Faith, Growth and Success

By Thami J. Khalil

Many, including believers, confine faith and religion practice to rituals and actions focused on the hereafter. By doing this, they may overlook the fact that the growth and success of Islam in particular could not go through centuries, cultures changes, without using leadership and management principles embedded in its teachings. Surats of Coran, Hadiths of the Prophet Mohamed (saas), and bibliographies of early leaders of Islam are full of concepts such as time management, quality management, people management, message design, excellence in execution, etc. The cultural distance between these centuries old concepts and modern management and leadership approaches is much smaller than one may imagine. These concepts and examples of their effective applications are available in open sources, accessible to everybody from all ages. Similar concepts are nowadays taught in Master of Business Administration or in expensive corporate management courses. This makes the distance from success and growth very small for those who recognise these concepts as early as possible in the practice of their faith and religion and apply them in their daily lives.

Thami J. Khalil unfolds the power of some Islamic leadership and management concepts, and directs his readers toward their importance as key factors for personal success and growth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Apr 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524628567

Thami J. Khalil

Thami J. Khalil was born in Morocco and lives in the Netherlands. He is currently University Professor of International Entrepreneurship with focus on scale-up and growth of start-ups in technology. The application domains are in access to healthcare, food and education in emerging markets, mainly in Africa. Thami J. Khalil mentors innovative start-ups and coaches graduates in their transition from higher education to work. Thami J. Khalil previously worked for Philips, LG-Philips, Saint-Gobain and Elf-Aquitaine. This is his second book.

Book preview

1

YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

The simplest way to measure the success of an action or a project is to measure the difference between the situations at two different times. Any positive difference is a success. By doing this, we see that we experience success daily. Most of this success goes unnoticed because we have a predefined idea of what success is – and most of the time, that’s defined by the successes of others. Some will run behind the first million and will never enjoy the first thousand.

The following verse from the Koran is an invitation to use our wealth to make a positive difference in our own lives and in the lives of others for the good of our present and coming lives:

Seek, with the (wealth) which Allah has bestowed on thee, the Home of the Hereafter, nor forget thy portion in this world: but do thou good, as Allah has been good to thee, and seek not (occasions for) mischief in the land: for Allah loves not those who do mischief. (Sura 28, v. 77)

What is wealth? How do we measure it? How big must a difference be to be significant?

Most people have engraved in their minds that the only differences that count are the breakthroughs, the giant leaps. People will throw their small successes in the garbage, not knowing that these are pieces of the success puzzle. Thinking in big terms about success and measuring it by the admiration of unknown people paralyses the ability to act and to build on the small differences we make.

Little things can make a huge difference in lives of others, if not immediately in our own lives. Success is compounded; tiny steps and small wins add up in the long run to big success. There is a power in a positive word, a smile, a minute and sometimes a second that we give to help, to improve, to finish. The difference between success and failure in the life of anyone is the importance he or she places on the little things. Any tiny negative word, any uncontrolled temper at the wrong moment with the wrong people at the wrong place can wreck the most promising career or damage the best relationship.

How long does it take to sign your name on a contract for a job, a house, a mortgage? That one simple act of signing or deciding not to sign at the last moment will make a dramatic difference in years to come. We have to learn to measure the differences we make or can make with our ideas and actions. How to measure a difference? Develop and use your personal profit-and-loss and balance sheets. On the profit-and-loss sheet, we have revenues and expenses. On the balance sheet, we have assets, liabilities, capital, and profit or loss. Liabilities, capital, and profit are the funds we use to finance our assets. Assets represent what the funds are used for.

People often mistake assets for wealth. A big car acquired with an expensive loan and used for a show-off generates some pride but can be a silent drain on wealth. Assets are to be used directly or indirectly to generate profit and wealth. Wealth or net worth is measured by the following difference:

value of assets – value of liabilities = capital + revenues – expenses

How large must be this difference? Abi Addardae, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad (saas), said in the eighth-century book Azzuhd, Wakiaa Ibn Al Jarrah, A little that makes you satisfied is far better than a lot that keeps you busy. This is not about thinking small and being satisfied with less. This is about making a good choice of a balanced goal and focusing and concentrating to finish and enjoy the results.

What is being wealthy if there is a feeling of emptiness in the heart and failure on the home front? Some will say it is matter of choice. Really? The only one who knows the real value of success is the person himself, as he knows the real cost to achieve it. Being financially wealthy is only one part of success. Being financially, emotionally, and spiritually wealthy is the real success. This triple wealth is a safe way to manage partial or major material successes and failures. It requires entrepreneurship, management, and a high level of use of assets.

Our current assets are knowledge and positive education. Our capital is health, intelligence, time, and faith. We received these free of charge from the creator. We do not have to pay them back, but we are accountable for how we invest them. Our parents, teachers, and mentors are our creditors. They have invested time and money to help us acquire knowledge and education. Receiving an education and not turning it into positive and productive relations is a mismanagement of assets. Acquiring knowledge without turning it into cash and happiness is a mismanagement of assets and capital.

