Survive the Business Jungle of Animals The Chalak Malak Leader is very much in the middle of a jungle surrounded by some harmless animals and a lot of predators. Let me first introduce you to the predators! The first lot of seemingly friendly predators are sponsored by Govt of India and regulated by Statutory compliances which are monitored by unfriendly bureaucrats. If you can fulfil all compliance norms in one life time, you already deserve the “Best Effort Award” for doing something which anyways can never be complete at least in the eyes of law! The Chalak Malak Leader encounters another class of “uneducated in English” but “educated in Business” animals who can gobble you like alligators without you even realising that you have been gobbled. These are animals who can sell the products that you make at costs less than the price of your raw materials. I call them Chinese Alligators of India! Now let us meet the grass eating harmless animals of this jungle! The Chalak Malak Leader is bound to encounter some business animals around them who look highly incompetent but move around in a Mercedes car and live in big bungalows. They are apparently harmless but makes your blood pressure go up one unit every day purely because they are not able to be half as successful as them.
You have your production supervisor who keeps on reminding you every day that you are a poor entrepreneur with a horrible infrastructure and this is primarily the reason as to why they are not able to produce and sell good stuff. You also secretly believe in them and try to keep you head high in front of them by coaxing them to do better. Did you miss the animal inside The Chalak Malak Leader? The Chalak Malak Leader himself is a classy combination of grass eating and meat eating animal. In the name of cutting costs, he never compensates the team for what they deserve. Many a times our Chalak Malak Leader cuts corner to compromise on quality to call a deal profitable because he has already given off his profits as discounts to his customer! On one hand he keeps on delaying his wife the promised holiday to Switzerland and on the other hand his customers keep on delaying the promised payments on the respective due dates. If this was not enough the tiny little cute looking puppies that he has as children pop up at the wrong moment to demand an extra fees from the school. Now that you have a semblance of an idea about the business jungle that I am talking about, let us try and understand ways and means The Chalak Malak Leader manages to survive this jungle with the help of my 10 commandments. 1. Tigers never seek a Deer’s opinion in a jungle The Chalak Malak Leader should never try to discuss his business challenges with minion animals of the eco system. His belief in his idea and the passion in pursuing the same will help him survive this jungle. 2. All Monkeys are not Hanuman The Chalak Malak Leader should realise the fact that if you throw peanuts you will get monkeys and all monkeys are not like Lord Hanuman. People are ones biggest asset in business and they should be given that priority when you are hiring them. Please stay away from the GIGO phenomenon of Garbage in – Garbage out! 3. The Eagle knows what it means to have a birds eye view. All other birds are good only for watching. The Chalak Malak Leader must frame all his decisions on his own opinion after having listened to all opinions. He should fly high like an Eagle to look at 360 degrees of any problem. 4. Zebra has invisible shades of Grey. The Chalak Malak Leader will be served with black and white but he has to decipher the grey in between to be able to take a stand on business decisions. 5. All dogs are not faithful.
The Chalak Malak Leader must understand that faith and trust is personified in dogs but all dogs are not faithful. While they can have their own reasons for behaving so, but The Chalak Malak Leader should be able to weed out the unfaithful dogs in the team, if there is any. 6. Only male Peacocks have the plume The Chalak Malak Leader does not have the liberty to take anything on its face value. There is nothing which is obvious for The Chalak Malak Leader. Everything needs to be vetted, assimilated, internalised and implemented in the right spirit of the game. 7. The butcher does no crime by killing the goat. The Chalak Malak Leader has certain duties to perform come what may. He has to understand that there is no decision which can keep everyone happy. If the goat has to die to serve the cuisine of someone, so be it! 8. Chameleons will change colours. The Chalak Malak Leader should not feel bad if chameleons in their business ecosystem change their colours too often. Isn’t this in the nature of chameleons? Why fret and fume on this? Instead decide whether the colours of the chameleon is of any use to your business or not. 9. Birds cannot swim. Fishes cannot fly. The Chalak Malak Leader must have the wisdom of choosing the right team players and assigning the right work to them. If birds are selected for the team but asked to swim , obviously the jungle will become a difficult place to live. 10. The Chalak Malak Leader is a social animal. To be able to survive this jungle , The Chalak Malak Leader must have strong networking skills, people management skills and social networking skills. All this will lead to Public Relations, so very much important for business.
In a nutshell The Chalak Malak Leader must follow the jungle rules to survive the business jungle. The 10 commandments explained above would prove handy to be The Chalak Malak Leader without being coined as “Jangalee!”.