Last year, some of us at C4E came across a post about Elon Musk asking Parag Agarwal, “What did you get done this week?” Now, a lot of people may not be a fan of this. They even thought it was rude and brutal. 

When Saurabh Garg saw this, he decided to fill in a review sheet each week, answering “What did I get done this week” across all things at C4E (brand, BD, team growth, etc).

From Saurabh’s review Sheet

The reason I was particularly inspired by this was because I had heard stories of other agencies. About how teams spend a LOT of time and mental energy preparing good-looking presentations for their weekly review with the boss. And it is nothing but stressful for the most part. 

For us at C4E, this exercise was self-accountability in action. As the kitchen-runner, he wanted to be accountable to the org and the team. The best part? Zero obligation for any of us to do the same. (If it trickled down, it would just be cherry on the cake). 

Why am I talking about this today?

Because with Decoding Draupadi, I’ve got grand plans for 2024. And if I’ve learned anything in the past year, it is that:

• Time flies faster than you think it does
• DD (or any young business) needs a sense of urgency. I cannot be measuring progress month-on-month. And thus the million-dollar question – “What did you get done this week?”
• You have take responsibility for your actions and show up everyday

And so, here’s what I’m going to do – a public review of what I got done at DD each week. I will talk about what we did the past week and plans for the upcoming one. 

Why public? Two reasons:

I will be accountable to you.

Building in public is a great way to have my notions challenged. To find people who believe in this mission. To find collaborators.

Week 1 – Jan 1st, 2024

This Week

1/ Reviewed the past year and planned for 2024. This included BAU and long-term plans. The large themes were:

• Revenue (DD is a for-profit social enterprise, so this is important for us)
• Communities – For instance, we want to scale our For Female Freelancers WhatsApp community. This includes sharing more freelance and hybrid opportunities, bringing in more women (read: providing more value), creating space for networking, and growing as professionals

And, our areas of focus will be:

Bringing out stories that inspire – Anshika and I plan to spend a lot more time speaking to women leaders in India to lead mumbles into conversations. In the past year, we’ve seen the power that representation and conversations hold – both to drive change and inspire fellow women. And we want to actively create space for that. The starting point? An easy-to-access database of women leaders, available for speaking opportunities; the objective is to increase women’s representation in public forums and disrupt manels.

Helping brands market to women better – Last month, we got our first pilot project a women-focused marketing agency – conceptualizing and executing a social media campaign for a women’s health brand. It will go live in the second week of January. This year, with the C4E Collective, our incubator, we will continue to take up projects with brands that have female consumers and help them design communication that speaks to the needs of women.

FeMela – This was our most ambitious project in 2023 – a women-only offline gathering designed to bring together professionals from all walks of life and create an experience that leaves them feeling inspired, better connected, and more capable as individuals. We had set out to host it in November 2023 but were unable to. If you’re curious about what it was, here’s a note. In 2024, we’re going to start by hosting small meet-ups while working to bring back FeMela. And oh, if you are enthusiastic about events (and have done it in the past), we must talk (cm@c4e.in).

Along with this, we will:

• Put together a job board and recruitment agency for women in India
• Work with women who have home-run businesses to find opportunities for scale, starting with a premium corporate gifting shop

At the core of these two, the vision remains singular – enabling professional independence for women in India.

2/ Put out a call for someone to help us curate content for various channels at DD

This is part of a larger shift I am personally making and it’s not been an easy one. With DD, I often end up thinking short-term. I feel that I can do EVERYthing without realising that I need to preserve my time. It is my biggest leverage (I’m young, and can take a LOT of risks). In short, I think what I’m trying to learn to do is acknowledge that I’ve got an opportunity and the resources (support, investment of time and money from some of the greatest people, and an impactful idea), and I cannot do it alone. One of the ways to do that is to outsource, find collaborators, and identify BAU tasks that are SUPER essential but don’t need my time every day.

3/ Re-started Draupadi on the Dais

Last year, we set out to build an easy-to-access database of women experts across multiple industries, available for speaking opportunities. And we hit multiple roadblocks. Especially with the website itself. Despite that, we kept the conversation going to get feedback on the idea and keep iterating. And here’s what we learned – everyone who we spoke to about Dais was able to relate to the cause – the lack of representation of women leaders in public forums. And thus, this year, we’re bringing back Draupadi on the Dais in a different shape and form (more about it in the consecutive weeks).

Next Week

For the week of Jan 1, we will be working on a content plan for our WhatsApp communities (including closing the content curation position), BAU at Draupadi on the Dais, way forward for all the ideas mentioned above, launching the social media campaign for the women’s health startup and finally, initiating DD’s website revamp.

That was all. If ANY of this resonated with you, I would love to hear thoughts / comments / recommendations. And if you know folks who’d like to work with us on any of these projects and ideas, they can write to me at cm@c4e.in.

Finally, I think I have to say I’m just as nervous as I am pumped. And so, I’m taking the role of a sponge, absorbing and iterating throughout.

See you next week.