Arnab

Arnab has the uncanny ability to see how the accusation he has hurled in his question at the politician/expert/bureaucrat/socialite has been substantiated in the answer that has come back to him. No matter how different the answer, Arnab finds in it the nugget that vindicates his original accusation!

My Uncle (may his soul rest in peace)

I had an uncle who was a member of a political party from the times before independence. Himself a man of very high personal integrity and uncompromising values, he was surprisingly lenient in his views about the party.  For every misdeed of a party leader somewhere, he always found a reason.  He would quote the Mahabharat and how the Pandavas used means – that cant exactly be called fair – many times to win the battle. Surprisingly, such convenient metaphors were inadmissible when it came to any other political party or for any member of his family.

The High Potential Executive

Here is a situation that has played out many times with me.  .
A reasonably senior executive is unhappy in his current job. He is feeling (let us assume) stifled – not able to ring in the changes he wants or explore the new ideas he has because of his supervisor. He has been speaking to another organisation and the offer is on its way. The assignment is with an organisation where the original promoter is still running the place and says he wants ‘fresh ideas’ to recharge the organisation. He says that he will be ‘actively involved in supporting the person to bring about cultural changes and drive it with him……’
Here, what I hear is that he will have a meddling, interfering boss who is very used to exercising and wielding his power and who will be an equal, if not greater problem than his current one. What he hears is that the promoter is looking for ‘fresh ideas’ and will ‘support him’. I bring up the issue for his consideration; he brushes it aside – he believes he has the playground to try out all the ideas that his current boss has put a muzzle on. I voice my concern about whether the promoter will give him a free run as his intentions seem to be to remain actively involved; he reassures me that he got along well with him in the meeting, found him very gracious and charming.
Six months later, he is looking again!!!

Confirmation Biases

In her wonderfully readable book, The Art of Choosing, Sheena refers to problems like these being caused by our ‘Confirmation Biases’.  Here is what she has to say about them:
“As human beings we embrace information that supports what we already prefer or justifies choices we have made before in our lives. It always ‘feels’ better to justify our opinions rather than challenge them, to contemplate the pros and relegate the cons to the back of our minds.” She goes on to quote it as a key reason why people make wrong hiring choices as well – you like/dislike a person because of similarities/differences in personalities and then look for supporting evidence in your conversation, ignoring other aspects.

Arnab finds it easier to carry on with his story when he finds the nugget that supports his point of view. My uncle found it comforting to believe that his ideals and the institution he strongly subscribed to was not incorrect. The restless executive is happy to find confirmation that he is justified in feeling stifled and that there are organisations that value ideas and will give him the freedom to explore.
All of us are probably victims of Confirmation Bias at some stage or the other and usually realize in hindsight our lapses in judgment. So, what if any, are the ways to minimize their occurrence?

Inoculation

Since you are unlikely to know when the “Bias” will kick in, a good place to start is to decide that you will use a process for decisions on the really important issues in your life.
You could choose from a number of processes, all of which have two things in common – analysis and a mentor/guide/counselor/advisor/coach.
Here are two methods that I have found useful. If you know of more, please feel free to add.
OIC
The principle behind this method is to start with the desired Outcome, related to the context (job, relocation etc.), consider the Intent (why do you desire this Outcome) and think of the Consequences (of achieving the Outcome). This is best done with a Coach familiar with this technique who can take you through progressive layers of OICs until you arrive at a point when all three points in every layer of OIC are congruent.
At the very least, the practice of writing down the OIC for the first level itself will provide better clarity.
P&C
Yes, the good old ‘Pros’ and ‘Cons’ method. Again, writing it down will help provide clarity. You may wish to try to write it as though you were advising someone else. This detachment from self helps objectivity.
Very often, when we are making lists or analyzing an issue, we consider only the facts. Factor the emotions into this list as well. The feel of a place, the emotions you feel when with a person, your current state of mind, should be taken into account.  This is to both allow emotions to be factored into decisions as well as be aware when they distort.
Once the list is done to your satisfaction, get feedback on it from a trusted counselor.  When seeking feedback specifically ask the person if you are sounding biased in your judgment of the issue. Be sure to listen.

