Decoding Our Beethoven's Einstein's and Leonardo Da Vinci's - Aditya Yadav

1. *
“Running an Agile Fortune 500 Company”
Aditya Yadav, aditya.yadav@gmail.com
in.linkedin.com/in/adityayadav76

2. * A Typical Global Company
* Fortune 500/1000
* 200 Divisions
* 40 Countries
* 25000 Employees
*

3. *
@ Acme Inc.

4. * Original Question “How do we replicate
Excellence?”
* The Correct Question - “Lets understand
Excellence, and then probably answer that”
*

5. *
And The Philosophy Behind The Answer

6. * Rather than construct a definition of
Excellence
* We define what our Beethoven’s, Einstein’s and
Leonardo Da Vinci’s do as Pinnacles of Human
Excellence
* What’s so special about them?
*

7. * We generally tend to associate Creativity more with Excellence than
Derivative Works
* Yet most people think that creativity requires some special, magical
"gift" that simply cannot be explained. The reality is that there's not
much difference between ordinary thought and highly creative
thought
* We ought to be annoyed by our ignorance of how we get ideas - and
not just our "creative" ones. Were so accustomed to the marvels of
the unusual that we forget how little we know about the marvels of
ordinary thinking.
* Perhaps our superstitions about creativity serve some other needs,
such as supplying us with heroes with such special qualities that,
somehow, our deficiencies seem more excusable.
*** (Ref: Prof. Marvin Minsky, MIT, Media Labs)
*

8. * There is nothing basically different in a genius, except for having an
unusual combination of abilities, none very special by itself.
* There must be some intense concern with some subject, but that's
common enough.
* There also must be great proficiency in that subject; this, too, is not
so rare.
* There has to be enough self-confidence to stand against the scorn of
peers; alone, we call that stubbornness.
* And certainly, there must be common sense.
* Any ordinary person who can understand an ordinary conversation
has already in his head most of what our heroes have. So, why can't
"ordinary, common sense" - when better balanced and more fiercely
motivated - make anyone a genius?
*

9. * Why doesn't everyone acquire such a combination?
* First, of course, its sometimes just the accident of finding a novel way to look at things. But, then, there may be certain kinds of difference-in-
degree.
* One is in how such people learn to manage what they learn: beneath the surface of their mastery, creative people must have unconscious
administrative skills that knit the many things they know together.
* The other difference is in why some people learn so many more and better skills. A good composer masters many skills of phrase and theme - but so
does anyone who talks coherently.
* Why do some people learn so much so well? The simplest hypothesis is that they've come across some better ways to learn! Perhaps such "gifts" are
little more than tricks of "higher-order" expertise.
* Geniuses, play inside their head with
* things they have learnt,
* want to learn and
* learning, improving and rearranging the way they learn
* That’s the quintessential definition of a Genius
* And that’s everything wrong with our organizations
* We rarely keep learning
* We rarely have the time to reflect or given the time choose to reflect on what we have learnt
* We don’t want to learn more, and want to stay in our niche and specialize or not even that
* And we rarely Learn and Improve upon How We Learn!
* And we hire people for what they have done(!!!) in the past, and not even what they have learnt and let alone the other things necessary for being
a genius
* Being a genius is rarely rewarded in the industry compared to complying with and measuring up on mindless measures of what we have done in the
past.
*

10. * Our cultures don't encourage us to think much about learning.
Instead we regard it as something that just happens to us.
* But learning must itself consist of sets of skills we grow ourselves; we
start with only some of them and slowly grow the rest.
* Why don't more people keep on learning more and better learning
skills? Because it's not rewarded right away, its payoff has a long
delay.
* When children play with pails and sand, they're usually concerned
with goals like filling pails with sand. But once a child concerns itself
instead with how to better learn, then that might lead to exponential
learning growth!
* Each better way to learn to learn would lead to better ways to learn
- and this could magnify itself into an awesome, qualitative change.
* Thus, first-rank "creativity" could be just the consequence of little
childhood accidents.
*

11. * Knowledge work can be derivative or creative - When you have a lot of
formal frameworks and models to create results your work is derivative. In
the absence of those and probably just using metaphors, analogies and
patterns the work is mostly creative.
* Derivative work requires learning the Process more.
* But the process of Learning and Learning How To Learn Applies to both.
* Also we take a very factor based approach of identifying Excellence. The
slide on “Combination” explains why that can never succeed in doing so.
* Also r’ber Genius’s “Will Fail Factor Tests” e.g. Maths, or some other
courses or competitions.
* Also r’ber that historically ALL OUR GENIUSES HAVE BEEN GENERALISTS or
SPECIALIZED GENERALISTS
* Organizations DEMANDING EXCELLENCE won’t succeed. They have to value
and reward Genius’s and Learning, and appreciate the Effort Spent in
Learning, and also appreciate Learning New Ways To Learn
* All current and future Geniuses have mastered the Art of Learning
*

12. * How do we replicate Excellence?
* We hire Genius’s (See Definition)
* We Invest in, support and promote Learning
* We help Learning New Ways to Learn
* And do away with our legacy organizational concepts of
Excellence defined in terms of mindless targets,
processes, obsession with perfection, …
* This presentation has extensively paraphrased from
Prof. Marvin Minsky and MIT Media Labs
* Please consider doing this course to understand
learning and to learn new ways to learn
* http://learn.media.mit.edu/course.html
*

13. Aditya!!!
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