Once a decade, ready to be conned

The year was 1998 or thereabouts. The dot com boom was at its peak. I was among the few nonbelievers.

A few years later, the dot com bust happened. Validation? I am not sure. Because by 2008, the world believed that just because someone in a pinstripe suit was selling it, bad loans were somehow an investible asset.

Validation? I am not sure. Because 10 years later, we truly believe that companies that don't have a profitable business model deserve to open to record IPOs. That is public money, by the way.

Why does this work? Why does it work so often? And so consistently?

Please do share your thoughts.

If we knew the secret recipe of why that public confidence comes to these businesses, and applied that to real businesses that need public confidence, imagine what that would do.

The new leadership skill?

Last month, it was a Facebook Group of alumni from a college. The moderators wanted the group to remain purely professional. For 2 weeks, the members requested the moderators to reconsider this. Nothing. Then, one day, some members said, "Lets have another group which allows personal interaction." 2 days later, the original group allowed personal content and created another group for those looking for professional connections. It worked.

Today, it was a WhatsApp group. Someone was removed for 'breaking group rules'. This action led to people jumping to the rescue of the person recused, and some people also exited themselves. The moderator responded by adding his own friends to ensure that the overall group size does not fall.

Makes me wonder - Is #CommunityManagement a new essential leadership skill in our world?

On Startups...

I like this model of acquiring customers even at a loss per transaction. Then telling investors that you have spent real money to acquire price sensitive customers who will ditch you as soon as someone can undercut you on price.

 #ThingsIDontUnderstandAboutTheWorld.

#WeWork, #Amazon....

What are your skills, exactly?

When a woman comes to ask for work, the recruiters politely ask her "And where do you think your skills would be the right fit?"
That is a polite way of saying - we don't think you have the skill set we need in this office.


This post was a few years in the making - in my head.


What are the skills she brings to the table? A woman returning to work after staying at home?


Presenting, The skills based
RESUME OF A WOMAN


Profile Brief
A CEO level talent with incredible view of all dimensions of running an enterprise. A dedicated and mature leader who has proven track record in aligning contrasting stakeholders to a common goal.

Finance
End to end budgeting, funds allocation and management of funds, accounting and internal audit for an annual budget of XX LPA. Upto 7-10% YoY increase in the budget every year. Additional responsibility is absorbed with no team augmentation.

Operations
Task Scheduling and Monitoring to ensure end to end efficiency in operations. Track record of less than 2% outage/task slippage over x years.
Operations Planning using CPM to ensure non-stop business continuity with minimal time investment.
Maintenance Scheduling and monitoring for all capital and operational assets including perishables.

Inventory Management
Demand forecasting and Inventory Management for 120+ SKUs, panning across Capex, Opex and perishables, with 0 outages and less than 10% forecasting error.

Human Resources
Recruitment, Talent Engagement, Agile Performance Management system with ongoing 360 degree feedback for a team of 5. Annual Attrition at <20 24="" and="" benefits="" control.="" discipline="" exit="" grievance="" hr="" like="" management.="" management="" monitoring="" payroll="" posh="" span="" transactions="">

Stakeholder Engagement
Excellent stakeholder management skills with proven ability to align stakeholders with opposing agendas to arrive at a common ground and collaborate. Ability to deal with a variety of stakeholders across levels, domains and organisations.

Negotiation Skills
Ability to negotiate in 1:1 and 1:M situations and arrive at Win-Win outcomes.

Project Management
Ability to plan, execute, monitor, control and close projects of short and long term duration across travel, construction and education industries. Brings valuable client perspective to the table.

Procurement
Ability to source on both “L1” and “L1,V1” basis for industries as varied as FMCG, Stationery, Appliances, Construction, Materials(B2B) etc.

Vendor Management
Contract Management, Performance Monitoring, Review Feedback, Payments processing and ongoing vendor relationship management.

Risk Management
Operational and Behavioral Risk Management in operational capacity. Ability to foresee risk, threat, vulnerability and plan accordingly.

Internal Audit
Ability to deduce information from written and unwritten sources and remain an agile internal watchdog. Also ensures organisational preparedness for external audits.

Communications Management
Ability to customise the message according to the needs of the recipient. Ability to be sensitive and responsive to the communication needs of various stakeholders and ensures adequate contact and communication.

