Disrupt – Moving beyond the Clichés

Whether we like to admit it or not, the universe is made up of clichés. These define how we do everything in life, how we grow up, start families, spend our time and also how we do our business. These beliefs govern the way we think about and do anything in life. If we pay attention to how we like to represent life as well, in the form of movies, we see this to be truer than ever. There is a good guy and there is a bad guy, bad guy tries to kill/kills the good guys’ family, the good guy ‘accidentally/in distress’ kills the bad guy while trying to save the family – convention being ‘Our hero is a good guy’. We have gotten accustomed to this and find comfort in the clichés. We usually say – “Well that’s how it is”, “that’s how the world works”. But some people don’t like how the world works. While we have this “bad guy vs good guy” norm, Tarantino disrupts with “Kill Bill” – A woman turned murderer for revenge.

This is applicable to our work as well. A lot of people do business a certain way “because this is the way it was meant to be done”. But if you no longer look for changing the way it is ‘meant’ to be done, how does business grow, how do you innovate, how do you create?

This has now become a stark reality and more so, for a lot of businesses across the world as they stare down the abyss that is the economic impact of COVID-19. Life as we knew it changed overnight across the world and a large number of businesses were left hanging by a thread. F&B, Hospitality, Entertainment, Tourism, Fashion Retail, Airlines, Banking, Education, etc. have all been affected so significantly that most people cannot even begin to understand the real effect of this pandemic. This is the rudest wake up call for all. It is now that one needs to pull up his socks, put on their suit, sit in the study in their house and start thinking out of the box. Disruption is a norm, cliches are done for and if one does not dramatically change the way things are done, most of the businesses will not survive to see the dawn. This pandemic has proven to be of holocaust proportions for most business activity in the world.

Having said that, disruption for the sake of disruption is bothersome. It is no longer enough to come up with disruptive ideas, these ideas need to fill a gap in ways that is valued by others, in ways that challenge the status quo and turn business models around on their heads. The core of any disruptive idea needs to be better value for the user or in current times, just reaching the user.

At Falak, we understand how the consulting world works within a corporate setting. We’ve lived it for years. And many have to told us that ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. We strongly disagree and trust us when we say this, it is now broke, fix it. We believe even things that don’t seem broken can be improved and made smarter, faster, and more efficient. We believe that nothing can be ignored, no idea can be left unexplored. Nothing at Falak is done the way it has been done before just because it was done before, even by us. Everything is improved, for us and our clients. We deny the clichés.