Rajat Gupta and David Petraeus: Birds of a feather?

Both are brainy. Both are brilliant strategists. Both were stars, one in the corporate firmament and the other in the military firmament. Both rose and rose to the stratosphere from plebeian childhoods. Both were role models that inspired people all over the world. Around sixty years of age, both appeared to be destined for even greater heights.  

Neither Gupta nor Petraeus took a single false step in their illustrious careers. Then both fell dramatically from grace when they were at the pinnacle of international reputation. One was brought down by a financial scandal and the other by a sex scandal. Are they then like you and me, slave to the same frailties as you and I are? We would have thought, along with Maslow, that once a person’s main needs - for food, sex, security, achievement - are met, he would focus on self actualisation and reputation.  Both Gupta and Petraeus had met all these needs. What is it then about sex and greed that snare such extraordinary achievers with a solid reputation?

Perhaps we are making a wrong assumption when we say that Gupta was brought down by greed and Petraeus by sex. Greed and sex do play a role in this tragedy, but a minor one. The main cause is quite different, but it is the same for both Gupta and Petraeus.

What is it? The clue lies in the fact that neither of these two heroes was investigated by any agency; investigations into other people's wrongdoings stumbled into these two. They were above suspicion. Suspecting them of any wrongdoing was as silly as wondering whether the Pope was practising black magic. Such feeling of super safety led to complacency, to hubris. The trouble with hubris is that it dulls the afflicted persons’ nerves. They don't take the usual precautions that you and I do because they don't feel the need.

We don't know why Rajat Gupta gave highly sensitive confidential information to his friend Raj Rajaratnam of Galleon Hedge Fund and who initiated the cycle of transactions. But as Gupa was floating in a super safe zone, it is not difficult to imagine him doing a small favour to his friend without worrying about the possibility of being found out.

We don't know how the extramarital affair between Petraeus and his adoring biographer Paula Broadwell started and who took the initiative. But it is not difficult to imagine the war hero in such an exalted position throwing caution to the winds; there was no way anyone would suspect him of anything improper. You don't need to look around before undressing in your own bedroom.

Reluctance to do what they did would probably have been perceived as an unacceptable sign of weakness in both the cases. Perhaps people afflicted by hubris are like you and me when we are in an inebriated state - pretty easy to be persuaded to do silly things.

Photo Credit: Rajat Gupta (The Guardian, UK); David Petraeus (Vanity Fair)

Lessons in persuasion from a heinous crime

Sajjad Mughal’s overwhelming ambition: make love to Pallavi Purkayastha. He is a young (22), under-educated Kashmiri working as a watchman at Himalayan Heights, an upscale block of flats in Wadala, Mumbai. A graduate of the National Law School Pune, she (25) is a legal adviser. She has been staying with her partner Avik Sengupta in a flat on the sixteenth floor for a little under a year.

He tries to please her and befriend her, generously offering any special services that she might need. She spurns his repeated offers. Faced with such stony behaviour most men would give up the chase especially when the social distance between them is so great. Not Sajjad. He observes her routine and her live-in partner’s. He discovers that Avik often comes home well past midnight.

To achieve his objective, Sajjad must enter Pallavi’s flat when she's alone. He should not attract anyone's attention. That means he cannot force his way in. She must open the door and welcome him in. So he searches for some service that she asks him to render in the flat.

He figures out that if power goes off in her flat, she will seek someone's help. Once he senses an opportunity, Sajjad finds out from the electrician where the trip switches are and identifies the one that controls the power supply to Pallavi’s flat.

One night he switches off power supply to her flat. She telephones Avik, who is still at work. On his advice she asks the watchman on duty– Sajjad – to get an electrician. He does. A couple of hours later he switches off the power supply again. This time the electrician, accompanied by Sajjad, asks Pallavi to disconnect all heavy appliances to prevent any further tripping at night. Meanwhile Sajjad quietly steals the key to the main door and leaves the room with the electrician. He returns after 1 AM, opens the door to the flat, and enters, determined to rape her in the short window of opportunity available to him.

Pallavi is fast asleep; he tries to force himself upon her. She proves to be tough. She resists valiantly. Brustrated, Sajjad pulls out his knife and stabs her wildly before running away. She dies well before Avik’s return.

This is a horrible crime against an innocent woman. It deserves to be condemned by everyone without any reservations. Let us, however, glean a few lessons in persuasion from the unfortunate incident. Sajjad tried ingratiation first. A very powerful tactic, it failed in this case. Perhaps he appeared too eager, alarmingly eager, and that turned Pallvi off. But without giving up, he observed the target closely to identify her needs and chinks in her armour. Do we study our targets systematically when we plan our difficult persuasion acts?

Sajjad was in too much of a hurry; that took him quickly from the beautiful thought of seduction to the ugly plan of rape and ultimately to the horror of murder. That's another lesson in persuasion for us. Hurry kills.

***     ***     ***

Acknowledgement: The account of the murder and the events leading up to it have been picked up from various newspapers, mainly The Times of India. Pallavi's photograph is taken from www.ndtv.com.

Rajesh Khanna’s (un)lucky home

What is the secret of Rajesh Khanna’s miraculous rise to unparalleled superstardom in the 1970s? No one knows. According to a July 24 Mumbai Mirror report, “Aashirwad was haunted,” however, the actor knew. It was because of the bungalow he had bought from fellow actor Rajendra Kumar.

The sea-facing bungalow on Carter Road had had a terrible reputation. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew it was haunted. Naturally, there were no buyers although the owner was willing to sell it below cost. That is when Rajendra Kumar bought it in the 1960s for just Rs 60,000 because he couldn’t afford anything better. Once he moved into the house, however, there was an inexplicable change in his fortunes. Every film in which he starred succeeded at the box office; he became ‘Jubilee Kumar.’ Rajesh Khanna was closely watching this success story from the sidelines. He believed that if he moved into the house he would be equally successful.

Rajendra Kumar did not seem to have attributed his spectacular success to the bhoot bungalow which he named Dimple, after his daughter. That is why, once he made enough money, he got a bungalow built at Pali Hill and moved there.

