Desi Subprime?

This was posted on Ambie's Blog on Monday 8 December 2008.

A news report that the RBI has a package proposal to accelerate the growth of the dawdling real-estate sector, by offering special consideration to the upper middle and middle class people who plan to take home loans up to Rs 20 lakhs, ring an alarm bell. The reason for the slowdown in the real estate sector is e unreasonable spike in prices, and the upward interest rates. The high interest rates, indeed, saved many from the inflated sale price of the property market.

Now that the proposal through banks to infuse money and induce people to buy houses would give only a notional stimulus to the real estate market, but would not be beneficial to the buyers in the long run. With a constantly inflationary economy, such packages would not do much help to the common man, but for pushing him into more troubled finances, as the constant price rise and slow growth of the economy are antithetic in nature.

The moot question is whether naturally savings minded Indian middle class would plunge into such offers and find themselves in the middle of a meddle. The Indian home buying scenario is not dominated by market forces or economic incentive packages. It is a family event and the women of the family have a definite say in the decision making. Given fact that Indian women are not price sensitive but price performance sensitive, we cannot expect that the inflated prices would be paid by the Indian middle class families for a few thousand bucks incentive from some banks.

The mathematically shrewd lot of Indian middle class men would calculate the interest rate/EMI and would finally conclude that the few thousand Rupees of discount/incentive by the banks would not be beneficial to them at the end of the day, as they would end up paying more than the incentives they got vide EMI and interest on loan. So, this stimulus package would induce people who have no financial plan and care free of the money spent, as they could easily be dragged into a financial deal which might not be beneficial to them.

Come to think of the IT professionals, they were the lot to be wooed in by such packages. But given the volatility of the industry, and the stress many from IT industry have undergone during the meltdown of the US economy and it's global impact, only a few takers could be found for such an incentive to home buyers.

The need of the hour is to curb the unreasonable price hike of the property and related materials, so that the industry could be trimmed from the economic obesity. In general, the Government, instead of putting money in people's pockets, should try and keep inflation under check. Any deal without having inflation under control would not work and deliver the expected result. Instead this stimulus package would further feed the inflation, and hence fillip would be given to the inflation not to the economic growth.

With this step the Government has started a walk into a land of financial mines and economic quick sand. Let us hope the mindset of the Indian middle class would help people from falling prey to such failed economic models and save the nation from a desi subprime.

Integrity compromises at work - Why?

This was posted on Ambie's Blog on Sunday 14 December 2008

Every human being lives on, based on trust. We go to sleep trusting that we would awake after a good sleep. Work is given to us in the same kind of trust, that we would finish it up as required, without any questionable actions. Life is shared among people in different forms like friendship, relationship, etc in the same sort of trust. But when the trust is found violated/breached, it would be chaos in the concerned relationship, personal or professional.

Of late we have come across quite a disturbing trend of integrity violations at workplaces, right across the globe . Why these are happening? The answer to this is none other than performance pressure and lack of a work culture. When it comes to performance managers prefer to reward the go-getter kind, irrespective of where they go and how they get the results.

I know a person who was awarded best performer for getting unbelievably good numbers with his work. His photo was flashed across the LoB and he was rewarded for being an example to others. A couple of weeks he was found to have fudged the numbers in some way and was asked to leave the job. But still, his name remained in the toppers list and people were shown that result as an example till the end of that business quarter.

These sort of activities send out wrong signals. I know people who did what was told to them and got axed, while the perpetrators got safe with preaching integrity to the rest. It is the administering of the organizational culture that really matters. Organizations need to send out clear signal that integrity violation would never be taken easy, and follow that as night follows the day. This would keep a check on people aiming at short term goals, losing sight on long term objectives.

When people work for immediate gains and lose sight of the long run objectives, they create and operate in a vicious environment, that would end up the organization and the people in trouble. The consequences may come up to losing a client account, thus bringing heavy loss of business and goodwill. The thought leaders in an organization shall make sure the middle and junior management is educated and constantly reminded on the long term objectives of the organizations, so that they could be aware of the consequences when they tend to go for the short term benefits.

This happens because of the aloof style of management, where the modusoperandi is not checked before lauding the result. A culture of checks and balances could effectively be implemented only if it comes from top down. The difficulty when it comes from bottom up is that, at any given point, the mission could be aborted by an aloof/corrupt manager.

