Read it again, ‘for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction’. Don’t we do the same as humans? Take the example of a kid who wants to play and his mother who wants him to study. The more the kid is notorious, the more the mother would get strict. Both striving for a balance.

As humans we tend to pull towards a point of balance. The point of balance though, isn’t defined. It is a gray area that resides somewhere in between. The more away the other person from your picture of what is right, the more you would pull towards the other side.

Child and Mother duo is probably an easy but poor example in this case. I would let that be the first one for simplicity, but for the ones asking, here is another. How about a coach and player. The coach’s objective is to extract the best from the player, but the player may or may not be aware of what is missing in his game. The coach would obviously make the player work to get inside the gray area. Similarly the tussle for balance is very much existent in organizations as well.

Aren’t there specific people in your contacts whom you would call a number of times to remind for a very small thing? Why would you need to give them so many reminders? It is the same tussle that I described between the child /mother or a coach /player.

Let’s talk a bit more about the tussle. 

“Tussle: A vigorous struggle or scuffle, typically in order to obtain or achieve something.”

Tussle is a strong word, a bit short of fight, but yet strong. And that’s what I believe describes some of these situations. So when does this tussle work and when it doesn’t?

There are two clear scenarios. The one with a commitment# and the one without. All the cases you saw above are with a commitment, either family, work or a friend. The one without commitment could be anyone ranging from a interviewee when hiring for a job or the person manning the ticket counter at the local railway station.

The tussle for balance works in case of commitment, doesn’t work that well for the ones without commitment. I will dive a bit deeper into both these scenarios.

In Case of Strong / Personal Commitment

Lets take the ones with commitment first. What if it wasn’t the child and mother but child and stranger. It is easy to tell a child what to do (mind you, not just studies, say playing with fire or colors or water). The stranger would talk softly, try to guide and perhaps even jump in momentarily if required. But the stranger can hardly do what a parent would do.

The stranger isn’t going to be around for long. They would hope to make a difference with their advice / guidance, strategy etc. They can’t command the same intensity as someone who has a commitment. Similarly a coach and a player share a bond, a common objective. This gives room for a stronger tussle.

The tussle exists more visibly in a scenario where there is strong commitment. It also involves fair bit of emotions. The gray area is the common point acceptable to both parties in a tussle. The narrower the gray area, the larger the side effects of the tussle. The more one person is bent on the other side, more the conflicts.

In Absence Of Strong Commitment

In absence of strong commitment, tussle exists as well. Be it someone you just met at a party or a transactional business like buying a used car. You would negotiate with the seller to get your deal, but you would show lesser emotions. You would want to make friends with someone but show lesser emotions in the tussle to reach that gray area of friendship. It is subtle. It is planned and the end result drives you. But it breaks where the commitment fails. You have options to go to another seller and buy a car, you have others to make friends with. Ignorance would step in the moment any one goes out of the gray area.

Humans juggle emotions along with tussle. Tussle works with commitment, it breaks with non commitment as ignorance steps in. The stickiness in the tussle for balance is provided by commitment^.

The alternative approach

Now that I have spoken of balance, tussle, commitment and ignorance. What is a better approach? You can’t always keep trying to hit the gray area and hope for results? You can’t always bring in ignorance and just let the commitment die? While as humans, the tussle would be an integral part of our behaviour, I would present an alternative here.

Be brutally honest. Arrington describes it for business here. The same could be brought in any relationship, co-worker conversation and even when talking to strangers. Not being diplomatic is difficult, not being ignorant is tough, but being brutally honest is perhaps the most powerful way to exist. And that’s not just power to you, it is power to everyone around you!

# when I say commitment, it means a larger or a longer commitment. Commitment exists in all interactions we do. But visualise your commitment to neighbor’s kids compared to the neighbors themselves.

^ The times when I wrote about Friendship and Face to face with online friends, in these situations perhaps the lack of large / strong commitment breaks the tussle for a common objective. With lack of trust or strong commitment (which is easy with online friends) ignorance steps in easily.

PS: I guess, my thoughts have evolved from this point. Apologies for making it a longer read than I usually like. Thank you for reading.

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If you are a 1 person company, the best advice and help you will get is from a person running a 10 person company. If you are a 10 person company, your best advice would come from a 50 people company. Go talk to them.

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What does it take for an entrepreneur to succeed? That’s a tough question to answer and there sure isn’t any one factor. But off late I am introduced to the reality distortion field and I believe it is an important bit for any ambitious person (say an entrepreneur or a leader).

