25 May 2010

Let us talk about Vision

Subroto Bagchi
(Arbor Mentis- a column by Subroto Bagchi, was published in the business magazine Businessworld.)

The subject of Vision has always intrigued me. What is Vision? What makes someone a Visionary? What makes ordinary people raise themselves to extraordinary heights when they are shown the right Vision? The word has its origin in the Latin word video that means, "I see". But at a deeper level, it refers to an "unusual competence in discernment or perception, intelligent foresight, it is the manner in which one sees or conceives of something. It is also said to be a mental image produced by imagination and a mystical experience of seeing as if with the eyes of the supernatural. (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language). Whether it is an unusual competence or a mystical experience, it is invariably associated with great leadership. Joel Barker, noted futurologist, defines a leader as someone we opt to follow to go to a place we would not go by ourselves. She is someone who takes us from our current state of existence to a future state at the base of which is her power of Vision. What are some of the characteristics of such people who shift us from our state of inertia into decisive action, leading to the creation of a new state of things? To start with, they have comfort in departing from the past. When we study great leaders, we find that many of them started by physically moving out of a place which would have provided them with the kind of safety that most people seek. Take Gandhi as an example. His turning point came when he left for South Africa. Mother Teresa's first great step was in leaving her homeland. Someone has said, "the safest place for a ship is the harbor. Yet, it was not built to stay there." Departure from the past is also a deeply mental concept. Many of us cling to the past in our mind, the same way others can not physically dislocate themselves from their zones of comfort. The Swedes are a great example of departing from the past. Two centuries ago, they started their own East India Company to trade with India and China. In the last century, they vacated the position of trading and became one of the greatest ship builders to the world. Today, if you go to the city of Gothenburg, the locals will show you a massive ship that now has been converted into a car park! The erstwhile nation of seafarers boasts of great companies like Ikea, Volvo, Scania,

SKF, ABB and Astra Zeneca. In the world of business, examples of significant departures from the past are many. GE Chairman Jack Welch exhorted a whole generation of people to move from product orientation to services, from national mindset to a global mindset. When such leaders ask their people to move from the past, it is not as if they have the fullest picture of how the desired future would unfold. Consequently, a Visionary must have a high degree of comfort with lack of clarity. Most people like clarity. When we are clear about things, we feel safe. We are told that there are people who are "path creators" and those who are "path dependent". Visionary leaders are path creators who are willing to actionate with only a speck of an apparition. Just the thought of a higher state of being for their people is often enough for them to articulate their thoughts and begin the process of the journey. When one sets sail for such a future state, most people get paralyzed by the thought of resources. Where would the money come from? Where would we get the right people? How would the right tools be got? You propose the smallest of things, the typical manager will first think of the resources only a person with a sense of Vision will start from the opportunity. Such people do not feel fazed with the paucity of resources. In fact, if we look at the history of the world and not just of modern business, we see that resources have always followed every great idea it is seldom the other way round. People with great Vision do not see failure as an option. They are committed to a beneficial outcome for their people who they carry along. At a personal level, they are not fazed by failure. These are people who are able to go against popular wisdom. They seek data and question it, even when it comes from their own mind. They know that sometimes, facts can be the enemy of truth. They have deep respect for intuition while seeking data and finally, these are people who do not conjure a Vision of the future around the constraints of personal survival. More about them, next time.

Of hairy, audacious goals & Vision born of darkness

When people envision a future for others around their personal need of selfpreservation, it never produces anything worthwhile. That is the reason why politics is a poor engine of national development. Quite often, professional managers and bureaucrats, when given the task of envisioning a future state, first think of what would happen to their personal interest they go about envisioning the future around the need for self preservation. That becomes the constant amidst all variables. When Gandhi was seeking freedom for Indians, he was not thinking about what position he would occupy in independent India. If the Chairman of a business gives precedence to his own continuity over growth, the latter will always remain hostage within the borders of his personal incompetence. The key therefore is to create a

