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Law of increasing competition !

"The first step of reaching the top is getting through the crowd at the bottom"

How often we think to cross one level of competition, and be assured that rest of the going would be smooth, just to realize that competion has just increased !
As a child we often didn't know what we are headed for. Later on we make a decision, usually the one that would lead to something more comfortable later in life, or colloquially "do this, then there is fultoo aish".

As a child I used to think that if I get good grades in school, life would be comfortable. Maybe comfortable meant "bed of roses" to me. In engineering, all the old school style of competition seemed somewhat trivial ! Bt still there is a big fight to get those coveted jobs, but again, on reaching "there", we often end up realizing that just to be ahead of the crowd, you have to compete a lot. During those job/graduation days it is a dream to get into any of the coveted b schools leading to a wonderful "bed of roses" type life. But again it is the same old competition, of the kind we had earlier, but much more fierce, with much more to win and much more a stake. All those "old" competition might now seem insignificant.

But still ... whether we like it or not, that's the truth. As we move higher and higher the intensity of competitiveness. If I land up at some dream job from here, to an outsider it may seem as an end - a comfortable life with success guranteed. But the one actually facing the music may realize that competition has just increased manifold. And as that chap moves up the hierarchical pyramid, he may realize that the competition for the next level is now manifold.

That reminds me of the process of selection of Jack Welsh's successor as the CEO of GE. All seemed to be absolutely fantastic, the margin for the final "winner" was almost negligible. Drawing inference from this, one can guess how competitive it would be as one moves up the career. And from the top looking in retorespect, all may seem so inconsequential. Maybe the school, or graduation was a cakewalk, as the person may think.

Maybe, getting ahead of the lot to suceed in competition may seem to be a tough ask as of now, but that may not be even a small part of the things to come and if it is just only about comfort without competition, it may just a form of manifestation of mediocrity.
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  1. Kushal Chowdhury3:13 PM, August 14, 2006

    Well written Nikesh. Honestly, thats the most well thought, well presented and impressive post I've read on your blog. Excellent stuff! Keep going.

    ReplyDelete

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