male speaker: good afternoon,everyone. thanks a lot for coming out. it is my great pleasure towelcome prasad kaipa to authors at google. he's here today to talk abouthis book, "from smart to wise." and it's actually a greathonor to have him. dr. kaipa is an executive coach,mentor, author, and founder of the center forleadership, innovation, and
change at the union schoolof business. he is also a long-time partof silicon valley. he has presented. he has led executivedevelopment, career-coaching, everything at multiple differentcompanies here at silicon valley. and it's an honor to welcomehim to google today. so if we could please all givehim a big round of applause. [applause]
prasad kaipa: thank you. good afternoon. i think what today we'll talkabout is to look at why the smartness is the baseline now. it is no longer something thatgives us the privilege. when i was growing up in india,when i went to iit, that was something very,very special. or when i worked for applecomputer in the '80s, that was something very special.
but coming and givinga talk at google, everybody is very special. otherwise, they wouldn'tbe here. so from that aspect, it'slike a baseline. if the smartness is the newbaseline at google, and many of the silicon valley companiesat this moment, how would you stay one step ahead? how do you demonstratepersonal leadership? that is the theme whichi address a lot more.
so next step i thought i shouldlook at is, how many of you think you are smart? other people may feel thatyou are smart or not. but from your own perspective,would you raise your hands if it's an interesting scenario,because depending on different cultural context and norms,everybody has their own expectations and standardsof whether to raise their hands or not. can you keep it upfor one minute.
ok, great. so some of you didn'traise the hands. i won't exactly ask at thismoment why, but let me get to the next. can you raise your hand ifyou think you are wise? yeah? could be sometimes[inaudible]. interesting. so definitely smaller numberof hands than smartness,
number one. number two, theywent up slowly. maybe we associate smartnesswith speed, and wisdom with slowness. that's a frame patternwhich we'll talk a little bit more about. i was curious about that. next thing, have you read thebook "from smart to wise," which i have written?
any of you? have you done-- there is a baseline assessmentwhich we came up with, which is a five-minute assessmenton fromsmarttowise.com. if you go, there are 18questions, because you have not read the book. of course, there is also a linkto that to [inaudible] to assessment. you can go there.
i recommend, before you startthe book, if you can actually do that assessment, thenread the book and start applying it. that may, actually the value ofwhat you need will become a lot more applicable, anda lot more grounded in what you want to do. so let me start witha definition. because the smartness is the newcurrency in the knowledge age, how do you reallydefine it?
we defined it in the book,smartness is the application of intelligence forself interest. so practical smartness is aboutusing your knowledge to get ahead, using your knowledgeto become a leader when other people are not havingthe same opportunity, or to make money, to geta job, to move ahead-- different ways. it's all connected with, howdo you make sure your smartness based off your owngrowth and development?
that's traditional, simplerway to define it. but of course, smartness isnot just about people. it is actually something thatis pervading our culture. for example, this ibm has beencalling this decade as the decade of smartness. they're trying to create whatyou might call a smarter planet, and how do we reallybegin to use our smartness for the larger context ofenvironment, population, technology, to workfor everybody?
and of course, i don't have totalk at google about the smartphones. if you notice, i putthe iphone all the way in the back. the other thing is thesmart televisions. it is not just thesmart television that is becoming popular. you are also talkingabout smart meters of different kind.
in california, p&g-- actually, it's pg&e-- introduced smart meters, andof course, nest smart temperature control. not just one unit,one appliance. now, everybody talks about anentire house, an entire community is becoming smarter. because of this pervasivenessof smartness as the new currency, i wonder whether thesmartness is a new definition
for dumbness. because if you try to reallylook at everybody being smart, you have to focus on somethingother than smartness if you need to get ahead. so in that context, sometimesholding back on self-interest, holding back on being too smartactually could be wise. at some level, reflecting,introspecting, slowing down to make sure that you have actuallypaid attention to the context of value, and takingcare of people on your team,
taking care of your organizationnot just to a self-interest, could beconsidered not just smart, but also wise. in fact, when i used to workwith several entrepreneurs and the venture capital firms inthe valley, they talked generally about if an idea hasa 70% chance of success to make it as an entrepreneurialsuccess, they say don't do it. why? everybody in the valley would befocusing on something that
has a 70% chance of success. so that means on the ground,your entrepreneurial company, based on that idea, maynot actually fly. if you reverse it, if an ideahas only 30% chance of success, but if you can reallyput attention to it-- because not many otherentrepreneurs are also interested in that idea-- you have a 70% chance of successfor making the company successful.
