Highlights from Swami Chidananda’s talk: Learning from the book of life

I got an opportunity to attend a talk by Swami Chidananda, a spiritual teacher, in Mumbai on March 9, 2014. Two things took me to the talk: One, I found the title interesting – “Learning from the book of life” and two, it was organized by Krishnamurti Foundation India (KFI) of which my father has been an active member. It was nice to give him company and meet his friends from K-community.

I enjoyed the talk and this article gives a few highlights from the talk that appealed to me. This is derived from the audio recording of the talk made available to us by Fowai – Swamiji’s organization. I am thankful to Vibhaji for sending the audio CD. I have kept the wording as close to Swamiji’s talk as possible.

What is learning from the Book of life?  There was an Army General who deliberately used to come home late. When he was asked, “Why do you go home so late?” He said, “In my job, thousands if not tens of thousands are afraid of me. But at home I am afraid of my teenage son. Some of the comments he makes e.g. ‘Dad, you won’t understand this, you are out of touch with reality,’ make me miserable. I feel, may be he is right.” Like this Army General, we feel comfortable in some situations and uncomfortable in some other situations. Some places we get attached, some other places we feel “fish out of water”. What is going on? Instead of reading big books on Atma, Brahma, Heaven & Hell, concepts of liberation, bondage, 24 tatvas and 36 principles, is it possible to learn about our reactions to variety of situations directly from our life experiences?

Tragedy of bookish knowledge: Knowledge of symbols and concepts helps us in various contexts. For example, if power suddenly fails here and one of you knows very well how to handle mini circuit breakers or fuses and then you quickly go there and open and set something right. And the power comes back. Of course, many others will thank you. “Oh, how nice you are with us today, you set it right immediately,” people will say. In that context, the knowledge of electricity helped you. Similarly, knowledge of languages, etiquette helps in certain contexts.

But does knowledge help in deeper inner freedom where we suffer from a number of self-created blockages, self-created mental hang-ups? The tragedy of bookish reading is, instead of understanding what you are going through, you are trying to remember, “What did the author say about this kind of scenario?” If you read a book on anger, when you actually get angry, you don’t think of the book at all. You go about your response in a mechanical way, in a habitual way. This habit, this mechanical way is to be tackled.

Over-investment of I, me, my: Suppose I happen to be a Bengali speaking person and I say, “There are 3-4 Bengali speaking people here. Let me go and know them.” This is alright. But imagine if my mind also says, “You see, others may feel bad to hear this, but Bengali is the best language”. You ask me, “But have you studied other languages?” I say, “No. But I know my language is the best.” “My food habit is the best,….” That is called psychological domain. This is the place where “I, me, my” is over-investing in certain conclusions –positions. Can learning from the book of life help us to be free of these conditionings?

How to learn from the Book of life:  The way to be free is to look at our conclusions right when they arise, not even in a post-mortem fashion, towards the end of the day. Like a dying duck, you analyse your day before you go to sleep, “Today, during the day, what did I do? What were the highlights? How did I treat people?” Such introspection has serious limitations. Can you examine a judgmental behaviour on your part right when that behaviour is taking place? For example, some of you may be feeling bored listening to this talk. Is it possible for you to take a look at what is going on in your thought process and look at it dispassionately? On the one hand you are looking at your thought, your emotion. On the other hand, you should not be in a hurry to label it. This is a very interesting science where the book from which you are learning is your psychological process.

Precious pages of the Book of life: Negative emotions are the precious pages of the book of life. You and I learn the operation of the self much more when we are disturbed, depressed, when we envy somebody or when we are afraid.

Can I stay with fear, look at it with all alertness? If you are not alert, then you start thinking about something else, “Whom shall I call to help me? I wonder how long will the fear last?” or “This fear is stronger than last time.” etc. These are all secondary thoughts, secondary considerations. Primary consideration is, “Here is fear. What is it?” The objective is to use this tool of attention or alertness without succumbing to or getting caught in all those this-fear-is-stronger-than-before kind-of secondary engagements. Not even saying, “This is undesirable.”

To understand fear there is absolutely no need to bring the past into picture. The fear that is rising in you has everything in it like in hologram a part has everything in it. The fear of which we become intensely aware without bias, without noise of conditioned mind reveals its entire structure.

To conclude, reading the book of life is nothing different from living in self-awareness. If you become aware of what bothers you, what delights you, what is going on in your mind or if you become aware of getting inattentive then you are already reading the book of life.

