Takeaways from Inception, the Movie

Long wait for Christopher Nolan's movie ended. Inception opened to great critical acclaim and also great box office collections.

Ever since, Memento, Christopher Nolan has maintained his edge. Let me admit, though I have watched all his movies after Memento, except Insomnia. I just went through the synopsis of Insomnia, that too seems to be a great psycho thriller! He has been a great entertainer for both the intelligent and the masses.

Inception is a brilliantly made movie revolving around a path breaking intelligent idea. A crime committed at subconscious level in the mind by clever exploitation by a smart gang. No sooner than the release of the movie, there were comments using the lingo in the movie. That's a sign of the movie or franchise which is going to stay. In terms of potential success, as rightly put in publicity, 'Bond meets Matrix',- This tag was basically to draw masses to the movie, the franchise is intended to hit the combined jackpot of Bond and Matrix franchises.

Are there any  takeaways for business leaders?

Let's look at what Nolan must have had in mind while conceiving and executing the movie. He had smartly realized the following aspects to make a movie with great business potential.

1) Create a Great Maze As Cobb asks the apprentice to create a maze in a minute, which needs minimum 2 minutes to solve it! ...or something to that effect.

In all his movies, Nolan has created mazes (mind benders), which need much more time than the movie duration. The longer the maze takes to solve, the people will watch and re-watch the movie! Thus, you get repeat crowd. Already, many people have watched the movie repeatedly to find out exactly, what is happening!

He shot into fame from his first movie, Memento. It was so great, got remade into Ghazni in Tamil and re-remade into Hindi and raked in big money in all the versions!

In business context, develop offers as simple solutions to solve complex  problems for the market . More complex the problem and simpler the solution, the chances of success is higher. Eg.: Google search engine, Apple Devices, apps,....

2) To Succeed Spectacularly, Create Great Visuals (It has the effect of sedatives in the movie): Inception, Batman Begins and Dark Knight have great visuals. Well, that needs lot of money too! Batman franchise could easily support it through sets and/or effects, for  relatively less money, v/s real locations. Thus Nolan  uses Cobb to say some psycho mumbo-jumbo (Psychology enthusiasts, please forgive me for this!) to tell his apprentice not to use the real locations. The CG effects in the movie can be passed to the audience convincingly!

In business context, the offering has to be engaging. I hope the example of  iPhone, Pixar movies will fill the other details. Please note that this gyan does not disregard all other business management fundas. Wise business leaders will leverage all the knowledge and new insights to strategize and execute in flawless fashion to deliver results.

3) Ensure Initial Draw: Initial draw is ensured by star power; in this case,  by Leonardo Dicaprio (one of the Hollywood top stars) and Michael Caine (All time favorite). Batman franchise could provide the initial draw for Batman Begins and Dark Knight. By now, Nolan himself can draw crowds to the movie hall. This is a great combination for starting completely new franchise.

Relatively, Memento drew people through word of mouth. So was the case of Paranormal Activity,  which became a success when released second time (by Steven Spielberg).

In business context, Google, Apple (ie. Steve Jobs),... can draw huge initial draws. Lesser mortals like us have to build ground up as Nolan did. Remember Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, were virtually 'nobodies' (Well, once upon a time!).

4) Continuously Engage, Emotionally: In addition to all the above, the movie engages emotionally. The audience empathizes and sympathizes with Cobb through out for the loss in his family and craves to see his children's faces! In my view, the emotional engagement was slightly less in Nolan's The Prestige. But, that is a subjective call.

In Business context, the business leaders need to continuously engage the market emotionally.and utility-wise too. Eg.: MS Windows at V7 and V8 is being developed!

I think emotional engagement can be termed as charisma of business leaders. The leaders, whether in business or otherwise.

In terms of utility, the business leaders have to keep on coming with offers to provide better productivity and efficiency v/s other products in the market.

These are  some of the takeaways, I could guess. While trying to solve the spectacular maze of success in real business life; I am sure it's not so easy. More so, when executing the takeaways. Because the challenge lies in achieving all the above and still do it profitably so as to sustain and grow. Otherwise, we all would have got bored by now!

