Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- Concentration: Focus on one task at a time to eliminate distractions and fully engage your mind. This sharp focus enhances your productivity and effectiveness in achieving goals.
- Consistency: Maintain steady and reliable efforts towards your goals. Consistency builds trust and credibility and helps you develop a strong reputation for reliability and commitment.
- Cooperation: Collaborate effectively with others, recognizing that many successes come from collective effort. Effective teamwork and mutual support are essential for personal and organizational achievements.
Mastering these disciplines will help you improve your performance, build strong relationships, and achieve your objectives more successfully.
In simple terms, if we define success as the attainment of predetermined goals, aims, and objectives, then we need to focus on applying three important disciplines effectively: Concentration, Consistency, and Cooperation.
These are the rudiments of achievements in any field of activity. Though used liberally by many, including management experts, they hold great significance for college graduates preparing for the challenges ahead in their careers.
1. Concentration
Concentration can, in a way, be related to focus. It is best understood with the following analogy. Let us examine the effect of a prism and a magnifying glass on sun rays.
When sun rays pass through a prism, you get pretty cool color bands, but no heat. A prism refracts light, deflecting it from a straight path by refraction, causing the light to split.
The split light naturally does not generate heat. The reverse is true for a magnifying glass—it concentrates the sun’s rays, generating heat and even fire.
The importance of concentration and focus in achieving goals and success cannot be overstated. We need to ask ourselves whether we resemble the prism or the magnifying glass. Being concentrated does not mean doing only one task; it means focusing entirely on the task at hand, without distractions like cell phones or email.
Concentration is achieved when your mind is fully engaged with your actions. The mind has a natural tendency to waver, worry about the past, and be anxious about the future.
For example, when a cricketer drops a simple catch, it’s because his hand actions and mind focus are not aligned. Concentration plays a crucial role in our daily lives and careers.
Our mind is like a monkey. It jumps from one thought to another, irrespective of body actions. Concentration is a technique to hold our mind on the task under action.
A person with a high degree of concentration as part of their personality creates a positive impact through their body language and results. When attending meetings, they listen carefully, talk sensibly, and analyze scientifically. They are 100% present.
Excellent quality work and breakthrough innovation result from concentration, while a lack of it can lead to poor interpersonal and communication skills, low-quality products or services, and software with bugs.
2. Consistency
You might have heard terms like ‘consistent performance,’ ‘consistency theory,’ or ‘consistent efforts.’ The ‘consistent behavior’ is an important part of one’s personality. People who display this are respected and valued more—they are more powerful. Like concentration, consistency is also related to our mind.
Consistency is a skill directed towards an ideal or a goal set to achieve. As we work towards the goal, the mind may slip into other attractions, causing our actions to deviate from the set goal. Here, your intellect plays a significant role in keeping all actions aligned with the goal. When your intellect channelizes actions in the set direction, you gain consistency. The practice of consistency lends power, energy, and strength to action. Just as water or wind flowing in one direction has power, actions channelized in one direction become powerful.
When a person or a company displays similar behavior or encourages similar decisions in repeated situations, they are regarded as having strong values or beliefs.
This is due to consistency as a characteristic of their personality. Consider the following examples:
- A cricketer’s consistent performance match after match
- Infosys’s strong emphasis on business ethics
- GE’s work culture of innovation and creativity
- Oracle’s aggressive approach to growth
These entities gain a unique identity due to their consistent display of specific behaviors. Similarly, your repeated behavior—like attending all events and meetings on time—brands you as ‘punctual.’ You may also be recognized as a person with ‘initiative,’ ‘planning and organization,’ ‘trustworthiness,’ or ‘openness to new ideas.’
Consistency in a Job Interview: The interviewer is concluding at the end of an interview, based on your answers to different questions, whether you are focused on making a career in a particular functional area and in the respective company. He is taking note of various 'signals' from you during the interaction as to whether you can make a good professional who fits in the company’s culture and value system.
3. Cooperation
Success or achievement is the result of one’s concentration, consistency, personal drive, and efforts on one hand, and the contribution of many others on the other. Some people, after achieving something great, tend to give all the credit to themselves, viewing it as the result of their hard work and talent.
In reality, many contributors make an achievement possible. Whether you call it teamwork, cooperation, or interpersonal skills, this ‘C’ is critical to achieving individual as well as group or organizational success.
As Orison Swett Marden wisely said, “No employer today is independent of those about him. He cannot succeed alone, no matter how great his ability or capital. Business today is more than ever a question of cooperation.”
Examples like the game of cricket or football, river rafting or boat racing, project execution, or filmmaking are well-known to all of us. What sometimes confuses us are achievements in roles such as sales, R&D, car racing, or tennis, which we think are purely the result of individual contribution.
However, in reality, many people contribute, directly or indirectly, to making this success possible.
Conclusion
In summary, the journey to success hinges on mastering three fundamental disciplines: concentration, consistency, and cooperation. Each plays a crucial role in achieving your goals and excelling in your career.
