One Being Able to Drive Change

Dear students, most of you will try to drive change in organizations you will work for. You will find that any change, however small or trivial it may be, will be met with the fiercest of resistance. The following is my takeaway from a recent experience I had at change management.

·     To drive change, first be a part of the system. An outsider or a relative newcomer will face a lot of inertia.

·      Be interested “in people” genuinely. Genuinely is the keyword. An organization is people working together. If you don’t care for them, you don’t care for the organization. Appreciate them, compliment them. I am sure you will find enough to compliment in any one if you choose to look for it.

·      Don’t be judgmental. The tendency to be so it seems is natural. Even if you have judged someone, do not be week to let that judgment affect your behavior negatively. Even if someone is incompetent according to you, do your best not to make your judgment obvious. If you do that, you will loose audience of even the ones you consider competent.

·      Try to be less “interesting”. The tendency to “seem” interesting expresses itself in everyone. In some cases the expression is crass, without basis and sticks out like a sore thumb. But in many cases talented people who “despise” attention seekers may do just that in more subtle ways. Simply put, if you want to be a real hero, don’t try to look like one!

·      Don’t be violent. Violence is not only physical. If you are deriding someone in a meeting, you are indulging in what is called “emotional” violence. You know how we react when we see someone trying to physically attack us. We go defensive, don’t we? Now the same thing will happen when someone’s ego and self image is under attack. You need to be more cautious with the more experienced and senior people in your team.

·      Learn to take criticism. Don’t react. Respond. Take special care if you have a tendency to get emotionally involved with work and have a tendency to “overreact”. Till today no one has been able to achieve “behavioral change” by force.

In the end, remember change needs leadership and leadership is always a derivative of “leadership of thoughts”. If you are negative and defensive most of the times, you will never be successful as a leader and if you do not lead, don’t expect to drive change.

Teaching in Slowdown

A recent seminar on “Marketing in a Slowdown” triggered a thought, “What about teaching in a slowdown?” As faculty in a business school, do we even need to ask ourselves this question? Is it necessary to modify my actions as a faculty only because of the now hackneyed global economic crisis?

I think so! So what can we do??? Let us see………

 

Keep the Morale Up

I am sure the worry bug will have bitten most of us by now! Consider this that the students listening to my eloquent exposition on global strategy is scared that she may not land up a job and even worse may not bag one at all. In such a case, my words, demeanor and actions in the class is definitely either add to their anxiety or if I am sensible, moderate their fears.

In this case the biggest disservice I could do would be to let my anxieties add to their fears. I guess, it will be worthwhile if I and my colleagues consider this before stepping into a classroom.

Realistic but Ambitious

They came to us because they were ambitious. We promised them the sky and made them pay for it. The number of jobs and the CTC figures being offered to management graduates is on the wane. Even the IIMs and ISBs of the world have had to face this unfortunate situation.

Will it not them become my responsibility as a faculty to keep talking to my students and explain the cyclical nature of business and the existing downturn. Of course we al do that but do we consider the impact of our “technical” explanations on young impressionable minds???

Can we find some way of moderating their expectations but nurture their ambitious spirit??

 

Value of “Value”

The word “value” is perhaps the most important yet most underrated concept in B schools. When we come across students expecting the heavens when their skill sets and abilities may not justify it, we should know that we erred on two counts:

1.      We have not made them “value creators”.

2.      We have not explained the concept of value to them.

 

Mentoring

That is where the answer may lie. Students are incredible packages of bundled energy, ambitions, insecurities, confusions and fears. It really is a no brainer to say that we better get talking to them if we are really serious about them developing the right attitude. At least what we think is the right attitude. In the absence of our talking to them, they will talk to others and we may never know what the “others” might give them as inputs! Anyhow we know what credibility they attach something to what you and me might say as compared to what an unemployed senior might tell them!!

 

Can I do All This??

Now to the bottom line.

Do I, as a faculty have enough knowledge, competence and ability to actually control my classroom sessions to reflect the macroeconomic climate of the markets?? Do I have enough control over myself to adapt my behaviour to maximise chances of my students achieving “their” goals??

