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!