Hopefully your decision-making will improve and you would have confronted and defeated the virus of your biases.
As for Arnab Goswami, I believe he takes a daily injection of the viruses to keep his mind sharp and find the nuggets that would escape most of us.

p.s. Arnab Goswami is simply used as a metaphor for ‘experts’ and ‘TV Anchors’. No disrespect is intended to him as a person.

 

Changing jobs – how to decide when

Note: Names and some event details have been modified to protect identities of the real persons and organizations.

‘Do you think I should change my job?’

Pooja, by all conventional definitions, is a successful media executive. She is heading national sales for a leading television network and has reached this position at a comparatively young age. We were meeting because she wanted to talk about her career.

As the inevitable question surfaced, I spotted, as I have during many such conversations over the years, the familiar conundrum:

1. The question has to be answered by the one asking, and,
2. The one asking does not have the right set of questions that will lead to an answer.

I knew it was time for me to make an attempt at articulating a framework that may be of use to others in a similar situation.

Question 1: Where are you?

Fig 1 displays a construct (borrowed from Marshall Goldsmith) that looks at job change along two dimensions:

• Direction (Y-axis): You make a change either on your way up OR way down. This UP or DOWN is as perceived by your colleagues and you will need to be completely honest in your judgment of this. This is shown along the vertical axis of Fig1.
• Action (X-Axis): You either jump or are pushed out to make the change. Jump is in your hands, push is not. This is shown along the horizontal axis.

1. When you are on your Way UP and a better opportunity comes along – JUMP to it. The key thing to ensure is that it should take you closer to your ‘goal’ (whatever that is) than your current job could. You have to be absolutely clear and objective about that.Somesh was doing very well in an HR Consulting firm. He enjoyed the daily challenges of consulting, leading a team and was well rated by his clients and colleagues. He had lots of independence and could pretty much decide on business priorities and budgets. He was clearly on the Way UP. He Jumped to join a large organisation’s L&D function in a role where he was reporting to the CLO and was one amongst five other direct reports. Somesh wanted to be the Chief Learning Officer of a large corporation and drive the growth agenda on a large scale.  That was his goal. This was, for him, a ‘Better Job’.
2. Sometimes you know you are on your Way DOWN. Performance is dipping, the job seems to be a drag and getting to work each morning is increasingly difficult. If you encounter this you, can either try and reverse the situation, or JUMP and ‘Save Yourself’  rather than be PUSHED (Fired). In the next question, we will examine some ways by which you can confront the reasons why you have the Way DOWN feeling.
3. The one situation that is difficult to understand is when you are on your Way UP but still get Pushed. This is a reality in today’s context. Seema is doing an outstanding job running a division for a large advertising agency. She has really turned it around and the division has stopped bleeding. Now is the time to invest to make it grow and count. The advertising agency has lost two of its biggest clients over a period of 3 months that accounted for almost half the revenues. The thinking is obviously to cut costs and the strategy being adopted is to rebuild the advertising business, which is the largest entity in the group. Seema will be an unfortunate victim of circumstances not in her control. She could get PUSHED even though she was on the Way Up. ‘What just happened here?’ is an understandable question from Seema.

Where you are in the grid may change fairly regularly.  Maintaining a constantly updated status creates a nice review mechanism and allows one to objectively contemplate whenever the question pops up in your mind.

Question 2: Why do you have the ‘Way Down’ Feeling?

Three years before I quit advertising and started my own venture, I had a particularly good year at work. My boss applauded me in the Executive Committee meeting and bestowed the tag of ‘Manager of the Year’. It was a high point but that evening the nagging feeling of discontent and restlessness refused to leave me. I was on my Way UP but feeling on my Way DOWN. I did not spend too much time thinking it through or doing something about it at that point.

That feeling stayed with me and two years later the same boss was having conversations of a totally different nature. This time I was unequivocally on my Way DOWN. My lack of motivation was showing in my work. I was closed to getting PUSHED.

