Credit : Hugues de BUYER-MIMEURE
It has been my personal experience that if things are not happening as per your expectations in your personal and professional life, It is you, who are responsible. It is you, who is a loser, it is you, who don’t have the required skills-set to deliver. It is you, who don’t have the material to run the business, so it is time to rethink, ponder, change, else you will be wasting your valuable time in being or doing something which is not apt for you.
If your startup is constantly struggling because of same reason again & again, you should be wise enough to accept it is not working for you and should be prepared to change. When I say change, it means you need to seriously sit with your team , your trusted network , mentor and most importantly with yourself to do deep diving into the problem statement, your questions should be directed towards real problems and this inquiry should continue till you get the answer.
When you question and question hard you do get answers which may surprise you for all good & bad reasons
When you sit with your team and everyone is willing enough to contribute you will find that it were the internal factors related to themselves, which were the main culprit for the mess you have been facing in your startup business. In this true inquiry, many losers will be exposed, many fighters will be identified who have been really contributing greatly, but not rewarded, many leadership issues will come up, but it has to be seriously audited without being biased, then only true analysis can be done.
Our action plan to shed what is not working has to based on the analysis of each and every stakeholders and team members, their skill-set has to be put under the scanner, the decision making team has to be questioned then only you can come to some conclusion or find any solution to all your problems.
It is not easy I must say, because 70–80% time you will find that upper level management team and founding team will be responsible for all the downfalls you are facing .
It was their weakness which cost the business big time. They elongated, they experimented with the team to test their dream out, which lacked the planning, vision and conviction. They smartly pulled people in the system without any real substance to cover up for their weaknesses and never worked hard on themselves to learn the art of leading or managing the business.
The Result you are facing now is not because of current market condition, or lack of finance, it is because you were not skilled enough to handle the finance and rotate it right, leadership team is not smart enough to foresee the existing opportunity and leverage it to scale the business.
If you are in the wrong business with the wrong people and doing it at wrong time you are going for a toss for sure.
Time you can’t control, other people you can’t control, you can only inspire them for a change , But one thing is for sure, you can change your profession, business, your leadership style, you can always start fresh and learn new stuff and then again bounce back with more confidence and conviction. Ultimate reincarnation will happen when you are willing enough to accept your failures and learn to grow out of it.
Life will always give a second chance, but only to those who are seekers.
Summary:
It has been 6+ years I have been running my startup, the key learning which will always stay with me is that:
I was responsible for all the failures which happened over the period of time. I had certain skills, but was trying to do too much stuff without having the right supporting hand. There was no financial plan in place, nothing was going into records, all decisions were made randomly, impulsively, dynamically, no self-discipline was being maintained and many other issues were there. But what I started doing right was to to accept that I need to work upon myself.
It has been my constant endeavor thereafter in the journey so far to introspect constantly and seek help whenever required to attune to the given situation. It works wonderfully well.