The Hindu Business Line : Hard work may be rewarded by bad press

But that doesn't stump the "over 200 people all over the world who have made a difference — large or small — in their field, profession, or community."

Success is the achievement of goals. But meaningful success is what is enduring, rather than temporary, argues Success Built to Last by Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery, and Mark Thompson, from Pearson (www.pearsoned.co.in) . The book is based on interviews with `over 200 people all over the world who have made a difference - large or small - in their field, profession, or community'.

The authors find that success in the long run has less to do with finding the best idea, organisational structure, or business model for an enterprise, than with discovering what matters to us as individuals. "It is here, at a very personal level, where thought and feeling inform each other, that creativity begins, and where the potential for enduring organisations emerges."

IT-watchers should be happy to find many a techie featured in the pages. Such as, Krishna Barat, principal scientist at Google, who came up with Google News.

"His personal interest in the media and his memories of listening to the BBC with his grandfather, back in India, were galvanised on 9/11, when the scramble to find news about the events of the day made it particularly obvious how hard it was to find and difficult to sort."

Google, as you may know, encourages employees to spend almost a fifth of their time in `passionate distractions', and work towards unfocused discovery, even if it seems messy! "Rather than having people moonlight at home in stealth mode, where the idea may die from neglect or take root so well that they choose to leave to do a start-up, the 20 per cent rule is a way to encourage and support breakthrough ideas."

Barat got the thumbs up from CEO Eric Schmidt, and an endorsement from founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. "Barat's dream became a full-time endeavour."

Then, there is Jeff Bezos in a chapter titled `why successful people stay successful'. To ask Bezos why he is still working is to dismiss his passion as a trivial pursuit, note the authors. He did not jump into his venture `with an exit strategy that included a retirement plan', but he wants to `revolutionise how retail business is done'.

Builders like Bezos take their `persistent dreams' seriously. "Builders haven't been working this hard this long to win a prize to go sit on a beach and stop doing what has mattered to them all along. There is no destination for them. Their passions create meaning in their lives that is nothing short of lifelong obsession from which they seek no escape."

A key finding in the book is `creative contention'; builders make sure the struggle is focused on creating something new or fixing the problem, not each other. For instance, Michael Dertouzos, who was an innovator at MIT for decades, until his death in 2001, used to remark that rarely did a week go by without a major wrestling match with his colleagues!

"I think dissent is very important, especially when it is toward a broad common goal. You agree on the broad goal and then you disagree and you quibble about how exactly to get there," reads a thought of Dertouzos.

Is it that only one passion works for the successful? Rarely, say the authors. Nor is `balance' a major issue for them. "If you define balance in the sense that it requires equal proportions of life partitioned into four or five politically correct parts, then CEOs and presidents don't have balance, nor do most Nobel laureates." Balance is painful and elusive, because that's not what you really want, advise the authors.

"Feeling a desperate need for balance may have nothing to do with balance per se as much as it means `you're not getting access to a huge chunk of time to do the things that really matter to you,'" is a snatch that has a quote of Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, and best known for Moore's Law.

Practical counsel from the book is that you don't have to make a career of everything that is meaningful to you. "But you do need to find a place for everything that is meaningful to you. That's the balance that you are seeking." For example, Moore, `the big-hearted, down-to-earth billionaire' loves `crunching numbers and inventing technology in Silicon Valley', but he also `ferociously pursues' many other passions, `such as, philanthropy, sport fishing, education, and saving the planet'.

Watch out: Hard work can at times be rewarded by bad headlines. "Even when you're doing your best, if you fail at any point, you'll get harsh reviews," write the authors. For, "It's tough to find examples where public dialogue ever refers to anyone's efforts as a noble failure."

Take, for example, Patricia Russo, who became the CEO of Lucent Technologies in early 2002. She remembers how in an interview, a reporter was chastising her team `rather aggressively' for not forecasting financial results close enough.

Russo narrates: "After a while, I stopped the interview and said, `Do you think we're idiots?' He just looked at me. I said, `This company has a lot of very capable people. We've got a lot of good history here. Do you think we're just stupid?' He said, `Well, no.' I said, `Then there must be something else at play here that has created a phenomenon in the industry that makes it impossible to predict.'"

Well, those were times when the target was moving at a rate most in the industry couldn't imagine. "All you can do in an environment like that is be open and honest about what's happening, what you know, what you don't know, what the risks are, and what the opportunities are."

Sadly, innovation does not happen in most organisations because of bad reviews that may greet failures. While, therefore, the majority of creative people may `hide out from pursuing their full potential to follow their dreams and serve the world,' what do the enduringly successful do? "They just tolerate the risks, feel the fear, take the brickbats, learn from failure, and do what matters to them anyway. Tripping points are inevitable stumbles that Builders harvest."

Great read.

Tailpiece

"Everything was fine till we extended our remote software development model to the canteen."

"Each one ended up eating another's lunch?"

"No, the trouble was with the long spoons!"

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