Are you M A D ?

Give a hungry man a fish to eat & you feed him for a day, But teach a man how to fish & you feed him throughout his life.

Each one of us is a philanthropist at heart & we all have contributed in big and small ways to help our fellow citizens. I would like to ask you this question – Have you fed them for a day or have you fed them for life? 

Are you Making A Difference?

Let’s go back to December 2014 & transport ourselves 532 kms from Pune to a small town called Digras in Yavatmal district of Maharashtra. Here we meet Sunita Jadhav who lives with her husband Balu and 2 school going children. Balu is a daily labourer & works very hard 12 hours a day & 7 days a week to make ends meet for his family, but life is a constant struggle. Sunita is smart & ambitious and she also has tailoring skills learnt at her parent’s house. But she cannot utilize her skills in this small town without setting up her own business. She cannot take a loan from the local banks or credit societies as she is not creditworthy enough for them. The local moneylender would happily provide her with the required loan against collateral of her jewelry and at a very reasonable interest rate of only 10% - per month. So what can she do now?

Cut back to present date & we find that Sunita has been running a small tailoring business for the last 14 months. She has been contributing Rs. 3000/- every month to the household which now is nearly 40% of the monthly inflow. Instead of using firewood, she now uses a LPG cylinder for cooking & plans to construct a toilet outside the house. She now has a bank account & also saves around 400 rupees every month, which she plans to increase every year. She is now more confident due to her new-found success and also meets other women in her town to encourage them to use their skills to set up a business too. Do you agree with me that this is excellent example of Making A Difference?

You might now be wondering about what caused this transformation? Sunita had connected with a local NGO & was provided a collateral free loan thru a non-profit platform called Rang De. She bought a sewing machine & required raw materials for her tailoring business and started making children & women clothing which she sold at a decent profit to people in the locality. She repaid the loan in 12 easy installments at an interest rate of 10% per annum & now plans to buy another pico machine which will further enhance her business.

Rang De is a crowd-funding platform which helps philanthropists like us to connect with beneficiaries like Sunita. We can channelize a small portion of our overall investment portfolio into Rang De as social investments & this amount is then used to provide loans to rural poor to set up small businesses. The amount repaid back by the beneficiary can then be reinvested or withdrawn back by the investor. In this way we can utilize some of our investment portfolio to improve the lives of multiple people thereby Making A Difference.

Rang De has complete transparency in their transactions, follow 6 Sigma processes and is supported by grants from organisations like ICICI Foundation, World Bank & Tata Trusts. They have been in operation for the past 8 years, disbursed loans worth Rupees 46 crores & have directly impacted 50,000+ families. Again would you agree with me that this is an affirmation of the principle of Making A Difference.

I have personally been an investor in Rang De for the past 3 years & have invested over 1.74 lacs till date thereby directly impacting 286 families. It gives me tremendous sense of satisfaction and therefore I would like to make a sincere appeal to each one of you to consider Social Investing thru Rang De thereby help in Making A Difference.

Increasing the Probability of Success

I have literally ‘picked up the pen’ after a long hiatus and article has been added after a year of zero output. A comment by a speaker in a panel discussion sparked off the ideation process & I could ‘connect the dots’ to a series of incidences which have happened over the last couple of weeks to support the main concept.

Today we talk about the concept of ‘Increasing the probability of success’ in any endeavor; I have included several real life anecdotes experienced by people known to me. Many folks undertake critical tasks without understanding the factors which can increase the probability of success. They therefore expose themselves to the vagaries of the outcome driven by multiple factors, most of which are outside their control. What if one could ‘load the dice’ in ones favor to increase the likelihood to achieving the outcome one desires? People call this luck, but I personally believe that you can influence your own luck if you can understand the concept of ‘increasing the probability of success’. In any case this is not propagation of unethical practices or indulging in underhand techniques & therefore one can use these concepts in everyday life.

So what are the mantras for ‘increasing the probability of success’?

