Am attempting in this article to stitch together different things. Do allow yourself a second reading if this leaves you a little confused, at first. 

Murphy Exists: We all know Murphy’s Law. What I mean by saying that Murphy Exists is simply this – If he didn’t exist you wouldn’t have a job. We as a society wouldn’t experience any breakthroughs or extraordinary successes.  

What is Murphy’s Law? Just for the sake of an example – What is the probability of a slice of bread falling with the buttered side down? Some say 100%. Well Murphy says the probability is directly proportionate to the price of the carpet! In other words if there isn’t a carpet – zilch!   

Let me give you a very recent example of Murphy hitting me. I was last week doing a training program in Mysore. Thursday morning I packed my bag, put it in my car so I could leave straight from office for Mysore. So, Thursday evening as I was getting out of office to head towards the Bus Station to board a bus from Bangalore to Mysore, my head buzzing with all sorts of things, I started thinking that why should I be carrying a full bag for just two nights. Very logical thought. So I took out a couple of T-Shirts and necessities from my bag and put it in my laptop bag. In the process took one of my laptops out (I use two) and put it in my bag and left in the car. I reach Mysore. I need music for this particular workshop. Guess where the music is? There is more to this. I thought, no big deal. I had time on my hand. So I went to the market and bought new CD’s. Problem solved. In the morning I ask the conference hall for the CD Player. Now take this – My dear friend who runs this center tells me that for six years no one asked for a CD player so last night he took it home. Long live Murphy! 

How does Murphy Exist in our daily corporate lives? It’s very simple. It basically means that from time to time one of your resources will be hit by Murphy and his or her ability to produce or deliver will go down. At times even in the opposite direction. The resource can be a machine or a person.  It happens all the time – Ever had a salesperson who just can’t get a sale? Ever had an accountant who messes things up even more? Ever had an HR person who just doesn’t understand people? Ever had a marketing person who spent the entire budget and didn’t generate a single lead? Ever had a transporter whose vehicle broke down only on the way to your best customer? Ever had an experience in the stock market where all the growth disappeared just when you bought that stock?   

If Murphy didn’t exist, everything would be fine. There will be no bottlenecks and there will be no urgencies. Everything will be as planned or thought. My dear friend, most of us will have nothing to do.  

Having said that Murphy does exist, Murphy also is the opportunity. The opportunity will arise and can bring benefits if and only if you realize that Murphy exists and then diminish him. If you ignore it as part of life, the opportunity will ignore you too. Don’t rush to agree with this though because once you agree with it you are hooked, everything else will seem illogical. Let me put this statement further in perspective – it says that opportunity will arise only if Murphy exists. It doesn’t mean that the opportunity will necessarily be beneficial.  Remember the words that it can bring benefits. Another thing to remember though is that Murphy (the limitation) may be unrecognized, that is what I mean by ignoring it as a part of life. How does Murphy go unrecognized? Lets go back 200 years ago. At the time it was not feasible for a person to have a full time job and cover lets say 10 miles everyday and so if a person got a job even more than 3 miles away, he would probably be relocating every time. But at that time if you asked a person if this was a limitation, they would probably say that it was a fact of life.  This was an unrecognized limitation. However, someone did see Murphy in this and challenged it. 

Why didn’t others do it? Why didn’t others question it? Why did others accept it? Basically because we developed a mode of operation, mode of behaviour, we developed rationalized thoughts in our head, we developed rules to help us accommodate the limitation. Thus we were able to operate. Much the same way we do today. The man who would have walked three miles to work would have probable taken about an hour to reach his place of work. My office is 10 miles from home. After all the technology on Earth, it still takes me an hour! We probably develop the same rules in our minds to help us operate.  

The question is this, what benefits can the opportunity that actually overcame the limitation, bring, if we still obey the rules? These rules were created to accommodate the limitation. The rules still exist in our minds (we are still okay with an hour to reach work). So what benefits can we see? These rules were there to bypass the limitation but for all practical purposes we assume the rules are still there. So we took the technology, we implemented it. But we don’t get the ‘basic’ benefit that it was implemented for.  Can it be that we are so stupid and we are still living the 200 years old rules in reality? The answer is obvious. Murphy continues to thrive. 

This is what really happens in the vast majority of opportunities we may identify and act upon. We do not see benefits because we still obey the rules. We also might not even identify the opportunity because we obey the rules.  

Lets take a very practical example to demonstrate this: The world, as such, has fought many wars and battles and still does over territories and borders. Why did we fight over land and still do? Because somewhere in our mind exists a rule “This is my country.” It gets established very early in our lives, it becomes patriotic, history gets transferred to us (more rules) and we are told and we believe that ‘this extra land’ belongs to us. So we have  war. You win, I lose. So the issue settled right? 1971 India wins. Kargill, India wins? Issue settled right? Afghanistan bombed? Saddam killed? Issue settled right?  

How can any action bring any result unless we change the RULE? We are all born in a particular place of birth. You need a visa to visit another – rule! Why is this – because you have borders, someone created them. Can it be that we are so stupid and mindless that we keep living rules without EVER questioning them? Why don’t we question them?  

In the history of the world, there have been and will be many wars. Why – We obey the rules. There have been weapons created and more sophisticated than ever each passing year – to kill one another – Why? Obey the rules. How stupid have we been? In continuing to do all this, what opportunity have we lost? You know, we are so into obeying the rules that we cannot even know that what the other possibility may have been. 

I read a physicists interview today. He was talking about Nobel Prize and how valuable it is to a physicist. He says there is only one criterion to get a noble prize. It is to write an article, no more than 3-4 pages. The criterion is that any physicist who reads it should say, “Oh Shit!” 

The sad part about this interview, I realized is that you and I come across many realizations and opportunities in our lives that we say “oh shit!” to but flush it down after that. We never act. The rules that actually need to be flushed down, we never can. We multiply them. We teach them. We live them. Bear in mind, for the entire life of this world, there are many rules that we live till today. We call it the modern world with opportunities, so many, like they never have been. The opportunities has it’s benefits – bigger ventures, higher salaries, bigger cars, bigger houses, better meals, better holidays, more technology, global reach, avenues of education, simplification of knowledge, internet, television, even a trip to moon.. better life styles in short.. But has it meant a better life? Has it meant a life better than the guy who walked three miles to work?  Long live the rules! 

Murphy strikes every now and then, probably everyday. Murphy presents and opportunity to act. We do, most of us, take the opportunity and get busy. We do not, however, take the opportunity to change the rules, none of us. So the same Murphy strikes again. We’ll still have a salesperson who doesn’t sell, an HR person who isn’t people oriented, a marketing person who isn’t market oriented and still have borders that are not world oriented.  

As I said earlier, Murphy will present the opportunity but the opportunity will be beneficial if and only if we diminish the Murphy, not just the limitation. Unless we change the rules, the limitation will remain. Only we make it more sophisticated – from limitation of walking three miles to a limitation of driving ten, from a limitation of making people perform to a limitation of performance management, from a limitation of fighting wars on land to a limitation of fighting wars in air.  

You see, we never dealt with the rules. We never will because we like being so stupid. And obviously how would it feel to be the only non stupid one? Very stupid! 

Yours,

Chetan Walia.