In this era of ultra busy and “always on the move” lifestyle, haven’t we come to appreciate things only when we stop having access to them? A sneak peek into our daily lives would reveal that there are many things whose importance we tend to realize only during their absence, be it material things like internet, smart phones, electricity or even relationships!
As we go on with “winning” in our lives, we tend to chase a select few things that we feel are the most important at any moment while giving other necessary and critical things a complete miss.
Organizations, I believe, work in the exact same manner. While we are busy growing our organizations, we get extremely busy with everyday activities that we, as leaders, often tend to overlook completely the necessary organizational drivers that may come back to haunt us later.
Let me illustrate this with an example. During the process of scaling, we are so busy acquiring customers and fulfilling our promised to the customers that we do not necessarily pay a lot of attention to the either the kind of people we are hiring or in up skilling our existing workforce. This often results in a stage where we would have grown to a point beyond which even though opportunities exist, we would be unable to capitalize on them. This, primarily, since we would just not have the organizational capability we used to have (because of wrong hires because we were too focused on getting someone to help us with the rush, or our existing workforce capability remaining at the same level as it used to be earlier and not what it should be to sustain our growth). This results in plateauing of growth due to our not focusing on what we should have all along! The power of absence!
This is just one example. There are many key drivers that are important for an organization which should not be overlooked in the rush for growth and scale. Needless to say, the best way forward to mitigate the overwhelming power of absence is by acknowledging and acting upon the key organizational drivers proactively.
