Decision Making and Revisionism

many a times many ministers have been branded as Roll Back ministers if they roll back a previous tenant of their Financial Budget or policy.
Yesterday I was going through the Jack Welch Column in 4p where he stressed that Revisionism is decision making is not bad.
Many a times the leader has to take decision under uncertainty and may lead to wrong decision at such times not correcting the decision in the face of possibility that people may brand the leader as Flip Flop leader is even more damaging.
Its better to revise than to continue with a wrong decision.
Many a times strategic insights are upended to previous insights and make it imperative to change the course of previous decisions. At such times Jack stresses that it is a leadership quality to make changes without clinging to the wrong decision.
Mr. Jack Welch I completely agree with you.

Corporate Governance

There is this corporate governance question rasied all the time if CEO and Chairman position should be held by the same person or different persons.

Different posts can hinder decisionmaking speed but gives the much needed perspectives to decision making.

But then how do actual people handle these processes. According to a survey about 80% of all organisations have only 1 person handling the same post and they also have 5% higher sales figure.

So if you want better performance better have one person as Chairman and CEO.

Importance of Succession Planning

Succession Planning is important in politics as well in Business. WE come across so many public spats in Business and politics alike about rebellions.

Well to avoid that there are various strategies that can be used by leaders. Delegation of authority and sharing of power and decision making can keep the squabbles at bay.

In a conglomerate it becomes easy to share power between generations by making each son in charge of a separate division or companies or group of companies.

So if you don't want your son or daughter to make a public disgrace of the family business make plan as soon as your son is 25 or daughter is 21.

How To Save Your Job in a Recession

Just like companies have their strategies for recession beating individuals should themselves come up with their own strategies to beat the recession blues.

Strategies have to be adopted to keep one self alluring enough in Job scenario's.

1. Multi Skill your self : Add new skill's to your resume through e-learning or self learning using computer and internet at home or through self help books or friends.

2. Accept More Responsibility : Don't shirk responsibility in recession as it may even cost you your job.

3. Be Team Oriented : Individualistic achievements may do in the normal times but hard times require networking and aligning individual goals to organizational goals and team play to synergise and increase effective goal achievement.

4. Don't spread rumors : Spreading rumors at such times may invite flak from management.

New Age Media Vehicles

With coming of a new era , comes the opportunities of new Advertising Vehicles.
1. Malls : Malls are used increasingly to target hip and young crowds who are out there to hang out or watch a movie in a multiplex.

2. Cyber Cafes : A survey shows that 50% of Cyber Cafe goers are students and rest 50% are grad's and PG's , these profiles are decision makers and hence can be targetted by advertising solutions used by Cyber Cafes. Using geo tagging you can create tactical advt.s instead of just generic ads.

3. Road Shows : Road shows can be used to create a hype around the product.

4. Mobiles : Mobile advt can be used to reach your potential customer in a cost effective way.

5. Painting Trains and Buses : Painting trains and buses could also get you requisite mind share and high brand recall.

So what are you waiting for go for that new media.

Used Car Market Downfalls due to Nano

How categories of products are intertwined is displayed aptly by the Nano Car launch. The prices of used car is down up to 15-20%. And so is demand. If one can get a new car in around 1.25 lakhs then why go for a expensive car without guarantee.

So here you are with a car competing with the used car market. But then a car for common man at last, with security for the pillion riders as endorsed by the Tata himself.

Even the rates of entry level small car markets are down by 40,000 to 50,000. Now this is some car creating ripples in the Car Market.

Bravo Tata you did some thing commendable.

9XM and Innovative Programming

9XM is a new channel but in its relatively short sting of operation it has seen undue success. That is all due to clutter breaking programming model.

All channels play the same videos. So how can you distinguish your content. 9XM did so by animated propriety content of its own.

Its jocular mascot "Bheegi Billi" and "Chote Bade" jokes are now very much popular with the audiences.

So its up to the programming department to go about menial tasks or think out of the box and make disruptive programming content around its core business.

