Never give up!!

"Failure is only when you give up trying; till then its only that you have not succeeded".


These words may seem very heavy and philosophical at the top of the page. But lets just ponder over it. I came across it in one the book of success stories of IIM A graduates - Stay Hungry Stay Foolish. I had put this up as my tag line in gtalk and one of my friends asked me if i really believed in this words. I spent no time in shouting "Yes, Of course!!" Somehow we could not debate much over it. But then, I started pondering over it.


I recently came across the address by Apple CEO Steve Jobs' Commencement Address to the MBA graduates at Stanford a few years back. I have recently finished reading autobiographies of Lee Iacocca and Lance Armstrong. Why go so far? Take the case of our very own NR Narayanamurthy. All of these have not become so successful just by chance. And its not only hard work. Its much more than that. More than anything, these people had a strong will to succeed
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Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, the company he had founded. But he came back strongly, founded a new company, and forced Apple to take it over and now he is again a part of Apple. Lee Iacocca, was the CEO of Ford. He was fired from that coveted position by Henry Ford because of some differences. He went on to become the CEO of Chrysler and lifted it out of bankruptcy. Lance Armstrong, battled testicular cancer which had spread up to his chest, recovered from it and went on to win 8 Tour de France titles from then on. NRN needs no introduction to us Indians. The hardships faced by him and his team in the early days were simply innumerable. Compare it to what Infosys is today!


All the people have only one thing in common. They never gave up when situations were tough. They never quit trying. They led by setting examples and that is why they are all role models and icons for millions of people all over the world today.


This quality is all the more important for leaders. Because they have a huge number of people following them. Here I can give a classic example of what I have closely seen. When I was working, we had launched a new vehicle which failed to meet our expectations. Moreover, we were entangled in a legal battle with a competitor over some IPR infringement, which we lost in the interim injunction. As a result a lot of us were disappointed and demotivated. But our MD, never gave up. He asked the R&D team to change the design and come up with an alternative till such time that the final order of the court came. Because of this perseverance, the R&D team came up with a modified design in record time. If the MD had given up, the top management too would not have taken much interest. The field team was anyway demotivated. And if this continued, the dealers and vendors would have totally lost confidence in us. And the competitor would have achieved his objective.


So I still stand by whatever I have written. Because I am a strong believer in the words, "If everything is going fine in life, enjoy. It is not going to last long. If things are not going fine, even then enjoy, they aren't going to last long either"