Suresh Dinakaran's Blog

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.”

If you are in any big city, you will see scores of people hurrying to their respective places of work, getting onto the commute bandwagon in the morning, beating the blues to get to where they need to. On time.

The same applies to a creative person at work, hurrying so that she can deliver the project on time to the client. The state of mind at that time is to ignore all distractions and possibly do some deep work so that deadlines are respected. Alternatively, if the deadline is not sacrosanct, the state of mind is far at ease(probably bringing in avoidable procrastination into play).

The situation is no different at airports. You are either reaching early and battling dwell time to kill the extra hours or minutes that you have or you are in a frenzy and stressed enough to make it your gate and board on time.

Hurry and stress seem to be co related. They need not be. Rather than see hurry as a dependency, as a crutch, as an excuse, the lens to wear can be to look at hurry as an asset. To unearth the best version of ourselves, to deliver the art that we are capable of and for bringing the version of ourselves to the fore. To fulfill on promises made. Use hurry to take that leap, sidelining the distractions that dominate our lives. Hurry has the power to be an ally, an asset, an ammunition. Switch that power on or off based on your need.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

If you are like me and given a few exams or tests, you would have encountered the popular multiple choice questions where the question is followed by a choice of potential correct answers. To make it a little dodgy for the test or exam takers, there is also a choice given ‘ none of the above ‘.

I think None of the Above gets us thinking about how we “other” people in our lives and how society teaches us to turn away from the unfamiliar.

Probably the choice is easier. Rather than stand for something and back it, you take the route of being against because that is the easier choice. None of the above absolves you of responsibility in a way because there is something on offer without being on offer if you know what I mean.

So, life’s exams will throw up ” None of the Above ” or even ” All of the Above ” as choices- that said, it is up to us to direct our responsibility in the direction we need to.

IQ and EQ have been part of the nomenclature for aeons now. And EQ over the past few decades have won pride of place in our scheme of things and is considered the bedrock for sound and progressive leadership. That said, the Covid-19 threw up a new necessity since a lot of organisations and individuals were caught like a deer in the headlights. And that was the crying need for adaptability. AQ(Adaptability Quotient) is certainly the new kid on the block.

Kids have the greatest sense of agility and adaptability. They can go from petulant and sad to happy and effervescent and switch contexts in an instant. As we grow older(and mature?), adults struggle with this. As we grow older, our ability to reconcile and thrive in a new situation or context diminishes. The law of diminishing marginal returns begin to apply. That is because we have not made such effort to change the default. The good thing is that with deliberate practice, we can change the muscle memory setting and enhance our adaptability quotient.

The same applies to organisations too. In an always on, dynamic and unpredictable zeitgeist, where the next new normal is being continuously disrupted, organisations that have agility and adpatability as its prized assets, are the ones likely to survive and thrive.

I remember when I was growing up and the reluctant cricketer in me and the generosity of my elder brother were always at loggerheads. He wanted my bat and pad to be close together while I remained happy with doing what I always did, inspite of the fact that it closed the door to newer, better, correct options.

I suspect status quo is the domicile of comfort. Playing safe. Of being deliberately in a state of impasse when change is resisted. When it is looked at with suspicion. As they say, when your fist is in a tight clench, little do you realise what is slipping through your fingers. And mind you, a lot is. When a toddler is crawling, it is only a natural preamble to her walking- she has no intent to remain in crawling mode forever.

We hang onto the coat tails of what was. At the cost of exploring what could be. We are afraid that whatever we have gained or whatever we have accomplished could be lost should we tread a new path. Our status, the connections we have made and the competence we have earned, though interim, is cherished and therefore protected with all vigor and rigidity. And we shut shop. Letting go becomes difficult.

Emotional enrollment is the bedrock of learning. That is what mentors, coaches, leaders are looking for when in the quest to moving the needle from ” what got you here, won’t get you there ‘. “Ignore sunk costs” is the critical lesson of useful decision making. More on this in an earlier blog post here.

Better will remain a slippery slope should the idea be to rever the status quo. We will find a thousand ways to maintain the narrative of security, entitlement or culture( people like us do things like this).

The ebbs and flows in our lives can be better managed. Are you defending sunk costs, sticking with projects simply because that’s easier( remember that domicile of comfort called the status quo) than leaving them behind? Which flows could be improved with focus and effort?

The decisions we make today( read probably hard choices) can lead to better outcomes later. The present(today) is a present(gift) and real but we still spend most of our lives living in later.

The other evening around 9.05 pm I get a call from an over enthusiastic sales person of an AI in Marketing company. No preamble, no polite enquiries but cutting to the chase with a sense of entitlement that cried out aloud ” that I am obliged to take his call, irrespective of the time, the context or what have you “. That is not it. When I asked him that is this a time to be making a sales call and how disappointed I am at being subjected to this unwanted intrusion, he had the audacity to tell me that it is company policy and it is NOT his responsibility to check on primary courtesies. Even when I reassured him that I will never do business with his company, he kept on saying that he is ‘doing his job ‘.

This is a classic template of the mindset of most(there are some exceptions fortunately) corporate customer acquisition | service personnel where they love doing either or ideally both of the below:-

– If at all possible, evade responsibility

– When you can, get it over with

So, when things go wrong and you want a response, it normally is this refrain ” It’s out of our control “.

There’s a flip side to this which is a far better alternative. Think of what you ‘could have ‘ done under the circumstances. Instead of hanging on to the coat tails of minimum legal and compliance, run away from the responsibility and under deliver and disappoint the customer( and lose her forever), explore what the maximum you can do to understand, empathise and resolve the customer’s problem. Like owning up and saying, we could have done better. We could have informed you and given a true update on the ground situation instead of hiding behind the customary ” there was a technical glitch “, ” it’s another department that is responsible ” etc etc.

So the next time you say ” let me escalate this to my manager “, actually do it, send good advice upstream, follow up and offer the customer perspective to find a solution and not follow the call centre script(designed to ensure customer problems are not resolved).

It is simple- organisations who win the race are the ones who are going way beyond the minimum( read this example of what happened with the Titanic to understand the gravity of what can go wrong when you opt for the safe and minimum), the ones that figure out that they could do it.

What could you do?