Entrepreneurs such as Mukesh Ambani are working toward giving up operational control. Does this reflect a shift in thinking?
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| Anurag Batra |
Entrepreneurs, big or small, treat their enterprise like a child they have brought up and nurtured. They like to always look after it, even when the kid grows up and matures. The entrepreneur of today wants to put his enterprise on auto mode in a serious sense someday, so that he can do either or all of the things I mention here. First: not overlord or overarch his able team and suffocate them. Second: enjoy his successes and have fun (read lecture at conferences). Third: go and build multiple businesses.
The entrepreneur also realizes that what got him here won’t get him to the next level. Besides, he enjoys creation and nurturing more than maintenance. With his successors (including his children) growing and looking to fill key roles he has to avoid being there in a full time and operational way so that his successors can grow into the role ably.
“Ek mayaan mein do talwaar nahin rahti”. He or she also may fear that his kids might not be up-to the mark or may take longer, hence he needs to create a management structure that works if he or she is not there.
I hear that India’s No. 1 business person and entrepreneur Mukesh Ambani is championing his being redundant “operationally” in his company. If Mr. Ambani is thinking like this, does it represent a radical shift in thinking of Indian entrepreneurs? Will this trend get accentuated? What are the larger implications of this trend for the entrepreneurial ecosystem? At what stage should an entrepreneur try to make himself or herself redundant? Reliance Industries is a giant amongst giants and has the deep pockets to experiment but what does it mean for other midsized or smaller entrepreneurs and do they feel the same? What is the difference between a promoter making himself redundant at the board level and having board level decision making being delegated at professional CEO levels? What if it doesn’t work and takes the company in a downward spiral?
Sometime ago a leading industrialist told me that instead of family members we have professional managers, as one cannot fire shareholders and family members.
If and when Mr. Ambani succeeds in his “redundancy” project, or shall we call it “The Daring Entrepreneur Leadership Project,” does it mean he and the Reliance board will leave Billion Dollar strategic decisions to this entrepreneurial leadership. Is Mr. Ambani readying for his son to take over in 10 years?
People often ask me, does Subhash Chandra, the pioneering and maverick media entrepreneur still run the group in spite of the fact that his son Punit Goenka has been the CEO of Zee Telefilms Ltd for more than three years, and has done a great job taking the company forward. They still think it’s Subhash Chandra who runs it, not understanding that he is there for inspiration and support and it should be that way.
Is it the nature of Indian enterprises that they will always be controlled and remote controlled by their founder or is that an illusion in India? We hope Mr. Ambani’s redundancy project succeeds and becomes a model for other entrepreneurs to emulate. We are watching. Hope Mr. Ambani and Mr. Chandra can say what Peter Powell said “It looks like being a busy weekend on the ferries, particularly Saturday and Sunday.”
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meet Anurag Batra
Anurag Batra is real life, first-generation entrepreneur who is Much Below Average (MBA) from the prestigious Management Development Institute, MDI. Anurag is the founder and editor-in-chief of exchange4media group which includes exchange4media.com. To write to the author, please send an email to dare@cybermedia.co.in with the subject line ‘Anurag Batra’. The views expressed here are that of the author and do not represent the magazine’s.
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