Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / James Bellerjeau on The Career Success Playbook: How to Balance Personal and Professional Ambition (#046)

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James Bellerjeau on The Career Success Playbook: How to Balance Personal and Professional Ambition (#046) · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Your long-term happiness is not worth sacrificing for your short-term career success.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, you might succeed and outcompete somebody, but what does it get you if you're then miserable, unhealthy, and have a heart attack by the time you're 40?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: It simply is an uninappropriate bargain and unfair trade-off.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: So if you find yourself in an environment where you feel like you must sacrifice your personal life for your career success, this is easy to say.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't say that it's easy to do, you must consider uh changing your environment.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Either you change your mindset, you change where you work.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: There are plenty of companies that will allow you to be a whole person and have a life outside of your work.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's what you need to strive for, uh, where you do not have to sacrifice your personal life.
• 0:57
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• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because managing a business should be anything but a hazard.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hi James Bellaggio.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for being a guest in our podcast.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's an absolute privilege talking to you.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Swami.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: I am delighted to be here and I'm looking forward to uh an engaging time with you.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh thanks, James.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh James, I wanted to straightaway uh dive into this uh conversation.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm uh frequent reader of your uh uh articles and I follow many of the uh stuff that you write about.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the first thing I wanted to talk to you about is uh you have a very different viewpoint on what is career success.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So uh can you talk to me about uh why uh you know career success needs to be looked very differently from the normal way it's seen by most people.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, happy to do so.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to reveal in my answer to you, Swami, a little bit my background, which is I am a corporate lawyer, and one of the things we do that annoys people, there's probably several, is we answer questions by asking more questions.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that is partly the answer to this question, and here's what I mean.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: It is very difficult to make appropriate decisions unless we have clarity on the outcome we're trying to achieve.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So this absolutely applies when people say they want career success, and everyone will say, Oh, I want to be successful in my career.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think looking at what that means, though, requires asking uh people facing career decisions a couple of questions.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: So the first one is, what does career success mean to you?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Does it mean a promotion, pay, the prestige associated with the job?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: Does it mean power?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Does it mean owning your own business?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Or perhaps it's having the flexibility to work when you want, travel the world?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever your initial answers are, then I'd suggest it's necessary to ask follow-up questions.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: And the most important follow-up question in figuring out what career success is is what is it that you hope those things that you answered, what is it that you hope they'll bring?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: When I say people should consider pursuing happiness rather than ambition, and that's one of the things I do advise people to rec uh to consider, it's because I've observed people at work over many years.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: So first I worked in a law firm environment, very high pressure, high stress, but with people who made a lot of money.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Then I worked in a corporate environment for almost 25 years, again, seeing people at all different stages of their careers.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: I saw that people chased promotions not necessarily for any intrinsic value, but because they believed it would bring them something else.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe one person thought it would give them recognition, a higher salary, perks of the office.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Those are all fine.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: But if that's the extent of your wishes, uh, I've seen something quite interesting happen to ambitious people.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: First, they often succeed, right?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: So they're confronted with having achieved what they so desperately sought.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: And while some seem satisfied with what they achieve, many do not.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: And their thought seems to be, hey, wait, I thought this would make me happy.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so now how come I'm dissatisfied?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's a real puzzle to them.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it seemed to me, after thinking about this and watching it for many years, that what people are actually looking for is to be happy and to live a good life.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: This might be the result of a career progression, but it very well might not.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: So if you frame your career management and your related decision in terms of how and whether it will contribute to your long-term well-being, you might make different decisions.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'll point out an irony, I observed suanly, and I saw it in my own career.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: People say they want happiness and they pursue ambition to get it, only to find that their ambition is making them unhappy.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: So you're frustrated because you haven't reached all your goals, you're not happy.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what's the point then of pursuing a path that is going to make you and is only making you unhappy?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'll stop there and explain in a moment what I then followed myself in order to find happiness.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but does what I've said so far make sense to you?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: It is uh the pursuit of happiness that I think most people are pursuing, not ambition as such.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: And when you look at it that way, career success starts to take on a different meaning.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: So uh so are you therefore saying that uh people need to have clarity on what is happiness?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh, you know, for some, uh you know, uh getting assets and acquiring assets seem to uh be uh a way of uh acquiring happiness.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And once they acquire the asset, then they're not very sure if that made them happy.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore, are you saying the articulation of what is happiness is something that is the real problem?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, uh the way uh I look at myself is uh when I was 20 years old, uh I wasn't as mature to decide what's happiness, right?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore, how do I start off and for the audience who are young, how do you define happiness?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: For somebody who is in a mid-stage of their career, how do they define happiness and does it change over a period of time?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh to answer your last question, I do believe it changes over time.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: It is related to experience and maturity.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I say these things, and I will say them because I believe them, but I recognize that the ability of a person to hear, understand, and implement will reflect their personal circumstances.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that people's personal circumstances are different.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I could give myself the same advice I am giving now to myself 30 years ago, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have listened because I thought I knew then what I wanted.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, the things we'll talk about are not a recipe, they're not a prescription.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: They are more food for thought.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so I can't define happiness for someone else.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: I can only define it myself.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: I would, however, say that the advice is to think about it and don't necessarily accept what your colleagues, your family, and society is suggesting is a recipe for happiness.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: I came much later in my career, after having reached many of my goals, and by all accounts being having every reason to be happy with my success, I came to uh question whether that was sufficient.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I really, uh, we'll talk about this later, started to wonder whether the normal things that people define as success were correct.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: So the wealth, the power, the job, the um house, whatever it might be that you thought you wanted, those didn't seem to be sources of enduring satisfaction.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we've blended two terms now.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: We started with career success and now we are talking about happiness.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's relevant to do that because most people equate career success with happiness.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: I would say whatever metric you're choosing, whether it's having more money, getting a spouse, uh, living in a certain place in a certain circumstances, whatever metric you're choosing, you simply need to ask the question, how uh is this going to contribute to my happiness?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh of course, if you don't have enough money to live uh the life that you wish, then it is very natural to say, if I only had more money, then I would be closer to feeling happy.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: I I get that.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there is research that suggests there's a limit to how much increasing your income increases your happiness.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but a lot of people could say, hey, uh, I'd like to test that limit myself and make more money and see.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: I completely understand that.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, which brings me to one more question.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when you define career success, there are two uh legs, I would call it.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: One is professional success, one is personal success.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, therefore, when you define career success, I see you talking about both ends of the spectrum, right?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Which many people probably lose sight of.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, how important is that in the final uh achievement of saying, you know what, I've had career successes because I I have balanced both of them very well?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is that something that you have seen across professionals?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Is that something that you see as uh largely in a cohort where they've had personal and professional success seem to be the direction to go?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we prepared a training program for our middle managers and evolved it over the course of many years.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the key a successful manager and have a sustainable career, you need to be aware of your whole life and to be able to focus on aspects that are important to you as a whole person.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: This means that you have outside of work.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: We believe, and I believe, that you are less likely to have a successful, sustainable professional career if there's aspects of your personal life that are out of balance.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I would go so far, Swami, as to turn it around and say if you focus first on your personal life and make sure that you feel happy and comfortable about things that are happening in your personal life, you are likely to enhance your professional performance.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: So here's how that works.