Looking up, Looking forward

Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending the Leadership Spotlight session within my organisation featuring Mrs. Sudha Murthy. She has been a model philanthropist & social worker for many years now. Yet, contrary to belief, she does not have a role model outside of herself. Isn’t it a crime? Isn’t this abnormal?

How is this even possible?

The majority of us, if not all of us has answered the following two questions, during our lower school days:

What would you like to become when you grow up?

Typical answers at an age of 5-10 years of age would range from the profession taken up by one of the parents, a sportsperson, an actor, engineer, pilot (probably most famous & common answer), etc. None of those answers is culpable. However, the answers most of us give would have been just to avoid further questions from the teacher/relative/guest.

Who is your role model?

No guesses for answering an Indian kid’s role model. J Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Subash Chandra Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sachin Tendulkar, Shahrukh Khan, Indira Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Steffi Graf, Martina Hingis, Rajnikanth, Amitabh Bachchan, Hema Malini, Asha Bhosle, Usha Uthup, Madonna, Michael Jackson, KamalHassan, Michael Schumacher, Carl Fogarty, Max Biaggi, Kapil Dev, Ronaldo Nazário, Diego Maradona, Pele, PT Usha, Kalpana Chawla, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, etc.

How many of us actually pursued a career that is in line with what we told the eager adult who was interested in our future?

Somewhere in the second decimal of percentages near zero.

What went missing between the time we gave our answer to the time we actually pursue a career path?

Various developments in the cognitive part of the brain influenced by society, day to day events, the value of money, new interests, wishes & aspirations of a close friend, social appeal of the field, exposure, challenge faced in the course of formal education, acceptance by community, acceptance by society, social status, etc.

However, if the same question were asked after we are landing our first job, some of us would just fake answers just for the kick/fun of it.

How do we arrive at an achievable, realistic, ambitious yet not over-zealous target?

Perform a SWOT (Strengths – Weaknesses – Opportunities – Threats) analysis of your own skills & goals
Understand any interdependencies of identified skills with the goals – Do your skills match with your goals? Pick a goal that matches best with your skills-set
Are any of your strengths useful to achieve the goals you have set & utilise the opportunities
Put Primary Focus on your strong skills – these are areas you are good at, but there is nothing stopping you from doing better to increase your chances of achieving the goals set
Can any of your skills be useful in converting threats into opportunities for the future?
Are the weak areas that you “should” work on to achieve the goal? If yes, start work on the weak areas & minimise the weaknesses. And also ask yourself if any opportunities will help negate a weak area
Over time, there will be situations where you can convert the opportunities into strengths using your skills. So, keep the SWOT analysis periodically updated in a iterative loop (A strength should always remain a strength but never become a weakness or threat due to ignorance or lack of due attention)
Always prepare an image of your future-self as a role model & keep updating your role model as you go along. Ask yourself, what would your future-self do in this situation?

The aim must always be to Focus on your strengths, minimise weaknesses, and take advantage of opportunities.
Sanjeev Bhushan

SWOT your way out of trouble, and towards your goals.

The future you as your role model always works best.
Sanjeev Bhushan

P.S. Strengths & Weakness are always internal factors, Opportunities & Threats are external

In case you were able to relate to the post & it helped you improve, it is a token of happiness for us. Do go through our other articles which might help you further: