Brand and Brand Builders

Brand gurus and marketing geniuses have defined brand comprehensively, leaving little scope for ambiguity or confusion for a postulant like me. Everyone is a consumer, we buy articles from sources we consider authentic within the reach of our presence and also in the grasp of our financial means. Every interaction with the product or service either creates a new impression in our minds or emboldens the perception built in the past: this applies to both good and bad experiences alike. You are not going to win the adulation of people by saying that consumers of our age live on an overdose of information, they have passage to reviews: real consumer feedback, success stories and matching products, all within the reach of a few taps. Someone determined to find out the positives or the negatives of your brand will succeed with trifling effort. The world has yet not seen a product that hasn’t failed, we are also yet to come across a brand that doesn’t make poor choices, from the perspective of its customers; yet we consider some brands better than the other. One can talk about the appeal of a product/service, its usability, price, availability etc to establish the brand and its identity, but it is not something that I’d like to explore in this article. What I’m trying to, and let me admit, audaciously superficially, the underlying reasons; or should we say what builds the character of the brand? Proof of the pudding lies in eating it; the brand is nothing more than the sum total of its user's perception, so if customers are a carrier of the brand, it’s true ambassadors, who are the brand builders? Who gives the brand character flesh and blood and brings it alive? No prizes for guessing, it is employees like you and I. Brands are built by what you and I do on our work desk and elsewhere in our work hours. Apple is not a person, Hyatt is not a singular object, the virgin airline is not lifelessly flying these are a result of real people working day in and day out. 

Desires, apprehensions, fears, motivation, commitment and conviction of employees manifest itself in the shape of a product and service that end consumer experiences and pays for. It is a misnomer that only great brands sell, there is a market for absolute garbage too. Everything retails, real measure of success of a brand is how popular or let say dominant it gets in the medium to long term : one quick test could be to figure out if its customers are willing to pay a ‘premium’, if so, you’ve done things right, at least those which matter the most to the customer. If the price tag is the only hook that you have on your customers, be rest assured, you will soon run out of business. Someone with a will just a tad bit better than yours to work on ‘features’ and the efficiency to keep the costs in check matching your levels of control, will suck your customer leaving you dry and unhappy. Therefore single most important objective for you should be to create a brand that is liked by your customers not only by the price tag at which you sell but also something else, something perhaps much more important than price itself. Let me quickly bring the Apple example here, for a quarter of the cost of a full spec iPhone you can buy a OnePlus which is as much a phone like the iPhone if not better, but customer stick to the iPhone knowing fully well that they are paying exorbitantly for a set of features which are not unique because iPhone is much more than a phone, in the Apple ecosystem, it does many things well without failing, which the cheaper Android counterpart can’t simply deliver. Apple has managed to create a phone which is more than a phone for its customers.

And that precisely should be the objective of the brand .. you have to be ‘more’ than what you must be in the most minimal sense. Lowest common denominators do not create history .. don’t aspire to be them. That truly in my view is what a brand should be, let’s turn our attention to the brand makers, the creators of the brand, the employee you and I. Or what should people in the leadership team do to help shape the character of the organisation to deliver a brand, below three things come to my mind ( that has a hell lot to learn on this subject and everything else)

1. Find that one thing you wish to be.
2. Be willing to sacrifice everything for that one thing
3. When you achieve that one thing ..look for the next big thing,

Let’s go over these individually and briefly.

1. Find that one thing you wish to be: A ton of researchers have proven it beyond reasonable doubt that it is utterly foolish to even fantasise being multiple things, it is just not wise. On the contrary, if you can be one thing and really good at that, you’ve made your mark. But it is easier said than done. In an organisation there are hundreds if not thousands of things that happen, every number mean something to someone; in choosing one, are we saying that we have to ignore the rest? Well, not quite, the ‘one thing’ philosophy says to choose one thing that makes most business sense to you. And you do not have to be austere in choosing what you wish to be. Let’s say choosing to be a 1 billion dollar company is a good target and so is getting high with 98% customer satisfaction. Both are brilliant targets to go after, please understand, everything that you would do, well, in one way or the other tie into everything, but by choosing one thing you basically, channelise energies in a certain direction of your choosing. So for instance, let’s say you are an ITES ( BPM, BPO, contact centre.. choose the phrase that you like) company and you had to choose a target, what should you choose? You can aim at a certain gross margin and say I wish to end this year at 23%, or you can give yourself a people target, saying I have to become a 40K people strong organisation or simply say that I will be on the number one spot on the partner scorecard for all my clients. Choosing to be on the number one in all client scorecard is a wise goal to elect, let me tell you why. Being number one the scorecard means you have not only met but also exceeded performance expectations substantially, in doing so you’ve given your customer a very strong reason to stay with you, one even stronger than your rate of billing. And to be number one, you’ll have to have the best talent onboard, a culture that retains skills, effective performance management, stringent cost control, satisfied set of employees etc. So to achieve that one thing you’ll end up doing all the right things. Choosing an indirect sensible goal will get you better results than a direct cost or number goal.
2. Be willing to sacrifice everything for that one thing: Temptation and temporary setbacks will set you off course. Distraction is everywhere, scattered so brilliantly that you’ll find it at every turn, even when you are not looking for it. You will need to resist the urge to do over midway. Remember shifting the goal post in a running match leave not only the players but also the spectators confused and confusion we can all agree doesn’t end in anything positive. Let’s take an example, let’s say the one thing that you had to choose happens to be ‘being the most preferred employer’ and in order to do that you’ve started reviewing your policies with the intent to make them lucrative and particularly employee friendly; what does that mean in the short term? Providing better couch and a better sofa, we know, comes at a cost higher than the ordinary. So it will mean that you’ll have to spend a little more, in bettering the benefits of the employees, giving the physical and the IT infra a facelift. This is real money and will go out of the limited reserve that you’d have built with years of frugality and conscious corner cutting, what you need to do is conduct a cost-benefit analysis. You do not have to hire a consultant for it, look at the cost of attrition (the opportunity you lose for not having people), cost of rehire, wastage caused by learning curve (new people take longer to do things, if the experienced lot took 5 minutes per task the new employee would start with 10.. you are losing money on every transaction), higher the churn more distant BAU gets, cost of chaos is 15% on an overall basis, per the research conducted by Harvard. Critical talent leaving robs you of your competitive advantage. So now that you have a view .. of what you should look at, do your numbers how is the cost of reform placed against the cost of ongoing leakages? Analysis done right will tell you that even with the additional cost of reform you’ll end up adding anything between 5 to 8% to your margins in the medium to long term alongside creating a strong, motivated, engaged organisation that you’ll be proud of. Remember when going gets tough it is the character of the organisation that comes to rescue.

On to our last item

1. When you achieve that one thing ..look for the next big thing: Goal setting is of paramount importance and must be done extremely carefully: intellect is put to use here. Fine minds create a meaningful plan; all organisations have all three kinds of people.
   1. Fire Fighters: These folks shine at transactions, they like moving from one problem to another, they are so used to fighting the fire that a period of peace makes them uncomfortable. They are the first line of defence.
   2. Sailors: The old and loyal guard, a very important section of people, scars that they carry hide many ugly struggles that the organisation had to go through. These are good people, with a desire to remain there. Their field of vision is wider than the firefighters and are generally calmer in their personas, they do not react easily, but when they do they do it with all the might. They have everything going for them except for one critical item, their exposure. Thanks to their long tenure in the same organisation their story of growth become the story of the organisation and so if the organisation is not the best yet, their acumen is also not top notch. These good souls become close, their visions get tunnelled mostly limited by past.
   3. Think Tank: This is a crazy lot, and perhaps the most valuable one. These are people with razor-sharp intellect, the best education, superb background, fearless outlook and they crave revolution. They are addicts for change, they keep struggling and propelling to better the environment for themselves and for the rest. This lot is seldom satisfied; for them, the road to success is always under construction and quite literally. They are courageous to the point of being impractical, they set for themselves inhuman targets and are mostly full of passion. Erudition, oratory & taste for fine things in life are their characteristics. They are persistent to the point of appearing nagging. They are dissatisfied with slow progress but never disappointed and end up being the agent for change.

