Mega thread for articles on Business & management

kingz2 · May 28, 2007

4 life skills b-schools don't teach
By Prakash Iyer

It was the summer of '86. And as I, and the rest of the graduating batch, walked out of the hallowed portals of WIMWI (ah, the Well-known Institute of Management in Western India), you could sense that we were probably echoing Bryan Adams' words as we looked back on our two years on campus: Indeed, those were the best days of my life!

We learnt the fundamentals of management. We learnt to draw up business plans, and evaluate advertising, and discount cash flows. More important, we learnt to stretch ourselves, and structure our thinking. We learnt to work hard. To compete. To win. And we made friends!

B-schools do a terrific job of equipping us with business skills. What's missing, perhaps, is a primer on life skills. We emerge competent to deal with the complexities of running a business - but not quite as adept at managing the business of running our own lives.

Here then, in no particular order, are four life skills I wish they had taught us in B-school.

Goal setting: I wish every student passing out of B-school would walk out with a set of written goals for himself. A set of goals that define what each of us want to do, be, have and achieve.

That would include financial and career goals for sure, but would also cover other key areas such as family, health, relationships and personal interests. Goals provide direction and discipline, helping us stay focused on what is really important to us.

Without those goals, we tend to drift - and wonder why we sense a strange emptiness even as the next promotion beckons. And as the saying goes, if you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.

Communication: The best ideas and thought are of little use if we don't learn to communicate them effectively. Learning to use the right words at the right time, to empathise and listen are priceless skills no one teaches us.

We master an assortment of financial ratios but forget the message God sent us when he gave us two ears and one mouth: listen more than you speak. And making presentations is a key part of business life - yet you find bright young managers fidgeting nervously and reading out every word of a text-heavy and hastily prepared PowerPoint slide. If only they had been taught communication and presentation skills!

Good health: Corporate waistlines are expanding almost as rapidly as company bottom lines. And between early morning flights and late night conference calls, no one seems to have the time to take care of their own bodies.

The games we grew up playing become the stuff we watch on TV. And our idea of a long walk is the trek from the corner room to the elevator. Perhaps B-schools should inculcate the habit of an hour in the gym every day. And the pursuit of a sport, say, every week.

Work-life balance: No man on his death-bed ever said "I wish I'd spent more time in the office." Watching your child grow up, spending time with loved ones, being there at those special moments in other people's lives - all these can probably give you as much joy as a deal clinched or a market share point gained.

"What would you do differently if you knew you had only six months to live?" We could all probably answer that one quite easily (spend more time with the family, play with the kids, take off on that vacation to the hills, write that book...). Alas, none of us really knows when precisely we have only six months to go.

B-schools teach us how to become change agents. We learn how to change the world, the consumer, the organisation, the works. But we don't quite learn how to change one key piece: ourselves. Learning to change ourselves, our thoughts, our beliefs, and our actions can often be the biggest and most effective change we can make!

Prakash Iyer graduated from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad in 1986

kingz2 · May 28, 2007

8 principles of visionary leadership

Among the various roles and skills of a CEO, the most important is perhaps his ability to observe things. He should be able to sit at the periphery of his organisation and observe, and then get back and act upon his observation.

F Zobrist, CEO of FAVI, France, has said about breakthrough leaders that they should stand at the organisation's boundary and bring in outside information. They must also communicate their company's philosophy to the outside world.

In their book Breakthrough Management, Shoji Shiba and David Walden have defined the eight principles of visionary leadership as follows:

Principle 1: The visionary leader must do on-site observation leading to personal perception of changes in societal values from an outsider's point of view.

Principle 2: Even though there is resistance, never give up; squeeze the resistance between outside-in pressure in combination with top-down inside instruction.

Principle 3: Transformation is begun with symbolic disruption of the old or traditional system through top-down efforts to create chaos within the organisation.

Principle 4: The direction of transformation is illustrated aimed by a symbolic visible image and the visionary leader's symbolic behaviour.

Principle 5: Quickly establishing new physical, organisational and behavioural systems is essential for successful transformation.

Principle 6: Real change leaders are necessary to enable transformation.

Principle 7: Create an innovative system to provide feedback from results.

Principle 8: Create a daily operation system, including a new work structure, new approach to human capabilities and improvement activities.

A true visionary leader must, therefore, train himself to perceive the future societal needs with a business perspective. Viewing the organisation as an outsider, the CEO is best placed to get a fresh perspective and perceive future societal requirements. A fresh perspective requires the CEO to forget about the existing customer and look at the entire world as the future market.

Often, new ideas sound extremely crazy and face resistance. Therefore, an important principle for the visionary leader is to never give up. To this end, he may communicate his idea to the outside world and create an "outside-in" pressure.

For instance, in the case of the Roadstar automobile project, Matsuda, the project leader, was facing immense internal resistance. He conducted a pilot test with potential users, which revealed a positive interest in the vehicle being designed by him. Post this survey, the project received all internal support and the vehicle went on to be awarded the "Car of the Year".

