Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Maneesh Konkar
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you.
Then you win.
Mahatma Gandhi
Luna Mohanty, Head HR, Mahindra Two Wheelers A must read for every level of managers; Maneesh has very effectively utilized his interaction with various managers while training them and beautifully compiled them together in this book. You will find a solution to each and every day to day challenge faced by you and practicing these will surely take you to the top. Suvajit Karmakar, Country Head - Sales & Marketing, ALD Automotive, Socit Gnrale Group
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All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.
Maneesh Konkar
Young Leaders at Every Level
Published by Maneesh Konkar maneesh@directiononeonline.com Direction One Consulting Pvt Ltd Mumbai, India www.directiononeonline.com
Preface
In the course of my career as a Business consultant, I have been influenced by many people. This includes not only my training and consulting clients but also famous authors who have shaped my thoughts. I use this space to thank the following. They have written outstanding books on their respective topics and I acknowledge their contribution: Rich dad poor dad Robert Kiyosaki Balanced scorecard Robert Kaplan Good to great Jim Collins. Built to last Jim Collins Buffetology Mary Buffett Zig ziglar on selling Zig Ziglar Maverick Ricardo Semler. Leadership pipeline Ram Charan Control your destiny or someone else will Robert Slater Secrets of Power Negotiating Roger Dawson At home, many thanks to wife Rupali who gave the original idea to write this as a story of an individual and not as a gyan book. Am also inspired by my kids Mallika and Sidharth who remind me every day how to enjoy life. Kids are constant reminders of the fact that when we die we are unlikely to say we wish we had spent more time in the office. My sister Medha and her husband Deepak who pushed me in the IIMB interview many years back. And my parents, Dad still going strong at 70 and Mom looking forward to my phone calls.
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2. What does getting wealthy mean to you? It is now six years since passing out of IIMB. All four friends are doing well, are married, earning good money and have bought cars and houses. Abhijit starts having second thoughts about the lifestyle of conspicuous
consumption. He starts realizing the impact on stress and how the expenses are keeping him dependent on the job. He starts moderating his lifestyle. 3. Are you servicing demand or creating it? It is now eleven years since they passed out of IIMB. All four are in middle level positions in different companies and are having high pressure situations. Some have boss problems, others subordinate issues. They now have challenges of people management, delegation, managing work, quality of life issues, etc. Through a conversation set in Mahableshwar, they talk out their issues. 4. Discover a new possibility creating demand It is now fourteen years since Abhijit passed out of IIMB. He is now a senior leader in his company and the blue eyed boy of the CEO. His company is facing challenges of leadership and has been losing good people through attrition. Abhijit takes charge of leadership development in his company. 5. There is no job more important for a leader than to invest time in developing future leaders. Seventeen years out of IIMB. Abhijit, as the CEO of his company, now has smart subordinates who come in and completely question the way the company is being run. Abhijit must now develop the maturity to take feedback and adapt to the challenges his company is facing. 6. Nobody ever joins an deliberately do a lousy job organization to
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Also great support from my friends Abhijit Dabhade, Arun Paul , Suryameet Kaur, Gopal Kulkarni and Abhijit Baxi. The next big jump in my life came at ICICI bank from Neelmani Singh who along with Vinod Gupta from Rubicon laid the foundation for many of the consulting that I do today. Thanks to Nitin Nayak for the constant feedback and inspiration. Also Neelmani Bhardwaj and V Krishnan from Tata AIG,A R Rajesh and Deep from Teamlease, Mrydul Vats, Anush Raghavan and Neha Karande from CMS, Vikram Bector and Vibha Anoop from Gyanodaya, Nilesh Kumar, Ejaz and Rahul Prasad from Asian PPG, Dr Jinesh Panchali from IICM, Chaitanya Nayak from UTI Securities and Vijay Menon from Videojet. Last three years, I have received tremendous learning from Mahindra and Mahindra and naukri. Thanks Rajesh Jejurikar, Luna Mohanty, Bhartendu Kapoor and Shalini. At naukri.com, great learning from Arif Parker, V Suresh, Vineet Singh, Ambarish, Ruchi, Sharmeen and Pallavi. Sanjeev and Hitesh, thanks for the opportunity. Thanks to also my only employers ITC Nripen Thakur who at Jammu laid the foundation for a process orientation and then Varun Goel & Anjan Mallick for the opportunity at Mumbai. A huge jump in capability happened thanks to Milind Apte from Godrej Hersheys who exposed me to the concept of Assessment centres and their use. Also thanks to Amit Taede, Rajput and Rabikant for their insights into the business. Great learning also from Sumit Mitra, Sanjivani Sadani, Dotiwala, Bhavini and Swati from Godrej Consumer, Ajay Aurora, Sameer Bhariok and Nikhil Mathur from Godrej Industries and Pooja Venkatram from Godrej Sara Lee.
