Like most “people like me” (self confessed wannabe intellectual/ corporate types), I have been viewing/ listening to Ted talks for a while – I even subscribe to them on my social media accounts. I love them for the sheer diversity of thought they portray, and obviously find some that invoke “aha” moments, and some that I couldn’t care less about. Went to my first live session though the other day – was not a TED talk, but a TEDx event, held in a school. I have to say at the outset that it was a fun evening – organised really well by the students. As expected, listened to some engaging perspectives by a diverse speaker set; met some interesting people in the interactive sessions; ate some really good food; and went through some entertaining performances by the kids. This piece is about reflections during and post the event; thought would type them down jfk 🙂
– BIG Hairy Audacious Goals – One of the speakers at the event, in terms of sheer coolness of “achievement” (at least by the mainstream sense of success and achievement), was easily in the top order – has had two really successful startups – one in the enterprise space of mobile marketing, and another (newer one) in the urban micro mobility apace – and while his ventures may not be Mark Zuckerberg big; they are both still household names. His talk was the one I was most looking forward to; both for myself, and for my musical-theatre – crazy – yet – wrestling – with – middle-class – parental – ambition – to – do – more – mainstream – stuff – teenage daughter, specially as, part of my objective of attending this event was to expose child to a divergent way of thinking, rather than just Broadway and the Westend. Now to me, the big nugget in this talk was his point of choosing a “BIG problem to solve”. He spoke about his quest for an entrepreneurial opportunity post his first one (this, by the way, after having sworn to “chill with coffee at 40” – much like my intention to lie on a beach and drink beer! The difference is, I actually do my beach and beer, and he went ahead and started the new micro mobility enterprise ). The problem statement to him was that of urban traffic congestion, (very relevant in a city like Bangalore), and air pollution; and he chose a really innovative solution, despite what one would say were insurmountable odds. (The solution was hireable cycles and electric scooters).
Now obviously, this nugget of choosing the Big Problem was directed more at the students in the audience in order to inspire them, but it also made me a bit ashamed. I think there are people in this world who really take big problems to solve – and they are the ones who move and shake the world, and make life easier for the rest of us. These are not necessarily “great men” – it could be the boy or girl next door (this entrepreneur is an ex neighbour, and a really nice guy). I realise that I am not one of them, instead choosing to focus on making my immediate eco system happy and comfortable. Look after ageing parents and in laws, undertake some community service in neighbourhood schools and slums, mentor some startups that come looking for gyan, manage kids’ complicated calendars…these are the low impact low scale items that keep me occupied. Both paths of life, though divergent, are interesting, and potentially fulfilling. However, the second (mine) can be fulfilled by any Tom Dick or Harry, while the first needs the people chasing BHAGs. My husband I think is one of them – his outfit, Social Alpha is aiming to end world hunger, poverty, disability, climate depletion and many more such issues. They have an incubator, as well as a fund to identify, mentor, seed and take to market outfits creating social impact on a wide ranging set of areas like nutrition, agriculture, health, education, sustainability. “Our complex social, economic and environmental challenges urgently demand a radically new approach” says their website.
Now most corporates have their quarterly/ yearly/ 2 yearly plans, and then do have their BHAGs – a practice that keeps their paths both on the immediate Wall Street happiness, as well as future profitability. In a world, where global economic profits sank from $726 billion to an economic loss of $34 billion from 2005-07 to 2015-17 as per a Mckinsey study, these BHAGs are what may ensure financial stability in the years to come.
This reflection, actually tied in neatly with one of the screened sessions – a very interesting Ted Talk by David Brooks’ on Resume vs. Eulogy. Brooks makes the point about most of us, all our lives really aiming to build “resume” virtues – that focus on “external successes” we can show the world, and be proud of. There is, however, what he calls the “eulogy virtues” that are more your legacy, and really exemplify your “Internal Goodness”. He says that despite the fact that we all probably really admire and aim for the eulogy virtues more, our culture and educational systems spend more time teaching the skills and strategies to build an external career, than on how to build inner character. It is apparently a really famous talk, based off American rabbi and philosopher Joseph Soloveitchik’s well known Lonely Man of Faith dichotomy between “Adam I” and “Adam II.” “Adam I is the external Adam, it’s the resume Adam…Adam I wants to build, create, use, start things. Adam II is the internal Adam. Adam II wants to embody certain moral qualities, to have a serene inner character, not only to do good but to be good. Adam I, the resume Adam, wants to conquer the world…. Adam II wants to obey a calling and serve the world. Adam I asks how things work, Adam II asks why things exist and what ultimately we’re here for.”
