Month: May 2026

Your biggest competitor isn’t another brand. It’s your own meeting that ended with “let’s revisit this.”

 

If the caption sounds like a boardroom bite, well that was the intention.

 

Can I ask you something?

 

What is the actual cost of the decision you didn’t make last quarter? Not the bad decision. The non-decision. The meeting that ended with ‘let’s revisit this.’ The campaign that got parked in approvals. The repositioning that died because someone said, ‘The market isn’t ready.’

 

The answer: The market was ready. You weren’t.

 

THE COMFORTABLE CATASTROPHE : Why Doing Nothing Feels Like Genius (Until It Isn’t)

 

Look at the peculiar genius of inaction: it is the only business decision that can never be directly blamed on anyone. A bad campaign? Fire the agency. A failed product launch? Blame the timing. But doing nothing? Ah. That’s collective wisdom. That’s prudence. That’s ‘we are being careful with our assets.’

 

Kodak didn’t destroy itself. It simply watched. It had the technology for digital cameras in-house in 1975. Engineers were excited. Leadership was nervous. They chose the safety of doing nothing disruptive. And then, with extraordinary patience, they waited for someone else to come and disrupt them instead.

 

Remember Nirma in India? Once it made HUL genuinely sweat. Then it stopped. Not dramatically — just quietly. No real repositioning, no new story, no fight for relevance in a changing India. It’s still there. But there as a ghost brand — present on shelves, absent from hearts. The safest catastrophe looks exactly like that: not a crash, but a slow, dignified fade.

 

THE SOHB STORY RECKONING: A State Of The Heart Brand Cannot Afford To Be Stateless

 

Crafting a State Of The Heart Brand means you have accepted a particular kind of accountability — one that most brand custodians run from. It means your brand carries emotional weight, not just market weight. It means people don’t just buy you. They believe in you. And belief, unlike market share, collapses not slowly but suddenly. We all know about ” The future arrives gradually, then all of a sudden “.

 

Not so long ago, think of how Café Coffee Day quietly imploded in public consciousness even before its financial collapse became news. The heart had left that brand years before the balance sheet confessed. Nobody decided to stop loving CCD. The brand simply stopped earning it, one non-decision at a time.

 

Contrast that with Amul — a cooperative that has consistently chosen to show up, say something, be present through every national moment for over five decades. Not perfect. Not always polished. But always there. A brand that never confused silence with sophistication.

 

SO HOW DO YOU ACTUALLY BUILD ONE? The Architecture Of A State Of The Heart Brand

 

No “off-the-grid brand strategy huddle” is going to reveal this: a State Of The Heart Brand is not built in campaigns. It is built in commitments. Small, consistent, unglamorous commitments that compound over time the way interest does — quietly, invisibly, and then all at once.

 

The Comfortable Coma

 

There exists a strange corporate lullaby:

 

“We’re doing okay.”
“Let’s not rock the boat.”
“Margins are steady.”

 

Translation?

 

“We are slowly becoming invisible.”

 

Brands that choose comfort over curiosity enter a beautifully decorated coma. No alarms. No urgency. No one to blame.

 

Because nothing happened. And that’s precisely what happened.

 

What would people genuinely mourn if your brand disappeared tomorrow?

 

Not miss, as in ‘oh, that was convenient.’ Mourn, as in ‘something real is gone from my life.’ If the answer is a shrug, you don’t have a Heart Brand yet — you have a transaction dressed up in a brand mission statement. The work begins there. Figure out what human truth your brand was born to serve. Not a category truth. Not a market truth. A human one. Patagonia didn’t build a Heart Brand by selling jackets. It built one by standing for the inconvenient idea that the planet matters more than the next quarter’s numbers — and then actually meaning it.

 

A Heart Brand must have a voice that speaks even when it’s uncomfortable, and a silence that is never confused with approval

 

Tata as a group has done this for over a century in India — showing up in moments of national crisis, rebuilding cities, funding education, refusing to exit markets just because margins got thin. You don’t have to be a Tata to do this. You have to be willing to stand for something beyond the transaction, say it out loud, and then — this is the hard part — do it when nobody is watching and there’s no press release to show for it. That’s where Heart Brands are actually forged. Not in the campaign. In the quiet, costly, unwitnessed choice.

