I want to be GOOD - Postscript

Let us not kid ourselves into thinking that we have successfully created a GO/NO-GO template of goodness and that the ready reckoner is all that needs to be disseminated to the children. The challenge in being good rears its head only when you are called upon to decide a course of action under fuzzy circumstances. Black and White scenarios are rare and can be trivially handled. Consider the following two incidents and see how even under almost identical background situations, two entirely different decisions emerged.

Binu has been bitten by a serpent and the poison is spreading fast. The friends around Binu realize that only Dr Chettan knows the antidote to the poison. Chettan is a loyal physician in the personal service of an aristocrat called Dattan; Dattan and Binu have been sworn enemies for decades. Chettan refuses to treat Binu quoting his loyalty to Dattan. At this point, Binu’s father Moopan reminds Chettan of Dhanwantri’s doctrine that a doctor’s professional ethic lies in not refusing to treat any patient irrespective of circumstances. If a life can be saved, it is the doctor’s duty to help save that life. I hope today’s Hippocratic oath that doctors take incorporates this principle. Chettan was convinced and decided to respect the professional code of conduct even at the cost of a servant’s personal code of loyalty to the master.

Jitesh was battling for his life with excruciating pain all over his body. He was on life-support systems. The doctor attending on him was his close friend Mony. Mony was doing everything at his command to keep Jitesh alive.  But Jitesh abused him and said that he did not want to live a life at the mercy of artificial systems. Mony made a reference to his professional code of conduct that as a doctor, if a life could be saved, it should be saved.  Jitesh said that the best way of “saving” him in the current state would be to let him die. He played upon the bond of friendship of the doctor toward him and succeeded. The doctor gave precedence to the friendship code of conduct ahead of professional code. Hence one needs to approach goodness with wisdom and with the full realization that there are no “perfect” decisions.

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The following is a summary of an incident from the book Did the pedestrian die? by Tompennar.

Suppose you were traveling with your friend who was driving the car at great speed beyond the stipulated limits on a village road. It was twilight time and the car knocked down a pedestrian.  There were no eyewitnesses to the incident. Does your friend have a right to expect that you will lie about his over-speeding? Will you lie and save your friend or will you uphold the law of the land? Or will your behavior depend on whether the pedestrian died as a result of the accident or survived?

It is YOUR CALL.

Thank you for your patience.

I want to be GOOD - Part III

Common code of goodness

Deriving a common code of goodness is not terribly complex. We have all the data needed to derive such a code but we need constant and blunt reminders about goodness. Scriptures have thoughtfully categorized these for different times, different stages of life and pursuit of different goals. For example a student needs a code different from that of a householder; a minister needs a code different from that of an industrialist or a soldier. Let us now design a list of “secular” virtues that could apply universally. The following list is necessary but not sufficient. It is a generic list and needs to be supplemented with personal items depending on one’s family, society, geography, period of time and other factors.  The list is a broad spectrum antibiotic and needs to be taken along with other medicines based on the particular patient’s conditions. Validity of the list can be had from several anecdotes found in history, literature, folklore and poetry. I request each reader to come up with his/her own anecdotes/ stories/personal experiences to validate the list. I also welcome arguments against the presence of any of the items in the list.

I am not describing the process of deriving this list from the scriptures mentioned in Part 2. The exercise took me several months. I jotted down some notes which ran to 80 pages and I do not intend loading the blog with those. Trust me that the list was derived using several scientific and even mathematical techniques such as generalizing from specifics and vice versa, concretizing from abstract and vice versa, recognizing isomorphic scenarios (scenarios that look different externally but are the same when viewed at a deep structural level), induction logic for drawing inferences, deductive logic, analogical learning, creating world models and answering several “what-if” questions. 

