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Indian b-school rankings

It's that time of the year when thousands of young Indians appear for the CAT, and a whole lot of other management exams aiming to grab that coveted seat in a top b-school. A few friends who have been appearing for these exams have been asking me for advice on which schools to apply to. So, here's my list of top Indian b-schools you would want to apply to, factoring in placements, faculty, research, industry perception, alumni network, and brand value. I am adding a few brief remarks against each b-school.

Presenting, my personal list in no particular order

IIMA- good across all parameters

IIMB - placements

IIMC - known for being the best finance campus

IIML - good placements, not so strong alumni network due to it being a relatively new school
XLRI - strong alumni network, known for its niche HR program in addition to the regular business management course.

FMS, Delhi - strong placements in BFSI, constrained by the Delhi University tag

MDI - up coming, placements seem good going by reports

SPJIMR - same as above. Still not in the big league.

This is what IMS has to say.

The difference between the top few schools, and the next set of schools is quite huge in terms of industry perception, salaries etc. Thus, if one is a serious contender (by which I mean someone who has been preparing seriously, or has been consistently doing well in all those simulated CAT tests) and doesn't make it to these schools, one may want to consider giving the GMAT and applying abroad. For someone with a lot of work experience, ISB is turning out to be a good option with it's flagship 1 year program.

Work experience versus freshers
Some years back, most b-schools took in a large number of freshers. However, the trend over the last few years has tilted in favour of people with work ex. The primary reason for this could be an increase in the number of work ex applicants, typically those with a few years in an IT company. I do not believe there is any other reason for this trend. So, if you are a fresher who has a call from an IIM, the probability of you getting through depends entirely on your performance in the selection process. I do not think you gain any points or lose any because of your lack of work ex.

Choosing a specialization
Some applicants start comparing b-schools based on specializations that they are interested in. In my view, unless you have had some sort of managerial experience, there is not much value in this exercise. Most people develop an inclination towards a specialization after they join a b-school. In my own case, I started off being very interested in marketing, and then by the end of it all had developed a stronger interest in Strategy and Organizational Behaviour.

Placements
With so much hype surrounding placements at the top b-schools, it is easy to get carried away. However, it is important to remember that the few jobs that get talked about in these news reports are just that - few. The majority of the batch does not walk away with a $200,000 salary. So keep your expectations realistic.

Academic Pressure
Initially, there is a certain amount of academic pressure at a b-school. It may appear quite unnatural compared to one's graduation degree. However, with time, one gets used to it, and learns to beat the system, and manage one's time efficiently. By the second year, life is a lot more relaxed, and one actually feels a bit bored when there is not much to do.

GD, PI preparation
In the group discussion, the main thing that one needs to focus on is 'contribution'. Nothing else matters. It does not matter whether you speak first or last. If you contribute positively to the discussion, you have done half the job. How does one contribute? There are two ways of contributing.
1. Contribute with content: This is a simple way of contributing. You bring in facts, personal experience etc. to make the discussion more fruitful. Even better than bringing in facts, is to bring in unique ideas or perspectives. This will make you stand out in the mind of the evaluator.
2. Contribute by managing the discussion: Here, you play the role of a coordinator, who directs the discussion, or atleast nudges it in a logical direction. You demonstrate skills like summarizing, logical reasoning, data consolidation and presentation etc. In addition to this you can also demonstrate critical skills such as interpersonal skills, team player skills (occassionally sacrificing your point of view for the sake of consensus) , and leadership skills.

The personal interview is your play ground to showcase your uniqueness as a candidate. Remember that you are contending with about 10 people for every seat on offer. You need to give solid, tangible reasons for the panel to pick you over the others. The interview, also offers you a fantastic opportunity to control the discussion, by leading it to your comfort areas. For instance, if you want to showcase your extra curricular accomplishments, grab the first opportunity that presents itself during the interview to steer the conversation towards extra curriculars. Remember, the interview is more of a conversation, than a quiz. You are free to speak beyond the scope of the question asked, or even initiate a discussion as and when such an opportunity presents itself. This of course does not mean that you steer every question towards your comfort zones. The key is to pick and choose.
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Finally, it seems to a be a bit of a tragedy, that over 2 lakh applicants appear for CAT for just over 1500 seats. With so much demand, I would estimate that we would need atleast 20,000 high quality seats in the top b-schools each year to satisfy the demand of both of the students, as well as the industry which is facing a shortage of quality management talent in the market.

I hope this post helps people make an informed choice. If there are specific areas that you would like to discuss in more detail, do mail me at mohit[dot]kishore[at]gmail or leave a comment.

Red!

Fantastic branding

A great example of how brands and get associated with causes.

Also visit, Blog Red.

"(RED) was created by Bono and Bobby Shriver, Chairman of DATA, to raise awareness and money for The Global Fund by teaming up with the world's most iconic brands to produce (PRODUCT) RED-branded products. A percentage of each (PRODUCT) RED product sold is given to The Global Fund. The money helps women and children with HIV/AIDS in Africa."

Live search

Though I'm an avid user of Google's portfolio of web-based products, I'm always on the lookout for non-Google applications that can give the search giant from Mountain View a run for it's money. Live search from Microsoft seems to be a step in that direction.

The interface is simple, the search results are visually elegant, the quality of results are good, and it opens up pretty fast too.

Try Live Search

Worldspace, are you listening?

I have been watching Worldspace's brand building initiatives over the last few months with some interest. First was the tie up with A.R. Rahman as brand ambassador. That was a fantastic move. Clearly Worldspace and A.R. Rahman are two brands that have a number of common characteristics - music, innovation, generation next, international etc. The tag line - 'There's so much to hear.' - also hit a home run. I expect that things should be finally looking up for Worldspace as a brand. It has probably finally made a move from the 'Awareness' stage to the 'Consideration Set' stage. However, there are some sore points that remain.

Product Placement in Lage Raho Munnabhai
This was a great move. Good product placements are inevitably those that are tied in closely to the film's script, unlike those that are in your face for no reason (Eg. Elf in Viruddh). The Worldspace guys got that much right. However, they showed actors in the movie listening to Worldspace 'on the move', in taxis, using receivers worn around the neck(!) etc. Of course, all this is not possible with a real Worldspace receiver, which needs to be stationary and aligned in a certain direction at all times. In my view this is a serious mistake. One of the biggest negative points about the product is that it is not portable. Now, covering up this exact point is not going to help. You don't want customers landing up at the retail shop, armed with their credit cards and then discovering this critical piece of information.

