Right at the outset, it is crucial that you FEEL that growth is possible. VISUALIZE it. Imagine your company is already there – at 50 crores. What does it look like? Can you describe it?
Visualization acts at the level of the subconscious, which is the most subtle and the most powerful part of your make-up. Once the subconscious self accepts and embraces a possibility, it commits itself to making it possible – then anything is possible.
As the book ‘The executive and the Elephant’ says, we need to speak to the elephant in its language, which is dreams and visuals, not words and numbers – the elephant being the subconscious self. The visualization exercise should be as visual as possible, spreadsheets and ppts should be discouraged.. the elephant doesn’t understand them.
CASE STUDY
Polaris Software, the Chennai-based software company, used a powerful visualization process called Lakshya to fuel its growth from 100 crores to 1000 crores. Every year, every single associate met for a day, in sessions led by the founder and CEO, Arun Jain, to visualize what the company wanted to be. No notes were taken, no minutes circulated, no plans hammered out – it was all about visualization, ‘planning at the subconscious’, Arun called it. The result was phenomenal growth, led by people who had already visualized the big things they were going to do, including a number of start-ups that were later spun off, including the HR product company Adrenalin esystems Ltd.
Let us look at some data on how long some companies took to get to 50 crores. Infosys started in 1981. They got to 50 crores only in 1994 – 13 years later. Polaris started in 1990. They got to 50 crores in 8 years. Persistent started in 1990 and got to 50 crores in 12 years. It does take a certain amount of time. What is equally true is that the first leap from 0 to 5 or 10 crores may take a long time. For example, it took Persistent about 10 years to go from 0 to 10 crores, but only 2 years to go from 10 to 50 crores! And this is true of the others as well. They went from 5 to 50 crores in about three years. Getting to the 5-crore mark may take you 10-12 years, but the next step – from 5 to 50 crores can be quick if you do the right things. What’s more important is for you to visualize how your business will look at 50 crores. How many units will you be selling? How many employees will you have? How many customers? What businesses will you have in your portfolio? Anything that describes your business.
Exercise:
Visualize your business at 50 crores and fill in these figures based on what you think your business will look like then:
What businesses/products/offerings?
How many units sold?
How many people?
How many customers?
How many projects?
How many managers?
How many salespeople?
How does my balance sheet look?
Exercise:
Can you draw it? Draw a picture of what your business will be like at 50 crores. Pictures are always more effective than words…
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is so magical about 5 crore?
- Nothing, it is just indicative, what counts is where the S curve starts flattening out and you know you need to jump to the next one. It usually happens in the IT industry around this time, but there is nothing sacred about it
- Does every company need to grow? How do I decide?
- No, absolutely not. Growth is itself a choice. It takes you down a road you may or may not want to go on, but it is well to know beforehand what lies on the road. It is perfectly normal, and perfectly acceptable, to be comfortable with a small, profitable business forever.
- why should I grow, then?
- If your company grows 10x, you will also grow 10x, as a person, as a professional. The climber who scales Mount Everest becomes a better climber than one who has never tried.
Second Orbit 