Lessons on Leadership 01

My first employment was with the HCL Group. I had joined them as a Sales person. It was around 1995, when the Group Chairman Mr. Shiv Nadar wanted to conduct a Leadership summit at Delhi wherein he wanted to invite his contemporaries across industries throughout India. A first of its kind meeting where all leading industrialists were to be present. 

Shiv Nadar wanted the invites to be physically handed over to the Chairperson & Managing Directors of Companies all over India. I was selected for this prestigious task for the Chennai region. My role was to visit all the leading companies in Chennai, personally meet the top notch industrialists, and invite them for the summit on behalf of Mr. Shiv Nadar. I was thrilled at this. However challenging it was, for a fresher with dreams and ambitions in mind, this was a welcome opportunity. 

This episode gave me some beautiful lessons of a life time. A fresher interacting with almost all the Leaders of Chennai. 

Two meetings are still etched in my memory. 

My first meeting with Mr. Suresh Krishna – Chairman of Sundaram Fasteners(TVS Group). I knew that he was just then awarded the Business Man of the Year(1995). I was nervous and at the same time excited at the prospect of meeting him. At the reception I was told that he had gone for a shop floor visit and would be back in 5 minutes, and that the message has been given to him. Within five minutes I saw the gentleman (in the company uniform shirt) briskly walking, came near me and told me, “Please come”. What a moment it was! He thanked me profusely and regretted that he would not be able to make it on that day to Delhi due to prior commitments. He said, “ I shall speak to Shiv”. The warmth, the hospitality, the respect for the visitor, the respect for the person who sent the invite was unparalleled. 

Another meeting. This time with Mr. TT Vasu, Chairman of TTK Industries. I could not believe, when I introduced to the receptionist and told her about my agenda, she told me to walkin to the cabin of Mr. TT Vasu. I had an amazing interaction with Mr. Vasu. Above all, Mr. Vasu himself came out of his cabin to see me off. I was just a messenger, but this showed the class and calibre and the regard he had for Mr. Shiv Nadar.

It was an eye opener for me. I was proud of my company HCL and Mr. Shiv Nadar. And I learnt a lesson or two on leadership. Humility, Respect, Kindness and class. 

Thanks for those wonderful lessons!

The role of intuition in your business, and life

The other day I was having a discussion with my colleague about business, importance of numbers, information, analytics and more importantly the “feeling”. We touched upon many instances of decisions of the past and some of them seemed like real case studies. 

Over the years like many, I have also taken many decisions. Some good, some not so good.  In hindsight, I am grateful to have made them because they have generally made me a better person, in business, in life, in everything. In the process, I feel that we develop our own sixth sense, which is hugely valuable for helping us to make better decisions about everything we do. And as a business owner, this sixth sense is extremely valuable. Call it intuition, call it gut, call it instinct, we have all experienced it in some way, isn’t it?

In business it manifests with people, deals, partners, projects, opportunities, customers, in so many ways. We get a feel in a situation with no real information, just a sense of what is going on and what we need to do about it. 

Unfortunately, in the current scheme of things with so much overload of information and clutter around,  the ability to hear and feel the intuition is a lost skill for a lot of people. We have become too busy to hear what our intuition is trying to say. We intellectualize because we are so bombarded with information that we simply cannot hear our intuition in midst of the clutter. 

A few days ago I participated in Leadership workshop. The awesome facilitator, before starting the programme started with a question to the participants. “What is your feeling just now? “. The program actually started with this most simple, but a thought provoking question, that set the stage for the rest of the day. 

It is so important to connect with oneself and check the “feeling”, which will be an answer to many a questions. 

Thinking back, I vividly remember what it feels like, to really be connected with my intuition in various situations that I have had in the past. Certainly, the impact it is having on my life is quite extraordinary.  The more I think and analyse about various decisions that I had taken in the past, the more I get convinced that it was the instinct that helped and guided me to take some of my most important decisions. 

Do you remember yours? Can you list down such instances?

Summarising some of the points, that could help connect with your intuition, gathered through experiences from various situations and insights from my mentors.

In any situation, learn to pause, take a step back and see how you feel, not how you think.

