Learning from the trailblazers: Raghuram Rajan shares workplace tips

         Raghuram Rajan has always got a rock star attention. He must be given credit for having spoken succinctly on many issues bothering India and being an economist, he has always given an economic angle to it. He rightly says, for India to unleash its full potential, there has to be fierce competition between different groups. These groups might be students, organizations, states, state-governed-organizations etc. The competition has to be so healthy that we learn from each other's mistakes and successes and strive hard to keep adding value to the society. 
         
         RBI governor Raghuram Rajan's speech at IIT Delhi's convocation last week included references to physicists, Indian kings, economists and scientists. Rajan recalled some of their exploits while building a case for diversity of viewpoints in a vibrant organisation and many of his ideas are fitting mantras for modern workplaces.

Here are his viewpoints on modern workplaces, which he says must be open to debate and the top level leadership must be open to accepting questions.

Richard Feynman, physicist

What Rajan said: "Feynman (a Nobel winner) found the atmosphere at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton stultifying. He found the atmosphere sterile because there were no students to ask him questions — questions that would force him to rethink his beliefs and perhaps discover new theories."

In the corporate world, a work environment where debates and discussion are not fostered is not innovative. Sycophancy might help a manager consolidate his or her power but that would be detrimental to the company's interests. 


Raja Raja Chola, of the Chola dynasty

What Rajan said: "In building the Brihadeeswara Shaivite temple at Thanjavur, ( Raja Raja Chola) incorporated sculptures of Vishnu as well as the meditating Buddha, thus admitting to alternative viewpoints."

When it comes to matters of diversity at the workplace, men, women, the disabled and those belonging to the LGBT community, among others, all possess a distinct point of view that must be accommodated and valued.

Shahenshah Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar, the Mughal king

What Rajan said: "When (Akbar) invited scholars of all manners of persuasion to debate the eternal verities at his court, he was only following older traditions of our Hindu and Buddhist kings, who encouraged and protected the spirit of enquiry."

Beyond simply admitting alternative viewpoints, it's important to accept them. A pool of diverse opinions can help shine a light on the problems being discussed, resolving the issue in an unexpected manner. 


Albert Einstein, the theoretical physicist

What Rajan said: "Ideas start with questioning and alternative viewpoints, sometimes seemingly silly ones. Einstein built his theory of relativity pondering the somewhat wacky question, of what someone travelling in a train at the speed of light would experience." 

As the governor said, nothing should be excluded, but everything should be subject to debate and constant testing. No one should be allowed to offer unquestioned pronouncements. Conventional wisdom must be challenged on an ongoing basis. 


Source: Economic Times

Learning too much from the past?

Decision making is a very important aspect in all spheres of our life; be it business, academics, profession, personal life etc. Given the nature of Indian society, our decisions naturally get altered based on our surroundings, upbringing and more importantly our past experience.

I read the below article in my favorite news paper The Hindu Businessline, which succinctly describes all these factors which we consider in the decision making process. The crux of the article is, while it is good to have rich experience in framing a decision, it is equally important to focus on the process. Time, people and situations change. We must learn from the past and alter the process based on the current environment. I always believe, in any life game, the rules or the processes which added value to you or to the society a few years ago might not necessarily add value now. Therefore, it is necessary to learn our lessons hard and correct ourself.

Since, I keep a lot of interest in politics, I hope Modiji our PM reads this article and understands that whatever worked in past might not necessarily work in future.

Here's the article from the hindu businessline.

What worked in the past may not work in the future unless we focus on the process.

We rely on the weight of experience to make judgments and decisions. We interpret the past – what we’ve seen and what we’ve been told – to chart a course for the future, secure in the wisdom of our insights. After all, didn’t our ability to make sense of what we’ve been through get us where we are now? It’s reasonable that we go back to the same well to make new decisions.

It could also be a mistake.

Experience seems like a reliable guide, yet sometimes it fools us instead of making us wiser.

The problem is that we view the past through numerous filters that distort our perceptions. As a result, our interpretations of experience are biased, and the judgments and decisions we base on those interpretations can be misguided.

If our goal is to improve decision-making, we can use our knowledge of those filters to understand just what our experience has to teach us and learn how to overcome our biases.

We focus on what we can see

In the business environment, the outcomes of decisions are highly visible, readily available for us to observe and judge. But the details of the decision process, which we can control far more than the result, typically don’t catch our attention. If the aim is to learn from experience – mistakes as well as successes – acknowledging that process is crucial.

Circle of advisers

Honest feedback – an unbiased, undistorted assessment of one’s experience – is essential for improving decisions. Yet decision makers are often surrounded by individuals who have incentives to feed them censored and self-serving information – and these people are not necessarily a crowd of yes-men.

Overvaluing experience

We can’t place all the blame for our distorted view of the world on the environment and our inner circle. Some of the blame lies with us. We tend to search for and use evidence that confirms our beliefs and hypotheses, and we gloss over or ignore information that contradicts them – an exercise of selectively building and interpreting experience known as the confirmation bias.

How not to be fooled

The following techniques can uncover the real lessons experience offers and help you base decisions on a clearer view of the world.

Sample failure: Failures and the processes that lead to them are doomed to stay in the dark unless special occasions are created to bring them to light. To identify what could be done better in the future, companies can also conduct decision post-mortems to analyse underlying processes.

Don’t miss near misses: Another oft-ignored event is the near miss – a failure that’s disguised as a success, but only because there are generally no dire consequences.

Pursue prevention: Recognising a potential problem requires a different approach than solving an actual problem. One strategy is to harness employees’ collective talents by allowing people to raise concerns about the firm’s operations. Disagree: As Peter Drucker wrote, “The first rule in decision making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement.” To devise healthy strategies, executives need to hear many perspectives.

Disconfirm: Rather than finding clues that corroborate your hunch – all too easy in an information-rich world – start by asking yourself how you could know you were, in fact, wrong.

Source:  Experience is not always wisdom