Update of Syllogic site

Do check out the new sections on Business Transformation, a central theme of our work at Syllogic.

Compelling & Inclusive vision: seed to sustainable business

Why do we need a vision?

From a startup to a large corporation, any enterprise needs a vision.  We engage on a path for a reason, for a motivation, and it drives our quest. Expressing that reason in a simple and clear vision is formidable asset to arm oneself with in order to progress on our chosen path.  Any enterprise is frought with obstacles and cross-roads.  The danger lies in loosing our way and wasting our energy. A vision allows us to refer back to it in moments of doubt, in times when an important decision is required, by asking the simple question "is it aligned with my vision?"

How do I determine my vision?

An inspired article by Erika Andersen, New York based business thinker and author, beautifully illustrates the importance of leading with a vision in any enterprise.  She stresses on two key words to define a vision that will drive an enterprise: compelling and inclusive.  Such a vision is the seed to a sustainable venture, for it encapsulates the DNA required for growth that includes all its stakeholders. Recall this post on sustainable and inclusive enterprise.

A Compelling & Inclusive Vision

The author describes this as one that offers an alternate, plausible and enviable future that requires the participation of the stakeholders (leaders, managers, actors, viewers, and to a certain degree society at large).  In Enrika's words, a far-sighted vision, but more importantly a vision that inspires its stakeholders to aspire.  That is very important, for not only it becomes you in that it drives your own determination and passion, but it is infectious and people will naturally follow and contribute to this enterprise.  It is also important to realise that a vision belongs to all its stakeholders, not just yourself.  This last point draws a fine line between success and decadence.

Some guidelines to determine your vision:
1. On a blank sheet of paper start jotting down ideas and words that you feel passionate about when you evoke your enterprise/path.
2. On a second sheet of paper, extract keywords from the first sheet, words that are the essence of your ideas and notes.
3. On a third sheet of paper retain a handful of these keywords, maybe 5 or 6.
4. Finally, draw up a sentence which captures the reality of these handful of words.  The sentence does not necessarily include the retained words.
5. Review the first, second and third sheet at regular intervals, when you have a moment of quiet time, and let your inspiration flow.  Do not force yourself to think about it, rather let it spawn day-dreams.  Eventually, your vision will emerge as a single sentence.  Cherish it!

Examples of inspiring visions:

"Henry Ford’s vision of a nation where every family would have an automobile seemed laughable, impossible, and even dangerous. Only the clarity of his vision and his consistency in moving toward it brought the support from others that he needed to make his vision a reality."

"When Jobs and Wozniak founded Apple Computers in 1976, the personal computer was still new and untested. Moreover, the idea that almost everyone would one day have a computer and that computers would be as accessible and easy-to-use as televisions or telephones seemed like craziness. "

There are visionaries all over the world, and today more so than ever, we need inspired and  visionary leaders in India to awaken the tremendous potential of our nation.  Here is an Indian visionary in both the literary and actual sense:

"If Coca-Cola can sell billions of sodas and McDonald's can sell billions of burgers," asks Dr. V., "why can't Aravind sell millions of sight-restoring operations, and, eventually, the belief in human perfection? With sight, people could be freed from hunger, fear, and poverty. You could perfect the body, then perfect the mind and the soul, and raise people's level of thinking and acting."

Dr. Venkataswamy set up the Arvind eye hospital in "... 1976, facing the prospect of social shelving at age 57, he opened a 12-bed eye hospital in his brother's home in Madurai, India. Today, he runs five hospitals that perform more than 180,000 operations each year. Seventy percent of his patients are charity cases; the remaining 30% seek him out and pay for his services because the quality of his work is world-class. He is a doctor to the eyes and a leader to the soul." (extract from The Perfect Vision of Dr.V. by Harriet Rubin, senior write at the Fast Company).  At the bottom of Harriet's article is a set of guidelines that should inspire all of us to build India's future.

Towards a more sustainable education system

Learning by wrote seems to be the only way for our nation of aspiring youth.  Our schools since our British heritage have thought the vast majority of our children to learn their lessons by heart, to copy and regurgitate during exam time.  Our entire educational system is founded on the principle that success at exam is the only yardstick of achievement.  Prestigious colleges and higher education institutions perpetuate this notion with the requirement of passing ever more demanding entrance examinations, favouring and biasing the selection process towards the ability to learn by heart, to have a good memory and regurgitate that knowledge into a exam format answer.
Unfortunately, skills that demand innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship, problem solving and intuition are not best served by wrote learning.  The very skills that are in short supply in an increasingly competitive world, and which are needed to power our growing economy.  Furthermore, our educational system, in favouring memory skills is side-lining a whole range of rich resources that our country desperately needs.

