How to deliver the outputs beyond your current job?

I read this interesting article in TOI that explains the difference in compensation of the professionals who constantly improve their capabilities. I was surprised to observe that small difference in the increment ( 15% for high performers visavis 5% for average performers) over a period of 35 years of working life can create a massive difference of 19 crores between a high performer and an average performer. And if both performers invests 30% of their income every year in various investments, that can result into a huge difference of 875% between the earnings of average and high performers. A simple math can show this difference.

But the key input in differentiating between average and high performers is not high academic credentials or the college from which you pass. It is not innate intelligence or ability. Neither is it 'technical knowledge or skill' ( which many graduates assume when they are passing from their colleges) about the subject matter. Nor is it about 'knowing the top bosses'. All these abilities could be important for a while, but are not the key to sustained improvement over a long period.

The key to sustain constant improvement (to justify 15% increase in salary every year') is delivering outputs that are beyond your current job. 

So here are five steps in delivering outputs beyond your current job

Step 1. List down the metasysems of your job

Metasystems are systems on whom you depend ( or who depend on you ) for getting key inputs/resources for your work- performance.

If you are working in sales in a pharma company, you depend on marketing ( for its marketing schemes both above the line and below the line), Finance ( credit limits for retail outlets) and you internal sales department's inputs ( which product to sell more, which geography will have higher sales budget), product development department ( who has developed a new product which is being tested in your territory). Finance department also depends on your 'collection target' achievement, while product development depends on your inputs in their product development efforts. So in certain cases, the dependencies are 'mutual. 

Step 2. Understand the purpose and criteria with which the metasystems are evaluating your work performance or depending on you to improve their work performance

Your sales metasystem is depending on achieving your 'total sales target', while finance is depending on your achieving your 'collection target', while product development depends on achieving your 'new product target'. It is important to understand the underlying 'purpose' of these metasystems, and the criteria by which they evaluate your work-performance. 

Step 3. Identify the constraints and supports that each metasystem is offering to improve your visible work performance

While sales metasystem is offering 'sales budget' as a support, marketing system is offering the 'marketing budget'. Product development may be offering 'extended budget', while finance may be offering 'good collection discounts' 

On the other hand, they also offer constraints. For instance, sales metasystem has the constraint of meeting 'x doctors a day' or 'three towns a month'. Marketing system has the constraint of promoting 'x' product more than 'y', which may be beneficial or harmful for your territory sales. 

Step 4. Identify the leverages ( within the constraints and support tools) that you can manoever

For instance, one can make three doctors' calls in a day by meeting 'three proximous doctors in a town', so that one can spend more time with a new doctor to get more mileage. Or one can use the marketing budget differently, say by offering more 'sales schemes' in one town and more 'off the shelf promos' in another town. Or one can meet the overall collection target, by targeting 'A' distributors. 

Step 5. Actively work with the perceptions of metasystem to ensure that your work performance is recognised

Each metasystem is evaluating you, although sales metasystem's evaluation is the more important one. Evaluation is often 'subjective' and based on perception. 

For instance, one has to be smart enough to sense that 'marketing' has more clout in designing a promotion scheme and use that knowledge judiciously to 'side' with marketing so that one's sales budgets can also be met. Or focus on meeting the target of product development in your territory ( because you are not able to meet your territory's target) and borrow 'additional time' to meet your sales targets. In other words, it is important to actively work with the perceptions of different metasystems. 

Summary

Delivering outputs beyond job is focussing on long term. Only by working on long term one can build those requisite long lead-time skills necessary in the future. Please remember that some skills develop fast and some at a slow rate. In order to ensure that your long term work performances is sustained, you have to build the long lead-time skills in time. If you are not prepared for this, it is double whammy for you: you miss the opportunity that comes your way, and by not preparing for the future job, your career growth automatically stops because you cannot perform well in those jobs. 

Will Sachin Tendulkar be able to contribute as MP?

In a corporate field, these transitions from one role to another are common: moving from salesman to sales manager, sales manager to Marketing manager, GM Maintenance to GM production or VP Servicing to VP Governance. One of the roadblock required to negotiate such a transition is to adopt new skillset of the new role in a short time-window.

When a person shifts from one role to another, he can contribute to the new role only when he lets go the 'old skill set' and moves into the new skill set. If he is unable to complete this transition, he will continue to function in the old role. For instance sales manager will continue to function as a salesman whenever 'sales challenge' is presented to him by his deputee. For instance, I know of a Sales manager who use to go on the field with his sales officer if the sales officer 'failed' to crack the deal.

This creates a double whammy. On the one hand, the deputees do not learn their skills. Because they do not learn the skills,  their dependency on the sales manager increases which consumes all the time of sales manager. And because of this, the sales manager continues to function as 'highly paid salesman' , solving the problems of his team members one after another. 

Consequently, he does not have the time to learn the new skills to perform the new role of sales manager. He is unable to develop his team to function without him. He is unable to 'espouse' the cause of his sales team with the higher management because he does not spend time in 'garnering top management support'. With all his time spend on 'doing field calls', he is unable to  synergise with his colleagues, say from marketing, to find high leverage actions that will increase the productivity of his sales team. In short, he is unable to transit into the new role of sales manager. 

Given these challenges in functioning in a new role, will Sachin Tendulkar be able to contribute in the new role of MP? 

Observe what Sachin Tendulkar said when he was asked how he would take time out for Parliament from his busy cricket schedule. He said, 

"I did not go to anyone asking to be a Rajya Sabha member. It is an honour and I accept that with respect. However, I am here because of cricket. I cannot take focus away from cricket because that’s where it all began for me". “I will focus on cricket and as and when I stop playing, I will look at other things and see how I can help,” he added.

Although one can hail the above sentiments, how will this mindset enable Sachin to find time to learn the new skills of being a good Member of Parliament. 

For instance, he will have to learn why and how the different challenges of sportsperson have not been addressed by the 'political system' until now. Has it been due to lack of adequate budget? Has it been due to the mindset that 'sportsman' are elite lot? Or has it been due to lack of support from other MPs? In other words, he has to plan. To plan, he has to get into the 'muck' of the action, identify what needs to be done, and what he can do ( given his constraints of time?). But all this 'understanding' itself will demand lot of time, effort and attention. And this is just the first step. 

Only after he plans his actions, he will then have to spend even 'more time' in ensuring that the parliament takes some action on his plans. This requires another set of skills: skill to bring the issues on the table, muster the support of other MPs to ensure that his issue is not put under the table, and above all use 'public and social' media to garner the necessary support to keep the issue 'hot enough. Of course, he can take help from others in doing all this, but he still has to 'spearhead' the efforts? 

Given the mindset of Sachin Tendulkar, it is upto you to judge, if he can really find the time to learn the necessary skills to take all the above actions to make his contribution as MP. Will Sachin be able to transfer his 'single-minded' devotion from cricket to the new role and tasks of MP for the time being? Although Sachin's image and record will boost the expectations of sportsman in the country, will his good intentions alone be enough to produce the desired result in the system which , everyone recognises, is a herculean task?

Given this big challenge of performing in the new role, do you honestly believe that Sachin Tendulkar will be able to find time to contribute in the new role of MP? And if Sachin is unable to perform in the new role, should we blame our unrealistic expectations or Sachin Tendulkar? 

One liner definition of Career success

Last week,i had gone to the college to talk on 'Steps to take to join corporate life'.A student asked me a question ' What is a definition of successful career?' Here is an attempt to write what i said.

Career is successful when 'you can remain apart in your work-life system while becoming part of it'. The balance between becoming part and remaining apart is dynamic; it has to be constantly maintained; not just achieved once. 

