Hubris Born of Success

When you are good at something, you tend to show off. Most often, when people ask you to share the success recipe, you extend an analytical response – simply attempted at making the recipe complex. If you’ve noticed, the next moment onwards, that analytical response starts playing in your mind and most often you fail to repeat your success. The shift from an intuition based success to one based on false analysis is pretty common. People who do this tend to add a swagger to their walk.  

   

I have noticed that with a cricketer who has been in the limelight recently for the wrong reasons. 

Success attracts skeptics. Indian Premier League has been no different. However, the last few weeks that has seen some of cricketing world's prominent personalities scurrying for legal cover seem to prove the skeptics right. Why do these people with the potential of furthering their success get themselves into such positions? Is there a lesson for others when such people can go from an iconic status to irrelevant? Jim Collins' book, 'how the mighty fall,' could perhaps provide some insights. As he writes, if companies such as Motorola, Circuit City, and Fannie Mae — icons that once served as paragons of excellence — can succumb to the forces of gravity, then no one is immune. After all, it is individuals who run these companies. 

Be it N.Srinivasan who was at the helm of affairs in cricket in India or Sreesanth or Vindoo Dara Singh - the common thread running through them is that they seem to have become insulated by success. Jim Collin's calls it 'hubris born of success.' People become arrogant, regard success virtually as an entitlement, and they lose sight of the true underlying factors that created success in the first place. Further, such an attitude leads to undisciplined pursuit of more—more growth, more acclaim, more of whatever those in power see as "success." People often stray from the disciplined creativity that led them to greatness in the first place, making undisciplined leaps into areas where they cannot be great or grow faster than they can achieve with excellence—or both.

So, what could be the solution?

It is important to learn to discount success and work incessantly to position one as stronger and better-positioned, as each day passes.

Associative Barriers

I am reading 'Medici effect,' by Frans Johansson. One of the topics in the book particularly interested me. Associative barriers - how we assume certain things with a given set of information without opening our mind to the broader possibilities. Take the test from the book. Susan is twenty-eight years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in biology and minored in public policy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of sustainable development, global warming, and overfishing, and is politically active. Which statement is most likely to be true?

A.–Susan is an office manager.

B.–Susan is an office manager and is active in the environmental

movement.

If you answered B, you are in good company; most people would give that answer. But the correct answer is A. In most instances it would make sense to infer that Susan is active in the environmental movement. 

Therefore we are more likely to make assumptions about who Susan is as a person, rather than maintain a mind open to possibilities. 

Well, why am I posting something like this? It is because I keep hearing people passing judgement about others or events without delving into details. For instance, if India is playing cricket, the comment I hear is, "why watch a stupid game like this. Anyway, we will lose." Being quite tolerant, I just dismiss such statements. What's intriguing, however, is the obsession for winning. Winning by definition is 'beating' a set of people slotted as competitors. 

It is very common to see young kids being pushed to be winners. They go for tuition's, music lessons, cricket coaching to name a few activities - all aimed at winning. I could hear one of my neighbours questioning her son, "oh! 89? How much did Rohan score?" It was certainly not something a third standard boy was expecting. The silence said it all. As Tony Schwartz, President and CEO of The Energy Project said, "What winners recognize, above all, is that the ultimate goal is never to vanquish an opponent or to prove something to others, but rather to more fully realize their own potential, whatever that may be."  Feel, teachers and parents should open up their mind and allow kids to unleash their true potential. The only way to do that is by redefining the word winning. Go back in time to check what Charles Darwin observed.  When the environment is changing rapidly, it is neither the strongest nor the most intelligent who survive — it is the ones who are most adaptable. Well, the first step towards winning is to accept the world's changing.