Especially for SME’s – 18: Time.

15 December 2021

Mr. Lowe: I look at life as nothing but our doing different roles at different times.

Some of these roles we like to do and we do, exercising our free will and some other roles are just thrust on us, none of which we can avoid or even evade. Look back at your own lives, have you done only what you have liked as per your free will?

SME 1: No, no, not at all. Some of my friends, for example, do not want to run an SME at all but they have to, for running their family! For some even family and married life are roles thrust on them!

Mr. Lowe: But the mark of an effective or successful person is that he is able to do any role – whether he likes it or not – with the same high commitment and involvement.

SME 3: How can you make yourself do that because one role you like to do and the other you don’t like to do!

Mr. Lowe: The only way you can do this is by removing “you” from the scene.

SME 1: But it is I who is doing the role. How can I remove that I?

Mr. Lowe: By shifting your focus from I to someone who is more powerful than you are, in the role you are doing!

SME 2: But when I do something, I think I am the most powerful and I am in charge. For example, I am running my SME and I feel I am the most powerful in my unit. What is wrong with that?

Mr. Lowe: Can I ask you whether there is anyone who is more powerful than you are in your unit – may not be inside it but outside it but who is intimately connected with it?

SME 3: Yes, I know, it is the Govt.!

Mr. Lowe: I keep the Govt. and its various departments at arms length by a simple trick: I abide by all their rules, though many are carried for over a century and British made rules; they made sense when British the foreigners were ruling over us and they cannot blindly trust us; but now the very rules are rank stupid, because we are ruling ourselves. Should there be any difference at all or not? Now you have no reason to mistrust Indians any more. So all the suspicion-based rules will have to replaced with trust-based ones. Our earlier Govts. and our lawmakers and bureaucrats let us, the people, down very badly. I have found that the best way to keep them out is by following all the rules however stupid the rules may be. Because spending time on attending to the queries and meetings by them is a shear waste of Time, the number one resource all of us have and I can generate lot more revenue in the same time than what I save by way of tax. My CA was recently told that they would replace my name even if it is chosen at random by the computer for scrutiny because they said I make no number 2 money at all -either on the revenue side or on the expenditure side – and scrutiny of me was a waste of Time, their number one resource, for them!

SME 2: So who is more powerful than me in my own SME?

Mr. Lowe: I will give you a hint: Power is higher if dependence is lower. So on whom you and your SME are dependent?

SME 2: Of course, I am dependent on my employees, suppliers.

Mr. Lowe: But if anyone of your suppliers or employees is not performing to your expectation, what do you do?

SME 2: Instead of wasting my time, I get an alternative.

Mr. Lowe: That means you are more powerful than they are as their dependence is more and yours in them is lower. Can you think of someone who can get someone as an alternative to you?

SME 1: Yes, our customers!

Mr. Lowe: You said it! Your external customer is one on whom you, your SME, your employees and their families and all depend. So your external customer is more powerful than all of you including yourself and your unit. ………………..contd.