PANEL DISCUSSION AND THE CONCLUSION!

Blog 11: Panel Discussion and the Conclusion!

Just as the course started, it concluded with lots of curiosity with vast knowledge on the subject and the zeal to learn more. We had an engaging panel discussion in the last class. Four people from different domains came with their rich experience and discussed with us on various topics. The value addition from the discussion was immense! At the beginning all the panellists introduced themselves, we had two entrepreneurs and two separate top-level management executives from Caterpillar and HP respectively. I found Mr. Suresh Sambandam, CEO of OrangeScape the most interesting person, a self-taught coder who founded the company in 2003 after working in companies like HP and Selectica Inc. He talked about building a community within the company, the sense of brotherhood and closeness should exist between two fellow co-workers which will help the organization in the long run. This will foster trust in employees. They all agreed on how learning is very essential for an individual and our knowledge database need to be updated in a regular basis. We also got to hear a brief discussion on individual and collective motives and how it affects an organization. Another entrepreneur panellist Mr Arul Dey initiated the discussion on the “Significance in Crowd” where he mentioned three important points: 1) Understanding Yourself 2) The people you are interacting with 3) Culture. He encouraged the concept of free audit, we should be always open to reviews and feedbacks. The panellist from HP shared with us her own experience where she joined a company going against her intuition which proved to be a bad experience and she suffered a lot in that organization. Later she joined HP following her intuition and it proved to be the most fulfilling experience for her. Through her talk, it was highlighted how intuition drives our decision-making process. The panel discussion concluded in a positive note and it acted as a bridge between our understanding in the class and the industry application.

MOTIVATION

Blog 10: Motivation

On 12th April, 2011, Arunima Sinha boarded the Padmavathi Express Train at Lucknow station to travel to Delhi for the CISF Examination. During her travel three robbers attacked and tried to take away her bag and chain. When she resisted, they threw her off the moving train. She was lying beside the train track, while her leg was on another track. Another train passing on the parallel track went on her legs crushing her leg below knee. During the night, many rats ran over her, more than 30 trains passed on her broken leg. However, she was unconscious. She lost her left leg and she was just 23 years old when this tragic incident altered her life forever. Just after two years to the incident in 2013 she became the first Indian amputee to climb Mt Everest and creating history in the process, receiving Padma Shri in 2015. No motivation blog can start without mentioning her name. She showed us the epitome of intrinsic motivation. Motivation can be seen from two different perspectives, one from the learner perspective and the other from the employee/work context. Motivation is primarily of two types, one as mentioned earlier intrinsic motivation which comes from inside and the other being extrinsic motivation which comes from an external force. I was not surprised to see that our Professor is a firm believer of intrinsic motivation, may be most of us too believe that intrinsic motivation triumphs over extrinsic motivation. But hardly do we admit it! Here our Professor also mentioned of ABC model, which was created by Dr Albert Ellis where A stands for adversity; B stands for belief and C stands for consequence.

                                      Adversity             Beliefs           Consequences

Factors which builds our motivation:

1)     Focus

2)     Goal orientation

3)     Energy

4)     Passion

5)     Curiosity

6)     Inspiration

7)     Flow

8)     Experience

The list is not exhaustive! So, motivation is when we reach our peak experiences. Yes, Maslow won’t leave us so easily, here it points to the temporal nature of motivation. In fact, intrinsic motivation comes down when there is extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation will only work under conditions like money, company perks, punishments etc. In our discussion in class we were mostly concerned with the intrinsic motivation from the learner perspective. We formed groups in class and discussed it briefly. My fellow German friend Sebastian pointed out some interesting point about the drivers of intrinsic motivation from learner perspective. They are as follows:

1)     Improvement

2)     An interactive learning Model

3)     Autonomy (The new A in the ABC model)

4)     Competence (The new C in the ABC model)

Our Professor also mentioned about the Self-determination theory by Deci and Ryan (1985). SDT articulates a meta-theory for framing motivational studies, a formal theory that defines intrinsic and varied extrinsic sources of motivation. It also describes the respective roles of intrinsic and types of extrinsic motivation in cognitive and social development and in individual differences.

