40. The lesson still remains unchanged – prioritise what is most important. Using the Pareto template wherever it applies organically will simplify your life and let you acknowledge the things that work for you.

For me personally, I often list out things I want to do. Sometimes (and by that I mean equally often) seeing the sheer number of tasks I often lose heart and give up without even trying. But ever since I learnt about the 80/20 rule, instead of seeing my to-do list as a list unfinished tasks, I first see the most important tasks that I am naturally good at that also end up giving me the best results. It gets me started. And we all know, when there’s plenty to do – getting started is the hardest part.

So, put your Pareto glasses on and see the world in different light – a much simpler one.

What freedom means to me

“What freedom means to me”… By no means an easy subject, this one. So, I allowed myself the maximum amount of time I could to think it through, long and hard. But now it’s time to put it on paper.

Freedom in it’s very nature is conflicting. Because the idea of freedom I identify with can collide with the idea of freedom you identify with and suddenly we are at loggerheads with each other. When you multiply that with the population of the world, you get one messy world to say the least. I often think it’s a miracle that we ever behave in a civilized way.

It is therefore of fundamental importance that we practise seeking our own freedom without being so concerned about curbing someone else’s who doesn’t subscribe to our views, not just about freedom. Yes, even in the case of freedom, conditions apply. Counterintuitive, I know!

Freedom to me, is in no way acting on whim, as so many people, youngsters especially, tend to believe. Freedom is not what some organization says it is. What it is to you, has to emerge from a personal point of view, at an individual level.

To me………………….
freedom is a world that believes in the hierarchy of competence – where the focus is on one’s capabilities, as opposed to one’s family, caste, religion, race, gender, skin colour, age.

Freedom is a population that works together relentlessly to eradicate hunger, poverty and war.

Freedom is an education that prepares you to make crucial changes in the real world.

Freedom is a system in which money neither propels – someone who has it – forward, nor holds – someone who doesn’t have it – back.

Freedom is a society that can be trusted with instilling in its young minds the right kind of values, so that they in turn can be trusted with freedom to begin with.

Freedom is a home where parents don’t have any reason to be worried half to death if ever their child is late to get back home.

Freedom is a set of values among which kindness reigns supreme, no asterisk.

Freedom is a person who believes s/he can change the world, and does.

Your list of what constitutes freedom maybe different from my list. Do we fight about it? No, because there is a better way – a way in which we can benefit from our differences. A way in which we try to understand why the values that the other person holds so close to their heart are important to them. Who knows, we might even end up with two better lists, or even one.

Book Review 5 – Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Robert Cialdini’s book Influence was for a long time considered a marketing classic, and, to an extent, still is. Cialdini, a professor of psychology at the Arizona State University produced his seminal work in the year 1984 and the business world wasted no time in lapping up the six core principles of the book. Since then, the same six principles have been talked about and reproduced to such an enormous extent that to someone who reads up of marketing principles comes across this book, they’d find most of the principles to be hackneyed. Let’s talk about the six principles that thirty-five years of Cialdini’s research on the science of persuasion boiled down to and how they apply to marketing:

Social Proof: People are more likely to be persuaded of buying something when they see someone they can relate to narrate how they benefitted from the product or service. Most marketing professionals are now aware of this principle which is basically why we see them encouraging customers to write reviews, sometimes even providing verified customers with incentives for their reviews.

Authority: People are more likely to be convinced of someone who speaks from a position of authority, people trust them to know what they’re talking about. This principle too has been adopted by brands when they started to produce content on things they claimed to be experts in. The principle even gave rise to the practice of thought leadership.

Liking: People are more likely to listen to those whom they like. It sounds like common sense and to the most part it is. That is why since time immemorial, celebrities were paid to advertise for products and services. But times have changed and nowadays buyers are drawn more to people, brands and content that seem real and relatable. No points for guessing, influencer marketing is exploding.

