Reverse-Engineering Shakir – A recursive algorithm for problem solving
I never went to business school and never learnt management. I was a software engineer and was entrusted to manage people in 2002 when I took over the family travel business. We were a small team of 15 people and I ended up doing everything – including sales, marketing, operations, hr, accounts and admin. For one – I enjoyed the problems these verticals presented. They were challenging and I was learning new things. Two – I found that I couldn’t trust anyone to do them right – people were either incompetent or lazy. I felt I could do them better, faster than anyone and get better results. Between 2002 and 2005 I worked 18-20 hours a day. In the process I became a control freak. I tasted success – the company grew to 70+ people. I started a bunch of other businesses, took up a position at Creative Chaos and ended up having about 140 people reporting to me. Soon afterwards I became a victim of my own success. Nothing was getting done because everyone expected me to do them. Surely I couldn’t do everything. It was impossible! I ended up spending 2 hours a day at each of my 4 offices – firefighting and delegating problems to people who had little confidence in themselves! We lost a lot of business opportunities, clients and money.2005 was the roughest year I had as an entrepreneur.
