Stop bothering, mate!

Seeking advancement is in the nature of man. We try to outdo people around us all the time, since that is the natural way we progress as individuals, as society; though the latter may not really be a part of our calculations. Whom do we choose to outdo then? Obviously the ones who are doing better than us, for the others we must already have outdone to reach the position which we have.

Now, let us assume that a hierarchy exists among people, which is not too much of an assumption really, simply because at any point of time, one person has to be doing better among any two people. For our purpose, we will take the level of competency a person possesses as a determinant to who is doing better, since competency is a fairly comprehensive parameter in itself.

Like any other person, you would be a part of some hierarchy or the other and therefore, you must occupy some position in it. Let us say that you are at the 6th position, i.e., you are the 6th most competent person. The immediate objective for you then would be to outdo the person who is at the 5th position in the hierarchy, since that is the only plausible way to move up - by displacing the person adjacent to you first and then the others further up in the hierarchy. To outdo this person, say M, you need to exceed the level of competency that he currently possesses. To do that, you have to try and match your competence to that of M’s current level first. M, however, has a similar motivation to elevate his level of competency and bring himself to displace the person in the 4th position, say N. So, he too works towards improving his competence to N’s current level at least. Apparently, the only way you can now outdo M is by increasing your competency level at a rate faster than him. Possible, surely?

Imagine that competency was a straight line starting from zero and ending at infinity. Your competency level is currently at, say, some point X, and M’s is at, say, some point Y. Here, Y is ahead of X. In your efforts to improve your competence, you move from point X to point Y. But in the mean time, M’s efforts have taken his competency level to some point Z from Y, where Z is ahead of Y. You still lag behind M. You try again and take yourself to point Z. However, during this time, M has again moved to a new point W, where W is ahead of Z. Extending this argument, it becomes clear that your position on the linear straight line will always be behind M’s. The same logic goes for M. M will continue to be behind N. And if that’s the case, the hierarchy will always be maintained.

In effect, however hard you try, you are always going to stay at the same position in the hierarchy, just where you had originally been. And if relative position is all that matters, then why even bother trying? Just chill and stay afloat.

Now, find me that silly person who wrote the 4th standard Moral Science lesson – “Try, try, again”.

(This article has been inspired from the Zeno’s Paradox.)

Yes, but intuitively

One of the dominant myths surrounding an MBA degree relates to the rigidity of the learning that is disseminated. A large section of people believe that MBA is a course where too much theory is ingrained into topics that are largely intuitional. In effect, the belief translates into saying that MBA makes robots of highly innovative people, by establishing closed stereotypes and binding their intellect into preconceived notions. This can’t be further from the truth.

Any person with a reasonable knowledge of what goes on inside an MBA classroom will vouch for the fact that it employs, arguably, the most innovative teaching pedagogy. The case study method developed by the Harvard Business School, the Vatican City of management education, has come to be widely accepted in management institutions all over the world, largely due to its effectiveness in enabling the target audience to understand new concepts by applying them to real market scenarios. But if we look beneath the surface, it’s easy to see that the participative mechanism which the method uses is as crucial to its success. Every opinion undergoes a process of evolution and modification, as a case discussion moves forward. By invoking the participants to jointly analyze a given situation and recommend solutions, an effort is made towards making sure that the concepts, rather than being thrust upon them, come to be appreciated as worthy of application in real life.

A skeptic might still say that though the concepts are evolved, they still tend to limit the field of view of the participant when it comes to analyzing a given situation; aren’t we killing intuition by emphasizing on the application of these concepts? It is relevant to note here that the concepts taught in any MBA course are merely tools to facilitate reaching a conclusion. Let’s take a situation in marketing as an example. A marketing opportunity may be perceived differently by two individuals, who can then make use of marketing tools and concepts and still reach two different marketing strategies. It is possible that both the strategies work. Also possible is that none of them give the desired results. It is here that intuition comes into play and demands creativity from the individuals in their approach. There are several such situations which demand subjectivity. More often than not, it is the combination of rationale and intuition that proves to be the best answer.

An MBA course aims to provide students a holistic view of the business world. Ingraining stereotypes among students would be as detrimental to the students as to the discipline itself. The general environment that an MBA course provides also facilitates exchange of ideas and learning. MBAs have time and again showcased their penchant for innovation and their ability to break out of the clutter. This has only been possible due to the high value that MBA places on openness to experience and readiness to change.