It is the responsibility of the top management not just to preach integrity and roam around, but also to check at random and make sure an awareness and alertness of being watched is created and spread across the organization.

Why people quit organizations?

This was posted on Ambie's Blog on Saturday 27 December 2008.

The prime problem that creates a sub prime of talent in organizations is attrition. The common definition of attrition is a reduction in numbers usually as a result of resignation, retirement, or death. Refer to any dictionary, and you get the meaning that "the act of weakening or exhausting by constant harassment, abuse, or attack", "the act of wearing or grinding down by friction". I'm not here to think aloud about job hoppers. I'm here to speak about career minded people who find it difficult indeed to leave an organization and the relationships they have nurtured throughout their stay in an organization, yet part ways.

Why do they decide to move out? The frustration they have with their work, which makes them feel ostracized without reason. Most of such separations happen during change in the organization, with the immediate colleagues and boss or policies which make people feel that they have been lured into something worthless to work for. This could be either because the management had failed to convince the people about the change, or the good change promised, had been brought only in paper.
Brain drain is because most of the managers tend to manage people in an autocratic way. They do not explain why a decision is made and in which direction the organization would tread thereafter, and what are the contributions expected and gains to expect. Either the managers lack the capability to communicate, or they expect the people to follow orders without questions. Even in military establishments, do or die orders without explanations are given only after taking the people into confidence about the decisions made and the decision makers.

We lack true leaders and fill the leadership positions with managers, who remain glorified overseers, instead of being given the responsibility to lead a part of an organization. This could well be attributed to the organizational practice of appointing people without adherence to proper recruitment process, lack of plans to educate managers, failure to impart the organizational values to new recruits irrespective of the levels they've been hired for. This results in a know-it-all attitude of managers taking charge of a new environment, which demands ceaseless learning, instead.

If a good manager takes a bad decision that results in attrition of good talent, we can accept that as bad time and move ahead with a confident satisfaction that a lesson is learnt. But when an incapable fellow takes indiscreet decisions, to assert his control over the department he handles, with a gross indifference towards employees' concerns, that would put the organization's goals in jeopardy with freshmen all around looking forward to (of course, incapable) manager for every other step, resulting in pandemonium.

If managers tend to run their departments as their fiefdoms without adhering to industry standards or organizational principles nor an acceptable civil conduct, it is high time for people who run the business to raise their eyebrows toward this and their fists, if needed, to save their business. The widely talked about management adage "People don't leave organizations; They leave managers", is worth a bar of solid gold for every letter of it. Well, talked a lot about chaos and the root causes, now let us think about some ideas to arrest attrition.

Talent retention is not just about giving fat paychecks, bombarding the employees' wallet with other benefits, and fun activities at work. Talent acquisition and talent retention are the much discussed about topics in management circles. But most of us are not following them up with talent nurturing. If a person in promoted as manager he had to be trained with management basics, a brush up on organizational goals and principles, and a constant follow up on his activities by his boss unless he satisfies the purpose he had been recruited for. Just by promoting people based on the time spent with the organization and/or their proximity to "somebody" in the organization is nothing but forcing people to do the job they can't do best. This would result in organizational anarchy.

People have to be given hope that their contribution would be recognized and rewarded. They have to be allowed to voice their opinions that counts for the process of business they work for, as most of the top notch management advises and ideas have come from production/assembly line, than from board rooms and lecture halls. It is the responsibility of the organizational leaders to acquire, nurture and retain managerial talent and thus facilitate the organization in turn to acquire, nurture and retain other talents to stay firm and fly their flag high in the business environment.

What they DON'T teach at Top Business Schools?

This was posted on Ambie's Blog on Saturday 10 January 2009.

Bouquets, brickbats and troubles target the ones who are at the top. The recent crisis in global economy, the recession (Oh! it is slow down.... I'm sorry Mr,Chidambaram. Fine. That's okay, he is no more FM.), the financial mismanagement, the failures of giant companies, the learned and certified people who connive with or show callousness when it comes to fudging in a grand scale, you name it. All these point to the top notch B-Schools, as most of the people involved in such condemnable conducts, in one way or the other, are from the top B-Schools around the world.

