How one can ‘Stay hungry and Stay foolish’ ?

Things to do, habits to fix, dreams to achieve and peace 

to discover; A life to live - Dr V V Rao

Even if you have to fail, attempt something big so that you fail spectacularly.

‘Stay hungry, Stay foolish’ is what Steve jobs advised the graduating class of Stanford University in his commencement address to the class of 2005. And that is the spirit by which all the great dream chasers have lived.

A surgeon’s goal is clear: fix what is broken.

The feedback is immediate and continual: check heart beat monitor. The intense challenge is recurring, though no surgery is the same.

The operating room itself is designed to block out distractions. And because the risk is so great, a surgeon is in a state of concentration “so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant or to worry about problems. Self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted.” All of these features create an emotional rush for surgeon. The only time a surgeon loses that level of engagement is when he or she gets into a position of rote repetition and game becomes predictable.

Flow and status-quo is the state in which we are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that we will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it. Three steps of managing flow:

1. Collect things that command our attention
2. Process what they mean and to do about them
3. Organize the results and review as options for what we choose to and implement

Lakshmi Mittal: CEO of Arcelor Mittal, the world’s largest steel making company, Mittal is one of the richest men in the world and owns some of the planet’s most expensive homes. He started out working for his father’s business, but when “family differences” got in the way, he wasn't afraid to spread his wings and set up shop on his own. When India took home just one medal, a bronze, in the 2000 summer Olympics, this Indian tycoon made it his mission to support sport in his country, and pledged US$9 million to support 10 world-class Indian athletes. More recently, he invested £19.6 million in the Olympic Park Tower, the UK’s tallest sculpture. 

The triple beauty is that our mind keeps reminding us of things when we can’t do anything about them.

Effectiveness and execution is after all, not a subject but a self discipline. Dream chasers solve problems once. People, ‘Stay Hungry & Stay Foolish’ look at problems as generic to begin with, and try to solve them with rules that will be simple and easy to follow everyone, not just involved in the current issue.

Fujio Mitarai: Longtime CEO of Japanese camera giant Canon, a company whose fortunes were steadily declining until Mitarai took to the helm in the '90s. Concerned about retirement law and policies in Japan, he stepped up as chairman of Japan's powerful Keidanren business lobby, pushing the government to overhaul the tax system and social security, in order to "eliminate my own concerns over when I'm old." This is one unstoppable 75-year-old.

People, ‘Stay Hungry & Stay Foolish’ always rather than doing things right we must be doing right things right.

How to be a star at work: Feat without selling your soul to the gods of hubris. Stars are made, not born and they practice rigor of

• Initiative
• Networking
• Self management
• Perspective
• Follower
• Teamwork
• Leadership
• Entrepreneurial Savvy
• Show-and-tell

Wale Tinubu: Dubbed, “The King of African Oil”, Tinubu is Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Nigerian Oil and Gas giant Oando Plc. He is an outspoken advocate for investment in the Niger Delta and improving basic education in Nigeria. An ambitious entrepreneur who started out with just one leaky second-hand oil tanker, Tinubu is now the driving force behind a multi-million dollar enterprise that is one of Africa's largest energy companies.

Stephen R Covey studied 200 years’ worth of self help, popular psychology, and self-improvement writings. He believes that “Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.” People who are Hungry & Foolish they bring excellence through

• Being proactive
• Begin with the End in mind
• Put first things first
• Always think win/win scenarios
• Seek first to understand then to be understood
• Synergise
• Sharpen the saw (As my earlier post)

It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.

Jim Sinegal: Founder and CEO of Costco, the third-largest U.S. retailer, Sinegal has proven year after year that his recipe for selling high volumes of a small variety of goods to members only is an unbeatable one. Sinegal has a habit of treating his employees extremely well, and stated many times that customer satisfaction is more important to him than pleasing shareholders. He spends 40 weeks of the year on the road, checking up on Costco's 582 stores around the world, wandering the aisles and making sure shoppers are happy and employees are not going anywhere.

Harvey Mackay has always been a “can-do” guy. After college, Mackay took an entry level job at a local envelope company and worked up into sales. Three years later, he bought a different small envelop company and turned into a $100 million business. His best selling business book sold over 4 million copies and in 35 languages.

He says people who ‘Stay Hungry & Stay Foolish’ may spend their most productive time staring at the walls: “if you discover one of your executives looking at the wall instead filling out a report, go over and congratulate him or her… they are thinking. It’s the hardest, most valuable task any person performs.

People, ‘Stay Hungry & Stay Foolish’ follow their intuition and you can define intuition as the way we translate our experience into action. Intuition is not some magical power or extraordinary mental attribute that some have and others don’t. Improved intuition comes from recognition of this unconscious routine and accumulation of real-world experience.

Seventeen Years-old Phoenix boy, who receives a letter from Dalai Lama, who instructs the teenager to go to India and fulfill his destiny as the reincarnation of an ancient Tibetan Warrior.   The boy agrees and begins a twelve year journey to becoming a monk. This decision is not expected guided by an internal compass. Many times we make decisions to change the course of our lives by following a hunch stemming only from passion, a direction not based in real-world experience but one satisfies some unfulfilled need.

Each of the stories may be different but at another level they are all same. The dream chasers took a leap of faith. Then struggled and strive for years.

The following is another dream chaser who ‘Stay Hungry & Stay Foolish’.

Tim Cook: When Steve Jobs resigned last year, he left some very big shoes to fill, but Tim Cook had had practice. Filling in for Jobs when he was at his most ill, Cook’s 14 years at Apple came to fruition when he was officially named CEO in August 2011. He may not have the charisma of his predecessor, but this soft-spoken Alabama boy works like a dog. He is said to begin sending emails before his morning jog at 4:30 a.m., and flew to China with no return ticket to sort out manufacturing issues.