Often this leads to the overqualified intellectually and underperforming financially frustration. I agree that we all have different distributions of assets and capital: some are more learned than others, some are more emotionally intelligent than others, some are more financially literate than others, some are born into wealthier families than others. Success comes down to scanning our capital, assets, and needs, and to our own decision on how we use them to make a difference. Spending time, health, intelligence, and faith in wrong actions is the worst we can do with our capital and assets. The Prophet (saas) made the following prayer to seek protection from the main wealth drains, at the top of them useless or unused knowledge, as narrated by Abu Hurayrah:

O Allah, I seek refuge in Thee from four things: Knowledge which does not profit, a heart which is not submissive, a soul which has an insatiable appetite, and a supplication which is not heard. (Sunan Abu Dawud book 8, no. 1543)

We admire often the visible assets of others: their cars, their mansions, their status. We never see or want to see their liabilities, what they invest to have these assets: hard work, patience, consistency, discipline. Sometimes we are mistaken about their real worth, as we see only the assets and do not see the liabilities. A cheater can have financial success but has large emotional and social liabilities.

The best way to appreciate real net worth and its sustainability is to know almost daily our assets, liabilities, expenses, revenues, and capital, and to have a target for growth, for making a difference by managing them. It is also a good idea to estimate our own wealth not only in money but also in emotions and religion. We may come to the conclusion that we are wealthier than we think we are.

In the book of Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah (thirteenth century) on patience and gratefulness, the following story is reported:

A man came to Yunes ibn Abied complaining about his poverty. Yunes told him: Will you be happy to have hundred thousand Dirham for your eye? The man said no. Yunes asked: and for your foot hundred thousand? The man said no. Yunes remained him the blessings of Allah on him. Yunes added: I see that you possess hundreds of thousands of Dirhams and you complain?

A sustainable positive difference will often require us to go to the limit through obstacles and failures. Going to the limit can be as simple as delaying a reaction and thinking before talking or acting. It means having discipline and patience. The acquisition of these simple positive characteristics can be an obstacle to making a significant difference. Other obstacles include negative emotions, such as fear of failure, and negative assumptions, such as misjudgement of the value of opportunities. They gives us the urge to quit and flee to a known comfort zone.

Successful people know how to manage negative emotions and negative assumptions. There are those who once they have defined a valid target and evaluated the reward against the risk are ready to create situations where there is no possible way to retreat to a comfort zone. Tariq ibn Ziyad, the commander-in-chief of the Arab army who led the conquest of Andalusia in 711, ordered the burning of ships after soldiers and equipment were unloaded onto the Spanish coasts. He addressed his men, saying, The sea is behind you, the adversary is ahead of you.

Making a difference, as strange as it may seem, usually involves matching the implications of our actions to our own aspirations and the aspirations of those we care about, and that is hard enough. It is not easy to follow the exact requirement to serve, nor is it easy to live by the rules. Making a difference requires patience and perseverance, strength, and fear of Allah. This does not mean fear of hell or punishments, but living following the rules of Allah. This is the way to success, to prosperity. As is written in the Koran:

O ye who believe! Persevere in patience and constancy; vie in such perseverance; strengthen each other; and fear Allah. that ye may prosper. (Sura 3, v. 200)

2

POS-ABILITY THINKING

Some people have it easy. They seem to succeed in everything they do, and even when they fail they have the ability to bounce back and succeed again. Their probability of success (PoS) is always high. Others work very hard but never seem to enjoy full success. They do not know what to do to increase their PoS.

Many of us wish to have a formula of success that we can apply and then enjoy the rewards. To prevent any risk of failure, we would like this formula to be a simple single-variable linear equation, with a simple boundary condition or preferably no boundary condition at all. The harsh truth is that this simple success formula does not exist, and if it did it would be like scratch-and-win cards: costing more than what they really can deliver.

We often confuse success with the visible part of it – results and achievements. While results are necessary for success, they are not sufficient. Success has different faces but always the same components: sound results, significance, and satisfaction. Success can be measured by the degree to which the results of our actions and our words have an impact on our lives and the lives of others, starting with our own inner circle. If our results or words cannot gain a position in the minds and the lives of others, they are simply not relevant or not made relevant. The fingerprint of our success is in how we are remembered or how others think or talk about us. People maintain in their mind a unique list of those who count, and most of the time this list is of people they can count on.

How do we increase our probability of success? When is a success a full success? Imagine that we have the best house in the world, the best furniture, and the possibility of having the best food and that we are just deprived of something we take for granted: a home. What is then success?

Imagine that we are retiring from the best social-ladder position we can imagine, with a daily agenda that could be twice-booked. How full will our social agenda be after retirement? Who will be on the list of those who will call us, seek our company, seek our advice or our support? How sustainable is our success?