Subscription Fees
The second problem with Worldspace is the fact that it charges a subscription fees. I expect this to be the biggest roadblock in the way for success. When all other competing music offerings in the market - FM radio, AM radio, MP3 music(!), MTV - are free, why would a customer want to pay an annual fee to listen to music on a Worldspace. MP3 music is of a comparable quality as Worldspace, and happens to be portable too, in addition to being free. If ICICI bank suddenly comes up with a paid credit card in this era of free cards, I would consider it only if it had a USP that no other alternative provides. Worldspace has no such USP (digital quality music? that's a commodity. 40 channels? Maybe. Niche channels? Yes, but I can get the same music on mp3, I-tunes, Yahoo Launch Cast... ). With this being the case there is no choice but to be free. There are other ways to bring in revenue, such as advertising, up-selling receivers to existing customers etc.

The Iridium Story
Many years back, Motorola launched Iridium, which was supposed to be this satellite phone that you could use anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, the cellular phone wave killed it (of course there were other factors too). I suspect that Worldspace too may be the wrong technology coming into the market at the wrong time. Gone are the days when customers would be in awe of 'digital cd-quality music'.

The music devotee
So, could it be that Worldspace does not care about common customers like you and me? Are they going for a very niche target group that has specialized tastes in music, and would be willing to pay for it? If that were the case, why are they going for mass market promotions like the Lage Raho Munnabhai example? Niche brands are successful when they stand for only one thing to one group of customers, not when they stand for everything under the sun. If you want to stand for everything, be a mass market brand.

What I would do
If I were the marketing manager at Worldspace, I would firstly scrap the subscription fees. It is a major nuisance factor, and a mental roadblock for any customer to seriously consider the product. Secondly, I would storm the market with receivers (probably priced a little more than what they are priced right now, so that the subcription fee can be recovered) and ensure that there is a big base of users in the first place. Once a critical mass of users is in place, I would then considering selling 'add-on' niche channels at a price. Alternatively, I would launch a plain vanilla free suite of channels, and let users add on a bouquet of other channels. It is important that the customer experience the product in the basic form first, before you do an up-sell. Worldspace seems to be entering the market directly with an up-sell (offering all channels to all people at fixed, and exorbitant subscription fee).

Yes, there's so much to hear. Worldspace, are you listening?

Summer Placements @ XLRI Jamshedpur

Great show!

Free Riding and Social Loafing [featured in The Hindu Business Line]

Today's Hindu Business Line carries the following article by me.

Link to the article: Free Riding and Social Loafing. Full text follows:

Free riding is a problem that is commonly found in almost all organisational contexts. With most tasks being accomplished by teams, it is quite common for a few members to slack off and not contribute to the team's cause, and yet not have the results suffer. As an economic phenomenon free riding has been studied for a long time.

A simple definition of a free rider is an agent who does not contribute his fair share to the cost of production of a resource, but receives an equal share of the benefits.

A simple example of this is taxation. Monies collected through taxes are deployed in various projects such as improving infrastructure, healthcare and so on.

Yet, a lot of people get away with paying no tax and still continue to reap the benefits of using those resources. The free riding problem is actually an `n-player' version of the famous `prisoner's dilemma', where `n' is greater than two. Where only two players are playing, non-fulfilment of one player's contribution would amount to the project being abandoned. However, when `n' is greater than two, it is possible for some players to not contribute, while hoping that others do.

Another interesting example of the free riding problem is the recent reservation protests in India.

Most protestors felt that while the general category of students would have to work really hard for the coveted few seats in the premier institutions, the reserved category would have it much easier without contributing enough (in terms of effort). Of course, those in favour of reservation could argue that the reserved categories have actually made up for this through the socio-economic suffering and discrimination they have faced.

Social Loafing
Related to the concept of free riding is that of social loafing. Social loafing refers to a situation where an individual holds back his contribution because he perceives that he would not be getting a fair share of the rewards in the eventuality of success, nor would he be blamed for failure. In an experiment by French engineer Maximilian Ringelmann, involving a group of people tugging on a rope, it has been seen that as the number of people increases, the total force exerted also increases, but the average force per person is seen to diminish.

The key difference between free riding and social loafing is that a free rider does not contribute to the cause at all, since his contribution is not essential for success, whereas a social loafer merely reduces his effort fully knowing that it would be impossible for an external observer to determine the same.

Dealing with free riding and social loafing
The Ringelmann experiment suggests that the size of the group may have some answers to offer us. A good manager may need to precisely identify the number of people it would require to successfully accomplish a task. Second, social loafing is seen in situations where it is impossible to identify individual contribution.

Thus, a good way to prevent it may be to clearly define the individual's role in the group task. Third, it is seen that social loafing does not present a major problem in cohesive teams (the reason being that team members value their affiliation with the group more than any benefits associated with social loafing). Thus, the choice of specific team members for a task may also help in minimising social loafing.

Task significance may also have a role to play in increasing motivation levels to perform. Task significance refers to the relevance of the task to the immediate organisation, group, society or the world at large.

One suspects that social loafing may be a less common phenomenon in an NGO, compared to other types of organisations.

Reward systems
Reward systems such as stock options and performance bonuses too increase the cost of not contributing, as non-contribution would directly lead to reduced benefits for the individual team member. Thus, each team member would at least contribute in his own self interest.

This is, in fact, not unlike Adam Smith's theory of the `invisible hand' of the economy, where each individual agent does whatever is in his self interest, and this somehow leads to a beneficial collective result, which is quite different from what the individual expects. Both free riding and social loafing are phenomena that are seen in all kinds of organisations — companies, families, communities, neighbourhoods, governments and so on. It is thus not surprising to find Glaucon arguing (many centuries ago ) in Plato's Republic that an individual need not obey the law in situations where he can escape the consequent sanctions!