so what i'm trying to raise isit is counter-intuitive for people to be successful inthe age of knowledge. you have to think outside thebox of, what is in it for me? how can i be successfulin the short-term? you may have to be expand yourcircle of not only influence, your circle of interest toinclude your team, your organization, sometimes yourcommunity, and bring in the context of noble purpose, ifyou want to be successful, with your smartness.
interestingly, somebody says-- like, of course, williamshakespeare puts it quite nicely. "a fool thinks of himself to bewise, but a wise man always knows himself to be a foolfirst." so at some level, we are trying to say, smartnessdoesn't cut it to be successful, let alone in siliconvalley, because of complexity that we live in,the ambiguity [inaudible]. nobody can tell you exactlywhat to do, how to do it.
and especially, when larry comesup and says, we need to have it as a 10x, you needto do 10x thinking. in google, it is no longersufficient for you to look at, how do i make incrementalimprovement? if i need to create abreakthrough innovation, and if my products and solutions arealways online, even a few minutes of going out could havesignificant headlines, saying that google is out for afew minutes, three, minutes, two minutes.
in that type of a context, youhave to figure out a way to say how to be wise. but becoming wise has gota lot of connotations. in the earlier stage, when myco-author, navi, and myself, when we started writing a book,one gentlemen whom we were interviewing, he asked us,do you think you are wise enough to write the book? if not, why are youwriting it? if you are not wise, what givesyou the authority to
talk about wisdom? that's a very legitimatequestion, because everybody in different cultures have theirown opinions about what it means to be wise. of course, i thought i'll givesome practical examples, collaborating with themyths that we have. people say once you are wise,you will stay wise. this gentleman washead of imf. he was pretty much a shoo-infor the president of france
till he couldn't keephis clothes on. sometimes, nobody talksabout how to use your wisdom or smartness. but unfortunately, latest-- what you call-- records say that he's beingcharged with all kinds of charges, which are so demeaningto what could've been an imf president ora president of france. so once you are wise, youcannot stay wise.
this is a grounded, pragmatic,action-oriented scenario where every day, you need to take somesteps to ask yourself, this is a smart approach,this is a wise approach. can i make a wiser decisiontoday for is? can i take a wiseraction today? that's the only way you cancontinue to keep updating on your wisdom. the second myth says that ageand maturity make people wise. general petraeus was celebratedgeneral in
afghanistan. he was the director of cia. but i wonder what happens whenit comes to thinking when you are doing the largest spyorganization in the world, but you think some of the stuff thatyou do can stay private? sometimes, i just don't know. and of course, we havethe latest hero. he thinks about what it is,and there was a nice comic about a couple of weeks ago.
so if you think that the onlychosen few have access to wisdom, without a question, whatkind of a wisdom is that? so i wonder whether the wisdomis actually a birth rite when we are young. if you have children, you doknow, some of the common sense questions that the childrenraise, some of that kind of comments they make, some of thehonesty and authenticity children have-- i wonder whether we beat itout of their system in the
name of socializing, in thename of politeness, in the name of what you call emotionalintelligence, in the name of everything else. i wonder we try to focus themmore on trying to be smart, according to all standards, butlet go of the common sense wisdom that would give them thelarger perspective, little bit more broader way oflooking at the world. now let me get it closerto the home. if you take some ofthese people--
many people i asked, when i givetalks around the world, would you call them smart? lots of hands went up. would you call them wise? not many hands went up. why is that? do we associate wisdomwith age? do we assume that only oldpeople with a lot of gray hair have to be wise, but if you'reyoung, you cannot be wise?