When you first encounter someone, take a moment during the conversation to see how you feel, not how you think about that person. The business owner's sixth sense does not come from the head, it comes from the heart. We have to remember what it feels like when we get a message from our heart and translate that feeling into information we can use.

Don't look for good or bad things, just try to interpret how you feel.

When we analyse pros and cons, we do not actually look for bad things, we look for the reality of a situation. There could be many times our instinct may have told us not to do something in business, but our brain would have generally rationalized the situation and over ridden the intuition, unfortunately to a detriment. We should learn to reconnect with how we feel at a deeper, less intellectual and more emotional level. I have heard of many such instances from a lot of my entrepreneur friends. 

“Me time” - take quality moments during the day to ponder.

This is a very important aspect we tend to forget. Importance of “Me Time”! Learn to take quiet moments during the day with yourself.  Find somewhere peaceful, disconnected and free of distractions and think long and hard about whatever you need to be thinking about for arriving at that decision. Then try to connect with your gut instinct and see what message it is trying to send. 

Learn from when you got it wrong in the past.

Reflect back on situations from the past that have not worked out as well as you wish they did. For example, some really bad business partnerships that perhaps you wish you could undo. But when you take the time to stop and reflect on them, you would say you  knew it before you even entered them that they were not going to work out. And not to mention the grief and money they cost you.

Haven’t we all faced at least one such instance? 

Learn from when you got it right in the past.

Think back about the situations or opportunities that worked out really well. Try to recall how intuitively you felt as they were developing and progressing. They would have been generally clear, clean, positive, light and made you confident in the initial instance itself. That's the intuitive feeling we want to look for, to give us the go ahead.

Be detached from all outcomes so you can hear your intuition more clearly.

Be detached from the outcome. I know, it is easier said, than done. However, when we are less attached to the outcome we tend to think and feel more clearly. If we are hoping to win a huge contract, and if it means in terms of good money and status, it is very easy for our intellect to take over and overshadow our intuition. Our intuition may be screaming to tell us, that this contract will not be what it is cut out to be and we might even regret it if we win it. 

This is one area, if you master it, you can certainly be a master of your decisions. 

Include intuition in checklist for making decisions

You may be having a master checklist for some of the major decisions that you take. I would say, at the bottom of the list please add - "What does my intuition say about the project?". If you get all ticks on your list, but a cross on the question about intuition, you may need to seriously give it a rethink. Your intuition may be giving you some signals. 

We all have this extraordinary skill - intuition, instinct, sixth sense, gut, whatever we want to call. The more we listen to it, the easier it is to hear and the better the decisions we will make, in every part of our life. The more we push it away, the harder it is to hear and the quality of our decisions would reflect this. 

And certainly as a business person, Intuitive skill is one of the most important skill to possess and nurture.

Listen to your self, for your own success :)

The Gruen Effect

There are times in the year you probably spend more time shopping than usual. Yes or no?

Do you stick to your budget and only purchase items you planned to buy? 

If your answer is otherwise, don't feel too bad - research shows that more than 50% of consumer spending is unplanned.

  

Retail spaces are designed for impulse shopping. When you go to a retail outlet looking for a tie and come out with a new shirt as well, it’s not just your fault.  Retail stores are trying to look so beautiful, so welcoming, the items so enticingly displayed and in such vast quantity, that the consumer will start picking compulsively.

This phenomenon is called the Gruen Effect,  named after Victor Gruen, born in Vienna in 1904. Gruen left Austria in 1938 for New York City. He then toured around America to understand people’s behaviour, their buying and socialising patterns.

Gruen subsequently came up with his grand vision. Gruen imagined a miniature “city under a roof”, fully enclosed from the outside world, but covered in natural skylight and with climate-controlled environments. He was aiming for a lively plaza with statues, fountains, greenery, shops and restaurants. He imagined that the visitors would spend time communicating with one another, strolling around and marvelling at the colourful window displays.

Gruen wanted his structure as an architectural panacea that would solve the environmental, commercial, and sociological problems of America under a single building. 

