Change Is Imperative – Santosh Desai, Managing Director & CEO, Futurebrands India Ltd.

Mr. Santosh Desai, Managing Director & CEO, Futurebrands India Ltd.

More things have changed in last 50 years than perhaps in all the generations preceding that and therefore the idea of living with change, the idea of living with uncertainty and drive change through it is an imperative for an organisation, business or any human being. What is interesting about this subject is that in the midst of all the change and uncertainty, we always try to resist change. The organisation’s tendency is to find ways to resist the change somehow, not accepting fully the extent of uncertainty and in some ways creating an island of stability. By talking too much about change, we actually insulate and immunize ourselves to stop dealing with it.

In stock market and election analysis, till the time the results come out there is a sea of comprehensions & mayhem of chaos. The day the results come out, everyone is an expert; everyone is certain what happened with very neat and ordered explanation & analysis about the results. Looking at the mechanism of uncertainty, we miss the fundamental and basic explanation of uncertainty with more proximate and comfortable explanation. You have financial markets worldwide, they are in a state of despair and yet we run away from acknowledging that. Therefore this kind of tension that exists between embracing uncertainty and actually being comprehended at a fundamental level starts many conversations in many successful organisations today.

I have spent most of my life in dealing with the consumer’s space; the consumers evolve with time and dealing with the customers can make you understand the changes that take place at a structural level in a better way. On the other hand it is very difficult to actually go back and understand that why those changes took place, it is a complex procedure specifically in a market like India as it is fragmented & fractured. It is a challenge to try and get a sense of uncertainty and keep a track of change in this kind of market in relation to consumers. How should organisations deal with it? There are broadly two areas: First is how one tracks & anticipates change? Second is how do you respond to that change?

In an organisation one needs to understand the sensing mechanism to comprehend the change that is taking place. According to me the perfect way of doing it is to understand the fundamental source of driving that change. When we describe human beings as consumers, we are just describing a small part of them, which is only interested in consumption. So, it is important to look beyond consumers and deal with the human being in the society and that is how we can connect the change in consumer’s behaviour with what is happening in the society and take ownership to understand human beings in all their richness and diversity. Ignore the changes at superficial level and look for the fundamental changes because understanding those will create a whole set of opportunities and will give a better sense of what might happen in future because of those changes.

The other learning is to distrust existing labels. In India, the notion of shopping is different, shopping in India is a form of transfer of energy, we thrive in a society where shopping has a sense of life about it. In India, crowded places attract crowds. To approach the Indian market we have to invest in the change management to understand the level of changes that we might face in future and to understand the pattern of change so that we can come up with strategies to deal with that change. In Futuregroup we keep ourselves aligned with the area of sociology to understand the mind set of our consumers and to understand in which direction the society is moving.

We should understand the fundamental variables related to our business and how should we respond to it. What we need to do is to build an organisation climate wherein the notion of uncertainty and change is the part of the air you breathe. The idea of change is not unsettling, wherein we are not looking for comforting coping mechanisms. I am always surprised by the exaggerated reactions which we get when we face the downturns, we know that we can face downturn anytime and we always panic when we face one. It is an ongoing process to engage with all these questions with seriousness, and we should try to drive these changes to the best of our ability.

The above article is an excerpt from the speech delivered by Mr. Santosh Desai, Managing Director and CEO, Futurebrands India Ltd. at AIMA’s 39th National Management Convention which was held in September 2012.