The Art of Finding What Works | Imran Shamsi | TEDxChandivali

Summary

Imran Shamsi's talk humorously recounts his journey of embracing failure as a stepping stone to success. He shares his story of being a college dropout to an entrepreneur, emphasizing the importance of finding and nurturing one's passions. Shamsi introduces a three-step framework—empathy, experimentation, and persistence—to discover what works for individuals and businesses. He encourages the audience to shift focus from the negative to finding solutions and to continue striving even in the face of failure, as it leads to growth and ultimate success.

Takeaways

• 😅 Even though the speaker isn't married, he humorously recounts a story of pretending to be someone's husband, leading to a deeper reflection on life.
• 🤔 The speaker's message centers around embracing failure as a key component of success and personal growth.
• 😂 The speaker, Imran Shamsi, jokes about constantly failing, yet believes in learning and laughing from those failures rather than being stopped by them.
• 👨‍🎓 Failure in education, careers, and life is emphasized, but the speaker argues that these setbacks have shaped him into who he is today.
• 💡 Instead of finding a single passion, the speaker promotes growing multiple interests and embracing being a generalist rather than specializing.
• 👟 The key to finding success, according to the speaker, is to imagine yourself in others' shoes and adopt empathy as a guiding principle.
• 🔬 The speaker advocates for experimentation, stating that learning what doesn’t work is crucial to finding what does.
• 💪 Persistence is emphasized as a vital trait — the speaker highlights that true success comes from getting up after repeated failures.
• 🎯 Focusing on the positive aspects, both in personal relationships and professional situations, will lead to better outcomes and solutions.
• 📚 The speaker encourages everyone to document what works for them and their clients, and to continuously build on these strengths rather than dwelling on weaknesses.

Q & A

What is the main theme of the talk?

The main theme of the talk is about embracing failure as a stepping stone to success. The speaker, Imran Shamsi, emphasizes that failure is an inevitable part of life and should be seen as an opportunity to learn, grow, and eventually succeed.

Why does the speaker mention his 'wife' in Thailand, even though he has never been married?

The speaker uses the story of his 'wife' in Thailand as a humorous anecdote to set the stage for the talk. It serves as an attention-grabbing introduction, leading into his discussion about failure and how to find what works.

What was the speaker's career journey before becoming an entrepreneur?

Imran Shamsi's career journey included being a college dropout, creative director, corporate employee, and eventually an entrepreneur. He describes himself as a story of failures, having failed in various roles, including as a Bollywood reporter and reality TV producer.

How did the speaker’s parents influence his perspective on failure?

The speaker's parents played a crucial role in helping him become comfortable with failure. When he was young, his father reassured him that it was okay to fail as long as he didn't do anything drastic, and his mother's understanding and supportive attitude also helped him embrace the idea of failure.

Why did the speaker decide to leave his job at Disney?

The speaker decided to leave his prestigious job at Disney because, despite the position's benefits, he felt unfulfilled and unable to satisfy his creative urges. This led him to introspect and focus on what truly made him happy, eventually leading to his decision to become an entrepreneur.

What is the significance of the name 'What Works' for the speaker's video agency?

The name 'What Works' reflects the agency's focus on finding solutions that are effective for clients. It signifies the power, practicality, and purpose behind their approach to creative work, emphasizing the importance of discovering what truly works in various situations.

What three-step framework does the speaker suggest for finding what works?

The speaker suggests a three-step framework for finding what works: empathy, experimentation, and persistence. Empathy involves understanding clients' needs deeply, experimentation requires trying different approaches to discover what works, and persistence is about continually pushing forward despite failures.

Why does the speaker believe that being a generalist makes him happier than being a specialist?

The speaker finds happiness in being a generalist because it allows him to explore and grow multiple passions simultaneously, rather than being confined to a single specialty. He enjoys the variety and flexibility that comes with dabbling in different creative fields.

How does the speaker view the role of failure in his life?

The speaker views failure as a natural and valuable part of life. He believes that failure either teaches you something or makes you laugh, but it should never stop you from moving forward. For him, failure is an integral part of the journey toward success.