interestingly, we talk to oneof the analysts who used to work with this gentlemen,mark zuckerberg, in the early stage. she said when he came to herresearch firm talking about social network, she was notat all convinced about his smartness, let alonehis wisdom. but a year, year and a halflater, when he came back, she almost thought it was acompletely different person. she began to realize within theyear time period, he had
associated himself with a lotof good advisers, wise leaders, and he learned. and because of his learning,he was able to transform himself, which is what yourfounders seems to have done. they started it, broughtsomebody else in, and then, when the time is right, andwhen they felt they were mature enough, larry tookthe ceo role again. so there is a role in whichthere is humility; willingness to say, i need to learn fromothers; and willingness to
say, this may not bethe right thing. those are some characteristics-- it doesn't matter whetheryou're a young or old-- that can come in. and finally, if you look at someof these people, i don't think there will be much ofdisagreement if we talk about their wisdom. one thing you might want tothink about is, did they give up their smartness to be wise?
interestingly, when navi and iwere looking at the title for this book, we wanted to call it"smart and wise." that is when the editor told us, youguys are writing the book, but you haven't figured out how tocome up with a wise cycle. we said, why? he said, if you call it "smartand wise," where is the hook in the book. why would anybody buy it? you need to have a title bycreating a journey or a
pathway from smart to wise sothat people get some doubt. maybe their smartness is notgood enough, they'll buy it. so they said, first, it is goingto talk about wisdom, but you have to be smart in thebeginning to come up with the right title. so we are learning thatsome of these are extremely important. but of course, finally, it isalso important to recognize wisdom is not about coming upwith answers, but it is about
asking the right questions. considering the kind of whatdo you do-- whether it is youtube, whether it is google,whether it is many of the other things-- your innovation, especiallybreakthrough innovation, will come not by incrementallytinkering what you already have, but being able to askdifficult questions, recognize your products are onlineall the time. and if you have to make changes,sometimes you may
have to fail bigger before youcan succeed even bigger. when you don't have the courage,when you don't have the wherewithal, and when youdon't go for the 10x as you are talking about, the abilityto stay afloat-- let alone the ability to growand become bigger and bigger-- is going to be questionable. but of course, we can talk froma google perspective, but the key it comes down to isgoogle is nothing but all of you, and a few more out there.
that means each one of us haveto take responsibility for what i'm doing, how will it makea difference to my team, my division, my company? if i can have that largerperspective, when what you do becomes successful, you alsobecome successful with it. in the book, i call itenlightened self-interest. that means if you want to be apersonal leader, if you want to be extraordinary and berecognized for what you do, you have to think about how weexpand that pie, like a game.
being in silicon valley, we'lluse another metaphor, right? i'm sure you're allfamiliar with it. many times, when smart peopleget together to create an entrepreneurial company, theytalk about, what is your share, what is my share,what is the investor share, and all of them? one gentlemen taught me. he said, when you're coachingthese people, you need to help them to see--
even if you have 70%of the grape-- 70% share of a small companydoesn't mean very much. your job as entrepreneurialteam is to make that grape into a watermelon. when you make the grape intoorange or a watermelon, even at 5% stake in that watermelonis going to be many, many, many times largerthan the grape. so that means being smart islooking at what share do i have, how much stockdo i have?
being wise means, how can eachof us work together to make whatever we have intomuch bigger? it shifts the perspectivesignificantly. but that doesn't alwayscome true properly. let me give an example ofmicrosoft, for example. in 1999, the departmentof justice wanted to break up microsoft. and bill gates' testimony didn'tgo very well, and got a bad rep for the microsoft.
bill gates stepped down. he wanted to go ahead and createthe gates foundation. of course, since then, he hasgiven away $26 billion, and went ahead and starteddoing something. and now, he has become, froma smart bill gates, he has become a wise bill gates. but on the other hand,he left the microsoft to the smart ballmer. just to give some ofhis wise quotes.
you might have heardof some of this. "there is no chance that theiphone is going to get any significant market share. no chance." you can see thison youtube, by the way. "linux is a cancer that theattaches itself to an intellectual property sense toeverything it touches." and this is the classic-- "google is not a real company. it's a house of cards."very interesting.
