Friday, February 23, 2007

Locating India

On the whole, Eklavya is a disappointment but to acknowledge a positive-- the mesmerising use of the physical location of a Rajasthani Haveli/fort in the plot. Don't often see the structure so seamlessly blended into the narrative and taking it to a new level. Another place where it was done brilliantly was in the song 'Tu hi re' from the film Bombay where the ruins of a fort on the coastline really added to the pathos and longing in the song.

Great to see some confidence being shown in some Indian locations. Our directors have been discovering everything - from Switzerland, Ausralia Manhattan to Korea off late- except India.

Although Maniratnam's films always manage to integrate the Indian geography into the story and provide snapshots of the potential of others in the way he picturises songs. As my cousin once said- India bhi foreign jaisa dikhne lagat hai uski film mein.

I am sure we are going to see the many Indias that we have been told about for years as our cinema comes of age and develops the self confidence as well as respect for its audience. Afterall, if we can do our bump & grind routines with 50 extras on the streets of London, we surely can do with some world-class acting and cinematography in the havelis, forts, gullies, and even the slums of India.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

What does a company need most- vision, values, mission, direction...

Another response to a David Maister (www.davidmaister.com/blog) query which too k me into thoughts i had never had--
If we look at it as sequence of events in the life of a company before a virtuous cycle sets in reinforcing each element-- I would say a business gets created by identifying a need i.e. customers in the market. It then becomes a company when a set of like minded people come and stay together around that need (although it could happen the other way round also with a group of like minded people figuring out a business to be in a la Sony) so shared values (or culture) keeps these people together... and this can become an enduring company if it looks at its business with a sense of contribution i.e. a purpose beyond making money. And it will become a visionary company if it develops a strong sense of direction early on in its life rather than being subject to environmental forces and opportunistic behavior.
In my consulting I have tried to study most of my clients with the Built to Last framework where Vision is a combination of values, purpose and a long term goal.
What I have found most often is the presence of a value system which is the glue keeping it all together. What is most often lacking is a sense of purpose and direction.
The growing Indian economy keeps this virtuous cycle in place and the core team sticks together trying out every new opportunity that comes up in the environment but there is no real sense of strategy and trade-offs that seems to exist.

One hypothesis I have is that most strategic calls get taken by a sense of identity that the management has of itself (this is our kind of opportunity and that is not) rather than any serious analysis of market opportunity or competencies (they come into play only when they desire excellence which is very often not the case). So, if as a consultant I can help clients become more self-aware by putting them in touch with their core values then an entity may emerge over a period of time that is differentiated in the market by what we call organizational culture.
One may wish to give them a long-term strategy articulating in great detail on a quarterly basis what they should be doing..however it is likely to get thrown out of the window the moment first unpredictable event takes place in the environment. And environment is only getting more unpredictable.
So, for an established organization I would focus most on discovering core values and illustrating it with actions/trade offs/rules etc.
for a new start up, i would focus on understanding the nature of the market opportunity.
Ultimately, it is all about finding, articulating and sharpening a difference you can preserve and at various life stages of a company, these would be my priorities.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Whether you say you can...

Was writing on David Maister's blog about whether 'being interested in people' is a necessary managerial trait and can it be acquired. The dominant opinion seems to be that either you have the attitude or don't, and acquiring it is nearly impossible.

i had an opinion to the contrary and wrote an elaborate one on that but while writing it opened up to me that Ratan Tata is probably the best example we have of a manager/leader who is a recluse and yet extremely effective.

My mind boggles at what he has achieved in terms of turning around a group whose complexity and diversity is unimaginable and he has done it by adhereing to a rigidly ethical value system in an environment in which everything is up for grabs and norms are anything that can be bent. And he has done all that after the age of 55, till which time he was more or less written off as a leader within and outside the group. Can there be a more vivid example of someone learning the skills, developing the attitudes when the situation mattered. Won't we do the same when a situation leaves us with no escape route.

Which brings you to another basic inquiry - are we born with certain fixed wiring or do we develop attitudes and preferences as life goes along which are capable of being challenged if the context changes. Also, if we are born with them, how do we discover them. IS it just a function of being good at those things or of enjoying doing certain things?

HAven't we seen that we can be good at a lot of things that we do not particularly enjoy doing and similarly there are things which become boring the moment certain accountability is introduced into it. If you enjoy movies does that necessarily make you a good critic or a movie maker?

So what does that mean for corporations and the conversations they have about themselves- we cannot beat the multinationals? We cannot do top end stuff? Our competence is only in commodities? By saying this they have started blieving it, and behaving in line with it, and obviously the results are reinforcing it.

I am reminded of a beautiful Zen conversation- when a Zen master was asked whether he knew how to play a violin, he replied- I don't know. I have never tried.

Baby Step One

Finally I get around to overcoming my intertia to start building my blog.... thanks to Rajeev, my first boss (always a strong influence) and now a good friend.. He said something quite important yesterday--in writing quality is directly proportional to quantity...and that somewhere struck a chord in me...so here is a first attempt at quantity in the hope that quality will follow.

Honestly speaking, as a consultant in the brand building space, I do have to write original stuff quite a lot..every day you are trying to give form to this abstraction called brand which the owners of the abstraction themselves do not have a coherent point of view on... my job most often is to give it some shape and form and draw some boundaries in which a company can focus on building its reputation and thus its brand... now i need to probably treat my blog as a client and everyday provide it with those contours that over a period of time develop into a well-defined entity..

What can this entity be?

Well it will be about the work I do primarily and the worlds I encounter as a part of that life. It will also be about interesting dimensions of brand building that seem to go unnoticed or rather not celebrated enough. It will also be about the ridiculousness of the buttoned up corporate life (hasn't enough already been said) but I need to put my two bits as well...

So the effort wil be to constantly question and demolish the 'ways of being' corporations have invented for themselves and hopefully in that journey we will doscover some timeless principles to live by...

Have been reading two books by Henry Mintzberg off late- Strategy Safari and Strategy Bites Back-- highly recommend both althought reading the former will more or less ensure that you have read most of the second one as well--there is a lot of repeatition.

He looks at various schools of strategy making like the vision school or the positioning school or the core-competence school etc. and critiques them by highlighting the results they have achived and their limitations as well...

I hope to attempt something similar in the brand building space.

And i invite anyone with a passion for brands to help develop this community...


...and ignore the incoherence till i find my voice!