In February 2025, the Bombay Times carried a feature on Simran Shaikh, a young girl who is from Asia's largest slum (in Dharavi, Mumbai), who grew up with four sisters and three brothers and was passionate about cricket.
She had just been signed up by Gujarat Giants for Rs1.90 crore and the whole community celebrated this ‘indicator’ of great success. She had reached the pinnacle after some years of playing club cricket, with ups and downs, before earning this selection.
What makes people tick? What makes one executive run the extra mile while another executive in the same company, perhaps in the same department, follows a laid-back attitude? What takes one manager way ahead, while another keep rolling back and forth on the fringes, like seaweed on the beach, moving a little forward, and a little back, with every change in the tide?
A magazine I picked up somewhere had an interesting quotation that I read for the first time:
“Every morning, when the sun rises, the gazelle awakens, and he knows to survive, he must run faster than the lion. Every morning, when the sun rises, the lion awakens, and he knows that to survive, he must run faster than the gazelle. Every morning, whether you are a gazelle or a lion, you better be running.”
And, in many ways, this is true for the manager on the move. Every morning, he gets up to make another contribution, and hopefully, another move up the corporate ladder, with an achievement of personal goals in consonance with the achievement of corporate goals.
Many years ago, I had changed jobs and joined a company where the managing director, Suman, was a person who had risen to his position, having started his career as a typist. At a party, soon after I joined, I met Kale, who had worked with Suman in his company. On telling Kale where I worked, he said, “You know, Suman, your managing director, was a typist in my typing pool, 18 years ago. I was in charge of the typing pool.”
He seemed to grudgingly acknowledge that Suman was 'a bright young lad' who worked very hard and deserved to go far. But he said all this more in a spirit of charity than of justice. After he had finished, I asked what he did now. “I am in charge of the typing pool,” he said quietly, and it seemed to me, apologetically.
Suman had, in the meantime, studied shorthand and become a stenographer. He earned a degree in Arts, going to morning classes at a city college. He moved on from the typing pool to be a secretary, then a purchase officer, then a manager, then a commercial director and on to becoming the managing director.
He worked till 8 every evening and sometimes later. He used access to the central filing system to know what was going on in the whole company. And at the end of eight years, Suman was better informed about overall company operations than anyone around. He knew what happened where, when and how and, because he had run the extra mile, he left behind PhDs and MBAs and others in the race to the top.
The sun rises every morning… And Suman was a gazelle. He ran faster and made sure that the 'lion of circumstances' did not catch up with him.
Waman was born in Ratnagiri district and the nearest school was 10 miles away. He walked to school and back for a few years, until an uncle who stayed near the school offered board and lodge to Waman, provided he did all the housework after school hours. Some years later, the uncle and aunt went to stay with their son in Bombay. As Waman was outstanding in school, the teachers got together and decided to host Waman, each for one day of the week, till he finished high school.
This went on for five years and Waman stood among the top-10 in the high school board exams. He came to Bombay, worked as a typist, went to morning college and completed his BCom, staying in a chawl at Parel with 12 others, sharing the room and reading his books by the street lights outside the KEM Hospital. He went on to do articles with an accountancy firm and, in the course of time, became a leading chartered accountant (CA) in the city.
Waman had all the dice loaded against him—money, influence, connections, housing. He had none of these and yet he made it, in a country where it is assumed that you can’t do anything without influence, including getting a ration card or a gas connection.
Every day, the sun rises, and the lion awakens to another day, where he will have to move intelligently if he’s going to get a gazelle.
There is the story of Walchand Hirachand when he quoted against a tender for the construction of the Hirakud Dam in Bihar. He went to pay a courtesy call on Jagjivan Ram, who was then in the ministry formed under a local self-government. Jagjivan Babu expressed the hope that Walchand would get the contract. Walchand felt confident that he would. Jagjivan Babu was surprised at such confidence. It later worked out that the tender was awarded to another firm, but the winners had to come to Walchand for the labour force, because Walchand had hired every able-bodied male and female in advance, in every village for miles around, on a two-year contract! He had the foresight to know that this labour would be needed if he won the contract. And that they would be needed through him, even if he lost the total construction contract.
We are seeing large industrial groups in the past many decades—the Ambanis and others—built up by individuals who began with nothing except the spirit of entrepreneurship. Everything else was built on what appeared to be a shifting sand foundation.
Sitting next to me, travelling to Delhi on the early morning flight, was the founder of one of the largest chit funds in south India. He told me he was going to Srinagar. Was he starting branches there? I asked him. He said it was a tender for the cleaning up of the Dal Lake. A very big job. He had quoted for it and he hoped to get it. But have you done such work before?
“No,” he said. “But there is always a first time. I may lose this project, but I will gain experience to do such jobs excellently in the future.”
I thought it was very brave and the expression on my face must have shown it. “I also started a chit fund many years ago when I knew nothing about funds,” he said. Sundaram had thrown the whole theory of core competency to the winds. Every time he picked himself up from zero base and made it big!
Soon after walking the rope from one tower to the other at the World Trade Centre in New York, the French aerialist Petit was asked by the press - Why did he risk his life to walk the tightrope? He had a simple reply, but it was loaded with meaning. “When I see two towers,” he said, “I must walk.”
It is the spirit of challenge, it is the need to achieve. It is what distinguishes the achievers from the ‘also-rans’.
(
Walter Vieira is a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants of India - FIMC. He was a successful corporate executive for 14 years, capping his career as Head of marketing for a Pharma multinational, for India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka- and then pioneered marketing consulting in India in 1975. As a consultant, he has worked across four continents. He was the first Asian elected Chairman of ICMCI, the world apex body of consultants in 45 countries, in 1997. He is the author of 16 books, a business columnist, international conference speaker and has been visiting professor in Marketing in the US, Europe, and Asia for over 40 years. He was awarded Lifetime Achievement Award for Consulting in 2005, and for Marketing in 2009. He now spends much of his time in NGO work - Consumer Education and Research Centre, IDOBRO, and some others.)
