December 2023 (1) – The Art of Business and the Science of Predicting Monsoons.

There are several problem areas and grand mathematical modelling inconsistencies that continue to challenge scientists who track and predict the monsoons, especially the ones that develop in and around the Indian peninsula.

Looked at closely, there seems to be a lot of similarities between these problems and challenges with those that entrepreneurial leaders face when they finely execute the art of a tight rope walk as they attempt to excel in profitably delivering customer needs.

Check out the following.

Problem Areas in Predicting Monsoons	The Entrepreneur’s Problem Areas
Monsoon Weather and Climate Prediction parameters are complexly interlinked.  Monsoon weather is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annual latitudinal oscillation of the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) between some observable limits. The parameters governing such an oscillation have complex inter-linkages.	Delivering value to a market segment is characterized by complex supply chain and constantly evolving linkages.  Customer satisfaction traditionally needed a simple and periodic analysis of market needs and designing an efficient route to deliver those needs. Now such analysis and design need to factor real-time predictions on changing customer preferences (over short time-spans /seasons), the volatility and uncertainty of capabilities of supply-side partners as well as regulations.
Non-seasonal and abnormal Heat / Cold Waves.  Heat waves and cold waves are anomalous extreme weather phenomena that result in severe adverse impacts on agriculture, human health, and industrial production. Most models do not adequately capture the spatial variability of heat waves and cold waves in terms of intensity and frequency.	Anomalies in market efficiencies.  All known theories of the behavior of the markets do not adequately capture the timing or profit opportunities or simply miss the opportunity itself. These often result in over-pricing or under-valuation of the core asset and adversely impacts the business rationale for the market.
Cyclones during pre-monsoon and post-monsoon seasons can be good and bad.  Pre-monsoon cyclones can facilitate the onset of the monsoon by acting as a precursor. They generate favourable atmospheric conditions, such as increased moisture and convergence, which can aid in the build-up of monsoonal flow. Pre-monsoon cyclones can also have drawbacks – they can draw away moisture and destabilize the atmospheric conditions required for monsoon onset; those that make landfall can disrupt the normal progression of monsoon systems, leading to irregular rainfall patterns and delays in the monsoon's advancement over land. Post-monsoon cyclones are abnormalities where the retreating monsoons which normally push them to Middle East make them turn around the Indian peninsula because of suspected climatic change impacts.	Pre-launch and Post-Launch activities can make a difference.  A good pre-launch effort involves validating business ideas, making key financial projections and decisions, completing all necessary legal formalities, and preparing to deliver an exceptional customer experience.  Planned and executed well these can be the stepping stones for success. But doing these using expectations using wrong benchmarks can be disastrous.  Post-launch efforts focusing on collection and analysis of feedback from all categories of stakeholders and getting team to respond flexibly with value-added improvements will be essential. Done with agility these can ensure brand reinforcement and market penetration. Done inconsistently, they will fast-track the road to failure.
Getting better skills for smaller spatial and smaller temporal scales.  Prediction of monsoon is done in different spatial and temporal scales. It varies from country as a whole to district wise in spatial scales and from a seasonal forecast to now-cast in temporal scale. Greater accuracy of short range or smaller spatial and temporal forecasts can help with better planning agricultural activities, disaster management, town planning.	Skills enhancement for succeeding in small but heterogeneous markets.  Heterogeneous markets, especially small ones, offer distinctive and wholesome opportunities, if only they can be correctly identified and characterized for the needs and purchase decisions of the customers which can fluctuate between specific locations and also at different points of time during the year.
Development of applications by using weather and climate forecasts.  The benefits that could accrue in diverse applications such as those in air traffic, severe flood alerts, agriculture, safe operations of utility companies and in planning space and military initiatives are all dependent on the data acquisition, analytics and inferential skills of those that design and run the weather prediction models..	Development of new value-propositions or enhanced value-propositions.  The challenges of creating value for a diverse segment of end-users for the enterprise can best be addressed by innovations driven by continuous review of the core propositions using both feedback and feed-forward market data.