Recently rocked Satyam scam raises the suspicion to higher levels. Given fact that most of the top business people are educated in top most B-Schools, we tend to ask what do they teach you at Top B-Schools and what do they not? Not limited to any businesses, all these companies have Top B-School alumni in leadership roles. These are the people who have the genius of overlooking the basics of management, which is quite well known to common man, but in a very much de-jargonized language. "If you give more loan to a person already in debt, he would not be able to repay", is the basic knowledge of laymen, that was overlooked by these elegantly educated experts, which led to the sub prime crisis and resultant global economic downturn.

The paying of bulk bonuses to top executives, irrespective of industry trend or economic trend is another part of this Top B-School culture. Talk at length about sacrifice and inspire people to shed even their shirts in sacrifice, but don't compromise even a dime in your pay is an attitude that would not help the society to live in tranquil. These people with top B-degrees, top notch doctorates, and pay checks those of Godzilla's size, fail to realize the baseline of lifecycle that good or bad things would come to and end. The universal fact that darkness would definitelybe followed by light and vice versa is known to common man, but not to these elite men.

This is a pathetic failure of the education system which doesn't prepare people to accept the adversity as part of human life and endure it with positive thoughts and deeds to make it less painful. The thought process is not developed properly by the education they had, hence whatever they had is not education. The ruin runs thorugh to the rock bottom of the system. Right from the primary school we tell our children that studying will give them a better life. We tend to ignore the fact that education is a life long process, not a preparatory process for life and we pass on this wrong notion to our children also.

The refusal to accept failure is hailed as a fighitng spirit, but the fight against failure is fought without ethics and victory often evades such fighters. A mistake was spotted with the functioning of the home loan system and people at the helm of affairs refused accept failure of their system and made it more complicated with the subprime. Such kind of refusals to accept failures deserve termination from the system.

Unless we do some self analysis, and try to find out our mistakes and correct them, we'll have more crisis of the subprime kind. Business schools and the teachers there shall devote some of their time to educate their students on educating them that there do exist something called non monetary values in human life. What they don't teach you at top B - Schools are the basic facts of human life without which any education will not stand worth, the true sense of the word.

Implementing Change

This was posted on Ambie's Blog on Tuesday 24 February 2009.

Change is the most live thing happening in the world. Every passing second is change, but yet humans find difficult to accept visible changes. We tend to hide changes in physique due to aging with beauty therapies, hair dye etc. When it comes to change in some thing we do in life, personal or professional, we tend to avoid change and to the possible extent we tend to evade change.

This is because of the psychological effect to remain with status quo and the fear of the change having in store something unpleasant. Unless change is forced on us by forces of the market or of the nature, we have some suggestions from experts on how to implement change and manage it.

Good or bad change has resistance. People are so mentally intertwined with status quo that they detest change when it is inevitable, but live with it as TINA factor plays a major role. The transformation process will be successful, when the organization goes through a step-by-step process of change. Real change happens when the change in practices, structures, and strategies and vision are implanted in the changed culture.

To successfully implement change we need to plan the change. A meticulous plan with every detail covered with the goal in mind has to be prepared. In the planning process, opinions and ideas shall be asked for from everyone involved. This would be a welcome move as people would be open to improvements and more willing to advise others than taking suggestions. With all the ideas, we need to carefully consider them and get a consolidated frame work. This frame work is known as a plan.

With this plan, devise a strategy to implement it. A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. Unless we're implementing military strategy, highest secrecy is not required. So, we need to give the people involved a brief idea about the goal. Tell them the ways and means we're about to follow. Welcome ideas and suggestions, as we've always time and space for improvement, unless we've a closed mindset.

We have psychologists to affirm that people change their mind-sets only when they see the purpose of changing. How to make/help them see the purpose of change? How to get our vision visible to others involved in the changes we're planning to make? The only way out is communication. Communication is an important factor that favorably contributes to successful implementation of change. US President Barak Obama is the latest example of successful communicator advocating change, who took people in his stride.
(We can also get some elite Gentlemen to the list Lee Kwan Yew, Deng Xiao Ping, Jack Welch, Lee Iacocca, Loius V.Gerstner Jr. who showed us how to successfully implement change and have it sustained.)

