Author: Suresh Dinakaran

The term win-win was first coined in the 1920s by human relations and management pioneer Mary Parker Follett.

Probably it is the most commonly used term in recent history and a compelling narrative in every negotiation where both sides claim and are trying to please each other. It seems to be an easy way to round off a discussion and demonstrate to the other side that you are thinking of them.

The truth is that ” win win ” is never a perfect world or a zero-sum game. There will always be short term losers, especially the ones who had entrenched interests and sunk costs(including emotional labour). Ideally a long standing problem solved with all stakeholders winning is the myth. If it was that easy, someone would have solved it long ago. The issue is who would bell the cat and take the hit in the short term?

A rather democratic practice is where it is a win-lose but where most people with something at stake end up benefitting. Being all things to all people is a fallacy and leadership certainly is not the ability to make everyone happy but an enabling mechanism where most of the people on the journey are glad to be going where they are being taken.

Win-win is a belief in the Third Alternative. It’s not your way or my way; it’s a better way, a higher way – Stephen Covey

Difference of opinion and divergent interests have a three point resolution: domination, compromise or integration. Needless to articulate, domination is a pure play one way street and compromise is never going to make either side comfortable. Integration is the middle path where both sides may end up getting what they wish.

I was never even mediocre at either math or arithmetic. Hence, if this fails to add up, I am completely at home with it.

” So the writer who breeds more words than she needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads ” – so said Dr. Seuss.

Every year at the Oscars, the award for Best Picture gets all the fanfare( a couple of years ago, of course Will Smith had other ideas). That may be stating the obvious. What might be not so obvious is in contrast, the award for film editing flies under the radar. But you may be surprised by the correlation between these two awards.

Since 1981, only three films have won “Best Picture” without also being nominated for “Best Film Editing”.

Why is editing so crucial in filmmaking?

A good film editor removes distractions by eliminating trivial or irrelevant things. She uses deliberate subtraction to add life to the ideas, setting, plot, and characters.

The best films are exceptional NOT because of what we see but because of what we don’t see.

We can draw parallels here. And use the same principles to edit our own lives. We might be from Mars or Venus but on Mother Earth our never ending to-do list need not be a perennial match for our Herculean, Machiavellian competence and calibre that we seem to have been willy nilly blessed(cursed?) with. Probably there is a space to begin by ‘ separating the vital few from the trivial many ‘.

The over ignored practice of essentialism.

Organisations(especially the big ones) revel in herd mentality thinking. That birds of the same feather must flock together. Swayed by the wisdom of the crowds. Or collective bias? If ain’t broke, why mend it? They stick their neck out to maintain the status quo. Their obsessive love affair is with the state of impasse.

The SOS( Sea of Sameness) is a derivative of the increasingly commoditised world we inhabit.

But, if we are leading a project or leading a company, especially a large one, part of our core responsibility is rewrite the default. To rock the boat. To hoover away the legacy mindsets and bring new perspectives and fresh ideas in.

Leaders and entrepreneurs face two vastly different kinds of risks. One is that their organisation took a moonshot, braved the odds and made a bold move. In the process, the project bombs or in other words , they sink the ship. The other kind of risk is that their organization could have taken a risk and reaped handsome rewards, but they let the opportunity pass. In another sense, they miss the boat.

Needless to say, the most remarkable ideas are counter intuitive. They go against the flow. Forget Blue Ocean, they are actually Green Swans. Or Purple Cows. Playing it safe is fraught with the highest risk.

As Michelangelo famously said, “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”

In a very real sense, the first job of leadership is to identify and overcome the costs of complacency.We don’t want to indulge in a trade off- where one sacrifices the remarkable parts of an idea in exchange for the comfort of a smoother ride.

High time to think higher, better. New thinking brings in new possibilities.

In the culture that we operate in, it’s more famous cousin gets to be in the spotlight all the time- I am referring to absenteeism. Some call it the ” bottom-line killer “. Managers and bosses are in perennial strife addressing issues caused by absenteeism.