Who knows some day they may come up with a cartoon channel leveraging the equity created in the core channel.

Now that is some business Acumen, what do you say?

Getting a Job in Recession

IIM Indore records a 15-20% decrease in salary offered to student placements, although more number of companies participate in recruitment.

This shows the job scene in recession. So if you are thinking of getting a job, you are likely to get that job by quoting a lower than expected salary figure. The demand of people is there , more so of multi skilled people.

So the best strategy to have for getting a job at this time is to hop on to the company and wait for the recession to pass sway and then demand your worth.

Now , why wait for your dream job.

Growing Business Through Joint Ventures and Partnerships

Recently Naukri created a application for GTalk customers to add naukri as Friend and search for jobs from GTalk without leaving GTalk.

So millions of GTalk users become potential customers for Naukri.

No referrals, no leads, no followups,

Just pure marketing Nirvana.

If you think out of the box, ready made businesses of the type mentioned above await you. So in this age of recession its more important to Co-opt than compete.

Joint ventures and partnerships are tools to achieve the above.

In joint ventures you have the advantages of market knowledge and insights , plus ready made customer bouquet. One can easily cross sell products to each others customers in a Partnership, or charge a small amount for every business conversion for one way partnerships.

Organisational Replenishment - 20%-70%-10%

Keep you organization vital at all the times, and how can you do that.

For the above purpose you need to understand that there are three classes of workers in any organization

1. Top Performers ( 20%)
2. Mediocre Performers ( 70%)
3. Non -Performers (10 %)

So you need a performance appraisal or measurement system which can measure and classify employees into the above three classes. It is very important for you to be transparent in this process as any attempt to include a sycophant in a above category than deserved will certainly not get unnoticed.

After classifying the people according to their capabilities you have to take necessary action to increase the vitality of the organization.

The above percentages are average. So it should be your endeavor to increase the percentage of performers, reduce the percentage of non-performers and take necessary measures to send the mediocre performers into the performers category by training and motivational techniques.

You know that performers can be ticked off by equity treatment and need differentiated treatment. That's where you need to be bold and carve out a strategy to retain the best at the cost of non-performers.

But non-performers and mediocre may take this to be inequity at workplace so you need to device ways of retaining top performers, like offering secret joining bonus to a top-performer joiner and ask him to keep shut about the whole affair.

So it is totally up to you how you use HR to invigorate your organisations DNA to a performance oriented from a clunky mediocre performence based.

Trust and the Workplace

Trust is very important in workplace. Trust results in a cohesive team at work place which results in enhanced productivity and performance. All these lead to greater degree of goal attainment by a team.

Trust results in better cohesion and better workplace relationships with lesser degree of workplace dysfunctional politics. This will result in lesser lost productive man hours.

Trust at workplace results in better employee retention as employees have greater satisfaction working in such places. They are also likely to recommend the work place to other friends and relatives resulting in better employer branding.

Trust between management and workers result in better Industrial Climate and more peace between labor and management.

Traps in Decision Making

There are various traps which one needs to avoid while making decisions. These are likely to make you take wrong decisions.

1. Misleading experiences

2. Misleading prejudgments

3. Inappropriate self interests

4. Inappropriate attachments

5. Hurrying through a decision

Finding One's Voice

Speaking about motivation. Maslow defined five levels of motivators, self actualization being the top most. Stephan R. Covey went a step further to define a meaningful way in which you can obtain self actualization.

In his book the Eighth habit, Stephan stresses on the idea of finding ones voice, finding ones voice is knowing ones purpose and speaking and expressing about self. The Man always had a voice in the Global Society, in west women found voice, In India women are still struggling to find voice.

This voice should be guided by your values and beliefs. Stephan further adds that after finding your voice you need to help others to find their voice. That is the best existence.

I would say that your voice should be such that it creates harmony in the world. It should create friendliness and peace in the world.

What say guys?

