Facts to Essence Series – Episode 3

Facts and the essence extracted from them…

• Eminem would spend hours every night studying the dictionary, so he could expand his vocabulary for his rhymes. 
  • There’s no such thing as “an overnight success”! There’s no such thing as being “too lucky”! There are “no miracles” in a business! The success that we see in today has always a loads of work behind it. It’s a result of years of hard-work and consistent efforts. As they say: “Luck is nothing but an opportunity meeting a preparation”.
  • As mentioned in earlier posts, there’s no substitute of competence. Even if someone copies your work, labels it with their name, takes whole credit; the amount of work that you did behind it never goes into a waste. It becomes a learning experience and stepping stone for you to do more great things ahead.
  • For the people who sustain their life by their labels and the names, rather than a value and an essence behind them, they always face a one definite problem: “Sustainability”. Being a one time success, or a celebrity by accident is easy, but to sustain a position as a man of content, is too hard.
  • Only people who can do something extra, who can walk a mile more than planned, who can motivate themselves to push some extra effort in their work – are ones who love their work, who’re passionate about it. For the rest work means just passing through a fixed hours of work day.
• Trees can send warning signals to other trees about insect attacks. 
  • There are always more than known ways to communicate, to deliver the message. Beyond the realms of verbal and written communication. Your grace, attitude, body language, also delivers a message. Message of your passion, zeal, enthusiasm, curiosity and interest. Often people who’re lying – it’s their bodies that betray them.
  • Similarly in business, when we lie – promising more than we can deliver, disclosing more than we’ve achieved, communicating wrong numbers. Our reports may not lie, but their are other things that would expose us, for those who’re investigative and know how to read the signals. No one, even the most excellent in field of management can control all the parameters. Hence, it’s better to promote transparency, honesty and integrity in your culture. In the long-run this always helps the company and team to survive in difficult situations.
  • Sometimes we can feel the presence of something, but we can’t see it – we feel the presence in the way other things react and appear. Just because one can’t see something, it doesn’t mean it’s not there.  There’s always a skepticism for two possibilities here, either we’re measuring the wrong signals, or either our sensors aren’t equipped enough to trace what’s invisible – yet which is showing its presence by the aftereffects, correlation and consequence. Scientists often use proxies to measure such variables that they can’t measure directly. What’s hidden or immeasurable doesn’t mean can be totally unaccounted for.)
  • Similarly when it comes to dealing with people, either in team-management or in customer interaction – not always we can see what’s wrong or what’s making them loose a traction. But there’re hidden signals, signals that may require a help of proxy variables, allowing us to read between the lines.
    Like for example one can’t detect the frustration (emotion) of a person should one only relies on a direct verbal or written communication, yet there are ways to detect and measure it, proxies like how they interact with you, how they interact with their work or product of yours, how responsive are they, how proactive vs. reactive, etc. Often a proactive approach by you as a manager/ support asking if something’s wrong and if you can be of any help also does wonders. Suggestions do reveal the signals that something is wrong or working differently than your expectations.
• Prescription drugs kill more people each year than heroin and cocaine combined.
  • More than categorizing things or labeling them as good and bad. It’s important to see them in a proper context.
  • What’s considered a “life-saving” is toxic in high doses or badly times ones. And what’s considered harmful or toxic in general, often in sparse quantity, when mixed with other remedies in acute precision does actually perform a life-saving miracles.
  • As mentioned in previous article of the series. Often what’s industry wide known as a “best practice” – when poorly implemented or gets implemented out of the context does more damage than a good.
  • Sometimes breaking the rules and not overemphasizing them for the efficiency, helps us to achieve what is effective. There’re no rules when someone’s exploring the uncharted territories – when all hope is lost, big risks got to be taken. As long as such risks aren’t going to destroy anyone’s ability to take them again.
• We have more detailed maps of the surface of Mars than we do of Earth’s oceans.
  • Depths of own lands are always more terrifying and tough to explore than the surface of others land. Sometimes curiosity of what’s visible yet unknown outside, triumphs the wonder of finding out what’s hidden in an unexplored territory with-in one’s self. From missing conscience to resorting to hiring an outside help, from taking what you’ve for granted to mingling in outside affairs – we repeat the same pattern over and over again.
  • As much as one has to satiate the hunger and curiosity of exploring other worlds – products/ markets/ talents, it’s equally important to reflect and self-introspect. To seek if there’s a hidden talent or opportunity that we might have missed. That could’ve been worth more than an incorporation of external asset.
  • The companies like Google, rather than going on a acquisition spree in-spite of their quickly growing size and stature in the earlier years of growth and development, relied completely on their assets, their talents. More than half of their now commercially available products are actually a brain-child of their employees – A more mature version of a prototypes their developers invented in company allowed 20% time for individual and independent development.
  • People/ Team/ Communities with passion to do something never cease to amaze – one must not undermine their spark and instead try facilitating them so that they can grow their subtle talents. One may reach a point where an outside help is not required at all, and success story takes a birth from with-in.

– Prepared for workshop/ lecture classes I conducted on “Project Management and Organizational Leadership” at Mohammad Ali Jinnah University (MAJU) and Khadim Ali Shah Bukhari Institute of Technology (KASBIT), both situated in Karachi.

Disclosure: Facts (in italics) come directly from @UberFacts twitter stream.

Note: “Warning: Never Trust A Proclamation Without Citation” – (Always be ready to do your research!)

Related articles

• Facts to Essence series – Episode 1 (alisohani.wordpress.com)
• Project Management Keynote (alisohani.wordpress.com)
• Facts to Essence Series – Episode 2 (alisohani.wordpress.com)

• Change management
• Continuous Process Improvement
• Customer Development
• High Performance Culture
• Khadim Ali Shah Bukhari Institute of Technology
• Leadership studies
• Mohammad Ali Jinnah University
• Organizational Leadership
• Performance Management
• Project Management
• Risk Management
• Sustainability