One of the most evocative television advertisements in this country has been
the little cameo where actor Pankaj Kapur samples a tomato ketchup and proclaims
"It's different!" This one simple line epitomizes the challenge that
many of our companies will continue to face in the new year-how to define and
implement this "difference"?
One truly "different" professional in the global Infotech industry
is Avinash Lele, who worked with the Tata Administrative Services in the Taj
Group and Tata Infotech, acquired a Law Degree in the US, and then spent five
years pulling one Indian software company out of the morass. What makes Avi
different is that he, like a handful of other people in this industry, is able
to see things differently.
One example that may well warm the hearts of many brilliant people running
small and innovative companies in India is his view that-contrary to popular
opinion which says that every company must aim to be Number One or Two in their
industry segment or get out of the way-there is a real value in every
successful company redefining its segment so that it is again Number Ten or
Eleven, giving its teams the impetus to look at new horizons and get some new
ambition to achieve higher levels of success.
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This difference in perspective is something that I have discovered and
treasured very much in the last three years during my interactions with
academicians and philosophers on the way to my PhD. During the early stages,
doing predoctoral coursework, the different worldviews of lecturers was just
something to be amused and sometimes enthralled by. As I went deeper into the
research process and got gored to near death in the progress seminars, the
insights of the professors came through like foglights on a murky Delhi January
morning and each, while seeming to contradict the other, contributed to a
picture of reality that enlarged with every interaction to accommodate newer and
newer inputs to finally blossom into a theory of Knowledge Management Maturity
that would transform management.
What can Software professionals learn from this is to value the
"difference" in views, perspectives and even employee and customer
expectations that they will come across in every new situation. Most leaders
will acknowledge that every deep interaction with individuals-shareholders,
customers, bosses, subordinates, colleagues and even suppliers-gives them
insights into a thinking process that could well be different from their own but
can add tremendous value to their work. Robin Sharma, author of the hugely
successful book "The Monk who sold his Ferrari" talks about the need
to ritualize leadership, and there is no doubt that it is leaders-read CEOs,
COOS, every CXO and every program or project manager in a software company-who
can learn to recognize and internalize different points of view will be truly
successful in competitive global marketplaces.
Back to Avinash and one more "different insight." He mentions one
Moore theory that suggests that as fortunes dip at the end of every business or
service cycle, the declining business itself shows the way to the creation of
new businesses which could be early opportunities in the life cycle and provide
rich returns for clairvoyant strategists who loom in the right direction and
capitalize on such opportunities. It is companies like GE, who are able to
reinvent themselves when markets change or business portfolios have to be
altered, can serve as role models for all Indian IT companies-big and small as
we step into one more year of challenge and promise.
The author is deputy chairman and managing director of Zensar Technologies
and chairman of Nasscom's SME Forum for Western India Ganesh
Natarajan