What is your SEX sorry SEK !!

As they say 'Hidden is beautiful' and that seems to be the mantra driving marketers worldwide. Early in the morning was watching a short film titled ' Jab Naam Hoga , Tab Kaam Hoga' and while I was completely soaked in the style and content of storytelling I realized that it was also trying to talk about Asian Paints, in an extremely social and shuttle manner.

In my numerous conferences where I do keynotes or attend hearing marketing wizards like Harish Bizoor and Ambi Parmeshwaran, one common marketing theme or challenge is always discussed which is  to double guess the thinking process or behavioral pattern of an individual or individuals and accordingly lay down a treasure hunt leading to brand goals.

Visualizing oneself as someone who can lay down a Treasure Hunt is very stimulating because you can at every stage predict outcome and most importantly can place bets of what's going to happen next. This is a more integrated thought than thinking of FB , SEO , Google etc which are more of Knowledge devoid of Skills & Experience.

So what is your SEK ( Skills, Knowledge, Experience) and how does it map to your current profile as when you have a seamless blend of these 3 aspects Magic happens.

As a Business Transformation specialist with 17+ years of experience I tried doing a bit of soul searching on my SEK as well and sharing with you so that it can help you to do yours as well and do share once you have found yours as well....

Skills : Communication, Presentation, Problem Solving, Perception Building ( Attributed primarily to my upbringing and my sign of being a LEO :) )

Knowledge : Maths, Computer Science , Management ( Attributed primarily to my Graduation, MCA and MBA degrees)

Experience : Retail ( Attributed mainly to my consulting , technology and marketing exposure in this vertical for close to 10 years now)

Why Japan was called Fampan - Part I

One time , China ruled on Japan. Japan was fully trapped. There were Chinese people , Chinese Food and Chinese language was spoken all over Japan and China.
At Hiroshima ( where one Japanese general was killed) one brave Japanese fighter's team was left. China doesn't know that.
Kentaro , the head of the team , was not afraid of dying. So he hoisted the Japanese flag , and said to his armies " We have to fight against China !!!"

To be continued .......

How are you feeling?

On the blogging space after a long span. To say that it has been hectic would just be the 'Tip of the iceberg' the fact is that the journey has been addictive very addictive.

I chose such a non serious title for this blog because this has been the question which I have been facing almost from everyone whom I meet nowadays.

Though I normally try to give a very formal ( read decorated) answer to those queries but when I sit and think back now it is a very intriguing question ' How do I feel '.

Well the first response which comes to my mind is that ' I am feeling very light' , a free spirit , seems like a lot of frills which was creating unnecessary weight has been suddenly removed. Now I work from whereever I can , work on whatever I feel like, meet whomever I think is important and feel great about everything I do because there are no compulsions

Puritans may argue that entrepreneurship is all about creating an enterprise and that has a framework for success and I fully agree but I guess in order to reach that stage you need to first soak yourself in this state.

More to come so stay tuned and cheerio !!!!!!!

Creating Leaders

Watching the IPL since the last 4 years , Rajasthan Royals was and still remains my favorite team. It is a coincidenec that they have won a IPL and have had a decent outings in all the IPLs but my linking for them stems because of Shane Warne who has led a bunch of unknown players ( Naman Ojha, Ravindra Jadeja, Yousuf Pathan) and created a unit which can challenge any decorated outfit.

This weekend I was watching 'Para Cricket' and observed an argument between the non striker and the bowler on whether the batsmen had nicked the ball and the moment the non striker was told he can bat as a single man ( for people not familiar with para cricket rules, a batsmen can bit single if all other players are out) he agreed that the batsmen was out. He preffered himself batting alone and felt he could win all by his own. Suddenly I felt that perhaps this is what singles out a leader from the rest of the pack. A leader is one who has the guts to back his troops as much as he backs himself perhaps more in some cases.

After spending 11+ years in the industry somewhere I have a feeling that we need more of such leadership to groom the current crop of people coming in and create a ecosystem where excellence becomes the key. These young guys need to get the right exposure, mentorship and most importantly a feeling that they are important to convert them into assets in the long run...

