Irrationality is Human

I think it would be foolish not to take irrationality seriously.What's worse is how we rationalize irrationality. I grew up thinking that rationality is noble virtue to be acquired because my environment was largely filled with people who gave more importance to emotions over rational approach. Years passed with me yet to acquire the elusive virtue.

Finally the moment arrived. True realization in serendipity. I realized the difference between rationality and rationalizing irrationality and much to surprise I realized that we as human beings have the uncanny ability to do it with ease even without realizing it.

My FMOT ( First Moment of Truth) was when i was trying buy a Television.. Like most men from Mars, I did trucks loads of research ( PMPO, inches, cost, offers) and narrowed down on one option.With great expectations, I walked into the store with  data in hand and all set to make the rational decision of buying Option A. The unexpected happened...The sensory experiences( great visuals and sound effects) took over  the rational approach.Much to my amazement I chose something that was different from the choice that I logically deduced as an option. At the moment, I rationalized my purchase decision for reasons that did not feature in my evaluation criteria.

That moment was the starting point of my search of the power of irrationality. I pondered to get some answers for my behavior. The revelation was possible through some insights that very stated by renowned cognitive psychologists in their books as well as my own self analysis - detaching myself from the decision and analyzing. The possible explanations that I could give to my decision making journey includes:

1. Our cognitive capabilities are based different sensory based learning styles on one or more senses. In my case, I am more visual (dominant) and Kinesthetic based learner.. The visuals on Television and the ambiance did have an on my decision making process. Imagine a large 56 inch TV with gorgeous visuals... Why would you not be tempted?
2. When faced with plenty of choices we rely on heuristics. In my case, the heuristics was that a good brand with  good ambiance and a good English speaking sales appearing to be knowledgeable can't get me to make  wrong decision. As Daniel Kahneman quotes in his book"Thinking Fast, Slow"- "The essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution". I might have substituted a convincing salesman for rational benefits.

Even in human relationships, it is important to accept irrationality in human behavior. The acceptance that irrationality is an integral part of human nature has helped me look at each event or stimuli with much more openness.  When I look at the following events, I am able to understand and appreciate human irrationality:

1. In a restaurant when sitting in the same table, no two people will order the same food.
2. Why we prefer some brands over the other
3. How we decide candidate fitment in a 10 min interview?
4. How judgmental we are about our colleagues or friends
5. The way we associate intelligence to qualification, nationality, color.
6. Our belief that our cognitive capabilities and memory functions are infinite.

As Dan Ariely says, we are predictably irrational.

Beware of Proverbs!!!

Have you ever lost an argument or got convinced with the argument based on some proverb/metaphors stated during the argument by the opponent.  Worse still, did you fret while pondering over the reason you gave up or accepted the argument for a metaphor used as substitution which may or not be relevant to the context.. If your answer is yes or if not clear with the above statement read on..

Lets say you have situation on hand. You are stuck deliberating on the road to be taken.

Option 1: A confirmed job in your own state that just about meets your expectations

Option: Moving to another country for a period of 2 weeks and looking for a job dream opportunity.

Context is King

It is quite natural that you will seek advice from your near and dear ones. Have you ever heard this metaphor from a wisecrack " A bird in hand is better than two in the bush". In that situation, this metaphor will push you into taking a safe default decision.

These are called as Generative Metaphors.They substitute for something easy to think about for something difficult.These generative metaphors gives us tangible simplified statements that acts as guidance systems for a complex situations. In complex situations, the brain looks for ways to simplify the problem and these metaphors does a convincing job.

My point is be aware of these metaphors used as substitutions.They serve as simple rule of thumb insensitive to the context in which you operate. Your context is the king and not these metaphors.

Illusion of confidence

Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions.

Kept wondering why “Confidence" is considered to be one of the most important factors in the game of life till I realized that we are oblivious to the fact that confidence is one of the heuristics we use to judge people. We come across different kinds of people in our day-day life and we are constantly expected to respond to various stimuli. We have no choice but to adapt to the situation by first assessing the situation using some heuristics and then choose our response.

Let’s say, we go to a party and meet some people. Invariably, we end up meeting some super confident individuals and our response/judgement  to that at a subconscious level would be:

• Knowledgeable hence Genuine respect for the person or
•  Get Intimidated

We live in such a competitive world that we have almost forgotten the virtue called reverence. It is becoming increasingly difficult to accept that somebody is more knowledgeable than you. But you judge somebody using a heuristic called “Confidence”. It is important to know that due to limitations in our cognitive capabilities, we are subject to illusion of confidence. What it means is that we tend to assume that somebody is knowledgeable if they sound confident. Most of often we would have judged candidates in an interview based on their confidence only to realize that there is a vast difference in projected capabilities versus actual.

