I Bought The Monk's Ferrari

by Ravi Subramanian

  Till date, I have never heard him complain about trying to strike a balance between work and his family. I have never heard him say 'life sucks'. He has never complained of not being able to go back to his son every night. Though he too, has family responsibilities and aging parents to take care off, he has never let that affect his work. Does this mean that he has no love for his family? Of course, not. He is as much concerned about family, as he is about work. It is just that he is equally passionate about both.

  Now, let me pose a different question to you. Assume for a minute that you have the Ferrari. You struggled in life, made it big and finally have acquired that dream machine. That is the only car you have. Would you stop driving the Ferrari on weekends because you need to give it some 'work-life' balance? The answer would be an absolute NO. If the answer is 'no' for the Ferrari, why should you be so bothered about 'work-life' balance for yourself?

  I spoke of Khosla to prove one crucial point—if he can work fourteen to sixteen hours a day in his fifties, I am sure, the youngsters of today can do it as well. I have a piece of advice for those who have just made their career beginnings. If you want the Ferrari, and want it early in your career, you will have to take one of the three routes ... hard work, hard work and more hard work.

  The other day, I had gone to IIM-Bangalore for a pre-placement talk—a presentation which every company makes to its prospective employees, telling them what it has to offer. I had gone to do a selling job—to sell my bank to the smart young MBAs. I could not curb my natural instinct and was showing off a bit during my talk. Digressing from the laid out presentation, I decided to demonstrate my audience-engaging skills. I looked at a young girl sitting quietly in the first row, I asked her, 'What would you look for in a company before you decide to join it?'

  I caught her a bit off-guard and she was too baffled to answer. However, someone from the back did ... '"Work-life" balance!' My heart sank. I ignored the answer and asked for more parameters that would influence their choice of career... 'Five-day-week!' Oh, my gosh! What is wrong with them? I decided to quickly shelve my digressive path and return to the original canned presentation.

  It has become an 'in-thing' to talk of 'work-life' balance. In the good old days, when I studied at the same campus, answers to similar sounding questions would have been— exposure, learning, brand value etc. None of these featured in the top of mind response that I got. This 'work-life' balance has become the most discussed issue in the campuses as well.

  But, I call it nothing more than just an idle topic for cafe gossip. Else, all the students would have run to join PSU (Public Sector Units). But that seldom happens. And, in that particular year not a single student joined a PSU.

  Your Ferrari will not come with a 'work-life' balance. I once read an interesting interview, I think, it was with Rahul Bajaj, who said: '"Work-life" balance is for wimps. Successful people go out and do what it takes to get there. If they have to work twenty-six hours out of twenty-four, they will.'

  Let me introduce a concept here—the LFL (i.e. Leaders, Followers and Laggards) rule of employee distribution. Every employee in an organisation falls in one of these three categories:

  Leaders

  Leaders are the scarcest of the lot. Barely five to seven percent of the people fall into this category. The organisation depends on this set of people to lay out the vision and direction. These people barely care about 'work-life' balance. They do what they have to do, irrespective of the organisational rules. If they have to give up their family temporarily to meet the demands of work, they will. If they have to slog seventy-five hours a week, they will.

  A survey on the 'work-life' balance of CEOs by Grant Thornton International Business Report (IBR), published in The Economic Times states that Indian CEOs work the longest hours amongst all the CEOs in the world. Does it not automatically set expectations that they will have of their colleagues?

  No organisation can motivate its leaders with 'work-life' balance initiatives. They do not need any.

  Followers

  This is the category where the maximum number of people fit in. They are the people who are satisfied with following instructions from the leader. Leaders lead and the followers follow them. The followers are happy with five-day week, limited working hours, family day initiatives, etc. No organisation can afford to ignore this lot because all organisations run on this category. The leaders are the thinkers and the followers are the doers. They implement what the leader asks them to. A few of these also graduate to a leadership status as they go ahead in life. And, it is quite surprising that the so-called leaders and senior managers of various organisations would fit in this category.

  Laggards

  Forgive me for this, they are the 'useless junks' in any organisation. Absolutely worthless but they still manage to tag with the company because no one has figured out yet that they are absolutely useless. About ten to thirteen percent of the employees in every organisation would be in this category. Laggards have a great personal life. Their contribution to work is almost negligible. Any 'work-life' balance initiative targeted at them will be a disaster, because they already enjoy enough of it. How early can you send a person home, who watches his clock everyday and leaves at six o'clock sharp?

  Before proceeding any further, I would like to assure you readers that not for a minute am I propagating that organisations should not advocate 'work-life' balance. By all means they should. However, the laggards do not need any, and the leaders will not want any, but yes, the followers will. And, therefore, 'work-life' balance initiatives are important from an organisations' perspective, since they cater to the instincts of the followers, who bring up a significant portion of the employee population.

