The secret of success

We spend the majority of our lives from school onwards in systems that seek to judge and reward success. Naturally, we think we can spot success a mile away. So here is a question: are two people, who have reached the same position in the same organisation equally successful?

Imagine a graph with ‘Achievement’ on the Y-axis (vertical) and ‘Personal Advancement’ on the X-axis (horizontal). Lets call this the ‘Achievement Curve’. You would imagine that the graph will pretty much go as a straight line at 45 degree, from bottom left (0,0) to top right (100,100). The logic being that if you have no position at all, you cannot achieve anything, and as you gain a better and better position you achieve more and more. As Galileo said “give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the world”.

However, in reality each individual will have a different curve. The highly capable individual and the duffer will both start at at (0,0). Thereafter, which way the graph goes depends on the make-up of the individual.

The true achievers, the ‘karmayogis’ believe in doing their work to the best of their ability. They will take the curve up at a slope of more than 45 degrees (which we can call the norm). Give them the slightest opportunity and they will achieve a lot. Give them an inch, they will deliver a yard. They may or may not reach a high position (X-axis) commensurate with their achievement (Y-axis). Even so, they aim for the sky on the Y-axis. Think of Gandhi. He never aspired to any position of power, yet he led India to freedom. A true ‘karmayogi’. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Narayana Murthy, Ratan Tata, Mother Teresa - these are some of the prominent ones who achieved fame. Look around you, you will find them at all levels of prominence and obscurity. The common characteristics of such people are integrity, high energy, dedication, a sense of purpose, unwavering focus on goals, sincerity.

On the other hand you have the ‘politicians’, whose aim is to advance as fast as possible and as far as possible. They will have a much flatter curve – a big score on the X-axis, very little on the Y-axis. They will achieve little, because their focus is not achievement but advancement. The exact opposite of karmayogis. All of us know such ‘flatliners’. How far they advance will depend on how resistant the firm/society is to political jockeying, how achievement oriented and objective the assessment processes are. Their characteristics are exactly the opposite of the karmayogis': lack of integrity, lack of dedication and purpose, focus on personal gain rather than results, insincerity. No need to list examples. I am sure everyone knows plenty of these, and if you apply the test of characteristics, you will identify some more amongst people you already know!

So the success of a firm or society depends upon seeking leadership with achievement curves of the highest slope - leaders that aim high. The process of recruitment through advancement in any sphere can be seen as a process of refining the cross section of society, trying to select the best, separate the gold from the ore. As you move up the ladder the concentration of gold should increase. As in everything, nothing succeeds like success. A firm/society that has developed a culture of high achievement will pick out the best individuals and groom them for leadership. Dysfunctional or decaying firms/societies that have deteriorated into self serving oligarchies will promote entirely the wrong kind of person for all the wrong reasons – the main one being personal loyalty and sycophancy driven by the insecurity of low achievers in high positions.

I know of a large multinational company heading into ‘oligarchy’ mode that rated people on both ‘performance’ and ‘potential’. This was a well intentioned policy that sought to identify people with high potential early and put them through their paces. Unfortunately, since ‘potential’ doesn’t lend itself to measurement but is subjective, over time as an oligarchy emerged it started to get misused. A loyal, pliable and sycophantic person's performance could be very mediocre, but he could be moved along rapidly by having potential rated highly, while another more professional less sycophantic person could perform extremely well, but be damned as not having ‘potential’. The correlation between Y-axis and X-axis was severed. Performance of the firm plummeted. The share, which had been a top performing blue chip languished and even declined a little while the stock market rose 5-fold. The moral of the story is that for a culture of achievement you can have movement up the Y-axis without movement along the X-axis, but not vice versa.

A fundamental problem is that most individuals and in fact most societies do not distinguish between the two axes. They see only one axis – the X-axis. A person is seen as successful if he gets to a high position. In fact some Padma awards seem to given to people who have reached a certain position - like the Chairman of a company, pretty much purely on that basis, with no discernible contribution beyond that. Which brings us back to the question of whether two individuals' success is the same if they have got to the same position in the same organisation. The answer is - not necessarily. In fact bearing in mind that for every point on the X-axis you can have a myriad points on the Y-axis all the way from bottom to top, 0 to 100, it would have to be said that very likely the achievements of those individuals are different - could be very different!

The challenge for a firm/society/country then is to be able to judge people on their capability and achievement, not just on their personalities, communication skills, ability to project themselves, seek and dispense favours and kiss ass. Think of public office and politics. That sphere basically attracts ‘politicians’ – and here by politicians I don’t mean someone who makes a career in politics but a cynical, insincere, self seeking individual who typifies politicians. That is why most career politicians are generally held in such low esteem. The world is looking for better leadership – which is why Obama has so enraptured the world, coming across as he does as sincere, capable and well intentioned, someone keen to shoot right up the Y-axis - 'to move the world' when given a 'place to stand' a la Galileo. Whatever he did before becoming president he did well and with commitment, dedication and sincerity, whether academic achievement including editing the Harvard Law Review, his work in a law practice, or thankless community work; and he showed integrity by opposing the Iraq war at a time when anyone who did so in the US was considered unpatriotic and therefore unelectable. All this in sharp contrast to his predecessor who belly flopped along the X-axis because the X-axis is all that ever meant anything to him. He weaseled his way out of the Vietnam draft, failed at running a business, failed at running a sports team, went on to be 'elected' by a dubious decision over Gore, then got re-elected by smearing the decorated Kerry's war record!

Bringing it down to the individual level, for each of us the key to selecting or promoting someone or voting in an election is exactly the same - think of which candidate has done the most – look for the karmayogi. The person who has been an achiever in the past is the one who will most likely achieve again in the future. Its part of his or her DNA. The person with a flat curve who has come a long way and achieved nothing but looks 'promising' is probably a charlatan/’politician’ who will just keep promising. Having never performed, he probably couldn't deliver even if he wanted to (president Bush?). Look for integrity, energy, perseverance, dedication, proven capability, sincerity. Think of the values we are building through our selection. Think of the values we are passing on to the next generation(s).

And lets hope Gen-Y lives up to its name.