The visionary CEO needs to create a strong belief in societal change and a philosophy on how the business must be transformed. To be able to perceive the societal change, he needs to be skilled in perceiving what is happening in the organisation in the context of the larger societal perspective.

In leading such transformation of the organisation, the CEO needs to relentlessly work towards putting in place a new mental model, leading to a paradigm shift in mindsets and begin to force change in line with the new direction of the organisation.

Symbolic disruption could be pulling down an old building, replacing it with a new building with a completely untraditional architecture.

However, while undertaking such symbolic changes, the CEO must ensure that symbols reflective of the company's core values are not destroyed. Even as an organisation undergoes transformation, its core value system must always remain firmly rooted.

The visible images of goals work on the subconscious of the target group and are, therefore, extremely important.

For instance, when John F Kennedy gave the US the mission to put a man on the moon, he created a visible image of this in every American's mind and, in those days, even a person who was sweeping an office in the US believed that he was working towards putting a man on the moon.

Any task is that much more difficult if attempted alone. Therefore, the CEO needs the support of what Shiba calls "real change leaders" - people who will help him diffuse the transformation philosophy even while he is not present. They make the implementation of the transformation real so that the transformation does not remain a mere idea of the visionary CEO.

Most importantly, the CEO must focus on creating an organisation with a noble goal and a place that enables the team to realise not only the breakthrough but also their personal dreams in the process.

Dr Surinder Kapur is chairman, CII Mission for Manufacturing Innovation, and chairman and managing director, Sona Koyo Steering Systems

kingz2 · May 28, 2007

Leadership lessons from George Washington
By Mark Goulston and Kevin Gregson, FastCompany

Friends, And Fellow Citizens

The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States, being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now apprise you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made...

Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope, that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.

- G. Washington

United States, 17th September 1796

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These words represent a transition of leadership unprecedented in all of human history up to that time. This can be said without American bias. This was the first time a soldier, turned citizen-leader, willingly and voluntarily turned over the power of civilian government to another yet to be determined citizen leader. Known as Washington's Farewell address, it was not an address at all but an open letter to the then nascent American People.

In order to fully appreciate the magnitude of this transfer of power, some historical context is important. Also, there is much that can be learned by entrepreneurs from George Washington, aside from this act of selfless leadership and dedication to his ultimate objective of creating a nation.

Washington was after all, an entrepreneur himself. He had to creatively resource the new and under-resourced Continental Army. As a leader he had to train, organize, motivate and manage this new and different fighting force. His competition was larger, better trained, more mature and better established in its approach, and very well capitalized. He led his people through very adverse circumstances, always keeping them focused on their higher purpose rather than their current difficult state of affairs.

Washington had a keen understanding of the importance of making time your ally rather than your enemy. He did this through conscious procrastination, the art of picking your spots and not acting in haste. He knew that in order to achieve his ultimate objective, he did not have to defeat his enemy in every situation. He needed to achieve small, important victories that would inspire his people and sow the seeds of doubt in his enemy.

Washington understood that the most important thing was to sustain and persevere. Rather than defeat the British militarily, he had to break their will. He had to convince the British command and the British soldier in the field that although the Continental Army might not achieve a decisive military victory, they would also deny that opportunity to the British. He needed to give the new enterprise, known as America, the gift of time. The time to develop, congeal and coalesce as a nation.

To understand the monumental task that Washington undertook is to understand the stature he gained upon having achieved it. Achieving victory with the forced expulsion of the British via the Treaty of Paris, gave Washington nearly unprecedented power and popularity. He was a truly mythic figure.

His likeness was everywhere. Nearly all revered him and even his enemies and detractors had deep respect for his achievements. There were greater thinkers, orators and writers at the time, but no greater recognized leader then Washington. Washington could have had himself crowned king of America at that time and there would have been little to stop him.

Instead he chose a different path. And with that choice set off a chain of events that has led to over two hundred years of peaceful, orderly transitions of power in the world's oldest operating democratic republic.

In September of 1796, Washington demonstrated that he knew something that entrepreneurs, founders and leaders of all types should know, but all too often fail to realize -- it was time. It was time to transition to the next level of stability and maturity as a government and as a nation. Good leaders know how and when to lead, great leaders also know how and when to leave.

Had Washington chosen to continue, he knew intuitively, that the entire future, and nature of leadership in America, would be forever different, and not better. He would have left the members of this new democratic republic with the sense of dependency on charismatic leadership vested in a man, rather than the independence derived from faith in themselves, institutions, process and their guiding principles.

In effect, Washington had come to an inflection point in the development of the new nation. Done well, the orderly transition would set this new country on an upward trajectory for growth and prosperity. Done poorly, the course would be set for dissention, dependency and the strong possibility this new enterprise would never reach its potential or survive at all.

By powerful example, Washington created a fundamental precept that resonates today in American culture. That dedication to a cause, an idea, or a principle larger than yourself, demands that you subjugate yourself for the good of the whole. The power of humility cannot be underestimated in a great leader.