LEARNING MINDSET

BLOG 9: LEARNING MINDSET

Vivekananda once told that if we want to know the depth of the universe we need to keep on learning new things and embrace those new ideas. We did an exercise in class where we evaluated our self-learning ability through jotting down what type of learner we think of ourselves. Most of us wrote down to be flexible and quick learners, which was not surprising to the fact that millennials are agile and always ready to keep them updated. We came to know about the goal of learning which can be divided into abstract and clearer goals. We know about some courses where the final outcomes are specific and objectives are brief with clearer statements whereas others too abstract to determine. A class in “Learning Mindset” is incomplete without knowing about “Learning Organization” by Peter Senge. Peter Senge’s 1990 book The Fifth Discipline that brought him firmly into the limelight and popularized the concept of the ‘learning organization’. Learning Organization are” organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.” We also need to create learning environment, where the following factors are considered:

1)     Psychological Safety

2)     Appreciation of differences

3)     Openness to new ideas

4)     Time for Reflection

We always need to create an environment which encompasses a concrete learning process and practices. The top management should help to reinforce the practices. Our teacher taught us about the purpose of learning, which are as follows:

1)     Learning to gain skills

2)     Learning to acquire a qualification

3)     Learning for intrinsic joy of knowing

Learning process should imbibe certain qualities like creativity, observation and as an individual we should be brave enough to unlearn, learn and then relearn. It is also an attitude which discards obsolete ideas intentionally and come down to zeroth step. We should be willing to come out of our comfort zones, start dialogue with each other and start respecting opinions of other people. Some people have high resistance to change, which should be discarded whole heartedly to learn new things. We should always seek for transformative learning. Finally, we jotted down the attitudes required for learning:

1)     Receptivity

2)     Resilience

3)     Agility

4)     Humility

5)     Patience

6)     Being shameless when it comes to learning.

Thus, aspiration should lead to self-awareness which head to curiosity which in turn moves to vulnerability. Next, we learned about loops of learning: Single loop, Double learning (Root cause analysis), Triple loop ( Bringing new ways to solve problems). We should all vouch to move from fixed mindset to growth mindset.

ETHICAL DILEMMAS

BLOG 8: ETHICAL DILEMMAS

We have our own moral imperatives and personal ethics which shape our behaviour in an organization. And this differs from person to person. When these personal opinions lock horns with each other; problem starts happening and soon takes a grandeur scale in no time. All of us have faced those moments when doing right is different from doing what is easy. We need to fight for our self dignity at that moment. Victor Frankl wrote in “Man search for Meaning” that people find meaning to their life through the ethical values they adore in life and can even die for that. In workplace people belong to different socioeconomic backgrounds and beliefs which make the problem more complicated. The major ethical issues of employees are noted as follows:

1)     Violation of rules and regulation of the company

2)     Personal use of company’s assets

3)     Unethical code of communication

4)     Undue credit of work

We face ethical dilemmas in all spheres of life, right from our normal day to day work to our work life in an organization to being an entrepreneurship. It is a rare person who hasn't faced some sort of ethical dilemma in life.

THE START!

BLOG 1: THE START!

The inclusion of IDIO (Individual dynamics in Organizations) in the second quarter gave me the much needed cushion in otherwise a hard analytics based term! I don’t know if the statement is an exaggeration or I am too happy for its inclusion, anyway the course started with a boom! Professor V. Vijaylakshmi’s unusual beginning of the course excited us, she told the class to write on the papers pinned on the wall. I wrote down about the most exciting part of my job. The large immersion of foreign students and research scholars in the class created unique dynamo in itself. The learning objective of the course is to create self awareness and to provide us with specific tools to transform us personally and professionally. The course also aims to attain flow, perfection and excellence in work. The pedagogy mentioned in the course outline is a combination of experimental experiences, games, case analysis and discussions. I personally believe the course will motivate us all and help us to be more creative through self reflection.

MBTI (MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR)

BLOG 2: MBTI (MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR) DISCUSSION

The very thought of knowing our own personality trait excites us to such an extent that we tend to believe that we can do extraordinary things in the process; it’s like getting our palm being read by an astrologer. The same feeling invoked my inner self when we were asked to do the MBTI survey as an assignment in our very first class. The link was shared by our teacher in the course outline; we just clicked and took the test! The result I got was INFJ; introvert (12%), intuitive (6%), feeling (41%) and judging (28%). I couldn’t hundred percent claim the fact that the result was true to my notion but it excited me to the very core, and I started believing that the course has something special stored for me. The results were discussed thoroughly in class which gave us a clearer picture how to examine the results. I always believed the fact that I was completely soaked in intuitiveness and was surprised to see the findings. The domination of feeling was well expected, as I easily get emotional and set my activities in that way. I have worked in a public sector bank for last four years, where I got the chance to mingle with people from all spheres of life. I have tried to work in harmony with everybody unless I was too dumb to understand the signals from the customer’s end. But have I ever tried to do an analysis of my own personality and how it’s affecting others? The answer is a big no. I believe it should be imbibed in every corporate culture regardless of its scope. My fellow classmates shared that they had gone through similar exercises in their work life and it helped them immensely. I became so curious about the test and its existence that I did my own research googling from one page to another. The MBTI was constructed by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers. It is based on the conceptual theory proposed by Carl Jung, who had speculated that there are four principal psychological functions by which humans experience the world i.e. sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking and that one of these four functions is dominant for a person most of the time. At the heart of Myers Briggs theory are four preferences; Extraversion and Introversion, Sensing and Intuition, Thinking and Feeling and Judgment and Perception. When we put these four letters together, we get a personality type code. Having four pairs to choose from means there are sixteen Myers Briggs personality types.

