Come on, give me the chills

Thoughts about changing, life, and whatever comes to mind.

Author: Andrea Grassi

  • the adaptive business plan

    What’s a business plan? It’s an idea, a goal, a destination to reach. It means you have an idea of where you’re going and how to get there, what steps are needed to grow and to become the company you want to become.

    A business plan, per se, is not adaptable, it’s not flexible. It doesn’t allow to change routes while driving. You have to get there.

    What then could we improve of this idea? Think of a business plan that you can revise, adapt to a market to include new ideas. What’s scary in a business plan is that each word you write seems set in stone, while in fact a business plan can (and I think should) adapt to the world you’re living in. If there’s a market crash you should steer away from it.

    The ability to pivot should be taken into consideration into each business plan, the R&D should be there, to allow your company to expand, grow unexpectedly beyond your initial imagination.

    Because afterall a business plan is this: Something you imagine that you plan to realize.

  • the illusion of growth

    Did you ever thought a book would change your life and it didnt?

    Did you ever thought a book wouldn’t change your life and it did change it instead?

    We’re guided by our needs by our vision. But what we want doesn’t always means that’s what we need.
    Sometimes what we need is different, it’s a slightly different variation of what we want. It’s a detour. Taking time off our dreams and pursuing something else that seems unrelated but will, in the end, change our lives forever.

    It’s like when you drive and discover a sightseeing spot while taking a detour.
    There was no way you would have found it other than with a detour.

  • be kind

    Kindness is often underrated and overrated.

    Overrated because you might be fooled into thinking that it can solve every problem in the world, but no, it won’t happen.
    You might do your best to be kind, do have empathy with someone and he or she might still treat you bad.

    But it’s also underrated because we forget how much power kindness has.
    There is this famous saying “Be kind; Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”. That is true in a specific sense.
    When you face someone that is angry at you he might not be really angry because you did something wrong. 
    As in the aforementioned example, people can still react bad even when you did your best, so why this happens?

    It happens because there’s a story we tell in our minds. Seth Godin, author and bestseller, clears this up by saying that it’s our internal narrative that defines what we do, how we react and so on.

    He’s right. It’s that little voice in our head and the sum of all the events that produces the angriness.
    A person shouting at you because you didn’t finish the work on time might do it not because he/she hates you, but because maybe he bet on that finish line, there was money/status at stake, he made promises to people that couldn’t keep.
    The fact that the project wasn’t delivered on time might not be a problem on many cases, but in _that_ one it was a problem because there was too much at stake.

    Or maybe he’s shouting because, thanks to this delay, he will receive a paycut, or simply because his personal status will change in the eyes of the bosses, making him look less effective.

    Who know what’s the story of the person you’ve got in front. We all don’t know.
    Sometimes we’re lucky enough to meet people that share this story openly, this way we know what they’re coming from and how to help them.
    Other times we’re left with them shouting at us.

    In all cases, be kind. Don’t be the one shouting.
    Because, on the other hand, there are people who did their best and still failed.
    Edison failed 10.000 times before finding one idea that worked, we’re not different. We fail.

    I suppose you did fail too, right? How you felt when everything went wrong? Bad right? Maybe you deserved it, maybe not. But what if the people around you didn’t blame you too much, what if they treat you like a human and not like a stupid dog?

    Maybe you would have found easier to stand up again and start doing your best work, again.

  • when nothing will work, work will work

    Military Quote

  • the comfort zone

    There was this online course for wantepreneurs that tried to teach you how to get out of the comfort zone.

    To do that, one exercise was to go into a bar, ask for something that was relatively cheap (a small drink, whatever) and then asking for a discount.

    We don’t usually do this, right? And it’s extremely unsettling, but whatever the outcome you’ll find that, if you do it, nothing bad happens.

    It’s not that they kill you (unless you live in a really bad neighborhood) and even if they refuse to give you the discount, everything is ok.

    This is the key takeaway from exiting the comfort zone: Nothing really happens. There is no downside, there is no catastrophe, no disaster. Life continues as it should.