Advice I’d Give My Younger
Self
Imagine
travelling through a time warp and meeting yourself.
Naive,
impetuous, idealistic — and about to make all sorts of mistakes.
What would you say to make life ahead a little easier? Corporate
Dossier asked business leaders this question — and got some
fascinating answers By Dibeyendu Ganguly and TV Mahalingam
“Don't
run from conflict“ Harsh Goenka, Chairman, RPG Enterprises
I
was only 24 when I was made managing director and 32 year old when I
was pro moted to group chairman. I was out of my depth and could have
used a lot of advice from my present-day self at that time. Here are
a few:
Don't
run from conflict:
Confrontations
are unavoidable in life and need to be handled gracefully. It doesn't
help to run away and hide from them. I remember one time a politico
called me asking for a donation. Instead of saying `no', I stalled.
When he kept calling, I would avoid his calls. He finally called my
father and said your son doesn't have any manners. That's when I
realised it would have been much better for the relationship if I had
said no, instead of dodging his calls.Also, I could never bring
myself to fire anybody. I'd think of his family. But if a person
doesn't fit the company's culture, it's best for all concerned if you
let him go. He will probably do much better in another organisation.
Understand
the value of networking:
My
father had built a network of political relationships during the
licensing era but I did not bother to pursue these relationships,
believing it was not the holiest thing to be doing. Now, I would
advise my younger self to see the value of the relationships my
father had so painstakingly built. Another instance was when I was
offered the post of president of FICCI. I was 35 then and I would
have been the youngest president, but I turned it down. I would
advise myself at that age to grab the opportunity because it would
have broadened my horizons.
Think
through the consequences of aggressive actions:
After
returning to India after doing an MBA from the US, I launched a
hostile takeover on Premier Automobiles. It was India's first hostile
takeover and we had the support of financial institutions. But my
aggression made other industrialists very nervous and they came to my
father and said they would boycott us, if we persisted with this
strategy. We eventually dropped our bid. My advice to myself then
would be: don't be a buccaneer, if you're not prepared to be a pariah
in society.
“Life
isn't a binary choice of success or failure“ Keshav R Murugesh,
Group CEO, WNS Global Services
Wish
I had the concept of `Coming Soon' in my life. These two words have a
sense of suspense, anticipation and hope in them. There was a time
when my family faced financial turmoil and I jumped into a small
business to support the family. Those days I thought I would be
looked upon as a failure because I was selling generators and TVs,
acting as a sub-broker to a stock broker and even selling abrasives
and pesticides, instead of doing what CAs normally do. We always tend
to categorise things as binary, success or failure. But sometimes we
are in an in-between place, with success coming soon in the road
ahead.
“You
can't excel in everything“ Achal Bakeri, CMD, Symphony
You
can't excel in everything:
Every
individual and every organisation has certain strengths and you have
to build on them. If I had known this when I was younger, I would
have saved myself a lot of grief. Symphony started with a single
product, designcentric desert coolers, and we were very successful.
But then I thought I would enlarge the formula to products like
geysers, water purifiers, washing machines and we weren't successful
with any of them. If you do something well, you can't transfer the
formula to everything else. You can be content with on really good
idea or product and make it better and better. Building an
organisation takes time and you can't become the biggest in a day.
Make
most of the time you have:
As
a young entrepreneur, I kept postponing holidays, thinking I'll
travel after I'd finished doing this or that. I would tell my young
self not to do that. There's a time and place for everything.
Big
failures will seem small tomorrow:
When
Symphony became as BIFR company, it was for an amount that is less
than one-fourth of our profits today.We unnecessarily went public
with a Rs 10 crore IPO when we didn't need the cash. Being a public
company took away a lot of my time and energy. I would advise my
young self to stay private and avoid the hassle.
“Find
a mentor“ Glenn Saldanha, Chairman & Managing Director,
Glenmark Pharmaceuticals ing When I turn the pages of my life, say
around 20 25 years from today (I am 45 years now), the one
advice I would like to give to my younger self is to `find a coach or
a mentor'. A common feature which I observed in the lives of many
great visionary leaders is that they all had a mentor who moulded and
guided them along their way to success. This is true for Steve Jobs
(a business leader I have been an ardent admirer of), Bill Gates or
even Mahatma Gandhi. I have now realised that no matter how smart you
are or however strong your business fundamentals might be, every
entrepreneur needs a good mentor. One must realise that someone
somewhere has
“Be
more deliberate, focus on culture building“ Anupam Mittal, Founder
& CEO, e People Group
Be
more deliberate and intellectually honest. It's easy to fall prey to
your own hubris. When you are growing in a hurry, you hire in a hurry
and tend not to focus on crucial issues like building a team or
culture of the organisation. You make the mistake of confusing
performers with people who pose as performers. That makes the
performers leave. Being CEO is lonely. You see what people want you
to see. As a result, you get pulled in directions, which you
originally did not intend to go. It's important therefore that you
spend time on building culture of a company, a culture which focuses
on people and performance.