Related article: Eckhart Tolle’s “Catch me if you can” experiment, Feb 2, 2014.
Photo: From the audio CD of the talk.

Responding to team member’s idea using 3 types of inquiries

Imagine you are a manager and a team member comes to you one day and says, “I have got this great idea!” There are multiple ways you may respond to this situation. You may say, “Tell me more…” and after listening to his initial blurb you may ask, “Why this approach?” or if you have a better idea, you may ask, “How about this instead?” Depending upon the context all three responses may be relevant. However, Prof. Edgar Schein shows in his new book “Humble inquiry: The gentle art of asking instead of telling” that the three inquiries, in fact, belong to three distinct categories of inquiries. Schein argues that managers today need to do a lot more of “Tell me more…” type of inquiry than “How about this instead?” type of inquiry if they want to build trusting relationships.  Before we understand why Schein says this, let’s first see what the three types of inquiries are.

Humble inquiry: What is a humble inquiry? According to Schein, a humble inquiry has 3 characteristics (1) It demonstrates genuine curiosity (2) It makes least number of assumptions about the idea and (3) it is followed by attentive listening. Apart from “Tell me more…”, other examples of a humble inquiry are: “So…” (with an expectation look), “What’s happening?”, “What’s going on?”, “What brings you here?”, “Go on…”, “Can you give me an example?” Asking the right question is not the most difficult part of humble inquiry. Attentive listening is. If you try to fake the question, it will show up when you listen. Why? Because it is not easy to keep your preconceived notions aside and listen to what the other person has to say. Let’s contrast humble inquiry with two other categories of inquiries.

Diagnostic inquiry: The second question the manager asked in the first paragraph, “Why this approach?” belongs to diagnostic inquiry. It is a type of inquiry where you steer the conversation in a specific direction by inquiring about feelings, reactions, causes, motives, next steps, previous steps etc. Through diagnostic inquiry you are influencing the mental process of the other person in an unknown way. Examples of diagnostic inquiry are: “How do you feel about that?”, “Why did you feel that way?”, “What may have caused this?”, “What have you tried so far?”, “What are you going to do next?” In this type of query, you take charge of the process but not the content.

Confrontational inquiry: The essence of confrontational inquiry is that you insert your own ideas in the question you ask. The third question in the first paragraph, “Why not this instead?” belongs to this category. Essentially the question has your agenda embedded in it – either knowingly or unknowingly. Examples of confrontational inquiries are: “Did that not make you angry?”, “Do you think customer will it like it this way?”, “Have you thought of …?”, “Were the others surprised?” In this type of query, you take charge of the process and the content. It is the hardest type of query to build trusting relationship.

Now, let’s come back to the question as to why Schein advocates humble inquiry. Well, whether you are a lead surgeon in an operation theatre or a delivery manager in a technology company or a CEO of an organization, you depend significantly on your team members (nurses, engineers, employees etc.) It is no longer sufficient to get things done by being “task oriented” – you do your job and I do mine and we will be fine. It is important to form trusting relationships to achieve results. Relationships are the key to good communication and good communication is the key to successful task accomplishment. Hence, Schein emphasizes “ask and listen” to “do and tell”.

How can we use this while responding to a team member’s idea? Let’s borrow three-hats approach analogy of David Packard. First, wear the “Humble inquiry” hat and ask clarification/example type of questions. Then wear the “Diagnostic inquiry” hat and see how he has arrived at this idea, what has he tried etc. And finally, wear the “Confrontational inquiry” hat before making the final decision.

Related articles:

A humble inquiry that led to a successful culture change initiative, April 7, 2014

A humble inquiry that led to a successful culture change initiative

Many times culture change initiatives are articulated at an abstract level. e.g. ‘We want to foster a culture of innovation’. The intent is good but the abstractions don’t help much in bringing about a change in the behaviours. In such situations, asking simple clarification questions – what Prof. Edgar Schein calls humble inquiry – can make a big difference. Here is a story Schein narrates in his new book “Humble inquiry: The gentle art of asking instead of telling”. It articulates how a humble inquiry might take the intent of culture of change forward in the right direction.

A CEO of a power company wanted Schein to help launch a culture change project. The CEO felt that the organization was stuck in an old and obsolete set of practices. He wanted Schein to diagnose the problem and propose a change roadmap. At this point, Schein didn’t know anything about the organization, CEO’s perceptions or his motivations. Hence, Schein invited him for a meeting to define problem. CEO brought COO and the VP organization development along with him.

