The price of competence from my experience

Quite a few years ago, I faced challenges structuring the new operational model for one of my ventures. Although I had sufficient experience with various operational models and modes, I felt some uncertainty about this particular one. The venture was silently bleeding money, and I had to fix the problems and settle it as soon as I could.

The issue was not external but sat between internal and external situations. The operative model was to gather specific market data and build momentum for conversion. The team was experienced and enthusiastic but could not understand the priorities I set, which made operational decision making increasingly difficult.

Life throws tantrums, and business is no exception. Here I was with all confidence, but the team was lacking something. It went a few months, and I invested money in competence. I worked with an American company that eventually helped me diagnose the new industrial patterns that would soon emerge. It was insightful and later proved very useful, fitting perfectly into the future.

People who are excellent at their work are usually the ones with the same emotions that dwell in everyone. Excellence is never competence.

Moreover, people who are really good at something and have gained momentum in business are the ones who face more problems than an average person. Yes, real-life data consistently shows this in business competence across industries.

Last of all, successful people often rely on confidence rather than competence. This confusion between competence vs confidence in leadership is more common than it appears. The illumination of intellect is never confidence, but competence.

When you know the situation, the users in that situation, and simulate the time to move ahead, excellence is not needed. Often, past success blinds people. The future is constantly evolving; the past doesn’t determine the future.

Just like today’s market crash in any industry, which is not rewarding excellent executives, CXOs, or business owners for rebuilding past glory. The same consciousness never helps; a new one does. That is competence.

Oh, coming back to my own experience, I was sharing at the start. What happened to me? Well, I just started slowly reflecting on the market’s patterns and dialect during those months. I have always been the same when ups and downs come in any of my businesses, especially when facing decision-making under pressure.

Competence never promises smooth outcomes, but thinking under pressure reveals where one truly resides — in a more evolved form.

That reminds me of a verse from the Bhagavad Gita.
बुद्धियुक्तो जहातीह उभे सुकृतदुष्कृते ।
तस्माद्योगाय युज्यस्व योगः कर्मसु कौशलम् ॥

The meaning is actually: One who is established in discerning intelligence rises above both success and failure.
Therefore, engage in Yoga — for Yoga is competence in action.

Learning is always a suitable approach you can take. However, something is superior even to learning. That is building competence under life pressures, and learning is one of the factors in strengthening long-term business competence.

Whatever I learned during that problematic period made me competent, albeit with a cost. Sometimes invoices accumulate, and payments have to be made later, which still creates fragility due to delayed operational decision making.

Why have to spend more when you can enhance your competence by investing now? It saves money.

The same structured thinking later helped me modify the operative model in that business of mine, and it paid off nicely; that much I can say with a smile.
I just continued with a realization in mind — competence costs anyway. Better spending now than later. It always comes multifold.

Any material investment is inferior to the investment in understanding.
Because all action ultimately reaches completion through knowledge.

Competence costs anyway.
The only variable is timing.
Pay through learning, or pay through correction.
Markets don’t forgive delays — they invoice them.

Jai Sri Hari,
Deb OM Malya