Raj Shankar's Blog, page 65
December 19, 2012
Vedantic Wednesday: Healing Body and Hurting Mind
Last week my colleague at office; had a rather freak accident involving her canine that left a deep gash on her palm. The cut looked as if it was a new line on the palm – with some divine prediction. As it would be in all small groups, in our office this was much talked about. She was almost wearing it on her lapel like a proud pin. As it had all our attention, we noticed in just about a day or two, the gash had begun closing by itself. It was amazing to notice the healing progressing through a working day. It was like the body working some magic on the scar. This is not something new. Neither is it a miracle. It happens to all of us all the time. We hurt ourselves and overtime with or without medication the physical hurt gets auto-corrected by our body. The body doesn’t stop to grieve. It accepts the hurt and moves onto healing it.
However the case with the mind is very different. It neither heals by itself; nor does it allow anything else to heal it. Only when it decides it fades away. And when one thought fades, the mind quickly latches onto another. This is true with any kind of thought. Be it something that betrayed you. Be it something that excited you. Be it something that hurt you. Be it something that soothes you. The mind does not allow the thought to flow through. It hangs on. Every thought that you hang onto leaves a scar. A bias. Worse are those scars that make you feel victimised and cheated.
Your body does not wait for your mind to give the orders to heal. If it does, it will never heal the scars. And your ego allows no one to heal your mind.
Which is why more than the damage caused to us by physical hurt, the scars of the mind are more dangerous!
December 18, 2012
Does Your Startup Have It?
‘Benchmarking’ is a well-known activity. From our youngest years we are taught to compare with others. It is by comparing that we are assigned a place. As we grow up, we are shown examples of performers by parents who constantly tell us to be at least as good if not better than them. When we land up in school, you hear ranking from the first grade in primary school. You are benchmarked based on your performance. As we grow through school the competitive environment forces us to compare and make adjustments / improvements to make headway. The same continues when we try to gain admission into colleges for graduate and postgraduate courses. Is it any different at work? If you have even moderate aspirations – you can’t avoid competition. Even in the so-called flat hierarchy organizations, it’s a pyramid. You compete to grow.
The same thinking is widely visible even amongst organizations and nations! What other reason could have made ‘competition’ as a subject so important to understand and learn. Even today we all compete. To compete you need benchmarks. You need statistics. You need averages. And so on…
In the realm of competitive growth, one can’t avoid benchmarking. But benchmarking also has a contradictory effect – namely increasing similarity. As the interest to benchmark increases, possibility of differentiation decreases. So called best practices spread across firms. Almost all players look alike! It is that rare firm that takes courageous steps to move out of the competitive arena to create fresh benchmark; that redefines the rules of the game all over again.
Every startup / entrepreneurial firm has the potential to be one such player. We need more entrepreneurism at the individual level, firm level, region level, societal level, and the national level and even at the international level. We need more enterprises that revel in experimentation. Any experiment requires courage to persevere. Does your startup have it?
December 17, 2012
Camera Makers – Two Big Commonalities!
Camera makers at all levels are under severe pressure to handle large-scale disruptions taking place in their industry. The greater worry seems to be the speed and variety in which these disruptions appear. Some firms such as Kodak (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16967171) have been forced to exit the industry, which they were synonymous with, while current leaders such as Sony, Canon and Nikon are all strategizing constantly to both survive and thrive. Emergent strategy as suggested by Professor Henry Mintzberg seems to be the way forward for these firms.
While discussing their case in a recent session on strategy – we happened to look at the industry changes and how these companies can respond to growth challenges. Interestingly when we completed the discussions we were left with a lot of strategic possibilities (blue oceans) and potential innovations around business models, products, markets and services. While many of those remain possibilities – the group seemed to agree on two common things applicable to all players in the industry:
Common Strength: Technology
Common Enemy: Smartphones
In today’s world, convergence is not a trend you can ignore. What needs to be assessed is only to what extent and in what measure? But the big question is: how will camera makers compete ‘using technology’ amongst themselves and defend ‘against smartphones’ together? The Camera industry is going to see tremendous changes. Will entrepreneurial strategy making skills come in handy for these firms? Are there lessons they can learn from entrepreneurs who find opportunities in such changes? Wild idea? Don’t think so!
December 16, 2012
Interesting Links This Week: 16-Dec-2012
Here are some of the interesting links i found this week.
Why didn’t Fred Wilson invest in 2012? If you didn’t know him and why people like him from the VC community didn’t make too much investments – here are some thoughts…
How can December go without discussion on ‘Goals’? Why not ‘NOT SET GOALS’ this season? Some thoughts you may not fully agree with – so what?
Link: http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2012/12/consider-not-setting-goals-in.html
A 2 Day Old Startup is bought for $176 million – Yes you saw it right? More importantly, are you exploring the SDN space if you are a tech entrepreneur? Many young tech startups in this space seem to be seeing serious cash.
Link: http://www.businessinsider.com/juniper-buys-contrail-2012-12
December 15, 2012
Books and Me: The New Rules of Marketing & PR
Book Title: The New Rules of Marketing & PR
Author: David Meerman Scott
If you are anyone with a career of even a few years left, you can’t not understand how the online world works. For all others – its mandatory. Its almost as if there is another world running in parallel. Just as we cannot survive if we don’t understand the changes in the real world – we will not be able to thrive in either worlds if we don’t understand the virtual world.
