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    Future Group's secret to handle a large, diversified portfolio: 'Futurocracy'

    Synopsis

    Future Consumer Enterprises Limited employees presented plans on its brands, giving them a chance to run an entrepreneurial set-up within the company.

    ET Bureau
    "We have almost 27 brands in food. The question now is how do we manage such a large, diversified portfolio?" asks Kishore Biyani, group CEO, Future Group. The answer came by way of a boot camp open to all Future Consumer Enterprises Limited employees, where they presented plans on its brands, giving them a chance to run an entrepreneurial setup within the company. The participants numbered in the 100s but there were only 30 slots up for grabs.

    It's tempting to think of this as a rebranding of the hoary role of brand manager, but Devendra Chawla, group president, food FMCG at Future Group assures us it goes a lot deeper: "They come up with ideas, get funding, develop products: more like an entrepreneurial role than a brand manager. It's about figuring out the categories they can get into and how these ought to be sold."

    Driving this is what Biyani calls Futurocracy, a version of the holocracy model. Instead of command and control hierarchies and elaborate organograms, the entrepreneurs tap into circles within the group including ones that specialise in new product development, sales and marketing. These resources are accessed when needed and there are no permanent team members. They are guided along by mentors within the system like Biyani and Chawla who has also mentored brands outside of Future Group like Paper Boat.

    The backgrounds of the internal entrepreneurs is highly varied including management trainees with just a years' experience and people who are taking their second shot at entrepreneurship. They are also not constrained by function. Chawla points to people from finance or even HR who are now entrepreneurs. Their performance is assessed and course corrected by the mentors.

    Biyani believes a blended model that integrates command and control and self-management will deliver better. He says, "If we were like ITC or Unilever, we would have had one boss on so many brands. That was not possible. We had to think of a new model. And so we created one which would bring together the wisdom of mentors and the energy of the young, and then collaborators who are specialists." He believes command structures are a relic of a different era when companies were primarily single brand entities. "People became multiproduct by acquisition and not design. We are becoming that way by design," he says.

    One of the entrepreneurs we spoke to is clear the biggest positive is one that was sorely lacking in his last entrepreneurial venture which failed: "When you do it outside such a setup, you are alone. Mentorship and advice becomes difficult. "There's also access to resources and a roadmap on growing the brand. While the model is just a few months old, Biyani says the results have been encouraging: "Sometimes stress levels increase in young people and sometimes the interpersonal skills are not there to the extent desired, but the working environment is very positive."
    ( Originally published on Aug 03, 2016 )
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