Building Successful Businesses

India: A Land of Opportunities

From time immemo­r­i­al India has been a land of oppor­tu­ni­ties. Many have this view that we were prim­i­tive peo­ple in the past and west­ern influ­ence has helped us to pros­per. The oppo­site is true, in many ways. Let’s take a sim­ple exam­ple. The GDP of India was esti­mat­ed at 25% of the world GDP in the 16th Cen­tu­ry. With the arrival of the British, the econ­o­my start­ed to decline. Indi­a’s share reduced from 24% in 1700 to 3% in 1950. Even now we are strug­gling in many ways to improve the GDP.

If you look at famous explor­ers like Vas­co da Gama and Colum­bus, they were explor­ing sea routes to India. Ofcourse, Colum­bus end­ed up in Amer­i­ca. The very fact that explor­ers from sev­er­al coun­tries were sail­ing to India proves our pros­per­i­ty.

Sev­er­al cen­turies ago and even today, India remains a land of oppor­tu­ni­ties and you must make use of it, being in the land.

There was active exploration of trade routes to India from all over the world. No one would trade with beggars. Would they?

Q: What are the building blocks of a successful organization?

Obvi­ous­ly mon­ey! Just kid­ding. No mat­ter how much mon­ey you have to start a busi­ness, the peo­ple are the most impor­tant part. Infact, a com­pa­ny is just an “orga­ni­za­tion” of peo­ple in a cer­tain way to achieve a goal.

Peo­ple in the organ­i­sa­tion are the limbs of an organ­ism. Each limb must move in per­fect coor­di­na­tion. Limbs can­not have their own agen­da. Then the organ­ism can move nowhere. Sim­i­lar­ly, the peo­ple in an orga­ni­za­tion must work in absolute coher­ence for the organ­ism to keep mov­ing and that too rapid­ly.

If you have to build a successful organization, you must invest in its people.

Let me tell you a recipe for a good team. Have you heard of the Pan­cha Bhutas? Can you name them? Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space. These ele­ments give us great insights on form­ing a per­fect team.

Let’s take earth. Earth is the ground beneath you. Sta­ble, secure and sol­id. A team mem­ber with the qual­i­ty of earth can bring great sta­bil­i­ty. Ideas can fly, but we need some­one to keep the team ground­ed. Some­times a real­i­ty check is help­ful.

Water is free flow­ing. It lubri­cates. We will need some­one who is flu­id. Many peo­ple I have met are so rigid! if they fix some­thing, they do not have the matu­ri­ty to han­dle changes. They get stressed out if things change. Peo­ple who resem­ble the water ele­ment, are flu­id and can han­dle changes with­out stress. They also act as a lubri­cant when “fric­tion” increas­es in a team.

Fire! It just burns! Peo­ple resem­bling the fire ele­ment are extreme­ly action ori­ent­ed. They are on 24 by 7. They can be tough task mas­ters but if you just allow them, they will burn all the obsta­cles and just put the orga­ni­za­tion on the path of rapid suc­cess.

Air is all breezy. If every­one is wor­ry­ing all the time, we will need some­one who is care free. Peo­ple resem­bling the air ele­ment move fast with ideas. Left on their own, they would gen­er­ate excel­lent ideas. They may not be good imple­menters but will be very vision­ary. They can help set great vision for the orga­ni­za­tion.

Air element people can generate great ideas. We will need earth element to make the ideas practical and fire element to take the ideas forward.

Space. We love space! It holds every­thing togeth­er. Does­n’t it. Most of us fail to notice the space that car­ries all these objects. We only see the objects. Peo­ple resem­bling the space ele­ment are those invis­i­ble silent peo­ple who hold the orga­ni­za­tion togeth­er. It would take tremen­dous effort on your part to know their true val­ue because they do not care if you know or not. They just hold things togeth­er in a gen­tle embrace and things just hap­pen.

It is not nec­es­sary that your orga­ni­za­tion has 5 peo­ple resem­bling these ele­ments. Small­er teams can cul­ti­vate these qual­i­ties and cre­ate a mag­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion.

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