Quality
Ability to apply simple QA and QC procedures to ensure quality. Ability to train team members on the importance of quality.

PS: This is neither satire nor exaggeration. Every single skill written here is true. It has just been put in a language that you understand.

 

ASK THE USER!

There is a lie that Apple started in the Tech World and it has now reached ridiculous proportions. The lie was - "The user doesn't know what it wants."


The commercial success of Apple products probably convinced the tech world of the truth of the statement.


BUT, the graveyard of user content based platforms should tell us the exact opposite. These platforms decided to create engagement modes based on their own understanding, tailored the feed to suit their business needs, and generally, forgot to ask the user.


When we design algorithms that learn purely from user behaviour and forget to ask the user, we are basically propagating the myth - the user doesn't know.


Well, here is the new theory - the average user is a reasonably intelligent person who DOES know what they want.


So please change your algorithms to include a module - ASK THE USER. And surprise! You might find a bunch of really intelligent people telling you what you should be doing right and how. They will tell you what they really want to see on your product, what their pain areas are, and how they really want to engage with people they know.


I think this is also relevant for designing enterprise applications (in fact, I have been a huge votary of keeping the end user in the design discussions) - Don't just ask the business process owner. Ask the user.

New Taxation that I would like to see

Everyone is saying that Income Tax rates are too high. I agree. I believe it is time to move from individual earning taxation to taxing on the basis of the burden an individual puts on the ecosystem.


So these are the 2 taxes I want:
1. Children Tax: The state allows you to have 2 children. You want more than that, you better be able to afford them and compensate for their carbon footprint on the world.


There's more: In a Christian wedding, before you get married, you have to undergo mandatory counselling in the church. I believe this is an excellent way to prepare people for life changes. There should be a mandatory mental fitness test that parents should have to pass before they have children. This will put an end to people who have kids just to get rid of pesky relatives. If you don't have it in you to be responsible for a child for 18 years, then please don't have children.


While adoptive parents have to prove a thousand things, the State takes no measures to ensure the safety and well being of biologically born children. If a couple is not fit to be a parent - they should not be allowed to have children. Because children are a nation's collective resource. And no child should be abused or ignored by indifferent parenting. Parenting is not a right or a fertility contest. Its a responsibility. If you can't take it, have the courage to tell your families. And to yourself.


2. Trash Tax: A person should be taxed on the basis of how much trash they generate. Commercial establishments too. This will ensure that 5 star hotels start serving their guests water in glass tumblers instead of generating plastic waste for every 200 ml of water their guests drink. This will ensure that people think before they buy. A mindful consumer will be rewarded in this way and the environment will be automatically better. Amazon will start shipping in containers that actually match the product being shipped. And people will learn to not waste food. If you do not do waste segregation at source, you should have to pay extra because someone else has to do it for you.


The Trash Tax will reduce consumerism, and therefore, will be bitterly opposed by the major companies of the world. I think it is time we decided, as a species, which we need more - the world, or the  growth of the companies.


The world has enough for our need, not enough for our greed. - This quote is usually attributed to Gandhi.

The Unaccounted money at the bottom of the pyramid

Background Information:
Only 1% of India's population pays income tax. The tax rate slab in India is 2.4 lacs for adults for the current financial year. Agriculture , which is a tax exempt sector, employs  about 57% of India's population. This means that of the remaining 43% of the population, 42% earn less than 2.4 lacs a year.

The Trigger:
On 8th November, 2016, something changed in India. By some estimates, 85% of our currency became invalid overnight.


The queues since then - mostly composed of the underprivileged, made all of us uncomfortable. Some of them had been paid to stand in that line. But a lot of others were there because they were a part of an all cash economy.


As time passed and the queues did not get any shorter, it set me thinking about the real size of the cash economy at the bottom of the pyramid. How much cash is really there at the bottom of the pyramid, that is not entering the system at all? (And is, therefore, black money)?


So, this morning, I did some back of envelope calculations, hoping to get some sense of the all cash economy that hides at the bottom of the pyramid


The bottom of the pyramid has its own hierarchy(see note below).


For my analysis, I decided to focus only on the primary income generators, as a reliable measure of  cash at the bottom of the pyramid. This is because B and C re-use the cash generated by A. They may add to the size of the economy, but I am interested in the size of the cash chest alone. The size of the economy will be about 2 or 3 times the size of the cash chest as the money gets recycled.