and of course, bill gateshimself wrote a book on future of technology called "roadahead." it didn't have any mention of internet,by the way. so sometimes, i wonder there aremore limits to smartness than we pay attention to. the key to remember aboutsmartness is today, you may be the smartest person in the room,but tomorrow there are no guarantees. somebody else will come andtake your position.
so it's a moving target. you can't actually tryto outsmart people on a constant basis. it's exhausting, andit is not worth it. second-- smartness is always about eithera vision of the future, or what you have donein the past. not worth it, because itdoesn't give you the mindfulness of [inaudible]in the present moment.
third-- what is smart from oneperspective may be foolish from another, and it doesn'ttranslate very well to one culture to another. you may have to really beginto think about, maybe smartness is not the only wayto be successful, and recognize that knowing andseeing the patterns ahead of everybody else is a trap,because it leads to ultimately self-denial, because you--
i came up with a phrase calledcore incompetence. your signature strength ofyesterday that got you to this job today is nailing your foot,and prevents you from going somewhere else. so where is your footnailed to the floor is in your smartness. so watch out, and make suresmartness is not an addiction that you keep feeding, becauseunless you recontextualize it as wisdom, your personalleadership does not get
recognized as much as you wantit to be recognized. so what is this wiseleadership? how do you reallyrecontextualize smartness into wisdom? i believe the smartnessis like a pendulum-- it swings to two extremes. one extreme, if it swings, icall it a business smartness, like an entrepreneurialsmartness. the other extreme, what youcall swings, i call it a
functional smartness. that means i want to be the headof my staff, i want to be the chief technologist, i wantto be the ceo, even nobel laureate i had a good tointerview several nobel laureate over a periodof time. i found out even they getstuck in one end of the spectrum or other endof the spectrum. the wise leadership is anchoringthe wisdom to your larger purpose.
when you anchor your smartnesswith something larger as wisdom, then you can swingfrom one end to other end without the loss of face,because you're no longer committed to the questions, orbecoming an expert in the room, but you're willingto look stupid. you're willing to askdumb questions. you're willing to ask somethings which other people are not raising, like emperorhas no clothes. because of that, you may be ableto find something very
interesting. arno penzias, one of the nobellaureates, talks about how he actually ended up gettinga nobel prize. he said once, he was drivingfrom new jersey through the midwest with his wife and anine-year-old daughter. and who was telling it seems-- why is that when you changefrom one radio station to another radio station,you have this buzz? how can you not preventthis buzz?
you are the physicist,what can you do? and where is this coming from? he said, oh, this is anelectronic noise. but later, he realized hedoesn't know where the noise is coming when you are goingfrom one station to another, and he spent some time. he realized, it is anintergalactic cosmic noise, which got him a nobelprize for that. so sometimes, it is extremelyimportant that smartness gets
us focused on knowledgeand what we know. but if you want to do 10xcontribution to you or to your company, you may have ask morequestions, and more questions for which you have noclue how to answer. then, the ambiguity you have,the stress that you are dealing with, and the complexityof work that we deal with, that can be leveragedto gain more wisdom, instead of proving yourselfto be more smart. so let me summarize a couple ofthings, and i'll give you a
few examples. ultimately, leadership-- whether you manage otherpeople or not-- to be a leader, to be a personalleader, it all comes down to three things. how do you make decisions? do you use judgment and discernment in making decisions? second, how do youtake actions?
are those actions towards yourown benefit, or with an enlightened self-interest thatbenefits your team, your family, or your organization? third, how do you communicate? do you communicate saying,what i talk, i take responsibility; what youlisten, i have no responsibility? that's one way to communicate. another one is to look at andsay what i communicate is
based on what youhave received. it doesn't mean i have to talka lot, but maybe much of what i have to do in communication-- maybe listening, maybe askingquestions, reading your body language, using a lot moreemotional intelligence, context sensitivity-- all of this become extremelyimportant. especially when we are smart,it becomes a lot harder to do this.
