Wk 5, Day 1: The value of learning, making sense of madness

Back to school... after a great break of 5 weeks... !!

For me, it was landing at Newark @ unearthly four thirty am. I am no big fan of US domestic airline travel and hence almost always choose to drive. Needless to say, it was a pleasant and enjoyable drive.

For many of us, coming back to Harvard this time, was more like coming back to a break, coming back to our own comfort zones. As if, the intense focus on the learning, acts as a meditative alternatives for our tired minds.

Pleasantries aside, it took HBS exactly 3 hours, to push us back into, much desired, strenuous routine, that started with a session on Sunday 5pm. 

"If you find students available, teach them." - An old HBS saying, (sort of).

In the previous module, we had touched upon the concept of "Simplicity", today we re-visited the theory and tried to understand the how the simple things called Lego bricks, camouflage the  complexity that goes behind building the same. The second session focussed on human connections. How a bleeding airline giant, was transformed from the damned position of "I hate this airline", to a very profitable, high performance airline. It was all about people and getting to trust and believe in them.

By the time, the academic day was over, I was pretty much convinced that we have found the magic mantra to make this world a better place to live.

For today, it is the Human touch.

And for tomorrow, make simple, creative tools that Children, can play and learn with.

It made so much sense. Human touch and Children make such amazing story for our future.  That's it, this is what I had to understand and its all clear to me now.

And then, in the afternoon..... Terror strikes at Boston. Three blasts, three dead, more than 25 injured (as on Apr 15th, 23:40 hrs). One of the dead was an eight year old child. The blast occurred where friends and family came in to greet the Marathon runners at the finish line !! This was just about 2.5 miles (as the crow flies) away from our campus. Though, it was not the first time, that I was in such close proximity of such an incident, but this was very very disturbing.

What chance do we have as Humans, if we are not able to solve basic things such as terrorism. All our learning, our so called - great understanding of life and success, remains confined to the theatre set by terrorists. 

Our legacy to the next generation is terrorism. 

Forget, winning the war on terrorism, we are simply trying to survive and not even sure, if we will indeed survive.

Of what good is the learning, if we cannot make sense of this madness and put a stop to it ???

My apologies, if this sounded depressing, but it is.....

My learnings of the day.

1. Treat complexity like you would treat cancer. Measure, review, re-align and re-focus the corporation, away from complexity.

2. Trust your employees. Fundamentally, those who come to work to office every day - WANT to be successful, creative and contribute. 

3. Charisma seems to be a qualification criterion for a leader.

Alok Sinha