The discussion began by the three leaders launching into a series of general statements about how the culture of the company was immovable and stuck. Both “immovable” and “stuck” are abstract terms. Hence, Schein felt it is best to clarify what they meant. So he asked for an example.

The COO narrated following story as an example. The previous day he had a staff meeting of the 15 member leadership team. There were only five members present for the meeting. However, they sat in exactly the same chair even if it meant sitting far away from each other. He concluded, “It was really crazy… you see what we are up against?” Then the COO looked at Schein for affirmation and support. Schein became curious about what happened next. He asked, “What did you do?” He said, “I didn’t do anything.”

At this point a huge light bulb went off in the heads of all the three people. All of them realized that they are the ones who were reinforcing the so called “outdated” behaviours by their own inaction. Subsequently, the four of them explored other ways in which the old patterns were getting reinforced and how they could change their own behaviour. Over the next year they were able to make most of the culture changes that they desired.

When change initiatives are being discussed, simple questions like “Can you please give an example?” that bring out before-change and after-change scenarios concretely can go a long way in adding clarity. Also reinforcing new behaviours is as important as changing behaviours, isn't it?

Related articles:

Saying, “We need a culture of innovation” is mostly correct and useless, Sept 4, 2009

3 lessons innovation leaders can learn from the iPod story

Walter Isaacson begins chapter 30 of the biography Steve Jobs titled “The Digital Hub” with a “What next?” workshop Jobs facilitated in 2001 where iPod idea got a push. However, as we read further into the chapter, we come across various events that influenced the decision making, shaped the idea and took it forward. Here are 3 lessons I feel innovation leaders (CXO, product managers, Biz heads, VCs) can learn from iPod story:

     1.     Strategic theme (“Digital Hub”): Apple introduced FireWire technology in 1999 that would help transfer video from cameras into iMac fast. The video could then be edited, mixed with music and distributed further. Seeing this Steve Jobs realized, “Using iMovie makes your camcorder ten times more valuable. That’s when it hit me that the personal computer was going to morph into something else.” Jobs would call that “something else” – “Digital Hub”. A side effect of PC becoming a hub was that it would create opportunity for personal devices to become simpler. Note that the source of the insight was an internal "bright spot" (i.e. iMovie-camcorder joint value creation) not a trend discussed externally. Digital hub would soon become the dominant theme during the brainstorms like the one mentioned above. I have facilitated “What next?” workshops for the past several years. Rarely do I come across a team or its leadership with clarity on strategic theme such as “Digital Hub”.

2.     Investment confidence ($10 million check): iTunes software was launched in January 2001. However, Jobs had started pushing for the portal music player idea a few months earlier – in the fall of 2000. At that time, Rubinstein responsible for hardware engineering, told Jobs that the right components were not available yet. During one of his regular supplier visits to Japan in February 2001, Rubinstein came across a tiny 1.8-inch Toshiba hard-drive with 5GB space. Toshiba engineers were not sure what it could be used for. Rubinstein realized its potential use in the portal music player. Fortunately, Jobs was also in Japan giving a keynote at the Tokyo MacWorld conference. That night he met Jobs at the Hotel Okura where Jobs was staying and said, “I know how to do it. All I need is $10 million check.” Jobs immediately authorized it. That was roughly 2.5% of the R&D spend at that time and R&D budget was around 5% of revenue. This demonstrates Steve’s investment confidence – not that easy to find at least in India.

3.     Business plan review (Experimentation focus): “There are certain meetings that are memorable both because they make a historic moment and because they illuminate the way a leader operates.” This is how Isaacson describes the iPod’s proposal review meeting in April 2001. Tony Fadell, a new joinee and a key brain behind iPod was the presenter and in the audience were Jobs, Rubinstein, Schiller (designer), Jonathan Ive (Head of design), Jeff Robbin and marketing director Stan Ng. It was Fadell’s first presentation to Jobs.

Fadell began his presentation with a slide deck on the potential market and existing players and soon realized Steve doesn’t like slides. Steve later told Isaacson, “If you need slides, it shows you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Fadell quit showing the slides and showed the three different models he had brought in to the conference room. Rubinstein had coached him on what order to reveal them so that his preferred choice is shown last and with a bit of suspense. The last mockup option was hidden under a wooden bowl at the center of the table.

Fadell took various parts out of a box and spread them on the table. These includes 1.8-inch drive, LCD screen, boards and batteries all labelled with their cost and weight. This was followed by a discussion around how the prices might come down in the coming year. Some pieces could be put together, like Lego blocks, to show options.