1. Ahimsa

Non-violence is a poor translation of the term Ahimsa. The word Himsa does not limit itself to causing physical injury such as spraying pepper or hurling a bomb. You commit Himsa even when you wound someone with words, with evil thoughts and when you do not let others make their own choices. Open mindedness is a hallmark of our culture. Imposing one’s dogmas on others forcibly or ridiculing others’ opinions without due consideration constitute himsa. Much of the terrorism in today’s world stems from the fact that some people deny others the freedom of thought. In a lighter vein we can say that proprietary software that functions like a black box is also an instance of committing himsa. So are appliances with non-intuitive modes of operation. Acts of spoiling the environment through pollution and deforestation definitely qualify for being labeled as himsa. A closely related trait to ahimsa is forgiveness which refers to the recognition that living with others is not possible without excusing genuine and unintended acts of harm done by others.

2.Empathy
Empathy refers to the capacity to connect imaginatively with the sufferings and unique experiences of another person. It demands courage to become someone else and look back at oneself with honesty. It connotes the capacity to be in someone else’s shoes especially when that person is on a “low”. The custom of calling on someone who has suffered bereavement and saying kind words is a manifestation of empathy.

3.Patience
We get angry because we believe that things should be perfect. Intellectually we have grown so good as to travel to Mars, but we can not stand mundane things that have a tendency to go wrong - traffic, slow moving government transactions, and eccentricities of other people. We should grow calmer and more forgiving by getting more realistic about how things actually tend to go. Impatience leads to unacceptable behavior that may inflict harm on others.  We have no business to vandalize public property when a train expected to arrive at 8.25 AM is delayed until 8.45 AM. Fortunately we are powerless against ambiguities in Nature. What can we possibly do when the monsoon that was predicted to set in on Jun 1 does not show up until Jun 12?

4.Sacrifice
We are hardwired to manipulate things to our own advantage. We forget that we also have a miraculous ability, to forego our own satisfactions for the sake of someone else. We won’t ever manage to nurture a family, run an organization or save the planet if we don’t keep up with the art of sacrifice. Please note that “sacrifice” implicitly assumes that we have “something” to forego. We can not sacrifice nothingness. Hence ambition to create wealth is indeed a prerequisite for the purpose of sacrifice.

5.Politeness
Politeness is often assumed to be about displaying artificial behavior. Mechanically falling at the feet of anyone and everyone does not constitute politeness. We need to learn ‘manners’, which are the necessary internal rules of civilization. Politeness is also closely linked to tolerance, the capacity to live alongside people whom one will never agree with, but at the same time, can’t avoid. Tact and diplomacy are closely allied cousins of politeness.

6.Humor
Seeing the funny side of situations and of oneself doesn’t sound very serious, but it is integral to wisdom, happiness and goodness. It is a sign that we are able to grasp the gap between what we wish and how life actually unfolds; what we dream of being and what we actually are, what we hope other people will be like and what they actually are. Humor may even spring from disappointment.

7.Self-Awareness
To know oneself is the same as not blaming others for one’s troubles and moods; to have a sense of what’s going on inside oneself, and what actually belongs to the world. Self awareness shields us from passing the buck and finding scapegoats for our failures. There are several tools both in scriptures (the “guna” theory for example) and Management literature (MBTI types for example) that aid us in evaluating our level of self awareness. For example some could be extroverts and some others introverts; an extrovert may do well in sales and marketing while an introvert may do well in design and research. Some may base their decisions on intuition while some others on sensing; some may be of thinking type while others could be of feeling type (also referred to as left brained and right brained). Self awareness guards against the “square peg in a round hole” syndrome and all the resultant unhappiness. For example, I was self aware that I can be an excellent employee but never an employer; hence I let go a couple of opportunities that came my way for being an entrepreneur. 

8.Hope
The way we see the world today is only an indicator of what it could one day be in future. Despair becomes far easier and almost automatic although we display streaks of coolness and adventurism occasionally.  We should learn to cultivate shallow levels of pessimism and deep levels of optimism. A related attribute is “resilience” which means the art of keeping going even when things are looking dark; of accepting reversals as normal, of not giving up. It is said that when the going is tough the tough get going.

9.Confidence
The greatest projects and schemes fail to fructify because we don’t dare. It is the duty of parents, teachers and other mentors and coaches to nurture a spirit of confidence. Confidence is not arrogance; it is based on a constant awareness of how short life is and how beneficial it is to take calculated risks. The keyword in the previous sentence is “calculated” because misplaced confidence and ill-considered risk can lead to misery.

