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Strategy for success

Manage the present, selectively abandon the past and create the future, says management guru Vijay Govindarajan in a chat with PRINCE FREDERICK

INSPIRED BY TAMIL FILMS Vijay Govindarajan

Vijay Govindarajan grew up on a diet of Tamil films. "Films of the MGR-Sivaji period are one of three things that have shaped me and today help me do what I do — enable companies create breakthrough innovations," says the man, whom Forbes has called one of the `Top Five Most Respected Executive Coaches on Strategy' and Business Week has rated as one of the `Top Ten Business School Professors in Corporate Executive Education'. Management International Review has put him in another august club — `Top 20 North American Superstars for Research in Strategy and Organisation'.

Govindarajan has also authored the bestseller "10 Rules for Strategic Innovators" (published by Harvard Business School Press).

"In films of that era, the hero will abduct the heroine in a Mercedes. The police will jump on a jeep and tail the car till it zips away. Sivaji Ganesan will now be in the thick of things. He'll choose a horse because a jeep is no match for a zipping Merc. He'll not take the road, but go up a mountain track and surprise the villain by getting his white steed in front of the shimmering, made-for-speed Merc. That's what breakthrough innovation is all about."

The other two factors — his grandfather and his first job. "I hated my job which was that of a management trainee. No one listened to me, but those trainees, no older than me, who had an U.S. education, had everyone eating out of their palms. I felt the four walls falling on me."

He went to Harvard to study management. He came back and taught at IIM, Ahmedabad, "until discontent was once again brewing inside me". At that time, he received an offer to teach at Harvard. The business school wanted him to join them immediately or forget the offer. Govindarajan accepted it, even though it meant incurring a $50,000 debt — because by joining the Harvard Business School he had violated the Ford Foundation fellowship that required him to work in India for two years.

Wears different hats

"Now, to pay up my debts I had to wear different hats. When I was not teaching, I was consulting for companies. Although necessity led me into consulting, I enjoy working with companies. My experience discounts the theory that consulting is a distraction for academicians (he is the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College — `when I told my wife I am the first Indian on the college's faculty, she said you better don't mess it up or they will not take another Indian'). Expertise in one feeds on the other," says Govindarajan.

The two collectively have given him the acumen required to write (along with his student Chris Trimble) "10 Rules For Strategic Innovators" (which was released at Landmark recently). Although the book distils what 28 years in the management field have taught Govindarajan, it is also a result of a special five-year project. "We studied 12 corporations over this period."

He summarises the management philosophy contained in the book — "There are three boxes — manage the present, selectively abandon the past and create the future. Most companies spend most of their time in the first box. Then they also cling on to the past — this prevents them from navigating to the next box. The competition for the future is in the present. You create the future — now. When Vikram Sarabhai set up IIM-Ahmedabad in 1960, he was actually thinking of 2006. In 2020, India will have to create 800 million jobs for its young workforce. The strategy (to create those jobs) starts today."

Govindarajan says the book speaks to individuals, and not just companies. "What applies to companies applies to individuals. I believe in the Karmic principle. You may not control all the variables, but you have the power to change those things that are changeable. Although the future can't be predicted and all variables controlled, you have to approach the future with confidence."

Hard days at Harvard

At Harvard, I was a fish out of water. Although a good student, I was not on top of things. I was too shy to speak in class. If you keep quiet for long, it only becomes more difficult for you — you are under constant pressure to say something spectacular but that never happens. I thought bread was the only vegetarian food available, so I had toast for breakfast, lunch and dinner till I got sick of it.

The social customs went beyond my understanding — the world at Harvard collided with my own that had largely been shaped by my experiences in Annamalai Nagar (a small town in Cuddalore district). I felt like a social misfit. I wanted to call it quits. I told the dean, "When you decided to admit the 900th student, I think you admitted me. I don't belong here." He refused to buy me a ticket. He said, "I'll put you in a study group; you will be the only Indian in it." The strategy worked.

I first tried out with the study group the ideas I presented at class. Because I had to hang out more with Americans, I understood why things were the way they were in America.

As for veggie food, I was allowed to teach a cook (at the campus restaurant) how to make it. Soon, a South Indian food counter was opened.

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