  Inspiration from age old teaching

A recent article in the New Indian Express, by Sumati Mehrishi highlight an age old tradition of Guru-Shishya.  It is a format of teaching and learning that has its root in the Vedic traditions, imparting a wide spectrum of experience-learning with a holistic approach that encompasses the body mind and soul.  It is also based on a learning by wrote principle, but the goal isn't that of exam results but rather the learning in itself, the path that is threaded   The techniques involves repetitive practice of techniques to achieve perfection, but in doing so it encourages the shishya (student-disciple) to discover his own inner aspiration.  This journey of self-discovery, perpetual and with no end, is a labour of growth and evolution, whereby perfection of the art (knowledge) is not a question of technical exactness, but rather of expression through the technique.  The technique becomes a tool for expression of what is inside.  Perfection can be thus redefined as the eloquent use of the technique to give a voice to the soul.   It is ever evolving for the practitioner.  However, it becomes apparent that without mastery of the technique, the language spoken is a poor expression of the inner reality.

Towards a sustainable education

At the heart of the Guru-Shishya is a quest for knowledge, a thirst for comprehension.  The Guru disciplines the student into observing their own reality, and guides them to get an understanding through their own experience.
The teaching techniques employed in our schools is a corrupted version of this ancient tradition.  Our children are no longer guided to understand the world but rather to succeed at exams.  This is partly the fault of the system and partly the lack of inspiration shown by a new generation of teachers that are themselves products of this corrupted system of education.  There is a lot of unlearning to be done.  However, is it possible to source a new direction, can we find renewed inspiration in our ancient tradition?
Our schools need to teach technique rather than facts by wrote.  Learn how to learn so to speak, but unvail your own truths from your path.
Taking a page out of our Guru-Shishya tradiation, we can explore a sustainable education with the following ingredients:

• Teachers need to inspire students
• students should have a deep, heartfelt respect for the source of knowledge
• emphasis on learning rather than facts
• students should be encouraged to develop a sense of curiosity, self-sustained learning ability
• encourage questioning and debating.
• encourage synthesis of knowledge, so that the student expresses their understanding in their own words
• emphasis on continuous assessment rather than final examination

In the words of the Shishya:

“Any intense, integrated and spiritual sadhana awakens and expands consciousness. The energy from such a practice suffuses the art. The guru gives the vision and the eye to performance and art.”

New discoveries from Chernobyl disaster

An article in The Hindu paper reports on an amazing research done of soya beans farmed within the vicinity of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.  Although the consequences from the radioactive fall out from the damaged reactor have been gruesome, ongoing studies on nature's adaptation to the unique environment on earth reveals that plants have adopted unique mechanisms to repair and retain its genetic make up.  The article points out to studies of soya beans and how the plant concentrates radioactive metals found in the soil into its shoots, leaving the beans (in this case the seeds of the plant) with relatively lower levels of damaging radioactive material.  In effect the plant shields its seeds' genetic heritage from stored exposure of radiation therefore allowing the seed to preserve the genetic make of the plant and the next generation a fighting chance to retain the original make-up of the species.  The scientist are at a loss as to what are the mechanisms operating this miracle.  It shows that Nature is a lot more intelligent than we previously thought.

It will be interesting to see our level of awareness in a few generation when further analysis of affected nature from the Fukushima disaster in Japan reveal its secrets.  I can foresee interesting applications from such studies in the search for adapting plants for growing food in similar hostile conditions such as in outer space, the surface of the moon and possibly other planets where shielding from the solar radiation is not as effective as the magnetic field of the earth.

Zero waste at home

An interesting article in the Hindu property plus supplement last w.e. caught my eye.

Bangalore based Daily Dump offer a range of composting solutions to recycle your bio-degradable waste at home and use it as manure for your garden or roof-top plants.

Over 60% of home waste can be recycles this way, a small step towards alleviating the garbage problem with landfills filling up with a mix of non-biodegradable waste such as metals and plastics which reduces the efficiency of degrading organic waste.  Segregating our waste is a must for a sustainable future.  Here is an easy way to start.  If you live in Chennai, Kuppa Thotti offers an interesting service to pick up your recyclable trash such as metals, plastics and paper.

Socially Sustainable Business

There is much talk of the environment when business leaders talk about sustainability, dismissing the topic entirely as a fad, such as the green movement last year or the fair-trade one in the years gone by. Yes, we use solar energy, we have replaced all our incandescent light bulbs, we have a CSR program that plants trees and so on. These are all in all good actions, but they do not strike at the heart of the matter. Businesses need to ask what does sustainability means to their business. A manufacturing business has inevitably environmental obligations in order to follow a path of sustainable manufacturing, but what about a service provider? Sourcing solar power to run their computers isn't really addressing the issue, the one that is addressing the sustainable question is its power supplier, not the service business. Beyond environmental sustainability are two other aspects, economic and social sustainability. The first is ensuring that there is no economic exploitation of its human and social resources, in fact long term sustainability can only really be achieved if the resources in question perceive the sharing of economic gain as being fair... else the worst case scenario being the recent violence erupt at the Maruti car plant in north India. However, it is the social sustainability I wish to address in this post. How can a business be socially sustainable and moreover what are the incentives for being so.

