Say Yes to Aggression
AGGRESSION pays and it pays big. Recent studies have shown that companies grow bigger and stronger not by taking lugubrious baby steps but by making radical changes. Bill Gates did not become Bill Gates by inching towards his island villa, his gobs of green were a result of a fanatical devotion to the art of money making. Donald Trump did not crawl into his mansion after years of prudent investments; he probably swung into it in a Mercedes after a couple of gilt-edged high-risk deals.
Ever since the first cave man walked out of his den and rubbed the sand out of his eyes and stared out of his deep-set eyes at the first wheel, one fact of life has remained unchanged over the millennia. The winner takes it all. The losers go home with the consolation `it was great just to be nominated'.
Take for instance, the annual ritual of budgeting. A manager plans his next year based on figures thrown up by the current year. He opens an excel worksheet or some such document and decides that a 20 per cent increase in cost and a 30 per cent rise in sales would create a modest profit for the company - one that would keep its employees warm and its shrivelled coffers contented. It is a good plan if the company intends to straggle to a slow stagnation. Using the past as a benchmark may have its advantages, but if you want to get bigger, the only way to do it is to ferociously contemplate the future. The Industrial Revolution did not come about because its principal forces were influenced by the medieval craft of bread-making. It came about because of a relentless focus on tomorrow and a desire to shape the future in their image of a better world.
If a company intends to reach its full potential and stride the bloodied pages of business like Alexander did on battlegrounds, it should do what Alexander did: be aggressive and dream. Not dream as in sit around and daydream all day and let that deadline slip out of your fingers, but dream as in think big; during breaks from your work, of course. It pays if you visualise something before you actually do it. The second step is to believe that it is possible.
This is perhaps best encapsulated in the Biblical saying faith can move mountains. Of course, one can always argue that it can't really and that the whole thing is a nothing but a lot of eyewash. But stay a while pilgrim, and ask yourself this: would Bill Gates or Donald Trump or any of those other incredibly rich and powerful men have got to where they are if they thought that way. No. This is not the time to stoop down to nay-saying. This is the time for action. If you have dared to dream, you must dare to believe.
The third step is to actually follow up on your dream.
Since we were on the subject of Bill Gates earlier, an anecdote comes to mind. It is mildly inspirational but extremely illustrative. In Microsoft's infancy, Bill Gates was still trapped in the amber of an age-old question - one of trying to turn a little business into a big one. It was then that luck favoured his palms and a computer called Altair came along. The great thing was not that it was the world's first personal computer, but that it had no programmes written for it yet. A friend of his, a guy called Paul Allen, had stumbled upon that vital piece of information in a magazine. Gates saw his chance, and jumped at it. He called MITS, the company that developed Altair, and told them that he had developed a BASIC programme that could be adapted for the Altair, where in actuality, he hadn't even begun writing it.He was informed that whoever showed up first with a working BASIC had a deal. The rest is quite predictable. In fact, one needn't even go to the trouble of predicting it (a quick sift through Google will do); we'll save you that effort. Gates won the battle. And the rest, as they say, is history.
ARJUN SENGUPTA
arjuns.hyd@cnkonline.com
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