The Shape of GRIT
The GRIT series is at the intersection of two ideas from writers who have inspired me greatly — Angela Duckworth, author of GRIT: The Power of Passion and Perseverance; and the master storyteller Kurt Vonnegut, who in this simple yet compelling video, explains the arc of storytelling.
Why do some people succeed, and others fail? This question has been explored for decades. There have been hundreds of studies and thousands of books written on this topic (forgive me, but I will soon be adding my own book on this topic in the future). While I was researching this topic, I was inspired by psychologist Angela Duckworth’s 2016 book GRIT (TED talk here). She shows parents, educators, students, and businesspeople — both seasoned and new — that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a focused persistence called grit. What really drives success is not genius, talent or luck but a special blend of passion and long-term perseverance. In my journey of over a decade working with people with disabilities, I noticed that many of the people who succeeded despite their disability, demonstrated grit at their core. Up against incredible odds, often in extremely difficult and painful conditions, these people had the ability to bounce back repeatedly.
After starting the SAP Academy for Engineering and teaching at Columbia University, it became clear to me that even though I was dealing with high performing individuals, the long-term success of many of my students had very little to do with their IQ scores or their ability to learn quickly. Instead it had to do with how long they continued to focus on the topics they were passionate about; and a burning desire to excel even when they failed. I also noticed that the most successful executives had stayed with the organizations long enough to overcome multiple challenges and the compound effect helped them become successful (this was contrary to the popular belief that you need to change your jobs often). The single most important predictor of success in all these cases was grit. What is important is to realize is that grit is about the long-term, it is about stamina and the ability to stick it out for an extremely long period. It’s like running a marathon but with a very clear goal, not just to finish the race but to improve your timing every time.
One of the ways to improve grit is to develop a growth mindset — a belief that the ability to learn is not fixed but can change with your effort, and that failure is not a permanent condition. At the academy, one of the exercises we ask our engineers to do is to write their “Failure Resumé” — it’s not surprising that the longer the resumé, the more the chances of long-term success!
To ensure comprehension, I wanted to illustrate this concept in a storytelling format that would cut across age groups and hence I decided to bring out a series of three books in the graphic novel format. I was fortunate to meet Sriram Jagannathan, who had a unique style of illustration that was easy on the eye. The challenge was to find the right stories. This often took years of search and observation. We had in mind a model that would encompass the entire life journey of the protagonist and ensure that the story arc had many ups, downs and even flats for long periods. This is where I took inspiration from Kurt Vonnegut who has explained it beautifully in the graph below:
Beginning and End in the X axis; Good fortune and Ill Fortune in the Y axis
The story of grit can be shown as the following.
When GRIT: The Major Story was released, it was heartening to receive numerous messages especially from children about how much they loved the story and the format. We have received hundreds of five-star ratings online and that encouraged me to proceed with GRIT: The Vishwas Story. I will soon be working on the third book in the series.
I would like to mention what Bollywood director Nagesh Kukunoor shared at IIS 2017 — “focus on the story and not on the cause”. In the GRIT series, the focus is on the arc of the story and grit; disability is incidental.