Focus on the critical factors and invest in them is the first mantra. When we need to accomplish something we are normally distracted by the many things which might impact an outcome & the attempt to focus on many or all of them leads to a situation where the desired outcome is missed out. It is far better to focus on the critical few and invest in them. Identifying the critical factors can be a tough task in itself, but a rational analysis will always yield the top factors and it makes better sense to invest the majority of your time, money & energy on these few factors. A very successful serial entrepreneur shared with me recently that he has ensured faster ramp of the many businesses launched by him, by investing early in building a very strong sales engine. In one his companies the first hire was a head of sales, who had a very strong track record and tangible credibility in the market. This ensured that the company was able to rack up very early successes in acquiring customers globally and this contributed in a major way subsequently to listing on the NASDAQ and a very profitable exit after acquisition by another company. In a tech start-up the focus inevitably is on the product or service being offered and on creating a better ‘mousetrap’. It is far better to ensure that you have a minimum viable product and then align the final output to what paying customers actually want.

Output is only an outcome of smart Input is the second one. A recurring problem seen by me is that positive outcome is expected from only token inputs. Unfortunately the reality is that when the required result is significant in size, input needs to be similarly smart & sustained. If one does not identify the amount of input required the possibility of assuming that certain actions are not working is higher & one could drop them before hitting the ‘tipping point’. Focus on the critical factors is a good starting point, but this needs to be supported by a systematic process which measures progress and helps one to maintain the path of sustained effort. A friend was disheartened by the lack of progress in his job change search & a change of approach went a long way in helping him get his next assignment. Instead of applying to all kinds of jobs, he worked on a most systematic effort by first isolating roles where he would be in a position to add value with his experience and background. Then he followed this up with customizing his resume to highlight relevant elements & creation of a covering letter where he enumerated fitment to the specific requirements of the advertised role. In parallel he also invested time & effort to network within his target companies that he wanted to work with. This might seem to be a ‘no-brainer’ but it is surprising that so many experienced folks forget the fact that they themselves are brands & should market themselves with the needs of the target market in mind.

Changing your attitude might seem very simple but it has far reaching implications in terms of the success one can achieve. Now many folks would say that this is psychological mumbo-jumbo & that anyone would put in efforts only expecting a positive outcome. If we examine this in more detail, it would be surprising to note that we have many self-limiting assumptions of what we can or cannot do. Also past experiences condition us to adopt certain attitudes about people or situations. A young management student was unhappy with his summer internship as he felt that there was nothing challenging in the work being assigned to him. On the verge of leaving the organization, he was advised to turn the situation around by analyzing how he could add value to the organization due his own previous experience. This resulted in a situation where he was able to propose an approach to build visibility among prospective new customers. Since he had previous exposure to this, he was able to take on the responsibility & add value to himself as well as the organization.

Giving is as important as getting might seem irrelevant to this article, but one would be surprised to note that so many opportunities can emerge from adhering to this concept. Most times people are focused on what they need & focus only on getting it, but helping others might also create avenues for you to get to what you need. Obviously one does not have to do this exclusively all the time at the expense of your own goals or tasks. A young entrepreneur known to me invests a small portion of his time to helping out initiatives in the start-up ecosystem. This might consume some of his personal bandwidth & time, but I have seen him benefit from the industry connects it gets him and this culminates in signing up corporate customers for his services. The visibility that he creates for himself also goes a long way in establishing the credibility of his business when pitching to new investors / customers. Now even if they do not know him directly, they are plugged into the larger ecosystem in various ways & positive referrals go a long way in ensuring positive outcomes. Another student was facing a challenging situation getting an internship in a foreign city in the course of completion of his further education. Interestingly one of the most interesting options within his own city came his way only due to the fact that he was sharing info about other opportunities with a larger audience in his university. If he had not been willing to share out info & help others, he would have missed out on this opportunity.

I hope that this article resonates with your own experience & knowledge and affirms something which you already practice. It would be great if you can include your own comments on other factors which can ‘increase the probability of success’. 

Look forward to hearing from you.