CARES Model of Leadership for the VUCA World

As a business leader in the 21st century, you face persistent changes in the business environments in which you operate. VUCA refers to this operating environment that is constantly changing in conflicting, dramatic, and relentless ways to produce leadership and organizational challenges. The VUCA world obstructs a leader’s ability to understand, to decide, to communicate, and ultimately to act decisively — which is actually a precondition for effective action in business. The CARES model for leadership development can prepare leaders to handle this VUCA world in a more deliberate, self-assured, and successful manner.

Each letter of the acronym VUCA represents a type of change that we need to identify to cope fully with the environmental unpredictability. Our world is volatile — things change, change quickly, and for reasons beyond our control and cause instability. It is uncertain — we lack full and confirmed information and hence gaining conviction about future outcomes becomes ever more challenging. It is complex — we can never know the interaction of the multiple variables we must consider, let alone how to integrate them effectively. It is ambiguous — the same data can yield multiple and often competing interpretations and lacks precedence making it difficult to move ahead.

Globalization and technology have and continue to fuel the VUCA dynamics through increased innovation, interconnectivity, and digital revolutions, which, in turn, give rise to new and nimble competitors, who operate globally to transform customer expectations radically and thus produce organizational turmoil. The current turbulence has baffled leaders due to its novelty and because the proven approaches of the past have been inadequate in the VUCA-world.

The VUCA world obstructs a leader’s ability to understand, to decide, to communicate, and ultimately to act decisively — which is actually a precondition for effective action in business.

It’s natural for leaders to react differently to this environment. Some have become so distracted by the volatility and constant change that they have stopped planning and are just trying to react to events. Others have become so intimidated by the uncertainty and ambiguity that they don’t act for the fear of making a mistake. Still, others try to do everything they possibly can in this complex environment and don’t end up focusing their efforts in any one direction.

Only a few leaders have been able to fight through all the complexity and uncertainty and chart a way forward for their organizations. They have managed to impose their will on such complex environments and succeeded where others haven’t been able to do so.

In fact, a study by DDI in 2015 had shown that only 18% of leaders were capable of leading in a VUCA world! I haven’t come across any update on this study in recent times but I believe that the percentage may have moved only marginally. If you ask me why I don’t think leadership development in the last few years has really focused on developing the specific competencies to deal with this VUCA world. So, what are the leadership traits or competencies that would prepare them to be successful in a VUCA world? What would help them to thrive where others flounder?

Based on my inter-disciplinary work in leadership development, social and cognitive psychology, coaching, and my own experience as a leader and a coach, I have come up with a model for leadership development that can prepare leaders to handle this VUCA world in a more deliberate, self-assured, and successful manner. I call it the CARES Model of Leadership.

CARES Model of Leadership

CARES is an acronym for C – Credible A – Adaptive R – Resolute E – Emotionally Intelligent S – Sense-making Let’s look at each of these aspects as to why it is important for a leader in the VUCA world.

Credible

Why does a leader need to be credible to be effective in the VUCA world, or actually under any circumstance? As a leader, credibility lets your employees see you as a dependable source of reliable information and for fair, effective decision-making. This information could be on a day-to-day basis or on those occasions when it’s most critical. If you have credibility with your team, you will earn their mutual trust and respect. This would enable you to align them with the goals of the organization. Without credibility, there cannot be a culture of trust and shared goals. So the creditability of the leader is of prime importance, especially in a VUCA world where you need the team to trust you to lead them in the direction that you want them to go.

Adaptive

To welcome change is to be adaptive. Adaptive describes people who are flexible — they don’t lose their cool when plans change quickly and they are always willing to learn new ways to do things. Being adaptive helps you cope with the volatility and uncertainty and sail along in today’s ever-changing world. Clearly being adaptive, flexible, agile, and adaptable is paramount in a VUCA world.

Resolute

Developing and articulating a clear view of the future in today’s increasingly complex environments demands that leaders make judgments about the future — something that entails risk and could be wrong, and there could be significant consequences. Successful leaders are those who can overcome those doubts and act to prepare the organization for success in the future.

