The other day when I was participating in
certain birthday celebrations, happiness, bordering on liberation, was strikingly
evident on the faces of all the participants. Clearly, people were celebrating
their arrival into the world that day several years ago, notwithstanding the
stresses and strains as well as trials and tribulations they may have
experienced thus far in their lives. Whether it was a momentary celebration
before they would return to a life of dreary routine or exciting challenge, as
the case may be individually, is also hard to predict. It is also interesting
that no one recognized that each one of them has grown one year older, and
hopefully thus each one has also grown one year wiser. Quite apart from what
the anniversaries signify as a reminder of graceful aging, there is need to
evolve a model of life in terms of time and talent.
It is an inexorable fact of life that time is
a factor of perpetual loss. Human beings have limited life-spans that are
influenced by genetics and lifestyles. Corporations, on the other hand, have
the ability to have an indefinite life, threatened only by discontinuities in
environment and exacerbation of competition. Time is, therefore, a finite
commodity both for people and corporations, which keeps ticking remorselessly. As
time flies by, it also fortunately bestows a few gains on the individuals and
corporations essentially as the former are genetically wired to learn and the
latter are humanly designed to learn. The balance of life is thus one of balance
of perpetual loss of time and a perpetual gain of time. This blog post
discusses some underlying concepts and provides a potentially relevant construct
that could help individuals, entities and societies.
Perpetual loss of time
Managing time is a subject of many
prescriptions. From handbooks to productivity courses, there exist multiple
tips and methodologies to optimize the use of time. The author in his blog
“Strategy Musings” wrote a post titled “Space, Time and Effort Management
(STEM): A Paradigm for Resource and Performance Optimization”, (http://cbrao2008.blogspot.in/2011/11/space-time-and-effort-management-stem.html),
that outlined an integrated and holistic paradigm. The key to following any tip, methodology or
paradigm must be an awareness of the inexorable and unstoppable manner in which
time ticks away. This recognition must be accompanied by a mature response that
balances available time on a host of daily activities classified as essential (for
example, quality sleep, preparation and exercise), value adding (for example,
learning and working), desirable (for example, socialization) and individual
(for example, personal hobbies). In contrast, being paranoid and miserly about
time and adopting crash methodologies of conservation of time or frenetic pace
of professional and personal life would be counterproductive.
The sense of loss tends to be set appropriately
in a perspective of one’s goals in life. As we know, there are actors and
musicians who accept movies, sports persons who sign on multiple tournaments
and consultants who take on multiple assignments, all as if there would be no
tomorrow. There are also actors, musicians, sports persons and consultants who
are very selective in what they accept. While at one level that could reflect
what each of them sees as their life’s monetization goals, more fundamentally
the anxiety for monetization, or lack of it, reflects their perceptions on
value of time. It is not for nothing that the adage of time is money has come
about. That said, while loss of time makes no distinction between any
individual, and is completely out of one’s control except to the extent of
individual differences in utilization, individuals and corporations have a lot
of leeway in ensuring that they access gains that offset the perpetual loss of
time in an equally perpetual manner.
Perpetual gain of knowledge
With the loss of time, individuals and
corporations can gain on knowledge. Wise people do not therefore rue over the
unrelenting loss of time. Instead they see time as an investment that helps achieve
gains in knowledge. However, there is an inadequate appreciation of what knowledge
means and how knowledge can be continuously acquired. Many people hold that
knowledge can be substituted or supplanted by experience, intuition and
instinct. Such hypotheses are erroneous and are based on infirm foundations. Knowledge,
holistically, is the understanding, information, skills and capabilities one
gains through education or experience. Knowledge is continuously absorbed and
stored in the brain and processed and expressed through the mind. Intuition,
and to a large extent instinct too, is the inner knowledge that is bestowed on
a person through a sharp definition of his or her sensory faculties and a
differentiated ability to synthesize perceptions and knowledge.
Clearly, knowledge is the foundation of any
gainful achievement in life. Even those who understand this hypothesis often have
misconceptions as to how knowledge is acquired. The most common fallacy is that
acquisition of knowledge plateaus after the collegiate education and early years
of experience. This is based on an erroneous institutional philosophy of
learning which does not leverage how human beings are (or can be) inherently
wired to acquire knowledge. To be able to understand this, the five ways of acquiring
knowledge need to be understood. These are: seeking-responding, awareness-understanding,
learning-absorbing, experiencing-integrating, and observing-reinforcing. These five
steps, unfortunately, are seen to be sequential or at best sporadically
combined. This inadequate manner of acquiring knowledge limits the knowledge an
individual can acquire relative to potential.