A clear understanding and recognition of our faults can have a profound impact on others. The Farewell Address is a masterfully conceived message that in its entirety embodies both great ideas with the humility of a Virginia farmer of the day.

The Farewell Address is a great study of how one gets the message out, and also about knowing your audience. The Farewell Address was never delivered as a speech, as many messages of its type were delivered at the time. Instead it was published as an open letter to the American public in a local newspaper and subsequently picked up and reprinted all over the country.

Washington was a master of symbolism, rituals and traditions from his years of military service. The crafting and placement of this message is no exception. Instead of an address to the Congress which may or may not have made its way to the people, he bypassed Congress completely and took his case directly to the public.

It was his way of sending a powerful message about their role as a central player in the future success of their country. Again, an unprecedented notion for the time.

The new country and its people were still trying to find their way in this new experiment, in effect seeking their vision. This strategically brilliant use of media and direct communication not only conveyed the message in its content, but reinforced it through its method and use of plain language.

Certainly, most of those reading the message then did not take the time to analyze the strategic nature of it, but it set a tone and created an environment that while conceptual, was also palpable.

That is what great leaders do. They set the tone and create the environment for future success for those best placed to make it happen, on the street, the shop floor or the local cubicle.

kingz2 · May 28, 2007

Do You Need to Be Ruthless to Succeed?
Not if you want to grow a business, earn the trust and commitment of employees and customers, and create sustained bottom-line profits.
By Alex Hiam
September 30, 2002

In this column, I want to rant and rave about what I view as a destructive misconception affecting many businesses today. The misconception is this: that you have to become ruthless in order to succeed in business.

It seems that way when you look at how the biggest and most visible firms behave. They're tough. They're underhanded. They chop jobs by the thousands, use unreadable small print to snare customers, and hire fancy advisors to find them loopholes whenever possible. So it stands to reason that to get big like them, you have to behave like them.

The hitch is that this in not how these companies grew and earned their places in the public eye. It is not how any business grows and prospers. Ruthless behavior is what people do when they're taking advantage of someone else's careful, caring efforts to grow a brand or a business.

My friend Peter Schutz, the ex-CEO of Porsche AG, often points out that "the expression is 'give and take' " not take first, because you only grow a business, earn the trust and commitment of employees and customers, and create sustained bottom-line profits by helping others and being of genuine value to your community, not by seeing what you can get away with.

Yet executives at many of the companies dominating the headlines don't seem to understand this. For instance, I just saw news reports about the credit card company First USA, the biggest U.S. issuer of Visa cards. The company is rumored to have a new policy in which it is reducing the time some customers are given to pay their bills. Which customers are getting this time penalty? You might think it would be the deadbeats who pay late, but actually, the company is said to have decided to penalize customers who habitually pay on time. The good customers, that's right. Suddenly good customers who never pay a bill late are finding that their due-dates have moved up a week. They aren't very happy.

So why would the company do this? Because, according to news coverage at least, the company doesn't make as much money on these prompt-paying customers. It wants to be able to collect more interest and late fees, so it's making it harder for them than for other customers.

My, oh my. That's not very nice, is it? In fact, it seems as if the company doesn't care. It doesn't care about its faithful, prompt-paying customers. All it cares about is trying to find some clever way to squeeze cash out of them in a hurry. (And it better be done quickly, because obviously many of those good customers are going to be upset by the change and will probably go elsewhere.)

This kind of nasty, shortsighted thinking is perhaps the norm in big corporations, but it doesn't help a smaller business grow and prosper. In fact, caring can be the smaller company's competitive advantage. If you make a genuine effort to treat your customers well, you'll have more loyal customers--and that's a recipe for growth and profits. Same with your employees. If they feel you care about them, they'll work harder and stay longer than they might at some larger rival. This is why companies that earn their place on the Fortune 500 list gradually tend to slip off it and new rivals work their way up to take their place. The company that gets so big it doesn't care any more is always doomed to decline. The entrepreneurial firm that truly cares has a significant advantage that, with persistence, can allow it to triumph over larger rivals.

kingz2 · May 28, 2007

'Golden' management lessons from Titan

Swarna Ganesh has attended over 100 weddings in his hometown Erode in Tamil Nadu in the past year. He is a little anxious about the weight he has gained, but Ganesh isn't really complaining.

As the franchisee of Titan Industries' Gold Plus chain of jewellery stores, the weddings have meant brisk business - the Erode store earned Rs 25 crore (Rs 250 million) last year with every sign of doing as well this year, too.

So much so that the Bangalore-based Titan has stepped up its focus on the lower-end jewellery brand: it has rolled out eight Gold Plus showrooms in the past six months, with another 18 slated to open later this year.

That's an indication of the new focus at the Rs 1,483-crore (Rs 14.83 billion) (2005-06 sales) Titan. Managing director Bhaskar Bhat sums it up: "If one can be smart at managing costs, the opportunity to make money at the lower end is huge."

Accordingly, for the next few years, Titan will be setting its sights firmly on the lower end of the market, both in jewellery and watches. Over the next five years, Gold Plus will account for a third of Titan's jewellery sales, from less than 5 per cent currently.