Wish will see another para cricket match where I will see a leader who fights to get his team chasing a target rather than trying to get the runs on his own

Understanding the 'Voice Of Customers'

Sitting in a government office and waiting for a presentation was draining my energy off so thought of doing something interestin to activate my neuron cells :)

For the last few weeks I have been participating in a lot of discussion forums where opinions were flying in terms of Target Addresable Market (TAM), Social Media intrusion, scope of consulting services etc and honestly lot of noise was being created without much sense

What I feel personally is that too many things are happening for sure Social Media, Internet Technologies, Process Automation etc but somewhere in midst of all these the 'Voice of Customer' is getting feeble , unheard.

I beleive that in whatever you do ( Product business, services or consulting) the key is to acknowledge the customers voice. I still remember a meeting where after presenting a 60 slide presentation on process effectiveness the customer whispered in my ears 'Mitul, I have 90% employees who just have class 10 as a formal education so do you think we can implement what you are presenting here' and I understood what I had missed. In all my enthusiasm to present my idea I had missed the context and hence was presenting something which was not implementable.

So treat every customer as a unique entity and present something which matches with their maturity to be acceptable. At the end of the day Technology has to make business easier rather than demanding change in business to do Technology adoption

Cheerio
M

Proud to be an Indian

Perhaps just heard the best analysis of Dhoni, the crowned king of Indian cricket by someone who himself was the crowned prince a few years back.

Sourav (aka dada) said that the process which gave India the world cup after 28 years ( my kid is of the same age as was I when India won the world cup in 1983...) started at least 3-4 years back, the nucleus of the team was created , the fearless spirit was taking shape. So in essence it is the same team albeit a different captain leading it but where Dhoni is unique is that he has moulded this unit from 'We have to Win' to 'We will win' and the results are there for everybody to see.

This man has a clutter free mind, doesn't believe in historical data and has the guts to back his instincts and above all gives you an impression that he is born to win and thats where he takes himself and the team to a differnt league.

The QFs with Australia when Dhoni got out, Brett lee was spitting fire, the australians were slowly closng on the Indian batsmen ( how many times have you seen 8 australian fielders in the ring closing on their prey) and the situation demanded an watchful session. But what we saw was just raw aggresiveness from Raina and Yuvraj attacking every loose ball, walking down the pitch to Brett Lee and all of a sudden you could see the crack in the famed Australian wall. Thats what Indian team is all about now , a raw energy and a clutter free mind which says 'We are there to win'

It has just been a very emotional night, perhaps a begining for all of us who aspire to hit a different league in years to come. The sign is on the wall if you want to hit the sky take the jump now. There is nothing called a right moment, a right context all of that has to be created and created now.

I would have loved to hug each and every member of this team and perhaps take a iota of that spirit from them ...

Feeling very proud to be an Indian today...

Online Model = Brick&Mortar Model

It was a strange thought that came in and I thought of writing this down. Today when the world moves towards web for almost everything from marketing to sales to knowledge management the most interesting pattern to observe is that to gain Success you need to follow the basic principles of brick and mortar model

Like in the conventional way you go and block a piece of land and if you can choose your land strategically there are chances that you can get a very high returns because some one would need that land as a part of his business expansion plan. Interestingly the same happens when you block a domain with a bit of strategic thinking and then you realize that the domain you have blocked is so critical that people are ready to pay you 5 times more than the original plan.

Similarly create a site increase 'eyeballs' and then attract retailers to put up there merchandise and let them pay you a percentage of your sales so what have you created essentially a 'Market Place' or now more well known as 'Mall' which can attract both the Buyer and the seller

So from now onwards whenever you design a eChannel do remember the basics which the conventional model follows and you are sure to get more success

Cheerio
M

Is your business scalable?

Well this is the question I have been hearing too often in seminars, from investors, even from the local chaiwallah and so much so that I thought let me try and put my own thoughts on this.

What is scalability. Any business which starts would expect to see an increase in revenue on a Y-to-Y basis and it will for sure see an increase in people etc so whats the hype around scalability.

