‘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!

Balance is a myth!

Balance, a situation in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions to the extent of egalitarianism. Yes, that!

Balance is one of the most commonly heard words from the wise. There is balance in ‘diet’, in posture, even between work and life; I’m here to argue otherwise. In absolute terms there is nothing called balance .. most practical translation of balance is choice. When we like a certain thing and we for some reason are not comfortable pushing the argument in its true color forward, we take the cover of balance to roll it across as a solidly knitted argument. Let me take the example of ‘work-life balance’. Successful people work a lot .. they work hard, round the clock .. they make work their life and therefore inch ahead of everyone else. Ruskin Bond, Sachin Tendulkar, Mahatma Gandhi, Shah Rukh Khan, Roger Federer, Barak Obama, Nushrat Fateh Ali Khan, Nelson Mandela & Steve Jobs .. did not do a 9 to 5 to achieve the level of greatness that they did.  There is another set that keeps clamoring for a better balance between work and life; truth be told, this set likes other things more than they like their work and to fund that other thing with more time and resources they often argue for a greater balance between life and work. Actually, the demand is not at all that of balance but of choice. And that is alright, everyone gets a vote and when it comes to their life they must enjoy ‘veto’. But it will be so much better if you just said it.. plainly.

One of my previous employers had this amazing tradition, in which, after annual performance appraisals rating closure employees were encouraged to bid for open roles higher in the hierarchy than their current one. Interested employees were then given a week to prepare for a presentation/talk in which they were expected to establish their suitability. Those who impressed the judges enough bagged the position and additional raise that came with it. Announcements were made public and it marked the end of PMS for the year. Those who had designed the process made sure that they picked the jury for each role in a manner which made familiarity or let’s say the popularity of a candidate absolutely useless .. 9 out of ten times the jury picked didn’t even know the names of the candidates before arriving in the meeting room. They were often chosen from different business and different geographies.

In last 15 yrs that I’ve been on; I have had 11 promotions .. out of which 4 were from this amazing process, naturally, I owe my success, 36% of career progression to this and therefore I love it. 

Opinions were divided on this policy, though! Because opponents were looking to create balance.

Those who benefited from it, like me, went all out to appreciate it. The policy rendered efforts spent in building ‘relationship’ with the immediate supervisory and their leaders, somewhat less useful and therefore unnecessary. People went about doing their work, making sure their KRAs were substantially delivered on because that was the only way to get to the bid for the next level. This single policy in a decade of its existence prepared a generation of employees who neither worked extra hours to become somebodies favorite or really expected their subordinates to treat them in a particular manner, all they cared for was delivery and work. Output measures, 8 out of 10 times remained at the center of all conversations. It all looked perfect from a distance. This brilliant system also had its side effects.. in the sense people to people bond started becoming less and less emotional and more and more purpose or should I say task driven. People became dangerously cautious of what they were doing and if in any way it will let them in a position of disadvantage. Year-round people worked crazily on improving their presentation, leadership, analytical & organizational skills etc but devoted little time toward the development of the teams that they were responsible for, which in some cases also proved counterproductive. Critiques of this system said it is incentivizing selfishness.

The other group found this policy absolutely outrageous and were often heard saying that this policy was crafted purposefully to disproportionately support ‘extroverts’. Their principal argument was that an organization has a mix of personalities .. people with all kinds of strengths. Why should the system be rigged to this extent to support one set of skills completely ignoring the other sets? Natural outcomes included attrition, lower moral in people who were not wanting to improve on the skills at the same time were also not getting opportunities outside.

Perfection is a textbook idea.. in reality every story has another telling. Ours is a complicated world. Most harmless activity when dissected mercilessly, may make completely opposite of the original intention appear as the valid one. Let’s take an example of you praying for your own success on something which has only one prize. What are you then essentially saying? That may everyone else competing for it scoreless then you do? Of course, you don’t mean it that way and it is a great thing to hope & pray for, but those who have to critique will do so, anyway. And if they apply their minds enough, they would also land a few sane sounding reasons but then should it make someone choose one over other, against their original inkling because there is opposition? Certainly not, irrespective of which side you choose there will always be other sides.

That brings me back to the primordial question; Does balance exist? Should one strive for it? On a number scale zero is placed at the perfect center, how many wish to be there at that number? People want bigger and better numbers .. don’t they? Ok, those of you who think zero is a good number, when it is to denote ‘errors’ or losses .. great, understand! Even that notion is so because we want a positive outcome on a whole, which is inherently towards the right of the number scale .. off its center, isn’t it? So is there any balance, at all?

What do we do then? Smart people trade, the way nature has negotiated gravitational force to enable vertical alignment for. Make the best of what is available.

Be off balance, if you truly believe in your cause and do what is needed to forward that, at the same time remember, you are entitled to be whoever you’d want to be.. you have just one life. Be unapologetic for the choices that you make but it will always be good .. to remain ethical and hold high moral grounds in the process. Because .. what is ‘good’ doesn’t age!!

