Serendipity and Learning

Steve Jobs is perhaps the most quoted (or misquoted) person in business today. Perhaps even more than Peter Drucker and Warren Buffet. Every business presentation that you go through has some reference to Steve Jobs or other. Recently, I attended a program where almost all speakers quoted Steve Jobs. Now, dont get me wrong, there is nothing wrong in quoting a great man such as he. But the fact is, Steve Jobs was unique - there is exactly one person like him in the universe. Nobody else is even comparable. In terms of vision, execution, creative ability, ability to almost visualize the future and take the team there, talent, hard work. Therefore, using him as an example, will only get you so far, because you are talking outlier among outliers. When people quote Steve Jobs and point to him as an example, mostly they miss the hard work that went into making him the icon he is today. He failed and failed big. He took an immense amount of risk. He spent time on getting everything...

A few years ago, I was at a panel discussion. And I realized that I was able to articulate my points way better than I perhaps did a few years ago. The difference? At first, I patted myself on the back and gave myself extra brownie points for the growth of my intelligence, articulation and felt smug about it. But when I analyzed it further, I realized that the process of writing it out had made the process easier. And the cause for it was my blog. This blog. I realized this unconsciously, but it just struck me how writing enables the speaking process. The fact that I had written about various kinds of learning experiences over the few years made a difference. When we write, we are channelizing our thoughts (which are unorganized, in a cloud) into a more tangible means. This is a far more stickier process than thinking about it or reading about it (atleast for me). And as you write more, more of thoughts are taken out of the waiting queue and newer thoughts (hopefully better e...