Rajesh Khanna bought the Carter Road bungalow and moved in. He knew success would follow him. And he was right. Every film he touched turned to gold. He got everything an actor could dream of – millions of adoring fans, astronomical fees, superstardom... 15 super hits in a row. All because of the lucky house.

Rajesh Khanna was sure of the role his house played in his miraculous rise. We don’t know if he changed his mind when, staying in the same house, he lost everything including his family. Perhaps he didn’t change his mind; he explained his reverses away as a temporary setback. Perhaps he believed that he would soar back to astrosphere where ownership and occupation of the Carter Road bungalow had taken him.

What has one’s house to do with one’s professional success or failure? Plenty if you believe that there is a causal link.

Was Rajesh Khanna superstitious? Do we have such superstitions influencing decision-making in the corporate world?

We are all superstitious. But we make a distinction. Our beliefs are well founded beliefs; others’ beliefs are silly superstitions. Our beliefs vary, but our faith in the validity of our beliefs stays strong.

Our personal and professional actions are anchored around our beliefs although, unlike Rajesh Khanna, we are reluctant to admit the link. That doesn’t take away our resistance when ideas that are at variance with our belief system are proposed. We are likely to give a perfectly logical reason why the idea should not be adopted, but the real reason is that it goes against our hidden beliefs. 


Photo credit: http://www.istockphoto.com/

Don’t Bluff!

In the last post, “Cheap Viagra, summer internship,” I talked about the way many bright students fail miserably to persuade professors to hire them as summer interns. Let me follow it up with the text of an exchange I had with an IIT student. All names except mine have been masked. Apart from this, the text is reproduced without any editorial changes.

(1) Original email from the student

Subject: Application for Internship

Dear Mr. Monippally,
     I am writing to you to explore the possibility of summer internship in your esteemed university during May-July 200x.

     My name is Raghupati Mishra. I am a Second year undergraduate student in the Dual Degree Program (Btech + Mtech) in Mechanical Engineering Department(specialization in Thermal and Fluids engineering) at the Indian Institute of Technology XXX, India.

     Having visited your personal homepage and gone through your research interests, I am really motivated and would consider myself fortunate if I get an opportunity to work under a distinguished scholar like you.

      I am very motivated to involve myself in Management field. I have  sufficient lab exposure--academic as well as optional as summer project--I have comppleted many managerial porjects related to marketing and management. I completed my project of data collection of NTSE students and convencing them to join [a coaching centre] for the preparation of IIT-jee for thier safe future under Mr. XXX. (Director of the coaching centre, Kota). I am also presetly working as a project manager and central co-ordinator for the conduction of zzz (a project under Mr. yyy,Director of Acme, Kota).

     I am also proficient in MS Office(Softwares) and Programming language C++, and can work in both Windows and Linux platforms. I am learning MATLAB to have some additional software knowledge.

     Kindly spare some time to consider my credentials and evaluate my chances of acquiring a summer trainee position under your able guidance. I have written a brief resume below for your appraisal. If any further information is required, I would be glad to furnish the same.

Thank you for reading.
Regards,

Raghupati Mishra
II year undergraduate,
Mechanical department,
IITX

                  CURRICULUM VITAE

[An impressive CV, copied in the body of the mail and attached as a Word file.]

(2)  My response to 1

Raghupati 

My advice: Don't bluff. 

Best wishes 

RN Saxena

(3) The student’s response to 2

Dear Monippally,

Actually i didn't got you while mentioning it as bluff. I am working since last two years at so much hard level, just to build up mine resume and if somebody calls it as bluff's, it really hurts me a lot.

First of all i will love to mention that i am making mine website(its under construction:- http://www.me.iitx.ac.in/~raghupati    please please please visit it before commenting some other words about me), their i would be uploading all the certificates which i received while working on these projects, i did since last 2 years as a proof.

Actually I am from such a family, that my father don't even had money  for my graduation. My father had taken loan form bank on mine studies, in short i knows what are my dreams and who i am right now. Case was this that before coming to IIT i had'nt touched computer before but then i started to exploring myself, and started devloping such qualities within myself. Now the situation is this that my hostel   council decided that i should start working as a comp. secy. of my hostel. because they thought i was quite much known about computer stuffs.

I am asking for a project in winter(dec.) not for summer(june and july) because i dont want to waste my 1 month like others use to do. My life is full of struggle. I am sorry to say you that if you don't want to give me a project then please dont give me that but please don't say such words that would effect someone feelings.

Last but not the least, i would be greatfull to yours if your will mention me that while reading which line u fealed that mine resume was bluff.

Thanking you,
Raghupati Mishra, Mechanical department, IIT XXX

(4) My Response to 3

Raghupati

When I asked you not to bluff, I wasn't referring to your CV at all. I didn't read it. I didn't want to go on to the CV because when I came to the following claim in your mail, I realized you were bluffing:

"Having visited your personal homepage and gone through your research interests, I am really motivated and would consider myself fortunate if I get an opportunity to work under a distinguished scholar like you."

There was no sign at all in your mail of your having visited my personal homepage to check out my research interests. If at all you clicked on the link, you appear to have done it just to be able to say that you visited the home page.

I could have just deleted your mail. I decided to send you a one-liner in your own interest. There may be professors here who are working on areas that interest you and might offer you an internship. Don't spoil your chances of such a project by this kind of pseudo-customization.

Best wishes

MMM

(5) The student’s response 4

Dear Monippally,

It may be my fault that while mailing i decided to keep the cover letter to be same for everyone. So sorry for that, but i would appreciate that your reason was very logical.
Last but not the least, thanks for your best wishes.

Thanking you,
Raghupati Mishra,
Mechanical Department,
IIT XXX,

Image from http://www.istockphoto.com

How to be a smart blackmailee

This morning’s papers in Ahmedabad brought the sickening news of yet another rape. This time it was Atul Bhatt, a fifty-year old senior officer in Gujarat Government’s Social Welfare Department, who is alleged to have raped his thirty-year-old woman employee.