Scalability has some key dimensions and one of the them is the 'Market' which means would your target addressable market grow with time, is the growth rate good enough to keep your business pockets exciting enough for investors

How scalable is your offering. If you are doing products then you scale up by adding more modules , more functionalities etc and you can easily talk about a product life worth 4-5 years but what about services. How do you define scalability for consulting business

How do you scale yourself in terms of your reach in the market. How do you reach out to a large set of customers, geographies etc. Digital Marketing, virtual sales force, distributor model or franchise...

Keep thinking as I don't feel that it covers all so pour your comments

Cheerio
M

Mice is Nice

There are times when a thing heard strikes you right at the core and thats precisely what happened while watching 'Rocket Singh, Salesman of the year'

I thing at times we are too nice and that stems from the fact that we don't really know our actual value and we were a veil of nicety. We ourselves are responsible for how the world treats us and most importantly how we are perceived.

At a personal level I think i have suffered a lot from 'Yes' syndrome where I have in order to either keep myself in good books or to avoid confrontation have said yes to things where I should have really said a big 'NO'. At a long run it doesn't help because the recipient perhaps doesn't always have the visibility to understand that you are too much pain to say that 'Yes'. This is a trait which needs to be developed specially if you are in a leadership role.

Cheers
Mitul

Know your value

Back to blogging after a short break. Life has been hectic to say the least. Too many stuff happening and most importantly every passing day brings in a sense of enrichment.

I was part of a discussion between some of my close pals and the agenda was how do you measure whether an individual has achieved success in his/her career and I loved when one of them said 'Happiness'. True if you are happy with what you are doing thats good enough to say that you have achieved success

Back to my agenda for this blog I think that we somehow fail to realize the value we bring to the table and thats the key reason we never achieve what we are destined to achieve in life. Sometime we term this phenomena as lack of exposure or lack of confidence but these are all offshoot being oblivious to the value one brings to the table

The day you know what you are and what you can do guess that day you achieve the strength to live your dreams. At that juncture success or failure becomes immaterial and you set yourself for a journey.

Cheerio
M

Procrastination - The 'Biggest' evil

This is more of self analysis , more of maturing over years which has given me this feeling that the biggest evil in the journey of entrepreneurship is 'Procrastination' . Success definitely depends on a lot of factors but something which is essential is discipline , a focused approach and most importantly a feeling that 'There is no tomorrow'

There would be a lot of stumbling blocks, lot of enticements but as a entrepreneur you need to just move ahead thinking that a a momentarily delay can cause a huge impact on your overall plans.

At a personal I have faced may instances where not taking quick decision or not reacting has made many trivial things go complicated, almost out of hand so you need to check that

They say Success has no magic sauce , a focused approach , a burning desire to attain success and most importantly a never say die spirit is what you need to hit the Stars

Cheerio
M

Intelligence Vs Information

I have had a brain wave tonight and couldn't help sharing it through my blog. How do you differentiate between Information and Intelligence. We all perhaps know and understand how raw 'Data' is differentiated from Intelligence. In fact there are plethora of BI and Reporting tools in the market who claim to just do that albeit using different names and tags. They follow the basic thumb rule of Information ( unambiguous, contextual, accuracy, speed of retrieval etc etc). But guess the challenge is how do you create Intelligence blocks which is one layer above conventional information

So how about a Business User looking at Sales Forecasting data for his/her items for the next 6 months using trends, customer buying pattern, inventory for those items etc and then applying a market pulse to that analysis so that he/she can add more 'Confidence' to that analysis

Thats intelligence as it is just not data aggregation or roll-ups it goes one step above and adds feedback to the whole process by applying data driven and localized patterns.

Got an opportunity to present Business Intelligence concepts in a MS BI event

More in the next blog

Cheers

How free are you...

This post gets dedicated to one of my mentors in the Industry...

He was doing a mentoring session with the CEO of an emerging startup company and the first thing he asked to him was 'How free are you?', at first I was amused but then I understood the deep insight which was wrapped.

