Aditya Kothadiya's Blog

Targeted Audience: Students, Recent Graduates, Entrepreneurs

We all know the importance of values. But we don’t really understand what it takes to follow them when we are students. I started respecting and following this "value based life" aspect when I was working with Infosys Technologies Ltd. Infosys has their punch line, which goes like this –

Powered by intellect and driven by values.

And I was highly impressed by their value system when I was working with them. I am a die-hard fan of N. R. Narayan Murthy, Chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys for building such a great empire, which is truly based on values.

What a student has to deal with Values?

Our current education pattern seems to be marks oriented. Students are only being prepared for exams and they are not exposed to morals and values that will prepare them for life. But many academic institutions now realize the importance of ethics in the education process and added ethics courses to the curriculum.

Let me give you the definition of ethics: it is good to maintain life and to further life. It is bad to damage and destroy life. And this ethic, profound and universal, has the significance of a religion. It is religion. – Albert Schweitzer

In our student lives, we will come across many situations where we will have two options to achieve our objectives – a value-based option and a value-less option. By choice, nobody chooses the value-less option. In academic life, peer pressure changes the students’ ethics. Stringent homework deadlines, minimum required GPA criteria, limited seats for assistantships and job offers might make students to compete with each other on unethical basis. In this competitive world, we tend to hurry for the results. We don’t have much time to think and practice the values and ethics. For students, their grades on tests and high salaried job offers are the major concerns.

By choosing value-less option, we may achieve a short term success, but that model is not sustainable in the long run. Lying, cheating, and copying are the attributes of short term success. You will see people around you getting better results in profession than you just because they could lie.

What path we should follow?

We should not even think of following short term success path through unethical ways. We always need to stick to our own values, and believe that in the long run, it’s the value based system that will last longer. Whenever we make any significant decisions, it will be based on our values so it’s important that we know what they are. Having values is definitely very important. It is the part of our upbringing and it should be in us.

How to build our value system?

But what if we don’t have our value system fully matured? Not many of us are aware of all principles and ethics. The simple workaround for this is – to learn from others. Identify your role models. See what values these people follow in their life to achieve their objectives. We can also learn from our friends, colleagues. We cannot stop learning new values from others. We need to keep our eyes open and keep observing others for their value system. It’s not just one or two principles. It’s the whole integrated system. So we have to keep building our value system consistently. I strongly believe that success will bound to follow if we follow the right path.

The cosmos is neither moral or immoral; only people are. He who would move the world must first move himself. – Edward Ericson

For more articles from this series, please visit - Beyond Intelligence