Entrepreneucide: 3 ways to kill your own business!!

When the economy starts behaving awkwardly, when job cuts and salary delays become a norm, when your work seems to get monotonous and unexciting and when the fire within to prove your worth gets tough to quell, then my dear friend, the time is just perfect for you to head the entrepreneurial way. It is never late to be an entrepreneur and neither is it too early to start your enterprise. You just need to have the hunger within and the passion and conviction for whatever you want to start your business in. 

Beware of the symptoms leading to Entrepreneucide -
an act of killing your own venture mercilessly

In the past 5-6 years, you must have learned a lot from your mistakes; you have also felt as if you have reached the end of the world when your efforts (read: performances) were blown to pieces by your tormenting boss(es). But, my dear friend, there is always a learning in all these and nothing goes in vain.  You learnt how to work on a business proposal by staying awake for 2 nights, you learnt how to make that powerpoint presentation look more slick and fascinating after getting yourself tortured by your boss, you learnt how to stand your ground and negotiate hard with the client, when your job was all that you could have traded off for and you learnt a lot more in order to stay focussed and get the numbers moving. You have finally arrived - you are all set to take the plunge in the world of your own venture. 

But, entrepreneurs have their own setbacks, their own shortcomings, which if not taken care of, are bound to doom him and his venture - he may lead on to an Entrepreneucide (a new word: killing your own entrepreneurial venture). So, take a cautious step forward, as right now you are the one to drive your own destiny without any confirmed paycheck at the end of the month - you are all alone out there, with just your passion, commitment and conviction to stand by you.

So, what are the common mistakes committed by entrepreneurs? Let's take a close look at the top 3:

a) Being rigid and dictatorial: Examples are abundant of entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs who have been rigid and dictatorial in nature. While some are open to ideas from people around, there are many out there, who may trash them completely, stamping their authority when it comes to ideation and decision making. Now, that is suicidal. An entrepreneur, no doubt is highly passionate about whatever he is into and probably knows a lot more than many in his line of business, but there are other functionalities in a business, for which he need to depend on professionals who have worked it out in the domain for years. You can have a say in terms of how your product should be like or what should be your target base or what are the kinds of people you want to have in your firm, but there are other strategic decisions related to finance, HR, marketing, production, quality, etc, for which the right man at a senior level should be given the freedom to perform his duty for which he is being paid a fat paycheck. Unfortunately, there are many such duds, who decide to wrap their entrepreneurial venture, even before it has set off, simply because, he thought he was the best mind in every department.

b) Being profit focussed, not value-focussed: An entrepreneurial venture has to be value-focussed. It needs to create and add value for all stakeholders. The value creation need not be in terms of the market capitalisation (remember, all entrepreneurial ventures need not be listed) or the bottom line, but should encompass creation of more jobs, focussing on sustainable income generation for the internal customers (employees), touching the lives of its end consumers (by maintaining high quality standards of the product/service it delivers), creating positive rapport with the media (creating goodwill and positive image), etc. Entrepreneurs who fail to see beyond the commercial realm of business, fail to add value to their stakeholders. This does no good to the entrepreneur or his venture and soon he may decide to wrap up his trade. 

c) Being eccentric and not practical: To be an entrepreneur, one needs to be superlatively creative and eccentric. If someone tells you so, he would be a big fool and he understands nothing of entrepreneurship. Yes, thinking out of the box, or working on a blue ocean strategy, may lead you to start a business with a fantastic idea, but to really establish yourself in this huge world of millions of entrepreneurs - big and small - you need to be practical. Eccentricity, to an extent is fine, but if that's what becomes your mantra, then you end up like that idiot crow in Panchatantra, who wanted to look beautiful and hence decided to put on peacock feathers on its wings. Entrepreneurship is all about practicality. Start with a low profile, put in your heart in the venture, be the person you always used to be and win as many friends as possible. You try to become the crow with peacock feathers, you end up losing friends, you end up being called an eccentric hypocrite. There are many in this world, who, intoxicated with a false sense of deja vu, end up losing focus in their lines of business. You do that, and you are half dead!!

Although I do not claim to be an authority in the current subject, I am open to criticism, flak and 'death threats' from some of those entrepreneurs who would seethe in rage reading about some of the harsh realities that I have quoted here. From my experience as an academician in an institute (which specialises in entrepreneurship), I have been witness to many entrepreneurial ventures (by students and colleagues), which have lost steam due to various reasons - funds, market conditions, etc. But, successful ventures which have hit a rock bottom because of the entrepreneur's intent to commit hara kiri (or Entrepreneucide) have been equally numerous and astoundingly shocking.

I welcome my readers to comment generously in whatever they have found right or wrong in my article, but I am sure this article would be a lesson for many of my students who have set sail in their entrepreneurial journey.