(The writer, an alumnus of XLRI, is working with a multinational financial services company)

The networked marketplace [featured in The Hindu Business Line]

Today's Hindu Business Line carries the following article written by me. Link to the article on the Business Line website: The networked marketplace

Full text of the article follows:

"A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter — and getting smarter faster than most companies." — The Cluetrain Manifesto

The implications are clear. Modern organisations need to be more nimble, more clued into what is happening in the external world — in the real world. They need to `talk' to their customers, not `talk down' to their customers through flashy corporate ads. They need to project a voice that is authentic and not sugar coated in marketing spiel. Companies need to start appearing genuine, human, humane and vulnerable if need be. This is the message of The Cluetrain Manifesto, a pathbreaking book, which in the true spirit of the Internet is available freely on the Web.

Very few companies, if any, have woken up to the reality of the networked world. So, one sees companies that do the market research, decide the product and brand attributes, launch the product and wonder what went wrong. What is likely to have gone wrong is that your customers have been talking to each other and spreading the `word' faster than your `advertisements'. Be it film reviews, music reviews, product and gadget reviews, people are talking, and talking like never before. Products get trashed before the first ad comes out.

Here is an insight that organisations need to pay attention to: Customers trust human voices. This explains why nothing beats word-of-mouth publicity, and today the biggest word of mouth movement is happening on the Internet.

Building Relationships

After all, every purchase made by a customer is a new relationship created with the company whose product the customer has bought. When I receive my monthly phone bill, I notice that it bears a `relationship code'. Yet companies do little to nurture a customer relationship the way a human relationship is nurtured. Strong brands like Google actively engage their customer in the `conversation'. The Google Blog for instance, is a place where customers can see what the guys at Google are up to . It's about time brick-and-mortar companies too embrace this new form of conversation. And as the manifesto says, "Because they are networked, smart markets are able to renegotiate relationships with blinding speed."

Employees of organisations are also part of this new form of conversation. People are actively and virtually networking with each other to find out more about each other's organisations. Employer brands are being created and destroyed in this brand new market place as fast as thought and the strokes of a keyboard. Secondly, markets too want to talk to employees. They want the inside track on what really goes into their products. Companies need to let go and let this conversation happen freely. Robert Scoble (Microsoft' erstwhile star blogger) did more to humanise Microsoft than any ad campaign ever would have.

The way forward

As I see it, the way forward would be for companies to view `advertising' as one of the ways of talking to customers, and not the only way. All kinds of organisations need to embrace the power of the Internet as the new global market place where brands will be created and destroyed — where your multi-crore ad spend will be thrown into the bin when your customers rant about your call centre service on their blogs. The future is a world where mere brand logos and taglines wont suffice. It will be a place where brand voice (how your brand talks to your customers) will assume more significance. Brands would need to be `humble' and not mighty; brands will have to understand, rather than be understood; brands will have to listen and not talk.

It's a brand new era that is unfolding (and, indeed has been unfolding over the last few years). Blogs, social networking, Web 2.0 and so on are all going to fundamentally realign the way society is structured, and people will be netizens of the marketplace first and then citizens. The future looks exciting, and archaic institutions will need to embrace this change for their own good.

Machiavelli on Leadership

"Moreover, men are less careful how they offend him who makes himself loved than him who makes himself feared. For love is held by the tie of obligation, which, because men are a sorry breed, is broken on every whisper of private interest; but fear is bound by the apprehension of punishment which never relaxes."

From Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince

Seems to be a reference to Coercive power, which is one of the 4 sources of individual power.

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Legitimate power: From holding a formal position. Others comply because they accept the legitimacy of the position of the power holder.
Reward power: Target complies in order to obtain rewards controlled by the agent.
Coercive Power: Compliance is to avoid punishments controlled by the agent.
Expert Power: Based on a person’s expertise, competence, and information in a certain area.
Referent Power: The target person comply because they respect and like the power holder (agent).

Lessons in Positioning - Nokia n-Series Vs Reliance Infocomm

My favourite ad on television these days is the Nokia n-series ad. I cannot think of any other ad that communicates to it's target segment as precisely (like a hot knife through butter, if I may use a Sidhuism) as this one. The film opens to the shot of a guy removing rings pierced on his face, and moves on to a guy with long hair, who gets a haircut (and I presume a new Nokia n-series phone), then we move on to a guy who trades in his old tattered jeans for a new one, and similar such life situations where people make that transition from being young and rebellious, to older more mature selves. The fantastic jingle begins with 'Zindagi ki nayi mod pe, aa gaye aaj hum' - which roughly translates to -Today, we have come to a new turn in our lives. The positioning is crystal clear - the n-Series is not your first phone, it's your second phone, the one you buy when you move up in life, the one you buy when you have had enough of living your rebellious college bum life, and move on to greater things (like employment, your first car etc).The whole ad just focusses on positioning and customer segmentation (by stage of life) - no rubbish about the phone's features or the prices. Sweet.


Check out the clip below

On the other hand, we have the new and youthful 'Reliance Infocomm', which has absolutely gone berserk with colours. Their new ad celebrates 2.5 million customers (and growing). However, the positioning goes haywire. The ad features these young twenty-somethings humming the new Reliance signature tune, while facts about the company appear to their right (in colours that I can only call vulgar). The average Reliance customer is NOT trying to make a statement about his cool quotient through his brand choice. It is more likely that he is a cost conscious person who wants a basic connection.

What seems to have happened is that Anil Ambani has decided that all his brands will be 'youthful', in stark contrast to brother Mukesh's staid brands. So, suddenly Reliance Infocomm (which had, and continues to have no brand attributes associated with it except cheap) finds itself in a desperate situation trying to be young and hep, instead of being itself - a lesson that is as important for a brand as it is for us mortals.

The analytical genius of Times of India

This article (titled, Want salary hike, join financial sector) on increase in salaries in the financial sector points out:

"India Bulls was amongst the highest payers in financial sector with a 262.44 per cent increase in their staff cost. Firms like Geojit Financials, IL&FS and CRISIL also registered 82 to 85 per cent rise in their staff expenditures."

Thus TOI would have us believe that a 262% increase in staff costs, corresponds to a 262% increase in salary, thereby making Indiabulls the highest payer in the financial sector. Wow. Now, if Indiabulls doesn't hire you, I suggest you head to Balaji Telefilms , where again the staff costs went up by 251%. Needless to say, TOI would like us to believe that this means that salaries went up by 251%.