Vision that does not worry about the future of the leader himself. Having said that, we need to understand the relationship between Great Vision and size. A few years back, the World Economic Forum gleaned lessons from well run businesses that governments could learn from. While doing so, it was felt that corporations that have made great progress, invariably set up "hairy, audacious goals". There is a direct linkage between great progress and the size of a Vision. It is easy to understand that one. People do not get enthused by an invitation to climb an anthill. In every person, is an innate desire to climb a mountain. Leaders who can stir that need, can rally people around. Not only is great Vision about "hairy, audacious goals", it invariably has the Leader both involved and committed. That is very different from armchair visioning in which people have no skin in the game. It takes away a myth that in any act of significant consequence, there can be someone who has the vision but remains detached from the struggle and it is someone else's job to deliver the revolution. The other interesting thing about Vision is the need for articulation in the simplest of words. Leaders often take recourse to sophistication in their communication. They choose lofty words that can potentially mean different things to different people. Yet, if we look at Gandhi's concept of "peaceful resistance", it could be immediately understood by the Eaton educated Nehru and the illiterate Indigo growers of Bihar in just the same way. Jack Welch talked to his people about "speed, simplicity and self-confidence" words that the smallest man in a GE plant anywhere around the world resonated with. Simpler the articulation, higher is the life of the idea behind it. That is why folktales live for thousands of years and corporate managers cannot remember Vision statements the day after attending an evangelical session. Great Vision is invariably born in difficult times. In other words, times of great difficulty often shroud a higher future the way to uncover that future is to engage the power of Vision. The film "Ten Commandments" gives us a fascinating account of how the army of Moses a people tortured, starved by the Pharaoh, went on to survive plague and marched hungry and bare-feet across a burning desert to finally reach the promised land. Those who have seen the account of William Wallace, acted by Mel Gibson in the film "Brave Heart" would recall that the burning desire for freedom consumed the ill-clad Scottish army of rag-tag men amidst mayhem by the ruling English who took away every bride after her wedding for a night, in exchange of peace for the Scottish villagers. We all know that Gandhi's inner call against racial discrimination and ultimately, the dream for a free India, was kindled when a white conductor in a South African train threw him out into the darkness of a deserted platform. The Japanese quest for world-class quality started when a group of Japanese businessmen, battered by the ravages of the war, living in a country that was

running out of food and had nothing to sell to the world, met Edward Deming to seek knowledge on how to create something that they world would agree to buy! Before the great Indian economic run of the current century started, India stood at the doors of the International Monetary Fund with the humiliating possibility of a loan default and had just a few weeks of foreign exchange reserve left to meet the needs of the nation. People who build great organizations and institutions spring back from moments of great difficulty that often hold the seed of a great idea and resolve to push it through. Fundamental to the great idea is the concept of inclusion. More on that, in the next issue.

Vision and the power of Inclusion

Whenever someone begins with a larger sense of inclusion while building a Vision, it is almost certain to be great. We repeatedly see this in the way human history has unfolded itself. The concept of Vision in modern business is new but not so in the history of sustained spread of ideas from the way the message of Christ, Mohammed or the Buddha spread. Each one had something for the ordinary people more they included them, greater became their spread. That may seem out of context in the pages of a business magazine. Not so. While building a business Vision, the same rule applies. Look at the reason for Reliance becoming a household word Dhirubhai Ambani's business Vision was to benefit faceless retail investors he built inclusion. Jamshedji Tata built inclusion with the families of people who worked in his enterprise. He could have just become as famous by paying top salary and safe working conditions for his workers in the Vision the man created, inclusive view of stakeholders was key. The way to build inclusion is to extend your zone of concern and the zone of influence to people who are twice removed from you. Think of the customer's customer. Think of the supplier's supplier see how your business footprint can benefit them. Netscape Explorer is a great example of building a technology Vision through inclusion. Thousands of copies were given away free by Marc Andreessen and company to developers at the beta stage. In turn, it became an extended developer community's mission to make the product deliver great feature and functionality. All the way back in the early nineties, Intel started the "Intel Inside" campaign when the company figured out that a desktop in any office could hold only two workstations. So, if they were to power the computing need for

