Bridging The Integrity Gap
Edition #108
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 to Craft a Fulfilling Career
Crafting your career is an art. You might have all the talent in the world, but it requires a thoughtful approach to building your career in line with your values and ambition.
In this Kellogg Insights article, Prof. Carter Cast, Clinical Professor of Strategy, shares some very profound views on what it takes to craft a fulfilling career:
‘Integrity Gap’ is the disconnect between our stated values and our actual behaviours.
A gap often emerges gradually when we find ourselves making incremental values trade-offs that begin to erode our sense of personal integrity.
An ‘Integrity Gap’ can be avoided through reflection and consistent recalibration.
Prof. Cast says, “Check in with yourself about what motivates you and what you consider most important in your life. If you do that, you’ll be less likely to find yourself in a job that no longer aligns with your values.”
Identify jobs congruent with your motivations.
Think and reflect - “Do certain activities give you energy? If so, how can you create a work environment where you do more of that?”
Set Boundaries - Prof. Cast says, “Most integrity gaps emerge when we ignore—or never set—our non-negotiables.”
Create little tests to help navigate into such a future.
Read the entire article here.
Dr. Shubha Tole on Understanding the Brain's Inner Workings
Dr.Shubha Tole obtained her BSc in Life Sciences and Biochemistry from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai (1987). Her MSc and PhD are from Caltech, USA. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago and joined the Tata Institute in Mumbai, India, as a faculty member in 1999. Dr.Tole received the Infosys Science Foundation Award for Life Sciences in 2014.
In this conversation on the Inductive Economy Podcast, she shares her ideas on:
How she developed an interest in Neuroscience as a child.
Why it is perfectly ok to disagree and collaborate too.
How the brain, or the Central Nervous System, is formed from a simple sheet of cells. Her explanation of concepts through analogies is brilliant.
How we need to encourage curiosity and learning more than just professional degrees.
How a PhD trains your mind in ways it’s not been trained before.
Over time, she realised that she could learn from anybody.
You can listen to the entire podcast on:
Entrepreneurship Gives Life Meaning
At Stanford eCenter, David Friedberg, a businessman, entrepreneur, and angel investor, spoke about what you need to have in you to be an entrepreneur or, if you are thinking of a start-up, what are the hard truths around which you must be ready for, to go through this journey. It is a brilliant talk and a must-watch for anybody who either wants to be an entrepreneur, wants to start-up or even wants to work for a start-up.
Here are some key takeaways:
Have a larger purpose and goal or a problem you want to solve if you want to be an entrepreneur or thinking of a start-up - solve a big problem.
The chances of you being successful a rockstar entrepreneur or start-up founder is as low as 0006%! - rockstar defined as wealth created being $1B vs wealth created being $0.0! Therefore, this is a long, hard and painful journey fraught with risks and carrying a potential of no rewards at the end of it all.
The reason for starting up or being an entrepreneur must not start with the financial rewards as the end goal.
Being self-aware and ruthlessly honest with yourself is crucial in an entrepreneurship journey.
Get rid of luck by constantly removing the unknowns, knowing the importance of ‘grind’ in any entrepreneurial journey, and the importance of learning to innovate.
You can watch the entire talk by clicking the above video link.
Bridging The Integrity Gap
The ‘Integrity Gap’ is a fundamental tenet that differentiates an individual from having both a successful and fulfilling career.
Most aspire to a successful and fulfilling career. In reality, very few achieve both simultaneously. Why?
When your stated values are in divergence from your behaviour, it creates a deep chasm within you because what you do every day and what you truly believe in are not aligned. This leaves you dissatisfied even though you may have ticked all the boxes of what determines a successful career - money, position, growth, reputation and recognition, which most consider as a marker for success. However, do all these markers of success lead to a fulfilling career for you? It may not always be true.
Fulfilment is a feeling of satisfaction of achieving or realising your desired goals or dreams on your terms - where it completely aligns with your inner core values. Your values are extremely personal to you - being treated with respect, not being constrained but having the freedom to try things, prudence and frugality in how money is spent, doing work that is meaningful to society, being involved in a piece of work that is done with deep research, thought and analysis, gaining the respect of others, being trusted, the importance of making your children successful etc.
All these may not necessarily align with the job you sign up for, as there are compromises you need to make incrementally over time, as life is not perfect. However, when there is a huge deviation from these values, and the compromises you make are in total misalignment with your inner core values, you begin to get completely dissatisfied. When your behaviour is not aligned with what you believe in, it starts to shake your personal integrity. You start to compromise at work for money, comfort, position, power, etc., and that’s when the downward spiral begins. You have a feeling of having ‘everything’ at the end of your career but not having ‘anything’. This leads to dissatisfaction and lack of fulfilment.
What is essential for you to consider is that success is closely related to your values and not what others think or consider as success. Therefore, it requires ruthless honesty to look at your face in the mirror, be highly self-aware and tell yourself what you will not compromise or be willing to compromise. However, it cannot shake the foundation of your core inner values.
In one of the early editions of this newsletter, we had written about this, based on a book and article written by the legendary Harvard School Professor Clayton Christensen - ‘How Do You Measure Your Life?’ where he writes, “It’s quite startling that a significant fraction of the 900 students that HBS draws each year from the world’s best have given little thought to the purpose of their lives.”
Like companies, you need a strategy and purpose if you want to bridge the ‘Integrity Gap’. If your behaviour is not in alignment with your values, simply walk away or refuse to compromise. It is tough, but achieving fulfilment and success simultaneously is not easy, either.
Some lessons we learnt from this week’s missions:
An ‘Integrity gap’ often emerges gradually when you make incremental value trade-offs in your career over time that can erode your sense of personal integrity. Avoid it at all costs.
Never forget that you can learn from anybody, regardless of age or experience, and practice the art of simultaneously disagreeing and collaborating.
The reason for starting up or being an entrepreneur must not start with the financial rewards as the end goal.