10 Key Learnings of 2009

The difference between knowledge and wisdom is doing. So the learning I’m going to share are not pieces of read text, but the wisdom I gained in the year 2009. Hope many can relate, few can contradict and many more can quicken their journey’s to wisdom through this post.

1. Starting-up is good fun: I myself started two enterprises (NxT Bizness Solutions & Dot Now Social), and worked with few others in 2009. From taking the decision to start-up from understanding of market need, potential customers to actually finalizing the name, registration its all good fun. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the freebies of starting up too; the learning, the hiccups, the obstacles, the glamor etc. I explored my inherent affection for startups in 2009.

2. SMEs are a HUGE market: Studying SMEs for the entire year, taking off from my stint at Milagrow, I realized the potent market of SMEs in India. Realized how much of market need exists, how little is getting met. It was very nice to see many entrepreneurs across the country dealing with this opportunity in their unique way. I also touched base with how little is known about SMEs on the whole. There is a huge gap to fill about understanding SMEs in India.

3. Power of Social Media and Social Technologies: Though I was an early adopter of social media while in college, then graduated into a laggard after I started working. Once on my own, I explored social media encouraged by a study by McKinsey. It is a revolution that is catching up, and what we have experienced is the tip of the iceberg. Social Media and social technologies can greatly aid business. This is beyond marketing and can prove extremely useful through all Conversations of Business.

4. Ecology is the new Business Ethic: Ecologies have existed in business ever since. I got introduced to linkages and ecologies in 2008 during my stint at Milagrow in an all new way. 2009 was the year to grasp the big picture. Co-Creation, Co-evolution, core competence taken to a new level, leverage of strengths (processes, customers, relations etc) and many more forms. I came in touch with very many and truly experienced the power that lay hidden. I’m more than ordinarily convinced that Ecology is the next Business ethic.

5. Culture is the secret of great organizations: Culture is very powerful. It has defined the progress of civilizations of the world. The combination of value system and belief system manifested into practices holds the key to not only civilizations but also organizations. During 2009, I came in touch with several organizations, some had weak cultures, some had strong cultures, some cultures were elevating and some destroying. It was the year of experiencing how culture defines the organization. I also learnt, culture is not for a wall poster, it cannot be “driven in”, it must be identified and not cultivated, in the context of an organization.

6: Relationships of Business: Healthy relationships are the key even in business. But understanding the relations of business goes beyond. Business is done between one who needs and one who provides. As long as the context is business, there is no more, no less. This is the most important lesson of 2009 for me. When there is an existing relation with a person beyond the purview of give and take, it is advisable to think twice about bringing objectivity that is required for business into such a relation. It was extremely difficult for me to build the objectivity (disclosure: I failed at it) into a relation that had business as the newest dimension.

7. USA is a nation built by Entrepreneurs: I read that USA had high business quotient, it was a nation pursuing personal liberty etc. When I visited USA, it was truly an experience (much to my surprise). It was an experience of how the power of individuals has been harnessed to build a nation. I had only come in touch with the fallacies and the ills of this excessive personal liberty leading to unprecedented greed, but experiencing USA was about realizing the collective potential individual endeavor.

8. Control is an Illusion: Like most of us I was one of them who congratulated myself for each achievement and blamed circumstances for all the failures (though I truly deep within knew neither was I totally responsible for success nor failure). 2009 is when I began to accept that events happen and I only did what I could do, I did not control or create any outcome. I began to practice letting go, practice not pursuing the end, but pursuing the means. I began to respect the Hindu philosophy of Karma one more notch higher for it gave the entire civilization the strength to let go and let come without attaching too much value to it. I’m slowly beginning to travel for the purpose of travelling in this journey called Life (be it professionally or personally)

9. Money is not that unimportant: Money to me was always a secondary virtue. Of a lower class of sorts. The year that went by taught me things about money I never properly understood before. 2009 was the year I began to give a lot more respect for money in a manner that I understand its value. I realized “Money can Buy”. Hence never discount it to second grade.

10. I’m not that much of a rookie after all: I began 2009 by moving on from Milagrow to start my own consulting enterprise. For a 21 year old it was quite an important decision, but I made the leap. Many times I thought to myself if at all I’m capable enough to take on the challenges presented by my clients and my startup. But I thoroughly enjoyed many of the solutions I gave to my clients all year through. My clients were much more experienced than me, few of them had done Graduation in Business, one of them in an top 25 B school in the world. But I too added value, enough value that they could acknowledge and appreciate. While I will always be thankful to all of them for having put faith in me and given me an opportunity, I’m also a lot more confident and don’t feel like a rookie anymore.

