A Cinderella moment is the moment of an overnight success or recognition of an individual in an Organisation.
Before we discuss about Cinderella moment any further, let me something about Keshav.
My friend Keshav works at a middle management position with a mid-size private Organisation in Mumbai. He has had a straight career graph. While his college did have the campus recruitment, he did not get through to campus interviews and hence no jump from C2C (Campus to Corporate). Keshav had to struggle for initial few months to get his first job. Thereafter over the last 15 years he has had a decent growth. Keshav comes across as a warm and soft spoken gentleman and maintains low key profile. Just like an ideal, dependable friend at workplace. His appraisals swung between moderate to good to very good and rarely excellent due to BnB effect (Boss’s perception and Bell curve :-)).
Keshav has one issue though. His bosses and super bosses do not entrust him with big, independent projects. They feel that he is too ‘mild’ to mobilise the resources and steer the project. This has started building some uneasiness and frustration in Keshav. He was struggling to understand the reason. In spite of doing all the work, why such a lack of confidence from the bosses?
Do you think Keshav ever stands a chance to lead a Project or Process or People initiatives independently?
Well the story I shared with you is of 2013 and today when we are entering into the year 2016, Keshav has handled many independent, complex projects, got awarded as one of the good people managers and has been contributing significantly to his Organisation. Well, he always was, its just that the world has started recognizing it.
The question is, how did Keshav became an overnight success or what made this turnaround? How did Keshav get his Cinderella moment?
Ask Keshav and he says what Mary Karr, an American poet, essayist and memoiri
st once quoted. “I was 40 years old before I became an overnight success, and I’d been publishing for 20 years”.
His favorite is Lionel Messi’s quote. Messi once said “It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success”.
‘So one has to know what skill sets and knowledge to acquire and stay the course irrespective of circum
stances to have his or her Cinderella moment’, I asked Keshav.
“That I don’t know, but I stayed the course and it has helped me” said Keshav.
“is there anything else” I asked.
Two more things said Keshav. Resilience and Transmutation.
Here is a brief of these tow qualities.
Resilience :
“I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits the bottom” said George S Patton Jr. How do you approach failures and handle them is more important than our ability to handle success. It’s easier said than done. Watch any sports. Especially watch the losing team. Those teams who demonstrate a composed and matured demeanor have better chance of positively channelizing their energy and focus on practicing the game to improve the probability of winning. All of us have the ability to bounce back. The ability can be deepened by observing sports and people.
Transmutation :
Sometime back, I saw an advertisement of a machine that processes decompose and transforms it into a fragrance. People who succeed are somewhat like that machine. They build their mindset in a special way. While pursuing their goals or objectives whenever they experience positive situations they draw energy from that positivity and continue with their work. When they get negative experiences, their attitude or unique mindset converts it into more energy and their intensity of action around their purpose enhances. They have an uncanny ability to transmute any experience into desired velocity.
I have seen Keshav actually take efforts around these aspects to develop himself, however now I knew the structure to decode the process which he knowingly and un-knowingly followed that led to his Cinderella moment.
Here is a quick look at the three things he mentioned.
1. Staying the course: He continued with his focus area(s) irrespective of the circumstances.
2. Resilience: He never allowed his chips to remain down for long. He bounced back from setbacks.
3. Transmutation: He developed unique mindset to convert positive and negative experiences to his advantage.
I would be happy to hear your Cinderella moments. Do share your experience/feedback.