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For leadership tips for young leaders, Follow our blog Young Leaders at Every Level now To buy the book Click here
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Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Contents
Discover your passion - If you didnt need the money.13 What does getting wealthy mean to you? ........... 61 Are you servicing demand or creating it?.....85 Discover a new possibility creating demand . 119 There is no job more important for a leader than to invest time in developing future leaders...........................................................139 Nobody ever joins an organization to deliberately do a lousy job..205
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Evenings used to be a nonstop series of intellectual m discussions. Every MBA, they say can talk on any subject under the sun for 30 minutes. Every day the discussions used to drag on late in the night on topics ranging from cricket to religion to government to business. Sometimes arguments used to happen. Later, some would move out for a drive while others would while away their time watching TV. After two months, Abhijit was ready to move into a Branch banking role. They made him in charge of branch operations at a small branch in North Delhi. It was a small branch and he had a staff of three officers and two tellers. The branch used to operate from 9 am to 2 pm and the day used to end by 6.30 pm. The branch manager was one of the oldest employees of the bank and was four years from retirement. Abhijit did not get too much guidance from his boss in his initial few months, till a new Branch Manager came in about four months later. A lot of Abhijits concepts on banking got clarified during the rest of the year with the new boss. A year later Abhijit was shifted to the Retail operations team at back office. This exposed him to a part of the bank he did not know existed. This was the factory which ran on processes and turnaround times and also had people disappearing from the job. Three days into the job, Abhijit was suddenly short of 5 of his 20 people. They just did not show up. Repeated calls to their mobiles produced no results. That role, which Abhijit did, was fourteen months of constant firefighting. Every day he was working on an average fourteen hours, with some days going even longer. It was in this part of the bank that Abhijit realized the true depth of leadership in his organization. It was here that he realized that you dont have to be good to get
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telecom company and Ashutosh had joined an asset management set up. That was what he had last heard. Last two years, he had actually met no one from campus, life had been so busy. A banking job also meant no travel and Abhijit had been thinking of a weeklong break to go to Mumbai as his closest friends were all there. And then his boss had called him to his office. He indicated that there was a new Branch sales structure being rolled out across the country so he had to go to Mumbai for three days. Ask and you shall receive its true, thought Abhijit. He immediately contacted Ravi. Well hello hello hello, how are you sir? Where have you been? Running around sir Enjoying the running around or not? Yes and no Then it is time to meet Excellent idea Where are you. Do you come to Mumbai? Next Thursday Where are you staying? My bank has a guest house in Vile Parle, very close to the airport Send me the address. Saturday evening, I will pick you up Done Instantly an evening was fixed and Ravi promised to contact others.
It never even occurred to any of us to think of this point when we went in for placements said Ravi.
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And then you suggested this place. Nice pub, whats it called Lions pub. Atleast they play our kind of music. Some of these new pubs, the kind of music they play, I could not sit there for more than half an hour said Abhijit And since its a new place, it is not too popular right now too. Nice food too. I loved the paneer tikka CAT was tough. I think I barely scraped through. said Ashutosh. You know we were all so clueless when we all joined in. The common admission test was of course tough, but the greatest challenge was surviving the first year, then it was easy. I would say we three had that problem in the first year, Ravi did not. He was already used to the pressure at IIT, Delhi. In fact he used to be so cool even during exams. I remember this guy used to play badminton even during exam time said Rajesh. In fact you three got in on the first attempt. I got in on the second attempt. During my first attempt, my seventh semester Pune engineering exams were on the Monday following the CAT test on Sunday. And while coming down the stairs after giving the exam, my friend and I were talking. He said I am done, I think I will go to a local management institute itself. But our professor asked us a very powerful question. He said have you given your best. If the answer to that question is yes, end of discussion. If you gave your best and did not get interview calls, then obviously your best is not good enough, then it is time to look at other management institutes. But if this attempt was not your best attempt, then keep trying till you feel you have given your best We had one guy during the CAT test who was in his sixth attempt
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The panel threw my entire argument out of the window. They said you MBA would not be a useful program for you at all. They suggested that I should go to the Institute of Entrepreneurship Development at Ahmedabad. That course, they felt would be more suitable for me. Thats where the fun started? Well, it wasnt fun when it happened then. I spent the next twenty minutes explaining why I dont want to go there and they tried their level best to convince me to go there. What happened in the Bangalore interview? Obviously that went well, otherwise we wouldnt have met Yes that went well. I was staying with my sister Medha at Dadar. And my brother in law Deepak saw my glum face and enquired what happened. I told him the story and he said you need to be more aggressive So I was more aggressive in the Bangalore interview. That went off well I got my admission letter in the last week of April. Or was it May, I forget said Ravi. Lucky you. When all you guys started getting your admission letters, the tension increased. Me and another guy Arun Sharma were the two people from our coaching class in Pune. We could have easily called up and found out our admission status. But we didnt. Hope is a four letter word. We waited a few days. Our friends were getting calls all around us. Finally we could not take the pressure any more. We called up Then what happened?
