THE FLAW IN MASLOW'S THEORY

I once attended an interview with a leading Indian IT company. 9/11 had just happened, I was retrenched from a large Airline company and was trying to resume working.

 

No sooner had we finished exchanging very brief pleasantries, than I was asked about my percentile scores from nursery to high School, an explanation on the derivation of the theory of Black Scholes model AND my views on the flaw in Maslow's theory. This was the opening question for a sales position for selling Aviation related services (read outsourced call centers for large airlines).  The interviewer was an IIM graduate ( probably 25 years old), brimming with cocky confidence, clearly relishing the sight of sweat on my brows and the fact that he had 'defeated' yet another 'rival'.

 

Not prepared for such dazzling display of intellectual prowess and faced with questions of such importance that would materially change the existence of human race, I failed the interview, infact miserably failed it- humiliated and red in the face, morale completely shattered and shaking with nervousness, I walked out of the room, head hanging down in shame, in less than 5 minutes of having entered it. Dejected,  I walked back home, as hallucinations of failing math exams in calculus kept appearing with voices of my elderly relatives advising my father that opening a PCO booth at the corner of a busy thoroughfare in our colony would be the best career move for me. It would earn me a lot more than people earned in regular jobs.   

 

However, You could probably imagine that I was curious to know who the bloody hell Maslow was, whose theory (or the flaw in it) was threatening to permanently interrupt my nascent career.

Maslow, a management theorist, (whatever that is), simply put, said this: People aspire for more material things early in their life such as money and gradually graduate to things like self esteem, standing in the society, respect etc. and he drew a pyramid to explain this. The flaw, again simply put, is that it is not necessary that people will follow Maslow's said trajectory and could desire and value self esteem right in the beginning. That is it- that's all that there is to it.  Trust the management theorist and consultants to make common sense sound like rocket science.

 

You get the point I am making- why is there so much obsession with theory and so little with its application?

 

Take a look around you and you will find products with outdated technology everywhere- some very common, low tech, day to day examples- the whole world uses a variety of drip systems as toilet deodorants, we use phenyl balls. Visit the Yelehanka Air force station with machines like MIG-35 at display-the very pinnacle of Aviation technology that we have in the world, and hear about them on 'bhopus' (loud speakers) designed in Circa 1919-the rest of world uses slim smartly designed ones and much much smaller, that produce far better sound. But the technology simply hasn't permeated down. The world decorates its buildings and trees during festive time with special decorative lights, we still use the ones with large plastic beads- I have seen them since I was born- and am inclined to believe there is just one manufacturer of decorative lights in India and 1 single approved design.  If this is the case with low technology items, you can imagine the state of high technology products.

 

Many years later, while talking to my wife, who is studying education, I learnt that Education, comes from the word 'Educe' which means 'to take out', or  'to extract' . We do it exactly the other way around. We drill rather than extract. Well, some amount of drilling is perhaps good, if the motive is to extract, but education cannot be 'planted'.

 

Anyway, back to the flaw in Maslow's theory, I noticed this wonderful signboard in a local grocery store and loved it. Maslow hasn't left me since the disastrous 2001 interview (and I thank my young interviewer for that) but now that I understand the flaw in his theory rather well, I do consciously look for opportunities where it can be applied. You can use Maslow's or other  management theories as ammunition to unnerve and unsettle an unsuspecting interviewee or you could understand and apply them to make things better.