wrt. the percentage, you need 60% of your staff to be firefighters, about 30% as sailors and 10% think tank. It won’t harm to have more think tanks but the problem is that there are not very many ‘good’ people and retaining this talent pool is not easy at all. You have to be wary of the sailor group; with tenure what also grows is complacency you gotta keep them in check otherwise, they will make their disability, limitation of the organisation; attrition in this group is desirable. Think tanks are not good for anything else, they can only be part of strategy and direction setting, so use all of them, have at least a few firefighters in the group and make sure you keep sailors out of the ground tasked with finding the next big thing for your organisation, it has to be one thing.

Lifting the victory title takes the pain of the practice away in the very moment; so keep running these and other thought experiments that you find fitting to your taste and your business. Wishing you well! 

‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’

‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’ I’m borrowing this line from a legendary business writer, if you’ve read him too, you’d know he means it. Will reveal the name of the gentleman towards the end of the article. Not all business houses and leaders think as high of ‘culture’ or invest enough resources in setting it right .. they often, on the contrary, are found wrestling with challenges that crop up as a result of not having strong cultural fabric tying loose ends of their organization together. For some reason they miss the fact that covering a wound doesn’t take the pain away; but this write up is not about them but the 'subject', so let’s get back to it.

Organisations have multiple identities, they exist for economic reasons, they also have a social purpose and sometimes even a moral signature; all at once. Travel far and wide, pick up any sector, county, sect or society in the Morden world, you’d find that wealth creation is at every core of its existence. Why else would you see democratic governmental setups talk about GDP growth.. etc? It is a good thing. Prosperity in practical terms is believed to be a close blood-related relative of happiness and therefore pursued wildly. There is no prosperity without wealth. This is not just a boring business administration line, you’ll find substantive evidence of it in mythology too, Hindu mythology in particular. The fact that we worship Goddess Laxmi and in her praise sing and chant mantras which when translated from Sanskrit into our language of daily use means “ to make happiness possible .. we need wealth so .. lord grand me it, in abundance” in summary 95% of the times, balance 5% is chorus, trying to match up with it, is proof enough.

For prosperity one needs perspective, though: this is true even for those who see happiness in things unrelated to wealth. For instance the great poet, Mirza Ghalib held that to lead a good life, all one needs is a good heart, someone to love and great prose to say so differently in different times of the day. If you read Diwan-e-Galib you’d find it. ( This is a rare book and is found only in the national Mirza Galib library at New Delhi, besides Nizamuddin Aulia Dargah). Do check it out.

Perspective is important and integral to organization building. Let’s agree that there is no right or wrong perspective .. as long as your straight view is legal and permissible you’ve every right to pursue it. It, however, needs constant reiteration in an organization to

a) keep people adequately informed and

b) making sure that people do not forget it. 

While an organization is way more , but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just assume that organization is a huge money-making machine : A huge press that prints currency, coming together of many moving parts some mechanical and others human ( accounting, sales, customer service, branding, information technology, procurement, and other, business acumens). From dusk to dawn it prints, converting paper into powerful currency. People who run it are happy seeing how humble paper with their labor turns into one with ink valued a lot more than when it arrived raw on the other end of their press and so are those who supervise it and fund its operations. Imagine, that the machines aren’t oiled routinely, its motors aren’t greased frequently, as a result.. some parts fail, causing a portion of the paper to get wasted, some ink going down uncountably. Let’s just say that workers are lazy, uncaring, selfish and insensitive, instead of letting the supervisors know about what caused the waste of paper and as a result lesser output, they choose to cobble a convincing tale, attach very little significance to it when presenting it to the top guys with the intention of having them pass it without they attaching much attention to it. And this happens over and over again as more parts fail thanks to aging, wear and tear over time. The insincere lot, keeps making their concocted story sound more believable by sprinkling experience to their false cover up reports.