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Yes, whereas if you dont study and dont do well you can always say that you never studied in the first place. And if you do not study and do well in the exams, they say you are a genius!! So the trick is to not study at all? Idiot, everybody studies. People claim they are sleeping, but are actually studying. The trick is to study of course, but claim or project the impression that you are not, so everybody thinks you are a genius. You really think it is possible to get in to an IIM without studying. All of us study like crazy, you know it, I know it remarked Abhijit Games we play on campus. Ha Ha Ha Guess we continue playing these games in jobs also I know, like walking around with a sheet of paper in the corridor, so everybody thinks you are busy or doing something important. In reality, that paper would be the shopping list to purchase on your way back home. Said Abhijit Another game is this call to the boss at 8 pm from the office on some flimsy pretext. In reality the purpose of the call is to inform the boss see Im still working till 8 pm And even if you work till 10 pm the previous evening, they still expect you at work the next day at 9.30 am. Otherwise, they put a late mark. Three late marks and you lose half a days pay said Rajesh Venkat Are you serious? Is this what they do in your company?
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asked me to assist in the launch of the same brand at Mumbai. I was out of my market for 45 days So whats the problem, you stayed in a five star hotel, had fun. No complaints about that at all. My company gives excellent perks. In Mumbai I actually walk 109 steps to my office. All the other three felt like emptying their glasses on Ravi. You walk to office. I spent two hours each way travelling. So what exactly are you cribbing about? said Abhijit Ill tell you what exactly I am cribbing about. After spending 45 days out of the area, I discovered that sales had gone up by 28%. I put down in my appraisal this point. My boss remarked that how can you take credit for this achievement, you werent even physically present. I remarked that we have such strong processes that these ensure the work gets done. Boss bought the argument, but later on I thought to myself. If sales could go up even when I am not there, the processes must be really strong. Which means the basic job of a leader to not only to do the job, but also to build strong processes that ensure the job get done said Ravi Ashutosh who was silently listening to Ravi all this while said so what you are complaining about is that there is no meaningful work here Exactly. Actually there is plenty of work that the company keeps giving, but it is mostly operations related. Its basically production related work. What I really want to do is building production capability.
