The Hindu Business Line : Managers as entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship is all about doing new things or doing the same things in a new way, taking the risk of succeeding. In today’s work scenarios, most successful people are ‘intrapreneurial’ managers who treat the company as their own and forge ahead bravely, taking their chances; blazing a trail, in other words. Some countries and cultures are traditionally more geared towards this than others. The US, for instance, has long had a reputation for innovation and invention. Perhaps, it has something to do with the pioneering spirit of the early settlers who found that entrepreneurship was non-negotiable for survival.

Cultural background of business in India

Today, the spirit of entrepreneurship or, shall we say, enterprise has set roots in India. In my own teams, I have leaders who are willing to go the extra mile, setting up a new division from scratch, working out a formula for success. What makes this work?

Nothing succeeds like success

Infosys has been one of the best known success stories and we had the chance to get advice from its creators on the eve of India’s 62nd year of Independence. N. R. Narayana Murthy said: “I believe that we can make India’s image better only by aspirations, achievements through hard work, smartness, honesty, sincerity and discipline. It is necessary to raise the image of India and we may have to use modern achievements such as the launch of the Chandrayaan and the exploits of chess Grandmaster, Viswanathan Anand, as examples rather than images from our past.”

When we met Nandan Nilekani, who calls himself an accidental entrepreneur, he encouraged us to follow our dream, tenaciously following the path of change and innovation. The arrival of challenges in business led to a rethinking of our business model recently, which I quote as a personal example.

Realising that the smallest part of our business — bringing out a free cultural magazine — had the potential to grow into a much bigger success, we worked on changing and improving it. Sustained quality has seen readership expand to include discerning Indians as much as expatriates in the country.

An ‘intrapreneurial’ business manager turned our four city copies into one national edition, making it available for the asking online and in hard copy. It is available free on www.globaladjustments.com, and we have almost sold out all the advertising space as a result.

China and India – spot the differences

Harvard Business School Professor Tarun Khanna’s highly acclaimed book — Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping their Futures and Yours — makes a comparative study of the factors acting as catalysts to the spirit of enterprise in both these countries, which the world acknowledges are going to be the powers of the future. I was at the Harvard COOP — the cooperative society and famous bookshop at Harvard — when I heard him speak at his book signing. “For the first time since the rise of the West, entrepreneurs in Asia can ignore New York and London almost entirely and still build companies worth billions. The economic centre of gravity is moving toward the East,” he says.

Talking of another aspect, Khanna says: “In recent times, China’s hard-power global expansion has been the result of premeditated and orchestrated State policy, while India’s influence in the world has largely been achieved through soft power. India oozes soft power. In India’s noisy political economy, creativity and the arts thrive.”

Talking of soft power, here is my personal 10-point checklist for success as an entrepreneur or an ‘intrapreneurial’ new manager:

Communication: Be clear, concise and kind internally and externally. Put yourself in the shoes of those who are to receive your message and see if you would have understood your message or if you would have liked working with yourself. Team building: Pay attention to all the players and improve cohesiveness by leading from the front. Once they know you truly care, a team can change and adapt no matter where you drive the bus.

Interpersonal skills: Use phrases such as “I need you to include me more when disseminating information” instead of “You did not tell me” while interacting.

Composure: Don’t react, but weigh the situation and postpone an emotional response. Leave hastily composed e-mails in draft mode for an hour or two, mull over them, before hitting ‘send’.

Handling ambiguity: Be prepared to chop and change in keeping with customer needs. Be flexible and adaptive. We recently ran a facilitation workshop for five Americans on the core team of a Fortune 500 company. When we asked for registration forms to be filled, they didn’t get around to doing it. So when we showed up, expecting to see five Caucasian, 6-foot-tall engineers, we found instead a Mexican American, a Vietnamese American, an African American, a Japanese American and even an Indian American. We had to change our delivery method to include consensus building among them first!

Big picture: This talent allows you to fulfil your customer’s latent needs, anticipating where the road will curve and getting to it ahead of the others. Nowadays new managers, as ‘intrapreneurs’, are empowered to work towards the future needs of their customers, thus ensuring the longevity of the company.

Patience: This is a must for results — for performance, for new ventures to succeed. Sometimes, a year into a new business, it seems worthless to be plodding on, but when you believe strongly in your mission, the right path opens up.

Writing skills: This encompasses text messages and e-mails. All forms of messaging should be treated as business communication. Paying careful attention to my correspondence has led to many top, seemingly out-of-reach leaders, responding to me. I did nothing extraordinary, just wrote sincerely and took care to compose the message.

Empathy: Feel for your customer and your team mates, success will follow. If someone wants to change track, let them go; someone better almost always comes along. If a customer needs speed or slowing down, feel his pain; if you treat him well, your business automatically grows.

Global mindset: Understand, strategise and act knowing yourself, knowing the other side, adapting as the situation demands. What you are doing is bound to have a larger footprint, so see how it impacts the world and open up your mind to include the global village. Make the Internet your teacher.

Changing times

The entrepreneurial landscape is definitely changing — away from the marked tendency to keep it all in the family. Today, talent and drive, not birth and upbringing, are the factors that determine the like spirits who draw together to set up and run successful ventures. Let’s welcome the professionally qualified, ever-innovative, brave new business Indian.

(The writer is Founder CEO of Global Adjustments, a relocation and cross-cultural services company, and author of Doing Business in India for Dummies. She can be contacted at info@globaladjustments.com)

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