A few days back there was a meme that went viral. It goes like this:

Who we are? 

Indians

What do we want?

Medals

What do we want our child to be?

Engineers or Doctors

We need glorious outcomes but we are not ready to pursue the appropriate means to achieve those outcomes.

Moreover, we celebrate outcomes to death. However, we don’t celebrate the processes, behaviors, and efforts that eventually lead to those outcomes.

So many organizations have declared millions, cars, and gifts for those who won the Olympic medals but how many have really invested in the processes or infrastructure that will enable us to win more medals in future events?

The outcome is rewarded but the effort is not. Efforts are the details that we wish to conveniently drop from the plot.

Let us borrow a page from Bollywood, shall we?

Bollywood takes every opportunity to reinforce an outcome-driven mentality.

I recall Dhadkan, starring Shilpa Shetty, Sunil Shetty, and Akshay Kumar.

Ok, I regret watching this movie, had to watch it while traveling (typical Volvo bus movies).

But I recall one scene so distinctly for obvious reasons.

When Sunil Shetty confronts Shilpa and declares that “when you left me, I didn’t even have 50 paise in my pocket, but now I have 500 Crores”

The audience is left bereft of the details as to how Sunil made this possible. Bollywood just doesn’t bother to explain.

But that’s Bollywood for you in a nutshell. Had it been a Hollywood or European movie, Sunil’s rags-to-riches story would deserve a sub-plot.

Likewise, we are still bereft of the details and know-how of what it takes to achieve excellence as Neeraj Chopra did. 

Those details seldom surface. 

We want documentaries that narrate the hardships and challenges and not prime-time news feed that only glorifies.

Let us also celebrate the infrastructure, processes and standards, and efforts of those who might enable sustained excellence in the future.