 

THE GLOBAL AUTOPSY: When The World’s Biggest Brands Chose The Slow Goodbye

 

Blockbuster met Reed Hastings(Founder of Netflix) in 2000. He offered to sell Netflix for $50 million. The Blockbuster executives reportedly laughed. What they were actually doing was choosing comfortable inertia over uncomfortable reinvention. By 2010, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy. Netflix today is a verb.

 

Nokia had smartphones before the iPhone existed. Their internal memos from 2007 reportedly show the fear wasn’t technological — it was cultural. They were afraid of cannibalizing their own success. Apple had no such fear. It ate itself first, before eating everyone else.

 

“The brand that waits for permission to be brave is already broken.”

 

And this food for torque from a domicile called The Quiet Coffin: Brands don’t die from bad decisions. They die from the comfortable ones nobody made.

 

Doing Nothing: The Safest Catastrophe

 

Let’s call a spade a spade( or should we call it a shovel?).

 

Doing nothing feels safe because it carries no immediate consequence.
No risky bets. No bold moves. No sleepless nights.

 

But it also comes with some sunken costs:

 

• Loss of cultural relevance
• Erosion of emotional connection
• Gradual commoditization
• Eventual invisibility

 

And the most dangerous part?

 

No one gets fired for doing nothing.
Because there’s nothing to point at.

 

It’s the perfect crime. With a missing victim.

 

Crafting a State Of The Heart Brand

 

Please Note: This is not a campaign. It’s a commitment.

 

  1. From Proposition to Pulse
    Stop asking what your brand offers. Start asking what it awakens.
  2. From Messaging to Meaning
    If your communication vanished tomorrow, would anyone feel the loss?
  3. From Audience to Allies
    Customers transact. Communities belong.
  4. From Consistency to Character
    Consistency is hygiene. Character is magnetism.
  5. From Safe to Significant
    Safe keeps you alive. Significant makes you unforgettable.

 

Wake Up and Bake Up: You Can’t Have The Cake And Eat It Too

 

Brands don’t lose because competitors outspend them.
They lose because they out-bore their audience.

 

In a world drowning in content, indifference is the new extinction.

 

If your brand does not evoke, provoke, comfort, challenge, or move someone…

 

It is already halfway out of the room.

 

Final Thought Please

 

You can choose chaos.
You can choose courage.
You can even choose calculated madness.

 

But if you choose nothing…

 

Nothing will eventually choose you back.

 

And it won’t even bother to leave a goodbye note.

 

If your heart is racing a little faster after reading this, perhaps it’s time we meet. I am at suresh@groupisd.com

 

PS: On a completely different note, I am taking the liberty to share here that my other blog SOHB(State Of The Heart Branding) Story is now a Podcast as well. You can access it on these links below:

Your brand isn’t for everyone. Good. That’s the whole point!

 

Circa 1962. A tiny car company told you it was ugly. “Think Small,” said VW. Didn’t apologize. Didn’t beg. Just drew a line. Sales exploded. Why? Because exclusion is the new inclusion. When you try to be for everyone, you stand for no one. The fastest way to become irrelevant is to keep every seat warm.

 

It’s not for you’ — the four words that built every cult brand you worship.

 

Make the best for everyone

 

Bullshit. That myth’s sell-by date expired with the last Kodak roll. In today’s bazaar of infinite scrolls, “universal best” is a recipe for irrelevance. The radical truth? “It might not be for you” is the unspoken heartbeat of every killer brand. It’s permission to polarize, to own a tribe, to leave the timid in the dust.

 

Question: What if your “best” is repelling 90%…and magnetizing the 10% who’ll evangelize forever? That’s the weight. Brands die chasing consensus; legends thrive on conviction.

 

It might not be for you

The most dangerous words in branding. Also, the most honest. Because hidden inside that polite shrug is a war cry:

 

“We are the best…for someone.”

 

Not everyone. Not the masses. Not the bored scroller who double-taps everything from biryani to bitcoin.

 

Someone. Specific. Chosen. Excluded.

