Friday, February 28, 2014

Five stories that have shaped worldview of TeamLease Services' Chairman



By Manish Sabharwal, Chairman, TeamLease Services

Poet Maya Angelou captures a wonderful truth when she says that the universe is not made of atoms but stories. Narratives are powerful not only because they capture the human condition in ways that facts, figures and logic cannot but they influence us in ways that become obvious only in retrospect. Here are five stories from books and movies that have shaped my view of the world.

There is something for everybody in life of Mohandas K. Gandhi; his innovations of satyagraaha and hyphenated identities, his imagination in using the symbolism of salt, his experiments with personal self-control, his high command style that denied Bose the congress leadership, his ability of establish diverse friendships, his choice of Nehru over Patel, his choice of peanut butter rotis for lunch, and so much else.

The recent book by Ramachandra Guha that covers Gandhi's life till he left South Africa is a jewel. A sequel will cover the most important period of life because the moderates who formed the Congress in 1885 didn't bring India half-way to independence; it was Gandhi's return to India in 1915 that converted the talk shop into a mass movement. For me the most important lesson of his life is that you must become the change you seek.
Team of Rivals

We have done a better job with our second venture because every entrepreneur learns the hard way that the team you create is the company you create. We learnt that companies who do great things have different skill sets around the table but it is hard to avoid the cognitive bias of humans wanting to work with people who are like them (race, language, schools, discipline).

The book that best summarizes the upside of diversity is Team of Rivals by Doris Goodwin and chronicles how Abraham Lincoln appointed three of his political rivals —William Seward, Salmon Chase and Edward Bates — into his cabinet and slowly converted their dislike and distrust of him into respect. This was because of "his extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, and to understand their motives and desires".

The four of them working together not only won the civil war for the United States but sowed the seeds of its subsequent glory and prosperity. For me the most important lesson was that you don't need to like people to work with them and emotional intelligence matters trumps intelligence.

The story of India's independence struggle

The story of how 200,000 white people came to rule over 220 million brown ones is interesting but understandable; the British had superior technology and the raj was a joint venture with many Indians (662 Maharajas, the Zamindars of West Bengal, the Talukdars of United Provinces, the Gurkhas, etc).
But the more fascinating story is about how independence was won from an empire on which the sun never set. This struggle can be captured by reading the biographies of Gandhi, Nehru (by Sarvapalli Gopal), Patel (by Rajmohan Gandhi), Gokhale (by B R Nanda), Maulana Azad (by himself), Bose (Elliot Vallenstein), Bhagat Singh (Jatinder Sanyal), Bal Gangadhar Tilak (A Bhagwat) and many more.
The Indian freedom struggle was inclusive, had vibrant inner party democracy, developed micro-funding and in the end won over the people like civil servants and maharajas that had the most to lose. This broad coalition of the unwilling and unlikely was important; India and Pakistan born on the same night have had very different destinies because our leaders aimed high, worked together, and persisted.
For me the biggest lesson is that breaking an entrenched status quo needs building a really big tent that attracts a strong team of rivals who unite for a big vision. And that overnight success takes many years.
The Shawshank Redemption

The hardest part of building a company is working silently over long periods of time and keep the faith in goals that are faraway. Sanskrit has a wonderful word called Mantragupti that means the strength in silence.

The Shawshank Redemption is a movie that tells the story of a wrongfully convicted tax lawyer — played masterfully by Tim Robbins — who works quietly against all odds for twenty years to change his situation. His closest friend — again played masterfully by Morgan Freeman — does not know his plans even though all his moves become obvious when he finds out what happened.

Don't want to give away the plot so watch the movie if you haven't. For me the most important lesson was that the less you talk about your long term goals while you are relentlessly working on them, the better.
The story of Amazon.com

One of entrepreneurship's most difficult challenges is balancing the long and short term. We entrepreneurs write business plans in poetry but execute them in prose and almost everything takes more time and money than you think.
For me the story of amazon.com and its founder Jeff Bezos is an inspiring example of being able to convince stakeholders to overlook short term metrics (profits) in pursuit of an ambitious and wonderful long term vision (low prices for consumers and reinventing retail). The company has almost never made a profit but today their market capitalization is $170 billion despite almost running out of money a few times.
Jeff Bezos's audacious vision, gumption in taking big bets and high expectations from his team have convinced the equity markets that he may change the world, and even if he does not, he will die trying. Of course there was luck - the company would not have survived if it hadn't done a large debt fund raise just before the dot com meltdown.

The best synthesis of this journey is a recent book called "The Everything store" by Brad Stone. For me the biggest lessons are that high expectations are important because we overestimate what we can do in the short run but underestimate what we can do the long run. And that gumption attracts luck.

By Manish Sabharwal, Chairman, TeamLease Services

Poet Maya Angelou captures a wonderful truth when she says that the universe is not made of atoms but stories. Narratives are powerful not only because they capture the human condition in ways that facts, figures and logic cannot but they influence us in ways that become obvious only in retrospect. Here are five stories from books and movies that have shaped my view of the world.


