Posts tagged business

Circumstantial Awesomeness

Mar07
2011 6 Comments Written by Prasad

Edit: I was browsing through my Picasa albums, when I found those photos of Nathula pass. Posting them. As I said in the post, the photos are not that glamorous, but you should have been there to feel the awesomeness of that place!

IMG_2815IMG_2823IMG_2828IMG_2816IMG_2824 IMG_2826

You got that right. It’s awesomeness in the right set of circumstances.

Certain business and product have such a high recall and such a narrow niche that they stand out in the memory of the consumer.

Take for example the only store at Nathula Pass, its perennially cold there, so cold that you could freeze your toes off. In that frigid weather, near the Toll booth, there is one structure that stands out. Its completely made of wood, with a chimney and all the paraphernalia. A place you would not think twice about, much less enter had it been in your city.

In that cold weather, the wispy smoke billowing out from the chimney are a welcome sight. An indication of the warmth of the fire available inside the cottage. You enter the place, and sure enough the place is a couple of degrees warmer. A group is already huddled around a drum-like stove. You are glad to join that huddle. The shopkeeper looks at you and takes down your order … a maggi and a fruitcake. There is no menu, those two things are the only things available there.

The maggi is watery, and you gladly gulp down the soup and noodles. You warm the cake in front of the fire and gladly share it with the people around you. More maggi follows. WIth the stomach full and the cockles warmed, you are ready for the journey ahead.

Yes the maggi was watery, yes the fruitcake was stale. But boy in those circumstances it was the best maggi I ever had. I guess the cottage does not see much traffic and the volume of people going through that pass is highly seasonal, but I rate the experience right there on top of my culinary experiences.

Posted in personal - Tagged , , , ,

Intensity of technology adoption

Feb16
2011 4 Comments Written by Prasad

Everybody you know, will probably agree with this, that Technology can be a great enabler.

It’s one of those motherhood statements (like “Shit happens” or “Life sucks”) that arguably can’t be denied. As someone who has often taken upon himself to forge this enablement with the demands of the business, I want to take a different stand.

Technology CAN be an enabler, only if you possess the know-how of implementation and your audience possesses the temerity to bear the brunt of teething and adoption problems, then can it be an enabler. How many cases have we seen that an organization wide technology upgrade has failed simply because the intended audience does not adopt it, but merely reverts to the easily available alternative.

My mother heads the medical department of State Bank of India, she in fact is the Chief Medical Officer. She tells me that they had tried three times to implement some form of an enterprise system for their department, Each time it had failed. Why did it fail? Not because the implementation was incorrect. We can’t say that, the moment we do – the implementation partner will pull out the requirements sheet, the scope document or some form of agreement which indicates that there was no breach of contract from their side.

And that is the problem I want to point out. Technology is not a function which can run in a silo. It permeates through the organization, from the most mundane of activities like checking email, to most complex of them like implementing a Decision Support System to help the top brass in strategic decision making.

Technology adoption therefore has to be intense. So intense that it should change the identity of the organization. If done properly, it can vault the firm into the next level.

The next time someone tells me that technology CAN be a great enabler, I will tell them that if my aunt had a moustache, then she CAN be my uncle.

Posted in Technology, work - Tagged , , , ,

Batch of 2005

Jan28
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

image

The world of business talks fondly of the batch of 1989 from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. This is due to the fact that a lot of participants in this class turned towards entrepreneurship and launched successful ventures of their own. The likes of Sanjeev Bhikchandani of Naukri.com, Rashesh Shah of Edelweiss Capital and many more.

Yesterday I was talking to some of my seniors, and suddenly there has been a tipping point in almost 30% of their careers. These 30% have left their well paying cushy jobs and started on the road to entrepreneurship. Some of them have already made a name for themselves, some of them are in the making.

I wish them all the best and hope that the batch of 2005, IIM-I is someday as famous (if not more) as the batch of 1989, IIM-A!

Tagged , , ,

1984 to 2010

Dec06
2010 6 Comments Written by Prasad

image

We are in the process of formalizing our IT and Electronic Access Policies. In this process, often the team drafting the initial proposal finds it pretty easy to switch to the Orwellian mode of 1984, wherein Big Brother is always watching.