Success is full success when it delivers sound results plus sustainable significance and satisfaction. Full success can be seen as a solution to a system of nonlinear, time-dependent differential equations with results: significance and satisfaction as variables. The solution of this system is difficult to find in one step. A small variation in boundary conditions or factors can have a huge impact on the outcome.

We will have a defined solution only if the system is well posed, with enough and consistent boundary conditions. The success we get depends strongly on how we set up our success system and on how we set up its boundary conditions. If we do not have a clue how to set up our own success system, we can use a proven existing system that worked for those we consider successful.

Simply finding a system, however, is not enough. We still have to set a goal and our own boundary conditions. Boundary conditions that have worked for others may not work for us or be available to us. Boundary conditions include the environment we live in, the knowledge we have or acquire, the money we have, and the attitude we have; all play a determinant role in the type of success we will get. Different boundary conditions on the same system lead to different solutions.

Consider superstar athletes who have achieved at some time in their career amazing results with the help of performance-enhancing drugs. These athletes came first to the top relying solely on their faith, talent, mental toughness, and hard work. They had full success: Their results were sound, their satisfaction was great, and their significance was huge. But at some point, seeking greater results made them change their boundary conditions to make illegal options viable and justifiable in their eyes. With performance-enhancing drugs, results are maybe there but they are not sound anymore. Satisfaction is there, but it is tasteless. Past and future significance are damaged. Full success is gone.

Why do some succeed fully while others succeed partially or even fail? The answer may be found in their efforts to define and have positive results, or to define their significance and satisfaction. When we manage to make these three components positive, we are successful. When we manage to make them positive almost all the time, we are fully successful. How impressive the results are is not important for success. What is important is sustainability. It is a mistake to treat a temporary failure or a temporary success as final or as an absolute value, like being wealthy or famous. What will make our life successful or not is the integral on time of all the successes and failures we have. Small successes, like small failures, are important in the way they compound with time or affect the next steps.

The solution of a success system or achieving success often comes about in an iterative way, in small steps. It is important to build on every success we achieve, however small it may be, for as long as possible. It is important to live with the goal of making the total time integral of our small successes much larger than that of our failures. By doing this we improve gradually our PoS or PoS-ability.

Aisha (ra) reported that once the Prophet came while a woman was sitting with her. He said,

Who is she? I replied, She is so and so, and told him about her (excessive) praying. He said disapprovingly, Do (good) deeds which is within your capacity (without being overtaxed) as Allah does not get tired (of giving rewards) but (surely) you will get tired and the best deed (act of Worship) in the sight of Allah is that which is done regularly. (Sahih Bukhari, book 2, no. 41)

How do we keep the integral over time of our successes and failures as positive as possible? A simple mathematical answer: by keeping the factors in our success system and its boundary conditions as positive as possible. If we formulate the success vector (sound results, satisfaction, significance) as the product of two simple vectors that we can act on, we will make the management of our PoS easier. Experience shows that the following vectors are vital few factors for any success:

• A vector: attitude, action, accountability

• C vector: commitment, communication, contribution

Formulating success as the product of A and C makes it possible to achieve sound results, significance, and satisfaction through management of attitude, action, accountability, commitment, communication, and contribution.

The A factors represent all that we do and can judge ourselves on before being judged by others. When we are concerned with the impact of what we do, we are careful about our attitude, action, and accountability. When we maintain a positive attitude, do positive actions, and have positive accountability, we increase our chances of sustainable success. Unfortunately, while this attention is necessary, it is not sufficient. We all know brave, hard-working, conscientious people who do not advance in life. We need to have the C factor also positive. If our commitment, communication, or contribution is negative or null, the product of A and C is negative or null, regardless of how positive and large the A factor may be.

The C factor represents all that we do and that others will judge as positive or negative. This judgement will prevail. Not all our commitment, communication, or contributions are seen as positive. Being religious, for example, is not always seen as a positive commitment; not all our communications are experienced as positive, and not all our contributions are seen as relevant or significant. To have the C factor as positive as possible, we have to start in the mind of others when we share our commitment, communicate, or contribute and to make the right choice of timing to do it. Some commitments, communications, and contributions may prove to be useless or even negative when done at the wrong times. Worse, they can make our previous successes irrelevant.

The following story happened in a remote area in a developing country to a couple who had dedicated their life to creating a better and easier life for their children. This couple were now in their seventies, still living and working in the harsh countryside at least two hours from facilities in a city nine kilometres away. They had two boys and a girl, all now in their early forties. One of the boys, let’s call him X, lived in a city thirty kilometres away, had a car, and came to visit his parents almost every weekend. He came together with his life problems: his mortgage, his long working hours, his regular long distance travels. The second son, Y, lived in a city nine kilometres away, had no car, and was running a small business in parallel with a regular job to ensure a good life for his family. He didn’t come to visit his parents often, didn’t call much, was not a talker, and kept his life troubles