The Ingredients of Success

When the Cat is away…

I had the privilege to go for dinner this week with some of the leaders of our European business, and they had some real gems of experience to share. The Managing Partner said, the first stage is to know your weakness, and yes, we all have them. The second stage is to hire people around you who are strong in your weak areas. Then you have a chance of succeeding. This is not a new principle, it has been followed to success for many millennia. I was also fortunate to once meet a monk called Govinda Prabhu. He explained that in the ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, the virtuous brothers, the Pandavas, also exhibited this dynamic, albeit in a relative sense. They were all virtuous and had an abundance of good qualities, but some were particularly strong in certain areas. Yuddhistira Maharaj, the elder of the brothers was extremely righteous. For him, righteousness was dearer to him than his life. On numerous occasions, his brothers would complain and say that they had more than sufficient grounds and reasons to wage war, and he would always decline and speak of the benefits of the way of peace, and need for tolerance. Now, in explaining some of these principles, Govinda Prabhu explains how both these elements are critical to success. He said that without the cause of righteousness, it is pointless to act, because you are simply setting yourself up to fail. At the same time, righteousness, cannot be upheld if there is weakness. The strength and to some extent aggression that the younger brothers, particularly Arjuna and Bhima bought, were necessary to uphold the righteousness and direction that Yuddhistira Maharaj bought. Sometimes we see this in corporations. At the top, the leadership is often very nice, with excellent principles, and sometimes at the middle management levels we see a style that may seem at conflict with these values. However, sometimes, in order to ‘get things done,’ a more aggressive mood may be necessary. Certainly in an environment where when the cat is away, the mice are at play so to speak.

 

Borrowing from the Future

Youthfulness, dynamism, freshness, ambitiousness. These are the qualities people like to see in leaders. But are they a physical attribute? Not necessarily. The greatest leaders often become great because they imbibe these. Nothing can stop the hands of time, but at the same time, those with these qualities, who are conscious of their benefits, continually learn and deepen their experience with them, and therefore constantly being conscious of them, they don’t forget them. They stay youthful and fresh at heart, although of course, externally they may be getting older. When I was a graduate, the global CTO of a company sponsored one of my projects. He used to always be so excited to hear of my developments and ideas. The more experiences I have, and the more people I meet, I realise more and more how great he was. He had these qualities, which had stayed with him over time. He clearly had experience with these concepts and applied them very enthusiastically. The CEO of our company addressed our Partners at a conference where they were being congratulated on achieving Partnership, saying that he would recommend a particular mindset on their achieving Partnership. He said they should not think of themselves as having “done it” and now  being the King’s of the Castle so to speak. Rather that they should think of the experience as borrowing time from the leaders of the future. In this way, one can be very forward looking, always leave lasting legacies, and find life actually quite light, and free flowing as they free themselves of the heavy weights of viewing themselves as part of a constitution if you like. This lightness is what paves way for achieving big.

 

The Ingredients of Success

The concepts cited above, you don’t see everyone around you think this way. It’s not quite normal. Why isn’t everyone thinking like this? Because only very few people become successful. It is not normal to be very successful. That’s why not everyone embodies such principles. But not all successful people think like this, I hear you say. We do not have the lense to analyse what bought someone success as there may be some things we cannot see with the naked eye. There may be a host of things a person may have done that bought them success, which we were not there to witness or see. Some of this may be planning, and training the mindset, which normally takes place not in the workplace. We don’t see this. There are numerous other reasons one may be successful, but we should look for the universal causes of success, and try to follow those. What the ancient Indian scriptures have to say about success, or opulence, or power as it would be called in corporate terms, is that it is born of austerity, or sacrifice. They also say it is based on virtuous behaviour. So we can understand that success must involve hard work, and virtue. One without the other, will not be successful in the corporate environment.