"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution,” said Albert Einstein.
With imagination trumping knowledge, do we overrate our ability to know the future, and plot an intelligent course? What is technical lock? What recently published book on Kenyan history did a quiet Kenyan thinker –equally at home with financial analysis and English literature–recommend?
Speed, ownership, science and openness are the four rules that global tech giants like Amazon, Apple, SpaceX and others have followed. Perhaps we are stuck in an old-fashioned industrial era way of thinking and doing?
This is the view of Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and co-founder of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, who studies how digital technologies impact business, work and society.
Stress is on having a minimum viable plan with a focus on speed, doing, and adapting. Getting feedback on what works, what doesn’t, iterating, learning quickly [as in, by the end of the day] and realising that failure is inevitable. Failing intelligently, based on low-risk bets, that when things fail, it does not scuttle the whole enterprise.
Overrate ability to see the future of a business
At the heart of the matter, is that managers overrate their ability to plan, setting a course for the future. As opposed to going through the rain dancing voodoo like ritual of a five- year plan that sits on the dusty shelf, better to escape the top heavy bureaucratic mess. Inject some creativity and imagination, keep it simple, reduce the time frame and watch the impact, focusing on confidence building small wins.
An almost medieval approach to planning – and delivering impact - is a symptom of what Robert Greene in his book Mastery refers to as a ‘technical lock’. Just plain being stuck in a comfortable muddy rut.
Greene writes “In many fields we can see and diagnose the same mental disease, which we shall call technical lock. What this means is the following: in order to learn a subject or skill, particularly one that is complex, we must immerse ourselves in many details, techniques, and procedures that are standard for solving problems."
"If we are not careful, however, we become locked into seeing every problem in the same way, using the same techniques and strategies that become so imprinted in us. It is always simpler to follow such a route. In the process we lose sight of the bigger picture, the purpose of what we are doing, how each problem we face is different and requires a different approach. We adopt a kind of tunnel vision.”
“This technical lock afflicts people in all fields, as they lose a sense of the overall purpose of their work, of the larger question at hand, of what impels them to do their work in the first place” notes Greene.
One of the operating principles of being human is no one wants to look stupid. Yet, the paradox is, that to learn in business, we have to be ready to fail, to make mistakes, to look and feel like we goofed, we messed up. Hopefully, low risk, negligible, not too costly failures. As in learning to downhill ski, if you are not falling, you are not acquiring a skill.
A quiet intellectual
One would not call many people an ‘intellectual, a thinker’ with both imagination, creativity and a depth of knowledge. It is hard to find someone who can equally well discuss the delicacy of financial derivatives, the three dimensions of a feasibility study, as well as Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novel, 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'.
In bumping into Professor Joseph Kimura, a former boss, at what was then ‘Deloitte Haskins + Sells’ he recommended a book, immediately purchased. In a time when there is an odd craving for fancy titles and all sorts of letters behind one’s name, humble Prof Kimura prefers to be known simply as ‘Joe’ to friends and colleagues.
One notices that while accountants are usually referred to as ‘bean counters’, often placed more on the administrative sidelines, in Kenya CPA’s play a prominent role. Likely reason for this, is that Prof Kimura, and others, made sure that the accountants training and curriculum was of a higher standard.
Full of imagination, a quintessential teacher, never pedantic, never talking down to people, Joe would just talk, telling a story, reviewing facts and figures – and one realised, one was learning though a process of gentle osmosis, taking in his thoughts and world class approach.
Trapped in history
'Trapped in History: Kenya, Mau Mau and Me', published in 2023, written by Nicholas Rankin is the book Prof Kimura recommended. Studying literature at Oxford, Rankin grew up in Kenya, with his first school being Tigoni Primary. In reading the initial chapters, one can see why Joe suggested it, where it provides a more balanced “search for the nuanced truth”.
“Trapped in History stands head and shoulders above the pack. Anybody with an interest in Kenya will want to read it; students of the empire should as well,” wrote Nicholas Best of The Daily Telegraph.
Rankin’s well researched perspective, sparing no one, will come as a pleasant change for Kenyan readers. History is always a delicate sensitive subject. As Ngugi wa Thiong’o wrote: “History is subversive because truth is.”
