Simple and straight a career guide

Guest Lecture

Delhi School of Economics-Department of Commerce (Delhi University) Valedictory Ceremony of Management Programs (MBA-IB and MBA-HRD) on 27th April, 2016.

Guest Speaker:

Dr.L.K.Pandey, Managing Director, Ananya Seeds Pvt Ltd, New Delhi.

“Simple and Straight” It’s a pleasure and privilege to share my thoughts with my beloved students in the presence of renowned professors of Department of Commerce, Delhi School of Economics (Delhi University). I can see your excitement on successful completion of MBA Programs in your specialised area. I am also feeling nostalgic to recall my own university days.

You have gone through rigorous sessions of learnings of management lessons but don’t forget that real lessons start at home from our elders, mothers, pets, domestic helps. Even after spending my life in various projects across the globe, I salute the wisdom of the people around us at home. In fact, fundamentals of inventory management, supply chain management, financial management, risk taking, risk mitigation, disaster management, damage control, self-management, empathy, leadership, human values etc are learnt at home. It shows that the kind of atmosphere we inherit determines our behaviour at workplace. The kind of relationship we have at our work place is certainly guided by our own cultural, societal and family atmosphere and upbringing. It will be our responsibility towards the nation while raising a family of our own, which I hope, you all will always keep yourself reminding.

The world outside may not have the comfort zone and may be more demanding than expected. You will be on certain responsible positions which demand more accountability for your thoughts and actions. So far you have lived in a highly comfortable environment and the most liberal place i.e. University. You need to be more disciplined (self-disciplined) and need not to read the rule books on disciplinary guidelines. You may also find certain learnings totally irrelevant and out of place. You have been taught to show your individual excellence right from your basic school but now next fine morning you will be expected to show your performance as a member of certain Team. It needs a change in your mind set and a real paradigm shift. It’s really a tough task as we have always believed in higher ranks, better score cards, individual awards being appreciated. Even you may qualify for a job on your individual performance and credentials. So unlearn the learned individual performance, relearn the Team dynamics and apply in day to day activities to prove your worth. I would like to talk on the traits of highly successful personalities. You need to show ownership in any task and activity assigned to you. It’s a very important habit that can be inculcated in our day to day activities. It can be observed in various things like maintaining cleanliness, hygiene of work place, resource savings, cost optimization, maintaining peace and harmony at our place of living and working.

The ownership is a manifestation of responsibility owed to us and can’t be compensated by any employer to its employees. We all will realize that our future is shaped up by the degree of risk we are taking. It’s possible through various scientific and logical approaches to take calculated risk. Also, we can mitigate the impact when it is very essential to take risk to run an organisation or taking a new business decision. I would like to underline here that your success in real life will not be decided only by your academic excellence but by your other social traits. We get a job by our qualifications but are fired due to our behaviour, so groom yourself very consciously to become a responsible, reasonable and reliable working partner.

Most of the successful CEOs and movers & shakers of the corporate world happen to be back benchers. So everyone now onwards will have equal opportunity to perform and excel.

Your lateral thinking window should always be open to get fresh air. Do not close yourself in a tight container but always have the ‘Out of Box’ thinking approach and try to find out various alternative answers for each question. It will help to prepare you with new solutions to every problem. So you will be known as solution provider rather than a problem child of your team, department or organisation. Problems will appear and disappear but they always leave impressions on our lives, so every threat may bring opportunities.

We need to keep our eyes open and be prepared to encash such opportunities for the benefit of ourselves and for whole humanity. We need to think events of life at a bigger landscape to convince yourself that you are a part of certain universal phenomenon and happenings. How you judge success will determine your approach and actions in life. In our common discussion, we conclude that success is about creating wealth and assets, winning a game, owning luxury cars, bungalow, rich lifestyle and having a family moving in high society.

But if you think about it on a bigger canvas and try to relate with tangible and intangible things, you can easily conclude that success is about opportunity to work for others, adding certain rich value in the society and finding a path to work for nature. Neither success is permanent nor failure. So failing is not so bad at all, fail early to succeed early.

If you don’t succeed after putting all your efforts, then you will learn something. Even an organisation which you create, may fail but you should not. We cannot get real success without failing once or more than once. You may succeed in finding the opportunity to serve people can be greatest success, so do the same with sincerity. Life is full of challenges, shocks, surprises and even miracles. It’s really a sweet and sour soup which has mixed feelings and tastes. You must develop your own survival skill instinct, if you lack the same.

This instinct can be honed by working regularly. We need to maintain a balance between work and life. You must remember that every success revolves around good health.