This concept later came to be known as the “third place”. The “third place” term was coined by Ray Oldenburg, in his 1989 urban planning classic, The Great Good Place. The main idea was that the normal social environments for people are home (“first place”) and the office (“second place”). “Third places” are those spaces that are public and allow people to interact with one another along with a host of other activities.

Gruen thus presented his solution for America: The Shopping Mall.

In 1952 – Dayton company commissioned Victor Gruen to build the first indoor, climate controlled shopping mall at  Southdale Center, in Edina Minnesota.

In 1956 – Southdale Center had its Grand opening.

1960s onwards – Shopping malls became very popular all over America and in many cases the only air-conditioned place in town.

And slowly, the mall culture became popular across the world.

However, Gruen had later admitted that malls never became community-enriching spaces as he had originally envisioned, but the malls did make people buy lots and lots of stuff.

Gruen’s discussions of shopping towns were based on a distinction he makes between "shopping" and "buying". According to Gruen’s definitions, buying is a result of a predetermined and exactly defined aim, while shopping is usually approached with a generous supply of free time, a flexible amount of funds and a certain aimlessness. Shopping involves the comparing of price, style, and quality, and while shoppers may have a shopping list, they welcome inspiration for unplanned purchases, perhaps not really needed. This transfer from a task-oriented buying to less focused shopping experience is the "Gruen effect".

Large retailers devote huge amounts of time and resources to exploiting this psychological principle, So, if you are a shopper, having a little knowledge of this concept can help you control your impulse spending. And if you're a small retail business owner, implementing this idea will help you sell more stuff.

Victor Gruen died in 1980, but the idea of Gruen effect is still alive.

In the 21st century, The rise of online shopping has heavily disrupted the retail industry.  Amazon now dominates consumer spending in the US. Between 2010 and 2016, sales on the giant online marketplace rose from $16 billion to $80 billion.

Today, as consumers increasingly buy digitally the shopping websites have adopted the Gruen Effect online. If log onto Amazon to buy a particular book, and then you end up clicking one or many of the countless products on its endless pages. Welcome to the Gruen Effect!

In this empirical historical overview, I have analysed the customer experience in shopping through the concept of Gruen effect, the history of mall development and how the same principles are being applied in modern day Online shopping.

Sources for  this research include journal on ­ “Malls and the Orchestration of the Shopping Experience in a Historical Perspective” by Fabian Csaba & Sren as published by the Association of Consumer Research, Journal called “Mall Maker” by the University of Pennsylvania press, article by Malcom Gladwell as published in The New Yorker.

Happy shopping!

New Year Resolutions

The title says it all isn’t it? You know what I am going to talk about.

Do you believe in listing out resolutions every year?

Or you don’t believe in resolutions at all?

If you believed in resolutions, how effective have they been? – Very effective? Not so effective? Ok-Ok??

It is that beautiful time of the year. People welcome the coming New Year with lots of hope, aspirations, zest and enthusiasm. Most people come up with their own resolutions too. Some people very sincerely seriously adhere to them. And some other people, I don’t need to say J.

The social media is full of greetings and images for the Ney Year. And of course there are jokes and memes on resolutions too. For example, the fitness freaks would say, they would not like to go to the gym on the 1^st of Jan, as it would be filled with people who would have chosen going to their gym as their resolution. And they would also be sure that the same enthusiasm will not last till the 2^nd of Jan. J.

Let me start with my disclaimer: I am no fan of New Year Resolutions!

Having said that, I have been observing a socially active friend of mine who would religiously put up a concept of a single word focus for the year at the beginning of the year.

Yes – a single word. It is not a resolution. Just a single word to define the focus for the year.

I became curious. How does it work?

I even debated with him – how can it be just a single word? Can it be a combination of a few? Can it be a sentence? The manager in me made me even ask - Can it be a list of bullet points? J

My wise friend wasn’t impressed – he said it doesn’t work that way. It has to be a single word!

Hmm, an interesting concept. That led me to think. Think hard.  You need to think of a single word that is going to determine the entire direction of the whole year. Wow!

Yes, it is a brilliant idea. To arrive at that single word – one goes through lots of emotions and thought processes. It is like writing the Vision/Mission statement for your Company.