Determining the Set of Primary Income Generators
After this, I zeroed in on some occupations where I have some idea of the margins, daily income, ticket size et al. 


Methodology
I just followed very simple back of envelope calculation. So, average order/ ticket size, no. of orders per day, margins (because according to Indian tax law, business is allowed to deduct expenses before arriving at income) and no. of working days per annum.


For monthly workers, I used average income per month, plus additional income (bonuses, overtime etc).


At first, I couldn't believe the numbers that appeared on that screen. So I did some more changes - reduced the working days, reduced the no. of tickets per day and so on. Even with all the changes, at the most conservative, this is how it appears.


The size of the all cash economy at the bottom of the pyramid - 2016 December

That number in INR Today is 562590 Million INR. i.e.,: 562590000000 or 562 Billion INR.



Notes:
1. This is only for a few selected occupations.


2. The number of 1000/2000/5000 vendors per city is obviously very low.




3. The hierarchy at the bottom of the pyramid:
A. Primary Income generators
These are the people who generate income from the economy and bring it to the bottom of the pyramid. Think: Vegetable vendors, pan wallas, small grocery shop owners, dhobis, malis, parking stand boys, domestic staff,  other service providers. In the money cycle, think of this as the point at which wealth enters the bottom of the pyramid.


B. Secondary Income Recyclers
These are the people who then use that money to support the bottom of the pyramid economy. Think landlords, service providers to the poor, alcohol thekas et al.


C. Consumers
These are the people who have the spending power at the bottom of the pyramid. Think home decision makers, consumers et al.


4. No. of cities in India as in 2011: 497. I have used the number of 450 for this analysis.

Mountains and Hills

If you want to trek up a hill, you can do it alone. And with some practice and grit, do it really well.

But no one, and no one, can climb a mountain alone. To conquer a mountain, you must climb with a team. And the rules of the mountains teach much.

There is no hierarchy. The respect is earned not by who pays whom, but by who knows what and who does what. The Sherpa who, strictly speaking, is a paid porter, gets much respect. Because he has been up and down that mountain many times, and because he has spent his life observing this mountain, worshipping her. He understands her moods way better than you ever will. When he tells you to turn, you always do. Because he knows better.

Imagine if we ran organisations and countries that way.. how would it be different ?

The Grandmother and the billion dollar company

As we write, Twitter is likely to be valued at 11 billion. Facebook's current market cap, according to this article, is at 100 billion.

If you were an old grandmother somewhere in (any part of the world), who was a nosy Parker and knew something about everyone's affairs, obviously you could guide a traveling salesman to the house that is most likely to buy the stuff he peddles. But the question is, how much would that traveling salesman be willing to pay you for that information?

And the answer is - 100 billion? 11 billion? 340 billion?

What is the point? Bear with me while we explain this.

The economic value of social capital is a very new phenomenon for the human civilisation. Social capital has always existed, and has helped society immensely - as traditional medicine, gossip (and what would we be without gossip?) , product recommendations from friends (remember Amway and Avon?) .. et al.

For the first time, we see a price - a very substantial, tangible price, being put on the notional value of this information.

Is this information, inherently, worth the price we put on it? How much more do companies sell on targeted advertising vs generic advertising?

I do not have an answer. Given the size of global commerce, the numbers could be too low, or too high, depending on that crucial factor - IS the grandmother's knowledge of which house to go to, leading to a sale?

And i really think we should pause and ponder.
Social capital also has a social cost.

Why Workplace Diversity is important - and good for business

This is the work of Mudra Group, Creative Director: Jonoo Simon and Copywriter: Akhilesh Bagri. Thankfully, we cant tell the name of the client because its literally in fine print. I think that might be deliberate. :-)

The Mudra group is one of India's oldest and most respected advertising agencies. That they should approve this ad comes as nothing short of a shocker, but the employees in question deserve special mention.

This ad proves why Diversity is important. The advertisement is wrong on a lot of levels. But basically, it is wrong because it places the onus of safe driving on someone who is not driving! And absolves the driver of all responsibility for Safe Driving. I am still amazed that an ad like this was cleared for production.