  The Ferrari is not meant for everyone. It is neither for the average worker, nor for the followers, definitely not for the laggards. It is only for the leaders. And, as a matter of fact, it is for the best among the leaders. If you are one of those who moan and groan about 'work-life' balance, long hours at work, and not being able to see your family before ten at night, then sit snug on your sofa and relax. The Ferrari is not for you. Do not even try to get there, because I assure you, you will not!

  COMMANDMENT THREE

  Do not whine and whimper about 'work-life' balance. Be the winner, not the wimp, and the Ferrari will be yours.

  Nine

  * * *

  Be Honest to Yourself

  As a child, I heard the story of a monkey and a crocodile. They lived on opposite banks of a river and were great friends. Every day the monkey would pluck sweet fruits from trees and throw them into the river and the crocodile would gather and take them home to his wife. At night, the crocodile and his wife would savour those fruits. One day his wife asked the crocodile, how he got all the fruits. And the crocodile told his wife about his friend, the monkey.

  'If the fruits that the monkey gives you are so sweet, imagine how sweet the heart of the monkey would be. Can you get it for me?' She was beginning to salivate. The crocodile was aghast at the suggestion and rebuked her for harbouring such a thought. A few days later when the crocodile returned home, his wife was lying on the bed, shivering and sick.

  Sow a thought, and you reap an act;

  Sow an act, and you reap a habit;

  Sow a habit, and you reap a character;

  Sow a character, and you reap a

  destiny.

  ANONYMOUS

  She said, 'The doctor was here. He told me that I'll recover only if I eat the heart of a monkey, else I'll die.'

  The crocodile was very worried and did not know what to do. He loved his wife and now she was forcing him to choose between his friend and her life.

  That evening he invited the monkey for dinner. The poor monkey did not suspect anything and hopped on to the crocodile's back as he waded across to the other bank. Midway through the journey, under pangs of guilt, the crocodile told the monkey the real story. In any case, he was in the middle of the river and the monkey could not sw
im.

  'Oh, is that all, my friend. I'd be glad but I've left my heart back on the tree itself. Had I known, I'd have carried it.'

  'Oh God! What should we do now?'

  'Let's go back. I'll quickly bring my heart down.'

  So, the crocodile and the monkey made their way back to the shore. When they were near the shore, the monkey leaped to the safe confines of the tree, 'Foolish crocodile,' he said, 'I gave you all the fruits as a good friend, and now you want to kill me because your wife wants my heart. I'm not going back with you.'

  When the crocodile's wife saw him returning without the monkey, she left him. The poor crocodile lost both his best friend and his wife. All because, he was not honest to himself.

  This apparently simple story gives us a very important message. Dishonesty will always come back to haunt you. We have all lied at some point or the other in our personal and professional lives.

  Calling in sick at work, lying about the reasons for your kids missing school, false excuses for being late for a meeting, buying a movie ticket in black ... the list is endless. These examples may apparently seem harmless, but they demonstrate an inherent tendency to lie and are, in a way, indications of bigger improprieties.

  If we do something which is right, we will always benefit from it. But, dishonesty or any other misdeed for that matter will continue to haunt us throughout our lives.

  At this juncture, step back and peek into the lives of winners, i.e. in the lives of people who are successful, who have made a mark for themselves in this world. You will find one common streak in all of them—all of them have the ability to stand up and face the consequences of their action. They will never do anything behind the back. They will not pussyfoot on tough decisions. Most importantly, they will follow deep- rooted moral values. They will never compromise on their values for a few rupees more.

  Just, a few days back I read a book, There is No Such Thing as "Business" Ethics by John C. Maxwell. Maxwell rightly argues that when it comes to ethics there can be no double standards. You cannot set different standards for your personal and professional lives. What is ethical in one's personal life is ethical in business, too. And, as far as ethics is concerned, two things are important—the necessity of an ethical standard and the will to follow it. He says that Integrity is all about meeting the challenge of doing the right thing even if it costs more than what we want to pay.

  What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us

  are tiny matters compared to what lives within

  us.. . a culture, a practice, a religion,

  something which all winners imbibe.

  RALPH WALDO EMERSON

  INTEGRITY AND ETHICS is all about a way of life ... which I am afraid is now becoming extinct.

  How many times have you walked out of a store because you felt that the shop owner was trying to cheat you? If you ever drove into a petrol station and got an uncomfortable feeling that the oil is adulterated, will you ever go back to the same filling station again? Then, what makes you think that people, if they get a similar impression about you, would want to come back and deal with you?