Ultimately when you narrow down to the single word focus for the year, you would have gone through quite a bit of feelings, logical reasoning, analysis, intuition, goals, ambition, wishes, dreams etc.. Yet a single word. Thank you my friend!

You know what, I have been practicing this concept for nearly four years now. And it works!

I have also been talking about this concept with my close friends and many of them have adopted it as well. For example, one friend told me he had chosen "Consolidation" as his word as he wanted to consolidate his many physical assets, financials, work life balance and so on. 

Another, a very successful one and arrived well in life early, yet grappling with mid life crises, mentioned "Minimalism" as his word. 

Both of them did exactly what they mentioned! And many such. 

Friends, I have thought of mine. That one word. For the year 2019.

Would you like to give it a try?

A Happy New Year to you!

I have a dream

It was the festive season of Navaratri at Trivandrum in the year 1979. Every household had the traditional Golu set up. Most of them had a nine step or a seven step arrangement with dolls of different sizes neatly arranged and decorated. It would be interesting to see the creative side of the aunties, who were otherwise usually busy with the chores of joint families. Girls looked prettier during those times usually decked in silk top & a frock like attire called pavadais. The boys did not have any such dress codes J.  All the houses were filled with music and lip smacking goodies. People visited each other’s houses religiously and it was the best time to socialise. Girls were usually adept at singing, mainly Carnatic music. During this festive season, every house that they visited, they had to sing!

I was a single kid. My mom took me along to every house she visited during the season. I didn’t have to sing at the houses,  being a boy, I could play with my friends and cousins while munching on the chivdas/mixtures and sweets and the savouries of the season called sundal. I used to be fascinated at all the festivities and would silently take a peek at all those music as well. I guess I secretly enjoyed the music.

On the 7^th day of that Navratri, we were at my father’s sister Saroja auntie's house(my favourite aunt) who lived not far from our place. In any case it was like a joint family culture. Music was a part of life and family. Saroja auntie had just then finished rendering the song Shri Ranga pura vihara, which is incidentally a cult song today, thanks to the Bangalore based band called Agam which popularised it with the millennials a couple of years ago. I was mesmerised with Saroja auntie’s singing. She was an A grade All India Radio artist and there were no Televisions then. Her eldest daughter Kausalya, my cousin was as proficient and was a trained professional singer. She was pursuing her post graduation in music. Kausalya sat with her tanpura and rendered her song with her mellifluous voice. I was just lost in the music and in devotion! Pure Bliss! Kausalya was a very gentle and a soft spoken lady. She was the eldest of the next generation in my dad’s family and was elder to me by thirteen years.

Later that evening, Kausalya spoke a few words with my dad and subsequently at home my dad told me that Kausalya didi or Akka as I called her, would teach me music. I was excited at the thought of learning music, that too under the guidance of Kausalya Akka. My dad told me that Kausalya Akka would start the lessons on the Vijaya Dasami day or the Dussehra day, which was the practice those days to start for anything special like art and music on the auspicious day of Dussehra. My dad also told me that I have to give respect to Kausalya Akka as my guru.

As planned the classes started on the Vijaya Dasami day. It started with Saa Ree, gaa maa….Kausalya had a younger brother, Padmanabhan, we called him Padhu.  Padhu 11 years elder to me, was tall and handsome. He was the brightest and the most intelligent in our family and was studying Engineering in the best college of Kerala in Trivandrum those days. I was very fond of Padhu & looked upto him as my mentor.

The second day of my music class… When the class was almost getting over, in walked Padhu with his engineering graphics tools and set squares. He saw me sitting on the floor in the singing pose, and he burst into laughter. Hahahahahahaha. He laughed and laughed and laughed. He said, “ Are you serious”? "Are you going to do this saa ree, gaa business?" He very well knew the proficiency of his mom and sister and the music lineage the family had, yet he taunted me.

He took me to his Study den in the attic that he had created for himself. He had a table top tape recorder. He pulled out a brand new cassette from his bag and played it. It was the year 1979, ABBA had just then released a new album. The song was “ I have a dream, a song to sing”. A couple of years ago, Boney M had released Daddy Daddy cool and just the previous year they had released Ra ra Rasputin! Padhu was way ahead of his generation and people in that traditional and orthodox street of Trivandrum. I still remember how would solve his complex differential equations and integrations while drumming and dancing to the beats of Boney M & ABBA.