My exact comment on the blog post where one first saw this ad:
**************
Dont talk while HE Drives?? Really? And what is HE? an invalid who cannot take that simple decision of what he needs to do for safe driving? WHo gave HIM a Driving License?

And the visual is very disturbing too. Ridiculous. Someone passed this ad? Really?
************
My guess is, that one woman on the team, or a non Indian team member, would have seen the stupidity of that assumption rightaway. Work like this proves that diversity is not just a pretty concept. Its VERY necessary.

This ad is not just stupid and insensitive. It crosses that fine line into being offensive. The ad creators did not realise that its a diverse world, even if they dont have a diverse team

Jobsworth, Tata and the Indian Work Ethic

Actually, this post is about none of the above. Its just triggered by a mind map that had the abovementioned stops. Early in the morning, i was considering writing a post on the professional Blog "5 Consulting Myths: BUSTED". Then i read THE Tata interview in the paper, where he has accused Brit managers of Jobsworth (a word i learnt from a similar article a few months ago) , and one of the lines struck me particularly : "Now things are better. Now no one leaves at 5, and we have bosses who call for meetings at 5." I went in my head "Hullo??!" One of the Consulting Myths i wanted to bust was "more hours = more work." Fact: An Employee is someone who can sabotage your project, while getting paid for it.(the sabotage, not the project, though you might think you are paying for the project).
And then i thought, Why is it that we Indians think nothing of taking work home? Where, in the first place, did this magical figure of 8 hours come from? A little thinking answered that - most probably, from the Industrial Revolution. It was not possible to measure your productivity on the assembly line, so we measured and said "Spend at LEAST this long at work" and over time, that magical figure became "Spend At most this much time at work." Way back then, there were supervisors whose only job was to ensure that you do spend that time working, work was easy to see and monitor (your hands either moved or they didnt) and it was ok.

And then i thought, "How did we measure performance before the Industrial Revolution? What was the traditional Indian way of measuring performance?" Then a story came to mind - of Jayadeva (the author of Geeta Govinda) using 2 lamps on his desk - one for his work, and the other for meeting personal guests. "Ohhh... even way back then, it was assumed that one would bring work home. Indians!"

And THEN it struck me - in the Vedic period, we identified so much with our professions that our most basic social and religious identification - the much maligned VARNA system, was based on what? The PROFESSION of the person!! The teachers and the knowledge workers were the Brahmins, the warriers were the Kshatriyas, the traders were the Vaishyas, and the menial labour people were the Shudras. Our work was not just what we did, it was what we WERE!

In Sanskrit, the word for duty and religion is the same - Dharma. It takes some commitment for a civilisation to actually do that without even thinking of it. While that might explain how India manages to play the Phoenix over and over again, there is another side to it. It also explains why most Indians just dont understand why people have to spend time away from work with their families.

Performance Management in Ancient India
Was simple. An astrologer( Raj Pandit) was judged by how well he predicted the future, not by how many hours he spends at the Court. A farmer was judged by the crop produce, not by the no. of hours put into the farm. The mathematician was judged by the quality of his writing, not by how many years he put into the research. The Minister was judged by how well he advised, not by how much he attended court. The trader was judged by his wealth, not by the working hours of his shop. In short : In almost all knowledge efforts, results were rewarded,not effort, and most certainly not hours at work.


The Indian Concept of Work Life Balance
You see, the family was completely involved in the work. it was a family profession. The children followed the father's profession, and since they had to be trained early, the entire family was also a work unit. Which means that there was no concept of a family life separate from work. Couples were hired to work together, and together they stayed. When children were born, they were inducted as early as possible too.

And that, Mr. Tata, is why 5 o' clock meetings are not ok. This is not the Vedic period. Indian companies do not do Family Days. Families are not a part of the profession or work any more.

And last, but not the least: Lack of Planning at your end does not constitute crisis at my end. 8 hours a day is not too little time to work and bring a company out of the financial mess.

Disclaimer: I am not in his shoes. Perhaps they pinch really bad for him to take a stand like this. I have never before heard him be vocal about something like this.

