“What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There” - Marshal Goldsmith
Will, the actions of, what got you here, will get you there? Will each and every step that made you successful continue to pour success into your basket? While I have not read the book authored by Marshal Goldsmith, this quote provoked my thoughts and got me thinking, will those actions that brought me success in the past continue to do so in the future?
I have had three bouts in the entrepreneurial world. I started my journey in the shadow of my family in India, selling a commodity in a fairly well-established marketplace, where my lineage and authenticity were known to everyone. We had competition, yet we gained success due to a hard-working and flexible team. My team would bend backward over accommodating every customer demand to the best of our ability to gain the order and win customer loyalty. Being a trusted business model, the family had no qualms in investing in the same, and the returns though marginal, the penetration was significant. I was on top of the world, and believed that I could climb on to the next ladder. Just out of college, and thanks to Almighty I was elated at the success. Soon another distributor entered the market, one with more financing power than I had and a heart to take bigger risks. Competition became unhealthy at times, and the naive heart broke every time we lost an order. Yet again, hard-work, determination and youthful age and innocence, helped us surface out again. I thought these would be my gliding light through my life and then no matter which path I chose, success will always be there!
A couple years down the line, God had written destiny in a completely different manner. I shifted to the United Arab Emirates, and started a new division of the business, independently facing people I had never met before at a young age of 24. Fear of being rejected, fear of being ridiculed and all other insecurities commonly cropped up within me. What would I do now I thought? And the mind thought, if I could do it back home, I can do it here, and I used the same principals. This time around, the job demanded harder work, and neither my innocence nor naiveness helped me. My customers needed solutions, and it took me a year to figure the same out. That this time around, simple hard work, ability to finance and innocence will not do the trick. I needed to constantly think out of the box, and that is when success came. There were a lot of failures along the way, and remember those insecurities, they hit the hardest at those time. However, this time around, I was married and my wife was my backbone through out, giving me confidence to fight in every round, and I started gaining capability. This capability helped me build my small little empire, and soon I decided to begin the third bout.
I left the UAE, the place that gave me everything to my new home and where I would like to permanently settle, Mumbai! In Mumbai, we had an old outfit, however the same was not systematic, and the systems were erratic. Though I chose to focus on my markets overseas, I could not resist being a part of the local market in Mumbai. I thought providing solutions would pave my way to success and I would be able to turn around our operations. But it was different this time around. The customers demanded solutions to make their life easier, but also demanded personalization and extreme cost optimization. The customers who were transparent earlier, turned opaque, as they wanted to protect their recipe that was churning the success wheel for them. We had to rework our model and change the same again this time to become the number one choice of the customers.
This is what got me thinking, that as time passes all variables in the equation constantly change. Though the guiding principal might be the same, yet, every other variable changed. In my initial bout I was only 22, and all my mistakes were forgiven owing to my age, and inexperience. My innocence and naiveness melted the hearts of the acquainted customers and they were willing to work with me. In my second bout, at times my innocence and naiveness got us losses, but then analytical thinking helped. At 25, the customers were less forgiving, and demanded greater responsibility. Just with the age changing a lot of variables in my team and customers changed. They wanted me to be more educated and wanted solutions that would help them grow in their respective markets. In my third bout, I am 30, and this time around, the customers aren’t forgiving. They demand perfection. They need us to be on our toes. Giving solutions, seemed intervening in their decision process and they needed result-oriented products. They wanted products that would help them optimise their cost yet not degrade the quality of their products.
Though I have given you a business example of customers in the same industry but of different regions, the times were all different, and what Marshall Goldsmith said is true, “What got us here, Will not get us there!” But then, the flip is that through this journey, the one thing that has stayed constant are the underlying principals. Those principals have seldom changed, though the outcome of using them have changed often! More on this in the coming blog!
Looking forth to your views - please email them at - vg@memoirs.blog
