the good life
Anyone who has visited this blog more than a couple of times may have sensed my tremendous reverence for Sir Ken Robinson’s speech at the TED 2006 conference in California. A few months ago, JK Rowling delivered another wonderfully inspiring speech at a graduation ceremony at Harvard. This address by the Harry Potteress, if you will, comes extremely close to evoking the resonance created in me by Robinson.
Their themes are similar in part. The overlap lies in their descriptions of how people are typically held back from finding their talents. Robinson talks of how kids are often pushed in to doing things that they are not designed to do. This detracts from their uniqueness and leads to the feeling of having failed from within – no matter how successful they may appear to be from the outside.
JK Rowling speaks of her own experience as a mother in a financially dire situation who finally found the courage required to live her life with authenticity: She said: “So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
Robinson gave the example of Gillian Lynne, now a British ballerina, who was taken to a doctor when she was still in school for being miserable at her studies. The doctor was wise enough to tell her mother that her child didn’t have ADHD but that she did have the fidgetiness of a dancer. He encouraged her mother to enroll her in a dance school. In Robinson’s words: “Gillian was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet school. She became a soloist and had a wonderful career there. She founded her own dance company. She met Andrew Lloyd Webber. She has been responsible for some of the most successful theater productions in history. She has given pleasure to millions. And she’s a multi-millionaire. Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.”
Bravo to both speakers!
Rowling took the idea a step ahead. She spoke of how getting in touch with ourselves then helps us to get in touch with others. She talked about how it enables us to use our power of imagination to empathize with those less fortunate than us. That, most beautifully, is her definition of a good life – which is what she eventually wished upon the graduating class of 2008.
I have always thought that “the good life” is not one in which you have acquired material things and been a conventional success, but one in which you have been true to yourself; it is the only way in which you can be true to others. Believe me, I know how tough it is. But I also deeply feel how vital it is, not just for our own wellbeing but also for that of those around us; for our children, our spouses, our families, our employers, our employees, our countries, our world – whether strangers or friends.
Finally, Rowling had an important point to make for the youth of ’superpower’ America – which figures in this moving excerpt from her speech.
“Amnesty International mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
Hear hear! Powerful thoughts and words indeed.
making it work
Back to work culture like I said I would.
I think one of the most important qualities to engage in the work place is flatness. By that I mean – a strong check on hierarchical behavior. Everyone has contributions to make and worrying about what the boss might say/think/feel is the best way to bring about clamming up of employees, or even worse – them expressing thoughts they believe will be favored by those “in power.” This creates a space where people are motivated by fear, leads to a fake consensus, and culminates in a non-progressive environment. What we need are work cultures in which people are intrinsically motivated. Every job is a self-portrait of the person who does it. Autograph your work with excellence. Sucking up is not conducive to this kind of sentiment.
A facet related to the first is this: companies must be very careful to inculcate an atmosphere that is not idea-killing. The role of two-way communication needs to be deeply underscored. It’s easy to be dismissive of thoughts that are not articulate enough or stated confidently enough or are perhaps slightly tangential to the topic at hand. But true respect is always due to input offered – so value all that is said, dig a bit deeper to get at the essence, certainly don’t discount anyone. Someone once said: The paradox of innovation is this: CEOs often complain about lack of innovation, while employees often say that leaders are hostile to new ideas.
The next thing I can think of is affirmation of who employees are – in a holistic sense. It is not often that people feel known/understood where they work. (There is plenty of research in organizational psychology showing that verifying people’s sense of self is greatly useful.) So, for example, let’s say you have an engineer who can paint, let it be known. Perhaps a showcasing of employee’s talents outside of their job descriptions is worthwhile. People are unique and should be seen as such; cliques should be avoided at all cost. A related aspect is of giving people autonomy. Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what needs to be done, and then let them surprise you with the results.
An openness to change is vital. A great quote speaking to it: To survive in the future, every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does. The world is engulfed in a revolution, on a social and psychological level, and this must reflect at the organizational level as well. I’m obviously not saying the focus should be on abandoning everything, but that there should be a readiness to doing so, if need be.
Money is an unavoidable but surprising variable in creating a good work culture. Another neat quote that talks to the point: There is no contest between the company that buys the grudging compliance of its workforce and the company that enjoys the enterprising participation of its employees. You could pay people a ton of money and not have their faithfulness. (Employee turnover rates are not as muted by high salaries as one might like to think.) Or you could value an employee tremendously and have his loyalty forever, even if you couldn’t pay him the best that is out there.
Management must develop a clear ideology and let it be implemented by all – from the guy who wheels the coffee and croissants in to the conference room to the one who heads the table. It is more than vital! A powerful quote that I believe gets at it most thoroughly: A visionary company creates a total environment that envelops employees, bombarding them with signals so consistent and mutually reinforcing that it’s virtually impossible to misunderstand the company’s ideologies and ambitions. This ties in inextricably with giving meaning to the work employees do. A vision is exceedingly important.