There may not be a consensus among everyone on how to be good. But that should not in itself be reason to disqualify us from investigating and promoting the very notion of goodness. Ultimately, each one of us needs to formulate our own list of specific virtues, because each one of us has specific eccentricities and whims. Such individual craziness is acceptable as long as it is not accompanied by violence. Indeed the individual craziness is what gives us our unique identity. During my career I always made it a point to have one maverick in my team who would keep questioning the norms and standards of the day!

I want to be GOOD - Part II

In this part, we shall place ancient wisdom contained in scriptures in proper perspective before attempting to abstract common attributes of goodness.

Just as it is necessary to use the Rear View mirror as much as the front windshield while driving, it is necessary to be respectful of the past while charting the future. We can not dismiss the RV mirror because it shows the past stretch which we have already traversed. Those who forget the past will have no future and those who don’t care about future become fossils. Hence it becomes relevant to understand what the old scriptures had enunciated so that we can add, delete or edit them for different geographies and contexts and time periods.

We shall use the word “Scripture” to denote documents handed down to us from very ancient times. The scriptures deal extensively with life practices that lead to vibrancy and dynamism. The philosophy propounded is holistic in the sense that it takes into account all the stakeholders involved in an issue and the specific needs and constraints of each. There are no isolated silos or compartmentalized treatises. The ancient Indian thought leaders found it quite comfortable to deal with a heterogeneous, non-linear, fuzzy and asymmetric world. Unlike their Western counterparts they did not artificially try to reduce the real world into a homogenous, linear, deterministic and symmetric framework. The texts do not promise an ideal solution in every instance.  But they help us find an optimal solution for every context. 

Scriptures contain valuable notes to improve one’s critical thinking abilities. These notes can compete favorably with modern day coaching classes that promise to make one smarter. They contain several modeling techniques to understand the world – through the eyes of chemistry, physics, sociology or politics. While we appreciate the need to “define” words before using them, the scriptures contain standards to qualify as to what constitutes a good definition. It cautions us against over specification or under specification.  The large number of anecdotes contained in them provides a benchmark against which we can test our own solutions. They also contain anecdotes where a particular line of action failed to provide the answers and even situations where the actions aggravated the original problem. Today’s management education is based on discussing Case Studies; Indian scriptures had used Case Studies as an effective learning pedagogy several thousands of years back.

The scriptures are an end product of an iterative effort over several centuries, with commentaries on the original text, commentaries on commentaries and so on. These commentaries were challenged by others and the authors had to defend their works. For example, challenging debates were held with the Budhists. This process of constant churning and aggressive review ensured that what remained was truth acceptable and applicable for all times.

Codes of appropriate behavior began as guiding propositions that are to be developed and deployed on the ground. The early norms of morality were down-to-earth in character. For example, exhortations to be sympathetic originated from awareness that a sense of sympathy could draw societies back from fragmentation and self-destruction. These norms were very vital to society’s survival.  However, over time they got projected into the sky (the perceived abode of a “God”) and reflected back to earth in the form of commandments and prescription for rituals. It is this distortion / misinterpretation that created aversion to scriptures.  For example, the word “Yoga” conjures up detailed contortions of the body called asanas. Yoga literally means unity. It means aligning the ambitions of a group of people toward a common goal. A school can not excel if it has bright students but incompetent teachers; similarly it can not excel if it has good teachers but poor infrastructure in terms of classrooms, laboratory, library etc. An organization can not excel if it has superb production teams but unfriendly after-sales teams. The alignment of the goals of all stakeholders toward a common objective is the message behind yoga. When you practice Yoga, you will not be working for your own agenda which could be at cross purposes with the agenda of others. The alignment between an organization’s processes and achieved results is yoga. Yoga leads to repeatable and consistent performance leading to sustainability.

Similarly the word yagna brings to mind a place where ghee and other materials are confined to fire. Actually the real message behind Yagna is teamwork, defining the roles and responsibilities of each person so that there is no confusion. The way relatives share responsibilities during a family wedding is yagna.  The way teachers and students share responsibilities during the school annual day celebration is yagna. During the yagna, the individual expertise inherent in every team member gets fully expressed and at the same time gets synthesized with expertise of other team members to achieve a common goal.

