The Art & Science of Life

I had been having several conversations in the past few weeks that led to this thought and eventually to this blog.

Conversation on Sales Training : I was having a chat with my leader at work on ‘How to maximize our team’s productivity?’ during these COVID-19 times and what would be the best way to utilize their time efficiently. One of the areas that we unanimously agreed was on ‘Sales training improvement’. For that purpose, we were creating a collateral focusing on how to do this effectively. We looked at various parameters to ensure that all the ‘conditions/terms’ were being made clear to even the dull-witted salesperson in the team. Having gone through all that, it was evident that we were focusing on getting the science of selling right. For example, if the conditions A and B fall in place, your response must be option X or option Y; very self-explanatory. We looked at some of the best salespeople we have and studied how they would react to some of the scenarios. During this analysis, we realized that it was extremely difficult to get this right. The reason for that was that we were focusing entirely on the ‘science’ of selling; ignoring the ‘art’ part completely. I do not know of a single ‘top-seller’ who got everything right purely with science only; they were all very good artists as well.

Conversation on Cooking : During this COVID-19 period, everyone has been trying their hands on cooking. My wife is a fantastic cook and she has always wanted me to give it a try. I thought that this would the time to try that and decided to give it a shot. So like every beginner, I too had watched numerous YouTube videos out there and attempted to make parotta. I must say: it would have been a massive flop if my wife hadn’t been around. Halfway through the catastrophe, she took control and brought back life to the mission. When I did the root cause analysis, I concluded that, I was getting the science right, but what I had missed was the art.

I believe that anything and everything we do in life has two facets- art and science. Let us take the example of parenting for this. There is a science to it – the do’s and don’ts. But, there is a wonderful art of parenting too. If it comes to leadership, communication, painting, music, finance management or anything you name: everything has an art and a science element to it. If we agree that they are co-existent, the obvious next question is: which one is more important?

For this, let me dig deeper in to sales domain (since I am most familiar with that) and look at examples of people who are weighted towards one over the other. Let us start with one of the core functions of Sales – Qualification. We use some of the sales qualification methodologies to train sellers to ask the right questions. A disciplined seller can carry these questions and make it a practice in asking these questions to every prospect they meet. However, if they are ‘quite average’ in the ‘art’ side of things, they won’t know when and how to ask those questions. There is a high possibility of them pissing the client off by interrogating.

If a person has a great attitude, you can get the ‘science’ right by utilizing their willingness to learn. To get the art right, you need to have passion towards what you are doing. It is extremely difficult to cultivate. For me, to become a decent cook, hardwork alone won’t get me there. I need to have an internal motivation to do that. So what I prefer to do is to focus on areas that give me intrinsic happiness and apply my attitude of getting the science right. Eventually, if you need to get really good at what you are doing, you have to get both the pieces right.

When you take a large set of people, obviously there are exceptions to the above law. You will find celebrities who have overcome the lack of ‘one of the two’, because of the abundance of the other . When we look at some of the best actors or sports personalities – we can find that they got both elements right. But if you deeply analyze them, you would still be able to figure out the difference – some of them are naturally gifted, where-as the others are trained professionals. Federer v/s Djokovic, Sehwag v/s Dhoni, Mohanlal v/s Mammootty etc. to name a few.

But in general, it is wise to pick the art part first and then focus on improving the science element . If you are a parent who is reading this, look at what are the areas of natural interest of your child (based on the questions he/she is asking, on the books they are reading, programs they are watching etc) and then try to develop the science associated with that. If you are in the budding years of your career and still not decided what you have to do with your life, again try to figure out your calling and then invest the time and energy to learn and apply the related science.

All the very best !!