A Business Lesson learnt from Music

I am thankful to my parents to have introduced me to the world of music. At the same time, I must admit that I have not made the progress to the extent I had to and wanted to. For a longtime in my learning I hadn’t appreciated the different connotations that are involved in our form of music (Carnatic Style) nor had I noticed the nuances in rendering flawless music to hear. But my outlook towards music changed predominantly due to the influence of my gurus Vidwan Belakavadi Rangaswamy Iyengar (Astan Vidwan of Govt of Karnataka) and Vidwan T S Krishnamurthy (popular as TSK). I must admit both of them are undoubtedly outliers.

From the very beginning, I have been inspired by Rangaswamy Iyengar’s astonishing memory and enduring enthusiasm at the age of 86 to deliver music lessons to students – two things crucial to any business leader. In reality, ability to keep the tempo high among the team members and recollect the stakeholder details at the right time is ‘The Key quality’ in a good leader.

Violin is not only most widely used as an accompanying instrument in the Carnatic classical concerts but also has good recognition when played solo. As an accompanying artist in the concert you have to focus on making the Concert successful by lending adequate support to the Lead performer (Vocalist, flutist etc..) and have to bear in mind a couple of things such as at no point during the concert you outshine the lead performer and you do not create an uncomfortable situation to the other artists. The business lesson that I am trying to drive home is that success is, at the end of day teamwork, an individual cannot put his ambitions or objectives ahead of the Team / Organization’s goals.

Another interesting piece of advice from my violin maestro is to play music according to audience. You have to pay attention to details what is the quality of audience, demographics of audience, situation of the concert and the overall mood of the audience. This is so true in business i.e to understand the pulse of the customer and pitch accordingly.

As is with good concerts you want to take away piece of music that you continue to hum for a long time, I would like to reiterate that Business is a Symphony to be played with the right partners to the right customers at the right time.

S M Haricharan, Co-Founder and CEO, ISACGlobal