FIGURED IT OUT

“You might learn more about you when you lose yourself”

Growing up in a town in India, I had the privilege of spending most of the childhood amidst lush green fields, pure air, bending rivers, simple and yet deep thoughtful people, a cohesive environment.

There were small streams of water and those were our summer getaways. With no second thoughts, we sometimes jumped into the water and tried swimming. I was floating for few minutes, scratch that, few seconds and it felt great. In my brain, I registered that I know swimming.

Fast forward few years, scratch that, its couple decades, here, I am taking my kids to the swimming lessons. When I see these kids, I can see what mistakes they are making as their hands and legs and the main trunk are not aligned all the time. Yet they jumped from one level to the next with fixing their small nuances.

When I tried to swim in our local swimming pool, that’s when I realized, I am no match to these small kids. Their bodies are much more flexible and they are much much faster in correcting themselves.

That’s when I realized, I should swimming myself properly and with a coach. Having enrolled in one such swimming lesson, I now realize how difficult it is to bend my body and swim like a fish. Yet I tried and tried… well, still trying to get my hands and legs and trunk to swim in tandem.

When I looked at others, I felt.. damn… they figured it out. They are now acing the swimming. I started introspecting. Is it my rigid body, lack of not using all the muscles that I am not progressing like everyone else. Park that thought for a minute.

While drinking coffee one fine Saturday morning and mulling over the digital news, on one end I read how retailers are buckling with the pressure of online stores and how big malls are slowly losing their once fancier tenants. We keep reading stories of how few companies not able to reinvent themselves in the right time that they simply lost the game and thus shutting down their shops. Contrarily, there are certain companies who had an idea and sprouted from that and now are leading the industry (read Uber, Lyft, AirBnB et al). Their business model is flexible and adaptable to the changes coming into the market.

Well, I guess I jumped the gun a bit faster. Hang on. Let me build the story in a slow motion.

ToysRUs, such a sad story. The online retail giants grew right in front of this store and yet ToysRUs didn’t evolve or reinvent themselves and within no time, they had to buckle down to the pressure of changing customer dynamics.  

Blockbuster, one of the places where Friday evening visits happened before heading home to pick a DVD or two and watch it over the weekend. It was such a novel idea when they started in 1985. 28 years later, they simply couldn’t come up with a better strategy for themselves and succumbed to the online giants such as Netflix, HBO etc.

Evolution happens and no one can stop it. But if you don’t watch the tide you are swimming on, the tide will over power you. Customers are changing, their exposure to new technology is increasing and they have more power in their hand than the service provider and whatever the service might be. If companies cant evolve, the tide overpowers and that’s what we spoke about till now.

Looking at some of the other giant companies in the industry, they somehow figured it out. Well, at least as of today, some of the market leaders seem to figure the pulse of the customer, service the customer and still make some cash at the end of the day. 

What could be the reasons for such success?

1.   Vision: If the leader of the company can give a clear direction and set forth the vision and continue to refine it with changing climate, the success rate will be on a trajectory if not flat

2.   Speed: if you have a great idea and if you can put the product in the lap of the customer and keep the product innovative at all the time, your margins will certainly flourish

3.   Cash Flow: Certainly money is important to the health of the business. If the cash flow is constant and ties with vision and still delivers with agility and speed, the company is guaranteed to enter into new terrains all the time

4.   Dedication: if the energy within the organization is dedicated to bringing positive results, there is no stopping for the energy to flow through.

5.   Confidence: having complete commitment to goals and objectives and confidence bubbling in every individual creates an aura of positivity and is difficult to break by competitors.

6.   Execution: if an idea can be executed perfectly and the idea is tied with vision and goals, and enough levers are available to play with during execution are some of the traits that success companies have.

There are many more such traits that companies develop and find their sweet mantra to stay afloat and still rein the market. Needless to say, such companies have figured it out.

Taking the same analogy into my swimming,

Had I continued to learn swimming while by body was flexible, I need not struggle the way I am struggling now to learn it.

Had I understood how easy it was to mold when young, I would have been in a better shape.

Had I reasoned that it was easy when supple than when strong (read bones), I would have been much more agile.

No, I am not a failing company. Rather I am an evolving individual. And yes, I am not giving up.

Will continue to keep working on it and find ways to make my body listen to me than me listening to it. Well, age is just a number and that’s what I keep telling myself and like to hear the reverberation all the time in my brain.

I realized this as I am ready to lose myself to learn more about myself

One day, I will say, I have FIGURED IT OUT