Ideas from India | How Steep is Your Growth Curve?

Not Everything Needs to Make Sense

A few weeks ago I went to New Delhi, India, again, to work with my amazing client Ashiana Housing, and to speak to a private group of entrepreneurs and CEOS with EO, about the principles in Your Oxygen Mask First.

Wow do I love it, there! It has an amazing energy and vibrance, and, even though it feels chaotic, at first glance, everything has its own flow and works well.

I also noticed that the scale and thinking of businesses in India is dramatically larger than typical businesses in North American EO groups. The scale at which things can happen is huge, and it was so great to meet and speak with these entrepreneurs.

One CEO I chatted with at dinner described his 40-year old family business. They had thousands of distribution points all around India and 2000 contract employees. In North America, someone would be running a financial model to make the contract employees to control them and run efficiencies. But from the viewpoint of this amazingly successful business, not everything needed to be that perfect.

There’s a piece in all of us that wants to be control, and to construct rules to make everything work. But, for CEOs, that can be a distraction. Sometimes the energy we put into perfection can be better invested in something that with more substantial impact. If something’s working, sometimes, it’s OK to be a little messy and inefficient.

It’s a great reminder that, when there’s a lot going on, things are supposed to get a little bit messy.

In the western culture, that’s not always an easy thought. Not everything needs to make sense - it just needs to work.

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