10 Challenges Before Today’s Business Leaders

Today, the business leaders face much bigger challenges than earlier. Additionally, the ground realities around are dynamically changing at faster rate than ever. The complexity is increasing exponentially. In such a scenario, to build sustainable high performance business the leaders need to prioritize, selectively . Thankfully, the management gurus have come up with some ‘must do’s to help the business leaders to focus on few priorities.

So, today's business leader needs to play the most of the following roles to lead sustainable high performance organizations.

1. Focused Strategist: Today’s business leader needs to be focused strategist. S/he has to handle all strategic issues related to the organization.

S/he needs to arrive at distinct value proposition for the company. S/he should ensure that her/his company can offer different value for clients in the sea of me too products/services. Such a value proposition needs to be proactive and effective response to the dynamic ground realities outside the organization. At the same time, s/he needs to develop this response based on the strength of the organization while leveraging the relative weakness of competition. S/he needs to communicate the strategy passionately internally so that the Strategic intent is well understood and implemented by employees. The strategy need to be formulated in such a way that the core competency of the organization gets strengthened further.

The leader needs to continuously keep track of the changes in the business environment, both immediate and distant. S/he needs to refine the strategy continuously to leverage the best for the organization.

2. Excellent Execution Practitioner: The challenge before the leader does not stop at formulation of strategy. In fact, the strategy is the beginning! Today's business leaders are tested for their execution capabilities.

The business leaders need to exceed expectations of their stakeholder while executing the brilliantly conceived strategy. The strategy needs to be executed in the harsh, ever changing battle grounds. This can be achieved only by empowering the front-line troop fighting the battle in harsh battlegrounds of the market. The dynamics of today's market are changing faster than ever. Additionally, the competitors and substituters are smartly leveraging their strengths to gain grounds. The execution needs to be proactively responsive to the changes around. This can be achieved only when the people in the organization are empowered to execute in excellent manner, rather than awaiting orders from top.

Today, the operational efficiency is the order of the day. It does not mean that the effectiveness can be given a miss. The operational efficiency and effectiveness need to go hand in hand to deliver the results. Only then, the execution of the brilliant strategy can be called as excellent execution. The stakeholders expect excellent execution from their business leaders today.

3. Builder of Enduring and Inspiring Culture: The leader needs to inspire his people to achieve the results to exceed the expectations of the stakeholders. We come across large number of managers working on the shortcut of conspiring to deliver the results. Such managers may meet short term gains, but end up affecting the culture of the organization in highly negative manner. Special care needs to be taken to weed out such managers.

The leader needs to reward the performance. Additionally, the performance measurement should be defined in such a way that the organization's high performance culture is not compromised.

The leader has the task of building an environment, which is highly challenging. The challenges should be such that the people taking such challenges should go through the 'peak experience' as noted by Maslow. The efforts should be to move towards 'plateau experience'. Thus, the leader needs to build 'exhilarating yet exhausting' environment for his people to lead them to self actualization.

The commitment to the values can not be underestimated. The values espoused by the organization need to be adhered to, at every step. The challenging times may put a great strain on the organization's values. This is the time the True Leaders are differentiated from the imitators.

4. Fat Trimmer: Today's business leader needs to look out for all kind of wastage and cut them to the least. He needs to identify and address any redundancies within the organization and the value chain. The challenge of cutting the fat does not end there. This has to be supported by bringing out synergy of various elements within the organization to boost the value delivery by the organization. Additionally, the business leader needs to put the best people in the 'Value Zone', wherein the real value is added for the organization.

5. Nurturer of Talent: Today's business leader needs to identify, tap and grow talent within the organization. He has to get the best talent to match the present and future requirements from the market too. If it comes to it, the leader needs to fight for the right talent to snatch away from the competition.

As emphasized in the paragraph about building inspiring culture, today's business leader needs to put her/his talented people to stretch themselves to reach the next level of performance.

Nurturing of talent should be supported by generous dose of Management Development Programs, OD exercises and trainings to prepare them for larger challenges as they come by. The efforts should be on to promote internal talent.

6. Developer of Leadership Pipeline: Today's business leader's responsibility does not end at nurturing the talent; s/he also needs to develop the leadership pipeline within the organization. The leadership in the organization should be people oriented. The leaders and budding leaders need to connect well with the people at all levels, as far as possible. The leaders in the pipeline should be capable of proactively identifying the opportunities and challenges ahead for the organization. There is a need for converting the challenges into opportunities for the organization. These traits need to be ingrained in the leadership and the potential leaders in the organization.

