Second time in the row I saw this movie today 3 IDIOTS a bollywood masala movie from the maker of Munnabhai MBBS and Lage Raho Munnabhai, Raju Hirani, from the producer of 1942 a Love story , MunnaBhai series, based on Chetan Bhagat's 5 point someone and with the lead played by Aamir Khan. This movie really entertains, its a block buster but also leaves us with some questions that needs some serious thoughts. Leaving the entertainment side, Hirani definitely gives us back a lot of lessons to learn from...
1. Success doesn't mean Money
2. Learn your lessons well
3. Attitude is needed, A Good one definitely
4. Teachers need to learn first
5. Do what is your passion
6. Be Capable first, Success follows ability
To give you a gist the movie is about 3 students and their life in an engineering college, based on facts events, mentors , attitudes, approach on life.. it ends up with the lead who guides and takes life innovative way, brings on change with his Iris attitude. He goes missing and I will leave the plot to be explored by you. I liked the dialogues and each of them are hitting my minds since last 2 days... here I write about them...
1. Success doesn't mean How much Money you make or what designation you hold.
A few years ago, a talented Engineer in his early career left the Team I lead. He came to me and said "I need a promotion, I am OK with my Role in the company, Team and my salary."
I asked "All of a sudden, whats in your mind?"
he said "All my friends now are Team Leads and Managers, they earn 5 figures, its time for me to grow. I also think that my peer is my bigger competitor here and I can go out and grow more than him or my friends"
I said "Do you want to grow because your friends have? Or you want to grow because you think you deserve it?"
He said "I am getting old now, I think I deserve to grow"
I said "So You want a jazzy designation to impress your friends? Or you think the jazzy designation would be justified by what you do?"
..... The guy left us, A few years later the guy got in touch with me and said.. "maybe I should have taken the role when I was ready, I think I screwed up a lot of projects because of inexperience and abilities"
2. Learn your lessons well
We learn our lessons, but do we learn it well? So you would ask me what does this mean!!!! A couple of years ago a Software Company made a disaster of their product. They Outsourced the product development, not enough analysis done on the requirements, technologies, no efforts on process, no definition on what to achieve, No stakeholders defined, no ownership taken, The Team had an attitude of money buys service and who gets money has to do things. They failed miserably, The outsourcing partner did not understand what to do and how and they took the company in ditch. The company recovered.. formed its own team, got a new product done to begin, got the foundation of a great product ready. They learnt their lessons and they got well out of it. Eventually when they progressed to newer development they hired 100 people in a month to do the rest of the development.. another disaster in way!!! if you had learnt your lesson well you would have Built the Team not formed.
3. Attitude, Have one a Good One
We always talk about it in our blogs.. so I dont elaborate much now... but its very important that you have an attitude that leads you to be capable of doing things...
Attitude, is what keeps us going. Attitude is what reveals our characters... Attitude is what is required... You have one is the basic necessity. And when you have one, dont leave it..
4. Books are friends and teachers, Do all friends guide well? Also Teachers need to learn first.
Well they definitely need to. I think we as mentors, Guidance sources, advisers and drivers to our Teams also need to learn TEACHING first. Not only our educating systems needs to be changed, but also the way we teach. When I say education system I refer not only on how we teach our kids, but also our employees, teams and members of organizations... This movie has a character called "Silencer", the guy who believes that he can dump the book in mind without understanding what it means... but its not his fault, because the examination he writes or the questions he answers to the interviewers or professors is based on what books teach.
In one of my previous companies we had a SQA (Software Quality Division), this department would audit and evaluate all the projects done by the company, define flaws , recommend suggestions to improve the quality process. However the members who were a part of this had a bible book in front of them to refer to it... and when they did not find something in the book, it meant the project did bad on quality ;)... In one instance our product involved a short term (1 day) project. The requirements were one liners as the customer needed it very very urgently. But since it was not a bug, nor a change request nor a full feature we did not have SRS and other documents for it... result? SQA recommended not to go ahead with the project, result????? wanna guess????
I have also seen that many of us dedicatedly believe in what text books says.. for instance principles of Agile... Ask a Developer who involves himself in Agile, he would know that demo and integration of feature, code and qa is an ongoing process. Nothing is complete. Ask a Text Book Agilist He would want a document, a start and end of the feature and time lines... Books are our friends (Not all friends give perfect guidance)
5. Do what is your passion
If you are passionate about doing something, then do it. Dont do something that you are not passionate about. But remember lean your passion in a way that you still have a day Job. Passion is needed in what you do, but it cannot be converted in what you are doing. Passion is the part of your character, that tells how much of your character actually exists.
6. Be Capable first, Success follows ability
If you are passionate and capable... Success will follow. Google did not start big... it grew, it followed its path, showed its capability, success could not hide long, it followed. Gandhiji took his abilities and followed a path, success (Independence) came along. If you are running behind success then you are ruining those abilities of you that you can definitely succeed with. If 1M Unique readers is your blogs goal, and if you focus only on SEO, promotion and marketing... without putting the actual writeups (ability of your blog to get readers) you will not succeed, you may see short term benefits not success.
Pele the football God once said "When I step on ground, I just want to play good football, Wins and Goals come along when playing the best football"
A Painter puts all his imagination in his paintings... he doesnt know when he starts on what he wants to get out of it... but when he puts all his efforts without thinking of results he creates a "Mona Lisa"....
As the Hindu Grantha of Bhagvada Geeta says "Do your Karma, Dont think of fruits, they will come with your karmas"