I am calling this trait Resolute because it refers to someone who is purposeful, determined, and unwavering. A resolute person has the courage to act with conviction in the face of uncertainty and risk. Be able to manage their emotions and be decisive even with limited information.

Emotionally-intelligent

As we discussed earlier, dealing with uncertainty, volatility and ambiguity can be emotionally challenging for any leader. Unless you are able to manage your emotions on this roller-coaster, you might end up burning out really fast. Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, as well as recognize and influence the emotions of those around you.

Emotionally intelligent leaders are aware of their own emotions and intuitively aware of the emotions of others. This self-awareness also helps them to manage their emotions when dealing with stressful situations. Their social intelligence enables them to lead with empathy and factor in emotions when presenting information, or otherwise engaging with their people. Leaders set the tone of their organization. If you lack emotional intelligence, it could have more far-reaching consequences, resulting in lower employee engagement and a higher turnover rate.

Sense-making

The primary function of any leader is to point the way ahead. This requires vision — the ability to see something significant about the future that isn’t readily apparent to others. Today’s VUCA environments are tough on leaders. The more volatile and the more ambiguous the environment, the harder it is for leaders themselves to come to grips with the situation, let alone articulate a clear way ahead.

Sense-making is the action or process of making sense of or giving meaning to something, especially new developments and experiences. Sense-making is how we make sense of the world so we can act in it. A person with highly developed sense-making can tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty. They have the ability to be able to know enough, even from limited information, to be able to make a measured and appropriate decision. The ability to spot existing or emerging patterns is one of the most if not the most critical skill in decision-making. Hence, it is self-evident that sense-making is a key competency for leaders to succeed in a VUCA world.

As a business leader in the 21st century, you face persistent changes in the business environments in which you operate. VUCA refers to this operating environment that is constantly changing in conflicting, dramatic, and relentless ways to produce leadership and organizational challenges. The VUCA world obstructs a leader’s ability to understand, to decide, to communicate, and ultimately to act decisively — which is actually a precondition for effective action in business. The CARES model for leadership development can prepare leaders to handle this VUCA world in a more deliberate, self-assured, and successful manner.

– Sonali Sinha

woman-entrepreneur

Leading Women: Stories of Entrepreneurship

Your maternity leave is coming to an end, and you are frantically looking for a daycare centre that’s convenient, safe and trustworthy. What seemed like a simple enough task (after all you see daycare facilities dotting the roads all around town), appears impossible now that the well-being of your child is at stake.

Divya & Ketika of Proeves - SoaringEagles

Divya and Ketika saw this as a potential area where new parents needed help. But where others see problems, they sensed an opportunity and turned it into a successful business. ProEves, an online portal that aggregates, verifies and engages with preschools and daycare centres across India, services parents and corporates to finalise a childcare centre that meets their requirements.

We spoke to Divya Agarwal, a driven first-time businesswoman, and mommy of two, about her entrepreneurial journey.

Q: You and Ketika started ProEves just a couple of years ago, and it’s already growing at a spanking pace! Give us a quick glimpse into how it started and the early days.

Divya: So, I was a corporate workhorse (Ketika is also a workaholic par excellence!), but with motherhood, some priorities shift. I loved my work in HUL – the team and the work environment were fantastic, but I was itching to do something of my own. Naturally, both of us had discussed this idea of connecting parents to good daycares.

During my maternity leave (with my second child) I felt its now or never! So, in 2016, Ketika and I bootstrapped our company and started our business with our little kids sleeping beside our desks!

Q: Tell us a bit more about ProEves. What services do you provide exactly?

Divya: A lot of parents don’t know what to ask or check when they go scouting for daycare facilities for their kids. I mean we check reviews of restaurants before we go out for a meal, so how can we rely on word of mouth for our kids! Basic questions about staff and first aid kits etc. are never touched upon. There are no legal requirements and licenses for day-cares in India, the industry is not transparent, and it does not provide flexible options to parents.

