BackCubiclenama | Embrace the random
Most problems are just random aspects of life that are beyond the individual's control
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This week we’re going to be play a little fast and loose with this column’s “Cubiclist" core proposition. Not that I am going to talk about truffled omelettes, the politics of caste or India’s death bowling conundrum or such distant topics. No, no, a thousand times no. Well, not today.
What I would like to discuss this week is the mild obsession many of us cubiclists seem to have with “solutionism". This is by no means a new ism. So let me explain what I mean here.
As some of you may have noticed from my bloodshot eyes, saggy six-pack and that constant miasma of posset from my clothes, I’ve recently become the father of a baby girl.
I have conveyed your regards, and she farts hello back to you too.
A few days ago I paid a visit to my dear friend Pastrami. (Name changed.) Pastrami himself became a father six months ago. So I was expecting to be enlightened in the dark arts of parenthood.
Poor, poor Pastrami. The poor chap is going insane. Not because of the baby, who is delightful except for a tendency to poo during baths, but because he has convinced himself that the baby suffers from numerous problems, each of which has a definite solution, but somehow none of his meticulously researched solutions seem to be working. Yet he keeps soldiering on, driving himself into ever deeper levels of despondence as he combats reflux or the Moro reflex or whatever is his latest baby-nemesis.
Later I was thinking about poor Pastrami’s plight. When it occurred to me that I had seen this kind of behaviour in many of my other, mostly MBA, friends. And in myself.
Also this tendency towards “solutionism"—that everything is a problem, and all problems have a solution—was not restricted to just parenting. I’d seen it in many, many other aspects of life that are not solvable “problems" at all. In fact most of them are just random aspects of life that are beyond the individual’s control.
For instance I’d seen this tendency in friends who tried to buy homes. Most of them usually start off looking at pictures of dream homes, interior design blogs and IKEA catalogues. Somehow most of them end up getting mired in “timing the housing market" or “finding the next great location" or some such “problem". Soon there are spreadsheets involved and data sets and regression analysis and Black-Scholes models and what not. Bam! Now they can’t afford anything anywhere.
It is particularly common in cubiclists who explore entrepreneurship. They spend one afternoon generating a great idea, spend another week drawing up a rudimentary business plan, and then spend four or five years working and reworking that business plan till they are convinced it all makes sense on a computer screen. Wasting time they could have spent on talking to people, piloting the business, or just experimenting with ideas.
Where does this tendency come from?
I think this “solutionism" is seeded in business school, and then nurtured in our workplaces.
A professor once told me that business school taught you not finance or marketing, but problem solving. And once you learnt to solve problems you could succeed in any sector and any competence. I recall being quite impressed by this.
But now I wonder if this also does not become something of a behavioural albatross around our MBA necks. Whereby we’ve convinced ourselves that we can use these methods to convert anything into a problem, and then solve them to our satisfaction.
Suddenly randomness is anathema. Things that don’t fit into logical, deterministic models—babies, real estate, relationships, careers—find us fumbling and indecisive. We scramble for solutions. Finding none, we wallow.
Perhaps this is one reason why “college dropouts" and such beaten-path-avoiders end up succeeding at things such as start-ups. They “get" randomness. So they roll with the punches, constantly looking for an opening to punch back. While the MBA, on getting thumped, reaches for his phone and Googles “Six Sigma Method For Avoiding Face Punch". Many workplaces, with their tasks, appraisals and result-orientation, make things worse.
The very prospect of unexpected outcomes petrifies us. How many times have you turned down a casual, no strings attached, cup of coffee with a potential employer, just because you “weren’t sure if you wanted to quit your current job"? How many great opportunities at start-ups, projects or partnerships have we let go because the outcomes seemed a little too random for our liking? How many times have we seen innovative companies lose their way because they brought in a bunch of suits, intrinsically averse to the randomness inherent in many creative pursuits, to manage things?
So I’ve now decided to fight my MBA tendencies and be a little more open to the idea of random things. And to not reduce everything to a problem that needs fixing. For example as I type the baby is vomiting into my Xbox. And I am totally cool with that. No problem. No solution. I can’t return her to the hospital for a refund, can I?
Wait… can I?
Cubiclenama takes a weekly look at pleasures and perils of corporate life. Your comments are welcome at cubiclenama@livemint.com.
To read Sidin Vadukut’s previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/cubiclenama
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