For the people in leadership position within the organization, large part of their pay should be based on the performance. Some of the organizations need to ensure that the directors have larger financial stake in the organization. Thus, their financial fortunes will be dependent on the organization's performance.

7. Innovation Incubator: Today's business leader needs to work as innovation incubator within the organization. The thrust should be always on bringing ground breaking technologies to the market. It may not be possible always to be the first to bring groundbreaking technology; in such a case, the organization should pursue aggressive follower position. At the end, the leader should strive to deliver the benefits of the innovations to the market at the earliest.

While innovating, for many organizations, there is always a question of whether they need to cannibalize the existing cash cows. In the present day environment, any delay may prove disastrous; somebody else may come out with the innovation and steal the thunder. A fine tuned execution in such situations may yield great results, yet milking the cash cows. A word of caution, innovation for the sake of innovation may actually turn out to be undoing of the organization. The challenge before the leader is to leverage both old and new technologies to achieve the strategic objectives of the organization.

8. Dealer wheeler: Today's business leader also has to be on the prowl always for the inorganic growth opportunities through mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and strategic partnerships. Inorganic growth opportunities need to be pursued in such a way that the service to the existing clientele of both the players get better offerings from such arrangement. Joining hands with complementers enhances the value addition, largely. In all these efforts, there should be always efforts to leverage synergies for the benefit of the market.

9. Astute Decision Maker: Today’s business leader needs to be an astute decision maker. He needs to be a great judge of people and strategy. Her/his judgment capabilities are tested in the crisis time for the organization. The decision making is science and art. The leader needs to practice his decision making skills continuously to enhance his judgment capability. Great business leaders ensure that the decisions get continuously refined right from the conceptual stage till the end of the execution. They are never afraid of admitting mistakes at any point. Additionally, they go great length to proactively correct the course of action. So, today’s business leader needs to be astute decision maker. At the same time, s/he needs to have the humility to accept the responsibility for the mistakes and correct them.

10. Driver of Continuous Improvement: Leadership, whether in business or elsewhere, is not an entitlement. Leadership is a big responsibility. Many imitators may think otherwise. Every leader has to keep on investing on improving himself. S/he needs to question her/his contribution always and needs to improve.

The above list may seem to be a tough act to follow. Looking at the challenges, one is tempted to say that today’s business leader needs to juggle many balls in the air. The leader’s role is tougher than that; he also needs to walk on tight rope of public glare while juggling these balls. According to ‘What Really Works’, the leaders need to handle all the first four challenges and any 2 of the next 4 challenges. The last two challenges need to be handled as part of the leader’s responsibility.

After looking at the challenges, today’s successful business leaders of consistently high performing organizations seem to be super heroes. Probably, the trick lies in being really good at what they do the best and delegate well so as to focus on priorities.

Acknowledgments: 

Mr. Nitin Nohria (current Dean of Harvard Business School), and coauthors of the book ‘What Really Matters’ conducted Evergreen research to identify the practices contributing to sustainable high performance in organizations. They identified 4 primary ‘must’ practices and any 2 of 4 secondary practices contributing to the sustainable high performance in organizations. 

Mr. Noel M Tichy and Mr. Warren Bennis have identified the process of taking judgment calls in their book ‘Judgment’. 

Many other books, especially, 'Employees First; Customers Second’ by Mr. Vineet Nayar, CEO, HCL Technologies and the management literature by Global Management Guru, Mr. Ram Charan, have helped identifying the high priority challenges before today’s business leaders.

PS: Yes, There are 9 balls in the figure above to show the challenges. The 10th challenge, Continuous Improvement, is represented by continuous juggling of the balls! BTW, the direction of the juggling of balls can be in any direction; as far as the balls are juggling in air ;)

Elements of High Performance Business Initiatives

The search for formula for successful business is an ongoing quest. The management literature is full of 'what to dos' and 'how to dos'. Some of them have focused the ideas or strategies behind the success. Earlier, the thrust of management books was more on getting the right strategy to be successful. Most of the management literature in nineties focused on ideas and strategies. Execution of ideas was the subtext.