Reverse Migration

With recession hitting Europe and US many Chinese and Indians are thinking of returning to their nations. Tens of thousands of employees already left, and in next 6- 12 months about 1 lakh people are likely to return back.
So the domestic markets of China and India are likely to see improvement, and US market is likely to suffer.
Asian market has 33% dependence on US and Europe for GDP, hence it is likely that a prolonged recession in US and Europe would hurt the Asian Economies.
Indonesia has already received 35 billion dollars from World bank. The IMF and the World bank are likely to gain in this period with increased loan disbursals.
India has already seen its Public Debt of upto 80% of GDP and lowerred GDP growth of 5.3 % this fiscal.
The coming months would reveal how chronic is going to be the global recession.

Focus Areas In Recession

There are four areas in which you can concentrate at the time of Recession. They are

1. New Product development and Innovation : You are likely to capture more mind space if you create a new product or add on feature during recession. Customers are likely to feel that you are a sound company unaffected by the Business Cycles.

2. Competition : Focus on Competition, this is the time when you can twist the arms of weak businesses and send them out of business or gain a competitive edge over them.

3. Consumers : Start new programs for consumers, focus on retaining the more capable of consumer with deeper pockets. Cross sell and up sell to these consumers.

4. Communication : This is perhaps as important as all the other facets of focus areas. Communicate warm messages which are likely to be reassuring to the customers and make them spend whatever money is at disposal to them on your products when given a choice to spend.

Leadership Through Innovation

This is recession time, even if its not recession time, Innovation helps. Innovation helps in staying ahead of people in Businesses. The more you innovate the more you are different from the me-too products. The more the differentiation the more the Brand following. You can be shaped by the market or you could shape the market, leaders are the later category.

Let me give you two examples.

1. Sony has started a smile shutter. A multi smile detection shutter which shuts automatically when all smile. So a step ahead of multi face detection and focus. Now that is some innovation for the consumers to talk about.

2. Motortola uses funky names for its cell phone models, ROKR was a huge hit, the latest model they have is Aura. How about that for some innovation.

Leadership Through Replenishment

Recent defeats of Australia in Cricket set me thinking what were the management lessons to be learn from the same. Well I got at least two ideas. Being at the top creates complacency in cricket as well as in companies. Complacency leads to sub optimal performance and loss of leadership advantage.

Also the second thought which emerged in my mind was that there are no young performers in Australia. ie since there world cup triumph Australia was not able to groom future leadership in the team. Ditto with companies all fortune 500 companies are doom to failure once the main leadership retires or dies. So that accentuates the importance of Leadership grooming and talent management in a company or team.

Hope you will learn from these two lessons and take your company to great heights.

High Stress Abusive Work Environments

All occupations have Hazards, Some have more so.

Referring to work environments where you are likely to encounter verbal abuse which is the more malicious of all abuses. Well police force according to newspaper reports have high degree of associated verbal abuse. many a time reports of a subordinate shooting a senior is reported in newspapers. that is the extreme for of reaction to verbal abuse manifested.

Other work environments having high stress are Sales and Defense force. Sales people have their targets and firing on every morning on not reaching the targets. Also defense personnel are also reported to lot of verbal abuse and stress.

With the above information in mind you should make a proactive choice to join such work places and at your own risk and knowledge.

Also the decision relating to career is a long lasting effect on life so all care should be taken to choose the best employer for along lasting and fulfilling career.

Groups,Teams and Gangs

Yes employees could be classified in the above three terms.

Teams are groups that perform and work constructively for the well being of the company. More often such teams are diverse in nature. The members are committed to the organisational goals and indiavidual goals are aligned to the goals of the organisation creating that synergy for performance.

Groups are employees which have some common critera of formation and join togther to form work norms and cliques to the detriment of the company. These groups would not allow individual committed workers to work for the best of the company and may craete hurdles in their path.

Gangs are the most deliterious of criminals operating in a company. These groups are totally criminal bent of mind and may steal company info or property and sell for a decent profit. So beware of these employees. That is why it is important to invest a few thousand of Rs. to run background check on employees to see if you are hiring the right line.