Amidst all the din and chaos created by absenteeism, what definitely goes under the radar is it’s rather upwardly mobile cousin: presenteeism. Presenteeism is the act of being present at work without being productive, normally because of poor physical or mental health. Most of us would be wondering why is presenteeism is getting the flak- because it is considered a serious hidden productivity killer and we need to be paying serious attention to it.

We all have observed the over diligent, the over committed team member- who works far longer hours than necessary, shows up at work even she is sick. What does not get measured is not only the loss in performance and productivity but the serious consequences it can have on physical and mental health. If you’ve ever popped a few paracetamols and dragged yourself to work with a splitting headache, you’ve been involved in it yourself.

Research has shown up many reasons for presenteeism– including but not restricted to:-

• lack of job security- triggering the need to show up, all the time
• being a workaholic( they enjoy the lowest level of happiness and highest burnout)
• The Damocles Sword of deadlines and lack of support to meet them
• The Type A personality whose self-esteem gets a boost if they are continuously going beyond
• Work that involves welfare and doing good- like social work, teaching etc, where it becomes a mission

Remember, presenteeism, like burnout is not a badge of honor. So the next time you find yourself working longer hours than necessary or showing up to work when you’re sick, remember to do a pause and review and examine whether you’re falling into the trap of presenteeism. Your health and your business will thank you in the long run.

It isn’t uncommon to see emails we receive with URGENT in bold caps in the subject line, screaming for attention. In a zeitgeist tailored to deliver and expect the instant, with tolerance levels and patience in high scarcity, not much thought is attributed to these attention grabbing manipulations. The video on this link attempts to distinguish one from the other aka urgent Vs important.

Most of the effort is in putting out the fires. Life is a perennial state of emergency where time, effort and resources are constantly ploughed in, leaving very little time for the far more important work that we need to do.

Distraction is omnipresent and no bigger than what is bandied about as urgent. As someone said ” Don’t watch the clock, do what it does “. Perhaps we should resist trading the important work for the urgent distraction of right now.

ASAP( As soon As Possible) is a trap: if the focus is more on soon than possible.

The engineers at BMW would tell you all that matters is what is under the hood and how measurable the performance is. That is the engineering mindset which tells us that all that matters is what’s under the surface.

The brand designers at Nike are deeply concerned about the perception that is being built up in the customer’s mind. The designer mindset operates differently. No less important please note.

For the country sending out a symbol to the world that it is a hard power, building an arsenal of nuclear warheads and other state of the art ammunition takes top priority. They are also symbols of human failure.

The client who meets you only an hour later than the designated appointment time is telling you that to him power dynamics is the symbol to wield the megaphone on.

The architect designing the town’s most to be talked about landmark building wants to send out the right inspiration.

The horror movie director having a long silent passage with only visual and no background noise or effect is preparing you for the silence is deafening moment.

By nature, we are storytelling creatures and it begins with what story are we telling ourselves before they get transmitted. Symbolism is not cheap. It can be priceless, as long as we know what we need to do with it.

As Stephen King quoted ” Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity “.

Growing up, the fodder we were fed was ” to err is human” and that gave us the opportunity to get away with serious, highly damaging, catastrophic, avoidable losses be it lives, money, reputation or any of that.

April 10, Circa 1912. Probably, a Red Letter Day in the history of passenger shipping. Among other things. Red Ocean would be a fitting metaphor.

The Titanic, launched on May 31, 1911, set sail on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York City on April 10, 1912, with 2,240 passengers and crew on board. Nicknamed the “Millionaire’s Special,” the ship was fittingly captained by Edward J. Smith, who was known as the “Millionaire’s Captain” because of his popularity with ‘ wealthy passengers ‘.

Errors are preventable. And the investment and planning to prevent them are worth it, always. And the one that we talked about above should never have happened. Imagine error in the manufacturing process of baby foods? Or life saving drugs? Or a high speed rail network?

A lot of us suffer from what we call the ‘ Hero Trap ‘- an over reliance on our ability to handle something that becomes infuriatingly urgent which could have easily been avoided had it not been the temptation of the short term hack. So, if your pilot is diligently going through the pre-flight check list, thank your stars, you are in safe hands.

Errors are the conduit to way finding and as long as you are putting in the effort and hard yards to eliminate and minimise them, good for you, and good for all.