The ancient documents are invariably in the form of a dialogue or conversation. A dialogue ensures that we are seeking solutions to the correct problem. In isolation we tend to offer excellent solutions but addressing the wrong problem, the version of the problem as understood by us and not the problem that begs the solution. Even if the solution is wrong or suboptimal, it is better that the problem is correctly understood. Ancient systems of learning emphasized dialogue so as to arrive at a consensus on problem definition. One of the greatest among modern thinkers Russell Ackoff used to say that it is better to do the right thing wrong than do the wrong thing right. In the former case we learn from our mistakes. In the latter case we make the wrong thing wronger by doing it right!

The fact that we ourselves created the behavioral norms does not entitle us to do away with them. We need periodic reminders to be sympathetic and fair minded even if we do not believe that there is a God who has a hand in ordering us to be so. We can’t agree collectively as a single monolithic society on a code of good behavior. Christianity used to have a list of 7 key virtues that it believed all its followers should heed. They also gave us the famous 10 commandments. Hinduism lists six bad traits to be avoided. There is no scientific answer to exactly how many virtues one might choose to be guided by; yet what seems central is to recognize that we probably need some kind of a list to correct our worst tendencies. The diversity in the framework for goodness drives the need to be tolerant of each other and brave enough to talk about misbehavior.

Religion and Spirituality

A language comprises syntax (alphabets, rules of grammar etc.) and semantics (the meaning conveyed). The syntax is the external manifestation and semantics is the inner content. Religion is like syntax and spirituality is like semantics. You have been told in the language class that your writing should be devoid of grammatical mistakes and also that the sentences should convey a train of coherent thoughts that the reader can understand. I personally consider the meaning part more important than the grammar part. To use the metaphor of music, religion is like the notation of a song and spirituality is like the lyrics of the song. Religion is like the blue dress of the Indian cricket team and spirituality is like the grace behind Tendulkar’s cover drive. If you take the totality of scriptures, according to my rough estimate, about 15% is devoted to linguistics and how to communicate. This is today a fashionable training module in corporate offices under the name “Soft skills”. The coverage also includes aspects such as negotiating skills.

If religion sticks only to unverifiable and enforced dogmas, it may result in dividing society and cause conflicts; it may shut out dialogue. Spirituality however is pursuit of truth and is closer to science. Akin to philosophy, it encourages discussions. Similar to science, it allows for falsification of its doctrines. It develops and disciplines the mind and balances the emotions. It is cohesive unlike religion which may become coercive at times. Spirituality removes cobwebs from our understanding of the world just a science does and it brings in logical clarity in thinking.

Scriptures have emphasized that we need to ensure our survival and we have to create wealth for ourselves before we can care about the community; after all we are also members of the same community. Scriptures do not demand of us to neglect our family and indulge in the service of the rest of the community. Similarly, the texts exhort businesses to make profits for themselves before they indulge in Corporate Social Responsibility. They have given us emergency exits where survival becomes paramount. Suppose you have been taught to find the root cause of problems by constantly digging deeper into causes and effects. In modern management they use a tool called the Fishbone diagram for conducting such an exercise. When your house is on fire you can not be logging on to your computer and looking at the Excel sheet of possible causes and start reasoning about the current cause by eliminating other factors. Your duty is to first escape by any available means.

The code of ethics does not ask you to never get angry; it gives representative examples of situations when getting angry is justified. If you fail to get angry when the situation demands, your subordinates will not respect you and they will take you for granted.  This is a great feature of the scriptures; it prevents one from getting ossified with standards and processes. Several discussions in the texts talk about balancing flexibility and robustness, submission and dominance. They discourage blind faith in a particular dogma because extremism leads to fundamentalist tendencies, madness and violence.

In the next and concluding installment we will derive a common code of goodness based on ancient wisdom and corroborated by case studies from ancient as well as modern times.

                                                                                                …………. To be continued

I want to be GOOD - Part I

I want to be GOOD- who will help me?