Have a great Sunday!

See 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.

From service to “Customer Experience” !

Hi People, 

How have you been? Thanks for your time and suggestions on the last article .. I appreciate every minute that you spend on my blog and deeply care for the suggestions and recommendations that you make. Many of you have requested that I keep the customer experience series going. Your wish is my command, in every sense of the expression. This is the fourth one that we are doing today, together as always. I shall link the other three at the end of this blog, to save you time and effort of finding it, in case you happen to be one who is reading this articles as the first one from the series. Well, then let’s get started!

Customer service for the future; is what we shall explore today. BTW, do we still just use customer ‘service’? Service is undeniably critical but, if I may say so, has outlived its utility. Service alone isn’t exciting anymore, so much so that excellent customer service practices of yesterday has become “hygiene” for operation today & are listed in the bucket labeled “bare minimum” in the minds of the customers. The customer is that one person or group that keep us going .. that is where the payment for all that we offer comes from ... therefore imp, isn’t it?

The transformation that we are going thru is rapid, every sphere of life is undergoing massive modification as we speak. We do not do things the way we used to let's say a decade ago. In very little time .. a lot has changed and perhaps forever. How many of us write letters now? Do you even recall walking to a bank branch for withdrawing cash or even making a deposit? The favorite bookstore for most of us is no longer crosswords but Flipkart.com / amazon.com - not to say that we do not like stores but we prefer shopping from our homes more. Fundamentally, things have changed, instead of us reaching the goods/services, the goods /services travel to reach us and on that organization compete .. who reaches faster .. fresher .. fuller etc. Take a look at the humble Pizza, '30 minutes delivery or free' has become more imp than the pizza itself, at least from the narrative that is being built. A whole lot of organizations, some close to a billion dollars have come into being, aggregating stuff .. Ola, Uber, Zomato, Swiggy; you name it - ridding on this wind of change.

The moot point that I’m trying to make here is that; the wind of change is not just blowing but is sweeping everything that is coming in its way and it is all for the good - I can say this today, not sure how will it be seen a decade from now. When we have all depleted natural resources greatly to fuel our outrageous ambitions; but then we must leave that discussion for some other time ( do hit me on my email if you’d like to hear the environmentalist, that I hide inside me, glaring about the changes that I see).  Considerable change in customer expectations is putting a tough challenge to the organization to manage, meet and exceed what is to be delivered to the customer, day in and day out.  

Before we get into specifics let’s just get the definition out of the way.

When you fix a problem that the customer has reported and done it promptly, polity and in a manner that makes the customer feel safe, it can easily be called service. Customer experience, however, is a different ball game it is not only about reactive care/support but also all the proactive measures that you take to ensure that customers do not go thru any of this ever on your platform. In one of my articles, I’ve argued that a set up that minimizes or better yet completely eliminates the need for customer service is the best firm for customer service. Attaining that is not easy, it would mean every nut and bolt of the organization is tightened and enough that before something reaches the customer it is 100% complete, and what follows it is a series of customer education; one that brings the customer up to speed. There the level of customer education is elevated … to the standard of advisory!! You need to make sure that you advise your customers on matters that matter to him, and the quality of advisory is so good that they become dependent on you. More like a dictionary .. when you do not know a word .. that is the only solution that you have .. you consume it on the web or flip physical pages .. .it is dictionary service that gets you to the meaning. That is what is needed for brands to create dictionary grade accuracy and reality and recognition.

What is also abundantly clear is that incremental enhancements to do with reducing cost can no longer be passed to the customers as a gesture of service, let alone, experience. You can no longer shut the telephone line and say that we are doing so because we care for our customers, phone in our view is an intrusive method so we decided to go all and ‘only’ digital. Your customer will read right thru it and know that you are cutting corners to grow your balance sheets fatter at the cost of customer experience and they will not miss a beat in choosing your competition over you should there be any offering what in their mind is better customer support. We need to understand that free flow of information is now a reality, customers can read reviews, learn about how others have experienced your brand in a matter of moments - it is all out there available and free! The way we learn about a product or a service, the way we compare and the purchase decision that we make today is supplied with a decent amount of data & research. Impulsive purchases are no longer the largest contributors of growth and certainly not a reason for a repeat purchase. A continued association is only possible if you service your customer well. There is no other way, really. 

It is as simple as this; if you want the customers to remain loyal to you and get you more users you’ll have to invest in their experience, sweat for them to feel the breeze of convenience. If you do not make "customer experience" your priority you will no longer remain your customer’s either. Make the choice, while you still can!

Championing the cause of customer is rather easy if you are a small org or let’s say a single identity; it is that much more difficult if you have a group of companies or an org that is well spread out in vast geographies. But there is a way out and I’m here to present that to you in what I call a customer experience toolkit :) 

It has five elements; much like our universe that is made up of five elements ( air, water, earth, sky, & fire); accordingly to the wisdom of the Vedas ( Veda for some other time). 

Here is the list in no particular order.