The quintessential temptation is to be all things to all people. Avoid being the contrarian or being adversarial and just find refuge in going with the flow. Find the sweet spot of being generous and revel in it.

That said, what are the guard rails in life that we are putting up? When to be what? Kind and generous or inward and for oneself ? There is no one approach which is either or. Both function in tandem. Sometimes the calling is to be kind and generous and you are showing up and shipping out your work or art or contribution, while at other times you are refilling your own cup so that you have the gas to continue. It’s a happy collision, a healthy mix of being caring and giving and being selfish. Sometimes you are pouring for others while at other times you are filling your own cup.

Sometimes you just need to be selfish and take care of you. If they care for you, they will understand.

“Selfishness is neither good nor bad – it depends on the way we are selfish as to whether it nourishes or injures.”- Hugh Prather

To be successful you have to be selfish, or else you never achieve. And once you get to your highest level, then you have to be unselfish. Stay reachable. Stay in touch. Don’t isolate- Michael Jordan

PS:UnMarketing happens when you stop marketing and start engaging. When you focus on building trust and connection, so when your market needs your product or service, you are the logical choice. Watch the video here.. In this age of UNMarketing, do you have an UNagency?  

Beating the trodden path is the default. Attribute it to established practice, the culture fit, our own inertia, all combine surreptitiously to ensure the path most chosen is the path most trodden. The rallying cry ” we have always done in that way “, helps in no measure.

That being said, there’s more than one way to reach your goal. The most obvious path is often the most crowded path—of high enrollment and low possibility– and therefore the most difficult. It’s indeed a very overcrowded space, fueled in large doses by what we call the ‘ herd mentality ‘ and the supposed ‘ wisdom of the crowds ‘. Red Ocean territory. Needless to say, the competition in this concourse is the highest. More on enrollment and possibility in a different blog post here.

It is easier to go where there already is a path forged. But the most rewarding trails are the ones we make for ourselves. The road less travelled. Those are ones we can leave behind for others to follow. It also means we find new places few others haven’t gone before.

Our comfort zones are the domicile where our dreams travel to gather dust. As you take your plunge and that overdue leap of faith, you need to let go of the trapeze and trust that you will find your wings on the way down or find an handle to hang onto. The typical playbook will never encourage to disrupt the status quo. Put that playbook into the bonfire.

So next time you’re facing a crowded path to your goal, step back and ask yourself, “How else can I get there?” Create the paths you want to walk on. You might just discover a journey that’s not only less crowded but also far more fulfilling.

Ready for the ride?

Don’t mind the contradiction- in a world where we are oversold the value of more and undersold the value of less, its time to stop missing the wood for the trees and soak in the abundance of less.

A syndrome fanned by our reluctance to look up from our ledger of lack as we seek perennial validation in this Republic of Not Enough. If perfect (in lieu of being content) is the default expectation dancing in our heads all the time, it is an unattainable destination that is rarely reached taking us down the rabbit hole of wanting  more  in comparison to someone else, as what you are whining about is that you never have enough.

Be that it may be in the form of more likes or shares on your post, the more’ connections’ you have virtually, the more material possessions we have, the more commitments we take on..all dictated by a flawed mechanism that signals more would mean and translate to happiness, importance, popularity, richness etc..alas, how wrong we are!

Reality is that the more we are sold, isn’t delivering the more we want.

Possessions and material things don’t equate to happiness. Deeper, meaningful relationships aren’t built on likes, shares or comments. Importance and popularity aren’t found in an hectic schedule and an overflowing inbox.

The only road that leads to the ‘more that matters’ is ‘less’. What we can define as Essentialism. Less but better. Separating the trivial many from the vital few. Lesser things but more experiences. Fewer shares but deeper and more meaningful conversations. Less busyness but more purpose.

“No ego can last for long without the need for more. Therefore, wanting keeps the ego alive much more than having. The ego wants to want more than it wants to have. And so the shallow satisfaction of having is always replaced by more wanting.”

To quote Holly Black from The Cruel Prince, “Desire is an odd thing. As soon as it’s sated, it transmutes. If we receive golden thread, we desire the golden needle.”