Forget It
Lima Sehgal

Youth orientation is prominent in today’s scenario. I suppose it existed earlier, but the longer one is around, the more prominent the fact becomes.

From the commercial point of view is the premium on youth justifiable? Hard statistics show that youngsters are valued, because they have a competence for risk taking, and accepting positive change more readily. Every year’s survey shows that IIM, Ahmedabad graduates for example get starting salaries that are uncomfortably close to yours.

Gossip in companies brings to light the fact that the one factor that somehow does not digest well is the justification for such high salaries. Does the fact that some brand new MBA kid earns more than the boss of your company make sense?

What about work experience? What is its rateable value? If lack of experience is what the kids are being paid so well for, what becomes horrifying is the fact that it happens to be the one asset that you can no longer possess.

In a world where change is the essence, the past becomes a handicap. When conditions are constantly changing, the ability to ask the right questions becomes more important than knowing the right answers. Because In decision making, assumptions have to be current. The hard part is to let go what has worked in the past.

Henry Ford made the Ford car company very successful by sticking to the formula of only one colour for the cars he sold — black. His marketing philosophy was ” You can have any colour you want, as long as it’s black.” He did not feel the need to change his formula, and, when a new consumer class came up after World War I that demanded a choice of colours and styles, the Ford car company lost market share to General Motors.

Experience implies that we have found our shortcuts, figured out the opposition, and worked out the methodologies. That is precisely the problem. When assumptions change, so do the parameters of application. The exploratory spirit is an important one to preserve and older, more experienced people shy away from exploration.

Specialisation has reached a stage where it also has become detrimental to personal success. We have had to become experts. This narrows our perspective on the whole picture. Psychologist Abraham Maslow said, “People who are only good with hammers see every problem as a nail.”

The same applies to experience. It narrows our perspective, and also curtails our risk taking behaviour. Which in turn implies that as our knowledge gets outdated and we get obsolete with time we tend to stick to tried and tested paths. We become relics.

“Mr. J. XXXXXX (AVSM, PSM), Retd., MBA / LLB.”

We flaunt it on our visiting cards and pepper our conversations with anecdotes of our past achievements. But nothing really helps.

Are we what the world is looking for? We put in a lot of effort in polishing our resumes, but almost no effort in polishing our skills, in the hope that our past successes will compensate for our current shortcomings.

The worst part is seeing someone do something successfully, that you believed was impossible. . Once, Columbus asked the courtiers in the royal court of Spain, if they could get an egg to stand on its end. They tried, but could not stand it upright. Then, Columbus boiled the egg, and squashed it down upright. They said, “It’s not fair — you broke the rules.”

Columbus said, ” Everything is fair, once you’ve done it.”

And that’s the same thing that Kerry Packer said, when he revolutionized the gentlemanly game of cricket!

I guess that’s all that counts.