It’s been a few months since I last posted anything. I had been tied up with closing some old, family issues with banks and local authorities and then my back problem erupted again so I was on bed for a few months. All-in-all a pretty eventful period.

A few learnings along the way – some things got re-iterated and some are new .

Persistent follow-up – I am usually not every good with doing follow-ups – but with government officials and with your employees, its a very good idea to ensure you are following up regularly on commitments, pending items etc. And a good mechanism for follow-ups is having a checklist on which you keep striking-off things which are cleared out.

Delegating – I have always been a very strong advocate for delegating tasks – but by delegating to the right person, you can actually improve your productivity tremendously, while the other person gets an opportunity to improve her skills. Over the last few months we did a lot of hiring. Hiring is a time consuming job, but if you can get to only interview shortlisted candidates, then it makes life easy. There is off-course a downside. if you were involved in the shortlisting yourself, you may have hit upon a raw diamond which you can cut and polish. But mining diamonds is a costly and time consuming activity so you might as well depend on someone else to handle the job of scouting through the dust.

Most people in the world are good folks – this is a belief I have carried all through my life till now – during these follow-ups with bank officials and agreement signing etc. I found in most places, people are generally cooperative and helpful. If you tell them the constraints that you face, they actually suggest possible solutions as well. If you actually ask someone for help, people go out of the way to figure out ways to help.

Life is short – Live it – Enjoy it now – This realisation actually started from the onset of the pandemic and the multiple waves that it got. I used to love going to different places with the family. But over the last 3+ years I have actually got scared of travelling to new places because of the uncertainty of the different variants of Covid which keep popping-up and also the medical facilities available in the country that I go to. Due to this, so many places, that were on my bucket list, to visit, I have to hold. Due to that there is a feeling of regret. I don’t like having regrets. If I had travelled earlier, I may have covered a lot of the places on my bucket list. I am hoping to get out of my fear for Covid and restart travelling – let’s see.

Identifying the right elephant to ride – this has been one of my pet theories for getting into the market. I am even more convinced about this theory today. Not all elephants are friendly and agreeing to take you along, on the ride, to where they are going. If you can identify the right elephant, you can rapidly cover a long distance. The assumption of course is that you want to go in the same direction as the elephant.

I would love to hear back from you and hope to post regularly again

Till then.

Carpe Diem!!!