Leverage

WHO NOT HOW – more than 7000 years ago

collaboration, Habits, Leverage

Dr. Benjamin Hardy — one of the most prolific writers on Medium has co-authored a book WHO NOT HOW. He has co-authored this book with one of my favorite thinkers Dan Sullivan.

The basic premise of this book is that if you leverage your relationships, you can solve all kinds of problems more easily as well as much much more quickly.

I finished reading this book yesterday and saw the immediate applicability all across my life. 

But what surprised me when I was going through the book was the fact that two of Indian Mythologies’ the Ramayan and the Mahabharat are completely about WHO NOT HOW. Both are huge texts and its not my agenda to go into a religious discourse but if you see the key architects of these texts you will immediately see the applicability of this rule.

In Ramayan — Lord Ram’s wife Sita is kidnapped by the demon king Ravana. Lord Ram and his brother Laxman are travelling in the forest helter-skelter trying to figure out where Sita could be when they come across the Monkey King Sugreev and his able chieftain the Monkey God Hanuman. 

In true “give” before you “ask” form that Dr. Ben Hardy suggests —Lord  Ram first helps Sugreev get his kingdom back from Bali and then the complete army of monkeys ably led by the Monkey God Hanuman help identify where Sita is and then with their help Ram and Laxman fight with the demon king and kill Ravana and his generals.

If it was not for the Monkey God Hanuman they would have not been able to identify the location where Sita was held captive by Ravana. They used the Monkey God’s key capabilities to fly long distances and get an aerial view to isolate the location in Lanka. After that if it was not for the monkey army — who created the rock filled walkway in the sea — Lord Ram & Laxman would have not been able to cross the Indian Ocean to get into Lanka and fight Ravana

Lord Ram did not instruct them how to do their jobs —The Monkey God  Hanuman and his army of monkey were good in their jobs and were wanting to get Lord Ram to succeed…. exactly as Ben Hardy talks about the “WHOs” that you need to choose and not micro manage.

If Lord Ram and his brother had tried to do everything on their own they would have taken a much longer time to first figure out the location and then go about trying to get there. 

I am sure if you try to think about it, most of the major achievements in the world would not have happened without a WHO being involved. And this is not ONLY a vendor — customer relationship, that we are talking about. Its about also relationships where there are no payments getting made.

Till next time.

Leverage the WHO

Leverage

My initial posts have all been centered in some way on the magic of compounding with respect to our financial lives. There is another concept which has always made me wonder and that is Leverage. Aristotle once said – Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which it can be placed and I shall move the world.

I have been listening to Dan Sullivan on multiple podcasts, one with Joe Polish (100X) and another with Dan Jackson (Joy of Procrastination) over the last 2 weeks, since I came back from my vacation in Canada (more about that in a later post).

Dan has not been one of the people whom I have known or written about earlier. But now after reading his books and listening to his podcasts, I find some of the things that he talks about very simulating ideas which are worth implementing.

During one of the episodes, Dan spoke about how when he analysed his successes over 30 years, the key turning points were not where he acquired new knowledge/talent/skill but where he met someone “WHO” helped change the direction of his life.

That got me thinking about my own 30 years. I have always believed that because I utilised my so called “down years” to prepare myself for the “when my opportunity comes”, I have been able to grow to where I am today in my job.

However after listening to the podcast I started co-relating the inflexion points which I had, to see if there was a “WHO” that helped me leverage on my knowledge. Dan’s premise is that if you have to grow yourself exponentially, then rather than working on the “HOW”(which is growing my own abilities in various areas) you should always first find a “WHO” that has these capabilities available.

So there were some positive things that came up which have helped me reach where I am today. For example my technical abilities aligned with my ability to present solutions , was recognised by one leader within the company, who then got me moved into a different division. In this division, for the first time my manager -gave me the free hand to build out a relationship with IBM which helped me blossom. Seeing my capabilities I was transferred to manager who actually took this capability of mine to propel me in a different orbit. Then during that time a couple of relationships in IBM helped me grow the business so dramatically. Now in all these situations my managers and colleagues in IBM also grew dramatically while I was growing.

After analysing these time frames however also got me a little pensive. You get connected to people when you meet them. As you meet more people the possibility of being able to connect with someone who can become the “WHO” also increases. So as I grew in my job positions, with my internal interactions taking up more time, I actually reduced my external meetings and therefore the reason for not getting the next set of “WHOs”

However Dan also brought out another aspect about using the “WHO” (he’s actually written a book Who not How) to launch any new idea faster. His suggestion is that you should actually first break down any new idea you want to launch into small pieces and then deliberately find the “WHO” to partner with and get all the work done by them. One should only focus on the “Unique Ability” one has, because then one is the happiest which results in things getting executed faster.

While I think this is a perfect idea, having been brought up with the idea of always improving personal capability first, this seems hard to implement….Do you think you would ascribe to this idea

Carpe Diem!!!