Week-long pressure points

It is Wednesday. As soon as Mom returns from office she asks “Bring today’s Unit Test paper”. “Why did you leave out this question for which I prepared you so thoroughly yesterday, spending all my energy?” “Out of the rest God knows how many slips you have committed (I thought God has better things to do than monitor my mathematics unit test paper!). If this is the status in the Unit Test, I shudder to think of the final examination for which you have to study the entire syllabus”.

It is Friday. It is the turn of Meera, my elder sister to turn on the heat. “Did you clear the speaking assignment? Remember that I passed Diplôme Supérieur with “Tres Bien” grading and you are expected to maintain the standard that I have set”.  She was referring to my French class where I had to watch a French movie and reproduce the dialogue. I have mastered written French but spoken French is a nightmare.

It is Sunday. Father is worried that my state of preparedness for the Fifth level Trinity examination in Western Classical music is inadequate. The investment in the high-end keyboard doubling as a low-end piano and the astronomical per hour fees to the tuition master are not producing the expected returns. Sundar who started a full year after me has overtaken me and is now ready for the Sixth level examination. “The differentiating factor is hard work”, I am admonished.

It is Tuesday. Uncle has come all the way from a distant suburb to comment on my backhand volley in tennis. My parents did not heed his advice to enroll me in Krishnan’s academy but put me in a local coaching class.  From the 98,765^th world rank I now hold, reaching the 100^th rank in the next 3 years looks as far away as Mars.

It is Thursday. The teacher is wondering whether she erred in nominating me as the school representative in the inter-school quiz contest to be held the next day. “Our school has been the winner for the last 4 consecutive years. Are you in a position to retain the status? Take care to read tomorrow’s newspaper as this quiz master has a tendency to ask a question from that day’s paper”

On Saturday, the friends want to be innovative at Bala’s birthday bash. No pizzas, no ice-creams. It is Indonesian cuisine this time. No 10 PM curfews. It is sleep-in this time and music at 10KW until 4 AM.

In the midst of the above, the Social Studies Project work due for submission on Monday remains unfinished.

To be Good is out of fashion

Parents, relatives, teachers, and friends turn out as stakeholders in Atul’s ambitions and agenda of progress. Concepts, definitions, methods, tools, equipment, coaches, time schedules, figures of merit, benchmarking schemes are all in place. Has anyone, at any time, asked Atul about his progress in being “GOOD”? Has anyone discussed the definition, the interpretations, the methods, the tools and the measure of achievement in being good?

The very concept and the practice of the art of being good sound bizarre and weird. The notion of trying to be a ‘good person’ invokes a sense of fear because of the jargon associated with being good. The vocabulary sounds threatening – ethics, morality, piety, solemnity, forbearance, rituals, renunciation, righteousness, conduct, character, manners, humility, respect, truthfulness, etiquette and so on. The threat is increased by the use of Sanskrit words such as Dharma, Karma, Ahimsa, Satya, Moksha, Naraka and so on.

As an individual everyone has some goals in life; organizations call it their Mission, Vision statements. Would any organization have as its mission statement a phrase such as “to be a customer unfriendly organization” or “to continue to produce shoddy products”? Similarly would any individual have as his personal mission in life to be the wickedest person in his society?

If your ambition in life is to fight hereditary diseases, you need to study genetics and anatomy; you need laboratory facilities where you can experiment with cell mutations and so on. If your life’s mission is to be good, where do you get help in terms of concepts, rules, methods, tools and gradation? Where is the body of knowledge and a course where you can enroll to earn a graduate degree in being good? What laboratory facility does one need in conducting the experiment to be good?

Parents shy away from referring to the need to be good probably because they are not sure whether they will pass the test themselves. Teachers feel that this is the responsibility of the parents and shirk their responsibility.  Peers will dote on you and even envy you if you tell them that you are improving on your backhand volley in tennis. Try telling your friend that you are working on your character, and you will receive quizzical looks and even be thought insane. It’s an indication of just how out of favor the mission of being good has become.  Popularity seems to be inversely proportional to being good. Look at the TV and newspapers. Criminals hog the headlines whereas good Samaritans do not get any coverage.