Or they are nice people but in absence of reiteration do not find motivation to report the issue, some may be at a level of less than required intelligence, thus unaware. Silence irrespective of reason is not healthy.

Because not all organizations are small and confined to a small & manageable by physical inspection geography/ office; not every business leader has it in within his means to check and verify every bit of information that is being shared. As a result, having heard the story so many times, they begin to believe in it as much. The real problem keeps flourishing unchecked. Neutral voices that go a-galore against the malpractices are subdued or gagged easily for they are a minuscule minority, as a result, the misdoing continues till that curial breaking point is reached when it becomes terminal and death seems the only cure.

Things come to an end: of what is left people make their last sum of money and walk their separate ways to their next destination. 

In the process what could have been a prosperous endeavor ends in misery, distress, and disrespect. 

Let us imagine, the same set of circumstances in an environment that drives ‘truth’ for a culture, one that rewards dispassionate reporting of events negative as well as positive. A currency factory, that doesn’t reprimand unreasonably, one that encourages people to come forward to own problems and faults and of course has practices and people in place to quickly respond to the situation and correct it. The error would have gotten reported and perhaps the press would still be running as respectably as possible. 

When you’re a 200 to 500 people organization; setting these things right is not as big an issue. In all probabilities most sensible people would have been a part of the hiring process, there is near real-time interaction between management and the delivery apparatus. The problem comes when you have an operation running in scale when you have half a lac or more people operating out of a geography well spread out, in diverse areas of work. Then the challenge is real and it is not just of setting the culture right but also developing detection methods to know what is broken and where? Because the complexity is of an enormous order not acting is equivalent to inviting untimely death.

In this write-up, we will only deal with the detection of the broken and I shall follow this one up with another article on restoration, in the coming weeks. Do keep an eye on this blog for it.

What we need to understand is that broken things are not a problem. In the real world things break all the time, the problem is not having a pair of conscious eyes set to find out what’s broken and then also not having an honest intention of fixing it. Time is of the essence when it comes to fixing.

What we need to know here is that ‘doing’ part of any job is relatively easy .. in deciding what is to be done, how and when lies mastery. Everyone knows that to score decent marks one must study hard, yet not everyone scores well .. because the underlying behavior of all students isn’t healthy. One who sleeps in the class, doesn’t complete his homework and disobeys the teacher is less likely to do great in academics .. may turn out to be a great dancer but if the need is to have an academician .. you will have to look for the traits that make one. 

Therefore, organizational symptom study is vital.

Below are a few detrimental symptoms for you to observe in your organization, if they exist .. your organization is a positive candidate for restoration. 

1. When people agree ‘all’ the time with those in the position of power: Let’s accept this we’re not right all the time and when people simply agree with all that we say, we are headed for a disaster. You need people who without fear, favor or malicious intent disagree with you, give you a contrarian view. One size doesn’t fit all, don’t we know this?
2. When good news outbalances the bad ones on a continuous basis: Let’s say when you review a process or a business and it only tells you all that is right all the time with very little mention of what went wrong and why .. you have got a problem. Well, even Sachin has had to walk back to the pavilion on ducks, if the unit is not failing either it is not trying hard enough or just faking it.
3. Evident Follow ups: If you preside over a system that runs on follow up and delays .. it is a clear indication of the fact that either you do not have competent people or your competent set isn’t sincere. In both cases, if you do not get your people to change their attitude towards ‘on time’ delivery/ response; you will have to change them and if you do none of the two.. you’re setting virtual lighted matchstick to a stack of hay which is dripping with petrol. Someone is always monitoring, natural justice, you see!
4. Disregard for conformance: This one is rather easy when you see people not conforming to the norm for the heck of it.. you have a problem. The common way of finding it out, when people run late for a scheduled meeting, all the time. When they wilfully come unprepared, almost always. Or better yet, do not attend crucial meetings. You should know they do not care enough and you should care little for them.
5. Shortage of Ideas - When the group that you work with starts falling sort of Ideas.. you experience relatively long & unexplained lull, often .. you must know that your people aren’t thinking and because thinking is 50% of doing an excellent job. Chances are they aren’t even doing what they are really supposed to do, let alone anything nearly good.

