Executing a great vision

ARBOR MENTIS : SUBROTO BAGCHI
The author is co-founder & chief operating officer of MindTree Consulting.


The gap between the best and the average people in any organisation is constant. The trick is to improve the performance of the best


Great vision must take people along with it. The greater the ability to carry people with you, the greater the chances of success for the vision. But, at times, while executing a vision, some people have to be left behind. However great the power of persuasive thinking, there are always the naysayers as well as people who indulge in 'subversive compliance'. The latter say "yes, yes, yes" to you, and go back to do the exact opposite. Leaders must have comfort dealing with them.

The important thing is to realise that we should not waste time trying to carry everyone with us. As Peter Drucker would say, do not waste time feeding the problem. Feed the opportunity. You will be surprised how often this message is lost on leaders. A classic story that drives home the message is that of the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra. For years, it was performing below par. A new conductor came and, within a short time, it became world-class. Drucker asked him the recipe of his success. The conductor said he always focused on the few people at the top. According to him, the gap between the best people and the average in any organisation is constant. The trick is to improve the performance of the best - the rest automatically move up.

Great vision always reserves room for providence and lends itself to the power of emergence. If you have thought through how to execute the vision in fullest detail, you probably do not know that you do not know. Great vision is an apparition of the future - not the future itself. We must be open and flexible to changes as we go along. Apart from that, great vision must have inherent risks and real possibility of failure. There is nothing called a risk-free future. While we embrace the risks and sometimes begin a voyage to discover India, we end up discovering the United States of America instead! That is quite acceptable. Sometimes, on the path of a great vision, we see reasons every single day to be deeply unhappy. That is perfectly normal. Yet, it is not reason enough to question the vision itself.

As we come to a close on this subject, I want to share with you my last thoughts. Great vision has no place for cynicism. Search the whole world and you cannot show me a cynical visionary. Let me share something from my personal life here to drive the point home. My mother came from a poor family with many children. As the last born of her widowed mother, she was dependent on the meagre earnings of her two brothers. Her family was naturally relieved when she was married off. What she did not know was that the man she married suffered from periodic bouts of schizophrenia. Either my father's family suppressed the fact, or they did not know about it.

Even today, many people think that a good marriage settles down people who suffer from mental illnesses. After delivering her third child, my mother realised what the problem was. The door to her past was closed. In the 1930s, in small town India, there was nothing a woman could do. She took charge of the situation. She went on to accept my father's condition and supported, loved and respected him for what he was.

She never complained of her fate. In the years that followed, she became the Rock of Gibraltar in the family. Despite her state, she had a great vision that her sons would grow up as confident, capable men of great character. When the first of the five joined the IAS in 1966, she was in her fifties and everyone thought her vision had come true. Just at that time, due to corneal ulcer, she became completely blind in both her eyes.

She lived without sight for three more decades. But during each day of her blindness, she woke up cheerful, was fully engaged with the world around her and always asked us to do our best. From her, I learnt that even when you lose your sight, there is no need to give up your vision. Cynicism does not ever deliver the world.