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Class Connection: Value focused thinking

I had read a book during my spring break called ‘Predictably Irrational’. psss….I think I am loving these kind of books now. This books talks about the various irrational decisions a rational person takes, such as, feeling better with a expensive drug as compared to a cheap over the counter medicine, stealing office supplies but not money, and etc. etc. But the interesting premise is that we tend to behave irrationally in a very predictable fashion. Unh!

For the purpose of this article, I want to discuss one such irrationality we display. In chapter 8, the author, Dan Ariely, discusses Why options distract us from our main objective? He cites several examples where given a choice between easy path and low rewards now vs. difficult path but high rewards later, people tend to choose the former. Another example talks about Xiang Yu who led an army against the Ch’in Dynasty.  While his troops slept, he burned his ships and smashed all the cooking pots.  He explained to his troops that they had to either fight their way to victory or die.  His troops won 9 consecutive battles.  Eliminating options improved the focus of his troops.

That brings me to the topic of value focused thinking. If we start with our objectives, then also we will have options/alternatives. But will they tend to distract us? I don’t think so because the options will directly stem out of the main objective. Again, yes we are irrational, and this step of listing the options will have to be made rationally. I am of an opinion that to remove this fallacy from our thinking, it is important that we try to build this habit of value focused thinking and sooner or later, our decision making process will be more streamlined and rewarding.

P.S. The author also has a website. Check it out for a good read.

Class Connection: Value Focused Thinking

After receiving my admission offer from Goizueta, I soon received my first assignment. Go to CareerBuilder (http://www.careerbuilder.com) website and take the tests. In a matter of few hours, the online application spitted out a few career alternatives for me.

The survey was very unique in the sense that it did not start with the alternatives but by asking what I was looking for in my career and what skill sets I believed I had. This is a classic example of value based thinking over alternative based thinking. When in India, our parents (I should say that a large proportion of current/past generation) had only three alternatives for their children’s future. If male, 1) get into family business (if any) 2) become a doctor (anything) 3) become an engineer (mechanical, electrical and more recently computer science). If female, replace the first and third option with ‘get married’. Once the alternatives were decided, logical justification of the choices were made that included everything from social status to affluence to foreign trips.

Coming to US (more recently Goizueta) and going through the CareerBuilder exercise, opened before me a new way of assessing and deciding careers. I had to take three tests that would answer one fundamental question – “What will my ideal career choice be?” The career builder site had the following tests:

1. BCII (Business Career Interest Inventory): To discover what my interests in business work are. In other words, help me define my fundamental objectives.
2. MPRP (Management and Professional Rewards Profile): To help me prioritize what really is motivating to me in work. Alternatively said, what makes my fundamental objectives fundamental?
3. MPAP (Management and Professional Abilities): To help me identify my top abilities in business work.

After finishing my tests, the application provided me a detailed report at the beginning of which were listed my top career choices (what should be and not what I intended it to be). Following that were detailed explanations and reasoning behind the choices (alternatives) provided. Thus, we moved not from “alternatives” to “goals” but from “what are the goals” to “what alternatives I have” or “what alternatives I should explore”.

What did Career Leader tell me to be? Well, that discussion is for another day.