Walter Issacson in his Steve Jobs biography talked about the reality distortion field of one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our era and that has left me thinking often about this factor living inside every leader / entrepreneur and perhaps every individual. Walter quotes Andy Hertzfeld from the original Macintosh team (1981):

“The reality distortion field was a confounding melange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand”

Steve Jobs had unrealistic expectations (his reality distortion field making him believe that it can happen) and he failed many a times. But in retrospect his reality distortion field worked. We cannot take away from him the successes he has had. But is that reality distortion field only restricted to Mr Jobs? Over the past few days, two separate incidents have shaped my belief that a reality distortion field works within every ambitious person.

In one email a friend (& co-worker) emails me “your admiration for xyz over-weighs so much that you are blinded…” He points that I am not seeing the reality, while I kept arguing that I am devoted to the end goal we are here to achieve, it is working. Somewhere in between both our versions, the distortion field breathed its last… we found a common ground, of course that took a few months to happen.

My learning’s from this incident is that the distortion field gives a pace to things, acts as a shot in the arm for actions. Many continued to be blinded with me and still continue, but in this case my friend managed to bring me closer to reality and I spent a few hours fixing a people issue at hand that I otherwise wouldn’t have done.

The second incident is again a conversation with a co-worker who argued that I am not allowing him to achieve large goals. My version of course is that I am preventing you from burning larger holes. And to anyone else working with us, it was clear that this co-worker is just a misfiring gun. His reality distortion field made him believe the same about us. We parted ways eventually. The distortion field though I can see in this case, sure gives a lot of confidence, but not always authentic.

Looking back at some homeruns that I have hit and many that people around me have, it is clear that a lot of success and failures are a product of a reality distortion field. You may argue that it isn’t impossible without a reality distortion field, but I would believe that the distortion field makes one achieve things that defies all logic.

The world is an expert in telling us, it cannot happen, you are wrong, give up. But what keeps an entrepreneur running is his / her own reality distortion field, which not only gets the best out of them, but helps them get over the logical side of brain that stops them from making a big bet. As a third person, I would respect the reality distortion field of an individual, unless of course the thin line between THAT field and BS is not crossed. Some noise is good, but no signal to back it up can be catastrophic.

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I am not even a longtime Apple user, I bought my Mac last year and never used an iPod other than the clip shaped shuffle in recent times. Unlike many, my connection to Jobs wasn’t because of the products he sold. During the end of my retail days, I made lots of cash on iPhones and iPods as they picked pace in India. I made a iPhone site (just as a hobby) for a friend and that became serious and somehow made money as well, but my attachment to SJ isn’t for the money I made trading products or news about his inventions.

The one time when Jobs made a real impact to me (and he still continues to) was when I first came across his Stanford commencement speech. It shook me, it touched that 15 yr old kid hungry for business on the streets of Crawford market. It gave me the courage to do so much more, break out of the shell and see the world. I have a long long way to go, but the journey is so much more powerful. Every time I listen to his words, it comes out even stronger. Be it not being burdened by others thinking or doing what you love to do. In a short speech he left behind a world of wisdom.

The day news of SJ’s death broke, like millions of others I played that video for myself one more time. And his words hit me harder than ever. It is so difficult and yet so easy to follow your heart. I wouldn’t express myself on twitter or fb as I would do in person, why? Because then I would be a soft target for a long time when it would come to my profession as an editor. Heck, I don’t care anymore … I won’t be  killing my own voice.

Something occurred to me today and yet it was nothing new. Rumors suggest that SJ was working for Apple right until his death. That may not be entirely true, but as a matter of fact we know that he resigned from Apple only 6 weeks before his demise. During his Stanford speech Jobs spoke about loving your work, to keep looking for it and measuring life like it was your last day. That’s good to hear during a graduation speech, but you know now that that man meant it. He did it. He demonstrated it to us.

We so happily talk about loving our work. Even show it off. But how deep is that? Asking myself a simple question ‘if these are the final few days of my life what would I be doing?’ is enough to give clarity in any situation. Would I be writing? Retailing? Hosting a Startup Weekend / Saturday? Conspiring the next BCM with Sengupta? Or spending time with long lost friends and family. The answer is for me, but as a CEO, co-founder, employee, freelancer… Whoever you are. Would you be working until the day of your death to make something happen? Do you love the work you are doing?