The models were made up of Styrofoam. The first one had a slot for removable memory card, the second one had DRAM memory which was cheap but user could potential lose all songs if battery ran out. Jobs didn’t like both of these models. The final model was shown by lifting the bowl and revealing the fully assembled model of 1.8-inch drive. Next Schiller demonstrated the trackwheel through a few models. Jobs shouted, “That’s it!” The decision was made and Fadell & co got working on the project immediately.

Fadell recalls, “I was used to being at Philips, where decision like this would take meeting after meeting with a lot of PowerPoint presentations and going back for more study.”

As an innovation leader ask yourself: (1) Do I have any strategic insight like the “PC as a Digital Hub”? (2) Am I willing to write a “$10 million check” for the strategic initiative when a “Rubinstein” shows up? (3) Can we emphasize experimentation (prototyping) in the business plan review over PowerPoint projections?

Source: Primary source of the story is chapter 30 of Walter Isaasson's biography Steve Jobs. Image source: en.wikipedia.org.
“Apple’s R&D spending hits bottom as percentage of revenue” by Larry Dignan, ZDNet.com, October 17, 2011. (has a table that gives Apple’s R&D as a percentage of revenue since 2000).

Is Google 20 percent time same as "Right to experiment"?

A few months back I presented following argument to PGSEM students at IIM Bangalore: Google “20 percent time” practice is same as “Right to experiment (RTE)”. I thought I had made a good case. However, a number of hands were raised and they all argued against the statement. And soon I realized that I was indeed wrong. How exactly is Google 20% time different from RTE? Let’s explore in this article.

What does Google “20 percent time” say? It says that a Google engineer can spend up to 20 percent of his time experimenting with his own ideas. Google wasn’t the first company to implement such a practice. 3M introduced 15 percent rule in 1940s. I asked following 2 questions to the students in the class (all of them had their day-jobs as managers in software companies):

1. Do you need to take permission from your manager if you have to do an experiment – assuming no impact on your deliveries?
2. Does your team member need to take your permission for performing an experiment – assuming no impact on deliveries?

Most of the students answered both the questions as “No”. That is, in many of the companies nobody questioned experimentation so long as it did not affect the deliveries. Even for the Google employees, most of them have to work on their deliveries anyway and find additional time for the 20 percent project. This is equivalent to the practice being more of 100-and-20 percent instead of 80-20. If that is indeed the case then how different is it from their situation? Isn’t their situation equivalent to having a 20 percent time? When I raised this question, I expected a mixed response. What I got was a vehement “No”. Here is a gist of what students said:

• Legitimacy: When an organization formally or informally approves a “20% time”, it makes “right to experiment” legitimate. The legitimacy makes a difference to many employees who don’t have to worry about whether what they are doing is “right” or “wrong”. Even if it is not a formal policy, it still sends a message that management values experimentation.
• Infrastructure: If you want to run a 20% project, you may need additional help. How do you communicate your intent to other engineers? Google-like organizations create bulletin boards where such projects can be announced where people can enrol etc. It makes it easy to implement such a policy.
• Senior management attention: Perhaps the most important aspect of 20 percent time is that somebody from senior management is watching the progress of at least the interesting 20 percent projects. As in Paul Buchheit’s story of AdSense, when a project shows significant promise, resources are put behind the project and it is incubated. If such a mechanism is absent, the motivation to work on the project inside the company is low.

Last year we saw a debate as to whether Google has killed 20 percent time. Ryan Tate has argued nicely that Google couldn’t kill 20 percent time even if it wanted to.

Why does Einstein say that “One Max” person reading his theory will suffice?

A couple of years ago, I got an opportunity to watch Steve Martin’s play “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” in Bangalore (directed by Vaisakh Shankar and produced by Bangalore theatre group Tahatto). In this play Einstein and Picasso meet at the bar “Lapin Agile” in Paris in 1904. Einstein has just written “Special theory of relativity”. In one scene (21:30), Germaine, the waitress, is trying to help Einstein on how to popularize his book. This is how the conversation goes:

Germaine (23:30): You want your book to have impact, don’t you?

Einstein: Sure

Germaine: And if you want it to have impact, you got to have people read it, don’t you?

Einstein: Yes…

Germaine: Okay, in your field, how many people do you figure need to read your book to have some impact?

Einstein: One

Germaine: No, no, no. In order for your book to have an impact, a lot of people have to read it. Every man in the street has got to have one.

