One day Mullah Nasrullah and his friend went to an eating place to feast on fish. They ordered two pieces of fried fish from the ‘fresh catch of the day’ menu and when the order arrived, Mullah Nasrullah immediately picked up the larger piece and put it on his plate.
His friend was shocked and exclaimed, “Mullah, how indecent of you, don’t you know it is considered bad manners to do that?”
“Alright,” Nasrullah responded, “what would you have done?”
“Taken the smaller piece” said his friend.
“Well, here you are!” said Nasrullah dropping the other piece on to his friend’s plate.
What Mullahji had done was to take an intelligent call on his friend’s “socially appropriate” response to cleverly have the larger piece of fish for himself.
Entrepreneurs too have to take an intelligent call, but of a different kind – when to be hands on and plunge into the day-to-day operations, and when hands off and trusting their managers to deliver.
An interesting example, and one entrepreneurs can learn from, is of the the way Kumarmanagalam Birla dealt with his ambition of taking over Novelis, a company 4 times larger than his, and the how, having bought it over, he dealt with the subsequent turnaround.
The Economic Times has a very interesting article on it.
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