The word 'system' is used with a specific meaning. It is not a political system, or religious system, or an IT system. It is not a system of rules and procedures. A system 'is an interdependent connection of elements that together interact with each other to achieve a purpose'. 

Work-life systems

For instance, in your work-life, you engage with a team: a job-system where 'you work with other team members in a given constraints of rules to achieve a useful work-output that market values'. When you become 'part' of your job-system, you flow with the work; you enjoy the company with your team and your skills are utilised. Excellent work-output is produced. We achieve what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls, the state of flow and happiness

But being part of job-system is not enough to sustain extraordinary performance in a job. Doing a job for a short time is possible by just being part of the job system. But to sustain the interest over a long time, it is important that you remain apart from it. To remain apart, you must have a 1000 feet perspective of your work. This enables you to see how your work fits with others in the sequence. You can view the 'whole' that your work is 'part of'. You can have 'insights' that can make a difference to work. You can convert the team's work-output better by 'managing' the 'external elements of work'.

More importantly, when you view your job-role from a distance, you can relate work with rest of your life and understand that work is not just for earning money. You can find your 'meaning' in work. Finding meaning is a personal journey that we explored in other blog. I may find meaning in working in software, while you may find meaning in working in education. We may take help from others, but we cannot borrow our meaning from others. Even if you may get money from your work by being part of your job system, you will remain 'dissatisfied' when you cannot remain  apart in your job- system.

Other sub-systems of work-life are skill-market system that helps you monetise your given skills, metasystem that helps you gain support from others, skill-arithmetic system that helps you grow your skills. 

Importance of self-awareness  

Students and professionals feel that it is 'waste of time' to see work beyond money and skills. But when one fails to engage in self and find meaning in work, one can become successful for a while, but cannot sustain successful performance for long. Like what happened with Tiger Woods. In one stroke, his extraordinary talent in Golf was brought to naught. 

Or take another example of a corporate stalwart: Rajat Gupta. (Google his name to find his excellent work-record) Here is one professional who has achieved the best in his life: Money, recognition and contribution.Rajat Gupta, is the most prominent corporate figure indicted in a broad US government crackdown on insider trading, accusing him of supplying Rajaratnam with business secrets between March 2007 and January 2009 while serving on the boards of Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Procter & Gamble.  

On the other hand, when one can balance between being part and apart of work-life system, one can find options which none have ever thought.See what Nandan Nilekani did with his work-life. Or what some professionals like Nishanth Baranwal and Vaibhav Lodha are doing ( by becoming consultants to Ministers) to make a difference on a grand scale. 

Work-life success therefore depends on maintaining this 'dynamic balance' between being part of a job-system and remaining apart from a job-system. When professionals succeed, they achieve this 'balance' automatically and unconsciously. They do not even understand what have they done to achieve it. They sense that something is wrong only when 'something' disturbs the balance. And then they change their jobs, get overburned, go to Himalayas, or do something silly! 

Note of caution

While working in a job, we also work with people. In other words, to succeed in our work-life, we are compelled to engage in people-systems ( relationships). The same rule of balancing between 'being part and apart 'applies in people-systems.We will later explore how to maintain this balance in people-system.

Advantage of this simple definition

Because systems thinking has a long history,it is easy to master the skill of being part and apart in a system. One only needs to learn to view 'invisible interconnections' in one system. That is enough to help one see invisible interconnections in other systems: learning can be easily transferred. The earlier you start, the better it is. Welcome to the new world of career-making !

One cannot build one's life by setting goals

One can achieve something specific by setting goals. Therefore one obviously concludes that one can also build one's life by setting goals, as most self-help books advocate. In order to help the person track the huge number of activities and steps generated by each goal, these self-help books suggest to keep a diary , which have been specifically designed by them. It looks very 'obvious' that one should be able to build one's life with all such tools. But when a person cannot do it , he blames himself for not being able to do so. Interestingly, the person does not blame the self-help Guru that the advice is mistaken; instead he blames himself for not having enough self control. Heads you win; tails I lose. This is a perfect example of Win-Win strategy that Self-help gurus advocate and practice! ( and another example that 'sum of parts do not constitute a whole')

Researchers in Psychology*** have identified three main consequences of this practice:

1. People who manage their life by setting multiple goals worry a lot: Because goals 'conflict' with each other, these people constantly face difficult choices. For instance, you will always find 'Achieving work-life balance' is one common goal. But this constantly demands one to choose between work-life demands and family demands. Because of these constant choices, these people are constantly  second-guessing their decisions. If they spend more time in work, they feel guilty; if they spend more time for their family, they feel their boss is looking at them questioningly.

2. These people get done less work: This is surprising finding, because we feel that one will achieve more by setting goals. But 'action' is replaced with 'rumination' ( thoughts, tradeoffs and choices) . When the goals are not conflicting, researchers have found plenty of evidence that goal-setting is helpful; but when the goals are conflicting ( and which life goals are not conflicting), they are busy worrying and getting stuck.

3. Their health - physical and mental health- suffers: In the studies, these people reported many psychosomatic symptoms and complaints.As Roy Baumeister, one of the researcher, says " A hen might brood contentedly, but humans suffer when their conflicting goals leave them sitting around doing nothing."

In short, because life is not a sequential and one dimensional achievement of money or satisfaction or happiness or feeling of significance, one cannot manage one's life by setting goals. If one tries to do that, one cannot resolve these conflicts until one decides which goals will do them most good; which goals can be traded off against which goals and when to ignore certain goals. The consequences are obvious !

In short, one needs an overall Direction - D in Capitals - to lead one's life. One should know the mountain one is desiring to climb; not the detailed routes and paths one should take. One has to make the various trade-offs midway and live with them; even though they are difficult and irreversible. One cannot have a cake and eat it too. This advice that one can achieve 'multiple goals' in one's life easily and smoothly is impractical; it only causes ulcers and hypertension.

***Lot of Research work can be seen in Roy Baumeister and John Teirney's book ' Willpower: Rediscovering our greatest strength'.

If it is working well, tamper with it

Some rules or heuristics are accepted without any resistance. One such rule is 'If it is working, do not change anything'. Flip side of the same rule is "It it is  not broken, do not fix it'. It is time to find what is wrong with this rule.

When we succeed in producing any significant outcome, the output is always a result due to many supporting elements 'falling in place'. ( Law of output emergence) This law tells us that we can only influence output. Output emerges out of 'action and reactions caused by many variables', some of which are controlled by you. But , along with your actions, the outcome is created because other variables 'interact due to actions (and reactions) which are outside your control'. 

As we are ignorant of this law of output emergence, we wrongly ascribe the successful output to our efforts, hard work, commitment or sincerity. We are therefore not ready for facing the eventual 'failure to produce output' when it happens later. We fall victim to 'Sehwag syndrome'. 

When Virendra Sehwag was playing his 'brand' of cricket, everyone felt that he can continue to play like that for eternity. When he lost his place in the ODI/test side in 2005-2006, it shocked everyone. He then tried to 'tamper' his game. It took him very very long time before he managed to 'revive' his game to come back in form after a long hiatus of two years. Many players do not get a second chance like Virender Sehwag. Most of them give up and never manage to recover the old form, because trying to 'tamper' something that is working in times of 'failure' is more difficult. 

