Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard hear and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com. It's guest time on the show once again and I'm very pleased to have with me Ravi Kathuria, business consultant, sales consultant and author of Coherent Strategy and Execution. Ravi, welcome to the BusinessMakers Show.

Ravi: Russ, thank you so much for having me. It's exciting to be on the BusinessMakers Show.

Russ: Well thank you very much. It's exciting to have you with us, too.

Ravi: Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Russ: Let's just start right at the top and tell our audience about Coherent Strategy and Execution.

Ravi: It's a business parable. It's the story of this vice president of sales. His name is Trend Wortheimer.

Russ: Trent Wortheimer; okay.

Ravi: And Trent is a very successful VP of sales, is brilliant and the board promotes him to be the CEO. Now Trent believes he's brilliant, which he is, but he also believes he's perfect, which he's not.

Russ: Okay.

Ravi: And that sets up for an interesting situation because the book opens with the management team meeting and Trent is complaining about the VP of customer service and the VP of engineering not pulling their weight and two weeks later Trent is the CEO of this team, the team doesn't like him, he doesn't like the team. He doesn't think that they're pulling and doing what needs to happen to grow the company. Now Trent does everything that he knows. He wants to take the company to the next level.

Russ: Right.

Ravi: But the harder he tries the deeper he digs himself into a hole. So it's the story of how he transforms the company, but in the process goes through a personal transformation.

Russ: Okay; cool.

Ravi: And to me that's very important is that in business you cannot have success with just business transformation. Business and personal transformation have to go hand in hand.

Russ: Very interesting. Well Ravi, I know you know that I feel this way, but I love the book -

Ravi: Thank you.

Russ: -- because I like the parable approach to teaching business. I like the fiction, the novel approach much more so than the business school textbook and even more so than these motivational books and these how-to books. We've had another guest previously on the show, probably two years ago, a young man by the name of Stuart Maudlin who did a book about a start-up and I have to tell you, when I read it I felt like wow, I've been there. He's depicting the challenges real well and in Coherent Strategy and Execution I felt like I've been there before, too, and you're depicting the real world quite accurately.

Ravi: Yes; thank you, Russ. I appreciation you highlighting that. When I started thinking about writing the book I knew that I didn't want to write a theory book. I had read enough of those and every time I read one I would get excited. I said, "This is really cool. The ideas are great." But I would go implement it in the organization and I'd go, "Oh my God. What they talk about in the book and the real world are two complete different scenarios because the books, the theory books paint a rosy picture about their method, their model. When you implement it you find out that's not how the world works. You think well where are these authors coming from.

Russ: Right.

Ravi: So I made a promise to myself. I said I will never put my readers in that position. So I created this - I think it's a very intense, it's a very real world backdrop. You see the politics in the organization. You see the management conflicts. You see the confusion. The people in the book are very smart people, but you see the confusion in the management team about what the business is about and they miss the picture completely. It's amazing and as you follow the book you will see how they could have arrived at those seemingly right decisions, but they are completely wrong.

Russ: Wow. My interpretation of that is that management and leadership in business in the rapidly changing business world is not an exact science to the degree that you can have a plan and say this is the direction we wanna go. You're always dealing with a multitude of variables and the variables even in the different personalities of your team and what motivates them. I think my best example of it is my early, early days in corporate America. I was an IBM-er and it was real interesting to particularly see a young over achiever that got promoted into the management position and you always got this sense the first time they're there it's like okay, now I get to show the world that my way works and it never seemed to work out very well what so ever. I kept thinking about that as I read Coherent Strategy and Execution.

Ravi: Yeah; you're actually describing Trent because Trent really thinks -

Russ: Right.

Ravi: -- that he knows what needs to be done.

Russ: And he has good intentions.

Ravi: He has good intentions.

Russ: And he wants to succeed and all of those things, but boy, it just doesn't seem to work, right?

Ravi: It doesn't seem to work and he goes back and he complains to his wife because we have those scenes. We have his visitings with his wife and he seems to complain is that, "I'm working so hard. I'm pushing the management team. I'm pushing the organization. It's just not happening. I don't know how to connect all of this."

Russ: Right; okay. Well I'll tall ya' what. I wanna go in a little deeper.

Ravi: Sure.

