Preempting Competition

A trip to Udaipur is incomplete without a visit to the City Palace. Against the advice of my better half (Statutory warning: Going against the advice of your spouse, can be injurious to health), I decided to engage a guide for the tour of the palace. These guides can speak Hindi (obviously), English, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, French and a few other languages. The guides charge a differentiated rate for each language, with charges for Hindi being the lowest.

Since we are not from South of the Vindhyas, we preferred Hindi. I have heard that now even in Chennai, the auto drivers speak Hindi, which was unthinkable, fifteen years ago. The IT enabled services industry has managed to unite the country in more ways than we can think of.

The guide led us through the narrow corridors of the palace. The rulers of Udaipur were called Maharanas as they have been undefeated. The most famous of the Maharanas is Rana Pratap. Apparently, Rana Pratap never enjoyed the comforts of the palace and spent his life fighting the Mughals.

The palace has paintings of the famous battle of Haldighati.   It took a cranky four year old to point out a detail in the painting which sowed the seed for this blog. “Dad, the horse looks like an elephant!” As an ‘educated’ parent I dismissed the observation, “Beta, it is a horse not an elephant!” The kids insistence, forced me to look closely, and behind me the guide was smiling. “Look properly sir, it is a horse with an elephant’s trunk!!”

 “Sir, what you are seeing is the famous battle of Haldighati, fought between Maharana Pratap and the Mughals, led by Raja Mansing of Jaipur. Maharana Pratap’s army consisted of horses, while the Mughal army had elephants. The horses are no match for elephants. Hence their faces were covered with elephant trunk masks. In the battlefield, the elephant, seeing the horse with the trunk, will think it is a baby elephant and not attack the same.”

No wonder, the Ranas of Udaipur are undefeated. They have been one step ahead in their game, and pre-empted the competition. Similarly the auto drivers of Chennai have realised that with ITES coming in, there is going to be an influx of non-Tamilians, and they need to be catered to. If they remain stubborn, somebody is going to come in and capture their space.

This leads me to ponder over how we think about our careers. In an extremely competitive and hardworking environment, I have always focussed on getting a good rating and the next promotion. I have always defined my competition, as my peers within the organisation. As long as I am with them or one step ahead of them, it is fine.

The battle of Haldighati, has changed my perspective. I now need to look at competition from the perspective of survival. In response to Mandira Bedi hosting the 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup on TV, Harsha Bhogle once mentioned, “We always thought competition would come from ex-cricketers, we never thought it would come from noodle straps, necklines and hemlines!!” My question today, is where is competition coming from?

To answer this question, I need to change the way I look at competition. My competition is no longer my peers. I need to look at my work and check, whether my skills will be relevant five (maybe three) years from now. I need not bother about the promotion or the increment.

The key word is ‘survival’. I am sure the horses were uncomfortable galloping with the elephant mask on. I am sure they practised hard enough, so they were ready for the battle. They were out of their comfort zone, I need to be out of mine. I need to look at what mask I have to wear, to survive the next five years.

Just yesterday, I read that the ex-CFO of Infosys, in his early 40s is joining Ola. Does he know something, that I don’t? Wonder if it is time to sell my Infy and TCS stock holding, and invest in Ola, Flipkart, Snapdeal etc.

The auto drivers of Chennai, the tourist guides of Udaipur and the battle of Haldighati have clearly signalled that re-inventing yourself is the name of the game. If the skills are not relevant, the horse will be trampled by the elephant.