Einstein: No… Only one, Max.

Germaine: Max?

Einstein: Max Plank, a German physicist… very influential. If he reads it, he makes my reputation.

The play is a fiction. However, the point Steve Martin brings out in this dialogue is true. For a person with a “great idea”, an influential person can be of much greater help than a bunch of customers. We call such a person “champion” in our book “8 steps to innovation” and for Einstein, Max Plank was indeed such a champion.

By the time relativity paper was published, Max Plank was a respectable name in theoretical physics and Einstein was an unknown figure. After relativity paper was published Plank was not only the first person to give a lecture on the subject, but also the first person to write a paper building on Einstein’s idea. Later he made a strong recommendation that brought Einstein to University of Berlin. Plank also recommended Einstein for the Nobel Prize.  

There is a reason why I find Plank’s championing of relativity surprising. Along with relativity Einstein had published another paper on the nature of light (light quanta). This paper built on Plank’s work which had introduced the now famous Plank’s constant. However, Plank did not agree with Einstein’s interpretation of the nature of light. In spite of this disagreement, Plank championed the “other” idea of Einstein. Quite remarkable!

Working on your pet idea? Then think of who could be your "Max Plank"!

Source: 

Image: www.broadwayworld.com

Walter Isaacson, “Einstein:His life and universe”, Pocket Books, 2007.

Eckhart Tolle’s “catch me if you can” experiment

Traditionally, spirituality is associated more with faith rather than experimentation. However, some spiritual teachers such as Eckhart Tolle speak the language of experimentation. In fact, Ekchart’s experiments are typically low-cost. For example, he says, “One conscious breath in and out is a meditation”. In this article, let’s explore one such experiment Eckhart suggests which I call “Catch me if you can”.

Well, the overall objective is simple – you want your mind to be peaceful as much as possible. Perhaps it is peaceful most of the time, except, may be, when you are provoked by someone – say your boss. Dimitry from Moscow asked this question to Eckhart during Eckhart's interview with Oprah Winfrey, “When I am criticized, I get into power games, so can you recommend something?” To which Eckhart asked Dimitry, “When do you become aware of your frustrated state? after a few minutes? End of the day?” Dimitry answered, “It depends upon the situation. If the situation is minor, I am aware of it five minutes after. But when I am deeply criticized by my boss, I can be in this state for a week.”

Now, Eckhart’s experiment is as follows. Whenever you get into a negative emotion such as frustration or anger, you need to observe how long you remain completely lost in that state. Note that once you are lost in, say anger, there is nothing you can do about it because you and anger are not different in that state. The recovery towards peaceful mind starts once you notice, “Oh, there is that anger in me.” At what point of time such an observation happens is the crux of this experiment.

The objective of this experiment (or game) is to catch yourself in the state as early as possible. Eckhart divides your "Gotcha" point into three stages.

·         Stage-1: You catch yourself just before you are going to become angry – perhaps you notice the trigger such as your boss’s criticism and become alert. Your goal is to catch yourself in stage-1 as much as possible. Why? Because your emotion can’t sustain itself for long when you detach yourself from it.

·         Stage-2: You catch yourself as you are entering the state i.e. you catch yourself getting angry. Perhaps you can’t do much about it and you get angry anyway. Perhaps the awareness subsides the emotion before it takes off.

·         Stage-3: Like Dimitry, you catch yourself in the state (say anger) after some time. It could be a few minutes or as much as a week after you enter into the state. This is when most of us become aware of our emotional state.

For example, the last time I got angry was when I was standing in a payment queue at Adiga restaurant on M G Road and one person just barged in and went directly to the counter. I got angry and told him to stand in the queue. He did. And within a minute I became aware of my anger and it subsided 10-15 minutes later. It was a stage-3 observation i.e. catching myself in angry state. Could it be in stage-2 next time? Let’s see.

I see following challenge in extending this experiment. It may work for extreme emotions such as frustration or anger. Could it also work for low-intensity emotions such as anxiety? How easy will it be to catch yourself getting anxious? I don’t know. Any ideas?

Source: Primary source for this reflection is Eckhart’s interview by Oprah Winfrey on chapter 4 of Eckhart’s book “A New Earth”. Dimtry’s question starts at 53:10. A similar question was asked by Dionne from Port of Spain, Trinidad at 44:06. Unfortunately, the video is no longer available online.

Eckhart describes this experiment in the following video "Dealing with anger, resistance and pessimism" (7:15)