Is this the real Rolex?

Somehow, while surfing the net today, I ended up doing a Google search for fake rolex watches. Its weird how easy access to information can get you carried away and you end up searching for the weirdest things possible. Anyways, I just clicked on search and ended up with 2.4 million links!! Can you believe that, two and a half friggin million links for fakewatches.

All those spam mails and millions of people cribbing on forums were not lying after all. I always thought it was a marketing scam to draw attention to something as trivial as fake watches so that we don’t pay attention to the bigger issues. But here it was, the seven digit figure glaring at me, mocking me. While I sat there, thinking of myriad different things, I had an epiphany.

Its brilliant how all these watches look as good as the real one. They work like them, look like them and even have the same flamboyance. Some times they are shinier and look better than the real thing. It is really hard figuring out which one is fake and which the original. But, that’s what we do all the while, we make a choice, we sort the good from the fake.

Hiring an employee is no different. There are fakes from the genuine, the paupers from the royal, and as Sameer (Morpheus Venture) put it, “the mediocre from the exuberant”.

You will always have people who splash the same qualities of a stallion. They flow free but are limited in their speeds, they show the same wild side but have severely limited powers. These are people who could have been great, could possibly have been the real hero but are too busy just acting like one.

If you look closely, everyone has this hero we want to be like, but trying to be like some hero is where we screw up. Like Kurt Cobain said “Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are” All of us have these unique powers that no other hero has, its all about finding these and being the hero others would want to be.

You might have worked with fake heroes OR probably your colleagues are working with one, whatever may be the case, you need to recognize who is a hero and who is trying to be one.

There are traits that distinguish a real hero from a fake. Traits that you would get in any super hero movie, all those things they have always glorified except that in the real world, they are crass. Charm and charisma when it comes down from the celluloid, takes some dirt from our societies and seeps into people after getting a little corrupt. So, your hero might not be the most charming or the most helpful guy in office, but the guy who believes in his actions and stands by them. While the fakes fade away with time, the heroes are the ones who make the future of your organization.

Human traits have always perplexed me and there is no clear guideline for sorting out the fakes and helping them become real heroes. Its all very subjective and unnatural, very much like nature itself.

I will leave you guys to come up with a method of your own. You can make a sheet to list out traits that you would want an ideal employee to have. Also, you can make a list of people in your office, and sort them into heroes OR fakes. I am sure, a little bit of reasoning will tell you what I have been trying to say in the last 661 words.