While 'succeeding', we have confidence on our side. More importantly, we have 'options' that we can exercise. We have 'space' and freedom to change. But trying to 'tamper' in times of 'failure' is doubly difficult: because we neither have the confidence, nor the necessary 'options' ( or space) to manoever. As we are already failing, we are under pressure to 'perform', robbing us of all the options to  'adjust'. Therefore 'when it is broken, it is not a proper time to fix it'. Instead 'When it is not broken, it is a proper time to fix it'

The same rule applies to corporate executives. When their projects and assignments are working, when they are producing outputs that are rewarded by management, when 'results' are flowing, it is the time to 'take chances'. 

It is the time to tamper with 'different variables' to find 'which variable does not work'. One can discover the power of 'simple variables' that are hidden out of sight because one cannot imagine that it works. It is time to experiment with new approaches and test the waters to find 'what does not work'. It is time to appreciate the limitations of one's own efforts in producing the resulting output. 

All these learnings will allow you to face the time when you are not able to produce the desired outputs. This will allow you to 'avoid' costly blunders which will further drag you into the muck. And it will teach you to be 'patient' when the 'circumstances' are not arraigned on your side. 

But this can happen only when you break the rule, " If it is working, do not tamper with it'. Instead of following this rule 'If it ain't broken, do not fix it', you have to adapt a new rule ' If it ain't broken, it is the right time to fix it'

Are you ready to break this rule so that your one-shot success does not remain a flash in a pan? 

How do you set conscious goals in your life?

Last month i was in conversation with one of my coachee Anil:

Anil, age 35, is doing well in a five star Hotel; working at the cutting edge of the industry. We were talking about 'next mountain in his life', because despite his good work, he was not feeling good to go to work every day. He had no 'urgency' problems to tackle like micro-managing boss, or insufficient money; the two most obvious causes of 'demotivation'. He had no 'personal-life' issues that were 'demotivating'. We therefore decided that it was time to find 'long term direction' in his work-life.


When we talked about his goals in work-life, he had a normal goal of any professional " Becoming a CEO of a Hotel group by the age of 40". But when i discussed his current fascinating work with a MNC group of Hotels for setting 'resorts', he realised his 'goal' had shifted since last one year. He wanted to be a master in 'setting resorts'. So we started talking about 'setting a workable goal' for next three to five years of work-life. But, despite our three sittings on the topic, Anil refused to commit to any goal. He gave many justifiable logical reasons ( all of which looked valid) to avoid the commitment: impossible to predict the evolution of hotel industry, clash with his desire to go out of India, mismatch with his wife's commitment to her medical profession and so on.  


This is typical for all of us. We avoid setting goals that are real ( force us to commit on a specific action with the possibility of not producing desired result) and important ( that make a big difference to our life) to us. I used to get quite surprised with this occurrence of behaviour time and again in individuals.

But after going through these many cases, i have understood that setting conscious goals on important outcomes is difficult because of four pyschological reasons:

1. They force us to 'confront' our inbuilt fear of outcome

Our outcomes that matter to us are few. When they happen to us, without any conscious intention, we are less stressful, flow with the unfolding challenges, because we are not thinking of the outcome. For instance, when we work hard on a critical assignment or a challenge spanning over a year, we overcome the most insurmountable obstacles easily. Only later we wonder how we did it.

But when the same 'determined effort' has to be put in consciously for a long time on a goal that matters to  our  life, we freeze. Like Anil, we find logical reasons to avoid the path. We find justifications which we know in our heart are untrue.

Even the sportsmen, who produce outcomes frequently in their lives, find it difficult to set goals.  Observe what tennis legend Roger Federer, cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and footballer Lionel Messi  'say' before an important tournament or match and what they say after the 'match'.  They constantly focus on the 'process'. In other words, they avoid setting any goals. They let goals happen. But this suits them, because their long term direction is set. These individuals are lucky. On the other hand, for knowledge workers like us, our goals determine our direction.We are therefore forced to set goals after overcoming the next three constraints.

2. These goals demand resolution with our own beliefs and aspirations.

Anil was avoiding to set goal because it directly conflicted with his aspiration of 'becoming CEO', 'wanting to go abroad' and some other aspirations like 'wanting to be a public figure'.

We all have aspirations which we 'absorb' from our environment. We have parents who invest so much of their hard effort and desires in us, that their aspirations and desires become part of us. We live in society which regard some outcomes as highly desirable such as having a Mercedes car, or going abroad every year, or flying to different countries. Many of the social beliefs and values are absorbed by us without any conscious process of indoctrination. They are good, but they can become a significant bottleneck, in doing something that you truly  want to do.

3. These goals force us to set priorities

Anil's goal meant that he had to shift his location to places where resorts are constructed. However, his wife was in medicine profession which demanded that she stayed in a certain place for a long time.

Such conflict of priorities are inherent in our lives. Sometimes the conflicts are within our two conflicting desires like 'Should we pursue work-life objective this time or should we pursue family objectives'. These conflicts are part of living our life. Although our knowledge of our Self helps us make these choices more easily, these small-looking choices are always difficult to take in our lives. ( Unfortunately the plethora of self-help books mislead us in presuming that these choices are simple in life!) However, instead of finding more about our Self, we constantly avoid making these choices and let the 'situation' decide the course of events. And then we wonder 'what happened to us'.

And when the conflicts are between our spouse's priorities and ours, the difficulty of setting goals becomes even higher.  It forces us to acquire the skill to converse with others in a 'non-confrontational' mode, arrive at a mutually adjustable choice (contrary to popular belief, not all choices can be taken as win-win choices) and then be able to 'live' with a given direction without looking back in the mirror constantly.

4. We have to learn to discriminate between the 'important' and 'not-so-important' goal


Some self-help books advocate setting goals for everything in life and chart out a 'diary' of every day to ensure that those goals are achieved. But if we spend time in evaluating all our choices and goals, we will get paralysed with thoughts and become inactive. Not all goals require serious attention. It is therefore important to sense the 'important goals' on which we should spend time and effort.

Some goals are important in life because they synthesise various dimensions of your personality. For instance, Anil's goal of 'setting resorts' synthesised three elements of his personality: his work-life skills that he had gained, his aspiration to make an impact on a wider scale which requires large amount of environmental understanding ( which is not required for setting a hotel), and above all his individual goal  of doing something 'different' in his life.

Some goals are important because they are difficult to reverse. For instance, moving one's path from software to one's domain ( accountancy, engineering or electronics) is more difficult to reverse than changing from domain to software. Decision to take over software soon after graduation is therefore an important decision. But most of the graduates take this decision unconsciously without sensing the importance of this choice.

Some goals are important because they force us to think about our Self, our beliefs and absorbed aspirations. For instance, choosing when to marry ( not whom to marry) is a very important decision because it forces us to think of our beliefs , values and Self. If you are called in a self-discovery training course and asked to write down your values, you will write down 'what you think should be important to you'. But when you confront an important choice, you really understand 'what is important for you'.

How are you setting conscious goals in your lives?

Career making is similar to Gardening

Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer has used this metaphor in their recent book "The Gardens of Democracy" to explain the different approaches (Machinebrain versus Gardenbrain) human beings have used to conquer their environment.

Machinebrain is a way of seeing the world as series of mechanisms which work like clock and precision. Everything happens efficiently in this world and is predictable. These systems can be regulated easily whenever a problem arises. On the other hand, Gardenbrain sees the world as set of eco-systems. They are unpredictable like gardening. They are effective, not efficient. Regulating these systems is not 'after the problem', but is inbuilt in the process of tending it. Both preventive and corrective steps are necessary to tend them.

In my five years plus of coaching and research, I have observed these two approaches in career-making . Here are the six differences i particularly find enlightening: 

1. Machinebrain professionals assume that their career is made once they get the best education: be it IIT, IIM, MBBS, CA or Phd. Gardenbrain professionals assume that their career-making starts only after they have finished education and have started working. Career-making is a tough grind like gardening.

