How much of what we know can we quantify, and how much of what we wish we knew can be put down to a desire for accuracy? Accuracy, as I see it, is a failed ideal the desire for which increases with every iteration, becoming more and more pointed until we visualise it as if inside a test tube, resting on a pin-sized pedestal, propelling our souls to ersatz elation.
That, at least, seems to be the raison d’être of the education system, in particular the B-school paradigm. Texts and curricula focus on arriving at estimates with a negligible margin of error. Entire semesters are spent discussing the merits of p-value, a tiny monster that determines the validity of a hypothesis. Research relies much more on probability than on discipline. Everything is at sea, unless approved by the heated gaze of accuracy.
But that’s academia. And then there’s the real world. A world where, if you are a high-earning consultant at a reputed firm, you meet clients who care not a fig about accuracy, but are all ears when the difference is of an order of magnitude. “I want to scale up my business,” they beseech, as they push stacks of lucre in your direction. At that moment, the distance between Rs 100 crore and Rs 1,000 crore is the only difference worth considering. It’s about scale, not accuracy.
A client walks up to you — he runs an airline, say — and asks you to help him double his turnover. He plans to buy 10 aircraft so that he can seek the government’s approval to fly abroad. You turn around and say: “Hmm, let’s see. Why don’t I help you improve your efficiency? Your current fleet is too unmanageable — all it does is bleed the airline. Let’s do some cost-cutting here, shall we?” You are gratefully shown the door.
You return disheartened and then you are given some serious pep talk: “Wake up and smell the coffee. Give them what they need, not the other way round. We know you are intelligent and know your job because that is why we picked you up from B-school. But now you can happily overlook all that and use our connections in the government to push policy. Take your kid gloves off and remove the rose-tinted glasses. Butch up and talk big. Be a man and set the ball rolling.”
And that’s that. You return to the meeting, perhaps with another client, and do the big talk. Details get waylaid as you mix confidence and charm into a cocktail that makes them sit up and listen. You sprinkle your talk with bravura assertions of what your company can do for the client, including tapping the right people.
The rising gap between academia and consultancy is, in some ways, akin to that between certainty and randomness. I am reminded of Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Everything that is worth knowing, he says, simply cannot be known. The idea of a knowable everything is erroneous. The world is too large and complex to “figure out” and compartmentalise into neat packets for our understanding.
Shouldn’t business education, then, be less concerned with certainties and accuracy and more attuned to the hurrahs and elegies of the real world? The world of voluble liquidity, tight margins and global uncertainties? The world of, if you will, corruption and nepotism? Why should B-school impart an ideal? Shouldn’t its ear be closer to the ground and its eye seek out meaningful detail, not an unnecessary hankering for precision? Shouldn’t it be more comfortable with doubt and failure?
A larger question pertains to change. What change can one effect on the job? I don’t mean incremental change, like increasing the company’s profitability by an improved sales force management system. I refer here to lasting transformation. The kind of strategising that imagines a new future. To wit, Steve Jobs’ invention of the iPod. Or, closer home, the Tata Group’s investment in JLR, an essential precursor to establishing a global footprint.
How often do our jobs give us a chance to implement transformational change? If we are driven and honest, government service might be one option. A friend and I, discussing the mundane reality of our jobs, talked excitedly the other day about our IAS friends (“I know two,” he boasted). One of his friends is an Assistant Collector in Gujarat and has single-handedly transformed the irrigation setup in the villages under his command. Another has started a pilot scheme in a few Andhra villages that provides broadband connectivity to the post office. Both projects have substantially improved the lives of the village folk.
But in the private sector, most of us, unless we are born into privilege, can only hope to reach the second rungs by dint of our merit. To reach there, however, we must per force forget the lessons that were drilled into us at the prestigious institute we attended, and only remember that it was the imprint of the said institute that got us where we have reached. That nostalgia is enough to sustain our memories of the place, notwithstanding that our education sits ill at ease with the requirements of the corporate world.
The author has switched too many jobs in the past and hopes he can hold down this one
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
