So this happened a few months ago: my brother was unwell with cold and my mom asked if he needed medicine.

This happened the a few months ago: a friend on Zoom said he was losing hair and another friend suggested him a clinic to visit.

It occurred to me that when we are faced with the problems we tend to jump to fixing it rather than taking a step back to ask why did it happen in the first place.

• Why do you have cold? Did you run into rains? Allergy you are unaware of?

• Why are you losing hair? Are you stressed out? Use helmet often?

And this happens with us all and extends to our day jobs. In SalesOps it could be “we need a new field on CRM for users to add their notes on deal”.

‘Hustle’ is the most abused word in startups!

You could either jump to build right away or take a moment and more to ask:

• What notes are these? Who will consume this data?
• Can we not do with existing notes object on the CRM? Why not?

It is the nature of our lifestyle where acting fast seems to solve everything. And hence ‘hustle’ is the most abused word in startups! Not every time does it work to move fast and break things.

Taking a step back is always fixing problems for the long-term.

The medicine would fix your cold or hair loss – for a while – not prep your body against the loss for the long-term. Asking multiple whys until you hit the rock bottom will help you build your processes and systems for the scale. Reverse engineer from the desired outcome to the requirements.

So step back to leap forward!