2. Machinebrain professionals assume that taking preventive steps is waste of time, while Gardenbrain professionals assume that prevention is the best form of tending life.Once the pest overtakes the crop, very little can be done to prevent the damage. Garden brain professionals therefore spend time in understanding the challenges of taking up anything new ( such as new job, new role) and prepare themselves for it. Machinebrain professionals, on the other hand, will take up anything for the sake of 'good position and salary' and will create the 'mess' that has to be cleaned by someone else. 

3. As people can cause unexpected disturbance, both professionals view relation with people differently. Machinebrain professionals view people as 'cogs in the wheel' who have to persuaded, cajoled or threatened to toe a line. Gardenbrain professionals, on the other hand, view people as multi-dimensional who have different viewpoint that may be as useful as theirs. They therefore tend to spend lot of time nurturing good people ( when they find them) and will go to extra-length to tend relations with them, even if it slows their progress in work-life!

4. Machinebrain professionals pursue money, career and reputation with a single minded pursuit because they believe that contentment can be acquired later. They believe that 'parts' acquisition will lead to the acquisition of 'whole'. Gardenbrain professionals pursue the money and happiness together because they believe that 'whole' has to be pursued, not parts, Even though Gardenbrain professionals tend to get this 'whole' at a later age, Machinebrain professionals never get it.

5. Machinebrain professionals believe that their work-life success depends on their talent and hard work alone. They therefore have a very unrealistic view of their capabilities that often blocks them in achieving anything meaningful in their lives! Gardenbrain professionals believe their work-life success depends on their talent as well as serendipitious events that have happened in their lives. They therefore respect the realities of life and tend to pursue visions in life that are meaningful. 

6. As Machinebrain professionals believe that life is predictable, they view unexpected events as aberrations and crisis something that somehow needs to be 'regulated'. As Gardenbrain professionals belief that life is unpredictable, they spend more time on cultivating the soft qualities of mind - values and emotions - to make them flexible. They therefore view unexpected events as opportunities to explore their hidden talents.

If you ponder, you will appreciate that career-making is very much like Gardening

- Like Gardener, one has to chose plants that suit the environment. For instance, one cannot choose football or research career in India ( if you have choice) because environment is not conducive enough for that.One also has to choose a career that is suitable to you, not just follow others, because it is the most popular !
- Like a Gardener, one has to pull out the weeds before they stop affecting the growth of plants. For instance, you should stop viewing relation with people as single-dimension. Emotional ignorance is another weed that can suck up the entire career, if not weeded out in time.
- Gardener views all the aspects of tending as 'one whole': he does not tend to use excess water or undue fertiliser just because he has them.He maintains the balance all the time. So too, in your career, you have to keep the balance between money and contentment. Overvaluing one retards the career growth, as it retards the plant growth. One has to therefore find time to 'find meaning in life' before it is too late.
- Like a Gardener, one must understand the characteristics of plants, earth and weather before one can garden. So too, in career, one must understand the characteristics of work ( cognitive or sports talent) and the conditions to make the right decisions.
- Like a Gardener, one has to accept the unpredictable weather conditions and be 'flexible' enough to respond to it. One has to work on one's mind (values and emotions).

If you can get accurate and timely feedback, it is enough to keep ahead in your career

Feedback is critical for learning and growth. A good quality feedback itself is enough to constantly improve one's skill and talent. If you want to see how, observe any sportsman.

Sportsmen constantly improve their performance with accurate and timely feedback because the quality of feedback in their work - playing tennis, cricket or football - is very good: timely, objective, context-independent.When the batsman in a cricket is told that his performance is 'poor', there is no doubt about it in the minds of batsman because the feedback is objective (he has scored consistently low in last three innings), seen immediately after the event and largely independent of context.

Having accepted that the performance is 'poor', the batsman takes the next logical step: 'find' an option out of multiple options that will 'improve' his performance by either correcting his 'technical' faults or 'mind' faults. His technical faults could be his awkward batting stance, his so-called strength of playing cut shots, or avoiding short balls. If he performs well in the next game ( even without correcting his fault) he is retained and can get an additional chance to rectify his fault. If he performs poorly, he is dropped. Although the system is very harsh on poor performance, it looks fair because it is transparent.


Why is it difficult to get accurate feedback in knowledge work

On the other hand, corporate professionals working in medicine, law, engineering, software or management find it difficult to improve their performance, because the quality of feedback in their knowledge work is very poor: it is delayed, subjective, and context-dependent. When my boss tells me that "My performance is poor in sales", feedback is confusing because it is delayed  (typically it is given after a year), subjective ( you are not aggressive enough) and context-dependent ( even objective-looking sales performance depends on various contexts: was the territory given to be tougher than others, was my budget inadequate in my area, or was the distributor  in my territory new, ...)

Because the performance is so dependent on context, I do not know that I have performed poorly in the first place. You will find many smart corporate professionals who use this feedback-characteristic of knowledge work to their benefit: they always manage to find other situations to blame their poor performance. They learn to manage perceptions.

But if I truly want to improve my work-performance, i do not know 'if I have performed poorly because of my lack of skill' or ' if I have not adjusted with the changing situation in my job' or if the 'situation required external support for me to perform'. I am stuck up because of poor feedback quality. Further, as I am prone to defend myself, i am more than likely to blame 'outside situations' and 'boss' for poor performance. If I find good reasons to blame bosses and colleagues, I stop taking feedback from them, even if they could be right. I stop believing that anyone is giving me good feedback. And that stops my learning completely. My performance cannot be improved easily now!

Because the feedback quality in knowledge work is poor and opaque, I start believing that the corporate system is unfair and stop doing anything to improve my work-performance! Instead I rely on something which I never wanted to do in the first place, manage perceptions!

Suggestions in obtaining quality feedback to improve your work-performance

If you wish to avoid blaming the corporate field, it is imperative that you learn to get feedback on your knowledge work. Here are five suggestions:

1. Get feedback on your behaviour, not on your attitude or thinking

We can see other's behaviour, not their thinking. Similarly, others can see our behaviour and not our thinking. This makes it imperative that you must get feedback to your actions, and not your thoughts.

Therefore, please take feedback on your actions, not on how you are thinking. For instance, please ask others 'what action did you think i performed wrongly'. Even if they tell you that 'you were not committed', ask them 'what actions of mine made you think i was not committed'. If they say, 'you were not prepared', ask them 'what actions of mine made you think that i was not prepared'. Learn to steer their feedback from 'interpretation of your thought' to 'action/behaviour'.

By restricting the feedback to actions, you ensure that the feedback is accurate and not subjective. Once you get the feedback on your actions, then you can 'review your thoughts' to correct yourself. For instance, if others are interpreting your 'action of early-leaving of office' as your lack of commitment, you appreciate that your thoughts are not in tune with the outside reality and 'recalibrate' your thoughts. This will give you important guidelines on how others 'interpret' your actions. This itself is an important feedback for you !

2. Always try to get feedback on the event soon after the event

In organisations, the feedback sessions are conducted once in a year. This kind of feedback is not useful to improve your performance, because one is rarely able to recollect the actions that have happened a fortnight or a month back. This becomes too 'generic' a feedback.

Instead, concentrate on getting feedback after an 'event'. Feedback becomes useful only if it is taken immediately after the event, say in a day or two. After a delay, one tends to give feedback on 'impressions' and 'memory'. This kind of feedback is not very helpful in improving your performance.