By Manish Sabharwal, Chairman, TeamLease Services

Poet Maya Angelou captures a wonderful truth when she says that the universe is not made of atoms but stories. Narratives are powerful not only because they capture the human condition in ways that facts, figures and logic cannot but they influence us in ways that become obvious only in retrospect. Here are five stories from books and movies that have shaped my view of the world.

The story of Ga ..

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

The karma yogi of consulting | Business Line

The karma yogi of consulting | Business Line



Ask the right questions; listen well; seek out viewpoints; zoom in on the crux of a problem; read people well. These characteristics, he said, define all great leaders.



It’s the serial uncertainty; things are more volatile. Uncertainty has always been there but now there are forces that have accelerated with more frequency and more volatility. But, as human development has taken place (over the years), the coming generations will rise to the challenge and create innovation, productivity and education to deal with that uncertainty. That’s the general one; then you go industry by industry, country by country; there are different degrees of uncertainty, and the successful leader will have to have the competence to deal with it.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Life is beautiful

When you hear a catchy tune, do your feet tap out the rhythm?          ........When you see a beautiful natural scene or a splendid piece of architecture,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, do your spirits soar? Of course! Because our brains can recognise and enjoy beauty in all its forms. We all have the potential to recognise beauty, but we have to CULTIVATE NOURISH skill.......................... We must learn to look for it not only in galleries and museums and from mountain tops but in the streets around us.................................... We must interpret the word beyond the narrow sense of beauty contests! Otherwise we will forever be condemned to what the poets like to call a “brutish existence.”
Life is beautiful

Sunday, January 19, 2014

‘There’s no facility in India for lessons learnt’

“Ordinary people quite often do extraordinary things. And that matters to me.”

Our idea was to write a book that is (long pause) embedded in the emotional experience of the attack, but also meticulously rooted in detail and to achieve that goal in the shortest number of pages possible.

The problem with 26/11 is that it has not been talked about enough in the right way, the emotional horror we lived with, just as everyone else did. Afterwards there was a meagre post-mortem.
 Especially at the government level?
The government level was nebulous. What the government did at the state and central level was to bury it as quickly as possible under 3,000 feet of earth. Like I have said many times, there was no post-mortem worth its name.
 Everyone talks about Mumbai’s resilience. But do you feel the offside can be forgetfulness?
The resilience is with the people. And the forgetfulness is with the government. What we say is Mumbai saved itself and of course the government wouldn’t have that debate.
 You are very critical of the RAW and NSG… there is that really sad scene of a cop throwing a plastic chair at a terrorist when his rifle jams..
And that is the reason so many people came forward. It is not just our view, it is the view within the institution because there is no system to reform and no amnesty offered for forthrightness. And no climate created for honest debate.
Which was the toughest part to piece together?
NSG was the toughest part to tell. Because the establishment did everything they could to prevent us from the telling of it. To persuade people to talk was difficult. Pain wise (long pause) I am not going to single out names because it was private things said by different individuals.
But there are people who I sat down with who were still very broken. And the reason is because there is no adequate closure.

Friday, April 1, 2011

India Inc's Unique Challenges

Plenary session of the International Futures Forum (IFF) headquartered here.
IFF brings together specialists and experts across disciplines, encouraging participants to think laterally and stay open to learning, no matter how high they rank in their vocation. In the process of finding solutions, ‘IFFers' undertake a learning journey, live with the problem and work towards a solution together with all the stakeholders. This approach of collectively working towards solutions, rather than imposing them from outside, is ideal for Indian conditions, marked by complexity and ongoing multiple transitions.
Bottom of the pryamid
Indian business today is in a unique situation that calls for much more than the standard strategic management models. Let me elaborate. First, Indian business, in order to succeed, has to necessarily cater to the bottom of the pyramid where purchasing power is still low but individual aspirations are high and there is a growing demand for globally comparable products. Second, domestic business is increasingly exposed to global competition and yet has to absorb the higher cost of infrastructure and other public goods and services, including security, normally available in other countries at relatively subsidised rates. Third, Indian industry may continue to face serious constraints such as rigid labour markets, higher costs of capital, higher transactions costs and a degree of uncertainty, as distinct from risks, in the investment environment owing to the nature of domestic politics and the relatively autonomous Indian State.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

urbanisation to be actively facilitated & comprehensive capacity-building programme for urban governance.

increasing urbanisation, problems relating to slum expansion, shortage of housing and traffic confusion, all make living in India's 5,161 cities and towns difficult.
Our urban population grew from 290 million in 2001 to 340 million in 2008 and is expected to reach 590 million by 2030.
From 35 cities with million-plus population in 2001, the figure is to reach 68 in 2030.
Six of them will be mega cities with a population of 10 million or more.
During the ten-year period from 1991 to 2001, the total number of cities and towns in the country grew from 3,768 to 5,161.
A substantial part — as many as 4,720 of these — are towns with population of a lakh or less, which means they are bound to grow and expand beyond the present limits, and fast.
If 58 per cent of India's GDP came from urban areas in 2008, it will be 70 per cent by the year 2030.
Cities will contribute about 85 per cent of the country's tax revenue.
Waste disposal
If cities have such huge importance in our economic growth scenario, what conditions prevail in our cities?