Recently, the thrust has shifted to execution, ie. 'How to dos’. In the early part of the decade, the focus shifted to execution. Such literature was driven by management gurus like Ram Charan, Noel M Tichy. amongst others. The strategy was the starting point implicitly in such literature.

The CEOs who rode the success waves emphasized on how they moved from almost a disastrous zone to the land of opportunity. They identified the waves they rode on. Andy Grove, in his book, Only the Paranoid Survive, gave the concept of Strategic Inflection Point (SIP), the point at which the industry experiences dramatic change. Jack Welch talked about how he grew GE; while narrating his growth in GE in Straight from the Guts. Strategy and execution were always given due importance in these books.

Recently Prof. Vijay Govindraj of Tuck Business School in his recent book, co-authored along with Christopher Trimble, ‘Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution’, provides formula for success of business initiatives in corporate sector. The success of such initiative is the function of product of strategy and execution. 

From the above, we can arrive to the conclusion that, the success of any business initiative is function of ideas, execution and the 'ground realities' around us. It can be simply put as Success = function of (Ideas*Execution*Reality). 

Let us explore different aspects of this formula. Though the formula is presented in 'cold mathematical' fashion; the formula does not tell the whole story. The function is based on how tightly these factors are aligned with each other. By an astute business leader, the ingredients of success formula can be orchestrated in such a way that a virtuous cycle may be created. Such a virtuous cycle can yield great results for the organization not just in the long term but also on short term basis too. On another extreme, if the same aspect is handled by a novice may create a vicious cycle to wipe all the earnings. Generally speaking, the ideas, execution and reality assessment need to be strongly coupled and then they should feed each other strongly to reinforce each other to create resonance in every cycle, thus enhancing the power by multiples in each iteration. Thus, every iteration adds value dramatically.

Here, an attempt is made to answer the six basic questions of business success. 'What' of the success is addressed by ideas part of the formula. 'How' and 'who' are addressed by 'execution' part. 'When' and 'where' are addressed by 'realities'. Rest of the text tries to address 'whys'.

Ideas:

As quoted by Victor Hugo, An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. But the beneficiary of such an idea being victorious goes to the smart and wise guys who hold the opportunity by its horns and ride the wave of the opportunity.

'Ideas', as a general term, constitutes innovations, strategy derived by assessing various parameters affecting the business largely based on the reality, the past, present and future. Generation of ideas can be done through various methods like brainstorming, structured meetings, reviews, Kai zen,... ...

The ideas are beginning of the journey. The ideas are more like seed or embryo. The DNA determines the shape of larger things to come if nurtured well with the favorable 'ground' realities. The ideas need to be executed well. The guideline for execution of ideas is ‘1% inspiration; 99% perspiration’, where ideas are inspiration, the execution is perspiration. The execution part is represented by 99 times, here but it may go up easily beyond 1,000s of times too. 

Where as ideas define the shape of things to come. Like seeds, ideas are small part of the whole story. The analogy of seeds/embryo stops here. Unlike the seeds which lead to specific plant, the ideas can grow into any other related business too. The ideas in business can be compared more to 'amoeba'. The shape of idea may keep on changing. The replication and multiplication is unlimited. In a way, we are at the beginning of 'Business evolution'. Hence, ideas generated today, can evolve from 'protozoa, ie. amoebic shape till the emergence of human beings in evolution terms. 

In a nutshell, there is a huge opportunity awaiting us in the long term. The evolution here can be advanced by executing the ideas. Test the ideas against the realities around us. Refine, execute, further refine. Execute the ideas in a new reality or new business altogether. Get new insights. Apply those insights elsewhere. Keep the evolution at full throttle to generate greater business at every iteration. Thus, the success breeds success to deliver greater results. In such an environment, the top management keeps on providing relentless 'learn_apply_re-learn_re-apply' cycles for the team. In this process, the team and the organization reap huge returns both financially and in learning opportunities. 

Once such ideas are generated, they need to be thought through till the execution against the backdrop of the ground realities around us. As an end result of such a session, the team should be able to come out with clear cut execution plan. The team moves into execution aspect of the journey.

Execution:

As noted by Theodore Levitt, 'Ideas are useless unless used'. Execution is the action part of the formula. The managers & leaders have the control over execution. Such an execution, when done well leveraging ideas and responding to the ever-changing realities around us, results in business success. Every such successful execution feeds the team back with newer learning to be more successful in the next iteration. 