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matters of the heart, you know it when you find it. said Ashutosh. I was surfing one day and came upon this article on Discover your passion. The website belonged to a business consulting company which works on productivity improvement. Some interesting points were mentioned in the article. It said - most of us live life in two compartments. One compartment is the Monday to Saturday one which we do because we need the money, we need to pay our car and home loan emis; we need to pay for what we buy at lounges and malls and ice creams. The other compartment is the weekend, the holiday routine. This second compartment is what gives us joy, satisfaction, happiness. Spending time in this compartment energizes us, revitalizes us. said Abhijit. I am certainly living my life in two compartments right now said Ravi. Why do we need to unwind over the weekend because we are so wound up the whole week? said Ashutosh. Hey thats not true. I enjoy my banking job said Abhijit. And I love to enjoy a drink with friends over the weekends. Good for you said Ashutosh. Most of us in the world live life in two such compartments, but not all. There are some notable exceptions. Cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle for e.g. let me ask you this question what is similar between Harsha and all of us? Pat comes the answer we all love cricket, we all talk about cricket, etc. The next question what is the one major difference? He gets paid for it, we dont. And that my friends is the
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then this decision is affecting your mental state and causing you great stress. Lets see how? Because you are working out of compulsion, you are probably working less than your capabilities could deliver i.e. you are working with your head, not with your heart. You could be working the bare minimum that you are required to work. Others will notice, peoples opinion of you is unlikely to be good. Your credibility suffers, this stresses you out even more and you put in even less effort than what you are doing today. Ravi said that is certainly happening with me nowadays. My super boss the other day told me, you need to take a call whether you are enjoying this job or not. And I was thinking, how did he come to know. Or is it so obvious? Oh yes, it is replied Abhijit. I could identify three out of my nine direct reportees who are working like this Ashutosh continued And there starts a vicious circle. Your heart is not in your job, you put in less effort, the output is low, bosses notice, colleagues notice, complain, you get depressed even more and switch off further. You know what; I was actually in such a situation one year back. But today if you ask me, I am having the time of my life in the same sales job and the same telecom company. Ravi asked is it really possible to apply these concepts in a job. I thought this was only possible for people like Harsha who are entrepreneurs. Of course, it is possible; I am a living example of this. I will tell you when I had a transformation. When they transferred me from Nagpur to Mumbai, the company threw a send off party for me. Some distributors were
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So whether we are in a vicious circle or a virtuous circle starts from whether we are working in a job or profession out of choice or out of compulsion. Ravi said I am certainly working a life of compulsion, not of choice said Ravi. Ashutosh responded Let me share with you all an exercise that would enable you to be passionate about your job. Selecting a job out of choice means knowledge of what are we passionate about, our core values and beliefs.
1. What kind of activity in the past has given you maximum satisfaction? 2. If you didnt need the money, would you still continue doing whatever job or profession or education you are doing right now? 3. If you didnt need the money, what activity would you do the whole time?
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Ill tell you what irritates me most about other people. There is no decent service in restaurants nowadays Come on its not so bad It is, look at that idiot pointing to the waiter at the side table. See how he is serving Seems fine to me, whats wrong with it Look at the way he is serving, look at the way he is holding the plate, pathetic Actually, if you have such a strong opinion about it, why dont you do something about it? What do you mean? You might want to ask yourself, why God is providing you these lousy experiences all the time. It is because he wants you to do something about it You mean, I should go and work in a restaurant? Not such a dramatic shift. You could pay attention to this sort of thing in your own company to start with. Quitting jobs is hardly the solution to anything. Do you have a Canteen committee or something in your company?
Good idea. You have a canteen in your office. And you seem to believe strongly in this. Pay attention to the service experience at the office canteen itself By that logic, you should pay attention to the drivers in the company All the other three had started smiling by now. You know how he behaves on the road? According to him, the person in front of him, who is driving slower than him, is an idiot, he needs to get out of the way. And the person behind him? The person behind him, who is faster than him and trying to overtake him, is a maniac, a madman And every time he is on the road, he thinks he is surrounded by idiots and maniacs And he is the only sane person around Ravi who had silently listened to this entire conversation where they were tripping on him felt a response was expected from him. He who fights and runs from the battlefield may live to fight another day. Saying this, Ravi got up to go to the washroom.
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Continue doing something more frequently that they are already doing now
Start doing something that they are not doing right now.
10. What is it about your immediate environment that makes you happy? What is it that makes you sad?
11. What is it about your immediate work or home environment that makes you angry?
12. If you were the Head of your department, what are the three specific actions that you would take to energize the office environment?
13. As a CEO of your company when you are speaking to your senior leadership team about dos & donts in the way
they behave with employees, customers & the government, what would you ask them to do?
14. As the CEO of your company when you are speaking to a bunch of fresh graduates who were joining your company, what behaviours and practices would you want them to do when dealing with people?
15. What are the three stupidest things your company is doing right now?
16. Below is a list of values. Put a tick mark on all those values, which are important to you.
Values
Being creative Designing strong processes Being a good parent Eating healthy Being financially secure Being independent Having fun Taking care of elders Being honest Living with integrity
Pl Tick
Values
Constantly learning Planning well Being organized Having a good environment Being open Being a good parent Having a great body Being patient Being calm Being safe
P Tick
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Raising resources Solving problems Having a happy marriage Serving the nation
*************************************************************** Hey come on, I ticked 32 of them. You mean I have 32 values that are important to me No, these are things that you somewhat care about. But are these values that you really care about? What do you mean really care about? If you say this value is important to me, are you investing time or money in doing some activity linked to this value? If not, does this bother you, keep you awake at night? I dont know what that means Take an example. You have ticked physical fitness. Do you go to the gym regularly? Everybody stared at his beer belly. What do you want me to answer? No, of course not Do you play any game? No Do you do anything regularly that would remotely classify as being linked to physical fitness? No
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17. Next, which of the above values would you continue to hold important, even if the world did not support you?