Let us begin the effort by believing, “I Do!!”

Now Deflation!!

Inflation, if you remember was the buzzword for most economists and policy makers. Even you as students would have had to bear seminars, presentations, questions and discussions on inflation. Less than a year later, the government seems to be worried about “Deflation”!!

Now wasn’t it the same government who went to lengths trying to reduce inflation? So should they not be happy that inflation figures are diving headlong and fast approaching zero and if some experts are to be believed, will hit negative figures by year end. The same policy makers are now scared of the looming Deflation!

So what is this “Deflation” and why is it so scary?

To understand deflation, let us review inflation first. Inflation you may remember was a term used to signify a general increase in price levels of stuff. Inflation meant that stuff would keep getting more and more expensive and in a way the value of money would decrease as the same one rupee would be able to purchase less. And I am sure you remember the two very basic reasons which can cause inflation: Increased money supply and the resultant increase in demand or a decrease in supply due to various reasons.

Now deflation is a persistent fall in price levels or the commonly followed macroeconomic indicators like in our case it would be the WPI (Wholesale Price Index). Please remember, the decrease in the rate of inflation (the rate at which inflation is growing) is called “Disinflation”. Disinflation and deflation are two very different terms. Generally, a one-time fall in the price level does not constitute a deflation. Instead, one has to see continuously falling prices for well over a year before concluding that the economy suffers from deflation.

In a deflationary environment, as the price of goods fall, people have look to delay purchases in the hope that the prices will fall further and that reduces the demand and therefore overall economic activity. So it is almost like a negative vicious circle where decreasing prices lead to decreasing demand (as people do not buy hoping for further fall in prices) and the decreasing demand leads to further decreasing prices. Ultimately the wealth creation of an economy goes for a six!

On Un-Built Roads and Non Working Street Lights

Finally the administration has decided to build the road in front of my house. They have also decided to repair the streetlights. I wish they had done that a couple of months ago, had they been working, a fatal accident I witnessed would not have taken place.

But why did they wake up now? In the words of an official supervising the repair work, “Elections are here!” Ahhh Yes!! The Elections!! How could I forget that I am an empowered citizen of the largest democracy in the world??!!?? How could I forget that people like me and you are poster boys for advertising the “success” of democracy??!!

I do not wish to indulge in yet another diatribe on the Indian polity. Neither do I wish to mourn the state of affairs of governance in India. Enough of that is available else where on the net. I wish to turn the tables. I would like to blame you and me, the citizens of this country for all that is going wrong in this country. It was because of my apathy that the roads remained un-built for so long. I needed the lights and I did not take the initiative to ask for it when I saw that the administration is not doing anything about it. My only contribution to the whole situation was to curse and analyse. “Curse and Analyse”, this is what we do. This is the only thing we ever do.

My belief is that the inaction, apathy and insensitivity of government bodies flows down from what they see as the status of a common man in the eyes of their political masters and I assure you that the people who sit in the Lok Sabha as your representatives care two hoots for you. I had the privilege to witness that first hand during my stint with a news channel in New Delhi. I was shocked to see what these politicians say before and after the official press conference is over. I was stung by the language they would use to describe their colleagues in the opposition and the total disregard for what we call the “common man”.

How did this happen?

In Greek, “Demos” stands for people and “Kratos” stands for rule. At least in principle, democracy is supposed to provide you and me, direct and equal access to power. The people whom we revere as our ministers and MLAs are supposed to be our representatives and our humble servants. In the run up to the elections all political parties are busy cobbling up partnerships and seat sharing agreements. Till now I have not heard of a single news story which might indicate that they are even considering being answerable to the citizens or asking them for their perceptions as activities worth pursuing.

What right do I have to decry the politicians and their activities when I am the very person who sent them to the hallowed halls of the Parliament? Please ask yourself the following questions.

·         Will I vote this time?

·         Do I know the festering issues in my state and in my country?

·         Do I know which party stands for what?

·         Will I vote for a party or will I choose the person?