Also read: Had completely forgotten that I had penned similar thoughts back in 2008. This one might be a relevant read as well “Do What You Love“

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The difference between a ‘friendly friend’ and a ‘real friend’ is more clear in my mind than ever before now. The understanding that the manner in which friendship is perceived today is very different than what I had in mind. Today being Friendly is Friendship.

It took a while, but I finally made a choice. That choice was acceptance.

Acceptance that I cannot control everything, I cannot be friends with people as I want, I cannot expect everyone to behave the way I like – rather I need not require everyone to be Friends, at times Friendly is enough.

This changed somewhere mid way, so did this. Dunno where I am today, but I shall be back!

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An email titled: Study Shows High ROI on Face-to-Face Meetings

While this was some newsletter sent to marketing / sales junta & I don’t even need to open the thing and read it.  The idea is pretty clear: no matter how much you rely on IM, FB, Twitter – fact remains that nothing replaces Face to Face conversations. And I strongly seek that value in any relationship. I have attempted hard at times to keep up with my contacts and as far as possible I would race the bike to meet up in person. Again that has some relevance with the Friend Matrix (sorry, a lot of things for me revolve around that, in a sublime manner though); though I fear I won’t be able to describe very effectively but here is an attempt.

Anyways, when I asked Are we friends? the keyword stressed was TRUST. Making yourself available for a face 2 face meeting in many ways comes under that. (If I am avoiding a meet, that certainly means lack of trust!)…

Update: Comments on this piece on Facebook… really takes the discussion forward

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“Friendship demands trust. For me trust is the respect that a friend gives me, I value that and I like to give the same in return. For any reason (and generally many) If I fail to see that respect for me and/or I feel I cant give that respect to you, we shall seize to be friends!”

Also read Darshan Chande’s views on friendship. I quite like and agree with what he says. 1) What is friendship? 2) Is friendship driven by purposeTweet

• Human brain is an unique bastard. It silences its conscience for all the sins, but holds the other person accountable for what they did, planned to do, what they could do and even what they never did

• I striked out the the word impossible from my dictionary. Subsequently the words easy and shortcut were also lost…

• Friendship is not built with a deck of cards with lie written all over it

• Be more concerned with your conscience than your character, Coz character is built only after you answer your conscience. What matters is what you think of yourself

And the older ones that I have published before:

• Life is a ‘tug of war’ between truth and facts. Your Fact is your truth and my fact is my truth Now when facts differ. truth differs and that’s where the mother of all problems arises !! But what prevails is the actual Truth and Fact (that everyone sees in a different light )…

• Human brain is the most outstanding thing, actually its the most dreadful criminal in itself. It makes you do things based on your perceptions and acts on the reflexes of past, yet it helps you convince yourself that you are fresh every morning, sacred and free from all that has happened in the past !!

• Entrepreneurs are the riders of Storm who venture out into troubled waters to bring glory to their land!

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Source: Some speaker at Prerna 2005, Raheja College

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A guest post for Annkur Ji. Hope he bears with this vexatious writing.

We all live, act and take decisions as per our discretion. The righteous listen to their conscience, the evil look in for their benefits. But sometimes and maybe always, we are bound to take decisions irrespective of how these  will effect people, friends and even us.

It is best to listen to our conscience when we get into these tricky situations. Whom to choose, the good or the right. The good will expect us to go wrong (either professionally or personally), just to become infinitely good and lovable. The right will get us all the condemnation from everybody involved. It becomes difficult to stand up alone being the right.

But the question is: How to discern what is being right?

The most difficult task is to strongly believe that our decision is right irrespective of all the ups and downs. A lot of times, we keep getting confused, trying to change and mend the situations around. Although not perfect, but there is a small solution. Sit and think, for as long as you can, debating with yourself about everything involved. Think putting yourself in others shoes. Think why somebody is acting in a particular manner. And then take your decision. A well thought decision taken from your conscience will never be wrong.

It is not necessary to be righteous, or rather thinking that everybody should think of you as the right. Support of the masses, is never possible even for the best of leaders. Forgetting family, friends and loved ones and their feelings during the process of decision making is the worst phase. But people around are not for always. In our whole life, we keep meeting people, keep losing people. The only omniscient factor throughout is our conscience.

So be right to your self. Do what you think is good. If confused, give it a good thought sitting in silence. Take a decision and pursue it with your might.

(This is a guest post by Anonymous, hope anonymous would interact with you below in comments)

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