8 Ideas that the fascinating MailChimp story teaches us (Part-2)

This post is in continuation of the last post. For more context on MailChamp story and the ideas discussed in the last post, please check here.

Continuing more ideas from this absorbing case.

4. Pricing shouldn't be a barrier to adoption

Mailchimp’s customers pay nothing for the first 2,000 subscribers or 12,000 emails sent, and then $10 a month after that. [From Forbes article]
Product monetization is not an easy beast to tame. In the past, many companies have struggled to hit that sweet spot with the users. Not so long ago, I recall that Evernote overhauled it's strategy as it was seeing weak conversion from free users to the paid ones.
What MailChimp followed is Freemium model for it's monetization. The key purpose of the freemium model is to attract new users. The freemium model enables a company to build a user base, which in turn provides a constant source of feedback. This helps organizations innovate faster, which is critical to the success of a freemium offering.
Per the Harvard Business Review, in order for freemium to be successful, the feature balance between free and premium versions is crucial. Free features should be compelling enough for the users to install the app, and the premium features should be just as compelling, enabling users to convert to a paid subscription.

Earlier this year, I was reading this thoughtful book- "Monetizing Innovation'. The below excerpt from this book hits the nail right on the head on the subject:

'

New products fail for many reasons. But the root of all innovation evil - what billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk would call the set of "first principles" is the failure to put the customer's willingness to pay for a new product at the very core of product design. Most companies postpone marketing and pricing decisions to the very end, when they've already developed their new products. They embark on the long and costly journey of product development hoping they'll make money on their innovations, but not at all knowing if they will.'

Summarizing the discussion in 2 points:
1. It takes a fine value balance between the free and paid features for the Freemium model to work. Getting the users to pay is always going to be challenging so the offering should create the necessary pull.
2. Monetization shouldn't be an afterthought in product design process but should be a critical part of it's discovery.



5. Your offering need not be High Tech to succeed
"Mailchimp’s success is built on the backs of America’s small business owners. Its most popular service—email marketing—might seem a low-tech, unsexy medium in 2018. But small business owners usually can’t afford marketing teams or social media pros." (From Forbes article)
With the companies built on high profile technologies dominating the conversations and getting majority of venture capital, the case of MailChimp stands out. It leveraged a marketing medium (email), considered by many as nearing extinction and built a multi-million dollar business on top of it.
I am reminded of an acquisition that Twitter did a few years ago to penetrate in India market. The company was called ZipDial. It tapped into a specific behavior of remote Indian consumers which made them call a number and hang up the call before the other party picks up the call. This sequence was called as 'missed call'. Consumers did it avoid high call charges and the other party having call balance would call back (receiving call was usually free). As an example,
For Disney, ZipDial created a contest on its TV channel where those giving a ‘missed call’ were logged into a contest and winners get prizes.

The case in point being that there are large number of problems waiting to be solved, especially in the emerging markets that could be solved with basic tech intervention.
Low tech isn't dead just yet.


Image Sources/References:
https://www.techwell.com/techwell-insights/2014/05/why-microsoft-launched-office-ipad-freemium-offering (my own article)

http://monetizing.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/book-cover.png

8 Ideas that the fascinating MailChimp story teaches us (Part-1)

For years we have heard some version of the now almost clichéd phrase "Email is dead." On the contrary and in the midst of all the innovations happening in social networking, the need for having an email account has barely diminished.

There is a thing I found fascinating about the MailChimp story that inspired me to write this and the following post. Here it is:
Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform and an email marketing service. In a day and age when futurists don't leave any opportunity to write obituaries about the future of email as a preferred means of communication, Mailchimp has built a multi-billion dollar business around email marketing and are still going strong.

MailChimp's success simply amazes me given the context of today's world where anything low-tech is considered unsexy.

I happen to read their story about MailChimp's success that appeared in Forbes.com, not so long ago.

