Design To Win

It is the ‘Sharp-Edge’ that maketh a cutting difference between the average, the good and the excellent! The difference is in the edge and never in the superficialities of family inheritances, schools one got sent to, or the locality in which one grew up. It’s never just a one-off. I could share evidences of these with first-hand experiences spanning four decades, working with talent in several global MNCs and Indian organizations.

In fact, adversities sharpen resilience for people who take upon themselves to fight-back and succeed. It makes unadulterated whiners out of people who sit back blaming the Wise Lord, the Government and the Community Bodies for not helping their conditions. You decide which you want to pick – the game, the name and the blame are all yours. Which group do you belong to – Definers or Whiners?

If you distill your thinking, the talent ‘Success Differentiators’ are hidden in these five elements:

1. Purpose And Passion: Each one of us is born with a legacy of unique capabilities. How we define the larger purpose of our life that we wish to achieve, and passionately drive our energy to fulfill it through our unique legacy – that is a determinant of success.2. Action Strategy And Game Plan: This has to be long-focused and flexible enough to re-adjust when market situations change. We need a plan to fulfill our purpose. Prayers are good but they do not substitute for a plan.3. Relationships And Networks: In current times, your ‘network determines your net worth’! Who you know, your confidence to reach out to them to give and receive help in the form of ideas, resources, support, contacts, experiences, links and so on. Ensure to keep strengthening your network of relationships.4. Shaping And Investing In Future Competencies: The digital world is throwing-up new skills and competencies as fast as it is out-dating the prevailing skills! We can no longer win by only becoming administrators, clerks, English and Elocution teachers, shop- floor engineers or accountants. We need to continuously keep scanning the market for ‘hot’ main market skills and competencies and develop them instead of focusing on easy paths of developing secondary market competencies.

   5. Intentions And Values: We see today, how the houses of crooks are tumbling by the wayside – it’s always a matter of time. Be clear about your values and governance. It is a folly to believe that to succeed you need to give up on your values. We have sufficient evidence of how successful business empires are trusted because they are built on values and how others, despite being bigger, are not so trusted. Values, therefore, need to be the guiding force when you define your purpose and passion.

Whilst serendipity is a blessing, it stays and fleets at per its own choice and time. And you do not have a monopoly for that. Building yourself up, all the time, is your only insulator. When I meet our youth today, I see two things – First off, clearly, a need to move away from community over-dependency for houses, jobs, funds, etc. (do not mistake the cherry to be the cake) or you will end up waiting on and on and on. You will find a reason to explain why you failed but no narrative for a reason to rise and succeed!

And second, the need for parents to build their children up and then let go off them to explore, conquer and fight their ways to success in the open markets. I know of many Parsi parents who go and ‘fight’ with the managers of their grown-up children post their appraisals at the workplace… possibly the same way they went to their teachers in schools!

It is coincidental that the acronym, of the Five Success Differentiators above, renders itself to ‘PARSI’. But that is where it ends! You have to drive yourself doubly as hard as the others.