But the way he laughed at me was perplexing. Perhaps he wanted me to break away from the shackles of just Carnatic music. Yet,  it left a psychological scar on me.

Just before the 3^rd day of my class I told my parents I wouldnt be going to the class. Did not give them any explanation. I just refused. My parents and also Kausalya Akka felt I was too young and playful. So they didn’t force me then. They felt they would give me time. That time never came.

A few years later, Kausalya got married and shifted to Hyderabad. My dad had got transferred to Madras.

And music was a totally forgotten chapter for me.

I moved on in life. During my engineering days, I would solve the problems exactly the way Padhu did, with music in the background and in a fun filled way. But I never ventured to learn music.

Thirty five years later, it had come back to haunt me. I started to feel the void in my life. Wish I had learnt music! Wish I had learnt to play an instrument! Wish I had not given up! The thought started pounding on my head.  Call it midlife crisis or whatever, I was in a real crisis.

I mustered enough courage to ask a teacher in her seventies if she would take me as a student for piano even though I was a zero in music and a zero in piano.

She was the best teacher in town. Still she is. I was so glad she accepted me as my student.

I now tell myself – I have a dream. I want to play the piano well someday soon. That’s my inner calling.

Unfortunately both Kausalya and Padhu are not alive today, tragically. But I want to play that Sahana Raag on that piano apart from the Bach and Mozart pieces and dedicate it to my dear  Kausalya & Padhu, as I know that they are watching me as my angels.

And in the words of ABBA, I say,

I have a dream, a song to sing

I believe in angels

Something good in everything I see

I believe in angels

When I know the time is right for me

I'll cross the stream,

I have a dream!

Friend or a Foe!

Have you ever been in a housing society’s meeting? How’s the scene generally?

The other day we were having a General Body Meeting in our housing society. It was a typical meeting. But an extraordinary one. As there were a host of tricky issues raised. And then an elderly lady with lots of anxiety in her mind raised a point. She looked concerned and she mentioned that she was raising that point on behalf of all the senior citizens, especially elderly ladies.

She mentioned that most of the elderly ladies prefer to go for a walk within the premises of the building. But what was bothering them was the presence of dogs. The pet dogs of some of the owners would sometimes be let free, which probably terrified those people.

Hearing this concern, one of the dog owners(who’s otherwise an active member of the society and an ardent advocate to address many of the issues pertaining to the society), got up from the meeting saying - now it is almost the end of the meeting and murmuring:  there are important issues, and people are talking about trivial things like dogs, when actually the pet dogs are the sweetest things in the world.

Until a few years ago, I was neutral to the concept of pets. Neither for nor against. I must admit I have never been exposed to pets, so no knowledge of the subject. While I knew of some people who were panic stricken by the sight of pets for their own reasons or lack of it.

But the other side of the story was alien to me.

Until I met this dear friend who has his lovely adorable labrador. Being with him I have now realised why the dog is called man’s best friend.

Yet, I have this question now looming over me.

• Was the elderly lady justified in asking this question?
• Was the dog owner justified in saying that it was a trivial issue by concluding that the dog is as much a part of his family like his own kid? And pet dogs are friendly and don’t do any harm.
• But, will he ever understand the fears of the lady/ladies that raised the question?

While I agree to the fact that dogs are lovable ones, I thought of digging a little deeper on this subject.

The book Phobias defines a panic attack as "a sudden terror lasting at least a few minutes with typical manifestations of intense fear". These manifestations may include palpitations, sweating, trembling, difficulty breathing, the urge to escape, faintness or dizziness, dry mouth, nausea and/or several other symptoms. As with other specific phobias, people suffering from fear of dogs may display a wide range of these reactions when confronted with a live dog or even when thinking about or presented with an image (static or filmed) of a dog. Furthermore, classic avoidance behavior is also common and may include staying away from areas where dogs might be (i.e., a park), crossing the street to avoid a dog, or avoiding the homes of friends and/or family who own a dog.