What does the speaker suggest people should focus on to improve their lives and relationships?

The speaker suggests that people should focus on what works rather than what's broken. By concentrating on the positive aspects of their lives, relationships, and work, they can build solutions and improve overall happiness and success.

Outlines

00:00

😅 The Paradox of Pretense and Failure

The speaker, Imran Shamsi, humorously recounts a fabricated story of buying gold with a woman posing as his wife in Thailand, despite being unmarried. This anecdote serves as a prelude to a deeper exploration of failure. Shamsi introduces himself as a serial failure, having dropped out of college, failed in various career endeavors, and yet found success in entrepreneurship. He emphasizes that failure should be a learning experience or a source of humor, never a deterrent. His personal journey from fear of failure to embracing it as a part of life is highlighted, showing how a supportive family conversation helped him become comfortable with the idea of failure. The narrative then shifts to his unsatisfying job at Disney, where he felt creatively stifled, leading him to introspection and the realization of his true passions.

05:00

🤔 The Three-Step Framework to Empathy and Experimentation

Imran Shamsi outlines a three-step framework for finding what works: empathy, experimentation, and persistence. Empathy is crucial, and he shares a personal story from childhood to illustrate its importance. He then discusses the value of experimentation, using a unique marketing campaign for Shah Rukh Khan's movie 'Fan' as an example. This campaign focused on the fans rather than the star, which was a risk but ultimately successful. Shamsi encourages taking risks and learning from failures, arguing that it's essential for growth. The final step, persistence, is exemplified by a challenging experience in Thailand where he had to improvise to continue a film shoot despite financial obstacles. He concludes by suggesting that focusing on what works can lead to solutions rather than dwelling on problems.

10:01

🔍 Shifting Focus from Failure to Success

In the final paragraph, the speaker discusses the societal tendency to focus on the negative, drawing a parallel between media sensationalism and personal attitudes. He suggests that shifting this focus to what works can lead to more positive outcomes. Shamsi encourages the audience to identify and build on their strengths, using personal examples and the advice of Zig Ziglar. He concludes by advocating for the embrace of failure as a stepping stone to success, urging the audience to find something new to fail at as a means to grow and achieve greater success.

Keywords

💡Failure

Failure in the script is portrayed as a recurring theme and a pivotal part of personal and professional growth. The speaker, Imran Shamsi, emphasizes that failure should either make you learn or make you laugh, but never stop you. He shares his own experiences of repeated failures in various stages of his career, from education to his professional life, to convey that failure is an essential step towards finding what works and achieving success.

💡Empathy

Empathy is described as the first step in finding what works for others, especially in a professional or client-based environment. The speaker stresses the importance of putting oneself in someone else's shoes, understanding their needs, and seeing things from their perspective. This is crucial for building trust and developing solutions that truly address the needs of others, as illustrated by the speaker's anecdote about his mother showing empathy even towards a thief.

💡Persistence

Persistence is highlighted as a necessary quality for overcoming challenges and continuing to progress despite repeated failures. The speaker likens persistence to the superhero Daredevil, who, no matter how many times he gets hit, always gets back up. This resilience is what enables individuals to continue placing 'brick after brick' until they build something significant, emphasizing that success often requires enduring through difficulties.

💡Experimentation

Experimentation is presented as a key approach to creativity and problem-solving. The speaker argues that to find what works, one must be willing to try different approaches and accept that many of them will fail. This scientific approach to creativity is illustrated by the example of promoting a film without using the lead actor, which was a risky but ultimately successful strategy. The willingness to experiment reduces the fear of failure and encourages innovation.

💡Generalist

The term 'Generalist' refers to someone with a broad range of skills rather than deep expertise in one area. The speaker identifies himself as a generalist, finding happiness in nurturing multiple passions rather than focusing on a single specialty. This approach allows him to engage in various creative activities, from writing to video production, which collectively fulfill his creative urges and contribute to his overall success.

