Entrepreneur King; his Pink City & the Future

Maharaja Jaisingh - 1688 - 1743 - (photo taken from the murals of the Jaipur museum).

Maharaja Jaisingh was an exceptional king. Amongst many of his great achievements in the 18th century was building of the city of Jaipur, which is still intact, vibrant and fully operational. But he built this city with a purpose. He wanted it to be a great trading center rather than a fort like city which was the prevalent style during those days.

And he hit upon a very novel idea. He thought to turn his subjects into micro entrepreneurs and traders so as to transform his desert kingdom into a wealthy and flourishing one. With this in mind he built small shops within the city with wide roads for transportation of goods. He also wanted to make it aesthetically pleasing. Therefore all buildings were made out of pink colored stones from which the city got its name the 'Pink City', where none of the buildings could be built beyond a certain height.

It was a rather exceptional idea to rent out these newly constructed shops in the heart of the city to commoners rather than to noblemen of his courts. He charged them a very small rent in exchange of letting them run their family business from these spaces for commerce. Even after 200 years of their existence the value of the rent has gone up to measly sum of Rs 30/- a month (under $1). The idea was not profiting from the rentals but letting people learn and do business and add wealth and cultural value to the princely state of Jaipur. A casual round of the place shows us the great variety of trades and professions the people were engaged in, most of which continues till this day. Businesses are passed down from one generation to the next. Artisans (read freelancers) flocked to this place from all over India not only to enrich the culture of the place but also put a permanent signature of their unique quality at affordable prices.

This had far fetching repercussions and implications on the development of the nature and structure of Indian businesses, some of which are the following:

1. Created a class of astute and die-hard business families called 'Marawaris'. They hate to do anything other than business.

2. Augmented the concept of 'family business', which is the prevalent style of doing business in India.

3. Promise and trust were the cornerstones of doing business where verbal agreements were equally honored like written agreements.

4. Promoted local crafts that pulled together designers, artisans, businessmen, freelancers, entrepreneurs, job seekers all over India especially from Bengal and Gujarat. The impressions of their fine art work of Bengal and Gujarat seem to be all over the place in Northern India, which even found a prominent place in Muslim and Mugal artifacts. Over time people from Gujarat were also sucked into becoming small and big businessmen but Bengalis stuck to their nomadic freelancer and micro entrepreneur life style. In that way they not only became the second largest community scattered all over India but also the eleventh richest community in the world.

5. Preservation of traditional crafts and professions till date, which the British wanted to obliterate with standardization of their products supported by efficient transportation connecting thousands of villages across India. It is in the desert region of Rajasthan that they miserably failed to push their concept of standardized and cheap products carried through an efficient railways system. This happened because British goods did not suit the local needs or matched the culture of the place. Their products weren't life centric as the traditional products were.

6. This brings up the unique topic of designing 'life centric products'. For instance, in these markets, one would find a blanket that weighs about 100 grams, which can be folded into a very small size. The unique life centric feature of such a blanket is that it is cool on one side and warm on the other. Such an artifact is completely life centric to the nomadic tribes of the region. It is light and small to carry and can be used both in the daytime when temperatures soar and in the night when the mercury dips too low. The brass vessels used for storing water serves as another live example of a life centric product. People in the desert have used brass vessels for storing brackish water to turn them into potable drinking water for centuries. So the traders still sell brass vessels so useful in a place used to having scanty or no rainfall during the whole year. Even today, these traders are busy selling such life centric wares, which as I saw kept evolving over time with changing contexts.