offices, Intel's growth would be limited to the total number of office desks available. It is then that the company created a Vision to bring computing home that move called for "branding" something like a processor chip that none of us ever sees. The subsequent success of Intel has been stupendous even children hassle their parents to buy only a Centrino or a Celeron or whatever is the latest chip Intel announces. Through the "Intel Inside" campaign, Intel reached out to the customer's customer and made sure its growth and visibility was not limited to the designs of computer OEMs. Inclusion has been the reason for the great success of Walt Disney in its theme park for children, there is something for everyone. Inclusion has converted the once infamous Las Vegas from a place for drunken gambling and ogling middle aged men into a family destination today. Several of its hotels are among the world's very best with something for everyone in the family. It has made Las Vegas a miserably hot desert with all but a tiny strip of road into one of the world's most sought after holiday and conferencing destinations. Sometimes, Great Vision starts by deeply questioning the present state of things. In any developed country, a bi-pass surgery costs close to $100,000. When one imagines the same in a country like India, even after adjusting downwards for purchasing power parity of the rupee, the cost would still be prohibitive for ordinary people. That would make such expensive but life saving procedure unavailable to the poor. To someone like Dr. Devi Shetty, that was unacceptable. Dr. Shetty started with a Vision that said it is possible for ordinary people to benefit from state-of-the art healthcare. He questioned the cost of every procedure, his mind is working on how to bring costs down and where it could not be, look for innovative solutions like the Yeshwaswini scheme. Under it, farmers in villages pay Rs. 5 a month and get complete coverage for all major surgeries. The scheme is not run on benevolence. When you aggregate the small savings of a large base of small people, it is staggering. Refusal to accept a seeming anomaly, an inherent deficiency, a point of justifiable deficiency in a product or a service leads to Great Vision. Why should a bank have pre-determined working hours? Why should computers cost upwards of a thousand dollars? Why should long-distance calls be differently priced from local calls? Why should a clean hotel room cost upwards of Rs.5000 for a business traveller? Why should vehicle servicing be a daytime business? Why, why, why?

In the quest for the answers, great business models have been delivered right here in India. Having said that, not all great Vision is born out of deeply questioning the present state of things. Many great Vision are children of discontinuity. They flow from the future that does not yet exist. In the next issue, we will talk about that one.

Vision as child of the Future

In the last issue of Arbor Mentis, we talked about how Great Vision often begins with questioning the current state of things. Sometimes, they begin elsewhere. They can well be derived from a future that does not exist. In other words, you create a Vision in a "future backwards" manner and not in a "present forward" manner. A classic example of such Vision was the creation of the pager by Motorola. In the late 80's the company did a series of studies on what would be some of the critical challenges for people as the world increased its economic pace. It figured out that more people will be on the move - more than ever before they would need to be in contact. Easily, at low cost and in a wireless manner. The result of that Vision was the pager a low cost, easy to carry device. Had it been a present forward Vision, Motorola would have made a cheaper version of a cellular phone. It is another story though that in ten years, the cellular phone and the pager and the PDA and the Blackberry were all destined to blur into each other! Toyota's Green Car initiative was the child of a future backward Vision the company envisaged a world that would demand sustainable energy usage and would witness increased environmental activism. In the mid-nineties, I had visited another Japanese company Toto. At that time, it was seized with the ageing of Japan and was building toilet equipment that would fit in to the need of the quarter of the population that was to be over 60 years of age by the dawn of the 21st century. This included toilet design to enable instant pathlab tests. The creation of the latest Microsoft "X" box that will debut this November, is another such example. The product is not a gaming machine it will be the communication nerve center of the family. To take another example, out of 6 billion people who live in this world, 450 million are children below the age of 15 and live in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. If someone created a Vision around them and create a product or a service around that vision, it would be fit to be called "future backwards". Whether we create a Vision by questioning the current state of things or imagining a future that does not exist yet, one thing is certain. Great Vision feeds on positive action and a network of supporting Visions.

