Why the scintillating number from Gully Boy, ‘Apna Time Ayega’ could be a perfect business lesson?

The famous saying – “????? ?? ???? ?? ???? ?? ?????? ???? ?? ??? ???? ?????” - means that you do not get anything before its' time and what you get will never be more than what you are destined for. This holds true for every walk of life, equally so for businesses and business leaders around the world.

The four dimensions of success for business leaders are their own purpose and capabilities, market conditions, capital and timing. Out of these, timing is absolutely critical - timing of when you start something, timing for raising capital, timing for scaling up, timing for almost all business decisions that a leader takes (big and small).

I learnt this lesson the hard way when I failed in my first start-up. At the time I started my first company in the year 2000, there were strong signals from the market that things were very risky. Many dot-coms were already going bust, VCs were avoiding or even pulling back their investments, federal banks across the world were coming out with warnings and there were only a handful of internet companies that showed any traction. Yet, being somewhat over confident about myself, I still started the company. I thought that ‘It would be fine!’. It was only when I lost all my savings and had to lay off 25 of my team members just before Diwali, that I realized the hard-hitting reality that the timing of any critical business decision is critical.

The lifelong lesson that I learnt from this mistake was that the worst thing you can do regarding a business decision is to take it in a hurry and that too without analysing the available data. The best thing to do is to do exactly the opposite - be patient and data driven. One of my favourite examples to establish this eternal truth is film director James Cameron’s 10-year long wait before bringing the world of 'Avatar' from his head to the movie screen. After finishing the screenplay, Cameron was smart and patient enough to wait for the prevailing CGI technology to advance considerably, so that he could create the visual wonder that Avatar finally came out to be. His patience eventually made the movie find a place amongst the highest grossing movies of all times! What did Cameron have? The insight that technology was not ready to give expression to his creativity and the discipline to be patient.

Timing of the decision is very important since it provides the flexibility to the decision maker to evaluate the decision on a number of attributes. These are - longevity of the options, time to evaluate possible outcomes in the future (or temporal decision making), truly understand how much time you have to take the decision and assess the timelines for the outcomes to emerge. Good decision making requires you to allow yourself enough time to gather enough knowledge and insights and take the final decision on the basis of high-quality knowledge.

Tens of thousands of business leaders across the world are trying to make the right decision at the right time through the right knowledge. At Benori Knowledge, our vision is to help our clients take such timely knowledge-driven decisions. We equip our clients with actionable insights and help them take informed business decisions. Our integrated and global approach using secondary research, primary research/expert consultations and data modelling supports business leaders like you to strategise and execute. Over the past 3 years, we have:

• Carried out 250,000 hours of secondary/primary research and data analysis
• Served 200+ clients (e.g. consulting, tech, FS, consumer, PE firms)
• Worked in 75 countries/20 languages
• Generated 25% cost savings

If you would like to learn more, write to us on [email protected] or [email protected]

Stay safe.....??.