Understanding China: Insights from Hank Paulson's New Book

Thanks to his intensive interaction with China over the last two decades, Hank Paulson has some unique insights to offer in his new book, Dealing with China. Here's my take on this important book.

Scale and Impact: Lessons from Ronnie Screwvala's Entrepreneurial Journey

Ronnie Screwvala’s entrepreneurial journey has traversed many paths. Starting from what seems very mundane by his standards – manufacturing toothbrushes – Ronnie has been into cable television and tele-shopping and, most successfully, into the media and film production.

From being a major provider of content to other channels with pioneering shows like India’s first daily soap opera Shanti, Ronnie’s UTV evolved into a media player in its own right through successful channels like Hungama and Bindass. While I knew that UTV had made many memorable films, it’s only after reading Ronnie’s entrepreneurial autobiography Dream with your Eyes Open (Rupa, 2015) that I realized the extent of their range, and how successful they had been.

Ronnie has been on a break between ventures (it’s impossible to contemplate him sitting still!) and he has put this time to good use by sharing with all of us some of the key insights from his life as an entrepreneur in India!

Just Another Entrepreneurship book….or something more?

There are, of course, many books written by entrepreneurs about what it takes to succeed as one. So, it’s natural to ask is there anything special about Ronnie’s book? Are there any unique insights that he has to share with us?

What I liked best about this book is that its told first-person, direct, and with very little digression. As a result, it’s short, pithy and eminently readable, and packs a lot into its 160+ page core. It is motivating (just look at the range of things Ronnie has done starting with not too much money in his pocket), yet realistic in that it does not gloss over failures or pretend that everything happened according to plan.

The main message I got from this book is what I would call the importance of determined execution. Once you have identified an opportunity, made reasonable checks to verify that the opportunity is for real, and decided to address the opportunity, put everything into it to make it happen. That’s a characteristic Ronnie displayed from his first venture into making toothbrushes with second-hand, automated machines imported from Europe, through his creation of the infrastructure to produce a daily soap opera, and into his becoming one of the biggest film producers in India with several films simultaneously under production.

An integral part of this “determined execution” is Ronnie’s belief that it’s better not to have a “Plan B.” His rationale is that the very existence of a Plan B acts as a temptation to give up as soon as one hits (inevitable) obstacles. Instead, one has to be determined to make Plan A work.

So, how does one make Plan A work? What I understood from Ronnie’s book is that this happens essentially by planning, frugal innovation, having the right team and clear communication. The right partnerships also help.

What do you need to be a successful entrepreneur?

One of the points in Ronnie’s book that resonated very strongly with me is to never start or run an enterprise with exit as the objective. Instead, focus on building the enterprise’s brand, franchise and growth potential. This is not a commandment against exits – it can’t be, for Ronnie has exited several businesses over his career – but simply a caution that running an enterprise with exit in mind is very likely to make you take wrong decisions that could jeopardise the future of the company. Exits make sense when the future of the company would be better assured in someone else’s hands. For example, Ronnie justifies his sell-out of his TV channels to Disney by the fact that he and Disney had a very similar approach and philosophy to youth channels, and the future of the channels would be safe with a well-endowed player like Disney.

One important point that Ronnie has underlined is the need to focus on spotting emerging trends and maintaining continuous contact with present and prospective customers. The former is important both to identify emerging opportunities as well as get out of the way of trucks and trains that could knock down your business. This resonated well with the pain-wave-waste framework we proposed in 8 Steps to Innovation – a company’s challenge book emerges from feeling the pain (of customers, users), sensing the wave and seeing the waste (of human effort, material and energy).

An important element of Ronnie’s managerial style that emerges from this book is getting into detail, continuous motivation of the team, and frequent communication. He is unequivocal about his dislike of long Powerpoint presentations that don’t come to the point and provide an opportunity for everyone to mentally disengage and start playing with their phones instead. This made me wonder how Ronnie deals with Newgen employees who are hooked to multi-tasking with one eye always on their smartphone!

