Good Morning edwardlorilla1986.paxforex@blogger.com,
It’s 8 pm on a Friday night and I’m on a Zoom call with Ronnie Screwvala, the chairperson and co-founder of upGrad, an online higher education company last valued at over US$2.2 billion.
Screwvala is in a car and the light from passing cars lights up his face on and off as we’re speaking. I’m on my Mac and Screwvala is on his phone.
“Each of us are a part and product of the choices we make,” he says. He is replying to my question about his favourite mental model or First Principle when it comes to major decisions at upGrad.
I’m lost for a moment as I try to process what he said. To a question about how to make the right choices, Screwvala had just told me that we are a product of those choices. That was very, umm, meta.
Mind you, metacognition is a thing when it comes to decision making. While “typical” decision making is about evaluating the pros and cons required to arrive at a decision, metacognitive decision making zooms out one level and looks at how you’re making decisions about decisions.
I ask Screwvala to elaborate on what he meant. “I’m talking about placing yourself at the centre of your choices and decision making. In the first person. Most of us place ourselves in the third person. We don’t own our choices,” he says.
I think I’m starting to get his answer. The “first person versus third person” is an important construct for both writers and journalists. The vantage point or perspective of a storyteller changes the way a story is perceived by a reader. The “Rashomon Effect”.
But is the same true of decision making? We end up making a lot of decisions on auto mode, with no sense of how we’re placed as the decision makers. If a storyteller’s vantage point affects the story, wouldn’t a decision maker's vantage point affect the decision?
“Third-person” decision making, to me, is when we haven’t spent enough time interrogating ourselves on why we’re making a decision, and what we truly believe in. We try to distance ourselves from the decision in order to bring about some notion of objectivity, I suppose.
“Most of the time, people are in the third-person because they’re scared of the consequences,” says Screwvala. “When we’re centred on the first-person, the choices we make also tend to increase the accountability on yourself.”
Though Screwvala had used the word “centre” earlier, I had missed it. This time I’m able to immediately grasp the concept of “centering”. Though it has a different meaning in the context of meditation and mindfulness, I could see Screwvala’s perspective. Centering our decision-making perspective means examining our own deep beliefs and giving them adequate importance. At the risk of walking into philosophical territory, we become an indelible part of our decisions. A product of the choices we make.
“I’ve two very good friends who are my age,” says the 67-year-old Screwvala. “They’ve both hung up their boots and now find it hard to see me spend 14 hours a day. But since I’ve taken that choice, it's helped me take away futile time trying to impress them or others. I’ve already visualised myself doing what I do,” he says.
I think this edition turned out a bit more meta and philosophical than usual, and I have Screwvala to thank for that. If you want to listen to my full conversation with him from earlier this year, do follow the link below.
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