The Starbucks Ways of Being

For its employees, Starbucks defines its core "ways of being" as:

1. Be welcoming
   
2. Be genuine
   
3. Be knowledgeable
   
4. Be considerate
   
5. Be involved
   

Hmm, looks to me like something that every service company should be adopting. Including IT service companies. Especially IT service companies.

PS : You now know what is that is missing at our banks.

Quality

What is quality? Dictionary.com gives a number of meanings, starting from "an essential or distinctive characteristic, property, or attribute" to "native excellence or superiority". Wikipedia, on the other hand, unequivocally states quality to be the "non-inferiority, superiority or usefulness of something."

We all know a number of buzzwords about quality, words such as ISO 9000, SQC, TQM and Six Sigma. We all have heard about the names of the quality experts who matter, names like Demming, Taguchi and Juran.

But beyond all these, and all of them, I think primarily quality is a state of mind.

It is quality, why a grandmother keeps her kitchen and her pots and pans spotlessly clean. It is quality why we spruce up our leaving room if guests are expected. It is quality why we caringly wrap up a gift, even while knowing that it will soon be torn and thrown away. It is quality, why we print a marriage invitation on special paper, knowing all the while that its life will be short lived.

Opposite of quality is not poor quality. Opposite of quality is apathy.

Take away that mindset about quality away, and no amount Quality Management helps. Then no matter of how much of SQC and TQM practices you put in place, you cannot prevent the production of shoddy goods and services.

Quality is all about 'I care'. Practice that attitude, and the rest will all fall in place.

Conceit

It is conceit when an organisation starts following practices that are meant to make its own life easier, rather than the customer's. It is conceit when an organisation takes advantage of a sudden shortage in supply to artificially inflate prices and make a quick buck. It is conceit when an organisation disregards the anguish of a mistreated customer, because there are many others like him/her queuing up to the buy the company's products or services.

Customers put up with this as long as they do not have a choice, though a slow anger burns in their hearts.

And then a smart competitor comes in, recognises that anger, and then comes up with a product or service that address that specific cause of pain. And voila, customers desert the older established player in droves, and starts flocking to the new upstart.

Twenty years ago, there was only one car manufacturer. People stood in line to buy their car. Bookings were taken even ten years in advance. And the hapless population got foisted with an old obsolete model because they had no choice.

Who cares what the suckers think? We are not going waste money upgrading ourselves!

That was conceit.

And then suddenly the Lord, sorry, the Government, said, "Let there be competition!"

And suddenly the party was not so hot any more. Their car, from being the only choice of an entire country, became just the choice for taxi drivers and travel agencies.

Last time I applied for a loan, the bank made me sign at three places on each page of a fat booklet filled with fine print. A total of fifty two signatures, I counted! Fifty two ! And I have no idea at all what all that fine print meant, because nobody bothered to explain it to me. I signed, because I needed the loan, and I did not have the time to hire a lawyer to comb through all that legalese. All I am sure is that the bank has kept enough legal provisions in place to put my neck in the noose, should I ever overstep my mark and ask for my rights.

That fat booklet with its fifty two signatures is made to make the bank's life convenient. Not mine.

Conceit.

Well, enjoy the party as long as it lasts my friends. Sooner or later, some smart bloke will find out that this is what cheeses off customers, and come up with an alternative. Good luck to you after that!

If you travel frequently, then one day you may suddenly discover that your hotel has suddenly nearly doubled its tariff. The room is the same, the service is the same, the decor and the food is the same, but the price has suddenly gone up two times.

Why? Because there is a three day convention happening in the town, and most of the hotels are all booked. Snicker, snicker, let's rake in the moolah, the suckers don't have much choice.

Conceit !

Conceit stems from, what I call the SSM attitude. The "So? Sue me" attitude.

No my friends, customers cannot sue you. But they can and will desert you as soon as there is an alternative. Keep that in mind before you get too conceited.

Faith 2

Deepika has posted these famous and oft quoted lines in the comments –

Khudi ko kar buland itna, ke har taqdir se pahle,

Khuda bande se khud puchhe bata teri raza kya hai

Meaning :

Raise yourself so high, that before each act of fate

God asks his servant (you), tell me what you wish for

The lines are by the Urdu poet Mohammed Iqbal, the author of the famous Sare jahan se achchha.