The business reality around us can be likened to 'tsunami hit' sea surrounding a ship. The management is at the helm of such a ship. We can draw an analogy of 'tornado hit' flight, and the management is in the cockpit. Whereas, such analogies may deter the faint hearted, the great business leaders thrive on such challenges. Because they intuitively know that, the ferocity of such challenges is devastating; but the results of riding such opportunities yield dramatic growth prospects. 

Whereas strategically, ideas determine broader direction for execution; Reality feeds back while executing the strategy on real time basis. The street-smart ideas generated at the time of facing the realities form the basis of tactics. 

Strategy can be illustrated, in military context (where it was derived from) as the Plan of Action (PoA) to win the war based on the inputs accumulated over long term regarding the enemy and the realities. The action plan is set in future, at least a few months, weeks or days ahead. The war is going to be fought away in harsh battle grounds. The strategic planners have the luxury of time, data collection, processing and trials errors.

The execution differs from strategy in as many ways. Execution is on real time, on the harsh battle grounds and while facing the enemy in his face; while the bayonet is about to pierce through. For bold execution, continuous rigorous practicing is required. The leadership needs to coach the team members (covering the whole hierarchy) in such a way that the reality seems like cakewalk. The more rigorous and real life like the coaching and practice, the execution will be completed more like a master stroke. Once, the art of execution is mastered in the known territory. The leadership needs to develop the processes and systems based on the learning and implement. After refining further the processes and systems, the ruling of the turf can be assigned on autopilot. The leadership needs to look forward to new unknown territories with larger opportunities disguised as challenges. Thus, the leadership keeps on broadening its business territory.

Realities:

Opportunities multiply, as they are seized, thus said Sun Tzu thousands of years ago.

Ground realities are shaped due to various factors beyond any individual entity's control. Here, ‘entity’ refers to any person, organization or even nation. These entities definitely contribute to the shape of ground realities. There is always an effort to control by all the entities; whether consciously or unconsciously. At the same time ground realities have the power to affect the destiny of all the entities. Such power may affect the entities suddenly or over a period of time.

As different entities have very limited possibility of shaping the ground realities; And at the same time Ground Realities have immense power to affect the entities. It is far easier for business leader to sense and feel the realities as they are being shaped. An astute business leader will look at the indications of imminent 'tipping point' (as explained by Malcolm Gladwell in his eponymous book); and prepare his organization to leverage the 'tipping point' to leverage to advantage. 

A friend of mine who has been running small but sustained business with healthy growth quipped to me that to run a business you don't need great intelligence. This is very true, if you are lucky enough to be part of steady business. Here we are referring to ‘steady growth’. Additionally, naturally you may be talented to read the signs of reality and astute enough to ride the wave. In my view, the person was lucky enough to have enough resources and the right combination of supporting team to succeed. 

This is completely different for high performance growth oriented strategies and execution. So for most of us, even though we may not be lucky enough, the knowledge of the elements of high performance business initiatives will help to focus on the things which matter in this context.

In the above formula the impact of ideas is largely directed towards zeroing in on the opportunity. The quantitative impact of ideas is the least compared to execution and realities. To give an example, the ideas quantitative impact is limited to the range of 0 to 100; whereas the impact of execution goes to the order of million; and the impact of reality goes to the order of billion, trillion or even infinity. 

It is necessary to mention a few words on alignment and tight coupling here. The ideas, execution and realities have to be well aligned. The effect keeps on feeding back positively in every cycle. Thus it leads to dramatic success. Conversely, if all these elements are not in sync, then one may end up in disastrous consequences. These are extreme cases. The truth for most of the organizations lies between these extremes on a bell curve. The wise and shrewd business leaders, who have benefited from dramatic successes in earlier wins, steer their enterprises to success. Such leaders are at the helms of such affairs. And intuitively, they understand the dynamics to steer their ship/flight in such a way that they get the most out of the opportunity: which had become a formidable challenge. 

To summarize, the elements of high performance in business can be leveraged fully if ideas, execution realities are tightly coupled and well aligned. These elements feed back each other in every iteration in multiplying manner to generate dramatically great results. This can be represented by the diagram above.