PERSONALITY (JUDGING AND PERCEIVING)

BLOG 3: PERSONALITY (JUDGING AND PERCEIVING)

Recently I have seen a movie named “Split” directed by Mr. M Night Shayamalan, the film follows the journey of a man with 23 different personalities (suffering from dissociative identity disorder) who kidnaps and abducts girls. Throughout the class, I couldn’t think less of Mr. James McAvoy who played the role of the main protagonist in the movie and brilliantly showed the ability to switch personalities without any special effects. In the MBTI exercise we have already learned about 16 personality types; mine own result came as INFJ which has already showed the insight of my personality in a big way. What if we all can harbour more than 10 personalities within ourselves? We can show the right one at the right time. It would be freakishly crazy, right? Maybe it would have been easier for us in that way, but if we weigh that in our ethical parameter it will be considered a disease. And we can’t fall sick so easily! The work of Carl Jung was discussed in class in respect to the study he had done on “Extraversion and introversion”, which is a central dimension of human personality theories. We often make mistake of judging a person introvert if the individual doesn’t mingle much within a group. Introversion is manifested in more reserved and solitary behavior. But Mr Jung provided a different perspective; he suggested that that everyone has both an extraverted side and an introverted side, with one being more dominant than the other. The same suggestion was also provided in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator study. We also learned about the big five personality traits also known as five factor model. The five factors have been defined as openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, often represented by the acronyms OCEAN or CANOE. Each of the Big Five personality traits contains two separate, but correlated aspects reflecting a level of personality. The most important aspect of this class was learning the technique of Johari window. The four quadrants of the window are open, hidden, blind and unknown. We were mainly intrigued about the blind room, which reflects the personality traits which are not known to us but known to others. It shows us how other people perceive us, we often misjudge ourselves and through this exercise we can understand our strengths and weaknesses in a better way. Our teacher also emphasised on the fact that we have the right to reject the negative strokes, which again brought a different perspective to the whole matter.

BUILDING AUTHENTICITY

BLOG 4: BUILDING AUTHENTICITY

I watched Pather Panchali, the only Indian film to ever win a Best Human Document award at the Cannes film festival when I was in seventh standard sitting next to my mother, who sobbed throughout the movie and gave her review in just one word” Authentic”. The “authentic” word may cross different barriers and reach from text books and films to our day to day life, revealing so much in such a short time. Authenticity is binary or spectrum?-my one fellow classmate from Odisha quipped the question in class. The answer is debatable. I personally believe the answer is binary and so does our teacher. We can either choose to become authentic or not, there is no way round. We tend to become unauthentic in the fear of shame and our inability to become vulnerable. In this context, our teacher showed us the Ted Talk by Brene Brown: The power of vulnerability. Dr. Brown questioned “Is vulnerability the same as weakness?” and then gave the answer that we associate vulnerability with emotions we want to avoid such as fear, shame and uncertainty. Yet we too often lose sight of the fact that vulnerability is also the birthplace of joy, belonging, creativity, authenticity, and love. Thus we need to embrace vulnerability.  We need the courage to be imperfect and compassionate at the same time. Self awareness is one more important tool required to be authentic leaders. In this context, the article “Authentic Leadership” by Bill George was discussed where he gave powerful call for genuine and ethical business leadership. We also need to update our own mental models and give the other person their due. In the class, our teacher showed us a short story based case study where we had to judge characters in the decreasing order of their authenticity. It was interesting as we all got different answers and couldn’t settle for one single character for sure. Thus perception of authenticity varies from people to people. In today’s corporate world, it is very important for such authentic leaders who will move the world forward with their positive and honest views.

