Managing Uncertainty (on Only the Paranoid Survive)

When Andy Grove wrote ‘Only the Paranoid Survive’ some decades ago, he couldn’t have been more accurate with the strategies he outlined for Intel and how Intel came out of the Strategic Inflection Point (SIP). The learning about the 10X forces coming into play changing something fundamental in your business world, the importance of identifying Cassandra (wise people who no one listens to otherwise) and believing them when they say that the market is not responding to our actions, and making experiment and debate a process to come up with new ideas and solutions is substantially important to any business even today.  However, given the speed of change witnessed in India over the last few years, it would be worthwhile to revisit those strategies from the perspective of the radically changed 21st century business environment- some of these strategies may continue to be relevant, but there are some others that don’t make much sense.

The Product or the Business Life Cycles have seen a major decline in the time line since .The growth phase in the product life cycle enjoyed by Maruti 800 no longer exists. Cars these days come and go like a fad, with exceptions of course, resulting in companies facing the SIP several times over within a short span of time. The competition is so intense that every company is subject to more than one of   Porter’s Five Forces at any given point of time. Industry mapping has become a considerably more difficult exercise on account of the rapidly changing dynamics of every industry and so on.

BUT, there are some very interesting people related tools that still exist. Identifying the Cassandra in your Sales and Finance teams still makes sense, and believing them when they talk about the changes in the market remains a key element of long term strategy formulation for companies across the board. Promoting Experimentation in an Organisation still pays rich returns and when in a debate, differentiating Knowledge Power to Organisational Power continues to be important to reaching a definitive somewhere in a discussion.

There is another interesting thing that has not changed, which is, the way we think, and the way our brain works. Our frontal lobe still lights up when we get a new piece of new information, our previous patterns that come from the basal ganglia still prevent us from looking at new solutions. When in a debate, we still tend to involve our emotions (which emanate from the Amygdala), making it difficult to reach any form of consensus.

With the competitive environment becoming so furious, companies coming and going every now and then, the need for experimentation and new solutions becoming so much important, one thing that surely can help is training the brain in the right way; to getting used to thinking of newer solutions, keeping emotions out from the debate, letting go of previous patterns.

(The role of emotion sometimes becomes very important when working on new projects, where emotion takes the form of Conviction)

A Free Mind Spurs Talent

Take a look at the papers and it's pretty hard to miss- slowly but surely, Indians are beginning to take over the reins of global capitalism. Sounds exaggerated? One glance at the latest headlines across the global corporate landscape, and you might just agree. Pepsico, Citibank, Unilever and now Deutschebank- when it comes to big business, it's hard to get any bigger than the names just gone by, And what's the one common thread running through them all?...yes, you guessed it-all of them have our very own desi management gurus at the top. What's more, each one of them has received the better part of his/her education in India itself-yeah the very same system that we routinely like to pass off as the next worst thing to the Indian football team...So what has changed? Have we suddenly become brighter as a nation?..or have all those years of religiously gulping down Dabur Chwanparash finally begun to pay off?

Well, the answer may just lie in casting a closer look inwards, instead of looking around everywhere else. Just think about it, there must be something we are doing right. After all, compared to the Chinese, who seem to be doing better on just about every other front, there is surprisingly little representation of our eastern neighbours when it comes to donning the mantle at leading global MNCs...could this be yet another example of that age-old axiom coming back with a vengeance- that while authoritarian regimes may and often do give rise to a more efficient big picture, at an individual level, there is nothing like a free and open society to encourage and spur innovation. Could this be the reason why we are yet to see a Chinese L N Mittal, their version of the Ambanis or even a single name in the global top ten rich lists that routinely find their way into some magazine or the other? 

With the 21st century poised to emerge as a battle of the two Asian giants, it’s a question that might just be worth exploring in greater detail.