And Vijay Says…

I am an eternal optimist. I published my wish list for the first Modi government when they took office 5 years ago . As you can see for yourself, none of those things happened in any significant manner. And yet, here I am with a new list – and I will append the original wish list under it, since I still think they are all things that are absolutely worth tackling.

Photo from : https://www.abplive.in/election/lok-sabha-elections-pm-modis-majority-is-minority-speech-in-wardha-not-a-poll-code-violation-ec-978420

Convince Muslims and Christians that they are first class citizens of India

I can’t think of anything else as more important for this term of Modi government. Modi has already made statements to this effect , but it remains to be seen if he and his party will walk the talk.  Election rhetoric from his party was clearly anti Muslim. BJP does not have a single muslim MP this time – despite Muslim population being about 190M in India. The specific trouble here is that Modi himself usually says (more or less) the right things on India’s secular nature – but when the extreme sections of his fan base resorts to atrocities against minorities, he usually chooses to keep quiet. That is NOT what the leader of the largest democracy should do – he should condemn it loudly, repeatedly and immediately !

Revive the economy, and fix the regulatory framework  

The jobs he promised did not materialize. The note ban did not yield the results he thought it will. And GST rollout – a much needed reform – left a lot to be desired in how it was implemented.

I would expect lowering of income tax will happen in short term (may be in the first budget itself) , in the hopes that the common man will improve consumption (as opposed to save the cash), and that increased spending will result in more jobs (as opposed to corporates just conserving cash or treating it as profit alone).

Tourism is easy money. With its rich history and beautiful natural attractions, its fairly easy to attract tourists to India. But there are many issues that stand in the way – including inconsistent last mile connectivity from airports to the touristy places.

But the larger problem that no government so far seemed to have the stomach to fix is the totally fragmented nature of regulatory structure. There are just too many overlapping regulatory bodies – and that is neither helping common consumers nor companies.

The RBI is governed by law passed in 1934  . RBI’s independence – at least the way I understand it – seems to be a factor of who holds that office at a given point in time. RBI controls the banks – but what about the rest of the financial markets ? Look at the pension type schemes – there is EPF and NPS without clear guidelines on portability.

Income tax is governed by law passed in 1961 . I remember listening to lectures in my Business school days about why this does not fit the times we live in. That was more than 20 years ago, and it has not been modernized. When will we get around to it ? India needs more fairness, consistency and more transparency to be a leading economy.

Prepare India for the long term

National security and Hindutva messaging worked great in Modi’s favor for the elections. I am fairly sure governance will return to more of a middle of the road mode though.

I am not a fan of everything Nehru did in his three terms – but one thing he deserves credit for is about putting in place a vision for the future. He did not just work on problems that were material for any given five year term. Later Rao did the same in his term – and a lot of the goodness we see today are due to governments who looked far into future. Now it is Modi’s turn to aim for long term greatness of the country, and balance it with the goals for next five years he is in office. Given the terrible state that INC is in – he might well have ten years and not five . But all of it will be a huge waste if the seeds are not sown for the future.

What is India’s strategy as automation picks up speed ? Computers will replace some forms of labor – and computers won’t care if those jobs are Hindu jobs, Muslim jobs or Christian jobs. An arms race with Pakistan won’t matter in how we solve this problem. Now is a good time to figure out what our strategy is.

Look at the composition of India’s GDP. More than 50% is services , about 30% is Industrial and Agriculture type stuff makes up the remaining 20%. We are a country with more than a billion people. Is this the mix that is sustainable for the future, or even the present for that matter ? The irony is that even today we refer to services as “tertiary” in this classification !

I am very grateful for the solid education that the Indian system gave me when I grew up there. But the public education system that caters to hundreds of millions of students are in urgent need of modernization. And it needs to be done keeping in mind that the future generations might actually hold several different jobs unlike what the present one does.

All of this will take time – but with the clear majority that Modi has, including the potential to win Rajyasabha majority as well in future, I hope it is used in the most constructive way possible and not wasted in arguing about religious superiority and other low value items.

