Triumph and Disaster. One more try
Gonzalo Moreno-Mu?oz
Vice-President Tower | Creating value through people, engineering and operations
When I read Rudyard Kipling’s “If“ the first time as a teenager, these verses have stayed with me until today:
“…If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same…“
A life lesson that I try to pass on to my kids and when trusted with leadership roles. Our families and schools tend to prepare us better to cope with defeat, because it is the likely recurrent thing to happen. And the consequences -invested effort, frustration, forced change- are tough to manage. For every win, there may be dozens of losses. Recently Roger Federer explained how this dichotomy shapes even the outcome of an elite tennis player.
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I grew up in a time when Spain was far from any international sport success. And not only in football -European king’s sport- but in any other discipline. Linked to those mediocre records, we had a well-trained resilient losing narrative while keeping the persistence of trying it again next time. Toni Nadal, Rafa’s uncle and years-long head coach, explains the basic philosophy of his academy: the difference between someone good and excellent is how many times (s)he is willing to try. Meaning that, to comparable talent, the only competitive advantage is how to react when adversity takes over.
Even if winning may look sweet and glorious, it is equally important to put it in the right context and understand that it remains a rare event in work, sport and life. Best professionals understand that typically the up is followed by down, and other way around. And they keep on trying and trying.
Last Sunday I had to explain my daughters why the whole country was celebrating the untouchable victory of our national football team in Berlin, only a few hours after my fellow country folk, Carlos Alcaraz had defended at age 21 the Wimbledon title in London. Happy talk but knowing that talent and excellence do not equate to success, at least in its basic definition. And I shared the same argument with many European friends who had to cope with broken hopes and sadness. Times will come to greet the triumph again. The difference comes only from the will of trying it once more.