 

And that’s where most brands lose the plot.

 

The Cult Of Universal Likeability(And Other Expensive Mistakes)

 

Somewhere along the way, brands started auditioning for everyone.
Like a stand-up comic who refuses to offend, provoke, or even mildly disturb…and ends up being just background noise.

 

Saying it as is, where is:

 

If nobody is saying “this isn’t for me,”
nobody is passionately saying “this is for me.”

 

Indifference is the tax you pay for playing safe.

 

The Unpopular Superpower

 

The best brands don’t chase approval. They engineer belonging.

  • A gym that screams at you is not for the “I’ll start Monday” tribe.
    It’s for the “give me pain, give me proof” tribe.
  • A luxury watch doesn’t whisper value. It declares irrelevance to anyone asking for discounts.
  • A brutally honest consulting firm repels the “yes-men seekers” and magnetizes the “tell me what I need to hear” crowd.

 

They don’t just define who they serve. They define who they refuse.

 

And that refusal? That’s the real brand asset. Want cult status? Start saying no.

 

The Unignorable

 

Exclusion is not arrogance. It’s precision.

 

When you say “not for you,” you are doing three radical things:

 

  1. Sharpening your promise
    Blurry brands don’t scale. Sharp ones slice through noise.
  2. Accelerating trust
    The right audience recognizes itself instantly. No persuasion theatre needed.
  3. Creating cultural gravity
    People don’t just buy. They belong. And belonging travels faster than advertising.

 

Building The Arsenal For Perpetual Readiness

 

  1. Audit your tribe: Map who raves about you. Double down. Ditch the dabblers.
  2. Polarize with purpose: Launch “not-for-you” variants—spicy for firebrands, subtle for sages.
  3. Test-fire hooks: A/B captions like “Love it or loathe it?” to spike shares.
  4. Future-proof pivot: Quarterly “tribe pulse” surveys. Evolve or evaporate.

 

Overhaul complete. Stop pandering. Start provoking. Your “best for someone” is the moat no competitor can breach. Scarcity of relevance beats abundance of mediocrity.

 

The Final Provoke Of This SOHB(State Of The Heart Branding) Story

 

Stop asking: How do we get more people to like us?

Start asking: Who are we willing to lose to become unforgettable?

 

Because the moment you accept that it might not be for everyone…

 

…is the moment you finally become the best for someone.

 

Because, the brands that win don’t include. They choose.

 

PS: On a completely different note, I am taking the liberty to share here that my other blog SOHB(State Of The Heart Branding) Story is now a Podcast as well. You can access it on these links below:

The RFP Circus: A Love Letter to the World’s Most Elaborate Pretence

 

RFPs: Request For Performance…Theatre

 

Sorry to defy the conventional RFP definition…almost forgot…yes I got it now…Request For Proposal.

 

As I write this, I can visualise a brand manager copy-pasting an RFP template from 2020, changing the logo, and calling it “a strategic partnership opportunity.” The heavens are weeping( No, the Bangalore rains this morning was something else). Somewhere else, an agency is pulling three all-nighters to answer 17 questions about “brand philosophy” for a pitch they know — in their bone marrow — was already decided over golf(or golgappas) on Saturday.

 

Welcome to the RFP. The world’s most expensive theatrical performance where everybody knows the ending but nobody breaks character.

 

Let’s call the shovel a shovel, shall we?

 

The RFP, as currently practised by most brands, is essentially a free consulting extraction machine dressed in the language of “due diligence.” You’re not evaluating agencies. You’re harvesting intellectual capital from six desperate vendors while the decision maker’s brother-in-law’s agency warms the winner’s chair. The “evaluation matrix” with its delightful columns of Strategy (20%), Creativity (25%), Team (15%), and Cost (40% but listed last to seem classy) is democracy theatre of the highest order.

 

The real comedy?

 

The evaluation criteria that asks agencies to demonstrate “deep cultural understanding” but the shortlisting is done by someone who hasn’t spoken to a consumer since 2016. That requests “breakthrough creative thinking” but caps the budget at what wouldn’t cover a decent documentary. That demands “long-term partnership vision” from someone who changes agencies more often than their Instagram profile picture.