Newspaper reports are notorious for inaccuracies and one-sidedness. We can’t jump to any conclusions based solely on newspaper accounts. Here, however, is the story, put together from three different sources.

Bhatt had hired Rupal (name changed), mother of two, in June 2011 as a peon in the office of an NGO that he runs in Ahmedabad. On June 19, 2011, he gave her directions to his house and asked her to go and work there after lunch. By the time she reached his house, he also arrived there. There was no one else at home. She asked him for water to drink. She fell unconscious soon after drinking the water that he had given her.

When she came round, she realised that she had been raped. When she returned home, she didn’t tell her husband or anyone else about the incident because Bhatt had told her that he had captured the rape on a CD and threatened to make it public if she told anyone about the incident.

Bhatt raped her several times during the following months. He even persuaded Rupal’s husband to let her go with him to Mumbai on ‘official’ work. Bhatt raped her there also.

Unable to carry on, Rupal swallowed poison recently to end her life. But she didn’t die. Although she tried to tell everyone else that she had taken the poison by mistake, her husband wasn’t convinced. Under persistent but sympathetic questioning from him, she broke down and narrated the whole story. With his help she lodged a police complaint yesterday.

***                                                   ***

How could this man keep having his way against her wishes and yet gag her effectively for so many months even as she led an apparently normal life?

Bhatt’s success was built on smart framing. Rupal was asked to look at the terrible consequences she would face if she defied him. That frame was so overwhelming that she didn’t for a moment think of the worse consequences for her tormentor. Being a senior government official (with two children – one a practising doctor and the other a student of medicine), he had a lot more to lose than Rupal if the CD was made public.  He could lose his cushy government job and spend the rest of his life in jail if she filed a case against him. If she had been raped when she was unconscious, it shouldn’t be difficult for the investigators to conclude that it was not consensual sex.

We’re too easily persuaded by blackmailers of all colours including certain bosses in organisations because we are overwhelmed by the way they frame the troubles we will have if we defy them. We can be smart ‘blackmailees’ and call the blackmailer’s bluff if we reframe the issue in such a way that we focus on the troubles they will have if we defy them. The only time this may not work is when we are blackmailed by someone we don’t know.

How do you deal with attempts by your bosses, co-workers, subordinates, or even customers to do things against your will?

Photo credit: http://www.istockphoto.com/

Why Big Favours Flop

Commenting on my recent post, 'I Took a Bribe,' (on the persuasive power of small gifts and unsolicited favours) Girish asks an interesting question about why big favours don’t lead to the same kind of results as small favours. He says that people don’t even care to acknowledge big favours.

If a small unsolicited favour can pay rich dividends in persuasion, it is reasonable to assume that big solicited and unsolicited favours should lead to even bigger returns on investment.  This generally holds good. Yet a big favour you have done may fail spectacularly when you try to influence the recipient. This is what Girish is referring to.

In order to understand this phenomenon, let's first look at the way bribe generally works. The size varies depending on the kind of service you are looking for. Often you pay a bribe to get what you are perfectly entitled to. You want to avoid artificial delays and related hassles. Then you may find yourself paying a bribe to jump the queue or to get what you are not strictly entitled to. There are also people who pay bribes so that they can break rules with impunity. These attract the biggest bribes because the bride-taker also runs a big risk. In some of these instances there may be a demand; in many instances you have to infer that a bribe is expected or that a bribe will do the job that you are interested in.

What is common to all these instances is that the recipient of the bribe doesn't deserve it. It is a different matter that he will justify it by pointing out that everyone else is doing it, that he runs a risk, and so on. If the bribe's recipient believes that he deserves it, he doesn't feel obliged to do anything in return whether the favour done is solicited or unsolicited.  This may appear strange but friends and relations often belong to this category.  So the next time you do what you consider to be a big favour and discover that you have no leverage over its recipient, ask yourself whether they aren't taking you for granted. Most probably they are. They don't consider it a favour.

Photo credit: www.istockphoto.com

The Hidden Hand in the Boardroom

This week let me share with you my short article that appeared in last Friday's (August 19) Corporate Dossier (The Economic Times) under the title, 'When the last leaf falls' http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/features/corporate-dossier/when-the-last-leaf-falls/articleshow/9651359.cms

I also copy it here.

“The Last Leaf” is one of the most delightful O Henry stories with a twist in the tail.

Young, struggling artist Johnsy is down with a severe attack of pneumonia one autumn. Her best friend and roommate Sue nurses her with deep love and care. The doctor gives her the best that modern medicine offers. But Johnsy’s condition deteriorates by the hour.

She doesn’t respond to any medicine because she is convinced that she is going to die soon. She knows exactly when she will die: the moment the last yellowing leaf on an ivy falls. Lying in her bed she can see that ivy climbing on the wall across her window. Unfortunately it is shedding its leaves fast because it is lashed by heavy rains and strong winds.

Sue tries to convince her that it is silly to link her life with a few yellowing ivy leaves. She begs her to cheer up. To encourage her, Sue even lies to her that the doctor considers her chances of survival excellent. Nothing works – neither logic nor love. By the time night falls, there are just two or three leaves on the vine.

Sue doesn’t know what to do to save her best friend. She mentions her predicament to Behrman, an old painter who lives on the ground floor beneath them. He pooh-poohs Johnsy’s idiotic belief.

Johnsy expects all the remaining leaves to have fallen off during another night of rains and fierce winds. When day breaks and the curtain is drawn back, however, she is amazed to find one recalcitrant leaf clinging to the vine on the wall. It bravely withstands battering by strong winds the following day and night, too. That does the trick for Johnsy. It convinces her that she is not going to die. She asks Sue for soup and milk and for a hand mirror. Now she wants to live; she wants to paint.

The following day the doctor gives Sue the good news that Johnsy is out of danger. He also gives her the bad news of old Behrman’s death. He caught pneumonia because he was out in the cold, windy, and rainy night standing on a ladder and painting a leaf on the ivy on the wall across Johnsy’s window.

