I Bought The Monk's Ferrari (11 page)

I want to share an incident happened the other day. My wife and I walked into an electronics store in Bandra, an upmarket suburb of Mumbai. I wanted to buy an LCD television set and was looking for a large one. The salesperson showed me a large 46" television set and took me through all the features of the exotic looking Sony Television. I was nearly sold on it set till I realised that the one he was showing me was a Plasma television, despite telling him that I wanted an LCD television. When I reiterated to him that what I wanted was not a Plasma television, he went on to inform me that he did not have a 46" LCD television set in stock. It could well have been that he genuinely was trying to sell me a Plasma and had no mal-intent. I would have probably given him the benefit of doubt too, had he not told me that he did not have LCDs in stock. But now it seemed as if he was trying to sell us what he wanted to sell because he did not have what we wanted.

It was too naive to even think that I would have bought a Plasma television mistaking it to be an LCD. The approach of the store sales executive made me feel that he was making an attempt to short-change me. Probably he was not ... But my mind was made up. That was the last we saw of that store. We walked out promising never to return because it could not sustain our trust.

To be the owner of the Ferrari, it is important to gain people's trust. If you want to be valued, respected, trusted, understood, and followed, you must possess integrity of character. Winners, when confronted with tricky situations, just ask themselves one question—'What is right?' They answer this question honestly and then take decisions.

It is important to take the right stance at the very beginning. Once you take a morally incorrect stance, even if you retract and tread on the right path, the damage is done. People will never trust you in the same manner that they could have.

Let us take the example of a typical FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Good) sales process. A Hindustan Lever sales executive dumps carton after carton of Lux soaps on a distributor with the promise that if he is not able to sell them, he will take them back and brand them as defective pieces. For the record ... he books a sale—a large one, at that, and he continues doing this month after month. In no time, the sales executive becomes a star salesperson. On the other hand, there is another salesperson who struggles to sell only half the number of cartons a month, but sells it the right way. Clearly, the performance of this person lags behind. After about eighteen months of such sales practices, the lid blows off the former salesperson's antics. Given the past performance the organisation is lenient towards this person and does not sack him. His sales volumes obviously drop from the previous high. However, the individual still sells more than the second executive.

Six months later, if an opportunity of giving one of them a larger role was to arise, who would the company give it to? If I was the decision maker, I would unhesitatingly give it to the second sales executive. If you ask, 'Why?', the answer is clear. As a supervisor, I would give leadership roles to an average resource high on integrity, rather than a brilliant resource with suspect integrity. Ideally, however, I would prefer an individual with integrity as well as high competence. But, if I am unable to find someone I would compromise on competence rather than on .integrity.

The bottom line is, the Ferrari can be yours only if you are absolutely unwilling to compromise on integrity and ethics.

While maintaining the highest standard of ethics is important, it is also the key to manage your personal life without any blemishes. Often, ethical compromises in one's personal life, tend to reflect in your professional life as well.

The HR manager of an organisation I know of, was on the take, and would demand and take kickbacks from the recruitment consultants to hire candidates referred by them. He was happily married to an ex-colleague of his. All was well between them until the HR manager began his perverse ways. He started having an affair with a girl from the training unit in the same organisation. Soon, his wife learnt of it and walked out on him and she sang like a canary about all his underhand dealings. The HR manager lost his job. Once she got to know, even his girlfriend left him. This is how a wayward personal life, low on integrity impacted a career.

Therefore, it is very important to maintain the highest degree of integrity. People form opinions about others and these opinions are often difficult to change. It takes only one move to create a negative impression, which stays for life.

Many a time, when you had to allocate a task at hand to a particular person, you must have felt, 'I won't give it to him, I'm not sure how honest he is.' Probably, you have not even worked with the person in question, but his behaviour drives you to form this opinion. Quite often, ideas are formed about individuals' professional behaviour and capabilities based on their personal etiquettes.

If you want to acquire the Ferrari, you cannot get to it alone. You need your team to work with you. And, how do you build a team? Do you know why dealing with your teammates with integrity and honesty is important? I was once told by Ajay Bimbhet, a stalwart in the banking industry, who I worked with for a very short period of time, that people work for organisations and people leave because of their supervisors. If you want to be successful, you need to get a great team of colleagues working for you. They will stay with you and work for you, only if they trust you.