Do we need to point out that staff costs go up when you hire more people (both Indiabulls and Balaji being growing companies), and not necessarily because you are paying your people more.

"The salaries rose by over 251 per cent in Balaji Telefilms and the drop in the profits of firms like Cinevistaas, UTV, Zee Telefilms, Mid Day Multimedia and TV Today can be partly attributed to the increasing staff costs, the release added."

I can see the young journalist writing this piece as it was originally meant to be - one about salary costs going up and affecting bottom lines. But, why would an ordinary reader of TOI be interested in something like that? He would be interested if you told him that salaries (particularly his own) are going up. Now, with that marketing insight in place, all you need is to substitute the phrase 'staff cost' with 'salary' in a few places in the article, and you have a story about salaries - which can then be given a juicy title - Want salary hike, join financial sector. Subsequently, this story can be put up right in the front page of the website, where readers will keep clicking, generating more revenues for TOI (Cost per ad impression).

MBAs prepare people to manage nothing

Or so says Henry Mintzberg .

To some extent it is true, because most MBA courses focus only on functional areas, and not on true people management or leadership. An ideal MBA course should probably focus on business concepts in the first year, and pure practical management and leadership in the second (possibly through social projects, live consulting projects, startup incubation etc.), culminating with placements.

I suppose one of the main reasons why IIMs, XLRI etc produce successful business leaders could be that the input raw material itself represents the topmost performers on the entrance tests with 10s of thousands of candidates, a group of people who I suspect would succeed anyway.

Carnival of the capitalists

The lastest Carnival of the capitalists, featuring great posts from the week from business and economics blogs is out. Incidentally, this week's edition happens to feature Slow Leadership, a blog I recently wrote about.

Downtoearth.org.in - a new kind of cola war

If it wasn't enough that softdrink makers use up precious reserves of ground water (thereby depriving farmers of the same) and spend very little on it, they now wish to have no standards to be set for pesticides in soft drinks. They contend that since vegetables, milk etc already contain pesticide, what harm can a little more of it do?

Three years after releasing the findings on pesticide content in softdrinks, the CSE continues its fight.

Read this, from downtoearth.co.in : The street fight
And read this from The Frontline: Thirst for Profit

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Update: Since this post is attracting more comments, thought I should add some more views on the way the issue is being handled by the cola companies. They seem to have realized that the best way to react to any controversy in India (be it terrorism, flooding in Mumbai etc) is to just keep quiet, and hope that the issue dies a natural death in our collective consciousness.

Secondly, this is also an example of how companies view customers as 'target segments', (who can be fooled into buying a product, leading to increased revenues) instead of actual people. What I would like to see instead is an 'explanation', not a yogic meditative silence on the issue. If you believe that the pesticide content in your product is at acceptable levels, tell us why you think the CSE is wrong, and don't put your US lobbies into overtime duty by threatening that this issue could affect FDI prospects in India.

Thirdly, the argument that there should be standards for inputs in the product (water, sugar etc), but not the final product is illogical. Consumers drink the final product, and not the inputs whatever their level of purity may be. I have noticed pani puri sellers who put up little signboards that say 'Only Aquafina water used for pani puris here'. Surely, we expect better from a multi-billion dollar MNC.

And finally, I am sure other industries too use up ground water. But lets have answers from the soft drink makers first, shall we? I suppose steel and paper contribute in some manner to nation building, whereas softdrinks just corrode teeth, and make people fat. Mangola (Pepsi's mango drink) for instance, contains about 15 grams of sugar per 500 ml, and if I am not mistaken, the dietary requirement of sugar would be about 12 grams for an entire day. (I could be wrong about this last bit though.)

And yes, in case you did not read the Frontline article at the top of this post, do so now. Click here.

Leadership vs Management

I have always believed that leaders and managers are two different kinds of people. This article, distinguishes between leaders and managers quite well.

Leaders conceive and initiate strategies that create and sustaincompetitive differentiation and advantage. They continuously pursue and evaluate innovations that may lead to increased productivity, new business opportunities and markets, and new or expanded competitive advantage and differentiation. They direct and influence corporate activities and behaviors to develop an environment and processes that support and sustain these strategies

Managers implement strategies in day-to-day operations. They establish processes and systems, create business rules and operating procedures, and monitor performance to maximize the efficient production of the company's products and services. They have the frontline responsibility for ensuring efficient and appropriate use of company resources, including equipment, employees and capital.

Thus, in summary it appears that leaders think, and managers implement. Now, here is my insight:

Most orgnanizations actually reward good managers. Good managers, over a period of time tend to occupy leadership roles. Is this necessarily good? The skill sets that are required from a manager seem to differ from what a leader requires. A manager is likely to be one who is good at delivering results, planning, organizing, people skills, data analysis etc. A leader on the other hand would need to begood at analyzing the environment, predicting trends, understanding human potential (of his team), influencing people and so forth. Plato believed that philosophers would probably make good kings. In the same vein, it appears that a good leader would be one who is an evolved creature, who can get away from the mundane operational issues, and look far ahead into the future.

Now, if this hypothesis is true, shouldn't organizations look for different kinds of people to occupy these two kinds of roles. In other words, I would like to see organizations look at creating two kinds of talent pipelines - a management pipeline, and a leadership pipeline, and not mix up the two. The management pipeline would consist of the left-brainers, the people who know what needs to be done to get the job done - the analytical people, who are good at making plans, roadmaps etc. The leadership pipeline would consist of the people with softer skills - creativity, intuition, vision, good values, a sense of justice, fairness etc. A leader is almost like a lighthouse, that creates paths, while good managers are probably like sailors who know where to go thanks to the lighthouse, but need to use their own talents to 'get there'.

Needless to say, this classification may make the 'leaders' appear more glamourous, but that is the case anyway in most modern organizational hierarchies. I however believe, that both skills are equally valuable - without good management, ideas would just remain ideas.

The new and improved 'Management by Matrices'

As you can see, this blog has just made the leap of faith, from being a drab old blog (in terms of look, not content!), to a sleek, sexy branded look. Many thanks to Joshua 'design' Karthik for that.

