The Habit of Winning

by Prakash Iyer

  Needless to say, Steve was proud of his team. Which is why I think this moment will remain special, even years later. Because this is not just about share gains or increases in market cap but about the building of an organization. Of an organization that won, by doing the right thing. At all times.

  It’s one thing to have a vision for the business, quite another to see it actually work. One thing to define values, another to see the organization live by them!

  We all set values to live by but when it comes to the crunch, when push comes to shove—are we willing to live by them? The rivalry between Coke and Pepsi is legendary, and they have waged several hard battles around the world in their fight for a larger share of the consumer’s throat and wallet. And yet, when some potentially explosive data about Coke landed inadvertently in Pepsi’s lap—data that could have given them a competitive edge—the folks at Pepsi just did ‘the right thing’.

  Would you? Would your organization? Would that salesman or that despatch clerk or that pushy award-winning sales manager behave the same way as the woman at PepsiCo did that fateful day? Many of us swear by values such as honesty and integrity but when rubber meets the road, do we stand up to scrutiny? When a mail meant for someone else lands in your inbox, can you resist the temptation to peek into it?

  Or do you justify it by saying it’s all right? After all you did not get it by fraudulent means. It doesn’t really matter how it reached you. If it’s not meant for you, well it’s not meant for you. And it’s interesting how we often redefine what’s right—or wrong—based on our convenience.

  Great leaders and great organizations are built on strong fundamentals. On a no-compromise adherence to a stated value system. Adherence by all—not just by some people. Adherence at all times—not just when it’s convenient.

  The real strength of character in the Pepsi story is reflected not just in the fact that the parcel reached its rightful owner, but in the fact that it was done without any fuss. There were no long meetings to decide the right course of action. The manager didn’t check with her boss (and his boss and his boss’s boss). Just two people in that large organization knew about it. And they just did what they thought—no, what they knew—was the right thing.

  I think that’s a great lesson to learn for individuals and for organizations. Values are not what are written on the office walls or on the first slide of the PowerPoint presentation to investors. Values are real-life responses of the people in the organization, to the challenges and temptations they face every day. Your personal values are not just what you espouse. It’s how you behave and react in the face of temptation, under pressure, even when you know that no one else would know.

  Often, our decision on what’s the right thing to do is influenced by what we think is the probability of being caught out. ‘What can we get away with?’ seems to be the uppermost thought. Not ‘What’s the right thing?’ If the folks at PepsiCo had opened that packet and dived into the secrets inside, no one would have known. Least of all Coke. The folks at Atlanta would have been left wondering about the mystery of the missing parcel. That’s all.

  What really matters is not what you do when the world is watching. It’s what you do when no one is watching! Perhaps the packet contained secrets that could have helped Pepsi win a share point or pre-empt a competitive launch. Opening it may have created a market opportunity. Perhaps. But it would have destroyed an organization. Slowly, but surely.

  What would you do if it were you, or your organization? What would you do if that envelope of secret opportunities mistakenly landed on your desk? Ah! That’s easy. Of course, you wouldn’t open it! That’s what we all say.

  The real question is this: What did you do the last time it happened? When your values were tested, when you had an opportunity to gain (albeit unfairly), when you knew you wouldn’t get caught—yeah, what did you do?

  Time to do some soul-searching. And time to ensure that we are all creating organizations where when the envelope meant for our competitor lands in the inbox, the despatch clerk knows what’s the right thing to do. And not only does she know what’s the right thing, she just goes ahead and does it!

  Your personal values are not just what you espouse. It’s how you behave and react in the face of temptation, under pressure, even when you know no one else would know.

  Enough. Do You Have It?

  If you are in the funds and investments business, you’ve probably heard of John Bogle. John is the founder and CEO of the Vanguard Mutual Fund Group, and also the creator of the world’s first index fund. In his latest book, John tells an interesting story about Joseph Heller, author of the best-selling Catch 22.

  A mutual friend took Heller to a party at a billionaire’s home in New York. It was a fabulous evening and the generous host—a hedge fund manager—ensured that everyone was having a great time. The friend turned to Heller and said: ‘Do you realize that our host probably makes more money in a day than you have made in a lifetime from your book?’ Nodding his head slowly and sipping his wine, Joseph replied, ‘Yes. But I have something he will never have.’

  ‘What?’ said the friend. And Joseph replied: ‘Enough.’

  I loved the story and as I read the book (appropriately titled Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life, my mind went back to Maslow and his famed hierarchy of needs. I thought of his pyramid and wondered if ‘enough’ figures anywhere in it. Self-actualization seems a fairly complex phrase for a simple enough word. Enough.

  We all have our definitions of success, our secret list of desires. Wealth. Power. Fame. And more … Very few of us, if any, have ‘enough’ on that list.