Entrepreneurship- It seems that more and more students are developing a high degree of confidence level to start their own businesses which is new era in our civilization. We believe in ourselves to become a job creator rather than a job seeker. I believe that Entrepreneurs are self propelled rockets who can’t be stopped doing something new and very creative for the society. However, as a nation it’s our responsibility to create a right kind of atmosphere and ecosystem with ‘Ease of Doing Business’ so that entrepreneurship can be chosen as first choice. Basic safety net in the country is needed to encourage risk taking abilities. Basic health care, unemployment insurance and old age benefits should be part of the system so that entrepreneurs get the impetus to start afresh if a business venture fails. Failure of businesses, should not be seen with hate but continuing to put in resources for a sick unit should be avoided. All resources in such situation must be channelled to more productive enterprise. Enterprises should fail but people should not fail. Small firms should be given more time to experiment rather than a fast exit, and large firms should not be allowed to last too long. Small firms should be encouraged to grow so that they can create more jobs therefore business environment and ecosystem should encourage firms to grow.

The start up initiative has created a positive sentiment in the country with a clarity on unbiased support to all with levelled play ground with transparent, predictable and least regulated market. The government’s promise to bring ease of doing business has started showing its effect. Anyone should be able to start a new business and give shape to his or her idea. The failure, should not be seen with stigma and people should be seen with rich in experiences.

Start early so that you can fail early for a grand success early. Also you must plan you exit from every activity before start. It is true for business also. Put your one foot in cold water, before you jump- we usually think and analyse too much to do something. If you think too much you will find your thoughts and courage paralysed. Remember that too much analysis leads to paralysis. Believe in learning while doing something. You need to keep your learning graph growing and bringing improvements.

I will always suggest you all to check your own attitude and aptitude of doing business even under very unfavourable conditions. Entrepreneurs can’t be produced in management institutes but they can be groomed on certain traits they should possess. It’s not difficult to find out at early stage of life about entrepreneurial skills. Being self-disciplined, creative, self starter, helpful, selfless, persistent etc are certain essential traits of an entrepreneur. You can judge yourself and people around you at home, in family, among your friends, in college and at workplace. This breed shows ownership and responsibility in all small and big tasks.

Always think BIG and believe in your immense potential. After the creation of natural processes, you must know that everything has been done by Human being, so you can also do something extraordinary. All our activities should be directed towards providing certain solution to common people. Your activity will bring out wealth and fortune for you also.

Your objective should be providing solutions to the society at large without focusing too much on profit and money. The day you make it your purpose then your focus will be somewhere else and you may not utilize even your own potentials. While making a business plan which is must for all interactions with banks, financers, investors, promoters and technology partners you should be clear about exit plan matching with your business objectives. Getting too emotional for the ownership shows short-sightedness and may hamper growth potential of any idea. While you need to stand by the side of your idea to defend its innovation, utility, advantage and disruptiveness, you should never be too obsessive. There is always a danger of a owner and promoter to fall in love with his idea and project. In such situation he or she can not bring a desired change and advancement over a period of time. So always keep checking through a third person to diagnose a disease called Narcissism.

Entering into an Entrepreneurial role in life is a conscious decision to be made after evaluating your own passion, goals of life and your immediate liabilities towards your family.

Once you decide in favour of starting a business and working towards realizing your dreams there should be no looking back. The approach should be unidirectional, concerted and determined one. However, I would always suggest that you must prepare your families and dependants for certain hardships during such adventure. It includes parallel options to meet emergencies as well as normal expenses budget. So they must be prepared to face thick and

thin and support each other during any turbulent phase. We need to remember that we work hard to make others’ lives easier so that they can work harder and that’s the principle of growth and development of society and community. So we may lose our own comfort to make others life comfortable through our products and services.

You can see that in mythologies as well as in our own life that all heroes need coaches. All big warriors had coaches who taught them specific skills as well as survival skills necessary for life. A coach can break one’s career- so choose them carefully, matching your own personal traits. Also you need to create a panel of veterans, experienced business leaders from diverse fields to advise you and your team on regular basis and also, as and when needed.

It’s an era of collaboration without which you will be stunted and dwarf. To grow huge, you need a strong, diverse and dynamic team. One person cannot have so many skills so law of complementarity works very well and lay the foundation on such existing natural laws.

People are the asset of an organisation. It is the only asset which never depreciates. So give value to everyone to enhance the value of the organisation. While building your team you must check their attitudes and wavelength of thoughts. Avoid bad blood from inducting in the team else they will play spoilsport. Every teammate has to bring in certain specific values and make the team diverse and competent. Once chosen, you all have to work on creating foundation on trust, transparency and worthiness. All have to contribute in the best possible ways.