It is very important that one does not fall prey to the illusion of confidence.   If you want to handle the illusion of confidence, here is a simple trick.

First of all, drop all you belief systems and pre-existing internal knowledge that you are likely form based on the stimuli and just increase your sensory acuity. Sensory acuity involves the ability to make refined sensory observations and this can happen if one can reduce or drop all preconceived notion/ pre-existing internal knowledge. Let me elaborate  the difference between power of sensory acuity versus how we lose out on valuable information because of preexisting filters. Ken Norris, a desert biologist, used his graduate students to observe a desert lizard.  While Norris has 6 pages of observation, his students had just one page. This was largely due to their preexisting knowledge. So what happens when you increase your sensory acuity? Just based on adjusting Physiology  ( changing body language)or eye accessing cues, one can access truthfulness or congruence. 

The second approach is to pose some simple unassuming questions on the same topic. Usually people who sounds confident without enough subject matter will get stuck at some point and will be exposed.

The next time you meet a super confident person do not fall for  the illusion of confidence. Take your time,observe and then judge them, confidently!!!

Create more options to reduce EGO

What am going to write in my blog is something which  very common in the our day-day life.

Choices.

Lets take for example a typical client - agency discussion. When a client gives a brief and when he views an output, he tends to expect for more options.  The argument in favor of the client is that they would need options to decide on the right approach. The same is true for strategy of a company to lunch menu for guests. We all expect options in whatever we consume so that we get a chance to choose the best.

For once I decided to look from the perspective of the provider of the service. Are they happy about giving many options? Not really. Going back to the first example of client agency discussions, the moment the client says that he needs options the agency guy starts to sulk. Why does he sulk?  For long I was thinking that reason for this attitude was either because of too many projects and less resources or he was lazy to give more options.

When I put this problem to my work scenario I was curious as to why I ended up sulking when both my hypothesis weren't true. It turns to be a reason which is completely oblivious to a surface level thinker. The reason is EGO.

I figured out that for a particular brief,if I generated one output then I end up placing my capabilities closer to the output. So when a person rejects the one output, I end up thinking as though they have rejected me. When there is only one option then it becomes a reflection of my capability. When somebody rejects it, my ego gets hurt.

Take another example.. Lets says your taking some food for pot luck. Naturally, you might take just one dish leaving the rest to others. I bet , at least for starters, one might be very nervous to get it right for the same reason stated above.

How to handle this?  Atleast for your own sake, try and create more options so that you don't attach your EGO to one thing. More the merry. With time you will realize that it is OK if your work is criticized  After all critics don't get statues in beach. You can benefit from somebody's criticism.

Go for more options.....

Reduce weight by reducing white lies!!!

“Self-Consciousness is the enemy of interestingness" a lovely quote by Malcolm Gladwell... Not just the enemy of interestingness but basic integrity... We, human beings, are known to fudge facts on varying proportions when something affects our self-image.

It is very easy to put this theory to test. Walk up to an image conscious person who is obese /on the heavier side and give him a lecture on diet, food habits and exercise.

In just 30 sec into the discussion, you will see his self defense mechanism in full action. He will claim to have adopted the healthiest diet for the last one week and you will hear healthy food items like low calorie cereals, carrot, greens. When it comes to the exercise you will hear tall claims like regular visits to the gym, 7 km on treadmill, regular walks and what not… These tall claims quickly expose the person because it is easy to judge the truth in the statement based on the body language.

Honestly, I believe that the person who fabricates this story is not fully aware that he is fudging facts... When self-image is put to test even the smallest of the efforts in the right direction (visit to them gym once in 5 days) gets represented to gargantuan proportions in the mind and it appears as if the person is very sincere in his fitness regimen. The self defense mechanism is in full action because:

1.     It wants to protect the self-image at any cost.

2.     Pacify the mind that things are under control

3.     Stop the other person from any further advice.

Best way to handle this to first realize that white lies will get exposed quickly. Instead of protecting self-image for today/everyday, it’s better to realize that protecting self-image at the cost of action/activity is futile...

Confidence of Ignorance!!!

Read this wonderful quote by Charles Darwin “Ignorance frequently begets confidence than Knowledge".

Let’s put this quote in the context of our daily work situations. Organizations are faced with a number of challenges and one among is to hire right kind of talent and make them successful.  The skill set requirements have vastly changed than how it was about 10 years ago. The advent of Internet revolution, eCommerce ,mobile penetration have changed the market landscape and new age companies are forced to look for different skill sets which are still emerging and no clear cut standards.

Most companies do not have a clear idea on what to look for in a candidate. Hence they go through a process of shortlisting of candidates and conducting interviews. Organizations put their best forward to get right candidates yet in at least 60% of hires (am statistically challenged hence I am pulling out a number which is more a figment of my imagination based on stories that I have heard) that happen there is a mismatch between expectation and actual capabilities when the rubber meets the road. 