Commitment: It is now relatively well-known that once people start identifying to an entity, they commit to them for life and their faith in the said entity then becomes unshakable. Political parties use this principle very successfully. Certain brands like a Harley Davidson find this cult following that no amount of controversy surrounding the brand can deter. Striking the right chord with the right audience is the key to such an incredible feat.

Reciprocity: People tend to return favours. This principle is so widespread that almost every subscription service now comes with a free trial. It simply signifies belief in the principle that if the customer benefits from the free service of the subscription they’d return the favour by opting for the paid version.

Scarcity: People are like to get hold of things that are scarce. But the principle shouldn’t be used as a trigger for customers. If things that are not low in supply are shown to be that, customers eventually catch on and that makes them trust less the brands who do this. But the principle is now used widely in almost all e-commerce sites- showing false messages like “Hurry! Only 1 left” are not hard to come by.

The book when it was first published may have been kind of a phenomenon but the core principles of the book have now become common knowledge since they’re so often talked about and widely practised. Ironically, that just adds to the phenomenal success of the book. I’d give the book 5 out of 5 stars.

Book Review 6: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

If I say ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ is an American classic, most people would agree. That’s the level of popularity the book enjoys. But here’s a fun fact, the Dale Carnegie book was first released in 1936 – that’s eighty-five year’s ago! But the ideas presented in the book are as relevant today as they were eighty-five year’s ago, if not more.
So why is it so important to win friends and influence people? Because, no matter how talented we are, it’s only so far that we can go alone. Eventually, we hit an enormous wall that we cannot climb or break or circumvent alone. We need others to help us. As humbling as it sounds to some if us, that’s the truth. When we have other people supporting us, anything we’re trying to achieve becomes easier to achieve. And Carnegie talks about how to make that happen for each one of us. The book is replete with mind-blowing ideas on how to win friends and influence people, out of which five stood out to me as the most useful. Here they are:

1. Call people by their names: It is extremely important to remember people’s names and call them by it to attract and hold their attention. The efficacy of this practice cannot be overestimated. Right since our early days of childhood, we’ve been conditioned to readily respond to our name. We can tell from our own experience that we perk up and take notice whenever we hear our name being spoken. Addressing someone by their name makes them like us instantly, builds rapport as well as trust, it also makes the interaction memorable and special for them.
2. Know that you are not going to change people’s beliefs by arguing with them: This is so true. Have you ever had an argument with someone where they made you feel stupid and ignorant and by the end of it you were totally convinced they were right and decided to change your belief system for them? Well, me neither. On the contrary, in an argument,, when someone challenges our beliefs, making us feel like we’re imbeciles for believing what we believe, we’re most likely to be bitter towards them and avoid all kinds of interactions with them anytime in the future. It’s true for almost everyone. So when we are on the verge of having an argument with someone, we must back off a bit and remind ourselves to first find a common ground with them and understand where they are coming from when they say something you cannot agree with. When we get a sense of their belief system and what’s important to them, we understand the person better and are better equipped to have a meaningful conversation with them that doesn’t end in bitterness of any kind.
3. Become interesting by getting interested: One thing to keep in mind while interacting with people is, it’s not about you – it’s about them. The fundamental truth about people in this day and age is that, they’re all a bit of a narcissist – they love talking about themselves! It is surprising to see how much people would talk if someone just let them. So, it while talking to someone, it is of utmost importance to let them do the talking. Ask them what they like, what’s important to them, what their values are, what they won’t compromise with at any cost. And listen – intently. It’s a great way to build trust and camaraderie by making someone feel like what they have to say is important.

The book by Dale Carnegie is a treasure trove of wisdom that never gets old. I’d rate the book a five out of a possible five.

