The corporate culture, and responsibility associated with it often makes it a bearing on us that we project ourselves, and behave as strict professionals. Need not to mention, if you are currently pursuing an MBA, or have done it in the past, you might remember that every class, every situation, and every project will teach you to be more and more professional. To present your ideas surrounding facts, meet your clients with charts, projections, contingency plans, and much more. But the question which now arises, is that if everything around being data ready and professional is so perfect, then why so many companies fail? I am not against being professional or do research beforehand, but basing everything on these two things and blind ourselves with just our self-knowledge, this can create stagnancy and failure.
I was recently sitting at the Starbucks near my house, and was working on a project. A project which is pretty complicated and challenging. I don’t like to fail, although I am not scared of failure, but I just dislike failing. So, I chalk out numerous contingency plans. If Plan A fails, then Plan B, and so on. High-level contingency plans, and I was working on one such plan, when I saw this kid entering the Starbucks with her mom. She was around 3 years old and very outgoing. In 40 minutes of her stay at the café, she went to each and every person sitting there, asked their names, what were they doing, and introduced them to her. In 40 minutes, everyone present knew her, and loved her. She didn’t have any data, facts, or plans with her. She just had herself and her brand. A brand of happiness, and urge to know people, and a want to let people know about her and her significance. She was not scared to fail.
Now, if you take her example and apply that to our corporate model, what can happen? Being a business professional, it may seem to be childish, but think about this when you are completely blank and try to learn, you understand your customer better, what they want, what are their expectations, and finally what you can do for them. When these things are clear, then you can plan a solution for them. Then use data, and then support your solution with the data. This should be the approach – the approach which I term to be the ‘Kid’s Way’. This would not only make a solution better, but it will save you a lot of time. The time which you can use in the implementation cycle rather than planning numerous contingency plans. Be it networking, problem-solving, consulting, wealth management, you name it, the ‘Kid’s Way’ can be the best approach.
So, why don’t we just try this approach once. For once let’s all be ‘kids’ and see how that works.
Arnab Pandey is a capital markets professional, an entrepreneur, a nationally awarded debater, an internationally acclaimed researcher, and a passionate blogger. He holds an MBA (Finance) degree from the Sykes College of Business at The University of Tampa, Florida. He procured his under-graduate (Bachelor of Technology) degree in the field of applied mechanics….. Read More
Arnab Pandey 