On the matters of Finance, you have to be realistic and practical. You must be able to identify the source of finance at various stages of your business or company. Money does not come easily and many promises prove false with the passage of time. Even banks, Angel Investors, VCs all need certain demonstration of innovation, creativity and future potential before they commit a certain amount. In such situations, you need to bring your own money from family friends and small time financers. You also need to have certain collaterals to offer to bankers and financers as security as well to show your seriousness. I don’t say they are wrong particularly with a background of their bad experiences.

People working for your dream project will expect demonstration of leadership, humanity, transparency, honesty and high degree of integrity towards your own people, customers, government, community and environment. So you need to cultivate the culture of transparency, honesty and integrity by practising yourself. Your organisation should be lawabiding and so should be all your people. Unless you follow such rules you will not be able to harness full potential of yours and your people as well.

Keep the basics right...Ethics, core principles, value system, transparent, law abiding, corporate governance, digitalization, customer centric and market driven, dynamic organisation Hard work in a focused area with determination is the key to success. Do not imitate other highly successful or mega brands. Also do not expect any miracle other than magic of team work with purity of thoughts and actions. Nothing is impossible for able persons with noble mind. Understand the magic of networking to make your tasks of life smoother. It has

multifaceted effect like handholding, mentoring, coaching, financial support and solutions, compliances, government schemes, relevant to your new idea. You need not to reinvent the wheel again as your network can help you by sharing the knowledge and experience of doing similar things. Learning from other’s experiences should be your wisdom instead of criticizing them.

Organisations are not created overnight but they are the result of sincere efforts of the right kind of people with strong core value, working towards achieving a common goal. The brand you will be creating should be intended to have a long life. Prepare your organisation for any opportunity in future and at the same time it should be prepared to face and cope up with unprecedented challenges. It is possible if it has created self-sustainable mechanism of healing and repairing while moving forward. If your organisation or your people are not fully prepared, you can’t expect desired success. The market is very ruthless and mechanical, it has no place of emotions, and therefore, you will be thrown out of it. So preparing for tasks with your full potential and capabilities is the basic Mantra. While satisfying your appetite for fast growth, do not grow faster than desired and manageable. The fast growth should have pace with internal capacity building also.

When you start building your career, you must understand the importance of Commitment and its role in your credibility in life. Try to bring differentiation for yourself to create a positive image among your colleagues, associates, bankers, investors, employers, employees, social circle and whosoever.

I strongly believe that God has given Leadership qualities to everyone but it needs to be honed up. We all take and given certain leadership roles in various stage of our life. It’s also a relative phenomenon therefore only superior and more experienced and experimental leaders shine up. Those who are regularly honing up their leadership skill, are ready to encash any opportunity. You need to be a natural leader where masses can connect with your personality, ideology and thought process. A leader is more sustainable if he or she emerges from the within and if he or she is willing to sacrifice for the greater cause of society. Leading from the front and keeping oneself within the reach of even the last person of society is a true and immortal leader. Here practice is more important than preaching and you must always lead by example.

I strongly believe in all of you who have gone through rigorous studies and now are prepared to face the challenges and also prepared to challenge the problems to make our lives smoother and the earth more liveable.

My Best Wishes to everyone to achieve the best in your chosen area.

Dr.L.K.Pandey

Brief Profile of Dr.L.K.Pandey

Dr. L.K. Pandey is the Managing Director of Ananya Seeds Private Limited, an emerging seed company with vast experience of more than twenty five years in variegated roles such as Hybrid Seed Production, Quality Management, ExportImport, Sales and Marketing, Supply Chain Management, Business Development, Liaisoning, Government Subsidy Business, Training and Development of seed professionals, New Business Opportunities etc. His contribution in development of Indian Seeds Industry across the country is well known. He also enriched the seed industry by bringing very rich knowledge from global seed industry. He is known for working towards global food security and empowering the farming community through high quality seeds. He has served as Head of seed production as well as sales and marketing in the leading seed company of India. He passionately works at grass-root level to increase the farm productivity. His current passion is to mentor and coach young agri-professionals and start-up businesses. Being an active member in various industry associations, he keeps participating and contributing in several national and international conferences and meetings. He is also associated with various business management institutes, international organizations, and agricultural universities as resource person and mentor. His venture, Ananya Seeds has won several awards such as AIMA-Dr.J.S.Juneja award, CII industrial innovation award, 2015 and awards from RMAI (Flame Asia Award, Leadership Award), IARI, HAU-Hisar and Pantnagar University.

Dr. Pandey strongly believes that much need to be done at policy and execution level to make agriculture as sustainable profession to feed the global population. The agriculture needs our honest approach towards making it profitable, cash generating with suitable risk cover using modern technological advancements. We all need to search a solution to stop the irreversible exodus of farm sector rural youth towards metro cities.

Valedictory Ceremony of Management Programs (MBA-IB and MBA-HRD), Delhi School of Economics (Delhi University), 27th April, 2016.