The time to ask yourself some hard questions is when you are not ‘feeling good’ about our job. Make no mistake, even if you are doing well in others’ eyes, it will catch up and you will soon find yourself on the Way DOWN.  Fig 2 presents a construct that you could use. Ask yourself:

• Direction (Y-axis): Is it because of ME (Inward) or is it the ENVIRONMENT (Outward).  ME relates to reasons that can be directly attributed to one’s behaviour, attitudes, beliefs and goals. ENVIRONMENT is all of the reasons other than ME. This is not as easy to answer, as it seems, primarily because of the human tendency to put blame away from ourselves.  We will delve on it more in the last section.
• Action (X-Axis): If the reason has been identified, can you make the required CHANGE so that the feeling changes to Way UP? The horizontal axis looks at the two possibilities – CAN CHANGE and CANNOT CHANGE. Again these require careful thought as we often underestimate what we can change and overestimate what we cannot, as we will examine later.

Question 3: ME or ENVIRONMENT?

Let us examine the human tendency to put blame elsewhere.

Arvind was extremely talented and achieved great results. He had spent about 8 months in his current job, a challenging assignment but was not feeling good – feeling WAY DOWN, a precursor to being WAY DOWN.

He had changed 2 jobs in the last 3 years. When I asked him why, it emerged that he felt that he was unlucky with bosses, he got ones who did not understand him. When I probed a little deeper, I realized that Arvind wore his intellectual arrogance on his sleeve and was not averse to letting his bosses know that he was way smarter than them. In my book that was a more ‘ME’ reason than the ENVIRONMENT.

If Arvind had to avoid becoming a frustrated, cynical, underachieving person, he had to learn that pissing your bosses off was an immature strategy that was bound to fail sooner or later. He had to make the CHANGE, difficult as it may have seemed and in his current job to realize his professional goals.

Question 4: What can we change? What are those that we cannot or do not want to change?

1. Here is another example about bad bosses; after all it is quoted as the single biggest reason for people quitting.  Pravash was a rising star, one of the youngest to have made it to General Manager in an MNC agency. His boss Aveek Singh had promoted him– Pravash had been a direct report in Aveek’s previous assignment.

6 months into the assignment, Pravash wanted to quit. When I asked him why, he said it was because of his boss. Aveek kept loading various special projects and Pravash was snowed in under, hardly able to create any impact in his new job. He thought he was not good enough for the job and resented Aveek for putting him in that position.

In this case, Pravash’s reasons for feeling Way DOWN were outside of him, it came from his boss loading too much work. Pravash was encouraged to speak to Aveek about it and to his credit Aveek understood his mistake and stopped the overloading. Pravash was able to CHANGE the ENVIRONMENT and hence stayed back in the job.

2. When I quit my job and started this venture, I was very clear that I did not want to be responsible for managing people any longer. I opted to GO because I did not want to make the change. BullzI has evolved as a partnership of very talented professionals who run their own lives and share in the earnings. To my surprise I have discovered that there are a number of others who have felt this way before embarking on ‘consultant’ careers.

Tailpiece

There are many of who have changed jobs just by listening to the “inner voice”. An inner voice that was not necessarily so articulate – but nonetheless correct.  Against every one of them, there are at least a dozen who agonize over this question without the  benefit of unerring instinct. Using these constructs as guidelines, it should be possible for you to decipher the ‘inner voice’ better when pondering this question, ‘Should I change my job’?

What do you think?