A memoir on the evolution of India’s socio-politics and economic policies from the pre-colonial to the mid-nineties

(Book review on THE IDEA OF INDIA by Sunil Khilnani)

The book is a vivid description of the socio-political-economic order of India from the pre-colonial era till around 50 years after independence (around 1996) – the year Sri H D Deve Gowda, assumes the Prime Ministerial responsibilities of this great nation. While traveling through time, the author takes the readers through a celestial journey in the most descriptive, yet lucid manner, spread across 4 chapters – Democracy, Temples of the Future, Cities and Who is an Indian? In every chapter, he leaves behind a lot for the readers to ponder upon and to debate on the current (mid-nineties) socio-political environment.

The opening chapter on Democracy could not have been a better description of the country’s struggles to come to terms to the concept of democracy, after centuries of colonial oppression. As the author himself notes – “Few states created after the end of European empire have been able to maintain democratic routines; and India’s own past, as well as the contingencies of its unity, prepared it very poorly for democracy. Huge, impoverished, crowded with cultural and religious distinctions, with a hierarchical social order most deliberately designed to resist the idea of political equality, India had little prospective reason to expect it could operate as a democracy.” But, this concept of democracy, which the author defines as – “a type of government, a political regime of laws and institutions,” had “penetrated the Indian political imagination and has begun to corrode the authority of the social order and of a paternalist state.” What follows next is a frank description of the evolution of democratic systems in the nation through the layered social structures of varnas & jatis (Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Sudras), explaining how economic and social balances were maintained in the days of the yore and finally raising a question – “Did British rule ruthlessly fracture the patterns of Indian society, or was it compelled to adapt to native styles, and merely preside in glorified manner over the more subterranean movements of India’s history?” This is where, the author introduces the Indian National Congress and its gradual evolution from “a stiff debating club that met annually during the Christmas vacation” to what Nehru once commented it as, “the mirror of the Nation.” The author then goes on to give an account of the role of Congress under Gandhi and Nehru during the freedom struggle and moves on to define the phase between 1947 till Nehru’s death (in 1964) as “… unsurpassed importance, during which the state stabilized, became a developmental agency and aspired to penetrate all areas of the society’s life, and showed that it could be subject to democratic procedures.” The author further illustrates the various political and economic changes that followed hereafter, from Indira Gandhi’s rule to Emergency to her assassination to communal tensions during the Babri Masjid demolition and the resurgence of Hindu nationalists. He finally ends this chapter by stating, “Conflict is a part of what Democracy is: a raw, exciting, necessary and in the end ultimately disappointing form of politics, that encourages people to make for themselves that most intimate of choices – to decide who they are and how they wish to be recognized, and to refuse to be ruled by those who deny them recognition.”

 In the next Chapter, Temples of the Future, the author describes how in the mid-50s onwards, a new and resurgent India tried to cope with the economic and commercial requirements by investing heavily in various infrastructure projects – starting from the Bhakra Nangal Dam in Punjab to building a new capital in Chandigarh (by Le Corbusier) to the gigantic steel plants in Durgapur, Bokaro and Bhilai (aided by the British, Germans and Russians) – “embodied the vision of modernity to which India had committed itself.” This is where the author comes down heavily on the developmental agenda of the newly elected Governments in the early phase of post Independent India by stating, “the economy created in the name of the intellectual blueprint of the 1950s, state-directed and regulated, founded on heavy industry and isolated from international competition, has not delivered its promises.” He goes on to critically dissect what went wrong through the first 50 years in post independent India and explains, “Nehru’s economic design was unquestionably more coherent than any of its Indian rivals in the 1950s. But it had to be built in real and particular circumstances, and inevitably intentions did not match outcomes.” The difficulties, he points out, “were rooted in the land: a very unequal distribution of land-ownership, defended by a powerful social order and very low levels of productivity.” Khilnani raises the question why, even with the Congress party ruling most of the states until 1957, economic reforms could not be administered. He finds out, “…Congress had never been a strongly ideological party… it was a broad political coalition, itself dependent on what some have described as ‘India’s ruling social coalition’ of commercial and industrial capitalists, rural landlords and the bureaucratic and managerial elite (in later decades, newly enriched farmers and unionized public sector workers would clamber aboard this coalition raft).” An interesting account on the failure of Indian planning and Planning Commission follows with the latter gradually “toppled from its throne” shifting the economic decision-making powers to the Finance Ministry in the late 1960s, while the commission continues to exist as “a sophisticated accounts office and a retirement home for the socially benevolent.”

In the third chapter, the author pens down the sentiments of Nehru behind building metropolises with a vision to “not only make them symbols of a new sovereignty but an effective engine to drive India into the modern world.” Khilnani gives an elaborate description of how the port cities of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras came into existence during the colonial regime and later, in the post independence era, newer cities were built to relive Nehru’s vision. The author went on to describe the changing skyline over the next couple of decades and how India’s modern cities competed for global visibility and recognition.

