Values Vs Skills
Edition #125
The ContraMind Code
Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and enables you to draw a blueprint on what it takes to get extraordinary things done. Please share your valuable thoughts and comments and start a conversation.
Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession to drive peak performance.
How I Raised My Social Intelligence.
Bryan Caplan, Professor, American Economist and author shares some tips on how he learnt to improve his social intelligence.
Here are some principles that he mentions he would teach himself:
Good conversation is an exchange - ‘You have to be interested in what I have to say; I have to be interested in what you have to say. This is an important reason why people with conventional interests seem more socially intelligent.’
Be friendly - ‘A strong presumption in favour of kindness and respect almost never hurts you and often helps you.’
Keeping friends is more important than getting your way - ‘You should think twice before asking anyone for help. If you still think it’s a good idea, try to make your request easy to refuse.’
Bryan ends the article beautifully - “Admittedly if your social intelligence has always been high, my recommendations will strike you as obvious. If they’re so obvious, though, why do so many smart people act like they don’t know them?”
Read the entire article here.
Why Fashion Industry Needs A Makeover With Imran Amed.
In the Masters of Scale podcast, Imran Amed, editor-in-chief of Business of Fashion, provides a framework for understanding the fashion industry trends and the economic impact and challenges the industry is going through right now.
Here are key thoughts that he shares for you to think and reflect on:
The challenge of corporatisation of luxury business.
The current crisis in the online luxury business.
Why creativity is the lifeblood of fashion.
Why is it hard to be creative inside large corporate companies - the importance of curation over growth in luxury goods.
LVMH recently appointed Pharrell Williams, an American musician, as their creative director and its impact on the fashion industry. LVMH is relooking at itself as a cultural brand rather than a fashion brand.
The business model of fast fashion revolves around data and intelligence, but the biggest issue that is not discussed widely is the amount of waste it creates.
The fashion industry needs to change customers’ relationship with their clothes.
Key trends to look out for in the fashion industry - Integration of Artificial Intelligence and creativity, the rise of the Indian fashion market and fashion’s role in addressing the climate crisis.
You can also listen to this episode on:
Morris Chang, In Conversation With Jen-Hsun Huang.
Dr. Morris Chang is the founding chairman of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd. (TSMC), a revolutionary enterprise he founded in 1987. TSMC is a dedicated silicon foundry, an independent factory available to anyone for producing integrated circuits. He is in conversation with Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder, president and CEO of NVIDIA Corporation.
Here are some thoughts that have been shared by Dr.Morris Chang for you to reflect on:
How the idea of a TSMC as a semiconductor foundry was formed, and how they built the capacity to help their customers grow rapidly.
There are different phases of building a company. During the survival phase, defining the company's values is paramount. The vision changes over time as the company grows, but the values don’t.
The importance of feeling strongly about customers and focussing on the growth and success of customers.
“A leader has to mentally adjust to the changing status of the company.”
“The most important customers were not the first customers who backed us in our early years. The most important customers for TSMC in their early years were still being born. ”
“I consider any business, greater than world economic GDP growth, as a good business.”
Some grooming tips for selecting the next CEO for TSMC were: Adherence to values came first, skills set came next—operations and sales, imagination, and how smart the person is were the key criteria he looked for in his successor.
Moore’s law is a relentless taskmaster. The best people are able to adapt and change from time to time.
Agility is tough to teach to large corporations.
You can watch the entire conversation by clicking the above video.
Values Vs Skills
All through our life, be it in school or college or even for a job, what is constantly tested and scored for is your skill. Skills are tested, measured and scored. Think of the following for a minute:
When you finally look at your own mark sheets, the grades reflect your test of skills and how well you have done in each subject.
When you appear for competitive exams, again, you are subjected to an intense test of skills to evaluate whether you are better than others in those skills.
When you represent your school, college or even your company in any tournament or any corporate championships, you are tested for your skill.
Finally, every year, your salary increases and your bonus is based on how well you have put your skills to use to achieve results, and you are rewarded for it.
The question really is how do you measure and score for values? Behind all the great skills you may have and you keep improving year after year, your values are the ones that help you stay on top of your game in life.
However, values never get a score! It is neither in a mark sheet, nor in a certificate, nor in an appointment or performance appraisal letter if you are working for a company. It is only your values which make all the difference - be it your success or failure.
This is precisely the reason why Dr. Morris Chang mentioned it so many times, during the conversation, as to how he gave a lot of importance to adherence to values.
What are values?
Values are basic and fundamental beliefs that guide or motivate attitudes or actions.
Values are the motive behind purposeful action.
Values are essential to ethics.
Values specify a relationship between you as a person and your goal.
Your personal values determine who you are and who you want to be.
When personal and professional values are aligned, people feel more fulfilled and happy in anything they do.
Therefore, values are simply the foundation over which your skills become embedded. Whenever you take up something - for example, deciding on a profession you want to pursue for life, working for a company, starting up your own company with a few people or picking up your successor for your team or your department or your company, alignment with your own values is the most vital. Not enough attention is paid as it cannot be measured, but it needs to be felt, observed and experienced.
Skills are necessary, but values determine how long one can go and reach the pinnacle of glory in their own terms and definition.
Remember, skills get scored constantly, and values never get scored but will genuinely differentiate the best from the ordinary.
Some lessons we learnt from this week’s missions:
Social intelligence is easy to know but hard to put into practice.
It’s hard to maintain creativity in large corporate companies.
A leader has to mentally adjust to the changing status of his company over time.
Skills get scored all the time, but values don’t get a score but make all the difference.