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: If you are happy that you are able to contribute your best each day, if you feel like I have worked really hard, I have studied hard, I'm able to bring my professional best, that's already something that makes you feel satisfied inside.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: You say, hey, look, my studies were worth something, I'm working for a good company, I like what I'm doing.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: That is uh an attitude that your colleagues will recognize.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: They say, Oh, Swami is so fun to be around.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: He enjoys being at work, he brings his best every day, and he's making a valuable contribution.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Your state of mind, in other words, is uh really important to how others react to you.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: People can tell whether you're uh happy to be at work or whether you are only there resentfully waiting for a chance to switch jobs.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Similarly, if you are lucky enough to have a good family situation, you're supported by a spouse and family members, if you feel like your health is not compromised by how much you have to work, those will also contribute to making you more effective at work.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a little bit of a chicken and egg question.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Can you first get career success and then focus on your personal life?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it better to focus on your personal life which will drive career success?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you can work on them together, and one doesn't have to come before the other.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I believe that it is very fruitful to spend time focusing on things that are important to you personally, which will then contribute to you advancing in your professional career.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: In a way, you know, again, the irony is that by stopping the relentless focus on career progression and focusing rather instead on your health or your family or your hobbies, you can enhance your ability to improve your career.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: So a little bit target fixation.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you focus too much on that narrow goal, you might not actually be most effective in achieving it.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a long answer to your question.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: I would say you can go either way, you can focus on them both together, but I today would say really, really pay attention to your factors outside of work, your personal life, which will have the indirect effect of enhancing your professional performance, in my view.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: In this section, James talks about how do you really define career success?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: So is career success a promotion, the kind of salary that you get, the kind of company that you need to work for, and you wish to work for?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And will that give you happiness?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And these are questions that you need to think about.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And what he says out of his experience is that when you believe that you have not asked these questions deeply, when you realize a certain career goal, you suddenly feel unfulfilled and unhappy.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, the key to career success is to ask deep questions about what really motivates you and what makes you happy and what gives you a sense of achievement.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, the importance of personal success and personal satisfaction is key to your professional performance and success.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: When you marry personal success with your professional success, that's really when you achieve career success.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I would argue, James, that uh in a dog eat dog world, in a corporate world, in a fast-paced world, uh is this realistic?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh I'm constantly looking at who's behind my shoulder, I'm constantly comparing myself, I'm constantly comparing uh who I graduated with and where they are in life, okay?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm constantly in this world of saying, hey, what does success mean?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, the benchmark of success of how other people see you also means that hey, I've not done as well as others would have thought.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, therefore, is this really practical, or if I have to make it practical, how do I you know resolve it in my own head?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I used to work with uh a global team.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: I had uh lawyers working with me in uh the US, in Europe, in India, in China, and other countries.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: And what I often admired about my colleagues in India, for example, and in China, and I use them as a lesson for my Western colleagues, was to say, look, these people do not take their performance and their progress for granted.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: They work super hard to make progress.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: We should not be complacent in Europe and in the United States and assume that our jobs are secure.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: If there's somebody who's willing to work twice as hard as us for half the pay, well, that's a real competitive threat.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: So you are correct to identify the environments in which we work as a very relevant factor.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's going to differ depending upon how far you are in your career, what your training is, uh, and what uh company you're in and who your competitors are at that moment.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: I would say a, and we don't, it's right that you raise it, a default standard for me in a person seeking to achieve important goals and success in their life, a default standard is that you always perform your best, not because anyone else is expecting you to do so, but because you hold yourself to a high standard.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as you are getting less than your best, and you will know, only you will know if you could do more, then you are at risk of someone outcompeting you.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: That does not mean, by the way, that you work 24 hours a day.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: I I worked extremely hard at many points in my career.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: I started out working 100-hour weeks and then I felt like it was a break to work 80-hour weeks and 60-hour weeks.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's no question that being willing to work harder is a potential competitive advantage, but work alone is not sufficient, and maybe we'll talk about that more later.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I I want to address head-on your basic question: is it really pragmatic to focus on personal?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think it is for the reason I mentioned before, which is that a person whose life is in balance, or at least who's aware of other factors in their life, I think performs better at work.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: They're happier, they're not resentful, they give themselves with intensity to their job when they're there, and then they give themselves with intensity to their private life when they're not at work.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: You, and maybe the other thing I would say is your long-term happiness is not worth sacrificing for your short-term career success.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, you might succeed and out-compete somebody, but what does it get you if you're then miserable, unhealthy, and have a heart attack by the time you're 40?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: It simply is a is an uninappropriate bargain and unfair trade-off.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: So if you find yourself in an environment where you feel like you must sacrifice your personal life uh for your career success, this is easy to say, uh, and I can't say that it's easy to do.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: You must consider uh changing your environment.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Either you change your mindset, you change where you work.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: There are plenty of companies that will allow you to be a whole person and have a life outside of your work.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's what you need to strive for, uh, where you do not have to sacrifice your personal life.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it can be done, but it's uh it is definitely a dynamic worth paying attention to.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: What is the competitive environment that you find yourself in?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: You also talk about uh at work, a very important concept, which I presume half the HR guys will uh you know, will take offense for it, you say where you basically talk about this fact that forget the job description, right?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I saw something that you wrote talking about forget the job description because that's not what you should look at.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, how does job description and forgetting it affect performance and what does it do to the work that you do?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, so that relates to one of the articles I wrote uh that's called the Why the Best Performers Ignore Their Job Descriptions.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to say that the title is correct, but it's a little bit misleading, in the sense that for most of us, we are extremely well advised to pay careful attention to the job description.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's simply that at a certain stage, if you can reach it, some people will have the chance to do exceptional things which do go beyond their job description.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: But what I think and what I describe is it's helpful to think of one's job uh or one's career in three distinct phases.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: And if I may, let me briefly describe those because most of us won't ever get to the third phase.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: In the first phase, you're learning how to do the job.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: You uh your main requirement here is just not to mess something up too big in the time that it takes you to learn what your job requires.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, do you have all the necessary skills and knowledge to perform your job?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, each job and each company has unstated expectations as well as the explicit ones that are written in your job description.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: So you have colleagues, your company has a culture.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Management has a certain style and certain expectations.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: It takes some time for you to understand your company and your particular success factors to being effective.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: This, in my experience, takes anywhere between six months and two years, depending upon how much experience you already have and the job that you're in.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how we all start.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: We start as beginners and we need to learn what exactly is our job.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, the job description, and then all the unstated stuff around the job description.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: The second phase is where you are delivering the essentials of your job as they're described in your job description.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: You can think of this as what I call mastering the core job response.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Focus all of your efforts right here.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: So many people don't get even this right.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of value, therefore, to spending time right here doing a good job in your current job.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Whenever I gave advice to colleagues who came to me looking for, my first suggestion was always, always, do a good job in your current job.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: That is what unlocks every other good thing.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: You must develop mastery of your core job.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: So this means mastery in your core job means that you can do everything your job regularly entails, and you know how to do it well.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: What this allows you to do is not just your core tasks, but you can handle a variation or some nuance.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: The more things that you become good at handling or expert in handling, the more work you can take on, and then you can do that same work in less time with better results and greater confidence.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: So there's really a lot of time that can be spent, years and decades even, mastering your core job and getting better at it.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: I said, and I believe this, that many people do not achieve this level of mastery.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Why is that?
