Raj Shankar's Blog, page 46

Opportunities Or Distractions

For most entrepreneurs sensing opportunities is a very natural trait. They are usually chronic ideators too. The levels of enthusiasm and intrinsic motivation that drives them pushes them to see how they can capitalize on every idea or opportunity so as to grow their business. While this may seem as very entrepreneurial in the beginning, this in my humble opinion is the biggest self destructive habit prevalent among entrepreneurs. The reason why such a powerful trait turns negative is due to the lack of focus.

Focus is what helps entrepreneurs separate opportunities from distractions for their enterprises. But practicing focus requires extreme discipline. If entrepreneurs work on strategy formulation, ‘what to focus’ is a definitive outcome. Armed with this clarity on what to focus the entrepreneurs will be able to say NO to highly luring  distractions that presents themselves as opportunities.

This makes the act of strategy making an important aspect of building enterprises. But today in an SME environment strategy formulation  is conspicuous by its absence!

Vedantic Wednesday: Value Alignment

What is correct? What is permissible? What is ethical? These are unanswerable questions. So to answer these, what we do is define an average. That is laws and rules by which we evaluate, categorise, and judge others. We are so confused that very often we get into situations wherein the person eating chicken admonishes the butcher for being cruel.

How much of truth is truth? What is honesty? What is morality? The shades that these terms take are innumerable. So how does one be at peace with this system that attempts to average out something that cannot be quantified? It is only by leading your life with your set of values. As long as you do not have a conflict with YOUR value system, your life will be fine. There is no compulsion or obligation for you to be in line with someone else’s value system. In the same way nobody has the need or the necessity to measure upto your judging scale. Understanding this has implication both in our personal life and business.

When you define a set of values which you want people associated in your business to upkeep, you must understand that there will be people who do not agree with you.  You have two choices then – take them in and convert them or allow them to go their way. While the first one is what most of do in our organization by force fitting value alignment, it is the second one that makes a stronger organization on the long run.

Your selection process for not just employees but also vendors, partners and even customers should seek those who have a natural fit with your value system. Associating with everyone and then trying to align forcefully value systems of these entities through coercion, convincing or dictatorship is not really viable in reality.  However it does sound very promising and encouraging superficially. Hence very often we see ourselves in life and business judging and evaluating, conforming and aligning all the time!

What is your priority?

Priorities are not what you talk about as priorities. 

Priority is not what you list as priorities

Priority is not what you discuss every day as priorities

What you do every day is a reflection of your priority.

During the course of my interactions with entrepreneurial CEOs of emerging companies I am always perplexed as to how much they have thought about their priorities and how little they have done something about their priorities.  What makes one who knows his priorities not act on it?  This is a question worth pondering on, because if you are like most people you would end another year wondering why the most important thing on your list remains undone. So the next time you want to know what is somebody’s priority (even if it is your own) don’t ask or don’ listen, but look at the actions that have happened over the last one month.

Actions not words are a reflection of priorities!

A weekend well spent

I spent the last two days on S P Jain campus with about two dozen entrepreneurs from Mumbai. We discussed various tools that they can apply to their business so as to enable them grow. The entrepreneurs were enthusiastic, passionate and vocal.  We had many intense discussions in and beyond the classrooms and spent many extra hours than scheduled to find solutions and perspectives to their challenges.

Every workshop I facilitate gives me a chance to know more about practical aspects of the theoretical framework. It reinforces the importance of theory while also serving as a constant reminder about its limitation. While many business owners believe that spending time on theory is not useful, the benefits of good theory and its subtle way  of sharpening decision making can never be underestimated.

Invariably in every workshop the question “is this theory actually applied in practice?” keeps coming up.  While many may showcase examples of how theory is directly useful in practice, I constantly harp on the fact if an entrepreneur takes effort to understand theory it changes and transforms him especially his thinking faculty. This makes him look at business, markets, industries, opportunities and every other decision points differently, objectively and effectively. Good theory influences and enables good practice. I am happy that the participants of the workshop were able to take away the right perspective about the tools and framework that we discussed. I truly hope that they put some of these ideas to practice and actually grow their business, because good practice is what enables creation of good theories.

Interesting Links This Week: 30-June-2013

How to run meetings better? A topic where there is perennially less practice than theory. Here is a bit of advice from some seriously successful entrepreneurs and successful people. Is running better meetings one of the secrets to their productive lives? Here is an interesting read. Link: http://www.fastcompany.com/3013013/dialed/11-simple-tips-for-having-great-meetings-from-some-of-the-worlds-most-productive-peop?partner=newsletter

The importance of local marketing can never be underestimated, but it always is. One must remember that your business might just be outside your front door. Here are some thoughts on local marketing. Link: http://www.inc.com/young-entrepreneur-council/hyperlocal-press.html?cid=em01020week25a&nav=su

How many of you detest crowds, shirk away from limelight and are best left alone? Yet are trying to be entrepreneurs – and that too successful ones? Is it necessary to be extroverted to be an entrepreneur? An interesting read that has a calming effect on all those introverts who are just raring to go.. http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/05/being_an_entrepreneur_when_youre_not.html?utm_source=Socialflow&utm_medium=Tweet&utm_campaign=Socialflow

Books and Me: Guidance From The Guru

Book Title:  Guidance from the Guru 

Author:  Sadguru Swami Tapovan

Very little literature truly exists of the numerous Himalayan sages. While a lot is heard about the existence of realized masters, meditative and introspective sages, very little of their thoughts are available to the common man. Even sparse are those which are available in print version.

