No Suitcase, No Plan, No Problem

Dubai airport, and my case wasn't on the belt. Everything I'd packed to look like I knew what I was doing was somewhere over the Gulf, and I had interviews starting the next morning.

The shops didn't open until half ten. So I turned up to meet candidates for roles I was hiring for the first time, in a market I'd never worked in, wearing jeans and a t-shirt. At the time, that simply wasn't done.

I'd been sent to the UAE for GE's security division to build a sales presence where we had none. No team, no local knowledge, no sense of how hiring actually worked there. Just a mandate and a plane ticket.

I could have spent the first month on what would have looked like the responsible thing. Market sizing, competitor mapping, a proper view of the landscape before I made a single call. I've watched plenty of capable people do exactly that, and call it diligence. Most of the time it's fear, dressed well enough that nobody questions it, including the person doing it.

I didn't have time to dress mine up. I got in touch with other GE divisions already on the ground, told them plainly I didn't know the market, and asked for help. They gave me their contacts, their read on who was good, their time. None of it was owed to me.

We hired the leader first, then a couple of commercial roles alongside. That was the team. It was enough. We were up and running faster than any analysis would have gotten us there.

I still catch myself reaching for the plan before I've started something new. The Dubai trip is the reminder that the plan mostly comes from being in the market, not from studying it beforehand. Every extra week of preparation is sometimes just a longer runway for the fear to sit on.

The jeans and t-shirt didn't cost me anything that week. Waiting until I felt ready would have.

What's the analysis you're still doing on something you already know how to start?