***      ***      ***

The last leaf is not a leaf at all. But it pulls Johnsy out of her deep conviction that she is going to die. We may find her belief silly.  How can there be any link between a yellowing leaf falling off from an ivy vine during autumn and a person breathing her last? We may also wonder why she doesn’t see through the trick of the painted leaf. It doesn’t flutter in the wind; a real leaf should. Why doesn’t she wonder? Why doesn’t she investigate?

But the fact is that we are no different from Johnsy – we all have some such beliefs that we hold tightly and without questioning. Our beliefs are, of course, well-founded while others’ beliefs are laughable superstitions. We can readily punch holes in others’ beliefs but we can’t see anything wrong with ours. However unreasonable it appears to the rest of the world, we cling to our behaviour shaped by such beliefs.

Our politicians are in the forefront of those who organise their public lives around some such beliefs. They may swear in at the unearthly hour of 2.39 am because they believe that that is the most auspicious time to open a new momentous chapter in the history of the world.

The strange behaviour of many famous sportsmen and women is common knowledge. During matches Michael Jordan used to wear his university’s blue shorts under his Bulls uniform. Whenever Goran Ivanisevic won a match, he would repeat everything he did the previous day: eat the same food, talk to the same people, and watch the same shows on television.  During the recent cricket World Cup, Virender Sehwag stopped wearing shirts with numbers at the back while M.S. Dhoni sported 7, the date of his birth, both apparently on sound astrological advice. During each match Zaheer Khan is said to have kept a yellow handkerchief on his body.

The power of such beliefs is so strong that, when a star sportsman is denied his lucky number or underwear, he may lose the game. That is why people who know about such beliefs make sure that there is no disruption so that the players can play their natural game and do well.

When he heard about Johnsy’s strange belief, old Behrman had nothing but contempt for it. But he understood the power of belief. That is why he risked his own health to go up in the cold rain and paint in a leaf. He framed his response in perfect alignment with Johnsy’s fears and expectations. If her belief was that with the fall of the last leaf she also would leave this world, a leaf clinging to the vine tenaciously and fighting the storm should persuade her to give up the thought of death and start thinking about the business of life.

Behrman could save Johnsy’s life because she had made her belief known. The problem with the corporate world is that everyone pretends it is governed by reason and evidence. Many wonderfully competent and visionary corporate leaders may not reveal to anyone some of the beliefs that drive their actions because they are afraid of being ridiculed. Would a CEO let the world know that after an expensive transcontinental flight he returned home without attending a crucial meeting because he had forgotten to pack his lucky undies?

The next time your boss doesn’t listen to reason and refuses to be persuaded, perhaps you may want to look out of the boardroom window for the last leaf. Or a hidden hand that stops him from doing what you want him to.

Catching Fish with a Lasso

This week let me share with you my short article that appeared in Economic Times Corporate Dossier of June 3, 2011 under the title Cowboy on Horseback . 

If you’re a cowboy on horseback, even the wildest and fastest of bulls cannot escape your lasso. You will rope the animal so gracefully that it will appear almost effortless. You cannot, however, take this ingenious device to the sea if you want to catch fish. You will have to use nets or hooks hidden in baits. Or harpoons if your fight is with whales. The best of lassos will be pathetically inappropriate and the nimblest of cowboys impotent in encounters with fish.

Yet, in the world of persuasion we often try to catch fish with a lasso simply because we’re comfortable using it. Of course we get frustrated when we are unable to influence the target.

A recent case that has been played out on the global scene to chuckles and wisecracks all around is Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi’s April 5 letter to President Barack Obama. It has all the ingredients of great emotional persuasion. The only problem is that it is a lasso thrown at a shark. Let us look at the brief letter a bit closely.

The opening salutation, “Our son, Excellency, President Obama,” makes it quite clear that the writer is focusing on a personal relationship rather than on the relationship between two heads of state.

The writer then refers to the moral and physical hurt that Mr Obama’s words and deeds have caused Libya, and adds, “Despite all this you will always remain our son.” Obviously the writer wants to arouse the wayward ‘son’s’ sense of guilt, then forgive him magnanimously, and reassure him that the relationship is intact. Signalling continued goodwill, Col Gaddafi goes on to wish President Obama all the best in his re-election campaign.

In a cunning move, Col Gaddafi then praises President Obama as “a man who has enough courage to annul a wrong and mistaken action.” This is followed by a few rational arguments such as impossibility of building a civil society by means of weapons and support for the terrorist outfit, Al Qaeda. He also reminds the American president of his own repeated assertions, including the one he made at the UN General Assembly, that the security of other countries is not America’s responsibility.

Finally, the Colonel asks Mr Obama to intervene for the sake of “friendship between our peoples … and for the sake of economic, and security cooperation against terror,” and keep NATO off Libya.

This is a very good use of emotion laced with reasoning to persuade the target to change the course of action he has set in motion. But we know that it failed miserably except to trigger ridicule. There are four reasons why the result could not have been different.

First, Col Gaddafi called Mr Obama ‘son.’ Even when not intended literally, it can be repulsive to a person who doesn’t treat the caller as a father figure. It could, of course, be different if Nelson Mandela used it.

Second, Col Gaddafi was trying to build on an emotional platform which was non-existent. Genuine emotion is so powerful that it is widely and successfully used to blackmail people to do what the persuader wants. Logic and evidence stand no chance against powerful emotion. There are numerous cases of powerful kings and queens and their modern equivalents going weak in the knees and doing foolish things as a result of emotional blackmail from people they love and care for deeply. As Birbal reminds us, Emperor Akbar’s grandson would be hugged and rewarded, not beheaded, for climbing on the old man and pulling at his moustache. Where there is no love, the rules are different.

Third, Colonel Gaddafi was attempting emotional persuasion publicly. While he might not have intended the letter to be splashed all over the world, it was not a secret document meant only for President Obama’s eyes because the Libyan official news agency also had announced the dispatch of this letter. Emotional persuasion is best attempted in private especially when you want the target to change a position that has already been made public. Leaders cultivate the myth that they base their decisions on principles and evidence. A political leader would not want the world to know that he changed a policy in response to an emotional appeal.

