Books that may Fire your Passion to Succeed

I am increasingly drawing reference to the famous experiment that was conducted on some Chimpanzees.  The experiment runs like this - 8 chimpanzees were placed in a big room with a lot of “toys” including a lot of wooden boxes. A bunch of bananas were hanging from the ceiling, but too high for the chimps to reach just like that.  Chimps aren’t stupid, so one of them quickly came to a solution – he placed the boxes one on

another and reached for the bananas, just as he was to reach the bananas the people conducting the experiment turned on the sprinklers in the whole room. Chimps hate water so a lot of chaos, screaming and turmoil occurred and the bananas were left in their place. The same thing occurred several times, so the chimps quickly learned that the bananas are not to be touched.

In phase two of the experiment they took one chimp out of the room and let in a new chimp. Soon the new chimp tried to pile up the boxes to reach the bananas – and guess what? He never even got half way when all the other chimps ganged up on him and gave him a beating. The new chimp, through means of socialization, quickly learned that bananas are forbidden and not to be touched.

THEN the experiment continued to take out “old” chimps from the room and replaced them with “new” ones. Each time the same thing happened and all the new chimps learned that bananas = beating.

Soon there were no “original” chimps in the room, but the “tradition” continued. The incoming new chimps were beaten when they tried to reach the bananas, even though there was no chimp that experienced the sprinklers, that nobody knew or remembered why the beatings were important. What is more, the chimps who never knew about the sprinklers and just learned about the beatings through socializations tended to beat other chimps harder than the chimps that actually knew what it was all about.

Many a times we get stuck in following old practices without for moment stopping to check if it is relevant in the current milieu. We are unable to identify emerging trends and the inevitable changes. The younger generation of CAs should realize that a whole generation of CAs are potentially going to be obsolete with changes coming through Direct Tax Code, Companies Bill, IFRS and GST backed by technology.  An great opportunity with challenges.