A Professional for the Future
It is five o’clock in the morning on a September day by the seaside, away from Pondicherry. I am perched atop a 40-foot-high rappelling wall in the middle of nowhere, overlooking the Bay of Bengal. I am waiting to catch a glimpse of the sunrise. The sun will not come out for good fifty-five minutes more, but like a villager who must not miss his train, I like to be nice and early. Next to me in the breezy darkness, my Canon digital SLR camera is sitting quietly. Beyond the camera is a box full of lenses. This morning, the one that is particularly happy to be here is my newly acquired Sigma 500 mm lens. We are here to capture the first rays bursting through scattered clouds, announcing the arrival of another brand new day. I like my camera, the aluminum box, the tripod. I love the 500mm lens the most, though. There is something solidly attractive about it. I like his power looks. Yes, it is a he. He clicks into the groove of my SLR every time I slide him in, as if to say, “OK, let’s go”. Each time I set the vision, his whirr gives me a high. I call him Lens. Lens makes me feel professional.
I can hear the sea waves but can not see them. The silhouette of a fishing boat is now beginning to appear and I can see the clouds in waiting-just as curtains and backdrops wait for a rock star to make an appearance. We have time yet. So here I am, thinking about what it will take to be a great professional in the days to come.
These days, even a small town guy who owns a so-called “photo studio” has a digital SLR. I, waiting for the sun, wonder: what is the difference between him and professional such as Dewitt Jones or Raghu Rai? Since everyone can take great pictures these days, photo-shop them, and freely upload them on the Internet, what separates them from these two?
The sunrise is still another good ten minutes away. Lens yawns listlessly.
His mind does not wander like mine.
Ignoring him, I ask myself, is this question any less relevant for doctors, architects, software engineers, lawyers and dress designers? What is required to be called a professional in the future?
Lens looks at me, rolls his eyes and makes a face, very similar to an affectionately irreverent teenager.
Just then, on cue from the clouds, my body tenses-the Moment has arrived. I lift the camera, pick Lens up, and fix him in. He is sharp and engaged, ready for war. The sliver of red appearing from below has made me one with Lens and my camera. Silently, so as not to disturb the arrival, we begin clicking. A whirr, the sound of a click and the shutter closes. Soft like my breath. Then a small wait. Shoot. Wait. Shoot.
Soon it is a ballet. The initial stiffness of a preying leopard is gone. We are talking again. But this time, Lens is doing most of the talking. I think he is showing off a bit, but he clearly knows what the professional of the future is all about.
“Have you heard of Howard Gardener?” he asks, casually.
I reply, “Oh yes: the Harvard prof who has written twenty books and received twenty one honorary doctorates; the same man who questioned the role of IQ in determining intelligence. In fact, it was he who had propagated the idea of multiple intelligences.”
“Same man,” says Lens. He begins to refer to what Gardner had said about professionals of the future: that to be a great professional you have to master the five minds of the future.
“What about that?” I ask a little impatiently, more keen that we focus on the job at hand, concerned that it seems to be suddenly slipping away.
“Why, it was you who asked for the reason your country cousin of a studio photographer could not become Tom Hewitt!”
I can sense that Lens is miffed.
Whirr, click, shoot. Silence. Whirr, click, blink, shoot, silence. More silence. More shots.
Boy Grocer to Director, NIT
So, this week I am taking you to Trichy, the 2300-year-old, historic South Indian city that has been witness to dynasties like the Cholas, the Pallvas and the Hoysalas - not to forget invaders like the Moguls and the British and the French. Situated by the banks of the Cauvery, Trichy bears testimony to the rich learning and cultural heritage of the region. This is where we have the impressive campus of the National Institute of Technology (NIT) where we are headed today.
NIT, earlier known as the Regional Engineering College or REC, is where MindTree Co-founder Srinivasan Janakiraman comes from. This is where the son of a village postmaster, a young Janakiraman, took his graduate degree in technology before heading off to the Indian Institute of Technology for a master’s degree. Sometime back, Janakiraman (or Jani as we call him) was felicitated as outstanding alumni.
Today, we are visiting NIT with a purpose. We want to actually spend time with a group of NIT alumni who have established a primary school. It serves the needs of villagers nearby on whose land NIT was set up. The members of the alumni association have raised money to upgrade the makeshift school to an impressive building which is being constructed at an estimated cost of Rs. 70 lakhs. Jani and I are here to see how MindTree Foundation can get engaged with the school as our way of saying “thank you” to NIT for giving us the likes of Jani.