1. Create customer centricity organization/Group.
2. Integrate customer touch points 
3. Customer interface based innovation 
4. Sell “service” for revenue  
5. Build high-performance operations.

Let’s get down to each one of them, individually. 

Create customer centricity organization/ Group: Our values are important because they help us to grow and develop. They help us to create the future we want to experience. Every individual and every organization is involved in making hundreds of decisions every day. The decisions we make are a reflection of our values and beliefs, and they are always directed towards a specific purpose. And purpose singularly should be “customer satisfaction”. You’ve to encourage all your people to think from the customer’s perspective. Everyone has to do it not just customer-facing units. From person working the accounts, the tech guys designing systems, to the IT personal fixing computers to the pantry staff to the security guard, everyone right up till the CEO/MD must make sure that every decision that they make; is made for the customer. I’m not saying make your organization non-profit charity but you have to make it sensitive to what your customers care about .. and that will be a good beginning.

Integrate customer touch points: Synergy gets built when you integrate smartly, you have to integrate your product lines; you can’t be selling one thing from one store and another from some other even if they are related. It is like selling a pen at one store and ink at the other to create a specialization, while it helps your logistics it doesn’t help the customer. The customer would want both the fountain pen and the ink to be available at the same store, placed beside each other. If you are a group that offers multiple products .. you got to integrate similar ones together. This integration will keep your customers from getting confused. After product lines coming together comes Sale and service integration; You can’t deny service at the point of sale, for all practical purposes it is the point of sale that the customer first gets introduced to, you have to make use of that familiarity to make your service outlet coexist with POS. Service where you sell and sell more because of your good service.( that is what Apple does). And then comes the touch point integration; Go omnichannel, make use of customer history and profile information to make your pitch contextual and win the customer over with detail, quality, and speed.

Customer interface based innovation: Organization needs to keep reinventing themselves by shifting their focus to truly reshaping the customer interface as a core driver for new value. Again, technology and service innovation is no longer solely used to enhance productivity and drive down staff costs. You have to be on the latest technology platform and keep your plan for migration into the future techs ready. Deploy state-of-the-art voice recognition systems not only to understand what customers say using natural language but also to detect emotional “vibes” thus making the routing system that delivers the call intuitive and intelligent. In addition to applying channel-specific technology innovations, more companies are leveraging technology to enhance the interplay of channels. Turn the ordinary business of technology troubleshooting into a customer adventure, a game for instance. Classic Web service features include live chats with service agents, moderated communities and forums, employee and user blogs, and product demonstration videos. Two-way interfaces capture customer suggestions and allow service agents to comment or directly follow up. Striking a smart balance between contact automation and human interaction is a key success factor for service organizations.

Sell “service” for revenue: Service is of strategic importance in a market that is crowded with low-cost options, the way for you to gain customer’s attention is by serving them right. A shift in mindset from contact avoidance to active contact management is one of the most fundamental changes in next-generation customer service. Rather than decreasing contact time with the customer to reduce cost, organizations must discover new value by using each contact to generate new consumer insights, build loyalty, and leverage the interaction for cross-selling and up-selling. Make customer- specific recommendations, for example, the system displays products and services already purchased by the customer on the line, automatically proposes new products and services, and simultaneously provides the agent with a script to help pitch those recommendations. This can also be applied to larger groups who have more than one organization. When you make a pitch for one service .. make sure you let your customers also know about some of the other capabilities that your company has to offer. 

Build high-performance operations:  Before we get into explaining why high-performance operations is non-negotiable, let us take a moment to understand how imp it is to keep the workforce meaningfully engaged, highly motivated and goal oriented. An unhappy person can never generate great results.. you have to work towards making sure that you pay right, you pay on time, you give your staff the tools and space needed to perform and above all make them feel needed. Value the person behind the title and it will all start falling into place. You have to, however, make sure that from a design perspective your companies/groups goal is very well distributed towards each function and all employees .. KRA and goal setting is a great tool to apply in this case. Poor service actually drives customers away; in others, inefficient processes are inordinately expensive. Focus primarily on changing or optimizing existing operations—processes, systems, and staff qualifications. Employee motivation is a prerequisite for efficient operations and high-quality service. Set realistic yet ambitious targets and use predictive and predictive analysis to sound early warning alarms and then if it comes to that .. you have to performance manage your people, indiscriminately & dispassionately.

Well, we are done with our toolkit. I do not claim that these are the perfect set or one that will solve all problems but I can with reasonable confidence can say that there is no way it will not work. These come from a mix of my own work experience, reading, and imagination using the former two.

As promised here is the link of the other three articles written for the customer experience series.. 

#1 Customer Experience - It matters!

https://lkstates.blogspot.com/2017/10/customer-experience-it-matters_28.html

#2 Customer Feedback, should you care? 

https://lkstates.blogspot.com/2017/12/customer-feedback-should-you-care-enough.html 

#3 Service & Churn!

https://lkstates.blogspot.com/2018/04/service-churn.html 

See you in the next one .. you have a pleasant Sunday!

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.