Also, eulogy problems take more than one’s lifetime to solve, while resume problems get solved within an individual’s lifetime.
And I was thinking (much like BILL Gates hinted at in his blog on this topic) – that maybe more than two sides of man, the two Adams are merely a function of life cycle stage – one spends one’s early life being more Adam (well, or Eve) 1 and then having achieved certain milestones, the balance shifts more to Adam 2. My husband is doing this – after the first half century of his life chasing a resume (coming from a govt school in remote Pithoragarh, he ended up at Harvard; leading the Gobal development org for a fintech company); he is now building an eco system for social impact – he is really doing this out of a deepest desire to do good – to help the under privileged, and to right, in some small measure, the inequalities the world sees. I do think both sides of his life have been equally frustrating, yet equally pharrellian. Another of my ex-partners is also doing this – after exiting the company we co-founded, she has created an amazing platform (called Lets Do Some Good) that has connected hundreds of organisations working on areas of childhood education, health, hygiene, employability and overall quality of life for the urban poor. The idea being that many random acts of kindness, when brought together, can collaborate to create synergies. Her flagship project, in addition, aims to bring urban slum children into mainstream schools after a year of a “bridge program”. So, after half of her life spent on resume virtues, she is now very passionately involved in the eulogy side. Even Brooks has said this – Deep people also tend to be old. But, “Being deep doesn’t preclude you from being, well, shallow. Some days we want to be externally successful, some days we want to be internally good. The question is whether your life is in balance.”
I think the trick is to ask this question of yourself, every few years, “At what points do my talents and deep gladness meet the world’s deep need?”
Having said that, another speaker, while maybe chasing resume virtues (she was really young though), made me realise that..
– The world is truly multidisciplinary / patterns are about joining impossible dots –
I still don’t know what this young lady does by the way – she said she could maybe call herself a Creative Researcher. Her primary work seemed to be in the space of sound. She basically took us through some (I would have said fairly disjointed) pieces of work/ projects that she has done – and they were all jaw droppingly amazing. They ranged from an installation done with cut plastic water bottles, that was kind of shaped like an igloo, and that emitted some sounds as the wind whistled through it; to a graffiti made of auditory codes, each of which when scanned told the story of an immigrant (she distributed copies of these codes); to some work she had done on sound therapy (apparently there are claims that sound therapy can cure cancer); to a kaleidoscopic installation in Oslo made of folks walking through some architecture, and the waves/ voices emitted as they did it; to work she had done with appliances created to help differently abled children in Himachal. All mind-blowingly new/ seemingly unconnected to me/ abstract as well – and yet, all apparently keeping this young women happy and in money! It was raw yet refreshing, bizarre yet educative, and, honestly, eye opening. A really unique insight into non mainstream interdisciplinary work, and the incredibly diverse opportunities open to kids today.
During one of the activities during the event, I also met a lady, a part of the audience like me, who told me her son was a professional poker player – had been a genius at math; and turned this into playing professional poker – I saw this traditional middle class Indian mum’s struggle with this unconventional choice of livelihood for her only son, but I also saw an acceptance of what apparently was making her son happy. A good lesson to learn for a theatre kid’s mum.
– Context is King – The first speaker of the evening was the director of a Dance Village in Bangalore, founded by the talented though troubled Protima Bedi. The lady had enrolled in the school when she was 20, following her passion, and a path away from a degree in economics. The talk was about many interrelated thoughts – following your dreams, but also about making someone else’s dream your dream in the true Guru-Shishya Parampara; about dance being more than just movement – it being more a means of bringing your “inside out” and the “outside in”; going/ passing from this earth when your work is done – not before and not after. Incidentally, a collateral reflection (of mine) during this speech was one about “learning” today, specially for disciplines like dance/ music etc; vs. the models in the earlier years. I remember a renowned musician Mashkoor Ali Khan saying that when we lived with our Guru, any wrong note we uttered, would be immediately corrected by the Guru, and we would get on the right track (this even if we were doing riyaz in another room while the Guru was resting in another one). But nowadays, with the weekly one hour class kind of learning we undertake (my kids have done the regular rounds of all classes – dance/ music/ tennis/ basketball/ drama/ art), I wonder how one really internalises learning – and achieves the 10,000 hours needed to drive expertise. Ofcourse, it is also an “exploration” vs. “perfection” thing – for kids, they are exploring the areas they want to maybe specialise in later – and the hours spent do go up once they figure the thing/s they want to focus on.
