“Fear is the glue that keeps you stuck. Faith is the solvent that sets you free.” said Shannon L. Alder

Sharing another personal learning that has really helped me through the years. I have possibly never spoken of this before and not even given credit to my then Boss for teaching me this valuable lesson.

This was 2005 and I was just about getting to lead projects independently, completely from client discussions to creating the solution, getting sign off on the project and then executing it. I used to love to see my idea get validation and sometimes even applause and then experience of delivering it as perfect as it can be. One of such projects came to me and I worked hard on the idea and validation from the client and then I was asked to hand over the project to another colleague ! I hated it.. I went crying (not literally) to my then Boss Gautam Bhushan sitting calmly in his corner cabin. I wailed… “Boss not fair that’s my project“…he looked at me offhandedly and said “yes I know but I need you to work on the next one“. When I insisted he smiled and said “you have the ability to create, go create another one instead of holding on to that one thing you created. It would do you good, trust me !”

He may not even remember this cause for him it was just another conversation but it changed my perspective for life ! It played in my head for long and then I allowed it realign me. Just cause its my idea I don’t need to get stuck with it. As I look back now over the past 15 years I have worked with more than 200 customers across industries on multitude of projects and the ability to handover the idea has been a strength. In fact whenever I love the idea more I ensure that the team taking over can think through sustaining the application.

Today, as I speak to so many friends and leaders I see the fear of losing their idea (business / strategy/ project) cause it lost its value in the new norm. I see them wailing and crying like I did (not literally but surely figuratively) ! I see them trying to hold on to it because of the strong successful legacy bias.

“What keeps us stuck and forever languishing in the muck and mire of whatever situation we’re in is the utterly convincing but entirely false belief that there’s nothing in our situation that we can do other than be stuck. Therefore, what’s got us stuck in this mess has nothing to do with our situation, but everything to do with our belief about our situation.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough

Our current situation has created a lot of disruption and we never had time to prepare for this. The impact of this will last a couple of business cycles and we will never go back to normal as we knew it.

So if you don’t have a boss like I had I hope reading this will provide you a spark of faith. Allow your ability to create flourish and don’t get stuck with a dead idea !

“The greatest discover of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.” – Oprah Winfrey