Although the interview process is one of the time tested ways of selecting a candidate, why is that it fails?

In this blog I am attempting to look at one of the possible reasons for such high failures and this thought process is based on the concepts highlighted in the book “Invisible Gorilla" by Chris Chabris and Dan Simons.

Our Competency

Chris and Simon delve deeply about a concept called Illusion of Confidence... How much we think we actual know is very different from how much we know...

In an interview, unknowingly, the one thing that we, as recruiters, look for in candidates is their confidence.  More confident the candidate more the chances that he will be selected. The fault lies not in the confidence but our love for confidence. Since we are not clear on what kind of skill-sets are required we tend to use confidence as one of the heuristics for decision making. So when we see a candidate presenting himself confidently, our illusion of confidence takes over automatically continues till we face some incontrovertible evidences.

From the candidate's/employee's perspective it is very common that when he starts learning something new while his skill level is low his confidence is usually higher that he might sound over confident. Justin Kruger and David Dunning in their research call it as the double curse of incompetence: People who are unskilled are also unaware of it. And in some instances if the leader or manager pledges his ignorance by trusting the employee to take all the decisions hence  there is high probability that he is not going to be honest about what he knows and what he knows not. It builds up the employee’s ego to make people believe that he knows. This struggle continues till both the manager and employee face contradiction which exposes the employee.

What is the way out?

There are no straight forward answers. It is important to know that anybody and everybody can fall into the trap of illusion of confidence. Recognizing this illusion is the first step. Next step is when manager and employee face this contradiction it is important for the manager not to take some tough measures. Kruger and Dunning have found in their experiment that explaining to the subject (employee) on what went wrong and teaching them is one way of the ways to make them better judges of their competence.

Am sure we will begin to accept that we have been victims of illusions of Confidence.. Reflect this thought and  share if you have had experiences of this illusion.

Facing a Conflict? Don't simply trust your brains

How we think?

It is really fascinating to sit and understand how a human brain works. Every situation presents itself in a way worth exploring to understand and enjoy the complex thinking. Faced with a conflicting situation a person is bound to be anxious or guilty and starts to lament about what happened. The natural reaction from you side to such a stimuli is to use the arguments presented by the other person and offer solutions. This may or may not cut ice with the other person but one thing that you can be certain is that you have a biased version of the situation. Why do I call it a biased situation?  We believe that our brain is super perfect and rational but there are enough evidences to prove how biased we are and how we subject ourselves to memory illusions albeit unknowingly.

So I decided to do what most of the spiritual gurus advise us to do when faced with conflict... "Relax, take a deep breath and observe" the situation presented... What I discovered during this journey was something really fascinating.  I did make an extra attempt to corroborate this discovery with an experiment done by neuroscientist on how we respond when faced with anxiety or guilt... A clue  ..." Motivated reasoning"

Recently I received a call from one of my classmates. We were colleagues at work some years back. After exchanging pleasantries, we started talking about his current work... Soon into the conversation he started to complain a lot about work and how his ideas were never considered by the top management. I was able to infer that he was just out of an agonizing meeting and his work situation was very depressing. As we moved along in the conversation, the tone changed from anxiety to confidence... The conversation moved from how anxious he was about the fact that his ideas were not accepted to how his ideas made a lot of sense that the company would miss out on a lot of opportunities by not listening to his ideas... He was affirmative that he would be a passive bystander in all future meetings and pacified himself by saying that only intelligent folks will be able to understand his ideas better...

My intentions were not to evaluate the merit of his ideas rather I was more curious to know what was happening in his brain and what was he thinking

Two things that stood out in the conversations:

a. Emotions during the conversation swayed from anxiety to confidence or should I say false notion of confidence

b. When faced with an emotional constraint how the brain decided to handle it... Passive bystander

I will try and explore the first point in this blog... How did the emotions move from one extreme to another...? When confronted by a troubling situation, a network of neurons becomes active and produces distress. In this situation the brain starts to do something called as motivated reasoning or some kind of faulty reasoning to alleviate the distress. Dr.Drew Westen of Emory University quotes from his research “Neural circuits charged with regulation of emotional states seemed to recruit beliefs that eliminated the stress and conflicts". The surprising part is that not only does the brain works hard to reduce the distress but goes one step forward to make the person feel good by giving positive reinforcements to their biased reasoning.

In this case, my friend was able to present so called "logical reasoning" as to why his ideas were correct and further went to on state that the team were not intelligent enough to appreciate his ideas. This explains why the pendulum moved from anxiety to confidence.

When faced with this kind of situations it is prudent to Relax, breathe easy and come of the situation before you start analyzing the situation to take decisions or form opinions.