Although the intent of these people often stems from the fact that they desire to protect both the system and it’s users, but that sometimes requires that extra bit of control. However, it becomes extremely difficult to tell the need for control from genuine to paranoia.

Further, due to some unforeseen events happening in the recent past, these rules are doubly strict ensuring that the past mistakes of a few have to be borne by the entire team. Only to ensure that something that happens out of the blue should not happen again (and rightly so!).

The problem at hand is how to ensure that people are enabled to work and co-create with each other, but are still protected from any malicious ill will that might exist outside (and even within the system). How can Big Brother start co-operating instead of watching?

One clear method is to assume that all people are good and need to be enabled. The other is to work closely with them step-by-step and layout a simplified process and get the end-user buy-in on each of the steps. Till that happens, Big Brother will continue to exist … we are watching you!

Posted in Technology, work - Tagged , , , , , ,

Social Entrepreneurship – How is it any different?

Sep02
2010 5 Comments Written by Prasad

I really do not see how is it any different from any other enterprise? I looked up the wiki page for Social Entrepreneurship, here’s what it says -

Social entrepreneurship is the work of a social entrepreneur. A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change (a social venture). Whereas a business entrepreneur  typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur focuses on creating social capital. Thus, the main aim of social entrepreneurship is to further social and environmental goals. However, whilst social entrepreneurs are most commonly associated with the voluntary and not-for-profit sectors, this need not necessarily be incompatible with making a profit.

How in the world is this any different from what a good business does? It recognizes a social problem (read loosely as a problem that the society in general faces), and it solves the problem. For any enterprise, over a period of time there will be performance metrics – profit and return merely build sustainability. These would be needed by the social entrepreneur as well. So what makes it any different? Social capital is also created by enterprises. If you go through any of the annual reports that a firm publishes, they have this term – Goodwill.

If good will is not social capital, then what is? I think social entrepreneurship is just a term invented by hacks to make themselves feel good. Or maybe its just a marketing gimmick for generating funds.

PS – Before you hit the comment button to rant, do not misread me. All I am saying is that any good business is as good as any “social entrepreneurship”, then why make the difference? Is social entrepreneurship the new green?

Posted in foo, social - Tagged , ,

Predicting Business Cycles

Jun14
2010 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

Back in August 2006, I had written a post on Dot Com Bust 2.0 (you can read it at the link provided, sadly rediff BLOGS has a bad way of storing posts (week-wise instead of it being individual posts).

Revisiting that post was an interesting exercise, an excerpt -

Do we see history repeating itself? A sudden surge in this Dot Com 2.0 demand, people are already teeming in to cash-in on this new opportunity. Do I start off a firm of my own and try to do the same. Is this risk / venture enough to sustain me through the impending bust? During my induction at TechMahindra, there was a fellow from the top management who was wizened enough to predict that the next bust is going to come in the year 2009. We laughed it off back then, I am not laughing now. Maybe, the dot com bust might relapse, and why not? Fortunately, IT in India is not just about web development anymore. We will pass through this. But will my dream of starting off on my own do the same?

Full marks and respect for that top executive.

Posted in work - Tagged , , , , , ,

Facebook monetizes

Apr24
2010 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

facebookcredits Facebook keeps changing its layout, looks, etc ever so slightly and so constantly that most users do not even notice the changes … until it hits them smack on the head. That’s what I like about these FB Apps, revisit the games after 3 months, and the game has also evolved … it has got more items, more plots … somehow it has become more interesting.

That’s why when I started playing Hero World, I couldnt help but notice that instead of having micro transactions through pay-pal or some such payment gateway, the game also had Facebook credits as a currency source. On further digging, I found that Facebook is offering users to buy Facebook Credits. Users can then exchange these credits with different applications.

Instead of carrying out micro transactions within games, now we can carry them through Facebook itself. Good to see a definitive revenue stream other than eyeballs and ads.