In this 2 part series, let me share some of the ideas I learned from somewhat understated MailChimp's story. Here are 3 ideas in this post:


1. Great ideas thrive on real life inspiration:
The founders of MailChimp came in from humble backgrounds. In their short lives before MailChimp happened, Ben Chestnut lost his job in 2000, Dan Kurzius saw his gather's bakery going bankrupt, sister losing her hair salon. They had first hand experience in seeing small businesses struggling. One of the thought they embraced early on was to build a simple site that could help small businesses be in touch with their most loyal customers. They reasoned that while a simple touch with customers alone may not save the business from going bankrupt but can potentially be a step in ensuring that they stay relevant. Thus were sown the seeds of email marketing software.

Last year, i was at Zinnov Confluence where i heard Shekhar Kirani (start-up founder and an influencer) energetically say at a panel talk- we have problems everywhere, right from the time we leave our homes, during our transit to office, in our office, everywhere. It takes an strong entrepreneurial mind to convert the same problem to a business opportunity and thereby giving yourself a chance to positively impact many lives. Most people don't choose to go beyond just classifying a problem and crib about it. It takes a different kind of will and tenacity to stay with the problem long enough and extract a solution out of it.

2. Nurture Side Projects

From the Forbes article:
"Mailchimp, named after their most popular ­e-card character, launched in 2001 and remained a side project for several years, earning a few thousand dollars a month. Then in 2007, when it hit 10,000 users, the two decided to commit full-time."
In the several interviews that I have taken, I quite respect it when people say that curiosity is their strength. One of the ways to get a hint of curiosity and drive among people is to probe them on what additional stuff have they done beyond their routine projects (for which you are paid anyway). Whether they have any side projects they have contributed on ?

I have seen quite a few projects that started on the sidelines and eventually became big. A project demoed in an internal technology event at my organization, eventually became a start-up called as Eye-D and is helping solve a real life problems that visually impaired people face.

I was reading the book- Sprint by Jake Knapp as a lead author. It tells the stories of how Google's

projects such as Priority Inbox and Google Hangouts started out as side projects before they caught enough attention to become big.

I see people generally give excuse of not having enough time while not embracing any side projects. Here is a thought that Jake shares in his book-

'Our best work normally happens when there is a big enough challenge and not enough time.'

3. When it comes to products, focus is your best friend

MailChimp's focus segment has always remained small business owners. Small business owners usually can’t afford marketing teams or social media pros.
Focus is an amazing tool for start up founders and leaders. Leaving everything else aside, it helps you discover the will to say no to things that aren't of high value.

When Steve Jobs rejoined Apple during his second stint, one of the first decisions he made was to cull the product SKUs that were redundant and were proving to be a distraction.

Sharing this excerpt from the book: Deep Work

“As the authors of The 4 Disciplines of Execution explain, ‘The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish.’ They elaborate that execution should be aimed at a small number of ‘wildly important goals.’ This simplicity will help focus an organization’s energy to a sufficient intensity to ignite real results.

For an individual focused on deep work, the implication is that you should identify a small number of ambitious outcomes to pursue with your deep work hours. The general exhortation to ‘spend more time working deeply’ doesn’t spark a lot of enthusiasm. In a 2014 column titled, ‘The Art of Focus,’ David Brooks endorsed this approach of letting ambitious goals drive focused behavior, explaining: ‘If you want to win the war for attention, don’t try to say ‘no’ to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasborg; try to say ‘yes’ to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.’”

More ideas from this story in part-2, coming soon.

Images source/Acknowledgements:
https://www.thesprintbook.com/
https://www.amazon.in/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/0349413681
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2018/10/08/the-new-atlanta-billionaires-behind-an-unlikely-tech-unicorn/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
https://www.njlifehacks.com/deep-work-cal-newport-summary/

#MailChimp #Focus #SideProjects #RealLife #Sprint #DeepWork

Notes from Leadership Summit: Great Leaders Take Risk

This one's really a blast from the past. I had attended a Leadership Summit back in 2010, which had a positive impact on me. I remember this conference for a couple of reasons.

