The 3 E’s by Manish Sabharwal: Entertaining, enlightening evening

Yesterday we had talk by Mr. Manish Sabharwal arranged and organized by Prof. Rajeev Gowda under a course we are undergoing this term. A brief introduction of Mr. Sabharwal would include his graduate degree from Shri Ram College of Commerce, an MBA from Wharton School of Business, venturing into entrepreneurship with setting of India Life (which was sold to Hewitt to be christened into India Life Hewitt Ltd.) and eventually setting up TeamLease, a major staffing company which provides temporary and permanent manpower solutions to their clients. He is also plays the advisor for almost half a dozen states in India.

Some of my friends were already talking about him because of his presentation during EXIMIUS – The entrepreneurship summit, held earlier this week. I missed on his talk because the first talk I attended was so boring that I had to leave it midway and then could not resist the temptation of taking a small nap when I was back in my room. Well, that small nap spanned over a couple of hours and I missed all the subsequent talks of the summit. My friends who did manage to pass the storm of boredom where rewarded with a talk by Mr. Sabharwal, at least that is what I could infer from the way they told me about the speaker. I got a second opportunity offered by Prof. Gowda and there was no way I could have missed it.
He spoke about topics like current scenario in labor market arena, the policies prevailing, what his company TimeLease aims to deliver and eventually about what entrepreneurship is all about. Starting with the 5 ways with which the labor market has transformed, he went ahead talking about the failure in the 3 E’s, namely: Education, Employability and Employment. He then talked a whole stretch about the causes and effects of these three E’s in the Indian labor market. My aim for this post is not to dump the lump of gyaan he gave about the labor market, but to magnify the incidences of his life he shared with us, the fundoo quotes he used during the presentation and what my small brain could make out of them(in some of the cases). Now, I do not recall of them but a few which I could hold on to is what follows.

Here we go.

• On changing relationship between employer and employees – “It has changed from Mai-Baap to Taxi-cab relationship. It is crisp and animated but often includes no emotions”
  
• On initiating a change (applicable to entrepreneurship as well) – “Good is not the enemy of Great”. Which later was rephrased by Prof. Gowda as “Good is not the enemy of Perfect”. In other words, don’t be a procrastinating perfectionist rather be the change you want to be, which also means to choose wisely between the ‘Intelligent Design’ and ‘Evolution’.
  
• On facing competition in entrepreneurship – “It is like a beauty pageant. You don’t have to be Cleopatra, you just have to be less ugly that you competitors”
  
• On perception of corporate world about the policies – “Policies for the corporate world is a thorn in the flesh and not a dagger in the heart”.
  
• On entrepreneurship – “Entrepreneurship is the art of being lucky”
  
• On luck and on ‘Ovarian Lottery’ – “Luck is not to be lived on but to be built on’
  
• On MNC’s attitude to think them as being able to compete with any other company because of the immense capital surplus they have –“In the French revolution it was said that God is not in the side of the biggest army but in the side of the army with best shots”.
  
• On dealing with his international competitors – “I can’t outspend them but I sure can outsmart or outrun them. In Olympics horse riding is the only sport where a woman can compete with a man and this is because horse riding is considered as an all technique sport. Same is applicable to business”
  
• On how carefully regulatory arbitrage can be leveraged he requoted Paracelsus – “The dose makes the poison”
  
• On government bureaucrats –“They are too small for big things and too big for small things”
  
• On government spending treasure of money on policies –“Government is deploying more cooks in the kitchen rather than trying a different recipe”
  
• There was this short story he told, I can’t recollect however the context on which it came into the picture- “A man died with his two wives behind. One of them was crying and screaming ‘mere pati ko vapis le aao(Bring my husband back) while the other one was calm and sipping coffee. Someone asked her how are you so compose then she replies back ‘Arre uska aayega to mera bhi aa jaayega’ (if her husband comes so will mine)”
  
• On life –“Life is painting of a picture and not solving of a sum. Don’t let it be an extension of a straight line”
  
• On change –“You can’t boil the ocean”
  
• On customers –“If people don’t want to pay for what they want then they don’t really want it”
  
• On IIMB –“Better place to be at than to be from”
  

As enchanting a speaker he is, I enjoyed the evening spent in the auditorium listening to this man. Hope you had fun as well while going through the post.

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