So we come into the picture as a daycare aggregator, we help corporates and parents discover, decide and book centres. There are features like mom references, block a visit, counsellor chats that parents can make use of.

On the other hand, many local, regional childcare centers are not tech and marketing savvy. The investment in infrastructure and staff is sizable, but they only end up relying on word of mouth to attract business. They don’t know how to manage social media or get reviews or do reputation management.

ProEves helps both sides of the child care spectrum; we help parents by ensuring that the daycare centres meet all requirements and we help daycares by streamlining their marketing and giving them a trusted platform.

Q: This is a completely new service. It must have been tough to create an ecosystem from scratch. Tell us a bit about some of the challenges you faced.

Divya: Well yes, any business is challenging. For us specifically, the biggest bottleneck was creating a large network of preschool, daycares and getting inroads to our target customers of new parents. It took a while to talk to managers and owners and explain the concept to them and get them on board and to create a list of standardised features that everyone followed – safety, first aid, staff training, etc.

Also, as we were bootstrapped, we had financial constraints. Putting together a good team took some effort as we were looking for like-minded professionals.

The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act 2017 gave a good boost to our business – it made crèche facility mandatory for every establishment employing 50 or more employees. By this time, we had already connected with over 600 daycare centers and had honed our knowledge of the whole ecosystem (in fact we were the only ones in the field).

This helped us work with corporates as consultants – they outsource their entire process to us. We shortlist facilities, conduct audits and manage the entire front end between the creches and parents.

Our corporate business has helped us grow and sustain our other operations. Now we are ready to go in for a round of funding in 2019 to expand our B2C business.

Q: What are your plans for the next phase? How do you plan to use your funds?

Divya: Increasing the depth and breadth of our network, technology-enabled bookings and ramping up marketing is a priority for our business. We plan to roll out various services like event booking, hourly daycare bookings etc for our customers

And yes! We also continuously conduct large-scale surveys and research with corporates the whole year round. Extra funding could help us increase the scope of these as well.

Yeah! So, lots to do! We have big plans!

Q: Did you face any special women-centric issues? Are there any struggles that are specific to women entrepreneurs?

Divya: Well, to be honest, not really. The field is largely women dominated. There is a perception that women don’t have a good head for figures, so maybe we will face these biases when we start tapping investors for funding. But I am pretty confident that in our field we are the experts and we have a tested business model, so I am not too fussed with how we will be perceived by investors.

Q: What are your learnings from your professional journey?

Divya: Business is not easy, setting up a new concept or service is even harder. I wouldn’t lie – there were times we wanted to give up. But am glad we hung around.

I have been blessed with a great team that has grown with us and with the support from my family. For both of us, Ketika and I, things worked out great – we found a good business idea that we are passionate about and a complementary partner in each other. She is meticulous in her work, plans for the next things and brings the big picture thinking, while I focus on executing with excellence. Maybe starting a company with a 6-month-old baby wasn’t the best timing – but there is no perfect timing for everything in life!

Q: Anything you would like to say to women starting their entrepreneurial journeys.

Divya: You need to let go of the salary mindset. Initially, for the first year, I was validating when the business outflows will be matching my corporate salary. It took me some time to realise that when you are building a business you need to think long-term and you need to think big. What excites me now is – what is the growth rate of our business, how many customers are we acquiring, how soon we will hit the 30 Crore, 50 Crore and 100 Crore mark.

Divya, Ketika and their team are doing a commendable job of helping women get back to work without worrying about daycare centers. We wish them all the success because therein lies the success of many women returning to work.

If you would like to share your entrepreneurial journey, then drop us a quick note or a comment below. We would love to hear from you.

women-entrepreneurs-stories

Leading Women: Stories of Entrepreneurship

Neha Bagaria, Founder and CEO of JobsForHer

The last few years have seen a huge resurgence in conversations about women returning to work. The concept is not new – generations have seen women drop out of the workforce for years to care for their children and their homes; some returned, some couldn’t quite make it back.