18. Which of the above values would you continue to hold important, even if the world specifically punished you for holding them?
19. Articulate, using three or four sentences, what specific behaviours would mean you are in alignment with these values that you have narrowed down to?
Behaviours? Meaning? You have got financial security in your list. What do you mean by that? By that I mean, I want to be financially secure Of course, but it helps if you could explain it in specifics so you know what you are aspiring for? Say it is Rs 25
Lakhs in the bank. Or the full owner of a three bedroom apartment. I could do that for being famous. For me that would be, every time an article on that topic appears in a financial daily, they would call me up for a comment Page 3 Certainly not, page one is what I am talking about
20. If you could organize a group of people to do something effectively which you yourself would find it difficult to do alone, what would you want the group to do?
21. Imagine yourself 10 years into the future. Imagine a felicitation event has been organized in your honour. If you were to look back in pride over your activities over the last 10 years and reflect on your most satisfying achievement, your most important contribution, what would that be?
22. Looking back at the general idea behind the responses that you have given so far, what is your mission in life? Why do you exist?
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To get around this, many of us have developed a set of activities to do on weekends; it is these activities that give us maximum enjoyment. The bulk of our day spent at work, which for many of us gives little satisfaction, it is a drudgery that we do because we need the money, because we need to pay bills, because we need to send our children to school, pay the car / home monthly installments to the bank and generally because we need to support our lifestyles. So lets ask ourselves a fundamental question? Why should life be compartmentalized like this?
Why should there be two sets of activities one to earn money and another one to be happy? Why shouldnt money come from the same set of activities that give happiness? So lets examine the concept of money and the way we go around earning it and the perception we have of it. In our society today, profit is a still a dirty word and to some extent that perception stems from the fact that we look at people who earn a large amount of money as selfish, that they are earning money for themselves and not for others in society.
Suppose money was to be earned by serving others and in that same process, we would also obtain joy and happiness. Suppose money were to be earned not by hoarding it, but by sharing it e.g. Narayana Murthy who created 800 crorepatis amongst Infoscions and also earned a large amount of wealth for himself. Suppose money were to be earned by taking excellent care of employees, by serving customers well with good products and services, by paying taxes and by generally being good citizens. Would that not lead to everlasting happiness and satisfaction?
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But is this style of leadership, i.e. the approach where a professional also serves society, widely practiced? Do the world best companies practice this?
The answer to both questions is Yes. The concept works for organizations as well the people who work there. Lets take some business examples that have been explained wonderfully well in two books Growing a Business by Paul Hawken and Built to Last by James Collins & Jerry Porras. Walt Disney To bring happiness to millions HDFC One of Indias largest housing finance companies. An excerpt from the website www.hdfc.com HDFC was incorporated in 1977 with the primary objective of meeting a social need that of promoting
home ownership by providing long-term finance to households for their housing needs. H T Parekhs mission A home for every Indian.
So what do we see from all these examples. That though we find plenty of leaders that make money without having any of these mission or value principles, long term success, personal satisfaction and respect only come from following these basic
guidelines. You might ask all this is fine but how does this help me in my day-to-day job. *************************************************************** You ticked reducing waste What do you mean by this? All kinds of wastage drive me nuts. We regularly take printouts which go waste, we probably waste tons of paper like this. In the company, we hire people then let them out into the field without teaching them. Thats another waste. Then we have four offices in the city, thats a waste in rentals And what must be the financial impact of all this? Lakhs of rupees annually So why dont you do something about it? Its not my department It is your company, isnt it?
