Management. Who better than an entrepreneur, a born manager, to explain this concept in depth. I raised this question to a friend with the expectation of getting a few fancy definitions from acclaimed books. Being a painter at heart and an entrepreneur at mind, she responded with ‘Management is Art’. Her reply surprised me to an extent. She further added colors to my grey thoughts, stating that management comes from within, and so does art. So, let’s look at management through the lens of an artist.
“I get the idea for every painting by observing the surrounding. And being an entrepreneur, without observing the surroundings, you cannot think of any problem which has to be solved. When I started thinking about my venture, the thought into it was the same as my imagination of creating a painting, when I see the objects to paint. This entire thought motivated me because I knew from my prior experience as an artist that, even after making loads of mistakes I would eventually turn the thoughts into beautiful ‘paintings’ of my dream company. I had to make changes according to customers needs during my journey. I believe in improvisation, and I quote the famous painter Kandinsky, ‘an authentic artist who creates art from an internal necessity’, a quote to which I can easily relate. Now, an essential and comparable characteristic I noticed was in the area of making a choice. There are a bunch of brushes available to do a painting, but only a few of those brushes can be used for a particular picture, chosen as per requirement. In the same way, as head of the company, we have to select people who are fit for different roles out of the available pool of talent. This requires a lot of expertise in various fields. Being an entrepreneur, all of these concerns have to be managed along with time and stress.”
At that time I realized, when she said art, she meant a multitude of different elements that worked together to create an entrepreneur. A single line to sum up the topic based on my experience at SIBM Pune would be that some entrepreneurs are artists, while some themselves are art in its most authentic form.
– Deepika Vaishnav, MBA Innovation & Entrepreneurship 1