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's because they don't focus on what they're doing.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: They get distracted too quick because, for example, hey, they're looking for the next job or the next promotion, and they switch jobs too frequently.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: This is something that I think the one of the very few things that my Indian and Asian colleagues got themselves off track with is the very, very ambitious, very talented, very driven, but also they assume that their path to greater things is always switching jobs, switching companies.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I get it, they don't see a path of advancement quick enough inside the company.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: So another company is offering them a pay raise and a promotion.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Why wouldn't they take it?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, seriously, why wouldn't they take it?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Every year switch for 15, 20, 30% increase in pay and a promotion.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: And my answer to that is you might take it, but consider the impact it will have on your ability to be an expert and a master of the job that you're in.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now you might say, hey, what difference does it make if I'm always getting another job offer?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: Why shouldn't I take it?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, I guess that's true.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: But after a point, the environment gets thinner and thinner.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: There are more and more people competing for those more and more senior jobs.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then the person who is not just a superficial expert who was filling a seat for nine months and then moved on to the next thing, the person who really learns and understands how it is that they add value, that's the person who's ultimately going to make the further progression.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it is honorable to stay put and do your job as well as you can.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that is a way to have a significant sense of satisfaction.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: It really feels good to do a job well that you know well, right?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't always, however, create the maximum impact that's possible.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: So this is the third stage for those people who say, Yeah, but I really want to do something extraordinary.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then I say, okay, once you've mastered the core job, you need to look at your motivation.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, do you wish to have something more to satisfy your ego?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be the CEO because that's what I want to see on my business card.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Or I think the best results come from people who are looking to do something for others.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: How can I help other people have uh an impact?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: How can I help other people thrive?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that can only happen after you've gone through stages one and two.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have the time for your core job.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't know if that's too abstract or not, but um, you know, uh it really the article should be only under very limited circumstances should you ignore your job description.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but if you do so and you have properly uh invested the time and effort to master your core job, then it's possible you might go on to do additional things.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I can give you a personal example if that helps make this point clear.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Please, please, I think uh you know when you contextualize it with some examples, uh it really uh it really helps.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the other important point that you're making here is uh when you really uh start moving up, uh it's about uh what you do to others and not what you do to yourself, right?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: So at uh at the start of this conversation, you talked about uh just uh external uh I would say uh you know, I would say uh nameplate versus internal uh nameplates which actually help you uh get satisfaction.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: The internal uh motivation really takes you uh longer and therefore you are able to sustain yourself.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the point I think you're making when you say just don't look at your job description, but look at how you can enhance what others uh you know can achieve, and therefore that's when you become a real leader, and that's the third stage that you're talking about.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I think you've summarized that well, Swami.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I'll take my experience at uh the company I spent uh large part of my career with.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's a US public company, and I served as the uh chief legal officer, the general counsel.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it took me, I I went through this same career progression, some years in my case, to become basically competent in the role.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: I was inexperienced and young when I started.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was very ambitious, and I had a chance to take the role, uh, the senior role, and I took it without being ready for it.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: So my first two years were just learning not how to mess up.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: I then spent a good 10 years learning how to do the core job better.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: But probably after, you know, somewhere between 10 and 15 years, I saw that I was comfortable, very effective.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: I knew how to work in the company and to get things done by virtue of knowing the company in the culture and its leaders.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized that there was an opportunity for me to help shape the culture of the company, which sounds like a very arrogant thing to say out loud.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, what are who are you to decide how the culture of the company should be?
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: But that's what you described, what a leader does.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: That is part of what a leader does.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: You take responsibility for how what you can in your environment.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized together with a colleague, just talking about issues over lunchtime runs, that we had an issue with our corporate vision and values.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: We had written them some time ago, shortly after becoming a public company.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: They were very management focused uh uh and addressed well, I think, the needs and desires of senior managers, but they seemed to leave the large bulk of our employees out a little bit.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't speak to why an employee should be happy to see shareholder value grow, for example.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's a very abstract goal for an employee who isn't being compensated on the basis of shares, for example.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so we embarked on, we suggested to the CEO and the board that we revisit and potentially update the company's vision and values.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: This has absolutely nothing to do with my core job.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't say, oh, the general counsel shall be responsible for helping set and shape the culture of the company and for being inspiring and making sure that employees are inspired by the company's vision.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we took our time with it.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: I went out and I interviewed employees, I had workshops, I thought about it, I tried to understand both what the company's current culture was and for what it was that employees valued about working at the company.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it turns out they valued stability.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: They liked the fact that our company had both past success and a strong prospect for future success.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: They liked the fact that senior management had small egos in the sense that we understood it wasn't about us, but about the success of the broader company and things like that.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: And we worked on updating our vision and values to both accurately reflect how employees saw the company and, yes, guide all of us towards our vision of how we could stay an attractive company.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, that was, besides being unrelated to my core job, deeply satisfying.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: I really felt like I was using my combined knowledge and experience of how to be successful inside the company towards others' benefit.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't benefit me a bit to do this directly, right?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: That was not what I was getting paid for and not how my bonus was being evaluated each year.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I felt like I was making the largest contribution I could in service of the company and its employees.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what I mean when I say the steps in my career of learning how to do the job, getting good at the job, and then applying those talents for someone else's benefit was satisfying to me.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not at all how I would have defined success at the beginning of my career.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: So which brings me um to something that uh triggered when you uh when you were talking.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um normally when I look at a job, when I look at my work, I tend to look at it from a very narrow uh point of view, which is to say, hey, this is what I'm paid for, 40 hours of work.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, I'm being made to work 100 hours.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so they're taking advantage of me.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and therefore, uh, and I'm not getting paid for building the culture of the company, that's not my company.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh why would you do that?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh that's not what uh you've been hired for, and many people today wouldn't agree with what you did because they would say, hey, that's you know, you know, you're not you're not paid for this, and why should you do it?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: How do how do you overcome that?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's really what the environment is all about, right?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore, there's going to be a whole set of group talking about it, and therefore, how do you cut the noise out of this environment?
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think it requires a certain amount of introspection and uh honesty about what kind of person one wishes to be.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: At many times in my career, Swami, I was feeling the stress and pressure of the work environment.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: Whether or not your company makes you work 80 hour weeks uh and pays you for 40 hour weeks, and I admit that is absolutely the tendency of any employer.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: If they have a well-meaning employee, they'll certainly take advantage of them, right?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a risk we all face.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I many times said, boy, do you really want to work so hard?
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Is it necessary?
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to have this stress and responsibility?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: Wouldn't you rather just have a simple job where you could come in and leave at set hours and not have to worry about all of this?
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: My personal answer was always, after a few moments' reflection, no, actually, I prefer what I'm doing.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: This suits my interests.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't be satisfied with something less related to that, not just how much you work, is the question of whether you are doing your best or doing simply enough to satisfy the job requirements.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Here's how I might summarize it.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just making this up.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to excel in your job, you need to be excellent.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: And excellence is the best that you can do, whether someone is paying you for it or not.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like the feeling of doing a half-ass job.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like the feeling of knowing that I did the minimum and I could have done better.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make it possible for people to take advantage of your goodwill?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely 100%.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: But you must also ask yourself this question.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: When the managers are sitting around in a room saying, who is it that we want to see promoted to the next job?
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: They will never pick the person who is just putting in the time.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Never.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: The person they will pick is the person who has sacrificed and worked hard and holds themselves to a personal high standard.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you can tell that a person, you can tell when a person is holding themselves to a high standard.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: They may objectively still not perform better than someone else, but you can tell when they're doing their best.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: That has to be intrinsic.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: It can't be because someone is paying for it or beating it out of you, or you feel stress or an obligation.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: All those things might exist, but I'm saying the motivation to do the best that you can comes from within, and that will be the most important attribute that you need to cultivate over the course of your life.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: Just having a personal standard and living up to that standard.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: You're happiest and you're delighted if that work is recognized and you are paid, but it isn't always, and it's going to come to one of the most important lessons I've learned when we get to it later.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: It isn't always recognized, and that hurts, right?
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: That that makes you feel like a fool or a sucker or like you might be in the wrong environment.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: I would say change your environment before you change your behavior.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you find yourself getting taken advantage of for your goodwill, and really the company is taking advantage of you and this happens, then yes, that's a good reason to switch jobs, even though I advised before not switching jobs too frequently.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: If maintaining your personal standards turns you into a sucker that the company is taking advantage of, that's a good reason to consider switching your work environment.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: In this section, James talks about the importance of internal personal benchmarks.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: Often at work, you are always surrounded by people who keep asking you these questions.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, are you supposed to do this job?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: Are you paid to do this job?
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Is it your role?
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: Is it something that you need to do while you're not supposed to do this?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: But if that gives you a personal satisfaction, then cut all those noise and get it out of your head.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: He says that to achieve excellence in the first few years of your life, you are more a beginner, you're getting to do a job without much errors, then you move in, and there's several decades that you need to spend achieving mastery in the job that you need to do.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he talks about the importance of being happy doing the job rather than keep looking outside and thinking you could actually get it in some other job.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, he talks about the importance of excellence.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: And excellence is not just about you having mastery about what you're doing, but helping others to achieve excellence.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: So when he says ignore job description, he talks about going that extra yard and not getting worried about whether I am being paid for it, whether I'm supposed to do it.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: But if it gives you the satisfaction and a sense of achievement, these things don't really matter because they anyway catch up over a period of time and you will get the rewards for it.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore taking the discussion further, so what you're really saying is hey, uh, would you still do the job uh if you're not paid enough, but would you still have this habit of I want to be the best that I want to do and keep doing it?
