Portability in learning and leadership

One can stay all his/her life in a hutment just outside of a large temple and can live the entire life on alms. At age 74 this person may have a life of learning but alas all that experience is very limited to subsisting on alms.

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The experience is living a “full live”, making lots of different efforts. At every stage of the life, there is a good point in putting efforts and gain experience in multiple things or acquisition of vertical depth in singular efforts if the avenue is appropriate. There is always a good idea to have lofty goals, put serious and considered efforts to fulfill them and be ready to embrace failure. At my elementary school (called primary school in many countries) from grade 1 to grade 5th, we had a great head teacher Ms. Sudama Sengupta. She told us two things repetitively: to achieve something you must have (1) a desire and (2) put wholehearted effort for it. One is empty or meaningless with the other. ?As grown-up adult I now appreciate her repetition, without that it should not be ingrained in the minds of a student like me.

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Alan Mullaly grew up as an aeronautical and astronautical engineering expert. Lived in that industry and went on to become CEO of Boeing. A lifetime learning at air and/or air space industry. He had no problem in portability of that experience to Ford Motor company and be a successful President and CEO in car industry. This is not a singular example, many such exists. Max Delbruck, a notable student of Max Born won a Nobel prize in Physiology and Medicine. Born on the other hand was a Nobel winner in Physics. Delbruck as a PhD student worked on Quantum Mechanics, crossed the Atlantic arrived at a new country and worked to elucidate the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses. Portability of learning-from quantum physics to viral biology!

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Any constructive experience is good. Failures in them often teach us much more than success. Today’s failures are tomorrow’s success, provided we take the experience to put more efforts to fulfil the desire. In the Up from Slavery Chapter 5, Booker T. Washington so eloquently illustrated the gap between desire (want) and the effort and resource generation. Chapter 10 in the same book is a good narrative about desire and extraordinary effort so that they can build a place to dine.

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The leadership comes at many levels. It is to see what is not working. What could work better and then make an earnest effort to make a concerted effort to achieve a different way to better something what is not working. Leadership is also to visualize what exists now and what they could be. To borrow from Bernard Shaw, “Dream things that do not exist today and ask why not”. All these with a broad lens can be learned in one place and transported to another place as a leader. The honest, integrity and appetite for failure is an integral part of this learning transportability. Those are very important for a successful leader. And yes often they are able to demonstrate portability of their experience and learning.