  What makes people happy? Money, love, health, respect? More of each of these? Or some magic combination of all of these? It’s good to remember that true happiness comes not from getting (and wanting) more but from being satisfied with what you get. From knowing that enough is, well, enough. As a wise man put it, you don’t have to be successful to be happy. Happiness can make you a success.

  Wanting more puts us on a never-ending ride. Like a roller coaster whose operator has vanished—there’s no one to switch it off! It starts off as a fun ride but not being able to get off means it’s not fun any more. Look around and you will probably see several ‘successful’ people who have all it takes—except enough!

  That money is not the secret to happiness has been well documented. You need enough of it, sure, but beyond a point it ceases to matter. So what really matters? What makes people happy? The magazine American Psychologist identified three factors, the three things you need to have in some measure to be truly happy. Call it the ACE trilogy if you will. The three needs are:

  Autonomy: the freedom to do as you please

  Connectivity: the ability to stay in touch with friends and dear ones

  Execute competence: the opportunities to put to use your special talents and abilities

  So the next time you contemplate a career move or worry about your bank balance, it may be a good idea to take stock of your ACE score. The problem is that in our quest for more and more, we tend to ignore what really matters. The freedom to do what your mind desires, the chance to spend time with the people you like, and the chance to do what you are really good at. If you have these, in some measure, you probably have enough.

  Greed is at the heart of a lot of our problems. Perhaps it’s time to say—enough. Time perhaps for each of us to define our own ‘enoughs’. And discover true wealth and happiness.

  We all have our definitions of success, our secret list of desires. Wealth. Power. Fame. And more … Very few of us, if any, have ‘enough’ on that list.

  Pig. And Other Games People Play

  Once when I was in Chennai, a friend told me about a game of dice he used to play in his childhood, and how the lessons he learnt from that game many, many years ago are still relevant. It’s a game called Pig. I hadn’t heard of it or played it ever. But as I heard about it, I found it quite fascinating!

  The
game goes like this: two players, two dice. The first player starts by throwing the dice; the face value that appears on the dice is the number of runs he scores. He throws the dice again, and again, and keeps adding to his score with every throw. If the same number appears on both dice, it’s a bonus and the score doubles (so a 3 and 3 gets you 12 runs). And you go on throwing the dice, and accumulating runs. However, if you get a 1 and 1, then you are out. And your score gets reset to zero. And the next guy then takes his turn. At any stage, a player can choose to declare—and ask the other player to start throwing. At the end of five innings, the guy with the higher total score wins.

  Sounds simple. And fun. Right?

  Now here’s the tricky bit. As my friend recalls, it would be great fun throwing the dice and scoring runs and watching your score climb. And then if you got a 5 and 5 or a 6 and 6, there would be jubilation. And as their score went past the 100-run mark, it wasn’t unusual for him—or his brother—to start admiring his own skill, his inner genius, which was resulting in those tall scores. The thought that the next throw could be a 1 and 1—which would mean that they’d be back to zero—would never cross their mind.

  And then inevitably, 1 and 1 would appear. Reducing their score to nought. Leading to anguish on one face, delight on the other. The poor soul whose score was reduced to zero would rue his fate, and passionately have you believe that he was just about to declare. He had decided, he’d say, that it would be his last throw. All to no avail. And then the other person would start his innings. Needless to say, he would hardly have learnt a lesson from his rival! ‘It didn’t quite occur to us,’ recalls my friend, ‘that it might be a good idea to set a target in our mind, predetermine the number of throws, and then declare.’

  And while I had said to him that I had never played Pig, I quickly realized that it looked like a game I had indeed played, several times. In a casino. In the stock market. In life. When the going is good, we let greed get the better of us. The stock market index climbs, and climbs higher, and we cheer and admire our stock-picking abilities. We don’t always declare—or exit—because the thought that a ‘1 and 1’ could be just around the corner doesn’t quite occur to us. We push that uncomfortable thought out of our minds.

  Which is probably why if you listen to someone who’s just been to a casino, he will delight in telling you how at one stage he had won over a thousand bucks. Yeah, at one stage. Only to lose it all.

  In life, you need a plan, which not only includes how much you want to make but also when you want to exit. If you are not careful, if you allow greed to rule you, a ‘1 and 1’ will appear and bring your score back to zero.

  And the problem in the game of dice—as in the game of life—is that most times we aren’t just looking at our scores, but trying to be one up on the other guy. That’s what feeds the greed and keeps us running. Our targets are not about how much we need but how we should have more than the other guy. And that is a recipe for disaster. In Pig. In life.

  Cricketers face the Pig effect too. It’s the all-too-familiar story of a great cricketer, who garners fans and glory and then, despite declining ability, holds on for one more game, one more endorsement contract, one more record … Only to lose it all, as he gets pushed into oblivion. Vijay Merchant, the legendary Indian cricketer, had advice for cricketers that holds good for all of us: ‘Quit when people will ask “Why?” and not “Why not?”’

