TEDxWarwick - John Kay - Obliquity: How Complex Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly

John Kay is a leading economist and Visiting Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a member of the Scottish Government's Council of Economic Advisers. He is a director of several public companies and contributes a weekly column to the Financial Times. He is the author of many books, including The Truth about Markets (2003) and The Long and the Short of It: finance and investment for normally intelligent people who are not in the industry (2009). His latest book, Obliquity, was published by Profile Books in March 2010.
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[@mmendi1114]

A gem among the TED Talks I have watched... an absolute gem...Thank you, Prof. Kay, and I actually do like the mannerism of your presentation it's different among all the high energy-loud extrovert types of presenters we usually watch

[@feraudyh]

One of the best TED talks.

[@scrumpymanjack]

If you step back, I think this is all about doing something well. If you are a drugs company, make the best drugs you possibly can. If you are a plumber, do your job as well as you can. In both cases, your fundamental objective may be to become rich, but if you do your job better than other people or companies, you will become rich in the process of doing your job well.

[@artandculture5262]

Found him in McGilchrist’s The Matter with Things. 🎉

[@benjaminwiner6220]

1:45 I didn’t realize the DSM 5 is floating in space. This makes sense.

[@gpk6458]

In software we call obliquity "agile" development.

[@feraudyh]

Really??

[@nonchalantd]

great speech

[@matthewmoran3041]

Brilliant.

[@spab87]

How come this presentation made it to TED???

[@TheJakub62]

Interesting idea which I quite believe in. However, what I miss here is more evidence or more factual information. I am too lazy but if I made a research I would surely find a lot of examples of companies that apply direct visions and yet, they are successful. After all, if businesses were pure and they're main purpose was really to serve people and do things by heart the shareholders would cut off as much of their profits as possible to reinvest it (I think Amazon has been actually doing this a lot as they were making consecutive losses for several years but the company's value was skyrocketing). But as I said I do believe in the idea. If you ask successful people on their key to success they ususally answer that they have just been committed to what they loved. And the same it is with businesses.

[@saileshkarki1858]

i cud relate dis to sumthing steve jobs said , " You can join the dots only looking back in life "

[@scrumpymanjack]

Great lecture - though, in the interests of accuracy, it's not "less than 500 yards to walk" from Paddington to Lancaster Gate.

[@martinsatyen7833]

play @ 1.25 or 1.5 speed !

[@MywishAnand]

Obliquity of watching slow videos. Great!

[@BANKO007]

Interesting observations but exactly how do you use obliquity?

[@TompeThomasH]

I like the ideas of Mike Dooley - follow your vision but don't go for the cursed HOW's - you cannot make detailed goals towards a complex vision.

[@TompeThomasH]

Interesting and important, you cannot make a sane detailed plan towards a highly complex goal.

[@patriciaoffer9585]

I must be more oblique. A neighbor/ex-boss might be abusing his dog....... and I keep screwing it up. "I want to see Rexy!!!" The neighbor's being distant.

[@FarmerFitness]

2x speed with captions FTW

[@MywishAnand]

Obliquity of watching slow videos. Great!

[@stephenhepworth3113]

sorry, i tried, i really did. Dont drink coffee while you are watching this, your head will explode.

[@dazedunfazed1022]

Только самые любознательные книжные черви дошли до этого видео

[@edwarddflint]

anecdotal, monotonal rambling. interesting observation but not very illustrative when you get rid of the buzz words and generalities