Lessons?

Sleep was elusive. But daybreak was still some way off. And counting sheep has never worked for me. So, I let my mind wander. And as it flitted from thing to thing, I found myself wondering “have I learnt anything this year.” And then, I drifted off into Somnus’ embrace once more.

In the morning, I found myself returning to the question: “What have I learnt this year.” My instinctive response was “not much.” But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I had learnt — relearnt rather — a few things this year. Most of these are rather mundane, the sort of mental and physical housekeeping that fills our lives. Two ideas stand out though because they were reinforced this year. There’s nothing original about them, but they are my top lessons of the year.

Know where you are: It’s important to know where we are. And it’s desirable to know where we’d like to be. And I don’t mean this in a cartographic or geographical sense alone. This is not to say we should keep evaluating ourselves or our lives every moment. But it is useful to take stock once in a while. And if we find that where we are is where we’d like to be, I guess that would be as close to heaven as we can get on earth.

Change doesn’t have to be sweeping: Change may be the only constant in life. And occasionally, drastic change may be required. Much of the time though, the aggregation of marginal gains can be just as revolutionary. Small continuous improvements or changes can achieve much — often unnoticed — without the trauma and uncertainty that typically accompany a forced, sweeping move. The key is to keep responding to our environment, making the tweaks required to make things better.

Finally, learning is not a destination but a process, a journey. As is relearning. 

Reflections on management

I’ve recently been re-acquainting myself with Henry Mintzberg’s work. In the past I’ve found his work interesting, but what strikes me today is how sensible much of it is. And he himself seems to be quite the non-guru, though his ideas make him as worthy of guru-dom as any recent management thinker.

Mintzberg has obsessed for years about one of the pillars of modern management — the MBA. A theme he’s examined in some detail in Managers Not MBAs. He questions conventional MBA programmes, which, he believes, tend to be designed to help graduates get a better job. Instead, management education should be about helping managers do a better job.

What makes Mintzberg different is that he did not stop with questioning the MBA, but went several steps further and helped design a masters programme in management for practising managers — the International Masters Program in Practicing Management at Canada’s McGill University.

Remarkably, he’s now extended this even further with CoachingOurselves, a self-organising management development programme. In CoachingOurselves, groups of managers or prospective managers get together to share their experiences on various management-related issues. Each discussion is anchored to a management topic downloaded from the CoachingOurselves Web site; each topic is authored by someone considered an expert in that particular area. An unfussy and effective way to learn. 

So is the ‘coaching ourselves’ idea selling? It is, says Mintzberg in this interview in Strategy+Business (you’ll need to register to read it). And if you want to read more by this most sensible of management thinkers, check out this page on his Web site. You may not get an MBA, but you sure will get some insights into the practice of management.

The checklist

Before I started on this piece, I thought it would increase the randomness quotient on Not Too Random. But once I actually got down to writing, it struck me that what I’m writing about, though linked to the practice of medicine, is something that can be used almost anywhere and by anyone. It is about a simple method to get things right — using a checklist. And that certainly is not too random.

I discovered Atul Gawande’s work a couple of years ago. Gopal Raj, a friend and former colleague, lent me Gawande’s second book, Better: A Surgeon’s Notes On Performance. I read it and was hooked.

Soon after, I read Gawande’s first book, Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes On An Imperfect Science and stayed hooked. Though slightly rawer than Better, Complications was equally fascinating.

Gawande, a practising surgeon, writes about serious stuff, but is a quintessential storyteller. His writing is thoughtful, easy, laced with humour and colour; it slowly reels the reader in and then keeps her interested. But what really makes his work stand out is the candour he brings to the table.

He asks questions — often, uncomfortable ones — about ethical and performance issues that underlie the practice of medicine. Questions that few medical practitioners would be willing to articulate in public. He’s also refreshingly honest about mistakes, his own and those of others. All as part of his quest to create a better understanding of the intricacies of modern medical science. And, perhaps, through this understanding help medicine get better at doing what it is meant to — help people stay healthy.

And that’s part of what Gawande sets out to do in his latest book The Checklist Manifesto. While the book springs from his experiences as a surgeon and his desire to improve surgical performance, it moves pretty quickly on to a macro issue: How do professionals deal with the growing complexity of their jobs.

Searching for the answer, Gawande talks to surgeons and pilots, financiers and the master builders who erect skyscrapers. And the answer, it seems, is to use a humble checklist — simple, crisp, written guides that walk people through the key steps in any complex task.

Of course, the checklists that experts use to address complexity in their professions are not the ordinary ‘to-do’ lists that many of us use. But they are based on the same idea — an aide memoir to ensure completeness in carrying out a task.