Fourth, the Libyan leader was trying to do the persuasion himself. It is true that as the person who has been ruling Libya for over forty years, Col Gaddafi has more power and authority than any other Libyan. But right now his face is unacceptable to the West. He should have used back channel diplomacy if he wanted to persuade any Western leader.

These factors apply equally well to the corporate world. Emotion can and does work there too, provided you have established your personal power over others. Don’t try emotional persuasion on those who don’t care whether you are dead or alive. It is guaranteed to fail. Don’t try emotional persuasion in public; you are unlikely to succeed. Learn to recognise situations where it is best to persuade targets through intermediaries.

Nelson’s Eye

They say you cannot wake up a man who pretends to be asleep. This captures a frustrating situation that many of us have encountered as persuaders. We see a replay of this at personal, corporate, and political levels. We do everything right, but our persuasion efforts fail because the target has decided not to see, not to listen, not to understand.

Let’s recall a well-known anecdote from Horatio Nelson, the British naval hero and the star of the Battle of Copenhagen (April 1801). Admiral Sir Hyde Parker commanded the British fleet that was trying to destroy the Danish-Norwegian fleet anchored off Copenhagen. From aboard HMS Elephant, Vice Admiral Nelson led the main attack.

As Nelson started his advance towards the harbor, Admiral Parker judged that a retreat was necessary because three of his ships had run aground and the Danish fire was much heavier than anticipated. Heavy casualties and defeat appeared certain to him. So he signaled to Nelson to withdraw.

The signal lieutenant informed Nelson of the signal from the fleet’s commander. But Nelson did not want to withdraw. He was pretty sure that he would win in spite of the destruction around him. Yet he should not disobey orders. So he raised the telescope to his blind eye (he had lost one eye in an earlier battle) and said cheekily, “I really don’t see the signal.” How can anyone blame him for disobeying orders if he didn’t get them?

Of course he went on to cripple the Danish and bring about a truce in favour of the British. And when Admiral Parker was recalled later in the year, Nelson was made the commander-in-chief in the Baltic Sea. But his tactic is something that many people adopt at all levels and in different spheres.

If you pretend that you can’t see the elephant in the room, obviously others can’t expect you to chase it out. When a powerful person or government adopts this tactic, there is pretty little others can do about it.

Americans, for example, consider it their sacred duty to reduce and if possible eliminate atrocities all over the world. They clearly see atrocities perpetrated by the Gadaffi regime against the people in Libya, and have intervened along with members of NATO. Through a press release American President Obama declared on March 28, 2011: “To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and – more profoundly – our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are.  Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”

Excellent. Highly proactive. But when signals of similar or worse atrocities come from their allies, they raise the telescope to their blind eye.

What happens on the international scene does happen on a smaller scale in the corporate world too. Have you come across Nelson’s eye in your organisation?

Murder most foul

It is not uncommon to accuse doctors of criminal negligence when their patients die. But in January 1668, when Antoine Mauroy, a mad man, was found dead in Paris, Dr Jean Denis was accused of his murder. His crime? He had transfused a calf’s blood into Mauroy’s body a few weeks before.

The medical and religious establishment in Paris was up in arms against Denis. They argued that his procedure was blasphemous because blood was the seat of the soul.

In June 1667 Denis had transfused blood from a lamb to a fifteen-year-old boy. It was successful and helped the boy live. The young physician wanted to experiment with transfusion and help people who needed blood. But the opposition was so strong that soon the French parliament banned blood transfusion. The ban was in place for almost 150 years effectively preventing any experiments involving blood transfusion.

When it was revived in England in 1818, human-to-human blood transfusion was attempted. Success was patchy because no one knew about blood groups then. It took several decades for scientists to discover different blood groups and figure out which ones matched and which ones did not.

Now hundreds of thousands of blood transfusions are done every day globally. It is such a common life-saving procedure that it is difficult to imagine that it was once treated as a sin against man and God.

What is the connection between persuasion and the early attempts at blood transfusion? There are three important lessons in the story for us.

First, it is virtually impossible to persuade people to accept or even try anything that is perceived as going against their strongly held beliefs, especially social and religious ones. According to Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, even great scientists have difficulty accommodating evidence that goes against their paradigms or deeply entrenched scientific beliefs. 

Second, in spite of such rock-solid resistance, the situation is not hopeless. But change requires time, patience, and systems. If you go in for a big bang that challenges strong beliefs, you are likely to fail. It may be wise to take one small virtually imperceptible step at a time.  After several small changes have been accepted or at least tolerated, you may find that gradually a big change has taken place. It’s like a bud that opens up in a few hours although you never see it opening.

Third, any ‘evidence’ that is in line with your beliefs is nearly always accepted uncritically. Here I should share with you a fact I’ve held back so far. Mad Mauroy was indeed murdered, but not by Denis. It was found out later that Denis’s opponents were the murderers. But the medical establishment and the public in Paris had no difficulty accepting their claim that blood transfusion led to the death. That Denis was an upstart with a humble origin also may have made it easy for the public to rubbish him.

Are you familiar with any instances where beliefs at home or at work place frustrate what you consider to be reasonable attempts at persuasion? Do share them with us.

Note: The historical facts about blood transfusion are taken from ‘Bloody victory, the evolution of a science,’ The Economist, March 19, 2011. It is a review of Holly Tucker’s book, Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution (W.W. Norton). If you can’t get hold of the book, read at least the review.

Faith - 2, Reason - 0

Today I must report on a match in which I was beaten thoroughly. I felt like an ant trying to break a huge block of granite.

Yesterday I visited a distant cousin, who dropped out of school five decades ago and became a full-time farmer in the western ghats of Kerala. Let’s call him Abraham. He’s pretty prosperous now but his education has been patchy.

While my wife gossiped with the women folk of the house, somehow the topic of the discussion with my cousin turned to the recent Japanese Tsunami. Abraham announced that this was clearly a divine punishment. I should have just smiled and moved on to some other topic. But I felt that I couldn’t let it go unchallenged. I also sensed an opportunity to hammer some sense into a country bumpkin.