I recently discovered, that a few quality blogs (like this one), find this blog's content worthwhile to list it in their favourites. That was motivation enough for me to go for a more branded look, in addition to trying and maintaining a healthy posting frequency. Now, if only I actively 'promoted' this blog, I suppose more traffic would come in. However, I tend to be a little more traditional in my views as far as promotion is concerned. I would prefer my readers to do the promotion if they like my stuff, rather than do it myself. Yes, I seem to be disregarding, an important 'P' of marketing. Hmm..who knows, I may just decide to turn immodest!!

Watch this space for more...

Slow Leadership

I thought I was the only one who did not support the modern management style of 12 hour working days, and break neck speed decision making. Turns out there is a dedicated blog on this, that advocates a form of leadership that they term 'Slow Leadership'. This is a link to their first archive page.

The eight key principles of Slow Leadership:

1. Right Tempo
2. Right Attention
3. Right Balance
4. Right Perspective
5. Right Direction
6. Right Relationships
7. Right Enjoyment
8. Right Gratitude

Reminds me of Stephen Covey's approach, that tends to focus more on the basic human side to leadership, and not the superficial jargon laden one. The move to the 'basics' has been an ongoing management trend that I have observed. Business schools too have realized that Organizational Behavior is probably a more important leadership tool than say, Financial Management. We seem to live in a world that admires speed more than anything else. There is an acute sense of there not being enough time to do anything, which stems from an equally acute desire to do everything at once.

In such a fast paced environment, we need to re-look at the people side to enterprise. We need to understand that organizations exist to serve not just customers, but also employees. Slow Leadership seems to advocate this deliberate slowing down. Human beings need to reflect, as much as they love to act. Modern organizations tend to focus more on action, and allow little time for reflection. In this quest for bigger, better and faster, are we becoming better people, or are we becoming 'resources', a term often used by HR managers to refer to people ?

Smaller cell phones please...

I've been looking at the trend of mobile phones growing in size with amusement. I thought the logical way to go would be have smaller and smaller phones, till you had one that fit into your ear (or implanted into your brain!). On the contrary, mobile phone makers are trying hard to fit in every possible function into the device from camera's to FM radios to e-mail clients. As a result, the end product is a lot more bulky than a purely functional phone. A better way to do things would be to make smaller phones that do the basics, which have lighter batteries that last longer, which radiate less heat, which probably integrate voice with video and which finally make the 'talking to people' experience better.

It's about time somebody did to mobile phones what Apple did with the i-Pod - create a super simplified phone that can be used for only one thing - making calls. I mean, who uses a mobile phone for any serious photography??

Google versus Microsoft, and the Henry Ford trap

Google and Microsoft differ fundamentally in their views on Office applications. While Google is all for having the application residing on a server, with the user accessing and using it through a thin client (browser), Microsoft believes in the traditional notion of having the application reside on your hard disk. [read about Google Spreadsheet]

In the medium term, with bandwidth being an issue, apart from the fact that there is only so much you can do inside a browser, I expect Microsoft to win the Office battle. In the long run too, with cheap hard disk space and cheap processors, I do not see much benefit in a browser based Office suite. One benefit that I forsee is that collaborative editing (example, Writely) may really take off (people in remote locations editing the same document over the Internet), but I am sure the guys at Microsoft will find a way to include collaborative editing within Office.

Is Google falling into the Ford trap ('People can have the Model T in any color - so long as it's black.') with it's insistence on developing applications that reside in the browser? Time will tell, but my hunch is yes.

Reward loyalty or performance?

All organizations reward members for loyalty. I am wondering whether this is the right strategy, particularly when loyalty is not accompanied by performance. Is retention such a high priority that organizations would like to keep people (even bad ones) at any expense? The answer may lie to a small extent in the realm of emotions. An employee who has stuck around for long with a company is likely to have a strong sense of affiliation to it, and is likely to serve the organization favourably in his decision making and performance (even if it isn't peak performance). It probably pays to have such people with you, rather than those who crib at every opportunity, and may jump ship any day. Secondly, and more importantly, rewarding loyal employees may also help to serve as a signal to good performers that hints at what their own future might be like. The question here is whether the signal may actually fail, if good performers begin to think that loyalty assumes precedence over performance.

My personal view on this is that only performance must be rewarded. Rewarding loyalty, purely as a symbolic measure is just going to be that - symbolic - and not greatly beneficial. Moreoever, rewarding performance is likely to increase loyalty of good performers, thereby leading to a virtuous cycle. Productivity in goverment offices gives us a hint of what happens in organizations that only look at loyalty at the expense of performance.

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Nirav, points out an interesting example of a reward system that combines loyalty and performance - stock options! You get them only if you stick around, and you reap the benefits only if your company does well (which indirectly means that you have to contribute to the cause).

The Stock market - Could Mutual Funds support the market in some distant time in the future?

I'm no stock market expert, but look what Mutual Funds were upto during the recent (and indeed ongoing) Sensex 'correction', and all the bloodshed that followed. This could be an indication that in the long run, MF's and retail investors could actually support the market.

I am also convinced that behavioural economists probably do better at the stock market than those who follow scientific methods such as 'top down' or 'bottom up' stock picking. But then, I am no expert!

Source: Frontline's cover story

Servant Leadership - another fad

The concept of Servant-Leadership was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf (1904-1990) in his essay The Servant as Leader.

Servant leadership is a form of leadership in which the leader desires to 'serve' first, and then assumes a leadership role by conscious choice. Greenleaf recommends that the simple mantra is to just 'serve' others in whatever situation you are faced with. Followers, while being served, become 'healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants themselves'.

The concept seems to boil down to "selfless service", not unlike what Indian philosophical texts have been recommending for thousands of years now! To me the whole concept of 'Servant leadership' seems more like a management fad than anything else. It seems to be a fresh articulation of leadership tenets that have existed for long. In fact most business books fall under this cateogory, possibly because modern managers don't read enough, and need to be spoon fed with easy to remember concepts in the form of 'The One Minute Manager', 'Principle Centred Leadership' and other such 'for dummies' books.

Signaling theory

An interesting post from a Fazeer's blog on economics, which I have been frequenting of late.

