Chapter 8

Improvement comes from within

Sometimes when I attend a course to improve myself, I wished my boss or my wife was with me listening to the lecturer.A close friend and management guru J.M. Sampath said such an attitude would not make any difference in the productivity or efficiency of the company or your personal life. He told me, I should ask myself: "Can I change or am I going to remain the same and blame others?''
"If you don't discover yourself through the process of self-inquiry, nobody else can do it for you.''
The answer, Sampath said, was in "the values an individual practises and being personally responsible for whatever initiatives or actions.''
As a consultant, he said: "I do not make any promise to change your character, attitude or your zest for personal growth.''
Scoffing at management consultants who promise positive changes to executives who attended their programmes, he said: "Change in any individual has to come from within. Don't invite me for any training of employees if you want me to make the change for them.''
I have watched many of my friends trying to make Sampath angry through their sensitive and provocative questions. He will always reply in cool and composed manner, smilingly.
The most successful people have many failures, because they persevered until they succeed. The important thing is to learn from your mistakes then and move on.

According to Sampath: "Worrying about things that may never happen is a futile effort. Time spent worrying about the future is time stolen from the present. Write down your worries."
“If you get angry because someone has passed an irritating statement or you have done it to someone, then reflect upon the incident and what provoked it.”
I have tried making affirmation in my mind not to do it again. Like Sampath, I believe you can't change what you've said and what people have said to you. Make amends to say sorry or apologise sincerely and not do it again.
Sampath has been invited by companies like Ford, Du Pont in the United States and other leading companies around the world to conduct courses on values clarification.His personal growth formula through values clarification, or "the process of identifying the causes of these conflicts and unknotting pathways, thus realising the potential for change,'' has been accepted by multinational corporations.
Sampath said that he could only provide guidance on why the individual should make changes. "Please don't ask me for prescriptions on increasing your bottomline (profits). It's only the individual who can gain greater control of his or her life, which will later contribute to better profits."
"Western formulated prescriptions will never work in Malaysia because the solution has to be context based. Today's manager is applying knowledge mindlessly without understanding that the problem and fundamental change will only occur when we change the course of behaviour.Actually, we are trying to apply some other consultant's knowledge to solve the problem and we fail.''
He questioned how we could find out whether the fruit is sour or sweet without chewing it."The taste of the fruit is in your chewing. Somebody else cannot chew the fruit for you.''
Sampath denounced "quick fixes'' and "how to succeed'' formulas propagated by western management consultants. He said it may work in the short term, but not in the long term because the executive may not understand the problem.
In the process of gaining clarity on our values, we need to understand the critical gaps that exist at different levels in each of us, which are:
· What I want to do and who am I;
· Who am I and how people around experience me;
· How I am experienced by people around and what is expected out of me.
"Each of us is value based on what we do than on what we say. Our actions speak louder than our words. Daily, we see people telling something and doing something totally different. At home, the father tells the child to tell the caller that he is not in. The child gets confused on the practice of the human value of honesty.''
Sampath related the case of a boss demanding quality products and clearing inferior quality products for quick, short-term profits.There are no short cuts to understand the path of excellence. "An individual can only understand himself better through his behaviour and the values he practises.''
In his book, Discovery, accompanied with a dozen other pamphlets, he said: "Discovery is an instrument that can make you look deep within. A learner discovers different facets of the same value and in the process widens one's understanding of each value, value related attribute, quality or trait.''
In Sampath's direct approach, he reminds friends like me to stop fault finding with others: "If only I can find fault with myself the way I find fault with others, nobody can stop my growth.''