In sales situations, for instance, the feedback is ideal if taken after a closure of sales cycle. For other functions, feedbacks should be taken immediately after critical events are over: such as crash delivery done in short time, or after an important damage control event was conducted, or after an important presentation was done for a client, or when external events like audit are conducted. If no other option is available, feedback at the end of month is still helpful.

3. Get feedback on the event from the people who are involved in the event 

Always get feedback from the people involved in the event.  Bosses are ideal for getting feedback, but not all bosses are 'good' in providing objective feedback !It is therefore useful to get feedback from colleagues working in your group or working in another group with whom you interact.

I have a friend who gets feedback from his family members every 3 months in a very 'formal' manner. Every quarter, he asks his wife, for instance and asks her three questions, "What do you think i did wrong in last three months",  'what behaviour could have been better' , and 'What behaviour changes you would like to see'. He never 'justifies' or 'refutes' the wife's statements or conclusions. He only asks, if required, for clarifications such as "What actions of mine made you think that i do not care about your health". I find this is a very good method of getting good feedback as well as keeping your close relationships healthy! Although this is an example from outside the work, it is a good example of how feedbacks should be taken.

4. Talk with the best performer in the company to unravel the 'context' of your work

The right person to provide you feedback on your work is the best performer in your company, industry or someone whom you know ( even though he is not from your industry). If you are a sales officer, find the best sales officer in your company to talk to. If you are an investment analyst, find the best investment analyst to talk. If you are a production engineer, find the best production engineer to talk.

If possible, work with best performer for a time being, and observe his/her actions closely, whether it is programming or cooking. Ask specific questions to these performers such as 'I am finding difficulty in closing sales calls. What should i do', or ' I often work late to complete my work'. Asking specific questions help you diagnose the root cause quickly.

Or use these rules of excellent performers to improve !

5. Talk with a good external coach to 'sort' out the interdependency of the contexts 

In a corporate management job, there are too many contexts to 'peel out' to find how are you really doing. As we have seen earlier, a corporate job has very high variety due to three contextual mixups: function, domain and managerial contexts. This makes it very difficult to isolate them individually and determine 'what you are doing wrong' in your work. This first phase of diagnosis is itself very daunting.

A 'credible and trustworthy' coach is therefore not only useful but also necessary to help you sort out wheat from chaff if you are seriously interested in improving your work-performance. He can help you  perform an accurate diagnosis that can make a big difference to your performance in work !

What are you doing to improve your performance in knowledge work? Because, if you are not doing anything, you have to either depend heavily on perception management or adopt a victim  ( what can i do?) mentality to survive in corporate field. 

Find meaning in your life practically

As we discussed in the blog on challenges of today's professional, one of the significant challenge of today's professional is to find 'meaning' in life, because money does not motivate today as much as it motivated his father. Often, it is also a root cause of mid-life crisis when professionals take sabbaticals to find something meaningful in life. In a milder version, it is a problem of most of the today's professional, when they seek job-satisfaction in life.

Difficulty in finding meaning

'Finding meaning' is difficult for professionals, because it not a left brain sequential process. It is in the realm of your right brain. And therefore, it is not in your control. Left-brain outcomes like earning x money, or marrying with x are direct, sequential and easy to achieve. But finding satisfaction from x money, or finding happiness in marriage are right-brain outcomes. They cannot be achieved directly; they have to approached indirectly. For instance, you cannot 'sleep' at your Will. You have to approach it indirectly. 

Right-brain outcomes like satisfaction, meaningfulness, happiness cannot be achieved directly by Will. They are typically the by-products of some other actions, of the way you explore life. Meaningfulness is an outcome that 'emerges' out of the way you engage with life. It is an outcome of not what you do, but how you do. 

If you do it in the right way, you will 'automatically' understand what is meaningful in your life. But if you are one of those who have got attracted to the 'individualistic' philosophy of westerners, then you will find it very difficult to find meaning in life, because you do not appreciate the oblique way of exploring life. John Kay has written on how goals are approached obliquely, not directly. His reading will benefit this exploration. 

Methods of exploring (for discovering meaning in life)

Meaning is personal for everyone. If you find 'ecology' meaningful, that does not mean i will find 'ecology' equally meaningful. Here are some of the suggestions for indirect approaches of finding meaning in life.

1. Engage in action with your values: Narayanan Krishnan was lucky to find his value in one encounter when he visited Madurai. Most of us are however not so lucky. To understand if you value 'removing corruption' or 'tackling ecology', you need to engage in action with that value. For instance, you have to actually work with some NGO and help underprivileged and find out if you would really want to do that 'at any cost'. Only thinking about 'values' is not useful; engaging with those values in action is more important. To understand what values are, please read this. 
2. Use your passion to express yourself: We all have hobbies and interests. But we find it difficult to find time as we start working. I have a friend who loves to read novels and books, and tells me that once he retires ( he is now 45), he will 'rest and read books'. I have friend who wants to write poems 'after he is 55'. Developing right-brain hobbies like drama and reading help us explore our values.                                                                                                                              Expressing oneself provide us the 'fuel' to charge our life. Above all, it helps us meet people who are 'passionate' in their lives and understand the 'unfolding' of passion in others. When we start appreciating how others find significance in something as silly as 'cooking', we start understanding the meaning of passion and liking in our lives.
3. Develop friends who work with 'values' in their work:  Many corporate achievers in their quest of achieving money, fame, and position forget to look at their hierarchy of beliefs because in corporate life one rarely experiences conflict with one's value. This is unlike in some fields where one faces 'value-decisions' daily in 'work'. For instance, fields of entertainment, publishing and medicine expose our values and force us to take some stand. Infact, one of the most misunderstood fields where value is strongly incorporated in the work, is the work of politics and (one that is popularly portrayed in cinema) police work.                       One of the best way to explore your values ( or your belief hierarchy), is to develop friends in these fields. If your school friend is working in this field, you are the luckiest, because that will enable you to understand the interplay of 'values' and 'work' much more easily. Our values conflict with our actions many a times, but we chose to ignore such conflicts instead of facing them. A friend who is engaging in this conflict becomes a 'model' to understand these conflicts, if not face them, at the least possible harm to oneself !  I had a police friend whose value-conflicts affected my sleep for many months ! 
4. Help friends and colleagues to realise their values/passion: This is a more easier method to explore your values. Work with a friend or colleague who is passionate about some value. The interaction is very helpful because 'collaborating' forces one to engage densely and therefore discover many hidden aspects of what you believe in your heart , but which you have never questioned! 

Evaluation of value 

Process of exploration will lead to discovery of your values, which may fit with Scheler's Pyramid of Values. The pyramid from the lowest to highest consists of four categories. It starts from Value of use and pleasure > Value of vitality > Value of spirit > Values of holy.  Value of use and pleasure are the the values of utility such as value of 'taking care of my family'. Value of vitality are noble values like bravery, magnanimity, loyalty and humility. Values of spirit are values like justice, beauty, and truth. Values of holy are values of compassion that originates when one understands that 'everyone is same'. 

Moving from lower to higher value depends both on one's physical and mental resources. If you do not have enough physical resources like your father/grandfather, you will be forced to remain at the lowest value hierarchy. Of course, we all have our unique definition of what is 'enough' for us. While Aamir Khan considers acting in one movie in a year as 'enough', other actors are not satisfied with even five! However, it is the lack of mental resources that often blocks one from moving to higher hierarchy. One lacks mental resources not because of inadequate ability, but due to withdrawing oneself from the dense-situations (where one confronts one's value ). With little practice, one's mental resources remain undeveloped ! If one uses these four methods of exploration from the initial stages of life, one is more than likely to discover one's value! 

