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In a world where business leadership has not yet changed its mindset to the new realities, failures are bound to happen. What better way to manage the VUCA world than to learn from the failure of others?

Learning from failure

BookREVIEW

For most part, this book is an anthology of corporate debacles during the past decade, a period associated with business vulnerability, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). However, the book emphasises that the majority of the corporate failures during the past decade could not be blamed on VUCA. They were self-inflicted.The authors list many examples of leadership mistakes that led the initially promising or successful companies into trouble, some to even their doom. The book is a digest of leadership failure at renowned Indian companies from different sectors, including SKS Microfinance, Kingfisher Airlines, Dhanalaxmi Bank (now Dhanlaxmi Bank), Jain Irrigation, Shri Renuka Sugars, Subhiksha, Suzlon, GMR, Ranbaxy, and Venkys.

The authors warn against reducing success to formulas and trying to replicate those in different contexts. They point out that most business failures result from the successful CEOs belief that they could do no wrong.

Pushing for fast growth is another deadly leadership sin, according to them. Greed for growth and valuation is the cause of irrational diversification and expansion, which ensure the downfall of established companies.

The authors pan Vijay Mallyas debt-funded foray into aviation, and then buying a budget airline merely for size even if that did not fit Kingfishers upmarket culture. They list Tata Motors Nano as a big mistake and argue that investing in a jugaad instead

of real innovation ended up hurting the company.The book cautions about behavioural flaws of leaders and the tendency to make wrong mental associations.

Among the many gems of wisdom, the book carries an apocryphal tale of a successful gurukul where a teacher instructed pupils to tie the school cat during the class to avoid disturbance, but the following generation of teachers and students made it a practice to tie a cat believing that it led to excellence in learning.

The authors advise that to succeed in the VUCA world, leaders need to see the world from diverse perspectives, consult others, and avoid rushing before acting. They argue that the era of the imperial and the one-trick CEO is overdecision-making in the VUCA world is like travelling without a map, and past knowledge and experience are often wrong guides to making immediate decisions. They argue that failure is not an absence of competence and failure needs to be treated as learning.

Though full of interesting anecdotes and wisdom, the book suffers from random organisation. It would read much better with a little sharpening. Following is an excerpt from the book:

THE vUCA CoMPANYAuthor:Suhayl Abidi and Manoj Joshi

Price: R350ISBN:978-8184956627

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Welcome to the VUCA world! It is a future that is here to stay; entry is neither optional nor avoidable. The VUCA world is characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. All human beings are affected by the VUCA phenomenon irrespective of whether it is a political, an economic, a business, a natural or a social environment.

In The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman notes that the rate of change today is much different than it was in the past. Whenever civilization has gone through one of these disruptive, dislocating technical revolutions like Gutenbergs introduction of the printing press the whole world has changed in profound ways, he writes. But there is something different about the flattening of the world that is going to be qualitatively different from other such profound changes: the speed and breadth with which it is taking hold.

The fate of many leading companies such as Kodak, which failed to navigate the rapid changes brought about in its business environment, and Blackberry, which is on its last leg of existence, is

a warning to all organizations that are now facing these inevitable, even unpredictable, changes but lack the leadership, flexibility and imagination to adapt not because they are not smart or aware, but because the speed of change is simply overwhelming them.

The vUCA CompanyThe V in VUCA denotes volatility. It refers to the nature, speed, volume and magnitude of change that does not move in a predictable pattern. U stands for uncertainty a lack of predictability in issues and events. C denotes complexity there are often numerous difficult-to-understand causes and mitigating factors (both inside and outside the organization) involved in a problem brought about by an increasingly complex globally intertwined business environment. Finally, A stands for ambiguity, that is, a lack of clarity about events. Each one of these factors comes with many challenges for the leader of an organization, and all four of them combined make it a virtual tsunami.

Reprinted with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

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