Daniel Barenboim conducts...learning to lead like the great conductors

Daniel Barenboim conducting the West Eastern Divan Orchestra

The BBC Proms, on TV this week, features the West Eastern Divan Orchestra playing the complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies, conducted by Daniel Barenboim. The West Eastern Divan Orchestra are an ensemble of accomplished musicians from the Middle East, with a compelling story about trying to bring understanding and harmony to that troubled region; they are playing Beethoven's symphonies, unquestionably some of the greatest music ever conceived. Yet the advertising tag-line reads "Daniel Barenboim conducts...". Is this fair? Does the conductor add so much value that he deserves to be the headline act?

I don't have a closed-ended answer to that question, but I am convinced that a conductor adds real value. This is thanks a one of the most memorable business leadership development programs I've attended - The Music Paradigm, with Roger Nierenberg.

This program is built on the premise that a leader in a business corporation is like the conductor of an orchestra. In a business, a machinist, statistician or accountant knows much more about her or his speciality then the Vice President or General Manager every will, like in an orchestra, the violinist, flautist or cellist are more skilled at their respective instruments than the conductor will ever be. The General Manager or the conductor is needed to bring the amazing individual performers together, harmoniously, to make music. The Music Paradigm session starts with members of the class, like me, sitting in the midst of the orchestra. Gradually, as everyone gets comfortable with the setting, members of the class volunteer to step up to the podium, pick up the baton, and conduct the orchestra (with Roger Nierenberg's help).

Roger Nierenberg helps a first-time conductor

What made the Music Paradigm unique, different from the dozens of other team-building or leadership development sessions I've attended, was the experience of stepping up to the podium, picking up the baton, and hearing this virtuoso orchestra responding to your gestures by making music. That was powerful, memorable, profoundly emotional, and completely unlike anything I had felt before.

My classmates and I had a debrief after the Music Paradigm session, and our takeaways were very consistent. We all were NT personalities in the Myers Briggs' framework; science or engineering majors who had experienced success as problem solvers. We were veterans of various leadership programs, and had several years of people management experience. We were used to thinking about leadership in terms of setting direction, getting buy-in or sponsorship, pulling together resources, defining roles and responsibilities, setting up incentives - as a series of problems to be solved. What we were less used to was leadership as an emotional experience. Music as a metaphor made it obvious that a conductor's, or leader's, main contribution is in establishing an emotional connection with the players and with the music, that that emotional connection makes the difference between a competent professional performance, and something that sounds very different, an inspired or visionary performance. My classmates and I may not have disagreed with that thought on a PowerPoint slide, but music brought it home in a way that PowerPoint can't.

Itay Talgam's TED talk makes the same point, with video clips of some of the twentieth century's greatest conductors in action. Maybe the next iteration of this talk will include Daniel Barenboim conducting the West Eastern Divan Orchestra. Enjoy...

Ithaka is to some what Tatooine is to others

Luke Skywalker strides towards the twin sunset on Tatooine

I'd posted yesterday about the poem "Keep Ithaka always in the mind", in which Ithaka is a metaphor for home, for integrity. Other classical traditions have their own Ithakas, their own sacred places that stand for integrity. For instance, Star Wars fans might think of Tatooine - the desert planet in a galaxy far, far away where Luke Skywalker was raised - as their Ithaka.

The mythic, metaphorical Ithaka has a physical analogue: the island of Ithaki in western Greece. It turns out that Tatooine also has a physical analogue: Tataouine, in southern Tunisia.

George Lucas filmed the desert landscapes of Tatooine on location in Tunisia, the Breber architecture in Tataouine is recognizably the inspiration behind Luke Skywalker's childhood home. Apparently, he borrowed the name of a local town as well. Adherents of the Jedi faith are now making pilgrimages to Tataouine. The World's latest Technology podcast has a story about a Jedi knight, Mark from Norwich, who got married at Tataouine.

