Looking Back: Five Learnings.

The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past.Edition 272.

Image via MidJourney

This past week I was fortunate to be honored at an event in NY. After acknowledging the other recipients who are in the prime of their careers ( very much like the 350 leaders in the audience) and thanking those who enabled my success, I shared five learnings that that have proved useful to finding success in work and life with the next generation.

1.Repair/Practice Resurrection.

In any career and sometimes in a single year we will believe we have arrived at Good Friday. We feel that all is lost and our future potential has been crucified. But let us never forget to focus on Easter Sunday and raise ourselves up again.

To do so we need to practice repair.

“Everything that has a shape breaks”- Japanese Proverb

But…

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places”- Ernest Hemingway

And…

“Repair is the creative destruction of brokenness”—Elizabeth Spelman

Read more about how to repair…

2. Generosity as a strategy.

If strategy is future competitive advantage, generosity is smart for individual or company strategies.

Generosity builds good will which is both an asset and a moat.

It is an asset in that it can be tapped in the future.

It is a moat because when an individual or a company has been generous in times of trouble their employee or customer are less likely to switch to a different firm for a lower price or higher pay.

Generosity is also a key differentiator because often when a person or firm needs help when they are down and out there are few people willing to help. Those individuals and brands who do help during these troubled times stand out. Their showing up in to offer help when others might not, burns into the emotional and mental memory of the recipient and is rarely forgotten.

Emotional connections are harder to sever or replace than financial connections.

Read more on Generosity…

3. Upgrading Our Mental Operating Systems.

My book “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data” includes a chapter called ‘Upgrade Your Mental Operating System” which ends with these key takeaways:

1. Regardless of how senior or established employees are, they all possess the capacity for growth and relevancy in changing times.

2. Organizations need to set aside time for people’s mental self-improvement. They can encourage employees to escape digital routines and engage in tasks and conversations that stretch their minds.

3. Today there are many amazing new ways of self-learning and improving of which every person can take advantage of.

Here is how to learn to learn…

4.Combine roots and wings.

To succeed as an individual or as a firm one must have roots and wings.

Roots provide stability, a place to stand, a passed along tradition and a sense of history.

But roots alone which are important to ensure one does not get blown away by the winds of change might anchor one too much to the past and to a status quo which may no longer be relevant.

Thus, the importance of wings.

The ability to raise oneself and see above the horizon, to look down with new perspectives and to ensure that the roots which feed us do not wither by failing to adapt to a new world.

Roots nourish via what we were and where we came from and what we did.

Wings encourage us to go where we need to and to blaze new trails which will lay down tomorrows roots and are a highway to what we will accomplish

Read more about Roots and Wings…

5 Think like an immigrant.

World class leaders and companies rarely get defeated.

They decide to defeat themselves by a) not taking emerging competitors with new models seriously, b) paying scant attention to underdogs with fewer resource and different approaches, and/or c) by refusing to align with the forces of the future and take the hard decisions to get there.

We can all learn from immigrants.

a) Immigrants often think like outsiders.

Individuals and companies that thrive over the long run view their business from external perspectives and not just internal perspectives.

b) Immigrants often think like underdogs.

Underdogs use technology, drive, and ingenuity to find ways to leverage what they have or what others have to change the rules of the game.

They do not view the moat surrounding the castle as a something to navigate but a source of material to flood the castle with by changing the rules of the game!

c) Immigrants think with an emphasis on the future

Short or mid term sacrifices and pain is endured to build a future for themselves and families just like great companies think beyond the quarter and the year but in long time periods.

Read more about how to Think like an immigrant…

These five learning will serve everyone, everywhere, decade over decade.

Even if one does not work these will help us all lead thriving and fulfilling lives…

Rishad Tobaccowala has almost five decades of working experience. Highly seasoned rather than old.