One of the things business has taught me over the years is that learning does not always come from people who are older, more successful or more experienced than you. Sometimes the person who teaches you something important is a customer. Sometimes it is a junior employee, a driver, a vendor, a traveller, a founder building their first company, or even a stranger you meet for twenty minutes and never see again.
I think this became part of me quite early because so much of my own learning happened outside formal classrooms. When you spend enough time around people, you begin to notice how differently everyone sees the same situation. Two people can look at the same opportunity and notice completely different things. One sees the risk, another sees the possibility. One notices the numbers, another notices the people. If you are curious enough to listen, every conversation can add something to the way you understand the world.
Travel has made this even clearer to me. When you move between cities and countries, you realise very quickly that your own way of doing things is only one way. People communicate differently, negotiate differently, celebrate differently and build trust differently. What feels obvious in one place may feel strange in another. Travel has a wonderful way of reminding you that your perspective is not the only perspective.
That lesson is useful in business too. Founders often become very certain about what customers want because they have spent months building something. Then one conversation with a real customer changes the entire assumption. A team member may point out a problem that leadership has overlooked. Someone much younger may understand a new technology or behaviour better simply because they are closer to it.
Kabhi-kabhi answer conference room mein nahi, kisi normal conversation mein milta hai.
I have had many experiences where the most useful insight came from somebody I was not expecting to learn from. That is why I try not to enter conversations only thinking about what I want to say. I want to understand how the other person sees the problem. What are they noticing that I am missing? Why do they disagree? What experience is behind their opinion?
Listening sounds very simple, but I think it becomes harder as you become more successful.
When you are starting out, you naturally ask questions because you know you do not have all the answers. As your experience grows, people begin asking you for answers. Gradually, it becomes easy to assume that your experience has already taught you what you need to know.
That is a dangerous place to reach.
Experience is useful, but it can also become a filter. Something worked for you ten years ago, so you assume it will work again. You know an industry well, so you stop questioning certain assumptions. You have made hundreds of decisions, so you start trusting instinct before listening to new information.
This is where other people become important. They interrupt your certainty.
A younger person may ask why a process exists at all. Someone entering your industry from outside may question something everybody inside has accepted for years. A customer may explain your business to you in a completely different way from how you explain it to yourself.
Sometimes those conversations can be uncomfortable.
But discomfort is not always a bad sign.
I remember learning over time that disagreement does not automatically mean disrespect. In fact, some of the people who add the most value to your life are the ones who are comfortable telling you something you may not want to hear. If everyone around you always agrees with you, either you are extraordinarily correct all the time or people have stopped feeling safe enough to disagree.
The second possibility is usually worth considering.
Good teams need people who can say, “I see this differently.” Strong relationships need enough trust for uncomfortable conversations. Even an investor-founder relationship becomes much more useful when both sides can challenge each other without turning every disagreement into an ego battle.
Har baar haan sunna achha lag sakta hai, par har baar haan useful nahi hota.
At the same time, learning from everyone does not mean accepting every opinion. That would create confusion very quickly. People will give you contradictory advice. One person will tell you to expand, another will tell you to consolidate. One will tell you to take the risk, another will say wait.
The skill is not in following every piece of advice. The skill is in listening carefully enough to understand what part of it may be useful.
I have learned to separate perspective from instruction.
Someone can give you a valuable perspective even if you do not follow their recommendation. Their experience may reveal a risk you had not considered or a possibility you had overlooked. You still have to make your own decision, but now you are making it with a wider view.
That matters.
Some of my most interesting conversations today are with entrepreneurs much younger than me. They are building in a world that is moving differently from the one in which I started. Technology has changed how companies are created, how customers discover brands and how teams operate. If I enter those conversations only wanting to share what I know, I lose half their value.
I want to know what they know too.
What are they seeing?
How are younger customers behaving?
What tools are changing the way they work?
What feels obvious to their generation that may still feel new to mine?
There is something refreshing about becoming a student again.
The same happens when I speak with people from industries I know very little about. Initially, you may feel you have nothing to contribute. But then you begin asking basic questions. Often those basic questions lead to fascinating conversations because you are not carrying the same assumptions as everyone already inside that industry.
Curiosity makes almost any conversation interesting.
And perhaps that is the larger lesson for me.
Every person carries a world you have not lived.
They have experiences you did not have, problems you never faced, skills you never needed to develop and ways of seeing things that your own journey could not have taught you.
You may not agree with them.
You may not even particularly like them.
But if you pay attention, there may still be something to learn.
Over the years, I have become less interested in entering a room and proving that I know something, and more interested in leaving the room knowing something I did not know before.
That does not happen in every conversation, of course.
But when it does, it is valuable.
Because learning is not limited to books, classrooms, mentors or formal meetings. Sometimes it happens over coffee. Sometimes in a car. Sometimes during an event when something has gone completely wrong. Sometimes during a five-minute conversation with somebody whose name you may not even remember years later.
The lesson stays anyway.
That is why I try to remain open to people.
Not because everyone will have the answer.
But because almost everyone has seen a part of the world that I have not.
And if I listen carefully enough, I may get to see a little of it too.
