Mantra For Scaling Growth

We all know that behind every organisation there is the leader who sets it on its path. A time comes when the leader himself is required to pass tests that come in his way in the form of certain rites of passages and bolts from the blue. Against this backdrop, The Elephant Catchers synthesizes Subroto Bagchi’s learning of the last few years and contains a collection of hard-earned lessons on a spectrum of issues around the core idea of scaling an organisation and its people. He distils his years of on-the-ground learning to explore why many organisations, even those that may have a brilliant start, falter in their attempts in their later phases. He also suggests what such organisations and their people must do to climb to the next level and beyond.

The 232-page book is divided into six parts. In part one, the writer presents the need to build comfort with the idea of scale and the essentials that go with it. The next part is about getting the large deals that will help scale your business and the kind of people you must employ to get them. It also talks about staying away from certain customer engagements and business models that could prevent growth, and about mergers and acquisitions that invariably engage every organisation at some stage or the other. In part three, the conversation shifts to the idea that sustaining an enterprise is a game of intellect. The capacity to get to the next level often depends on a leader’s ability to augment organisational intellect by tapping into external expertise. The writer has given a few pointers here on how it can be done most effectively.

In the next part, the book deals with the reputation of an organisation. Reputation is a form of capital and growing it right, beyond just good public relations, is something that organisations often overlook. In part five, the focus is on the importance of scaling people at every level of the organization. The concluding part tells you about the final frontier, where the leader must scale his own self. Through a combination of engaging anecdotes from his experiences as co-founder, and subsequently Chairman of Mindtree Ltd, and insightful stories from our everyday world, Bagchi demonstrates a crucial point: Organisations with real ambition to get to the top need to embrace the idea of scale and then ensure that it systematically pervades every aspect of its functioning.

Author of the bestsellers The High-Performance Entrepreneur, Go Kiss the World, The Professional, MBA at 16 and The Professional Companion, Subroto Bagchi was acclaimed as India’s No.1 bestselling business books author. His works have been translated into several languages, including Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, besides Korean and Chinese. Practical advice on real issues, from how to deal with consultants to the question of succession, words of caution on strategy traps, and invaluable insights into a whole range of growth-related issues, the book provides them all. In a nutshell, it can be affirmed that the book is engaging and can turn out to be very effective for everyone in every organisation seeking breakout success.

By Ashok Kumar