Want to pursue your interests? Pre-commit or Meditate!!!

Its been a while since I wrote my last blog... It used to be a habit or some sort of determination to write a blog every week no matter what the priorities were in front of me.. Truth be told,my last blog was in Oct 2011. Its almost an year gone without a single blog. When I sat back in my armchair to think about what did I do to give up this wonderful habit to blog, I was left clueless..The usual excuses( Suspects) were

• Have no time
• Busy with some other worth
• Work Pressure
• running out of topics

Be aware

Silly!!!

This applies to all of us. For me it was about blogging and for some of you it might about your Food diet or Physical exercise. There is one thing that is subliminally common to all these pursuits.All of these require some will power or self control to do these on a continually basis. Will Power or Self Control are functions of  System 2 of the brain. As Daniel Kahneman highlights in his book " Thinking Fast Slow", System 2 of the brain is responsible for reasoning, analytical abilities and self control.  

What does this got to do with my delay in writing a blog? When I started to think about it, I figured out a few clues.. 

Before I get to some possible answers here are some theories. Quoting from Daniel Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow

• System 1 and System are hypothetical separation mega structure of the brain
• System 1 of the brain is an auto responder. It is automatic and Intuitive
• System 2 functions including reasoning, self control, analysis
• Most often we believe that our System 2 is dominant. That is to say we analyze and then respond
• Unfortunately, this is not true. We respond and the rationalize
• System 1 responds and then we attempt to rationalize. Classic example include familiar products are perceived to good.. No wonder advertisers are out to get our eyeball attention
• System 1 can never be switched off. You can't stop it from doing its thing. System 2, on the other hand, is lazy and only becomes active when necessary. Slow, deliberate thinking is hard work. It consumes chemical resources in the brain, and people usually don't like that...

Now back to our problem.. What stopped me from pursuing my interests.. It turns out to be that  my active memory ( RAM) was occupied with a lot of day-day issues which inturn increases fear.Eventually most of the energy was spent on automatic response to handle these fears.This is called a Amygdala Hijack a term coined by Daniel Goleman to describe emotional responses from people which are immediate and overwhelming, and out of measure with the actual stimulus because it has triggered a much more significant emotional threat.!!! During these times, the energy required for fulfilling an intellectual task is depleted. Dan Ariely calls this as  Ego depletion. Will power is a limited resource and in the absence of energy,brain uses it auto response mechanism. In my case it turns out to be that the brain decided to give me a break from pursuing my interest. During these times, i was passively engaged in activities which does not require much of intellectual power.

Map it your pursuits, the same logic applies. What makes it worse is when you are on a guilt trip for not pursuing your interests. As Kelly McGongial states in her a book " Will Power Instinct", If you are hard on yourself for not having willpower the more you are likely to make mistakes again. This probably explains the reason for my procrastination. In some cases, due to ego depletion, people tend to succumb to their temptations like calorie rich food or anything that was programmed as forbidden in System 2.

What is the way out? 

Pre commitments: This is a wonderful  concept was suggested by Dan Ariely. Pre-commitments or Preemptive actions are some of check that we can keep on ourselves. If I want to continue writing my blog, what if I make a pre-commitment to one of my mentors every week on the topic that I am going write.Good possibility that I will strive  to keep up my word,atleast with my mentors :-)

This is certainly a short term solution. If we have to see a change then it needs to happen from within.

Meditation: If the active memory is not constantly battling the day-day fears, then good portion of the energy can be well spent on making the System 2 work. One of the ways to alleviate such fears is to live in the present. To live in the present one needs to widen the awareness to access a situation. Daniel Goleman presents a theory on how meditation increases awareness. Amygdala ( part of the brain) makes rapid judgments about a situation and has a powerful effect on our emotions and behaviour, linked to survival needs. With meditation, the prefrontal cortex, responsible for introspection and planning, has a better control over the signals that it receives from amydala. Individual who meditates regularly has better control on his/her response to a stimuli.. 

With a solid purpose in life and enough energy available in the brain to activate System 2, our pursuits on things that we are passionate about or that which is important for life is no longer a difficult pursuit..

Question unquestioned facts- Generate Insights

Root Cause

Have you heard of this unquestioned fact " Talk about your problems to near and dear and you will feel better". I have accepted this statement with so much faith that I didn't realize the problems that come along with it. What is this all about?

 Lets say your friend has a problem at work or to be specific has a problem with his/her boss. It is so natural for him to talk to  people he trusts. Each time he talks about the event which happened between him and his boss he starts interpreting new things about the event based on your questions and fabricates an answer to justify his position. With this new answer in mind, he walks up to another person and talks about it and based on the other person's question he fabricates a new answer on top of the existing one. Suddenly the problem will loom large in front of him.It will  appear insurmountable and difficult to solve it.

