Published May 29-June 2, 2023
76
When Anger Comes
Netcore was a sponsor at an event organised for marketers and founders of eCommerce companies. As a sponsor, we were entitled to speak for 2 minutes. I had written up the speech, had it approved by the organisers, and practised to make sure I finished it within the stipulated time. When my turn came, I went up, paper in hand, and spoke. There was a countdown timer visible from the stage. With 13 seconds and 10 words left to speak, the anchor interrupted me and ended my promotional speech. I was taken aback, but quietly walked away. When I returned to my seat, I was seething with anger. What had happened was not right, but there was no way I could show my displeasure at that time. I was upset because I had done nothing wrong and the audience (to whom we wanted to sell) would have got the impression that I had gone overtime, reflecting poorly on Netcore and me.
I don’t get angry easily, but for the few minutes after I went off-stage, I was. The event was continuing, and so I could not afford to visibly demonstrate my feelings. I opened my spiral notebook and wrote out my thoughts. This calmed me down. What was in my mind was now in my book. I decided to put the incident behind me and move on. I thought about it from the anchor’s perspective – maybe he thought I was going overboard on pushing Netcore, had no clue how long I would speak, and did not notice the timer. Yes, it should not have happened, but I could not undo it now that it had. If I kept the anger going within me, I would not make the best use of the next two hours at the event. I still had marketers to interact with and persuade.
After the event, I made my displeasure known to the organisers, and they offered a formal apology with their version. It didn’t matter much, but I wanted to let them know that I had done no wrong.
There was a second incident on the US trip which also made me angry. A meeting with a potential investor abruptly ended before the scheduled time when the investor just got up signalling it was over, even as I was speaking. I got the message. I had mistakenly assumed that just because a calendar slot had been blocked, I had that much time. After coming out, I again wrote out my feelings in my notebook.
Bad things do happen, and it is at times like these that it is important to keep one’s anger under control. I did exactly what I had written in an earlier post on anger management: “It is not that I keep my anger bottled up inside me. I use my notebook to write down my feelings and get closure. I find that writing out my thoughts helps clear the mind; it is almost like talking to someone else. The writing forces me to reflect and that helps dissipate the momentary anger.”
77
When Things Go Wrong
I was going with my colleague for a meeting in New York. We had just exited the subway. I did not pay attention to the two-levelled pavement, lost my balance, and fell. The fall was worsened because of my heavy backpack. (As a friend put it, my centre of gravity changed.) I hit my knees against the concrete, and for a few seconds, I was in a daze. Luckily, my friend helped me up, and I examined the damage. I had a few bruises on my knees with blood coagulating fast. There was a CVS nearby and we bought some wipes and ointment to ensure things did not get worse. The good news was that I did not seem to have broken any bones. I could walk, albeit slower than my normal pace. (As my same friend put it, there were 206 bones that could have been hurt!)
Back at the hotel room after my meeting, I used an ice pack to ensure things did not get worse. I needed to ensure that I could still move around without too much discomfort. I had a flight from New York to San Francisco the next day, and 12 days still left in my trip before I returned home. I had to make sure that the ‘morning after’ situation was not bad and painful.
Thankfully, the knees settled down. There was no swelling, and I could move around. It was a near-miss. The fall had not been on the agenda! If I had hurt myself more severely, I do not know how I would have reacted. Things had gone wrong, but it wasn’t bad enough to upset my plans.
As I reflected, there were the obvious errors: not paying attention as I was walking and talking, and a loaded backpack which made it hard for me to regain balance. I also realised that I was extremely lucky that I had gotten away very lightly. By chance if I had fractured some body part, it would have been the end of the trip for me.
A second incident also brought into play how things can go wrong. At a dinner table, a wrong nudge meant some water split on the table. It just missed my iPad and notebook. Small thing, but just goes to show how at times things can happen, and in an instant, life can change.
The incidents I described were small, but the lessons are big. We all rely on things going according to plan. And yet, so many things – some beyond our control – could rearrange life in ways we don’t expect. There is much to be thankful for each day – for things that do go right. And when things go wrong, we need to accept them and do our best to come out of it. Many of the mistakes are in our control and can be avoided. I will be more careful when walking and ensure I am more aware of my surroundings. I will not keep fragile things on a crowded dinner table. And so on. And in the event that bad things do happen, do the best and move on. There is a time for regret and reflection which can be later.
78
Delta Dollar Decision Rule – Applied
I have written previously about what I have termed as Delta Dollar Decision Rule: “Set a threshold below which one will not waste thinking time – the answer should be a Yes. For me, that threshold is $100 (Rs 7,500). This simplifies decisions like buying a book, booking a better seat on a flight, going to a better restaurant for a business meeting – the answer is always Yes. The same applies in business also – the decision threshold can be higher. Always look at the benefits and the delta, rather than the absolute.”
On my recent US trip, I had many places where I put this in practice. I tend to choose a bigger airline rather than the cheapest flight, and one which is direct rather than with connections. They tend to be a bit more expensive, but the odds of delay or cancellation are much lower. And even if something happens, there are more flight alternatives available.
I also choose a hotel which is more conveniently located even though it is priced higher. My preference in New York is the Residence Inn Marriott at Times Square. It is a 5-minute walk from our WeWork office; it has a very good breakfast spread; and it has a kitchenette in the room which is very helpful for me given my dietary restrictions. There are many cheaper options available, but the location and facilities more than make up for the higher cost.