Above all, please remember that your value cannot be evaluated and rated. How will you evaluate a poem? or a relationship with friend? or a passion of a friend? So even if your discovered value is the "Value of utility", you need not be 'apologetic' about it. You have to be practical about it. You have to respect your constraints, wait for physical resources to increase, simultaneously keep on exploring your values, so that you are ready to migrate to higher hierarchy when the time comes.

Reclassify your relationship skills

Many of our skills, such as programming, can be learnt by one's individual efforts, understanding the topic in details, simulating different situations to test one's ability, correcting oneself on the drawing table and then be able to practice it in a 'live situation'. I call them off-line skills.

Relationship skill is however an online skill, because it can only be learnt by practicing it in 'live situations'. It is a product of using/misusing our Type 1 mind. Relationship skill is the derivative of Type 1 mind.

And because it is online skill that is derived from the way you use Type 1 mind, you already have a developed ( or undeveloped) relationship skill that you have unconsciously learnt from your parents, friends, and even movies, serials and stories. If your relationship skill is effective in managing your relations with others, you are lucky. In earlier days, the chances of developing this skill was high because we and our fathers/grandfathers had lot of opportunities in developing and fine-tuning our relationship skills.

If we lived in joint family, we could depend on many siblings and relatives to teach us the basics of relationship skill such as listen fully before you talk, or understand the unique drivers of a person to relate with someone, use different kind of powers such as persuasive power, ownership power or positional power. If we lived in small towns ( which had not Walmartised@ itself to only include transactional relationships) , we had siblings and families that exposed us to variety of relationships with unequal power, incompatible habits, irreconcilable beliefs, and diametrically opposite attitudes.

Our children are not so lucky. They confront the worst possible situations that inhibit ( and sometimes actively discourage) development of relationship skill. We have nuclear families with fixed pattern of relating. Sometimes siblings are also not present to provide enough differences. TV and computers have further reduced the 'interaction-time'. Friends are only from a specific 'strata' that pose only one kind of pattern.

If you are from one of these families, you have a big mountain to climb, because you are not only very immature in relating with people, but - more importantly - you are not even aware that you have a poorly developed relationship skill. As relationship skill is a product of Type 1 mind, none of your relations will tell you something is wrong with you because you will 'find' friends who are 'like you', you will work in 'familiar situations' with 'known bosses', you will convert your 'children' in your mirror-image. Type 1 mind manages to find 'coherency' in everything.

You find something is wrong in your relationship skill only

• when you cannot 'execute' big ideas because you cannot 'collaborate' with someone
• when you are comfortable only with people who listen to you all the time
• when your daughter grows young and wants to 'pursue' her own interests which are different than yours.
• when you will find something 'wrong' in others all the time
• when you are uncomfortable with your 'aloneness' 
• when you seek 'validation' from others for whatever you do
• when you keep on aping someone else's goals and dreams throughout your life

Because Type 1 mind manages relationship unconsciously, it never lets you 'detect' the relationship problem unless you consciously deploy Type 2 mind. But because Type 1 mind often manages with its unconscious package of heuristics, intuitive judgements, and 'rapid calculations', it is often difficult to undo this 'unconscious package' later in life. The longer one takes in detecting, the more difficult it is to undo the package of Type 1 mind.

Often corporate executives who succeed in 'corporate life' fall in a different trap. They conflate relationship skill with 'social relationship skill'. As they become adept at managing one kind of relation: the social relation (where the exchange between two people is transactional, either of money or in kind in 'return' of something) they feel confident in dealing with people. They become overconfident (overconfidence is also a trait of Type 1 mind) and often use the same 'style of relating' with their friends and family, which are dense relations. It is these dense relations which enable us to challenge our beliefs, force us to confront reality and find meaning in our lives. Because they get stuck up in 'social relation', they never get an opportunity to utilise dense relations ! Only big upheavals ( such as big financial loss, loss of a job, or deaths of near ones) in their life can challenge them to question their belief and heuristic set! Biographers then tell us that people need failures to succeed in life!

We all know that 'relationship skill' is critical to do anything in life: be it negotiating the pay rise, collaborating with colleagues or finding satisfaction in one's life. Unfortunately, Type 1 mind does not know that relationship skill is classified in three types: Social ( transactional), dense-social (collaborative) and dense ( with spouse and close friends). Because we never understand this distinction, we never exploit its fullest potential, nor do we train the Type 1 mind with appropriate heuristics and cues.

We shall see later how the relationship skill of 'dense-social' and 'dense' types can be learnt by altering Type 1 mind and reconfiguring the 'complementary relation' between Type 1 and 2 mind.

@Walmartised living: This is the term used by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer in The Gardens of democracy to define a state in which because people 'lose' touch with each other because of overreliance on laws and rules to govern every day interaction. People also lose their ability to judge each other and trust. 

Why intelligence is not enough to build talent

Many professionals confuse intelligent mind with rational mind. So here is a short summary of how our mind works. We have two minds: Type 1 and Type 2.** 


Type 1 is fast, automatic, and subconscious. It is quick, dirty and parallel, and requires little energy.  Type 1 uses all kind of rough heuristics (thumb rules) to come to conclusions and solve problems, even if they are imprecise. It is prone to all kind of biases. When you want to leave company because of a bad boss, it is your Type 1 mind taking the quick decision for you. When you chose a job on a impulse which turns out to be good, it is your hindsight bias that tells you that you have taken a good decision, even though you had taken the decision on impulse. 


Type 2 is slow, deliberate and conscious. It is therefore energy-consuming, slow and serial. Type 2 consists of algorithmic and reflective mind. While Algorithmic mind is linked to intelligence (measured by IQ) which helps us represent the world 'cognitively' and therefore help us manipulate it for our purpose, Reflective mind is the rational mind which uses  thinking skills such as logical, scientific and normative thinking. The division of reflective and algorithmic mind explains why intelligent people can behave irrationally and can fall prey to Ponzi schemes.


Ideally, one has to achieve the right balance between Type 1 and Type 2. Type 2 is the mind that helps solve problems, set goals, reflect on our experience and learn, but it also requires effort and energy. As the Noble Laureate Daniel Kahneman says, we are 'cognitive misers'. We avoid taking any mental effort as far and as long as we can. That is our natural tendency, so to say. So we rely on Type 1 processing even when it is harmful to us and even when the evidence against using it is infront of us.


Because of overuse of Type 1, we tend to take 'instinctual easy decisions', instead of 'right decisions'. Because of Type 1, we copy the decisions of friends and colleagues and then spend time in damage control. We blindly follow the logic of Type 1 mind and then waste huge effort in clearing the mess. Here are some of my examples that I have seen of Type 1 overreliance: 

1. Asit jumped from one company to another, even when everything was going right in his first job: his boss was right, his 'area' of work is right. But he changed the company because he believed in the thumb rule that 'one must change job after 3 years, if one has to grow quickly'.  He landed a job with 50% hike, but also landed with a wrong company. And then he approached me for damage control ! 
2. Parag left a job in US after 8 years, came to India with the hope that he will be 'grabbed' by the companies. Only when he started looking for the job, he was shocked to see, as he said, 'how the companies were exploiting his job-less situation'. A typical trait of Type 1 is overconfidence and therefore being unaware of market realities.
3. Jeevan, a CA, joined a software company, because he got a very 'big starting salary in 2005. In 2011, he met me because he was dissatisfied that 'he was not using even 10% of what he learnt in his chartered accountancy'. He was unable to leave his job, because he was handcuffed in the 'golden chain'. On the one hand, companies could not offer him higher salary because he had no relevant experience of accountancy. On the other hand, he was unable to start from 'scratch' in accounting. Another case of wasting time to clear the mess ! 