Best laid plans of mice and men…
You set yourself a goal. It is discussed with all the relevant people. Timelines are agreed upon and you work hard, stretch and then stretch some more to reach the target.
As the finish line comes into focus, suddenly events, totally out of your control, throw everything into disarray. The path to your goal blurs. Maybe it is the promotion that did not come through at the last minute, sudden change in the per sq ft rate of the house you were looking to buy, cancellation of the holiday because of the strikes in Thailand…. it hits all of us sometime or the other.
Coping with disappointment ranks amongst the top 5 ‘life skills’ that all of us need to be equipped with. It determines not only our immediate welfare but shapes our attitudes and belief in life. I came face to face with this very recently and wanted to share the experience.
Meticulous Planning
Since the October of 2009, I had set my heart on going for a trek in the Himalayas. Along with figuring out routes, guides and costs, I had got into a get-fit regime that increasingly became the largest agenda in my life. From being a ‘foodie’ I went to watching the calories and refusing ‘useless carbs’ and ‘mixed proteins’.  I carried my yoga mat across the country to various hotels and off-site locations where I was facilitating programmes. As June approached, I had built in a walking routine as well that went to 6 km everyday. In my 50th year, I was fitter than I have ever been since 25!
The trek was part of the holiday with family and friends. Family would stay back at base camp and I was to go off with a couple of friends for 4 days. We were climbing from 8500 ft to 15500 ft to a snow-bound pass.  Incidentally, this trek was also a ‘build capabilities’ kind of exercise for me to go for more difficult and longer ones later this year. You can see there was a whole lot of planning.
Unusually liquid and frequent movements
Day1 at our first stop in the hills, I have a sumptuous lunch where the ‘chutney’ and paneer taste a little too sour. The plan is to leave early the next day for the long ride to our base camp in Sangla Valley, Himachal. I wake up in the middle of the night to start a process that has me running to the loo repeatedly and checking out various ’facilities’ next day, en-route to Sangla, from real close quarters. By the time we reach, I am well, quite wasted. I miss the Day 2 walk.
The Disappointment
Day 3 is the last day for preparation before we begin our trek, the first day of which involves a steep 4,000 ft. climb. I have already started on medication but the demons inside are still winning. Have no option but to drop out of the last preparatory walk. I attempt short walks and find that the exertion is taking a toll. For the first time since the bug hit me in the gut, I begin thinking whether it would be wise to go for the trek. I am torn, between feeling guilty about letting my fellow trekkers down, a creeping thought that maybe I am feeling nervous and that is what is causing this problem. By the evening my fellow trekkers are back and we sit to discuss next steps. I am still undecided. They ask me to decide while trying to relieve me of my guilt ‘could have happened to any of us’, ‘not your fault’, ‘we are together so we will enjoy in any case’. I figure there is no way I can climb 4000 ft the next morning and we decide to cancel – my friends are not interested in going if I am not.
Once the decision was taken I started brooding.
Going Negative
I was crushed, totally. I felt like a loser and that I was somehow responsible for the bug. Thought I was a coward who chickened out at the last minute at the thought of physical hardship. I knew there would be some friends who would not let me live this down for a long time. I lost a lot of self-esteem in the first few hours after cancellation.  I began to doubt if I would ever be able to trek again. Then I began cursing my luck and just kept sliding further into a downward spiral of depression. Not only was the trek killed, I was killing the rest of the holiday for those around me by being in a total blue funk.
Going Positive
It helped that family and friends were around. The thought that I needed to ‘get my act together’ was one big reason for being able to bounce back. They were in any case trying to reassure me that it was not my fault.
My first action was to try and get alternative plans in place so that everyone could at least have a good holiday. I must mention here that the tour operators Banjara, were absolutely fabulous in rapidly reorganizing the programme for us.
Then I cracked the first ‘potty’ jokes on myself and that seemed to help hugely. Everyone was waiting to see me get ‘positive’ and they laughed much louder than the joke deserved.
It took me two more days to recover fully. And then I was determined to walk as much as time and place allowed. I found that the nine months of preparation had made a huge difference – was able to breeze through climbs and descents that used to earlier be very daunting. That helped me hugely to recover my belief. I began thinking about the next trekking opportunity.
Have been back at home for a while now. Only one friend cracked the jokes I expected and I have added my own to them. Self-doubts have gone and I am looking forward to the next opportunity.
Sometimes bad karma just happens. We have to find our own way of staying positive and not losing faith. Like bad karma, good karma also happens.
Here is to keeping the faith.