Business & the Principles of War

The British armed forces (and thus the Indian armed forces) have 10 Principles of War. I learned it by the acronym COSSAC FAME. These are equally applicable to business strategy & tactics.

1. Concentration. Determine the chinks in the competitions offerings, needs that are not being addressed, segments that are not being served, ... Then concentrate on exploiting these weaknesses
2. Offensive Action. Be proactive. Do not wait for the customer to walk in the door. Go out and find her. Do not wait for the competition to obsolete your product. Obsolete it yourself. Actively seek innovation. Follow the golden rule, "Do onto others as they would do onto you; only do it first." When on the defensive, counter-attack to slow down the competition.
3. Security. Temper offensive action with measures to safeguard against exposing your own vulnerability.
4. Surprise. Innovate. Then execute with speed. Slow execution will alert the competition.
5. Administration. Meeting regulatory & legal requirements. Managing cash flows. Safe and hygienic working conditions ... Things that will not give you a competitive edge but must be done if you are to stay in the game. What Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution calls context
6. Co-operation. Between different function heads. They should not be working at cross purposes, or playing political games.
7. Flexibility. No plan survives contact with the enemy as expounded by von Moltke. Gen Eisenhower said, "Plans are worthless. Planning is essential." The actual scenario will not be quite the same as the one planned for. Business environments change, assumption turn out to be not quite true. If business plans are inflexible they will break.
8. Aim, Selection & Maintenance. There is a hierarchy of aims. At the very top is the Mission of the Business. This must be selected with due thought and then zealously maintained.
9. Morale. It is adversity that tests morale. What builds morale is not food courts, or week-end beer bashes, or company parties. Management must be frank and truthful on all company matters, must share the pain, must train people for tasks they are to handle and not set them up for failure. The CEO must take the lead. It calls for relentless and truthful communication through word and deed, and celebration of even small, individual, or team wins. Morale indicates the quality of leadership.
10. Economy of Effort. Get the maximum bang-for-buck. Be frugal - but effective.

Entrepreneurial Traits and Cricketers: Aggression

Aggression must be backed up by muscle (capability). Bluster, or posturing, will land you in trouble (read that as "You will get slapped by Bhajji and end up weeping on national TV":-)

In my experience of delivering software, an aggressive attitude in committing to customer demands, that does not take into consideration actual capability, will result in poor quality of deliverables, missed schedules, an unsustainable work process (heroics cannot be performed on a 24 x 7 basis)  and finally angry customers. I would much rather under-promise and over-deliver and have a sustainable process.

Having said that, sometimes heroics are called for. The operative word there is sometimes never 24 x 7. Stretch is fine, but beware of stretching beyond the elastic limit.

Set Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) but read this before doing so.

Set a target "to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade" but only if you have already build successful ICBMs.

This is the final post on "Entrepreneurial Traits and Cricketers"

Entrepreneurial Traits and Cricketers: Focus

One of the traits mentioned in the first post in these series was focus.

Problem with focus is it can get too narrow. That leads to tunnel vision. Or it can be too broad to the extent that everything is in focus - something like a wide angle lens

Let me give an analogy. Search and Track are two operating modes of radar systems mounted on modern fighter aircraft. The radar is capable of switching between both modes at a high frequency. Given the rate at which the scenario changes the effect is of simultaneous search and track. For tracking a target, preparatory to firing its weapons, the weapons system uses a narrow focused beam. For being aware of other aircraft in its vicinity - friendly or hostile - it uses the search mode which is much broader, far less focused, beam.

An entrepreneur needs both a narrow tracking beam to lock on and track her target and a broad scanning beam to tell her of likely threats, and collateral opportunities.

How broad is broad? How narrow is narrow? Depends on the market dynamics. That's what makes entrepreneurship fun!

Entrepreneurial Traits and Cricketers: Fear is Good

In my ealier post ,  I said that fearlessness is one of the traits that Dr Nandini mentions in her article in the "Entrepreneur".