 

Late on Wednesday night, I got an email that essentially said we moved from #5 to #1 on a certain important metric . This was a big goal for our team, and we were all working hard for it. So I shared the news with my leadership team right away . Thursday morning, one of them (who is new to the team) asked how we managed to pull it off . And my reply was that our secret ingredient was LOVE, and cued in the Barny song . Of course it sounded terribly cheesy 🙂

In any case, here is what I meant by LOVE in this context

LOVE = Level Set + Operational Efficiency + Valor + Execution Excellence

It’s a simple formula that has served me well throughout my career

Level set

There are three parts to doing a good level set – starting point , destination, and the first couple of milestones.

You need to know where you are starting from – what works , what doesn’t work , strengths and weaknesses of the team, existing relationships and all that. More important – a good honest hypothesis on WHY we are where we are, and WHY we need to change. The trick here is not to get bogged down in details . Get a good enough starting point and have the confidence that you can tweak along the way as you progress and learn more .

You need to make sure everyone else knows the starting point too , and that they are bought into the first upcoming milestone – and the long term vision . Strength of leadership is in making sure you have both an actual vision and at least a few initial milestones in place before you start . One without the other does not go anywhere far.

Operational Efficiency 

I grew up in a culture of being metrics driven. It has its definite advantages – but also some problems that need to be addressed. I like to be a metrics minimalist. Any measurement that does not give me a chance to change the outcome is a metric I can live without.

I am a big fan of keeping things simple so that everyone gets what they need to do. Complexity does not scale – and your job as a leader is to encourage your team to simplify everything that can be simplified. You need a simple way to track progress – and the process needs to be tweaked as you learn more along the way.

You need to be pragmatic about metrics. Metrics is not the end – it is just a means to an end. If you don’t realize that – you and/or your team will just find ways to game the metrics. Fascination for metics at its extreme is also the primary cause for premature optimization.

Valor

The very fact that you are in a turnaround should indicate that some things were messed up in the past. The starting point to a turn around is that you need a lot of courage to take it on – simply because you don’t really know if you have actually hit the bottom, and it might sink further on your watch. But your own courage is just a starting point. Your team needs to find the courage to face the hard problems , and look at them differently in a positive frame of mind. And they won’t do it until they see their leaders have their backs – which goes back to the point of the leader having the courage to begin with.

This is also why it is important to celebrate successes – however small, and even if the net result is still in negative territory. Positivity breeds more positivity and eventually gets you the collective momentum you need . A lot of turn arounds fail because people feel their efforts went thankless for a long time. That is squarely on leaders – if you truly care, you need to express your sincere gratitude to the people who trusted you and put in the effort. In the same breath I will add that if you don’t mean it – don’t put on a show, as your team will see through it quickly and it only does harm .

The true tests of courage is the trust and transparency of the leader. Most people can see through the BS if you try to spin the message. Also, it is a lot less stressful for leaders to be transparent and admit that you don’t have all the answers and that you need their help to find solutions, than to pretend that things are rosy and make up some convenient answer.

Execution excellence 

This is where everything comes together. Planning and preparing only takes you so far – the real test is what you do every hour of every day. You have to clearly say what you are going to do to your stakeholders, and then go do exactly what you said you will do. And when things don’t work the way you thought – you need to tell them what did not work, and what you are going to do about it, and then go do that. Success of a turn around is due 99% to perspiration , and just 1% to inspiration .

True excellence means that you don’t need to drive this top down any more, and that the team does it as their routine work and grow into leaders themselves.

Post script

Looking back over a long period of time, we all realize that turning around a problem is perhaps the relatively easy part in hindsight. Things can go south at any point – either because you slacked, or because there were others who put in more effort and thought into it than you did, or because the environment changed externally and internally and you did not see it coming, or maybe just plain bad luck. That is why its important to iterate- and why you have to celebrate success, say thank you to people who made it happen, level set to a new baseline and start all over again.