Building a business - is much like building a house …….. without a vision, a model, detailed plans …… drawn up by an architect with specifically defined engineering calculations to ensure the house is stable ….. ….. for builders to follow …… with strong systems ….. and strong leadership to engage , enthuse and inspire the right people to take action is fundamental for building a strong foundation!
Without setting your vision and mapping out your course - you are blindly walking along - not knowing where you are heading !
However !!!!!
Before setting your vision , HBR suggests that you need to root your business in a noble purpose - find your North Star - one bigger than yourself - one that your team can get behind -
As Simon Sinek says ….. find out your WHY!!
That purpose becomes your North Star ( “Dhruv Tara” - Indian Translation) - your Compass - and will define the vision , goals and tasks.
In fact , the vision, goals and plans ….will invariably change - shit will happen and you will need to “map a new course” …… and there are many ways to achieve your purpose”,
Knowing your purpose - your why - knowing what your North Star is - and then mapping your course with a solid vision, a set of goals and tasks before taking action is a key to success…..
That purpose - that North Star will give you direction when the path ahead is hazy, and the outlook seems bleak…. And let me tell you … the outlook will look bleak!!!
With the great resignation …. And the difficulty in recruiting the right people ….. the goal is to retain your team, and turn them into leaders .
Wise leaders were often wise followers and Once they become clear about their North Star, it becomes their calling, and they serve that calling willingly, happily, and infectiously.
Case study
Prasad Kaipa shares the story about Dr V in an HBR article
What Wise Leaders Always Follow
https://hbr.org/2012/01/what-wise-leaders-always-follo
Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy (also known as “Dr. V”), an ophthalmologist with crippled fingers started the Aravind Eye Care System in 1976 — with no business plan, money or resources….. but with a powerful purpose
He dreamed a seemingly impossible dream: to eliminate needless blindness by providing appropriate, compassionate, high-quality eye care for all.
And three revolutionary guiding principles:
- Turn no one away, regardless of whether they can pay or not;
- Give everyone the same high quality of care;
- Don’t depend on any outside sources for funding;
Dr V now sees 2.7 million patients every year, and even more impressively, treats the majority of them for free. He has become a business example of compassion, as well as proof that wise leaders can radically change the world by following their North Star.
Dr. V changed the face of eye care on the planet, and he did it by owning the entire problem — providing community outreach, eye care, training, eye banks, research and the production of inexpensive but high-quality eye care supplies.
He realized that if he wanted to eradicate curable blindness from the world, he had to start thinking not only about his organisation, but also about training others. Conventional wisdom would be to guard your secret sauce, but Dr V did the exact opposite. By giving away all his secrets, he has trained approximately 15% of all ophthalmologists in India and thousands more from over 69 countries. The work of this one man is said to have touched 40% of eye care patients in the developing world to date.
Here is an extract from Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World’s Greatest Business Case for Compassion by Pavithra Mehta and Suchitra Shenoy (a special note: Read this book!):
To Dr. V, the cultivation of empathy, the effort toward equanimity and self-awareness, the stepping back from ego, and the attempts to align with a clear-sighted, inherent wisdom are all part of his larger aspiration to be a perfect instrument.
Wise leadership does not fit the strict patterns of smart analysis, but instead taps into an intuitive part of who you are at the core, unearthing counterintuitive principles:
- Compassion doesn’t have to come at the cost of efficiency — it can actually drive systems and operational excellence. You don’t have to separate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) goals and project goals. You can make CSR the strategy or even the end goal for your business growth.
- If you truly focus on service, resources do organize themselves — if your main interest is in solving a problem, then there’s no • question that cooperation beats competition. Businesses should focus on the customer, not on profit or business model.
- When individuals (and especially leaders) stay rooted in inner transformation —being true to one’s calling, paying attention to one’s values and being aware of one’s emotions and actions — it fundamentally alters the way in which organizations develop. Leaders aligned with their own North Star inspire their teams to do the same, not simply by words but by the power of their example.
For Dr. V, inspiration struck when he learned about McDonald’s. Due to his experience as a government doctor with rural camps, he knew that he had to develop highly efficient, scalable, repeatable processes to treat the masses that came. In McDonald’s, he saw that throughout the world McDonald’s franchises had similar quality meals for low prices. “If McDonald’s can do it for hamburgers, why can’t we do it for eye care?” And sure enough, he developed systems that allow Aravind surgeons to do more than five times the number of cataract surgeries done by the average Indian doctor (and ten times that of an average US physician).
When intraocular lenses (IOLs) came on the scene in the West in the early 1990s, global health professionals called it a luxury that developing countries could ill-afford. Dr. V saw the value of IOLs and literally manufactured a revolution. At a time when India was far from being the hotbed for technology outsourcing that it is today, Aravind started manufacturing these IOLs at world-class quality, driving the global price down from $150 to $10. Aravind now makes 7% of all IOLs in the world.
Wisdom is not about focusing on the future, but rather about acting in the present, aligned with our North Star.
What is your purpose - your North Star? And how can you be the perfect instrument of a higher calling?
Share it with us in the comments below .
https://hbr.org/2012/01/what-wise-leaders-always-follo