Rohit Mehrotra is the founder of CPSG. His success in entrepreneurship is evidenced in his ability to turn simple ideas into high growth businesses, bringing exceptional value to stakeholders. An important element of his accomplishment is not only in starting and building profitable companies, but navigating them through unforeseen obstacles towards even greater success.
Rohit’s background includes 25+ years of experience in Building Technology companies, Mergers & Acquisitions. Prior to starting CPSG, he founded Vital Technologies (1990, Software), Vital Solutions (1997, Systems Management), Vivare (2002, Demand Chain / Web Development), and Paranet Solutions (2003, Network Management), each of which was acquired by public companies or private equity firms. Prior to that, he was the District Technical Manager for Sybase, and was responsible for managing Software Presales and Advanced Services Group for SouthWest United States.
The “Why” of Your Business
All businesses begin with a mission statement. It could be overt as in formally stated and announced by the founder(s) and communicated to everyone connected with the company, whether they are employees, investors, customers or suppliers. A mission statement may also be private; the founder of the business may keep the mission pretty much to himself or at the most share it with a closed group of friends or associates. But what’s critical is how important is the mission statement in the life of the business. Is it simply a string of impressive sounding words that adds gravitas to a company’s image. If that is so, its not only a complete waste, because a lifeless mission statement cannot do any good to anyone, but it can also be dangerous because a business without a mission is like going on a journey without a map. Yeah it maybe adventurous for a while, yeah you may enjoy the ride for a while, but soon you will run out of fuel and have no means of refilling, or you may get lost in a dangerous terrain with no way of getting out. What’s more you will be overtaken by well prepared competitors. And most likely you will go nowhere, won’t attract the kind of talent that could help you best, have the support of committed investors, or be able to come up with quality products or services. That’s how influential a mission statement can be.
Rohit Mehrotra, Founder/CEO of CPSG Partners, the fastest growing IT company with 10,000% growth over 3 years, is a serial entrepreneur with many such successes in his past. How does he manage to do that, replicate such astounding success time and again? The formula according to Rohit, lies in nailing the why and what of the business right at the beginning, and then building everything else around that. In other words, he lets his business mission be his North Star and guide all his decisions. He begins with identifying the “problem-set” and then goes about defining how he is going to solve it. What he is going to focus upon to solve the problem he has identified. In one instance he focused on high growth in a field and drove all his activities towards achieving that. In another instance he focused only on working with the best talent available. Interestingly, he did not focus on growth here, he says that his focus and efforts on getting and keeping the best talent (Navy SEAL level talent is how he defines them) automatically ensured the high growth.
This makes for the most interesting case study and also goes on to establish the critical importance of having a clear and concrete business mission and following it with single minded focus. For Rohit, defining the business mission involves identifying a simple goal or principle that he would like to achieve. In his case, it has at various points, been high growth, technology leadership and working with top talent. Once he identifies the principle, he stays true to it. For example, when he decided that he wanted to attract the best and brightest minds to work in his technology venture he realized that if he went through the usual route of hiring the techies he would fail in his goal as they would likely prefer to work for a Google or an Apple. His eureka moment was the realization that he needn’t hire techies to begin with and he needn’t even hire only from the Ivy Leagues. He wanted the best and the brightest problem solvers and he could get them in the liberal arts as well. All they would need was the right training to be able to channel their talent in the direction that would serve the venture. He solved both problems by hiring personally and then providing the fresh talent with the best mentoring opportunities. For him it was not one mentor for 15 fresh recruits, but 1:2 and even 1:1 mentoring.
You need to be passionate about what you are doing and that should be your mission statement. All the greatest achievers, be it Walt Disney, or Steve Jobs, they were driven by their passion. They were focused on putting out the best they could and that itself ensured success. So your business mission should be something that gives personal satisfaction. That’s what entrepreneurship is really about, you want to do something your way and if you create something for your personal satisfaction and put your heart and soul into it, then others are going to get something out of it. Just like a musician creates a symphony and his creation brings joy to scores of other people. It’s irrelevant what you want to do, if you know what you are passionate about doing, identify the right principles, dig deep enough to find what’s missing, what you can do to improve the situation, to solve the problem better and then make that your mission statement, your “North Star”.
The original article in the CEO Magazine can be found here.