Impact of missing the first stage growth of 15

If a higher secondary student fails to grow during his first stage of development on all the three axis, he moves to the graduation stage and faces several difficulties and challenges. But, at least,he has second chance to correct the growth if he knows early enough.

In his pre-final or final year of graduation, he will display one or more of the traits of these three type of students : either he becomes an Academically Intelligent student, Smart Outgoing student, or Bored Confused student.

Here is a brief description of each type and what they can do to 'restart' the process of their growth.

Academically Intelligent student ( 50-60%) - over-development on the axis of IQ Management

These students grow only on one axis of IQ management, because they believe that academic education is the most important facet of career development. Either their IQ is on the higher side, or they are blessed with the right teachers and guidance. They enjoy the learning and pride themselves in their knowledge.

However, their growth is one dimensional. As these students do not learn to 'Regulate Self', they always seem unsure of themselves. They talk the least in a group of strangers. Their body language displays lack of confidence. They dither and vacillate over every decision. They get distracted easily by what others say and think. Because they understand little about their mind, they are confused about what to do next and typically follow their friends.

Because they do not understand 'interdependence' and its use in their life, they withdraw in their shell. They become part of one group and stick to it. If this group is stable and helpful to each other, they are at least lucky to have developed a skill of working together. 

For these students, the first challenge is to learn the interdependence of skill markets so that they can get the desired job and get the playground to practice their skills. If they do not learn the interdependence of markets and domains, they will constantly struggle to find their playground. They must also learn to Understand Self, to decide what to do next and not get sucked up in following others. More importantly, if they do not learn to see the invisible path of unfolding of their potential, they will never get what their higher marks and intelligence promised them.

Smart Outgoing student ( 10-20%) - Over-development on the axis of Understand and Exploit Interdependence 

Students who grow on this axis are the one's who at least understand the interdependence of people ( if not markets and domains) and become the extrovert types. They understand the benefit of interacting with different students and learn to present themselves in the best light. They take active part in cultural and other events of college. They become action-oriented. In the process of interacting with students, they learn one important skill : the skill of relating with people. This helps them considerably in the next phase of working career.

If they are smart, they learn to score good marks without studying in depth. Such students win the awards of best student of the year. However, if they do not get high marks, they may lack the assurance, but carry themselves well due to their outgoing nature. Because of their ability to present themselves, they generally get their Practice ground( the job )they want.

For this student, the first challenge is to utilise his 'confidence' to develop in-depth knowledge of a specific subject or a specific area. This focus is necessary for him to guide his IQ in the development of in-depth knowledge. He also must learn to curb his instinct of action (Regulate his Self ) so that he can perform meaningful work. If he does not regulate his Self, he constantly feels dissatisfied with his job.  

Bored and confused student ( 30-40%)- Underdevelopment on all three axis 

This student does not grow enough on either of three axis: neither on intelligence, interdependence, or his self.  Because he is unable to use his intelligence, he is bored and demotivated. Because the student is unable to make sense of the interdependent environment around him, he is confused.  And because he is unable to regulate his Self, he looks like a person waiting to be rescued. 

This student feels like a fish out of water and blames everything and everyone. He is already looking for other options of post graduation. For instance, you will find many IIT Engineers in third year already planning to do MBAs. I know of a CA student who left his CA work to go in Film making. If this student can afford, he exits from his chosen education path immediately after graduation. In his situation, this is a better alternative!


Professors and teachers blame these students because they seem to lack any initiative. They are also blamed for not finishing anything that is given to them.  These students often blame wrong choice of their career path for their current state. They lack any anchor, and seem to be killing time. Because of lack of good teachers and the ever increasing complexity of interconnected systems, this category of students are increasing day by day. 

Their biggest challenge to restart their growth cycle is to find some 'area or work' ( a practice ground) where they can find their feet, gain back their confidence, and find a new target. They need lot of hand-holding initially to navigate and learn something. Without this help, their career growth stalls. As these students may have got good marks in the 10th and 12th class, they blame their luck for having missed the boat of career growth!

