Mr. Narayana Murthy, in a television program described entrepreneurship as “delayed gratification.” I think it was an apt description of a career which so many aspire. Unfortunately majority of the people never seed their thought and of those who do, many pull out the green shoots too quickly. A small majority who have the staying power and luck on their side are able to enjoy rewards. The journey is full of obstacles and rewards are mostly received in the future. At times the true rewards are harvested by the next generation. I guess this is what Mr. Murthy meant when he spoke of “delayed gratification.”
The “Marshmallow Experiment”
The concept of “delayed gratification” was first studied forty years back and the results continue to surprise everyone even now. Back in 1960, Walter Mischel at Stanford University conducted a “Marshmallow Experiment” using four year olds as the subjects of the study. Walter assembled a group of four year olds in a room and gave each one of them a marshmallow with a clear instruction that he would be leaving the room for 15 minutes and those who do not eat the marshmallow would get another marshmallow when he returns. When he returned to the room he found that some children could wait while others could not. Researchers followed these children into adulthood and found that those who could wait were better adjusted and more dependable (as reported by their families); and scored an average of 210 points higher on the SAT test.
In another study conducted by Dr. Anders Ericsson at Florida University on acquisition of expertise found that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert. If one practiced 20 hours per day for 50 weeks in a year it could take an individual 10 years to reach mastery level. 10 years of continuous work surely qualifies for “delayed gratification.”
Dr. Anders study covered fields like chess, music, sports, medicine, engineering and ballet dancing-fields where one could separate expert from other.
Besides entrepreneurship, marshmallows and discipline-mastery there are plenty of other inspirational goals which meet the definition of “delayed gratification; for example, studying for IIT, wanting to lose weight, learning a new language, aspiring to be a professional sports person just to name a few. All of these goals have several things in common, they are stretch goals, only a minority will ultimately succeed and all of them require sustained effort over a long period of time.
How do we ensure that we are focussed during the journey? In addition to strong personal character the role of a mentor can be of great importance. Mentor is someone who probably inspired this individual in the first place and also believes in him. Perhaps this is single most important external critical success factor.
Manager as a mentor at work-place
At the workplace most of the regular goals are byte sized. A good case in point is acquiring new skills to improve performance. The goals or improvements required may be small but collectively they can have a huge impact to the top and bottom line of the organization.
The key to achieving these goals is learning. The learning could be of technical or soft skill type. The soft skills are much harder to imbibe as it requires that we abandon or change our current habits. By and large, employees do not initiate the process of learning because learning anything new is a stretch and people are not naturally inclined to do difficult things. Additionally, we are all afraid to fail. And even if employees start the journey the early results are generally disappointing. Subsequently they get discouraged and abandon the effort.
Those managers who understand that failing initially is an integral part of learning are able to manage the learning process of the team mates more effectively. These managers provide continuous support in terms of encouragement and feedback to help employees become self reliant.
It is suffice to say that lucky are those who have people around them to provide feedback. It is important to understand that the purpose of providing feedback is to support the employee in his endeavour; it is not to show how much the manager knows.
There are no self made men and women; behind every success there is a mentor; someone who cares and provides encouragement and guidance to do things which one has not done before.
Has there been someone in your career who mentored you?