First reason was obvious- various sessions at this conference were chaired was industry leaders including a few luminaries. In addition to the learnings i gathered, it was a sort of fan boy moment to hear them live.

A more inconspicuous reason was related to my note taking skills. I remember that I managed to note most of the stories and key points I gathered in this conference. It may sound like a routine thing to many and you may wonder why I feel proud about it. I have a perspective on this and I

wish to share it here.
I feel note-taking is one of the most underrated yet most effective skills. The fact that almost 9 years later I am reproducing my learnings via this blog is a reason enough to consider note taking as a serious skill. Without these notes, I may have had these learnings hidden at some corner of my mind but that wouldn't have helped me nor the readers- just because of sheer inability to reproduce them at the moment of need.

The session notes that I reproduce here from a session on risk taking. A cool thing about this panel session was that it was chaired by country heads of my current and the former organization.
Risk taking is an often talked about virtue and at the same time one of the least understood one too.

There are numerous examples about risk taking that one can learn about yet it is a concept that is hard to internalize with just reading theory. You got to take risks to truly understand what risk taking is all about.
Here are some nuggets from the session that I made note of. Hope you enjoy going through these as much as I did re-reading these again.

Great Leaders take Risk

Speakers:

Sridhar Jayanthi, Senior VP, Engineering & Managing Director, McAfee India

Rakesh Singh, VP, products and Managing Director, Citrix R&D India

My assessment notes:

·       This was again a panel discussion and quite enlightening of all.

·       This session was again not PPT driven and involved sharing of real life experiences around risk taking. This was moderated by Sridhar Jayanthi.

Key Takeaways:

·       Both panelists seem to agree that one of the biggest risk that a professional can take is deciding to start a Start-up operation.

·       In Start-ups, the major risks are around constraints and having to manage your new born business around those inevitable constraints.

·       In a Leadership team, Risk is a way of life.

·       There was a reference to the book- “Design of Business” in one of the discussions.

·       One striking quote- “If you don’t take risk, you are stagnant. And if you are stagnant, you are not going linear but falling back literally.”

·       Take risk to grow people and help them take your place.

o   One such risk story was narrated by Sridhar Jayanthi. In one of his previous organizations, they I think hired a person (who was a construction worker) to take care of cleaning/housekeeping stuff. This guy had not even completed his schooling but was quite passionate. One of the tasks that he was involved in doing was collect the printouts near the printer and ensuring that the place was clean. One of the things, he observed was that during every Friday, there were many printouts (around 100s) that were fired and the printer invariably used to give problems in printing the jobs on Fridays. This guy was a keen observer and he could figure out the problem and not only fixed it but suggested a very productive way of doing the routine job that not anyone else could think of.  Foreseeing his talent, One of the bosses there spotted him and took a risk of training this guy on programming languages and computing stuff. This person picked up the stuff quite steadily and started contributing a role of Engineer very soon. Within few years, he scaled himself as a Manager of Development and by the time Sridhar left the organization, he had scaled up as a Director of Development.

o   An Amazing story of a construction worker who turned out to be an immense success in technology areas. This happened primarily because some took a risk with him and considered him suitable for a technical role.

·       Building Risk culture requires-

o   Risk Enablers

o   People who are grounded having Inner peace.

§  Rakesh Singh narrated a story of founder of Runners High, Dr. Rajat Chauhan, who showed tremendous guts to leave the job (after a successful higher education in US) to do something he found more meaningful for life i.e. become a running coach. It takes great deal of peace with inner self to do something you really want to do especially when going against the tide.

o   Sense of humors

§  Rakesh Singh again illustrated an example of a Pakistan cricket player- Shahid Afridi. During the recent Test cricket series with Australia, he was faced with barrage of lightning fast bouncer deliveries in an over from Mitchell Johnson. One after the other, he was faced with balls that just whizz past his head, ears, nose etc. and he was all clueless about what was happening. After few such balls, in an unusual gesture, he took off his helmet and just laughed out loudly with mouth wide open (without worrying about millions who were seeing him) to calm his nerves. The lesser mortals who have succumbed to pressure but here was a rather unorthodox action to deal with adversities. What better way than to just laugh off the problems and face what coming next.