so wise leadership-- we define it as sameintelligence application, but this time, we ask youto do two things. one is reflection on thecontext around you. second, introspection on theskills that you bring. if you can couple reflection andintrospection, and focus on the larger good-- that larger good could extendas far as you want it to be. for steve jobs, largergood extended only up
to he and his company. but for you, you needto make a choice. how much good is largergood for you? in other words, it isrepurposing your intelligence and smart leadership inthe present moment. it is about being mindful, notjust about the past or the future, but it is about beinghere and now at some level. what does wise leadershipget you? it gets you ethical clarityin times of complexity.
second, judgment when youneed discernment. and finally, humility,recognizing i might have come up with a great solution today,but it has happened because of help withother people. and when you honor other people,when you respect other people who help you, chancesare that can become a sustainable relationship. so let me just give a court,and ask whether you have any questions.
and i can give examples of wiseleadership, and i can do a lot of different things. but for you to become wise,there are three most important stuff. as i said, reflection isa very powerful tool. second, we call it politicallycorrect word-- best practices. we try to look at thebest practices. in my book, we wrote a lot ofexamples based on interviews
and narratives of varioussuccessful leaders, which is the easiest. third, experience. what i recommend is once youcomplete this talk, actually think about-- whenyou go back-- three areas. what do i need to communicatein my project? what decisions do i need to maketo take the next step? what actions are imperativefor me?
in both of these scenarios, ifyou can think every day at least one decision, one action,and one communication. is this a smart one,or a wise one? can i begin to take one decisiona day that is wiser, one action a day that wouldmove me towards wise leadership. i have a feeling overa period of time-- as somebody said, can ibe wiser sometimes? i think you raisedthe question.
i think that is the wayin which we go. even though wisdom may be thebirth rite, because we have forgotten and got conditioned,we may have to unlearn and selectively forget whatwe have picked up, how to be smart. and step by step, we can makeprogress towards wise let me stops for a minuteand check-- any questions? comments?
yeah, please. you have a questionin the back. there is a microphonecoming [inaudible]. audience: you're not speakingabout being genuine. and i know that it's embedded inthose concepts, but that is one particular concept, i think,first and foremost, needs to be spoken to. and obviously, maybein your book. prasad kaipa: i use the word"authenticity." for example,
steve jobs was very authentic,but he was not necessarily mostly appropriate. i think there was a movie thatcame out last weekend. i just saw it. it was so flat for me, becausei worked for apple, and i had known steve jobs atdifferent times. so for me, it was like, duh. there wasn't anythingthat got into what made somebody special.
that didn't come through. so all the key points, all thechecklist has been done, but there is no learningthat can come. there is no insight in there. on the other hand, tim cookis very appropriate. he didn't care about when hewas number two, chinese workers, all of them. but as soon as he became ceo,he started paying more attention to.
but at the same time, he's verypolitically sensitive, politically correct,wonderful. but now, some people are raisingquestions, is he the right person? is he leading applein the right way? so you may need to think aboutwhen it is appropriate for you to be genuine and authentic, andsay what you have on your mind with your team members andother people, and when is it appropriate to hold backyour genuine feedback, and
look for the right timeand right place to give that feedback. in india, as i grew up, thereis a wonderful proverb that says, the truth has only meaningwhen somebody is looking for it. if somebody is not looking foryour genuine feedback, if you give that feedback, they'll lookat it like a criticism, only negativity, or youjust don't like me. so in a negative context,authenticity and genuineness
is not appreciated as much. but if you can create a context,if you were to say, you know, i see that youhave done one, two, three very, very well. and there a couple of things, ifyou do, you could even take it to a whole new level. if you have interest in it, ihave identified a couple of suggestions for you. let me know when youwant to implement.
i will give it to you. so what you have done in theminute, one-minute coaching is you have created a context forother people to ask for the feedback, and recognize that youhave given your positive, appreciative stance to yourfeedback already, and you have created a gap for them toreally look at, how do i transcend that gap? because they are intentional,because they are asking for it, they will receive yourgenuine feedback much more
appreciatingly, and they become friends, and stay friends. so that is what i think is theway in which authenticity is not always good. you have to watch for it. that's what i call wisdom is notabout staying on one end or other end. it is not right or wrong,good or bad. how do you balance it in a waythat is appropriate to the
context, and still beingtrue to yourself? any other questions? then shall i move on witha couple more examples? and then, i can takemore questions. you can prepare forthat, if you like. here is a gentleman, alanmulally i had a good chance to interact with in boeing,and later, in ford. he comes out of-- he had aeronauticalbackground.