“Think
Strategically“ K. Ganesh , Serial Entrepreneur, Growthstory.in
If
there is one piece of advice that I would give my younger self, it
would be to think more strategically. Often, as an entrepreneur, you
are caught up with the day to day challenges of run ning a business
and forget to take a step back and look at the larger picture. My
first entrepreneurial venture was IT&T, a remote hardware
maintenance company, which was founded in 1990.This was before the
days of venture capital. We sold the company to iGATE in 2000.
If
you looked at the players in that space back then (like HCL, Wipro),
they went on to diversify into software exports. In that sense, we
missed the woods for the trees. Since then, I have put that learning
into practice into my subsequent businesses. For instance, while
TutorVista (founded in 2005) was pursuing online tutoring for
American students as a consumer internet company, I saw an equally
large opportunity in Indian market for a technologically led,
non-virtual business model. So within three years of starting,
TutorVista scaled up into a large Indian business covering multimedia
sales to over 1000 schools, 200 tutorial centres and managing over 25
schools, before it was sold to Pearson (in 2011). It is important for
entrepreneurs to con stantly step back and take a look at the larger
picture. Think big and think long while executing well on the ground.
already experienced what you are experiencing right now and has
traversed through the learning curve. He or she is a person, who has
`been there, done that' and is will ing to guide your steps. You can
use their insights to make the correct choices and learn from their
mistakes. And the earlier you discover a mentor in your career path,
the better as it will help you accelerate your journey to success. If
I could turn back the wheels of time to the year 1982, when I started
my pro fessional career, I would give my younger self a pat on the
back & a high-five and tell him that one should also have a
passion beyond work. I have always been a workaholic regularly
clocking 11 12 hours at work, non-stop, for the last 33 years.
Everything else which I cherished in life -music and sports -took a
backseat. The carefree days of my childhood ended up as a distant
memory as work and family responsibilities came to the forefront.
Now, I really feel that I should have held onto at least one passion,
nurturing it the best I could and leveraging it to constantly sharpen
my creative edge. On the brighter side, I still have plenty of time
to catch up on my childhood passions and it's never too late to
rekindle an old hobby.
I'm
honestly not the kind of person to have regrets, preferring to focus
on the proverbial `half-full' glass. However, if I had the
opportunity to give some ad vice to my younger self, this is what I'd
say in different phases of life.College: I'd opt for engineering,
ideally computer science, over economics.Early stage career: Work in
a tech start up, ideally in Silicon Valley . Launch my own company
after 4-5 years working in one or two consumer-focused hyper-growth
companies such as Google and Amazon. In reality , I ended up spending
eight years working in three different companies. I learnt a lot
about different management styles and dhanda which has no doubt
helped me with MakeMyTrip.com, but given another chance I would have
taken the entrepreneurial plunge sooner.MakeMyTrip: With MakeMyTrip,
I could not ask for more. To take your own company public, that too
on NASDAQ, is a dream come true. However, what would have made this
script sweeter would be perhaps doing it a little faster.The one big
change I would make to step up the momentum would be starting with a
strong tech co-founder and launch our India offering even
sooner.Plus, I would opt for a puritan product-driven business model,
quite different from the product-cum-service offering that we
currently have. This model would be far less people intensive and
hence inherently more scalable.
I
would not give any advice or tips to my younger self on how to avoid
mis takes, failures or pain. However, I will still share the benefit
of hindsight to help my younger self deal with them better. My anger
and frustration would be much milder. It will be an endless source of
pleasure to recount the stories of survival, fight and victory
against adversities, so called mistakes and challenges. I used the
term so-called mistakes as nobody has divine revelation to know
future outcomes of each decision and action. It is only with
hindsight that certain acts in good faith are termed as mistakes.
Even when I did not win, I will be happy with the valiant fight I put
in. When there is pain, I would know that not only this too will pass
but will be followed by happier times almost always. I would suffer
much lesser when I know that every pain is harbinger of good times to
come, like the darkest hour of night is before the dawn.
CDET 30JAN15
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