I said that there was no reason why any natural phenomenon should be treated as divine punishment. Who was being punished when the Tsunami raged? The ones who got killed? The ones who had been injured? The ones who were not injured, but lost all their possessions? Those who survived? Or was it the country that was punished? But what is a country without its people? Why should a whole country or population be punished? For what crime?

This in any case was not the first disaster. There is some disaster or another in some part or another of the earth every now and then. When something goes wrong in one part of the world, it often gives another part of the world an opportunity to profit from it. I argued that it was unreasonable to treat such disasters as supernatural interventions in human affairs to punish the guilty and reward the virtuous.

He was not in the least shaken by any argument that I put forward. Instead, he moved on to another claim delivered with equal conviction: The world is about to end. It has been prophesied in the Bible, he added as conclusive proof, that when the end of the world approaches, there will be not just big calamities, but wars. Look at Egypt. At Libya. At Lebanon. At Yemen. At Afghanistan. There are wars everywhere. This is a clear sign that the prophesies are being fulfilled.

I tried to remind him of the first and second World Wars. Those wars, I told him, were Tsunamis while these ‘wars’ in the African continent are mere ripples. My feeble attempts to persuade him to look at these uprisings differently did not meet with any success either.

As I reflect on this little conversational episode, I marvel at the power of faith over reason. Perhaps we all have some strong beliefs that effortlessly frustrate any arguments that reason might put forward. Perhaps we never question some of our assumptions and beliefs. We just reject any counter evidence or give it an interpretation that is aligned to our beliefs. Reason stands no chance when pitted against faith. 

A stroke of luck (2)

 Charu Datta behaved like the way an animal walks into a trap in search of the easy food waiting there.

They expected him to accept the invitation to work with the Prince. He did it readily. They expected him to become curious and watch secretly what the Prince was doing to the maiden behind closed doors. Their entire plan hinged on it. They expected him to become convinced that it was safe to bring his own wife. They expected him to want to make a fast buck without any risk by passing his young bride off as a virgin. He did.

Why did he fall for such a trick? Was he a big fool? 

Not really.We cannot spot a clever setup (here, the unsolicited offer of employment at the palace and the Prince’s special Gauri pooja with maidens being worshipped) however smart we are.  The simple reason is that there is nothing odd or unusual about it to arouse any kind of suspicion. A clever setup is like a smart spy who never looks like a spy.

Does it mean that there is no way we can prevent being deceived? Does it mean that we should look at everything and everyone with suspicion?

Certainly not. While we may not be able to spot a setup, there are things we can do to avoid walking into the trap.

We generally fall victims to deceptive persuasion for four reasons. I deal with them in chapter 10, The Resistant Persuadee, The Persuasive Manager. Let me give you a summary.

1.  We tend to take many decisions at a sub-rational level, which is driven largely by instincts.

2.  We blindly rely on certain rules of thumb to deal with the complexities of life.

3.  We are often too lazy to scrutinise apparently logical but false reasoning that our persuaders use.

4. We suffer from the Goliath Complex: we think we are too smart to be cheated.

When good things happen to us we fold our critical antennae and go along without asking any questions. We don’t want the soothing music to stop. Then instincts such as greed take over. Our fraudulent persuaders depend on this sequence to trap us.

It is possible to say that Charu Datta should have asked himself why, without any move whatsoever on his part, he was invited by the Prince and given a prestigious assignment. But this is wisdom in hindsight. Things like this can happen. Any of us could be the lucky beneficiary of someone’s generosity. We can’t blame Charu Datta for accepting the assignment.

Even his curiosity is understandable. But what undid him was letting greed guide his actions.  We see many examples around us. The Ahmedabad edition of the newspaper DNA has, for example, been reporting that a few local companies are promising 120% annual returns on investment. People are handing over their hard earned cash to agents of these companies. It is obvious that such high returns are either impossible or illegal or both. It is greed combined with a sense of invulnerability that persuaders many investors to part with their money.

There is a simple rule of thumb that we can follow if we don’t want to be victims of fraudulent persuasion: If something is too good to be true, don’t grab it; be extra critical. Consult others before you go ahead.

Taken for a divine ride

The other day I was taken for a ride. Not a very rare event in my life by any means, but this time it was by a vendor of flowers and other offerings you take to temples. Let me tell you the story.

I was in Haridwar. I thought I would visit the famous Mansa Devi temple. I decided to walk up the hill. When I was almost at the top of the hill, one of the two flower vendors on the road asked me to buy flowers to offer to the Devi. I said no, I didn’t need them. (I don’t make such offerings in any place of worship.) He didn’t insist.

As I stepped forward, he said I should remove my footwear before going any further. I was a bit puzzled because the temple was a clear 150 m away, behind a bend on the road. So I looked around. I saw a family leaving its footwear on the road near the only other flower vendor’s cart. Almost immediately, I removed my sneakers and left them on the road in ‘my’ flower vendor’s (paid) care.

Barefoot, I walked the rest of the road to the temple building. There I found several flower stalls and lots of visitors with their footwear on. There was also a ‘shoe stall’ next to the temple entrance, where one could leave one’s footwear before entering the building. I could easily have walked up to that point in my sneakers without offending the sanctity of the temple premises and without hurting my feet.

While climbing down the hill I asked myself: Why was I so readily persuaded by the flower vendor to leave my footwear so far away from the temple? Two influences immediately came up in my mind.

First, the example of a family leaving its footwear near the other flower cart. I assumed that they were local folks who would know the local conventions.  When we are unsure of local customs, we tend to follow others assuming that they know better. They may be as clueless as we are!

Second, I wouldn’t want to do anything that would violate local perceptions of sanctity and appropriate behaviour. This is particularly because I’m not a Hindu. I would already have appeared strange by not taking any offerings to the temple. In my eagerness not to offend, I meekly accepted the flower vendor’s suggestion. I didn’t think. I didn’t question. I just went along.

A moment’s thought would have been enough to realise that I could go further up before removing the footwear. If this is as far as visitors were allowed to keep their footwear on, how come there was no footwear left by the visitors who had already gone up? After all, it was evening, and I had seen many people go up and down the hill. Usually, there would be a notice and a place for people to leave their footwear before entering any temple. How come there was no such notice near the flower vendor and no place to leave one’s footwear and retrieve it systematically?

