Who? Me??

A friend’s company recently published this article on Harvard Business Review. Here’s an excerpt -

New research by our firm, Catalyst, shows that among graduates of elite MBA programs around the world—the high potentials on whom companies are counting to navigate the turbulent global economy over the next decade—women continue to lag men at every single career stage, right from their first professional jobs. Reports of progress in advancement, compensation, and career satisfaction are at best overstated, at worst just plain wrong.

The report stated that there is not much correlation between child bearing and career growth for women, there was not any significant indicator as to why women are at a junior position v/s men on the same career path. The only indicator which showed bias was the entry roles offered to women, where they had to prove their worth to the organization before being taken for higher roles (10% women were accepted at higher level roles v/s 19% men were accepted at higher level roles).

To know more of the scenarios that is in corporate India, I did some secondary research (read googling) and came with some interesting articles. This one says that the condition of women in India Inc. is no different, some excerpts -

Surprise? Not really, as experts say that a bare three per cent women occupy senior positions in private companies across India. And most of the companies only have five to six per cent women employees. What is more, a national daily quoted Pallavi Jha, former chairperson of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) (Maharashtra Region) as saying; "A study on women graduates of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, showed that more than 70 per cent do not pursue a career."

A study conducted in 2007 revealed that this discrepancy is not only observed in the lower echelons of company management, but even more so at senior management levels.

Out of the 9,000 people on boards of the BSE-listed companies, only five are women. Indian companies seriously lack women in senior management roles, HR consultants say.

If one has to change this, then who does the responsibility lie with? The women to achieve more? The men to give women a fair chance? The organizations to level the odds for both the genders? The education system? Or the society to change their mindset?

It was the summer of 2005, I was in the quest for knowledge in the mostly empty libraries of IIM-Indore. That’s one of the main reasons to be there, if you don’t want to be disturbed, then the library is for you … nobody goes there

I found Soft War by Larry Ellison. It was an interesting read, but throughout the book, there are potshots at Microsoft and the personal PC concept. Oracle says that the era of the personal PC is over and its time everything moved onto the web with machines as dumb terminals. Although I agreed with most of the things he was saying, I could not fathom how could the PC fade into oblivion? One of the main reasons why I thought this not possible was because of games. As a gamer, I thought that PCs are here to stay, games require too much hardware support to have a successful online game.

Five years later, I stand corrected and oh so much humbled! With games like WoW, 9 Dragons, Silkroad, Eve Online, League of Legends, DotA, most of the game titles which we know are planning (if not already) a MMO version of their game. What really makes sense to the game companies is the ease of distribution and control they get over the piracy that soon ensues after a successful release. Add to that a pay-per-use business model that is inherent to the cloud architecture, and organizations really stand a chance to make a thriving profit. I am thanking the stars because creators are looking at replayability as one of the critical success factors in making an MMO.

I still have some nagging doubts about the cloud (I guess because of a higher total cost of ownership), but its there to stay, for games to go online and create a variety of possibilities. I wonder when people will start having company reps within these games ala social media.

I walk into a brick and mortar store (say a book store), browse through some books, finally decide on my selections, head to the counter, make the payment and come out a happy customer. All that the vendor needs to do here is –

   1. ensure that he is well stocked with books I like
   2. have a search mechanism in place to find the right book for me
   3. have someone manning the counter

The beauty here is that if the book were torn or something, I do get a chance to examine the goods before buying them. I decide to buy the goods only after I say its ok, who would I trust more than myself? Thus, I perceive the transaction as fair, and I pay the book store and head home.

Now consider a second scenario, I walk into a bookstore, and I inform the vendor that I am looking for, say a Jack Reacher novel. The vendor shows me his collection, but much to my chagrin the particular title I am looking for is not with him. The attendant assures me that they have run out of stock and will restock in 5 days. However, they would be more than happy to inform me once the book arrives. I hesitantly leave my no. with them and think that it’s good to have book stores who inform their customers about books they want.

Apply the same paradigm to an online shop. Rarely would I come to this shop for idle browsing, if I do have a title in mind, then I would be interested in skipping directly to it. If at this juncture, the store informs me that it is out of stock and will not accept my order, however they will be more than glad to inform me when the book is in stock – I won’t be that pleased. I will grumble and grudgingly close the browser.

If the decision making involvement is the same, if the outcome is the same, then why the difference in behaviors?

While at work today, an interesting discussion cropped up. Whether there is any correlation between Employability and Self-Esteem. Although a lot of work has been done on these two topics independently, I could hardly come up with anything which tied these two together. Interestingly, many firms have tried to come up with Employability Index and Self-Esteem Index, so why not see the behavior of these two?

Before we laugh off Wally, I want to say at the highest point of Employability, the Self-Esteem is the true identity of the individual’s skill sets. It is very difficult to find people like these, whose estimate of their self-worth is equal to the actual difference they make. I remember a study that I had participated, in a sample size of 40 individuals, only 2 of them were close to their self-worth, the rest either thought very highly of themselves or undersold themselves.

Where would you choose to be?