Ronnie dwells quite a bit on failure and the importance of looking failure in the face, learning one’s lessons, and moving on. Clearly, in Ronnie’s case, this ability came from a strong sense of self-belief and self-confidence. How do you build that confidence? Well, in Ronnie’s case it appears to have come from his involvement with the theatre. The ability to appear before an audience, emote your lines as planned, and hold the audience’s attention was, I am sure, helpful in building this confidence. Though he doesn’t dwell too much on his family, I get a sense that his family gave him that confidence too – while I am sure his family wasn’t pleased by his failing in his college exams, they gave him the space and encouragement to start again.

Like many entrepreneurs, Ronnie alludes to what is commonly called the affordable loss approach to risk management. He is willing to take big bets as long as he will be able to survive the downside. This simple heuristic is invaluable to entrepreneurs, particularly in India where so many things seem outside one’s control.

I found one of Ronnie’s observations particularly insightful. We often find businesspeople complaining about regulation and how it impedes business. But, based on his experience in the then fledgling cable TV business, Ronnie argues that some regulation is important to ensure that ground rules are in place and that there is orderly development of the industry. Here I might add that it’s not only regulation that is needed, but its fair and transparent  enforcement. In the absence of such enforcement, players who follow the rules are at a disadvantage and this often leads to poor quality products and services.

A Couple of Cribs…

For Ronnie, clearly big is beautiful. Though he acknowledges that scale is an individual choice and that some may choose to start niche businesses, his own preference for the large and impactful is clear. Ronnie argues that strategy becomes important only when you pursue scale. I found that too much of a stretch – in today’s highly competitive world, even a small company in a narrow niche needs to keep sharpening its competitive advantage if it wants to survive. Yes, for sure, the strategic challenges become greater when you are investing thousands of crores in setting up a Reliance Jio, but even a boutique consulting firm needs a strategy to survive and prosper!

One of the big challenges of starting and running a business in India is coping with corruption. Prospective entrepreneurs, particularly those who lack a business background, are often unsure how to deal with this. Ronnie makes only a passing mention of ethics and integrity. I wish he had shared his perspective on this issue.

In conclusion…

There is a surge of entrepreneurial energy in the country today. For the would-be entrepreneur looking for the right motivation and some tips on how to keep going, Ronnie Screwvala’s book has come out at the right time.

[The views expressed here are the personal views of the author.]

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A Tribute to Vidyanand Jha and Dheeraj Sanghi as they turn 50

This post is dedicated to two of my friends who just turned 50.

A Creative Persona

He was one of the first friends I made as a doctoral student at IIM Ahmedabad (IIMA) in 1991. Poet, film buff, supporter of the underdog, teacher of creativity, voracious reader, questioner of authority, former left activist, jazz enthusiast Vidyanand Jha celebrated his 50^th birthday recently.

As doctoral students at IIMA, we had to do many of the first year classes along with the MBA students. So, we were part of one of the sections of the MBA class, in the spacious amphitheatre-like classrooms for which IIMA is famous. We were seated towards the back, on the right hand side, with one MBA student between us.  But as far as I can recall, we were already friendly even before we were serendipitously seated so close to each other.

Several things stood out about Jha – his looks, his photo-chromatic glasses which helped him hide his eyes or even let him sleep while classes were in progress, the diversity of his experience compared to the typical MBA student! Many of our classmates had probably never heard of the CPI-ML, let alone been a member. I recall one occasion on which a professor asked how many students had a rural address, and Jha was the only one who put up his hand. Jha used to hang out with the senior, scholarly yet rebellious doctoral students who held forth on the philosophy of management thought and life.

While at IIMA, Jha and I used to attend every seminar we could. So, we got exposure to a wide variety of subjects and speakers. But, neither he nor I became great researchers in the traditional academic sense. I think we just enjoyed the exposure and the discussions.

As evidenced by his Facebook posts today, Jha is a member of multiple worlds. One is the world of Maithili literature. Jha is an accomplished poet himself, and has been published by the Sahitya Akademi. He has also translated books into Hindi. I tried to persuade him to translate my book From Jugaad to Systematic Innovation into Hindi but didn’t succeed in doing so. Maybe he would have done it if it were fiction. I often ask myself how strong is the dividing line between fiction and non-fiction – after all, even non-fiction is based on the lens through which you see things. But, may be Jha doesn’t see it that way.