I learnt a lesson in persuasion for a small fee of Rs 10 that I paid the flower vendor for taking care of my sneakers for about twenty minutes.  Our fears, anxieties, and sensitivities can be easily played upon by those who want to persuade us. When these things happen, our eyes close and minds go to sleep. The strange thing is that they happen when we least expect them. We may be well fortified against the slick advertisement or the smart car salesman but not against the simple peasant.

Have you had any experience of being taken for a ride? Do share it with us. Also tell us when you discovered that you had been persuaded far too easily.

Bull!

Recently we read in the papers about a young Delhi woman who poisoned her jeweller husband and two kids to elope with a man she had ‘met’ on Facebook and had been communicating with for a few weeks. 


The man had told her that he was a non-resident Indian based in London, interested in marrying an Indian woman, and taking her back to London with him. He found her perfect. They decided to get married. He asked her to leave her family and bring some cash or jewellery; she gladly took along jewellery worth about half a million Rupees. They checked into a hotel and had some refreshments in the room. The following morning, when the woman woke up, she realised that her lover had taken all her jewellery and left without any trace. He had laced her drink with some sedative.

We may be tempted to tut-tut and wonder how gullible folks can be. How could this woman trust a stranger and take his claims seriously? Shouldn’t she have checked his credentials? After all, it was a major, life-changing decision that she was taking.

We may consider her foolish and gullible. The fact is, we are little different from her. We are susceptible to deceptive persuasion if the conditions are ripe. Let us look at the conditions under which this young woman acted the way she did.

We don’t have any information about her personal life and relationship with her husband. We can only speculate. It is very likely that she was not happy with her marriage. She was hoping for an exit. Perhaps she had dreams of living abroad especially in a western country. She wanted someone to come along and deliver her from her marriage. When the Facebook friend happened, her mind was fully ready to buy any bull from him. 

The man must have been suave, full of love and concern. He must have shared with her his dreams of an exciting, love-filled life together with her. He presented to her the picture of a caring man who appreciated her, unlike her husband who took her for granted. She desperately wanted to believe him and was afraid that she would lose him if she dillydallied. Under such circumstances, it is not at all surprising that her critical faculties were switched off. It is like your immuno-responses being suppressed by cortisone.

However knowledgeable and critical we are, we also succumb to deceptive persuasion if we are approached with a proposal that is along the lines that we believe in and are dreaming of. The belief that we are smart and that we cannot be taken for a ride itself dulls our critical faculties. In fact, fraudulent persuaders often play on our sense of invulnerability to strike us. 

Take any financial fraud that lures savvy investors. The victims consider themselves smart, capable of smelling an extraordinary opportunity before others spot it. They skip due diligence because their greed doesn’t let them share such information widely or seek others’ opinion. They are worried they would lose the edge. Just like the woman who didn’t ask her Facebook lover any hard questions lest she would lose him.

Have you had any experience of being taken for a ride? Why not share it with us? I have had several. I’ll share one with you in a few days. Fortunately the loss was minimal. And the learning phenomenal.

Jesus, WikiLeaks

One day some Jewish scribes and Pharisees caught a woman in the act of adultery and brought her to Jesus Christ, who was teaching his followers on the temple premises at Jerusalem.  “Master, they said, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. Our law-giver Moses has commanded us to stone such sinners. What shall we do with her?”

They wanted to test Jesus, who had been preaching brotherly love. They would be able to find fault with him whether he spoke in favour or against following the law. He did not answer immediately. He sat looking down and writing in the sand with his big toe. Smelling victory over the charismatic preacher they insisted on an answer. Finally, he lifted his face and said: “He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.” Again he looked down and continued writing in the sand.

After a while Jesus looked up again. There was no one except the woman who had been accused of adultery. All the accusers had left the place quietly.

“Did anyone condemn you,” asked Jesus. When she said no one had, Jesus added: “Nor do I condemn you. Go, sin no more.”

(Based on the Gospel of John, Chapter 8, verses 1-10)

This was an instance of superb framing: let him who has not sinned cast the first stone.  If Jesus had said that she should not be stoned, the Pharisees would have accused him of violating a law given by Moses. That would be almost blasphemous. If he had said that she should be stoned, they would have accused him of being cruel in spite of preaching love. They were hoping to trap him into one of the two positions, both untenable.

But Jesus framed the issue in such a way that they were dissuaded from pursuing the case. They didn’t know how to respond. They left.

If, however, we critically analyse the answer Jesus gave, we can see that the Pharisees needn’t have retreated with the tails between their legs. There are different kinds of sins and different kinds of punishments to match them. That a person has committed Sin A is no justification for his not being entitled to carry out the legally sanctioned punishment for Sin B. The accusers need not have left unless they had all committed adultery; in that case, it would have been difficult for them to carry out stoning.

But the framing was so powerful and so unexpected that they were unable to think critically and reframe it. Often we are easily persuaded by such framing because we don’t subject it to critical evaluation. Let us take the way the United States government pressured companies such as Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal to choke WikiLeaks, Julian Assange’s website that published thousands of leaked cables from American embassies. Those documents are definitely embarrassing to the American government and some of its allies. But that is not the way the issue is framed by the US. WikiLeaks has to be strangled because what it is doing is an irresponsible, anarchist assault. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it “an attack against the international community.” According to State Department legal adviser Harold Koh, secret diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, “place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals.”

When some companies including Google were pressured by China to restrict information available to Chinese citizens, the very same Hillary Clinton was in the forefront of the critics of the Chinese government and supporters of Internet freedom. Referring to the events in China she said, “information networks are helping people to discover new facts and making governments more accountable.” The need for freedom of information was the basis for such criticism.

We need to ask whether such framing is appropriate before buying the American argument against WikiLeaks or any argument from any source of power.

Resisting Pressure - IIMA Style

IIMA turned fifty yesterday, December 11, 2010. About fifty professors who had taught here during the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s came to attend the launch of the golden jubilee year. It was wonderful to hear several of them reminisce about their experience during the formative years of the Institute. Quite a few of them had worked with the truly inspiring and visionary founding fathers: Vikram Sarabhai, Kasturbhai Lalbhai, and Ravi Matthai. 