In which category do you fall? And what are you doing about it? 

To grow, skill- combinations are more important than single skills

In Aesthetic and Sports fields, deep skills in one field - guitar, singing, writing, cricket or hockey - are more important than the combination of skills to grow. In this field, one has to mix one's skills with one's mind set (temperament) and personality preferences to find the right 'zone' for expressing oneself.

In contrast, in knowledge work, the combination of skills is more important for growth. For instance, if one is good in sales, one has to combine it with other field - say marketing, delivery, or even strategy - if one has to grow further. This is not just for vertical growth ( growing in vertical hierarchy), but also horizontal growth (growing across functions and domains). Horizontal growth is more important for doers than for managers.

For example, let us see this field of Data Analytics, which we talked in earlier blog.

According to Mckinsey, in US alone requires about 4.90 Lakh data scientist by 2018 with a probable deficit of about 1.90 Lakh. In India alone, it is estimated that there will be a deficit of about 1 lakh data scientists in the next couple of years.

Why is the deficit to be estimated so high? Because Data analytics requires a combination of skills - statisticians, behavioural psychologists, business analysts and technologists - which are difficult to find. How does this process work?

Statisticians are required to make sense of the huge data in the databases. They will use their knowledge of statistics to find  strange correlations between two seemingly unrelated sets of data. For instance, the risk profile of a single adult is higher than rhe risk profile of married adult, for say giving , automobile loans or housing loans. This can be discovered from the available data in banks by statisticians. However behavioural psychologist is required to confirm that this data is not mere correlated data. It has got underlying causes to justify this. So he needs to find the causative factors and confirm the hypothesis that 'risk profile of single adult is infact higher due to xyz factors'.

Once this is established, business analysts converts this 'information' into useful 'knowledge' by finding business figures: single adult customers, married customers, returns from both customers, the growth of these customer population in last three years and so on. He makes a business case and converts this 'knowledge of single adult behaviour' into 'business strategy'. Technologists then comes into the picture to ensure that 'all the different applications' which are sitting in different technologies ( ERP, BI and front end softwares) are integrated to produce the desired result.

Of course, this process does not happen in the above sequence only. The process can be initiated by anyone, while others have to pick up from that place. The dependency between the four skills is however very very high.And that is what makes it difficult for companies to find 'good data scientist'.

So who are data scientists? Are they statisticians, psychologists, business analysts or technologist? Because the dependency between these four skills is very high, if you start as a business analysts, you have to learn a lot about 'statistics' to converse intelligently with 'statisticians'; a lot about 'technologies' to understand the limitations and benefits of different technologies and a bit about behaviour psychology (something one reads now in the books of Friedman) to understand what 'needs' to be understood. In other words, a business analysts must have 'sufficient' depth in the other three areas to become a data scientists (to make the process between the four skills seamless and transperant). If you are a technologist, you must acquire sufficient depth in the other three areas, and so on.

So technically speaking, each of these skilled professionals can potentially become a data scientist. But more than often, professionals do not approach their career with any 'plan'. They happen to become data scientists, because they 'fall' in the 'right place' at 'right time'. Do you want to shape your career or do you want to let the career happen to you? The choice is yours.

Best and worst jobs of 2012

A website ranked 200 odd jobs based on physical demands, work environment, stress, income and future outlook.

Can you guess which job emerged in the best job list? You guessed it right. It is software engineer. Other jobs in the decreasing ranking are Actuary, HR Manager, Dental Hygienist, Financial planner. Mathematician is the 10th in the rank.

In the ten worst jobs, most of the jobs are physical-oriented jobs like waiter and dishwasher. Surprising inclusion in the list is the job of reporter and soldier.