My own favourite are his lines,

Taqlid ke rawish se to behtar hai khud kashi

Rasta bhi dhoondh Khizr ka sauda bhi chhor de

Suicide is better than servile imitation

Find your path and look not for a guide

Any explanation here is of course unnecessary.

Five Cardinal Sins

In his book Presenting to Win, Jerry Weissman points out the five cardinal sins of a presentation. They are, in short, and in my words :

1. No clear point. You go through the entire presentation, without understanding what was it that the presenter was trying to state.
   
2. No audience benefit. You are treated with slide after slide about the features of a product or the achievements of a company, without being told how it all helps you.
   
3. No clear flow. At the end of the 75^th slide you wonder, 'how the hell did the presenter reach here?"
   
4. Too detailed. You are presented with so many detailed and irrelevant facts, including the name of the presenter's favourite cat and what he ate for breakfast, that you lose sight of the overall picture.
   
5. Too long. There are so many slides that you are bored to, if not death, then at least slumber.
   

I am sure you yourself may have actually fallen victim to one or a few of these sometime in your working life. So while giving a presentation, avoid inflicting them on your hapless audience whom you may have lured with the promise of a good lunch in the first place.

PS : And one more thing. Please avoid too many animation or transition effects. You need to impress people with presentation ideas, not presentation effects, as Weissman puts it.

Followership

The opposite of leadership is followership. I am not sure whether such a word exists in the English language, or if I just made it up, but I think you get the general idea what it means. There are two kinds of followership that I have encountered, idea followership and social followership.

Idea followership takes place when people do things in a particular way either because that is the exact way it has been done in the past, or because it has worked successfully for someone else. If you go to the web site of any IT company, you will inevitably be greeted by a web banner of smiling people milling around computers and laptops. Inevitably.

Why ? Because that is the way that it has always been done.

In any kind of trade shows it has become a standard practice to hand out brochures. Whether somebody reads it or not is a moot question. A few months back, we had put up a stall at an IT job fair. The second day that I went to see how my colleagues were doing, I found all the aisles between the stalls literally carpeted with brochures. These were laid so thick that the red coir carpeting below was no more visible. Enthusiast sales people in the booths were forcefully pushing the brochures onto the visitors who were immediately throwing it to the floor. Immediately!

Then why were they still being handed out? Same answer. Because that is the way that it has always been done.

Idea followership is also sometimes euphemistically referred to as "industry standard". Industry standard? Or industry status quo?

Now on to social followership. Certain species of living beings, such fish and herbivores like sheep, move together in big groups, relying on large numbers of their fellow kind for their safety. Since there are a lot many of them in a group, and they look and seem alike, it's very difficult for a predator to focus on any single individual member and attack it. Therefore it is prudent for a group member to behave and act exactly like the others, and not do anything different, that attracts a predator's attention to itself.

Unfortunately, evolution seems to have hardwired this behavioural pattern in humans also. Which is why, when I ask people in a group to come up with a few suggestions in the light of what I have just presented, everyone remains mum. Or if a is mail circulated in the organisation, asking people to come up with ideas which could be implemented, none are forthcoming. Or at a seminar, you find people filling up the back rows first, even though there are plenty of seats left at the front.

If you keep your head down, just do what you are told to do, and don't do anything that calls attention to yourself, you will be safe, seems to be their way of life.

You are perfectly right. By remaining unnoticed, you will remain safe. There's also a good chance that you will also remain a perfect nobody. Good luck to you, Mr. Nobody. Only, next time when someone is promoted over your head, please spare us all your tantrums about the unfairness of it all.

Leadership

Once upon a time, a young man, thoroughly beaten and defeated in life, decided to renounce the world and become a monk. So he went around searching for a sage, a sadhu who could become his Guru, and teach him spiritual practices.


He searched near and far, till one day he came across one such sadhu, living in a small hut deep inside a forest, along with a few of his disciples.
Our hero accosted this holy man with folded hands, “Maharaj, I am fed up with the difficult ways of the world. I would like to renounce it, and become a sadhu like you. Please make me your chela (disciple) and teach me.”