What is social sustainability anyway?

The wikipedia definition is social development that retains equal access to social resources for future generations. It addresses labour laws, human rights and the likes. This is all well, but what does it means effectively? Of course, employees have rights, and many businesses do give them those rights, but yet there is something missing. The fundamental essence of social sustainability for a business is ensuring that society's perception of that business remains positive. CSR actions, efficient energy use, green energy sourcing is all in vain if society (your current and future employees/suppliers/clients) has a perception of being robbed by the product/service your business offers. This is a very subtle concept. It is one that is at best marginal on the short term and at worst catastrophic on the long term! Why should businesses sit up and pay attention? A recent survey in the US shows that 78% of internet users and a growing trend, research products online before making a purchase. The internet connectivity provided by social media is quickly tipping the balance in favour of a more and more pro-active consumer giving little scope for old-tactic marketing campaigns in order to sell a product. This gives raise to two evidences: (i) the need for sustainable marketing (see my previous post on this); and (ii) the need for social sustainability. Businesses cannot hid in the age of the internet. They have to adapt and revisit their strategy for long term success.

How does one achieve social sustainability?

Having established that social sustainability can only be achieved by ensuring society's positive perception and moreover, having understood that it is not possible to hide in today's internet age, it is self-evident that one needs to be sincere in giving fair adage to your stakeholders. How so? The general trend in the last decade has been to find the most competitive suppliers in order to maintain and in most cases maximise profits. In simple economics, buy at the cheapest rate and sell at the highest. Business need to revise this strategy, for it is leading invariably to catastrophic results in the long term. This strategy has been so well executed in China, that their own consumer market has suffered catastrophic negative social perceptions on a global scale in the last few years, re-evaluating many businesses' plans to set up shop in that country. (See the contaminated milk story, the poisoned toys, the Apple sweatshop... and many more). This is the fundamental weakness of capitalism today, and unsustainable in the long term. Businesses need to focus long term by adopting an old and mostly forgotten raison d'être for any business. Traditionally, business artisans in ancient times engaged themselves in their chosen trade because they were good at it and because they actually enjoyed it. The most successful among them where those that had the best skills, producing the best quality. They did not strive to find the cheapest manufacturing process, but rather they strived to improve the quality at the most competitive price. That, in my knowledge, is the way to be socially sustainable.

Adding value at no extra cost.  Businesses aspiring to be socially sustainable need to adopt a new thinking process which is to strive to add value to their product/services while retaining competitive pricing. The rest will happen automatically. From this single goal flows all other socially sustainable actions. Let me explore the repercussions on the various stake-holders. -- The employees first, to add value in any form and yet retain cost margins, a business needs empowered employees, employees ennobled to the goal.... the whole gamut of socially responsible management can be explored to achieve this symbiosis. -- The suppliers need to follow suit, poor service/material from their end will only result in loosing business, however they can also be encouraged by engaging and valuing their contribution to the business' product/service value. Empowering them and especially giving them credit for their contribution is the surest way to achieve sustainability on the long term. -- The client/consumer is the slowest to react, positive perception is a slow maturing tree, but once fully grown is not easily uprooted. Communication is key, and it is ever so important to be impartial and sincere. Blog and social media are best suited for this, and the communication should strive to educate and uplift the awareness of the reader, ie to empower the client. The bottom line is that in order for a business to achieve social sustainability it is imperative that it aspires to achieve the best quality at the most competitive price as an end in itself rather than a means to profits. This should not be confused with the natural requirement for a business to strive for financial stability, for any business that is not achieving reasonable profits isn't economically sustainable.

Quick-gains development for Chennai

This is a continuation of my previous post "What is ailing India?", more specifically looking at Chennai where I am currently settled.  Here are a few examples of where Chennai can make quick gains in development with a change of mindset, 

The garbage collection and recycling, as highlighted in this article, is the need of the hour, and visiting other cities like Singapore and Shanghai is good, but only talking about it does not convert into solutions.  A few years ago, a Singapore based company, ONYX, managed to do a decent job of city garbage collection, but they where replaced by a cheaper local company. Today the bins originally placed on the streets by ONYX are either broken or stolen, and overflowing due to lack of regular collection.

The corporation seems to be waking up, as show in this article and this one