Developing Original Thinking with Santosh Desai

One of India’s best known Social Commentator and CEO of Futurebrands, Santosh Desai talks about pitfalls of MBA education, importance of synthesised learning, his process of Developing Original Perspective and thoughts on what constitutes meaningful work.

Questions from The Episode

1. Does being in the hills have some kind of impact on your creative process? (02:55) 
2. You started as a marketeer, How did you end up writing? (03:39) 
3. Did you’ve self doubts about your writing when you were asked to write for the first time? (06:35) 
4. In one of your article in 2012 you mentioned " It  [MBA] did not open my mind enough to new modes of thinking, and while it spoke of 'thinking outside the box', it spent all its energies in building the box instead  " about MBA. Can you elaborate on this further? (09:14) 
5. What Do you think is holding the institutes like IIMs from changing their teaching approach? (14:45) 
6. What got you interested in Tik Tok? (19:01) 
7. But do you think I t really adds tangible value to peoples life? (21:12) 
8. In another article you mentioned “Management education…. helps you reach to the level of order from disorder, but falls short if you want to reach from order to creation. It does not teach you synthetic thinking but advocates disparate thinking.” Can you please elaborate a little more on synthesized thinking and disparate thinking? (24:28) 
9. Does MBA help people deal with uncertainty, which is extremely crucial in the process of creation? (30:41)  
10. You write on diverse subjects - education, gender roles, Indian state, family etc. How did build up your background knowledge to write on these subjects (39:27)? 
11. What do you mean by "Understanding the structural aspects of an issue or topic at hand"? (42:39) 
12. Once you have asked the basic question, how do you build your observations around it ? (48:48) 
13. How do you sift through the flood of content on the internet to build your understanding around problems that you are interested in? (01:00:12) 
14. Are there certain simple ideas that you practice repeatedly that has helped you improve your writing? (01:05:11) 
15. What kind of fundamental ideas should freelancers understand in order to communicate their value preposition better? (01:07:33) 
16. From you experience as leading multiple organization, what do you think holds people in an organization?  (01:14:37) 
17. Creating a space where people can explore ideas is an ideal scenario but don’t you think most organizations do not allow this because it takes time, they would rather refer to the best practices and templates?  (01:18:17) 
18. DO you think with the advent of internet, a lot young people would be inclined to work as individuals rather than be part of large organisation (01:23:40) 
19. 3 Big Takeaways  (01:26:11) 

3 Takeaways from the Episode 

1. Developing Original Perspective - As Santosh mentioned, Developing an original perspective doesn’t mean developing a unique perspective. It means gaining fundamental understanding of issues or problem you trying to solve. Very often, in order to save time, we use templates and quick hacks. Which is fine, as Santosh mentioned, for example, If your computer isn’t working, you just need 5 ways to fix your computer rather than understand how it works from scratch. However, When it comes to subjects you are deeply interested in, or subjects that your livelihood depends on, just gaining a superficially understanding and using templates doesn't help. When you do your own thinking, when you ask simple questions and compare your ideas with other alternatives, you not only develop a deeper understanding but begin to realize the limitation and utility of existing templates or solutions
2. Importance of Thinking by First Principle - One of the ways to develop original perspectives is doing First principle thinking - It is basically a mode of thinking where you constantly ask the "why" question until you reach a point that has no underlying “why”. For example - Why do you listen to The Break School. Because you want to learn how to do what you love and make a living out of it. But why is it important to do what you love? Because you spend at least 9 to 10 hours on some activity everyday, to earn a living. So if you are going to spend 70% of your life's time (ignoring the time you sleep) on something, isn’t it important you love and enjoy what your do. But why is it important to enjoy what you do? Because otherwise you are constantly stressed, you don’t feel the motivation to get better, you seek superficial and harmful ways to gain pleasure and most importantly you are not happy. But why is it important to be happy? Well I leave you with that question. You may also want to check out this article on first principle thinking by Farnam street.
3. Second Order Thinking - Second Order thinking is when you don’t just look at the immediate consequences of your action but you understand the chain reaction it will cause. As discussed in the episode, Monetary incentives in organisation do work, people at an individual level, do respond to it. However, in the long term, it creates a culture where everything becomes transactional, people begin to hoard work and internal competition supersedes Collaboration, which is extremely crucial to produce great work. To develop second order thinking, you have to stop viewing your actions in isolation and look at the entire system you are operating in. In our example the system is the Organisation. You can check this article on second order thinking by Farnam street.