The GPS to navigate a chaotic world

Learning to filter out the false and the fake is an exceptionally important skill in the twenty-first century, argues a new book

Ravi Venkatesan has straddled the worlds of both manufacturing and information-technology, from Cummins India to Microsoft India. Currently UNICEF’s Special Representative for Young People and Innovation, his new book What the Heck Do I Do With My Life? makes the case that successful adaptation in the new century requires a ‘paradigm shift’, a different mindset on career choices, new skills and strategies. An excerpt from the book:

Snakes and Ladders was a popular board game when I was a child; it is a game of chance, not skill and so I found it comforting. In 1980, for my first coding project at IIT, I built a simulator for Snakes and Ladders. I still like Snakes and Ladders since it strikes me as a nice metaphor for life. The ladders that propel you up are your strengths and efforts meeting good luck. The snakes are random negative events and also bad decisions, they can set you back greatly. The number of snakes on the board seems to be multiplying lately, so learning how to avoid stepping on one is important.

I am not a herpetologist but there appear to be distinct varieties of ‘snakes’. One is temptation. I have long wondered why, with such unfailing regularity, some otherwise extraordinary person shows stunningly bad judgment and ends up ruining their career and life. In India, over the years we have seen business leaders such as Phaneesh Murthy (Infosys), B. Ramalinga Raju (Satyam), Chanda Kochhar (ICICI), Peter Mukerjea (Star TV), Dr Rajendra Pachauri (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC]) and many others fall from grace. Globally, Bill Clinton, Bill Cosby, Rajat Gupta, Carlos Ghosn, Harvey Weinstein and so many others have not covered themselves with glory. Usually, it is a story of someone succumbing to greed, lust or power.

While it is easy to get judgmental about these fallen leaders, it is important to remember that they were not idiots. They were talented, extremely successful and self-made individuals. None of them started their career intending to do whatever they did, but somewhere, they lost their way. Human weakness prevailed and overshadowed all their strengths and achievements, and they ended up in disgrace. The question for us is this: ‘Why do you think this cannot happen to you or me?’ It absolutely could and often does but being less visible, our fall from grace is not so spectacular. Someone gets expelled from school for misbehaviour, or sacked from a job for impropriety or loses their family over an affair. Sometimes, it is even more mundane; our weakness or inability to resist some of the seven deadly biblical sins (pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth) results not in infamy but in us simply fizzling out without achieving our potential. Over the years, I have seen this happen to so many good and talented people.

If temptation is one kind of snake, another is a ‘really bad decision’, particularly around crucial choices such as, ‘What should I study/become?’, ‘Should I join this company or that?’, ‘I do not like my manager; should I quit this company?’, ‘Should I take a risk and start a business?’, ‘Should I marry this person?’ and ‘Should I emigrate to another country?’

Decisions like these which are costly to reverse deserve deep thinking and multiple perspectives. A poor choice can set you back, in some cases even destroying a person’s life. For instance, over the course of my career, I’ve made some dumb decisions which I regretted. Turning down an offer from Microsoft in 1992 is one of them. Had I had the benefit of better advice, I might have made a better decision. Years later, the opposite happened. I was being recruited as the CEO of an extremely successful company, but one with a mixed reputation. I was all set to join when two of my closest friends beat sense into me. I shudder to think what might have happened had I not changed course.

The third type of snake has to do with what information we choose to believe. This is hugely consequential at a time of so much disinformation, fake news and deepfake videos often spread by extremely charismatic and deeply flawed leaders. For instance, a lot of otherwise sensible people believe in various conspiracy theories about vaccines. They may buy into a story that these are developed by billionaires to control the world or that vaccines can cause autism or infertility. So, they reject a COVID-19 vaccine. I never cease to be amazed at the people I know who buy into various narratives such as COVID-19 being caused by 5G networks or that Muslim men are waging a ‘love jihad’ to convert Hindu girls or that Joe Biden rigged and ‘stole’ the U.S. presidential election. While we may laugh at how ridiculous these specific ideas are, we have all seen good and smart people—relatives, colleagues and friends—buy into all kinds of fake news and narratives and follow and worship dangerous leaders. We would not have such polarised societies if this were not the case. This stuff is quite subtle and pernicious, with enormous consequences both for society and for you, personally. So, learning to filter out the false and the fake is an exceptionally important capability in the twenty-first century.