Last week I came across a quote by science fiction author N. K. Jemisin on “world building”. Context: Fantasy/sci-fi is genre where authors create a world in which their characters live, which is different from our own. This imaginary world itself (describing it, explaining how it behaves) becomes a part of the narrative. In the video, Jemisin is quoted saying that in these stories, “The fundamental changes shape everything, even if the characters are not aware”. What she means is that the type of planet, the geography, the resources, culture etc shape the character more than anything else, and the characters are just adapting to these changes in the system. Imagine if there is a tsunami or a volcano, this will change every inter-personal relationship in the story. This is more apparent in sci-fi than other genres is because we can see the world better as it is so different from our own. We are so “blinded” by the world we live in and accept it as a part of “reality”, that we are often unable to sense the bigger changes in our world and how they affect us.
The second interesting thing that happened last week was that we had quarterly performance reviews. The session was an opportunity for everyone to give me feedback as the CEO, and this time people really gave it back. I won’t go into the reasons, but one of the common feedback is that they don’t see change coming and are very disturbed by it. I have had this same feedback over the years - “We change around things very frequently at Frappe”
If you look at the day of a regular person, they switch “on” their laptops and get to work. Much of the work is interacting with other people - customers, users, colleagues, partners, vendors etc. And every interaction has a flavour of the inter-personal relationship the person has with the other person. In this “day-to-day”, we often forget the larger forces at play. The company has to be sustainable and profitable. The customers have to be fulfilled and delighted. There should be a market for products the company is offering - which depends on the local and global economy. There are layers of forces at play, every single day and and they are every changing. A stronger or cheaper competitor may steal your customer, a global crises may take away the liquidity of your customers etc. And it is these larger forces that take people by surprise.
For example if the company does not have a sustainable business model, then it will try new things, like new products, market positioning, pricing, distribution strategy etc. The goal is to find a model that is sustainable and growing. When these forces change, it will of course change the work content of people. They may have to build new products or explain new pricing to the customer. The change is usually not welcome because it forces people to question and make new decisions, throwing away everything they had setup. It throws a spanner in their well oiled working style. But if we don’t change things, then the company itself may not sustain or grow.
When change happens, there is usually a change agent, which might be the CEO (that would be me). To ensure people are not blindsided by changes, it requires constant and clear communication of what is happening. For example, for many years (decade and a half) Frappe did not have a predictable business model. Our month-on-month revenue would vary by 20-30%. There would be no way to predict the revenue of the next 3-6 months. With this kind of a model, it would be hard to make any investments. Frappe has had several handicaps going against it - a complex product, low cost offering, 100% open source, diverse customer base and hence low ability to invest in high quality services. It is only recently that we think we have a stable business model with Frappe Cloud.
While we may “compare” Frappe to other companies that have scaled much faster, the reality is that we did not have the right product at the right price and the right place (distribution) for the customer. As a CEO, I believe that I had communicated this over several discussions to the team. Each team member on the other hand was solving only a part of the problem so maybe they were not getting what I was trying to say. Customers used to tell us that why are you charging your service on a “per user” basis when your product is open source? But it took a while for the entire team to agree that we need to move away from a service based offering to a hosting platform. This was the only way we could keep our products 100% open source while building a sustainable business.
We had to keep changing our pricing and offering till we found that model. To repeat, the world is shaped by forces that are beyond us, even beyond me as the CEO. While I do empathise with their discomfort when things change, but I don’t see any other option. A startup by definition has to be high on experimentation. It means it has to keep pivoting until it finds its product market fit. Sometimes that path may be long and winded. The fundamental force at play in Frappe as a business was that it is hard to grow a business where you are always giving away your product for free. It was not defensible. The answer was not charging for service (because there was a community of people already providing them), but to find another way to offer value to customers (by hosting it for them). The search for the right business model has been long and often painful, but a lot of fun as well.
So if you are working in a company, you need to identify what are these fundamental forces that can affect your job. This way you will probably not be blind-sided by any of them. There other forces of nature or geopolitics that are beyond your control, or you have limited control on, and if they are volatile, then you should work actively in fixing them. For example if your local government is not stable, then you need to also invest time in ensure there is a stable policy regime or you migrate to another region if you can.
Often when we are unaware, we find someone to blame for these forces. It could yourself or your boss. But we don't ask the question if there is something else. When you fell like blaming yourself for not finishing a task on time, ask what were the bigger forces at play? There is no point addressing your "will power" if you realise that you may not have the right skills for the job. Maybe you need to hone them first. Or similarly, when you feel like blaming your boss or your company, ask what are the force they are being shaped by. Maybe if you do that you may find opportunity to be more helpful in whatever they are trying to fix. If you find “mean” people, maybe you are in a team where opportunities are shrinking and people are trying to protect themselves.
The key to not reacting is to understand. Be curious about the world around you. What are the forces that shape your work, your team, your company, your neighbourhood, your country, your world? If you look hard enough, you will be able to see the world like the matrix and stop being very emotionally affected. That might be an exaggeration, but you will be less likely to be caught blindsided and then disoriented. This is also the text book definition of “wisdom” - the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement.
