Anindya's Anecdotes #1

How many times have we witnessed good idea’s go down the drain because someone in the system vociferously opposed it?

Too many to count, isn’t it?

In my career, I have seen many such incidents but one stays fresh in my mind…

This incident occurred a few years back.

A Ms.Young energetic buyer was recruited in our team to drive the sell thru’s of a key but non performing category. She bought a lot of new ideas with her, was enthusiastic about the category & took up rather unique initiatives.

2 months passed.

6 months passed.

12 months passed.

But, nothing happened! Sales continued to stagnate.

One day, she came up to me after a rather difficult Monday morning review. Distressed & irritated, she said;

But what is the issue? I asked her!

Our competition is constantly innovating and introducing newness in the product range. This keeps them ahead of us, she said.

She discussed how she had put together an innovation pipeline and worked with the fabric team, designers and vendors to come up with some new age products. She created marketable ideas, worked out the promotions and then presented it.

To her utter surprise, every one of her ideas went either into rework or were dropped.

This discussion stayed in my mind thereafter. I kept pondering over why her ideas were dumped. One day, while interacting with her team leader, I understood what had happened.

Introducing Mr. Team Leader.

He truly believed that he is a brilliant buyer and fancied himself to be an innovator par excellence. His arrogance made him overlook many unique initiatives by his team, many going waste like our case in discussion. In fact, his team refrained from taking up such projects and eventually became YES-MEN. The mere fact that a young buyer had taken the initiative to work on innovations did not go down well with him.

His logic was simple;

IF I DID NOT INVENT IT, IT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH! and he genuinely believed in this.

Ms.Young energetic buyer eventually was recognised as a power house of talent and recruited by our competitors. Mr. Team Leader continues to be the same arrogant leader he always was…

This incident, though an everyday occurring, did teach me something!

- It's what I now call;

We see good ideas biting the dust too often to count. Most of the times, it's because people don’t want to listen. The team leaders come with the “Been there - Done that” attitudes, and refuse to see the obvious. The solutions are right there, staring us in our face, and yet our ego makes us look the other way. We just need to silence it to be able to listen/see, appreciate & recognise them.

This is the bane of the fashion industry. It’s so subjective that a little success can sometimes build big ego’s which become our blind spots. It slows down the teams efforts & creates a negative environment for the team.

In the end, I would only say that we should simply learn to open ourselves to listening, learning and understanding the various inputs that are coming in from everyone. All our stake holders want us to succeed as in our success lies theirs too. All we have to do is move beyond the ‘NOT INVENTED BY ME’ syndrome.

We would love to hear about some incidents & anecdotes from your professional life too. Do leave your comments below!

RELATED TOPICS:#Apparel,Anindya Ray