·         Will I even consider independents?

·         Will I vote for candidates with criminal cases pending against them?

·         Will I consider caste, creed and religion while deciding my vote?

·         Will I caste my vote just for the heck of it or will I be serious about it?

·         Do I really believe that I can loose the victim and helpless mentality?

 

The answers to these questions, my dear students will decide the fate of the road in front of your house, the streetlights near your home. . . . . . . . . The answers to these questions will decide the fate of your nation.

On Being "Negative" ( I am one, by the way)

What is the difference between, “being a cynic” and “being a pessimist”?

Both adjectives have been used quite liberally to describe me by two who probably understand me more than anyone else!!!

How did I get to be such a negative person? Why do negative feelings come so naturally? As a teacher I feel it is my responsibility to talk to you about being negative.

Negativity is easy. It is far easier to say “no” than “yes”. It is far easier to look for reasons “why it cannot work” than look for “why it should be done” and “how to do it”. It is so easy to complain, whine, blame others, blame the system, the government, the society………… My parents are not rich, my teachers are not good, my college does not bother about students, the system is corrupt, you need recommendations and references to get a good job……. Some of the many grouses expressed by the many I teach. Try to calculate the ratio of the time we spend talking positive and good things to the time we spend talking trash, criticizing, making fun of, and cursing someone or something. We don’t even have to talk negative to be one, we just have to think negative!!!

Of course most of these views are correct. But the point is, Do you have the mettle to stop whining and do something useful to somebody?

Option 1: If yes, you are a success waiting to happen!

Option 2: If no, you are belong to the vast majority of human beings who spend a lifetime wallowing in self pity and do nothing worth mentioning in an entire lifetime.

Something tells me that if given these two options, as educated (not merely literate!!) human beings, we should take option number 1.

I have initiated a process of introspection and correction and I would recommend you guys do the same.

A Simple Lesson

Apologies for having stayed away for so long but I guess what matters is that I am back. As this is my first blog for the year, I guess I will make it the distilled extract of my learnings in 2008.

It does not last, nothing does.

I had a wonderful time last year and went through really tough times too. As it happened almost every year, neither did the good times last nor did the bad times!! Even after realizing that, I admit that the good times exhilarate me and the bad times scare me to death. But I guess my reactions are moderating and that is a good sign. The message for my students then would be: Focus on the present, take life as it comes, everybody goes through what you are going through, no big deal!!! OK???

Take it this way, you have been allocated a limited time that you call “life”. The only surety in life is that it is terminal. That would automatically mean that all of us irrespective of our socio economic status, our gender, our religion………. In fact whoever the hell we may be, we have a very limited time to live. Only a complete moron would spend even a single minute wallowing in regret, fear and self pity. On the other hand, if we claim to be intelligent and educated, we should be enjoying ourselves as much as we can……….

I don’t know about you guys, but I have made up my mind. I am going to have some fun……. Fun working, listening to music, reading, travelling…… Hell I am gonna have fun whatever I do! For I have realised that if I cannot be happy with myself, no one else ever will be!!

LEC 2. WHAT is "MARKETING"?

The answer to the question marketing is very simple...... Marketing is the creation of "value"...... Creation of value for someone so that they pay happily and come back for more later..... I am telling you this word "value"....... probably the most important one in management and mkting........ So marketing is much more than selling... Selling is only the final transaction..... Marketing involves:

1.   Identifying a market segment (you cant sell everything to everybody….. look at Rotomac and Mont Blanc). Segmentation can be done on the basis of Geography (would you sell Pringle in Kerala??), Demography (What do you think…. How much would a person earning Rs. 10,000 spend for buying a pen….. Don’t consider my case!!!), Psychography (Based on lifestyle, attitudes, values…. Look for an example!!) and Behaviour (How do you use a product, How does one drive?, How price sensitive is your target segment?)