(If you are pro-MBA, then be happy! If you aren’t, then read this as a sarcastic take on MBA. As for me, I am still undecided. Bah!)

Silence and Thunder

With open arms and camouflaged eyes,

Silence did welcome thunder.

Earlier, it begged for peace,

Now, peace when it had enough,

It sought what it should have wanted least.

A picture of tranquillity that was never meant to be,

But camouflaged eyes damage had did.

And now when silence looked around,

He found only ruins of the past,

Bullets among the massacred

Rusted against the tears.

No more did it want silence,

It only sought peace.

Reflections

It’s been a long time since I have written. It is something that scares me. A person’s passions make his life and to lose your passions is as good as losing your essence. It is a realization that has grown stronger with me after coming here, to this physically beautiful place called Kozhikode.

You may ask the reason for my unexpected disappearance from the blogging world. But I myself don’t have a confident answer. Probably, it’s just that I have not been able to gather enough inspiration, or probably that I was too intent on writing an article that was nowhere below excellent. That brings me to why you find this article on a new blog address. I actually did write a few things during this last half a year (phew...how time flies), but never put them up on my old blog. It’s come to be something very sacred for me, my old blog, and I did not want to put up routine things on it. I will in all probability do that here, unless I become obsessed over this one too. Some people, I am sure, would prefer the words neurotic to obsessed.

To tell you exactly how life has been this past half a year in a single emotion is difficult, rather impossible. Time doesn’t wait for anyone and emotions wait even lesser. They just whizz by before you actually start feeling them thoroughly and start believing that you are in a state which you can qualify by a particular emotion. That also might be one of the reasons why I haven’t been able to write. Whenever I have made an effort, I have found it very difficult to think along one line. Emotions have been multitude in number and their direction has been very random.

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A few observations, and a few insights, during this period which I feel are worth sharing:

1. Most people are essentially good-natured. My initial scepticism over my future peer group has given way to an assured feeling of potentially long-lasting friendships and the acknowledgement of the inherent goodness of people.

2. I was reading a dear friend’s blog here, in one of whose articles, during the course of a conversation between two of his fictional characters, one of them comments about the travesty of success - “in the end, you may realize that it was not so important after all”. The statement struck me. And since then, I have grappled with the question of what success is. How important is it? Is there actually contentment after success? How do I measure my success? Success to me might not be a success to you. But your failure may still be a success to me. Why do I desire success?

3. There are a few moments in your life when everything comes to a standstill, and you feel your purpose of living has been accomplished. In such moments, you can see the whole essence of your life coming through. In such moments, you just sit back, reflect about yourself and your past life and marvel at your journey. Inevitably, more often than not, such moments would occur in the simple things of life and maybe when you least expect them. At such moments, you have no regrets over the way you have lived your life, over the way you have conducted yourself.

4. The Social Services Group here started a wonderful little initiative of career counselling for school children. While volunteering for the event, I had the fortune of sitting in the auditorium hall and watch the young children listen intently to the counsellors, earnestness in their eyes and curiosity on their faces. Though it didn’t actually transport me back to my school days, those were some wonderful feel-good hours and I soaked in the charm of school life all over again.

5. Probably it’s the proximity in time between my graduation and post-graduation, but I still fondly remember BHU. And it’s mostly for the things that are ostensibly inconsequential in the supposedly larger scheme of things. One of the most vivid images which I remember very frequently is that of my batch mates sitting around the lamp-post towering vertically in the centre of the hostel. It was a common routine. One by one, people from different corners of the hostel, would come towards that circle as if there was a magnet pulling in all directions from there. It surprises me still how we managed to talk so much endlessly over potentially the same topics, the same teachers, the same girls, and still always managed to pull off interesting talk.

6. It’s truly remarkable how every person is so unique, while being so similar. Pick up any particular quality, and there is a role model for you. I have come across some amazing people here - people with so much equanimity about themselves that I feel as relaxed in their company as my limits would allow me, people with so much ambition that I too feel like setting the world on fire, people with so much dedication that I would willingly absorb a trickle of it, people with so much in love with what they love that it puts my passions to shame, people with so much maturity that you feel like a kid who is allowed to toy with his musings.

7. There was a most wonderful person by the name of Prof. Mathew along the way who taught us a course by the name of “Social Transformation of India.” He was not a sermonizer, nor was he a priest, but he tugged at our heart strings like no one ever has. In those few classes that we interacted with him and those few movies he showed us, he made us feel extremely small, while at the same time, giving us hope that there was a chance we could redeem ourselves.