By Eswaran Narasimhan, PGP 1985
When did you last give credit wholeheartedly to someone in public, or for that matter, in private? How much of your success do you owe it entirely to yourself and how much with the help of others? On the other hand, we freely tap the shoulders next to us when we need help. This I have observed most prominently among the software development teams working side by side within the scrum teams. The Beatles had in their words – “I get by with a little help from my friends….”
This reference to the shoulders of giants was attributed to Newton. It is this that I wish to write about in the following words and paragraphs. Newton attributed his success to those before him. Who it was that he wanted to give credit to is not known; however, one can clearly feel the humility within his statement.
The ability to give credit, especially where it is due, requires a few traits. One has to have a modicum of humility, a splash of an abundance mentality, and a belief that every success of yours is an outcome of some prompt and push of somebody else’s action or inaction.
One of my brushes with humility was during an intense exercise involving the development of an algorithm in the paper industry. From a big paper roll, smaller reels are cut. The positions of the cutting knives had to be determined such that the orders for paper can be produced in a manner that produces reels and sheets with less trim loss, the less the better.
This cutting plan, as it was called, was specified by a person, “Deckle Master,” as he was referred to, with more than thirty years of experience in the business. He would look at a set of orders and conjure up a cutting plan at the beginning of the week. He had a look at the results produced by the algorithm and exclaimed that there were cutting patterns that he had never seen before in his considerable experience. I was incredibly happy as he could easily have poo-poohed the whole exercise. He then proceeded to tell me the nuances and considerations that made my output more usable. For me, that was the epitome of humility.
Creditting others: A skill to learn
Should one reach a position of authority to be able to credit others with accolades? Is it a teachable trait by elders to children from a very young age?
Usually, experts often cannot give a clear step-by-step narration as to how they have come to a particular decision. My expert, the “Deckle Master,” could not answer the same when I questioned him on the process by which he arrives at a cutting plan!
A novice woodcutter wanted to stack logs of wood after the trees were cut. He asked an expert woodcutter about it. The expert replied, “Stack them in such a way that the rabbit can go between the logs but not the fox that is chasing it.”
We live in a world marked by environmental changes, changes in technology, changes in the degree of patience in people, changes in their tolerance levels, making them more demanding – all these drive us perennially to look for better solutions to the same problems. The need for the hour is collaboration – more minds, better solutions. Too many cooks spoil the broth is true only for making the broth, not valid for so many other human endeavors.
A good expert knows the power of collaboration. Milton had immortalized his life and words by concluding in his poem, “On his blindness” the verse, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
“A student of Albert Einstein’s once said to his professor, “These are the same questions you asked on last year’s test. Nothing has changed.” Einstein answered, “True enough, all the questions are the same; but this year, the answers are different.”
As Einstein observed, the answers are all different, and these answers, too, will eventually change before one’s lifetime. If collaboration is important, so is the humility in oneself to acknowledge everybody’s contribution.
It is often seen that while researchers like to increase their h-indices, fewer actually give credit to their inspiration sources and the people behind their successes in their field of research. Even in football events, the goal assist metric was first recorded by FIFA in 1994, ninety years after it was formed, and it has now become one of the most commonly used stats in the global game.
A visual metaphor. Representational Image – Pexels.
Handing over the Spotlight
After leading the Indian team to victory in the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup, Dhoni displayed his humility by allowing his teammates to take center stage during the trophy presentation ceremony. He ensured that the spotlight was shared equally, highlighting his selfless nature.
Is humility a virtue or a strategic weapon, one may ask? Like the character Pop Tate in Archie Comics, or like in the book by Oliver Goldsmith, titled “She Stoops to Conquer”?
Are we human beings wired to take credit for ourselves and not acknowledge those who helped us? The only place everyone gets their credit is at the award speech on Oscar Night. Even in business, credit notes take longer to be received than a debit note.
Knowledge, sir, should be free to all! — Harry Mudd, “I, Mudd,” Stardate 4513.3. A recurring theme in many of the Star Trek episodes. If knowledge is termed free, will the institution of giving credit die?
The AI software ChatGPT has been trained with a huge corpus of knowledge in terms of writing, reports, photographs, and other media. People have purchased every newspaper and written matter from The Times, both in print media and online form. So, it appears that quoting verbatim from the archives of The Times still needs permission. More importantly, a credit that mentions the source. Will it also entail monetary considerations? I suppose it is anybody’s guess.
Eventually, perhaps, it does not matter who received credit and who did not or for the matter, who gave credit and who did not. Somewhere, someone knows it and feels it, whether dead or alive, it hardly matters.
