Key lessons for growth

THOSE WHO hunt rabbits are rarely able to rope in elephants, writes Subroto Bagchi in The Elephant Catchers. Elephant catchers come at a price that may raise eyebrows and change the status quo in your existing set-up. The difficulties of ‘catching an elephant’ is an euphemism for smaller organisations wishing to make it big. There are great success stories of organisations graduating from small game to large, but they all begin with the fundamental realisation that the social contract that brought everyone together in the beginning— with bows and arrows, drums and utensils—no longer works... step back and rethink the purpose of the organisation, and be ready to remodel its structure and functioning. In the chapter, The Cat and Dog Differential, the author says, “the key to winning a customer’s business is to be able to connect and to come across as hungry, willing, genuine, trustworthy and above all, interesting.” Bagchi compares the business decisions with the decision of choosing a life partner. It is imperative to make the right choice or face the consequence. “... in business, too, relationship choices have consequences. If you seek a marriage of convenience do so with your eyes open and always be aware that it just might become an unholy alliance.” Bagchi writes that a brand needs to be nurtured and reinvested for it to keep on succeeding. Branding is a very important aspect of an organisation’s future prospect. A brand literally takes birth, grows, and ages and, unless it is renewed, it dies and decays. The brand is an expression of an organisation’s mission, vision, values, its reputation and ambition, and it cannot change unless the core goes through a transformation. Bagchi writes that he learnt the essentials of branding from rather colourful man named Shombit Sengupta who founded Strategy Design, a brand advisory in Paris. When I first met him around 1996, his company had reported a turnover of $9 million, his brands sold for over $40 billion worldwide for companies like Danone of France and Lakme in India. Bagchi says, “Shombit taught me that a brand is not just a logo, a tagline, or a smart-sounding name. It is the perception of the value of a company, product or service in mind of a customer, and a perception is partly rational and partly emotional. The process of brand building, then, is the externalisation of the inner value of a corporation, product or service.”