If they get even an iota of doubt on your trustworthiness, you will cease being the boss. And if that happens even once, you will never be able to get that allegiance from your team, and without a cohesive and united team, you will never be able to come up with good performances. Post that, if you still have hopes of a Ferrari, you would have taken the positive thoughts concept as detailed in the previous chapter, to new heights.

COMMANDMENT FOUR

Set and follow the highest standard of integrity in your personal and professional lives. If you are high on integrity, people will respect and value you. The Ferrari when it comes, will stay with you.

T
he erstwhile American President, John F Kennedy once narrated an interesting story about the French Marshal Lyautey:

The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for hundred years. The Marshall replied, "In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!"

This brings us to the scarcest and the most wasted commodity in this world—TIME. Time is invaluable, be it yours or others. Most people care little about this precious resource, procrastinate and leave everything for the last minute. I read a very interesting statement somewhere, a few days back. It said, 'Had it not been for the eleventh hour, most of the things in the world would be left incomplete'. How true!

To get all there is out of living, we must employ
our time wisely, never being in too much of a
hurry to stop and sip life, but never losing our
sense of the enormous value of a minute.

A
NONYMOUS

Think as to what would happen if the last minute disappeared from your schedule. Look back to all the activities you did last week and see for yourself. Knock off the final minute from the activities you did the last week. The result is, almost everything is left unfinished, because you left everything for the eleventh hour. The obvious consequence is that your effectiveness suffers.

I remember a meeting I attended once. It was chaired by the new retail bank head of HSBC, Rajnish Bahl. The meeting was attended by all his direct reports. Rajnish had taken over, only a few weeks ago, and, therefore, there was a fair bit of suspense about the agenda for this meeting. We walked into the conference room, wondering what lay in store. HSBC's Indian business was to be hit by an audit in a fortnight, and everyone predicted that Rajnish would speak about it.

The meeting began on time; in fact, all meetings at HSBC begin on time. Punctuality is one aspect of doing business which I learnt at HSBC. Rajnish walked in and spoke to the team for over thirty minutes on his vision for the business and the shape he would like it to assume. This was the first time he was addressing the team and everyone was listening intently. Everybody was curious. Why was this meeting called? And, the answer came within the next five minutes.

'Friends, now that I've outlined my dream of the retail banking business for this bank; it's time to put some numbers on the table. We need to draw up a plan now which will become our bible for the next five years. All you business heads need to put your minds together and come up with the plan of your business for the next five years.' He then paused, partly for the effect and partly to gauge the reaction of the crowd. There was a flurry of activity in the room. Everyone looked at each other, a few papers crossed hands, and worried looks appeared on some faces. The confident ones looked at Rajnish and smiled. 'Yes, we should go for this exercise.'

'Okay,' continued Rajnish, 'we need to draw up a strategic five-year plan for all our businesses. Once that's done, we need to agree on an action plan and follow it. We must ensure that whatever is put in the strategic plan is achieved. Do you think we should be doing this at all?'

Everybody nodded.

'Sanjay will work with all of you on this. When do you think we can complete this exercise?'

There was a silence in the room.

'How much time do you require?'

Finally, someone spoke up, 'Rajnish, we have a group audit hitting us in the next two weeks. We all will be tied up with that. We can do this once the audit is over ... say, within a month.'

'Audit starts in fifteen days, it'll go on for another fifteen days and a month post that... that makes it sixty days ... two months?'

'Yes, Rajnish.'

Rajnish shook his head in despair. 'Not good enough.'

'We can possibly do it fifteen days post the audit, that's forty-five days from now. However, let's not distract ourselves from the audit preparation,' someone spoke up. Rajnish was still shaking his head. He looked at Sanjay and grinned. What did he want? None of them knew. All they knew was that he was their new boss and a demanding one, at that. 'How does five days sound?' Rajnish asked.

'Rajnish, five days after audit is tough, but I guess we can finish it in about ten days after audit, if we do some preparatory work now and during the audit.' Another of his subordinates was out to please him. He looked at the others and smiled, his chest swelled up a few inches, thrilled that he was about to strike a deal.

'I am referring to five days from today!' That was a bombshell. There was a pin-drop silence in the room. Everyone turned their eyes towards Rajnish. What the heck! Had he lost it? Five days for drawing up a strategic plan for the next five years. Five days ... ONLY!!

'Rajnish ... audit ... we have to prepare ...'