What can you do?


When I coach individuals, I ensure that they learn at least two skills to stop overuse of Type 1.


One is the skill of sensing a situation to override Type 1. Type 1 is always in a hurry and gives you the necessary confidence to negotiate daily situations with grace and ease. One therefore has to develop a 'sense' to detect situations that should be processed by Type 2. Unless this 'sense' is developed, one tends to 'follow' the Type 1 mind recklessly. One of the way to increase our 'sensitiveness' is to check the heuristics (thumb rules) that one is employing unconsciously. For instance, Asit should have checked his heuristic of "changing job in 3 years' before acting on it. 


Second skill is to enhance the 'logical skill' of Type 2. For instance, when one appreciates the unintended and ancillary consequences of taking various decisions and actions, one is able to compensate for the logical consequences of an action proactively. This skill simultaneously enables the 'sensing and detection ability'.
For instance, if Jeevan had understood the consequences of taking up a software job after doing CA, he could have simultaneously taken 'proactive steps' such as 'taking finance assignments in software company', or finding products like SAP finance to use his CA skills. On the one hand, this would have helped him 'polish' his finance skills ( keeping his other options open)  and also helped him find 'satisfaction' in the software job itself.  And if he found his 'satisfaction' in software job itself, why would he need to find another job to use his CA skills? ( The problem is dealt at the root level!) 


** Read any of the Daniel Kahneman's book on psychology. He is Noble Prize winner of 2002.  His latest book, Thinking Fast and slow, is worth a read. 

Pursuit of virtues is neither a way to build talent, nor to succeed in life

If you read any book on the 'keys of success', the book will tell you to follow a long list of traits and virtues such as honesty, hard work, confidence, motivation, pursuit of truth and so on.

But, as we have seen in our earlier blogs, traits are highly contextual, and have only limited significance. For instance, we have discussed how motivation is contextual.  Even confidence is contextual. Because of their contextual nature, traits are both time-dependent and relevant for a specific situation. We should not ascribe this traits more 'meaning' than what they represent. We should instead listen' to the signal they are trying to communicate, and take the necessary action. For instance, when the motivation falls for a specific task, it gives us a signal that our challenge is lower. It tells us that we need to find a way to increase our challenge by increasing the complexity of the 'task', for instance. The same rule pertains to confidence. When 'confidence' is lacking in a specific act, be it buying a house or driving a car, we know that our capability is not commensurate to that 'act'. Either we find the right person to help us out or increase our 'capability'. Sometimes, it is better to ignore the low confidence, because when a task is unknown to us, we will naturally feel 'diffident'. Trying to feel confident in all the situations, a symbolic hallmark of corporate achievers, is a sign of 'foolish bravado'.

In the same way, most of the virtues are appropriate for a specific context. Take example of a virtue, which is most talked about; the virtue of honesty. Are you honest if you pick up a lost wallet and give it back to the owner? or are you honest because you refuse to buy a cinema ticket from a rogue outside the cinema theater? or are you honest when you report your every 'cent' of money in the income tax returns? or are you honest because you refuse to pay additional money to the railway ticket officer for getting a reserved seat in a 3-tier coach and instead get down from the train? or are you honest because you refuse to pay 'additional sum' to the ration-card officer and  prefer to re-visit the office repeatedly? As you will realise from some of the multiple situations  described above, one may be 'honest' in some situation and not be so 'honest' in other situation. It is very normal for us to practice honesty that we think is relevant to us and not practice another 'definition' of honesty. Virtues by themselves are not 'right' or 'wrong'. They are just 'appropriate' or 'inappropriate' to the situation. The same is true with other virtues like hardwork, patience, pursuit of truth and countless others.

Many individuals confuse 'virtues' with 'values'. Values are something that we hold close to our heart, irrespective of the difficulty or the challenge we encounter in 'holding them'. In other words, values are not 'nice-to-have virtues' which are appropriate or inappropriate to a situation. Values are strongly held beliefs that we will live for irrespective of the 'damage' that is caused by them.

How do some virtues become values? Values are right-brain outcomes in which we 'ascribe' meaning to virtues. As we have seen in the blog, these right-brain outcome depend on the loosely-knit process that is occurring in our lives unconscious to us. It is a process of clarifying aspirations, understanding and 'resolving' the conflicts in the values one holds and method of closing the gaps that the 'reality' confronts. Because of this process, what is value to you is not a value for me. You may value 'ecology' and I may value 'education'. And when virtues become values, talent becomes a means to an end, not an end. That is the fourth stage of talent embedding phase we discussed in our talent unfolding process.

But do not get misled by the slogans of positive psychologist who tell you to pursue different  kind of virtues and traits like Have a goal, Pursue truth, Be creative, Form a Network, Be committed and so on. Each  new author will present to you with a new list of virtues/traits that will help you succeed in life. This list is a laundry list; 'useful to all' and therefore 'useless to anyone'. Like they say when you believe 'everything is holy' then nothing is holy for you.

For full description of the list of virtues and traits that have attained mythical proportion, please read the book " Sanjiv Bhamre, The five myths of career building"

You can acquire talent in more than one way

Talent can be acquired in more than one way; with or without educational background, or by following a role model, or by relying on one's own strengths.

In the earlier blog, we discussed how a working model of a task of 'stock broking' converts knowledge into a skill. One has to 'refine' the same working model to convert the skill into a talent. In other words, your journey of becoming a talented performer in your field is via the 'task model' that you develop. Task model is the medium of acquiring talent.

A working model can be built using solid 'knowledge base' of the ' task area'. For instance, Nicholas Taleb's 'task model' of stock market is based on the theory of 'randomness and probability'. Harshad Mehta, who made huge money from stock broking was a High school student. His 'task model' of stock broking was perhaps based on the simple 'rules' of buy and sell. Although, he later became too ambitious and used 'bank money', which landed him into trouble, one cannot ignore his talent in stock broking. He proved that the task model of  'Stock broking' does not need a degree in Economics or a Phd in Mathematics.

On the other hand, one can follow a completely different route to build one's task model. For instance, Warren Buffet  has a completely different 'working model' of share broking which relies on investing in one or two companies, and then influencing the company by taking huge stake in the company. There are various ways of climbing the mountain, so to say. Warren Buffet used his own 'strengths' to develop a task model of stock broking which earned him millions, as have Nicholas Taleb and Harshad Mehta

Books on talent building ( stock broking or any other talent) are misleading, because there is no one 'best' working model of a task. Every working model is highly 'customised' for the task done by the individual. Whose book will you follow: Nicholas Taleb, Harshad Mehta or Warren Buffet? Only one thing is common: Every task model has to go through the rigorous process of 'reality-testing'. Initial robustness or comprehensiveness does not matter. Accuracy does not matter. It's ultimate value depends on how you do the reality-testing so that the model closely reflects the as-is reality.

One of the biggest class of best seller books are management books written by erstwhile successful managers. As you will realise now, they are not particularly useful because of the above characteristics of task model. Every manager has to built his own 'task model' to manage his own unit/branch/group. The task model of 'management', to be useful, has to be sensitive to context ( depend on the function, domain and industry of the unit), cultural practices of the company in which he or she is working ( implicit company rules and practices) and the personal strength and weakness of the individual who is managing ( people oriented, task oriented ). Because of the highly 'contextual' nature of task model of management, one cannot easily adopt someone else's task model of management. And you will also observe  a curious phenomenon here:  Building a good task model of management does not require any degree in management, or post degree qualification in organisation behaviour.