·       Create a risk environment in the organization-

o   What you rewards and how you handle failure determines the risk taking appetite of the organization.

o   There was a talk of organization which used to reward the Best failure. How many organizations do that ?

·       How can Managers become risk takers ?

o   First and foremost- One got to be a risk taker.

o   A lot of times success and failures in career is because of what opportunity one picks up. Great leaders grab the opportunity when they find it.

o   Get buy-in from the people. What people say about you and way they perceive you is important.

o    Be genuine and be visible-

§  People should be high skilled communicators.

§  Don’t be arrogant or boastful but be visible and market yourself and your achievement in a right manner.

§  Quiet achievers are very hard to find in an organization.

Images source/credits:

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--AZwD7vqA--/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/18m5vfjl1jqjmjpg.jpg

https://i1.wp.com/www.thejumpingplace.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/529232_10101720562241321_209875322_n.jpg?fit=841%2C561

Little nuggets from an inspirational book 'Steal like an artist'

We all read and consume contents from various sources. In our reading pursuit, we often come across words that we find effortless to construe and feel an eternal connect that's sometimes hard to explain and assign adjectives to.
I recently had such experience when reading Austin Kleon's book- 'Steal like an artist'. I went through the book like a breeze and resonated sublimely with the core of who I am. Now, I don't claim to be anything like the publically renowned creative folks and cases referred to in the book but I can claim to have mind of own in this regard with my way of dealing with all things creative. And that's very much like in the spirit of creativity.
I don't like writing book reviews and that's for a reason. If my years of working in management/leadership roles have taught me something, it is this- To be effective as a leader, one must learn to suspend judgement and inculcate the habit of looking at things as they are. Mastering this skill is hard but this is something that has helped me in numerous ways (may be a blog on this later) in avoiding potential problems.

I somehow took this skill of suspending judgment in case of reading books too. And never liked reviewing books. Of course, depending upon stage of my life and state of mind, some of the books i read were relevant, some less so.

'Steal like an artist' definitely had an lasting impact on me, some thoughts resonated fully, some challenged me. I would be pursuing a few ideas and possibly write about them separately. In this blog, i just wanted to share the nuggets from this book that i shared as tweets (getting reasonable attention on social media). Hope you like these:


On working with people better than you:

If you ever find that you're the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.

On having a hobby:

It's so important to have a hobby. A hobby is something creative that's just for you. You don't try to make money or get famous off it, you just do it because it makes you happy. A hobby is something that gives but doesn't take.- Scott Tomlinson

On importance of being bored:

I get some of my best ideas when I'm bored, which is why I never take my shirts to the cleaners. I love ironing my shirts. it's so boring, I almost always get good ideas. If you're out of ideas, wash the dishes. Take a really long walk.

Procrastination isn't always a bad trait:

The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.

On source of ideas:

We don't know where we get our ideas from. What we do know is that we do not get them from our laptops. - John Cleese

On the importance of unread library:

Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library.

On being prepared before asking questions:

Don't ask a question before you Google it. You'll either find the answer or you'll come up with a better question.

On Creativity:

Creativity is Subtraction. In the end, creativity isn't just the things we choose to put in, it's the things we choose to leave out. Choose wisely. And have fun.

On constraints vs creativity:

It seems contradictory, but when it comes to creative work, limitations mean freedom. Don't make excuses for not working- make things with the time, space, and materials you have, right now. The right constraints can lead to your very best work.

