"Recipe for growth: Cook unhappiness and tough goals, peppered with vision Shubham Mukherjee

Please refer to the following article in the Times of India:
 
"Recipe for growth: Cook unhappiness and tough goals, peppered with vision
Shubham Mukherjee
02 October 2012, 06:59 PM IST   1
Vineet Nayar, vice chairman and CEO of  HCL Technologies very famously declared in a recent interview that if a company wants to succeed it needs to be perpetually unhappy. Nayar, a management thinker in his own right may be true but his remarks could set the cat among the pigeons for HR managers, who are incessantly trying to up the happiness quotient within companies.

But Nayar's comments could well be rooted in our very own mythology wherein both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata have shown how suffering and unhappiness triggered transformational changes for both Rama and the Pandavas. Rama lost his rightful claim to the throne, when his father Dasharatha passed away just before banishing him to the forest for 14 years to uphold a boon he had given to one of his queens. It was a period of Ram's deepest personal tragedy. But it was only during this period of hardship and suffering that his personality and destiny was shaped. A substantial part of the Ramayana actually deals with those 14 years.

Similarly, even in the Mahabharata, the Pandava brothers - Yudhisthir, Bheema, Arjuna Nakul and Sahadeva - were all banished from their kingdom by their scheming cousin brothers for 12 years. During this time, despite the unhappiness and suffering, they learnt the art of survival as also fostered relationships and bonds which helped later when they had to fight to reclaim their kingdom.

Fast forward to the present, can we expect similar changes in the economy and stock markets and for people associated with it, who have been in a constant state of unhappiness for a while because of depressed market conditions. Only when the government was hemmed in did it give a breather and new direction to the economy by announcing a spate of new reforms. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh actually likened the present crisis, which neccessitated the changes, to the crisis of 1991. 
 
Let us take the stock markets, easily the barometer of a nation's state of being, to drive the point. So, if you had invested during January 2000, a period of high optimism built around buoyancy in technology stocks, the three year return of the sensex would have been -38 % and a five year return would have been 26 %. Similarly, your investments in another period of euphoria during December 2007 (when the global economy was booming) the three year returns of the sensex would have been 1 % and a five year return would have been 15%.

However, investments during October 2001, right after the global markets collapse would have fetched a three year return of 91 % and five year return of 334%. Similarly, investments in the sensex in June 2004 following the unexpected defeat of the BJP in the general elections would have yielded a three year return of 206 % and a five year return of 334%. Perhaps a state of confusion and discontent brings out the best in both people and companies to ensure better returns or to just survive.

Following March 2009, we have been in a constant state of flux – salary cuts, retrenchments, currency fluctuations - all of which lent a debilitating impact on the markets with the sensex contracting to 9709 from 15644 points in March 2008. It has moved back since but the pain for a lot of companies still continues as they muddle through.

In a recent meeting, Nayar, sought to explain where he was coming from. Following the slowdown of 2008, he said he actually drove an aggressive innovation without any retrenchments and gave employees new stretch goals and a vision. Despite the state of unhappiness and discontent, because of increased targets, a focussed cultural change of "Employees First", the outcome was positive. HCL Technologies has been growing above the industry average since.

It's been a similar experience in handful of other companies including FMCG major Hindustan Unilever. Smarting under the downgrades by analysts following the slow down of 2008, HUL CEO Nitin Paranjape, took charge and carved out new audacious goals for its employees. Some people couldn't cope and left. He too used what he describes as "healthy dissatisfaction and stretch goals" to goad the staff to give more than their normal, besides also offering them a "purpose". The result - its market cap improved from Rs 51,770 crore in 2008-09 to Rs 88,600 crore in 2011-12 , while revenues grew by 50% to over Rs 22,000 crore since 2007. The HUL stock is once again the darling of the investor community. Obviously certain companies have done something right to be able to project better valuations, discounting the turbulence of the times and thus differentiating themselves by using unhappiness to their advantage.

So, it appears positive dissatisfaction with the present, which could lead to unhappiness in the short term for most, is actually the road to success in the long term if used wisely. Maybe that would happen to our economy as well as long as there is a leader to milk the discontent, channelize it and drive it forward."

 
Very recently, our Prime Minister has taken some very tough decisions to ensure growth. His Govt. has survived despite withdrawal of support by TMC led by Mamata Banerjee. Will he take the following more tough decisions to ensure happiness for India in the long run:
 
1. Contol the population of the country by effective family planning methods taking the help of religious leaders.
2. Throw out the illegal migrants from Bangladesh
3. Recognize the Tibetan Govt. in Exile to create a buffer Tibet State between China and India.
4. Make India Secular as per the dictionary definition of the term and not as practised presently so that the State would have nothing to do with religion which would mean (i) Bringing in an Act to enforce Uniform Civil Code, (ii) abolishing Minority Commission and (iii) abolishing the Ministry of Minority Affairs.
5. Abolishing reservation on caste basis but bringing in reservation on the basis of poverty.