104 Monday Musings

104 Monday Musings The tale is in the telling.

The other day I had the fortune of listening to the maverick and extremely talented film maker Sudhir Mishra. For the un initiated, Sidhir who cut his teeth with a film like ‘ Jaane bhi do yaro“ has in the recent times directed films like Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi and Khoya Khoya Chaand. 

I recount for you two thoughts from what he had to say that day. First – film making is simultaneously an act of arrogance as well as an act of humility. Arrogance in the sense that hundreds have told their stories since decades and one still believes that he can say something more and something better. Humility in the sense that the product speaks to you after it has been made. It tells you how good or bad it has been.

Let me pick up where the last strand thought leaves. Each one of us are creators of something or the other – of performance, of creativity or teams or culture  - irrespective of whether we are film makers or managers. Each day we churn out our ‘produce/product’. We may have a self image of selves in which we might have a certain view of our capabilities, mostly good and sometimes exaggerated, but reality is revealed only once we analyse our product. The soil may believe a thing or two about its fertility but the crop is its ultimate expression.

Our product/produce is our signature, the ultimate expression of our worth. The wise one will compare his self image with the quality of his produce and check for differences, deviations and disparities. What we create talks to us – sometimes softly but mostly it shouts. The strategy we weave, the portrait we draw, the managerial decisions we take, the teams we lead, the culture we have built – talks to us. Do we listen and do we respond?

The second thought that I brought back from that event was when Sudhir said – ‘The tale is in the telling’.  As a training professional in a life insurance company I have always wondered what is that I will add to the universe of life insurance selling – that has not already been said or talked or taught. My friends in other walks of life may be asking similar questions. I guess much of greatness and much of genius will be revealed in telling the tale differently than in telling a new tale. Most of live and work in familiar spaces – which have been walked on by millions before us, worked on by thousands before us, impacted and affected by hundreds before us. Our glory and our redemption lies not in getting burdened by the history of those hundreds, and thousands and millions, but in the audacity of our own abilities to tell the tale differently.

So irrespective of whether you are a film maker or a manager, go ahead and tell it the way you see it – you always had different eyes, now is the time to have a different vision.

Guru