What drives us towards success : Our intelligence or vision?

We all must have met many intelligent people till day. These people are branded ''Intelligent'' either by academia or by general public. And, as per general perception these intelligent people are destined to achieve better things than their counterparts. But when they don’t achieve those certain standards then there a room for doubt is created where we feel there is a need to revise our standards of intelligence. I try to discuss this thought in the following discussion.

Recently I was watching this movie ‘’Fight Club”. This snippet forced me to think, four things:

• Should a leader be trusted without an ounce of doubt?
• Does the vision has any correlation with the intelligence?
• What makes a person say that he is a leader or he belongs to a certain group of leaders which makes him command a better sense of achievement and better mental prowess than the follower group?
• What factors are there which makes the reference group better than the counterparts?

Let’s start with the discussion that “What are our basis of our judgment?’’

We generally base our judgments about the person by emphasizing on certain few visible characteristics of him or by using people amongst the subject’s social group as a yardstick. This manner of judgment is suggestive, inconclusive and probabilistic so, let’s try to avoid judge people this way. This kind of judgment does not differentiate between the thought process and the results (whether positive or negative) of these thought processes. So the replication of success is not possible in this scenario, all we are doing is judging someone for the purpose of further incrimination/defamation/several other negative reasons which leads to no value addition in the person’s life. This way of thinking, will leave a person with redundant thoughts which will further act as an anchor and make you sink in a long run rather than advance you in your battle towards success.

Why this kind of differentiation is required at all?

When we build/narrate any success story about an inventor, artist or any successful person in any area or skill, we always emphasize about, what all he achieved in his life (the consequential ends), but we seldom talk about how he achieved the ends. Even when we talk about the ‘How’ part, we talk about the hardships he faced while working towards the consequential objectives. We altogether negate the thought process, the triggers behind the ideas which brought the drive of achievement. The thought process can help a person to emulate the right behaviors and which can further be used as a reference point to guide us to a probable success or at least help us to develop an approach which would propel us towards our goals.

So what is the fundamental problem in our judgmental attitudes?

We continue to base our judgments of goals, aims, success and failures on the materialistic reasons which include the indicators like:

• Wealth accumulated in one’s life
•  Publicity a person enjoys
• The verbosity of the person
• Interest in art and culture
•  Reading habits of an individual
• Spontaneity in the social setups
• Maintaining the public relations
• Resourcefulness of a person in the social and professional setups.

These factors are indicative and visible so we tend to base our judgments on the basis of these factors, but these factors tell us that the person is able to showcase his intelligence. These factors can be faked or emulated for shorter periods of time to portray a point of superiority in certain situations (generally these factors are used to make Marketing pitches and presentations effective) where there is a need to create a WOW!! Factor. For a person who seeks, to enhance the economic and intellectual standards of living, one has to look beyond these mere indicators of success and reach on to the factors which are responsible for these resultant attitudes or behaviors.

So here I raise a question, ‘’What is bigger your intellect or your vision?’’

Let me quote an example here, of one of the most successful businessman Jack Ma, (founder of $ 162.7 billion worth of company, Alibaba.com) who started his career as a lecturer of English and International trade at the University level. In his later years of University career he forayed into an unrelated field, of building websites and gradually by gathering investment and wisdom he formed world’s largest merchant website Alibaba.com. He became a successful entrepreneur and was listed in Fortune’s list of ‘’25 Most Powerful Business people in Asia’’.

Is that just an example of intelligence?  For me Intelligence is just being limited, and doing better than others in a given line of profession and making a bunch of rational choices which his peers would have made had they entered the industry few years earlier than oneself.

This is not an example of sheer intelligence, intelligence could have had been proved just by being a best teacher or by holding a P.hD in Shakesprian/ Immanuel Kant view of thought but, it was a vision of Jack Ma, which made him one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the decade.

Success like Jack Ma needs a little something more than the stereotypical indicators of intelligence. 

He had a little something extra to kick him ahead in the race towards success. He had power to ideate, ability to learn and unlearn, and apply/ exploit the know-how in an effective manner. Another example supporting this argument is from a Harvard trained Economist, ‘’Theodore Levitt’’ who wrote a paper titled ‘’Marketing Myopia’’,(HBR article- On Marketing Myopia) in which he arrives at a similar argument to state this point in market scenario where the conclusion goes like this: ‘’It doesn’t matter how smart, intelligent or well thought your product/ business idea is it will die out one day (Due to competitive environment), unless you don’t have a bigger plan to compete and diversify within an industry as a whole rather than fighting a smaller battle amongst the product leaders of today. That’s nothing but an example proving that vision is bigger than intelligence.

Vision, widens with experience and by keeping your mind open to possibilities. But, intellect is nothing but just a relative complement, like beauty. Definition of Intelligence has changed its meaning through the years but the stress area has always been on, generating matter material results consistently. And all these results should spread across a wide time frame where the sustainability and rigidity of the thought process is tested in diverse scenarios. Under those test conditions only, a thought becomes philosophy and a philosophy then transforms into a decision/judgment.

A last question to ponder upon, “We all are surrounded by intelligent people at our workplaces, but how many of them are the ones which have an idea/opinions which will be worth a dime in near future?” – The ones who have the ability to earn a dime even after stripping off every title and position they have today just with their idea/opinions.These are the people who have started to explore a right thought process.

In the end, I leave you with a thought, "That every inventor and every person who has ever done anything worth to be mentioned in the books of history is not known as an intelligent person but a man with Vision".

The Great Indian Class Struggle.