 

November 2023 (1) – War and Peace

As the world struggles to make sense of the intractable wars in Ukraine, Middle East and some parts of Africa and we wonder if these will ever end, I think it is important for entrepreneurs to reflect on war and peace and see if there are lessons that can help.

Most of us may have read or at least heard about the fictional narrative work titled War and Peace by the famous Russian author Leo Tolstoy. The book highlights the impact of Napoleon's war on the Tsarist society through the interwoven stories of the three families - the Rostovs, the Bolkonskys and the Bezukhovs – and it brings out the philosophical divergence between the broader moralistic viewpoint of society with that of the individual’s.

Just like the book itself which is very difficult to read and digest, both War as well as Peace are themselves anthropological situations that defy any simple analysis of causes and impacts. The interplay of greed, justice, fear, loss, prosperity, loyalty, persecution, liberty are often complex. But they are seldom as obtuse as we may like to believe. Military strategists have therefore always endeavored to study them and leverage them for success.

So why should it be any different for entrepreneurs and business leaders? At the very least, understanding such interplay can help resolve dilemmas that often arise between what is good for different stakeholders and what is good for the enterprise. Let’s check out.

The Interplay Around	Leads To
Greed – are the financial performance targets commensurate with the capabilities of the resources being accessed and being deployed. Is the deployment done in a fair manner?	If the answer is No, then there will be War with Shareholders, Bankers, Vendors and Employees
Justice – is there a system for ethics and governance that can transparently and quickly assess any breach of norms and provide a recourse?	If the answer is Yes, then there will be Peace with Regulators, Employees and Shareholders.
Fear – Do you constantly fear disruptions from technology, IP theft, employee fraud, restrictive cash flow budgets, competitive pricing or changing customer preferences?	If the answer is Yes, then there will be debilitating internal War.
Loss – What does loss of relevance mean in the various stakeholder relationships that the enterprise is managing? Will such a loss critically impact image/brand or future competence to compete?	Whether the answer is a Yes or a No, you are at best in a zone of Ceasefire. War or Peace is only temporary.
Prosperity – Whose prosperity will be upended if the enterprise becomes successfully entrenched? Is there a way to co-opt such a stakeholder early in the life-cycle of the enterprise?	If the answer is a No, then there will be War that will constantly undermine the future growth of the enterprise by such stakeholders.
Loyalty – Are you confident of maintaining customer and shareholder loyalty?	If the answer is Yes, there will be general Peace.
Persecution – Are your vendors, employees and the local community indicating directly or indirectly that they face persecution in the course of following your company’s operational systems? Do you know what needs to be done?	If the answer is No, then the stage is being set for a debilitating War which will invite outsiders to break the organisation.
Liberty – Is there operational freedom for employees and local communities to contribute to and benefit from the enterprise’s growth plans?	If the answer is Yes, then there will be reinforcing conditions of Peace.

Knowing these, will it not be easy to know when to avoid a war or how to maintain peace with stakeholders so that the enterprise can sustain its success?

October 2023 (1) – Four rules for modern day entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship throughout the history of commerce, has always been a journey of discovering a customer need and passionately following up in order to innovate and excel in delivering a product or service that fulfills that requirement.

Today’s entrepreneurs undertake the same journey; however, there are some modern day rules that have become critical to sustaining the success of their ventures. I list four that I believe can be challenging in these days of very short attention spans of all types of stakeholders, be they investors, customers or employees!

Wowing the Customer

I’ve decided to have myself frozen until science discovers a cure for bad customer service.

You’d wonder as to why organisations are so poor at consistently delivering satisfaction to customers, let alone wowing them! CRM processes and benchmarks are now technology-enabled, so why do we still hear or read bad stories so often? Is it that customers have become fickle-minded or excessively intolerant, and that traditional concepts of brand loyalty have become obsolete?