7. The business models that operate are built on three vital principles -- a) Robustness b) Resilience c) Natural cycles and rhythms linked to patterns of living. They have cleverly blended the concepts of robustness/reliability with resilience into their products and business models. The products are cheap, aesthetically pleasing and reliable over long periods of time. As opposed to concepts of robustness and reliability these businesses, which have stood the test of time, primarily evolved around the concepts of resilience and patterns of living tied to Nature. The businesses were resilient to stand the test of time since they had the innate ability to detect changes in the likes, dislikes and changing demands of the people and times (a sort of collaborative effort) to quickly adjust and adapt to those changes. It means rather than think in terms of fixed and often larger volumes, scaling up, improved infrastructure etc the businesses were in tune with the patterns of living of the masses that varied with the rhythms and cycles of nature. People needed different artifacts at different times of the year hence the supply was not tuned to a pump out a steady constant volume pushed month after month over the year based on average 'customer needs' to minimize operating costs to maximize profits but churned out in variable volumes in collaboration with the customers' patterns of living to meet variable demands at different times of the year. Hence these family businesses never felt a need to grow beyond the space their small shops provided them for the past 200 years. They persevered in adapting, maintaining and creating wealth within the constraints of their given space. I was indeed fascinated by the remarkable business model that not only obviates the need for constant capital infusion to keep one's neck above water but also creates unimaginable wealth for the families and others. (See a live success story of such operating model being used as a strategy in competitive environment here)

(A glimpse of the old shops running their family businesses in the Pink City, October 2011)

My visit to the Pink City was more than enlightening. I was rewarded by sudden but deep insights in to the business psyche of the Indians and a possibe model that would serve us in the future.

The new questions that arise in my mind now are:

1. What are we doing to preserve these principles in the present context?

2. Can start ups and new entrepreneurs take a leaf out of these old lessons to model their business?

3. How can we create a platform or network of such budding entrepreneurs and make them thrive and grow over the years just like Maharaj Jaisingh did in his Pink City?

4. What we need to do to move from the business models based on robustness and reliability to a business model that primarily focuses on resilience without sacrificing resilience.

5. How can we bring down the operating, inventory and product costs through design rather than through scale ups, speed of operation and the constant need for capital infusion to increase infrastructure to accommodate growing volumes?

6. All our notions about business models and operating our businesses would change once we adopt the resilience model over robustness model. That would throw up hundreds of new questions to be answered.

I have just grown to love entrepreneurs -- design thinkers of sorts, who operate in seemingly impossible situations, solving problems with their heart & guts.

I feel this resilient way of doing business through micro entrepreneurs, where individual capital investment need not be high, holds the key to shape and inspire the future economy of the world, which presently is collapsing to its death crying out for a major transformation.

Do you think the same?

 

Epidemic of Cultural Blindness

Even very intelligent people sometimes mistakenly take culture of a country to be some sort of yardstick to measure other cultures. By doing so, they get utterly confused since they find most of it out of sync.

Then they commit another terrible mistake. They blame it on the culture for a country's failure to achieve economic progress or to raise their standard of living or something else by 'benchmarking' another country. 

Many organizations also commit the same mistake. They feel if only some cultural changes can be brought about everything would change overnight. And most of their ugly problems would never resurface. They believe that attitude of the people would change which would enable them to think differently, talk differently and work differently. Management of such organizations go about this task of conversion with the zeal of religious evangelists spending huge amounts of time, energy and money only to generate lot of confusion in the end.

Recently found an organization trying to implement Japanese culture in their manufacturing processes. After trying it out for a year they lamented, "We are nowhere near our desired target."

I asked them, "How does manufacturing effectiveness of your organization compare to the manufacturing effectiveness of the best in class, Japanese included."

They replied, "Well it is nearly same. The difference is negligible"

Pushing them further I followed up by asking "Then why do you want to bring about this cultural change?"

Obviously, there wasn't any answer to this.

Similarly, in a joint venture organization the Japanese who were partners blamed the culture of the other partner country for lack of productivity. The real issue lay in the cultural mismatch of the two partners working shoulder to shoulder in the same workspace.

In another newly acquired plant in Chile, the Chairman who was an Indian, during a board meeting lectured the top managers, "I think the process you people are following is absolutely wrong. You must follow the unique process we have developed back in India. Some of you must visit to learn more about that."

The top managers gently reminded him, "But what is wrong in the way we work? There is no quality rejection, no customer complaints, no productivity loss and to say the truth our productivity in this line of activity is best in the world."