Jewellery sales, coming almost entirely from the Tanishq brand, are tipped to touch Rs 1,200 crore (Rs 12 billion) in 2006-07 and should grow to Rs around Rs 3,500 crore (Rs 35 billion) by 2011-12. The contribution from low-end watches to total revenues from watches, too, is tipped to go up to 40 per cent, from around 25 per cent at present.

The purity plank

Of course, that's easier said than done. Consumers from the B and C income groups react to different triggers, have different tastes and need to be communicated with differently.

Then, a significant chunk of Gold Plus's target customer group comprises people who are investing in the yellow metal rather than buying it for immediate use - this includes people saving for their weddings, or those putting aside a little something for their daughters' trousseaus.

As L R Natarajan, vice president in charge of the Gold Plus business, points out, "There are customers who start buying for their daughters' marriages even if the child is barely six." Over 40 per cent of the estimated annual gold purchases of Rs 70,000 crore (Rs 700 billion) (industry-wide) is accounted for by this group.

For such customers, purity of the gold is more important than the variety of designs and quality of workmanship (important issues with the SEC A).

Which is why Gold Plus is continuously educating would-be buyers on the need to buy the real thing - it has even installed carat meters in all its outlets. Purity is the dominant theme of its media campaigns and also the audio-visual shows and question-answer sessions that it organises at street corners.

Equally important is the Tata tag. Gold Plus and Tanishq are two distinct entities - there are no obvious signs to connect the lower-end range with the older, more upscale jewellery brand. Instead, the Tata name is flaunted conspicuously on all Gold Plus hoardings and shopfronts - research by the company showed this was more widely recognised and trusted, in any case.

Bonding with the buyer

To make customers feel comfortable, the Gold Plus stores have been designed to look traditional - either homelike or resembling temples. Explains R Sharad, head, retail and marketing, Gold Plus, "Many of these buyers are accustomed to buying jewellery from local goldsmiths or family jewellers, so we need to make them feel at home."

The price points are low so as to bring in the footfalls: customers can buy as little as one gramme of gold. Exchange of old gold for new - a popular practice in South India - is permitted at just 2 per cent charge, compared with the market rate of 6-8 per cent.

"We also make sure that we constantly bring in new designs because customers are demanding and preferences vary from community to community," observes Sharad.

Unlike the Tanishq stores, which are a mix of company-owned and franchises, the Gold Plus chain is entirely franchisee-driven. The logic: jewellery is a localised business and in smaller towns especially, the store manager needs to have local contacts and be a trusted individual so as to be able to inspire confidence in customers.

"The franchisee is the face of the brand in every town and is key to the success of the model," declares Natarajan. Potential franchisees - typically, the most prominent jewellers in the area - are decided on the basis of their network and their potential business worth. (They also have to be capable of investing Rs 50 lakh (Rs 5 million) in the new venture).

Even the options Gold Plus extends to its customers - programmes like chit funds and savings schemes (where money saved with the company earns interest, which is later used to buy jewellery) - are more typical of traditional jewellers than corporate organisations.

The emphasis on local involvement is also why Titan is convinced that the direct approach in marketing will benefit Gold Plus the most. The store manager keeps track of weddings and other social events by networking with local priests.

He then sends a congratulatory card and token gift well in advance to the families concerned. Should they then shop for appropriately large sums at the Gold Plus outlet, the company sponsors banners at the wedding, and another round of gifts follows. And since the manager is invited to the wedding, it gives him an opportunity to network further
with potential buyers.

Of course, more conventional approaches are being followed as well, including hoardings, wall paintings and event sponsorships. Titan is also stepping up its advertising and promotion activities; apart from advertising on local cable channels, it is also experimenting with FM radio channels. But Sharad believes that here too, the local flavour - rangoli and cooking competitions - work best.

Watch this space

If Titan is trying to cash in on the craze for jewellery, it is equally determined not to miss out on the opportunity in the lower end of the watches space.

Consider some numbers first. The total watches market is about 36 million units and is worth Rs 2,200 crore (Rs 22 billion) (industry estimates). Of this, the Rs 300-1,000 price band is noteworthy. It accounts for 45 per cent value share and 16 million units in terms of volume, and is growing at 6-7 per cent a year.

Now, Titan is already a significant player in this segment. With 600 models, Titan's Sonata is already India's biggest watch brand, selling around 4.6 million units a year. But Titan believes it should now tap the potential for bringing in new buyers - primarily, people who don't already own watches.

Says Sonata Business Head C Srinivasan, "In the next two to three years, we will focus on the sub-Rs 500 category by launching a range of products." At present, there are 40 variants in this category.

Srinivasan believes that total Sonata volumes could more than double to 10 million units in three years, which will also help increase the company's share of the Rs 300-1,000 segment.

The pull factor

Most of this volume growth will come from the lower price points. Come April and a watch priced Rs 275-295 will be on store shelves, which is about Rs 100 less than the present Titan starting price point. A sizeable chunk of the market (around 30 per cent) is accounted for by watches under Rs 250 - mostly Chinese imports or smuggled ware.

