Author: Anubkumar

People Vs Process

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Foot Steps and Foot Prints

Two types of scenarios are there in professional life. First, following Foot Steps, second, creating Foot Prints.

Following foot steps require lot of compromises and enthusiasm to learn. Whereas creating Foot Prints require lot of confidences and innovations.

The later will become an entrepreneur and the former will become a business person. Though we used to think both business men and entrepreneurs are same, the above said is the difference between these two.

Whether you are a businessman or an entrepreneur you should have Plan B in place to run your show. Every entrepreneurs should keep in mind that Plan B should not be people oriented. But Plan A must be people oriented only.

Plan A

If you want your idea to become reality, even if you are backed my Capital, you need PEOPLE to carryout your vision and mission.  This helps your idea to become reality. Then your realised idea can start earning for you. You are a perfect Entrepreneur only if your idea starts to earn for you. Else you are just another short time Amateur Entrepreneur ONLY.

Your core people should start building your company with their teams under them. Management should make sure that these core team is well equipped and empowered to carry out these tasks. Even though you have handpicked these core team members, you cannot expect everyone from your core team to be of same caliber. It is your management skill that will better utilise their individual capabilities and form a full functional core team.

If the core team is trained and fed to handle tasks to their brim that will help them to expand their team size and in a short duration you can realise your company has crossed several milestones on growth aspect.

Can this scenario continue?

No it will not. Because every individual will have their own ambition in their career and life. On the other hand your core team would have learned a lot of additional skills which they will love to get disclosed in front of others, who would really appreciate that than what you can do to them. If their increase remuneration also gets added to this then they will surely try to unfold their wings and start flying their own.

In spite of the above situation being true, every Manager will have “that one person” who will not leave you in spite of knowing all the above. If you get one, then you are the most successful professional person. Wish for one!!!

Plan B

Loosing your core team is inevitable for sure. What will be the next step? That is what is called “Plan B”.

People are the core for the growth and success of any company. There is no substitute for that.

But people should not drive the company. Your people should drive the process of your company and if that happens, then all you need is KT time and not Individual presence. Time invested in formalising the Process by any Management will give huge returns than any other form of investment including investing in individual. End of the day, Individual will leave you for their own  aspirations, how much ever growth, knowledge and money you bet on them.

Plan A Vs Plan B

Being said, can we invest in process and run the company without people or invest in people and run the company without process? Both are not possible and this is the core issue of many Entrepreneurs ending up their vision with failure.

You should side by side invest on both, else you will be LEFT ALONE at the middle of the road. This scenario will happen to most of the companies which are on the growth aspect year after year for the first 5 years. But if you have crossed the chasm of 5 years then you would have automatically formalised some processes in operations which will eventually lead you to strengthen your Plan B and carry forward your company smoothly.

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DOn’t quIT… DO IT

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First set – Luxottica Group, American Apparel, Centerplate, Pimco, Volkswagen

Second Set – Gerard J. Arpey, AMR, Bill Gates – MicroSoft, Coby Brooks – Hooters, Meg Whitman – eBay, Mohammed El-Erian – Pimco,

All the above CEOs quit. But the difference is, the second set quit realising that the company would be a better place without them. The first set quit for various other reasons.

All the CEOs in the second set became role models.

Do CEOs really need to quit?

If there are behavioural mistakes of them then quitting is the only option. But for the mistake of others do the CEOs really take moral responsibility and quit?

Is the company not going to be the looser again?

Stepping in, correcting the mistakes and brining the company back to the original height wouldn’t be the best these CEOs can do to the company?

Whoever quits is surely going to get job somewhere else. No one is going to be jobless or going to goto a lonely island and spend the rest of their time there.

The company has spent lot of time and money on these CEOs. If mistake happens they should correct it and pay back the company. Quitting cannot be a viable option to be given to CEOs.

These CEO will surely loose money and reputation by quitting and no denial on that. But by quitting are they not doing more damage to the company than what had happened?

Myth of Raising Money equals Success

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Its scaring nowadays to read the shut down of companies which are earlier earmarked as the most successful startups. Example Quirky today. Actually speaking their products are really good. But what went wrong?

The bubble burst is yet to come. Before that we are witnessing many companies that are getting shutting down. First of all we need to understand that all startups are not successfully running forever. Even the Venture Capitalists are not expecting all their ventures to run successfully. They are quiet happy if they make money from one venture out of every 10 they make.

Groupon has shut his operations in 7 countries and laid off 1100 employees. Quirk has filed bankruptcy. We are getting to know these because they are becoming NEWS in the media. But there are 100s of startups that are getting shut down even before they takeoff. No one is getting to know that.

What will be the impact if we get to know about all these failure startups.

We always see at the successful startups and draw a line. But we never even get to know the failed startups at all. Couple of years back I met a CEO of a startup in USA who was manufacturing stands for holding books and laptops and tablets. The speciality of this stand is that we can adjust it to suit at all positions even when we are lying down are slouching at the couch so on and so forth.

We had dinner together and he was very positive about it. I had a question in my mind. This is nothing but our table-mate which is already popular in USA that time. Last year I saw him working as a Technical Lead in another company. When i enquired I came to know that his business didn’t takeoff well and so he shut it down. His product would have been a successful one if he had thought of tweaking the same so that people can carry it along with them wherever they travel. Just to use at one location we already have table-mate and their many replicas. This is Good Idea But into Competitive Market.