This collection of eighteen letters written by Swami Tapovan to a couple who were householder devotees (Mrs and Mr Chandrasekhara Menon)  is indeed a treasure house of advice. While masters are of many kinds, a few belong to the school of “few words”. This master is one such! And when these masters speak,  if you are not attentive and listening –you could miss out entirely on those snippets that have the power to change your life and living! The letters are filled with practical tips to lead a spiritual life.

Swami Tapovanam, is known to a lot of Mahatmas as ‘The Vibhuti of the Himalayas’. You may easily recognize him as Swami Chinmayananda’s guru. This slender volume is a must read for anyone living in the world, with worldly duties but still with intense desire to be peaceful, happy and know- god.

Entrepreneurship Beyond Enterprise

Entrepreneurship today means start-ups, enterprise creation, capital backed venture, growth etc. While all this is entrepreneurship, the very fact that a person decided to turn entrepreneurial seems almost forgotten. Any activity arising out of one becoming entrepreneurial should be termed as entrepreneurship. But when we restrict entrepreneurial activities, research and thinking only to venture creation, we may be doing a great disservice to the inherent potential and benefits that being entrepreneurial can deliver.

So while we teach entrepreneurship in a variety of courses and make it more widely accessible as a subject, one thing that we need to encourage and instill in students is the ability to become entrepreneurial in their thinking and action. This will truly create a more vibrant society and make life more enjoyable and successful.

Amma Unavagam

Of the fundamental needs for a human being namely food, clothing and shelter; food comes first.  Over the past few years, the rising cost of food including vegetables, grains, pulses, fruits etc have made it difficult to make ends meet, even for the so called middle class families. Considering the job climate, cash flow challenges and increasing cost of food – it is not beyond normal intelligence to wonder how the poor and the poverty stricken live in this country.

While this thought may have crossed many a minds, I wonder how many actually managed to turn this into action. In recent times,  government schemes have always been on giving goodies to select group of people in the hope of political alignment. While politics can never be removed from society,  unthought through actions while benefiting politically may not deliver the actual benefit intended for the chosen audience.  Examples of these include freebies like bicycles, laptop, tablets, grinders etc

But I must agree that this scheme called ‘Amma Unavagam’ is probably way different from many others mentioned above. Under this scheme the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, Dr. J. Jayalalitha has begun opening food canteens which will serve meals at highly subsidized prices. One must look at the price list to believe that quality food can be hygienically cooked and neatly delivered at these prices! http://www.ammaunavagam.com/index.html

While the intention of the scheme is to enable the really poor of the society gain access to a few meals every day, it is not surprising that a lot more beyond the poor seem to have also embraced and benefited from this scheme. After a long time we are beginning to see rave reviews and praises for a government scheme from the public across all sections.

The socio-economic benefits arising out of this scheme go well beyond just serving subsidized meals.

They also provide jobs, thereby reducing unemployment
They create healthier people, thereby reducing sickness and malnutrition
They possibly will reduce social disorder as many a times it is done for the sake of the belly

In my opinion after the mid day meal scheme launched in the eighties by the then Chief Minister Dr. M.G Ramachandran of AIADMK, Amma Unavagam launched by the current Chief Minister Dr. Jayalalitha is one that is going  to be revolutionary for party, state and in similar lines at national level (for states that would adopt this). I am sure this scheme will grow to serve the people of the state while also acting as an example for other parts of the country to emulate. This goes to prove that if political leaders running government want to help the people they can! It also shows that if the government intends to do something, nothing can stop it!

Hence it is the intention of the political leadership coupled with strong strategic planning that can help devise and implement wise schemes that can truly develop and improve the lives of the people.

Vedantic Wednesday: Gandhi’s Letter To Hitler

Last week I had shared in the forum views of Gandhiji on Rights and Duties.It is in that same week that I came upon this letter. And reading it has left an indelible impression on my mind.

How can one be so non-judgmental when addressing someone whom by all standards of the world was committing heinous crimes?

Gandhiji’s humility, his acceptance, love and respect for entire mankind is reflected in every word of his letter.

This tone cannot be established through 100 rounds of careful editing. This is only possible if you have 100% belief in your way of living. And this can only be if it coincides with the greater truth.

Very often philosophy and Vedanta seem to be too idealistic to be lived in flesh and blood. However when one chances upon these not so old references from the lives of great masters like Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and others , we understand it is possible and there is hope for all of us too!

The Himalayan Downpour

Are the number of natural calamities in the world increasing? Is the frequency of occurrence of natural calamities in proportion to the rate of development? Is the intensity of nature’s fury an equal response to what we dole out to her?

What’s happening in Himalayas, especially in the state of Himachal Pradesh is like a Tsunami in the mountains.  While debates can be had over every aspect surrounding the event , one thing stands out as the bitter truth: there is a limit to how much human beings can plan and control.  While many of us may disagree to accept and continue to think and use science as the solution, nature’s response to our actions seems to have more manifestations than we can ever imagine.

While national debates on television is on how good/bad is our preparedness to recover from disaster and who should have been responsible to do this, nobody seems to consider going to the root cause of the issue.

Who is causing imbalance in nature for more and more of such occurrences? Can science and technology which discovers and utilizes nature’s gifts for improving life, actually control and define nature itself? How should policy actually handle nature’s backlash to our actions?

It is not nature against man – today or ever. Nature is not an avenging force.  What we are seeing are just reactions to our continuous tweaking and interference with nature. What we are seeing is but a natural response to our attempt to make nature submit to human wants!

As Mahatma Gandhi said ” There is enough for everyone’s need but not for anybody’s greed!”