Great Vision is one that is acted upon with a sense of immediacy. Imagination without action is of no use. Not only it needs to be acted upon, it invariably depends on an eco-system of supporting Vision to see the light of the day. Toyota's Green Car is just in time for a younger generation that is a lot more environmentally conscious. The software Vision of India is dependant upon the economic Vision of reforms by successive governments. Having said that, let us now shift our focus to the all important question of who delivers great Vision? Great Vision is always delivered by average people with simple tools. Every great movement in the world from the march of Moses, to the Independence struggle of India or South Africa to Mao's Cultural Revolution all had to do with ordinary people with simple tools. What is complex about nonviolence or peaceful resistance? The Mahatma delivered the largest democracy with the power of an illiterate, half naked humanity. Mother Teresa created a 6000 strong network of sisters who are in 140 countries around the world. If you see their training and development system, you will marvel at their maturity. I once met a sister who was attending fashion design classes so that she could do a "train-the-trainer" program for other sisters. The Vision? To equip unwed mothers to become economically self-sufficient. Even today, the Missionaries of Charity do not use computers and e-mail because such things could alienate them from the poor whom they serve. Yet, they are 100% on-line with each other and run with amazing degree of simultaneity. Average people and simple tools! GE's Jack Welch galvanized the sleeping giant with his three words: speed, simplicity and self-confidence. At the root of Japan's economic resurgence was something as simple as the "7 QC Tools" the concept behind them is something that a fifth grader can understand. Ask most managers to perform a seemingly impossible task. They will be quick to point out that alas, they have a second rate team! In the history of the world, it is always a "B" team that has delivered an "A" job. In the next issue, we will conclude the series on building a Great Vision by looking the need to take people along and the need to sometimes, leaving a few behind. Vision: taking some along and leaving some behind Great Vision must take people along with it. Larger the ability to carry people with you, greater are the chances of success of the Vision. That bit is easy to understand. What we have problems dealing with is the fact that at times, while executing on a Vision, some people invariably have to be left behind. However great the power of persuasive thinking, there are always nay sayers. There are

always people who indulge in what is called "subversive compliance". These are people who say "yes, yes, yes" to you and go back to do the exact opposite of it. Leaders must have comfort dealing with them. The important thing is to realize that we should not waste time trying to carry everyone with us. Peter Drucker would say, do not waste time feeding the problem. Feed the opportunity. You will be surprised how often this message is lost on leaders. A classic story that drives home the message is that of the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra. For years, it was performing below par. A new Conductor came and within a short time, it became world-class. Peter Drucker asked him the recipe of his success. He said that he always focused on the few people at the top. According to him the gap between the best people and the average in any organization is always constant. The trick is to improve the performance of the best, the rest automatically move up. Great Vision always reserves room for providence and lends itself to the power of emergence. If you have thought through in fullest detail on how to execute the Vision, then probably you do not know that you do not know. Great Vision is an apparition of the future not the future itself. We must be open and flexible to changes as we go along. Apart from that, Great Vision must have inherent risks and real possibility of failure. There is nothing called a "risk-free" future. While we embrace the risks and sometimes we begin a great voyage to discover India, we end up discovering the United States of America instead! That is quite acceptable. Sometimes, on the path of a Great Vision, every single day, we see reasons to be deeply unhappy. That is perfectly normal. Yet, it is not reason enough to question the Vision itself. Ask Azim Premji or Narayan Murthy in their sleep, they will tell you ten things about their respective corporations that deeply bother them. Yet, they must trudge along. As we come to a close on this subject, I want to share with you my last thought. Great Vision has no place for cynicism. Search the whole world and you cannot show me a "cynical visionary". Let me share something from my personal life here to drive the point home. My mother came from a poor family with many children. As the last born of her widowed mother, she was dependent on the meager earning of her two brothers. Her family was naturally relieved when she was married off. What she did not know was that the man she married, suffered from periodic bouts of schizophrenia. Either my father's family suppressed the fact or they were just ignorant.

Even today, many people think that a good marriage often solves settles down people who suffer from mental illnesses. After delivering her third child, my mother realized what the problem was. The door to her past was closed. In the 1930's, in small town India, there was nothing a woman could do. She took charge of the situation. She went on to accept my father's condition and she supported, loved and respected him for what he was. She never ever complained of her fate. In the years to come, she became the rock of Gibraltar in the family. Despite her state, she had a Great Vision that her sons will grow up as confident, capable men of great character. When the first of the five joined the IAS in 1966, she was in her fifties and everyone thought her Vision had come true. Just at that time, due to corneal ulcer, she became completely blind in both her eyes. She lived without sight for three more decades. But each day of her blindness, she woke up cheerful, was fully engaged with the world around her and always asked us to do our best. From her, I learnt that even when you lose your sight, there is no need to give up your Vision. Cynicism does not ever deliver the world.