These are just 10 of the most important ones, and mostly only in the professional domain. 2009 was a bumpy year where I learnt many things both professionally and personally. Elaborating further is beyond the scope of this post, but I’m grateful for all the opportunities I got in 2009, I’m thankful I met the people I did, I’m glad it came, I’m happy it is over!

Management Consulting for Small Businesses – Justifies Existence?

Historically management consultants are among the most hated professional community in the business world. As a student, when I aspired to be a management consultant, I wondered why glamorous management consultants always frowned about being “hated”. Once I entered the profession as a management consultant is when I truly understood how hated management consultants are.

While there are ethical and unethical people in every industry, act of a few consultants (since the emergence of management consulting) who robbed clients without delivering value can’t be rub against the entire profession of diligent value worshippers. Management consultants, over the years, have emerged to be a very important part of the entire eco-system.

Though Indian businesses are not as consulting conscious as their western counterparts, the trends to employ management consultants has begun to improve. Management consultants still get brick bats while moving in industry circles… Especially when it comes to SMEs management consultants are look at like the famous quote “don’t employ a consultant to tell you time from your watch”. Whenever I come across these people, I so pity them for the lack of knowledge and understanding of the benefits of employing management consultants. (more...)

CEO – Chief Example Officer

I’ve seen many team leaders complain about the culture in their teams. (i was part of the sample set one point in time). I see them complaining about their lack of goal clarity, their lack of interst in building skill, lack of discipline and what not.

From small teams to CEOs (here i mean Chief Executive Officers) of enterprises complain of lack of good culture in working teams. They often disregard themselves from them “team”. To their understanding they are independent and a notch above, hence by default superior (including in terms of work culture).

I’m sure many greats have written about this many times, but it is sincerely my observation that leaders lend culture to the team. The style adopted by the leader is inevitably imbibed by the team. It can be said that it is a strength of a good leader to lend culture to the team. In other words good leader set example for their team.

The problem arises when the leader considers himself/herself outside the sample space of team for consideration of evaluation. The leader tends to justify his/her actions by reasons, probably valid. Then goes onto blame the members of the team for their cluture for he/she doesn’t identify or is unable to undetify the reasons. There really may not be any reason, but there isdefinitely a valid excuse.

The Chief Executive Officer must also remember that he/she is also the Chief Example Officer. The entire organization takes behaviourial cues from the CEO.

When I was leading entrepreneurship cell team, I set for my self a challenge to achieve what I set out to do. I knew it was not easy and every moment was precious. I was actively leading one half of the team and indirectly leading the other. 

Though is was not intentional, today when i look ack and interact with the members of the team, the half of the team which work closer to me consistently imbibed the culture of challenging themselves to achieve set objectives. I showed them “the way to go about work: challenge it”. This happened without my knowledge. The half team which worked with me bonded very closely and today form the ranks of the organization. 

The other half imbibed a loosely connected culture which reflects the culture of the person who actively lead that half of the team. As I try to analyse the success we had together an year ago, many revelations come to me.

Similarly, teams in which I was part of… AIESEC Hyderabad. I can distinctly observe the traits I’ve imbibed from my first immediate vice-president and what i’ve imbibed from my two-time president. Their styles of working can be observed in my even though it has been long.

Similarly at Milagrow… The style and culture of my CEO can be extensively observed in the first circle team he has. Once I had more interaction with him and began to be directly part of his team, (due to only a short stint) i can observe in myself few traits of him and his style. 

Thankfully for me, the leadership styles and cultures in the organizations I was fully part of were very similar. I can also recollect acouple of instances when I quit teams because there was a culture mis-fit.

Even at my client I observe that the good and the bad traits of the leadership has slowly sunk into the viens of the organization. there is justification and no action. Again a consequence of excellent leadership.

May be the phrase With power comes responsibility needs appending. with ability comes responsibility.

This goes out to all real and pseudo Chief Executive Officers… plesae take the effort to be good Chief Example Officers apart from just being phenomenol leaders. If you are not a good leader, probably you can take a skip…

Taking speaker podium as an Entrepreneur – another first experience

The second edition of Entrepreneurship Week India for Entrepreneurship Cell MJCET. As memories of the 2008 edition still remain fresh as examplery examples of achievement, I had the opportunity to be a speaker, in the role of an entrepreneur, at the 2009 edition of entrepreneurship week India.

It seemed proud to be a product an organization I envisioned. It was good to take stage in another engineering college as part of an “external academia” initiative of E Cell. A strategic move which won us the award last year around. An initiative which was the toughest to put together last year, this time around seemed to have gathered lots of momentum.

The audiance were students of Aurora Engineering college and Aurora college of management studies. The topic was “Entrepreneurship with a purpose”.