David Meerman Scott (http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/) is not giving you tips and tricks which are tactical. His book primarily focusses on making us understand how the world of marketing is undergoing tremendous fundamental changes because of this new medium – web.
His detailed elucidation on numerous tools available for entrepreneurs, small business owners and marketers in larger firms is interesting and informative. Through numerous examples and cases, he takes us on a journey of how anyone (Davids & the Goliaths as well) can make use of this fast changing and disruption-prone medium to identify, connect, reach and retain customers. The most enticing part for most entrepreneurs is that, all this can be done almost in a shoestring budget.
The book reinforces that we cannot ignore this medium as the impact is high. The tools such as blogs, podcasts, news releases, wikis, videos, squidoo, social networking mediums such as Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, amongst others make it possible for every individual firm (however small) to make its presence felt. He also provides enough emphasis on the importance of content and how it should be tailored to result in action, so as to make monetization profitable. Many of the examples used to explain have online references in the footnotes which make it interesting to see it in real. This provides us enough confidence to create a plan, get online and make an impact.
Overall an interesting and informative read. It provides a fair mix of concepts as well as tactical advice. If you are planning an entry into the online world or interested in making your virtual presence more effective – this is a book you may not want to miss reading. Don’t expect any magic bullets though! I loved the book because it offers lasting solutions and a lot of home work. This allows me to improvise on the ideas as well. Hope to make my presence on the web and my firm’s online foray a success! Look forward to read more in this genre. Happy Reading!
December 14, 2012
Who says mentoring is easy?
I have been asked to share my thoughts on coaching and mentoring of entrepreneurs. I am to share this to a group of aspiring mentors tomorrow. While I was driving back home, I was forced to stay put in a place for over 20 minutes due to traffic. During those solitary moments – my mind went over the last few interactions of this week and a barrage of thoughts hit me! Does the entrepreneur’s decision-making style differ based on his/her worldview? Should coaches / mentors understand this to be of help? Is it easy to know the worldview of your mentees?
In my role as researcher, teacher, consultant and coach, I come across a variety of entrepreneurs (aspiring and those who already are) almost on a daily basis. During these conversations we rarely miss talking about the reason for starting up the enterprise. Being entrepreneurial they have strong opinions and very fixed worldviews. But they are also very smart and fast learners. When such complex, motivated and aspiring individuals come for mentoring – the mentor needs to be prepared to handle the subtler aspects more than the scientific ones.
This week I met up two interesting entrepreneurs who stand as example for this fact. One has been forced into entrepreneurship because of a personal tragedy while the other is taking it up because his role is getting mundane. While one does not want to make a wrong decision, the other is fine to experiment. The former wants to take measured steps while the latter is exploring trends in their infancy. Though the entrepreneurial spirit in both of them seems equally inspiring – each one seems to be approaching opportunities differently. Each session demanded me to listen, view, measure and facilitate the discussions on their current and future opportunities differently. Both of them were sensitive to their situations, their views and still had to be shown the mirror. What greater benefit can a mentor bring to the table if not for this? This had to be done without becoming critical while keeping the truth alive.
How can I share this subtle learning with the group tomorrow? Jotting down my thoughts and learning from my own experiences and those of experienced coaches / mentors. Hope to have a lovely time tomorrow and share more refined thoughts post those discussions.
December 12, 2012
Starting up in India – Rank 173 out of 184
We all hear about the “Doing Business Report” ( www.doingbusiness.org ) that is released every year by the World Bank. Our country is ranked pretty low at 132 out the 184 countries that get ranked. We have also been pretty much consistent (looks like) as we have not changed from last year! Intrigued I searched to see if our neighbors are doing any better. I was surprised – Sri Lanka (81), Bangladesh (129), Nepal (108), China (91) and Pakistan (107) are all above us on the list. Some of them way above!
But what really got me saddened is the fact that on one factor considered in the study called “starting a business” – we are even worse. Especially because it related to a subject of my interest: entrepreneurship. We rank 173 out the 184 nations ranked on the list. Seemed a shame to me! With so much of talking happening at a national level on entrepreneurship and small businesses – how can we encourage our next generation to startup? Since the number of nations where starting a business is more difficult than in India are so few, I decided to look up and do some searching. Here are the names I found:
Djibouti, Haiti, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Congo, Rep., West Bank and Gaza, Suriname, Iraq, Côte d’Ivoire, Cambodia, Bolivia.
Except for one name ‘Cote d’Ivoire’ from where I had met and trained a few entrepreneurs as part of a UNIDO Entrepreneurship Development Program, I actually looked up to know where the others are. They are far from being considered emerging countries. So we can understand why they rank so low in the list. They need more time to become developing nations to attempt a higher rank.
But why India – Why do we need more time and how much more time? Many of our smaller and larger neighbors are all ranked higher even here: Sri Lanka (33), Bangladesh (95), Nepal (105), China (151) and Pakistan (98) Even some of the world’s poorest nations are ranked higher (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita ).