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

I have been trying to understand for quite some time how habits are formed. During this quest of mine, I came across this book and I’m happy that I did. Because the book gave a clear perspective on the process of habit formation that made a lot of sense to me. The following were my main takeaways from ‘The Power of Habit’:

1. There is a habit loop:
   There are three components to the habit loop – cue, routine and reward. A cue is what triggers a habit, a routine is the behaviour itself, reward is what you get by the time you perform the habit. A reward is the motivation behind performing the habit. At the beginning of the habit formation cycle, the brain experiences a dopamine spike when it gets the reward. But as far along you are in the process of habit formation, the dopamine spike moves further back and soon enough you get the spike soon after the cue. So, you lose the motivation to actually perform the habit. At this point, to go on, you need to be able to look at the larger picture to see why you’re really doing what you’re doing and give up your dependence on the dopamine spike.
2. A cue is of five types: You can get triggered by five type of cues and you need to be aware of these to get rid of bad habits. These cues can be a location, a shopping mall where you always end up eating a cookie even when you shouldn’t, for example. Or it can be a specific time, Valentine’s Day for example when you wallow in self-pity and get nothing done. A cue can be an emotion, self-pity, for example, that makes you inefficient. A cue can also be an action of another person – you tend to feel not-good-enough when your father makes a joke about your profession, for example. A cue can also be the immediately preceding action. For example, when you eat pizza you also crave a dessert. It’s beneficial to be mindful of these cues and not give in to what usually follows these – a chain of bad decisions that you know will end up making you feel bad to worse about yourself.
3. Keystone habits:
   Probably the most important concept in the book is the keystone habit. These are habits that trigger other good habits and begin a chain of good habits all linked to each other but begins with the keystone habit. For example, you form the habit of waking up early – which gives you a lot of time to start your day the way you want to. So you start running in this spare time. Running makes you feel good about yourself and makes you look great so you decide to take it a step further and give up junk food. Giving up junk food improves your gut health and leads to a better overall well-being. In this example, waking up early was the keystone habit that triggered a number of other great habits.
   The book is a must-read for anyone trying to give up habits that they know are doing them more harm than good. I did and I’m happy that I did. I’d rate the book a five out of a possible five.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

Robert Kiyosaki uses the rich poor dichotomy to explicate the point of his book. But this rich or poor is not so much rich or poor of wealth as of mindset. Kiyosaki pits his father, who was a university professor against his friend’s dad who was a business owner.
There are two main points of difference in rich mindset and poor mindset. The first being what the two groups buy – Kiyosaki says, the rich buy assets whereas the poor buy liabilities.
The poor mindset group has the affinity to splurge of luxury cars, big screen TVs, ultra spacious living spaces – all things that are going to take a significant upkeep and take away a major chunk of the group’s future income.
The rich on the other hand buy assets. They invest in things that will eventually grow the very money that they use to buy these “assets” and hence, the name. People who belong to the rich mindset invest, for example, in stocks, the pay them dividends year after year – it makes their money work for them. The rich buy property too. Only such properties are brought to be rent out so that they bring in more money over the years than what was spent to buy it. For a long time, personal property has been thought of as an asset. But Kiyosaki rightly points out in the book that if such property is just used for living and it does not bring in any income, it is, in fact, a liability.

The second point of difference between the two groups lies in how they pay taxes. In America, where Kiyosaki is from, people who are employees pay a larger proportion of their income as taxes compared with those who own businesses. Thus, you could be earning hundreds of thousands of dollars from your job in America, Kiyosaki would still call you poor. Employees, at the very lowest, pay a federal tax rate of ten percent which may goes up to thirty-nine percent as the salaries increase. The rich on the other hand, are owners of companies. A company could invest in stocks of other companies, or manufacture products, or buy real estate or provide some kind of a service, the money the company makes will be paid to the owner in dividends. Dividends are taxed at a much lower rate, especially if one has held the shares for a longer period of time. When a business owners invests in a stock and holds it for a period that us longer than a year, the capital gains from holding that stock is taxed at a much lower rate than federal income tax.
The book makes some groundbreaking claims about personal financing but towards the end it gets increasingly preachy. Also, the book is written in a way that seems to call – all people who earn their living as employees – stupid. The book completely disregards the fact that to some people there are more important achievements in life than earning copious amounts of money.
Overall, the book is an easy read and recommended for any beginner who wants to understand the very basics of finance. I would rate the book a three and a half out of a possible five.