The retired professors spoke about several things that moulded the Institute’s culture that helped it become the leader and stay at the top year after year. But what struck me most was an incident narrated by Professor VS Vyas, who was the director from 1977 to 1982. He received a telephone call from a senior official in the Prime Minister’s office. He was told that he should admit to the PGP a Prince from the Royal family in a neighbouring country. [Professor Vyas didn’t name the country during his speech, but I guess it was Nepal. Which other neighbouring country had a king?]

The Prince had not taken the Institute’s admission test. Professor Vyas said it was not possible to admit any student who had not taken the Institute’s admission test and qualified himself. The official said that denying admission to the Prince would have diplomatic complications and hurt the country’s interests.  He insisted that IIMA admit the Prince.

When reasoning did not succeed, Professor Vyas said that for a decision on an issue like this he would have to consult the faculty and the board. So he asked the official to send him a formal letter asking him to admit the Prince to the PGP and explaining why. The official promised to send it, but never did. So the problem went away.

What enabled Professor Vyas to withstand the pressure from the Prime Minister’s office? What were its consequences? Is there a lesson in it for us?

Standing up to the political masters is far from easy for the Director of any institution that depends almost completely on the government for funding. But two things helped Professor Vyas do it. First, the founding fathers had secured for the Institute an unusually high degree of autonomy right from the beginning. There had not been any instance of the Institute caving in under pressure from anyone in the government. Second, Professor Vyas was willing to face the consequences (possibly, loss of his director’s position) of doing what he believed was right. Each such act of resistance contributes to a reputation which acts as a shield against coercion.

When Professor Vyas couldn’t stop the pressure on his own, he decided to involve his colleagues and board. This is an excellent strategy because it gives an individual tremendous power. Many bullies would not dare confront a group.

It is interesting that the official from the Prime Minister’s office never sent a formal letter requesting admission for the Prince. Obviously, he was trying to use his positional power informally while subtly implying that he was doing it on behalf of the Prime Minister. He didn’t want to leave any trace of his request because he knew it was unjustifiable. The Prime Minister was probably unaware of this although the call came from his office.

Many managers allow themselves to be persuaded far too easily to bend and break rules when all that is required is a little bit of courage to say what they really believe in. They emasculate themselves and their departments making it harder for everyone else to resist unwanted or unreasonable requests.

An Unnecessary Death

I am amazed at the absence of resistance to persuasion in the following true story recreated from newspaper reports.

The dead body of 22-year-old Priyanka Ramanuj, a first year MBA student, was picked up from a sewage canal between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar on October 24, 2010. The young woman had been missing since October 21. That evening she had called her brother to say that she was still in the library and would be late to get home. Soon after, her cellphone was switched off. There were no further calls from her.

The post-mortem examination confirmed that the death was caused by drowning because water had entered the lungs. There were no signs of rape or injuries pointing to an assault. The police started investigating the case assuming that it was a suicide or an accidental death although they did not rule out murder.

Priyanka had been engaged to Mahendra Sadhu, an engineering student and the son of a local builder and political leader. Both the families had been waiting for them to complete their studies, marry, and settle down. Both the families asserted that Priyanka was not the kind that would commit suicide and that it was a clear case of murder by someone who knew her. A shallow sewage canal was hardly the place where a healthy young woman would get drowned. But no one could point a finger at anyone who would want to kill her. Mahendra’s father Chandu Sadhu suspected that one of his many political enemies was the killer.

In five days the police cracked the case building on certain Facebook messages. The woman had been murdered by her fiancé, Mahendra, with the help of his friend, Hardik Gohil. They admitted to the police that on the evening of October 21, they met Priyanka and persuaded her to lie to her brother that she was still in the library nearly an hour after she had left the college premises. They told her that they wanted to give her a surprise. All three got into Mahendra’s car and went for a long drive. 

During the drive they gave her a soft drink mixed with a sedative. Once she was unconscious, Mahendra made several calls to Priyanka’s cellphone and then switched it off. Then they drove to Drive-In Cinema, parked the car there, and used a cushion to smother her. They drove out, and assuming that she was dead, dumped the body in a sewage canal. They called Priyanka’s brother and told him that Priyanka was not picking up his repeated calls.

They thought that they had pulled off a smart murder. They had the perfect alibi. On the evening of October 21, they were watching a film at Drive-In Cinema and they tried repeatedly to call her until she switched off her cellphone.

More background information surfaced during the investigation.

Son of a rich builder-politician, Mahendra had a flat, a car, and a lot of cash to spend. He spent lavishly on his friends. Hardik Gohil, his closest and long-term friend, was a beneficiary of his largesse.

Priyanka had been engaged to a doctor; it was called off in 2008. Her father Chandrakant Ramanuj was working as chief engineer to Mahindra’s father Chandu Sadhu.

Mahendra had an affair with a classmate (Disha Dave), which ended in 2009 when she moved with her parents to Dubai. He was dejected. Chandu Sadhu suggested to Chandrakant Ramanuj that if Mahendra and Priyanka married, it would be good for both of them. Ramanuj agreed; Priyanka and Mahendra got engaged at a grand function. They used to meet occasionally. There did not appear to be any problem between them.

Mahendra, however, got in touch with Disha on Facebook and their relationship was rekindled. She came to Ahmedabad during Navratri in October 2010. Mahendra managed to spend eight out of the nine evenings with her. Priyanka didn’t know or suspect anything.

Mahendra wanted to marry Disha.  So he asked Hardik to persuade Priyanka to break off the engagement. To find out quietly how Priyanka would react, Hardik joked with her and asked what she would do if Mahindra broke off the engagement and married another girl. She said she didn’t have the heart to go through yet another engagement.

Both Mahendra and Hardik concluded that getting rid of Priyanka was the only way out of the sticky situation.

[True story reconstructed from news reports that appeared in the Ahmedabad edition of DNA and the Times of India between October 25 and 31, 2010.]