The greatest joy of an entrepreneur is I guess seeing the first rupee for his/her venture come in. Surely it is for me.

It gives me immense joy to see the first rupee come in as revenue for our venture. Enterpreneurs live in a dream world where they toy with that idea which they think is unique, will grow, gain recognition and bring money. Some start building on the idea, travel a distance and then realise it has not just worked and resign. A few others, struggle even further, not giving up. Many see them as crazy, impractical and failed to doom. Nevertheless they go on with hope and determination. Then somewhere down the line there is that glimmer of hope. Hope of a new horizon. Hope of crossing that crucial inflection point. This point in an enterpreneur’s journey is the point when he or she sees that first rupee as revenue.

There can be no greater joy for an entrepreneur.

This point is significant in one very important way. At least that is the way I see it. This point is significant because it is a recognition that the world sees value in the idea that the entrepreneur came up with and built on – and thus they are willing to pay for it. Every entrepreneur believes that his or her idea is great. But he or she can be “successful” only if there is an alignment between “that” within the entrepreneur and “that” perceived by the world or the end users. Most often such alignment would take lot of time – lot of time for the entrepreneur to understand the behaviour of the world, their perceptions to his or her idea, making changes in the execution without losing sight of the vision, - lot of trials and tribulations. An entrepreneur needs to let go of some, ready to subject to scrutiny ones assumptions, ready to keep moving. The world - the customers are right. The entrepreneur is also right. But it takes time for the “rightnesses” to match. And then when the “rightnesses” match there can be that nuclear fusion or a take off. This is “that” crucial point in an entrepreneur’s journey.

Today is that great point in this enterpreneur’s journey as we see the first rupee come in. A long journey of two and half years it has been. Glad that we have reached that point where our internal effort is aligned to the external needs of the world.

What would happen after this point? I do not know as I have not experienced it yet. Hopefully something good. But it can’t be better than this moment.

With my gratitude to all those who have stood and stand by me.

With love to my dear Thalaivar to whom I dedicate this joyous moment.

It was a catch 22 situation! If I did not do it I knew that the job cannot be done; if I did it then I knew that I was trading into an unknown territory where risks of failure, I feared, were not exactly modest.

Let me not talk in riddles, and explain it to you. I was planning a program for a client company where VPs and GMs were invited to attend. They were successful individually, but they worked not as a team, but in compartments. In my pre-training session they recognized it as the biggest organizational issue. I proposed that we must attack it first since it was the biggest pain area. They agreed.

While planning the session I realized that the trick was to get them to talk about the issues between them and their role in building invisible walls. But it does not take great intelligence to realize that they would shy away from it, they would not talk about it unless we somehow created an environment conducive for it. That was a tough call.

I began my session presenting ‘what I had heard them say’ in which I reproduced verbatim the statements of VPs and GMs about the organizational issues. Lack of teamwork and integration figured as the top issue, very predictably so. The group decided that it must be sorted out.

It is at this stage I introduced to them the Peter Block’s formula called ‘Conversations for Change’. Put briefly, it says that we should get people to stop having the old conversation. Tell them to talk about the agenda but ask them to have conversation they have never had before. If the conversation is not new, ask them to stop it and be silent. The group got into ‘new conversation’ cautiously and then with a lot of energy. The result was that they had demolished the invisible walls between them.

Try it. My experience is that it never fails!

I am happy that I took the bold step to experiment with a new approach; I am delighted that it worked so well. Somebody has said ‘Every great inspiration is but an experiment and every experiment, great inspiration!’ I now know, it is true, I have experienced it.

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By Vivek S Patwardhan

VSP as we call him, is an Executive coach and HR consultant. He is also a visiting faculty for the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. He had a 33 years career with Asian Paints where he played a vital part in shaping the careers of many while shaping the organisation itself.

Please visit his website: http://www.vivekvsp.com