Behind every seemingly large problem there will just be a simple easy to understand root cause. In this case the fight between your friend and his boss could just be a simple EGO issue. The mind complicates it by building events on top of it. The path to find out the root cause is complicated but the root cause will definitely be simple. It takes mature, perseverant and honest  mind to through this complicated process of unearthing the simple fact. Just because the root cause is simple and obvious do not undermine its significance. After all we are simple beings who worked really hard to complicate ourselves.

Marketing is all about travelling a complicated path, trading minds with consumers and generating  insights. Insight is bound to be simple . Just because its simple and obvious we have the tendency to ignore it.. Beware..

Primal Ignorance in Customer Service

Customer Service Attitude

Whether you are in B2B, B2C and any other business model, one of the key things that you check on a periodical basis would be to measure overall customer satisfaction. Many of the tried and tested techniques include surveys, customer contact programs or measure satisfaction scores like Net Promoter score ( NPS). I am sure businesses are working towards getting better satisfaction measurement models.

While much of the effort has been put in to find out how consumer reacts, what gets neglected is the attention that one needs to give to the people/your employees who serve these customers. Regular training, feedback session,process manuals, monitoring are still not enough to create a delight to the customer. Want to check this out?

Walk to customer service team and ask them the reasons for pending customer issues or the reasons for low customer satisfaction score. 8 out of 10 times you will get  a very familiar answer that somebody else is the reason for the current state. The other departments lackadaisical attitude is the single biggest reason for the failure. What you will also hear is more problems. You are sure to be overwhelmed by the end of the meeting. With this team you are bound make incremental progress on customer satisfaction and with great difficulty.

What is missing? " Great attitude". Customer service is best felt when people with great positive attitude  are close to the customers. Some people have it in them and rest get it from the environment or organization culture. The attitude which makes them own customer problems, go to any length and breadth within the organization to solve issues , sets them apart from the rest of the crowd.

The first in customer service is to get people with right attitude. Not getting  right people but attempting to measure customer satisfaction is called primal ignorance.

Ignorance is not bliss at least in this case

Bottle necks are desirable

One of my favorite quotes of Steve Jobs " The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything". So what does it mean to me? " Loathe comfort zone. Get passionately curious ". 

Loathe Comfort Zone

Much has been spoken about about how one's passion leads to making remarkable contributions. What about comfort zone? How does one get out of it? To get out of it, one should be able to realize whether he is in a comfort zone or not?

It's simple... To find out if you are in a comfort zone,look for the following indicators:


1. You are very busy with your day to day activities. Mistaking Activities for accomplishment
2. I am the expert, I know it better and I cannot be questioned
3.You look for activity efficiency over creating new things
4. Nobody questions your decisions and you have a bunch of sycophants  who overwhelmingly approve your decisions
5. Nature of work is supervisory and you spend more time in meetings deliberating pointless processes


These are just some of the indicators of you getting stuck into a comfort zone. The lizard brain in you will reassure that the going is great till you realize that rapid changes will topple the existing set up.


Likewise what are the indicators of moving out of comfort zones... 


1. You are hands on with your job...Feeling of back to basics. Actually you pick up one of your books and start brushing up your basics 
2. Great deal of effort is required to push through your ideas
3.You push your work to everybody and solicit feedback
4.A child like enthusiasm to do work despite facing criticisms
5. When you listen more than talking. Better cognitive abilities.


Moving out of the comfort zone feels like crawling through a bottle neck. You may get pushed, squeezed but you are sure to move to the next stage.


Get uncomfortable with status quo. You will get shaped up well.


Looks like bottlenecks are desirable. 

Effort-Less says Lizard Brain

Excuses by Lizard Brain

Do you know the power of Lizard brain? Or better way to start is to know what a lizard brain is? Lizard Brain (Seth Godin's definition) is the resistance  in the back of our head telling us to back off, be careful, go slow, compromise.. Most of often we do not realize the effects of this resistance.


Lets take some live examples:


Imagine you are going through crash diet regimen.. Barely living on vegetables and fruits with a determination to lose 20 pounds in 20 days.. With great difficulty you manage to cross 5 days and manage to lose 5 pounds. When the going is good,lizard brain nags you to compromise and convinces you to eat a super heavy meal.You succumb to it. This indulgence will not show immediate results ( weight gain) so the lizard brain further encourages you to indulge in a couple of more heavy meal. But all of a sudden, you end up in a guilt trip and start your crash diet again. Much to your disappointment you will notice a weight gain. To make matters worse,the lizard brain will convince you that the heavy meal did not lead to weight gain. On the other hand you might end up thinking that crash diet did not work. 