Role of religions

There is however one arm of the society that shows interest and even considers it its responsibility to disseminate applied ethics – it is called religion. Different religions may have disagreements with their definitions of goodness or on the practical implementation aspects of their own beliefs; however, religions do not stop trying to encourage their followers to be good. They give their followers commandments and rituals, they deliver them sermons and ask them to recite prayers and hymns.

Even for a life-long atheist, there is something interesting about the processes and efforts that religion indulges in. Is there anything we can learn from these efforts? The standard answer would be that there is nothing to be learnt, because religious morality is perceived to come from God, who does not figure in the atheist’s dictionary. Psychologically whenever God is mentioned people lift their heads to the skies implying that God resides somewhere up there. We can however delink God from morality because the main motivation for norms of proper behavior came from the pragmatic need of our earliest communities to control their members’ tendencies towards violence, and to foster in them habits of harmony and forgiveness.

How does the institution of Religion help us with a syllabus, a learning pedagogy and an evaluation system for a course on “goodness”? It acts in several layers; some of these layers may not be relevant to a student. An approach that will appeal to the rational mind is the one through anecdotes interspersed in its literature which we call scriptures. One can read them with reverence or one can read them purely for their literary excellence or for their imaginative story line (as we read Harry Potter). They could be viewed as historical facts or imaginative fiction. In any case they present typical scenarios of dilemma and how the actors behaved under those circumstances in their time and in that place and context. They do not sermonize that YOU should act exactly the same way when faced with an identical dilemma today. The scriptures do not provide one-size-fit-all solutions. They present several options for you to choose the one that best suits you. This aspect of scriptures has not been properly understood and that explains the aversion toward reading the scriptures. 

                                                                                    ……… to be continued

First day address to management students @ ASB

Value of Management Education

Till fifteen years back, I held the view that management education is not a value adding endeavor.   I have changed since then and today find the question quite redundant. However I will share some ideas on what adds value to management education. I am making an assumption that management education’s aim is to equip its students to become effective problem-solvers.

How would you approach the following problems?

Which car should I buy – a Mitsubishi Lancer or a Honda City?

How can we prevent events such as the Wisconsin gurudwara killing?

Should a new dam be constructed at Mullaperiyar?

Should the interest rates be lowered to boost production at the cost of incurring inflation?

How do I double the enrolment % at universities?

As a Project Leader how do I handle schedule pressure?

How do I compete with Walmart in my retail business?

You will note that the problems span a variety of domains – business, governance, family, society, economy, education and so on. However, traditionally management and management education got associated only with business. Success in every domain is governed by management and leadership imperatives. Hence I use the term “management” to encompass all of society and its ecosystem.

Value-add # 1: Enlarge the scope of applicability of management principles.

Challenges facing society, government, technology, environment and business change with every generation, say, every twenty-five years. Coping with these changes requires that development of leaders should co-evolve with the changes. This, in turn, translates into management education co-evolving with changes in societal behavior patterns. The current challenge can be described as the strong interrelatedness of the above institutions. When we say that life is getting more and more complex, we mean that life has become a web of interconnections rather than remaining as discrete disjoint entities. Look at the way the internet has changed our banking habits, our travel habits, and our reading habits. In such a scenario, problems do not arise in silos and problems do not appear with headings proclaiming to be an HR problem or manufacturing quality problem or customer retention problem.  There are just problems. Hence problem-solvers have to be first trained in the art of problem discovery and diagnosis. The solution part then is simple, mostly available in commoditized form. There are time tested system archetypes to guide solutions.