Russ: Into what motivated and triggered the idea for you to write that after this. I'm talking with Ravi Kathuria, business and sales consultant and author of Coherent Strategy and Execution and we'll be back with more with Ravi after this. You're listening to the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com. This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com. Continuing on with Ravi Kathuria, business consultant, sales consultant and author of Coherent Strategy and Execution. Okay Ravi, I keep introducing you as business consultant and sales consultant, which I know you have a practice there, too, and I know you have no history in corporate America, but tell us what was it that motivated you to write Coherent Strategy and Execution?

Ravi: What a beautiful question, Russ. I served in corporate America for a long time, worked for five different companies and then about nine years ago started my own management consulting, executive coaching firm and I have been very active in Houston. I've served in volunteer positions for many business organizations in town. The one thing that I saw in all the companies that I worked for, the organizations that I volunteered for and the clients that I served as a consultant, they all had one thing in common. All these entities, all these organizations, these corporations and companies, they were all dysfunctional. They were all dysfunctional. They all struggled with issues and that used to boggle my mind. Ever since I started my career I've been figuring out why is it so difficult to lead and manage an organization regardless of size.

Russ: Right.

Ravi: Because I've seen the same pattern of issues at Fortune 500 companies. I have seen the same pattern of issues for a start-up. Even two brothers who are actual brothers and they formed a company, but they face the same issues and it's been bothering me. Why is it that in this day and age we have more information available to us today, more management information, more books, more big articles. Still companies are struggling.

Russ: Right. Now when you say they were dysfunctional all of them, that doesn't mean that none of them were successful.

Ravi: No; they were very successful. Some of them were quite successful, but they were not achieving the potential, the true potential that they have there. They could do a whole lot better and sometimes I'll say this, they were succeeding in spite of themselves.

Russ: Right. I understand that, too.

Ravi: And that is a paradox. You look at that and say this organization, this company could be so much more productive, so much more effective, but all these issues come up and those are real issues. These are hard and difficult issues. One thing that I talk about in the book is that there is no silver bullet.

Russ: Right.

Ravi: We live in this age of there are so many books out there which says the three rules for success, the seven steps to nirvana and I struggle with that.

Russ: Right. There aren't three rules to success.

Ravi: Yes; I wish because then life and business would be very simple. The issue is business is very complex. Business has so many variables and then you throw in human beings. Human beings are very complex.

Russ: Right.

Ravi: You take an individual person, their mind is very complex and it keeps changing and views things very differently. Now you put 500 of these together. Talk about an interesting ________.

Russ: So in the book, Trent Wortheimer, which is the guy that's driving the boat.

Ravi: Yes.

Russ: And you characterize this change that he did within himself, helped, correct?

Ravi: Yes.

Russ: And is that always the case in businesses that you've seen? Does that fix the problem?

Ravi: I see the need for both. In order to be a successful leader you need to have what I call the business savvy. You need to understand the business. You need to be a good manager. You need to be able to take the organization and work on its processes, but if all you have is the business side of things and you do not have the credibility in the organization where people do not see you as a leader, they don't believe in you, you're not going to be as successful.

Russ: Right.

Ravi: Now if you go to the other end, if you're just a leader who people love, but you do not have the business sense, you do not have the management skills what will happen is people who are reporting to you who will have the management skills, you will lose their confidence. They will only see you as a rubber stamp in the organization.

Russ: Right.

Ravi: You need both.

Russ: Right.

Ravi: Specially as a business leader you need both.

Russ: When you mentioned there is no silver bullet it brought back another memory. In management training with IBM I remember I went out to this week long training session. They did a good job because they kept giving us one case study after another after another and we all felt, those of us that were new managers in the class thought well, at the end they're gonna tell us the right way to manage. They got to the end and they essentially said, "Well there is no right way. There is no silver bullet. You have to adjust to each and every situation." I like the way that you said you gotta know the blocking and tackling of business, but you have to have the personal skills to have people like you and believe in you, too, right?

Ravi: That's right.

Russ: Okay. Talking with Ravi Kathuria, author of Coherent Strategy and Execution and we'll be back with Ravi after this. You're listening to the BusinessMakers Show heard here and scene online at theBusinessMakers.com. This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at thebusienssmakers.com. And finishing up now with Ravi Kathuria, the author of Coherent Strategy and Execution. Well Ravi, as I've already said, I love the approach of using fiction, novels, parables to teach business ideas and expose people to it. I'm curious though. Are there more books planned in your future or is consulting the whole gig? What's up next?