Signaling Theory…or why the hardest bit is getting past the secretary

Published in The Hindu Business Line

Today, The Hindu Business Line (a leading mainstream business daily in India) carries an article written by me on decision making in groups. The article appears in page 10 of the main sheet.

Link to the article: Why groups make bad decisions

You can send me feedback at mohit[dot]kishore[at]gmail[dot]com.

Purpose before profit

I have earlier written on mission and vision statements here.

Now, read a similar post from Talentism that talks more about the importance of a clear 'purpose' for every business. Purpose before Profit.

Project Manager Leaves Suicide Powerpoint Presentation

Over time, managers tend to think in the form of Powerpoint presentations, bargain with shopkeepers keeping concepts like opportunity costs in mind, and use 2x2 matrices in their personal lives.

That eternally funny 'news' source - The Onion has this hilarious "story": Link

Project manager Ron Butler left behind a 48-slide PowerPoint presentation explaining his tragic decision to commit suicide, coworkers reported Tuesday. "When I first heard that Ron had swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills, I was shocked," said Hector Benitez, Butler's friend and coworker at Williams+Kennedy Marketing Consultants. "But after the team went through Ron's final PowerPoint presentation, I had a solid working knowledge of the pain he was feeling, his attempts to cope, and the reasons for his ultimate decision." "I just wish he would've shot me an e-mail asking for help," Benitez added.

The importance of Mission/ Vision Statements

I don't know why companies do not give enough importance to their vision and mission statements. As organizations grow larger and larger, it is only the top management that has any clue about why the business exists in the first place. Employees lower down the hierarchy are unable to see the grand pattern in their mundane day to day activities. When employees find that the organization's goals are not in sync with their own personal goals (or when they have no clue about what the organizations's goals are) they start looking out for other jobs. People like to, and should, be part of causes which are larger than themselves. The employees at Google, are likely to strongly believe that what they do on a day to day basis will revolutionalize the way people view computing and technology. Check this link, to gain an insight into Google's corporate philosophy.

Vision statements and mission statements convey in a few words, what it is that the organization exists in the world for. Their brevity enables stakeholders to easily remember, imbibe and apply the tenets of the founding fathers of the organization. It also tells you in a few words whether or not an organization is for you or not. If a company's mission statement was - "To be the most ruthless widget manufacturer with the supreme goal of wiping out competition" - would you join it? Of course, I have to admit that most vision/ mission statements are really sugar coated and sound glorious. That is only because the people who are crafting them do not think the exercise will add any value to their organizations. They think it's more of a PR exercise for the benefit of the outside world.

If companies pay closer attention to the vision/mission statement, and tie organizational objectives to it, evaluate every step they take in terms of whether or not it will help them achive their mission, employees would be much happier. At least, they would have a clue about what the hell is going on, instead of just selling more of whatever it is that they sell.

Incidentally, the Balance Scorecard is one such approach where strategy flows from the organization's vision and is translated into four perspectives - financial, internal, customer and organizational development. It is inherently a good concept, and it probably works because most organizations rarely have a right brained vision/mission. They usually have a very quantified, market related definition of why they exist. With a left brained mission like "being number one in the market", a Balance Scorecard becomes like a simple execution roadmap for the same. It lacks that one key magic element - "passion".

Needless to say, just having a great mission/vision statment is only the first step. The next step is of course execution! This is done through rewarding employees who actively demonstrate the values of the company in their day to day dealings with other people.

Of course the job doesn't just end with Vision / Mission Statements. These statements must also flow in the values, which in turn flows into actual behaviours and organizational culture.

Read this new post for more on this topic.

Also check this post on Netflix's culture and values.

Calling for leaders who are geeks

Why business needs more geeks. Great post on why we need geeks in business too, and not just technology. I am reminded of the Apple ad that went "..because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.."

In that sense, the greatest leaders in the world - Gandhi, Mandela etc - have all had a geekish streak to them. They were not scared to try out new things and think unconventionally. Gandhi's non-violent struggle represents just the kind of stubborn idea that a geek can hold on to till he proves that it works. Gandhi's Dandi March was also a disruptive innovation. It was almost cinematic in its conceptualzation, the idea of thousands of Indians marching to Dandi to protest against the British salt tax.

On April 6th, Gandhi raised a lump of mud and salt (some say just a pinch, some say just a grain) and declared, "With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire." He then boiled it in seawater to make the commodity which no Indian could legally produce—salt. [Wikipedia]

The world progresses through such unconventional people, who take tough stands.Similar to technology geeks, leader geeks also bring in disruptive innovations to the world. However, their innovations lie more in the space of politics and people management. When Mangal Pandey sparked off the Revolt of 1857, he did not do it because he had some grand notions of freedom for mankind. He started on a rather minor issue (that of the cartridges in their guns having pig fat on them), and took a strong and unconventional position on it.

I think geeks in every sphere must be actively encouraged, instead of being treated like outcasts. A touch of the eccentric is what leads to innovations that are later termed great.

Idea sharing in organizations

Co-workers hoard ideas

Not surprising, since most organizations have a normal distribution oriented approach to performance measurement. In any normal distribution oriented place, people begin to think that the only way in which they can get ahead is at the expense of other people. Clearly, this is not a good environment for idea sharing.

I had read a book by Jerry Harvey called How Come Every Time I Get Stabbed in the Back My Fingerprints Are on the Knife? : And Other Meditations on Management, in which he talks about how he encourages his class to cheat on exams, therby ensuring that the quantity of 'good work' relative to bad work goes up. People inherently want to help each other, but in some environments (such as classrooms), this is referred to as cheating. Harvey turns this whole notion upside down. The following link gives a gist of Harvey's ideas.

How cheating helps build good teams...

The arts of impression management

Goffman, in his seminal book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, proposes a dramaturgical perspective on impression management. He uses the metaphor of theatre to describe how people play different roles in different situations to create a desired impression.

However, such performances are often disrupted intentionally or unintentionally through unmeant gestures, inopportune intrusions, faux pas, and scenes.

The arts of impression management

Prospect Theory

Although, I had read about this theory some time back, it has suddenly captured my interest again. The Prospect Theory came out of the work of two psychologists - Kahneman and Tversky - to explain why people make decisions that conflict with the Expected Utility Theory. To put it in simpler terms, the theory tries to explain why people behave irrationally in the face of choices.