The knowledge loop
The primal way of generating and spreading
knowledge is through seeking and responding. It is commonly assumed that this
phase is best seen to be limited to the first baby months of a person. It is
not so in reality. Even as one grows older, knowledge gets developed through
the seek-respond mechanism. A more evolved level of knowledge development is
through the awareness-understanding bridge. This is, again, akin to toddlers
and children becoming aware of several matters of life, and understanding them
through positive and negative outcomes. This, by no means, is only a child’s
way of knowledge gaining. Even mature persons, need to gain awareness and
understanding of new situations as they develop. Becoming aware of the new
circumstances and developing an understanding helps build foundations of new
knowledge even for knowledgeable persons.
Learning-absorbing is the more commonly
appreciated method of knowledge acquisition, leading to formal degrees and
certifications. Enormous emphasis is placed on this phase of knowledge
acquisition as the degrees make a difference to the career entry. Society and
organizations provide the ecosystems for people to experience and integrate. The
same educational course taught in two countries would, even in these days of
globalization, would be interpreted, absorbed and acted upon in two different
ways in the two nations. More specifically, in an organizational context, knowledge
acquired through learning is upgraded, adapted or honed through experience. And,
each organization can develop a unique competence in this regard. Each of the
above four steps of knowledge acquisition involve external inputs. The fifth
step of knowledge acquisition, observing-reinforcing, is perhaps the only step
of knowledge acquisition that is wholly individual driven. This requires a
person to be keenly observant and have the willingness to draw the appropriate lessons
from observations.
Knowledge, every moment-every way
Faced with perpetual loss of time, competent
individuals must strive to enhance knowledge every moment and in every way. The
five step knowledge loop discussed above provides a seamless methodology of
continuous knowledge development, applicable for individuals as well as
entities. The primal way of seeking-responding becomes relevant whenever an individual
faces an uncertain ecosystem. Rather than be overawed, the individual must seek
attention and demand response. The natural way of awareness-understanding
requires a calm and analytical state of mind that absorbs verbal and non-verbal
cues and understands the supporting notions. The formal manner of
learning-absorbing is often seen as an activity for a formal degree. True knowledge
acquisition occurs when the knowledge seeker and knowledge giver focus on “know-why”
behind each nugget of knowledge. This approach prepares one to apply or
customize the acquired knowledge to multiple industry situations.
Experiencing-integrating is another aspect of
continuous formal learning. While all societies and entities provide scope for
experiential learning, certain organizations and societies provide for their
members immersive experiences that stick to their minds with deep insights. Organizations
which have formal systems of mentoring in organizations and societies which are
blessed with model disseminators of knowledge (for example, media) provide
beneficial knowledge arising out of day to day developments. Ultimately, it is
for individuals and corporations to recognize the importance of observation and
reinforcement. The observant individual reinforces knowledge from every
activity he or she observes; whether the activity is performed by a superior,
peer or subordinate, whether the activity pertains to his or her domain or someone
else’s or if the activity is a corporate business activity or civil society
activity. As an old saying goes, nothing is trivial in terms of the knowledge such
seeming triviality can impart.
Knowledge corporations, societies
Observant corporations, in a similar manner,
do not stay still in knowledge; they endeavor to be knowledge corporations. They
seek attention and receive knowledge. They provide opportunities for
individuals to reflect and develop understanding of people and processes. They emphasize
induction of personnel with excellent knowledge credentials and also nurture a
pioneering atmosphere of learning in an organization. They institutionalize a culture
of generating knowledge through every activity of an organization. Most importantly,
they sustain the spirit of inquisitiveness and curiosity in individuals. As an
extension of such knowledge-driven mindset, corporations themselves
continuously seek attention and responses in the wake of uncertainty, enhance
awareness and understanding of emerging environment, learn to develop new
products and processes, integrate experiences for greater knowledge and observe
other corporations to reinforce their own competitive positions.
Knowledge societies existed from times
immemorial. Tides of history swept away some knowledge societies, battered some,
reconstructed some and created some others. All through the torments of history,
it is amazing how knowledge survived and grew in the overall. Societies which
have been both diligent and fortunate to preserve and develop knowledge have
prospered or are on their way to prosperity. India needs to consider how the
nation can recapture its ancient glory of being a knowledge society; a society
which gave the world’s richest religion with multiple scriptures and epics that
set forth principles of living relevant even today, a society which computed, without
the aid of any computing devices, all the planetary movements that are accurate
to the second even in the current days of atomic clock , a society that gave
natural healing through Ayurveda and yoga which stay relevant in the face of
strides in synthetic medicine, and a society which built cradles of knowledge
such as Nalanda and Nagarjuna Sagar centuries ago. As India reinvents itself
towards economic supremacy, it is not a race against time but it is the pace of
knowledge creation that would determine India’s success.
Posted by Dr CB Rao on July 21, 2013