Value-add # 2: Look for interconnectedness and go behind the front-facing layer

Answers to the questions posed above can not be black and white statements. They are complex because there are multiple stakeholders each with his individual needs which may conflict with those of others. There could be constraints such as cost ceiling or governmental regulations. The relationship among the elements may not be linear. Many elements can not be quantified and yet they play a vital part in arriving at an optimal solution. Management education has a course titled quantitative modeling but I have not come across a course titled “qualitative modeling”.  We are all trained to be rational and logical while real life problems contain feelings and emotions. Look at consumer behavior – while buying a cupboard do we ask for sheet metal thickness and surface finish of spray painting? We decide to buy a brand by the look and feel of it. A marketing strategy that does not factor in the emotional aspects is bound to be incomplete and not produce the desired results. Even the best numerical simulation software needs a model of the problem as input. The model has to be as close to reality as possible. The best model in the world can not equal reality. Qualitative methods help in building a realistic model incorporating all stakeholders’ needs and constraints.

Value-add # 3: Don’t get obsessed with quantification, qualitative factors are equally important

Behavior is dynamic and context dependent; population control methods applicable to Kochi will not work in Lucknow. What worked in 1970 may not work in 2012.  Solutions are context dependent. I learnt that measures to make a private school in Trivandrum as the best school in the district will not work for a government school in  Mumbai. In this connection the case study method of management education is useful in providing a context. Management education should aim to prepare the students find an optimal solution for the given context. There is no unique solution to any problem in the world. Design of a solution is nothing but choosing the optimum solution from among a set of solutions. Good leaders, unlike mathematicians, do not look for global optimum solutions valid for all time. Good leaders also know when to exit from a chosen line of solution and make mid course corrections instead of being bogged down by ideological pig headedness.

Value-add # 4: There is no “the best” solution, only an optimal solution for a given context

 An electronics engineer would always use spectrum analyzer as a tool irrespective of what he is looking for. Often this results in mutating the problem to suit the tool and the resulting solution becomes subnormal. I consider a problem as an animate being which is crying to communicate with us but our ears have been muffled by our favorite models. For some management consultants every problem is a linear programming problem or a regression problem depending on their favorite tool or depending on what software package is installed in their computers. Instead we should make the problem as the master and the tool as the slave. The problem should drive the model and not the other way around. Else we will end up offering technologically brilliant solutions to some problem not the problem for which we have been hired. I have case studies based on first hand experience to validate this. An organization won a contract with a leading pharmaceutical company against stiff international competition because it did not mutate the company's  business model to suit a popular ERP software. It also took into account subjective criteria such as the level of cooperation among the units of the business arising out of inter-departmental politics. There is also a case study of a company losing a project with a leading automobile client because it had excessively concentrated on the technology without getting an insight into the business environment.

Value-add # 5: Beware of pre-conceived models

Specialists tend to be biased because of their passion for the domain. Technical people look at issues from their viewpoint. Bureaucrats look at them from their own viewpoint usually from a compliance viewpoint. Students of management need to be versatile so as to look at issues from an external vantage point. They should have the ability to see the forest and not just the trees, to discern the underlying music behind the chirping of birds. For the current times, versatility is more relevant than specialization. Gartner research has predicted, for example, that 7 out of 10 jobs in the IT sector will not require one to do programming or other technical work. They will be front facing roles closely working alongside the customer. The consultant needs to quickly understand the domain. This necessitates cultivating the fine art of asking stupid dumb questions upfront. Management education would be valuable only if the students are trained to seek business benefits to customers than just providing the best possible technology solution. A candidate’s CV that mentions expertise in Java or Oracle or specialization in HR or marketing will not attract the attention of employers. CVs that are likely to attract attention will read like
 “I increased customer retention in xxx telecom company from 22% to 37%” or “at yyy automobiles I brought down production costs by 17% by identifying and eliminating non value adding activities” .

Value-add # 6: Aim toward versatility

Herbert Simon, a Nobel Laureate, gave a life cycle model for problem solving process  as a linear sequence of activities. He was in fact formalizing the reductionist mindset of those times driven mostly by the industrial revolution paradigm. Our spiritual heritage repeatedly emphasizes cyclical models of development. A doctor discovers information by asking questions to his patient. He in fact enlarges the scope of the problem. Thereafter he performs a series of diagnostic tests to narrow down the options. He then prescribes medicines. The process does not end there. If the diagnosis is inconclusive he goes back to make more discoveries. If the prescription does not work he goes back to more diagnostic tests. Students of management education should be familiar with iteration and recursion exercises that are part of the life cycle of problem solving. Otherwise a consultant will not command the respect of clients if he just throws a set of recommendations at the client, collects his fees and walks away. A consultant should constantly keep looking for feedback. Only feedback will drive him toward the vision and mission objectives. It would help in mid course corrections. He should remember that the trajectory from problem origin to solution destination is not a straight line but a curved path, involving adjustments all the way. It applies to business, it applies to governance and it applies to personal career development.