💡Introspection

Introspection is the process of self-examination and reflection that the speaker undertook to discover what truly made him happy. After feeling unfulfilled in his job at Disney, he introspected to identify his passions and strengths, which led him to shift his focus and ultimately start his own company. This concept is central to the speaker's message about the importance of understanding oneself to find a path that leads to personal and professional satisfaction.

💡Client Perspective

The client perspective is about understanding and prioritizing the needs and goals of clients in a professional setting. The speaker suggests imagining oneself in the client's shoes and considering their business as one's own. This perspective ensures that the work produced aligns with the client's objectives and fosters trust and collaboration. The idea is part of the broader framework for finding what works in creative and business endeavors.

💡Success

Success in the script is portrayed not as the absence of failure but as the result of persistence, experimentation, and learning from failures. The speaker redefines success as finding what works for oneself and others, rather than just achieving conventional milestones. He encourages the audience to view success as a journey of continuous improvement, where even failures contribute to eventual success by teaching valuable lessons.

💡Storytelling

Storytelling is a key technique used by the speaker to convey his message and connect with the audience. By sharing personal anecdotes, such as the story of buying gold in Thailand or his experiences with failure, the speaker illustrates abstract concepts in a relatable and engaging way. This method helps to make complex ideas more accessible and memorable, reinforcing the overall theme of finding what works.

💡Creative Director

The term 'Creative Director' refers to the speaker's role in his professional journey, where he transitioned from various roles to becoming the head of creative efforts. As a Creative Director, the speaker was responsible for overseeing the development of creative content, which he found both fulfilling and challenging. His experiences in this role are central to his narrative about understanding and applying creativity in a way that aligns with both personal and client needs.

Highlights

The speaker humorously questions a past experience where he bought gold for a woman who pretended to be his wife, despite never being married.

He introduces his topic by promising to provide tools and techniques that will help the audience fail spectacularly.

The speaker shares his background as a college dropout who transitioned through various roles, ultimately becoming an entrepreneur.

He emphasizes that failure should either teach you something or make you laugh, but never make you stop.

The speaker recalls a childhood memory where his parents helped him become comfortable with the idea of failing.

He discusses his experience at Disney, where despite being at the 'happiest place in the world,' he was unhappy due to unfulfilled creative urges.

The speaker talks about how introspection led him to find what truly makes him happy and discover his multiple passions.

He challenges the idea of finding one true passion, instead choosing to grow all his passions together as a generalist.

The speaker shares the process of founding his own video agency, 'What Works,' after quitting his job at Disney.

He introduces a three-step framework to 'find what works,' consisting of empathy, experimentation, and persistence.

The speaker shares a lesson in empathy learned from his mother, who showed compassion even towards a thief.

He emphasizes the importance of experimentation in creativity, citing a successful campaign strategy for a Shah Rukh Khan film.

The speaker discusses the human tendency to focus on potential problems, which inhibits experimentation and creativity.

He compares persistence to a superhero, stressing that getting up after a fall is a victory in itself.

The speaker concludes by encouraging the audience to focus on what works, rather than what's broken, to build solutions and achieve success.