Like with everything else in the world, digital technology, and the Internet has opened new opportunities for millions of women – either as job opportunities or as online support systems and job boards.

One such leading online platform is JobsForHer, a connecting portal that is designed specifically to help women restart their careers after a break.

We chatted with Neha Bagaria, Founder and CEO of JobsForHer to find out how she channelled her personal experiences as a restarter to help other women.

Q: Your bio on your website makes it clear that JobsForHer is something that came from your personal experiences. Tell us a bit about why you started this venture and the motivation behind it.

Neha: I was the usual career woman, and when the children came along, I decided to take a break to raise them – the break ended up being more than 3 years long.

During this personal journey, I became aware of the various difficulties a woman faces in order to re-enter the workforce. There are innumerable accomplished and qualified women around me who just stopped working for personal reasons such as marriage, motherhood or elder care, and then never returned to the workforce.

I started delving into the reasons behind this female brain drain, and it became clear that there are many re-entry challenges that need to be addressed in India.

Something as basic as school pick-up becomes a huge issue – most schools get over at 2-3 pm; offices go on till 6 pm at the very least – unless you have someone to take care of your child during this time how can you hold down a full-time job?

This is just one situation – women returnees not only need flexibility but also need help to regain their confidence and retraining to enter the workforce properly.

On the other side of the spectrum, companies and employers need to overcome gender biases and change cultural mindsets.

My own experience made me determined to enable other women to restart their careers and connect them with whatever they require to do so. And this idea grew to become JobsForHer, I founded it on International Women’s Day, March 2015.

Q: How did you jump into entrepreneurship? What was the progression from idea to execution?

Neha: I’ve always been a social entrepreneur at heart; during my last semester at college, I founded my first company Paragon to introduce the Advanced Placement Program in India, and I also became the College Board Representative of India.

When marriage brought me to Bangalore, I started working with Kemwell, a pharmaceutical services company, in the fields of HR, Finance and Marketing strategy.

The growth and development that I experienced at Kemwell were immense, but social entrepreneurship was my first love and after I took a few years out for the kids; it all just fell into place. I knew this was exactly what I wanted to do. But apart from my gut feeling, I had enough experience to understand the gap that existed in the market and how I could fill it.

Q: It’s not easy setting up a new business, and I am sure it must have been challenging for you as well. Tell us a bit about some the hurdles you faced.

Neha: Well yes, when I decided to start JobsForHer, there were a lot of challenges – to put it mildly.

Firstly, I had started working after a long career break and untangling motherhood responsibilities from work demands was difficult. It was a challenge to figure out how to divide my time between my kids and my new business.

I hadn’t yet started working full-time, and I felt that not picking up my children from school was a deal-breaker. I was fighting against the traditional stereotyping where women are made to believe they are the sole caretakers.

The last time I had founded and run a company was 12 years ago, and I didn’t have kids then so the challenges of balancing work-life was different at that time.

Professionally, there was also the challenge that my past work experience was in education and pharma, which was diametrically opposite to the fast-paced rollercoaster world of tech start-ups.

However, slowly but surely, I started piecing it all together. I started with strong advisors to fill in the gaps in tech, HR and to build a scalable start-up. This gave me immense confidence in my idea, and I felt I could achieve the scalability I had envisioned.

Q: Did you face any special women-centric issues? Are there any struggles that are specific to women entrepreneurs?

Neha: I think we are our biggest hinderances. Through my entrepreneurial journey, I have realized how often women tend to hold themselves back because of fear.

It is so important to recognize our fears and to name them; only then can we find a path to overcome them. Whenever I am at a crossroads, I ask myself this question, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” It is critical that we don’t let our fears hold ourselves back and stride on, confident of figuring things out – eventually.

Q: What are your learnings from your professional journey?

Neha: I strongly feel that for a woman entrepreneur to succeed in the competitive business landscape, it is imperative that we become comfortable giving equal importance to our careers as we do to our other obligations, roles, and responsibilities. And for that, we need to build a thick skin and a strong support system.