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's one thing that you're talking about.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: But not always uh, you know, uh many of these guys or you know women end up at the finish line, right?
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, how do I take that and many of them go back dissatisfied, right?
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Say, for example, I would say I would give my best, I don't know how to play the corporate politics, uh, you know, I just don't know where to uh where to uh reach, but I I've given my best and I I leave out of frustration.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: And how do I reconcile to that?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it requires a great amount of maturity to actually say, hey, I'm doing it for myself, and therefore I really don't care at the end of the day uh what is really the recognition I get at the end of end of it, and therefore, recognition again is subjective, right?
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, therefore, it's important to start looking at what are your goals, what drives your happiness, and that happiness depends on, therefore, what kind of recognition you're looking for, and all these are all I would say connected, right?
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I think you did a good job of answering your own question and saying I correctly, what I would also uh suggest is the somewhat circular path of getting there, which is if you are unhappy with your progress towards your goals, then evaluate again why you are pursuing those goals and what it is that you ultimately hope to achieve.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: And don't accept your first superficial answer.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: I want a promotion, I want to get more money, I want fill in the blank.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I accept that you want those things or that you think you want those things, but why?
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, the fruitful path that anyone can do at any age, in any stage of maturity, is to ask themselves, why do I want these things?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Why do I think I want these things?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: I would argue that the sense of satisfaction, personal satisfaction that one gets from being true to their own internal values is success all by itself.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you can say, I have principles, I live my life according to those principles, external recognition is nice but not necessary.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: Nice but not necessary.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you're doing your best and you know you're doing your best, then whether you get a gold star from the teacher, an extra bonus from your company, uh, kudos from your colleagues, all of that is nice but irrelevant.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's how I would start to reconcile those things and to say in another way, you can learn to like what you have.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that is one of the keys to success and happiness in life.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: Don't be sad for what you don't have, be happy for what you do have.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: And this is not an argument for accepting mediocrity or giving up on your ambitions.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's more a pragmatic and very useful tool to say, I am finding the positive in my situation.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: And in your situation, let's take the person who's been working really hard, they're in a company, they don't feel they're getting recognized, they don't know how to advance.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: What's the positive there?
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that starts with them saying, Hey, I am working in a job that is giving me experience, I'm using my skills, I'm doing the very best that I can every day.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, maybe I have a few friends at work, I'm getting exposure on this project.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit, there's probably five, ten different ways you could say, here's something I like, here's something positive.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: When you focus on the positive, then you are creating the conditions that I think most people are looking for.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're creating the conditions for happiness.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: And who's to say that your happiness is tied to that promotion?
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: It may or it may not be.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: Your happiness is tied to your happiness, which is, hey, I have a friend at work.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I did something useful that added value.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's very rarely tied to things that other people control.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a key realization that came to me uh later in my career, near the end of my career, I have to say, which was understanding how a little bit of a philosophical approach, and in my case a Stoic philosophy approach to life and work, helped put things in the proper context.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: And to just make the connection quickly, and we'll see if you want to talk about that.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: The Stoics believed that it was helpful to try and distinguish between things that are in your control, partly in your control, and outside your control.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: And if you place your happiness in the hands of things that are outside your control, what other people say and do, then your happiness is at risk.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: The more you can bring your happiness and your thoughts and your beliefs within your own personal control, the more no one can ever prevent you from achieving what it is that you wish.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: So yes, Brilliant.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh that gives me a beautiful segue into the philosophy uh that uh you know that you uh talk about, you uh write about, which is you almost have about 37 stoic wisdoms, right?
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw a whole host of wisdoms out there.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the first question I'm gonna ask you uh here, uh James, is that how do I start practicing this?
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because very hard for me, right?
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: Say I am an angster, uh, I'm a middle manager, I'm a uh you know CEO.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I just need a way to start the way you're talking, which is you know, how do I practice it?
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: What are the first few steps that I should take?
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell me a couple of steps that I should take to say, hey, how do I look at it?
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: How do I uh ensure that uh I start seeing small wins, realizing it, absorbing it, uh feeling it.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, how should I start and what are the first few steps I need to take?
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I spent a few minutes before our conversation this, and I'm gonna read you five headlines from that, which I think is the start to answering your question, if I may.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote, My traditional habitat is the corporate environment.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: My long-term interest is in how to foster career success.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: I believe the greatest force an individual can wield on themselves and others is an idea.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: I am interested in understanding and sharing ideas.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: Maturity means adopting a philosophy of life which addresses both one's goals in life and two methods to attain those goals.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's details under that, but that's the headlines.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the point that I want to highlight now to answer your question is ideas are powerful.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: Ideas impact the world, but they also operate on you as a person.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I found that I, over time, without really having a grand plan, uh, came to adopt a philosophy of life that helped me navigate difficult times, good times, but basically feel like I had both a purpose and a path.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the way for me to attain such a philosophy of life is to expose myself to ideas.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: I started reading Seneca's moral letters to Lucillius, which were short, right?
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: Each one only takes five or ten minutes to read, and therefore I could easily read one each day, but I found myself thinking about it for hours afterwards.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: How does that apply today?
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: Does something writtenly still have relevance for us and why?
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a slow, accretive process over many months and years where an idea would stick and maybe have more meaning to me, and other ideas maybe less so.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: I then started to write my own summary of Seneca's ideas, his summary of Stoic philosophy, and that's led to the creation of the Stoic letters for modern times that you referred to.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: I actually have 125 of them.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just publishing them one a week, so more come out uh each week.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: I publish them on a weekly basis exactly to help accommodate the person who's busy, who's working 40 or 60 or 80 hours a week.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: They don't have a ton of time, they don't maybe have a great interest in philosophy.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: But do you have an interest in a five-minute read that's going to cause you to think about things like what does success mean?
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: What does happiness mean?
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: How do I deal with being busy?
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: How do I deal with, you know, uh being healthy, living a long life?
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: Is it appropriate to seek fame, public office, wealth?
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: Why or why not?
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: Basic life questions, it turns out, have been on people's minds for as long as there have been people.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: The reason we can read Confucius or the Buddha or the Stoics today, and it makes absolute sense to us, is because they're talking about basic human nature.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: And human nature has not changed so much, even though our environment has changed rapidly and technology has changed rapidly.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: The basic questions about how to live a good life have not.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore, I personally found great value in little incremental reading on topics which confronted me with ideas, and ideas have the power to change you as a person and the world that we're in.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: So my recommendation to a person wondering about these questions would be to for sure, you're welcome to read my if they're interesting to you.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, I know there's a whole wide world out there of successful people.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: Most successful people, even exceptionally busy ones, often are curious and they are reading something.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be like homework, it shouldn't feel like homework to you.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: You should read things that you enjoy.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, let me please expand that.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: You can consume ideas in many forms.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: You can listen to excellent podcasts like this one, which will confront you with interesting ideas and interesting people.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: You can listen to TED Talks, watch YouTube videos.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't, you know, you consume an idea in whatever format makes sense to you.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: Consume them on topics that are of interest to you, habit, uh, of half an hour each day of some sort of uh exposure to an idea.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: You will become a thoughtful person, you will become a more mature person, and you will probably develop, however formal it is or informal, uh, an idea about what's important in life and how you want to live your life.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: So uh this brings me to another question, uh James.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we are always taught since we are kids about results, right?
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: So what you're telling me uh is to contemplate, right?
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: So contemplate contemplation doesn't have an outcome.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore, I'm used to checklists, I'm used to outcomes, I'm used to results, I'm used to uh you know seeing uh you know uh output, okay?
