Pause & Reflect.... Before ..... its too late.

Development ... Growth .. Produce More......Sale More....... More awareness , More Advertisement More Sales Push and More Sales Target for companies to survive and succeed......Stressed Employees.... 

Too Many Producers ..... Less Margin..... Stressed Top Management to achieve more ROIs.... 

More Buy.... Over Buy.... Stuffocated Customers ....  Advance Buy with Loan or Cut in Savings .... High Debt and Low Saving....More Stress at Home to Maintain Standard and Manage Debt ... 

Kind of development we are pursuing in this capitalist society is leading us to overall STRESSED society for all. 

This is not we need. We need happiness and what we are pursuing with this route is assumed and temporary happiness but at the end mere stress and stress.  

We need radical thinker & ideas in this mad rush for so called development and developed economy goal. 

PAUSE....Reflect ... What we are upto and what we are achieving with this mad rush. !!! This herd mentality rush all around us wont even allow us to PAUSE and Reflect but we have only one life and now is the time.

Vacancy for Kejriwal in Corporate World (Off Topic)

There is a book called Creative Destruction. There is a person called Arvind kejriwal. I think there is a similarity. What Indian politics & politicians used to practice since 65 years needed creative destruction. AAP has provided the same to us. AAP has started deciding behaviors and action of other 100 to 40 to 4 year old political parties. 

VIP culture and huge people disconnect is the cause of such a silent revolution.  I am not writing here about politics but what has happened on political landscape is also necessary on business landscape at each enterprise level. 

All our CXOs are behaving like VIPs.  They think their branded education , coupled with arrogance , system, processes,  only ROI focus & silo-ed way of working is the best way for Indian enterprise to thrive. They need some jolt & shock like creative destruction. During last month I have met some employees of private as well as public sector companies. Apart from many dis-similarities , one common similarity across everyone is heavy work stress & long hours of working. 

I fail to understand for whom are we sacrificing our work force ? Why the hell working 12-15 hours like a slave is a necessity? What as a society we are out to achieve? Is happiness of people working for the enterprise is of any relevance? Is it only shareholders and financial bottom-line matter?  On one hand customers are suffering due to overwork of employees by way of huge unwanted choices & mis-sale to achieve the misplaced targets and on the other employees are at the receiving end - in struggling to achieve misplaced targets. 

I think there is a need to break this mindless run & rush for ROI , IRR. 

Development YES but at what cost? Huge wealth creation by a few at the cost of stress, frustration , multiple disease , unhappy families (I am not counting yet on antisocial & unethical behaviors & environment impact to achieve the same) ? I think there is a need for one more Kejriwal at corporate level to break the way businesses are being managed or rather mismanaged  (best of ROCE generating company is mismanaged if employees are stressed & unhappy).

Time has come to put HAPPINESS at the center of all our economic activities. Gross happiness of all the stake holders. Happiness of the present generation. We don't want sermon that we have to sacrifice for the future generation. Everyone is sacrificing for present generation shareholders' un-satiated appetite. 

Creative Destruction in corporate world is badly needed. Anyone dare to step into the shoes of Kejriwal? 

RAQs in the world of FAQs

Yes we all are used to FAQs. Today I came to know of the term RAQ and realised it is these set of questions that are critical for everyone. 

An entrepreneur will always ask what the ROI of any initiatives is. He will rarely ask irrespective of ROI whether it is critical and important for the enterprise. 

As a citizen we always ask our politicians and leaders what they have done for us. We rarely ask ourselves whether we have fulfilled our duty as a citizen.

Venture capitalist and PE investor will always ask about ROI , EPS & Valuation but they will rarely ask what is the employee satisfaction level of the enterprise.

To a potential job candidate employers will always ask what the past experience is and what has been achieved till date.  Candidate will rarely be asked what he can do that can change the fate of the company for better.   

We always ask in our customer feedback form about how the company has fared on select parameters. We rarely ask them whether their expectations were met by the efforts of the company.

Asking RAQs will make us think about RTIs (rarely thought ideas). 

Converting RAQs in to FAQs is the real challenge and that is what truly differentiates winners.  

Financial Ratios - Outdated to measure SUCCESS

ROI, ROCE, EPS, PE, EBIDTA  all these words have assumed so much importance in business world that what it takes to achieve is completely ignored. Cost of achieving better and better these figures is so huge that it consumes humanity , environment , ethics and every other things. 