Apart from task of 'management', which are the two big professional tasks where a talent can be developed without any educational background? Just take a guess. One is cooking !. Another is ....!.Hint: we engage with these talented people every day.

If you cannot monetise your talent you are forced to change your path

In 2004, Dhiraj Rajaraman, at the age of 28,  left a consultancy firm Booz, Allen Hamiltaon,sold his house, to establish a data analytics company. Dhiraj raised a total 400,000 US $ from his friends, started a front end office in US, back end in Bangalore. No body gave him any business in the eight months.For four years, he did not even take his salary. 

Decision analytics talent ( ability to use the information to take decisions) was rare in 2002. When a new talent area emerges in the industry, there is no  ready-made 'market' for that talent for few years.Because there is no 'market', there is no 'money value' attached to that 'skill/talent'. More often than not, it is the person with that talent who has to change his skill-path because he cannot find a buyer who is willing to buy his skill/talent. Because of inadequate opportunities in monetisating the talent, when it was difficult to 'nurture' a talent, one was forced to change one's path.

In early days, one had to depend completely on the intermediary- the company - and the available skill market to monetise one's skill/talent. If the skill/talent was well ahead of its time, then another option was to become an entrepreneur, which was fraught with considerable risk. Since last decade, Internet and VC market, the two big drivers, have brought in huge opportunities to the talented individual.  

Due to internet, global world has become 'localised', which means a person with a narrow skill/talent can also find a 'buyer' for his focused skill and 'monetise' his skill. I know of several individuals who sell their 'skill/talent' by working from home at the time and rate at which they are comfortable. I know of 'researchers' who sell their 'research skills' on a project-to-project basis. I know of a company where 'spiritual' talent has been combined with some other skill to sell 'spirituality' to corporate world. 

But where this is not possible, another option exists: the market of 'venture capital' where funds are available to monetise ideas into marketable product. Venture capitalist ( or angel funders) step in and 'fund' the initial idea, like in the case of Dhiraj Rajaraman. Although this VC market is not as developed in India, as it is in USA, it is developing at a very fast clip. 

Today's talented individuals are more lucky than our forefathers. On the one hand, availability of internet opportunity has made it easier to find a buyer for our talent, while on the other hand, the availability of VC market has made it easier to convert that idea into a marketable product. However this has also meant that 'talented individuals' also should possess additional skills: the skill of using internet and the skill of understanding the business model . Later skill is necessary to convert idea into a marketable product. 

In other words, if you are a talented individual, the boundaries between working for a company ( corporate individual) and working for oneself ( as entrepreneur, freelancer or consultant) are becoming thinner and transparent  One cannot decide in advance that one will work only for a company or for oneself. If one's purpose is to identify and nurture a talent, one has to work anywhere; and with it one also has to learn these 'complementary' skills which were unnecessary in earlier days. 

For today's talented individuals, although their opportunities have multiplied, with it it has also become necessary to learn additional complementary skills ( such as the above skill of identifying business model) to exploit those opportunities. Are you ready to nurture your talent in today's world?

Find suitable mentors to constantly improve your cognitive performance

Performers in Aesthetic and Psycho-motor fields, say in music and tennis, get constant feedback on their performance to improve their performance. For A&P performers, the bigger challenge in improving their performance is not in knowing 'what are they doing wrong', but 'how to correct the wrong', because it is easy to find 'what is wrong'. Better coaching practices in these fields have therefore emerged in knowing how to correct the wrong; because every athlete and musician is unique and requires a different approach to reach the top in his field.

Cognitive performers however face both the challenges in improving their performance: what and how. Because work output in cognitive work is not visible, it is difficult to evaluate cognitive performance through its output, This makes it difficult to know 'what is going wrong'. Infact, one does not even know, if everything is going right.

Because output is not visible in cognitive work (and therefore not measurable ), it cannot be evaluated visavis 'comparable performance' by other performers to guide the process of improvement. For sportsman, getting this comparable benchmark is a standard method of improving. If your serve speed in tennis, for instance, is less than 180 kmph, you know you have to improve that speed. Although performers in aesthetic fields such as music or painting, do not have such comparable benchmarks, they at least have the benefit of visible output. An excellent teacher can 'judge' their output and guide.

On the other hand, the only way to get guidance in improving your cognitive performance is through 'input' route. But,  as we discussed earlier, you require a special kind of person, who has worked both in your field and domain ( for instance, sales and computer software, or programming and telecom domain) to spend time with you, to guide you in your performance. We call this special person a Mentor. This is why, if you are serious about succeeding in the corporate world of knowledge work, Mentors are absolutely necessary in improving your cognitive performance.

Find good mentors if you want to constantly improve your cognitive performance

Good mentors are those who have worked in your combination of specific domain (software, engineering, telecom) and specific function ( sales, design or manufacturing). By asking you the right questions, they can understand your challenges, and definitely help you in developing your performance, especially if your cognitive task is of doing, and not of managing. Doers are the one who do the actual task, like selling, programming, or designing, while managers are the one's who synthesise the task of different doers to produce an output.

Your mentor should have an ability to appreciate the challenges of  your specific task in the context of your strength and limitations.

The first challenge for your mentor is that he/she cannot have a simplistic understanding of your task. For instance, sales task is not just the ability to 'convince someone to buy something', but is far more complex. Variety of strengths can be utilised to perform this task. For instance, it is normally believed that sales task can be performed well by extrovert individuals. But, as we know now, you will find even 'introvert individuals' excel in sales, especially where a 'solution' (software, for instance) has to be sold, not just a product ( car or flat).  The same is true with other doing tasks such as programming, design, production or training (or teaching).

The second challenge in finding mentor is to find someone who can appreciate your strength and limitations. Without this understanding, your mentor will make the mistake of advising 'Rahul Dravid' to be aggressive or advise Virendra Sehwag to bat in a 'technically correct' manner. Your mentor should understand your unique strengths and weakness, and not just offer advice which is technically correct ( such as improve your presentation skills), but which is 'impractical to implement'. Without this understanding, the mentors may give you a 'technically appropriate' prescription, but which is 'impractical'. The prescription may look good on the paper, but could be fundamentally impossible to practice because of your combination of beliefs, emotions and habits.

Because finding mentors for improving management task is structurally difficult, you have to rely on coaches

As the task becomes more varied, such as management, understanding of human being becomes even more critical. Jobs in Management are of very high variety; every job is different than other job, even within a single company. In jobs of such high variety, instead of trying to ' configure the person for a job', it is more practical to 'configure the job for the person'. The approach of improving performance in 'management task' has to be diametrically opposite than improving performance in 'doing task'.

For example, take a simplest example of a management task in a software company, task of a Project manager.  This is the first level of manager in a software company. Observe its variety. It can have multiple combinations of domain ( ERP, BIS, Simple solution, web solution etc), field ( software, support, time and material) customers ( Government department, private customer with small division, language and other possibilities) and size ( small, medium and large).  The combinations are numerous. Even in a single long duration project, the critical element of a task can vary from month 1 to month 6.

Despite this huge variety in the task of project management, software companies try to fit a person to the task of Project Management. Only a strong mentoring, which some companies employ, can help align the person to the requirement of managerial task and improve his performance. If companies do not employ such mentoring practice, it causes double whammy to the company: it leads to demotivation of good performers who cannot understand why they failed, and loss of good managers for the company who may leave the company to save their face.

Because of this unique characteristics of management task, it is more difficult to find good mentors to improve your cognitive performance, if your task is of 'management'. Your second best option is to rely on a coach, who really understands the variety of human beings and can collaborate with right 'function+domain' mentor to provide you a 'wholistic' advice which is both 'correct and practical'.