Tag: insight

Fighterization

The story begins with this slightly old blog-post written by Ritesh Banglani, a guest faculty at IIMB. Banglani writes:

In the first class of my course at IIM, I asked students a simple question: What is strategy?. The most interesting response came from a rather cynical student: “Start with common sense, then add some jargon. What you get is strategy”.

I didn’t say so at the time, but that is precisely what strategy is not. If anything, strategy is uncommon sense – making choices that may not appear intuitive at the time.

The cynical student in question mentioned this during a conversation earlier today, and I thought the discussion that followed merited a blog post. I thank the cynical student for his contribution to this thought.

Innovation happens when someone gets an insight, which, by definition, is a stud process. The person innovating, naturally, is a stud. For a few years after the innovation, the idea is still in development, and it is still very tough for other people to do what the pioneer stud has done. The first wave of people to do what the pioneer has done will also naturally be studs.

However, after the idea has been established, the market for it grows. The pool of studs that are then involved in the idea won’t be able to service the entire market. Also, being studs, they are prone to get bored easily with whatever they are doing, and will want to move on. The increased size of the market as well as the gaps left by the leaving studs will attract fighters to this idea.

Now, fighters are not natural when it comes to generating insight. However, they are excellent at following processes. And once an idea has been developed beyond the initial stage, it makes itself amenable to processes. And thus, a set of processes get established. Soon enough, thanks to the processes, the fighters are able to do a much better job of implementing this idea as compared to the pioneering studs, and studs get driven out of the industry.

This generalized process that I have just described applies to all fields, or “domains” if you would like to call it that. Let us now leave the generalization and come to one specific profession – strategy consulting. Strategy consulting started off as an insight-driven process, a stud process. Industrialists would go to consultants in order to get insights, and out of the box ideas, in order to take forward their business. Soon, the business became profitable, and the consultants, like any good capitalists wanted to expand.

There was one problem, however – talent. It wasn’t easy for them to attract similarly insightful wannabe consultants to work for them. Similarly insightful people would either not want to work in strategy consulting, or they would start their own consulting shops. Thus, there was a need to bring in the fighters into the mix.

It was to facilitate the entry of the fighters that the various consulting models and frameworks came into being. A large set of processes were drafted, and all that the fighter consultants had to do was to identify the appropriate processes for the situation and then implement them along with the client. Insight and out-of-the-box thinking were thrown out of the window. Hourly billing became the industry standard.

Strategy consulting has come a full circle now. It has been “fighterized”. Clients nowadays don’t expect insight. They expect processes. They expect to be led down the “correct” path, and they want to make sure they don’t make obvious mistakes. And thus, the “strategy” that the consulting firms offer are mostly common sense which has been appropriately packaged. And this has percolated down to business schools. And so the cynical student’s cynicism is valid.

Extending the studs and fighters theory

In a seminal post written over a year back, I had classified people into two, based on their working styles. I had called them “studs” and “fighters”. Studs, I had argued were people who had the knack of finding the easy way out. Who liked to work around corners, and find short cuts. And who would try to do things in as efficient a manner as possible.

Fighters, on the other hand, were supposed to be extremely meticulous, and process-oriented, and extremely hardworking. They would make up for their lack of natural talent by way of sheer hard work, and would be extremely determined in order to achieve their goals.

Today, thanks to a shared item on Google Reader by JP, I came across this article in The New Yorker. It talks about how humans get insights. The article talks about the process, or the lack of it, that leads to people getting insights. A large part of the article is a bit technical, and talks about a lot of biology. But if you can navigate through that, it offers a lot of insights on what goes into insights, and what might be needed in order to think in this sort of manner.

One major idea that is presented in this article is that insights are usually developed by the right half of the brain (for right-handed people), while most process-oriented stuff and calculation takes place in the left half. The article argues that in order to leave ourselves open to more insight, we need to take care not to focus too much of the problem. It also explains that you are likely to get your insights when you are least expecting them, such as when you are playing table tennis.

Ok, so going forward on these two lines of thought, I argue that “studs” and “fighters” can be extended to learning styles rather than as just working styles. It is the way in which the two categories of people understand things. Studs, I believe, are the people who tend to get most of their understanding by way of insights. People who are unable to put a finger on the process by which they learn a particular thing. Because of this, their thought is so unstructured that it is difficult for them to precisely and correctly follow processes.

Fighters, on the other hand, get their understanding incrementally, by following a process. They build up their understanding bit by bit. Slowly but surely. They are inherently left-brained people, and because their learning style is so processed and orderly, they thrive in orderly environments. Where all you need to do is to come together and go through a process. They are willing to work hard. They don’t mind if what they are doing is not insightful (partly because they experience insights so rarely). And thus lead low-volatility lives.

One other important insight from this article is that you are not consigned to a career in liberal arts or related fields if you are a right-brained person, as a number of people would like to convince you. Popular belief is that people who are good at math are inherently left-brained, and those good at languages are inherently right-brained. And that the paths for these people are disjoint. And they should stick to what they are good at.

However, what you might want to infer from this article is that all that it means by being right-brained is that you survive on insights. And that you are more likely to be a stud than being a fighter. The old school used to say that engineering is for the left-brained because they saw engineering as being process-oriented. And they saw the liberal arts as being insight-oriented. However, there are enough instances to show that the complementary skill is also important in both kinds of fields. You need studs in engineering, for if everyone would just follow the processes, there wouldn’t be anyone to think out of the box and come up with new stuff. You do need fighters in the arts, for on many occasions it’s a sheer execution game.

In any case, I would advise you to go read the article. It’s longish, but offers important insights. And if you think you are an insight-driven person, as I think I am, it might help to show this article to your bosses, and explain to them that making you focus may not exactly be the best thing to do in the interest of the firm.