Associating .. Can save lives !!

Met a fellow country person abroad ?
Reacted to the very small news in Boston Globe that talks about fire in an "Indian Grocery Shop" ?

Even if you do not know someone, have you felt warm just seeing a person wearing "your" company T-Shirt in a crowded shopping mall ?

All human beings look for a reason to associate and a reason to differentiate, themselves from others.

But I associating could save lives, came to me as an extreme example today.

Bunch of internationally renowned academicians are in Bangalore for IEEE conference. One of the papers being discussed here among these research oriented engineers / academicians and mathematician, was rather interesting.

One Electronics prof. along with a psychologist have come up with a case study if human behavior during catastrophic incidents and the case study is largely based on the world trade center fire on 9/11, post the terrorist attack.

And the most simple yet eye opening conclusion is - "The floor where the entire floor was the same company, casualties were the minimum. People helped each other. No stampede. No chaos. The floors where many small companies rented space on one floor had maximum chaos, stampede and casualties."

Amazing reinforcement of a basic human property. This can directly map to a typical corporate job as a tool for better collaboration.

Change your next call with AS / CA / TAC even demanding customer (the other teams) to a video conference or meet them personally. Talk about something that associates, than something that differentiates.

Most likely the heated debates, that are norm, will trend down !