Managing Ambiguity and Paradox

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
-- F Scott Fitzgerald

These are two important things that a manager or most importantly an entrepreneur has to handle. Any thing that is ambiguous rationally will not find its way, but ambiguity is finding its common place. (Guess this is an ambiguous statement in itself)
To explain the above scenario I will take you through my recent experience. I have closed a deal with a certain number of confirming participants for a trek from a reputed organization. Eventually there was a change in the number of participants and the guy who was dealing with did not cross check the numbers before giving us the final number. Since there was a fair amount of relation that was formed he started to negotiate. This ambiguous situation of weather to go ahead with the agreed number and put the guy in fix or to relent back and save his a#@ was a position that I was facing. These two opposing ideas set the stage were I had to make a trade off…. What I did is part of the contract that couldn’t be revealed….

Will write about paradox in the next blog..

Happy Week End!
Cheers Ravi.

Importance of Agreements

The most important thing after a sales is to have the agreement duely signed. This avoids any last minute change of mind by the client. No matter how much amount of trust is involved between both the parties. Getting into a habit of signing agreements is health practice that has to be practiced.

Though personally I believed that trust preceeds agreements, I strongly feel that agreements have to be made.

Cheers Ravi.

Training the mind to think

It is important to look for facts and patterns among a variety of sources and integrate them in a systematic and insightful manner that is useful for soliving the specific problem.

The interactions that we have with our clients or customers must be made productive by findng a pattern that would be of help to design a sales pitch or a service call accordingly.

Let us imagine a scenraio where we have 5 mins to make a sales pitch for the top boss in an organization. To maximize the return on the pitch we can do a study about pattern of the boss by finding the details about him from his sub-ordinates and we can present the case accordingly.

The art of asking good questions. This is a very important tool that a sales manager has with him. In any sales presentation there are certain taxonomy of questions that can be used to triangulate information. This would give the sales manager to find the gap and picth in accordingly.

Next Blog would be on the taxonomy of these questions.

Cheers Ravi.

Vision – Knowing the Destination

Hi All,

this is my first attempt at blogging. please express your views.

I would like to share my experience as an entrepreneur .The life of an entrepreneur is different. I have been living this life for the past one year. Of late, as things get busy again and the shift happens from thinking to doing, I could not help reflecting on how this life is different. What I am writing is driven by my own experiences (positive and negative). There may be some overlaps with what I have written or said in the past, but hopefully, there are enough new thoughts that can be useful to you.

GYAN # 1

Having a reasonably clear perspective on where one is headed over the long-term is very important. At the same time, it is not that important to know the detailed roadmap – that will evolve over time. More often than not, people get it wrong – they focus too much on the near-term and not enough on the long-term rationale of why they are in the business

REASONING

We at ZICE OUTBOUND are clear that we want to be India’s Premier Adventure Service Providers. That’s the long term perspective. This is what the Tip of the Iceberg is the detailing can give an in-depth picture as to what the services that we provide might actually constitute of.

GYAN # 2

The vision has to be driven by a set of core beliefs – only then will it stand the test of time, criticism and competition. This vision must define a future that is different from the present. The entrepreneur must be able to convince others that the future can be created. The beliefs must be based on a series of logical arguments, and not just a fancy dream.

REASONING

In my case, for much of the eleven months, my driving belief has been that of providing off-beat adventure experiences for Corporate Sector. The aim is to provide an complete holiday which includes travel in ZICE’s parlance we call it Delhi-DESTINATION-Delhi experience. Which include all the elements of the Holiday viz., Bus, Ticketing, transit services, the destination logistics and customized services that the corporate is in need. I embarked on the road thinking all I had to do was the core-service (create an integrated travel suite). I was wrong. I realized that I had to think about creating a total solution comprising travel and destination and seamlessly integrate because we are dependent on external service providers for the travel (considering the fact that the travel is an un-organized business the biggest issue is professional adoption, things like quality checks or quality control mean little to these operators because most of the routes have one or two operators). This led us to build partnerships with service operators. Over these eleven months, the roadmap has changed but the destination has remained the same. We are still a long way from reaching the destination – in fact; I don’t even know how long it will take us to complete the journey.

I guess this has given some in-sight into what have I been doing. Please comment and I am open to suggestions and recommendations but the request is to acknowledge the writing or reading as this will act as a test bed for me to further pen down my experiences.

Cheers Ravi.