The website also displays a list of highly stressful jobs, which is a more relevant list for us. Airline Pilot, a highly paid job, is also a third most stressful job. That Police officer is the most stressful job is not at all surprising.  Event Coordinator is perhaps the stressful job, because there are too many 'dependencies' in the job. Job of PR Executive, which is supposed to be a glamorous job in India, is stressful because it is a job which keeps the incumbent in constant 'glare'. A small mistake gets 'highlighted' in a big way!

Did you notice one very interesting feature in the list of stressful jobs? There is no physical-oriented menial job in this list. Are you surprised? On the one hand, Menial jobs are low paid because supply is more than demand. On the other hand, they are also of low stress because one can do one's part without worrying about the dependencies. And because of the 'physical nature', one can go home and sleep without any 'worry'.

This also explains why Senior corporate executive is the 8th most stressful job in the list. Senior corporate executive, which is generally high paid, is one job where accountability is high without the requisite authority. In Senior corporate executive jobs, resources are not in one's 'control', they are only under one's influence. People who have not worked in companies, or who have not worked as senior executives, often find this very surprising.

Psychologist call his hot-cold empathy gap. It is the inability, during the cool rational peaceful moment to appreciate how one will behave ( or experience) during the heat of moment. When we are driving in a car, for instance, we cannot appreciate how we will behave as a pedestrian who crossed our car in a hurry and almost collided with our car!

Similarly, when we see the job of senior executive, we only see the perks and frills of the job such as big office, big power, large car, secretary to work, flying in airplanes, attending meetings and conferences, giving orders. We do not see the anxiety of not meeting the target because one of the subordinates was sick during the final week. We do not see the stress of 'daily choices' that an executive has to exercise in the course of job. We do not experience the helplessness of not being able to fire someone because that person compromised the function in order to fulfill the more important duties given by other boss. We cannot experience the executive's loss of face of losing an order which was guaranteed to come ! We cannot be in the shoes of the senior corporate executive and imagine the 'stress' that he or she goes through every day. Not for nothing, incumbents of these jobs are the ones who suffer most from all the chronic ailments: high blood pressure, cardiac trouble, diabetes, back pain, insomnia, and others.

I know graduates strive for senior executives job, not knowing what they are getting into. So when they get 'what they want', they are shocked. Very few are equipped with the right tool kit to deal with this stress! They are simply caught in the winch. Neither they can give up the job, nor can they deal with the situation! Do you want to be one of them?  

Use programs like Google internship to develop your knowledge

Read this news in TOI of 25 April 2012

Seventeen students have been selected by Google for the internship with its program called ' Google summer of code ( GSoC). GSoC program was initiated in 2005 to offer post secondary students beyond 18 years to write software code for various open software projects. Selected participants are paired with mentors for a project. The idea is to give students exposure to real world software development scenarios. 

These kind of live projects, with real problems, are very useful in applying the learned concepts in real world. This is what converts information into knowledge. If you have read the process of converting data to information to knowledge you will understand the impact of such live projects. This is what Howard Garnder calls 'Understanding something'. 

Look at what students in the above program are doing.  Smit Patel, a student for 3rd year BTech who has got selected in GSoC program, plans to integrate a 'bibliography engine' to the software which is missing until now in an open source software suite called Callligra Suite ( which is similar to licensed Microsoft office). This internship is for 3 months, typically starting from May and ending in July. More importantly, in GSoC, the student can talk with a expert mentor to ask any questions and clarify doubts. 

Out of the 17 students who have been admitted in Google internship program, one is from first-year , 4 are from second year, 9 from third year and 3 from the final year of B Tech ICT program. In other words, a student can join this Google internship program at any stage of his education. One need not be a master or an expert in something. One can use these live projects to apply the concepts into a real world scenario and deepen one's understanding at any stage of the education. 

These kind of live projects help a student in understanding all the various concepts in a subject, connect them together to solve a problem, and therefore build it into a 'knowledge' that can be re-utilised later. The student is forced to move from 'rote' learning to 'real' learning. A live project like this also enables the student to 'gain' the confidence in accomplishing some useful output. And more importantly, he also gets a straight entry in corporate world if he does the project well. Success or failure of project is not important; it is the student's ability to handle the real-world constraints that are tested in such a project.