  I want to share an incident happened the other day. My wife and I walked into an electronics store in Bandra, an upmarket suburb of Mumbai. I wanted to buy an LCD television set and was looking for a large one. The salesperson showed me a large 46" television set and took me through all the features of the exotic looking Sony Television. I was nearly sold on it set till I realised that the one he was showing me was a Plasma television, despite telling him that I wanted an LCD television. When I reiterated to him that what I wanted was not a Plasma television, he went on to inform me that he did not have a 46" LCD television set in stock. It could well have been that he genuinely was trying to sell me a Plasma and had no mal-intent. I would have probably given him the benefit of doubt too, had he not told me that he did not have LCDs in stock. But now it seemed as if he was trying to sell us what he wanted to sell because he did not have what we wanted.

  It was too naive to even think that I would have bought a Plasma television mistaking it to be an LCD. The approach of the store sales executive made me feel that he was making an attempt to short-change me. Probably he was not ... But my mind was made up. That was the last we saw of that store. We walked out promising never to return because it could not sustain our trust.

  To be the owner of the Ferrari, it is important to gain people's trust. If you want to be valued, respected, trusted, understood, and followed, you must possess integrity of character. Winners, when confronted with tricky situations, just ask themselves one question—'What is right?' They answer this question honestly and then take decisions.

  It is important to take the right stance at the very beginning. Once you take a morally incorrect stance, even if you retract and tread on the right path, the damage is done. People will never trust you in the same manner that they could have.

  Let us take the example of a typical FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Good) sales process. A Hindustan Lever sales executive dumps carton after carton of Lux soaps on a distributor with the promise that if he is not able to sell them, he will take them back and brand them as defective pieces. For the record ... he books a sale—a large one, at that, and he continues doing this month after month. In no time, the sales executive becomes a star salesperson. On the other hand, there is another salesperson who struggles to sell only half the number of cartons a month, but sells it the right way. Clearly, the performance of this person lags behind. After about eighteen months of such sales practices, the lid blows off the former salesperson's antics. Given the past performance the organisation is lenient towards this person and does not sack him. His sales volumes obviously drop from the previous high. However, the individual still sells more than the second executive.

  Six months later, if an opportunity of giving one of them a larger role was to arise, who would the company give it to? If I was the decision maker, I would unhesitatingly give it to the second sales executive. If you ask, 'Why?', the answer is clear. As a supervisor, I would give leadership roles to an average resource high on integrity, rather than a brilliant resource with suspect integrity. Ideally, however, I would prefer an individual with integrity as well as high competence. But, if I am unable to find someone I would compromise on competence rather than on .integrity.

  The bottom line is, the Ferrari can be yours only if you are absolutely unwilling to compromise on integrity and ethics.

  While maintaining the highest standard of ethics is important, it is also the key to manage your personal life without any blemishes. Often, ethical compromises in one's personal life, tend to reflect in your professional life as well.

  The HR manager of an organisation I know of, was on the take, and would demand and take kickbacks from the recruitment consultants to hire candidates referred by them. He was happily married to an ex-colleague of his. All was well between them until the HR manager began his perverse ways. He started having an affair with a girl from the training unit in the same organisation. Soon, his wife learnt of it and walked out on him and she sang like a canary about all his underhand dealings. The HR manager lost his job. Once she got to know, even his girlfriend left him. This is how a wayward personal life, low on integrity impacted a career.

  Therefore, it is very important to maintain the highest degree of integrity. People form opinions about others and these opinions are often difficult to change. It takes only one move to create a negative impression, which stays for life.

  Many a time, when you had to allocate a task at hand to a particular person, you must have felt, 'I won't give it to him, I'm not sure how honest he is.' Probably, you have not even worked with the person in question, but his behaviour drives you to form this opinion. Quite often, ideas are formed about individuals' professional behaviour and capabilities based on their personal etiquettes.

  If you want to acquire the Ferrari, you cannot get to it alone. You need your team to work with you. And, how do you build a team? Do you kn
ow why dealing with your teammates with integrity and honesty is important? I was once told by Ajay Bimbhet, a stalwart in the banking industry, who I worked with for a very short period of time, that people work for organisations and people leave because of their supervisors. If you want to be successful, you need to get a great team of colleagues working for you. They will stay with you and work for you, only if they trust you.

  If they get even an iota of doubt on your trustworthiness, you will cease being the boss. And if that happens even once, you will never be able to get that allegiance from your team, and without a cohesive and united team, you will never be able to come up with good performances. Post that, if you still have hopes of a Ferrari, you would have taken the positive thoughts concept as detailed in the previous chapter, to new heights.

  COMMANDMENT FOUR

  Set and follow the highest standard of integrity in your personal and professional lives. If you are high on integrity, people will respect and value you. The Ferrari when it comes, will stay with you.