Renting Your Mindspace

A workplace should be clean and free of Dysfunctional politics, but many a time that does not happen and we see lot of dysfunctional politics in the office. This mat result in strained inter personnel relationships and lost man hours of productivity, apart from loss of goodwill from customers in customer facing departments. Thus it is important that employees do not create problems for each other. Such employees should be identified and positive and negative steps should be taken to warn them to abstain from dysfunctional behavior. One of the employee party to the dispute could be transferred to other department, or if things are worse could be fired. As one bad apple spoils the whole lot.

Attributes of High Performing Teams

1. Composition : A high performing team should be diverse with regard to cultures, races and gender so as to include all the perspectives and consumer insights.

2. Motivation : A high performing team has a very high motivation due to individual motivation levels, hygiene factors and leadership.

3. Leadership : A capable team has a capable leader who performs in all trying conditions by setting direction and morale of the team.

4. Cohesion : A high performing team show high degree of cohesion and low degree clique formation.

5. Team-Work : The employees are motivated to team work and their efforts always result in a team synergy of 2+2 = 5 or 1 = 1 =11.

6. Attitude : Most of the members have infectious positive attitude and zeal, which gets rubbed off on other members of the team.

7. Commitment : Most members show high degree of commitment towards their individual and team goals.

8. Communication and Trust : There is high level of trust in the team which is the result of open communication which is present in the team.

Participative Change and Employee Commitment

Participative change is when the employee's are taken into confidence and are involved in Decision Making process. In these times of turmoil taking a black box decision on the course of action to avoid problems may be autocratic and swift and may appeal to intuition but may be totally counter productive. So it may be well advised to take decisions by involving the employees.

Take input from the employees that this is the situation of market and cash flows and that certain tough decisions need to be taken. Ask them that what they would have done if they were at the helm. In this way you could very well reduce some rancor and bitterness from the process of change which could be painful for some of the employees.

Communication and compassionate communication at the times of distress could in itself be a hidden boon and could reduce many of the problems hounding the management at such times.

Be Humane to the employees to be laid off as you would feel for some one of your own family. Talking is always great , but walking the talk is always difficult. So go for it, provide crash retraining to those being laid off so that they are multi skilled and less prone to failure after leaving your organization. This is also likely to improve the overall morale of all the employees post tough decisions and help in productively bouncing back once the flab is cut.

Working At Small Vs. Large Company

many people say that working in small companies is more beneficial as you are likely to get more responsibilities and a steep learning curve. you also have a better identity compared to the anonymity of working at a large company.

But I think it depends on what your ultimate aims are when you decide to work for a large or a small company. A small company may offer you limited scope of growth. Also in a small team the chances of getting involved in Group Dynamics and being a victim of tactics like isolation et al is more strong.

In a large company you are likely to gain acceptance from one group or the other and in the process have a better work life.

Also if you want to become an entrepreneur you could consider working for both a small and a large company to learn the tricks of the trade and best practices of both to gain when you set up your own company. The implementation of the systems and processes are smooth if you have the experience of being a part of the same for a couple of years.

So these are some of the pros and cons of working in small and big comapanies. Go for it, make your own decision.

New Marketing Techniques

Many software companies use online distribution of files which results in piracy and cracks and lost business. But it is imperative to use online and offline ATL and BTL marketing to promote your business through troughs and crusts.

I was experiencing the power of net when I came across some techniques of marketing by some companies. Limiting the time utility is one method. Zapak gives a game for download which is valid for 1 hour 1 month. It means if you play 2 minutes daily the trial period gets exhausted in 30 days. If you play 1 hour then it exhausts in one day itself. Cool isnt it. Also the word game of Readers Digest is valid only for 1 hour from the beginning of trial. Now thats another way of giving short bursts of product experience to your customers.

Another way if marketing many software companies use is free limited edition of product to spread viral Word of Mouth and premium paid edition with enhanced features.

So thats all on marketing for now. Chow?

Agression and Jobs

Aggression is a quality, certainly positive aggression is. many jobs like marketing and sales require positive and even negative aggression on the employees part. All jobs would certainly reward the quality of positive aggression.

