Monday 12 May 2014

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How to Get Inspired: Am I Another You?

I was intrigued by the title of a book I saw staring at me in one of the airport bookstalls; it proclaimed boldly, presumably provocatively “I am another You”. Since I was only intrigued but was not provoked by the boorish title, I did not pay my penny and buy the book. So, whatever I write here is not on its contents but on the provocative title. I was not provoked by the book because I always believed that, small and ordinary as I am, “I am not another you”. I am unique. 

I also always firmly believed that “You are Not Another Me”. You are as unique as me. What makes me is not what I have common with everyone else. What make me are the unique experiences I gathered over a life time, my worldview, and my thoughts. And, that is true of you as well. 

Self development gurus want us to believe that if only we see what makes the successful people (or successful managers) successful, we need just to do what they do, and there you go and become another Bill gates – I am another you, in other words, You are another anyone! 
In the same refrain, Marcus Buckingham coaxes us to “First Break All the Rules” in his book with the same name. Then he goes on to tell you in seven chapters and a few impressive appendixes how great managers broke as many rules as there are great managers. The message is ‘if you want to be great, do what they do’. In Enron there were ever so many successful and great managers - that is until they fell out of favor. And the core of the success of Enron and its managers was relentless breaking of the rules. Need I step into the shoes of Skilling or Kenneth Ley and become another Skilling or Ley? Don’t fault me if I shudder at the thought. In fact, the secret of success is uniqueness. Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Alfred Sloan, Jeff Bezos etc. have only one thing in common – their success. What made them successful are their unique qualities. 

These unique qualities are the learning from a life time. Here are two episodes picked from Freakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner: 

1.     Robert Lane, a New York City man decided to call his baby son Winner. The Lanes, who lived in a housing project in Harlem, already had several children each with typical name. But this boy – well, Robert lane apparently had a special feeling about this one. Winner Lane: how could he fail with a name like that? Three years later, the Lanes had another baby boy; their seventh and last child.. 

For reasons that no one can pin down today, Robert decided to name this boy Loser. It doesn’t appear that Robert was unhappy about the new baby; he just seemed to get a kick out of the name’s bookend effect. First a Winner, now a Loser. But if Winner Lane could hardly be expected to fail, could Loser Lane possibly succeed? 

Loser Lane did in fact succeed. He went to prep school on a scholarship, graduated from Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, and joined the New York Police department (this was his mother’s long time wish) where he made detective and, eventually, sergeant. Although he never hid his name, many people were uncomfortable using it. “So I have a bunch of names,” he says today, “from Jimmy to James to Loser”. Once in a while, he said, “they throw a French twist on it: ‘Losier’.” To his police colleagues he is known as Lou. And what of his brother with the can’t-miss name? the most note-worthy achievement of Winner Lane, now in his midforties, is the sheer length of his criminal record: nearly three dozen arrests for burglary, domestic violence, trespassing, resisting arrest, and other mayhem. These days, Loser and Winner barely speak. 

The father who named them is no longer alive. Clearly he had the right idea – that naming is destiny – but must have gotten the boys mixed up. 

2. Recall for a moment the two boys, one white and one black, who were described in chapter 5. The white boy who grew up outside Chicago had smart, solid, encouraging, loving parents who stressed education and family. The black boy from Daytona Beach was abandoned by his mother, was beaten by his father, and had become a full-fledged gangster by his teens. 
So what became of the two boys? The second child, now twenty-seven years old, is Roland G Fryer Jr., the Harvard economist studying black underachievement (who has been profusely quoted by the authors in Freakonomics). The white child also made it to Harvard. But soon after, things went badly for him. His name is Ted Kaczynski. 

These stories reveal much more than people taking different paths in life. Winner, Loser, Fryer Jr. or Kaczynski – they had all one thing in common. They followed their own path for good or bad. Would they have chosen another way if they were asked to believe that they were another someone? We cannot be sure. 

Our everyday life runs by facing our own unique challenges. The challenges are unique because each one of us sees the challenges in our own unique way; and we respond to them in our own unique way, learning our own unique lessons. It is not the events of life that one goes through that makes one’s experience; it is one’s unique response to the events of life that make one unique. It is our response; and learning leads us to change our reactions to external events. Successful people change the experience of their life by changing their response to external events based on their learning. It is a process within. The events may be external, but the reactions are from within. That is why Winner, Loser, Fryer Jr. and Kaczynski took so different paths than what we expected – Fryer Jr, and Loser changed their response to events; not so Winner and possibly Kaczynski. 

On 5/12/2014

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