The best advice I ever got

Category: Editorial

I am a great devotee of The Economist magazine. It arrives every Friday and I devour it from cover to cover; it normally takes me a whole week. I start at the back with Books, then Science and Technology, then Finance and Economics, then Business, then though the regions of the world. I am a believer in the freedom of the individual, free trade and the power of the human mind. The Economist gets behind the news into explanations and principles; it helps to see the bigger picture and to recognise the trends and forces that are shaping the future.

The other magazine that I read is Fortune. This arrives on the same day, but fortnightly. I tend to read it first. It is more of a magazine, with in-depth business articles. The current issue celebrates 75 years of publication and includes two articles of great interest. One is their ultimate reading list of 75 books that teach you everything you really need to know about business.

The other is an article based on asking 28 leaders about the best advice they ever got.

I noticed a theme and a couple of parables. Here are some extracts: -

Do what you love

Donny Deutsch (CEO of Deutsch Inc) from his father:

"Look, whatever you do in life, find something you love - I don't care if you are garbage man - and everything else will fall into place. If you love something, you'll be great at it, and the money will come and everything else will fall into place."

Ted Koppel (anchor at ABC's Nightline) from Danny Meenan after he said that he wanted to go into politics:

"You would be a lousy Congressman and it looks like you are going to be a pretty good reporter. You will have much more fun being a reporter than being a Congressman. And you should do what you're good at, and do what you love. And you look to me that you are loving journalism."

Jim Collins (author of Good to Great) from Peter Drucker after he said that he wanted to start a consulting firm:

"Drucker asked 'Why are you driven to do this?' I said I was driven by curiosity and impact. The huge thing he said to me was, 'Do you want to build ideas that last, or do you want to build an organisation to last?' I said I wanted to build ideas to last. He said 'Then you must not build an organisation.'"

"His point was, the moment you have an organisation, you have a beast to feed - this army of people. If ever you start developing ideas to feed the beast rather than having ideas that the beast feeds, your influence will go down, even if your commercial success goes up. Because there is a huge difference between teaching an idea and selling an idea."

Parable 1:

Vivek Paul (President and CEO of Wipro Technologies) from an elephant trainer.

"The best advice I ever got was from an elephant trainer in the jungle outside Bangalore. I was doing a hike through the jungle as a tourist. I saw these large elephants tethered to a small stake. I asked him 'How can you keep such a large elephant tied to such a small stake?' He said 'When the elephants are small, they try to pull out the stake and they fail. When they grow large, they never try to pull out the stake again.'

"That parable reminds me that we have to go for what we think we're fully capable of, not limit ourselves by what we've been in the past."

Parable 2:

Anne Mulcahy (CEO of Xerox) from a customer.

"When everything gets really complicated and you feel overwhelmed, think about it this way: You gotta do three things. First, get the cow out of the ditch. Second, find out how the cow got into the ditch. Third, make sure you do whatever it takes so the cow doesn't go into the ditch again."

"Now, every time I talk about the turnaround at Xerox, I start with the cow in the ditch. The first thing is survival. The second thing is, figure out what happened. Learn from those lessons and make sure you've got a plan in place to recognise the signs, and never get there again."

What advice have you received? Please send it to me for sharing with other readers.

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