By the time we reach NIT, it is past nine in the night. After a quick meal, I lie down on my Spartan bed at the Guest House. I love the bare essentials in such places - University Guest Houses are clean, friendly and functional - sometimes very historic too. For all I know, a Nobel Laureate has slept on the same bed as I. That thought itself makes me feel wonderful and relaxed and before I know, I am asleep.
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I wake up early in the morning. The Youngman who brings me tea explains that the Director would be coming over to meet us for breakfast at eight. Now that is a surprise, we came to visit a primary school and of course I am talking to a bunch of students and faculty of the MBA course in the afternoon, but that does not warrant a meeting with the Director. But what choice do I have now? He, Dr. M. Chidambaram, wants to have breakfast with me and Jani!
Of Start-ups & High Performance Teams - II
From a team building perspective, start-ups go through different phases in their early years. In the beginning, it is mostly all about the core team. Then comes a stage when the core team must expand its sphere of influence to a larger group of people who come to join in the journey. Next, the start-up survives and moves on to become an established entity - it is in this phase that we have to look at teaming as an abiding way of the organization. No longer is it about just a few people or for that matter a group. This is what I wrote about in the last blog and we carry the discussion onto this week as I show case the learning from Arjun Erry and Mohinish.
Arjun Erry brought out some very interesting aspects of second-stage teaming. According to him, it is critical that we recognize “core” competence of the core-team. Find the gaps and fill them by hiring outstanding people. We have all heard about the idea of core competence and of course we know about core teams. But do core teams truly know their core competence? Do they feel emotionally secure to admit what they are not so good at? And what about timing? What happens when a core team takes longer than necessary to recognize its own gaps, initiates action, brings in supplementary talent and then assimilates the newcomer to eventually get the wheel of the chariot added? Well, if not sensed at the right time that you have a missing wheel, before you have even strated, the race is declared over!
Arjun Erry was looking at issues related to acquiring key talent that completes the team. In doing so, he underlined the importance of always going the extra mile to hire the “A” players. It is tough selling, but often the most critical first step in giving booster power to the rocket. Why “A” players? “Because”, “A”s hire “A”s, then the “B”s come. What do the “B”s do? They go and hire the “C”s. Before you know you have diluted the genetic pool of the organization and that can well mean the difference between a high performance company and just another start-up.
Arjun recommends that entrepreneurs take professional help in the hiring process. Not all founding team have the capability to talent scout. Some times you are so busy that you do not have the capacity to broad base your search. There are outstanding people who are often looking for the excitements of a start-up but belong to another industry! It is a good idea to choose a like-minded search organization and enlist their support just as you would go and sell your vision to an advertising agency or a PR firm to get their mindshare for the long run.
But handing over your specifications for a key hire to the agency is not enough. Arjun says, you must keep your involvement in the hiring process high. It is a top-management imperative. It is not something that can be outsourced and forgotten about or handled by HR. At each stage of talent induction and assimilation, the start-up team must deeply interact with the set of people who come on board - they must treat them as if they are semi-founders. When you build that mindset as against treating them as “employees”, you get ownership and not just bodies that are “work-for-hire”.
Of Start-ups & High Performance Teams
After MindTree got off to a great start, Sudeshna Shome Ghosh from Penguin sent me a mail asking if I would write a book for aspiring entrepreneurs using my experience of co-founding MindTree. That is how my first book The High Performance Entrepreneur came about! I am glad I wrote it because it seems to have filled a large gap. Having written the book, I am obviously very keen to learn from others on the subject and constantly look forward to interactions with experts on the subject of entrepreneurship.
A couple of weeks ago, I met three outstanding people at a TiE event in Bangalore - Mohit Bhatnagar of Sequoia Capital, Arjun Erry of Hunt Partners and Mohinish Sinha of iDiscovery.
Mohit initiated the evening with thoughts on start-up composition from the vantage point of a venture capitalist. His focus was on the early state of an enterprise. Arjun picked up from him and spoke on the idea of expanding beyond a core and Mohinish then picked up the relay baton completing the conversation by looking at teaming issues beyond the start-up stage. Let me start with you what I learnt from Mohit.
Mohit was pithy and powerful. He had a seven-fold view on the issue.
1. Balanced teams are better than a lone ‘Rock Star’
Almost every company that ever made it to the “A” list was a start-up of multiple founders. This fact is borne out by 30 years of data. It is hard being a lone Rock Star and take on the ups and downs of a start-up, all the way to it becoming a high performance enterprise. It is a little like rock climbing. “Find complimentary folks, do not go there alone if you can”, says Mohit. He should know.
