initial advantage

"They say the secret of success is being at the right place at the right time, but since you never know when the right time is going to be, I figure the trick is to find the right place and just hang around."
— Bill Watterson

I have saved this strip – I think it follows where Calvin hopes if the right place is a comic book store, so you can hang around in front of that.

I was thinking about this initial advantage. Heard this in Radiolab podcast On Success with Malcolm Gladwell as well – about a random initial advantage maximized over a period of time. Of course, small things like hardwork, passion, attitude and a little bit of genius helps. It is not about the initial advantage through quirks such as which year you were born etc, but advantage created by people with own initiative. I have been involved in setting up a new team recently – given everybody gets same chance and starts from same place, looking at how people come up differently. I have seen people becoming go-to persons in projects without anyone realizing that is what is happening. Last week I was hearing about someone where customer is saying they can start a project, but need one particular person even though he doesn’t have background on the project, but the potential was very obvious. I feel those are people who keep working on some aspects of the project – be it business knowledge or technology – and with enough time and effort spent on their own – eventually it widens the gap with others. I had one person join my previous account during a major technical upgrade project, kept digging into product issues which was not exactly his responsibility and within months became highly regarded by vendor and business partners – it was in an area where we had multiple people released from project due to complaints from a nasty customer contact and I had almost written it off as not possible to turn around.

That is my second thing – I think many people wait for assigning responsibilities before doing something. I think many times we can go beyond the typical assigned responsibilities – yes, some time we get managers who ask you not to be overenthusiastic. I don’t mean it in a way of being over ambitious or doing it in a calculated way. But there are people who learn the most and become such go-to persons (linchpins?) without anybody telling them to be.
Lastly – being hungry for it. I think we need to watch out for that time when we stop learning and stop wanting to do anything other than minimum required.

random

One of the blogs I follow regularly is Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist. Her stories of startups, suffering from Asperger’s syndrome, weird mix of seemingly unrelated anecdotes, personal references and thoughts on career is interesting and often thought provoking. Like this one that Prom is a career stepping stone. Excerpts:-

The thing that is most difficult in work life is adjusting to different cultures as seamlessly as possible. People do not lose jobs because they don’t get the job done. People generally lose jobs because of poor cultural fit. If people think you fit on the team, they’ll cut you slack even when you don’t get the job done. In fact, the Harvard Business Review reports that people don’t even care if you don’t get the job done if they like you.

It’s the getting people to like you part that is so hard.
.. Asians are kicking everyone’s butt in academics. But.. Asians don’t do as well in the workplace. Because the skills that you need to do well in school are not the skills that you need to do well at work. Work is not a meritocracy—it’s a popularity contest.

Also after a long break, I was catching up on Radiolab podcasts this weekend. Radiolab podcasts is science based – they choose all sorts of subjects like time, love, chimps, sleep, parasites; get scientists who are doing interesting work; narrate stories using music and sounds and have delightful hosts who are not really scientists but have long experiences in hosting such programs. Often the topics may seem drab like tumors for example, but the kind of stories they pick, narration and insights will make sure you stay hooked till end.

One of the shows I listened to last weekend was called “strangers in the mirror”. It was with two guys who have face blindness – they can’t remember faces. They were talking about the social awkwardness of it – one of them said he just withdraws from the shame of not identifying the people he is supposed to know and other said he tries to charm his way out of such awkward situations. So other day in the elevator I met a person with whom I had lunch a week back where we were introduced. As he entered elevator I said hi and he didn’t have a clue who I was – then I told him about others who were in that lunch with us etc and his response was to invite me to a dinner which of course never materialized..:)