Well, if you see any of these symptoms surfacing enough in your organization, you should declare an emergency. At this point, you should slow down expansion and fuel restoration. Because if you do not fix .. it will break .. and sooner than you think. 

BTW,  Mr. Torben Rick, is who said "Culture eats strategy for breakfast"

Have a great Sunday, catch you in the next one!

Empathy & Organisations!

I won’t hold it against you if you accord less than warm reception when I go on to mention ‘empathy and organization’ in the same breath. For far too long, virtues, in general, have been getting a solid beating from their flashy cousin ‘numbers’ ( to do with top & bottom line, performance & other tangible titbits). It is only natural to get lured into thinking that ‘numbers’ along matter and everything else is not worthy of our attention .. such abrasive attitude surprisingly even attracts applauds in boardrooms across the world, today. There is no denying the fact that such talks have a tendency of sounding aggressive .. so much so that even wisest sometime forget to pause to look for substance beneath the claim. We greet it as it hits us .. warm and loud and move on with a happy and satisfied feeling. What happens after however is not always desirable and we know that for a fact, don’t we? Targets get missed, deliveries do get delayed and prospects shut doors .. real world failures.

I do not wish to say that numbers aren't important, they indeed are ; unless you are making the money that you need to run your affairs you won't be able to sustain .. this write up is towards highlighting that foundational layer that comes handy in creating a base on which you can lay plans for the future firmly .. of growth, relevance, and of sustenance. 

Before you go on any further : I need to mention this that I’m very much for numbers and have been driving those for most of my life; as a student .. grades and as a professional organisational ’mandates’ and at the risk of sounding boastful, would say that have done a damn good job at creating spectacular results, some of which are standing benchmarks in my area of work. What I’m here to discuss however is what I have uncovered in my own mad and sometimes even mindless perusal of numbers and how it has deeply affected the way I operate. It is my duty to mention that my way is not essentially the ‘best’ way. It is merely a statement of the way that has worked surprisingly well for me.

Our work routine invariably revolves around three things;

1) Where am I?

2) Where should I have been?

3) How do I get ahead from wherever I’m?

These apply to everyone in equal measure; you could be an individual contributor, a beginner, team managers, someone in the mid-management rank or an executive from the higher office - all that you do can be categorized in these three statements, broadly though. Let’s take a pause here and think .. what are organizations really? At its core, it is a group of people, larger the size more heterogeneous the mix, coming together to fulfill what is a 'common goal'. That goal can be expressed in monitory terms: “Have to become a trillion dollar company” or can have relative connotation: “We must be the biggest and the largest in our area” etc. I personally like the later more.. because it doesn't have a ceiling, not even in the short term. 

How are these goals going to get accomplished? The science part of it gets addressed rather easily, see what is working, what is not .. validate by data, research action, build prototypes, refine and regulate .. implement, observe and rework. Keep repeating the sequence & the cycles for so long as you discover the set of activities that meet your effort capacity and give you what is your desired output, at the cost that you can bear and in the time that your customers would happily give you.  What is difficult to achieve is that ‘art’ of problem-solving. There, let me come back to that statement that I made a while ago; organization are essentially a group of people and thus human emotions play a part, seminal in nature. And therefore it is only vital for leaders like us invest in it. Remember, you’ll need great people by your side to weather storms of a bad market, poor economy, upset client and cyclic poor performance that will keep showing up every once in a while.