Jha has been a member of the faculty at IIM Calcutta since he finished FPM at IIMA. Kolkata has always been the gateway to the east, and his location has helped him remain in close contact with his home. He has also become a fluent speaker of Bengali. Kolkata has a good number of literary and cultural events, and it’s a clear sign of Jha’s cultural interests that he has managed to attend these in spite of the fact that IIMC is miles away from the centre of town. That’s quite unlike many contemporary management academics who lead a much more sequestered life.

Over the time I have known him, Jha has been a compulsive giver, particularly of macabre films. But the fun part is that he doesn’t see them as violent or offensive. Maybe that just comes from being a writer and a film buff.

Many years ago, in an article in EPW, Ramachandra Guha bemoaned the loss of the bilingual intellectual. Guha spoke too soon – Jha can be an intellectual in Maithili, Hindi and Bengali in addition to English! But if I have one regret, it’s that Jha (like many other Indian scholars) has been more in the Indian oral tradition than a great writer as far as management is concerned. From talking to him, and seeing the feedback of his students, I can see that he has lots of interesting insights into management and organizations, but few of these have found their way into print.

Reflecting his left leanings, Jha has always been quick to take the side of the underdog. I can remember one warm afternoon many summers ago when he and another friend of ours derided the IT industry for creating cybercoolies.

A Change-Maker

Another friend who turned 50 recently, is an equally weighty academic. Dheeraj Sanghi was technically one batch junior to me at IIT Kanpur, but we graduated in the same year as he did a 4-year BTech, and I did a 5-year integrated MSc programme.

I got to know Dheeraj thanks to another friend, Pramath Sinha. We were building our team for the Cultural Festival and Pramath brought in Dheeraj to manage our finances. Dheeraj was active in student politics , and so was I, but I got to know him well only after he became a member of our Festival team (he did a great job!).

After a PhD at Maryland, Dheeraj returned to our alma mater and has been a faculty member there ever since. Like Jha, Dheeraj is also a straight talker, and not one given to excessive diplomacy and tact. But he has been fiercely loyal to IITK and has put tremendous effort into sustaining its best traditions. As Dean of Academic Affairs over the last few years, he was an enthusiastic innovator, with all his efforts directed towards helping IITK achieve the best academic standards.

Dheeraj has never been afraid to experiment. He took a couple of years off to head the LN Mittal Institute of Technology in Jaipur, and though I couldn’t visit him during that stint, from what he told me it is clear he managed to try out a lot of new things there as well.

Dheeraj just moved to IIIT Delhi for a couple of years. IIIT Delhi already has a creative leader at its helm. But Pankaj Jalote should watch out, Dheeraj will soon be ready to unleash his ideas there as well.

Dheeraj’s commitment to engineering education has been evident from his blog. He has waded into controversial issues like the two-stage JEE process with gusto and has always managed to provide very logical and thought-provoking analyses.

One of Dheeraj’s other passions has been the Indian Railways. He travels long distances (by train, of course) to attend conferences of other rail buffs like himself. He explores the myriad options available on the IRCTC ticketing website, sometimes landing up in all sorts of trouble as a result, and he then has to valiantly try to recover his money using various clauses of the Railway manual.

I am surprised that Dheeraj hasn’t figured in the recent round of IIT director appointments. Maybe he is too outspoken. But, time is on his side, and I hope the country will take advantage of his energy and vast reservoir of ideas to build one of our institutions.

It’s been my privilege to know Jha and Dheeraj. As they cross 50, here’s wishing them many more years of creative endeavours.

Lessons from Jagdish Sheth on what it takes to be a management guru

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Creating a Distinctive Identity for Indian Management Education

How should the Indian B-school and MBA program of 2015 be distinctive? And what can our business education offer to the rest of the world? These are two questions that flashed across my mind as I attended MBA Universe’s Asian Management Conclave (AMC) at Singapore recently.

For my answers to these questions, read this.