 

The agency side isn’t innocent either. They dress their speculative work in confident fonts, present recycled frameworks with evangelical conviction, and call three junior executives “The Core Team” while the actual talent never enters the room.

 

RFPs: Request For Performance…Theatre

 

Somewhere in a glass-walled boardroom, an RFP is being born. Not as a quest for brilliance, but as a beautifully formatted ritual. A document that whispers: “Show us your best thinking”…while quietly budgeting for the cheapest thinking available.

 

Welcome to the grand opera of “RFP for Vendors” where agencies pirouette, procurement claps politely, and merit is the understudy who never gets stage time. Welcome to Russian Roulette with blanks.

 

Act 1, Part 1

 

The opening act is always seductive. “Looking for a long-term strategic partner.”

Translation: Three presentations, five rounds, twelve stakeholders, and a decision already pre-decided in a WhatsApp chat.

 

Agencies arrive like Olympic athletes. Strategy decks that could double as PhD theses. Films that could win at Cannes. Ideas that could make a brand feel something other than quarterly anxiety. And then comes the twist ending:

“Can you match the lowest quote?”

 

India’s masala remix?

 

Picture a Delhi FMCG behemoth RFPs for “disruptive content storytelling.” You pour Diwali-level effort into GOLOKA-esque narratives. Shortlist? The Mumbai shop with “digital expertise” (read: interns on Canva). Verdict: “Your ideas brilliant, but budget!” Why? “Procurement.” It’s the corporate equivalent of “It’s not you, it’s our P&L.”

 

It’s less Mad Men, more Deal or No Deal.

 

Across India, a boutique agency crafts a soul-stirring brand narrative. In London, a mid-sized firm builds a cultural movement blueprint. In Dubai, a digital shop reverse-engineers consumer behavior like a Swiss watch. All three lose to…a spreadsheet with a smaller number. Now go, spread the word!

 

Globally consistent. Locally perfected.

 

In New York, agencies joke that RFP stands for “Really Fixed Process.” In Bengaluru, it’s “Rehearse, Perform, Perish.” In Mumbai, it’s simply “Rate First Please.”

 

The irony is rich enough to invoice. But don’t you dare try it. And if you do, please ensure your price is the lowest!

 

Nothing Changes

 

Because brands don’t actually lack good agencies. They lack the appetite to choose them for the right reasons. The RFP becomes a polite alibi. A compliance costume. A paper trail that says, “We evaluated everyone fairly” while the decision quietly hums, “We evaluated cost obsessively.”

 

And agencies? They play along. They romanticize the chase. They submit unpaid thinking like it’s a devotional offering. They convince themselves that this time, surely, the idea will win.

 

PS: It rarely does.

 

Ever wonder why RFPs demand 43-page decks plus free mood boards, yet decisions hinge on “rate cards“? Because depth? Nah. It’s shallowness disguised as process—agencies shortlisted by Excel wizards, not visionaries.

 

And the shortlisting process?

 

Please. It’s a mood ring, not merit. “We loved your case studies, but your deck’s font felt aggressive.” Or the classic: “Your team is brilliant, but our procurement guy didn’t like your coffee.” Or the ubiquitous cut paste four para regret note that is as emotionless as a doorknob. At this point, agencies should submit quotes in crayon. It matches the depth of evaluation.

 

The RFP charade is a mask for indecision. Brands fearful of owning a point of view hide behind “process.” They want to look polite while gutting value. They tick boxes like tourists ticking temples—no prayer, just photos. They( read the VP-Marketing) want vendors who will give them a roll up overnight Rs 80 cheaper; not an entity with breakthrough strategy or moonshot thinking that delivers.

 

The Tragedy?

If you shop for imagination like you shop for office chairs, don’t be surprised when your brand sits comfortably…and says nothing.

The tragedy isn’t that cheaper agencies win. The tragedy is that better thinking doesn’t even get a fair audition.

 

So what now?

Brands, if you truly want transformation, rewrite the ritual.
Pay for thinking. Shortlist for chemistry. Decide for courage.
Because the cost of safe decisions is invisibly expensive.

