Professor SRIKUMAR RAO (“Creativity and Personal Mastery,” Columbia Business School, to class): I would like you to give me a list of things that you need to get in order to be happy.
LUCKY SEVERSON: The answer to Professor Srikumar Rao’s question would seem obvious. These are, after all, MBA students at Columbia University Graduate School of Business. Some already have their Master of Business Administration degrees and are working on Wall Street or in corporate America.
Prof. RAO: None of this is necessary for you to be happy. None of it. Most of us function under the model we have to get something in order to do something, in order to be something. If this happens then I will be happy. And I’m suggesting to you that we live our entire lives based on that model, and that model is fundamentally flawed.
SEVERSON: The answer, says Professor Rao, is that you can’t get happiness. It’s something inside you.
Prof. RAO: I don’t think you need to get anything in order to be happy.
SEVERSON (to Prof. Rao): So that’s the answer?
Prof. RAO: Oh absolutely. Anything you can get you can lose.
SEVERSON: Imagine discussing happiness in a business course 25 years ago when some were proclaiming greed was good. Professor Rao was a player during that high flying era, a marketing consultant to several blue-chip companies.
Prof. RAO: I reached a point where I said there has to be something more.
SEVERSON: When he found his answer in the teachings of Hinduism, he created a course called “Creativity and Personal Mastery.” It’s an extremely popular course with five times more applicants than can be accepted.
Prof. RAO: Probably 90 percent or more of my students have already been out in the business world. They have worked for some of the largest corporations in the country, and they say, “This is nice, there’s a lot of money, there’s a lot of prestige” — quote, unquote — “there’s career success, but there is something more that I’m looking for. I’m looking for fulfillment and I haven’t found it yet.”
SEVERSON: The class is so popular that would-be students are willing to go through Professor Rao’s grueling acceptance process and pay an extra thousand dollars tuition fee. They get no course credit, huge writing assignments, a 62-page syllabus, and the class meets all day on Sundays. The course is so well-liked graduates even formed an alumni association. Stewart Glickman is a teaching assistant. [...]
SEVERSON: The class is so popular that would-be students are willing to go through Professor Rao’s grueling acceptance process and pay an extra thousand dollars tuition fee. They get no course credit, huge writing assignments, a 62-page syllabus, and the class meets all day on Sundays. The course is so well-liked graduates even formed an alumni association. Stewart Glickman is a teaching assistant. [...]