The holy man, though, was not unwise to the ways of the world. So he tried to dissuade our hero. “See beta, becoming a chela is not easy. You will have to get up very early in the morning, take a bath in the river, whose water is absolutely freezing, then chant and meditate upon God’s name for a few hours. After that you will need to collect drinking water from the river, and firewood from the forest. That done, you will have to walk with the rest of my chelas to the village ten miles away to beg for food. Then coming back, you will again need to practice meditation for a few hours. The villagers themselves are very poor, and the bhiksha they give is never enough, so it’s quite possible that you will go hungry in the night. So my son, think carefully about the sort of life that you are about to choose. It’s very hard work”.


Our hero reflected on this reality check for a few moments, and then was quickly seized by a flash of inspiration, “Then Maharaj, I do not want to become a chela. Please straightaway make me a Guru instead”.

“Guru miley sawa lakh, chela na miley koi”, lamented Sant Kabir, in one of his couplets.


Unfortunately, interaction with a few ambitious people that I sometimes come across during my work also evokes the same thought in my mind. The common myth that these people subscribe to seems to be that becoming a manager is a ticket to plenty of perquisites and absolutely no responsibilities. “Once I have a few people reporting to me” their attitude seems to speak out “I can just relax and manage them, while they do all the hard work and get me the results”.


Sorry to disappoint you folks, but it just does not happen that way!


First, a leader, apart from being responsible for himself, also becomes responsible for the actions and failures of those he leads. He therefore must have the skill and strength in him not only to complete his own tasks, but also make up for the mistakes of his subordinates. For, though he has the freedom to delegate authority, the responsibility remains his and his alone. So, in reality he needs to work not less than his subordinates, but more.


Second, the word ‘leader’ implies to lead, it implies being in the front, ahead of others, in the thick of action. A leader consequently is the first one to take damage, when the situation is out of control. A person who hides behinds his troops is no leader, and his team is bound to fail.


Leadership does not mean just an overlordship over a few individuals. Leadership means the ability to shoulder responsibility on behalf of the entire team. “Sirdar sardar”, as Swami Vivekananda has succinctly put it. Sir means head. Sirdar, a man who can give his head, is a sardar, a leader.


Sirdar, sardar. That is the definition of a leader. There is no other. Leadership is not access to power and privileges, and an escape from responsibility. Leadership is in fact agreeing to more responsibilities. Ponder on this before you look for ways to an instant leadership.

Corporate Vision and Mission Statements

Mission and Vision statements are meant to provide a sense of direction to the entire organisation. Unfortunately however, the way most corporate mission statements are framed, with a liberal sprinkling of management jargon, means that it remains incomprehensible to most people in the organisation, except perhaps a few at the top. Consequently, there is little similarity between what the mission statement professes, and the organsation practices.

To invigorate and give direction to an entire organisation, mission statements should be simply stated and comprehensible. Popular leaders in history have proved this time and again.

Take for example, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. His mission statement can be very simply stated as :

Vision : Free India.
Mission : Dilli Chalo

That's it. Period.

So simple that even a schoolchild can understand it. So powerful that it arouses a whole nation.

Wish management moguls understood the power of such simplicity.

Crowdsourcing

I came across this term, while reading an article about Google Earth in the Economist. You will find a full definition here, but in short it is the throwing open of a job traditionally done by the organisation, to the general public. The content of Wikipedia, for example, gets built by members and the enthusiasts, rather than by employees. Members contribution of location specific information to Google earth is making it more information rich.

As the web becomes a part of our daily routine, and web communities come up around shared interests, content is becoming more and more democratised with individuals sharing the knowledge, ideas and viewpoints with the rest of the world.

But with the explosion of content comes the difficulty of managing it and finding what one needs. This has given rise to folksonomies (derived from the words folks and taxonomy) which allow user to tag and rate content, so that other users can find what they need. Users can now tag content and create social bookmarks using del.icio.us, digg it and reddit.

Will Web 2.0 one day completely bypass traditional media ? Only time can tell. But the times ahead are definitely interesting.