Beautifying the Hotel

If you are a facebook junkie, you might have heard of a game called "Hotel City".Here, players have to create a hotel, and as they play , they make game currency. What is that currency used for? Beautifying the hotel. There is no game benefit to beautifying the hotel. It is just that people "like" to do it. A lot of money that Second Life makes is based on this "like to beautify" instinct in humans.
Have you seen the new Airtel logo and heard the new tune? It sure looks like someone was playing Hotel City there. Sure, the brand logo needed repositiong because there was a possibility of visual confusion with a new entrant - Aircel . But the tune? Why would you kill one of the best known advertising tunes in india? WHY?
This is not the first time organisations have played Hotel City. (Made expensive, but essentially cosmetic changes to their corporate presence without any known strategic, marketing or other benefit).
 
But in some companies, a lot of Hotel City is being played right now. Nokia about tops that list in mind. What are some other Hotel City playing companies that come to your mind?

The post about technical implementations

Once upon a time, there was an ERP company called ABCD. ERP was a revolutionary concept. It integrated data from all over the business, integrated processes across departments. It was good.

The implementation had 2 kinds of consultants – Functional Consultants, who understood business processes and translated them in ABCD terms. And Technical consultants, who developed applications that the standard could not take care of. These applications were supposed to be the exception rather than the norm, bcs the product was very well researched and prepared to meet most business needs.

Over a period of time, it became apparent that every implementation will have to have some technical applications built especially for that customer.

Over a period of time, it became important to contain project costs, and customers started questioning the existence of 2 consultants – functional and technical. Customers wanted to know why the same person could not do the development.

On the other hand, technical consultants wanted to do something more meaningful, and that “more meaningful” was “functional work” .

Therefore, it made common sense to let the technical and functional consultants learn and do each others’ work. Right? Wrong.

This model overlooked a few small points. These were:

· Coding is like Poker. It takes 5 minutes to learn, and a lifetime to master. Good technical skills cannot be learnt in a matter of a few weeks or even months. Coding is specialized activity. It takes a good coder to write a good code. And the difference between good code and bad code is the difference between Microsoft and Apple. You may inundate the market with volumes. But that will not make you the “customer delight” company. Likewise, you may have years of coding experience, but still not be the coder who writes easy to implement, and easy to update code quickly, effectively, efficiently. Mediocre coding costs more money than most organizations can imagine.

· There is only one way to know what works and doesn’t work with a business process. Its called experience. To know what will and will not work in an technical product, you don’t have to look at the flowcharts or the product features. You have to look at that incongruous being called “The user”. Implementations are a study in user behavior. Users are not a part of most implementation projects. Which means that as the functional consultant, you have to know already what users will and will not do with your product.

· If you combine half baked process knowledge with good coding skills, or if you combine good business knowledge with less than excellent coding skills, you will get the same result – a mediocre implementation, with limited scalability. Which means that you will need an upgrade faster. And because your processes and/or your code are not easily scalable, you can look forward to a nice upgrade project costing just a few million dollars. Because you wanted to scourge on that extra consultant. What was that poem again, for want of a nail, the battle was…. ?

So what’s the point? The point is that one needs to go back to the basics –To be penny foolish and pound wise. To understand the importance of both kinds of skills, and that excellence in both of them has to be valued *equally*.

If you have 5 minutes...

What does one do with an empty day? Thank God for the opportunity and sit back with Coke and some phenomenal reads. Here they are, each one of them worth a read, but if u have time for just one, it would be this one (don't miss it) :
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126258063197814415.html#articleTabs%3Darticle
Prof Madhukar Shukla on An Invisible Revolution in India.

Here are the others:
http://www.hrbartender.com/2010/employee/opinion-surveys/ - Super for its simple, brief and spot on presentation.

And i loved this article for its one liners. Samples below the link:

http://www.bretlsimmons.com/2009-08/engagement-soup/

"Want to know if a tree is healthy? Look at the leaves and the fruit. These are indicators of the health of the tree. Just because we give our tree lots of fertilizer, water, and sunlight does NOT mean it is healthy. These are all very smart things to do, but they do not guarantee health, and the only way to evaluate health is to examine the tree and not its environment."

" correlation is not the same as causality. " - aah, the no of times one has banged one's head on that one point.

Appy reading, while moi moves on to the next link...

What made my day today..

This.. http://dilbert.com/most_popular/

and This: http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/inappropriate_witticisms/
Some of those things are sooo not funny (Open mouth. Insert foot. Run for cover on foot 2)