Leadership and Perception

During one of the events in the CIM, the 77 MBA candidates in our section were surveyed with questions on leadership and self-assessment. Q1: How do you rank yourself in terms of leadership ability? (it was left open for our interpretation as to the base population for comparison). Only when every one of us had written down our response we were presented the next question. Q2: Now, how do you rank your leadership ability, compared to everyone in this classroom? As I placed myself in the top 25% category for Q1 and in the average category for Q2, I was curious how my classmates perceived themselves.

Here are the results gathered from the survey:

While I could see that the majority of my fellow MBA candidates responded to successive questions the same way I did, the results surprised me in several aspects. There is no doubt that every one who was admitted into Kellogg exhibited strong leadership qualities at some time or the other and are usually considered to be the top candidates in the world. Then, what made the majority of candidates place themselves in top 25% or in the average categories instead of in the top 10% category?

One of the main sociological concepts we are being taught here are the biases (due to the Availability heuristics) that impede the ability to make sound decisions. In short, the availability bias clouds the judgement as the mind quickly recalls only recent experiences or any information strongly imprinted in the memory and tends to ignore more valid and wider information, and also tends to be insensitive to the base comparison rates. For our leadership experiences, we tend to recollect any personal experiences we had at work or in other activities, and relate them to the outcomes. Most likely, these individual experiences would have involved either a team of competent people with strong views or a complex task and/or a situation assigned by superiors based on the individual's perceived capabilities. And at least for me, my failures have made a far more significant impact on my mind than my successes. As we tend to judge ourselves based on the outcomes from those challenging situations, we may be rating our leadership abilities a bit conservatively.

But then as I write this, an even more fundamental question is pricking my mind. Is there one and only definition for leadership? Was it not possible that the 77 people perceived the question of leadership in 77 different ways? For example, one might have unwittingly provided leadership at work or at personal activities or in dealing with social responsibilities. One might have consciously made efforts to overcome a personal tragedy or might have helped others to overcome their losses, without realizing that all these efforts constitute one or other form of leadership. The experiences can be either deeply personal involving only self or clearly plural involving multiple entities. While each one of us certainly has a large number of experiences constantly accumulated and stored in our mind as a large mass, we tend to throw only a smaller mass for others to catch.

It is always almost impossible to convey our experiences to others in the exact form as we see them (of course, if I can do that then they no longer will be "my own experiences" but rather will be "everybody's experiences" !!!). Besides, we tend to make minimal efforts in conveying our abilities and experiences, as we overestimate (because of the Illusion of Transparency) the extent to which our thoughts are understood by others. And, undoubtedly the predominant usage of many modes of asynchronous communication (such as emails, blogs, voice mails, text messages, etc.) instead of the synchronous modes of communication (such as face-to-face, direct telephone, etc.) is exacerbating this illusion.

Complete Immersion in Management

The CIM has finally come to an end. These past three weeks have been extraordinary. I cannot imagine there is any other better way to start the intensive two-year program at the Kellogg School.

We had a great deal of fun......each of of us were made to memorize the names of the rest of the 76 members in our section (Jive Turkeys) within the first week through namegame and other activities. We did paint our faces and wore the turkey attires and competed with the other seven sections in the cheering competition !! It was like being in a football stadium cheering at the peak of the voice.....the instructions were clear...if you do not lose your voice by the end of the day, you did not stretch your lungs enough !!!!!!!!

And then came the Amazing Race competition. I volunteered to be part of the Evanston team, which is responsible to run all over the city from one clue station to the other as fast as it can. Perhaps, I was overenthusiastic and overestimated my abilities to run long distances at a faster pace. I could have chosen to be on the Northwestern team (which has to run all over the university campus chasing the clues). Though I usually run a lot, I was amazed to see the speed of the other team members and found it hard to keep up with them after the 5th or 6th station. In the race, at each station the team could get the next clue only after all the team members reach the station and are accounted for. And, it felt bad as I was slowing down the team. But then the surprising thing happened. Marcelo, for all his agility and speed could have easily stayed ahead of the team. Instead he slowed down and stayed behind me through the rest of the race and kept encouraging me to run without stopping. At the end of it, I could not help but admire the team spirit among the members who didn't even know each other a couple of days earlier. The Amazing Race truly turned out to be an amazing experience for me.

The Section Showcase and the CIM Olympics were great fun in preparing, strategizing, and executing each and every bit of the competition as one team of 77 members.

In the midst of all this, the Leadership in Organizations course started with daily 3-hour classes for two weeks. With its demand for extensive reading and case studies, people were just waiting for the course to come to an end. But, it was a great learning experience with deep insights into building and leading effective teams, biases and flaws in decision making processes, influence tactics, negotiation strategies, and strategy for implementing changes in organizations. The legoman exercise was truly an experiential learning. Our team did well in using all the 40 minutes allocated for developing the strategy and in division of labor, and finally used only 2 minutes and 3 secs for executing the strategy. The important lesson the class learnt from the experiences of all the teams was that the execution time is inversely proportional to the planning time, and with the execution time being much more expensive than the planning time in the real world, it is absolutely imperative to plan well before the actual implementation starts.

That our section won the overall CIM championship was a nice icing on the cake. Is winning a habit? Because, the Turkeys section have won the championship four times in the last five years, and they came 2nd the only time they lost. Some say, it is not about winning or losing but more importantly about learning. But, we learn from winning as much as we do from losing, if we pay attention and not get lost in the euphoria. Winning presents the chance to build further and improvise the strategy and gives the confidence to execute the strategy.