Jobs like marketing where there is less market and more marketing personnel through DSA's would require cut throat aggression. Only the aggressive survive in marketing.

So if you are thinking of a sales and marketing job you must be aggressive and aggressive to survive, prosper and grow in your job.

Employees Owning The Business

A lot has been written about the professional management vs. family owned business and how many family oriented firms have gained by using professional management. But the latest Satyam fiasco and the various US accounting scams prove otherwise. I have a small story which depicts how employees can be subservient to the cause of business freedom through hired managers.

I used to go to this Cyber Cafe in Dombivli and these had some employees hired in addition to the regular management. These employees would act like owners in absence of owners and would not allow the customers to sit.

They would start chatting on 2-3 PC's and deny service to the legitimate customers. As I was a regular customer I recognised them and alerted the owner to the potential problem who promptly took action by firing some of the errant employees and increasing their supervisory time and surprise checks

So now what you have to say about the professional management vs. owner debate.

Franchisee and Brand Building

There are various doubts about the Franchisee Route to Brand Building. Certainly aggressive growth can be obtained by using this route but there are some precautions to be taken as the path is fraught with risk.

First and foremost the path is taken to increase the brand presence and visibility but it may lead to brand dilution if the Franchisee management and employees do not understand the importance of the parent brand. So make sure you have proper guidelines and incentives and disincentives to induce the right behavior patterns in the Franchisee work force.

Encourage positive behavior by being fair in profit sharing and profit remittance dates et al as these are likely to create grouse in the Franchisee management. Also make sure that the termination conditions are set in the contract level only as also the SLA's expected off the Franchisees. But keep in mind that every failure would lead to a brand dilution.

So keep your fingers crossed and go for that aggressive expansion drive.

Tackling Recession With Comraderie

Every problem is a hidden opportunity. Recession is a challenge in itself. One could fume and fret over it or get into proactive action depending upon the DNA of the person heading the company or the board of advisers who flank the top management team.

Alacrity in business could lead to certain business advantage for the company. The company is equipped with skilled staff who are a potential repertoire in themselves. And the truth is evident that Human Potential has no bounds, so all the things get skimmed to the mindset of the leader. To accept defeat from the situation or take it as a challenge to hone the disaster management prowess of the company.

If you take any case study of successful business conglomerate you find one thing in common, they dont wait for disasters to happen and they continuously churn their businesses by exiting non-profitable businesses and entering sunrise sectors on the go so they diversify their risk to the effects of business recession. Similarly having geographically dispersed global business is another hedge to the ills of recession. This could be called the self renewal of the organization. GE,Kingfisher,Reliance all exhibit self renewal.

But take heart, there is no age for learning and nothing lost by being the second mover. One needs to constantly be on the learning mode while transacting business.

Use your team to your advantage, instead of firing them make them your assets in distress. Set up crack teams to access geographies and business conditions of various countries and set up a list of potential business venture sites. Set up Center of Excellence teams to do research in the identified sectors about the best practices and the key Success factors. Take the entrepreneurial risk and go for it with the zeal of a high school project intern. You are likely to succeed.

Strategy To Boost Sales in Recession

It is recession time and from Business Standard to moderately priced Economic Times are discussing about reducing sales turnover. Economy is likely to grow at 7% for 09-10 years, so what is the repercussions and what should be the company's strategies.

I didn't give a thought to FMCG sectors strategies which are relatively insulated from the effects of recession, but certainly I think that the Durables Sector can gain through taking a hit on the margins by reducing prices those with net disposable savings can go for that discretionary or opportunity buy or impulse durable buy.

I think this would also give a boost to the economy which is showing a sign of slight slump at the present times.

HR Strategies to be Adopted during Recession

1. There may be painstaking layoffs to be done. At that time it is required that the management keeps its communication open to avoid the effect of grapevine on the morale of the employees.