at one time, he wantedto be an astronaut. and unfortunately, because hehas some eye issue, he could not become an astronaut. he was very disappointed. but then he said, you know, atleast let me make the planes. so he joined-- from kansas, he cameto seattle. he joined boeing. he became the president ofboeing commercial aircraft.
somewhere down the line, he wasinvited to ford, and that was 2006 time period. and then when the financialmalaise hit the nation, most of the companies tookthe bailout-- government bailout. instead, ford went ahead-- andunder the guidance of alan mulally-- took about$24 billion loan. they actually had toget that moniker mortgaged, that ford moniker.
everybody looked at it and said,isn't it stupid for you to not take the easy money? not only that-- there so many other actionswhich it took, everybody questioned, we should have neverbrought that person from outside the automobileindustry. what are some ofthose actions? he went ahead, and sold themost expensive, profitable ford businesses, like landrover and jaguar.
he sold indian tata group. and ford was making a lot ofmoney making trucks and suvs. he said, you know, we need tostart focusing on smart cars. ford said, we don'tmake money on it. then he said, you better figureout how to make money on the small cars, becausethat is the future. then he found out that-- ford taurus, which used to bea famous car, they shut done that brand because they saidnobody is buying it.
he said, well, if you havealready built a brand value, figure out how to come up withsomething, and make that brand value to pay for itselfinstead of trying to build a new brand. so in more ways than one, he wasvery counter-intuitive to what they were doingin and out. but now, five years later, fordis much, much more green, much, much more profitable, andit is on a path to success that was unprecedented.
and even when compared to theircompetitors, they have done exceedingly well. so in that respect, i believecertain ways in which alan mulally had taken decisions,taken actions, and how he communicated are some thingsthat increase the value of not only the ford brand, butalso his own brand. and some of you might want tocheck out alan mulally videos. there are-- alan mulally, some of thearticles about him.
he is extremely positive. when i went to interview him, heknew more about me, and he was really preparing variousstuff for me rather than for himself. then when i came out-- actually, it was at boeing-- i asked the secretary, isalan always like that? he said, yup. he's always the cheerleader.
for anything he takes on, he'spositive, appreciative, gung-ho, and 100% into it. but those are some things whichwe don't know how to deal with sometimes indifferent cultures. you need to think about, whatis your authentic style, and what appropriate style? how do you really make it workin whichever group, whichever company you are in. let's look at the contextsensitivity and discernment
for a minute. sam palmisano, when he took overibm in 2002, he saw the writing on the wall-- pcs are becoming commodities. hardware is not wherethe energy is. so what did he do? he sold the entire pcbusiness to lenovo. he sold the hard disksto hitatchi. he got rid of even thechips manufacturing.
he completely converted ibminto services business. few years later, leoapotheker, from sap, took over hp. he tried to do the same thing. he wanted to getrid of the hp-- what you might call thehardware business. even though they bought thepalm for $1 billion a year ago, within a month ofintroducing the palm tablet, he closed it down.
of course, they closed him downbefore he had a chance to do more of what they calleddamage to hp. what was smart at one time wasno along wise by the time it came to apotheker. that means you cannot justblindly follow successful people, even though they maybe your bosses, they may be your seniors, or someone else. you will have to pay attentionto what is appropriate, and use discernment and judgmentto make it work.
in india, when i studied,there was a gentleman. this gentleman-- called dr. v., for a shortway to think about-- he created, after he retiredas an eye surgeon at the age of 55-- he said, i'm too youngto retire. i want to make a contributionto the world. so he converted his familyhousing to an 11-bed hospital. and he convinced everybody heknew in his family and his
friends to becoming the eyedoctors, or to provide eye medicine supplies, or to createan organization, or to create training. as of last year, aravind eyecare is the largest eye care system in the world, operatingat one 10th the cost of united kingdom. they provide more servicesthan the entire united kingdom provides. just to give you a comparison,they got license for the
cataract lenses. they got the patent from theunited states, they got the license from united states. same cataract lensesare being sold for $150 in united states. in india, they offerit for $2. i was told it has comedown to $1 now. and for every one paid surgery, they do two free surgeries.