Finally, a thoughtful and honest Corporate Responsibility policy is imperative today. When institutionalized right, it can cover almost all of the points touched upon above – and more! The idea of Corporate Responsibility is NOT anti-profit, as many like to believe; it is just a more long-term orientation than the short-term one to which we are accustomed. Ultimately, CR is about nothing but profit, actually. I will write about it some more in another post.
more on outsourcing
In a brilliant article called Revenge of the Right Brain in Wired magazine, Daniel Pink brings a fresh perspective to the outsourcing issue. I first read it about 3 years ago and highly recommend it even today. Here’s a synopsis, with a few of my own thoughts thrown in.
Pink first establishes how our left brains help us with linearity, logic, literal thinking and analysis while our right brains are more about emotion, synthesis, creativity, context, and meaning. So while left-brained thinking dominates in professions like accounting, engineering, and programming, the right brain manifests more strongly in artists, care-providers, and others professions grounded in holistic thinking. We obviously typically need both halves to function. For example, a judge would use both halves of his brain in delivering a verdict – the left that knows the rules that apply and the right that understands the context of the case at hand. And like we use both sides to process this picture below.
There is debate over how stark the dichotomy in brain function is, but there is certainly something to it. Here’s something interesting I learned in neuropsychology: research on patients with localized brain damage has shown that relying primarily on the left brain (which is more straightforward and computer-like in function than the right), we would likely see the picture above merely as “a bunch of fruits, flowers, and veggies.” And if the activity were situated mostly in the right brain (which gets the ‘big picture’ and dwells in metaphor more than the left), we would see the picture above as “a colorful man.” How cool is that!
What does that have to do with outsourcing? Pink’s contention is that as left-brained work gets outsourced more to developing countries, the rest will have to enhance the use of right-brainedness in business – a phenomenon that will shape significantly the progress of our world. (Do read his article if you fancy this drift.)
I see outsourcing as leading to a shift in balance. And, I firmly believe, it’s not about the balance of power – a lens through which many, rather unfortunately, tend to view the issue. It’s bigger than that; it’s much more about how we evolve rather than who gets to rule the world. Here is an excerpt from Pink that speaks to the point…
If the Industrial Age was built on people’s backs, and the Information Age on people’s left hemispheres, the Conceptual Age is being built on people’s right hemispheres. We’ve progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we’re progressing yet again – to a society of creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers.
hotel QE2
big-idea generator
This comes from Wired magazine and is totally funny! Check it out here.
cheap cheep
The Tata Nano is undoubtedly the world’s cheapest car, but consider the context in which it is embedded. The Chevy Aveo (~$11,000) is less than 1/4th of the US per capita income. Granted that India’s middle class is growing fast, but the Nano (~$2500) is priced at more than 3X India’s per capita income!
Now that says something.
And its a fact those that levy accusations at Ratan Tata – for furthur choking up India’s roads with bizarrely affordable cars – should consider. When you add to it the fact that European safety and emission standards are met by the Nano, then outright naysayers begin to look just a little silly.
a method to the madness
What makes a brand a brand? Its ability to stand out of the clutter, how the product fits lifestyles, how the advertising fits mindsets, the price, the packaging, the connection it makes over time with consumers… the list could go on and on. How does belief in the brand fit in the big picture?
At an account planning conference I went to recently, Domenico Vitale talked about ‘belief’ branding. One such is the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. This flavour of branding seems to derive itself from a higher purpose, a greater calling, if you will. As Carisa Bianchi put it, “People want to be inspired. It’s up to us to find a way.” Consumers appear to be looking for a way to make a change for the better, to be part of something bigger than just the brand. And sure enough, companies are beginning to create appropriately ‘noble’ contexts for their brands.
But some brands are inspired from within – where a ‘purpose’ need not be superimposed on the brand, since the product and the greater good that inspires it are seamlessly spun. Consider Method. I’ve been following it for a couple of years and been fascinated.
They are a home cleaning product brand with the tagline “People Against Dirty”. Their aim was to clutter-bust P&G and other big soapers. They also knew they wanted to be environmentally friendly, aesthetic and fun. Their products look beautiful, they clean well, are naturally scented – they are truly sink-top accessories rather than something nasty that you hide away as soon as you are done. They don’t make a big deal about being “green” in their advertising but their blog is explicit: “Dedicated to the fight against dirty. In whatever form dirty appears.” On it, they talk about individual and corporate social responsibility with respect to the environment and other such things.
I have never known a brand that comes from the inside-out as much as Method does. These guys are young, smart, and above all, they have a vision. They seem to sleep, breathe, walk, and talk Method. They deeply believe in their brand and (perhaps consequently) have been wildly successful in engaging deeply consumers’ belief in their brand. The result: a near cult phenomenon linked to something as banal as cleaning! Of the co-founders, one of them was an account planner and the other is a chemical engineer. Together, they have a brand that was initially bottled in their kitchen in San Francisco. It has grown almost 4000% (?!) in the last 5 years and they were listed this year as the seventh-fastest growing company in America.
Here is an engaging telling of the entrepreneurship of Method by one of its co-founders, Eric Ryan.