Because we’re talking about organizational symmetry & set up; let us look at what could be a measure of success; a number .. we all need it.

Attrition could be one

Employee satisfaction another 

I don’t think I need to make a case here to say that an engaged and happy workforce almost always outperforms those who are dissatisfied or plain unhappy. Happiness can't be bought by throwing stacks of cash .. you can be paying handsomely, providing your employees with shiniest of the offices or most efficient of the infra but they could still be disengaged, unhappy, disturbed and even disgusted. A good way of testing if that is the case is seeing if problems keep resurfacing, check for clients expressing repeated discomfort, check for how much people actually care about the issue at hand. Do people take responsibility for errors easily or keep explaining how it is not to do with them but everyone else on the planet? If these tests come positive .. you have a problem which you wanna solve.

Happiness is created by trading in the currency of intent. Bad results are often overlooked if ‘intent’ somehow proves itself to be good & intact. From an organization, it is critical that ‘intent’ is always voiced out loud and clear. Over-communication here is not entirely undesirable. And that brings me to the word with which title of this blog begins “Empathy”.

All of us have at least once watched tightrope walk being performed by artists in circus .. when they walk on that rope, the onlookers feel sweat in their palm, wide open eyes get glued to the point where the rope meets the feet of the walker, heart begins to race faster than usual and we almost unknowingly start praying that he ends up on the other side of the rope without falling off and when he does it; we clap in cheer and feel happy as though, we conducted the gymnastic ourselves - This feeling is "empathy"!

When you not only understand other’s feeling but also feel it yourself; you connect at a level which is deep and meaningful. From it comes the resolve to act and then the delivery gets magically aligned to the purpose and from there on it is a function of time that one puts on the issues, that determines success. Solutions only keep getting better. Think of it yourself .. if you were to bet your life on someone; who would you choose? Someone who empathizes with you completely and honestly or those who understand your problem but do not quite care as much for its impact on you? 9/10 people will choose the one with empathy .. the 10th person, well .. let’s empathize with him and let him be.

In all organizations, people essentially solve for their customers and in the process work towards making their organization/entity richer, more prosperous, known and respected and there if employees were to not care deeply about the thing/issue they are solving for or feel for it as much, the effort that they will put will always be inadequate and that will sadly reflect in the results visible to the customers/ clients/ employees/ stakeholders ....everyone. The surest way of delivering great results is building empathy with the problem and those affected by it. Superficialities do not count here. These are four important things to do.

Understanding: Not just the issue but also the plight of those who are impacted by it.

Passion: for solving it and solving it for real

Honesty: Being open and candid about stating facts and laying out plans.

Communication: Let people know about the cause, the effect and also the remedy. 

Given the obvious benefits, it is wise to build an organization that believes in the need to be empathetic and practices it at all times. Remember empathy won’t insulate you from failures or losses or delays but if implemented well, it will surely reduce such possibilities greatly and should they still occur you'll have a group of people who are committed to the cause greater than ever and from it will stem awesome things like collaboration, cooperation, accountability, and sensitivity . Treatment will not be merely symptomatic but one that eliminates the root cause. Whenever the undesirable happens you will have a whole organization ready to understand, care and solve for it with utmost honesty and commitment.

On that note, allow me to offer my best wishes to you on this friendship day.

See you in the next one.

Make hope your culture!

Happy new year, people! I hope 2018 is treating you well.

Earlier this week, I, kickstarted series of education session for brilliant people in my team .. the objective was to get to know them better and give them a different perspective, some thought for them to ponder over! Four sessions to cover the entire staff. And in the process, I essentially repeated myself, four times over and that got me thinking that perhaps, the message will find deeper application if it reaches a wider audience, so here I’m.

