“It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out; it's the grain of sand in your shoe”-Robert W. Service
Why do challenges exist? Are they the walls you must climb with worn out shoes? Like how a forge tests the strength of steel making it into a sword, similarly challenges tests and strengthens the person. It is a part of progress and growth and must be embraced for positive change.
Personally, I view challenges as an opportunity to learn from and teach others. Books such as “Rich Dad Poor Dad” and “12 Rules for Life” from Jordan Peterson form my view on challenges. I view them in a positive light. To understand how I cross over barriers, let’s look into the time I was the Editor in Chief of my Degree college publications. The major challenge I had to face was to increase the number of submissions and articles to our annual publications. Besides that, I was tasked with improving the quality of articles accepted and organising a team for the events of the L&D committee.
The first step of solving a challenge is to note down what is the importance of completing this challenge and understand if the actions done in the past was fulfilling that goal. The publications were a platform for students to ascertain their thoughts about socio-economic topics which gives the stakeholders an idea of the knowledge and curiosity in the campus. After ascertaining its importance, classify the challenges into a series of smaller task. After understand why the challenge is difficult. In my case, the students didn’t show much interest in writing or they were unaware of the publications asking for articles.
After finding out the actual challenges in the role, think of solutions and arrange them on the basis of difficulty on implementation. Do the easier tasks first then progress to the more complex tasks. Often called the Snowball, this would train the team along with building confidence. With the help of the team, we set up a committee representative on each floor that would talk with a classroom once a week to encourage writing articles on varied topics. Furthermore, we opened up submissions for more languages such as Marathi, Sindhi and French. The last step was to involve the stakeholders’ i.e the professors, the principle and the trustees for guidance, support and decision making. After following this approach, in two years we saw article submissions increase from 50-60 per year to almost 120-140 per year covering more than 45 unique topics. As a result, more people signed up as committee members and volunteers.
Challenges don’t always test your endurance but also they test your creativity. Try to work smart if possible. If the solution doesn’t lie in creativity, then resort to hard work. Most times complex problems have simple solutions, but those solutions come from really understanding why you are facing this challenge. In 2017, the current CEO of Aditya Birla Group Mr Ajay Srinivasan in an interview with Money Control stated that they started dealing in financial products as they saw a lot of opportunity in this industry. He aimed at building scale in every business they operate. He saw there was a massive potential and he entered with barriers associated in the financial products industry. As of December 31st, 2018, Aditya Birla Capital (The financial services wing of ABG) manages aggregate assets worth Rs. 3,000 billion and has a consolidated lending book of over Rs. 600 billion, through its subsidiaries and joint ventures. By simply adding scale. Sometimes challenges don’t test your climbing speed, they check how well you can dig below that imposing wall.
ARSHIS R BALSARA
