STFU #34 - What Beethoven and Sheetal Devi can teach about Constraints in Startups

If someone around you plays wonderful piano or thinks that he does, chances are you might start calling her, Beethoven - the legendary German composer and pianist. Beethoven was a master storyteller through sound. In the early 1800’s, his performances were legendary, and one of the most sought-after in the European world. 

But few know that by the time he turned 30, Beethoven suffered from reduced hearing. As he grew older, he heard less, but still kept performing. However, he was pounding pianos and raged in his performance, most likely to hear his own notes. By the age of 45, he became completely deaf. 

Was this the end of the legend? Ironically, it was the beginning of his rise. 

While he was shaken and even considered suicide, he turned around and focused on his music. And his compositions only got better from there on. 

When Beethoven played his greatest triumph of all, the Ninth Symphony, a composition that defines Western Classical even today, he was so deaf that he could only see the happy faces and the claps but not hear the thunderous applause!

Sometimes our loss becomes our identity - and defines us in a manner that others cannot imagine. As Beethoven so vividly demonstrates, you can’t hear yourself until you can turn down the volume on everyone else. "Deafness freed Beethoven as a composer because he no longer had society’s soundtrack in his ears."

Sheetal Devi

Last week, if you had peeped out of the news about wars that are happening in the Middle East or Cricket and rugby Stadiums, you might have read about a new legend representing India. 

Sheetal Devi recently got 3 medals for India in Archery at the Para Asian Games in China. 

“What's special? We keep getting medals right? A country of 1.3 billion should get it”, a pessimist pragmatist would say!

But what if you were told that this girl had all odds against her - odds of age as she is 16 years old, odds of location as she comes from a rarely represented state, J&K, odds of resources as she comes from a poor village family, and odds of physical ability - as she participated in a sport that, apparently, needed ‘hands’ to aim and shoot! 

Suffering from a rare congenital disorder where the limbs are malformed (Phocomelia),  there were high chances that she might have given up and be loitering around in farmland up north somewhere. Or might have just succumbed to societal pressure in her childhood.

But from there to first getting family support, and then thinking of getting into Archery, to then getting the resources to practice, to then representing India at an international event, to shooting six consecutive ten rings (the innermost circle), to winning not one but 2 gold medals and 1 silver, and to being the “first female archer without arms to compete internationally” beating everyone else - all at 16 years of age, is just awe-inspiring!

If you see this 4-minute clip and don’t get goosebumps, my suggestion would be to get your hair follicles checked for ‘empathy’ deficiency!

In more than one way, Sheetal Devi could hear the sound, “Ten, ten, ten! Perfect scores!”

So?

Beethoven was deaf. But he used his constraint to his advantage to create a masterpiece. Sheetal Devi had all odds against her and did not have limbs. But did not let it come by way of her ambition and, instead, figured out how to still reach her ambition by redefining her constraints. 

Everyone revolves around constraints - Some call it bottlenecks, others call it opportunities! Some stop at them. Some walk over them. Some walk with them!

I learned about the “Theory of Constraints” during one of the sessions at the ISB Leadership Summit, where Mr. Ravi Gilani was a co-speaker at the event. While the Theory of Constraints has a multi-step process, to keep it simple, it entails identifying the bottlenecks and then removing them one by one. 

Constraints and Startups

When you start, you always feel short of something - co-founders, money, team, idea (sometimes) so much so that one of the top searched phrases on Google is "How do I start my own business?"

While everyone would give you checklists and truckloads of playbooks, in my limited opinion, they would never be completely appropriate for you. Your checklist would be unique to you.

But one thing that will make you get up and go is to accept that the world will never be perfect, and you will never have everything. You will always be short of something - as you scale, rarely have I seen a startup acknowledging that “yeah, we have everything!” - sometimes it is funds or cash flow or right people or right channels, or sometimes it is just, self-motivation!

The startups that gain respect, are the ones who know they don't have everything, but they still move on. Sometimes they leverage their constraints, or they exploit their constraints, and sometimes, they identify and eliminate the constraints altogether! 

At True Elements , we have moved from one constraint to the other - every year we learn about a new constraint. As an organization, most of the stuff we do is in-house. Manufacturing, shipments, advertising, branding, blame games, gossip - everything is in-house. And all of these working together in sync is almost equivalent to the Ninth Symphony - great to hear, but rare to occur! 

But that’s where the beauty is - while we keep identifying the bottlenecks and removing them, we also keep moving forward - despite constraints. It is never a perfect world, and that’s what keeps us busy!

As you see various success stories around you, one should keep in mind that we see Beethoven playing but not his deafness and we see Sheetal Devi’s overnight medal but not her perseverance amidst all constraints.

So keep playing your music and focus on the target in front of you. Eventually, whether it is your Ninth Symphony or a perfect Gold, you know that when you look back, you might not hear the thunderous applause around you, but you will most likely hear your voice shouting back, “Ten! Ten! Ten! Perfect Scores!”

STFU!

Reference: Cal Newport on Beethoven, Armless Archer, News on Sheetal, Book: The Goal by Eli Goldratt | Images: Beethoven, Sheetal Devi