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly you are asking me to do the exact opposite that I've done for maybe 20 years, 25 years, 30 years, and I would be left with you know, going back in the day saying, hey, what did I get?
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: So how do I balance between contemplation, no outcome, but reflection?
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I you know it's a it's a it's a huge amount of contradiction you have to live with because that's what at work you are uh fighting every day, which is you are saying, hey, get it done today, I want it done today, I just want this outcome, give me the result, you know, get it sold, uh, you know, whatever.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're coming back and saying, you know what, I just need to slow down, I need to figure out a way, and that's exactly you know, it's it's it's a very tough transition, right?
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do I manage this transition?
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: I have a couple of things to suggest in response to that good question, Swami.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: One would be to say I came to realize in my career that the absolutely most valuable results-oriented time that I invested, so exactly with the pressure to achieve results, was the time that I specifically carved out and set aside for strategic thinking.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: It was not filing that document, writing that contract, negotiating that acquisition.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was none of those things that were the outward appearance of results.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was the 10% of my time, you know, half a day, one day a week, that I said, okay, I am taking no appointments, doing no calls, producing no output, I have priorities.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the outcome of thinking should be that you have clarity over your priorities.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: And let me say that that was helpful in my case because it helped ensure that my effort and my team's effort was not wasted.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: How would you feel about a person who is immensely results-oriented, spends every hour of every day working, producing output, but on things that are of no valuable, no value to the company?
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's not really very helpful, is it?
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: So you need, we need, one needs, in order to be productive, a balance between work and direction setting.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: You need to spend time setting the direction, setting the priorities of your work.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: Even if someone is telling you every day, oh hey, Swami, these are the tasks I need you to get done.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly this and just do it, don't think about it.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_01: You still have many things to think about in terms of what's the right way for me to work, can I organize myself?
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: Can I save time by investing in a process over here?
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, time spent for strategic thinking absolutely contributes to improved output.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: You ensure you're working on the right things and you ensure you're working in the right way.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's one answer to your question of why time spent contemplating is actually supremely helpful to improving the quality of your output and the quantity.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing I would say is most important elements of what I think contributes to success, which is accepting that progress is the result, it's cumulative, it's the result of many small steps and decisions.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: I know people like to see big steps, home run, a giant uh result out of a project that really advances you, that believed in the power of continuous improvement, incremental progress.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: Small changes made consistently over time add up to very significant results.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually great news because we can all do one small thing.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: If you do one small thing, and really it's as small as I'm taking 10 minutes out to read this article, to listen to a few minutes of this blog, if you do that consistently over time, just like with a health habit or an eating habit or with many things, you know, getting a degree, you will see that over the course of months and years, all of a sudden you're in a very different position you were than when you started.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: So what might appear to be taking away time from your ability to deliver results could actually be a small step towards creating something much more significant, much more foundationally important to your progress.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: And again, you know, just like having a strategy at work is so critical to you being able to deliver good results, having a philosophy of life, which is a personal strategy, if you will, for success, having that strategy of life is critical in making sure that you're actually heading in a direction you want to go.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: The last thing you want to see happen in your life is that you've spent 30 years diligently working towards a goal that leaves you unhappy and unsatisfied when you attain it.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's why the few minutes that you might spend each day is not at all wasted time.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe, and I will firmly suggest to you and our listeners, that it is the best use of your time.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: Carve out those small percentages of your day that you can invest in strategic thinking and it will pay off.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: It'll pay handsome dividends.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: In this section, James talks about the idea of a circular path, where he says that it's important for you to ask yourself and only you can answer that question, which is have you done the job in the best possible manner, and are you convinced that you are given your best?
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: Once you've given your best, you may get the rewards for it, you may not get the rewards for it.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: But what it does to you is it gives you the satisfaction and a feeling of achievement, and that is key to you being calm about what is the outcome.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: When you know you've given your best, when you know that you've been uh getting better and better at what you're doing, and you know that you did things better than what you did yesterday, then results uh will come your way.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: But what's important is you being convinced that this is the best I could have done in what I was uh asked to do.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, the importance of starting to build maturity around not looking at outcomes for every effort that you put in at work is important.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, look at if you have done your job well, are you building excellence in an accurative manner?
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_00: And surely when you ask those questions and ask important questions, look for ideas and think about whether you've done the job well is the first step, and that is uh important for your professional success.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, which brings me to another thought that uh you know you uh you triggered uh as you spoke.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: Most often when we look at our uh jobs or look at the work that we do, uh we look at the job, but we don't look at uh the company values being aligned with my personal values, right?
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't see too many uh situations where uh I have a personal value and it's exactly opposite of the company values, right?
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore you get dissatisfied.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do I uh assess if my company values are aligned with my personal values?
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: And what are the tips that you can give to say, you know what, hey, that's a great job, that's a great position that they are offering you, that's a lot of money, okay?
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to give you fame and uh you know name, okay, but it just does not fit with your philosophy, right?
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, therefore, many people do the mistake of picking all of that up and then you end up not being happy about it, and therefore, how important is the alignment of how the company approaches uh you know its values, and how do you really assess that?
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you'll be your boss might have a different value, the guy who's interviewing you will be having a different value, so it's important if you really want to achieve what you're talking about, which is your personal goal, and therefore, how do I have a way to evaluate this?
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, I would say you can apply a knockout criteria and then the mismatch between something that your company, your boss, or the environment that you're in would have you do and something that you simply just don't wish to do.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, an easy one for a corporate lawyer, but I suspect for most people, would be you cannot work for a company or for individuals who are unethical.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_01: That is, who will who will skirt the law or break the law, no matter how financially attractive that appears in the short run.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_01: I personally could never do that and would never recommend that a person do that.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's selling your soul to achieve an outcome that, you know, okay.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um that is an example for me, and you others listeners will have their own examples of hey, if that circumstance exists, it's an absolute knockout.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's a mismatch of values that prevents me from staying in or working in that environment.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: Another one might be: I could imagine people saying, I simply cannot work for an industry that is obtaining uh, you know, that makes its money by doing something that conflicts with an important value of mine.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: I won't work for a company that sells weapons or that, you know, makes tobacco, whatever the person's concern is.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: That could also be a, while it's not illegal or immoral, something that still goes against the deeply held value.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a personal question.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_00: I have a uh I have a uh you know far more uh you know deeper uh you know question, which is to say, you know what, uh the way I approach a problem, uh, you know, there are some companies which just say, just go do it, we'll figure it out.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, versus, you know, I think we just need to plan, we need to get this in a way, uh, you know, thing, and these two are completely two different values, right?
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: I may like the industry, I may like uh, you know, uh, I'm passionate about that business, but the way I approach the work and the thinking behind that work will be very different between two companies, and that that's one company that I would probably not want to join because it just does not fit my uh you know, my personal way of doing things, and again, that's another way to look at it, and many people ignore it, and then they end up actually failing in that uh I won't say John failing in a career, okay, because it they end up not being successful because there is a dichotomy between what they believe and what they are doing.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I understand your question, and it is the the second part of values, if you will.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I would also include or describe that a little bit as corporate culture.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_01: How does this environment work?
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: How do you succeed in this environment?
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: Is it compatible or not with my own personal style of working?
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: You would be Swami in the sense that for sure, if there's really like uh this company just doesn't plan, they're they execute and correct as they go.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that that could be a fundamental mismatch between how you personally work and it just you won't be successful in that environment.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: People usually realize that.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: I find actually the opposite occurring, which is that people are too quick to judge that they are not a good fit for that environment.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: They have a dispute with somebody, they feel like their initial approach was rejected, and therefore they say, Oh, I can't work here.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_01: That I think is a mistake that leads people to switch jobs too quickly when in fact they could be a little bit more flexible and open in their thinking.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, there are multiple ways to say a sentence in English.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_01: Many ways.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: I might choose one, you might choose another one, but I am probably making a mistake if I say my way is the only way and the correct way.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, what I want to suggest with that is that not just with writing English, but with approaches to work problems, with company cultures, it's often quite helpful to work within the system and say, hey, I understand you're following this approach, I follow this approach, you know, your way works, my way works, and you still can be true to and honest to your own personal style of working and find a way of being successful in your environment.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because you know what?
