Calling out the elephant in the room – Assumptions – 2

arrogance, Assumptions, B2B, Business, ego, Marketing

For a background to this post, I would suggest you have a look at the fist part of the topic here

Not many know that the digital camera was first created by a team in Kodak. Whether you call it arrogance on the part of the managers at Kodak, who assumed that no one would want to buy such an expensive camera. What was assumed was that the technology would make it unviable for most folks to afford the camera.

No one thought that technology was following Moore’s law, where the power of the chip was roughly doubling every 18 odd months. A similar thing happened at Xerox who actually had designed the “mouse” long before it became a standard accessory. But they never moved forward on it.

It is said , the Swiss already knew about battery powered watches, much before the Japanese, but because they prided themselves on their engineering and movement, they never bothered taking a patent. Suddenly the Japanese were all over the place with watches leaving the Swiss, gasping for breadth. Again technology assumptions can go wrong very badly.

Brainstorming on the assumptions you are making and listing them, gets you grounded to think better. Also its a better idea to ask an outsider to check out your assumptions.

In marketing, because you are dealing with human perceptions, understanding and accounting for the assumptions can help you avoid expensive mistakes. In B2B scenarios where there are multiple people involved in a decision and there’s general inertia, not accounting for these assumptions can be fatal.. Its a good idea to keep asking ‘what else are we assuming”.

Like assuming that the person on the production line will easily adopt the new technology you are bringing in via the CIO and /or the CFO. More IT projects have failed because of these faulty assumptions than the problem with the technology itself.

Especially when you are making the marketing or sales plan at the beginning of the year, if you don’t account for these assumptions, very soon when you hit the road, all your plans will fall flat.

Don’t make the mistakes that I have done. Whenever you make a plan list out all the assumptions and make everyone aware about them so that collective wisdom can find a better solution.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Calling out the elephant in the room – Assumptions

arrogance, Assumptions, ego, Marketing

Whenever you are doing an analysis of the market or doing a post mortem of why an iteration did not wok out, one of the biggest things to bring out in the open is the “Assumptions” based on which you have chosen to take an action.

A simple mathematical example will show the problem. Most often people like to say the market for some broad category is X billion dollars per annum and growing at Y percent. Now you have chosen a niche in the segment whose market size could be 20% of the X billion dollars. Suddenly you have lost 80% of the market size. This could be growing at 50% of Y per annum. So assuming that X billion was the market today and it was growing at CAGR of 12%, then this category would become 2X in 6 years.

Now your chosen niche however is only 20% of the X billion dollars and this is growing at 50% Y or 6% rate. Which means this market will double in 12 years. Suddenly your niche is not so attractive as the overall category.

Now suppose that the growth rate is dependent on the availability of a key raw material which comes from only one country and if there’s a problem in the production of this product then this growth rate could become 10% of the projected Y or 1.2%. At this rate the market will double in 60 years and it may not be worthwhile for you to invest in the market at all.

Yes you could come back saying what is the probability that this scenario would occur. Maybe not much. However if you don’t identify it and list it as an assumption even though the odds are low, then you can be caught completely unawares if that scenario plays out.

In marketing – Murphy’s law – paraphrased by me – if anything has to go wrong, it will and at the most inappropriate time – always plays out. Most of the times it is sheer laziness on part of the team or sometime even arrogance / ego which causes us to not list out the assumptions. This happens especially when we have had a string of non-stop successes.

If you call out all the assumptions that you are making, then it becomes far easier to plan and execute on your strategies.

In technology buying a very small dependency like availability of trained resources to work on the technology can cause your product to not get the same traction. I remember the RDBMS market was growing in double digits about 20 years back, what with UNIX, Windows and Linux all giving an impetus to the growth. However there were 2 companies which took a major portion of the market because the other companies did not realise that the trained manpower needed for running these RDBMS was not there. even though most of these RDBMS were very good, they were not able to garner any worthwhile marketshare.

Inspite of the fact that I am writing this post, I have also happened to miss assumptions a lot of times. And chances are that the assumption I missed calling out, was the one which came to haunt me for the failure.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Negativity – all around – count your blessings – take affirmative action

Affirmative action, arrogance, Karma, mindset

The second wave of Covid19 in India is really taking its toll. To every person you talk there’s someone close to them who’s down with Covid19.

If we switch on the television, all it will talk about are the challenges with patients not getting oxygen, Politicians are at their best doing what they do , by blaming the ruling government for all the ills being faced.

I am generally a very positive person and try to find something which will give me a reason to be positive. But I couldn’t get myself to do that. All the conversations I had today had some tragedy about someone. I was not even being able to think of what I should write in this post.

But I started writing this blog and then started thing of all the blessings that I have in my life. All the reasons for me to be grateful that I can continue writing this post.

Then I thought I could continue to being a spectator or I could also help in some way. So I thought the government is facing a challenge in getting hold of oxygen. now I can’t make medical grade oxygen, but I can help the government in whatever small capacity in helping them get the equipment which can make the oxygen. So I went and donated money to the PM-CARES fund. I decided to stop just thinking but took some affirmative action.

As John Paul Dejoria says – and I am paraphrasing it – Success not Shared is worthless. If you don’t know who John Paul Dejoria is do a search on Google. He is a few billion dollars worth, but such a soft spoken gentleman, with absolutely no arrogance, who has contributed so much.

And suddenly the world is not so bad. Yes things are not rosy, but human beings have the resilience to find solutions. I am sure we will find solutions to handle this pandemic. I also did my little bit again today. I always feel terrific after donating money. I also believe in Karma and after donating I feel I have sent out a positive message into the universe.

What’s your view, please put in the comments section.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Peaks and Valleys Part 2

arrogance, ego, Karma, mindset, Turn around

Continuing on what I was talking about yesterday, my belief is that circumstances are never going to be perfect all the time. Tides change all the time, so does every person’s luck.

I do believe that luck does play a very important role in every one’s life. Which also means that you can’t be lucky all the time.

However I also believe in Karma. So if you have a positive balance in your karmic account then even during your not so lucky days, you can get quite a positive outcome.

The other thing which I mentioned yesterday also is the ego of the person. Generally ego is all about me and mine. Everyone will give you that explanation. My belief is that ego is when we acquire a fixed mindset or as Carol Dweck talks in her book Mindset, its not a mindset which is willing to learn.

Learning and ego generally can’t go together in my opinion. To be able to learn, you have to be willing to have humility to accept that someone else knows more than you. You also need to have your mind open, if you want to learn anything. Generally people with a large ego don’t have an open mind.

By its very nature your next peak will happen when you cross the valley and start your climb towards the peak. The moment you start your climb, if you are not going to be adapting for the unknowns, you won’t be able to reach the peak.

Effectively while luck will play a role in your progress, if you prepare while the tide is turning and keep your ego aside, then your chances of reaching the next peak faster are very high.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Ego, learning mindset