Blindsided into tracking JUST competition? Beware. Rank outsiders can gobble up your ENTIRE industry… Lesson from the Apple way

Obsolescence was a threat of the past. Irrelevance is the threat of the present. It seems like yesterday when management gurus and professionals were consumed by concepts like competitor tracking, benchmarking, differentiation and the likes. But in a short span, operating within the paradigm of your own competitive set seems myopic and frog in the well like

Coke Vs. Pepsi, Chrysler Vs. Toyota, Hertz Vs. Avis, Hilton Vs. Holiday Inn, such jousts have constituted popular management lore in the past. But today its not about who will win but will they both survive? Or more importantly, will their industry survive? Uber and Air BnB rank outsiders have rendered at least the latter two rattled

Apple and its strategy best epitomize how quibbling and unsuspecting players in a completely unrelated industry were delivered a lethal punch that left them reeling. Lets look at few examples

Portable Music Players: It was a cozy club of Walkmans, Walkies, Cassetboys and MiJockeys.  An upstart computer company would have never been considered for membership. But in a single bearlike swipe Apple practically brushed aside all of them. Walkman is finding it difficult to walk today even with an Ericsson crutch!

Phones: Ditto. A clean left hook and an uppercut to a blindsided phone industry and Nokia the leader was kayoed. Last heard, still nursing its wounds in a neighborhood Microsoft hospital!

Cameras: Nikon San, Canon San, Minolta San, Pentax San and others have perhaps already spent hours in a warm, private luxury onsen near Mt. Fuji discussing whether “Shot on iPhone 6” could really mean Shot “BY” iPhone 6 for them!

Watches: A recent supra intellectual apple Watch critique by Tag CEO - no battery and juvenile design! C’mon! Does he think Apple is stupid!? And this will be a third blindsiding for the Swiss. Remember Swatch & Quartz? Guys.. smell the air beyond the Alpine. Also Citizen San, Seiko San and Titan Bhaijaan…. watch out (no pun)

And finally Visa & Master. There is an Apple pay coming your way…

So don't be lulled into a feeling of infallibility of your company or of your industry. Keep an eye not just on your company’s future but also your industry or sectors future. Doesn't matter if you are a traditional FMCG company or a core sector behemoth. There are several Apple like players out there evaluating your sector in real time and could administer a kiss of death

I am compiling a list of sectors that require taking predatory insurance and how they can do it. A few that require emergency attention are banking, entertainment, media, chemicals, logistics, and durables… But more on that and what they should do later

For now, if you are only thinking about your competition, be cautious…. and, if you have anything to do with technology…then, be afraid, be very afraid…

5 Hypocritical words in the corporate world

Cubicles, corridors and corner offices around the world constantly churn out words and phrases. Some stick, some become concepts and yet others fade out. A quick list of few hypocritical and misleading ones that perhaps began with a good intent but ended up to mean something quite different. Opinion is personal.

Intrapreneur This one is fashionably overused in my view. From evolving as a neologism for a new projects guy within the organization whose risk of failure is covered, the term has gone on to become a generic attitude descriptor of a professional manager who has entrepreneurial spirit. But entrepreneurial spirit means an ability to risk it all and tenaciously face uncertainty. Frankly, if risk and uncertainty are removed there is no entrepreneur. Will an “Intrapreneur” risk it all? Paychecks, perks, anything? Doubtful. Conversely will organizations willingly share ownership? Again, doubtful. So unnecessary liberal use of the word is a mystery to me. Both, professional managers and entrepreneurs are complementary, important and have their own place in the world of business. No point attempting forceful tagging

Devils Advocate This is one ecclesial concept gone too far in the corporate world.  Devils advocates are as easily found in offices as black coats in a courthouse. God’s advocates are woefully short by comparison. They arrogate solely to themselves the task of pouring chilled water on any new idea & rarely take the trouble of coming up with an original idea themselves. Being one has also become a great personal branding tool. Smartly intellectualize the advocacy and you can even obtain an angelic halo. Besides it is easy. It takes serious hard work to come up with something original but to shoot it down requires a mere micro fraction of an effort. My suggestion. As soon as someone begins, “Er, ahem…let me play the devils…” Stop him right there and tell him that you would gladly let him but only if he places his own original idea at the beginning. Touché

Experience Yes, Buddha did sit under a tree for a long time and gain that supreme experience. But then that was of the philosophical and subjective kind. Just basing it on a single dimension of time however cannot ensure attainment of the objective experience of our mundane type. Yet this is perhaps the most commonly used word in every organization, “I have x years of experience” So? What about variety, depth, quality etc. So beware of the types who remind you of their years of existence in a hurry. They do it as a ploy to mask their resistance to any change. Best to ignore these types. The genuinely experienced will never count you the years. They are permanently childlike and in an inquisitive and a learn mode. Besides in an era of twenty something’s as leaders time as a measure of experience holds no water in any case   

360 Feedback This one is famous but Machiavellian in my view. In good old days feedback was when your boss told you what was expected of you and you in turn told the boss what you aspired for and you went out for a drink after that. When did this simple & pristine “one to one” mechanism transform into a “many to one” and for what reason I don't know. Perhaps because of increased hypocrisy and reduced transparency. Besides, this methodology is frustratingly one way. After all it is impossible to express your feeling to everyone around you. So you just give up and hopelessly sit in the center of the circle and take it from everyone around you. Till of course your turn comes to sit on the periphery and throw it at someone else! My vote goes for qualitative one on one feedback even today

Collaborative This one is a personal favorite. Often the biggest execution deterrent especially in the planning stage. It is supposed to mean teamwork, collaboration and all the good things, but is often used in situations when one person does not or can not take on responsibility and accountability and gathers a bunch so that the blame can be shared in case failure. I feel an idea or a project should start with at least one person taking a clear responsibility. Collaboration can happen in the execution phase. To begin an initiative with a collaborative responsibility is to risk a chaotic end. The buck has to begin and stop at one table 

Add-on to the list if you like. I am sure there are many….