2. After painful layoffs the Morale of the employees may be at historical lows, so plans should be made to keep the morale of the residual team on a high. One solution which may work here is to go in for temporary layoffs with a promise to hire as soon as the good times return.

3. Days off ( Like 4 days week ) may also help to tide the recessionary months or years.

4. Pay and perks cut and performance based variable pay may help to a large extent.

Viral Advertisements For Free

Youtube is a huge medium. You can leverage this medium to generate free advertising eyeballs for your product. Create your awesome advert and upload it on youtube.

You are sure to get some lakhs or thousands of ad views.

This is free computer air time without paying a single penny for the same. Hence it can be safely called viral marketing on the net where you can create word of mouth for your product.

Also you could give your contact details and web site address and generate valid leads and business conversion for free.

So try out this channel today. Make sure you create a unique advert. You could also test your adverts copies on the internet and the ones which pick up on the net could then be aired on the television.

Downsizing and Rightsizing

Rightsizing is an ongoing process. The maladjusted and non performing bottom 10% of the employees should be removed on a regular basis , a number of Indian companies like the Infosys follow this practice.

Also downsizing is required at the time company is going through decreased profitability or recession has hit the economy. When the question is of survival at that time tough decisions have to be made.

Some times temporary layoffs and reduced pay can do the trick.At such times it is important for the company to do communication properly with employees and also motivate the employees to perform for companies survival.

Mahindra Xylo Advert

Mahindra XYLO advertisement is truly outrageous. It speaks against the traditional wisdom that Sedans are mark of luxury.

In the advt. they show a Container and compares a sedan to a container. Some consumers may get disturbed by such advt's some others may be attracted by the advt. if instead of irrationally rubbishing sedan , they stress on the fact that cosmopolitans are congested and it may be difficult to drive a sedan on the roads.

So what do you think is Human species a rational one. Would you buy a sedan or a car?

Repositioning Conundrum

Is Repositioning Successful always?

Should repositioning be sudden or incremental?

Is repositioning costly or cheap?

These are some of the questions which haunt CEO's and Boards of large companies. WEll I thought about it and came to the following conclusion,

A Number of brands reinvented using various strategies.

1. Bata is now not a value player and you find Bata Showrooms in swank malls. Bata did it gradually without big bang ad noise.
2. Ditto with Cambridge who from mass player are now a middle level player
3. Big Bazaar is doing it incrementally in their garments business with fashion@big bazaar.
4. LG and Samsung are trying to reposition as premium brands

As the demographics and income disposition of a market segment or nation changes you need to sync your products with the public expectations and you get your strategy right or wrong you are surely going to meet a degree of success if you at least try.

Also as your org matures you may have the technology and R&D also the capital to dabble in premium products and create separate brand or subsidiary to cater the upper echelons of consumers.

Also one reason for repositioning is that the Brand Freshness is maintained, so to keep a brand alive and relevant go for kaizan repositioning where you keep refining the brand positioning so that it is nearer to the customer expectations and doesnt loose its consistency of Brand Character.

What say.

Employer Branding

Employer branding was known as early as 1996. But now it is a full fledged concept and is being utilized with zeal and enthusiasm by all and sundry organizations because of its various advantages enlisted below

So lets first see what is Employer Branding?

It is the process of Marketing the company to existing and prospective employees. It is placing the organization in a good stead with the employees.

1. Attrition can be reduced because existing Employees are more satisfied
2. Right candidates can be hired for the right jobs as there is great Job Clarity in the minds of both the Employer and the Employees
3. Stress of Employee and Employer reduces with less number of Maladjustment employees in the companies.

All employees of an organization are brand ambassadors of their organization. But some who exhibits all the values , behaviors and culture of the organization are said to be the Brand Champions and are showcased by the organization’s as successful employees of the organization.

It is important to have a Employer Brand Equity ( through Employer Branding) which leads to increased Brand Equity of the company as Customer Facing Employees show maximum satisfaction and are more adept at handling clients with empathy and compassion.