Capitalist society we are in has attached extreme importance to the figures/ratios stated above. All our business actions are only measured on these parameters.  There is no measurement of corrupt practices indulged , environment polluted , stress generated among people working for the organisation , customers fooled , under-served and even cheated to achieve these ratios. 

Single minded focus on financial ratios is killing the ethical and human factors in business. Growth at all cost is doing harm to the society and benefits handful of shareholders. We are talking about sustainable business practices  keeping environment in focus however what about sustainability of ethical norms human sustainability ?  

We have seen in the movie Guru , one company takes on the Govt rules by breaking and indulging in unethical practices. Who has authorised them?  What if every company start doing that? Just for personal gain ethical standards have been broken and justified for business & share holders wealth creation. We live by quoting that as an illustrious example. It is nothing but collapse of value system and unethical conduct for personal gain of a few. 

Just focus on financial success is the cause of all these nonsense prevailing in business world these days. There are a few companies like Zappos.com which make DELIVERING HAPPINESS as their business mission and not only financial ratios. We need more and more of such companies and rest assured in times to come these are the kind of companies which will be valued more than just financial ratio focused companies. Non manipulative and socially sustainable measures will be in demand, 

Any one of the Indian companies dare to do things differently ? 

Capitalist Trap we are all in !!

During last week I had two conversations about the PEOPLE in organisations.

One of the new recruits of public sector bank told me that before joining public sector bank he was with the largest private sector bank.  On my asking why did he left  ? he responded  - It was highly stressed organisation. From Peon to CEO all are living in high stress.

Work culture in Public sector is relaxed in  a way. They employ more people , less efficient and these are less ROCE enterprises.

Same day I had an occasion to meet someone very senior in public sector general insurance company. Officer told me – yes we want to make change and want to make organisation customer centric but you know we are public sector company and people mindset is a major issue.

Job is mostly secured, union support, high employment ratio, pay scale is relatively less but work culture is also relaxed,  mostly corruption on higher scale, listed but suffers low PE.

Private sector companies less job security, high pay scale, high work related stress, low employment ratio so higher work pressure , corruption , hmm, well little less,  listed entities so huge performance pressure.

Companies in both sectors are competing with each other.

Inefficiency, low ROCE vs highly efficient and high ROCE , low pressure vs high pressure, high employment vs lean employment.

Which one is better ?

Do we want more efficiency , better ROCE and therefore high stress and pain or we want more employment, less stress &  therefore  more happiness ?

What do we really need ? In the name of privatization and capitalism,  humanity is lost somewhere.

My vote is for the man who switched to public sector job leaving highly paid private sector job.  People in public sector can be trained for efficiency  , attitude and customer centricity  but we cant train and convince capitalist for lesser ROCE for better happiness at large.

For sustainability of humanity private sector MUST learn and take some clue from public sector.

What do you think? Are we in a big trap of a few capitalists ?

3 Idiots - 2 for Our Enterprises Too

Wishing all my readers & their family a very joyous , HAPPY and grand Diwali. 

Time to celebrate , enjoy  & introspect too. 

While watching movie 3 Idiots (i have lost count now , how many times i have watched this movie) last night , I could find new meaning and relate it to our professional and corporate life. We now have 3 Idiots for students to fall back upon while getting excessive pressures from professors and parents, but we also have pressure cooker kind of situation in our professional and corporate life also & post studies we spend our rest of the life working for corporations. What about that??

Like students life , Marks and Numbers rule corporate life too. Sales Targets and Bottom-line numbers. This unlike students life we have to under go along with our family responsibilities. Companies declare better out look and better targets quarter after quarter. Top and Bottom-line counts , that's all. 

What it takes to achieve the numbers is hardly of any significance. Environment awareness is spreading somewhat but what about human side of it ? Who care about employee happiness?? Superior and out of the way Customer Experience ?  Better vendor relationship ? better social responsibilities ? better environmental concerns? 

We measure sales , profit, eva , ebitda, eps, roi and hence we focus on improving the same and our success is measured based on these numbers. No measurement of qualitative parameters to achieve quantitative numbers , hence not measured and hardly given any  importance. We need stress free corporations and enterprises. We need to change our enterprise success parameters. Something grossly wrong is going on unnoticed.

Chetan Bhagat, Raju Hirani or Aamir Khan, or someone else , who will wake up to these realities and make another 3 Idiots -2 ????