check out this book, "infinitevision." it is written by [inaudible], one of the authorsactually lives in [inaudible]. so when you have a largerpurpose, when you have a noble purpose, your smartnesscan actually serve a larger community. so each of you beingextraordinarily smart, you might want to think about andsay, where am i contributing? what is my north star?
what is my noble purpose? where do i want to be 10 yearsfrom now, 20 years from now? it is good to do 10xcontribution at this moment, but 10 years from now or 20years from now, what would you like to say to your children-- and for some of you later thanthat-- maybe to your grandchildren, what have youcontributed to the planet? if you can begin to thinkabout it, then your performance--
whatever do today, tomorrow-- it will come with a purpose. that is what indra nooyidid in pepsico. not only they are looking atmaking the drinks, coca cola drinks, and pizza,and all of them-- doing food, what youcall a fun food-- it's ok. they said, we want to get moreprofit from good-for-you foods, not just fun-for-youfoods.
because of that, they've wentahead and said, we buy quaker oats for oatmeal. we want to create more kindsof healthy food. of course, their own stockholders don't like it. so she's actually fightingsometimes for her own position, because everybodywants you to make money right now, but they don't care aboutanything-- where it goes, and how it happens. so at some level, you need tolook at it and say, how do you
reconcile your long-termvision with your short-term delivery? that is where thewisdom comes. you cannot just say, i will onlyfocus on the vision; or you cannot just say, i willonly focus on quarterly results of what i need to do. the wisdom is to be able tobalance both of them, and align your head and yourheart and the hands. when you bring that alignment,the wisdom is something that
actually naturally emergesin all of it. so again, steve jobsand ron johnson created the apple stores. but as you know, he tried totake it to jc penney, and tried to apply the same recipesof no sales, focusing on marketing, and creatingstores within stores. again, he got booted out,because what worked for apple didn't work for jc penney. so you need to have, again,three things which i said
about personal leadership. am i having a discernment andright judgment to use what needs to be usedwhere and when. i can't use what made mesuccessful in apple stores in jc penny. remember, i used the wordcore incompetence? you need to ask yourself,whatever got you this job, for you to go beyond it, you haveto see where is your foot nailed to the floor.
most chances are, your foot isnailed to what got you the success the last time. think about your success formulathink about your winning formula, and see whatyou need to learn beyond that. and here is another lady, who isconsidered to be one of the richest entrepreneurs in india,kiran mazumdar-shaw. she has a company called biocon,and she focused on oral insulin. when it didn't work out, sherealized her focus is on
actually diabetes therapy. she cannot become very analabout one of the product, and lose focus on the big picture. so last thing which i'll sayis ratan tata, the guy who bought the jaguar and landrover, he also realized it is not just the most expensive carsthat he needs to sell, but being in india, he wants tomake automobiles affordable to everybody. so he came up with a car whichcosts only $2,000.
right now, it has become evencheaper because a dollar is 62 rupees right now. so that means, for $2,000,he could do. marketing didn't work out verywell, because he called it a poor man's automobile. so not poor men want to buy it,because they want to buy a rich person's automobile. they don't want to buy apoor man's automobile. so marketing kind of messedup a little bit.
but i have a feeling the conceptreally caught on, and there are many other companiesare beginning to make it. this is an example ofenlightened self-interest-- you have everything what youhave, but question is, how do you support other people? so in my book, i talkabout any of this. but right at this time, i wouldlove to take questions. yeah, please? audience: you touched upon ita little bit, but if you can
expand in more detail about thebarriers from going from smart to wise. especially in the context of,you have a vision, you're looking at the bigger picture,you're looking beyond self-interest, and more forcommunity or for your company or your family. of course, the people who arearound you that should be supporting you are thebiggest barriers. and how do you overcomethese ones?