Value-add # 7: Problem solving is a circular activity

Good leaders avoid knee jerk reactions namely temporary fixes that fail and actions that have side effects; they look for sustainable responses after drilling down the structure of the problem. For example, tightening gun control laws would be a knee jerk reaction to purposeless shooting incidents. It would create fresh problems because guns would be sold clandestinely. If guns are not available, the perpetrators of crime would use other weapons. If people are frisked before entering places of worship, criminals will choose other venues. Hence one needs to understand the problem at its structural level. Would a good leader sack his sales person at Shimla because the sale of ice-cream there in December had gone down?

Value-add # 8: Avoid patch work, look for sustainable solutions

It is obvious that good decisions need good inputs. Good decisions also need good decision making processes. In the context of management education, we need to revisit the horizontal segmentation of course content such as HR, finance, marketing, and systems. We should do bits of all these throughout the program and offer elective specializations based on different verticals. Yale and Loughborough (U.K.) seem to have adapted this approach. The latter has modules on Science & Technology too. Employers such as British Aerospace are happy to hire these students.

Value-add # 9: Rearrange content by applying core mandatory topics to specialized verticals

Globalization does not mean just having offices around the world and boasting that one’s topline comprises multiple currencies. It means, for example, raising capital from Singapore, sourcing raw material from Africa, getting designers from India, setting up manufacturing facilities in China and marketing the products in Europe. Thus an understanding and respect (not mere tolerance) for diverse global cultures is necessary for a successful business. Indian IT companies have learnt that HR incentives that work in India will not work in China, Walmart realized that pillow cases meant for USA will not sell in Germany. Suppose that a client belongs to a society where equality is the norm and as a result people at every level feel empowered. Assume that the service provider belongs to a society that is strongly hierarchical and decisions are made only at the top layer. If these parties do not understand the underlying cultural traits, misunderstanding is bound to occur. Management education will be valuable if the mindset of students is conditioned to get an insight into different cultural traits without being judgmental about them. Absence of an inclusive mindset leads to tensions and even terrorism.

Value-add # 10: Get an insight into different global cultures

We may not yet have an Indian style of management. But there are already several management principles attributed to Indians. Value of management education will be enhanced if we reflect on these. The ethical business doctrine of Nitin Nohria, Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid by late CK Prahlad, Purposeful business by Indra Nooyi, Strategy alone will not produce results, execution matters by Ram Charan are some examples. Several lessons from successful anecdotes and unsuccessful anecdotes described in texts such as Mahabharata are worth consideration; progressive steps in negotiation described by sama, dana, bheda, danda translate to cooperate, yield some territory, divide and rule, hostile take over. Several Indian business models have worked well – Amul and Mumbai Dabbahwalahs have caught the attention of management educationists, there are others such as Fabindia worth looking at.

Value-add # 11: Wisdom can come from inside too!

Vocabulary is not just a cosmetic façade. The correct vocabulary sometimes dismissed as jargon, drives the right mindset. The transformation needed for coping with the current time has been captured in the change in business vocabulary as shown below:

From                                                    To

Logical                                                 Intuitive

Analysis                                                Synthesis

Expansion                                            Conservation

Competition                                        Cooperation

Domination                                          Partnership

Limitless growth                                  Stable development

Command & control                            Consensus

Efficiency                                             Effectiveness

Output                                                 Outcome

Information                                          Relationships

For example, the number of hospital beds per 1000 people is a measure of output while quality of health is a measure of outcome. Each row above can be expanded into a full essay / case study. According to me your education would add immense value if you can clearly see the distinction between the word pairs given above.

Value-add # 12: Words are often pregnant with powerful messages

I wish all of you a very purposeful and value added stay at ASB.