Book Review : Building a Winning Culture

“Every article highlights a value, principle, mindset or an approach at the foundational level rather than providing a popular tip or a technique. The focus is on the long-term rather than gaining from a fleeting advantage.” N R Narayana Murthy, Founder Infosys

Rajeev Upadhyay
Entrepreneurship is an adventure which attracts perhaps everyone but very few actually commit themselves to it. And writing about entrepreneurship with real life experience and wisdom is possible only when you tread the water. There are a number of books on entrepreneurship by professors and many successful entrepreneurs on this subject. Desh Deshpande has been a serial entrepreneur and founded many successful start-ups and whatever experiences he has gained; he has summarised in his book On Entrepreneurship and Impact. This book stands out uniquely in the ocean of books on entrepreneurship because it has mainly been written for entrepreneurs keeping their needs in mind. The language is simple and the author has used words wisely to communicate about a very vast subject and he has clear cut idea about  needs of his audience and specifically deals with the same.

 It seems to be a small book but has covered almost everything about the entrepreneurship in a very lucid manner. It gives solutions, not just advice like many academic books do. It explains how and why a social entrepreneur needs to engage with the general public for creating sustainable solutions as well as sustainable organisations. He indirectly says that it is not possible to build a sustainable social enterprise but creating sustainable solutions to problems and these must be done by local participation.
This book has foreword by N R Narayana Murthy. The book has been divided in six parts; each dealing with different phases that an entrepreneur faces while establishing a successful organisation. Accordingly chapters have been distributed. The book starts with the most important question ‘Are you ready to be an entrepreneur?’ and ends with the suggestion on how to engage general public to support your cause.
Every entrepreneur wants to establish a big organisation that has competitive advantage and is leader in its industry but achieving this requires not only some brilliant marketable ideas but ability to build a winning culture is also as important. When author says, ‘Building a winning culture should be a priority for all leaders – irrespective of the size of the company they are building’ and ‘Delegation is the key to scale’; he not only talks about the importance of culture but also about the trust, effective communication and alignment of strengths. These are the ingredients that help establishing a successful organisation.
For entrepreneurs, harsh
realities, failures, bad decisions and mistakes are something which they have to deal with every day but how they deal is most important irrespective of the result. Also at the same time the entrepreneur must be able to acknowledge the competition and respond meaningfully.
‘Focus on building a start-up; that is valuable and the valuation will automatically take care of itself’, author indicates towards the new challenge that entrepreneurs are exposed to but the author does not stop here. He does give the right answer as well. If the start-up is valuable and can be marketed, the entrepreneurs need not worry about the valuation. The investors themselves will find out the right valuation.
In this book author not only talks about building an organisation but also about how to build an ecosystem for entrepreneurs. For that he has proposed five locals such as local situation, local resources, local capacity and local ownership to create local problem solvers. His experiences suggest that local situations must be solved using local resources by creating local capacity and ownership must be in hands of local stakeholders and this should be done through local problem solvers. If this can be achieved, a permanent solution to social problems can be achieved. These five locals give a social angle to the entrepreneurship. This can be achieved only when there is general public engagement in the whole picture. This is the most important part of the book. The fifth and sixth sections are dedicated to explain and present these issues only.
(The reviewer is an independent
commentator)