In today's world if you really want to make a venture, an enterprise successful you need to be 'Present'. As they say the 'MBWA' , Management By Wandering Around, where as a CEO you are just meeting people ( Clients, Prospects, Investors, Mentors) , fine tuning your pitch and business model and of course you have a strong operational team to back you up.

Gone are the days where you can get a mileage by pitching in with your offerings quality or uniqueness unless they are relevant to the business.

I was hearing a interesting video of one of Guy's book on pitching where he says, imagine that old man sitting on your shoulder and whispering in your ears 'So What', if you can pitch your offering keeping that old guy happy you have made it

It is a journey move on .....

Cheerio

How passionate are you about the work you do

Sorry a long lull in my blogging due to 'Durga Puja' and other stuff. So first of all Subho Bijoya to you all.

This though suddenly popped up in my mind that perhaps one of the key elements of achieving success depends on the fact that 'How Passionate are you about your work', how much 'good feeling' does it generate , how much closeness do you feel when you do those things.

Yes, there are other important things like how scalable is your stuff , how much financial benefits can that generate but paramount importance is 'How much are you enjoying'

So measure that happiness before you embark on a journey because that will decide as to how long can you persist to realize your vision , how much struggle are you ready to face...

More on my next blog..

Do you have 'CPO' in our organization

Was watching 'Chak De India' and a thought suddenly crossed my mind. Guess what is a 'CPO', Chief Passion Officer, surprised, intrigued .. trust me very soon we will have an official role like this.

What does a CPO do in an organization. He is the one who is responsible to percolate the dream and the vision of the organization at different levels and layers. My personal take is that you need more than one CPOs as you grow big as the challenge of an organization once is grows big is to tie up the organization in one thread.

I know a lot of thinking has been done in this area so thats why you hear about things like company day, annual day, offsite gatherings , CSRs etc but for me they are like one of things , you need to have this on a continual basis

My personal experience says the biggest challenge is to make each and every one in your organization feel important in terms of what they are doing and give them a dream and trust me it is a very difficult stuff to achieve

I know a company in Mexico where every employee is a partner of the firm :)

Keep commenting

Cheerio
Mitul

Experiment to Enterprise - A Journey

Been a bit irregular in terms of blogging as have been involved in a few very challenging but time consuming activities.
Suddenly had this thought in mind, how does an experiment, a concept evolve into an Enterprise. How many such journeys lead to destination and most importantly what is that 'Destination'
last 3 years of my experience with such journeys have been very insightful and though every such journey is an unique one but still if one does observe minutely there are certain common patterns

- One trend which is very prevalent in such journeys is the fact that at one point of time the happiness and joy of seeing your concept getting accepted in the market has to be replaced by the concern that your coffers are getting empty

- The mundane* aspects of these journeys are the ones which become the key impediments if not handled properly. So kick start the 'How do I get funds in my business' track at the earliest in your journey. It has dual advantage a.) Of course it gives you a cushion b.) It gives you an early validation of your direction

- 'When do I accelerate and how do I accelerate' is perhaps another common area which hits these journeys. Scaling up has to be planned properly and right timing is the key

- Finally it is important to have an image of how your journey will look like say 3 years from now; so you know whether you would end your journey at that point, or merge yourself in a bigger journey or may be chase another destination, have that in mind as that will act as an checkpoint to how you are doing

would love to hear more from you all ...

Cheerio
Mitul

Intelligent Passion

Hi,

Back to blogging after a span. It has been a Topsy turvy ride in terms of my medical condition so have decided to skip health blogging henceforth ;)

Yesterday while I was taking bath it suddenly stuck me that what makes you indispensable in the industry. Technology acumen, communication, ability to multiplex, client handling blah blah, may be they all contribute but for me it is one single attribute 'Intelligent Passion'

A person who can infuse passion and charge in the group, somebody who can create that madness, that drive is a key, intelligent because that passion has to be aligned with a long term vision/direction rather than just trying to achieve some sort term goals.

Specially for a start-up you need a bunch o such people who can instill that 'we can do it and lets do it' attitude in the group. To become such a person one has to love his work and be proud of it without thinking of any immediate gains , thats when you can drive a team a set of people into it ...