If only the people in power would uphold Britain's traditions of tolerance and include the Jedi religion on the census questionnaire, conversion to the Jedi faith would hit a tipping point...pilgrim traffic to the Tunisian Sahara would take off...the Tunisian economy would improve...the Arab Spring would be reinforced...inexpensive and effective nation-building in the Arab world!

Berber granaries in Tataouine, Tunisia

Keep Ithaka always in your mind...

Came across another classically inspired poem. This time, I didn't randomly spot it on the tube. It came to my inbox in a farewell email from a Greek colleague, Clementina, who dedicated these lines to us:

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean. 

Ithaka as a metaphor for integrity reminds me of:

"You, who are on the road, 
must have a code, 
that you can live by. 

And so become yourself...".

Ithaka is where you learn that code, the code itself, and where you get to when you've lived by that code. Echoes of the Bhagavad Gita as well, "not expecting Ithaka to make you rich" maps directly to "कर्मण्ये वाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन".

Clementina found some beautiful words with which to acknowledge us, her colleagues, for being a part of her unhurried, marvellous journey, her Odyssey. Cheers Clementina! May Ithaka remain always in your mind.

Jan Morris' Fourth World: In Praise of Idleness

Ox Travels has been resident on my bedside table for several months now. This is a collection of stories by travel writers, each story based on a meeting or encounter that happened while on the road. The stories are evocative, charming, and at about ten pages per piece, are not too demanding - ideal for a dip into another world before drifting off to sleep.

One story I just read in this collection is The Fourth World, by Jan Morris. The Fourth World is Morris' term for the virtual nation of kind people around the world, who together should be a powerful force for the good:

"My own experience, after seventy odd years of the meandering life, is that there exists a kind of vast supranational community whose citizens are essentially kind.

...the qualities of this virtual nation of mine can be elusive...But I know them by now, and I recognize them in all their myriad guises. I have recognized the signs in statesmen as in housewives, in taxi-drivers as in actresses and tycoons - a look in the eye, a smile, a gurgle of laughter is often enough. I knew I was in the presence of an initiate when, one day in the high Himalayas, alone in the high snows, I met a wandering holy man with whom I shared not a word or even a gesture, just an instinct.

...over the years I have come to realize that these people constitute a vast and powerful freemasonry...

I think of them one and all of constituting a Fourth World of their own...an association as wide and varied as my Grand Diaspora, bound only by decency and humour, would surely be unconquerable..."

Morris proceeds to give an Edinburgh barmaid an impassioned spiel about the latent force of the Fourth World, which is the "encounter" in the story. Regardless, I found this notion of the Fourth World seductive. My experience is also that most people, everywhere, are basically kind. I went to sleep thinking that, surely, basic human decency, kindness, the latent power of the Fourth World, will be harnessed one day to make the world a better place.

When I woke up, however, I remembered a paper I read in B-School which shows why it is so hard to engage the power of the Fourth World. Basically, people are kind when they have time on their hands. The same people stop being kind when they get busy.

The paper in question is "From Jerusalem to Jericho: A study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behaviour", by Darley and Batson (thank you Google). This study looks at whether or not people stop to help a man slumped in an alleyway, moaning with pain; whether or not people behave like the Good Samaritan in the biblical parable. It found that people with time on their hands stopped to help. Those who were under time pressure, including those who were bustling off to give a lecture on the Parable of the Good Samaritan, did not help. This wasn't a small effect, it was observed in almost all the subjects of this study. People with time were kind, people who were in a hurry were not.

Looked at this way, Fourth World citizenship is situational. It increases when people are feeling time-rich. Perhaps the best thing organized religion did to promote kindness was to enforce the sabbath, to give people the experience of being time-rich, to create a space where time is in our hands, where we're not in the hands of time.

Idleness serves a deep moral purpose, as citizens of the Fourth World and bloggers know...

Chorus from Hellas, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, on the London Underground

Spent fifteen minutes or so staring at these words on the London Underground:

The world`s great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn:
Heaven smiles, and faith and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
Against the morning star.
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore... 

This poem is Chorus from Hellas, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, an explicitly political piece. At the time it was written, Greece had been an Ottoman colony for over three hundred years, and was fighting for independence. The English romantic poets were deeply exercised by the Greek cause.