In the ultimate chapter of this book, Khilnani raises an interesting question – who is an Indian? At the time of independence, the country had a “multitude of Hindu castes and outcastes, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and tribes; speakers of more than dozen major languages and thousands of dialects; myriad ethnic and communal communities” – how to unite such a diverse group as citizens of a new, free and democratic republic under a common code of law? He sets the tone of the chapter by recounting the horror of the Ayodha communal riots (read: carnage) and linked it with BJP’s electoral manifestoes, which saw this as the forging of ‘one nation, one people, one culture.’ The author further depicts how the various communal, ethnic or social movements, for the demand of an independent Bodoland, Khalistan or Tamil Eelam, have further dented India’s image as a nation united in its diversity. He concludes by explaining, “The contest is over economic opportunities and about cultural recognition. It is a contest for ownership of the state.”

Overall, the book finds close semblance to Nirad C Chowdhury or VS Naipul’s historical delineation of facts, while it is enriched with political economic detailings of Amartya Sen or Dreze and the socio-political perspectives of Pawan Verma.

Understanding the psychology of mob behaviour: A case on Maruti mob attack (July 2012)

Burnt and vandalised cars left in the 

Manesar plant of Maruti

 It was a black day for the industrial community in India, the day when a young HR personnel at the rank of a GM suffocated to death in his office due to a fire put on by workers, who had no respect for law or order, least to say any worth for human life. Media reports also stated that the same person was first beaten up by the workers with steel rods and blunt auto parts, which resulted in multiple fractures in both legs, thereby making the person an easy prey to the engulfing inferno. Left to perish, with no help in sight, he finally succumbed to his injuries and was reported death by suffocation along with 100% burnt.

This was no one-off incident, which took place in a factory in the depth of rural India – away from the civilized urban world. Unfortunately, this incident took place in the very heart of civilization within 50 kms from Delhi NCR in Maruti Suzuki’s plant in Manesar – one of the fastest growing industrial townships in North India. And, this GM was not the only prey in this mob-frenzy that broke out that day, in that doomed Maruti plant. Some 40 other executives, many of them at the ranks of GM and some at the ranks of VP were predated upon by hordes of workers, with little knowledge of what they were up to.

The above-cited incident reflects on to an action, which can be commonly termed as mob-attack. Let’s first try to understand the meaning of the term ‘mob.’ A mob is a crowd of people with no defined objective, although the group is big, most-often leader-less and highly emotionally charged. What starts off as a systematic protest, in the above case, by a trade union, actually moves on to become a disoriented, mass movement, with a goal to cause unwanted destruction of life and property.  

According to social psychologists, there are various factors, which come into play when the term mob mentality or mob behaviour is referred to. Two of the main factors are the greater anonymity that exists within a group and the distribution of responsibility for the group's actions. These factors sometimes make a person believe that they can act a certain way within a group and not have the same consequences that the same actions would have if he or she acted alone. For example, if a person is in a group that is vandalizing a building, he or she might believe that there is less of a chance of getting caught than if he or she was acting alone, because it might be difficult to identify every person who was involved. He or she might also feel less guilt because other people also vandalized the property.

Another factor in mob mentality is the sense of confusion or even panic that can exist in a large group. An example of this can be seen when people in crowds suddenly begin rushing in one direction. Although many people in the group might not know why this is happening, they see the urgency in the group and begin rushing in that direction, too. In extreme cases, the urgency and panic increases, creating a sort of crowd hysteria, and some people might even get trampled as a great number of people try to move in the same direction as quickly as possible. Even for something as seemingly innocent as a department store sale, a mob mentality might be evident as dozens of shoppers rush toward the sale items, push each other out of the way and fight over the items.

According to Floyd Allport (1924), noted social psychologist, "there is no psychology of groups which is not essentially and entirely a psychology of individuals". When it come to collective action, Allport declared, still more famously: "the individual in the crowd behaves just as he would behave alone only more so". Crowd members lose their unique and idiosyncratic identities and behave in terms of a primitive animal substrate.

Crowd members who take part in violent action or action against the social order might be expected to have violent or anti-social personalities - or, at the very least, to be under- socialised or marginal to society. As the official US Riot Commission report of 1968 acknowledged, the most prevalent view was that "rioters were criminal types, overactive social deviants or riff-raff - recent migrants, members of an uneducated underclass - alienated from the society." Drawing analogy to the incident that took place at Maruti with the commentaries shared above, it can be very well justified that the vandalism that took place there was ignited by the demands of the working class – a demand to reinstate a suspended worker – which was not to be accepted by the management. Although the workers were not marginalized in terms of their numbers – the media had quoted around 2000 workers – but their sense of feeling marginalized was evoked by their social class order (working class). When the long negotiations in the plant failed to get any peaceful resolutions, the workers erupted in the most antagonistic manner.

Most mob attacks or acts of vandalisms are caused by
mindless, brain-dead individuals who have no concern
for life of property

As a common man, one can only wish to stay away from such mob-attacks, but one never knows when he gets dragged into one. The incident that took place in Maruti’s plant at Manesar is no doubt one of the most horrendous incidents to have happened in my lifetime. My heartfelt sympathies go out to the family of the bereaved as well as to all the workers, for whom the future employment in the plant seems bleak. One miscalculated, misjudged and mistimed step taken by an immature group of brain-dead people has lead to undesirable consequences – most often turning sour, rather than getting any sweet results out of such unwanted actions.