Dears,
Many a times being successful doesn’t mean that we should stay forever in our comfort zone. I feel living in your own comfort zone is the most destructive thing that you can ever do to your career growth and It’s much more difficult when you have tasted success and
comfortable in doing things which would yield the same or diminishing results
but not a highly rewarding ones since you take a calculated risk of applying
your same thoughts, processes and same old fashioned way of doing things. In a
way you become a Goliath and this is true even for large companies. Are you a
Goliath waiting to be slayed by David’s of the World
When you are doing something truly disruptive, you are in a
David versus Goliath situation (and this is especially true for
technology). The story of David is highly instructive for anyone who
aspires to do world-changing things, and its lessons go much deeper than an
inspirational tale of the little guy beating the big guy.
Let’s
begin with the obvious: David wins by not playing by Goliath's rules. He
doesn't out-muscle Goliath, instead fighting a lightweight, guerrilla style
insurgency. David is Exhibit A for the theory that speed, wits, and the
ability to adapt can trump size, resources, and heavy armament. After
felling Goliath with his slingshot, he beheads him with his own massive sword
(a gory but potent bit of symbolism often left out of the retelling).
However, David’s selection as champion of the Israelites and his rise to field
commander and then to a King were unconventional, even revolutionary acts in
themselves. In fact, almost every key event of David’s ascendancy was
highly unlikely.
For
technology professionals, the story of David is a highly attractive one, and the
modern-day parallels are striking. You can think of David’s slingshot as
one of the original disruptive technologies – it’s lightweight, requires
minimal training, and utilizes off-the-ground commodity hardware. It is
likewise fitting that the term “Philistine” has come to mean someone without
any appreciation for art and learning, and this is especially true concerning
the perception of software, perhaps the most misunderstood and underappreciated
form of technology at the institutional level. Of course, David himself
is the most inspiring part of the story, a young, fearless, brash, but
supremely talented leader who emerges from the least likely of places with the
most counterintuitive blend of skills.
However, those who would follow in David’s footsteps
must beware the catastrophic, yet often subtle pitfalls along the path.
It is paramount that as David wins, he doesn't become Goliath. For
leaders who emerge from the twister of
the hyper-growth phase, this is deceptively easy to do, and the histories of
technology are piled with the cautionary examples of companies born from
innovation that faded into irrelevance by allowing themselves to become the
hated establishment. David must be true to who he is, not by consciously
choosing to remain small and irrelevant, but by resisting Goliath’s arrogance
and vulnerabilities - even while embracing growth and influence.
We
spend a lot of time working with large and fortune companies to help them solve
their biggest problems. This tremendously rewarding, and as the sense of
partnership and investment in their mission develops, it is tempting to want to
be of them as well as work with them. Yet you can only help them if you
are true to David, and this requires you to maintain the unique identity and vantage
point of the constant outsider. And this is why massive institutions need
the help of entrepreneurs, even if they don’t realize it at first.
This is inevitably a bumpy process, because
the cultural bias is to keep David in a limited role, away from the
front. Eventually, though, it becomes clear that in order to do radically
different things, they need radically different competencies and
perspectives. If it was simply a matter of finding better top-down
management, they could promote from within. Of course, embracing
unconventional wisdom is only the first step. The far greater hurdle is
how to institutionalize agile and independent thinking without becoming
doctrinaire and inflexible about it – an ironic but all too common
mistake. Interestingly, this applies to both the century-old brand name
that seeks to embrace entrepreneurial culture and the scrappy start up that
suddenly finds itself with thousands of employees.
Thank you
DC*
Dinesh Chandrasekar
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