CREATIVITY AND THE THINKING HATS

BLOG 5: CREATIVITY

Creativity is to make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena and to generate solutions. It involves two processes: thinking, and then producing. The class was taken by Mr. Shiva Subramaniam who spoke about six thinking hats in details and how to use them when needed. It kind of reminded me of the sorting hat from harry porter movie which was a sentient hat at Hogwarts that magically determines which of the four school Houses each new student belongs most to. The “thinking hat” concept was developed by Edward de Bono who identified six distinct directions in which the brain can be challenged. In each of these directions the brain will identify and bring into conscious thought certain aspects of issues being considered. The white hat represents only information, what we know and what we need to know. The yellow hat represents benefits and value potential, the black hat talks about problems, difficulties, cautiousness and the risks we need to take. Green hat talks about creativity and idea generation, the red hat represents feelings and intuition and the blue hat initiate the thinking process, helps people think without arguing with others. The guest lecturer also spoke about the deliberate creativity steps; step 1: To define the problem, step 2: To find what is taken for granted, step 3: To drop what is being taken for granted, step 4: To think how to make the enterprise profitable and the step 5: To add the “taken for granted”. We need to have courage to break the patterns and vouch for new things.  The statement which startled me the most in the whole lecture is that empathy drives creativity. If we start helping others, we will start creating better things in life. I pondered over the statement even I came back to my hostel room, creativity doesn’t confine itself in the poems of Tagore or the paintings of Picasso, but also expresses through the work of Mother Teresa or that old man in our neighbourhood who painstakingly feeds the beggars from his old age pension.

IKIGAI (FLOW, PERFECTION AND EXCELLENCE)

BLOG 6: IKIGAI (FLOW, PERFECTION AND EXCELLENCE)

Can we really do a bonding between vocation and avocation? If the answer is yes, then it even poses a greater question for us-“For how long?”I personally believe that they hold a surreal relationship may be like a couple who fights a lot but again wants to live their entire life together. And yes, our lives thrive when there is harmony between the two. In Japanese culture, that sweet spot is known as “Ikigai”. It embodies the idea of happiness in living and it is the reason why we get up in the morning to go office, work for next 12 hours and still return home buying Cadbury for our sweet loving mother. Thus, it is associated with a Venn diagram with four overlapping qualities: what we love, what we are good at, what the world needs, and what we can be paid for. The fundamental drivers of our work outcome are learning, growth and development and the fundamental drivers of our life are purpose and meaning, and when these drivers fall into unison, people tend to do extraordinary things. This correlates to what Abraham Maslow in 1960 described in his theory of peak experiences, that ordinary people may undergo genuine peaks in the seemingly most commonplace events and surroundings. In our IDIO class madam spoke about flow where we identify our strengths and work accordingly, we even ask question like” What should I do?” “Where do I belong?” in this phase. We then direct our strengths towards perfection with practice and effort and finally reach to the state of excellence. People may want to become a travel blogger, painter, or professional photographer or if our imagination soars high enough we can even dream of becoming a kung fu monk. But then at the end when we find ourselves hiding behind an office desk reluctantly showing the job title of a goddam analyst we don’t feel so good. Thus we need to be job crafters, bringing a mind and behavioural shift and adding more positivity to the situation. Job crafting helps to make our job more engaging and fulfilling. We can link that with Kramer’s progress theory which states that people are motivated by taking steps forward on a consistent basis even if those steps are relatively small in the big picture. By feeling like we are consistently making progress, we are more likely to remain engaged and motivated towards achieving even bigger goals. Our teacher emphasised in reading books like “Managing Oneself” by Peter Drucker and “Man search for Meaning” by Victor Frankl to enhance the understanding of the topic.

DECISION MAKING AND THE BIASES

BLOG 7: DECISION MAKING

In 1983, the famous Bengali poet Sakti Chattopadhay received the Sahitya Academy award for his collection of entitled” Jete pari kintu keno jabo?” which translates to “ I can go but WHY?” As a child when I used to hear my father reciting the poem and giving an emphasis on this “Why” more than once in his baritone voice, I always wondered about its importance. The question to go or not, is it really that hard to decide? As I grew older, learned my ways through the job life and all, the answer became clearer than before and soon my realization forced me to ponder “What lies beyond that WHY”? And the answer I got to know is “everything”. It is this WHY, the decision making ability of a person which determines the individual’s future and reshape the environment surrounding him. In the last IDIO class when madam was teaching about “Decision Making” as a topic, I couldn’t think less about that old poem which once transcended me to the understanding of the real world. Every significant decision has an implication which can either go our way or can lead upto an unfavourable end. We did an exercise in the class where we wrote down about a decision that we took in our life, how it was decided and was it good or bad. I wrote down about joining the MBA program, how I came to the decision of joining the program at IIT Madras and was the decision favourable to me or not. So, every decision we make, we tend to have an expectation, thus every decision has an objective. And then there are biases which always put hindrance to our decision making. People talk a lot about step wise decision making and how it can be efficiently applied in our day to day life. But this is the biggest myth; about ninety percent of the efficient decisions are born out of our intuitions. Intuitions follow a recognising pattern and can be enhanced with practise and experience. In the class we have also learned about the assumptions of classical decision making model; the bounded rationality and the concept of best satisfying solution being the strongest assumptions we put forward to. Thus we can take a decision based on our intuition; we can judge the short term and long term benefits, can look upto the alternating evidences, weigh our pros and cons and finally answer the “WHY” after all.