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_01: I suspect you're not unique, you're not completely unusual in your approach.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_01: You'll find other people in the company who work the same way you do, and you can more work with that person than with the person over here who flies by the seat of his pants, for example.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I understand your point, and I would say I definitely see the harm in just banging your head against a wall in trying to pursue an approach that does not suit your personality or your skills.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I would also be careful of assuming that too quickly, uh, when in fact you can both work within the existing system and if you spend enough time there, you can shape the system.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was talking about before when I talked about the project to change our vision and values.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: We were actually shaping culture.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: I viewed my role as a more senior leader then to be actually helping guide a little bit, hey, this is the kind of company we want to be.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be a good employer, and therefore, here's how we're going to respond to these circumstances.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_01: So after you gain mastery over the core job, you might be in an influence in a position, and you certainly are in a position to influence the circumstances around you to a greater or lesser extent.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_01: You can have an influence on how your company works, and that's a positive, very optimistic way to think about things.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm going to use the power of an idea, the power of my personal example, to help show how we could do this differently.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_01: So don't give up too quickly, would be my suggestion.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful, beautiful.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, what you're really talking of is be patient.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you're talking of uh, you know, uh build your way through, uh, you know, influence uh what you believe in.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, don't be impatient.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh look at how you can, you know, walk through and ensure that you know you are able to change the system.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, don't come and don't jump into conclusions too far fast.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: Figure out and keep working on it if you still like what you're doing.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's really what you're really talking about in an age where you just want to give up and move on.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's not something that uh you know uh that you at least recommend you're asking people to consider, right?
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_01: That is exactly right.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: Patience and persistence, those two things are tremendously helpful to your success in an environment.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Think about this.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_01: When you start with a group of 20 or 100 people, and most of them are impatient.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_01: Most of them cannot see a project through or leave when they get frustrated.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: What happens after one year?
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, 50% are gone.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: What happens after two years?
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now 80% are gone.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_01: Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, guess what?
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_01: Simply by virtue of being patient and persistent, you are influential simply by virtue of having stayed within your environment, worked within your environment.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_01: And at that point, you're more senior, you absolutely are in a position to influence much more than you were at the beginning.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: I say keep your enthusiasm, keep your high standards, don't compromise, but recognize that you can also play a medium to long-term game and have uh the same effect at the end as you would if you had just uh had everything you wanted from the start.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, patience and persistence are extremely valuable tools.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, that only comes with time.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's a rare young person who is ambitious who is also patient.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_01: I understand that.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_01: But um I've seen it work out many times that simply being the last person standing from an initial group is what made you successful at the end.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing uh most of us go through in our uh uh you know in our life is uh you don't want to really be stupid in front of others, right?
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's a bit of embarrassment, and you are given new roles, you're given new things to do, and uh you can make mistakes, but you're very worried about being judged, uh, you're worried about being embarrassed because you've done some stupid things.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_00: How do I uh overcome this whole feeling of always being judged, looking stupid, uh, therefore getting embarrassed?
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do I overcome these behavior and what is it that I need to do because I need to have a certain amount of self-confidence and saying, hey, these things happen and I'm going to keep trying.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is something that I need to build in my DNA to actually go through this process?
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, these are difficult issues.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_01: They deal with self-acceptance, they deal with kindness, and I would say if you did one thing, it would be to remind yourself every now and then to be kind to yourself.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_01: The same kindness you would wish to extend to a family member, a child, why not think in your own mind about adopting that same attitude towards yourself?
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know how hard you work, you know what you intended, why not give yourself a little bit the benefit of the doubt?
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that that self-care, that self-kindness is a mental attitude that you might seek to adopt.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_01: Another one that I have found helpful, Swami, is to always look for the silver lining in every circumstance.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, as a way of building resilience, there's lots of different things that you can do, but one of them that I found extremely powerful is to say, no matter what happens, no matter how seemingly bad, how seemingly embarrassing, how seemingly terrible, I'm going to look for the positive.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the positive is often, oh, hey, I learned something.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_01: I learned what doesn't work, I learned that an embarrassment is not in any way permanent.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_01: People will laugh about it.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_01: It serves to have a good sense of humor.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_01: There's lots of different ways to turn what appears to be a setback in the moment into a positive.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so those two attitudes of being kind to yourself and of always trying to spot the silver lining, the benefit in what appears to be a difficult circumstance, help you not feel so terrible when a mistake occurs, when the bad thing happens.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you say to yourself, oh, what positive is going to come from this situation, immediately that changes your mindset immediately from feeling the shame and of feeling like you've made a career-ending mistake to, no, everyone makes mistakes.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_01: This is something that I will grow from, I will learn from, and I will be stronger from.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_01: When I think of my own career and the things that made me progress the most, it was not the successes.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Those were nice, those were great, it was the failures, the failures that I learned from.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because then you get better.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what ultimately will contribute to career success is continuous improvement, steady improvement over time.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_01: So if you think of it from that perspective, you need the embarrassments, you need the occasional mistakes in order to really have uh proper career progression.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_00: In this section, uh James talks about uh the importance of marrying your personal values and philosophy with a company's philosophy.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_00: People have a certain deep belief and values and they normally don't agree with what's happening around them.
• 1:11:09
  SPEAKER_00: But yet they continue to chug along, try, be dissatisfied, complain, but the values that they believe in don't match with what they do at work every day.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, when you are looking for a job or when you're doing a job that you're already in, find ways to get aligned to the job that aligns with your personal values and beliefs.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And when you start looking at that, what happens is that you're not just looking at what the role is, what the compensation is, what the growth path is, but how does it align with your own values, the way you work, the way you believe work needs to be done, and that is a very key aspect to personal satisfaction and a sense of achievement and fulfillment which leads to better work performance.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Also, James talks about the fact that once these two are aligned, then the ability for you to be patient and be persistent, you tend to stay in the job for a longer time.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_00: You are patient, you are persistent, and therefore you beat others just by your longevity.
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, when you actually have a job that uh has patience and persistence weaved in, the chances of success are very high.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to ask a personal question, if I may.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you are a lawyer, lawyers are supposed to be cut and dry, rather unemotional.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and here is a lawyer I'm speaking to who's talking to philosophy, which is a lot of emotion.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And uh therefore, how do you really uh you know, uh reconcile or you know, how do you really work at both ends of the spectrum, right?
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_00: At one end you are rational, at the other end you got to be emotional, and and you are actually having a professional uh uh you know qualification that you are a lawyer, which means that how do you really balance this?
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're not supposed to have uh a philosophical mindset if you're a lawyer.
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_01: I in my undergraduate days, and then I went to business school, and those two additional experiences gave me uh another perspective, which when I started working as a lawyer, I was able to uh observe things from a different way.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was always interested in the question of what works and why does it work?
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_01: What works?
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I ultimately an immense pragmatic.
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm interested in pragmatism.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um and when I asked the question of not just what works, but why does this work, I came to the realization that very often, almost always, you could tie a success or a failure back to a question of human motivation, human character, and incentive that was designed correctly or incorrectly.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And this didn't immediately get me into philosophical thinking, but it definitely got me thinking about the human factor.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_01: People are emotional.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_01: We think we're rational, lawyers too, but we're actually also very emotional.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore, if you can understand emotions, I focused on understanding others' emotions, and only later in my career realized, hey, my own emotions are also a significant driver of behavior, then you can pragmatically improve the quality of your work and your outcomes.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it was that trajectory, the psychology and the business strategy, which led me to think about people's character and their personal uh incentives and motivations that ultimately led back to these more philosophical thoughts of, hey, everyone, we're all people, we're all human beings.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_01: We have is a very useful tool to use to drive all sorts of other outcomes.
