This is a pet theory of mine and I happily acknowledge it could be wrong. A difference I noticed in how I was raised and how I think kids in USA are raised was that for me it was always ” If you do not do xyz then pqr will happen” Xyz was like drinking milk. PQR was like Gabbar will come or XYZ was studying hard and PQR was like being on the streets.
The result was that I had a strong fear of failure and a strong work ethic. In America there is a sense of optimism and self esteem with the result being a very low fear of failure and a relatively poorer work ethic.
Of course these are broad generalizations but I think I am seeing a difference in the way kids are being raised today in India which is a little more balanced.
Do people agree that fear of failure should be less ?I tend to think in an entrepreneurial society failure has to be an option. ? Is this fear decreasing in India ?
Any comments on work ethic ? My observation is that Silicon Valley startup productivity is atleast 2X what I have observed in India. True ?
This post was inspired by a visit to a school exhibition which I will cover in the next post.
- Community Platform For Ward 103 - November 22, 2012
- Municipal Elections New Delhi-16 days for rolls to close - October 15, 2011
- The next Facebook ? - September 17, 2011
I think it’s wrong to shift the blame entirely upon the society in which we’ve been raised. That’s a given, we had no choice because we were born in. What we did with the rest of our life had entirely been in our control just yet.
Recognize the biggest sin of all is inadvertence. Not being fully awake. The future descends equally on everyone, but some notice it faster because they are always pushing the limits of their knowledge, asking questions and picking up on weak signals. Keep eyes and ears close to the ground to hear its rumblings, gut it out and react.
We have to be willing to place intelligent bets, and give up the smoothness of predictability for the non-linear upsides of intelligent risk taking. Not all bets will lead to success but there’s hardly any safety in passivity either. We need to have the self confidence to set a direction but not the arrogance to fight the need to change if market conditions so require.
I don’t know whether the XX -> YY is what creates a fear of failure. It creates a fear all right, but not that of failure, in my opinion. The fear of failure is a more pervasive middle-class effect, one I was party to as well; this stemmed from the lack of opportunities and/or cushions of support.
This situation does not exist any longer, which explains the more balanced upbringing. The answer to “zyada se zyada kya hoga?” is now less scary than ever before. The fear of failure will always exist. Lower levels encourage entrepreneurship perhaps – but isn’t it true that for the most famous of those in India that made it big, failure was not an option? Dhirubhai Ambani, Sunil Mittal and the like came from modest backgrounds.
Perhaps the answer to that is not the fear of failure, it’s the impact of failure. The effect of lowered social pressures, higher savings, and more opportunities makes failure more palatable perhaps.
Productivity wise: Maybe this is true for tech startups or hi-fi offices. People here are far more productive in general – from accountants to waiters to bus conductors to neighbourhood dukaan owners. To that cook-in-singapore comment, I would say this does not apply to the more common hotels – in Bangalore visit “fanoos” or “Adigas” or most of the standing-place-only restaurants, there’s no way anyone in the west would come close to that level of productivity.
but yes, tech has that issue. I can’t even seem to get people to understand that spending time creating “sub projects” is far more productive than compiling the MASSIVE 120 MB project for every micro change you make. Even in todays times of blazingly fast compilers I think doing that is evil. But why should techies be productive dammit, when the entire business model is man-month billing?
Alok, as for Productivity is concerned, I remember Ashish kapur, MD@YoCHina, once saying to me that dont think labor is cheap in India. Labor is cheap in India because productivity is low. Not just the SiliconValley envrionemtn, even if you compare the productivity of a cook in singapore to that in India, Singapore will come out higher in terms of productivity.
Second point, in terms of silicon valley productivity, is that startups, specially technology startups are more suited to a developed economy. In india, its still has a long way to go before it reaches an inflexion point. first, i guess its the old economy firms that need to touch the productivity frontier, utilizing their capital, cash and humar resources effectively. blah blah blah..
anyway, it was great to listen to u at Orchids…
I think there is less fear of failure in the US because there is a welfare system that works! Even in the worst case scenario, you will hardly find people in US dying of hunger. Having said that, success is at a premium in US too, and there is a distinct division in society based on class, level of affluence et al.
As for India, it will be hard to generalize because prosperity and class difference is much more sharp here. Its people at the bottom of pyramid (unskilled, semi educated) who have nothing to loose– who try out different things at different moment of time. Or its the people who have had an entrepreneurial culture at home ( read marwaris et al) or with relatively stable sources of income — they are the ones who have the resources to try out something.
Entreprenuership or startups are not mutually inclusive, a person can be entrepreneurial in many other ways. However, with majority of the educated bachelor junta still hopping onto IT/BPO services bandwagon, you can still conclude that fear of failure is high.
Hi Sanjay
I agree that fear of failure is one major reason leading to taking lower risks.
But we have to look for the reason for the fear of failure. My theory is that this fear is due to the fact that India is a very family-oriented society. By this I mean that whatever you do reflects on your family. All your success is trumpeted around, and all your failures are talked about in family circles etc etc. With this, there are 2 main results
— Risk Aversion – You tend to do things that are less likely to fail so that at least you don’t look bad
— Conformity – You tend to do things that others approve of. This is so that when your mom says that my dad is working in XYZ etc, everybody thinks you have a great job etc instead of “say what” looks all around.
In the US it is very much an individualistic society, so much so that in many times the parents don’t care as much what you do as long as you make enough to feed yourself, do not stay with them and don’t get yourself killed. In such a culture, there are 2 main results –
— You don’t care about what other people think. So you do what you love. Go on a world tour, hike the Appalachian trail, continue to be a great developer rather than be a Project Manager etc
— Take more risks
Looking at the general direction in which urban Indian society is shaping up, I would say that the risk aversion and conformity will move out in another 10-15 years (ie another generation). Due to more people moving out of the family influence and hence losing touch with the extended family of cousins, people are becoming very individualistic.