I have this business.....

It's always an experience to meet new people. You always get something new from people...but then ever so in a while, you get these googlies...

When in the US a few years back, I used to get accosted by desis on the street. They would make very polite conversation for a few minutes, boost my ego to the stratosphere (lots of energy, charisma..blah blah) and then the innocous remark...

'I have this business activity that I am involved in addition to my job. I have become pretty successful and I am looking for spreading this amongst more people.'..the first time I got conned into thinking this was something interesting. After a couple of meetings is when the dreaded word 'Amway'(now known as Quixstar in the US) comes out..

The thing about it is all these folks who do this business are trained in exactly the same manner. By now, probably everyone has been approached at least once. Get it guys, you are either interested the first time or never.

In the last 2 weeks, I have been approached by 2 people. I didnt know this was catching up so much in India. By now, I have become so used to the drill that when they use the word 'part time and business proposition' together, I ask them directly 'Is it Amway?'...unlucky that I couldn't see the expression on the face through the phone.I was almost rude to these guys...

But I guess, the one thing, the company needs to realize is,they are not going to score brownie points by doing what I can only term 'an attempt at deception'.
Guys, get a life!!! Don't trouble me with your fake attempt at polite talk!!

Air Deccan - A second innings

After a long time, I travelled by Air Deccan. There seems to be something happening over there. It almost seems like Capt. Gopinath got up one day and said 'I am sick and tired of people cursing my company. My employees are all becoming demotivated having been shouted at so many times.'

Let me run a market research to do a perception map for Air Deccan. So now we have the dear Captain making enough announcements about how they are making it on time 88% of the time and we are only late 12% of the time.

So he gives all of his employees this bright yellow T-shirt asking his customers to give Air Deccan a second chance. It's an interesting exercise to change the negative perception of the public.

In many ways, this is an important exercise for the company. They need to boost up their sagging stock, their customer satisfaction scores and their employee morale.

Let's see if the captain manages to pull this off too...

ps:Btw, captain, it is perfectly legal to provide some directions to passengers when and where the flight is going to take off from at least 30 min before departure

Smart Companies and the MBAs

This is definitely a question that I have thought of on multiple occasions. What makes a company diversify into a totally unrelated field, burn up their own cash cow and finally sell the business to focus on their 'core areas' after a few years at a loss?

I liked this article by Guy Kawasaki. I think it is a nice way to put things in perspective..

Of course, I like point 5 best... :)

5. Restrict the use of experts to narrow areas. Never use experts to create your product roadmap or marketing plans unless you want MBAs who have never run anything larger than a school snack bar to decide your fate.

Ms.Bansal has also talked about the yuppie MBA. Looks like we are not a very well-liked group not withstanding the so-called money (havent seen it yet myself though...but i guess hope is the way to the future) ;-)

The Infy Epic

Infy is on a roll again. If there needed to be one example of using the media to the best of its advantage, look no further than Infy.

We have had so many firms in the country who have passed the 25 yrs. We have quite a number of firms that are more than $2 billion in size. We have TCS, the grand daddy of Indian IT doing a lot of things. But yet, no one remembers them as much as Infy.

The Infy way of media management probably had different agendas at different points of time. When Infy was this new kid on the block, they stayed low profile. Then they embarked on this strategy of under promising every quarter and then over shooting it always thus becoming the darling of the shareholders. That got it the visibility it desired in the markets.

Then came the days of the Global Branding. They did Nasdaq and did a lot of road shows in the US. By the time, the competitors had wisened up and the war for talent had become hot. Then Infy did that big $1 billion bash again telling the world, we love our employees ensuring that there are enough people still wanting to get into Infosys.

Now if you need to get into consulting, you need to again build that kind of visibility. To align with the international vision, they started the first ever widely publicized Global Internship program to brand themselves in campuses abroad.

Again the 25 yr bash and the 126 crores are all part of 'we love our employees' message. Today Infy realizes that the biggest challenge is again talent. So here you have all the directors of Infy sitting for television and talking in their own inimitable style again putting the desire in so many more young people to want to join Infosys.

But make no mistake. I dont think Infy is any evil corporation. In fact I think this media management is itself worth a case study...the changing faces of Infosys. I think Infy's success has been that they have been doing this before anyone even realized that you had to manage the media.