• 1:15:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's how it worked for me to go from the pure analytical side to the more emotional human side, which I found to be just a useful tool.
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, therefore, would you say that uh you talked about three stages, right?
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh so, therefore, as you move to the third stage and the, or as you move to the second and the third stage, uh, this aspect of the human nature, this aspect of uh you know applying this whole human nature and having a certain uh uh you know irrationality or emotionality uh is a very important aspect that you need to build if you have to be successful?
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I would.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I would put it this way, Swami.
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_01: You should never be surprised by good things or bad things that happen as a result of other people's actions.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_01: You should not be surprised by them.
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_01: At least upon reflection, if you look at them and say, hey, how come that person behaved that way?
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_01: How come this person did that thing?
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_01: How come our competitor did that thing?
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_01: You should be able to tie it back to a very clear, this was the incentive that was in place, this was the human factors at play.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying people don't act irrationally and sometimes it's hard to predict.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_01: What I'm saying is when there is a human incentive, a human emotion, that is part of the manager's skill set toolbox that they need to develop.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_01: I want to understand what motivates people, why they do the responsible for our global compliance program.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore I had to write guidelines that tens of thousands of employees all over the world would have to read and understand and follow because we had to comply with the law and we didn't want to get in trouble.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it was very important that our compliance program was effective.
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_01: I learned relatively quickly that it wasn't about how clearly I could write a sentence describing a law.
• 1:17:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was about incentive that they had.
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that incentive could be: I don't want to get fired, I don't want to have a difficult time talking to the company's lawyers, I'm going to get paid beer promotion.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_01: However, you can understand, and the better you can understand what is incentivizing and motivating people, the better then you can pragmatically achieve your goals.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, uh, you know, short answer to your question, it's very helpful to become a student of human motivation and of human character if you wish to be a successful manager.
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I would argue in any profession, in any job, the more you can understand your colleagues and why they think the way they do and why they behave the way they do, the more likely you are to be able to successfully navigate your environment.
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_00: My final question, uh James, is that uh you talked about excellence, you talked about uh, you know, doing it for yourself.
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and excellence is a long journey, right?
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, there are no uh it's not an easy job.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we normally look for short-term gratification, right?
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're saying, hey, you know, I did this and I got this.
• 1:18:51
  SPEAKER_00: So if I have to pursue excellence and I have to build a certain amount of uh capability and a craft in what I uh, you know, uh I I I need to build my craft, uh it's a very hard thing uh balancing short-term gratifications with my long-term goals.
• 1:19:12
  SPEAKER_00: How do I keep moving from long-term to short term, short-term to long-term, yet keep my enthusiasm, yet keep my motivation?
• 1:19:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, what are the tips that you would give to ensure that this is something that I'm able to live through?
• 1:19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because I had to live through it for quite a long time in my career in anything that I do, right?
• 1:19:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, therefore, what would you think we need to do?
• 1:19:36
  SPEAKER_01: So the balance between short-term and long-term is one that is partly solved by just having a little bit of faith that although you are not aware of all of the twists and turns your path will take, that you will arrive at a good destination.
• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's something you cannot be.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_01: I I trust that it will work out.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_01: And all I can do, all I can really do is what I'm doing at this moment today.
• 1:20:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the piece that helps me about before, the power of continuous improvement.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_01: I know now, because I've seen it happen on a personal level and a professional level and a company level, small steps taken regularly, every day, add up to significant results.
• 1:20:18
  SPEAKER_01: So the pursuit of excellence is not what am I going to be in 10 years.
• 1:20:23
  SPEAKER_01: The pursuit of excellence is absolutely driven by what am I doing today?
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the way you ensure that you incrementally add to your excellence every day is by making sure that it is not too burdensome.
• 1:20:37
  SPEAKER_01: If it's a horrible task that you have to force yourself to do, like, oh, I have to do my reading or whatever the thing is, then you are likely to add to your excellence that are pleasurable to you.
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_01: I enjoy reading.
• 1:20:50
  SPEAKER_01: I like listening to podcasts, and therefore it is no burden to me whatsoever to spend half an hour reading an interesting article in the Harvard Business Review or wherever I might do it.
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_01: It has an incremental over time professional benefit.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know when that article I read is going to be useful to me, but I trust that one day it will be.
• 1:21:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, by uh accepting that your daily actions, and even though they're pleasurable to you and fun in the moment, um, if they're targeted uh with a goal in mind of, yeah, this is going to help me somehow professionally.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I think the daily reading habit or the daily knowledge habit is so helpful.
• 1:21:31
  SPEAKER_01: But by all means, don't make it a chore.
• 1:21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Make it something that you actually enjoy.
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_01: The combination of those two things, having faith that the future will play out, and then taking what daily actions that you can in a way that is not work but pleasurable, goes a long way towards helping a person build excellence over time.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_01: The other one that needs to be mentioned is you should have personal standards.
• 1:21:53
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to get excellent if you wish to get excellent.
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or let's say uh in the reverse, you won't get excellent if that's not your personal goal.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, that's also fine.
• 1:22:03
  SPEAKER_01: Not everyone needs to be the CEO or a giant success.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Be honest with yourself about what it is that you wish.
• 1:22:10
  SPEAKER_01: I know some of the happiest people who said, I am no longer pursuing career ambition the way that my friends are telling me I should, or that everyone else is telling me I should.
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_01: I am happiest when I earn enough to make a good living, and I can take my vacation each year, and I can spend time with my children.
• 1:22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Those are perfectly acceptable and valid definitions of personal ambition and happiness.
• 1:22:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, of course, uh make sure that you have done the introspection to understand at that moment in your life what are my values, what is it that I am working towards?
• 1:22:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that will also help you have faith that the future is something that you are diligently and day by day working towards.
• 1:22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_00: In this section, uh James and me talk about uh the importance of human factors in anything that you do.
• 1:23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, when you are working, you are dealing with uh humans and the need to understand human behavior, people skills, and the ability to appreciate how others react and feel to what you do is as much important as any rationality that is involved in a job.
• 1:23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, life is not all about uh algorithms, it's not about rules, it's also about how you deal with people.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, be ready to handle irrationality.
• 1:23:52
  SPEAKER_00: So not everybody is rational, not all decisions are rational.
• 1:23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Your ability to handle irrationality is as much important as rational and logical decisions that you will be making in your job.
• 1:24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, when you want to develop excellence, it's not one big ambitious goal that you need to set.
• 1:24:20
  SPEAKER_00: James put it very rightly that excellence is done in incremental steps, done every day, and you need to have faith in it.
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't happen overnight.
• 1:24:34
  SPEAKER_00: You need to do it every day consistently, and that is key to driving uh yourself to excellence.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is an important aspect of what you believe and what you need to do and be convinced about it.
• 1:24:54
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I'm coming to the last set of questions.
• 1:24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, these are rapid-fire questions.
• 1:24:59
  SPEAKER_00: So uh my first question to you really is uh uh what does success mean to you?
• 1:25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Success means living your life consistently with the principles and values of a well-ordered mind.
• 1:25:14
  SPEAKER_01: So you have thought about what you wish to achieve and you are living uh consistently with what it is that you have defined for yourself.
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Brilliant.
• 1:25:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think I need to listen to it again for me to reflect and uh understand it a little more.
• 1:25:31
  SPEAKER_00: But brilliant answer.
• 1:25:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've not heard such an answer in a long time.
• 1:25:35
  SPEAKER_00: The second uh question that I have is what would be the advice that you would give to an 18-year-old in a university today?
• 1:25:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I would give a couple pieces of advice, and please, if anyone is listening, take the ones that are suitable for you, or take none of them if they're not suitable for you.
• 1:25:56
  SPEAKER_01: I understand um it's a difficult time.
• 1:26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, first, I would ask whether university is necessary.
• 1:26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh problems which provides you with particular opportunities, but it is just one set.
• 1:26:09
  SPEAKER_01: I would ask as a related question, what are the skills that you believe will be useful to you over a long period of time in your life?