Faith

Faith on one's self is an absolute necessary for taking on stiff challeneges. The kind of faith as illustrated by this old story :

A bird had built its nest on the seashore, but one day the waves carried her eggs away. The distraught bird first prayed to the sea to return the eggs, but receiving no reply she threatened the sea that she would empty it. With still no response coming from the sea, she decided to carry out her threat. With a leaf of grass held in her beak, she proceeded to empty the sea with it, one drop at a time.

Empty the sea drop by drop with a blade of grass ! You must be joking !!Sounds pretty dumb, right ?

Yes it does.

But then when a school master's son called Dhirubhai had dreamt of building a global Fortune 500 company, I am sure a lot of people would have thought him to be dumb too.

Or when a school droput called Bill Gates had a vision of computers becoming personal and installed at homes, he would have also sounded dumb to a good number of people.

And when a hadnful of women monks of Sarada Math took up a barren garbage dump to build an ashram (see this post), I am absolutely sure people in the neighbourhood would have taken them as a good case study in dumbness.

There is an old Sanskrit saying :

Udyoginam purushasimham upaiti lakshmi
Daivena deyamiti kapurusha vadanti
Daivam nihatya kuru paurusham atmashaktya
Yatne krte yadi na sidhhyati ko’tra doshah

Lakshmi (fortune) comes to that lion among human beings who is industrious - the coward says that he depends upon fate. Throwing away all concepts of destiny be industrious through your own inner strength; in spite of all your efforts if you do not succeed , what is wrong in it ?

No achievement is possible without faith. A faith ready to take on seemingly impossible challenges. A faith that can proceed to empty an ocean with a blade of grass.

Common objectives

We get to hear a loing common goals for teams, to attain a certain level of organisational unity. Here is a famous verse from the Rig Veda, which talks about - guess what- common purpose.

And this is is what it means :

Meet together, talk together, let your minds apprehend alike, in like manner as the ancient gods concurring accepted their portion of the sacrifice. --- (1)

Common be the prayer of these assembled worshippers, common be the requirement, common the purpose, associated be the desire. I repeat for you a common prayer, I offer for you with a common oblation. --- (2)

Common, worshippers, be your intention, common be the wishes of your hearts, common be your thoughts, so that there maybe thorough union among you . --- (3)

Talk about good ideas being everlasting !!

The Perfect Pitch

I just complted reading The Perfect Pitch by Jon Steel, and he makes an interesting point - some presenters are to presentations, what Jack the Ripper was to medical sciences.

And as the author states in one place, haven't we all at one time or the other sat through a long, boring presentation and contemplated the choice between murder and suicide ?

Check out the Presentation revolution blog for some interesting presentation styles.

Struggle and Success

When we study the lives of successful people, the one common thread that we see binding them all is that they never gave up. They kept on trying and bettering themselves every time that they failed.

Success and struggle are two sides of the same coin; you can’t have one without the other.

Struggle can be hell - but it is a necessary step. Struggle hard, and you are sure to find success, as sure as day follows night.

We often have difficulty appreciating the truth behind this because we are so far removed the people who struggle and succeed – be it Walt Disney or Dhirubhai Ambani

So let me tell you about something much closer to you, something that you can see for yourself, because it’s right at the heart of Bangalore.

Sarada Math is the women’s wing of the Ramakrishna Ashram. In Bangalore their centre is on Nandidurga Road, just opposite Cafe Coffee Day, where apart from a temple they also run a primary school and a charitable dispensary for the underprivileged.

If you can, spare some time to visit it, because it is a beautiful place, not noticeable from the outside. With tall trees, a fruit garden and flowering plants, it's almost like an oasis in the concrete jungle that surrounds it. It is a serene and quiet place that somehow defies the roaring traffic just outside its gates.

See it once to get a measure of its serenity and then consider this.

When they received the land to build this ashram, it was a barren place devoid of a single blade of grass.

In fact it was actually a deep hole in the ground that was being used as a garbage dump.

From a barren garbage dump to a green oasis. And the transformation brought about by a small band of women monks living on charity.

In a country where women face challenges in every sphere of life, here are a band of women monks, who have made the impossible happen, all by themselves.

Think of the challenge they faced. Reflect on the difficulty of their task. Go take a look to see what has been accomplished.

And then think. Are your challenges stiffer than what they faced ?

‘Ask and it shall be given, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.’ So says the Bible.

Struggle, and you will find success.