A few weeks ago, I walked into my neighborhood grocery store for something simple. Milk. That was the mission. I even told myself, “Rupesh, do not get distracted today.” Which is exactly when the universe said, “Challenge accepted.”
Right near the cereal aisle stood a man staring at a box of Frosted Something like he was decoding ancient Sanskrit. He kept picking up the box, putting it back, sighing dramatically, picking it up again. After thirty seconds of this performance, he asked the store associate, “Last week this sold out. Is it happening again?”
The associate smiled like he had been waiting for this question all morning. “Already stocked extra in the front,” he said. “I saw the sale announcement and knew this one vanishes first.”
That answer was delivered with the confidence of someone who could run logistics for the Pentagon if they wanted. And there I was, holding milk, accidentally watching a live tutorial on business foresight.
It struck me how often we celebrate teams that “execute fast,” but we rarely talk about teams that “prepare early.” Yet the quiet anticipation from this store associate probably saved the manager three hours of chaos, five angry customers, and one unnecessary WhatsApp escalation. Not bad for an 8.30 am shift.
Driving home, I kept thinking about this. In business, execution is important, but anticipation is priceless.
Over the years at Ergode, I have seen this play out again and again. When we were scaling our marketplace operations, our advantage was never just speed. Anyone can speed up. What helped us was spotting patterns before they became headlines. We noticed when certain product categories spiked before festivals. We sensed when compliance reviews were about to increase. We had early signals when a global supply chain slowdown was coming. These small anticipations saved us from big fires.
Here is something I believe deeply. Execution handles the present. Anticipation shapes the future.
My second insight is that anticipation is not some magical superpower gifted to “senior people.”
It is a muscle anyone can build. All you need is the habit of zooming out. If something keeps repeating, it is a loop forming. If something always takes longer than it should, friction is building. If a usually vocal person suddenly goes quiet, a problem is loading. Some of our youngest team members at Ergode became our best early-warning sensors simply because they paid attention to patterns the rest of us ignored.
The third insight is something leaders often forget. Anticipation only works when the whole team participates.
If only one person sees the signal and nobody else acts on it, you have a prediction, not a rhythm. But when different people across the organisation share small signals early, the entire company moves like a connected system. It is like those birds that turn mid-flight all at once. Nobody screams “turn left.” They just read the cues.
The best part is that anticipation makes work feel lighter. You avoid the drama. You reduce the frantic repairs. You remove the late-night heroics. Great teams do not wait for the fire to start. They notice the smell of smoke long before the rest of the building does.
Which brings me back to that grocery aisle. The associate did not stop a global crisis. He just saw a pattern and acted early. But that tiny move kept everything flowing.
So here is the question I want you to sit with.
Is your team busy executing, or are you paying attention early enough to change the outcome before it reaches your desk?
Regards,
Rupesh
Cloverbites By Rupesh Sanghavi 
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