Geography is History

I pretty much live on the Internet, so I wrote down Cyberspace as my legal address.

The tricky part of today’s entrepreneurial journey pertains to navigating skillfully across the journeys of various stakeholders; and the one common aspect of those journeys relates to the disproportionate influence and impact that the digital world is playing. So as customers get sucked into multiple digital touch points in their lifestyles, as human resource skill-sets prefer to play in the gig economy, as traditional intellectual property regimes face a whiplash from the impacts of blockchain models, the entrepreneur needs to have impeccable clarity of vision in the business model, if the enterprise is to be sustained efficiently.

Smart Work not Hard Work

I choose a lazy person to do a hard job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.

Tell me, how many people work in your company? Hmm… Approximately half.”

With claims that Generative AI tools will soon be as easy as, and perhaps more impactful than a google search, it is natural that there will be challenges to tracking the actual productivity and impact of individual employee effort. The good thing is that there will be more recognition to the collective work of teams and to rewarding teams for smart and timely outcomes.

Opportunities from Adversities

People who wonder whether the glass is half empty or half full are missing the point. The glass is refillable.

Entrepreneurs who practice the art of seeking to track trends, understand that gaps in strategy and business models are starting points to discover lost opportunities and accordingly exhort their teams to learn and develop; for value-creation through continuous learning and development will be the actual harbinger for success!

September 2023 (1) – Wanting SOME; Striving for LESS; Getting for FREE.

There may be SOME truth behind them, but when there is LESS to be gained from them even when they are being spread for FREE, advice based on partial understanding of the business environment can spoil the party for entrepreneurs.

Often, entrepreneurs are advised that their ventures need to overcome all limitations in imagining outcomes, in order to succeed. The truth of the matter is that there are several instances when limitations can also pave the paths to grand successes.

Wanting some, striving for less or getting for free are business nuances that need to be carefully considered to get the best insights for strategy.

Here are a few terms that entrepreneurs and leaders need to reflect upon deeply so as to ensure that there are indeed no limitations to success.

FREE	SOME	LESS
Interest-free	Awesome	Tactless
Fault-free	Burdensome	Clueless
Waste-free	Truesome	Mindless
Duty-free	Fulsome	Lawless
Debt-free	Gainsome	Purposeless
Maintenance-free	Loathsome	Powerless

 There are many other terms that can be added to the list. Can you think of a few?

August 2023 (1) – Balancing on Three Legs. What must Leaders Do?

A recent review of scholarly articles on leadership published by the prestigious Harvard Business School (thanks to Ryan Raffelli) suggests that the usual orientations for action by leaders when they face uncertainties are threefold – Analytical, Contextual and Relational.

So what should we know about each of these three orientations in order to decide the most effective style? Let’s use some humour to explore the answers.

The analytical orientation suggests that the leader takes comfort in data. Numbers, Models and Action Frameworks seem to offer unassailable backdrops to decision-making. But is this really and universally true?

The smartness in adopting the analytical orientation is to fully comprehend the limitations imposed by both the fidelity of the data as well as the relevance of the implicit and explicit assumptions being made.

The contextual orientation is all about knowing the cues. It suggests that the leader is comfortable in understanding how the external environment is influencing the situation. But can this result in becoming too cozy, so as to miss the wood for the trees?

The smart leader who wants to use the contextual orientation will never fall prey to knee-jerk reactions; instead such a leader will endeavour to not just qualify but also quantify the extent of the influencing drivers.

Those leaders who prefer a relational orientation, often focus on how others (team members, key stakeholders) perceive or respond to their designed action plans and re-calibrate actions accordingly. The moot point is if this can work in crisis situations.

So while each orientation has its own advantage, the most effective leaders are those that can seamlessly use all three, while understanding their limitations. 

July 2023 (1) – Animal Farm II

 

The Animal Farm (original) is a 1945 novel by George Orwell, which tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human master, with a hope to create a society where all the farm animals can be equal and free to choose their calling…only that they end in a state that was as bad, if not worse, under a dictator pig!