There is an additional bonus in doing such a live project. A student's future education path is automatically selected after a project work. If he likes the work after GSoC, such as software, he continues on the same path. Even if he does not like the work, he knows what he does not want to do in the future. As we have seen in this blog, shifting from software work-path to domain work-path is difficult. So if you come to know that you do not like software, you prevent lot of future misery.  Therefore in both the cases, it is helpful.

Google internship program is just one example of doing a live project in software area. But every engineer, chartered accountant and other graduate student gets a chance to do a live project scenario in the final year; which imparts the same benefits: development of knowledge and the accompanying gaining of confidence. If you are working in a town like Pune or Nashik, you can even find a company who is willing to do a project for its own use and pay for it. For example, GSoC pays US $ 5000 to work on a 3-month project ! Be it in software, electronics, civil, hotel management, journalism or any other area, student must find a live project scenario to work on. There is no better way to develop knowledge. This is also the benefit of interdependency, which we discussed in the blog.

Do not glamorise passion in your life

I read an article on Sunday TOI about how it is important to live life by Passion. Example of Sachin Tendulkar has been quoted profusely to show how his passion of cricket has helped him break records in cricket. However, in my short career of coaching of about 5-6 years, I have met many individuals like Manik who could not generate 'passion'.

Manik has been acting since she was 12. She won several Gold medals in Acting at State Level drama competitions. She joined commercial drama Group in Mumbai at the age of 26, very competent in her acting abilities and mature in her outlook. In three years, she left drama, after working with several theater groups, because she could not 'adjust' with the unprofessional practices of commercial drama. She cited many instances such as drinking habits of main actors even before the act, disliked the way supporting cast was treated 'inhumanly', cringed at the abuse that was thrown at women actresses. Her engagement with the real word life of drama showed her that her 'principles of living life' were flouted in the drama world. She tried to adjust with the real-world of drama valiantly, but eventually left the field in which she had invested more than 18 years of her life.

When I met Manik 6 years back, I presumed that it was Manik's fault that she could not 'adjust' with the principles of Drama world. But as I met others during my last few years of coaching, I realised that Manik is not an exception. In Po Bronson's book, where he interviewed unusual people and wrote stories of about 50 individuals, I read a case of a gynaceological doctor** who left medicine after spending 30 years of her life getting through a toughest course.

Mary ( a fictional name) always wanted to do medicine because her father was a doctor. But no sooner did she start working as a doctor, she understood that she had a flaw she could not rectify. She lacked an 'Off button', as she says. She carried her patient's pain and concerns to her home. She was unable to separate her professional work from her personal life. She could not live her life, so to say. As she told Po Bronson, the journalist, she was forced to leave Medical profession.

Do you think Mary and Manik lack something which Sachin has? 

As you would have guessed, they did nothing wrong. Only after engaging with the work in the real-world of their work, did they find that 'passion' could not be generated because of some incompatibility. Manik's incompatability was due to her 'principles', while Mary's incompatability was due to her 'off switch'. No one could have predicted that this would happen. Sachin was simply lucky to have found his passion in the activity he engaged, playing cricket. While, Manik and Mary, despite investing huge effort in gaining the necessary skills, could not find their passion when they engaged in the real work of drama and medicine respectively!

Many writers of self-help books wrongly presume that 'passion can be discovered' just by introspecting. Vinita Nangia in the TOI blog, for instance, suggests that if you ask yourself what you are happy doing, you will find it. Infact many self-help books claim that successful people chose their careers through 'passion'. But this is like putting 'cart before horse'. Unless one engages with the real work, one cannot find one's passion. So how can one select one's career through passion? This suggestion of selecting career through passion, though wonderful, is impractical. Please read this blog on how passion develops.

Many authors claim that unless you work with passion, you will not truly discover yourself. This is true, but it is also a statement that is guaranteed to induce guilt in everyone. Since  there is no method to find a work that will generate passion before-hand, one can simply listen to this statement and feel 'awful'about oneself. 

