Well, I did find a lot of those Lagaan slideshows and lessons-learnt submissions - but, almost all of them were in the areas of People Management, Leadership, Leaders vs Managers, Team Management, and then the rest few were in the areas of Opportunity, Entrepreneurship and Passion.
Personally, my MBA lessons helped me to #gobeyond these concepts of people and talent management, and I found a scope for bringing forth some more MBA concepts that the movie highlights. Hence this post: Five MBA things that #gobeyond in Lagaan
1) Negotiation Skills: The scene where the British officer ends up offering Cricket match as a way to discount additional taxes levied on farmers is an excellent example of how the negotiations should not be done. This officer had an advantage of a favorable B.A.T.N.A. [Best alternative to negotiated agreement], had the required authority to anchor the entire discussion near or beyond the reservation price [beyond which negotiation is not affordable] of the farmers, yet, when he did the actual negotiations, with each round, he kept changing his anchor, in fact he didn't really anchor to any point, and while he kept pushing beyond the reservation price of farmers making them uncomfortable, he also kept pushing his own limits beyond his own reservation price, making offers that expanded the Z.O.P.A. [Zone of Possible agreement] so much that both reservation prices were mandated to become three times of what they originally were. As I mentioned earlier, a classic case of how negotiations should not be done.
2) Principle-Agent Problem: An officer in-charge of a certain region, comparable to regional manager of some multinational firm invests the firm's three year revenue from the region in to a gamble, through a completely personal decision, drenched in risk of losing it all, thanks to his pride and ego. A classic case of an agent forgetting interests of principle, a perfect situation to imbibe some corporate governance, a tale where the very definition of stakeholders and concept of stakeholder's interest goes for a toss. And then, if we wait till the very end of this movie, we see that this officer is in fact penalized, sent to a remote location on transfer and all the taxes missed are recovered from his personal wealth and salary. So, if and when the board decides to take action, our agent manager does see his own earnings tied to the firm's income, and his decisions made accountable for firm's losses - a glimpse of corporate governance to mitigate the principle-agent problem.
3) Change Management: I am not sure if the script writer's of the movie actually read about Kotter's model for Change Management before making this movie, yet everything that our protagonist Bhuvan does in the movie to create his match-winning cricket team from a bunch of regular village folk conforms so much to the Kotter's model.
a) Create Urgency: Establishing a gamble, a bet, around the cricket match - winning involves opportunity to extreme prosperity, losing involves risk of losing everything that every person of the province possesses, just to be able to pay the three-fold taxes, does create a sense of urgency, ain't it?
b) Form a Powerful Coalition: Bringing on-board a British Lady who knows the ins-and-outs of the game, early on - Can there be a more powerful coalition that Bhuvan could have formed.
c) Create and communicate a vision for change: 'Three years without any taxes. Everyone can keep everything that he earns, Everyone can prosper.' A vision, a common goal that Bhuvan keeps preaching to bring more and more players on-board, to gain support of villagers, to inspire and motivate one-and-all.
d) Remove Obstacles: When you start something with nothing in hand, there will be obstacles. Not having equipment of the game, to finding a suitable ground to play, to keeping an eye of a bunch of hens as they provide livelihood to one of the players, to injuries of players. Our protagonist takes care of them all in one way or another.
e) Create Short-term wins: Whether it is appreciating Tipu before all villagers for his first balling and catching efforts, or whether it is celebrating village festival with a bang, involving the British Lady as well in the celebration, Our protagonist does know how to create short-term wins and also announce them to the world.
f) Build on the change: Well, every little progress that the team makes in the movie is an excellent example of building on the change.
g) Anchor the changes in corporate culture: By the time, the team becomes complete and is ready to play, there is already a crowd of entire village cheering those who are playing. Cricket which was a completely alien game for these villagers has now become an everyday routine.
Interesting, ain't it?
4) Incumbent vs New Entrant Strategy: Well, when you are a new entrant, and you know that you have no choice to give up the game, the best strategy is to burn the ships - Cut off all the ways that can lead you to step back. Invest so much that "not producing" doesn't remain an option anymore. By accepting a gamble, where loss or withdrawal meant paying up triple taxes, which in turn meant ruining the lives of everyone, Bhuvan had burnt the ships as soon as he had landed in the game.
5) Trust: Well, some may call it people management, some may tag it as excellent leadership skills, some may use it to distinguish managers from leaders, and may call it team management, some may describe it as the magic that makes start-ups successful and some others may talk of emotional quotients and stuff. But the bottom-line of it all remains 'Trust'. It is the trust created by our protagonist Bhuvan through his constant endeavor to help others, through his narrative of a better future for every living being of the province, through his actions and through his vision, that makes him successful in the end. Things do work out really well when "trust" is established.
No comments:
Post a Comment