Transcripts

a few years back my wife and i went to a

fancy jewelry store in thailand and

bought lots of gold now it's a little

strange because i've never been married

so who was this woman pretending to be

my wife

why was i buying her gold

and why am i telling you this story too

many questions right well i have another

one would you like to find what works

for you

because by the end of this talk i'm

going to give you all the tools the

techniques and the secrets that will

surely positively and most definitely

help you fail

yes i will help you fail like you've

never failed before

my name is imran shamsi and it almost

sounds like imran hashmi

shamsi hashmi hashmi shamsi

you can guess that college wasn't easy

so yeah i'm a college dropout turn

creative director turned corporate slave

turned entrepreneur but to be accurate

i'm a story of failures

i failed my graduation i failed my film

school interview i failed as a bollywood

reporter i failed as a reality tv

producer i failed as a corporate slave

and even now i continue to fail every

single day

maybe failure has a thing for me or

maybe i have a thing for failure

but why should you listen to somebody

who's failed so much

it's like how they say if you've had a

shitty life look at somebody whose life

is shittier

i believe that failure should either

make you learn or make you laugh but

never make you stop

i wasn't always this thick-skinned about

failing

i remember i was terrified of it when i

was in school

my father had come to me on the day of

the results of my board exams i had not

studied at all and he comes to me and

says it's okay if you fail beta just

don't do anything stupid and i shot back

saying i'm not going to fail

and my mother was right next to me and

she said

so i wasn't going to kill myself but

this cute little conversation with my

parents helped me get comfortable with

the idea of failing

now fast forward to more than a decade

later i found myself sucked into this

well-paying prestigious but unsatisfying

job as the head of content at the walt

disney company

now you know you're screwed when you're

the saddest person at the happiest place

in the world

the problem was not disney or my

colleagues the problem was me

i was bitter and resentful about

stagnating and not being able to satisfy

my creative urges

so i decided to do the most cliche thing

that everybody thinks about but not many

people do

introspection

i took a break and shifted the focus

back to myself and started noting down

all the things that i really wanted to

do the things i was good at and the

things that truly made me happy

in short i had to do what they do right

after graduating from iit find my

passion this cliche scared me much more

than my biggest fear that is public

speaking

on that note here's a fun fact this is

my first public talk ever and the way

it's making me feel from inside it may

as well be the

last nervous jokes apart i thought that

finding my one true passion

or the one thing that i was born to do

or my sole purpose in the world was kind

of pointless for me there was not one

definite passion that i could commit to

and there were too many things that i

love to do like writing photography

cinematography video editing graphic

design web design branding and whatnot

but i realized that i'm not a good

enough writer to be just a writer i am

not a good enough director to be just a

director and i'm not a good enough

photographer to be just a photographer

i could relate hard with the words of

robert downey jr when he says

i know who i am i'm just a dude playing

a dude disguises another dude

but i did not want to be anybody else

so instead of tying myself down to one

passion i decided to grow all of them

together i realized that being a

generalist makes me much happier than

being a specialist also this act of

really dabbling into many things without

the fear of success or failure kind of

worked for me

and it filled me up with excitement and

hope

so after finding what works for me i

thought of applying my learnings for

others so i decided to quit my job at

the house of mouse and founded my own

video agency called what works i chose

this name from over 200 options

the power practicality and the sense of

purpose these two simple words had was

phenomenal what works that's all you

need to think about

while i love the name i also thought

that many people will find it cocky

because nobody wants to work with a

bunch of know-it-alls and frankly in the

creative industry no one truly knows

what works

so instead of claiming to know what

works we decided to focus on doing

whatever it takes to find what works

and to do that you don't have to be a

genius a maverick or even an

intellectual

you need just one thing

shoes

yes

shoes

imagine yourself in somebody else's

shoes

think from the client's point of view

for a moment imagine that your clients

business is your business

every penny that they're spending is

coming from your pocket and all their

dreams are yours too too many times we

get blinded by our selfish desires and

we fail to see the needs of the people

we are serving the ones who put their

faith in us and the ones who are giving

us the money

so how do we fit into their shoes and

find what works for them

simple take a hat any hat just put it on

their head

let it absorb all their thoughts and

then put it back on your head

i'm kidding obviously there's no magic

trick to this there's a simple

three-step framework that will help you

find what works first

empathy now it's not easy to have

empathy when all we think about is

ourselves so as a rule even before

thinking about the ideas we deploy a

borderline stalker level empathy for our

clients businesses

that means we go beyond the brief beyond

the website and start looking for

conversations about them on social media

