Fresh out of business school, as green as spring grass, I found myself at the helm of a sales team in the cutthroat Mumbai market. The good news? I had a team. The bad news? We might as well have been selling snow in Siberia—our product wasn’t catching on, and our rivals were outpacing us tenfold.
There I was, the epitome of a fish out of water, captaining a crew whose spirits were plummeting faster than a sinking ship.
Amidst this turmoil, I stumbled upon an unexpected source of inspiration. I was in a Churchgate store, searching for a romantic card for my long-distance girlfriend, when I found myself inexplicably drawn to condolence cards oddly placed next to declarations of love. Without fully understanding why, I purchased ten cards that simply stated, “Sorry for your loss.” The cashier gave me a puzzled look that seemed to question, “Are you okay, buddy?”
Back at the office, I displayed the condolence card collection on the reception table. Seizing the moment, I proposed a wild challenge: “What if we could send these condolence to our competitors if we win ?” The suggestion ignited laughter and, surprisingly, planted a seed of desire.
With each passing day, the team’s desire to win and then sign and dispatch these condolence cards to our competitors grew. By the year’s end, we had climbed from rock bottom to the top of the sales leaderboard.
This experience taught me that not everything is about logic and strategy. The mind works in mysterious ways. If you provide it with the right motivation, it finds a way. This was a great lesson in leadership: we are often trapped in the thought that we need to provide the answers or brainstorm and come up with solutions. Actually, this was my first lesson in the formation of the “Employee First” idea.
By embracing the idea that motivation and inspiration can lead to extraordinary results, you can create a more engaged, motivated, and high-performing team.