The Rs 275 pricing, then, is significant - it is just a small leap from a grey market product to a genuine branded watch, complete with guarantee. "As aspirations grow, there are many buyers, especially those on the borderline, whom we can draw in on the strength of the Sonata brand and the Tata pedigree," agrees Srinivasan.

Batting for the brand

Like Gold Plus, Sonata's marketing needs are quite distinct from its parent brand. Hence the company's choice of cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni as mascot, a present-day icon of small town boy made big. (Compare that with the brand ambassadors of Titan's premium range xylys: international celebrities like Carlos Moya and Saira Mohan.)

Titan believes bringing Dhoni on board has paid off: in the past year, sales have increase 13-14 per cent, even as the category has grown at a slower pace.

Cost side story

The key to operating profitably at the lower end of the market is, of course, keeping costs under control. Which is why Titan plans to outsource 75-80 per cent of its production, from virtually nothing at present.

Srinivasan says the biggest savings in costs will come from outsourcing, re-engineering products and through better prices from vendors as volumes rise. Besides, the company doesn't intend to add too much to distribution: 12,000 outlets in 2,600 cities is sufficient, it believes.

Instead, money will be spent on improving in-store visibility for the Sonata brand - better shelves, lighting and more point of sale displays.

"Although we will be selling incrementally more volumes at the lower end, we hope to sustain margins at current levels of 20 per cent at the operating level, because we expect costs to stay flat," says Srinivasan.

Growing the market

In the short to medium term, Titan's game plan is to gain share from the competition, both from branded players like Maxima, as also the regional players. Maxima's volumes are less than half of that of Titan (according to Titan management estimates), but it is nonetheless a competitor.

In the long term the plan is to get in new buyers, which is possible because penetration of watches in India is still low at around 20 per cent. But that would call for a fair amount of investment. Explains Srinivasan, "We need to educate people about the usefulness of a watch and convince them that they need one."

Srinivasan has been touring the countryside and has initiated pilot projects in places like Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh and Vellore in Tamil Nadu. His learnings: aspirations of rural folk are high; they are aware of the benefits of education and are willing to spend on it. So they will spend on watches, too, if it is within their reach.

Swarna Ganesh would say this is time well spent.

kingz2 · May 28, 2007

Live out your dreams, not your degree
Vikas Tandon

Let me first get one major grouse out of the way -- why is work experience still not an eligibility criterion for admission to a management programme? The one thing that B-school does teach you is that what you learn, understand and assimilate, increases infinitesimally if you have had at least two years of work experience.

Unfortunately, most of us realise this much too late. Perhaps, it has something to do with the traditional Indian mindset about education, but that's a topic for another discussion.

Ever since I finished B-school, more than a decade ago, I have always worked in small enterprises or start-ups (even the jobs I held with large multinationals were in set-up/start-up roles). And hence, my views about B-school education can only be in the context of entrepreneurship.

It has often been suggested that B-schools are largely geared towards preparing students for 'corporate' roles and not enough attention is given to entrepreneurial training. My experience corroborates that view. Don't get me wrong: an MBA does help, but my guess is that it is far more relevant in a corporate environment than in a new business setup.

It's not about the degree

To start with, I think all MBA programmes should end with a modified Men in Black-style 'memory eraser' course, which helps students retain only the learning but forget the MBA badge! All too often, I have seen young MBAs (especially from the premier B-schools), living out their degree rather than their dream. You have to be able to extricate yourself from the shadow of your degree/qualification.

An MBA should create new career opportunities for you, and help you get closer to what you really care about -- not lock you into the expectations of society. In today's environment, it becomes difficult to even consider options outside of a traditional consulting/ investment banking/ FMCG marketing track. And more than curriculum or pedagogy, it is the expectation of peers, family, media and, indeed, the students themselves, which is the bigger culprit.

Master of business creation?

The curriculum itself is also biased towards fitting in large corporate roles (perhaps driven by market forces) -- understanding and running existing operations. Some B-schools do have the odd course in entrepreneurship, but they fall woefully short in preparing you for what it takes.

It's all very well to learn about corporate finance and organisational behaviour, but how do you begin? How do you set up scaleable and cost-effective accounting systems? How do you evolve your vision and mission as the organisation grows? More often than not, setting up a business requires thinking on your feet rather than thinking on a plan.

Smarts or hearts

At B-school we are also spoilt for working, with a relatively intellectually-homogenous group. In real life, and especially when running a small enterprise, you have to deal with people with far more diverse backgrounds and abilities. More importantly, you also realise that integrity and dedication is of almost equal, if not greater, value than smarts. And I doubt that can be taught in a B-school!

Get a life!

Recognising that networking is an important aspect of corporate life, some institutes have actually started primers in golf. Why can't we also recognise stress as an integral part of modern professional life and help students start early in recognising and managing stress? Keeping things in perspective, managing stress, and balancing your life are as important for success, as working hard and meeting targets.

