A 'model' That Helped Me Make My Life Choices
Nav Qirti
It sounds a cliche now, but I think covid has made us all think about our lives differently. It made us pause, and made us see new opportunities within ourselves and around us. It also made me think about my own transformation and progress - both personal and professional.
I have been running a consulting firm that I started in 2012. It has been an exciting journey so far - a journey of self expression and realisation. What next? How shall I shape my life from here on?
In the process of arriving at this decision, through reflections, conversations, and rounds of articulation I theorised a ‘model’ to draw out the context of the business I operate in - which is essentially ‘business of problem solving’ - what we refer to as consulting business. This ‘model’ then gave me a way to think about my options and choices I could make.
Model A: a model that helped me design my professional life
The ‘model’ I drew has five bands (so far). The size & scale of the organisation is smaller at the top band, but impact is high. While, the size & scale of the ‘organisation’ increases as we go down in order, but impact decreases (I mean impact that an individual can create). These five bands are:
Gurudom
Lens Giving
Tools Giving
Solutions Giving
Doing
(Note: The number of band doesn’t indicate hierarchy or superiority. I am not suggesting that one is better than the other. I am using numbers for easy reference)
This ‘model’ appears to be now clearly structured but it started fuzzy. I started with thinking about the kind of work that I have been doing for the past 10 plus years.
So far I have been playing in the ‘Solutions-Giving’ band. In such a band the mode of delivery is ‘consulting’ and outcome is a ‘solution’.
Over the years I have solved problems for organizations. The dynamic is such that clients give you their problems along with a cheque of, say, one hundred thousand dollars, and keep a dagger on your head (figuratively) till you give them a solution. The business generation is competitive, and delivery is demanding.
Over the years, while working on a multitude of varied projects, I started to develop a pattern of solutions. Informed by these patterns I started to develop frameworks, methods and tools to solve problems. These tools are teachable and can be applied in different situations.
This led me to conceptualise the next band in the schema - the ‘Tools-Giving’ band. In such a band the mode of delivery is ‘training’ (workshops, playbooks and sometimes coaching) and outcome is ‘human capability development’
Here you don’t solve clients’ problems directly but enable people (in organisations) by building their capabilities to solve their problems themselves. Your role is to teach them the tools, and build the mindsets associated with problem solving. This is essentially the business of education / learning.
Model A: One of numerous iterations shaped by conversations with friends and colleagues
After a certain period of professional experience your thoughts, ideas, work experiences, life philosophies or a combination of all these start to coalesce into something coherent. This could be a set of principles. Or a framework that gives a new perspective to think about. Or a point-of-view that opens new ways of thinking and new possibilities for people.
I conceptualised this as a ‘Lens-Giving’ band. When you play in this band, the mode of delivery is ‘a book’ and ‘public talks’ and the outcome (for the audience) is an epiphany or gaining of a new perspective to approach their profession or life.
Here you you not directly solving people’s problems, nor you are necessarily giving them tools, rather you are giving them a way to think - a perspective - to open up vistas of options in people’s mind that helps them grow in ways they had not imagined before, or didn’t find it possible to achieve.
In the past months while reflecting upon and talking about ‘solutions giving’, ‘tools giving’ and ‘lens giving’ I realised there are two more bands - rarefied ‘Gurudom’ and down below ‘Doing’. I will explain them one by one.
In my view ’Gurudom’ is rarefied, higher order lens giving. It is about attaining a status that your word is the truth. People see you as and seek you for personal and deeper transformation journeys. It is not just talks and books, but spending time with the guru is considered an act of ‘transfer of wisdom’. It is like becoming the ‘Dalai Lama’ of your field.
The mode of delivery in this band (in addition to what you do in lens giving), is having retreats, personal audience, sermons, etc. and the outcome sought by the audience (in addition to perspective and epiphany) is wisdom, peace and a sense of transformative direction.
The band at the bottom is ‘Doing’. Players in this band take activities that are non-core to the businesses of their clients and do it for them for a certain price. It is all about efficiency, and sometimes also about an area of competence where a client doesn’t want to invest and outsources it to a partner.
A smile when you sense you are on the right path
The ‘model’ gave me a framework to think about my own transformation journey and progress. To make my own choices by seeing the bigger playing fields. It led me to ask myself the deeper questions:
- Why have I been doing what I have been doing?
- What am I good at and what do I enjoy doing most?
The answers were not direct, but a series of realisations and a certain direction over a period of time by having conversations with people around me. The ‘model’ helped me structure these conversations.
The answers are still not final, rather are being revealed as I am acting on those realisations, and getting constant feedback and iterating on what I am doing.
Realisation was that I want to co-create with people I love to work with.
Realisation was that all of us together achieve more than each one of us alone.
Realisation was when we give more we get more.
Realisation was when we share more, we create more.
Realisation was that I want to build something that can be used again and again.
Realisation was that I want to continue to explore, discover and learn.
These realisations have led me to my quest to create an education platform where we bring creators and facilitators to develop ‘action research’ based content on topics around new ways of learning, and bring this content to as many people as we can to help them make their lives better. The work is in progress. I will write more about the education platform as it takes shape.
A ‘model’ may not be the answer but it certainly helps you arrive at one.