we speak to people offline read news

articles about them to understand what

really matters for them and once we do

this not only do we get relevant ideas

we also gain the clients trust because

they know we care

my first lesson in empathy was when i

was 12 years old i remember i had gone

grocery shopping with my mother and we

were both coming back on a cycle

rickshaw with a huge sack of rice now as

tradition with mothers while shopping

goes she had to get off to get more

stuff and when she did not return i went

to look for her but i couldn't find her

anywhere

so i came back only to see that the

rikshawala the riksha and the sack of

rice had all vanished so i went back

home only to find my mother what is sick

because she thought that she lost me and

i started crying to her and i said i'm

so sorry i was stupid and the rickshaw

stole all her eyes

her response baffled me she said ko

bhatni beta rikshay balabhito gadibi

hoga maybe he needed the rice much more

than we did

at that moment i couldn't understand how

could she have so much empathy for a

thief but later i understood that when

you put yourself in somebody else's

position it becomes easy to deal with

the situation now how does one build

empathy

simple

by listening listen twice as much as you

speak there's a reason why we have one

mouth and two ears

the second step is experimentation

now to find what works we need to find

what doesn't work experimentation and

having a scientific approach towards

creativity helps with that knowing that

most of the approaches that we try will

fail take the sting of failure and it

gives us more courage to keep going

i remember there was a time when most of

the films that were being promoted were

promoted using item numbers

around the same time we in collaboration

with yasha films came up with a very

unique campaign strategy for shahrukh

khan's fan

instead of shooting cliched promos with

the actors of the film we decided to

make a series of documentaries featuring

the real life fans of the superstar now

it was a little stupid because we are

promoting a shahrukh khan film without

shahrukh khan

but then as shahu himself says it's not

special to be special it's special to be

ordinary we focus on these ordinary

people and their extraordinary stories

and made them the heroes of our content

no wonder the campaign trended worldwide

three months before the release of the

film

so why is it that people do not

experiment

the answer lies in their dna it may

sound a little odd but it's true

human beings are hardwired to look for

potential problems and dangers back in

the prehistoric times it was the fear of

wild animals hunting us down

which has now evolved to

whether my post will get enough likes or

not or is my art good enough or what

will people think about me

firstly nobody cares

secondly criticism and failure will not

kill you

the final step is persistence in a

superhero universe we'd not be like

superman or batman we'd be like

daredevil

no matter how hard we get hit

we get up we always get up

getting up after a hard fall is a

victory in itself

we focus on such small wins to keep us

going if you put brick after break after

break after break eventually you'll have

a whole building

too many people want to see the building

right after placing the first break

and that is why they give up

but sometimes you don't have an option

but to persist

remember the story i told you about my

wife in thailand here's what actually

happened

we were shooting a web series and by the

time we landed in thailand

demonetization had already happened so

all our currency notes immediately

became invalid

and to run the shoot to run the set we

needed a lot of cash

the only way we could figure cash at

that moment was buying stuff from our

credit cards and selling it just so we

could get enough cash to make the shoot

happen

now to do that i had to pretend to be

the loving husband to my line producer

and we bought jewelry across the country

and only then could we arrange for cash

and resume the shoot this lesson taught

me that sometimes you have to forget

everything else and do whatever works

so how will finding what works benefit

you

society has trained us to focus on the

negative

consider the news all they do is

sensationalize stuff that's sad and

depressing

like wars murders accidents natural

disasters and whatnot how many times do

you see them talking about how many

roads were built or how many lives were

saved or how many schools were

inaugurated

our mind focuses on the negative

and that's what they exploit but if we

shift our focus to what works

we will come closer to finding solutions

instead of worrying about the problems

for example what if there are few things

about your partner that you don't like

but there are too many things that you

love about them

now if you focus on what you don't like

will it be a happy relationship

what will happen if you focus on what

you love about them how will the

relationship change then

focus on what's broken and it can

consume you

focus on what works and you begin to

build solutions

so take a notebook and start writing

down what works for you it can be your

attitude your ability your personality

your education your wisdom your sense of

humor your boldness your ambition your

drive your empathy your discipline it

could be anything anything that works

for you double down on that instead of

dwelling on your weaknesses as zig

ziglar says you can get whatever you

want if you help enough people get what

they want

so i urge you to try this technique to

find what works for your audiences

clients friends family and followers and

when you finally feel that you're

successful find something to fail at

failure humbles you and builds you up

for bigger successes

because every failure is a step closer

to finding what works

thank you

[Applause]