Here is another example. My return flight from LA to San Jose on Delta was scheduled at 8 pm. I had a meeting near the airport at 4:30 pm. I figured that if the meeting got over around 5:45 pm, then I could be pushed hard to make the flight – getting an Uber, doing the 15-20 minute ride to the airport through peak hour traffic, passing through security, and walking to the gate (LAX is a big, crowded airport). I then decided to upgrade to Business class for an additional $65, which would ensure that the security queue would be a shorter one in case I reached late. As it turned out, I didn’t need it – the person I met dropped me to the airport, there were no long security check queues, and I was at the gate by 6:30 pm. What the upgrade bought me was peace of mind, which ensured I could focus on the meeting without being mentally distracted and trying to rush a closure to the conversation with the clock ticking away.
For business meetings, I also tend to choose restaurants which have more spaced-out seating. They tend to be a bit more expensive but the conversation tends to be much better. I pay for extra legroom and an aisle seat when travelling, especially if it is a longer flight. This enables me to be more comfortable, which helps with thinking. The extra $10 for inflight Wi-Fi is also worth it if I use my laptop. I know all these things add up, but each individual decision is a small delta over the base price.
So, think “delta” not absolute when making decisions about money and time. It will make life better, and a month later, you will not even remember whether you spent $48 or $87! The better experience will more than make up for the incremental spend.
79
Thinking Bubble
Airports and flights can be noisy. I use five things to create my own bubble: QC45 Bose Headset, iPad, mobile, Amazon Music, and my notebook. The headset with its amazing noise cancellation shuts me from most sounds enabling me to think and not be distracted with all the random sounds and conversations of those around me. The iPad has a lot of books and other reading material. The mobile with the Amazon Music app has a few hundred songs downloaded and available in offline mode; I tend to play them at low volume so while they fill the ears they do not disturb the chain of thinking. And finally, my notebook – in which I write everything that I think.
At a minimum, I need my notebook because I like to write everything as the ideas flow, rather than trying to remember. Long flights give me time to read books and think. In general, I try to avoid doing emails on long flights. For every email I send, I will get one back – and then they all become micro-distractions which I can do without and there is a different time and place to deal with them.
I can create a bubble for myself anywhere. I had to take my parents to the hospital recently for a check-up. My BB with my iPad and notebook helped me during the hour-long waiting time. I did not bother with my mobile for most of the time; it is very easy to see a message, start a conversation, and go down a rabbit hole of useless banter!
The bubble creation works well at conferences also. While most sessions tend to be generally useful, there are times when one ends up having to sit through what is a boring presentation or conversation. It is hard to walk out unless one is seated at the edge of a row. In such situations, I create my own bubble – no headset or music, but just my thoughts and notebook. I see a lot of people around me doing stuff with their phones or sometimes laptops, but they are just not good for a continuous stream of thinking. And that is when ideas come – as one thought leads to another, and so on. I like the notebook because I can write faster than I can type and because I can do much more freehand stuff. An iPad could serve the purpose but it’s simply not the same thing.
Whatever it is that suits you – create a toolkit to ensure you can create your own thinking bubble. While ChatGPT may have all the answers, we still need to read and push our own minds further and beyond.
Also see: The Zone.
80
Think Bigger
I was discussing with a colleague recently about how we can accelerate growth in a specific geography. My suggestion was: instead of working on a plan to double in the coming year, what would it take to grow 10X in the same period? My point was that we would think and act very differently if we took a crazy outsized goal rather than build incrementally from a low base. I then gave the example of my “Project 275 for 2014” which I had proposed for the BJP in 2011. The best the BJP had done in Lok Sabha elections until 2011 was winning 182 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha. In conversations that I was part of, the focus was on how to get to 200+ seats. I looked at it differently. I asked what it would take to focus on getting a majority (winning 272+ seats) rather than forming a minority government. Targeting 200+ meant going with the same approach of a summation of state elections, while aiming for 275 meant creating a national wave in favour of the BJP which transcended state politics. As it turned out, the BJP did the latter and won 282 seats in the 2014 elections.
The very next day after I suggested the 10X bigger approach to my colleague, I came across Sheena Iyengar’s book “Think Bigger.” The focus is on innovation. Sheena, a professor at Columbia Business School, writes: “I noticed that our many courses on entrepreneurship taught students how to implement a new idea—but not how to get that idea in the first place. Not all new ideas are equal, just like not all choices are equal. I found that the field of innovation offered methods to get new ideas, but these dated from more than half a century ago. They failed to take into account the recent breakthrough in neuroscience called Learning+Memory. It lets us actually see how imagination works in the human mind…In this book, I will show you how to deliberately form creative ideas—and most importantly, how anyone can be creative once they understand the roadmap to creative problem-solving.” The book offers a 6-step framework as the table of contents shows:
The question we should ask when we look at solving problems is how to “think bigger”. By changing the frame of reference from 200 to 275 seats (minority government to majority), by reframing the growth question from 2X to 10X, we can push ourselves to come up with bolder ideas and possibly very different paths to success. Too often, we let the safety of the incremental lead us away from the boldness of the disruptive. In some way, this is what entrepreneurship is about. By thinking big, we may risk failure, but the outcome is likely to be much better than the obvious ordinary.
So, the next time you are asked to solve a problem, ask yourself – what would it take to be much bigger and better? Even if that doesn’t make it to the final plan, you will have opened many new avenues which you would have perhaps not considered previously.