2.   Targeting simply means to identify the one target segment that holds the most promise for you. You need to identify that the needs and wants of which segment matches well with the capabilities of your organization. Maruti too could have targeted the higher end market but they did not and chose to cater to the “economy” segment and rest is history. Targeting is more like your birthday cake being cut into slices and you choosing the one with the cherry. Pick up the segment that not only matches your strengths, holds enough potential but is also within comfortable reach to service.

3.   Positioning (creating an image of your product and your company in the consumer’s mind)……. Your product features, its price, where is it available…… all these will contribute to its “image”…. Don’t you agree??? Imagine Prada available in Phase 10 Mohali!!! Of course you cannot know positioning till you know of two guys called Al Ries and Jack Trout!!! Please do me a favor and look them up!!

You will see that the above given three will need you to decide upon the following decisions:

1.     What to make?

2.     Whom to sell it to?

3.     At what price?

4.     How much service will they expect?

5.     What do I brand my product as?

6.     Do I brand it at all?

7.     What do I say in my ads?

8.     Where do I give my ads?

9.     Do I give ads at all??

10.  How should I treat my customers?

11.  What should I ask them?

12.  Till when should I keep talking to them?.............................................

The list  is endless….. Asking these questions are in my opinion marketing…….

To understand the meaning of the term marketing it is important to analyse why we needed it in the first place. Till the late 1800s and early 1900s (The Industrial Revolution), consumption guided production. That means that people used to produce what they needed and since international trade had already started, some stuff would be procured through import. But in most cases the imported goods would be what we can call “lifestyle” or “luxury” goods like tobacco, silk, precious metals etc. Therefore in simple terms we can say that demand dictated what would be produced or procured….. OK??? Then came the industrial revolution and an increased movement of people across large distances, that too obviously due to increasing technological developments like the steamboat….. Now two things happened:

1.   Due to the industrial revolution, people could manufacture the same stuff but in extremely large quantities. Obviously you would need to “sell” all that you could make to convert the ability to produce into money…. Right??? The good thing was that at that time, the number of people who would need anything that could be manufactured was huge……. Take for example, a product called lens….. I am sure you will agree ever since people have lived on this planet many must have been experiencing reduced eyesight too…… So the need for spectacles was always there….. Till the ancient Assyrians (look up “Lens” on Wikipedia….amazing) invented the lens, no one had an idea that you could “magnify” something…… So the demand for a product called spectacles did always exist but no one, not even the consumers knew that they “needed’ something like that….. Therefore when spectacles began being produced, they would be gobbled up as soon as they would be made but the problem was that it must have been extremely time consuming and slow to grind lens manually and then set them into frames…… So production was the biggest limiting factor. So the demand would always have been far greater than the supply. So when industrial revolution gave the manufacturers the ability to use power (electric or mechanical), tools and machines to manufacture glasses in large numbers, they would have been faced with an ever hungry market and the more people they could reach, more they would have been able to sell….. right??? This example is also an example of “Latent Demand”…….. find out what that is…..

2.   The second thing is in my humble opinion, a more important occurrence……. Imagine you are living in India at the beginning of this century……. You are a commoner with just enough money to make ends meet (that used to be the case with max people in India)…… You have a bad eye sight and you see that the local Zamindaar who too had a bad eye sight has procured something from a far off land that can make him see properly!!! Wow!!! But the problem is that he had to shell out more money than you would earn in your life time……. A very sad, frustrating and common experience for many even today……. Don’t you think so???? Remember how it feels like when you see something you dearly wanted being purchased and used so casually by others….. Orra, D90, Semaster, Harvard, Columbia, V-Rod, SUV, Seychelles, Alaska…. This feeling would have been felt by many who could not afford to buy but yearned to do so…… Where does marketing fit in???? Arrey….. You have a market that is primed, fertile, bursting with desire….. do you have the innovativeness and timeliness to tap such huge virgin markets??? Explore the story of Nirma and how one gentleman; Karsanbhai Patel beat the hell out of a global giant…HLL!!

