Business to the Buddha

Tag: strategy

  • Change – is it welcome?







    I have a garden. Actually, I had a bit of open space.  It was an opportunity not to be ignored and I converted that open space into a garden. After a while, I put in some plants.  I however felt that the order, organization and quality of the garden could be improved. People visiting and sitting there felt good about the open space converted to a garden but were not happy about the quality of plants and some things which they could not articulate.

    I was obsessed with the success of converting the space into an acceptable garden. One day a respected person whose hobby was gardening visited and suggested that I should bring in more fresh plants and improve the look and feel. I followed the advice, brought new plants and planted them in the available space. That did not solve the problem. A few weeks later, these new plants could not survive. Some died/dried and some lost their beauty. I again asked for help from the same person. He asked to see the new plants that I had brought into the garden, I told him about those plants. He said that those were not suitable plants for that particular garden, for the climate this city. [This is our habit, we try to find out wrong with the possible change]

    He further added, “Why don’t you try different plants?” I did it again; this time too the results were no different. Now, I thought that I should go to some expert. Fortunately, I met one, shared my problem with him and gave him the history of the last couple of months. He too shared the same opinion as the hobbyist.  He however added that my plantation and watering process had issues, I should have put in some fertilizers etc.

    I was not convinced – Once bitten twice shy. This time, instead of relying on just advice and suggestions I asked a professional farmer/gardener to visit my garden. He came, I offered him some coffee; we discussed what had been happening and we visited my garden. He said everything was right but, you did not weed out the weeds! I didn’t understand so with all humility I asked him – to explain.  He said – “Pravin, over time, if you miss out on opportunities, if you overlook a few things, some plants become susceptible of weeds and unwanted – not good – plants also grow in the ground. At times this happens because of the soil with which your new plants were planted. That soil might have had those weed seeds.

    “So what is the solution?” I again asked him humbly.

    He said – before investing any further in your garden, you do a few things. Firstly make your garden worthy of new plants. Secondly, take care of the soil and make it a habit to water and fertilize the ground. After a couple of weeks go to the market, bring suitable plants for your garden, capable of flourishing in the local climate.

    Lastly, remember that you cannot leave your garden at god’s mercy. You have to keep an eye on it, keep on investing in fertilizer, watering, weeding etc and keep on maintaining the garden. Perhaps, find a person who can do all this over a period of time, if you are finding it difficult to do so yourself.

    Now replace as following –

    Garden as your organization.

    Plants as your employees – some of whom make the garden grow weeds!

    Water, ground, soil as culture and future (strategy)

    New plants – new hires

    Valuable advisers – You know who are they.

    PS – This is just a story, author does not own any land, not even a wheel of bicycle, forget owning material thing 🙂

    This was just a way to express how Organization change can fail. For knowing more on Change Management please reach the Author

  • “Social Strategy” – a step in the future!







    A couple of days back I was on Facebook. Yes it happens when you are too occupied with work and commitments are such that you are socially cut-off – even if you do not want to. I checked Facebook update of one of my friends – Nishant Jain, a Supply Chain specialist with HCL – “Outsourcing is dead. Co-sourcing is the only way to go” by Vineet Nayar. This comment of Mr Nayar and subsequently sharing the statement by Nishant makes an statement that we are going to grow together, there is no other way out! I wrote on this earlier – Collaboration in logistics… What we call competition or what we see as “servicing clients” is actually helping client perform their duty better and there needs to be more ‘open-ness’ and involvement in what service/product we are offering. I started writing my blogs with the same concept (Refer – Why this title?).

    …“When Ferrari and Honda run on the racing track competing for the first spot, they are not eying at the first spot, they are racing to offer best product to their customers.” The Buddha’s teaching on ‘Dependent co-arising’ teaches me this. “Each one of us is a rung of a ladder to the other and vice versa, hence for self development and moving higher up, one’s ladder should be strong enough, even one’s competitors.” I believe this will be the extension of P&G’s present approach of Connect & Develop in future; working on various fronts with the competitors such as IPR – strategically innovating – besides others…

    I requested Nishant that would it be fine if I refer you in the blog? He is kind enough to say yes. Around the same time, when I was drafting this blog I happened to read an article in McKinsey Quarterly – The social side of strategy.  This article, Nishant’s facebook update and my owns earlier blog connected all the dots. I could see the relationship between Business and the Buddha in another dimension yet again.

