Simple straightforward lesson in leadership

Gandhi said - identify the poorest of the poor and evaluate how your decision's going to affect him/her. Leadership is similar if not same. Identify the weakest member in your team especially the one you hate the most. Now, take up the challenge to transform this guy until you start loving him. Give it your best shot, try-fail-try-fail-try harder and harder till you succeed. Help him achieve his goals, bond with him, show him by actually doing 80% of his work even if you are the boss and get 20% done from him. Keep decreasing this ratio till you reverse it 20:80. And I am a strong believer of Pareto rule in leadership - you as a leader have to meet 20% of your full team target personally. You cannot outsource your whole target to your team. Simply like you cannot outsource passion. Thats how your team respects you and learns from you. When you have transformed the weakest members in your team, you have succeeded as a leader and you also have a great team bond for life.

PS: this can be only done with team members who have a strong value system, just that they don't perform well for XYZ reasons. Someone who is a bad influence on the team because of lack of values should be removed immediately.

Transform an individual, get transformed yourself...

There is some truth to - Behind every successful man there is a woman. Actually behind every successful man or woman there is a coach. A coach who is patient in approach, adjusts to the maturity level of the one being coached, pushes and keeps pushing - never relents. New Horlicks TV ad captures the essence - mother pushing child to run faster day-in day-out. Its not easy. At times child gets frustrated with mommy simply because what is being tried to achieve is not an easy goal. But coach can never give up. In the end mommy sums up by saying - the day he will beat me I win. Coach has to adapt. To start with, coach needs to micro manage and develop the necessary skill set. Later he needs to hold back and help only in strategy and tactics and motivate. In the end of a cycle, he needs to help the one being coached, reflect on learnings and get back into the game even stronger. Coach can work wonders for you and you can wonders for someone you coach. Find a coach now - who does not give up on you and brings the best out of you. Coach someone now and bring out the best in someone. Transform someone and get transformed.

Face your inner Shaitan(Entrepreneur)!!!

If you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much space!

That's the tag line in Anurag Kashyap's new thriller, which in fact I recommend watching. I meet a lot of people who pour their hearts out about ideas they are incubating in their heads for a long period of time. And believe me everyone around you, including you has that one great idea in mind. What prevents the baby to break the egg are myths, which remain dominant in most cases, and ideas are never taken to the execution stage in the whole lifetime.

1. AM NOT READY. Believe me you never will be. Risks are there in everybody's life, just re-think on their real magnitude, are they imaginary or created risks. Mitigate the actual potent risk and take the plunge. The idea of waking up one morning, going to office, submit a 0 day notice resignation, gives me a high till date.

2. LEADERSHIP. Can I get work done from a person or a team? Intimidated even before experience. Leadership is not about expressing authority, it's about charming, by both your personality and visible actions which contribute to employee's growth. The more challenging task is finding a good guy, not getting him to work. Yes, tracking is important but working as a team takes care of it.

3. FINANCE. Is the most easiest thing available if not as capital, as leverage. Which is even better, why would you want to give somebody a piece of your cake in exchange of money. Unless we are talking in tune of a million dollars, finance is easily available, try approaching your bank. If business loan is not feasible, you can always get a personal loan. For eg in food business, a capital investment( raised thru personal loan at say 18% PA) of INR 5 lac can give you first year annual turnover of INR 36 lac, very minimal net profit: 3.6 lacs, which you can reinvest or keep as personal salary. Initial 6 months can be a pain. But these figures will grow considerably in coming years depending on your product and strategy.

Business I created, money has come from clients themselves as advance, but yes having said that, getting initial 5 clients is not easy. Worst case, Complete loss making proposition, you can dispose the setup you created at a discount, payback loan as much possible and look for a new job. But it will be a "THE 'NO REGRETS' LIFE" that you'll live.

Easier said than done, ultimately it's YOU who can/has to bring out the Shaitan in you. I'll be happy to discuss/help about any 3 of the fears I have mentioned or your very own unique roadblock.

The Campus Inc.

Young students in India after completing their school education wander into universities to specialize in various disciplines. Majority of these students aren’t able to find right focus even during their graduation period. They start to believe, for example, that this is what is destined for them or they will correct at a later date. But the fact of the matter is during this whole cycle, industry experience remains obscure to them. If at all they get a chance to interact with Industry stalwarts will the things might start looking up for them. Further there is another set of who are talented in their own right or even a set of students who are the enterprising lot. It is very important that these guys should from Day 0 work with industry-researchers as one. Any delay or void of opportunity on industry-academia-peer interaction front can lead to permanent losses. Or we can look at this in following way: A forum that removes this gap and facilitates interaction between students-industry-academia can bolster our country’s growth many times over.

The Original Guru

Abhishek Bachhan did an excellent job in Guru and I loved it. But this was not the first attempt in the family to do a startup subject in a movie. Rather in my view Big B did this at least 2 times long long ago. 

One of my favorite Big B movie is Manzil (probably even lesser known than its song: "Rimjhim gire Saawan..") - in which he plays a fresher from college, least interested in getting a job and highly motivated to startup. He identifies a recycling business - repair defunct galvanometers and sell them to companies and universities. He is hell bent to do it, but there are relationships - friendship, love, mother that make the job a bit complex. The guy is highly ethical in business but falters when a local technician - Pyarelal screws him after being bribed by the market leader. And the relationships go for a toss when the enterpreneur's forecasts are not met. Mired into litigation and emotionally distraught, he learns the hard way and then does it by himself - learns physics and completes the pending order before living happily ever after.

In contrast came another movie - Trishul. Here was a Vijay, highly confident, oozed chutzpah and who was an effective executioner. The audacious commitments were met incredibly fast and very smoothly. He would use, saam-daam-dand-bhed in the most effective manner. However the motive here was someone's downfall more than own rise. But can a conviction become so strong so as to replace the market leader in no time and can one garner such support, create the strongest team and beat the best in the business?