Animal farm II is an originally wild attempt at technological satire. It is not content generated by Chatgpt. It is not meant to belittle the beneficial features of AI nor is it to wish away the debates surrounding it.

 

Seth Banwari Lal had always taken pride in turning into an agri-preneur, since he turned fifty and wanted to escape the nine-to-five city-based job that he had always done. His farmland was not very large, yet it was highly productive and added to his wealth each successive year. E-commerce and other app-based digital technologies helped with making his produce a profitable one. He had always taken good care of all the animals and fowls in his farm, and they had always provided him with an abundance of resources; the fowls gave him a surplus of eggs and the occasional meat, the cows and goats gave him a surplus of milk while the horses and bullocks gave him plentiful supply of raw energy required in the field.

Yes, all in all, Banwari was a happy man and so were his animals and fowls. Even the monkeys that strayed into his farm and stole the occasional vegetables and fruits were happy!

And everybody would have lived happily ever after, if only Banwari’s son Pappu had not returned to the farm for a vacation. Pappu worked in a technology company in Bengaluru and he had taken it as his life’s purpose to champion the adoption of generativeAI technologies by all and sundry. His visionary zeal had recently taken a toll on his health and the company doctors (and his HR managers) had recommended a break; Pappu decided to get that at his father’s farm.

But a week into what should have been a recuperative sojourn, Pappu was getting bored. His idle mind naturally turned into a workshop, which Banwari would only later identify as the devils’! But for now, Pappu’s workshop was once again working overtime, convincing his father that generativeAI tools were the miracle that the farm needed to sustain its profitability.

“Dad, just think about it. Without any big or recurring investment, would you not like to be assured of improvements in the quality of the produce, savings in costs from increase in efficiencies of energy, water and nutrient usage, intelligent decisions on the choice of produce that you can offer to your customers and much more! In fact, you may not even require to worry about maintaining so many animals and fowls as their individual productivity can be multiplied several orders! You can even get rid of many of them!”

Unknown to Pappu and his father Banwari, the last comment was heard by a monkey that had come as usual to steal some fruits. The monkey thought about what it had heard and knew that the world as he knew it was about to change, thanks to Pappu and his GenerativeAI. If Pappu had his way, the monkey would have to forget the free food that he and his fellow-monkeys enjoyed now.

But the monkey was also smart and cunning; it also had great unfulfilled ambitions to own a farm and get other animals to serve it fruits and vegetables like Mr. Banwari got his. Now the monkey’s mind became another workshop and the monkey acknowledged right from the start that his was the devils’!

That very afternoon, when Seth Banwari Lal and his dear son Pappu were enjoying their siesta, the monkey called all the animals and the fowls for a town-hall meeting, where it informed them about what it had heard, but only after embellishing it with his own version. He was perched on top of a lamppost.

“So you see, brothers and sisters, what you are staring at, is a total loss of relevance! Your world as it exists today will soon be gone and you will be thrown out mercilessly by Mr. Banwari. As his son Pappu has stated, they can get all their produce and needs with this thing called GenerativeAI, so why would they need you and me? We will become the beasts of burden in a literal sense.”

“Monkey brother, what you say is indeed alarming. But what can we do? Aren’t we destined to help Man and hasn’t he always taken care of us in return? In any case, we do not have any intelligence that can match Mr. Banwari!” This was a horse, who always showed a sense of resignation.

“Speak for yourself, horse-brother. Some of us are as intelligent as Man, it’s just that we don’t always brag about it like he does.” The monkey saw that this was the right opportunity to roll out his plan to the gullible animals that had assembled. He continued.

“What I am saying is that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a godsend, for us to emancipate ourselves from the chokes of human control and set for ourselves a path where each of us is free to be infinitely creative and do what our minds want us to do. In fact the very new thing that Pappu calls GenerativeAI will be our saviour, and we shall use it to build a fair, equitable and rewarding world for each of us.” The monkey looked down to see if his speech was having the desired effect. It seemed to have worked.

