Applying Serenity Prayer

This post is not a relegious sermon. Can we apply this prayer to real life?

The Serenity Prayer is the common name for a prayer written by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

How do we apply this to real life? There are many things not in our control, even if we wish to change them. There are some things in our control that we can ( but we ignore or avoid ). For any business or personal problem, the wisdom to know the difference means figuring out what you can change and what you cannot.

There is no point fretting over what you cannot change. There is no time to be lost in changing the things you can to solve the problem. As you brainstorm solutions to the problem, keep this prayer in mind. It will save lot of time and money!

Spreadsheet vs Street Fight

You can analyze all you want, get second/third/fourth…’n’ th opinion/ cross verify etc etc. Ultimately you have to take the plunge. That’s the only way you will know if an idea will actually work. You have to move from Spread Sheet to Street Fight. And that takes a special quality!

You can simulate /scenario play / do sensitivity analysis all you want. It still wont replace the real world. Not everyone has the guts to take the plunge.

1.The 40–70 rule of Colin Powell : Colin Powell, former head of US military forces and former Secretary of State is a well-known and respected strategist and leader. On this particular subject of making tough decisions, Powell prescribes the amount of information that one needs to make the decision. He says that we need between 40 and 70 percent of the total information to make a decision.

He believes that with less than 40 percent of information, we are bound to make a wrong decision. At the same time, if we keep looking for information beyond 70 percent, then by the time we make the decision, it will be so late that others will have taken that decision and moved on. It will be too late!

2.Pivot : In the world that we live in today, the ‘re-imagine’ cycles are significantly shortened. Someone is always thinking of a radically better way to do things and experimenting. It is more critical for you to try something and then PIVOT to what works better, rather than wait forever to try something first time.

3.Fail Fast : Celebrating learnings from failures does not come easy to many. Especially the traditionalists. Like Jeff Bezos said famously “ if I know the result before the experiment , its not an experiment! “ . While no-one plans for failures, do not fear it. Embrace the learning.

4.Create or Critique : Another common conundrum is the fear of criticism. It might be pertinent to know that without creating first, there is nothing to criticize.

5.Agile Design : Design everything to be agile, flexible, variable and malleable. That way , making course corrections is easier and you will have less legacy baggage and can move on quickly.

It takes some special attributes to move from Spread Sheet to Street Fight. And the street matters more , any day!