Leading authors and scientists on the subject concluded that the age of onset for animal phobias is usually early childhood, between the ages of five and nine and additionally found dog phobia developing as late as age 20.  Also it is interesting to note that 75-90% who reported such animal fears were women.

Now getting back to our case, the ladies who raised the issue were largely in their 60s. I can imagine the deep rooted fears manifested over decades in them. Seems more complex than what it appears.  There are genetic and biological influences that make someone more likely to develop such fears and cannot be switched off easily.

Should the dog owner be a little more sensitive to such larger fears of people?

And the population of people who have these fears out number those own pets?

There are more than 25 million stray dogs in India. While there are animal activists now protecting the interests of stray dogs, how do we tackle this inherent psychological issue prevalent in a larger population of people who do not speak up, but sulk in their own fears.

I don’t have a conclusion yet on the subject. I seek your opinions!

Or should I say, who am I to conclude on this? As the well known idiom goes, “Let Sleeping Dogs Lie.”

Fountain Pen

So, they say it is a mobile revolution in India. To give you a perspective of how things have changed in the last 3 decades – Overall tele density in India was 0.6% in 1990. Today it is a whopping 89.9%. Mobile telephony when it was introduced around 1995 was considered a luxury item then. Incoming calls were charged at the rate of Rs.16 per minute.

Emails and internet also started to gain some traction, roughly about the same time. 

Slowly things started to change. Somewhere we saw a convergence of Internet and Telephony. That was the beginning of a new era. The Millennial era!

Rest as they say is history.

New Telecom operators were born. Initial thrust was to increase telephony presence. Call charges dropped. Incoming calls became free. Outgoing calls were charged under a rupee. That was the real beginning of the “mobile revolution”.

What did it do to the psyche of people? Mobiles shifted from being an aristocratic luxury item to be a common man commodity. Missed calls became a phenomena. SMS lingo were invented.

Then started the data penetration.  Tablets, smartphones came to existence. Apps and social media became a part of life. From cameras to address book, Computers to wallets, shopping to books & music - everything got encapsulated in the small device.

But as in any new technological development, there were collateral damages. Slowly but surely people started losing some of their life skills. For example – people started being more comfortable texting than talking. PMs meant Private messages and not Private Meetings. They were more comfortable in their virtual world of social media. Group chats took the place of group meets. Not to forget, Mute buttons in group chats got more importance.

Does anyone remember any telephone number now, apart from their own?

Writing with one’s own handwriting – that has definitely taken a beating. Either it is typing on the computers or extensive usage of thumbs on the phones. Thankfully the new smartphones have made it easier for the thumbs.

Now even the doctors have starting typing their prescriptions. As the joke goes, deciphering what the doctors wrote in their handwriting needed some skill!  

Would the thumb have actually liked to provide the good supporting role that it used to do while holding that mighty pen? Remember the days when the thumb would be soiled with ink from the fountain pen?

With the latest thrust on data penetration, spectrum availability for faster speeds etc – the good old voice calls have now become free. Yes, all incoming and outgoing calls are free. There’s one silver lining there. Move on from missed calls and short messages. Take the telephone and speak. SPEAK. Let your voice be heard by the other person. Lest, that life skill would be lost too.

With technological advancements in SMAC & IoT, looking forward to some interesting applications which can enhance and utilise the life skills of people as well.

Can there be a laptop without the key board – but have a writing pad wherein one can write with one’s own handwriting? Artificial intelligence(AI) can take care of deciphering the letters and words. With the option of displaying in the original handwriting as well as a digitized version. After all, AI can now identify human faces faster than humans. 

The day may not be far when the traditional paper back note book be connected to the cloud? Whatever one writes in the notebook, (which would perhaps be sporting a printed antenna built-in on that paper), gets stored in the cloud too.  A few years ago – the laptops were named Notebooks and had tried to take over the traditional note books. There will be a time, when the traditional paper back notebook takes over from the laptop with even better technology at a fraction of cost.

The fountain pen hopefully will have a rebirth with an embedded chip inside, coupled with AI and to connect to the cloud.

Lovely name – Fountain pen. Will the new fountain pen spread data and connectivity in all directions just like the fountain? Will it have music too?