Posted in social, Technology - Tagged , , , , ,

Price of failure

Mar30
2010 5 Comments Written by Prasad

Yesterday I met some friends over snacks at Candies (in Bandra, do look it up if you are in the area). A friend of mine has recently switched to work as a manager in a reputed firm, and he was overall happy with his job (work from home and all the perks).

Then he said something which sparked off this post, he said the amount of money the firm wastes in their day-to-day activities is insane. At first it seemed as if he was talking about how the organization has money to spare … but then to drive his point home, he gave examples. Inane but true. A lot of us are willing to put in that extra buck just so that everything that can go wrong won’t.

The design has to be perfect, the models have to be dressed in a certain fashion, the product has to be the best. In creating these spaces, we are de-risking ourselves … that’s what I like to tell myself. But are we?

Is the price of failure so high that we don’t take action and let others do what needs to be done? So what’s the price of failure for different people? For a person who has nothing to loose, its zero. A start-up for example can afford to go in some communities and have it misrepresented … its ok, bygones can be bygones for them. But take a Coca Cola or a Pepsi (not that these are the aforementioned organizations), and you suddenly have to think about ten thousand other factors. Not a freeing thought, is it?

Would it help if one could see the price of failure as zero?

Tagged , ,

The Hell Curve

Mar24
2010 12 Comments Written by Prasad

image

No, I deliberately wrote it as Hell instead of Bell.

Managers who have run teams must surely know this model. A friend of mine works in one of the top IT organizations this country has, every year he worries incessantly about how he is going to survive appraisals. Not his own, he is consistently in the top 10% of the firm, but his teams.

They carry out appraisals using the bell curve in this organization … that means in any project team, someone has to be top performer, someone has to be average and someone has to be in the bottom 10% … survival of the fittest in this corporate jungle … that’s the rule.

The problem with this rule is that managers are forced to take under-performers and average team members as opposed to top performers. This is so, because when appraisal time comes, he cannot appraise everyone as a top performer. So if he has more than 10% of his team putting their hearts into the project, then after a year, someone will get an unfair assessment … someone will be disappointed in his superiors. Someone will get disillusioned. And that someone would be reporting to the manager who appraised him.

The only solution available for the manager then, is to select a mediocre team and hope that they deliver the project. An entire organization that runs on mediocrity!

My question to HR personnel then are two-fold -

  1. Why the bell curve?
  2. What will you do if the curve becomes skewed (towards the top performer side)?
Posted in work - Tagged , , ,

No risk, No return

Mar22
2010 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

Or No pain, no gain … the adage holds, is what empirical data says. A working paper by Harvard Business School presents its findings on human capital, performance incentives and ownership models.

Do different kinds of firm ownership drive the adoption of different managerial practices? HBS professor Raffaella Sadun and coauthors focus on the difference between the two most common ownership modes, family firms and firms that are widely held, namely that have no dominant owner. They find that the greater weight attached by family firms to benefits from control induces a conflict of interest between family-firm owners and high-ability, risk-tolerant managers. Key concepts include:

  • Family firms systematically offer low-powered incentive contracts to external managers compared with widely held firms. The differences are economically large.
  • Where incentives are more powerful, managers exert more effort, are paid more, and are more satisfied.
  • Firms that offer high-powered incentives are associated with better performance. This result holds even after controlling for the type of ownership.
  • Economies where family firms prevail because of institutional or cultural constraints are also economies where the demand for highly skilled, risk-tolerant managers languishes.

What this study suggests, is that to have high performance managers, organizations should employ the high powered incentives (this may not be as simple as cutting the current CTC of an individual into fixed and variable components). The last finding suggests that economies (and even societies) where family firms are prevalent (take Marwaris or Sindhis), the risk-appetite may be lesser. The first set of findings is also interesting since it is related to satisfaction.

So the next time you are considering a job, maybe these tips might help you evaluate that job slightly better -

  1. Is there a variable component, is the calculation of that component completely transparent?
  2. Will you be empowered enough to take risks and get the job done?
  3. How mediocrity based is the leadership? (As in, is the leadership attracting the best talent, or the talent which can be ordered around)
  4. Is your work ecology risk tolerant Or does it always stick to the safe path?
Posted in work - Tagged , , , ,
← Older Entries Newer Entries →