A great, but terrifying learning opportunity
“You could not hold any truths to be self-evident. After a class, some students came to me and asked why we could not just appoint the leaders, instead of having elections. Some things that were self-evident to us are not necessarily self-evident in other societies. These became a great learning opportunity, but were also terrifying. I did not know what I was doing and thought that at the very least I should do no harm and hopefully should do some good,” said Karthik Ramanna, Professor of Business and Public Policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government and the author of the recently released book- The Age of Outrage: How to Lead in a Polarized World.
He narrated anecdotes of his experiences in his first year (2016) while trying to engage the student community in student governance via elections. The students came from senior leadership positions like cabinet ministers, chief secretaries, senior civil servants, and mayors from different nations. Ramanna spoke at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business on how leaders and their teams can navigate and thrive in today’s polarized milieu.
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The idea behind The Age of Outrage
The book originated from a popular leadership course, How to Lead in a Polarized World, that Ramanna taught as the founding director of the Blavatnik School’s Public Policy Program at the University of Oxford to a diverse class of 120 students from 70 different jurisdictions. During that time, Ramanna reached out to business leaders, non-profits, or governmental agencies and asked them to bring their biggest challenges in the age of polarization to the class, so that they could collaboratively work out solutions with the students.
“After some years of teaching at the Blavatnik School, I needed to take a step back. Not wanting to lose what I had learned in the process, I wrote a 10,000-word essay about it and sent it to my editor at Harvard Business Review. They loved it and wanted to turn it into a book. That is how The Age of Outrage: How to Lead in a Polarized World happened,” Ramanna said.
Practical steps for a polarized world
The book is based on his popular leadership course at Oxford and case studies on organizations like Disney, IKEA, Nestlé, the Vatican, and others. It offers practical steps to make sense of the outrage, work with relevant stakeholders to progress through it, and emerge stronger for it.
Ramanna’s pragmatic framework, developed through years of experience with organizations, helps leaders “turn down the temperature during an outrage”, analyze root causes of conflicts, develop and implement responses that are mission-consistent, and build organizational resilience.
Speaking about the core premise of the book, he said that it’s not about managing outrage (crisis management) but has two core principles, understanding that some of the outrage is very legitimate and treating it as a PR issue will in the long run not make the problem go away and there needs to be a more holistic way of dealing with the outrage and approaching it from a firefighting lens will always put a leader in a firefighting mode. “Leaders should instead be in a prevention mode, human flourishing mode focussed on mission, economic growth (in case of a for-profit company), and sources of innovation,” says Ramanna.
“It’s not a book about the what, but the how and how to arrive at the strategy and putting the strategy in place. Depending on the business that you are in, your strategy will be different. There’s a whole question about values as well that I do not directly engage in because each enterprise will bring its different values,” said the Professor.
Turning down the temperature
Rammana spoke about the four-part framework and the interdisciplinary nature that the book deals with in presenting the “how.”
“The core of the framework is about turning down the temperature – the manager turning down his or her temperature in contrast to trying to tone down others. We are all humans and prone to aggression at times. Science of aggression points out good insights on how to navigate this,” he said.
He went on to say that many in leadership positions tend to think of themselves as very cognitively engaged, rational people who look at evidence and weigh it, but how we interpret the world has a lot to do with lived experiences too. “We might be logical or rational in the context of certain assumptions, but it’s important to keep our biases aside by surrounding ourselves with people with different lived experiences with whom we share mutual trust and respect,” says Ramanna. “The book is about creating active listening communities, building organizational resilience, and implementing strategies.”
The two axioms
The two axioms include accepting that it’s impossible to address all demands and to not look at oneself as the whole solution. “Do not try to solve the whole problem or make it a popularity contest even if you are doing the right thing- since in this age of outrage, the problems are very complex and multidimensional and the world is deeply polarized,” he suggests.
Ramanna spoke on the unique challenges and opportunities for leaders as they navigate today’s polarized landscape. He shared insights on how leaders can address stakeholder tensions, build bridges across diverse perspectives, and cultivate the resilience needed to lead effectively amid anger and ideological divides. He offered insights via anecdotes of positive and negative experiences from various leaders in diverse enterprises on organizational purpose and values, reputational risks, constructive engagement, and collaborative problem-solving.
A book about leadership
“You cannot ignore the context in which you operate. Real understanding and appreciation for implementing an inclusive process while moving your agenda forward is the key,” said Rammana. “The book is more about leadership than management. It’s about personal effectiveness and how to bring people with you and be more effective without making things more polarized.”
Ramanna acknowledged being humbled and moderated in his experience of leading the course that is attended by extremely bright and committed individuals (several Rhodes Scholars and other decorated individuals) with radical political views and how the rules of the game are tailored to make the attendees engage authentically, take accountability and make mistakes. “You have to allow yourself to create the conditions to deal with polarization before polarization hits,” suggests the author.