Notes

Slippery, Not Smooth

Read on Substack · 2024-10-15

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This is the first draft. It’ll also be called first draft. It’s all going to be about problems. No solutions here. Suggestions are welcome if you understand the problem.

As an employee (All posts here are ‘as founders’), I think we put a great deal of efforts in our work too. Actually, measurable amount of work. In terms of salary, hours and the difference between our expected salary and the actual number. That’s the input.

Now while doing that, this is what I’ve been upto at work, in past few weeks/months.

Getting our supply chain flow in place, but more than getting it together, it was about getting ahold of it. It requires a team, ofcourse, to keep it in control. Keeps slipping away. Slimy AF.

While dealing with all that, I do realise that this isn’t just a month job, I know that. I read this in some book that Having a zero latency information system has always been a great investment for an organisation trying to scale up. Getting a slimy ball in hand is impossible. But only to someone who is looking at it from far. For someone who has the ball, it sounds like a possible thing. Depends on how optimistic a person is. Or how talented the execution team is. Knowing when to get an extra hand and pack that ball in a box once and for all (for few months/years at the least) sounds like a great idea. Hence, it’s time I take the initiative and propose that even though I still think it’s possible to do it (duh! 🤪), but it’s not always about me.

Working with a team to solve a problem, where not everyone is looking at it from a different POV, isn’t a great thing. So tough. Also, thinking all of this while being an employee who isn’t really senior but is too impatient to wait isn’t very comfortable. So writing about it is the next best thing, maybe.

No MBA alternative video talks about just working and being a great employee gives you great deal of empathy for your next role/venture, to understand what actually runs the system while being one above execution level and one below the decision level. Yet there’s no mention of this in ‘how to succeed’ videos. Scam. Ofcourse being an a**hole like Shashank Mehta said on ‘All founders are a**holes” takes a whole different experience. Can’t deny that.

It’s not just about fixing internal stuff and metrics slipping away. At some point, it all comes down to numbers anyway. No more room for excuses—just measuring, counting, and analyzing. At the end of the day, you're just another piece of the puzzle—whether you're an employee, a startup, a SaaS tool, or even a CV. It’s all about the outputs.

This post is also going up so when I do become a banging substack writer years down the line, I can come back to this badly written post with no direction, that I’ve come so far. ( I hope).


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