“As a Business Leader, I have had extensive experience in India in building businesses from conceptualization to blueprinting to actualizing them and making them successful, covering the entire gamut of clearances, erection, installation & commissioning, hiring, training, sales, and ongoing change-management, all aimed at building highly reliable organisations. Superimposed on this rigmarole is the matter of approaching and convincing investors, which means selling India and its potential to them.”
That would be a most unexciting way to start...
...if I am talking to a young, intelligent audience who have come to listen to me and learn a bit about building a business and managing it well. They will expect me, as a management professional, to say something useful, interesting, original and perhaps share a few self-deprecating anecdotes.
I have probably already convinced them that building a business is agonizing and boring.
How then have I managed to stay committed all along my journey?
By simply INJOYING myself in my engagements with individuals who have remained a part of my life: colleagues, customers, and suppliers.
Colleagues, in particular. COMPANYONS, as I idiosyncratically refer to them. Many of them have made significant contributions and quite often delivered superlative performances. Someone at some point of time might have even described them, mistakenly and even uncharitably, as ordinary.
I have seen elation in the eyes of these individuals, and I have felt joy.
Every time. Joy, pure and immense and incomparable.
All I have done is just these little things.
- Trusting people
- Peaking their strengths
- Inspiring them to draw the bigger picture
- Awakening them connect possibilities
- Helping them with their inner conflict
- Challenging their potential
- Providing them the best conditions
- Not being directive unless warranted
