5 Strategies for Evolving Your Business

During his 40-year (and counting) career, Harsh C. Mariwala, who joined YPO in India in 1990, transformed a traditional commodity-driven business into a leading consumer products company.

From a turnover of US$0.08 million in 1971, his company Marico/Kaya, specializing in health and wellness products, crossed a turnover of US$833 million during 2013-2014. For FY2015, the company is expected to gross US$1 billion with a market cap of more than US$4 billion.

With his business flourishing, Mariwala decided it was time to give back. His passion for innovation and social responsibility led him to establish the Marico Innovation Foundation to fuel innovation in India and ASCENT, a mentoring organization to help budding entrepreneurs learn from one another through idea exchange, experience and insight.

Having gravitated from “doing things to getting things done to influencing others,” Mariwala handed over the day-to-day operations of Marico/Kaya and now focuses his attention on scaling up ASCENT.

He shares five essential practices to support leaders looking to grow their business by changing their strategy but not their vision:

1. Navigating the Vagaries of Family Business: Ensure the stakeholders, especially the owners of your company, are aligned where the business growth plan and how it should be managed during the journey.

2. Attracting High Quality Talent: If you have limited resources and big aspirations, you are forced to think differently, and that’s when innovation happens. Creating an impactful and innovative ad campaign will make you stand out and attract talent.

3. Turning Values Into Culture: Share your values with your teams and ask them to share ideas. If managers own their values, it will create a culture in the organization. A strong culture is impossible to copy.

4. Don’t Take ‘No’ For An Answer: If someone says your idea cannot work, test it again. Innovation is not simply creativity; it is a lot of execution.

5. Copycats: When your idea works, copycats will come along and try to acquire the market share. Instead of becoming redundant, collaborate and innovate again.

(The author of this article is Deborah Stoll from Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO). This article first appeared in the March 2015 YPO Ignite quarterly newsletter, an exclusive publication for members.)

(Image: Thinkstock)