I am here to learn and also win by reaching my objective. The new quarter begins on Monday, and I am all set to explore the arts of accounting, finance, business strategy, and management decisions. It is going to be twice the excitement for me with the expected arrival of our daughter in the next few weeks !!!!!!

Opportunity and timing

Neelima and I felt ecstatic at the first moment we received the admission confirmation from the Kellogg School of management. And then the very next moment we sensed a strange sweet and sour feeling; may be it was the nervousness trying to abate the excitement. The reason...we were pregnant and our second kid is due in October !!

We knew we worked so hard for over an year for admission into the Kellogg School and we knew how much we wanted it, and that we will not miss the opportunity at any cost. But, there were so many questions; how will we take care of Vedant and handle the arrival of new baby? Will the move to the Chicago area make things easy or difficult for us and the kids? What will we do about Neelima's job in Dallas that she likes so much? How do we take care of selling the home and cars? What about finances? If I move alone, are we ready to make sacrifices in living apart for two years? If so, can Neelima handle both kids while I am slogging it out at school?

Perhaps, it would have been a lot easier to sort out things, had we been not on the way for our second kid. But, could we have afforded to wait for a longer time for our second kid and get pregnant only after the admissions process was decided either way? Perhaps not.

One thing I had learnt early in my highly-strenuous academic career (of course, I was lucky to get an excellent mentor who explicitly advised me in this regard) was to not postpone any personal happenings that bring joy for the sake of something in career that is not guaranteed. In the research career, the percentage of rejections or failures is disproportionately higher than the success rate, and possessing an anchor in personal life undoubtedly helps to remain sane !!! I have seen someone not getting married or not having kids at all while working hard to get either tenure or promotion or something else. I believed that if I fail in worst case to accomplish whatever I set out to get, at least I should have some beautiful things left with me to not feel devastated.........and, only Neelima and I know how much correct it proved out to be in our life !!

Often people are shocked when I tell them that eleven years ago when I had to choose between the girl I liked (and intended to marry) and the ambition to pursue an advanced degree (PhD), I was clear in making the decision. I was sensing that the personal relation was putting up a roadblock in what I wanted to pursue and so did not hesitate to let it go.

Did I repeat the same thing again now when I left behind my family in Dallas and moved to Evanston alone? In fact, this time I was very hesitant and concerned to leave Neelima and Vedant in Dallas. But for the strength and determination of Neelima and the unflinching support of her parents and her sister, I could not have done it so easily. More than me, Neelima was particular that I should take up this opportunity and that we should make things work out in our favor. I was lucky to have the family that understands the importance of this transition. All the credit goes to my in-laws for alleviating the troubles in our transition.

The point is, opportunity rarely shows up when the time is right for you. You have to make the time and things work out for you when the opportunity is at the door. Because, the possibility of the opportunity returning to you the second time is as rare as the lightning striking twice at the same place. I believe that one has to decide (on one's own) what is most important and puruse it with focus, quickly securing the things that one cannot live without and leaving behind the rest.

As we made this transition, Neelima and I are still looking to answer some of the questions we faced months ago. But in this process of transition, we certainly evolved stronger and wiser, and are better prepared to face the upcoming challenges.

Why an MBA after PhD?

Or, why an MBA when you have a good career going on right now with PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering?

These are the questions I have been facing consistently in the past few months, since I had decided to resign my job as a professor/researcher and join Kellogg School for my full-time MBA program. These were the questions put to me not only by the Kellogg admissions interviewer, but also by several friends, colleagues, family members, and now by several fellow students at Kellogg. Of course, I could sense that many who asked me were doing so more out of curiosity and amazement than out of any intention to discourage me.

Every time the questions were put to me, I think I was able to justify the purpose. But then, I could not help myself wondering what ultimately am I looking for here in my journey in this new area.

As it is hard for someone, who had lived his/her entire life in only one small region or even in one country, to visualize the life in other parts of the world and it is difficult to understand and appreciate the culture, the beliefs, and the lifestyle of people from other far away places, it is natural for people in very different fields of research and management to not understand each other's work culture, style, and purpose.

But for me, who has just stepped out of the field of research after an intense twelve years of constant exploration and publication and entered the field of management, it feels that I am only travelling within the same world from only one hemisphere to the other. As one develops a global perspective after travelling to distant and distinct places, I too hope to attain more clarity in what I vaguely sense for now that I am only travelling from one hemisphere of research career into an another hemisphere of management field, and that they are not two different worlds but are only two hemispheres of the same world.

As I face the question of why an MBA degree after a PhD and a long career of research in technology, something struck me in my very first week at Kellogg. The very first case study that we did in the first week of very first course (Leadership in Organizations) was the analysis of the decision process at NASA that led to the disaster of the Challenger space shuttle launching in 1986, and the very next case study we did in the same week was about the decision process at NASA that led to the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003.

Come to think of it, the people at NASA involved in these decision making processes were the smartest people with highest technical calibre and with advanced degrees in Engineering and Sciences. Yet, the post-mortem of the process revealed flaws in the decision making at various levels. It showed how engineers/scientists, however smart they are, are unaware of their own flaws in the decision making process. So, I believe the analyses justify even more why a researcher/scientist with a PhD must have a good understanding about leadership and decision making, especially if that someone is bound to lead organizations and make critical decisions. Take my word, attributes necessary for providing good leadership and making sound decisions are not taught in most engineering or science programs.

So, my new journey has begun and I look forward to travelling through the many horizons in this new hemisphere.