Once he freezes on the checklist as the tool to handle complexity, Gawande and a team of researchers work with the World Health Organisation to develop a Safe Surgery Checklist. One that can be used by hospitals across the world. Almost simultaneously, though, Gawande discovers that getting people to adopt a checklist — in medicine or in finance for that matter — is not a very easy task. Pilots, it seems are the only exception; the one profession in which checklists are adhered to, no questions asked.

Gawande, though, has no doubts. Towards the end of the book, he writes:

“Indeed, against the complexity of the world we must. There is no other choice. When we look closely, we recognize the same balls being dropped over and over, even by those of great ability and determination… It’s time to try something else. Try a checklist.”

Innovations that will reshape business

Trend spotting can be tricky. Just think about all those predictions a few years ago that people, especially the Baby Boomers, would retire early and then enjoy the fruits of their labour for many years to come. And then along came the recession or slowdown or financial meltdown or whatever it was and suddenly, early retirement was no longer an option for many. In fact, for many Boomers retirement itself now seems a distant possibility.

So the new, post-recession mantra is ‘ postpone retirement and work longer’. Almost simultaneously, and perhaps inevitably, the idea of the ‘multi-generational’, ‘age diverse’ workplace, with each generation benefiting from the wisdom of the other(s) took on a life of its own.

Or consider all the talk from a few years ago about financial innovation, globalised financial systems and the supremacy of credit being the way to go. And then consider where all that innovation took the world.

So it’s pretty interesting to see that the Financial Times has got into the trend spotting act with this story on 10 innovations that will reshape business.

One instance of an innovation that could transform business over the next decade, the FT says, is the revolutionary discovery that “Greed isn’t as good as we thought”. Truly visionary!

While it will be great to see businesses renounce, or at least temper, the Gordon Gekko ‘greed is good’ philosophy, will this really happen. I wonder. While values such as passion and purpose drive entrepreneurship and business, the desire for profit is, arguably, what fuels corporates. So while the single-minded pursuit of profit may be diluted with values such as responsibility and a sense of purpose, corporate greed won’t simply disappear.

The FT piece also talks about how people will have to ‘work longer, work older’, with more people in the 50s and 60s choosing to turn entrepreneurs. This innovation will in all probability throw up demographic and social impacts that will need some serious thought from communities and governments the world over.

One possible impact of the ‘work longer, work older’ movement could be in the workplace, especially given another innovation that the FT article talks about: ‘Generation Xers come into their own’. How businesses handle a multi-generation workplace, with a mix of Gen Xs, Gen Ys and Baby Boomers will determine the contours of corporate life. Especially interesting will be corporate efforts to find a balance between the leadership aspirations of the Generation Xs and the Boomers who are hanging on to the reins of power.

What really makes me go hmm… is the assertion that trial and error could become a legitimate business technique! Equally odd is the declaration that governments, companies and individuals should “roll up for some risky business”. ‘Innovative’ financial products structured around risk, it seems, aren’t going away any time soon, their perceived role in the global financial meltdown notwithstanding. But then as the FT piece points out, according to Robert Schiller, professor of economics at Yale University, the credit crisis merely shows that “much more work needs to be done to democratise finance. The crisis occurred because the principles of financial risk management were not being applied to the widest possible population.” I do wonder where this innovation is going to take business?

In all fairness though, the FT piece also talks about a couple of innovations that are truly innovative. One is the, move towards smarter energy use and management. The other focuses on the changes that are spreading through the world of shopping; for instance, the move towards creating pick-up locations for goods ordered online. An option that is likely to be a hit with shoppers who are time-starved.

Now some of the innovations the FT piece talks about, are ideas that have been floating around for a while. So they really aren’t new. Yet, it will be interesting to see just how much they reshape business over the next few years.

Shah Rukh Khan gets down to business

Over the past few weeks, there’s been a spike in the media coverage of actor Shah Rukh Khan. Not particularly surprising given the ruckus that engulfed the release of his film My Name is Khan on February 12. So I’m not going to mention all that here.

What interests me, though, are a couple of pieces that appeared in the business press — Business Today magazine and the Financial Times, to be specific. For both stories — in varying degrees — focused not so much on Shah Rukh the entertainer, but Shah Rukh the entrepreneur!

Last weekend, the Financial Times featured Shah Rukh in its popular Lunch with the FT column. Though the piece was more of a general-ish profile, it also slipped in a mention or two about Shah Rukh Khan “the multi-million dollar superstar brand”.

