Winning In The Beginning oR Winning In The End ?
My Cousin, who is a perceptive and wise man was telling me about a very successful Indian entrepreneur called Kishore Biyani. Mr. Biyani is the founder of the future group which owns retail chains like Big Bazaar (and Pantaloons ?). He was telling me about Kishore Biyani saying that whenever Mr. Biyani plays any a game like Bridge etc. He does not try too hard to win the first game on purpose and does not pin too much importance to winning the first game. According to Mr. Biyani, if he does not focus on winning but on learning the principles of the game, he might lose the first game but he gets to understand things that equip him to beat his opponents later on as the games progress. This logic sounds very sound (:)). I thought about this and then it also came to me, that winning in the end is much more important than learning nothing in the beginning and winning and then keep on losing for the rest of the time.
Then I also found my thoughts corroborate from a completely unconnected source. This was a report by a group called the STANDISH committee, that was setup to review the success rates of IT projects in the US. The conclusion of the report almost reverberated with my thoughts. The report was concluded by words which meant the following (after the first few lines I have added my words freely). There are two ways to success, luck or knowledge. If you succeed early on with luck you learn nothing but arrogance, you feel it was your ability that caused the success. If on the other hand you begin with failure, you learn a lot, it gives you knowledge, it gives you wisdom. And wisdom becomes the basis of sustainable and long term success. It makes you humble and you are much better prepared for any situation. Arrogance on the other hand breaks like a sheet of glass. When it is not damaged, it stands very hard and erect and shines as well. When even a small pebble of failure hits it, it comes crashing down in a million pieces. And it becomes very hard to gather the pieces for the owner of the arrogance. In all probability he then replaces the glass with a much more but not so good looking steel. With time and immense effort though, the steel can be replaced with diamond. Sparkling, shining, and completely unbreakable. Deserving all of the shine it exudes. Glass looks like diamond for some time, but it is just a very very cheap lookalike of it.