“Be yourself,

…everyone else is already taken.”: Oscar Wilde. A quote from my childhood memories.

We, at OfBusiness, too, believe that retaining one’s individuality is the key to one’s and the company’s success. More so at work, which you do for a large part of the day and the success of which is a large part of your life’s goals.

But retaining individuality under the public glare is a rare art. Especially when the chips are down. And when you are just starting off. Or the going is against you. But whenever in doubt, I always remember these stories of heroes that I grew up with or read about in fields that were always under the public eye.

• Sehwag’s almost dogged determination to not follow copybook and trust his hand-eye coordination over any coaching manual. With astonishing success against the fast bowling of SA, Aussies, and Pakistan, that too on foreign soil.
• Federer’s (then) naivety to continue with the single-handed backhand when almost every coach or player vowed that the backhanded return to high balls would be weak. Style trumped power and how; he’s still the leading grand slammer.
• Hrishikesh Mukherjee stood tall amidst Bollywood potboilers to produce common man films with a common man message when anger, fights, and melodrama ruled.
• Kishore Kumar’s quest to remain untrained amongst classical singers when the very qualifying criteria were who you had trained under. Believing one day that raw talent and pathos will rule over the manual.
• Murthy’s gritty vision (that he stayed true to for 30 years) that Infy will aim to be India’s most respected company in a world surrounded by corruption, nepotism, and profiteering and where all his peers’ goals were commercial.
• And Tata’s to prioritize nation-building vs. deal-making over a century (hopefully why took back Air India).

Hence, if ever asked, what would be my (our) advice to the upcoming, my (our) unaided retort is to, “Be yourself.”

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– Poise amidst Noise
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