Business Today, however, really put Shah Rukh the businessman in the spotlight in its last issue. In a cover story titled SRK Inc, it talked about how Shah Rukh is not just the badshah of bollywood, but is also an entrepreneur with an eye on building a business empire. His business interests range from the predictable film making and producing content for television to the slightly more unexpected ad film production and visual effects business and, not to forget, his stake in the Kolkata Knight Riders Indian Premier League cricket team. Most of these businesses are run as divisions of his company Red Chillies Entertainment, which according to the Business Today story had revenues of Rs 73 crore in 2008-09.

Shah Rukh is not the first bollywood actor to take a stab at running a business. While actors like Jeetendra and, more recently, Shilpa Shetty and Preity Zinta have dabbled in entertainment-related businesses, the most famous example of an actor-businessman is, arguably, Amitabh Bachchan. While Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Ltd (ABCL), Bachchan’s first corporate venture, in the mid 1990s, went horribly wrong, he appears to be having more success with AB Corp, the new avatar of ABCL.

However, what makes Shah Rukh stand out from his bollywood peers with entrepreneurial ambitions is that he appears to have the sort of business savvy that will make India Inc proud. Some of this business sense seems to have come the hard way, from his experience with Dreamz Unlimited, his first go at running a production company; a venture that wasn’t too successful.

The Business Today piece, for instance, reveals that while Shah Rukh takes all the creative decisions, business decisions are mostly taken by the professionals who head the various divisions of Red Chillies Entertainment. Yet, Shah Rukh has, in a sense, influenced business decisions too because he’s the one who hired the professionals! And like any good entrepreneur, Shah Rukh is passionate about his ventures, but also appears to have the detachment needed to take hard decisions if one particular business isn’t doing too well.

Yet as Shah Rukh says in the Business Today story, his philosophy of business is less about the bottom line and more about a business’ larger purpose and whether it lives up to this purpose. This ‘purpose is the soul of a business’ approach is what, perhaps, what really makes Shah Rukh the entrepreneur interesting. So much so, that I wouldn’t be surprised if a b-school somewhere soon writes a case study on him!

Of course, a misstep or two could throw Shah Rukh’s empire-building ambitions out of kilter as the ABCL experience testifies. The badshah of bollywood, though, will be conscious of this. But as the Business Today story puts it, if Shah Rukh needs to raise some money all he needs to do is shake a leg for a few minutes at a private party or pick up a brand endorsement or two and the money will flow in.

Now that’s a funding model that even the canniest entrepreneur will find hard to replicate.

Business lessons from The Dead

Practitioners of the art of management have often found inspiration in the most unlikely places.

Sport and the military have, quite unsurprisingly, been major sources of inspiration for management best practices. For instance, some time last year IMD hosted Usain Bolt the Jamaican sprinter who won a gold at the Beijing Olympics. During the discussion, Bolt offered his b-school audience thoughts on success, motivation and standards.

Equally interesting is that India's film industry has provided food for thought to managers and business thinkers. Almost a decade ago, the Hindi film Lagaan created a buzz, not just for its entertainment value but also for the management lessons it offered. In fact, Totus Consulting — a company based in Chennai, India — did some qualitative research on the management lessons the film had to offer.

And now the news that there are business lessons to be learnt from the band the Grateful Dead. According to a piece in The Atlantic magazine, the Grateful Dead Archive is scheduled to open soon at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

While the archive is expected to be a treasure trove for academics of all hues, the biggest beneficiaries may perhaps be business scholars and management theorists, the article states. This is because management thinkers are finding that The Dead were business visionaries who focused on things like creating customer value, promoting social networking and strategic business planning long before the corporate world warmed-up to these practices.

The Dead, for instance, focused very intensely on its most loyal fans or ‘customers’. “It established a telephone hotline to alert them to its touring schedule ahead of any public announcement, reserved for them some of the best seats in the house, and capped the price of tickets, which the band distributed through its own mail-order house,” the piece in The Atlantic points out.

Similarly, The Dead also had a Board of Directors, with the CEO’s position rotating, and set up a profitable merchandising division. The band even allowed fans to tape shows for free, based on the “assessment that tape sharing would widen their audience, a ban would be unenforceable and anyone inclined to tape a show would probably spend money elsewhere, such as on merchandise or tickets,” the article adds. A forerunner of the ‘give it all away free’ Internet business model, perhaps?

It appears, in fact, that John Perry Barlow, The Dead’s lyricist, had it all figured out over a decade-and-a-half ago. In a piece in Wired in 1994, he suggested that in the information economy “the best way to raise demand for your product is to give it away."

So do sport, music, art and literature have lessons for management? Perhaps; just as management may have lessons for sport, music, literature and art!

PS: I also suspect that business thinkers and managers will soon look to the Hindi film Three Idiots for nuggets on the art and science of management!