In 2012 I met another CEO who was trying to raise money for his new concept of Internet for Blind people too. The concept is still a most innovative one and I have even experimented his POC which is designed for Patients to access their records at a particular Hospital and make new appointments or to access their pathology report or for anything related to hospital management through net. His aim was to expand it to all possible verticals. But 3 years passed and it didn’t takeoff well. This is Business Model Problem. He doesn’t  have an internal competent team to build and iterate the product.

We can pass negative comments on every concepts we get to know. But the CEOs are able to see the positive aspects more than the negative aspects. I wish all these CEOs have a R&D team which gives every findings in a very candid way. This is evident because of Resisting Deep Thinking and Analysis

Last year I met another friend of mine with the concepts of brining one perishable product door to door. Just one product and then based on the success he planned to bring to many more in the same way. He can sell that product only for a quarter in a year and he doesn’t have a plan to run the business for next three quarters. He did a good move. Since he was asked about that Business Model for the entire year, he stopped it at once and saved the money and time. The best part is he DIDNT IGNORE THE FEEDBACKS.

9 out of 10 startups fail. This is a hard and bleak truth. The one who WIN becomes the yardstick for everyone to get into new startups. This should not be the real model. They should be the motivation. But experience of those who failed should be the yardsticks of what not to do in business.

Inspite taking off, 1 in 10 business crash land. This is nothing but Management Problem of not knowing how to scale up or not knowing how to recover with small hiccups in the initial period.

The top most reason for any well took off business to crash land is their abnormal rapid growth in the first 3 – 5 years where they fail to meet the cash requirement with their growth rate.

The one who succeed has done different than what the other 90% people have done.

Well start is half done. But don’t forget that we have another half to be done correctly to call it a SUCCESSFUL Venture. Else every business will crash-land for sure.

This proves that getting funded alone will not assure your success in Business.

Gain Value to your Presence and it will Give Value to your Absence!!!

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Whether it is profession or personal we have to make impression on our absence as well as presence.

Let us take the professional part here.

Whether we are an entry level employee or a Management person we have to create our impression. I have seen situations where I didn’t even recognise the absence of some guys for days together. I used to think what if my situation was like this?

Nightmare isn’t it?

To have an impression for both Absence and Presence we should ESTABLISH us first. Unless we establish ourselves in the crowd, we will get lost and so its not going to matter whether we are absent or present.

To have an impression on our Absence we should have created a heighten on our Presence. So Presence is very important to be felt by the crowd. Presence doesn’t mean silent spectator rather to be a contributor. No one can get into our mind and find out what we are thinking.  We should participate on all healthy discussions in professional life and should value add into any discussion. If we start giving ideas and suggestions which doesn’t carry any value, then our absence will be much appreciated than our presence.

If our Presence cannot add value then our Absence is also not going to make any difference too. But the same time we should Present our ideas in a way that they echo our team’s thought. Always try to go along with the team. This will always make people to enjoy our presence.

Skill and competence are more important when we present ourself and that will make everyone to wish to have us in the discussion.

During any discussion, even if we are physically present, Say Less so that people will expect us to speak more. Here our absence should be present and recognised. Also if we speak less, there are more chances that we are keeping ourself at a distance from speaking foolish. Because once the words are out we cannot take back.

Being said, how much ever we are smart in contributing our skills and competence our absence only will give value to us. So set a schedule for being physically elsewhere and unavailable, and stick to it.

The more we are seen or heard the more our value will get degrade. So we should learn the skill  of withdrawing ourselves from the Presence so that our absence are felt in a very positive way.

So once we are back from our absence to presence, our presence will be felt more than normal.

But we need to attain a power by our presence. If we absent without attaining that power, then we will just get forgotten instead of creating any positive impression.

Gain Value to your Presence and it will Give Value to your Absence!!!

Analyse how we WON before analysing how we LOST!!!

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There is no concept of Winning all the time or Loosing all the time.

Success and Failure are happening one after the other. But if we feel that we are failing most of the time or we failed on most of the important things then we will automatically start analysing why we failed.

Actually analysing why we failed is good. But if we didn’t analyse how we Succeeded earlier, then we cannot correlate what mistake we did to fail this time. Human mind will always requires a comparative study to determine anything.

Over thinking about failure happened to be the reason for our next failure. We should learn to accept failure with the attitude “YES I FAILED”. Move on. But human mind will not come out of that failure until we see next success.

So without any limitation, our mind will whirl around the failure, instead of thinking about success. If we are not thinking about success then how can expect success to think about us?

There is a saying, in any crime, without even realising, the criminal would have left the evidence at the scene of crime. Criminology call this as “Hands of GOD”. Same way we would have left some evidence in our success for sure. If we are able to analyse both success and failure situations we can find out the “Hands of God” there.

Success or Winning is a combination of 100% correct steps. Whereas Failure or Loosing is a combination of 99% correct steps and 1% wrong step. So the gap between Success and Failure is just 1%. Is it not worth to correct that 1% and call us as a Winner?

Finally, both Success or Failure are not constant incidences. They both are just next step of the current action or the first step of future action!!!

Periodic changes or transformations are the sign of GROWTH. If we are not ready to do the periodic changes then how can we expect continuous success? You have to loose your childhood to attain bachelorhood. You have to loose your bachelorhood to become a father and so and so forth.

Can you scroll and walk together? You have to leave your scrolling to start walking. You have to start walking to start running and so on and so forth.

Same way if you analyse your Success and Failure you can understand that you may have to leave something Existing to get something New. If we are able to identify that step then every step will take us to Success for sure.