Opinion Analytical deadlock

After confidently clearing all tests,you join the working world. Only to realise that analytics alone gives no results. You are expected to ideate out-of-the-box; are admired for tactical new angles you can bring to kill competitors. Your efficacy is measured in how you ruthlessly,aggressively thrash competition entering your market territory. You also have to beat colleagues in performance to become a leader. You discover that an amorphous entity outside the enterprise that’s under no one’s control is what business is entirely dependent on. That’s the customer,whose insights you have to use in drawing up the company’s strategy. Suddenly at work,it’s the “bad student” antics that are treasured,like marketplace fighting,challenging set norms,finding solutions purely through one’s own wits. Many “good student” managers cannot take this total turnaround in mindset and practice. If you’re one of them,you’ll intellectualise your job,engage in heavy analytics. Meanwhile,behind your back,competition nibbles away into the market share of your company’s products.

This capitalistic world is akin to Africa’s savanna grassland-cum-forest,home to animals like lions,hippos,wild dogs and hyenas,crocodiles,wild elephants,snakes,among many others. Their attack can chop you,crush you or chomp on you. Survival of the fittest is the name of the game,exactly the way it’s among competitors in the capitalistic marketplace. Here it’s like traversing the savanna where analytics becomes a deadlock impeding a market win. Without becoming a warrior who’s watching every market movement,you’ll be eaten up in this savanna jungle. Conversely,communist economic culture is like the frozen North Pole. Everything’s very cold and decided by the state; you need nothing more than to protect yourself with heat. Competition barely exists here,so you can happily create heated analytics as the North Pole freezes all other action.

In the savanna,what role does art play to change your total perspective of work and life? Even in today’s Internet era that’s proliferated with pornography,a bold 19th-century extreme close-up painting of the female vulva called Origin of the World still has the power to scandalise the world. L’Origine du Monde came to Paris’s Musée d’Orsay in1995,after being in private hands for over a century. The museum mounted it behind glass and gave it special security in case it drove offended visitors to violence. Its creator,Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet,pioneered the Realist movement in French painting. He vociferously guarded his freedom: “When I am dead let this be said of me: He belonged to no school,to no church,to no institution,to no academy,least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty.” But Courbet was unable to exhibit this painting because he could have been sent to prison on charges of “affronting public and religious morals”.

The popular Paris Match magazine recently published an article that stirred up a storm. Had Courbet painted his muse in entirety,but severed the top half to avoid public dishonour for her? It’s now revealed she was Irishwoman Joanna Hiffernan,mistress and model of American artist James McNeil Whistler,and that the two artists fell out over her. In 2010,an amateur French art-collector found with an antique dealer what he reckoned to be the top half of L’Origine. He bargained,bought the painting for £1,200 and subjected it to various scientific tests. Earlier this year,the expert on Courbet,Jean Jacques Fernier,confirmed it to be part of the same canvas,authenticating it as L’Origine’s top half. But a controversy still reigns and not everyone is convinced. This new-found top half is now supposedly worth £35 million.

Take another masterpiece,the 500-year-old Renaissance painting Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci. It’s still steeped in mystery as nobody has discovered who the woman with the alluring smile was. But what’s new is that the National Committee for Cultural Heritage in Italy has found that by magnifying high resolution images of Mona Lisa’s eyes,letters and numbers can be seen. A microscope is required as the human eye cannot view them. Silvano Vinceti,President of the Committee said,“Da Vinci put a special emphasis on the Mona Lisa. We know .in the last years of his life he took the painting with him everywhere in a secure case. We also know that Da Vinci was very esoteric and used symbols in his work to give out messages.” In the right eye’s black pupil,Leonardo da Vinci wrote LV,possibly his signature. In the left eye are unidentifiable symbols. This famous painting was featured in Dan Brown’s bestseller The Da Vinci Code,which became a film starring Tom Hanks.

Brown had suggested that secret messages are hidden in Mona Lisa,a painting Da Vinci started in 1503 and completed just before his death in France in 1519. Mona Lisa was once stolen,twice vandalised; even a tea mug was thrown on it by a Russian woman who was refused French citizenship. That’s how closely the world identifies Mona Lisa as the reference of France today.

So,my sub-25 Zapper friends,analytics can definitely land you a boring career where you make good money,but your imagination will be stifled. By bringing creativity into this traditional work,you will keep your mind and business vibrant. Those of you who want a creative arts career,learning from these masters will help you ideate differently. Because they have shown how art can impact and change society,even five centuries after they have gone.

Shombit Sengupta is an international consultant to top management on differentiating business strategy with execution excellence (www.shiningconsulting.com)