Recipe for Growth

Recently I read an article written by Prof. Ajit Ranade in India Today.  An alumnus of IIMA, he writes about why IIMA has always attracted the best students in the country and remained at the forefront of management education.  One sentence by him caught my attention, ‘many gold medalists got their egos deflated in the very first term’.  Having been part of IIMA for two years, I could very well relate to this.  I remembered another instance.  Few years ago I met the Director of a B-School at Bengaluru, who was also an alumnus of IIMA.  She told me, ‘I was a rank holder in my school. I got first rank in my pre-degree and again a first rank in my B.Sc. Mathematics from Bangalore University.  I was considered an extraordinary scholar in my family and friends’ circle.  With this aura of superiority, I landed at IIMA.  Within no time, I realized that everyone else was more intelligent than me and nobody cared about my ranks’.  

So, what happens when we are surrounded by people who are more intelligent and knowledgeable than us?  Before answering that question, let me touch up on two more instances.  Prof. Ravi J Mathai, the first full-time director of IIMA, was not even a postgraduate.  But what he did at IIMA was to create a team of academicians, where almost everyone was more qualified than him and led the institute to greater heights.  Prof. P V Indiresan, the ex-Director of IIT Madras, spoke about his contributions to IIT at a function organised to confer the IEEE Fellowship on him.  He said, ‘the best thing I did for IIT is to induce a number of outstanding persons to give up lucrative careers elsewhere to join in the struggle for life here in IIT. That is my pride: I persuaded a number of minds greater than mine to join IIT’. 

There lies the answer to my question.  When we are surrounded by people who are slightly less in caliber and intellect, we would definitely feel a sense of superiority.  But that feeling is of no use.  It doesn’t allow us to push beyond the comfort zone, to scale greater heights and grow.  But when we are in the company of people better than us in terms of knowledge, intellect, and skills, we will be motivated to work harder and grow.  But, we need to carefully keep away jealousy.  It is very much possible to find people younger than us and coming from lesser backgrounds to be more knowledgeable than us.  We need to humbly accept the truth and go hand in hand with them. 

Even our ancient wisdom advocates ‘Satsang’, being in the company of good (better) people.  So, one of the recipes for growth is – Surround yourself with people who are better than you!