“The biggest epiphany I’ve had lately –
If I had indexed on structure and outcome in the first three years of my career, I wouldn’t have progressed. Or made it to where I am today.
What did this mean? Working on ideas that often did not see the light of day.
Now, unfinished projects may not be ideal. Focusing on outcomes is important. But not to the extent that it becomes a deterrent.
When I look back, I see that my agility and ability to work in ambiguous situations helped me grow. More than one successful project ever would’ve.
When I say grow, I mean –
The width of experiences I got
The kind of people I got to meet and learn from
The different kinds of work I got my hands dirty with
There are 48393 examples. But I will share one for context.
Sometime early this year, Anshika and I worked with two celebrities in India to put together a women-only offline event. A grand festival designed for women of today.
When we first envisioned this, we knew it was audacious.
To think about raising a crore for our first one in sponsorships was slightly crazy. My mom’s entire life’s earnings don’t amount to that much.
And then, to email these two women, who logically seemed out of reach, and pitch to them to do it together. As partners.
If at that time, we had done the math or made a decision based on probability of success, we wouldn’t have even tried.
The detachment from the outcome and the acceptance that this may not see the light of day pushed us to try. And that led to –
▪ Us pitching to the marketing head of a company that practically dominates how India communicates
▪ Sitting across the founder (and his dog :D) of one of India’s largest event and ticketing platforms
Like I said, people. Width of experience. And new tasks.
This goes for each thing I’ve done.
When I first started working with C4E, I did not have a job description. In fact, to date, I don’t. I have responsibilities and projects. And those change very often too.
What’s next from here? What’s the lesson?
1/ I will continue to say yes to things. Be detached from the outcome.
2/ I will build the muscle to ship things. But I will do it with the awareness that success in all cases won’t mean a shipped project.
While I will put my 100% in, the metric to say yes to something won’t be whether I can complete it or not. Will chase out-of-aukaat ideas.
That was all. Tell me what out-of-aukaat thing you’ve decided to pick up this year?”