The point is…… By late 1800s and early 1900s, people had the capacity to design, manufacture and transport products in ways that did not exist earlier….. So we can say that during this time, we got the capability to “create new utilities” not only by creating new products (design utility, functional utility etc…..) but also the Price Place Utility!! How???? The more a manufacturer could manufacture, the economies of scale meant that his manufacturing cost went down dramatically, add to that the developments in transportation reduced the cost of inputs dramatically…… Therefore the selling price of most things fell sharply to become affordable to common people all across the globe!!! That is the price utility!! As for the place utility…… it is simple, you could make you product reach the end user further away that you could earlier!!!

So the world saw what would be later called the “Product Orientation” form of marketing…. Most of the guys (business men and academicians) were more concerned about manufacturing, production, costs, efficiencies etc…… In a way marketing till this time was a stepchild of Economics……

This went on like that for decades…… The manufacturer and seller were the kings….. The consumer had to buy what ever was manufactured at whatever cost at whichever place!!! Then came WW 1 and WW II…. I will not go into the details, but at the end of WW II the industrialized nations had an incredible amount of manufacturing capacity left idle……. In war these manufacturing capacities were needed to keep the forces supplied, now that the war was over, you faced an incredibly fast decrease in guns and ammo!! These units then migrated to manufacturing products for civil use and here too, the production was so large that “selling” became necessary…… So the “Selling Orientation” emerged in late 40s and Early 50s…… The focus shifted from manufacturing to the ability to “sell” that was being manufactured…… By the way can you think of any company that was set up specifically for the wars and later had to shift to consumer goods??? Some should come mind immediately:

·    BSA (Cycles…. The kind Maj. Rahul used to fly on in school!!) was Birmingham Small Arms company!!

·    Our “tashan” Bullet!!! Royal Enfield was the best gun manufacturer of the time!!! By the way the so called revolt of 1857 was according to the most accepted version of history began as a result of animal fat coated cartridges made by Lee Enfield!!

·    You must have seen your Dad banging away on his “Remington” at work!!! They I guess still make some of the best known high power rifles…..

·     Others: BMW, Rolls Royce, Harley Davidson!!!!

The 1970s saw the birth of what we call as the “Marketing Orientation”. By this time many bigwigs in the field of marketing began saying that it is the customer who “should’ be at the centre of marketing and it should be the consumers needs and wants that should dictate what will be made, marketed and how…… In way the commentators were saying that the “customer” should be the ultimate consideration while designing any marketing strategy….. Be it the product design, features of the product, its price, the packaging, where will you make it available, what will be said in its ad……. In simple words all the four Ps which Dr. Kotler gave should be focused on the consumer satisfaction of consumer needs…… that automatically meant that organizations now needed to “know” the consumer better…… Not only for understanding their needs and then designing products accordingly…… but to see how they reacted to the products……. That gave birth to marketing research as well…….

So what we call marketing today emerged in the late 1970s and this concept too has evolved over time. The growth in technology and media, the increasing understanding of the consumer psyche, new research etc…….. has brought in many developments to the concept of marketing. We have seen emergence of concepts like Service Marketing, Customer Relationship Management, e marketing, ERP etc…… All these changes and developments are reflected in the changing definition of marketing……..

The American Marketing Association (Did you visit their site??) in Oct 2007 gave the following changed definition of Marketing: 

“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

So this is the current accepted definition of marketing and the academic answer to the question, What is Marketing…….

What I think of marketing is walking the tightrope to create situations that will make all the stakeholders (the consumer, the suppliers, wholesalers, retailers, the company owners, management, the government and of course you too!!) happy. Why do I call it the “walking the tight rope”?? Remember if you say that the aim of marketing is to make the consumer happy, that will be a problem as the shareholders are not investing money for “making people happy”…….. They need returns….. So in efforts to make consumers happy, you forget to fatten the bottom line…… you have had it!! Similarly to keep your bosses happy if you start indulging in questionable practices, then the government may get unhappy…… then there are the suppliers, the dealers and wholesalers, the retailers …….. a product will have to provide value to keep all of them happy!!!!

That dear students is Marketing!!!

Please try to analyse the definition, look up demand and try to find out if there is a difference between marketing and selling…….