Resilience and Suez Canal

Disruption doesn’t arrive after announcements it just comes at its own time and moreover, we can’t even predict its “change-forcing potential”. Remember how 15months back many of us were just sitting comfortably on a couch watching some news of an unknown virus creating challenges in some parts of China and little did we realised that this same virus is going to create havoc and is going to force us to sit in the same couch for months. A recent disruption is Suez Canal Blockade by 400-meter-long Ever Given ship for almost a week. As we know that the Suez Canal carries over 12 percent of world trade by volume and this blockade has costed billions of dollars to the world and is going to have its impact on the global economy. Now Suez Canal blockade has not happened for the first time, so let’s go around a century back during WW1 as the world witnessed Suez Canal Blockage. This also brought in huge business losses. At that time around 4700kms away from Suez Canal, the state of Mysore during British India was under huge stress. Mysore state being the world’s biggest exporter of Sandalwood was generating huge revenue from Sandalwood export to European countries. The obvious shipping route was via Suez Canal but the unprecedented blockade during World War 1 has left many exporters high and dry. The kingdom was sitting on tonnes of export-ready sandalwood and huge revenue loss.

In such situations, it is very common to get frustrated, be on denial mode and/or depression, and ultimately deepen depression in the Kubler Ross Change Curve. But the King of Mysore and his ministers were hell-bent to find a way out. After many rounds of discussion and brainstorming, they decided to make soap from this sandalwood. The only challenge then was that so far, the Indian subcontinent did not have the know-how or technology of soap manufacturing. But the nobles of Mysore had a way higher commitment level. Every possible opportunity was being explored, So to develop soap even IISC, Bangalore was involved, someone was sent to Europe to understand the technology for soap manufacturing and finally, after a collective effort India got its first indigenous soap by the name of Mysore Sandal Soap and the rest is history.

Dear Reader I would like to leave you with these thoughts 

We all as individuals are that king/queen of Mysore and we all are blessed with tons of sandalwood. This sandalwood is that distinctness that defines us, as we all have something unique by which we can glow the world. Your sandalwood with its unique fragrance may benefit others but there always can be a Suez Canal blockade, it's nothing but disruption. It can be due to natural disasters, cyber-attacks, global hazards, etc. The tipping point for all of us is our ability to create Mysore Sandal Soap in response to disruption faced by our Sandalwood. That's Resilience.