Organisations cannot survive in our times if they aren’t heterogeneous in composition, ‘more of the same’ is no longer a winning mix. You need people from various educational & social backgrounds, skills, personalities, and beliefs to come together to achieve what is the common objective. Everyone in their unique ways takes the group forward, every day, by contributing in the space that they work. A techie writes compelling codes making the product complete and competent, that enables the salesperson to go out there, stand hand and shoulder above the competition to win customers, those won over .. need help and support by a group committed to making bitter experiences better by applying what they consider valuable - service skills. Someone works tirelessly on excel files trying to make sense of it all and everyone else that is there is between who try and give it shape and enable it to work like a machine that is well oiled and up to date.

Often times, however, we get so overwhelmed, by the challenges we conquer that we begin to undermine the values that others bring on to the table and there seed of conflict is sowed; it only grows bigger if not checked in time. People who are there in the field get seduced into considering that those who operate from the office are lazy and unconcerned and those at office desk begin to believe that those fighting it out in the streets are outright ignorant and often times ill-behaved too- hair-splitting may get the observers a clearer view of who is right but then the organisation is not served well with these conflicts not even in the least bit.

It is said that when strong personalities come together conflicts become inevitable; because people generally do not like to budge. What does one do in such situations? These are real-world issues and often do damages which are far more grave than a bad business decision, they tend to make the organization shallow from within. People then come together only to pose for photographs not so much to really be together. These situations are just as tacky as they are tricky !!

In my talk, I spoke to my people about the great leveler that nature is when it rains .. no matter which way you pray, which school you went to .. whichever subject you could be major in - you’ll all great drenched! Sun rays do not light rich homes more than poor huts. Morning breeze is just as soothing to all people, of all background and beliefs - we’re the same people, we hold dear similar aspirations! ‘Expression’ however differ and that alone creates all the ‘differences’ that exists today. We must all be watchful of what, how & where we express ourselves. 

Whether we like it or not ; whatever we do for a living has a profound impact on who we are and even before we realize what we do all day starts reflecting in our behaviors and quietly creeps into our belief systems too, changing us from within, sometimes irreversibly. Be very sure of what you wanna pick up as a profession.

A goldsmith values precision over power; blacksmiths love power more; Pain in patient doesn’t prick emotions in a doctor, a worker at a construction site doesn’t mind dust, a scientist is not afraid of failing, customer service professional have fragile emotions yet are resilient - these remarkable traits are not what that these people were raised on or born with - but were acquired working and slowly it shaped their worldview. They all think differently of the same thing, sometimes.

These forces are so strong that it can come in the way of the larger objective at times, greater goals may sometimes, succumb to these differences. Every organization needs to be aware of these challenges and should have a strategy to overcome them.

Alongside financial & performance goals, the organization should also keep in mind, cultural goals and invest strongly in making it happen. In the face of most difficult times, it is the strength of character that pulls people up, organization are no different. Clearly identified values and very well articulated intent; are a good start but it mustn’t end there. If you look at Indian business landscape, we have more than a handful of successful business houses but if you were to name top two, The Birla and the TATA group walk away with the prised perceptional value, there! The reason is that these organizations really invest in values.

Every passing day makes it tougher for organizations to survive, they deal with multiple challenges, from rising cost to shrinking capital to customers walking away to difficulty in keeping top talent. Things will continue to get more complex and confined as time progresses.One can choose from the open ocean of positive adjectives and traits and make it their own by sweating to act in accordance at all times, but if, I were to pick one, I would say, it must be “hope”!

Without the audacity is ‘hope’, integrity, kindness, candor, respect, resilience, forthrightness, frugality and just about everything else is just as incomplete as is a cup of tea without the tea bag! Nothing is going to live until the end of time without failing and when failure sees you in the eye, “hope” comes handy. The failure can be of any shape or size but the undeniable fact is that it will always be there in some proportion or the other, it is inescapable and a lot/group that is not hopeful and madly so - will not always get thru difficulties.