In recent times the amount of entrepreneurial activity has increased. This is a very positive sign. In my workshops on business modeling and planning I am seeing a lot more serious participation from aspiring minds. It’s time we bucked up and accelerated our efforts in building a more conducive ecosystem for early stage activity. Though sporadic efforts are taking place (some of which are also very intense) – a higher degree of coordination is needed to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Vedantic Wednesday: Lessons from Rajini!
Today is Super Star Rajinikanth’s birthday. Too many programs with channels interviewing people on what of the super star they like or admire the most. Almost unanimously the answer is – his humility and good nature. Why is it that apart from the many other things that make him what he is, people remember his humaneness? You guessed it – its rare! As one of the interviewees shared, you don’t find it common in people and more importantly, one doesn’t find it amongst even remotely successful people.
How is Rajinikanth able to maintain his humility when so many external indicators are against this trait? How is it that amongst the chaos he exudes a rare calmness, control and care? It occurred to me as I was watching the interviews that here is a man; who has got his machine up in the true sense. (refer last week’s blog: http://rajshankar.wordpress.com/2012/12/05/vedantic-wednesday-get-the-machine-up/ )
He has very openly acknowledged his interest in spirituality and God. He attributes all of his success to that greater divinity. We hear that he involves himself in prayers and company of holy places and people. By doing all of this he stands as a leading example of what is widely believed as the first step towards self-realization – namely ‘keeping the company of the good’. By keeping the company of the good one is reassured of the holiness within while getting exposed to the fragility of the world outside. This automatically makes one both grateful and humble, allowing the divine then to shape them from inside.
It does not allow us to get carried away by the successes or be drowned by our failures. This moderation in how we handle situations that we pass through is reinforced by spiritual thoughts and practices. And all this begins by keeping the company of the good.
Every time I come across anything about Rajinikanth, I listen intently because he is such an inspiration. And on this wonderful day 12-12-12, I wish him a great birthday and pray for his health and happiness. As I continue to draw inspiration from his personality, I am amazed at what one can learn from simply observing his professional and personal journey. Both of these anchored strongly by the trait of humility. And it all starts when one awakens to the greater power within!
December 10, 2012
You don’t need a purpose to live!
This is a continuation of what started as a talk on Saturday evening, went online as a blog ( http://rajshankar.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/when-should-an-entrepreneur-think-of-purpose/ ) on Sunday and led me through a day of extremely spirited discussions for & against on Monday. While some agree that purpose can make a difference to the startup, many have questioned its authenticity. They feel its just a flashy statement created to look interesting in front of the customer. Its contribution to the firm’s evolution, growth and sustenance has been questioned strongly. Voices are stating that one does not need a purpose to live.
I AGREE COMPLETELY! You don’t need a purpose to live life! Why do you?
You need it only if you intend to give meaning to your everyday actions!
You need it only if you intend to have at least one man / one woman (not family) miss you!
You need it only if you want to live a life of service!
You need it only if you want to derive joy in enabling another live better!
You need it only if you want to be self-driven!
You need it only if you want to sustain your passion & energy!
And many more… BUT why do you need a purpose to live? To live like any other plant, animal and so many human beings who live their lives in a pre-programmed way – you don’t need a purpose. You only need it if you want to wake up every morning to get back to what you love doing irrespective of the outcome. You need it if you want to thrive not survive! You need it if you want to give not take!
So don’t worry about not having a purpose – if all you want to do is just live! AND the same holds true for firms too!
December 9, 2012
When should an entrepreneur think of purpose?
Yesterday i was invited to speak at the Startup Saturday monthly meet in Chennai. I spoke on the topic “Does your startup display purpose?”. The reason i chose this topic is because while most entrepreneurs talk about their core purpose and many times even have something written down, it is never reflected in the choices that they make, the decisions they take, or the behaviors that they display. I keep wondering why people who startup with so much passion lose steam along the way? Could that be one of the reasons why so many enterprises stay small?
After i shared my thoughts there was short silence, followed by a series of questions. Number of us caught up after the event and exchanged our views on the topic. I was happy that i triggered off serious thoughts in close to a 100 entrepreneurial minds. When the audience gets polarized and attempts to question the validity of your hypotheses – it means the purpose of your act is bearing fruit. So i had a rather happy Saturday.
But the above question (in the title) asked by one of the participants seemed like something that many others would be toying with – hence i decided to share it here. When should an entrepreneur think of purpose? Is it when he is at the ideation stage itself? My response to him was that one need not spend time on identifying and defining purpose at the ideation stage! But prior to enterprise creation, the time when the entrepreneur gives birth to the institution, they must think about purpose. The moment the entrepreneur decides to give birth to an enterprise, he/she understands that at some point in time the institution should outgrow him/her. If this is consciously understood, then the entrepreneur is responsible to help the new-born gain an identity for itself. Being a social entity, it can live a life without a purpose (so many of us live our entire lives this way – isn’t it?). But to create a long standing and successful enterprise, the entrepreneur must ensure the institution knows “why it exists” – that’s purpose. Do you agree? Do you have other thoughts?