Communication is two-way and helps the change process to move on smoothly. Unless the initiator of change is able to communicate effectively his/her ideas, we cannot guarantee success. We need to change the beliefs that influence specific behaviors. For that we have to be witty enough to communicate to people, answer their questions, reason out with them on the need for change. If a change is forced, people would either resist that by making mistakes and blaming them on change, or would quietly walk away from the organization, but both would end up in a messed up end result.

If the change is implemented successfully, there ends the job? NO. The implemented change has to be sustained. It is not enough you stand you must stay in the business, so adaptations to the changed culture needs to be done. Adaptions are also changes of small nature. Is this a never ending process? YES. That's why the adage goes, change alone is constant. How to live up to it?
Change the organizational culture to get going with adaptations and be open to changes of any magnitude.

How to do it? Let us summarize whatever we thought in the previous paragraphs. Conceive an idea and vision for change. Plan it. Get a good strategy to implement it. Communicate the goal and need for change. Take people along. Implement change. Stay awake to time to time adaptations. This is the way to sustainable success.

Should the heading be "Cultivating sustainable success"? I'm open to thoughts from everywhere. Let us think for good change!

Taking Business Client centric

This was posted on Ambie's Blog on Sunday 10 May 2009

There is story told in almost management every management seminar, class or workshop. There was a telephone company which was leading the market with large customer base. They outsourced their billing and customer support to a company called Alice services in wonderland. There was a proposal in the telecom company to club the bills of one customer for different services. For example, if a customer has 3 phone connexions, one for office, one for personal and another for his wife they would be clubbing together the bills of all the three. This arrangement was to check the paperwork and reduce the billing expense.
Customer were given an option to choose for it or ignore it. The next month, there was a call volume spike at Alice services, with customers who opted for the new joint billing finding it difficult and wishing to return to the previous state. Now that the Alice services have no clue what to do in such a situation. The customer were pressing for a restoring previous status or threatening to close the account. There was no SOP for such a situation.
Alice services were given the business of soliciting new accounts and also closures as and when necessary. So, when customers insisted on closure if their demands are not met, they opted to offer closure, as they have no specific instructions for such a situation, and customers were also demanding a quick solution so, checking with client was also not feasible. The client realized the impact after a week and a loss of hundreds of accounts. Then a roll back of the scheme was announced and alterations made to take necessary care for the business to stay. But the damage had already been done, smarting from that took a lot of time and money.
This is one of the banes in outsourcing, but there is another side to this issue also. Taking everything to the clients. To service a customer's special request, the outsource partners would wait and get the clients approval, by which time the customer would have gone out of hands.
The same happened in a place where one of my friend works. He was with a team that handles critical issues and dissatisfied customers. His team was trained by the client and they were deciding on the solutions to be provided for the customers. Once there happened a management change and the new manager didn't know an iota of the business intricacies. He was much concerned about the industry basic standards of TAT, on-time calls, and metrics like same day case closure, delayed case closure etc. The business was of a nature that the customer's were to be taken care of in every possible way. When freebies were to be stopped due to recession-bite, these guys still managed to get it in a different way for the customers.
But the new manager insisted on metrics through numbers. He didn't care for appreciation letters, praising mails etc. He wanted numbers to show that he mattered. When client came up with new work arounds, he would not question back as to the nature of the customers the team was handling. Had he done so, the clients not so business conducive proposals would have been scrapped at the start. Without discussion, the client's proposals were implemented and when results shot back they would still take "gaalis and golis" from the client and go around with the new work around.
None seemed to have realized the famous words of Jack Welch,"If an idea doesn't stand for a no holds barred discussion, the market place would kill it ruthlessly". The manager had his infamous justification, "If client says crow is white, crow is white. Because he is client and it is his business." Finally some of the people who were veterans in the business were sent off as they were not doing their "allocated job" and were asking too many questions. Now people who were retained in the business are looking around for opening elsewhere.
Well, what is the moral of the second story. BPO businesses should been run client centric. But making it centered around the client and according a demi-God status to the client would definitely ruin the business for the client- they are also humans and would err by nature- consequently to the outsource partners.
It should rather be a cooperative effort by both the client and the partners right from choosing the people to run the business. People who run critical business should atleast have a minimum business intelligence, rather than a "Yes Minister" attitude. The business managers and leadership team should dare to question the client on his proposals keeping the business in mind. Outsource employees should have the feeling of ownership towards the part of the business they run for the client. This attitude could be brought through by training, orientation and encouragements by the outsource management and the management of the client.
Jack Welch, Louis Gerstner and Lee Iacocca have developed a sense of ownership for GE, IBM and Ford respectively and they succeeded because of that. For that matter, take any of the successful business managers. They own it, they win with it. If you don't feel you own something, you will have indifference towards it. If you have indifference towards it, you will not care for it. If you don't care for it, you're not fit to run it, be it business, family, nation or a bicycle. Business managers need to develop a sense of ownership towards the business they manage to successfully run the show.