Another homily is 'Unless you work with passion, you will generate mediocre work.'. This is not fully true. Passion does generate excellent work, but not always. For instance, Sachin's cricket passion has enabled him to break records at personal level, but it did not help him to 'lead' Indian team successfully, because captaining a team requires a different skill. Even his passion of cricket was not enough to help him learn the skill of 'captaining'. 

So let us not 'glamorise' passion. For us, who make our careers instead of writing how careers should be made, let us understand passion with all its limitations. When it happens to us, let us exploit the benefit. But when it does not happen to us, do not blame Luck and try to find passion desperately. 

Errors of omission are more critical than errors of commission in your life

An error of commission occurs when an individual does something that he should not have done. For instance, when an individual fails to complete an assigned task satisfactorily, or when an individual makes an error in submitting his plan.

An error of omission occurs when an individual fails to do something that he should have done. For instance, when an individual fails to ask his boss ' how his task performance is going to be measured' before commencing the task, or when an individual fails to ask ' how is his plan going to be rated' before making his plan.

Errors of omission happen when a person misses an opportunity by failing to do something. When a chartered accountant (CA) does not find a way to use his accounting knowledge in a software company, he is missing opportunity of utilising his knowledge. This error of omission is difficult to spot. But when the CA leaves the company because he is dissatisfied after few years of working in a software company, he is blamed for the wrong decision. This error of commission is easy to pick.

In career, the errors of omission are more difficult to catch, because they are caused when a person has not taken preventive steps. In contrast, errors of commission are easy to catch because they are major causes of distress and frustration. When a student fails to choose the right career-path and instead follows a career-path that everyone is following, the student rarely notices the error he/she is making. But when he/she gets poor marks, everyone notices his/her error of choosing career-path. When a graduate fails to take actions that will maximise his/her advantages of joining a science, commerce or engineering stream, the student is not blamed. He is instead blamed when he fails to find a job, which is an error of commission.

The story continues further. When a professional takes up a job without understanding what 'he can do' in the job, this error is rarely noticed. But when he complains that he is stuck up in a job because he cannot grow further, he is blamed because it is an error of commission. When a person marries without knowing 'what challenges are involved in sustaining a marriage', this error is not even noticed. But when the same person complains about his marital discord, his error of commission is immediately noticed.

At the age of 45, when a successful executive is not able to find anything meaningful in life, everyone notices the error of commission. But when the same executive did not take enough actions early in his life to find meaning in life, this error of omission was not even noticed.

As you would have noticed from the above examples, the errors of omission can be avoided only when you take help from a mentor or coach, before the event: either before marriage, or while taking up the job, or before you are successful. On the other hand, you will find individuals who will take help from the mentors or coaches only after the event: when they have failed after a marriage, or when they are dissatisfied in the job, or when they have failed. In short, in career, if you focus on avoiding errors of omission, you will gain more than if you focus on avoiding errors of commission.

What can you do to avoid errors of omission? Here are three suggestions:

1. Find coach/mentor when you are taking up anything new: be it joining a new stream like engineering or commerce after 12th class, or taking up a new job, or finding someone to marry, or relocating to a new place. And find this mentor before the new event is going to happen. Because this gives you enough time to equip yourself with the skills, if required.

2. Find coach/mentor when you are succeeding. Because success gives you time to pause and learn, knowing what has caused success is very useful in time of 'failure', because in failure you have very little time to maneuver. This helps you to focus on prevention, rather than cure.This is a smarter strategy.

3. Focus on avoiding error of omission in the core activity. For instance, focus on 'how to improve the performance' in your core job, course or activity. If you fail to do so, you are forced to focus on how to 'avoid blame' of poor performance later. In the earlier blog, we saw that if we avoid taking feedback on performance to improve our performance, we naturally depend on perceptions to avoid the blame of poor performance.

