After an illustrious career spanning over 40 years, Ravi Kiran had set about todo something on his own, fulfilling a dream that he had nurtured for a long time. There was a deep seated problem in society and the product and offering were designed to address this. He was struggling to scale, trying hard to create a unique offering that would distinguish him from his competitors and would have his customers flocking to him. With hardly anything that one could call digital, he realized that his business had a very low entry barrier, confusing the hapless customer who was comparing what he was offering against the variety that the markets had to offer.
As a busy entrepreneur, CXO, manager or even a regular employee, it is easy to get mired in to the routine and challenges of a daily schedule. Your world tends to revolve around your business and industry domain. The people you meet and interact with tend to speak the same language. And it is easy to develop what one may call a myopic vision where you fail to think out of the box and look beyond. It also takes a lot of courage and grit, not to mention intense research, to take that bold step and reinvent your strategy — to say no to something that seems to be working fine, to disrupt status quo, to take that jump.
When you need to innovate, reinvent and re-imagine, you not only need to convince your staff, but you also need to convince yourself. You need facts, you need data — you need customer stories to tell you that this is the right thing to do. You need to be able to pick and choose the right solution from among a multitude of options, you need to prioritize and let go of all the others, you need to focus. You need your business to stand out amongst the madding crowd — to be unique and rare. And for all this, there is nothing wrong in taking help. You only end up losing time, money and adding a lot of stress by attempting to be a Jack of all trades. Leave it to the experts, they say, and focus on what you do best!