 

Agencies, stop auditioning for every stage.
Qualify the client as hard as they qualify you.
If the brief smells like procurement, don’t spray it with creativity.

 

Brands, stop the motions. Agencies, demand paid pilots.

 

Merit-first RFPs exist—Scandinavian brands nail it with “idea bounties.”

 

India, let’s pioneer: Reverse RFPs where you vet them on vision, not just velocity.

 

And maybe, just maybe, we rename RFP to something more honest?

 

RSL — Request for the Safest Lowest.

 

Or, if we’re feeling generous,

 

RFT — Request For Trust.

 

Because the brands that win tomorrow won’t be the ones who found the cheapest partner.

 

They’ll be the ones who had the spine to choose the right one.

 

So, what to take away?

 

Brands: Stop asking for magic at bargain-bin prices.

If you run an RFP without real intent, you will attract real actors—not artists. You’ll get compliance, not courage. And your brand will sound like every other brand: safe, sorry, and silent.

 

Agencies: Ditch the dance. Chase clients craving heart over hustle. Your stories deserve shovels that dig gold, not dirt-cheap graves. Who’s in?

The contrarians will disagree. Good. Let them. But the ground truth is simple: Merit isn’t a checkbox. It’s a mirror.Look into yours before you send that next PDF.

Or don’t. And keep wondering why your “brand story” sounds like a terms of service agreement. Your move next.

 

PS: On a completely different note, I am taking the liberty to share here that my other blog SOHB(State Of The Heart Branding) Story is now a Podcast as well. You can access it on these links below:

“Let’s Catch Up Soon!” — The World’s Most Beloved Lie

 

“Let’s catch up soon.”

 

You bumped into Ramesh at the Bangalore supermarket. Or cousin Priya at a wedding in Coimbatore. Or your college roommate Vikram on Zoom. For approximately 90 seconds, you performed the Dance of Manufactured Warmth — eyebrows raised, arms slightly open, voice pitched at “delighted but busy.” And then someone said it. The magic spell. The Get Out of Genuine Connection Free card.

 

“We must catch up soon!”

 

Both parties immediately relaxed. Because everyone understood the assignment: this meeting will never happen. No date. No venue. No intention. Just the beautiful social lubricant of a sentence that means absolutely nothing and protects everybody’s feelings simultaneously.

 

It’s brilliant, actually. Diabolically, anthropologically brilliant.

 

Let’s catch up soon!

 

The four most faithfully broken words in human history. More predictable than a politician’s promise. The Great Ghosting Gala of Modern Bonds.

 

Sorry to open your gall bladder with a rusty fork: The last time you said “Let’s catch up soon,” you were probably on the pot, scrolling reels, lying through your teeth.

 

The Japanese call unnecessary social performance tatemae — the public face worn over private truth. The British perfected the art with ” We should do lunch“ — an institution so hollow it has its own Wikipedia entry. Brazilians have “a gente se vê” — “we’ll see each other” — which roughly translates to “I wish you well from this comfortable distance.” Indians? We weaponised it. We added “for sure,” “definitely,” “100%” — extra garnish on a dish that was never going to be cooked.

 

Some Ground Truth?

 

In our swipe-right era, “catch up soon” is the velvet hammer of shallow ties. A 2023 Pew study ghosts us: 60% of adults feel lonelier despite 5x more “friends.” Why? We’re masters of motion, not momentum.

 

Ever wonder why your WhatsApp glows with 27 “let’s meet” threads, yet your calendar’s looks like a Vidarbha farmland in summer?

 

 

 

Some More Examples( Caution-They Might Sting)

 

– USA:Two ex-colleagues text “Let’s Zoom!”. After six months of “So busy!” the quest dies without a meeting. LinkedIn recommends each other instead of therapy.

– India:Uncle says “Beta, come home for lunch” at a wedding. You say “Yes, uncle.” You both know the only lunch happening is between his ears. Next family funeral? Same script.

– Japan: “Gohan ni ikimashou” (Let’s eat together) gets lost in keigo politeness. It never happens. Deep bow, shallow bond.

– London: “Fancy a pint?”: translates to “I’d rather scrub a Tube station floor with my tongue.”