In typical student style, I got the confirmation of the event late the previous night. With obviously no time to prepare, I had to come up with something different. It had been a long time since I faced a public audiance. No butterflies, but lack of any prep was slightly new to me. No powerpoint slides, so decided to put my tablet PC to some use. The brief gap to connect my tablet to the projector was enough for the already restless audiance to further scatter. 4th and final speaker on the list didn’t seem as ugly when I was informed early about it. 

From the response to the previous speakers, it seemed to me as if the students we forced into the hall (I remember this happening often on college campusses). Typically no interest in “Entrepreneurship”. Probably too big a word for them. The topic was high flown, “Purpose”.

Using the tablet in public audiance was a first for me. But the ploy worked. It was captivating the audiance, as they began to become curious of the presentation medium. To break down entrepreneurship was task 1. Myth broken , I began to enter into the discussion. But the audiance continued to remain restless. Thus followed a series of questions, answers to which were being written on the screen. Once I was satisfied most of the audiance was glued to the screen, I began to enter serious discourse.

The idea was to tell the audiance that the “dream” behind the enterprise is the most important success factor. The dream translates into purpose. Purpose driven organizations become great organizations in the world. It was to emphasize on them that toplines and bottomlines are consequences of purpose, the purpose is the key to success.

With the help of a wide range of examples, global super powers to quiet back yard SMEs which are thriving today because of their purpose driven nature, I could satisfactorily drive the importance of purpose.

This formed the prelude to my thesis that today’s global melt down has been brought about by “greed driven entrepreneurship”. The saviour of this world is “entrepreneurship with a sense of purpose”. Enterprises forged to create wealth. Enterprises aimed at further closing need-gap. These are the saviours of today. The flag bearers of tomorrow. I was very happy when the audiance received the crux of my message. A round of applause, from passionate young hands which understood how entrepreneurship is such an important phenomenon we all await.

A truly scintilating experience!

Succession Management – I can truly claim success

” A Great Leader is not that which has most followers; a great leader is on which creates most leaders” – Sun Tzu, Art of War

This is one of my favourite quote from the great Sun Tzu. The master strategist discovered that the secret to success in a battle was team work, and proper delegation. A leader’s role is not just to delegate, but to make the people whom the work is delegated to worthy in their own right.

Well, when I met the team of Entrepreneurship Week India 2009 today evening, I felt very happy to a sense of what I had left behind as the Chief Coordinator of Entreprneurship Cell after delivering the 2008 edition of the week.

The chaps I had picked and chosen from a huge draw of individuals, to see them perform and come of age is satisfying. What is even more over-whelming is the admiration they showed to me as once leader, now mentor/frined.

It is satisfying to see my endeavor in creating a next rung of leadership for this organization and grooming them to take on responsibility has paid off. I share their success today as they better my performance and humbly admit I was better.

They deserve all credit. Entrepreneurship Cell MJCET, deserves the credit for what they have achieved today. The team which made it possible gets all the laurels and rightly so. It was exhilarating to be part of their event as a proud sponsor, mentor to the core team and a sharp critic of the outside.

Well, I’m glad the special efforts taken to groom these guys have paid rich dividends. They are champions. I claim to have created a best practice in “Succession Management in Student Organizations on college campuses”.

Vision statement formulation exercise facilitation – a first experience

As an initial step towards the Business Process Transformation of my client, into the education sector, formulation of the vision, mission, core purpose and value system was identified.

It so happened that on the very first day of my association, there was a gathering of the entire work force, when we decided to conduct a workshop to arrive at the vision of the organization.

I was instrumental in formulating the vision of 2 organizations on college campus and took part in the exercise conducted by Milagrow, my first job, to arrive at our own vision statement. Each of them were tremendous experiences in themselves, the one at Milagrow most unique and satisfying among the lot. But this was different.

I was on the other side, as a spectator, as a facilitator with no strings attached. Merely guiding the various aspirations of stakeholders to what they want to view their organization as in the future.

It was a scintillating experience to see the aspirations of so many rise so big and high. Each truly stepping into the shoes of the CEO and thinking as if the company was their own. A true display of Intrapreneurship from the employes of an SME.

A contribution of ideas, words, phrases and passion that these stakeholders (including the entrepreneur) that lead to a shortlisting and then to a statement.

It would have been greater if more intellectuals were part of the discussion, more stake holders were involved in the exercise. But never the less the experience, the first of its kind for me as a facilitator.

I’m glad that today’s entrepreneurs realise that great organizations are made by driving themselves towards an aspiring & far-reaching vision. Top lines and bottom line will remain in the bylines. Wish all of them success.

The next objective would be translate this vision into a proper vision, identify a value system and establish a defined working culture.

Also one has to realise these statements on paper make little sense. The real meaning comes with its diligent imbibing into the way of life of the organization. I guess consultants like me are hired just for that. They have done their job well…. now its my turn to perform and deliver!