On getting comfortable being ignored:

Ironically, really good work often appears to be effortless. People won’t see the years of toil & sweat that went into it. Not everybody will get it. People will misinterpret you &; what you do. So get comfortable with being ignored - the trick is to be too busy doing your work to care.

On how to best respond to complains:

Complain about the way other people make software by making software- Andre Torrez

Image source:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71yg3JyYa9L.jpg

Of Embracing Constraints and Driving Innovation

Not so long ago, I was speaking with one of the talented engineers (lets call him John) who was involved in a high visibility project as a part of Innovation Program that i was leading. His team had done extremely well to be selected among 5 ideas out of 100+ submissions that came in from diverse set of employees. His had made impeccable, convincing pitch presentations about his idea during the evaluation rounds.

The way this innovation program worked was that the selected employees usually get certain percentage of their time to work on the project. What i have experienced is, even with a strong

management support, the selected teams has to spend far more time than what is allocated to realize the potential of their idea. While not really an ideal situation but that's how most corporate innovation programs function. One could call it a stretch for the participating employees but what good has ever been achieved by staying within the confines of one's comfort zone.

So what John was asking me was that he finds it extremely difficult to manage the innovation project and the regular work he has and the fact that he only has limited time at hand to be making a meaningful contribution. I had a long conversation with him to understand what the root-cause of his condition was. Could it be misalignment with manager ? Could it be an issue with managing time ? Could it be that the theme of innovation project being totally different from his core work ? Could it just be an issue with not being able to multi-task ?

As i delved deeper, i figured out that the core cause leading to the effect he has facing was quite different. To cut the story short, he was finding it very difficult to deal with situation of extreme constraint. The constraint that he was faced with was lack of time. And my analysis of this situation suggested that rather than embracing constraints, he just chose to conflict with the constraints put forward by prevailing situation. And this conflict was stressing him out.

In this insightful article, Ash Maurya makes a compelling point when he says-

We all hustle, struggle, and fight to acquire more resources for our projects. But ironically, when we have these resources in excess, we don’t become efficient. We become wasteful.

At the heart of Lean Start-up approach, that became a sort of gold standard for building successful start-ups, lies a theory which when put into practice teaches us how best to respond to an ultimate constraint of our life. Time.
Start-ups need to find that elusive product-market fit before they run out of time or money or both. 

The of the main reason the Lean Start-up approach became popular was because it taught its followers how to deal with constraints a start-up face. Many facets of Lean Start-up approach like iterating quickly, validating the idea, collecting data before making decisions and going through the build-measure-learn cycle ensured better preparation against the constraints.

In the book 'Disrupt Yourself' that i was reading recently, i found this profound mention:

In 2007, Entrepreneur magazine compiled a list of the five hundred fastest-growing companies in the United States. I was intrigued by the various ways these companies had funded their growth, rather than taking outside cash. Only 28 percent had access to bank loans/lines of credit, 18 percent were funded by private investors, and 3.5 percent received funding from VCs: as many as 72 percent of these successful businesses were pulling themselves up by their boot straps. I believe these companies were successful not in spite of, but because of, their constraints.

And also the book introduces you to this successful case of Pluralsight, which i reproduce below:

A prototype for bootstrapping is Pluralsight, an online training library for developers and information technology professionals. In 2004, Aaron Skonnard and three software developer colleagues launched Pluralsight on a shoestring budget of $20,000. Growth needed to be funded through cash flow, so they were highly incentivized to get the business model right. By 2007, they had grown the company to $2.5 million in revenue. After they pivoted from classroom to online training in 2008 and demand exploded, Pluralsight finally took in outside money in 2012, raising $27.5 million to fund future growth. In 2014, they generated revenue of $60+ million, and CEO Skonnard was recognized as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

There is a common theme emerging from these examples:
1. Constraints are not really the enemy of progress and if dealt with well, can be the cause of progress. Lack of finesse in managing constraints can well be damaging to the project in a short term, and to the business in a longer run.

