At
the Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, India, 82-year-old Dr. Govindappa
Venkataswamy has solved the mystery of leadership: He brings eyesight
to the blind and light to the soul. It is the only mystery worth solving:
the mystery of leadership.
There is a place you can go to find the answer: India. Ride for seven
hours with an eye doctor who is 82. Ask him to tell you the secret,
to answer the question, to solve the mystery. Listen carefully to what
he says. Watch everything he does. And learn.
You know he knows. He's an eye surgeon -- a man of vision. He has learned
how to deliver perfection, and to do it despite crippling obstacles.
As a young man, a brand-new obstetrician, he contracted rheumatoid arthritis
and watched helplessly as his fingers slowly twisted, fused, and grew
useless for delivering babies. So he started over, this time studying
ophthalmology. He managed to design his own instruments to suit his
hands, and these tools enabled him to do as many as 100 surgeries a
day. He became the most admired cataract surgeon in India.
Twenty-five years later, he confronted another potentially crippling
obstacle: retirement. In 1976, facing the prospect of social shelving
at age 57, he opened a 12-bed eye hospital in his brother's home in
Madurai, India. Today, he runs five hospitals that perform more than
180,000 operations each year. Seventy percent of his patients are charity
cases; the remaining 30% seek him out and pay for his services because
the quality of his work is world-class. He is a doctor to the eyes and
a leader to the soul.
If corporate leaders who have the best educations, the best consultants,
and the best financial and technical resources consistently deliver
projects that are dead on arrival, how does perfection emerge for the
Chief, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy, Dr. V.? How does his execution so
closely match his vision? How did his original hospital, Aravind Eye
Hospital in Madurai, invent a service so perfect that it created its
own market -- and how did it do so without any significant resources,
and with a paying clientele that represented far less than half of its
customer base?
The free patients, whose medical services ( including food and room
) are covered entirely by the hospital, have a separate building. Paying
customers are charged 50 rupees ( about $1 ) per consultation and have
their choice of accommodations: "A-class" rooms ( $3 per day ), which
are private; "B-class" rooms ( $1.50 per day ), in which a toilet is
shared; or "C- class" rooms ( $1 per day ), essentially a mat on the
floor. Paying customers choose between surgery with stitches ( $110
) and surgery without stitches ( $120 ).
"You don't have to qualify for the free hospital," says Dr. V. "We
never question anyone. We sometimes give rich people surgery for free,
and we don't question them. I don't run a business. I give people their
sight."
The next clue to the mystery of leadership: To achieve perfection,
it helps to respect money -- but not to be motivated by it. Since opening
day in 1976, Aravind has given sight to more than 1 million people in
India. Dr. V. may not run a business, but it's important to note that
Aravind's surgeons are so productive that the hospital has a gross margin
of 40%, despite the fact that 70% of the patients pay nothing or close
to nothing, and that the hospital does not depend on donations.
Dr. V. has done it by constantly cutting costs, increasing efficiency,
and building his market Most companies tend to focus on selling to the
rich and the super-rich -- consumers who have an annual income of $50,000
to $100,000, or more. But there are billions of potential customers
out there whose purchasing power is about $2,000 per year.
Dr. V. agrees with that analysis, but he hates the sound of it. "Consultants
talk of 'the poor,' " he says. "No one at Aravind does. 'The poor' is
a vulgar term. Would you call Christ a poor man? To think of certain
people as 'the poor' puts you in a superior position, blinds you to
the ways in which you are poor -- and in the West there are many such
ways: emotionally and spiritually, for example. You have comforts in
America, but you are afraid of each other."
As a market-driving organization, Aravind has to educate its free patients.
One of the ways that the hospitals accomplish this is through community
work, which their doctors and technicians almost routinely undertake.
First, a representative from Aravind visits a village and meets with
its leaders. Together they do the planning necessary to organize a weekend
camp. Then Aravind doctors and technicians set out for the village,
sometimes driving for days. Once there, they work around the clock,
examining people and working to identify those who will need to be taken
to Madurai for surgery.
They put a pair of glasses on people for whom the purchase represents
a day and a half's pay. "People can't believe it," says Dr. V. "Often
they can see clearly for the first time in their lives. They usually
say, 'Thank you,' and go away -- with the glasses on. The next day,
they come back ready to make the purchase. This is how we sell 1,000
pairs of eyeglasses per day."
The stories about him are legendary. Here's one: Dr. V. is leaning
unsteadily against a wall. Usha, his niece and fellow surgeon, runs
up to him to offer help. "You can't help me," he says, "I'm supporting
the wall."
Many members of the hospital staff go to the Aurobindo ashram. Says
Dr. V.: "We feel that the higher consciousness is trying gradually to
give us a system. We are all aware of the parts of the human body as
they work. We take in food; we like the taste of it. Part of it is absorbed
here, part of it there. But we are not aware of it. The higher consciousness
works in the same way. Slowly, your system is built around it, but not
according to human nature. At the hospital, we are slowly building an
organization that seems to be linked with the higher consciousness."
When Dr. V. said that he wanted to build hospitals, Dr. Natchiar was
ready to do what he asked. He was her older brother. He had raised her,
and he had been her teacher at ophthalmology school. Dr. Natchiar convinced
her husband to study ophthalmology. His sister, in turn, convinced her
husband, and on it went: Eventually, nearly the entire family got involved.
Little by little, a dynasty was being built. The family is now in its
fourth generation.
Dr. V.'s Perfect To-Do List
You can set the same challenges for yourself as Dr. V. does.
Understand the deeper principles of work as well as your purpose in
the game. Becoming a clear instrument of these aims is a declaration
of power, and it draws resources - money and people -- to you.
Understand the poor, and market to them. This requires more imagination
than does marketing to established markets. It requires expanding beyond
the smallness of the self. It requires a shift in your view of economics
and market forces.It requires expanding beyond the smallness of the
self. Everything you do for your personal well-being adds another layer
to your ego -- and in thickening it, insulates you more from perfection,
happiness, and fulfillment.
Appreciate that we are not different from the poor. We have spaces
in us that are empty and ravaged. We are on the inside what the people
of India are on the outside. They are materially poor; we are spiritually
poor. Indians are on the outside what we are on the inside: starving
for meaning, not homeless but the next worst thing -- directionless.
Learn how to sell water by the river. If you can become market-driving,
not market-driven, you can create new arenas and go on to build a legacy.
When we talk about new markets, we will have to call on new abilities
within ourselves. We will have to acknowledge the least-developed parts
of ourselves. That means going deeper than intellectual abilities to
more- profound, more-basic human attributes.
Recognize that the great opportunity in world markets is to make a
difference in the human sphere. Bring people things they can't imagine
wanting. From this act, we too will be changed -- and maybe even enlightened.
Dr. V. teaches that work can be a vehicle for self- transcendence. mind
picked and edited from fastcompany.com by Mani
Courtesy : Fastcompany.com
Article by :Harriet Rubin
compiled by : Manivannan