Crisis II

This is the second part in the series of how to handle important stakeholders during a company crisis. In the first part we talked about handling the government and investors. In today’s part we shall take the discussion further by including the board and NGOs as well.

Board

• A crisis demands prompt executive-level actions within the company. But crisis response is also about being externally focused: government and regulators, investors, media, customers and consumers. The company will be scrutinised by them, and with the organization’s license to operate on the line, the board cannot afford to be a mere bystander.

• Today’s crisis response needs to practised in advance to win in this environment. The board should be made aware of its role in advance, not briefed about hastily after the crisis has already hit

• We will give them reassurance that the plan is simple but robust and that executive leadership is ready for anything that might happen

• We will undergo practise responses like scenario walk-throughs (for the less experienced among the crisis management team) and table-tops (for the more experienced crisis handlers) and make board members participate as well

NGOs

• Strategic partnerships with NGOs should be a regular practice in the organisation to bolster its sense of purpose

• Relationships with NGOs should be a mutually respectable one so that they seek to hear our side of the story when a crisis hits and so that we also may seek their help to mitigate suspicion

• Trusted NGOs must be invited to our factories to give their word on our safety practices.

This two-part blog post is a succinct guide on how to deal with a crisis – with special focus on handling stakeholders. Hope it gives you an idea about what a crisis entails and how, as a PR professional, you must -first – prepare for it, and second – deal with it.

Crisis I

HANDLING THE VARIOUS STAKEHOLDERS:- (government and investors)
The government is also the regulator for several organisations. Thus, organisations have to rely on the government/regulators for product approval, distribution, et al. Goes without saying, the government needs to be adequately informed about the company to take the right decisions it is supposed to. If questions are raised about the quality/safely of the company’s products/services, officials directly in charge of charge of knowing about these must be getting questioned from within the government organisations or from the people. To inform them in prior of any potential lapse in safety/quality of products/services will keep the organisation from attracting their ire for making them seem incompetent in the eyes of the media and the public

• Once government/regulator comments, the topic is sure to be covered by every kind of media. The issue can snowball into a major political story and have undesirable impact on the business and the reputation of the company, so the company must ensure the government/regulator is not caught off guard
• Middle of a crisis is the worst possible time to try to form new relations within the government. It is extremely important that an organisation invests in a ‘strategic government affairs plan’ well in advance – way before a crisis hits. If the government perceives the company to be trustworthy and credible from the get go the latter would have better chances of resolving a crisis, because cooperation from the government is essential in such situations
• Good relationships with government can also help a company stop a crisis from unfolding by virtue of early detection of issues. Keeping the government informed about any safety issue that may arise will help them prepare ahead for risks associated with it. If something goes wrong and media/public start questioning the government, a lot of time that would’ve gone into explaining can saved as the government already knows and us prepared. It also makes the government look more efficient by not appearing to be clueless about a crisis situation. However, the company must contact the government as soon as the crisis hits – before the government feels the need to contact the organisation – and tell them how the company is planning on handling it. That would build more trust between the two parties and also let the government know the company is determined to keep them in the loop and is not deterred in the face of a crisis

Investors want to keep updated about the financial health of the organisation they’re putting their money into. Whenever a crisis hits, they’d want to know how it’s affecting the profits of the organisation and what the organisation is doing to protect the its goodwill
• They need to be brief about the crisis. The crisis management team can make them a part of tabletops so that investors are prepared to face the media and responses from all of them are uniform and coherent
• The organisation must be honest with investors about revised numbers due to the impact of the crisis on business. The organisation must ensure the revised version is totally transparent and not subject to change, because more than one revision tend to elicit doubts in the mind of investors
• The organisation must be modest with their numbers in a crisis situation. Often we have a bias towards how well our organisation is doing and how quickly it will recover from a crisis. We need to take such as into account while predicting numbers that investors must be aware of
• To increase transparency and answer any questions investors might have after seeing the revised numbers, the company must set a meeting of the investors with the sales and analyst teams. The teams must also take into consideration any advice from the investors that are likely to improve the numbers