In October this year, I was thrilled to learn that economist Esther Duflo had been awarded the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, along with two others – Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer.
I have been following Esther for a while now – she is the youngest person and second woman to win this, the youngest professor to secure tenure at MIT at age 29, co-founder of Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action lab and author of a best-selling book Good Economics for Hard Times! Over the last few years, I have frequently read about her and watched several of her insightful and inspiring interviews/videos on the work she has been doing to tackle a BIG global problem – Poverty. In fact, it was her experimental approach to alleviating global poverty that won her the Nobel Prize.
Recently, I watched an interesting episode of HARDtalk on BBC and was intrigued by the underlying theme of the interview – Esther’s approach to problem solving. She believes that irrespective of the kind of work we do and are responsible for, the most effective way to solve/tackle a big problem or challenge is to break it down to smaller, manageable projects or ‘dots’ as she refers to them.
Each of these little dots will help us understand and deal with one aspect of the big problem. Together, the smaller dots which focus on smaller questions, eventually come together to form the big, macro picture with little issues, bugs and kinks addressed with rigorous answers. What I love most about this approach is how it makes sense to all of us, irrespective of our roles, the industries we work in, and the skills we possess.
To consider the most basic and literal analogy – in design – every picture or image is actually a composition of small dots called ‘Pixels’.
Another aspect of Esther’s approach that really struck a chord with me is that it allows every dot to function independently and develop its own learning curve and failure path. It also makes it possible for us to compare dots with each other to understand what worked, why it worked and what didn’t. Understanding and analysing this data empowers us to scale and replicate effectively. It also allows us to ‘fail fast and learn fast’ – acknowledging and accepting what didn’t work enables us to move on to a fresh, new dot, equipped with all the learnings from the previous one.
However, while creating multiple dots is great, sometimes, we also need to ‘connect the dots’ ourselves at some point to get the bigger picture. And that’s where people come in – co-workers, friends, partners, teams, groups – we all have a part to play. So, it is important that we learn from each other and support one another till all the dots are connected.
A great example of this was earlier this year in August, during our quarterly meet, when my leadership team and I talked about how we could employ a similar approach to deliver results – team by team, client by client, brand by brand, country by country… with each of us taking leadership responsibility for the small dots to drive success and bring value as One IBM to our clients, partners and people.
On the personal front as well, I can’t help but remember the age-old adage – “Tiny drops make a mighty ocean”. Though technically Esther’s approach and this proverb mean the same thing, the former works beautifully when addressing a challenge or a problem and the latter works on our psyche – encouraging us to be perseverant, dedicated and resilient while we take on challenges that may arise on the journey to achieving our goals.
Earlier this week, I chanced upon this blog by Arianna Huffington where she talks about how small habits can lead to big changes – small, actionable and science-backed micro-steps we can all take to make immediate changes in our daily life and form new, good habits that are more likely to stick.
Irrespective of the challenges we face, I believe it’s important we ensure all the ‘dots’ we create eventually form a Gaia of consistent, sustainable and profitable growth… a constellation of success that we need to build on – personally or for business.