The expected utility hypothesis is the hypothesis that the utility of an agent facing uncertainty is calculated by considering utility in each possible state and constructing a weighted average. The weights are the agent's estimate of the probability of each state.

The crux of the prospect theory is this: We have an irrational tendency to be less willing to gamble with profits than with losses. This means selling quickly when we earn profits but not selling if we are running losses. [Tvede 1999]. This can be represented by a value function as shown on the right. As shown, losses hurt more than gains satisfy.

The key difference between the two theories is that the expected utility hypothesis describes how people should behave (prescriptive) when faced with choices, while the prospect theory aims to describe how people actually behave (descriptive).

Simple enough isn't it? But consider the implications:

• People hold on to stocks that have taken a beating hoping that they would go up some day
• People tend to sell off stocks sooner when they are going up - (leading to frequent stock market "corrections" as TV channels put it)
• People place a higher value on something they own, when compared to the same thing if they didn't own it. (People prefer certain gains)
• Your boss is more likely to approve your application for leave if it is in the form of a series of applications for 2 days each every 20 days over a 60 day period as opposed to a stretch of 6 days at a time.
  
• A person who owns an apartment will estimate its market rate (for rent) to be higher than what he would pay were he to take it on rent himself.
  

The prospect theory is all around you. Look out for it.

More about prospect theory.

The myth of a 9 to 5 job

As people go higher and higher up in an organizational hierarchy, they actually have lesser and lesser to do. In a company that sells a product or service, it is the frontline sales team that actually has a REAL 9 to 5 (or 9 to 9 in certain companies) job. This is because the time they spend on the job directly influences the business they get. Heads of business units and senior managers rarely actually go out to the market place and source business. This means that the time they spend on their jobs has no direct correlation with the success of their organizations. Most of their day is spent on man management, data analysis and decision making.

All of these activities do not consume much time. After all how much people management would you need when the year end bonus of your employee depends on his performance, apart from the threat of losing one’s job. Data analysis is also not a time consuming activity. It is after all the poor MIS guy who has to prepare and present the reports in an easily understandable format. Decision making may be time consuming, but certainly not a full day job!! And then there is this magical word called ‘delegation’. Its no wonder that business heads typically spend their days in ‘review meetings’ and ‘feedback sessions’.

With this being the case, companies must consider changing the ‘official’ working hours as you go higher and higher up, with the CEO being allowed to come and go whenever he pleases. I really fail to see the brouhaha over adhering to 9 to 5 regimens. It works well in a school (where you need to instill discipline, apart from the fact that you cant turn up for a 9 am class at 9:40 am) or in an army (where a herd like adherence to orders is the norm). I can’t see why it should be the same in companies, which I believe are constituted of free thinking and mature adults. Some tech companies seem to have realized this and it is not uncommon to see a few of them adopting a ‘flexible working hours’ scheme for their employees.

I think that the hangover from the manufacturing/ industrial era (when management wanted to be perceived as being equal to the workers) has permeated into white collar jobs too. However, in a white collar scenario, there is no fixed 9 to 6 activity (such as producing N widgets in X time) and hence I do not see why people are expected to sit around all day, or for that matter even turn up on days when all they have lined up is a couple of meetings!! Now that’s what I call, to use a manufacturing term, poor capacity utilization!

Team Management vs. Influencing

I have been thinking about this a bit, and have come to the conclusion that managerial roles can be classified into two broad cateogories:

• Team Management Roles: These are classical management roles where you have 'n' people below you. As a manager you achieve your goals through these 'n' individuals by appropriately motivating them to achieve their goals, which will cumulatively achieve yours.
• Influencing Roles: These are roles where you don't have people reporting to you, but instead your primary objective is to influence people around you to get things done. A typical such role is that of an internal consultant in a company.

I think both roles have their unique challenges, but I believe that the latter is just a little bit more difficult, because people easily understand hierarchies and reporting structures whereas they don't often want to take instructions from people at their own level. I cannot think of many roles that fall outside the above two categories. In fact, even team management is a form of inflencing and thus the first category may be a subset of the second. Are we to conclude that there is nothing else to management apart from influencing? If that is so, it is rather unfortunate that most b-schools (at least the Indian ones) don't have many courses on influencing.

Seating Arrangement and Social Interaction

Have you ever wondered why the seats in an airport waiting area are tightly bolted and arranged in a manner that they all face the same direction? Well, research suggests that there could be a very commercial reason for that.

Seating patterns are classified into two categories:
1. Sociopetal : An environmental condition (such as a seating arrangement) that promotes social interaction. Eg. A park bench, a circular arrangement of seats etc.

2.Sociofugal: An environmental condition (such as seating arrangement) that discourages interaction among group members. Eg. Rows in a classroom, waiting areas in hotels and airports.

Sommer feels that airport seating is deliberately designed in a sociofugal manner in order to drive people away from the waiting area into shops and cafes where they will spend their money. I think that the reason could be that designers of such seats want people to have their own space while waiting, without feeling compelled to engage in any form of social interaction. Even seats which are placed opposite to each other in airport waiting areas tend to be so far apart that you never feel compelled to interact or even acknowledge the person opposite you.

Some other interesting concepts related to the effect of seating arrangement on social interaction:

The Steinzoir Effect: The Steinzoir effect is the tendency for members of a group to speak immediately after the person who is sitting opposite them. This is possibly because we have an easier time observing people who are directly in our field of vision and hence their statements act as a stronger stimulus for us to respond, when compared to that of other members of a group. The next time you are in a group discussion that is being used as part of a selection process, consider sitting opposite the person who is most likely to dominate the group. If not anything else, it will ensure that you will speak enough during the course of the discussion!

The head of the table effect: This one is obvious. It is the tendency of people sitting at the head of a table to be naturally perceived as leading the group seated around the table. Even if you aren’t the leader type, merely positioning yourself at the head of the table will make group members perceive you to be the leader.

Leadership = Transformational Leadership

An interesting definition of leadership that I found:

Leadership is the lifting of a man's vision to higher sights, the raising of a man's performance to a higher standard, the building of a man's personality beyond its normal limitations. Source: Businesspundit.