What the mind fails to realize is that there is a phase lag between efforts and results. You do some work today you will see results tomorrow. It is important for you to realize that you have to do the same effort tomorrow to get results the day after and not to relax...


I am sure you can relate this to your daily work as well. You might be doing some great work. You see results after a phase lag. The lizard brain says " Take it easy". Work less to get the same results.. When you listen to it and do so you might not see the effects of the reduced efforts immediately. The mind thinks all is well. But there will be a point when you will realize that disastrous effects of your lackadaisical attitude.


There is a phase lag between efforts and results. The best way to stay ahead is continue to do good work and reap the benefits.To do so, pay heed to this simple advice. Ask you lizard brain to " Shut up!!".

Management theories by Gandhi

Walk the Talk - Management Theory by Gandhi

On the eve of the 64th Independence Day of India, my heart couldn't resist but think about one of the greatest architects for India's freedom, Mahatma Gandhi. In his book " My experiments with Truth" Gandhi highlighted many of his experiments and struggles. 


Just wanted to take 2 such instances and explain how Gandhi, greatest embodiment of truth and Ahmisa, truly practiced many of today's management theories


Instance 1:  Gandhi realized that people at the bottom of the pyramid were in need of freedom more than anybody. In order to understand  that, Third class travel was the mirror to the plight of Indians. Gandhi's train travel was only in III class..
Managment Theory:Jack Trout & Al Ries in their book Bottom Up Marketing highlight " Your desk is the most dangerous place to watch the world". To know your consumers,go to field and understand their real needs & wants.


Instance 2:Gandhi's first major struggle in the country was stagged on the soil of Champaran district in Bihar in 1917 in connection with indigo plantation.The planters resorted to inhuman and illegal methods in order to get indigo cultivated at the lowest cost. Rajkumar Shuka approached Gandhi to resolve this issue. Gandhi's reaction " I can give no opinion unless I see it myself".  Gandhi described his presence as a genuine searcher of the down-to-earth facts. He along with his friends went to the place of action to collect objective information before they came to a conclusion
Management Theory: Go to the market to seek information and not to seek confirmation of your thoughts. Any preconceived notions could color your thoughts which could adversely affect the inferences you can draw from the market.


 Gandhi lived in strict accordance with Satya and Ahmisa no matter what the situation was.... It is worthwhile  to look at Gandhi's actions at different compelling situations. Am sure we  infer many such management theories that are in vogue..


As management experts say "Walk the Talk"..

Want to buy an innovative gift? Start walking

Life is moving at really fast pace. High powered cars help us travel between places at a much lesser time than before. Access to information is just a click away. Facebook, twitter, gmail, google etc have mad(e) sure that information is no longer scare. One cannot take pride for long about being fast at something.. Someday, somebody,for sure, will catch up. But this blog is not about how to be faster than somebody or something.. On the contrary it is about something that all of us are longing for in this fast paced world.

Walk with joy

Peace.. Rather Inner peace

Think about what happens when a few old friends meet up... After all the fun and laugh, the conversation gets a little philosophical. One of them group is bound to say "we were much more happy when we had less luxury during our childhood days". The talk gets everybody nostalgic. The theme of the conversation would be  focused on peaceful life and the route for that would be " Back to Basics".

One such " Back to Basics" item is our daily walk. A walk down the memory lane, one can recollect that all the daily errands were achieved with no transport...On the contrary , today,even the smallest of errands demands us taking our cars or any form of vehicle. Our kids get picked up right outside our house and dropped just outside school. Call it luxury or laziness..Walk is becoming a thing of the past.

I decided to break this routine and started walking for all my regular errands. It is during these walks that I realized how much I have missed in this busy life. As I started walking, I realized that there are many interesting people,shops and activities in and around my neighborhood. All these years I missed seeing an interesting art gallery,couple of restaurants, gift shops, hardware store, car mechanic to name a  few.Till this realization happened, I have spent many hours travelling for each of these items.. This break from routine in the form of a walk  will give you fresh breath which inturn will give your Inner Peace.

Next time you want to buy an innovative gift for you spouse or friend, starting walking.A word of caution: do not be wired in any form ( mobile, iPods)..

Happy walking.....

Brand positioning - " Be what your are"

We come across many a brands in our day-day life... Each brand attempts to position itself in the mind of the consumer. Jack Trout coined this term positioning...

Brand Positioning - Be what you are...

 But what does it mean to a common man?

When marketers try to position their products they are actually  trying to create an image or personality about the brand.The purpose of positioning is differentiate the brand from competition. Volvo stands for safe cars, Walmart for lowest prices...While the definition is simple, it is certainly an arduous task for the marketers given the fact that the human mind is very complex to decipher their opinions,interests, needs, prejudices.