On Why PSU’s Wont Perform

This is with due respect to the Navratna’s and the other healthy PSU’s. But still things move with disgusting drudging ness even at these places. Especially when you move to the fringes of the city the offices are just like you could have expected them to be at the time of British Raj in the Eighteenth Century.

Forlorn looks and dark alleys. Old faces with people hardly visible. Rural markets are now emerging as getting the lion’s share of market share of a company in various verticals. So is this the time to overhaul the offices of PSU’s in tier II and tier III cities now.

Also what about the mindset of the officers and workers which spell doom for these companies. With assured pays these officers are at their inefficient best with all the bag , baggage and unlearnings of a Graduating College which teaches no professionalism which may be elicited even by a Distance MBA student.

So I thought about it and came up with at least two recommendations to the powers at the helm of India, to create profit center oriented culture at these non – motivated unprofessional workforce.

1. Have a performance oriented bonus and a variable pay package
2. Have regional and national performance competitions highlighting and awarding and rewarding the winners in Company website and Annual Function and Reports
3. Send the key officers to Executive MBA programs which are only one year and also available part time.
4. If point 3 is not possible then conduct seminars by industry experts so that they can gain the expertise to propel PSU’s to be able to compete with the professional private ENTERPRISES.( Indicating Entrepreneurism ).

Iconic Brands

There are great brands and there are iconic brands. What are this iconic brands and can you try to think of some iconic brands that come to your mind?

Well here is a list of what I think is a Iconic Brand.

1. A brand that lives up to the brand promise. Is the brand promise well envisioned and documented. Do all employees have a knowledge of the brand promise.
2. A brand that generates trust. Customers don’t ask about any aspect as they are sure they will be delivered what has been promised.
3. Consumer Loyalty : There is exceptional Consumer Loyalty to the extent that customer becomes a brand champion for the brand and generates goodwill through blogs and word of mouth.
4. Unparalleled Customer Engagement : Consumers give valuable info and insights on their experience with the brand.
5. Continuous Customer Delight : Customer is delighted every time and comes back more often ( Sticky ) and buys more, recommends and up scales and cross scales.
6. Mind space Invasion and Customer Talk point : Magazines, Newspapers, Journals talk about the product giving free PR and the product becomes the talk of the globe.
7. Viral : All this gives rise to viral marketing effect and associated gains.

Some Iconic Brands and lessons they teach, which come to my mind are

1. Google : How one product can create an empire
2. Microsoft: How marketing prowess and capital are more important than innovation to marketing
3. Harry potter: A story worth told is worth a Billion
4. IPCL : How a unique concept can make a brand iconic overnight. (Entertainment marries Cricket and Diversity)

Kaizen Through Attrition

Come on. Am I nuts?

No but its true. A secure job with no competition what so ever takes you to your worst state of efficiency. So if you want that all should be nimble in your organization try attrition. Yes sometimes wear and tear can lead you to the ultimate HR nirvana and what that could be?

Fire bottom 10% of non performers every 6 months. Then what would be the result. Top performers will feel the zest and be motivated to deliver. Counsel the non performers that in this job there is no career and growth for both them and the company. If possible place them in other jobs in the same company or a subsidiary.

Else counsel them to find a better job and give them 3 months or so to displace so that no bad blood is developed within the organization.

More better managers or workers hired in place of these non performers will breed success in your organization.

Differentiation and Enterprises

Is there any relationship between the type of enterprise and the execution of differentiation policy. Well I thought about it and did some research and this is what I found.

Implementing new policies like differentiation and other Change Management interventions is easier in Private Enterprises and easier said than done in PSU’s and govt. depts..

There is a tendency in PSU’s to resist differentiation between top performing and under performers. With the concept of Unions and job security in PSU’s and govt. organizations it is hardly possible to fire the bottom 10% performers before they start spreading the inefficiency syndrome and party culture in an organization.

In private organizations with hardly any concept of Life Time Employment the above problems are not encountered and differentiation can be exercised easily. Thjs also creates continuos improvement even in the best with best being recruited all the time leading to a multiplier effect and a gain of immense employee productivity and effectiveness.