Several years ago, I had attended a seminar by a renowned management Guru who at that point, some of us had labelled as a PKIA (Pompous Know It All). The seminar was about learning how to developing a Teachable Point Of View (TPOV). TPOV is a concept that was introduced by Noel Tichy and generally accepted as a fairly insightful concept. PKIA talked extensively about how a TPOV can be developed only through experience and thereby is extremely authentic/credible. The "Been There, Done That, Learnt From It" articulation helps bring positive/authentic change. People are less likely to question authentic ideas especially when articulated by somebody who brings that experience to the forte. In addition, the TPOV comes along with a repeatable and workable template that can make adoption of the practice faster.
However the PKIA was quite emphatic in how much chaos, a "POV" can create if it is not teachable. In his view, the intellectual POV (IPOV) which is cultivated by just reading something or hearsay information could be the equivalent of a nuclear bomb in the amount of catharsis that it can spread as people tend to debate endlessly over half baked information or even delusions, resulting in rhetoric diarrhea as opposed to getting a clarity of thought. He warned about how a connected world is going to make these intellectual delusions an order of the day. Very specifically, he talked about the cocktail of misinterpreted data, strong but pretentious articulation and dubious pedigree of the articulator can actually make a POV sound extremely realistic even if it has no bearing in reality. He cautioned the audience on forming a POV unless they can support it with experiential wisdom. In his view, don't stop reading or gaining intellectual know-how but if it really needs to translate to wisdom (Point of View), it will have to be substantiated by Field research or relevant experience. And he put a very delicate example to drive home the point. "You aren't going to learn swimming by reading the laws of physics on buoyancy". If you have understand the laws and also learnt swimming, then you have a TPOV else it is just pure know-how at best. Sure, you can teach it to a bunch of Physics students but not to a motley crew that turned up for a swimming class. The other thing that he cautioned was how the concept of debating becomes pointless if a IPOV is already formed. A TPOV improves the ability to listen but an IPOV almost always blinds it as the articulator gets into a defensive mode to somehow justify the lack of experiential wisdom by coming out with absurd/rhetoric arguments.
At that point, i did not fully comprehend as to where he was headed but looking at the drivel that goes on in FB or the media, couldn't stop admiring at how prophetic that he has been. Over the years, i have had several personal experiences which have proven how ridiculously daft, an IPOV can be.
Recently i had the fortune of reading a book written by my college senior Ajay Chaturvedi about the lost wisdom of the swastika (My review of the book can be found here.) , where he has articulated the same concepts, drawing upon his own experience. The following statement keep resonating and i couldn't stop admiring at how profound and how relevant it is in today's cacophonous world.
"Natural law is in being and experiencing. Not in defining and forcefully naming something"
Well w.r.t PKIA, i guess the real PKIA in the room was me :)
2 comments:
Reminds classical mechanics book. My intellect is not good enough.
Class Mech does ring a bell. Was that the horrid course that we had to do with the Physics guys with all kinds of complex mumbo jumbo?
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