In December 2006, we were working on an e-commerce portal aimed for the B2C segment. It was supposed to rival Amazon in terms of features, experience, technology … a very ambitious project. When doing market research for that project, we tried out many Indian e-commerce sites, actually shopped on some of them, and literally choose from the best of them the features we want to build. That was the first time I came across Futurebazaar. I bought a book, (Shantaram) from the site, the book was delivered in a week or so. I soon forgot about the site, little did I know that I was one of the first customers on the portal. Within a month or so, I got a mail from them saying so and also an invitation to their public media launch. Wow! My first media launch invitation!! Wheee!!

I look at the site now, almost 40 months later, and I can see how well they have evolved. No more the tacky-looking nested menus, distinct spaces which map onto their physical presences, interesting sales promotions (Lucky Wheel thingy), only products which they stock in their physical stores, support offered through their physical stores, etc. The way they have evolved their business from being a pure play online shop to a click and brick model is to be applauded.

Kudos to you Futurebazaar!!

This post by Seth Godin made me think.

People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: "If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I’m safe."

Whenever you are working with people, how many times have you had to think for everyone else? Everything looks hunky-dory and people seem to be listening to you. But do you know why they are listening? Because that way, they do not have to think, because then they are not responsible. When sh!t hits the ceiling, it will be most likely you who would be doing the clean up.

Try what Seth says, the guru is right. Refrain from telling them what needs to be done. Let your team struggle, let the people take up the mantle. Some of them will start liking being independent. Foster and nurture these pieces of independent thought, and you have a sustainable knowledge practice up and running.

A lamp in pure darkness is bright, but its not as bright as a lamp and 3-4 flickering sparks.

Was listening through a podcast by Duct Tape Marketing on Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik. It started of as an interview promoting his new book on analytics powered through crowdsourcing. Towards the fag end of the interview, something that Avinash said really got my attention.

Most people treat Twitter as a shout channel. Please do not treat it as one.

Then he rattled off two important parameters for measuring one’s tweeting success. They made more sense because I agree with him on Twitter being an engagement space with your customers. His parameters are -

1. No. of RTs/1000 followers
2. No. of replies per day

The first one measures how many of your followers are listening to you and see value in your ideas. The second one measures how many of those listeners are engaging with you.

Simple.

When it comes to work, ours is a curious lot. Always willing to check new things (as long as it takes us away from our work ).

So it was no surprise when on our way to lunch we noticed a simple sign at a hall … it said “Youth Venture Workshops”. Since we are in the career space and passionate about entrepreneurship, off we went. The workshop was having their lunch break and we took that opportunity to talk to some of the organizers. Their idea was simple, they talk to individuals who have a burning desire to change something in the society, and help them achieve it through guidance, team building, and funding. They identify potential social entrepreneurs who have the drive to change the society and help them.

The organizers were kind enough to invite us to stick around and watch some of their sessions. The teaming sessions were simple, and involved a lot of play … just the right thing needed to build a team of young and energetic people.

The workshop turned out to be a subscription based program, for which one has to enroll in the month of June. So we gathered took information about their site and went back to work. After coming home, I decided to check up on their site, and read about the youth venture. Turns out that Ashoka Partnership is one of the largest association of social entrepreneurs!!

At the program, we talked to some of the participants who were volunteering, and it was a good experience to see people take charge of the desire to change something in society and act upon it. The next time you blame society for something, remember it can be fixed

I have been reading Reeves and Read’s Total Engagement: Using games and virtual worlds to change the way people work and business compete, this is as part of my work (I know, rocking job ). The whole idea started when we decided to see how individuals change their approach of work if they see their passion in their work (and not the other way round!!). One of my passions is games. Hence the book, and to see how games can be used in work scenarios in order to change the way employees engage with their jobs.

By the first set of chapters itself, the authors had me re-affirm my faith in games completely. The authors looked at around 800 different jobs available with the US Labour Department (O*NET), and identified around 50 0r so different capacities/skills needed to function in those jobs. Each of these skills was then explained as something that we (as gamers) do whilst playing our favorite games.

So why do we pay for doing the something for which we can also get paid for? Why cannot work become play? I strongly believe it can be made into a play-space. Imagine your job as a MUD

Just read this on the Wall Street journal, that there is a venture fund by the name of Pacific Lake Partners who actively seek out young entrepreneurs, give them enough money to scout around for the right organization to takeover. Then help them acquire that organization for a healthy return.

You can read the rest of the article here. An excerpt -

Pacific Lake will provide between $300,000 and $500,000 to entrepreneurs to cover living and travel expenses for two years while they search for a business opportunity – generally an established business with revenue between $10 million and $30 million. There’s no sector focus; it all depends on the opportunity the entrepreneur finds.

It feels good to know that there is a venture fund who values someone who can not only boot strap an organization but take on an already running organization and turn it around. This is the stuff of what legends are made up of. All of the awe-inspiring case studies that we used read in our b-schools have suddenly come real. I wonder if any VC or angel investor follows a similar policy in India. As a developing economy, we need increasing number of such folks.