Resilience in Building Ventures
This interview was originally published by Arabian Business as part of a series titled “EMIR Boardroom” on August 16, 2020.
Danish Farhan, speaks about the "copy-cat" culture, understanding cultural context, importance of resilience, and the ability to tell a grand story.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
I think we are obsessed with the “copycat culture” in general, we think that because somebody like me that fits the mold that is me has succeeded elsewhere that I really just have to copy-paste-rinse-and-repeat and it just doesn't work that way.
My advice — really has to be understand cultural context. Without cultural context there is zero validity of any lessons you could learn from anywhere else. I think the Middle East, specifically the UAE is quite unique in both both its opportunities but also the challenges that come with being in a region that is under 50 years old has made a mark on the global economy.
Number 2 — is resilience and I think because we're in such an untested market and I can say that we're a frontier market, we're not the developed world, we are we are a long way from becoming the developed world but we behave like we are and we operate like we are and we're going to get there.
Number 3 — is resilience. Number four is resilience.
Number 5 — is the ability to tell a grand story. If you're unable to tell the stories to inspire your employees, your partners, your parents, your siblings, your children, or the leadership of a nation, it is a practical impossibility that you're going to be able to tell yourself the story — which is the most important story that we ever tell. To be able to go and get up and do what you need to do.
If you're unable to tell the stories to inspire your employees, your partners, your parents, your children, it is impossible to tell yourself the story.
Once you're able to inspire people, so storytelling happens right at the very beginning you need to switch right into resilience mode because the only thing inevitable about a business plan is that it's going to be wrong. That's why we call it a plan and therefore when it fails you have to be ready with the grit, to be resilient and get up and do it again.
Here's where the finer details start to emerge. If it doesn't hurt, it's merely an inconvenience. I think it's going to have to hurt for it to matter. If it knocks you down, it's exactly when you know this is something worth pursuing. That leads to resilience.
If it doesn't hurt, it's merely an inconvenience. I think it's going to have to hurt for it to matter.
The third kind of failure is that which is completely internal: where you may have succeeded by metrics that are visible to the world but you have not succeeded in what you set out to do for yourself. This kind of failure is perhaps the hardest to get up front and that takes resilience.
The last piece that takes resilience is the fact that you do not have to be emotionally invested in what it is that you're doing. Because I am not here to prove what I'm good at, I'm here to to go and and draw a line between an opportunity and a challenge, and that may change. You're going to have to be able to pivot and when you do it could be drastically different.
The only thing you can discover is your passion. Purpose, on the other hand is always within you.
But what remains are passion and purpose. Passion and purpose are two very different things. People tend to think that you go and discover your purpose. You go on this trip, you go to an ashram you, take a vow of silence and you go discover your purpose. That's not true. The only thing you can discover is your passion. Most people mistake passion for purpose.
Purpose, on the other hand is always within you. You just have to find a way to reconnect with it and that happens when you start to live your life with passion. Purpose is inevitable.