When Nobody Around You Seems to Measure up, Its time to change your yardstick

So you’re pulling out your hair because your colleagues are so inefficient? Don’t seem to understand and do simple things right despite repeated coaching?

You’re exasperated because your girlfriend does’nt seem to understand your worries and seems to not care?

Wait before you shift all the blame to the world (and exhibit an external locus of control). It’s more likely you are the one at fault here. Each individual is unique and has her own set of characteristics. Note I did not say strengths and weaknesses because you are nobody to classify something as a strength or a weakness. They are just different characteristics, having different utilities at different times. The challenge is to be comfortable with the differences. In a given situation, identify people’s strengths and appreciate them. Support people to give their best the way they like it. And learn to derive utility from it. Also, be aware of the diversity in the world, and be tolerant in your measurement scale.

• Ex 1: Just because you yourself adhere to a certain regimen of planning ,or a certain pace of work doesn’t mean everyone else has to match up to it. If they don’t, it is not their fault. Otherwise the world would be full of “perceived perfect” clones, and there would be no fun. A last minute cancelled appointment is not such a big deal.

• Ex 2: If a colleague is uncomfortable working in your team, and doesn’t even communicate that to you, it is your failure, not hers. Learn to step into others shoes and look at issues from their perspective.

• Ex 3: You think your girlfriend has become too selfish of late and doesn’t care about you? Before judging, Wait! Are you misinterpreting the “independence” and “individuality” that attracted you in the first place as “selfishness”? Or are you missing an important event in her life which’s causing her to behave “differently”? You’re using a wrong yardstick, aren’t you?

• Ex 4: You think a friend is too “cavalier” in her attitude towards life and needs to be more serious? Before delivering a sermon, take a moment off to think of the lessons she’s taught you about the pleasures of enjoying life. Is’nt it the same “cavalier”- this time paraphrased as “cheerful/easygoing”- attitude which you appreciated in the first place? I repeat, appreciate differences in people.

Some Clarifications – Saving my skin: I need to clarify this doesn’t at all mean compromising on anything. An oft touted line is “If you expect nothing but the best, you usually get it”. This is irrelevant in this context due to the use of the word “best”. Which is too fuzzy and too relative. The challenge is to get the “best” pleasantly. Furthermore, this is not to tell you to go diametrically opposite and blame yourself for everything.(have a complete internal locus of control).That would be disastrous. The agenda is to sensitise you to the other side of it.

Ultimately, the aim is to attain a high level of harmony with the world, live in a climate of trust and positivity, and successfully bring more smiles than frowns to your own face and the faces of the people around you. All this while you do not compromise on your personal and professional goals.

Sounds idealistic? Lets give it a try nevertheless..

The Theory of Gas: A B-School Perspective

“HR is all gas”

“Lets study FM.MM and BL are gas anyway”

“Even Prof S doesnt bring anything into MIS, its still all Gas”

• Students Definition of gas: Topics with no subtstance, no learning, and whose exams can be passed by “gassing” (verb) - Writing any crap that comes to mind.
• Students definition of Solid: Topics of substance, and high learning, that require thorough understanding and preparation, in order to pass them.
• Dictionary definition of gas : A state of matter, consisting of a collection of particles without a definite shape or volume that are in more or less random motion.
• Dictionary definition of Solid: A state of matter characterized by resistance to deformation and changes of volume.The constituent elements are closely packed together and have fixed positions in space relative to each other,accounting for the solid's rigidity.

What if I say solids are easy to comprehend and swallow due to their rigidity? However, gases are extremely tough to comprehend and ingest, due to their randomness. It is a struggle to arrest the far flung gas molecules and make sense of them.

Solids spell out clear cut methods and formulae to arrive at the right “answer”.The pertinent point here is, search for an "answer" rather than a “solution”. It is a function of the trained engineering minds (which have unfortunately come to dominate all of our business schools). But gases demand much more effort to discover a method to the madness. In the absence of which, their importance is not appreciated. Furthermore, when you don’t believe in the utility and power of something, you automatically don’t pay attention to it. Hence all the Strategy Cases, the HR cases, the Marketing cases invariably go unread, and even in Finance related subjects, there is a huge emphasis on the “numerical” aspects of it and the so called “blah blah blah” gets glossed over. What results is a big loss of opportunity. Opportunity to develop higher thinking abilies. Despite all its vices, the beauty of MBA education lies in its ability to develop habits. It has the potential to develop a habit of a taking a “birds eye” view and indulging in rich perspective thinking, but only if the participants give it a chance and practice it.

The so called “gas” provides frameworks to put individual pieces of “concrete” knowledge in place, and bind them into a stunning cohesive whole - each piece making sense and beautifully feeding onto one another.In its absence, what results is a disjoint structure which serves limited purpose in the real world. I daresay it results in a myopic view-imagine staring at the leaves and branches of a tree, rather than getting a birds eye view of the forest and its various intricacies and interactions. Another facet of it is ,some very important and intuitive concepts which unfortunately have no numbers and formulae to glorify them. They nevertheless are extremely tough to comprehend and very powerful to use. An example would be the works of great Philosophers, and Psychologists, which would be conveniently dismissed as “Gas” by our paradigm.You would agree that is a hilarious mistake.

Maybe that is why they say MBA’s make good managers but not necessarily visionaries and leaders. The paradigm shifts in approaches and innovative ways of doing business come from visionaries who haven’t been meticulously trained to work through the details and by extension trained to deride the “gas”. The “gas” comes to them intuitively and makes all the difference. The other “trained minds” end up doing mechanical “managerial” work, albeit very complex no doubt.

This is not the only way to develop a rich and varied perspective – It comes naturally to some individuals, and most others can develop it by experience. But the academic “gas” courses provide a good opportunity to do so quick and early. Hence it's is advisable to have an open mind and make the best use of it. The purpose of an MBA programme is much more than to pass exams and earn grades.

Gyaan : Make a distinction between what really is “gas” and what you classify as Gas because you cannot understand the concept or appreciate its utility. But yes, “Gas” will remain useless if it isn’t given a chance.