    According to the McKinsey article companies are trying their hands on social strategy. Further it states that such strategy planning efforts would be more inclusive, action oriented, detailed and of course measurable. The other advantage of such efforts would be enthusiasm people would have; it would provide ownership to the execution. The reason for these strategic initiatives to be far more measurable is that these would increase accountability. Everyone in the organization would review progress of each initiative resulting in improved quality.

    Effectively, we are moving toward a more inclusive society and more inclusive organizations. Caution – the idea of open strategy or social strategy is to provide a platform to the organization for brainstorming, yet the whole idea is not yet completely evolved. So, companies need to open up slowly in some regards such as intellectual property.

    As Indian philosophy states – Vasudhev Kutumbakam (one-world family), I sincerely hope to see that happening.

    I would continue this in future blogs, too. Until then thank you for reading.

  • Next is what?







    I was reading a newspaper, the question came in mind – next is what? For a moment Samsung mobile advertisement came in my mind. So keep guessing, next is what for Samsung (off late for Nokia too)? Jokes apart, the question is serious, forward looking and for soul searching.

    The question is very natural, after completing graduation person asks him/herself – what next further education or a job? The question is still there and will always be there in our mind – thinking species.

    In terms of existence and growth of an organization this question is apparent. Organizations think of short term and long term strategies, I have heard some plan for next 25-50 years too and they do it sincerely every year. So, the question “Next is what?” is an eternal, perennial question.

    Next is what, was the question at the time of independence for India. Singapore became a part of bigger Malay nation in 1960’s with a vision of The Next. Though it failed, what makes us feel really great about Singapore is – the vision of Mr Lee Kuan Yew. He rose to the occasion and see where is Singapore in forty years of its independence. Singapore has emerged as an economic power and hub for Asia Pacific, I admire leadership skills of Mr Yew.

    Next is what? is the question currently for Egypt too. What we learnt in strategy planning is – scenario planning and what.. if analysis. Egypt needs an able leader one similar to Mr Yew of Singapore and make long term agile strategies and take short term actions to realize those plans.

    After Egypt, Algeria, Yemen and Bahrain are protesting, “Next is what?” for Egypt is the question to ask and this is equally pertinent for these other countries. We will see the results in coming time.

  • Lost in translation







    I read some status messages on gtalk and other places – ‘lost in translation’.

    It is good that people get caught only in translation; there are chances when someone can be lost in words. Take an example – when I write business to Buddha, meaning is not limited to ‘business to Buddha’. Here Buddha relates to humanity, to the messages of the masters (prophets) and how message of the masters are applicable to businesses e.g. Islamic banking. In a more subtle sense what these prophets taught and which is applicable, in general, in businesses too.

    The problem with us today is not translation only; the problem is getting hold of words incorrectly and staying with them. When the words could mean much more than the only dictionary meaning they convey, that’s where we find problems in understanding poetries. I have heard that someone was reading out a poem written by a Noble laureate to an aristocrat. Suddenly, the aristocrat stopped the reader and said either the line you read just now is incorrect or there is some mismatch. The reader re-read the line with some change of words (resulting in grammatically incorrect sentence) and hearing to the incorrect line the aristocrat said it sounds good with the poem. Later, the reader informed the aristocrat, sir “I suggested the correction in that line! Poet was not willing to accept the correction but when I told him the GRAMATICAL mistake he accepted my argument”. Here the big question to ask is – whether the message is important or the words, meaning and beauty or the grammar is more important? [Here again it seems a fight between system and utility of system relating to my earlier blog on line of understanding]

    During his life time, the Buddha never accepted his bhikkus to translate his messages to any other language. Why? May be for the reason that ‘soul of the message would be lost’. After his enlightenment he did not utter a word for few days. Why? Because ‘words create a boundary to any expression or feeling’. I have seen mails floating on why for many feelings we not only stop speaking but also close our eyes for? Because words fail to explain some deeper feelings of life. However, in business that cannot be accepted, you have to speak and you have to express. Therefore, marketing heavily resort on visual advertisements. I was reading an article of Harvard Business Review. The strategy initiatives fail not because of improper strategy formulation. The initiatives fail because there could be one of the reasons: miscommunication and therefore problem in implementation. So, how are you going to tackle this challenge of translation?