Ravi: I would love to write more books. I have to be careful. I made a commitment to my wife.

Russ: Okay. That you'd still be out there billing as a consultant, too. Okay. I understand.

Ravi: But I think there is a second book. There is a compelling case for a second book because Coherent Strategy and Execution has my business method. It's the business method that I have used over the years with clients and now as people are reading, companies who are adopting the book, they're implementing the method. So the next book is the case studies.

Russ: Okay.

Ravi: Across industry sectors and across sizes of companies who have implemented the method. I think that will make for a very interesting book.

Russ: Cool. Ya' know it seems to me that it would be very educational for business schools to have parable approaches to teaching some of these things. I felt that exact same way when I interviewed Stuart Maudlin and his start-up book. My goodness. This sounds like the real world and I think they need more exposure to the real world.

Ravi: Absolutely. In fact, the University of Texas, the Fleming School for Healthcare Management is using it in their strategy and management class.

Russ: Interesting.

Ravi: In fact, they used it last year when the book came out and there were 30 students ended up using it again this year and 65 students have signed up.

Russ: Wow. Cool. Great.

Ravi: So I'm quite excited. I go talk to the students and for four hours they pepper me with questions. In fact, they tear the book apart. I wear my Teflon suit and I go, but it's really fun to engage with the students there and I wrote the book so I love it, but I really love it because it really, like you said Russ, it gives students an inkling into how organizations really work because the case studies that you read - almost every strategy class uses case studies, the Howard business case studies.

Russ: Right.

Ravi: But they don't get into the people side of things.

Russ: Right. The politics, the feelings.

Ravi: The politics. So students have to realize is that it's not just their knowledge and their technical abilities when they get to an organization. They really need to understand how the organization works and that is what a book like this does.

Russ: Okay. Well you might have already asked this last consistent question that we ask visitors here at the BusinessMakers Show, but let's imagine that there's an aspiring young business person or entrepreneur that's tuned in, that's listening and watching your interview right now -

Ravi: Thank you.

Russ: What kind of general advice would you give him or her to prepare for the future in business?

Ravi: If you're a budding entrepreneur and an aspiring entrepreneur and you're looking at what you should do or how you should build your company, I think what you need to do is and which is what I have done in the book is that I have looked at companies that have been successful. Large companies, whether you take Walmart or whether you take your neighborhood bakery store.

Russ: Right.

Ravi: There is a common theme that I see in these successful companies and that's what I try to capture in the book and I start even in the preface talking about that is there are two traits, two common traits that I see and when I state what they are you're going to listen to it and say well that seems common sense, but I promise you the more you understand these two terms, the more you implement it in your business and in your thinking. The more your ability to succeed your probability of success will go up. The two traits that I see is clarity and coherence.

Russ: Okay; wow.

Ravi: And I'll give you an example. I don't know if our audience knows, but Walmart is a Fortune 1 -

Russ: Right.

Ravi: -- company; Fortune 1. Right? The highest revenues of any other company on earth and they make I think 14 billion in profits. There are 400 billion or something like that in revenues; 14 billion in profits. This company has all the money and resources to carry any product in their aisles that they want, but there is a reason Walmart doesn't carry a $2,000.00 suit. Now think about that. Think about that. What that would do to you as a customer if you're in Walmart and you come across a $2,000.00 suit. You'd get all confused. You'd say I'm not sure what this is doing here.

Russ: Right.

Ravi: Is this a $10,000.00 suit that they're selling for 2,000 or if I'm buying a $2,000.00 suit I expect a very different level of service. My point is Walmart knows its business model. I go into many examples of companies in here who understand their business model. If you are an entrepreneur you need to understand your business model and absolute clarity around that business model. Otherwise you might succeed, but you're going to work much harder for that success.

Russ: Alright. Ravi, I really appreciate that insight and I really appreciate you sharing your story and some time with us today.

Ravi: Russ, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much.

Russ: Alright and that wraps up our discussion with Ravi Kathuria, the author of Coherent Strategies and Execution. Stay tuned in for the BusinessMakers Flashback as we feature J.D. Gershbein of Owlish Communications. You're listening to the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.