Shelley wrote these words while raising money for Greek partisans, showing a strong pan-European sensibility; it's possible to read this poem as a creation hymn for the European Union, written one hundred and thirty years before the Treaty of Rome. Unfortunately, now, "wreaks of a dissolving dream" also bring to mind the financial havoc in Greece, and the dissolving dream of Europe.   

Thank you to Transport For London for making room for Shelley on the tube. It would have been so easy to fill this space with yet another advert. 

Maria Sharapova finding her way back to the top is special

Nike, one of Maria Sharapova’s main sponsors, just brought out a new advert to celebrate their girl’s return to grand slam glory and the #1 ranking. It reads “Those Who Belong at the Top Never Forget Their Way Back”. Nike have got the story the precisely the wrong way around. Maria’s return to the top after years in the wilderness is so thrilling, so heartening, because so many who belong at the top lose their footing momentarily, and then never find their way back. The complete narrative arc - of young glory, years in the wilderness, and a triumphant return – is rare. Returning to the top is even harder than staying at the top. The natural course is for young glory to melt away into a career of middling mediocrity, or worse.

Perhaps I’m conditioned to expect gifted youngsters to go slip-slidin’ away into nothing because of the scars I carry as a long-suffering supporter of the Indian cricket team.

Laxman Sivaramakrishnan

To me, one of the greatest moments in cricket history happened in the Benson and Hedges Cup finals at the MCG in 1985, when Javed Miandad was stumped by Sadanand Vishwanath off Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, to top off a glorious Australian campaign for both young men. India beat Pakistan, Sunil Gavaskar held aloft the trophy, the team lapped the MCG in Ravi Shastri’s Audi...all of creation was shouting out that the Sadanand and Siva belonged at the top. Yet, after that golden start, both Sadanand and LS tragically lost their way, like Maninder Singh, Raman Lamba, Surinder Amarnath, Vinod Kambli, Salil Ankola, Abey Kuruvilla, Vivek Razdan, Sadagoppan Ramesh, Praveen Amre and Narendra Hirwani, potentially like Yuvraj Singh, Irfan Pathan, Ishant Sharma and Sreesanth. I’m painfully used to seeing talented youngsters, who had glorious starts to their careers, burn out or fade away.

Tracy Austin

Tennis too has had its share of shining young stars who don’t go on to achieve very much. Tracy Austin once looked like Chris Evert’s heir. Chris Evert won eighteen slams, Tracy won her second and last grand slam when she was nineteen. Andrea Jeager, another of Chris Evert's heirs, didn’t manage even one. Gabriela Sabatini won just one slam, disappointing for someone long considered Steffi Graf's peer. Dinara Safina and Jelena Jankovic rose to world #1 and fell back into the pack without winning a single slam, Ana Ivanovic managed one. Anastasia Myskina pipped Maria Sharapova to become the first Russian to win a slam when she won the French Open in 2004, a month before Maria beat Serena Williams to win Wimbledon. Anastasia Myskina hasn’t won a slam since, and hasn’t played professional tennis since 2007.

There are exceptions, of course. Zaheer Khan returned from the wilderness to spearhead India to the #1 test ranking and the World Cup. Jennifer Capriati showed real character in winning three slams after kicking her well-reported drug problems. Kim Clisters is justly one of tennis’ favourite players, for coming back from retirement, and motherhood, to win back-to-back US Opens. Regardless, the pattern of young stars quickly fading away is strong and persistent.

So, when Maria Sharapova won back to-back slams in 2008, had shoulder surgery, and vanished from view, I assumed she was following that established pattern. This was an especially easy assumption to make about Maria, since she had every opportunity to follow in the footsteps of her compatriot Anna Kournikova, and settle for the plush life of an A-list celebrity, earning many millions endorsing designer handbags and wrist watches. I darkly suspect Caroline Wozniacki is making peace with that kind of mediocrity: she just launched a range of designer undergarments, branded the Caroline Wozniacki Collection.

