Kanchan Metals director learnt patience from Phil Knight’s 'Shoe Dog'

Despite his hectic schedule, Raghav Gupta, Director, Kanchan Metals enjoys reading and tries to find time to invest in learning.

"The lockdown was the time for unparalleled reform. The only book that I have read in the past few months was Shoe Dog – Memoirs of Phil Knight, the founder of Nike. It talked about the early challenges to its evolution into one of the world's most recognised and profitable companies," he told ET Panache.

Lessons
The book gives a great amount of learning like - to keep things simple, follow an idea to the point where you know for sure whether it will or will not work, look for and invest in people who bring to the table skill sets that you don’t possess, look beyond your personal opinion before allocating jobs to people.


"One should always keep in mind that it takes time to build and to establish a viable firm that sells physical products. Not only for the sales, but particularly for creativity, growth and building confidence as well. Having said that, patience is the key," he said.

Schedule
Not including emails or internal reports, Gupta does not spend much time reading but he considers that to be a huge part of growth.

"It somehow depends on my work schedule or perhaps if someone recommends a book worth reading or I notice it myself. I do not read as often as I would like to read," he said.

Stress buster
Any bookworm would tell you that books are an endless source of inspiration, culture, comedy, humanity, romance, creativity, extended horizons, and everything else you might like.

"Yet right now, in these difficult times, books are so much more than that. They are a powerful instrument for helping our well-being and motivates us to excel by giving us great examples. I usually like to read autobiographies with the objective to try and learn from the experiences of those who were successful at what they did. Perhaps the idea is to try and imbibe some of their success formulas at work. Thus, on the contrary a motivation behind reading is to excel at work," he said.

Book ways
From a noticeably young age, Gupta has been fond of collecting physical books. "I am an old school person; I find myself more engaged while reading a physical book as compared to an e-book. The physical books have an essence and aroma to it that binds it to me since childhood. Reading is one of those activities which I enjoy that doesn't tie me to another electronic device," he ended.