I am writing this blog after pondering over an issue which has consumed a lot of thinking space of mine from past few days. This post is about the people who are working for back-end processes and feel that there is something missing in their day to day jobs. I am very new to the private sector just shy of completing 1.5 year in this sector. It’s not been enough time for me to become confidently judgmental, but the following is an estimations made by simple observations. 

I would expand on my observations which can be biased, baseless or painted with my own perceptions, but would try my best to keep out the unaltered versions of truth and talks which I had across dinner tables, on drunk cold nights and in those corporate parties where after people after getting drunk are either dancing or talking about their bosses being bitches.

Let’s start this time by categorizing the kind of people we all have around ourselves in our organizations. I am categorizing them here into four categories:

1.  The Indifferent Tyagi's:  These are the people who are generally the neutral ones on the face of every situation. They don't really have much complaint nor do they talk much about the organizational procedures. 

These people are generally the people who are either working for a bigger cause i.e. self-development, and have an achievement oriented attitude or these are those who don't feel that the organization plays any role in building their career up they themselves are the ones who are building it.

These are people who always are good to go with and continue strive for the performing better. Generally people of this lot are 'Silent Achievers'.

2. The Rampal Yadav's (strugglers): These are the ones which are always toiling with work they are doing they may be doing a menial task but they would continue to wail in the   agony of work and performance pressure. these are generally the people who have either achieved the level/position at which they are earlier than they would have had acquired it (in short they are not able to handle the pressure) or they want believe in that school of thought (not even a thought but a 'Mis-Thought') of 'Third World County's Back-end Processes (TWCBP)' where according to the them a person who is wailing more is the one who is working hard. 

These are probably the most tricky ones to manage, they are the ones who are difficult to trust by the managers as their true capabilities are not known as they try to abstain themselves from the full utilization.

3. The Gyani's: These people are my favorite category, rather than a category these are the off shoots/ are an advanced stage of people of 'The indifferent Tyagi's'. These are those enlightened ones (who are actually better than their manager pool) these are the ones who form the basis of the teams and act as a value enhancers they are given recognition by the juniors but seldom appreciated by the top management because:

3.1.   These are the ones who openly challenge the systems and conventions of conduct.

3.2.   These are the ones who have polarized the similar potential equivalent of themselves in the teams.

To avoid getting overpowered these Gyani's with technically stronger acumen are not easily promoted. One other reason also came out while discussing this category with one of my friends (Having 12 years of Experience in IT consulting) is that these are the people who over perform and their productivity is high these persons if promoted are hard to replace and probably the replacement can't be met in the quality of the resource so, it would be compensated by the number of resources and that will directly impact the profitability. And, moreover what the guarantees are that this resource will be loyal to organization for long enough to serve his promotional purpose. So, these employees work hard to get the promotions but being outspoken they have only one choice either to switch the organization or change the line of thought. The latter one is hardest so generally they go for a switch.

4. The Middle Class of TWCBP: These are the employees who are generally moderate performers and their managerial skills are not very efficient. This lot, needs guidance at times and seeks for approvals. These are the ones who adhere the strict hierarchical culture of the organizations and do not cross their lines of authority. They try to prove their knowledge and skill in every seldom chance they get (but only at times when they are asked for it). 

These ones are proud in nature and admire the Gyani's but silently abhor them for their views.This lot is the one which is best suited for mid-managerial level promotions. They are often given promotions up to the middle level managerial positions as they are good Goofies to be kept and will stick to the decisions of the managerial strata without questions. 

This lot takes the vision and values of company more seriously than the client relationships. As a result in the Capitalist setup of corporate these Socialist's win sympathy votes. I don't want to demean this lot, but this lot is the one, for whom I am not able to foresee a position in the real world, outside corporate offices. They are characterized by their hoity-toity attitudes which can hardly be substantiated in any kind of fulfilling experience, other than slogging at work.  Many of these after 7-8 years in their job profiles, when asked about the nature and quality of their jobs they do? The typical replies are like this "I know my job is not a good one and I don't really feel like that I know anything other than what I have learnt in past few years" this is a typical attitude which will make your careers stagnant long run.Because of this the acceptability in the market becomes low and the person is restricted to a small area of specialization.

                                   

                   (Why you will fail to have a great career | Larry Smith | TEDxUW)

Conclusions and questions yet to be answered:

So these were the types of people whom I have come across. This is an entire picture which I was able to build up of TWCBP's basically everyone in the midst of chaotic curry of client satisfaction is struggling hard to break the shackles of the social class in which one was born. Yes, undoubtedly people do had been successful in attaining the better social status and improved their standard of living but at what cost? I fail to answer this question.

 People here in BP's do have skill but they are trained like an assembly line worker who only knows a bit of his job and doesn't know a whole process from start to end. This is a sole reason because of which these services have a high attrition rate, low employee satisfaction. These employees are well trained but not skilled in their craft because purview of their work is very narrow. So for you out there in the TWCBP the career sustainability is a big question. This sector hasn't yet seen the first generation of retirees and moreover this class is like a footloose labor (Footloose or fractured work identity) who is seldom able to make their own piece of real estate in tier-1 cities these questions again raise a mark on the sustainability of the idea.  

 Will this person be able to sustain his class where he has settled in for now, after 30 years of service as the rate at which this sector is growing and the rate at which the facilities for the non-working population is growing is not in line with each other? Questions have not been resolved for me till now but each day I am talking to people and knowing things but still it is a start of an exploration but wouldn't comment on it how it is going but it is somewhat a hilarious experience. Let’s keep that aside for another blog.

This was a summary of thought process of mine till date. I invite further views and thoughts on this please feel free to write them in comments section.