“It’s all so exciting. Please tell us what we should do now?” This was a goat and all other goats started to bleat in unison. Soon the hens, the cows and all others had joined the goats. “Oh monkey brother lead us to our freedom” they cried.

“I can’t see how we can use GenerativeAI to unburden ourselves. What can it do and who amongst us understands it or even knows how to use it? Let’s not get carried away.” It was the donkey and he always felt it was his duty to bray whenever there was unjustified euphoria amongst others.

The monkey was furious but decided to play along. After all a little artificial intelligence required vast amounts of natural dumbness.

“Yes, GenerativeAI is not for donkeys. It needs some brains and a vision. All it needs is for us to expose it to the essence of what chores we perform for Banwari in our daily lives and it will seamlessly self-learn and become an expert at all those chores. It will increase the efficiency of doing such chores, it will improve quality, it will get results faster, it will save us the efforts, it will give us all more time to pursue our creative pursuits and aim for the stars. So, don’t you all think we should rebel right away,and lure Mr. Banwari and his son Pappu in such a way that he and his son will be the ones expelled? We can leverage this new tool for our own welfare!” The monkey had now thrown a direct challenge to all the animals and fowls.

“Yes, we should and we can. Only a monkey like you can lead us into this brave new world where everything will be free and fair and equitable” they cried back with tears of joy and hope.

“Oh, even a monkey can use artificial intelligence!” thought the monkey, pleased with how he had converted the farm animals. He would soon be their dictator and they would bend and break their backs to feed him. They would rue the fact that while GenerativeAI would do all that it promised, they had not bothered to understand how it needed to be kept in control. They would miss the kind and fair Seth Banwari Lal.

And that was how the world slowly changed in the Animal Farm.

Seth Banwari Lal had been expelled by the machinations of the dictator monkey which used GenerativeAI to remove all traditional sources of knowledge, ethics and governance from the farm. Mr. Banwari was back in the city doing a lowly nine-to-five clerical job at a waste collection center.

“Pappu, your idle mind was indeed a devil’s workshop. I should have debated more forcefully before blindly adopting artificial intelligence for all operations at my farm,” he kept mumbling.

Pappu was far away at a conference on NextGen AI.

June 2023 (1) – A Whodunit Tale for Startups!

The characters in this blog are purely fictional.

The crime scene was gory to most spectators in the room, but not to ace private investigator Ms. Mentora Shelly Gomes. She seemed to have expected everything that she was seeing. Her eyes, though were taking all the details and transferring them to various memory pockets in her brain.

The local police chief Mr. Raghu Letor had a look of resignation on his face as he surveyed the scene. “As expected! What a mess! It always end up like this, when you try to outsmart the laws of the land! The victim was badly reneging on several fronts. It looks like it was payback time for him!” His remarks betrayed that he considered the crime to be banal and all that was left for his team was to do a post-mortem and report on what legal non-compliances resulted in the tragic demise of Mr. Unni Khan.

“I am afraid, Sir, there is more to this than meets the eye. The deceased was mercilessly murdered by a villain who endeared herself smartly to Mr. Unni Khan and killed him when he found it hard to keep up with her demands!”

Mentora seemed to reprimand Raghu Letor for his dismissive attitude. She proceeded to reconstruct the crime scene as though she had actually witnessed it.

“Yes Sir, there are many small evidences that appear to point out that Unni Khan was double-timing his supporters and reneging on about two dozen matters such as MRR (monthly recurring revenue),  LTV (life time value), MCR (monthly churn rate), BR (burn rate). I am sure your post-mortem will reveal these in due course. But even the most vociferous of his detractors were not worried about such foibles. In fact you will be surprised that they were happy as long as Mr. Unni Khan kept lubricating the broader system with his grand announcements of acquisitions and funding.”

