December 2022 (1) – Migratory Birds and Entrepreneurship.

It is a well-known fact that as summer gives way to fall, many birds begin to move from their spring and summer breeding grounds to their winter homes. The annual migratory ritual offers many insights to entrepreneurs who are desirous of analysing their routine business practices with an aim for continuous improvement.

Here are four questions that can inform an entrepreneur as much as they can an avid bird-watcher!

	BIRD-WATCHER	ENTREPRENEUR
1	Why do birds usually undertake arduous migration during the Fall season? Decreasing number of hours of light and cooler temperatures both help birds know it’s time to move on. But the most important reasons for migration are changes in food sources, especially insects, and changes in nesting locations as trees lose their leaves.	Why do businesses usually undergo arduous lean periods from time to time? Many businesses encounter lean times when there is decreased appetite for customer-spends; lean periods are also triggered from scarcity of key resources that are needed for active operations.
2	How do birds know how far to migrate and where exactly to migrate? It depends on the bird.  Short-distance migrants, may simply change altitudes, heading to lower elevations for winter. Medium-distance birds roam around to find better conditions but generally stay within the continent. Long-distance migrants, spend summers in the north, then do wintering in warmer climates of the south. The winners in the long-distance category are whooping cranes and Arctic terns, which can travel 2,500 miles and as much as 24,000 miles, respectively. Researchers are still unlocking the mystery of how birds know where to travel, but it looks like they use a variety of techniques, including "navigation by the stars, sensing changes in the earth's magnetic field, and even smell."	How do businesses know what to do and how much to do during the lean times? It depends on leadership qualities of the entrepreneur. Good enterprises anticipate such lean periods and do two things - (a) seek and migrate to fresh market segments and (b) increase their productivity. The exploration and migration to fresh market segments will depend on the compulsions of maintaining or improving the returns on capital investments made thus far. Increasing operational productivity will be in direct proportion to the scarcity or resources and also on the cost of servicing existing market segment commitments.
3	Do birds physically change at the time of migration? Birds that migrate at night start changing their routines. Some male birds lose the bright plumage that helps them attract a female during spring or summer mating season, making them closer in appearance to females for most of the year.	Do organisational structures and systems undergo changes in response to lean times? Often successful enterprises do not shy from making small but significant, changes in operational systems and organisational structures,as a dynamic response to manage the lean times. Examples can be found in areas such as advertising intensity, L&D programs, CRM programs. Seldom do these changes outlast the lean times.
4	What are unnatural impediments for bird migration? Bright lights can disorient night migrating birds. Unseasonal weather disturbances that happen midway cause food-related stress and trauma that even leads to death.	Are there impediments that impact the capabilities of businesses to survive lean times? Poor knowledge management practices and poor market-intelligence acquisition capabilities can (at best) confuse and (at worst) collapse the responses.

 

November 2022 (1) – Keeping the entrepreneurial spirit alive!

Entrepreneur (noun) : person who jumps off a cliff and builds a parachute on the way down, sells it to another hapless jumper and then builds himself a para-glider to surf the winds; see also wizard, magician.

Entrepreneurial ventures are often the result of a bold and passionate bridging of market opportunities with innovations that differentiate the newcomer from the incumbents. But most often the entrepreneurial story loses steam after sometime. The danger of losing the entrepreneurial spirit and the ability to innovate as a company grows, must concern every genuine entrepreneur.

So what causes many small firms to lose the spark? There is sufficient evidence to suggest three reasons.

Existing Customers – once a company has customers, a syndrome known as ‘the tyranny of served market’ sets in, and this can block the company’s capacity to innovate in an agile manner to other non-served customer segments. It oftentimes also does not even allow exploration of undefined needs of the current customer segment!

Size – necessitates the creation of functions, control systems and communication hierarchies; all of which frustrate creativity and ideas-development and gives a disproportionate importance to risk avoidance as a key aspect of risk management.

Complacency – Early success is often confused with ‘being right’ about everything from markets to pricing, from vendors to staff, from technology to regulations; this leads to complacency which is antithetical to true entrepreneurial spirit.

So what can help keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive even as the firm continues to grow? Getting back the spark requires constant efforts to stretch out and to snap out!

 

Here are six tips that can help maintain the aggressive, innovative and responsive characteristics that defined the early and adrenalin-filled days of the firm.

 

#1 – work continuously in creating and perfecting an ambidextrous organisation that is effective in two things – (a) getting today’s operations to grow and succeed, and (b) anticipating and designing the operations for the future.	#2 – establish the strategic direction of the firm; more importantly ensure the rest of the team do not lose sight of this vision and ensure the creative ones are able to efficiently pursue ideas that fit this strategic purpose.
#3 - don’t allow the requirements of operational management take over and detach you from spending adequate time in innovating for the future.	#4 – you have done this once before, but continuous improvement of the idea-to-market process needs to take center stage; this means that you and key team members need to unlearn and relearn many aspects based on emerging trends.
#5 – use new approaches to evaluate projects vis-à-vis growth. Diverse range of opportunities that can benefit from core competence, designing and positioning the firm’s offers for a range of uncertain or complex market situations.	#6 – rethink about team competencies and recruit diverse range of entrepreneurial skill sets that can collaborate for the future.

 How ready are you to stretch out and snap out?

October 2022 (1) – An umbrella and a mixing bowl!

JBALLPPOSTS WILL NOW BE ON SUJAVANA.

Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or a fledgling start-up, there is one thing that can make all the difference when it comes to sustaining your success. It is called Organisational Culture and it can take all shapes and hues.

Two shapes that you must learn to recognize are those that represent an umbrella and an upturned umbrella. I prefer to call the latter shape as a mixing bowl.

These shapes – the umbrella and the mixing bowl – illustrate two dimensions of how an organisation’s culture can impact its growth performance. Each has its own benefits and drawbacks, but when the focus is on sustainable growth, the impacts from predominance of either need to be clearly understood. Let’s look at both from this perspective.

Umbrella Culture

Many of us grew up with this culture and are comfortable with it. The organisation acts as an umbrella to the teams working for it. The umbrella shields the people and the functional roles with its structures, systems, processes –the insulation from external disruptions, are usually very useful, even if they may not be permanent. The protective nature has an inherent disadvantage, in that it limits exposure to external vagaries in the environment. It blunts the resilience and agility to counter changes. Loss of risk appetite and easier management using elaborate governance and controls are highly encouraged. Managers and leaders get too comfortable under the buffer of the umbrella. Umbrella culture offers a nice and safe environment for a mediocre performance.

Mixing Bowl Culture

This is the umbrella culture flipped over.   There is a trend to stop across-the-board protecting and shielding.Instead there is an encouragement and support for exposure and out-of-the-box experimentation.     Besides holding the existing ingredients, the mixing bowl allows addition of new ones, even being generous and allow spilling over the sides.       Some good ingredients may be lost, but other good ingredients get added and they enrich the old remaining ones, creating new flavours, odours.     The unbridled exposure and agile response to what exists on the outside creates exciting opportunities to sustain and grow.        A solid bowl casing (shared values) a mixer (leaders) and hopefully a good spatula (processes) - these provide the governance frameworks that ensure that the broad visionary goals are realized in a fair manner.

 So what do you have in your organisation – an umbrella or a mixing bowl?