Author: animeshjmathur

Just Ask – you never know….

Affirmative action, Marketing, Product Management, Questions

There are lot of times when we can save a lot of time, effort, energy and eventual success, happiness if we were to Just Ask.

Somehow , we humans have – an ego – which causes us to feel that if the person whom we are asking refuses, then we will lose face or somehow people will make fun of us….etc. Since the human brain was designed to protect us, it ascribes all kinds of meanings to even small things. While I am preaching this, there are a lot of times, when I myself don’t follow this advice and then later wonder, what if I had just checked out.

I will give some real life examples of how by just asking – the persons got what they never thought was possible.

My colleague and I were coming back from Mumbai. Its a 2 hour flight to Delhi. You have to generally arrive at the airport about 3 hours before departure. We were travelling in a full fare airline, so they were providing us with snacks, coffee etc. Since were travelling in economy class however we were only getting a limited set of options in the food and drinks.

Both of us were in aisle seats, in the same row. The stewardess asked me for coffee / tea and I took my coffee. However my colleague did not take anything. After the stewardess had moved away from our row, he asked me if they didn’t serve juice. I was not sure so I told him “why don’t you just ask and you will come to know”. The good thing about this colleague of mine is that he generally takes my advice. So he asked the stewardess when she passed by him again.

And guess what – she said they don’t have it in economy class, but she will check in the first class and come back. In ten minutes my colleague was sipping fruit juice enjoying himself. But he would have not got it if he hadn’t asked.

In another situation my technical team mentioned that they had seen multiple options and the cost of taking licenses of a specific software were close to $14000/- for annual purchase. But we only needed to test our software so spending that kind of money didn’t make sense. So I asked on the minimum duration that would help them if I were to somehow get the licenses – so they said 2 weeks.

I then asked my colleague who handles the relationship with this software partner , to fix a short call with their product leader. Incidentally she had already set up contact with this person earlier and I had noticed that he was a helpful person. Luckily this person was available , he immediately responded back and we met on Zoom and I asked him if he could help.

Once more – we got the license to test our application with their software free of cost for a full month. The key thing about humans – is if you are kind to people and ask them in a pleasing way, most people will like to help.

My mother used to say the two most important phrases in the English language are “thank you sir/ma’am” and “if you can please”. It does not mean that your requests will always be accepted, but if you don’t ask, anyway it will not be accepted. By asking you are giving yourself a chance to play and find out.

We will look at the implications of this for marketing / product management

Till next time then….just ask….and you never know….

carpe Diem!!!

Habits – Path Dependence – 2

competition, differentiation, differentiation, ideal customer, Marketing, segmentation, single target market

In my earlier post I wrote about why Path Dependence can be a big barrier to success. The reason this is important when we look at Marketing and Product Marketing is that the market and the competitors are always changing. The customers change, the way they like to interact with suppliers changes, their priorities change. The way your competition reacts to these changes with their offerings and how you react all need to keep up with these changes

So the solutions which helped you become successful previously may not make you successful now. It happens to me all the time. Whenever I keep trying to use the same old data points, the same old methods and things don’t work I have to start going down to basics.

Habits are good , as I have said multiple times before, because they help cut out the energy requirements from our life , but the same habits become a baggage when you have to change to meet new scenarios. Habits work on path dependence.

While the basics of targeting a single target market, differentiation , segmentation, all remain as is, what changes is the way you address a customer. There was a time when you reached out on the phone to people. Then people. got Caller id phones and if they didn’t recognise your number you got diverted to voice mail. Then came email. But if you were still stuck on phone as primary method of prospecting and didn’t adapt to email prospecting you would be long gone.

So while habits are good, energy & time efficient, sometimes when things are not working out you need to look at another path to see if it can take you to your destination.

If you look at India’s history as an analogy, one of the reasons that they were able to conquer our country and rule it for almost 150 years was because they came with guns, while the Indian kings at that time, still had their armies using swords and spears.

In marketing if you don’t carry the ability to go back to basics to figure out what is causing your team to fail, then you won’t last long. Sometimes you have to change the teams just for this reason, because if they are not willing to change, you have just two options – either die a slow death or change the team and live to fight another day.

Till next time then, don’t let path dependence stop. you from exploring new solutions.

Carpe Diem!!!

Thinking and Action – frameworks

Affirmative action, books, Flow, Frameworks, Habits, Human Brain, possibility thinking, problem solving

Till now I have been generally written about how the brain gets positive feelings when you do a gratitude exercise or when you do charity etc. This feeling helps your brain see more possibilities. This was actually topic of my last post. While all of this is true, I still was not able to figure out what will ensure that I keep taking action on a continuous basis because at the end of the day, just thinking won’t get you there, you need to take action.

This is not to degrade the thinking process. As a matter of fact if you spend time into thinking then the chances are that you will find a solution which may be extremely elegant and solve the problem. But you need to have the grit or persistence to work on the solution, figure out if it actually works, if it doesn’t, go back to the drawing board and find another solution.

How does someone ensure that they are always taking action. What will create that behaviour which will make me ensure that I am moving in the direction, to achieve my goals of the impossible while I am coming out with more creative solutions to handle my constraints.

While I am not sure if I have all the pieces of the puzzle in place for me, I do think that there’s a combination of things which I have observed when I have read the following 4 books – Tiny Habits by B.J.Fogg, The Art of the Impossible by Steven Kotler, A Beautiful Constraint by Adam Morgan & Mark Barden and Think Like a Rocket Scientist by Ozan Varol.

So two of the books – in no particular order – are about solving problems and handling constraints, one is about creating behaviours and the last is about taking your brain into a high performance agenda. over the next few weeks I will try to see if I can take out the best pieces of advice and put it into a framework for myself and see the results.

So there are some low levels activities which I completely stop doing – like writing emails. Then I create behaviours for small things which can make a huge impact for me, find processes and frameworks to resolve constraints – thinking tools and then get into flow to figure out creative solutions. If I can have prompts to help me do all this then I would have really figured out a way to not get stuck from time to time in time.

Once there’s a behaviour based on a habit, then my brain will also not get over worked. With the energy that I conserve, I may actually figure out even better solutions.

Is this too much of a fancy. I don’t know. Let me put it in action and see. I will keep you posted.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Gratitude – it makes your more resilient

Decisions, Fear, Flow, Gratitude, Habits, Happiness, possibility thinking, problem solving

This was news to me. I have always spoken about being grateful for whatever we have in life instead of bothering about what we don’t have. This habit has held me in good state, because God has genuinely given me a lot to be thankful for. That doesn’t mean I don’t have aspirations, but I definitely don’t get anxious about things which don’t come my way.

What I learnt over the last few weeks is that gratitude gets more dopamine into your brain. That spike in dopamine helps the brain feel good. Since the brain is designed to make you safe always, it is always looking for the next point of danger. So the brain is always looking for the next negative item.

When the dopamine enters and the brain feels safe, it does not have fear. When it feels safe it is willing to think of more possibilities. The moment you get into a possibility mode, you tend to solve problems better, you take better decisions and better decisions help you get better in life. You get into flow state faster because negative things are not bothering you.

When you are able to solve problems, then your brain does not get frustrated with the impediments that come your way.

When impediments come your way, your brain goes into negative mode trying to visualise all the negative situations in a snowball effect. When that happens, your ability to think of solutions goes down. And you get further frustrated, which leads to anxiety and most health related problems start from there.

Therefor being gracious, having gratefulness, is extremely good for your health. when you have good health automatically you become more resilient handling tough situations physically also.

Till next time then, be grateful for all that you have.

Carpe Diem!!!