• 1:26:18
  SPEAKER_01: And they may or may not be things that you can obtain at a university.
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_01: So for my case, um, it's a little bit anachronistic, but one of the absolutely best things I ever did was take a typing class and I learned how to type.
• 1:26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um turns out that over a long career spent writing, uh, that was a super helpful thing to have done.
• 1:26:37
  SPEAKER_01: What might, and this is a hard thing for an 18-year-old to do, but nonetheless, it's appropriate to at least start asking yourself this question.
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_01: What might a life well lived look like to you?
• 1:26:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, who do you know in your life that you think is done it right and lived exemplary?
• 1:26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's an uncle or a ask yourself, though, that question.
• 1:26:56
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe you don't have to have an answer, but you should at least be wondering, hey, what do I think a life well liked look like?
• 1:27:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then last question I would ask you to start thinking about already now is what companies seem to provide an environment that is conducive to the long-term growth of their employees?
• 1:27:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, and maybe said differently, what environments seem like ones that help uh their individuals thrive?
• 1:27:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's as a long answer to your question, but those are the types of things that I would like to suggest I would have liked to have thought about when I was 18 years old, and I can tell you I didn't think of any of those things.
• 1:27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I didn't think so.
• 1:27:40
  SPEAKER_00: So uh you know, so therefore uh I think we're privileged to actually talk about this so that some 18 year old is going to pick up and uh add value to their life.
• 1:27:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we we should be uh thankful that we have been able to contribute to them.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's really how I see it.
• 1:27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what is one best piece.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Of advice.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_00: You would have got a lot of advice, but what is one piece of advice, best advice that you got that remains with you even today?
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to give you two because they're short and they're both pretty valuable.
• 1:28:13
  SPEAKER_01: One is to really understand and accept life is not fair.
• 1:28:20
  SPEAKER_01: Life is not fair.
• 1:28:22
  SPEAKER_01: And if you go through your life and your career outraged by the injustice of it, you will hamper your ability to be happy.
• 1:28:34
  SPEAKER_01: That is not a pessimistic approach, it is a pragmatic and a realistic approach, and you can absolutely work with it.
• 1:28:39
  SPEAKER_01: But point one is accept that life is not fair.
• 1:28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Point two is as a philosophy of life, you could do worse than this.
• 1:28:46
  SPEAKER_01: Be happy with what you have, not sad about what you don't.
• 1:28:49
  SPEAKER_01: It makes them unhappy.
• 1:28:51
  SPEAKER_01: When in fact, if you adopt a philosophy of gratitude, you can always find something to be happy about.
• 1:28:58
  SPEAKER_01: So those two bits of advice life's not fair, and learn to be happy with what you have, not sad about what you don't have.
• 1:29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 1:29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Can you recommend a couple of your favorite books that uh you believe have added value to your own thinking, which will be useful?
• 1:29:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I had an answer to the question about favorite books, but the way you just framed it, in terms of being useful to you and your audience, I'm going to recommend uh something different.
• 1:29:31
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of what I benefited from and what I absolutely enjoy, I would have said the genre of science fiction, which is a blend of technology, sociology, and forecasting the future.
• 1:29:42
  SPEAKER_01: I find that to be a wonderful diversion, and I really do enjoy it.
• 1:29:49
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of what I think might be useful to people, uh, I gotta say, I am a big fan of Stoic philosophy.
• 1:29:56
  SPEAKER_01: And there's two authors I would recommend: Marcus Aurelius, who wrote Meditations, which was his diary, but it is a good summary of Stoic principles, and it is wonderful to see one of the most powerful persons on the earth at that moment in time revealing his humanity so openly.
• 1:30:17
  SPEAKER_01: And when you see that the Roman emperor himself can struggle, then you know, hey, my struggles are not unusual.
• 1:30:24
  SPEAKER_01: I am not somehow uh in any way uh lesser for having for its humility and its wisdom.
• 1:30:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then, in terms of uh just an outstanding writer, an excellent thinker, and a lawyer, by the way, um Seneca's summary of Stoic philosophy, which I've written my own version of, but his version is also excellent if you're a little bit history-minded.
• 1:30:48
  SPEAKER_01: He's he's got some references that make it challenging for some readers.
• 1:30:51
  SPEAKER_01: But Seneca's moral letters to Lucilius are quite good.
• 1:30:54
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want a modern version, you can read mine on Kalubni.
• 1:30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but um, those those Stoic thoughts uh I found to be fine companions for many uh many an evening.
• 1:31:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you were to invite three or four people as guests for a dinner, dream dinner, who would they be and why?
• 1:31:18
  SPEAKER_01: So the two that I just mentioned are on my list, Marcus Aurelius and Seneca.
• 1:31:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the other two that I would add to the list just because I find the overlaps between the philosophies fascinating, um, Confucius and the Buddha.
• 1:31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I'd like to see those four inner room and talk with all of them.
• 1:31:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's quite a quite a it'll be quite a dinner, I I must say.
• 1:31:43
  SPEAKER_00: It would indeed.
• 1:31:45
  SPEAKER_00: We'd need a few hours.
• 1:31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um so uh what would be uh one thing that you believe in that you know others don't agree with you?
• 1:32:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if they don't agree, but they certainly don't seem to follow this approach.
• 1:32:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it's one that I mentioned not long ago, and that is effective problem solving is all about psychology and incentives.
• 1:32:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you understand these, you have a chance to succeed.
• 1:32:15
  SPEAKER_01: When you ignore these, you will be beset by unintended consequences.
• 1:32:19
  SPEAKER_01: People have an intention in mind, they apply something, and then they're surprised that it doesn't work the way they intended.
• 1:32:25
  SPEAKER_01: Politicians passing laws happens all the time.
• 1:32:28
  SPEAKER_01: People get confused by their good intentions not matching the outcomes.
• 1:32:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the reason that they fail is psychology and human incentives.
• 1:32:36
  SPEAKER_01: So problem solving is all about understanding psychology and human incentives.
• 1:32:42
  SPEAKER_00: So if you were to uh recommend a guest or a couple of guests for contramines, now that you know uh you know what we do, who do you think you would want to listen to?
• 1:32:53
  SPEAKER_01: I have a colleague, a friend who I've interacted with over the years.
• 1:32:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, her name is Elsa Papadopolu.
• 1:33:02
  SPEAKER_01: She works at the European Research Agency, um, pursuing a PhD now in AI and ethics.
• 1:33:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um just a deep thinker about and a smart person uh about life, about career, about family.
• 1:33:18
  SPEAKER_01: She'll talk about some similar topics, but with a very different uh perspective.
• 1:33:23
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I enjoy people who are not just successful, but also careful thinkers about, you know, what does it mean to live a good life?
• 1:33:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a question that I always like myself to hear more about and to understand other people's perspectives on.
• 1:33:40
  SPEAKER_01: So Elsa's probably somebody that I think you might have a good conversation with.
• 1:33:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 1:33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, James Belagio.
• 1:33:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was fantastic talking to you.
• 1:33:50
  SPEAKER_00: A wide range of topics made me think a lot, uh, not normally heard, not or not not normally shared, and very, very different perspectives on career, on life.
• 1:34:02
  SPEAKER_00: How you need to look at balancing all these viewpoints, great ideas, great thoughts, something that I believe was very, very engaging, and I really love this conversation with you.
• 1:34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks a lot, and lovely talking to you.
• 1:34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, pleasure Swami.
• 1:34:24
  SPEAKER_01: I hope readers had a or listeners had a good time here, and I am happy to carry on the conversation with anyone who's interested after the fact.
• 1:34:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm uh always happy for new readers uh of my blog and the other things that I'm writing.
• 1:34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to this episode.
• 1:34:43
  SPEAKER_00: For selected links and detailed show notes, visit www.contramines.com/slash blog.
• 1:34:51
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• 1:34:57
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• 1:35:02
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• 1:35:05
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• 1:35:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening and stay safe.