OB theorists refer to this kind of leadership as 'Transformational Leadership'. The opposite of TL would be 'Transactional Leadership', which is basically a carrot and stick style of leading people.

The idea of lifting "man's vision to higher sights" also finds support in the Hindu philosophy of Karma Yoga, which basically says that self-realization can be achieved through selfless work i.e. one views oneself as being part of a cause that is greater than oneself.

I am thus inclined to believe that Hitler's followers must have been much happier than Henry Ford's employees.

Can blogging ever become mainstream?

I wonder if anyone has done a study on the profile of visitors that blogs typically attract. One suspects, that a large percentage of visitors are bloggers themselves. Blogs, I think, needs to take a leap ahead and become a medium that people visit the way they do Yahoo or even a Google.

The only way that can happen is by having more and more credible voices in the blogosphere, such as CEOs, world leaders, politicians, academicians etc. When celebrity blogging takes off, I can forsee a day when advertisers would pay a blogger to have them featured or 'plugged' on a blog page.

Another way in which blogs can become mainstream, is when there is a centralized rating agency. I know this goes against the very tenets of blogging, which is all about being a free-for-all medium of expression, but I would certainly like to spend time on a blog whose quality of content has been rated. Thus, there would be two types of blogs out there:

• Rated blogs: "Content here has been rated 5-stars! If you want a credible analysis of the situation in Israel, come here!"
• Free-for-all: "All views here are my own... take them seriously at your own peril. Sometimes, I will talk about my showering experience this morning."

Over time, rated blogs could become self-sustainable ventures and blogging may even become a profession that would be paid for by advertising. For this to happen, Google Ad Sense would need to find the next big thing after text ads, for text ads really dont seem to work much!

The third way, is for blogs to be used as a medium of conversation, rather than communication. The comments feature in blogs seem to have this potential, but I somehow find it to be rather cumbersome. A live chat with your readers would be more like it!

The day I see the first TV ad for a blog, will be the day I believe that blogs have truly arrived! And I do hope that that day comes soon.

[To a large extent, the views presented above are India-centric. Outside India, blogs are certainly much more "mainstream". ]

Maintaining social distance in flat organizations

With organizations around the world preferring to have a flat structure, as opposed to a hierarchical one, social distance is reducing between leaders and followers. This article argues that leaders must maintain some sense of social distance so as to keep an eye on their overarching goals, as opposed to getting into a friendship competition.

The article ends on a rather interesting note:

What makes this case of wider significance is that introverts are overrepresented at the top of organizations, and many of them find establishing closeness difficult. Introverts need time to establish closeness and reveal difference—and time is in short supply. The trouble is that much that has been written about leadership behavior plays to the predispositions of the extrovert. We need a "Leadership Guide for the Introvert."

Your website : the world's window to your organization

I fail to understand why most Indian companies fail to realize the value of a good website. Not only companies, some of India's finest educational institutes too have pathetic websites. In a world that has shrunk due to the Internet and other technologies, it is vital that companies realize that their websites probably touch more people than their physical offices or even the products/services they offer will ever do. Your website represents your brand to the rest of the WORLD.

When companies spend so much on television advertising to strengthen their brand identity and recall, why don't they realize that their websites are like open windows to their companies?

Any good corporate site must have the following features:

• Excellent use of the brand identity: Just a cursory look at the website must reinforce the brand's core values.
• Repeat value: A site must offer users some reason to come back. This could be in the form of a live news ticker that has updates on the company or even online contests for visitors.
• No registration please: Never ask a user to register to access any part of your site. If your idea is that more and more people should learn about your company, then creating artificial barriers like registration does not help your cause.
• Reinforce, reiterate, repeat: This can't be said enough, but use your site to reinforce your brand values as much as possible. Anyone who has been watching the slick and sexy State Bank of India ads on TV will be dissappointed when they visit their old world style online incarnation here.
• Live mail ids please: If you mention any e-mail ids on your site, please make sure that those ids exist and are checked on a day to day basis. Dead e-mail ids are a major irritant!

Public-private partnership in public transport

Interesting article: Oberoi group plans JV for luxury trains.

“The Railways Tourism Policy ’06 lays a lot of importance on public-private partnership (PPP) in tourism products. “There is a huge potential for public-private partnership in rail-tourism services as there are 5m international tourists and 400m domestic tourists.”

In my view all public transport must be privatized. This would lead to healthy competition from service providers who would try and provide the best possible services to the end user. Private participation also means that radical decisions take a shorter time to execute. Considering the sad state of public transport in most major Indian cities, radical ideas are the need of the hour.

Product super-customization is also a natural fallout of a free market scenario. Look at the number of tariff plans that private cellular phone operators provide! On the other hand, the government typically goes for a ‘one size fits all’ strategy that would be easy to execute and implement on a large scale, but not optimal for a customer. For instance, if I was running the Mumbai locals, I would probably add a couple of AC coaches to it, thereby passing on additional comforts to people who can afford it and use the additional funds to better services for other passengers!

Entrepreneurial Proverbs

Proverbs are a great way to codify precepts into a form that is easily remembered and applied. At O’Reilly Radar, I found a fantastic article that budding entrepreneurs may find interesting.

Check it out: Entrepreneurial Proverbs

Innovation at the bottom of the pyramid

Most organizations conceptualize strategy in a top-down manner, where senior management expects the managers down the levels to execute without questioning. What often gets ignored, are little process improvements and even major innovations undertaken by managers, in an attempt to tackle uniquely local issues. For instance the response to a marketing initiative in a saturated market like Mumbai may not be the same as the response in a less saturated market like a Madurai. This may mean that local managers need to devise customized solutions.

While, it is appreciable that managers lower down the line come up with such innovations, and indeed feel empowered in the process too, what is disappointing is that most organizations have no mechanism to capture these local successes. I would like to see every organization have a Knowledge Manager in each location where it operates, who documents local successes and failures. A central repository of such 'cases', would go a long way in ensuring that the wheel is not reinvented each time. Knowledge management need not be a fad followed by multi-national organizations. I see it being relevant even for the smalles entrepreneur.

Organizations would do well to develop a bi-directional strategy setting system, where macro-strategies are formulated at the higher levels and micro-strategies are formulated at the lower levels, and together they would form a part of the organization's roadmap for the future.