Leadership quality 4/9

She wakes up at 3 AM. She then completes here morning routines. Walks outside. Two pairs of eyes look at her. The eyes are attached to dark grey bodies. They have been her livelihood for years now. Two Indian Buffalos. She feeds them and milks them. She collects the milk in a clean container. Then visits the local milk agent booth. A queue of considerable size had already built up. She waits for her turn. Pours her milk into another container at the booth. It is about 2 Litres. The fat content of the milk is measured and the value determined. She is paid for the milk she had sold to them the evening before. She gets back home with a happy face. She is a middle-aged woman in Gujarat, who had lost her husband some years back and she is the sole bread-winner for her family. She is one of the lakhs of milk farmers who benefits from Amul.

She is happy because she gets about 70-80% of what a typical consumer pays. Which is a good sum to make her ends meet. But this did not happen in a day. To understand what’s at play here, we need to go back to 1945. A company called Polson.

Have we seen this chubby girl somewhere?

Polson was started by Pestonjee Eduljee, who created a company which made a lot of money by selling Coffee and Butter to British Indian and American forces. He started the practice of collecting milk from villages in Gujarat and selling the milk at a premium in Mumbai. His was a monopoly. He had made sure only his company could collect milk from the Gujarat milk farmers. The farmers were paid a paltry sum, while he made a lot of money. The farmers had tried several times to stop supplying to Polson but with just a section of farmers participating, it was not successful. There were multiple attempts to create a co-operative. Finally, with perseverance in 1946 Amul – the milk co-operative union was formed. The rest is history. Amul is one of the most successful farmer co-operatives which provides enough profits back to the farmers.

It is the same girl (similar?) in Amul Ads.

Normally we look at individuals and how a particular leadership quality was displayed by that individual or a team. In the case of Amul, although we had leaders like Saradar Vallabai Patel and Dr Kurien who shaped it to the form it is in, it is a clear case of thousands of farmers displaying the leadership quality of perseverance which made it successful. It continues to be a story of perseverance as Amul still operates with the same principles.

Is perseverance important for Leadership? Let us look at the couplet from Tiruvalluvar once more

Fearlessness, generosity, wisdom, and energy: these four

Are qualities a king adorns for evermore.

Never to fail in these four things, fearlessness, generosity, wisdom, and energy, is the kingly character.

Valluvar talks about energy (ookkam). Energy is one of the meanings, but closely related to it are motivation, perseverance and passion. This aspect is so important that Valluvar dedicates one chapter (10 couplets) on this. Leadership starts with a vision and a passion for that vision. It is about not worrying about the consequences but passionately follow the vision one has. No other character comes close to passion and vision than Don Quixote. Don Quixote is a fictional character created by Miguel De Cervantes in 1605.

Don Quixote’s story – He reads a lot of books on Knighthood and then somehow, he gets into the notion that he is a knight. He wants to do all the wrongs right. He starts seeing windmills as monsters, common everyday happenings as adventures. Needless to say, he fails miserably in every one of those adventures. But he still pursues those adventures, true to his imagined identity. As a leader we need to be passionate about our vision. There is no better example of a passionate leader who is passionate to his cause as Don Quixote.

At another time, I was sitting in a NASSCOM HR event. The last show was an interview with Bhaichung Bhutia. He is described as the torch bearer of Indian football in the international arena. The host asked a beautiful question to him –

“How do you handle failure? How do you handle loss?”. His response was simple yet profound. He said,

“I stop fussing about today’s loss and start focusing on tomorrow’s match. If I worry too much about today’s loss, we will end up losing tomorrow’s as well”.

I cannot take this out of my mind. This could be the potential answer to how one can persevere after so many losses. Let me know your thoughts.

This post is dedicated to all the passionate leaders who have stayed true to their visions in spite of facing a lot of failures. If you like this post, more than just clicking on the like button, tag a passionate leader you have known.

If you like this post , you will also like my others in this series

Post #1, Post #2, Post #3, Post #4