2. Bootstraping (get into or out of a situation using existing resources) is painful in a short term, but successful in a long run. Short-term discomfort should be embraced in favor of long term gains.

3. Constraints comes in many flavors but mostly wrapped under the covers of knowledge, time and money. Much like less time at hand can improve our focus, less knowledge can be our license to think differently than our incumbents. 

I wrote this article up just so that I meet a John in near-future, I can effectively show the light at the end of tunnel.

What are your secrets of dealing with constraints ?

Images Source:
http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55b65626e4b0d3dd13b3b383/55b68b97e4b0c3dfa580cd86/57ea79a55016e19cf41302a8/1475497425148/BIZZ.png?format=1500w
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51nRGy9lBSL._SX334_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Things I Learned From Intuit Fasal Story

As few days back, i wrote about a 16 year old India shooter Saurabh Chaudhary's achievement at winning the world cup gold. Saurabh overcame daunting constraints to emerge victorious at the world stage. In every walk of life, we face constraints that seemingly come in the way of our success. How we think about these constraints eventually becomes a difference between success or half-success or failure.

Recently reading the book- 'Disrupt Yourself', I came across this riveting story recently on how the

product Intuit Fasal came to life.

Intuit's VP of Product Development was given a mandate to change the life of 1.2 billion Indians. Unlike many other initiatives of such magnitude, this project didn't get laden with resources.
Despite the open ended nature of the project driven by a grand vision, it had to start somewhere.
Intuit got three engineers of the job and gave them the directive to 'figure something out'.

As they started chatting with farmers, they figured out that farmers had an information access problem. They were mostly growing perishable food and were mostly at the mercy of mandi (Indian farm market place) owners and had to agree to the price they were quoting. While making the decision pertaining to selling their produce, they didn't have access to the prices being offered by other mandis and also didn't have any knowledge of changes in prices. Due to this, farmers were selling the stuff orders of magnitude lower than what they should have got.

So what did the engineers do, after they had qualified the problem? They didn't go and start coding the solution. They rather adopted a low cost, highly iterative approach by manually seeking the prices and texting it to the farmers on their mobile.
They eventually came with up an easy-to-use, text message-based platform that uses complex matching algorithms to help the farmers get the best prices.
Fasal has more than two million active users in India who enjoy a 20 percent increase in their bottom line.

Embracing Constraints:
I started this article with a mention of constraints and how our attitude towards them plays a part in

determining the eventual outcome. Intuit Fasal's story is a great case in driving innovation in midst constraints. Working in organizations, the constraints can come in different shapes and sizes. They can be in different forms- be it knowledge based constraints, time based or money based. In case of Fasal, the VP of Product Development offered minuscule resources for an outrageous vision.
Alternate approach could have been for them to put in large budgets in anticipation of the results.
But the scarcity of resources helped them create a sense of urgency and likely drove the engineers to maximize on the most important, non-perishable resource, time.







Shunning Analysis Paralysis:
As wikipedia defines:
Analysis paralysis describes a moment where over-analyzing or over-thinking a situation can cause it to become 'paralyzed', meaning that no action was taken therefore a solution is not reached.

One unintended consequence of having too many resources is that it leads to tendency of spending resources on over-planning i.e. to cover all the bases before taking action. The team at Inuit Fasal realized that only way they could achieve progress was to hit the ground running and reach out the rural areas to identify problems causing significant pain to the citizens.
Quite often, the lure of arriving at a perfect solution keeps us locked in the meeting rooms far away from the ground realities of the situation.

Low Fidelity Prototype:
Intuit Fasal team didn't in product development till they qualified the magnitude and relevance of problem they were looking to solve. They followed judicious approach to product development and actually didn't even start building the solution in a big-bang way till they qualified their approaches to solution.
The invested in what is termed as low fidelity prototype. As defined in this interesting design blog:

Low-fidelity (lo-fi) prototyping is a quick and easy way to translate high-level design concepts into tangible and testable artifacts. The first and most important role of lo-fi prototypes is to check and test functionality rather than the visual appearance of the product.