If you are committing errors of commission, it is the sign that you are constantly doing the catch-up in your life. It is time that you focus on errors of omission. Which strategy are you using to avoid errors of omission?

Whose approach is right - Gambhir's or Dhoni's?

Gambhir had said that Dhoni should have ended the second one-day match with Australia early ( played in the current Commonwealth series) and should not have waited till the last over, when he had to hit a six.

Dhoni in response to this comment replied, "It's different when you are playing in the middle. If you see his innings today ( after Gambhir played the next innings against Sri Lanka) , he also found it difficult to rotate the strike consistently, and once you are in that situation it is very difficult to play a big shot. You can easily play big shots, but the difference is it always has to pay off. So I am never in a hurry to finish it in the 48th over or 47th over. Even if it goes to the 49th or 50th over, I am quite happy".

Whose approach is right? Dhoni's or Gambhir's? What do you think?

In cricket, it is the bowler who makes the 'first move', so to say. Like white pieces in the chess, who make the first move, decide the course of the game, so it is with cricket. It is the bowler who determines the course of the game. If the bowler therefore is bowling beautifully, it is more likely that the big shot will not 'pay off'. And if it does not 'pay off', the team goes behind further. As the 'big shot' is predetermined, it is more than likely that one will also lose a wicket. This increases the 'risk' further. Not only deliveries are lost, but a new batsman has to take even 'higher risks', which is unlikely to pay off. Hitting a predetermined big shot to end the match early is less likely to produce the desired 'result' because one is ignoring the situational context of the game. (Gambhir's approach)

Given the nature of the cricket game, it is therefore prudent to 'wait' for the 'right delivery' of the bowler and play a big shot only on a 'loose delivery' ( which is Dhoni's approach) and keep on playing 'safely' until then. And if the bowlers are bowling well, ( if you remember that match, Jadeja got out in the 49th over) one may have to wait till the 50th over to play the 'high risk' shot. Although this approach may seem 'risky', you will realise, that it 'safer bet' than trying to play the high risk shot early.

More importantly, one has to be careful to ensure that one does not evaluate the two approaches based on the desired 'result'. That is called hindsight bias - in hindsight any approach can be justified based on the 'result'. Sometimes Dhoni's approach may work, sometimes Gambhir's approach may work. (Overall, Dhoni's approach will always give a higher average.) But the 'specific' result does not determine the 'rightness of approach'. That is a wrong way of evaluating an approach. The approach has to evaluated  from the 'strategic' and the 'risk' angle, given the nature of the game and the situational constraints. ( as-is reality)

More importantly, your approach has to be evaluated on the fundamental principle of success, that 'your efforts alone do not produce the desired result'. This is true in game as it is true in life. Gambhir's approach is wrong, because he believes that 'his unidirectional predetermined effort' can determine the 'result' of the game. He forgets that it is the 'bowler's delivery' which gives him the 'workable options', not the other way round. ( Just because his approach works sometimes, it does not mean that it is right). Dhoni's approach is right, because it is based on the 'reality' that his options are limited by the bowler, and if one respects the as-is reality, one is more than likely to produce the desired outcome ! Dhoni's seemingly easy success is based on very sound principles !

In other words, your pre-determined unidirectional effort does not produce the 'desired' result; it is your 'appropriate' effort , based on the situational constraints, which determines whether the 'desired result' will emerge. In the language of systems thinking, 'result' is the emergent property of the system, not the property determined by you alone!

Please remember this basic principle when you are giving CAT exam of management, aptitude test of a company, an interview of a company, or getting a performance rating from your boss for your last year's efforts. Your unidirectional effort does not determine the result; it is your 'appropriate' effort based on the given constraints of the situation. One has to be smart like Dhoni to find the appropriate effort, and not do what others think is right. If you are not smart like Dhoni, you can learn it through systems thinking !

By the way, there is another cricketer in the Indian team, who believes in Gambhir's approach. Do you know who he is? I will give you a hint. If he had used Dhoni's approach, he would have broken many more records !