prasad kaipa: ok, thank you. one action orientation. smartness is about thinking,wisdom is about doing. wisdom is always here and now. smartness is always about thefuture you are creating. so you need to realize that thewisdom will not come by reading out of a book. but if you can-- let us say,some of you, because you got the book as you came in--let us say you create
a small book club. start talking about every week,one chapter, or one part of a chapter, and see how youcan apply it in your immediate work or in your familyoutside. try to share those things. you can even createa google hangout. you can create some of otherways of sharing it. begin to apply onestep at a time. if you can do that, chances are90 days from now, you will
be much wiser. but you see, saying thatis much easier. i'm sure you have hundredreasons why you don't have time, you don't have enoughpeople, it takes energy-- you have too many things onyour plate to be able to organize any of this stuff. so what it means is, one,it is cognitive framing. don't look at wisdom assomething away from what you are doing.
as a matter of fact, whatever iswritten about in the book, or what i'm talking about, isabout application of what you're doing in a smarter,in a wiser way right now, right here. so wisdom is not justabout long-term. so that is one thingyou need let go. that means focuson applying it. second, do it with other people,because wisdom grows when you have multiplequestions, and people
challenge you. it is not about showing offhow smart you are in the group, but asking questions sothat all of you can learn. wisdom multipliesand synergizes. so that is something which ishard for people to look at. third one i found is a barrier,if several times we look at, it is outside ofwhat i'm supposed to do. i will do this, and if i havetime, i will read the book. if i have time, i will applyit, without recognizing
whatever you have to makeit more executable, more successful, you need wisdom. because as you saw larry doing,it is not about adding more projects that makesgoogle successful. it is about removing certainthings which are not having a high impact, and focusing on asmaller number of them with the discernment, and making themdeeper, more profound, more meaningful, and morehigher quality. for that, you needdiscernment.
so similarly, if you can beginto recognize, acting with wisdom, you have everythingwhat it takes. you did just that. you need to put itin practice. acting with smartness, youmay need more knowledge. you may need to read more, oryou may need to actually talk more, or do something else. these are three major barriersi have seen. many smart people, despitehaving the resources--
time, our cognitive framing,and third, application-- this are some things which youneed to pay attention. audience: so i'm just wonderinghow you applied all these concepts in your own life,and my significant parts of your life where youdecided, ok, this is more wise to do? prasad kaipa: ok. well, my daughter says-- like, i remember whenshe was in school.
i traveled so much that oneday, i came in and she was going to school. and i was reading paper earlymorning, and she was busy getting ready. and then my wife was there, andwe were talking, and she my wife was giving me updateon what happened during the week that i was gone. i was saying, uh-huh, and thencontinuing with the newspaper. my daughter comes in and says tome, why do you keep saying
uh-huh when you're readingnewspaper as if somebody is listening to you reading it? then i put my best, caring,patronizing tone, and i said, sweetheart, your mother isgiving me an update. i'm acknowledging her. it is not quite to listenwithout acknowledging. she said, dad, you talkabout communication. my mother has gone to bathroomfive minutes ago. now i know how muchyou are listening.
what i learned was that moreyou talk about wisdom, the lack of it shows up a lot moreclearly to other people. but what i'm learning is, placeswhere nobody's paying attention to me, places wherei am not in front of other people, that is where actuallyi have an opportunity to contribute, and learn,and grow. so i'm paying a lot moreattention to learning from home, and paying attention toareas where i can make a contribution, just becausei want to learn,
and i want to practice. so i should also say, after mycolleague and myself, we finished the book,i have learned a lot more about wisdom. and i'm ready to do 2.0 the bookalready, because some of these are all based onpractical stuff. but i'm also learning which ofthese are easier for me to practice, which of these are alittle harder to practice. so that is how i'm beginning tomake a move myself, to take
what i have written and applyit in my own life. and it is working. that is one thing. most of the time, i used tosay, what you write is for others, what you learnis for yourself. but i'm actually been figuringout that some of what we have learned from others, i canapply it for myself. so this book is as good for myown learning as it is for other people.
male speaker: ok, so withthat, i think we're almost out of time. so once again, i'd like to thankdr. kaipa for coming and talking to us. and if you have any morequestions, or would like your book signed, i believe he hassome more time to sign your copies of the book. so if we could all thank him.