Intuit Fasal's team first prototype was a manual text based system where they sent the market rate based info to farmers after manually matching the type of crop. They invested in a solution only after qualifying that it really solved the identified problem.

What did you learn from this inspiring story ?

Story source:
Book: Disrupt Yourself
YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuMpnWxblVY

Image source:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*xwAg16Mhmj2NRPmmhNGjBQ.png
https://3jd8gl2iires146kaw2hgqy9-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Political-analysis-paralysis.jpg

How to find your distinctive strength ?

I am currently reading the book- 'Disrupt Yourself' by Whitney Johnson. The book is based on the application of Clay Christensen's world renowned theory of disruptive innovation for managing

individual careers.

One specific aspect of disruption it talks about is playing to one's distinctive strengths. Marcus Buckingham's books and body of knowledge covers the notion of strength based thinking in-depth. Too be honest, earlier in my career, i didn't quite believe in the concept of playing to one's strengths, or not to overly focus on eliminating weaknesses. The main reason i argued with myself was that human beings are among the most malleable species around and they have infinite capacity to mold themselves. I see multiple examples of this playing around me. Recently, i was reading a book on Ripley's Believe it or not and some stories of the participants really amazed me. It was not just the act that was described. The common thread in many stories was the fact that people practiced deliberately and became better at their act.

With time, experience and knowledge, i have softened my stance on not just playing to one's strength but i still believe that we as humans are extremely capable of dealing with our weakness only if we are willing to set our focus to changing anything within us. In a larger scheme of things, it's more about where we want to set our priorities.

It was this context that really made me read through the chapter in the book 'Disrupt Yourself' with interest. The part that i liked was the analogies used by author to drive home the point e.g. sharing the story below:

"Think about the cuddly little koala, sleeping up to twenty hours a day. One might have serious

doubts about its ability to survive. However, the koala can
do something that almost no other animal can: it use eucalyptus leaves, which have minimal nutritional and caloric value, as a food source.'

Nature has it's powerful ways of ensuring that the each of the species were born with unique strengths and these strengths make them survive and differentiate themselves from the rest of the us.

Then's there a mention about Charles Darwin's experiment on finches:

When Darwin gathered numerous specimens of these birds. He analyzed these and presented to a ornithologist. At first these seem like similar specimens but careful analysis revealed that each one

was an evolved species of finches. In their evolution, most distinctive part was their unique beak structure that allowed it to exploit different types of food.

In summary, our strengths evolve with time and with practice. This is quite common in the world of sports. Quite often the sporting talent is identified in the early ages but the ones that make their mark eventually are the ones that hone their talent with hardwork, sweat and putting in hours of practice. One's strength isn't really a constant and with a dose of effort and with time, it can evolve into something significant.

So how can one find their distinctive strength ? The book offers some advise that resonated with me. It shares the advise in form of questions and that allows you to do some soul searching to find the answers:

1. What skills have helped you survive ?
2. What makes you feel strong ?
3. What exasperates you about others ?
4. What made you different as a child ?
5. What compliments do you shrug off ?
6. What are your hard won skills ?

I found these questions eye opening as they allow you to look at the word 'strength' not in unidimensional sense but genuinely opens up different avenues to articulate your strengths to yourself.

How would you answer these questions for yourself ? or you have better ways to find your strengths. Please share by commenting.

Images source:
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51nRGy9lBSL._SR500,500_.jpg
https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/sites/default/files/2016-11/animals_hero_koala02%20copy.jpg
https://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/xJKggxhrEM9sJsVxLu3d9Cz1jI0=/800x600/filters:no_upscale()/https://public-media.si-cdn.com/filer/40/36/4036d112-76e8-45f8-bcaf-83a121f49fe6/finches1.jpg

#KoalaStory #FinchesStory #Darwin #Strengths #PowerofQuestions