Well, you know better. The better way might have been "Let me learn your methods and the ways in which you work to consistently produce high quality stuff and ship goods with the highest productivity"

But we simply can't shrug off this attitude of 'I am holier than Thou so I know better' simply because one has more money or more economic advantage or probably more educational certificates compared to another. 

The same mistake happens in the concepts of globalization and standardization. Ray-ban had to close shop in India. Their frames were simply out of proportion on an Indian face.

Coke came to India secretly nourishing the idea that Indians would soon forget about drinking water. They would drink Coke instead.

Kellogg harbored similar ideas. They would provide more nutrition to wean away Indians from their traditional breakfasts.

Nothing of these ever happened. Indians did not forget to cling to water and anything other than traditional breakfast tasted bland or insipid.

We, more often than we suspect, fall prey to this cultural trap in our personal relationships too.

Are we suffering from this "epidemic of cultural blindness"?

Complexity, Shall We Dance?

There is an old saying in Bengal, which runs something like this: One person is insignificant; Two together make something creative/worthwhile: Three persons collaborating make things complicated: When four get together things turn chaotic.

Needless to say governments, parties, organizations, teams, communities, online communities are complicated and chaotic. So, what do we do? Naturally, organizations are always wary of chaos and therefore want to bring in order through rules, regulations, regimentation, hierarchies etc. This is the common way.

But even with all that in place, leaders still want to feel the pulse of their people, want to keep a tab on what is going on around them, listen to stories, build culture and many other things. How do they do that? 

They dance with Complexity as a partner. They keenly listen to its music. They follow its steps. They feel the passion and sense its self organizing movement. Then they either copy the steps of complexity. Or they take charge to lead complexity. Or improvize and innovate on the way. But in no case they try to overpower complexity or play rough or be sly about it or ignore it. They dance cheek to cheek with complexity.

Let us see how great and good leaders go about befriending complexity,  

Deep immersion to learn

Here Mr. Bill Gates and his wife are seen in one of the remote villages of Bihar, India. Both of them are now highly involved in philanthropic work in India. However, as expected, they know very little about the country and its culture, which they must learn so as to bring meaning to what they are doing. Hence, they immerse themselves in that learning environment.

In Bill Gates own words, "learning from partners and community members in Patna, Bihar. Incredible start to the day…"

And why in the world is he doing that? Could he not have asked his well paid people to do that for him? They would have loved to send him a detailed report complete with facts and figures supported by photos, videos and what not. Obviously that would not work for him. Human interactions are very complex in nature and that complexity can't be fathomed to any degree of reality without deep observation and learning through direct experience such as this.

Is Mr. Gates alone in such Observation Based Learning through deep immersion?

No, it seems that other great business leaders keep doing this on a regular basis trying to learn within a given context.

Here is another photo that shows Sir Richard Branson practically doing the same thing with his staff located at various offices.

Deep immersion to build culture

The idea is not to straighten out complexity. The idea is not to find order in the complexity or avoid complexity or formulate rules to bring about simplicity. The idea is to befriend complexity to grow and develop by learning from it through direct experience gained through deep immersion and observations.

This brings us to another idea: How do organizations build upon such direct experiences of learning? They can do so through sharing such experiences on a common platform for others to learn and develop on the ideas gained. We call this social learning which uses Enterprise 2.0 platforms to harness the power of complexity and chaos to drive the organization in a self organizing and may I add creative manner.

Best platforms are those which are run on this idea of building on observations, ideas, deep immersions and learning not those who focus narrowly on retaining the heirarchical structure of work as the meaning of work is now undergoing a serious redefinition, the most useful I find is 'observable work'. Such platforms enable Culture Based Design for long term sustainability of an organization.

We now have another name for it. Seth Godin calls it Idea Tourism.

And why would this be so important?

Because money hardly brings in good ideas to sustain but good ideas rake in a lot of money to progress and sustain.

So, we need not be afraid of complexity anymore. Complexity is our partner in our progress not an impediment. So,....

Complexity, Shall We Dance.... since the 21st century belong to the tacit. Or is it?

 

References

1. Culture Based Design

2. Evaluating E2.0 Platforms

3. Management Upside Down

4. Coconut Uncertainty