I believe it is the ability to overcome one's fears, to not let fear cloud one's thinking, and not the absence of fear, that is important. And that requires training. And faith in one's capabilities developed through training.

Fearlessness is doing a trapeze act, without having trained for it.

As Andy Grove's book title says, "Only The Paranoid Survive". But it is paranoia that is under control, as he explains in the preface.

You need fear, "kyunki", as the ad for a soft drink has it, "Dar ke agey jeet hai" - because success lies on the other side of fear.

Entrepreneurial Traits and Cricketers

Last week, on a flight to Delhi, I was reading the February issue of the Entrepreneur. The lady in the aisle seat enquired if I was an entrepreneur and we got talking. She mentioned that she writes a regular feature in the magazine. The issue that I was reading had an article by her on entrepreneurial traits and styles of some Indian cricketers. The lady is Ms Nandini Vaidyanathan.

I have thought about her article for the past few days.

The article lists 11 traits:

1. Focus - Gambhir, 
2. Fearless - Sehwag, 
3. Reliable - Dravid, 
4. Outside the box (Nandini calls it "Do the impossible") - Laxman, 
5. Genius - Tendulkar, 
6. Leadership - Ganguly, 
7. Street fighter (Nandini calls it scrappy) - Dhoni, 
8. Identity - Irfan Pathan as an example of losing one's identity, 
9. Resilience - Kumble, 
10. Adaptability - Harbhajan, and finally 
11. Aggression - Sreesanth.

 Cricketers at this level have been playing the game since they were kids. They have had time to experiment with styles. They have varied their heroes. They have learned whether they were speedsters, or leg spinners, or off spinners, openers or middle order, close in fielders or outfielders. In short they have had a long time to discover their identity. They have had time to discover if they should pursue cricket, or become an engineer, or in some cases both. Except, of course, a prodigy like Sachin. Prodigies do not require time to discover themselves.

Entrepreneurs, largely, start much later in life. By that time their traits have been set. What is worse is that most entertain wrong notions of their traits. To discover their identity they need to go and play "gully cricket". But then scoring "ducks", or getting hit for "sixes" in "gully cricket" is very bruising for the self-image - also the pocket. A mentor, someone like Ms Nandini, can be of great help.

In subsequent posts I will write about some of the traits.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Needs to ask 5 Why

Our Foreign Minister, SM Krishna, commenced his address to the UN Security Council by reading out the address of the Portuguese Minister, translated copies of which would have been distributed in advance to all delegates attending the meeting. The Deccan Herald in Bangalore carries opinions about the faux pax. I hope the MEA does not adopt a similar attitude. People will wonder if our Nuclear Button is clearly marked. Won't do to have it confused with the button on some minister's office coffee machine :-)

The MEA needs to do 5-Why analysis. Here is what it might look like

1. Why did the Minister read out the wrong speech?

1. His own speech could not be distinguished from other documents in front of him.

2. Why could they not be distinguished?

1. Because his speech too was printed on the same stationery and the same printer as all other speeches and documents.

3. Why could the document not be printed on the Government of India stationery and put in a separate folder marked prominently as, "Address by the Foreign Minister of India, Shri SM Krishna, to the UNSC, on

"?

1. No sanction for special stationery.
2. Funds for getting special folders exhausted.

4. Why could funds, or sanction not be obtained?

1. Because the Indian Mission at the UN is not the CWG Organizing Committee.

5. Bingo! That's the solution: Make Suresh Kalmadi the head of the Indian Delegation at the UN.


Explanation of hiatus from Blogging
For those who were wondering what happened, since early January, I was attending to my mother, in Bangalore. She is much better now. Hopefully I should be back in Noida in a couple of weeks with more time on my hands. The couple of weeks that I spent in hospital, attending to my mother, gave me lots of time to reflect and read - I had no access to my laptop. I will blog about some of that.