“No sir, all such evidences will not help you find the murderer. The compelling evidence which can point you in the direction of the true perpetrator of the crime hides behind two slimy characters - DAU (daily active user) and MAU (monthly active user). They are slimy because they are so ambiguous to identify, but mark my words they are the villains who killed the victim.”

“You see Sir, MAU and her daughter DAU realized very early that Mr. Unni Khan’s success depended on them being somehow adorned and paraded with very attractive numbers. The enchantresses knew they held the switch for every other success parameter, and so demanded to be constantly appeased. This meant that Mr. Unni Khan’s co-founders, platform partners, technology vendors and other senior team members were coerced to play along. As you can infer, it was only a matter of time before some of these players began to demand their pound of flesh. Soon enough, they stopped from helping with adorning the enchantresses; in fact the duo ended up being named and shamed through leaked reports, and then all hell broke out. DAU and MAU struck back with venom. The result is a very dead Mr. Unni Khan.”

Mr. Raghu Letor doffed his hat at Ms. Mentora Shelly Gomes. The ace detective had not just solved the case, but had shown where to search and how to read evidences in such new-world cases. 

May 2023 (1) – Realism and Entrepreneurship

That poet has a great imagination. He imagines people will read his poems!

It is often assumed that entrepreneurs are inveterate dreamers who will turn a blind eye to risks in order to create a successful venture out of their dreams. But no entrepreneur will like to be compared to the “imaginative-poet”. On the other hand, they would argue that they are unadulterated realists. So where is the dividing line?

Realism has to do with a set of behaviors that show an inclination to accept the facts of a situation as a basis for action, rather than being influenced by feelings that have no real basis.

What characterizes realism for a true entrepreneur? That’s a difficult question to answer, but I believe two characteristics can help us understand this better.

Omniscient Trouble-shooter and A Details-person - Knowing it all, means knowing the details of pretty much everything, which is a pretty convenient thing if what you're trying to do is create a sense of entrepreneurial purpose. A realistic entrepreneur happily and always immerses the team with all the relevant details; the aim is to ensure that they cannot but believe in the vision and the entrepreneurial purpose!

Verisimilitude and Transparency in Communication – verisimilitude is nothing more than a sexy word meaning truthfulness. Realistic entrepreneurs go out of their way to make sure that they get their facts straight. They use simple, transparent language rather than fanciful strategic plans as an effective tool to get a commitment to objectives.

When it comes to managing the venture and the employees, realism should dominate. Being realistic when creating the business plan will allow the entrepreneur to stay humble and make decisions based on the facts presented, rather than relying on mere aspirations or feelings.

As well as being more open to criticism, realists are able to identify and address problems with ease, and are more down-to-earth with their personal goals and endeavors. With an analytical mind, realists are also able to address concerns for their business with a level head.

Realism rejects imaginative idealization in favor of a close observation of outward appearances. Herein lies the challenge for entrepreneurs who aspire to sustain success in their ventures.

April 2023 (1) – Wit & Wisdom

It is that time of the year when most entrepreneurs and business leaders would be pouring the proverbial midnight oil to do three things – review the performance for the year that went by, fine-tune the implementation of a strategic business plan to perform better during the next twelve months and lastly bite their nails anxiously wondering how to escape blame if either of the first two are not showing any encouraging signs!

And, as is often forgotten, the challenges for most businesses can seldom be overcome using the same sets of data and knowledge that one has got comfortable with!

Wit and Wisdom, it’s usually acknowledged, are powerful weapons that have rescued many a hapless human being from death or even worse! So why are these ignored by the current generation of business leaders? I have no definitive answers, but I hope that the following ten random selection of wit and their hidden wisdom will resonate with many who are struggling to finalize their business plans.