1 Comments:

At 21 May 2009 9:36 PM ,  Vijay Kumar said...

You are right. In many situations, the customer requires to be educated so that they can articulate their needs better.

Refunds, Rebates, Returns & Recession

This was posted on Ambie's Blog on Friday 11 September 2009. 

Nowadays we hear a lot about people asking for rebates, returns and refunds especially in the US market. Customer support and technical support of businesses get a lot of callers asking for return of products, refund of money or while purchasing they ask for a lot of rebates. Why this has become a trend now? Or are we getting a lot of spotlight on this aspect of business nowadays?

People ask for rebates and refunds but businesses are very reluctant in giving them. We have people lamenting about the worthlessness of products compared to the price. They whine about how they have been duped by the sales person to shell out lot of money on a product that would not meet their requirement.

Many of my friends working in the customer service divisions working on the US markets, tell a lot about this. At times people pay for a service and after completion of the service ask for a refund claiming that the amount charged was too much for the service provided. They would threaten a law suit claiming that the service they have been charged for was part of the free service agreement during the time of purchase. This prolongs the service incidents of the business and costs money as almost all businesses have toll free numbers for which they pay for the customers to call them.

Interestingly some of the businesses call the customers when the issues get aggravated due to unreasonable claims by the callers or untenable service quality by the representatives of the businesses. This case is worse than the tall free call. The business pays money for the call as well as higher pay for the personnel calling the customers and they would have to track the incident till they satisfactorily resolve the issue raised.

Abundance of knowledge through internet has also been a reason for this. Users of products surf the net and read a lot (expert opinion and casual remarks in expert language as well) and get worried when they experience a hitch in the functioning of the product. They tend to recall all they have read about the product, possible causes of failures, possible fixes for the failures etc. before getting the trained experts of the product take a look at the situation and provide a resolution.

Nowadays we see a lot of comments for product reviews and analysis online. Most of them highlighting a negative experience of a distant past and from a dim memory. Headquarters of businesses have seen a spate in receipt of complaints, most of them squealing for a refund/rebate. A careful look into the prevailing economic and social situation would lead us towards an understanding of this scenario.

The mindset of people is that with the loss of jobs and hardship to find new jobs, is to hold money as much as possible for turbulent times. Businesses would like to maximize their profit by cutting costs in every possible aspect. This most of the times put both the parties to the transaction in a denial mode. Customer refuses to accept what the business offers and business refuses to give what the customer demands. They both have no patience to sit and talk their problem out for a reasonable solution.

Businesses need to have people who have the patience, understanding and conscience of the prevailing situation to handle customer service especially during trying times like the present. But most businesses still run on a target of sales and good index numbers for QoS. This makes the representatives of businesses push the customers to buy products. Such a push leads to exasperation of customers who are already irritated.

An exasperated customer is very hard to handle and could hardly be convinced to stay put doing business with insensitive pushy people. Businesses those boomed and puffed their purse with money with sales without responsibility of service are now suffering. Those who were proud of minting money during the boom with insensitive sales and irresponsible service, have now suffered heavy losses. Some have been closed down many of their profit centers.

One good thing that has happened in the worldwide market due to the recession is that people have become price performance sensitive. Most of them already were, but the graph of sensitivity and the count people who have it, has the arrow representing both going upwards. Businesses have to understand this and instead of blindingly targeting to exceed the past number tally, they have to be innovative enough to hold their customer base in tact atleast until the economic recession recedes and boom blooms.