The intent of this blog is not to detail out the process or the steps taken by the marketers to position their products.. On the other hand, I have a different take on Positioning based on some of the assumptions made by marketers. To explain that , lets go back to the definition... Positioning is the process of creating an image in the mind of the consumer.. It is important to own a position in the mind of consumers that provides differentiation for the brand.

It is at this stage marketers make a big mistake. Marketers tend to look only at the consumers side to come up with their positioning statement so as to appeal to them. But the primal mistake is to  not realize the company's fabric.What is the company all about? Its values systems, employee opinions etc. Why is this important? Marketer cannot afford to create an image about the company in certain direction and have values,  employees opinions in the opposite direction. This mismatch will eventually show up in day-day interaction for the consumers and will eventually lead to dissonance between the image created and the service delivered. For ex: Lets say the marketers have positioned its product as a sophisticated brand keeping in mind the target audience's opinions and needs. On the other hand the employees who act as touch points with consumers are conservative middle class people. Their opinions based on their background will dominate and will show during customer interactions. To avoid this embarrassing situation, its important to take it in account not just the consumers side by the company's basic fabric before finalizing the positioning.

Be what you are in front of a customer is far more easier that the desire to be somebody which you are actually not...

Keep it simple..

What books do you read? Connect the dots

Right from my childhood I considered reading a book and completing it as one of the most difficult tasks in the world. Call it destiny, I was surrounded by avid readers. Somehow I never had the urge to pick up a book and read. Some of my cheap tricks to impress the outside included things like filling my shelf with books, sitting with a new book every day... Cheap tricks failed and I finally came to a conclusion that reading books is not my cup of tea...

But to my surprise, in the last 3 years I have read over 40 books.Little bit of introspection lead me to a good insight about my behavior. The habit of book reading was eluding me because I  couldn't find "My calling" in other words "my interests".

The big turnaround happened through a normal matter of fact incident. I was listening to podcast in which was a specific mention about a book on Marketing through Internet. Am passionate about using Internet for Marketing. This passion led me to buy this book. To my surprise I managed to finish this book in less than 2 weeks. Suddenly I realized my reading list increased to 5 books because I started to note down the references made by author. It is then that I realized that I was embarking on a wonderful journey with no idea of the road ahead....

5 books became 15 books and i started using the amazon application in Linkedin to update my book list.. I got a few people watching my list and started following a few lists. This lead to adding a few more books. I was of the opinion that the books that i buy were random/ eclectic mix.When I sit back and connect the dots, I am able to see a mysterious connection in the kind of books that I have been reading. What started out with Marketing through Internet moved on to Consumer Psychology( Influence). This in turn moved on to macro socio economic ( Economics Epistemics) items which lead to character ethics. When I read about great leaders like Mahatma Gandhi who have great character ethics the underlying message in all their teachings had spiritual inheritance.

Like how all rivers lead to ocean, my book list has eventually lead to spirituality. With great conviction I can now state that most of modern strategies and tactics can trace back their origin to religion or better still to spirituality. Modern marketing guru's like Seth Godin are talking about the importance of honest in business. 

As Swami Vivekannda says " Give me few men and women who are pure and selfless and I shall shake the world. Arise, Awake and Stop not till the Goal is Reached"

Be truthful even in Business

example of an honest restaurant

My inspiration for this blog is a quote by Mahatma Gandhi. His advice to the Indian community in South Africa:  " Be truthful even in Business". Such an apt quote for today's businesses as well given the fact that Truth, trust and honesty are very scarce commodities in this modern civilization.

Lets examine as to why consumers have turned to peer reviews or other customers feedback. In the era of TV industrial complex, it was a fascination for brands to glorify about their products or services with less or no substance through a interruption medium called TV. Advertising and businesses were symbiotic relationships.This explosive mass media approach kind of suspended the disbelief in us which resulted in large scale impulse purchase. With many brands taking the same approach and with huge chasm between product promise to delivery the disbelief was inevitable. Consumers were looking to get actual feedback while businesses were looking to camouflage substandard product capabilities through innovative advertising.

Businesses were convinced that mediocre products,tall promises and great advertising would deliver the goods. All these plans have just began to become obsolete thanks to a disruptive medium called internet. Internet especially social media has done the impossible. Consumers connecting with consumers to seek real opinions than being mislead by the usual sugar quoted brand promises. What does this mean to brands? Is it end of story? Not really.

Its simple. Create remarkable products, provide unique positive experiences for the customer and do business in a truthful manner. Consumers will carry your stories to many consumers which is more powerful than any amount of advertising.If that is a tall ask, even  if you have mediocre products be honest to your customers. New age customers are willing to trade off quality for honesty albeit for a brief time period.

Keep it simple, honest. The revolution starts here...

Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast,Lunch and Dinner

Culture eats Strategy

Last week I happened to read a quote of Peter Drucker - " Culture eats Strategy". I didn't realize full value of this statement till I did some research and encountered a few situations at work.