Can the world of marketing come crashing down?

Imagine. Imagine our world where there is no one to market to since there is no one who wants to buy anything. What would then happen to the corporation? To enterprise? To goods, to services? To currencies, to stocks, to options, to futures? To jobs, to professions, to vocations…would our daily work a day life come to a grinding halt just like the huge metal blades of a turbine slow down and eventually stop when the plant shuts down. Will then that be the end of the world of marketing as we see it?

Lets face it. At its core the entire world of commerce as it is structured today is like a “need satisfaction” engine. It is like this humongous locomotive hurtling at great speed satisfying multiple needs of corporations and individuals by producing a vast array of goods and services. And what fuels this engine? A highly combustible compound fuel called “need creation”. The more fuel you add to the firebox the faster the engine travels

With a little help from Vedanta if we try and identify the ingredients that lend the combusting property to this potent fuel they are primarily two; “the desire to acquire” something new and the “fear of losing” something that you already have. And if we analyze deeper we find that marketers are constantly engaged in altering these two ingredients to achieve maximum potency of this need creating fuel

For a moment consider the “fear of loss” ingredient that is constantly thrown at you. The preventive healthcare industry instills the “fear” that you may succumb to an ailment tomorrow, the insurance company portends that your house is sure to burn down someday, the lawyer charges for a prenuptial making you imagine that divorce could be a distinct possibility, the iodized salt manufacturer scares you with pictures of abnormal goiter, the fund manager scares you that you are headed for a depressing poverty stricken lonely old age, builders of old age homes warn you that your children will indeed desert you to the elements some day….and the fear list goes on

And then there is the “desire to acquire” ingredient. You can “acquire” a better skin by using a certain cosmetic and in-fact outdo even the almighty in the domain of dermatology, you can acquire a certain status by owning an expensive car, you can acquire friends by buying into a club membership, why you can even acquire the neighbors envy if you own a certain television and wait, you can even acquire an ego (!!) if you buy a certain laptop…

They say as long as humans exist, the human mind exists; desire and fear will drive activity. So in that sense marketers and marketing is blessed with perennial existence
But one can see contrarian signals emerging. People are getting tired of constant sense bombardment by goods and services that claim to satisfy some need or the other. There is some movement in the direction of controlling if not reducing needs. There are signs that the modern concept of "happiness through need-satisfaction" is losing ground to the traditional concept of "happiness through need reduction"

So what happens when the potency of the need creation fuel drops? What if people stop getting scared of losing something they have or do not desire to constantly acquire something that they don’t? Will the need satisfaction engine slow down? Will it produce lesser number of goods and services? And is marketing as a function prepared for this scenario. Or will its relevance as a function as we conventionally see cease to exist? Or will it emerge in a new avatar? And what will that be?
Marketing professionals will need to be prepared…anti-marketing is lurking somewhere…. waiting to rise…Helicon Consulting

Trustworthy or Competent who do you prefer?

Leaders often find themselves facing this dilemma in assessing members of their team. And each time they feel they have finally arrived at the correct answer they realize that they’ve made a mistake yet again. And this keeps repeating. They swing in their preference from the trustworthy to the competent and back again… like a yoyo… never really finding the right answer. It can be frustrating!

Personality is a cocktail of several traits. When a leader connects with deeper emotional traits of her team member such as honesty, fairness etc. she considers him trustworthy. And when she connects with relatively outer or operative traits such as confidence, grasping ability etc. she considers him competent

To successfully accomplish a task the ideal lieutenant would obviously be the one who is both trustworthy and competent but leaders find it difficult to discover this combination. In reality the problem is not that this combination does not exist, it is just the leaders inability to connect, nay even identify the traits at different layers of her team member’s personality. As a result there is a tendency to search for these two types in isolation and consider them as mutually exclusive. This could in fact be beginning of a larger problem. The team may get divided into two distinct sub-classes giving rise to unhealthy team dynamics

In my view it is futile to even try and perhaps even wrong to brand someone as either trustworthy or competent. It is best to internalize that in every member of your team there is a combination of traits that are best suited for every task, which make him either competent or trustworthy for that task. Attempt should be to hone the art of managing this task and trait matrix. This is perhaps one way to address the dilemma…Helicon Consulting

Is demotivation an alibi for non-performance?

Demotivation being cited as a reason for non-performance is common. But sometimes I wonder whether demotivation is also an alibi for non-performance? Perhaps it's like the chicken and egg story but it is important for organizations to distinguish between those who are genuinely demotivated and those who are merely pretending

Organizational performance is judged on rational and tangible criteria. Targets, operating margins, growth, share of market and the like. Achievement or the lack of it is a combination of skill and attitude. Winners combine both very well but amongst those who aren’t, it is difficult to identify the real cause. Operational excuses are common alibi for skill deficiency and demotivation for the latter. It’s important to gauge the relative weight of both. Since ego prevents genuine and honest self-introspection often the latter is touted as the bigger issue. And since there is no empirical diagnostic test to really isolate and identify demotivation it is a convenient option to pick. One can always claim to be demotivated and wait for myriad motivation tools to be deployed yet keeping the option of remaining demotivated or otherwise with oneself all the time!

Again, unlike professional managers, I rarely come across demotivated entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur either succeeds or fails. Something like a tiger in a jungle. Wonder whether there is a demotivated tiger not wanting to attack its prey when hungry

Being demotivated is a luxury and perhaps a function of choices and options one has. But whatever be the case it is important to distinguish the genuinely demotivated from those pretending. And it can be done …Helicon Consulting