Does environment take away everything from you?
You are a very simple family man and live a very moderate life. Before the COVID-19, you were pretty settle. Your wife had left the job to do business. She had visited overseas to start her import business. Everything was just fine and going according to our plan.
But when Corona attacked in Europe, you thought it would not affect you like other viruses. You waited first three months and expected that things would be normal again. But it was not coming as per your plan.
Environment started taking away every potential opportunity, shortened your income, restricted your freedom and suffocated you in every way.
Like another general person, you tried to short-term adjustment with the environment. It begun with the small-scale steps. You do not use any long-term plan here. Rather you look for spaces not particularly any opportunity. You were waiting and observing the environment.
Wait Environment will come back to you:
But all the changes are not negative. After a while, more specifically after the first quarter of COVID-19 attack, you observed some changes which could be converted as opportunities. Maybe early movers would take the opportunities. Maybe it is the new-normal and you must align with these.
You start believing environment is not only taking away everything from you. It is coming to you. You must give time to adjust and the environment will come back to provide you the necessary facilities to live better.
It is a symbiotic relationship that you cannot predict from a long-term viewpoint. For example, your apartment manager sees new opportunities, and he starts small scale stocking business. It also suits with your current plan. You get daily necessities within 15 minutes of your request from your apartment manager. It is better than purchasing from your regular grocery store and even far better than buying from online. Also, you are taking advantage of cash flow. Earlier, you are used to purchasing five kg of onion from the market. Now you are buying only one kg as per demand. You are purchasing a small quantity in cash. It is better than a deferred payment strategy and ensures excellent quality with the right price.
Learning points from family management:
Ø Taking advantages of symbiotic relationship. Early movers will take the advantages.
Ø Life is all about waiting game strategy. Small scale change in a continuous process is better.
Ø Take the approach of a marathon, not a 100-meter sprint and follow the rule of 10% change. Don’t rush, your time will come.
Ø Payment deferred is not an effective approach, rather we need to find better cost management, do small-scale stocking, establish high bargain power and manage effective information system to compare.
You are adapting with O2O (offline to Online) strategy:
More changes you brought in your day to day operation. Every week you spend a reasonable amount of time for purchasing, paying utilities, and doing banking. Now you are using online to do purchases, mobile banking to make small scale payment and online banking to your credit payment, transfer money to settle your payable and deposit in banks. You are using different channels (Omnichannel strategy) in a more centralized way. It gives better accountability and control, as well. You are not habituated before with these new technologies, and even you did not feel it that way. But now you find it easy, cheap, effective, and efficient than your earlier practices. You have adopted and learned to use new means within the first quarter of the COVID-19 attack. Though you are in the late majority but good sign, you have selected it nicely. Now, this Omnichannel strategy starts to give results.
All resources were there but you did not look at:
You regret that you could have used these online levers earlier and even in the normal time, but you did not use it then. The reason is that you did not try hard to find available resources that you can use to solve the problem in a more effective and efficient way. You were quite happy with your current practices. But cost-cutting or structural change is always a continuous process.
Learning points from family management:
Ø Online facilities were always there but we did not use it earlier.
Ø Need to blend the omnichannel strategy properly.
Ø For an example; a popular fitness & gym app of China, closed its physical centers and instead launched live training broadcasts on its app for at home classes and on-demand fitness courses. As a result of increased at-home training, there was also exceptional demand for its fitness gear sold online.
Ø Also, one of China’s leading new retailers, Freshhema, quickly pivoted its model as in-store shopping volume plummeted while online shopping and delivery services surged. They required customers to pre-order by midnight for next-day pickup, and essentially moved all in-store employees to support online shopping.
Ø More examples; Digital economy conglomerates like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent – collectively known as ‘BAT’ – have emerged and is operating an extensive array of digital businesses and technology platforms. They are involved in everything from financial services (online payments), news and information, logistics and distribution, e-commerce, social media and messaging through to new online-to-offline (O2O) retail, cloud computing and mobile gaming.
As Albert Einstein said, “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change”.
Along with our changing ability, we must have the insight to bring the change within us with the passage of time. For this, I would like to recall the finding of Wolfgang Kohler’s most famous study (1925) is that problem solving is not necessarily a trial-and-error process. We must have INSIGHTS to solve the problem. In his experiment, Kohler placed a banana out of reach in one corner of a room and a small wooden crate about 2.5 meter from the position on the floor beneath it. After several fruitless attempts by all six chimpanzees, one of them suddenly moved the box from his position and springing upwards with all his force, tore down the banana.
We must look for the facilities in our environment like the chimpanzees or like the Chinese company did. Environment does not always take away all the time. It comes back. Even resources and structural facilities are always there. But we did not use it earlier. Maybe we were not keen enough and did not realize its importance. But note that the early movers will take the advantages. In this case we must use our insights to bring the first change in us or in our organization.
Lastly, I would like to share one of my favorite quotes from the Paulo Coelho.
“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
Thank you.
Cell: 01730783200
Ref: https://drrobertepstein.com/downloads/Epstein-Insight_in_the_Pigeon-Nature-1984.pdf