Because until we don’t, we won’t be able to create the ecosystem required to support this challenging journey to the top.

We will need to rally the troops and have our support structure firmly in place – parents, in-laws, extended family, friends, and yes, husband too.  We will need to stop caring about people who don’t understand and help the people we care about to understand us. We will need to make sacrifices and compromises about being there for everyone all the time and having everything perfect.  And we will need to stop feeling apologetic about it.

Q: Wow! Well said! What’s next?

Neha: More of the same! We have come a long way in the last 3 and half years. We have made huge progress in changing the mindsets of both the women and companies. Women, so that they feel confident about the gap in their resumes and portray it in the right light and companies, so that now they are not only taking back a huge number of women returnees but companies like Dell, Epsilon, Facebook, Diageo, Sapient, Credit Suisse, etc. are working with us closely to reach out to this candidate pool.

It gives me enormous satisfaction when I hear of women restarting their careers through JobsForHer. We’ve seen success stories of women who restarted their careers at companies ranging from large enterprises to SME’s. I see them happy and confident and excited about regaining their financial independence and a sense of self-worth. In fact, we have launched an e-book called “Way Back to the Way Forward” to chronicle some of their restarter journeys. Whenever I read this book and delve into their challenges and achievements, it makes everything feel worthwhile.

Q: How was your experience with SoaringEagles? Did you see a direct business benefit?

Neha: Working with SoaringEagles has been a great experience!

Since they offer a wide range of professional development courses and JobsForHer is India’s largest portal for women returning to work post-sabbatical, we found a perfect partnership.

Run by a fantastic and empathetic team, the courses they run are perfect for women returnees to reskill themselves before dipping their toes back into the professional world.

Q: And finally, is there something you had wished you had done differently?

Neha: Not let guilt and fear hold me back from dreaming big!

Neha and her team are doing a commendable job of helping women get back to work after a break. We wish them all the success because therein lies the success of many women returning to work.

If you would like to share your entrepreneurial journey, then drop us a quick note. We would love to hear from you. If you want a sounding board to grow your business fearlessly, click on the Request Consultation button above.

women-entrepreneurs

Leading Women: Stories of Entrepreneurship

All of us have hidden strengths that come forth when we are challenged or inspired.  And at SoaringEagles we love to hear these stories of human endurance and ingenuity. Of dreams – big and small – becoming a reality.

Every month, we try to catch up with a woman entrepreneur or business leader for a quick chat to understand how they do, what they do!

This month, we spoke to Nirali Sanghi, Founder & Owner, Indiaparenting.com

Indiaparenting.com is India’s first and largest parenting site catering to the needs of parents across diverse geographies, culture, and language with nuanced content that is relevant to their local culture.

“I had a 5-month old baby; we did 18-hour days, and I couldn’t wait to get up the next day and start again.”

This is the sentence that sticks to mind from our conversation with Nirali!

Here’s the rest of the talk –

Q: You launched indiaparenting.com in 1999 and almost 20 years down the line you still sound so excited about it. Tell us how it all started.

Nirali: Well, after I had my baby in 1998, like all new mums I went on the Internet to look for advice and information and saw a huge gap – there was no information that was India centric. All the biggest websites and forums were either US or UK based. Things like Indian baby names, information on mundan ceremonies, etc – things that are specific to our culture was just not discussed online.

So right off the bat, I knew that this is something that has enormous potential! By the time my baby was 5 months old, I had a team of 15 people working out of my bedroom – there were desks and laptops all around and a baby sleeping on the side. We launched the website in May 1999.

It was crazy, but also really great! We were doing everything in that one room; writing, designing, programming – you name it.

You have to remember this was the dot-com boom period and the website really took off very very fast. We even had an offer to sell it. We got funding in 2000, just before the huge dot-com crash!

Q: Wow, this sounds exciting! Did you find it difficult to get an investor on board? And did this investment help the website?