 

-In Dubai, “After Ramadan for sure.”

 

Civilisations change. Scripts remain.

 

This isn’t harmless fluff. It’s emotional spam. Because, we’re not bad people. We’re bandwidth bankrupt.

 

“Let’s Catch Up Soon” — The Most Successful Event That Never Happened

 

Somewhere between “How are you?” and “Take care,” lies a phrase that has built more imaginary bridges than actual meetings:

 

“Let’s catch up soon.”

 

Soon, in this context, is not a unit of time. It’s a polite black hole.

 

Entire friendships have been parked there. Engines off. Indicators blinking. Nobody stepping out.

 

We’ve industrialised intent without delivery.

 

Shall I dare say it aloud? 

 

Most “catch ups” are not postponed. They’re pre-cancelled.

 

This ritual isn’t just harmless social lubricant anymore. It’s a symptom. Of connections measured in follows, not phone calls. Of relationships maintained by forwarding memes at unearthly hours. Of a generation that mistakes being liked for being loved. Of the slow, quiet tragedy of people who are digitally crowded and humanly lonely.

 

We’ve confused the motion of connection with the emotion of it.

 

We’ve mastered the art of appearing invested without investing time.
We’ve replaced depth with declarations. We’ve turned connection into a checkbox with good filters (and of course bad lighting).

 

Consider the family WhatsApp group

“Let’s all meet this Sunday!” Twelve blue ticks. Six heart emojis. Zero logistics. By Saturday night, the message has gracefully aged into archaeology.

 

Or the annual ritual: bumping into a school friend after a decade.
“We should totally do a reunion.”

Yes, we should also colonise Mars. Similar probability curves.

 

And yet, beneath the comedy sits a small ache. Because every “soon” that never arrives leaves a residue. A thin film of almost. And over time, almost becomes our default setting.

 

The Truth Of This Lie

 

“Let’s catch up soon” is now the world’s most popular lie, beating “I’ve read the terms and conditions.” It sits between “We should have dinner sometime” and “I’ll pray for you.” A verbal mirage.

 

Why this shallow grave?

 

We’ve outsourced connection to likes and story replies. Real meetups require calendar negotiation, deodorant, and emotional availability. Too hard. So we toss “Must catch up” like rose petals at a baby shower.

 

The Call Of The Shovel

 

Call it what it is—a social sedative. We are drowning in acquaintances, starving for depth. Your WhatsApp has 1,400 contacts. Who will hold your hand during a colonoscopy? NOT the “catch up soon” crowd.

 

A Honest Cleaner Playbook, If I May?

 

If you mean it, book it. Date. Time. Place. Done.
If you don’t, downgrade the script. “Good seeing you. Take care.” No emotional EMI.

 

And occasionally, surprise the system.
Be the anomaly who turns “soon” into Sunday, 5 PM, filter coffee, no agenda. My place. Watch how rare that feels. Almost rebellious.

 

Because in an age of infinite pings, the scarcest luxury isn’t attention. It’s showing up.

 

So the next time “Let’s catch up soon” tiptoes to your lips, pause.

 

Either give it a calendar…
or give it a dignified funeral.

 

In Closing

 

So next time you say “let’s catch up,” ask yourself: Am I building a bridge or just licking a stamp for a letter I’ll never mail?

Be a shovel, not a spade. Dig truth. Or shut up.

 

PS: On a completely different note, I am taking the liberty to share here that my other blog SOHB(State Of The Heart Branding) Story is now a Podcast as well. You can access it on these links below:

 

 

 

We don’t fail because we lack talent. We fail because we misallocate it

 

We love the talent myth. “If only we had smarter people.” “If only we had more budget.” All that is a pack of lies. Look at your organisation chart. Your best creative mind is buried in quarterly compliance reports. Your sharpest data scientist is writing meeting minutes. Your most charismatic brand storyteller? She’s “managing vendor relationships.”

 

A virtuoso violinist doesn’t fail because she can’t hold the bow. She fails because someone handed her a drum kit and asked her to open for Metallica. As if nothing else matters.

 

We don’t bleed talent. We misplace it. Then call it a skills gap.