Strategy is defined as coherent marketing direction. Much of leadership's team time in many company is spent on defining the strategy and the execution plan. One of  the critical components in strategy is competition differentiation. All these concepts were perfectly right in a demand and supply game. When the demand was greater than the supply, we had the manufacturing concepts and when the supply is greater than demand, we have the sales & marketing concepts in vogue. As a consumer, you are surrounded by great marketers who have the skill to convince you  about their products and services.Adding to this is the media power which is related the money power of the company. Worse, in the Internet era, to find an alternate product or services provider is just no big deal. With so much of competition and growing buyer demands, competition wars gets murkier by the day. What do you do as a company to grab the share of consumers wallet?

But what is the consumer looking for?  A scarce Community in today's world - Trust

I am now beginning to understand and believe that business is not just about making great products with distinct competitive advantage. These competitive advantages are like mirage, seemingly real but truly unreal. But the consumer is looking for is great deal of trust. Why is this become so important? In this cut throat world, self centered value systems have peculated deep inside many companies. " I win and not worried about where you stand" is the underlying attitude.Which is why consumers look to negotiate, so that some of the post purchase dissonance can reduce.

On the other hand, if brands were to  build a strong relationship with consumers. Easier said than done. Relationships are built through every interaction with the consumers. every employee should imbibe the value systems of the company and translate it as positive experiences for the consumers. Mind it, this is not strategy. This is nothing but  culture that needs to set in and peculate to all levels in an organization. Trust thus built through these interactions turn out to be positive stories about transformational customers experiences. Positive stories do find a way to reach other customers either through WoM or Social Media.

But where is competition in all this? Its tempting to fortify territories through strategic initiatives but time spending on building a culture within the organization far outweighs it.

Countless stories that we hear about Zappos, South west airlines are not just born out of strategy. The culture within the organization is the pivotal point.

Social Media - Perfect Bounce Board

Social Media bug has bitten our brand ( HiDoctor)as well. Finally we have got our act together on the social Media strategy. This has resulted in establishing our presence in:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/HiDoctor4pharma
Facebook: Since we dont have a minimum of 25 fans yet, we don't have custom URL. But one can search for HiDoctor .We will get there in a few days.
Linkedin: Search for HiDoctor.

Perfect Bounce Board

Setting up these pages in the social networks and linking one with the other is the easiest part in the whole process. Now comes the real test for social media presence. What content to generate and how to engage the audience on a regular basis? While it is a known fact that getting into Social Media is a strategy and not a tactical initiative, reality strikes when you get into the nuts of bolts of implementing the strategy.

We set out to generate content for the social media. But to do so we had to establish a theme and a relationship for our presence and to do so we had to firm up our value proposition and our brand position. We had to do this exercise so that,as a brand, we are consistent and clear with what we intend to collaborate with our audience. Once this is done, getting content and ensuring content proliferation through social network is not an arduous Task.

Take a step back... To establish our social media presence, we have to re-visit our discussions on strategy, brand and value proposition.

To me, it is evident that Social Media presence will be a true bounce board for one's brand/company strategy. What's more, your audience will validate and provide feedback on your strategy.

Informal Learning is preferred - Intranet 2.0

This is in continuation to my previous blog on successful Intranet.One of the most important features of the intranet will be continuous learning module. This is aimed at addressing at the Knowledge deficit that exists within an organization.

Continuous learning can be provided to each associates through robust Course Management System ( CMS/LMS)integrated into their Intranet Personal page. The courses provided to the individual can be based on

• Individual performance & aspirations
• Soft skills
• Organization objectives/Business goals
• Project based information
• Technology up-gradation

to name a few. The individual's performance in the various courses can be integrated into their respective performance appraisal. But this blog is not intended to promote the role of Learning Management System in Intranet. It is more to address the need for a  comprehensive route to address Knowledge management in any organization.

The organization's initiative to training associates is a  formal route

Informal learning

Research states that only 20% of an individual's learning is through formal route. Remaining 80% is through informal routes. Informal routes can be through casual discussion,peer-peer discussion, interaction with experts, access to artifacts, blogs, wikis,forums etc. Better still, informal learning is mainly user initiated based on his/her needs and wants to excel at work.

With workforce of an organization spread in different geographies, it is imperative on the part of the organization to not just provide formal course structures for employee knowledge enhancement but create a platform within the organization which will encourage informal learning. Be it peer -peer discussion or sharing of best practices through audiocast, videocast or wikis/discussion forums. 

In essence, the  new age intranet within an organization should be the ideal platform for informal training for knowledge enhancement.

User Initiated informal learning through an organization wide platform - Learning 2.0 thru Intranet 2.0