  Good to take some lessons away from the game called Pig, into the larger game of life. Set targets for yourself. Know when to call it quits. Worry about your own score, not about the other guy’s. When the tide is in your favour, resist the temptation to boast about your surfing skills. And learn to keep greed out.

  We all tend to be greedy pigs, I thought to myself! And suddenly figured how the game got its name.

  Have a plan, which includes not only how much you need to make but also when you need to call it quits.

  Smelling the Coffee

  There’s a quarterly event I secretly look forward to with great eagerness—the reunion lunch of my batchmates, the gang of IIMA 86! It wasn’t always like this but as the years have rolled by, the sense of nostalgia and belonging has grown quite dramatically.

  It’s a relaxed lunch where a group of us—usually twenty-five or so—get together to catch up, laugh, exchange notes and reminisce about the good old days. The presence of spouses ensures that the discussion doesn’t get too heavy on stock markets and boardroom battles; there’s usually as much chatter on the latest Bollywood release, the kids’ homework and the new restaurant in town.

  Our hairlines have receded, our waistlines are bulging and two decades in the corporate world have seen all of us go down different paths. But, as every quarterly rendezvous seems to confirm, the reunion lunch has the uncanny ability to somehow shrink the distances we have travelled, and transport us back to the time when we were all thrown together in the red-brick-walled confines of one of the best places to be in the world, the campus of the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. At the reunion, nobody is a CEO or a billionaire. We are just the same young fellas of the class of ’86. All excited, eager-eyed, in hawai chappals, unshaven, even unbathed!

  The life stories are interesting. One of our batchmates is a top cop in the city. A man doing a fabulous job, sans reward, of maintaining law and order and ensuring that we all sleep well. There’s another guy who gave up a lucrative job with a consulting major to do something on his own—so he could spend more time with wife and family. (Know what prompted it? His daughter complained to her teacher that her Papa was not spending enough time with her and that he was on his BlackBerry all the time at home.)

  I’ve noticed that at these lunches, while the conversations are wide-ranging, there’s very little interest in discussing individual progress reports. That’s a complete no-no. Thank God for that!

  I wonder if we were lucky to have graduated before the great investment banking boom of the 1990s. We chose jobs that excited us, not the ones that paid the most or offered postings in exotic foreign locations. We chased our dreams. And while we all find our eyes popping in disbelief every time we hear about the astronomical starting salaries at that well-known institute of management in western India, we are probably a happier, more contented lot. It’s so much nicer to be able to remember the two years at IIMA for the time spent there, rather than for a starting salary.

  Reminds me of a little story. You’ve probably heard it but there’s a message in it for all of us. Perhaps even more so for that young fast-track i-banker jetting across time zones, buying his next swanky apartment, upgrading to a new BMW and delighting in telling his friends about how he and his wife briefly caught up with each other at Frankfurt airport last week.

  The story goes that a group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress at work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic, glass, some plain-looking and some quite exquisite. He then asked them to help themselves to hot coffee. When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: ‘If you notice, all the nice-looking, expensive cups are taken, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and your stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the better cups and are eyeing each other’s cups.’

  ‘Now, if Life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, they don’t change the quality of Life. At times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it.’

  Think about it. And don’t forget to smell the coffee!

  What we really need is the coffee. But what we keep searching for are better-looking cups.

  What’s Better than Winning a
Gold Medal? Losing It!

  Have you heard of Lawrence Lemieux?

  Probably not. He’s one of those Olympic heroes who never won a medal. And yet, his name is indelibly etched on the list of all-time greats. On the list of men and women who, in their own ways, epitomize the Olympic spirit.

  Lemieux, a Canadian sailor, grew up dreaming of Olympic glory. Years of struggle, sacrifice and sailing were finally rewarded when he was selected to represent his country in the Finn class sailing event at the Seoul Olympics, 1988.

  The big day arrived on 24 September 1988. The sailing events were being held in Pusan, about 450 km away from Seoul. The competitors set sail in fine weather but conditions got worse as the race progressed, and wind speeds climbed from under 15 knots to nearly 35 knots. The waters got choppy, the boats wobbled, the crew was under threat … and a race was on.

  Halfway through the race, Lemieux was in second place, doing rather well despite the adverse weather conditions. As he gazed into the distance, his mind probably saw visions of an Olympic medal. The realization of a lifelong dream seemed near, very near. Stay focused, push yourself that extra bit, go for it, this is the moment you’ve worked so hard for … Lemieux was egging himself on.

  But then, looking into the distance, he saw something else too. Across the choppy waters, two men were struggling for dear life, clinging on to a capsized boat. They were Joseph Chan and Siew Shaw Her, two sailors from the Singapore team who were competing in another sailing event, the 470 class. Their boat had gone out of control, they were injured and their lives were in danger.

  In an instant, Lemieux decided what he had to do, what appeared to him to be the right thing.