Reverse competition

Competition in B-school starts even before you enter one, right from the admission process. And much like most other education systems, you go through the two years trying to outdo each other -- in grades, in class participation, in placements, sometimes even in getting to the student mess first! It is only later that you realise that success almost always depends on how well your team performs.

B-schools teach you how to perform better yourself, but rarely to get the best performance from others. What if we could reverse the grading system? What if you are judged by how much you have been able to boost the performance of your colleagues? After all, isn't that what leadership is all about?

Vikas Tandon is founder-director, Indigo Consulting. He graduated from IIM, Ahmedabad in 1993.

kingz2 · May 28, 2007

You've Got To Find What You Love

This is text of a speech by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar
Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005 at Stanford University. I'm
sharing it here and hoping that few young souls might find it
enlightening...

“I am honoured to be with you today at your commencement from one of
the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth
be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I
want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three
stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed
around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So
why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed
college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She
felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so
everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his
wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that
they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a
call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy;
do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found
out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father
had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final
adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents
promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that
was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents'
savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't
see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no
idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was
spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I
decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty
scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever
made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes
that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked
interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in
friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with,

and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one
good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what
I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be
priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in
the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every
drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and
didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class
to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about
varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about
what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically
subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten
years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all
came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first
computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that
single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces
or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s
likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped
out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal
computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of
course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in
college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect
them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow
connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny,
life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has
made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started
Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10
years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion
company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest
creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And
then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well,
as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run
the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But
then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a
falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I
was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult
life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the
previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton
as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and
tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and
I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly
began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at
Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in
love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the
best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being
successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less
sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative
periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another
company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would
become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer
animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation
studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I
returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the
heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful
family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired
from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed
it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm
convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I
did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it
is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the
only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And
the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found
it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll
know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better
and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't
settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each
day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made
an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked
in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day
of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And
whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I
need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever
encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost
everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment
or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only
what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best
way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You
are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the
morning, and it clearly showed a tumour on my pancreas. I didn't even
know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a
type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer
than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my
affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to
tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell
them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned
up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say
your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where
they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into
my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the
tumour. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when
they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying
because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is
curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I
get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to
you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely
intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to
die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has
ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the
single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old
to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too
long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.
Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be
trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's
thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner
voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and
intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole
Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was
created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park,
and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's,
before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with
typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in
paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and
overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalogue,
and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the
mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a
photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find
yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the
words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they
signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for
myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.”

kingz2 · May 30, 2007

Life lessons from Narayana Murthy

N R Narayana Murthy, chief mentor and chairman of the board, Infosys Technologies, delivered a pre-commencement lecture at the New York University (Stern School of Business) on May 9. It is a scintillating speech, Murthy speaks about the lessons he learnt from his life and career. We present it for our readers:

Dean Cooley, faculty, staff, distinguished guests, and, most importantly, the graduating class of 2007, it is a great privilege to speak at your commencement ceremonies.

I thank Dean Cooley and Prof Marti Subrahmanyam for their kind invitation. I am exhilarated to be part of such a joyous occasion. Congratulations to you, the class of 2007, on completing an important milestone in your life journey.

After some thought, I have decided to share with you some of my life lessons. I learned these lessons in the context of my early career struggles, a life lived under the influence of sometimes unplanned events which were the crucibles that tempered my character and reshaped my future.

I would like first to share some of these key life events with you, in the hope that these may help you understand my struggles and how chance events and unplanned encounters with influential persons shaped my life and career.

Later, I will share the deeper life lessons that I have learned. My sincere hope is that this sharing will help you see your own trials and tribulations for the hidden blessings they can be.

The first event occurred when I was a graduate student in Control Theory at IIT, Kanpur, in India. At breakfast on a bright Sunday morning in 1968, I had a chance encounter with a famous computer scientist on sabbatical from a well-known US university.

He was discussing exciting new developments in the field of computer science with a large group of students and how such developments would alter our future. He was articulate, passionate and quite convincing. I was hooked. I went straight from breakfast to the library, read four or five papers he had suggested, and left the library determined to study computer science.

Friends, when I look back today at that pivotal meeting, I marvel at how one role model can alter for the better the future of a young student. This experience taught me that valuable advice can sometimes come from an unexpected source, and chance events can sometimes open new doors.

The next event that left an indelible mark on me occurred in 1974. The location: Nis, a border town between former Yugoslavia, now Serbia, and Bulgaria. I was hitchhiking from Paris back to Mysore, India, my home town.

By the time a kind driver dropped me at Nis railway station at 9 p.m. on a Saturday night, the restaurant was closed. So was the bank the next morning, and I could not eat because I had no local money. I slept on the railway platform until 8.30 pm in the night when the Sofia Express pulled in.

