Month: November 2022

Top Class and Top of the Class, are two totally different things. We’ve each seen this. People who are top of the class in school and university, may be successful, but rarely are the truly top class and top-of-the-world successful.

Pete (his co-founder) and I thought of the people we wanted to run these new business areas as "10 out of 10s". We had both been judging talent long enough to know a 10 when we saw one. Eights just do the stuff you tell them. Nines are great at executing and developing good strategies. You can build a winning firm with 9s. But people who are 10s, sense problems, design solutions and take the business in new directions without being told to do so. Tens always make it rain.

Here’s what Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone says in his book:

Notice how he doesn’t even mention the 1s to 7s?

Are you an 8, 9 or 10? 😄

We must have all come across that book with a weird title. “Eat that frog”.

Want to eat a frog? No thank you. But that’s what the book says. There’s always stuff we don’t like to do, like eating frogs, and hence we should do those tasks first. This is more from a work perspective, so that by the time the day is even half done, we feel like we’ve accomplished something.

Of course there are those that love to eat frogs, literally, and so to those I wonder if this title even makes any sense.

But keeping them aside, one slightly dated but interesting example is of the actor Amir Khan in Dangal. He was playing two roles in the same movie, initially as a young muscular fighter, and then eventually a fat old man.

But what was his genius here? That he decided to eat the frog later, and requested his Director to shoot the ‘old man’ scene first, followed by the ‘young man’ scene. He knew that eating and becoming fat was easy, but losing it would be very hard. And if he had no reason to look fit, he would just lapse off. Clearly, eating the frog later is also not that bad, but it must be eaten!

Steve Schwarzman is Blackstone Group’s Chairman and Co-founder. The company is worth some 100 billion dollars plus.

But he didn’t start out on top. In one of his first jobs, he was asked to take a printout of a presentation that he had made. This was to be used by his boss for an important client pitch.

Enroute to the client’s office, his boss realized that Steve had made a mistake in his calculations, and a big one at that.

To remedy the situation, his boss told him he could still manage the show, if Steve could just tear out all the even pages and leave only the odd ones. Simple enough, and Steve was relieved that he wouldn’t be the cause of a messed up meeting.

Except, that in the tension and anxiety of that moment, Steve tore out all the odd pages instead!

So it’s not all rosy, even for the best, even for those who have scaled Mount Success today. Just need to develop some thick skin, learn from our mistakes, and keep ploughing on.

There are two very critical ‘back’s in life. No its not like there’s a substitute back when one’s got back pain.

These 2 backs are essential for growth and success.

The first back is setback. We often only look for victory everywhere, but setbacks are a part and parcel of life. If there is no setback, we will never have the chance to learn and improve our game.

The second back is comeback. This is how we implement our learnings from the first back, i.e. the setback.

Taken together, setbacks and comebacks are an insanely powerful combination.

No need to fear setbacks because without one, we would never know how to do better. And there is no shame in comebacks, only honor.