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As I finish my “SDA Application Portfolio” series I think about the utility of the knowledge gained in this class. It was one of those classes where you are not taught how financial instruments work, how brand management is done, nor how profitability is calculated. There were no formulas to memorize, no equations to be remembered. It did not go into the world of marketers or traders, it did not made me analyze a country’s economic growth, it did not teach me how to increase ROI. Yet, it taught me all that and more.

You may ask – What was this course? How does it fit into the MBA curriculum? How will it help you in the long run? Answers will follow.

This course was called “Strategic Decision Analysis”. It was a course that harnessed the power of analysis and thinking in order to take decisions and increase your chances of success. The course introduced many concepts such as Negotiations, Prisoner’s Dilemma, Voting, and Auctions, among others. But more than that, this course provided insight into how a human mind works and what it thinks. You don’t need to be a CFA, a Six Sigma black belt holder, or a Statistics major to understand all this. All you need is common sense thinking and more importantly what the other person is thinking.

It fits well into an MBA curriculum because it is expected of us to go out and take decisions. Difficult decisions. Decisions that will affect companies, people, nations. Decisions that will alter the way you live, you eat, you sleep, and all that in between. How can you take such decisions and maximize your chances to take the right kind of decisions? Note that when you are taking the decisions there is always someone else taking a similar type of decision. You have one goal – to win in this duel of decision making. Because if you don’t win, somebody else takes all the glory or the pain associated with the decision. This course, in part, was about maximizing your chances to win.

With knowledge comes great power. But also comes with it the “curse of knowledge”. It is dangerous and can be applied dangerously. An incomplete assessment of your own understanding of the knowledge can actually lead to disaster. So it becomes important that we become competent in the use of this powerful knowledge and how we apply it.

The reason I am stressing this is because the knowledge is not just limited to the world of business. Your understanding of six sigma will not make you a great husband, a great father. But this knowledge is different. It spans our daily life and our relationships. Thus it becomes more important to understand the subject matter closely and intimately. The most important piece of this knowledge is – knowing what the other person is thinking. Not what you know and think. Bluntly speaking – you need to drop your ego from the equation to apply this knowledge. You have to stop force fitting because there are ample opportunities to do so. One formula to apply this knowledge is this –> First, you need to drop what you know. Second, know what the other person knows. Third, apply what you know and what the other person does not know. What you know is what you have learnt from this course, from your observations, and from the uncommon common sense that has been bestowed upon you.

Final thought – Always remember – Cooperation is better than defection! It will become all too apparent for you to defect with this knowledge. With this toolkit in hand, you will take decisions that go against the grain of this thought, that of cooperation. Recognize such tendencies, observe your thought process, re-evaluate the knowledge, and then apply it again.

It is now almost trite to say ‘Common sense in not common‘. We all know this. Ironically though, everybody, including yours truly, strongly believes that he/she has that “common” sense.

Then what is this common sense. Why is this uncommon and why does everybody think they seem to possess it?

Symptom 1 : Curse of knowledge

Partly, I think it is to do with today’s world and the environment we live in. There is an abundance of knowledge everywhere. At the same time, we are forced to have a steep learning curve because of the nature of our profession. What this leads to is learning but not to understanding. What I mean is this – Because we have to assimilate so much in such a short duration, instead of experiencing or living the knowledge one step at a time we have decided to memorize and move ahead. Unless the knowledge is not experimented with we don’t develop that intuitive instinct that separates an expert from a generalist. Look at great painters, musicians, and architects. Each of them understands a brush, a guitar string, and a brick respectively. That is why they are able to innovate. They are able to derive something from them a common man does not see. Something obvious, yet hidden. Common sense.

Symptom 2: Challenge me!!!

There is another aspect which can be directly or otherwise derived from the first analysis. We have been fed on complexity – complex puzzles, complex exams, complex movies, complex workstyle, and so on. It seems that we are ingrained with the thought that what sounds simple is not that simple. With time, they turn out opposite. What was thought complex, was very simple. There is a story of a great mathematician who was giving one of the most difficult exams (in those days). He got stuck in a problem and was unable to solve it. Desperate, he started looking around the room and saw the most stupid guy in the class had completed the problem. Naturally, he felt both amazement and jealousy at the same time. After pondering for a few seconds he thought why not approach the problem simply. After all thats the best a stupid guy can do. Problem solved. We tend to see and approach a problem as if it has a twist, something hidden. But if we just take a step back and remove that thought from our mind, we will see that the problem was simple, easy, intuitive. Common sense.

Symptom 3: You know, I’m lazy.

Finally, there is a lack of discipline that forbade us from practicing common sense thus eroding it from our minds. When we hear a learned guru speak about how to conduct your life, don’t we say – Common sense, man. When we read about how to organize our time and work, don’t we say – that’s obvious, but can’t do. There are so many more examples. Following common sense forces us to come out of our comfort zone, makes us do things uncommon in our environment. We cringe from it. Hide behind an excuse. But don’t you think you will benefit immensely by following these many small baby easy steps diligently. Common sense.

DIY

Do an experiment and test my hypothesis. Approach day to day problems simply. Without branding it difficult, complex, one-of-a-kind. Act on it based on the first solution that comes to mind. Trust your instincts. Check the results. If what I feel is correct, you will see a sea change in your attitude towards problems, towards challenges, towards everyone else. Your “common sense” will come back to you. Common sense!!!!