From the Brink of Failure to Award-Winning Success: Lessons in Resilience and Agility.

17th September 2021, Economic Times Leaders of Tomorrow Conclave. The announcements for the category of services are announced. Hearing the candidates nominated, me and my colleagues see our grip on that award loosening with every competitor’s credentials being announced. We’re at a third of the turnover and in some cases a tenth as compared to the other nominees. Our profitability numbers dwarf in comparison to some of the giants in our category (Best MSME Services).

The moment arrives, the winners, announced by one of the most prominent thought leaders in our country, the Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India, Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal. To everyone’s surprise, ours the most, the name announced is HotFut Sports (India). We were dumbstruck, and the only question I had for Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal on stage was, WHY?

His answer - We are looking for the leaders of TOMORROW. Not the cash cows of today.?

Being A Leader Of Tomorrow A future full of uncertainty and ever-changing technological disruptions. A Future where existing business and industry standards are decimated overnight by, for example, AI and machine learning, automation and robotics. To his mind, the answer was defined by two words – Resilience and Agility.

Resilience – in the face of uncertainty, of rising competition both from within the industry and from across industries. A company whose foundations are strong enough to weather the storm and rough patches, to find a way to survive when everything around them seems to be going against them. And Agility. – The ability to be flexible as an organization. To adapt to industry changes, tech trends or whatever major disruption heads your way. To be able to pivot, entire business models, that too multiple times if need be. To find a way to align or compete with the disruption on hand and be flexible enough to make sweeping changes to the way you conduct your affairs to align to the new norms.

So apparently, we had an abundance of both resilience and agility. But how did we get there? In all honesty, mostly by accident.

Our Journey: From Crisis to Clarity

But reflecting on these accidents gives us great insight into how to be prepared to be a company for the future. Upon reflection, we identified that we had 5 years of terrible luck combined perilously, with short-sighted, hasty decisions on investments made for our expansion. Market conditions had changed with low entry barriers in our business moving us down the ladder from pioneers with an innovative product, to one of 350 new companies that established on our model within 3 years. We ventured into allied business and expanded both horizontally and geographically, without possessing the management prowess or execution bandwidth to do so. This was followed by a 2-year COVID that decimated our industry specifically. All these factors led to a plunging bottom line and a P&L that was in the red for 4 straight years and plunging.

Resilience - We got out, by taking some really harsh decisions. As owners, we had to sacrifice any and all salaries or perks for ourselves. We had to shutter bleeding projects and locations no matter the social or emotional repercussions. Leading to some long and old friendships being soured in the process. We had to renegotiate banking terms, re-mortgage assets, and sometimes even personal. We had to incur the heat and flak from creditors whom we were unable to pay and grudgingly work out payment schedules with folded hands. But no matter how hard and insurmountable the odds, we never lost our confidence or optimism in our ability to make it out and survive.

This chapter of our lives was ugly, to say the least. How did we build this resilience? Lessons from the Tough Times.

A) Belief – in our Philosophy and our purpose.

B) Desperation – We had put everything we had into this. Calling it quits was just not an option. I was personally financially highly exposed. All my personal networks and reputation were invested into it. There was no option BUT to keep bailing out the water.

Lesson – Be FULLY vested in what you do. If you leave an easy way out, a back passage exit. You WILL take it. I know I would have. In the words of Charles Bukowski – Find what you love and let it kill you. For all things WILL kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover.

C) Responsibility – Having a team that took pay cuts with us. Faced head-on with the rough creditor calls, the customer complaints, and the downgrade in lifestyle. Without us ever asking them to. They never lost faith in us. We owed it to them.

Lesson – Build a culture of loyalty and responsibility at the core of your organisation. There are several ways to do it. The one that worked for us was radical transparency and a democratic approach to decision-making. Authority is earned in our organization by demonstrated energy and outcomes, constantly. This was our story of resilience.

D) Agility - I distinctly remember a board meeting, at one of our lowest points, where I was given the task of making - the company grow aggressively, without capital investments and while being risk averse. I gawked at the time at my fellow board members at the sheer audacity to suggest such a ludicrous proposition. I believe my response (as per the officially recorded Minutes of the Board meeting) was “and we can throw in the Taj Mahal, since we’re only dreaming”. Through this period, we did change our model. Not once but several times. We pivoted from an infrastructure dependent Pay and Play product-driven company to a services-driven consulting, academy and events management company. We reduced our dependence on Pay and play (which is highly price sensitive and highly volatile) from 90% to 30% within 3 years. We pivoted from a capital-intensive model to a Capex-free model whereas a policy we do not invest in capital infrastructure, but use our knowledge and capability to execute, operate and deliver ROIs for large developers, institutions and government bodies. We pivoted from high-risk fixed Opex contracts to more amiable revenue share models thereby deleveraging our risks.

We demonstrated resilience in the face of insurmountable odds and agility time and again to adapt as the market shifted. How did we do this? How did we build strength and fighting spirit as a company? How did we create such a flexible system that the company and the people in it, could change, adapt and evolve faster than others? Our secret – we have pinpointed it down to – Our culture. We staggered and stumbled our way into our culture. However, the philosophy that guides it was always there as a constant baseline in our purpose and our motto. Resistance builds character. Driven constantly by our philosophy of resistance-building character, we kept the belief that this too shall pass and we will emerge stronger, wiser and better prepared for the future.

Lesson – Have a strong purpose. One that you truly believe in. Not a fancy-sounding tagline on a wall.?

We have a culture in our company. One that is dominated by freedom and responsibility. We are in a people business. Communities thrive when our team members' personalities and passions are deeply interwoven with their work.

The Secret: A Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

For this Freedom of expression and a culture of radical transparency and honesty is critical. And it starts at the top. We are big fans of entrepreneurship and allow people to run their operations/projects like it were their business. We encourage them to bring their personality and imprint it onto their respective projects. We make generous room for mistakes and view money/opportunity lost as an education cost/investment we have made in our colleagues. We work hard, but more importantly, we encourage working smart. High performance is the KEY attribute of our culture. Our driving tenet is that the best places to work are not sushi lunches and fancy company perks. But rather a place where you have superstar colleagues. Where everyone around you is amazing at what they do. They raise the level of your game, pushing you to be better everyday.?

We don’t have the best pay packages, we don’t have the coolest perks, but we do have an amazing culture. A culture that created a sense of ownership and responsibility towards the company that made it resilient. A culture that gave enough freedom that people found it ways to change and adapt to new norms and business models because there was no fixed way of doing things. To be agile enough to change their mindsets and the company’s to rediscover itself in the face of obsoleting. Our employees and colleagues had the ability to make sweeping changes required to adapt without being bogged down by the rigidity of fixed processes and bureaucratic red tapes. We do have business processes as any organization needs to survive. But our processes were limited to business processes like finance, accounting and compliance. Not towards, HR, management and strategy.

This allowed us and our teams to adapt, constantly and be agile. Not just in Business but as a mindset and as a People. This was how we stumbled, coiled, twirled and adapted our way into being agile. My personal belief is that relentless enthusiasm guarantees success in the long term. I think the future of companies is People. Smart, talented and MOST importantly motivated people.?

Ordinary People, Extraordinary Results

I believe the age of information has passed for us and the age of curation and assimilation of knowledge has led to the need for emotionally and socially intelligent people. Building a culture that allows you to be true to yourself, true to your purpose and most importantly true to your people, will foster an environment of motivation and enthusiasm and allow you to get ordinary people to produce extraordinary results.