This side thought aside, to me the one thing that stayed behind in my mind was what she said about how the motivation behind every gesture in dance dictates how one uses the gesture. She took the audience through the different ways in which the karkata mudra (I think), could be used to portray waiting/ mystery/ allure/ thoughtfulness etc…., similarly how the gesture for a veil could be used in different occasions – a bride, a mistress, shyness, strategy….and this essentially made me realise that what we hear very often now in the tech world – Contextual Marketing – is really more basic. The idea of a piece of technology working according to the place where you are/ or the impulse that triggered the use/ or the kind of person using it, is really common sensical context right? And this context we apply in everything – in our speech – how we talk, who we talk to, how we behave, how we purchase. Hence we develop ads like the one I saw while typing just now, for rental cars in Budapest and then another for winter clothing (I was just checking flight fares to Europe). Or, utilities like my friend and other ex co-founder’s company Zineone does. Zineone is a real time AI based personalisation solutions company. In their own words, “Want to drive higher traffic to your location? Send an exclusive offer for a customer’s favorite beverage, redeemable on-site only?. Are you looking to increase orders during a typical lull period? Push the customer a coupon for an item they frequently purchase, redeemable in the store during that time frame only” In fact, all of the currently wildly popular yet continuously developing Augmented Reality/ MR solutions would be nothing if it wasn’t for a realisation of context.
The question of context also came across in another, well, context …
– Know, and focus your target audience/ market – This was an unfortunate observation (and one would think is Business 101) – One of the above speakers, who I would have thought would have had the most interesting talks; much to my dismay, and the child’s boredom, got lost in vague generalities and prescriptive inanities. And, therefore, the talk remained just that – a talk. I think part of the problem was that this talk was undecided about who to address it to – the high schoolers, or their parents – it ended up by sitting squatly in the middle, and could impress neither – my daughter and her friends apparently raised eye brows and had a giggle about some visual with a Tee shirt saying IDGAF (which I learnt that night – means I don’t give a f$#@), and how he kept saying “dude” (which DD authoritatively says is only used by old fogies wanting to be too-cool). What would I think have made an impact on both audiences would have been anecdotes of how he achieved what he did/ what were the challenges he faced/ how did he overcome them. It also goes to show that you can do very cool things without being the communicator.
– Be honest to yourself – fake is forgettable – A bit of the same problem happened to a speaker who was a singer/ songwriter – lovely voice by the way. At the end of his talk he actually performed a song he had written – was really very foot tapping music, relatable theme and incredible voice. But, in this case again, he didn’t quite read his audience right – I think being younger, had the added burden of wanting to impress the audience – thus the talk was just high faluting words strung together – thereby narrating abstract banalities. To be fair, one of his subjects WAS the “power of words” – but I am guessing the older people were thinking – “why is this young thing telling us that words are important” , and the younger kids were thinking “what is he even talking about”. Instead, a description of how he started/ how he overcame his mental health issues/ how he struggled, and life lessons from there , would have been awesome. Again, set context via anecdotes – just a point with no back up data, is tough
– Less is more – In contrast, there was a scientist (who was the one my daughter was least interested in to begin with – you see, we are “theatre/ humanities’ type, we don’t like anything connected to STEM – but who ended up being the most interesting talk of all). Was about biodiversity of species , specially in the Western Ghats – crisp, concise, articulate, engaging, not too simplistic that you would brush it off, but not too esoteric either – overall, relatable, informative, understandable and told in personalised story format. No attempt at grandeur, no attempt at impressing anywhere – not unnecessary humility either – but just an honest talk about the work she does. Reflection – be true to yourself – the moment you try to project yourself as what you are not, you will meet circumstances where you will fall on your face.
At the end, the lessons I learnt from this evening in a high school were:
A) A parent is a parent, and unconditional love comes only from one
B) Context and Relatability are ubiquitous fundamentals
C) Today’s Youth is cool (and lucky) – far more so than my generation
D) The Circle of Life is real – and one traverses it by moving from building on strengths; to working on eradication of weakness.
E) Science is cool. Genetics is cooler. Honesty is the coolest
joshsang 