The group I was addressing, did buy the message and wanted to know how does one really apply the currency of hope to buy goodness. Answering it is simply, you gotta practice “self-talk”.

It is a system in which you give yourself instructions mostly verbal that you’d be the best at whatever you’re doing. When on the road, you would try and be the best-behaved person there. When playing a game you’d instruct yourself to be the best gamer - not every-time you’d end with the best score but if you have the value of hope by your side.You’ll find reasons to try again at being the best at what you do. 

Hope keeps us going, in the shiniest of the times and the darkest of the hours. It is hope that made cars on the road and airplanes fly in the air, possible ( and also innovation and the engineering ;) . With unwavering faith and untiring effort, we can achieve whatever we set our minds to. Let us not forget, we should do what we must but in sight of the fact that our journeys can be singular but the destination is shared! We must remain one hopeful force, in all our rises and in all of our falls, we must hope and win together.

So here’s my message - always remain hopeful and keep telling yourself that you have to be the best at whatever you’re doing - everything else will find its own sweet place.

Until next time ;) 

Is being nice beyond business?

The human race has made significant progress since it came into being. We’re no longer naked creatures chasing animals barefoot with the hope of satisfying pangs of hunger. We're evolved and now have greater goals to go after, we’ve put man on the moon, many machines made by us circle celestial objects we still know very little about, we however still chase, not animals, but humans for quicker food deliveries sometimes and on other occasions one another for nothing of value.

We’ve not only devised language and formalized dialects but have also quite extensively defined the design of civility and organized most of our relations and contacts. We’re born under medical supervision, sent to institutions to gather education & know-how, we fall in love .. marry the person in fan fare and start another circle of life with our partner.

All of us want to succeed at everything that we do, we wish to gain, to accumulate, to rise above the rest, be known, be valued and above all, have all that we want right within our comfortable reach.

If this were to be told in fewer word, perhaps, saying that we wish to be profitable always won’t be an unfair representation. 

All of that is very good.

But have we in the process become a little less human? Have we forgotten to believe that passim isn't necessarily deep; nor optimism shallow? Have we become so insecure that we care way too much about things that don’t really matter that much? 

Have we lost the need to be in constant awareness of how short life is & how little we ultimately lose from risking everything?  

Let’s not forget, what the world now is .. is nearly a pale shadow of what it could be one day.. we are still at the beginning of history, in that sense. It is upon us to make that a reality - it doesn’t require much of an effort beyond the ask of being virtuous. 

It is perhaps easier for me to lecture on history, Indian independence, and even world history to a certain extent but "being nice" isn't really something that I have read but I deeply feel and care about, the need to be "nice" - so sharing.

I think, to be good, we really need to as step one shed the load of insecurity that we carry with us, by doing so the unpleasantness that it creates will on its own disappear making room for much desired "goodness".

To make it happen all of us would need our own little toolkits - below is mine. Disclaimer: May or may not work for you :)  

Resilience - The art of keeping going even when things are going dark, accepting reverse as normal refusing to frightened others with one's own fear, remembering that human nature, in the end, is reassuringly tough.     

Empathy - The capacity to connect imaginative with the sufferings and unique experiences of another person, the courage to become someone else and the desire to help.

Sacrifice - The ability to give up on something dear for the sake of others with a smile.

Politeness- It is going beyond having good manners and being nice it is the conscious desire to not hurt anyone on purpose.

Humour - The ability to see the funny side of situations of all kinds. It is integral to wisdom, it is our ability to softly locate the gap between what is and what should have been. Like many other human emotions, humor also springs from disappointment but only when optimally & creatively channeled.   

And at last, would mention Forgiveness and Most important- HOPE for a better tomorrow.

Those of you who know me would have heard this many a times from me .. let me repeat it here as well - being nice costs nothing.

On that note .. time for me to leave .. see you on another side.