::::|| VU ||:::: Winners Don't Have to Win.

Winners Don’t Have to Win

The anatomy of a winner

Dougal was enjoying his birthday celebration. Surrounded by family and friends, life was good. Yet every time he encountered his very successful neighbors, Lucius and Julia, he felt a twinge of discomfort. They had such a successful business, had won many awards, and seemed to be at the very top of their industry.

Dougal, who was the CEO of his company, had recently realized that the root of his unhappiness was envy of Lucius and Julia, as well as other notable business leaders with whom he was acquainted. He knew it was irrational. His company was doing very well, made a healthy profit each year, and enjoyed the favor of many loyal customers. Yet he had never achieved the sort of recognition enjoyed by the top firms.

He always seemed to be an “also-ran” in the race for recognition as the very best, and felt unable to call himself a true winner in the world of business.

For every winner there must be someone who came in second. Coming in second can be better than winning. Very few empires last for long, very few consumer goods remain in pristine condition for long, and very few winners stay on top for long.

Companies and individuals sometimes over-extend themselves in their drive for the peak.

Getting to the top is both a challenge and a goal. Staying on top demands as much energy as getting to the top. Winners’ efforts to stay there, and the energy they expend as they try to stave off their eventual fall, can be financially and emotionally upsetting.

After the euphoria of winning, winners may feel more precarious and exposed because they are alone at the top—alone and enduring much more scrutiny. After much success, executives may find the challenge diminished and the competitive urge diluted. This often leads to unhappy winners who have run out of goals, with nowhere to go but down. Many in this malcontent condition have proceeded to set unwise goals that have contributed to their own downfall. The slide from the pinnacle can be painful, sometimes leading right into the black hole of bankruptcy.

Being number two can be a blessing. It is lonely at the top. Below, you are never alone.

Below, you always have company. It can be more comfortable being number two. You can stay a contender forever, always a threat to number one, yet never having to expend your resources in an exhausting effort to reach for the fabled top spot. Steady success as number two can result in greater long-term profits derived from high quality operations, constancy, and organizational stability.

Not having to be the biggest, fastest, strongest, or most diverse doesn’t mean you are not the best. The best is a state of mind: your own mind, the mind of your staff, and the mind of your clients. Life is a journey, not a race, and being the best is not attained as you pass a winning post; it is something that true winners carry with them as they travel through life.

Dougal was also dismayed by the thought that as he was here cutting cake and drinking champagne at his birthday celebration, problems were piled up on his desk at work. He felt that a business with problems was a problem business. He longed for a day when he would not have to face managers rushing in with crisis after crisis, and seemingly endless requests for action. He decided that he was trying to do too much.

It was time to get better at delegating to his very capable president. That thought started to put him at ease. The more he considered it, the more he was able to relax.

Winners understand the shelf life of problems. Winners never view problems as a burden. They know that when one is solved, another will be ready to take its place. Many managers assume, often subconsciously, that one magical day all their problems will go away.

Unfortunately, most will retire, still waiting for this magical charm to appear.

The real magic occurs when you realize that business problems can be good. You are going to have them anyway, so why not make a friend out of an enemy? We tend to shy away from the unpleasant, pretending it's not really there, shunting it aside so we do not have to deal with it, or we deal with it as a burden. Winners see problems as instructive: a way to improve operations, products, and services.

Are your problems today identical to those you had two or three years ago? Similar perhaps, but identical? probably not. Milk on the supermarket shelf has a date stamp. Every week when you go shopping, you notice that the milk on the shelf has a new date stamped on it.

Most problems are like this. They also have a shelf life. The problems you have today are different from those you had last year. The problems you will have next year will be different from those you have today. Realizing that problems have a shelf life opens up a new vista.

Winners see the parade of problems as normal, each with a solution to be identified and a lesson to be learned.

The type of problem encountered is often linked to one’s stage of business growth. With this realization you might even anticipate the problems ahead as you move towards the next phase of your development. Being forewarned is being forearmed. You might be able to mitigate, or even prevent, a future problem if you recognize the stage you are in and think ahead. But do not have sleepless nights worrying about a problem that has not yet arrived.

When it comes, you’ll solve it just as you will solve today’s problem, and just as you solved last year's problem.

A problem might be a future opportunity in disguise. The ability to see the opportunity depends on your attitude, your positive approach, and your willingness to look past the gloom and notice a gleam of gold in the half-shadowed cracks. See it, extract it, and profit from it. Do not fight problems. Accept them not necessarily as a friend, but at least as a normal condition of living. Accepting a problem lets you get closer to it so you can examine it and its source, and then deal with it appropriately. Problems are always going to arise, but by seeing them as lessons, we can use them to adapt, to learn, and to grow.

Thanks
Best Regards,
Dr. Muhammad Kashif Mahmood.
MD / FP

Al-Mustafa Medicare
E-mail address: dr.mkm12@gmail.com
Mobile # +0092-308-7640486.