Fortunately for tennis, Maria didn’t settle for mediocrity. She looked within, and said yeh dil maange more. Fortunately for tennis, Maria Sharapova found the spunk, the guts, the gumption and the game to deliver on her fierce desire. Ave Maria!

Is Mark Zuckerberg richer than Mr Darcy?

This picture of Mark Zuckerberg’s wedding with Priscilla Chan was one of the few truly heart warming images from the last few weeks. This picture was so heart-warming because I learnt something new: I didn’t know Zuckerberg’s girlfriend was Asian. This knowledge re-framed the Zuckerberg wedding for me, as a fellow Asian. This isn’t just another wedding photo any more. It is now the picture of every Tiger Mom’s most fervent dream coming true. Dennis and Yvonne Chan, ex-refugee immigrants who ran a Chinese takeaway in Boston, must be so happy with their multi-billionaire son-in-law. How nice for them!

As my heart warmed to the Chan family’s good fortune, I started slipping into an authentic Tiger Mom mindset, and some more tough-minded thoughts took shape. A good Tiger Mom would do some rigorous competitive benchmarking. She would ask herself, “Mark Zuckerberg is a nice boy, but is he really rich enough for Priscilla? Is he as rich as Mrs. Bennet's son-in-law, Mr. Darcy? You know, the one they want to marry Elizabeth off to?”

It turns out Mrs Chan need not have worried, her son-in-law compares very well with Mrs Bennet’s son-in-law. Jane Austen tells us that Mr Darcy had an income of ten thousand pounds per year, in 1810, in England. Converted into today’s money, that is about $600,000 per year. That is a tidy income, but feels distinctly imaginable, more affluent-professional than masters-of-the-universe, certainly not the kind of money that animates the Occupy Wall Street movement. A self respecting Tiger Mom would wish more for her children.

So, is that game, set and match to Mrs Chan? Was Mr Darcy really no better off than assorted corporate vice presidents? Mr Darcy owned half of Derbyshire and employed a vast domestic staff, but he couldn’t buy an asprin, or watch the World Cup finals on HDTV. Can one really compare his situation to ours? To whatever extent comparisons are possible, it seems like our living standards have improved so much that millions of upper middle class professionals enjoy a quality of life that is equivalent to that of the most privileged landed aristocrats just two hundred years ago, which is a comforting thought in these troubled times.

Mrs. Bennet’s partisans might argue that relative income matters more than absolute income. This is reasonable. Behavioural economics and evolutionary biology suggest that people care more about status than about absolute living standards. Mr Darcy was high status, certainly higher status than the armies of contemporary upper middle class professionals who share his living standards. But how does his relative income or status compare with Mark Zuckerberg?

The American academic James Heldman tells us that Mr Darcy’s income of 10,000 pounds per year was 300 times the per capita income in his day. The per capita income in today’s America is $48,000, so a contemporary Mr Darcy would make approximately $15 million per annum, which is starting to feel appropriately rarified. Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune is at least $10 billion. If that earns risk free returns of 2% p.a., that is an income of $200 million, which is an order of magnitude more than what our contemporary Mr Darcy makes.

James Heldman also refers to the economic historian G.E. Mingay, who estimates that there were only 400 families among the landed gentry of England with an income in the range of 5,000 to 50,000 pounds per annum, with the average being about 10,000. To keep things simple, lets say that puts Mr Darcy in at about the 200th richest man in his England. Mark Zuckerberg is the 14th richest person in his America, trumping Mr Darcy once again, without any fiddly adjustments for the larger population in today’s America. However one looks at the numbers, our contemporary Tiger Mom Mrs. Chan has outperformed the proto-Tiger Mom Mrs. Bennet.

At this point, the top performing Tiger Mom in the jungle would need to pause, offer the other Tiger Moms a cup of tea, and initiate a conversation about how money doesn’t really matter, that there are many qualitative things like character and compatiability that make a marriage successful. This blog would like to join the Tiger Moms in drinking a cup of tea. This blog would also like to wish all happiness to the newlyweds Mark and Priscilla. May they play many Limca Cuts.