Broadening my Perspective

I have always been a pragmatic person. I never accept the things that have been told to me without understanding them completely. I for some reason have this innate ability to question the things which have been told to me before internalizing them. More often than not, this contemplation has always been beneficial for me. I get clear about what to discard and what to work on.

This blog is one such idea that I didn’t feel useful in the first place, but thinking about it has created a change in the way I aim to function.

I have been part of the Enterprise India Fellowship for more than 8 months now. One of the fundamental components of the fellowship is the different real-life, client projects we work on. These projects are filled with unique experiences and learnings which make you think. These projects are anywhere from 1 to 3 months in length with pre-decided objectives.

While the projects are going on, we have quick check-in meetings with Adi (my mentor at the fellowship) to discuss our progress and the next steps. In one such meeting last week, Adi said something which really made me think and introspect. 

Adi said, ”Don’t limit yourself with what has been told to you in the form of these objectives. Always try and give the client more than what they have asked for. What your client wants is more important than what they have told you” For the first time, I did feel that there is no reason that we should bend over backward and make sure that we are providing something extra. We should just abide by what has been told to us and do it in the best way possible. What’s the need of doing all this and giving the client more than what they have asked for? Is this really going to generate some better output?

But when I did it, it took my clarity about the project and the objective to a whole new level. I was working on a project where we had to create a marketing budget for our client with the reference of similar competitors. The client told us to do this by looking at the different financial statements and calculating the percentage of revenue spent on marketing. At the start of the project, my perspective was restricted to just what had been told to me. But after the meeting, with Adi, I did the things which hadn’t been told to me but were necessary. The final objective of the client was to market in the best way possible and creating a budget for it was the first step. For this, even though we were told to look at the financial data, it was not going to be enough. Thus, along with the financial data I looked out for marketing strategies used by the competitors rather than just finding the numeric data. This was not told to me, but this was for sure needed to accomplish the decided objective.

I realized that irrespective of what we do, at the end of the day, the project is successful only if the client’s need is getting fulfilled. Now what matters is by any way possible we have to make sure that we do this. I feel that this fulfillment of the goal happened when I understood that difference but what was told and what was needed. I was getting fixated on the fact that we should only do what has been told to us. I wasn’t putting in the conscious efforts to understand what was needed. But understanding what was needed and working on it is what made the difference.

Many times, we just focus on what’s in front of us fail to look at the bigger picture. While solving a jigsaw puzzle, we tend to focus on what the next piece should be and not what the actual picture is. Keeping the final picture in our minds is as important as finding the next piece which fits in. Zooming out gives us a better sense of what we are supposed to do. Putting in the pieces while having the image of the final picture in our minds makes the process more effective.

All of us strive to be the best, excel at what we do, and do it in the best way possible. All of us want to be extraordinary but often we don’t realize that the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little “extra”. For me, that extra is the difference between what is told and what is actually needed.