 

The Benchmark Nobody Benchmarks

In New Zealand’s All Blacks rugby setup, no player — regardless of global superstardom — plays in a position that doesn’t serve the collective strategy. The best ball-handler doesn’t automatically play fly-half if fly-half isn’t where his instincts peak.

 

They call it Role Clarity aligned to Natural Game.

 

Your brand strategy needs the same surgery.

 

Not “we have a great creative team.” But the question to be asking is “is our great creative team solving creative problems — or drowning in approval chains and reporting decks?”

 

The Allocation Illusion

We obsess over hiring. We ignore placement.

 

We run talent audits. We skip talent deployment audits.

 

We ask: Who do we have? We forget to ask: Where are they being wasted?

 

Think about this. The Māori concept of Mana — roughly, personal power and authority — isn’t something you’re born with permanently. It rises or falls based on whether you’re placed in situations where your gifts can actually land. Misplace a person, you diminish their Mana. Diminish enough Mana across an organisation, and you’ve built an expensive mediocrity machine.

 

Flip to benchmarks that bite

 

Japan’s kaizen ninjas at Toyota don’t hoard engineers in R&D ivory towers; they scatter them on factory floors, tweaking assembly lines mid-shift. Result? Zero-inventory miracles while Detroit rusts. Or Nigeria’s fintech phenomenon Flutterwave: Engineers could’ve coded another boring app. Instead, they allocated smarts to “barter bucks” for Africa’s unbanked, exploding from zero to unicorn in hyperdrive.

 

A bit of wisdom whisper here: Chanakya nailed it—”The root of wealth is activity, not talent.” But activity without aim? That would be like squirrels on steroids.

 

The Kodak(Non)Moment

 

Kodak employed some of the sharpest engineers in America. One of them — inside Kodak — invented the digital camera in 1975. They buried it. Not because they lacked genius. Because they allocated that genius to protect film margins instead of inventing the future.

 

The talent was there. The misallocation was catastrophic.

 

This isn’t ancient history. This is De rigueur  in most organisations.

 

You might have heard about The Roman Praetorian Guard — elite soldiers who ended up babysitting emperors — is history’s most elegant metaphor for talent misallocation. Don’t build a Praetorian culture.

 

Netflix’s “Keeper Test”

Not “is this person talented?” but “would I fight to keep them in this exact role?” If no, move them. Don’t fire them. Move them. Misallocation is the enemy, not mediocrity.

 

Japan’s “Cleaning with Elite Athletes”

 

Instead of hiring separate janitors, a Tokyo airport gave sprint coaches to their cleaning crew. Result? World’s cleanest airport. They didn’t add talent. They reallocated timing, precision, and urgency from track to tile.

 

Actionable Arsenal for Brand Rebels

  1. Audit Ruthlessly: Map your squad’s superpowers. That copywriter killing carousels? Don’t bury her in boilerplate emails. Redirect to viral threads that hijack feeds.
  2. Experiment Wild: A/B test allocations weekly. Swap your data wizard from dashboards to customer whisperer—watch retention rocket like Elon’s rockets.
  3. Cross-Pollinate: Borrow from offbeat worlds. Allocate your CMO’s hours to a street vendor’s hustle study. Their one-minute pitch could nuke your pitch deck.
  4. Kill Sacred Cows: Fire 20% of “talent” at misfiring tasks. Reassign to moonshots. Perpetual readiness demands it.

 

What if your next breakthrough isn’t a new hire—but a reassignment?

 

You may not find these captions on a slide, therefore here they are:

Misallocated brilliance looks like mediocrity.
Correctly placed mediocrity looks like competence.
Correctly placed brilliance looks like magic.

 

Your job isn’t to find more magic.
It’s to stop hiding it in the wrong rooms.

 

Food For Thought?

The Talent Bazaar – Kill job titles for a day. Post “problems” on a wall. Let people grab whichever problem fits their instinct, not their JD. You’ll see your true talent map in 4 hours or even less.

Wisdom Weight:  A Ferrari in a cornfield is just expensive scrap metal. A dull axe in a lumberjack’s hands fells forests.

 

Talent is neutral. Where you place it is the strategy.