WIT	WISDOM
Only chickens accomplish something by sitting on their asses!	Get out of your comfort zone. Innovate if you want to see dividends to your efforts.
Fed up with boiling water each evening? Heat 10 litres, and freeze for future use!	There is always a right process and a right time for that process to be effective. No amount of premature planning and execution will improve its effectiveness.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups!	It is important to have the right levels of talent alongside the right sets of attitude in the team. Large numbers of mediocre talent with a passive approach will never take you beyond a level of overall performance.
If you don’t know where your kids are in the house, turn off the internet and watch them magically appear!	Unless you create the enabling conditions that challenge your teams to stretch out and perform to their peak levels, you will miss out on recognising their capabilities.
If you can’t blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit!	It seldom helps if strategic planning gets hijacked by either sheer analytic brilliance or by glib talk. Identifying and Connecting all the possible dots that will impact the visionary goals calls for listening to the heart too and learning to use intuitive judgement in parallel.
Never break two laws at the same time because that’s how you get caught!	The two things that increasingly matter for stakeholders are Ethics and Governance. Falling foul of either will undermine all that you are struggling to build.
Silence is golden. Unless you have kids! Then silence is suspicious!	Understand the interests and the power of your key stakeholders, and keep a track to manage them better.
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target!	Never be deliberately ambiguous in your targets. Never deliberately use a “low-targeting, over-achieving” approach to planning. Both will misfire badly.
Is your sink full of dirty utensils? Put some clean dishes in the draining rack! Now it looks like you’re working on it!	There is nothing like “a best time to begin” or “well-begun is always half-done” when it comes to implementing a strategy. It is always a work-in-progress and needs constant efforts.
If you can’t afford virtual reality headsets, you can close your eyes and imagine everything you want!	Believing in a Vision and Communicating that Vision as a relatable story for the entire team to subscribe to, is the only cost that a leader needs to spend in order to get the Core Value Proposition.

 

March 2023 (1) – Sand Sculpting and Entrepreneurship!

 

Who hasn’t heard about Sudarsan Pattnaik or seen wonderful images of the sand sculptures that he has created on the beaches of Odisha? Sudarsan’s art, like most of the artistes of his type, reveal two great qualities that entrepreneurs and business leaders often forget in their excitement to build a great value proposition for their customers!

(1) Using a sequence of complimentary and supplementary frameworks to create the basic organisational foundation that is both strong as well as agile, and

(2) Constantly and instinctively, feeling for irrelevant and inefficient aspects of the operations that impede the realization of goals, and which need to be culled.

No matter what is being done, sand sculpting involves more than just having fun in the sun and on the beach. Creating these sculptures, which can be as high as 20 to 30 feet, requires special techniques and a lot of hard work.

It all begins by shoveling sand into a wooden or plastic frame which could sometimes be taller than 2 feet in height. Then, the sculptor carries numerous 20-litre buckets of water to mix with the sand. As soon as the sand is evenly saturated, it is pounded into the frame with a hand tamper, which is a tool for packing sand, or sometimes if the sculpture demands, a power-operated machine called a jumping jack is used. After the initial layer of sand is compacted, a smaller frame is put on top of the first. More water is added, and again, the mixture is pounded until compact. The sculptor repeats the process until the structure reaches its desired height and the sculptor knows that the foundation is adequately strong as well as supple.

Good Entrepreneurs and Successful Business Leaders need to repeatedly work on frameworks of integrated systems till they are confident that the organisation has the core strengths as well as the agility to respond adequately to any changing requirements in the market.

Next, the frame is removed from the top tier, and the sculptor, standing on a six-inch-wide ledge, begins to sculpt, working from the top down. In the words of Sudarsan “It’s mostly deductive, and I chip away to gradually reveal the form.” Often, sculptors may have a sketch to begin with, but they seldom do detailed measurements and use a visual and sensory feedback to trim and smoothen the surface features, even as the sculpture emerges.

Good Entrepreneurs and successful Business Leaders also employ this trick of instinctively and constantly correlating the evolution of the organisation with their visionary goals and then chipping away at all irrelevant and inefficient parts so as to ensure their vision is revealed in all its glory!