The only passengers in my compartment were a girl and a boy. I struck a conversation in French with the young girl. She talked about the travails of living in an iron curtain country, until we were roughly interrupted by some policemen who, I later gathered, were summoned by the young man who thought we were criticising the communist government of Bulgaria.

The girl was led away; my backpack and sleeping bag were confiscated. I was dragged along the platform into a small 8x8 foot room with a cold stone floor and a hole in one corner by way of toilet facilities. I was held in that bitterly cold room without food or water for over 72 hours.

I had lost all hope of ever seeing the outside world again, when the door opened. I was again dragged out unceremoniously, locked up in the guard's compartment on a departing freight train and told that I would be released 20 hours later upon reaching Istanbul. The guard's final words still ring in my ears -- "You are from a friendly country called India and that is why we are letting you go!"

The journey to Istanbul was lonely, and I was starving. This long, lonely, cold journey forced me to deeply rethink my convictions about Communism. Early on a dark Thursday morning, after being hungry for 108 hours, I was purged of any last vestiges of affinity for the Left.

I concluded that entrepreneurship, resulting in large-scale job creation, was the only viable mechanism for eradicating poverty in societies.

Deep in my heart, I always thank the Bulgarian guards for transforming me from a confused Leftist into a determined, compassionate capitalist! Inevitably, this sequence of events led to the eventual founding of Infosys in 1981.

While these first two events were rather fortuitous, the next two, both concerning the Infosys journey, were more planned and profoundly influenced my career trajectory.

On a chilly Saturday morning in winter 1990, five of the seven founders of Infosys met in our small office in a leafy Bangalore suburb. The decision at hand was the possible sale of Infosys for the enticing sum of $1 million. After nine years of toil in the then business-unfriendly India, we were quite happy at the prospect of seeing at least some money.

ALSO READ: The amazing success story of Infosys
I let my younger colleagues talk about their future plans. Discussions about the travails of our journey thus far and our future challenges went on for about four hours. I had not yet spoken a word.

Finally, it was my turn. I spoke about our journey from a small Mumbai apartment in 1981 that had been beset with many challenges, but also of how I believed we were at the darkest hour before the dawn. I then took an audacious step. If they were all bent upon selling the company, I said, I would buy out all my colleagues, though I did not have a cent in my pocket.

There was a stunned silence in the room. My colleagues wondered aloud about my foolhardiness. But I remained silent. However, after an hour of my arguments, my colleagues changed their minds to my way of thinking. I urged them that if we wanted to create a great company, we should be optimistic and confident. They have more than lived up to their promise of that day.

In the seventeen years since that day, Infosys has grown to revenues in excess of $3.0 billion, a net income of more than $800 million and a market capitalisation of more than $28 billion, 28,000 times richer than the offer of $1 million on that day.

In the process, Infosys has created more than 70,000 well-paying jobs, 2,000-plus dollar-millionaires and 20,000-plus rupee millionaires.

A final story: On a hot summer morning in 1995, a Fortune-10 corporation had sequestered all their Indian software vendors, including Infosys, in different rooms at the Taj Residency hotel in Bangalore so that the vendors could not communicate with one another. This customer's propensity for tough negotiations was well-known. Our team was very nervous.

First of all, with revenues of only around $5 million, we were minnows compared to the customer.

Second, this customer contributed fully 25% of our revenues. The loss of this business would potentially devastate our recently-listed company.

Third, the customer's negotiation style was very aggressive. The customer team would go from room to room, get the best terms out of each vendor and then pit one vendor against the other. This went on for several rounds. Our various arguments why a fair price -- one that allowed us to invest in good people, R&D, infrastructure, technology and training -- was actually in their interest failed to cut any ice with the customer.

By 5 p.m. on the last day, we had to make a decision right on the spot whether to accept the customer's terms or to walk out.

All eyes were on me as I mulled over the decision. I closed my eyes, and reflected upon our journey until then. Through many a tough call, we had always thought about the long-term interests of Infosys. I communicated clearly to the customer team that we could not accept their terms, since it could well lead us to letting them down later. But I promised a smooth, professional transition to a vendor of customer's choice.

This was a turning point for Infosys.

Subsequently, we created a Risk Mitigation Council which ensured that we would never again depend too much on any one client, technology, country, application area or key employee. The crisis was a blessing in disguise. Today, Infosys has a sound de-risking strategy that has stabilised its revenues and profits.

I want to share with you, next, the life lessons these events have taught me.

1. I will begin with the importance of learning from experience. It is less important, I believe, where you start. It is more important how and what you learn. If the quality of the learning is high, the development gradient is steep, and, given time, you can find yourself in a previously unattainable place. I believe the Infosys story is living proof of this.

Learning from experience, however, can be complicated. It can be much more difficult to learn from success than from failure. If we fail, we think carefully about the precise cause. Success can indiscriminately reinforce all our prior actions.

2. A second theme concerns the power of chance events. As I think across a wide variety of settings in my life, I am struck by the incredible role played by the interplay of chance events with intentional choices. While the turning points themselves are indeed often fortuitous, how we respond to them is anything but so. It is this very quality of how we respond systematically to chance events that is crucial.