Cheerio
Mitul

Health is wealth :)

It has been a long gap. Last 2 weeks of my life has been some sort of a 'Wake Up' call. It started of with a 'dull ache' in the lower abdomen which gradually increased, so much so that was sleepless for almost 4-5 days.
Went through a battery of tests USG, Blood and CT Scan and thanks to the good wishes of all my friends and family and of course the almighty there is nothing very serious to it.
In this period there have been some major realizations and I am sure that going forward they would help me to shape myself or rather prepare myself well.
If you are in a long term game you need to preserve/care for your body (unless innovation can bring in a case where you can have a creative mind without the need for a body :) ), so a bit of daily exercises, less of alcohol and smoking and most importantly a good and health diet should at least take basic care of your body.
I am planning to join 'Tai-Chi' courses...
Changed Mitul ;)

Building an Enterprise - Team Dynamics -I

The first 2 formation years of an startup is very critical as it lays down the road map of how the organization is going to evolve in the next 5-10 years time span. This is the time when you know whether your organization would become a Global enterprise or merely exist as a lifestyle business.

Now what do you do in the first 2 years, you formalize your service offerings, identify your market segment, identify and close your first n customers and most importantly you look for funding options.

In midst of all these perhaps we all tend to ignore a critical piece, a piece which can make or break the organization in the long run, TEAM

To start with you have your core team, a team which has 4-10 people depending on the nature of the organization, they are the nucleus of the organization and mostly are people who have very strong association/linkage with the organization. The sample profile of these people would be Co-Owner/Share Holders, Evangelists, Academician, Advisors, Tech/Marketing Gurus , Industry stalwarts, Angel Investors. This group brings in a lot of experience/exposure/innovation to the table and it's extremely important that you handpick this team based on how you want your organization to evolve.

As with any other aspect of life we need to take some measures to see that this group is aligned and connected. It is not important that they all think in the same line ( of course not we are talking of a multi discipline team not robots coming out of assembly line ;) but it is definitely important that they share the same Vision.

Regular tractions, participation in common forums, involvement in common activities is the key to ensure that this group is working in tandem towards building a world class organization.

Even a small questionnaire could help at times to do a quick check on the common goal part

for e.g.

1.) Describe the organization in 10-20 words
2.) Who are you in the organization, what is your role and how do you think you are linked with the other people in the organization
3.) When you think of your org now you are ( Content, Excited, Worried, some other feeling)
4.) If you get 4 Crs in your hand right now , how would you spend it for your organization
5.) What is the worst nightmare you have regarding your org
6.) Describe the organization 5 years from now in terms of all the aspects ( Resources, Spread, Revenue, IPs) etc

Float this and you would be surprised that how often we fail to instill a common goal and trust me that hurts once the organization grows big.

Bye for now...

Strategic Thinking - The key to success

A lazy day today, great weather ( my favorite) coupled with some very long wait to get a few customer approvals to start new engagements was tickling my neurons...

I was thinking of one key parameter which differentiates between a top notch executive and a mediocre manager and according to me it's 'Strategic Thinking' or ability to see the big picture.

Whether you are a CIO or a Business Development head or a Entrepreneur the key differentiator is how big/deep can you think/visualize and then of course you need the capability ( self/team) to draw an measurable implementation plan based on that thought.

I know of a person ( a very close friend of mine) who own a company which has an offering on the Infrastructure space . I was generally discussing about his vision in terms of the product/company and to which he mentioned that in the next 100-150 years the amount of data which will get generated will surpass any storage technology available today and so if we can leverage this need we are in the game. The beauty of his answer is in the 'Big Picture' thought which talks about a period where neither he nor his next successors will exist but then thats what depth thinking is all about...

Just like any other capability of human beings 'Big Picture' thinking also needs to be nurtured, groomed, protected and exercised and it's very important for people who aspire to make it big in their life.

To end this blog with an incident which happened very recently where a person whom I know personally had invited me and then realized that he had forgotten keys to his home. He then said you know I don't remember where my keys are because thats an information which is of no use to me and I would prefer keeping that bit of brain free to absorb something which is meaningful

Thanks.....