Nirali: Well I have around nine years of experience in Banking and Marketing, so when it comes to approaching investors, I knew what I was doing.

At first, the idea was to use the funds to acquire other similar parenting sites and expand the business, but with the crash, the market was quite iffy, and in 2003 I decided to return the unused funds. Our investors had entrusted it to us and as we didn’t need the funds anymore; I was sure that returning them would unlock the investment for someone else, so we gave the investors their money back.

Our website was self-funded and making money. We didn’t need the extra funds, and it was the right thing to do.

We did a whole redesign and relaunched the website in 2008, and then the market crashed again in 2009!

Q: What bad timing! And twice in a row! What are some of the challenges you faced throughout your 20-year journey?

Nirali: In the beginning, naturally the struggle to just get it off the ground was immense – there was no office, very few employees, I had to keep a tight rein on the cost because it was all coming out of my pocket and also it was all so new.

Plus, I have very strong opinions on what I like regarding content and style and managing a diverse team of creative people with different mindsets was something I had trouble with in the beginning.

What I find professionally challenging and also very exciting is to create new products and develop them from scratch – its all yours, like a baby. That’s what keeps me going really.

Of course, along the way, there were products and services that didn’t work very well – like an e-commerce venture for baby products. We realised that people are searching for specific information when they visit us, and the mindset was not receptive to pitch sales.

Q: What about your experience as a woman entrepreneur? Anything that stands out?

Nirali: I didn’t have any specific challenges being a woman.

Now things are a bit different, but at the start, we would go for meetings, and people would just look at the male employee, they just expected the guy to be senior, I guess (laughs). Men focus on men! All that has changed a fair bit now, so many more women in boardrooms now.

Q: Almost 20 years down the line; what are your takeaways from the journey.

Nirali: We are the largest Indian parenting site! And the first, other sites came and went, but we are still here and growing. I couldn’t have done it without my outstanding team. We have 15 permanent employees now, and every single one of them is fantastic. I give them a completely free hand and no matter what the challenge – they just crack it! I know it sounds like a cliché, but we are like a family.

Q: You recently did one of our courses on public speaking. What motivated you to do this course?

Nirali: Well actually I am getting several opportunities to speak at forums and conferences, and I thought I could use some help.

What I discovered is that I am part of the vast majority of average speakers (laughs) – we are not too bad, but not great either. So, the course really helped spike my confidence by correcting some important points – like dealing with negative situations or structuring the ppt.

What I really liked was how to make your presentation memorable – I never really thought in that direction, so that was quite refreshing.

Q: Finally, what do you think is the most important requirement for an entrepreneur – women, and men.

Nirali: From my experience, its family support. Your husband, your children, and your extended family matter a great deal – they can either make the journey fun or make it harder.

As the digital world expands and fills up our homes, we are quite sure that Nirali and her team will continue to grow with it. We wish them continued success!

If you would like to share your entrepreneurial journey, then drop us a quick note or a comment below. We would love to hear from you.

intrapreneur

It’s Your Turn to be the Intrapreneur

Yes! I am talking to you…enough of blaming others for limited career growth, poor management, etc. It’s high time to be that ‘irreplaceable’ employee. It’s your turn to develop Intrapreneurship in you.

Ken Kutaragi was working in the sound labs at Sony Corporation (1975) when he bought his young daughter a Nintendo game console. When he saw his daughter playing with the new Nintendo game, he was not at all impressed with the quality of the sound. Ken believed that a digital chip, dedicated solely to sound, would significantly improve the quality of the Nintendo gaming system.

Ken successfully developed a CD-ROM-based system for Nintendo. Ken Kutaragi visualised the business opportunity of computer gaming systems for Sony. With his Intrapreneurial spirit, Ken pushed hard to convince the Sony Corporation to enter the electronic gaming business. His persistence paid off and he went on to lead the effort to help Sony develop its own gaming system. This went on to become a blockbuster product success we all know as ‘PlayStation’.