    I understand it this way – make life simple. Keep your messages simple. Say what you do, do what you believe in and believe in what you are. In my opinion, organizations too have an identity and this identity is formed by behavior of management and the employee. Understanding and sticking to this identity would make life simpler for organization, employee and internal and external interactions amongst all stakeholders. This would help reduce the bewilderment of translating strategy in to actions. This does not require anyone to be being “grammatically correct” always.

  • When Situation demands… drop your tools







    You cannot rely on tools only to devise corporate strategies. For making corporate strategies visionaries are required who recognize patterns. Because no one has seen the future and for making future driven strategies vision is very important. Let us take an example of CEO of GE Mr Immelt, he has changed the paradigm in which GE operated. He is investing in future centric businesses.

    Now, visionary does not necessarily point out to a newer set ‘pattern recognition’ – THE next tool for strategies. In fact occasionally people need to drop the tools for formulation of business strategies also. So, the important part is – learning when to drop the tools, willingness to drop the tools and being ready with alternative plan of action. The alternative plan of action is not to find another tool for handling the situation but to analyze the situation and being on your toes to think fast, think creatively, out-think others and look into all aspects of situation to react effectively.
    There is an anecdote which helps learn the concept well.

    The short story is – in a wild fire, 17 firefighters had made a plan on dinner table on how to do their work (tomorrow 10 AM). Next day at 7:00 AM they found that the fire is beyond their planed actions and anticipation. They could
    i) try fight the fire and possibly die, or
    ii) run for their life.

    Many decided to run, the team leader told them – “Drop the tools”, no one heard. Only 3 survived in the accident – 2 who inadvertently got into a cave when one fell down and 1 the leader who DROPPED his TOOLs. He did this because he had heard past experiences of fire fighters.

    At times you have to leave your tools and that is important. Strategy is similar, in cases you have to drop the tools and work. The challenge is to know when to drop the tools.

    You know, this works for meditations too. The Buddha when he was asked what he did to reach enlightenment, used to say – I stopped ‘doing’ and that’s how I reached enlightenment, in fact everyone is enlightened (yes! I have heard that Buddha said everyone is enlightened). I recollected few expert management consultants have told me in general that at times one needs to drop his tools. So mystical lesson, simple yet so difficult to implement.

  • Business Value system – Integrity







    “Integrity is very important in GE and the fastest way to get fired in GE is ‘NOT sharing knowledge/information’.”

    I have seen mission, vision and value statements of many companies. Occasionally, I have seen a word which seemed alien to me in that – integrity. I was wondering on the concept of Integrity and how it relates to business value system in the cut throat competitive world? I asked this question to Dr Ianna Contardo my professor of global business strategy and Associate Dean of the SP Jain Center of Management GMBA in Dubai. I had a brief nevertheless holistic discussion on the same. Her answers to few of my questions reinforced my approach on Business to the Buddha.

    In her opinion integrity is – unifying abstract projections of the wholeness of the identity of the being. It relates to how we behave and act in the world, align to the commonsensical approach that we are a ‘continuation of humanity’.

    This definition of integrity seemed very humane to me and therefore less business oriented. My apprehensions also echoed from the questions few people have earlier asked me, how social and commercial aspects can go hand in hand e.g. business to the Buddha. So I asked, can you please elaborate on ‘continuation of humanity’. She said – we are parts of the whole, that turns our life meaningful and transforms our existence into a multifaceted thinking, diverse interdisciplinary environments with its reach on bountiful examples of doing good through business. The statement reverberated (especially – we are parts of the whole) again to Buddha’s lessons to me. Moreover, it connected to the business very effectively.

    Then how to associate competition with integrity, how to respond to competition? There is no turning back on the values for a business and if integrity is one it also applies to fulfill expectations of all the stakeholders (including the competitors). Integrity plays a balancing role in creation and the future of business would be balance between business and humanity. CSR, social enterprises and NGOs are the initial first few steps towards the same.

    Poetically, she referred to a song and summed up – In a way, integrity represents the tipping point, the fulfillment of this prophecy whereby once you think of yourself as an accomplished ruler you will end up in the misery of solitude. On the other hand, if you walk your talk and you are that integral part of the whole, you do get to fit. Strategically, enhancing the experience of the Buddhist approach to existence is common to that of using your know-how in business. If you do engage with the rights and wrongs, learning will take place.

    What lesson I take out of this discussion was – integrity is not just a word in the dictionary of business it is actually getting into the business value system. As we are progressing in time the concept is becoming prominent and businesses are also evolving as humanistic institutions.