3. Of course, the mindset one works with is also quite critical. As recent work by the psychologist, Carol Dweck, has shown, it matters greatly whether one believes in ability as inherent or that it can be developed. Put simply, the former view, a fixed mindset, creates a tendency to avoid challenges, to ignore useful negative feedback and leads such people to plateau early and not achieve their full potential.

The latter view, a growth mindset, leads to a tendency to embrace challenges, to learn from criticism and such people reach ever higher levels of achievement (Krakovsky, 2007: page 48).

4. The fourth theme is a cornerstone of the Indian spiritual tradition: self-knowledge. Indeed, the highest form of knowledge, it is said, is self-knowledge. I believe this greater awareness and knowledge of oneself is what ultimately helps develop a more grounded belief in oneself, courage, determination, and, above all, humility, all qualities which enable one to wear one's success with dignity and grace.

Based on my life experiences, I can assert that it is this belief in learning from experience, a growth mindset, the power of chance events, and self-reflection that have helped me grow to the present.

Back in the 1960s, the odds of my being in front of you today would have been zero. Yet here I stand before you! With every successive step, the odds kept changing in my favour, and it is these life lessons that made all the difference.

My young friends, I would like to end with some words of advice. Do you believe that your future is pre-ordained, and is already set? Or, do you believe that your future is yet to be written and that it will depend upon the sometimes fortuitous events?

Do you believe that these events can provide turning points to which you will respond with your energy and enthusiasm? Do you believe that you will learn from these events and that you will reflect on your setbacks? Do you believe that you will examine your successes with even greater care?

I hope you believe that the future will be shaped by several turning points with great learning opportunities. In fact, this is the path I have walked to much advantage.

A final word: When, one day, you have made your mark on the world, remember that, in the ultimate analysis, we are all mere temporary custodians of the wealth we generate, whether it be financial, intellectual, or emotional. The best use of all your wealth is to share it with those less fortunate.

I believe that we have all at some time eaten the fruit from trees that we did not plant. In the fullness of time, when it is our turn to give, it behooves us in turn to plant gardens that we may never eat the fruit of, which will largely benefit generations to come. I believe this is our sacred responsibility, one that I hope you will shoulder in time.

Thank you for your patience. Go forth and embrace your future with open arms, and pursue enthusiastically your own life journey of discovery!

kingz2 · Jun 13, 2007

Love Your Job : Extract of Mr. Narayana Murthy's speech during mentor session

I know people who work 12 hours a day, six days a week, or more. Some people do so because of a work emergency where the long hours are only temporary. Other people I know have put these hours for years. I don't know if they are working all these hours, but I do know they are in the office this long. Others put in long office hours because they are addicted to the workplace. Whatever the reason for putting in overtime, working long hours over the long term is harmful to the person and to the organization. There are things managers can do to change this for everyone's benefit. being in the office long hours, over long periods of time, makes way for potential errors. my colleagues who are in the office long hours frequently make mistakes caused by fatigue.
Correcting these mistakes requires their time as well as the time and energy of others. I have seen people work Tuesday through Friday to correct mistakes made after 5 pm on Monday. another problem is that people who are in the office long hours are not pleasant company. They often complain about other people (who aren't working as hard); they are irritable, or cranky, or even angry. Other people avoid them. Such behavior poses problems, where work goes much better when people work together instead of avoiding one another. As managers, there are things we can do to help people leave the office.
First and foremost is to set the example and go home ourselves on time. I work with a manager who chides people for working long hours. His words quickly lose their meaning when he sends these chiding groups e-mails with a time-stamp of 2 am, Sunday.
Second is to encourage people to put some balance in their lives.
For instance, here is a guideline I find helpful:
1) Wake up, eat a good breakfast, and go to work.
2) Work hard and smart for eight or nine hours.
3) Go home.
4) Read the comics, watch a funny movie, dig in the dirt, play with your kids, etc
5) Eat well and sleep well. this is called recreating. doing steps 1, 3, 4, and 5 enable step 2. working regular hours and recreating daily are simple concepts.
They are hard for some of us because that requires personal change. They are possible since we all have the power to choose to do them. in considering the issue of overtime, I am reminded of my eldest son. when he was a toddler, if people were visiting the apartment, he would not fall asleep, no matter how long the visit, and no matter what time of day it was. He would fight off sleep until the visitors left. It was as if he was afraid that he would miss something. Once our visitors' left, he would go to sleep. By this time, however, he was over tired and would scream through half the night with nightmares. He, my wife, and I, all paid the price for his fear of missing out. perhaps some people put in such long hours because they don't want to miss anything when they leave the office. the trouble with this is that events will never stop happening. that is life!! Things happen 24 hours a day. allowing for little rest is not ultimately practical. so, take a nap. things will happen while you're asleep, but you will have the energy to catch up when you wake.
Hence "Love your job, but never fall in love with your company because you never know when company stops loving you... "

N R Narayana Murthy, Chief Mentor, Infosys Technologies

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