Sony backed Ken’s Intrapreneurial venture by investing $2.5 billion into the PlayStation start-up, and has gone on to build over 70% market share in the global home video game console market. Ken’s Intrapreneurial success has been called one of the greatest new business creations and launches in business history.

Animator John Lasseter was fired from Disney after suggesting the company get into computer animations. After all, he was just an artist. He went on to work for a division that later became Pixar. Here his interest in CGI was not only appreciated, but led to several hits like Toy Story and A Bug’s Life. Eventually, Pixar was sold to Disney. Lasseter went on to become Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios.

There are many examples of employees who has shown Intrapreneurship. Cheryl Pohlman (Kodak), Jeri Yoshizu (Toyota). If they can…then what is stopping you?

Entrepreneurial employees don’t always make it at large old-world companies. But, as the ability to innovate has now become a competitive advantage, even a requirement for survival, such large legacy companies need ways to retain people who can pull off innovative ideas. These employees recognize opportunities, and have the drive and persistence to make them happen.

If you want to be the ‘Irreplaceable Employee’, adapt the following 3 traits of ‘Intrapreneurs’

Driven To Come Up With New Ideas:

They are not satisfied with a job where they show up every day, follow orders, and go home. They want to do more, to achieve more ultimately, to have some degree of control over what they are doing. You will find these employees willing to follow through on their ideas with passion, taking ownership of some small part of the organization.

Willing To Take Risk:

Every business that exists represents a risk that someone was willing to take, and it’s similar for Intrapreneurial employees. They are not paralyzed in situations where the outcome is unclear and potential failure presents risks. If anything, they are energized by that sense of desperation and driven to come up with the best solution. Intrapreneurs aren’t afraid to change course, nor do they fear failure. They have an inner confidence and courage to believe that every step takes them closer to their ultimate goal.

Focused On Results:

They want to know how they are doing, what they are doing well, and where they can improve. That thirst for information spreads to the rest of the business, too, and they are always looking for ways to do things better. An entrepreneur “gets it” and does their work in a way that shows the organization they are someone it can’t afford to lose. The money and advancement finds them.

Konosuke Matsushita, one of the business titans of the 20th century, said: “Think like an entrepreneur, not a hired hand.

Apple, Motorola, Mitsubishi, 3M, and Johnson and Johnson are all well known examples of large organizations that practice and develop intrapreneurship today.

If you want to become that irreplaceable ‘Intrapreneurial Employee’, check out the coaching programs offered by Soaring Eagles. This program helps you develop into a highly productive, creative thinking leader who can communicate their ideas with confidence and influence people. Those who have stayed the course and followed the strategies, have risen from a sea of mediocrity in the workplace and emerged as Intrapreneurs!

Successful-entrepreneur-soaring-eagles

The Formula for Success in Entrepreneurship

The e-commerce industry has changed the landscape of the start-up ecosystem of India, for the better. Every time, while reading about the success stories of organizations like ‘Flipkart’ and how the Bansal duo officially entered the Forbes billionaire club, there are many aspiring entrepreneurs, hoping to make it big, eventually.

So, what does it really take to be a successful entrepreneur? While there is no specific recipe for success, there is no substitute for hard work and dedication either. Establishing a venture entails taking risks, having the ability to anticipate consequences, demonstrating a thorough understanding of the environment in which one plans to operate in and the ability to handle setbacks.

The future belongs to those who can innovate as well as address India’s systemic issues in the process. While doing so, it is important to ensure that the initiative that you plan on taking is aligned with your passion, abilities and core values. The fruits of success are more likely to come to entrepreneurs who can stay focused on their strengths, while striving for excellence.

The entrepreneurial journey is all about executing a new idea and continuously evolving in order to stay relevant. It is through humility and positivity, that facilitating the process of learning and growth becomes possible.

So, while the Bansals’ ‘Flipkart’ continues to raise the bar for start-ups in the e-commerce industry; they have proved that through visioncommitment and determination, your dreams can be transformed into successful realities.