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Not really. We are anything but considerate when we let off our non performers how are they let off? Immediately. No warnings, no grace period nothing. We just call them for a meeting at end of the month one by one and fire them What would be a more considerate way to do that? Maybe a two weeks notice period How quickly do they get other jobs? Oh, within three to four days. Then one week at junior levels is good enough Yes possibly. I guess I need to put this down in my agenda for next week. I have been disturbed by it for some time now Thats how we derive satisfaction from our work. See we all have certain values that we believe in. Nothing right or wrong or wrong about them, just that we are particular about them. Since we spend the bulk of our life at work or in our profession, the values have to be in alignment with those of the organization That would address all the negativity we perceive in our jobs the whole day Thats the point actually. A lot of us complain about what is not right in our companies. But what do we do about it? The problem is always in they. They are doing this, they are not doing this, etc etc
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Again I am thinking of a zebra You get the point That it is very easy to think of zebras Are you finished? Then pull the chain Sorry, what is the concept here That the mind does not process dont. It just processes the main message which was zebra in this case
So when I say I want to reduce weight, the mind does not process the reduce bit, it just takes the weight bit Exactly. So coming back. Align your thoughts to what you want to do I want to reduce wastage in my company. No. No. Thats a negative again. Try again. Rephrase I want to ensure that resources are utilized well Something more specific I want to improve productivity to 90% Cheers
Is music your passion? You could have soft music running in the office the whole day. Or organize a music night where employees can showcase their talent.
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Suppose your passion turns out to be empowering others, or more specifically giving encouragement to less educated people. Take charge of people development for the sales associates who work for you in the dealerships or channel members. You could arrange better employee benefits like insurance or loans.
You like sports? Are you one of those high flying corporate managers who stopped all interaction with sports the day you passed out of college. Then take charge of reigniting a sports culture within the company. Arrange one sports tournament every month. Start with table tennis or carom, a light game them move on to cricket, football etc. Ensure your company participates in intercorporate sports tournaments.
Did you want to be a pilot when you were young? Still fascinated by aircraft? What could you do? Kale Consultants is one of the worlds largest software
companies in airlines ticketing. PTC does modeling for Airbus and Boeings designs coming out 5 years later. Air Deccan (now taken over by Kingfisher) was started by a passionate entrepreneur Captain Gopinath who revolutionized air travel by making it affordable to the common man. So you could even start your own airline.
Do you love cars? How do you live out your passion today? Watching movies on cars? Taking test drives? What are your chances of owning a Mercedes? Lets see what options you have. DC Designs (who made that car in movie Tarzan) is a large company that has VC funding too. Or you could be a journalist for these auto magazines. What would be your job? Driving every new car that is coming into the market. And getting paid for it too. Auto component companies like Bharat Forge is working on next generation vehicle designs for cars that are likely to be launched five years hence. Car companies have design teams whose job is to study whats happening in the world of design in other cars, knock down competition cars and study them for ideas. Exciting?
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Making others independent / providing employment to others: Supposing your life passion is to help others, make them independent. Why not find a job or start a business that would enable you to do that? Supposing you were to join an insurance company. At Tata AIG General Insurance Company, we trained a bunch of Agency Managers on how they could perform their role better. A part of their role is to hire and inspire independent products. financial advisors range to sell from insurance MBAs to
These
people
housewives and all profiles in between. They need to be inspired to move into this role, learn some amount of finance and are shown a dream of financial
independence for themselves. This involves a service promise by the Agency Manager to the potential advisor join me and I will empower you to earn Rs 50,000 per month. Similarly in Birla Sun Life AMC, the managers have to constantly inspire their advisors to sell mutual
funds over other financial products. Ensuring that the day to day target pressure is sustained is easy if we remember the mission that we are trying to achieve in the long run making people independent.
Looking beautiful / making others beautiful: Beauty and cosmetics is amongst the biggest industries in the world addressing half the worlds population. LOreal sells cosmetics, so do Marico and Godrej Consumer Products. A sales person in these companies would be under constant pressure to sell products through the channel of distributors, wholesalers and retailers. Loreal is one company that stands out in terms of the attention they pay to educating the salesperson about product features and benefits. The belief in the product is so high and the salesperson can actually give intelligent, knowledgeable answers to doubts of the retailers and address their queries. The passion goes across from the seller to the buyer.
On a deeply spiritual plane, God is giving you lessons. You will keep getting the lesson until you learn the lesson!! God is giving you these experiences because he wants you to do something about it. So move your backside and live out your passion about food and service and hospitality by doing something about it.
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What about taking care of elders? Very satisfying to do this of course. But how do I do this on a regular basis for more elders not just those in my own family. I feel parents and elders in general are uncared for and I would really like to do something about it Then consider this example. There is a housing complex in Pune which has a lot of studio apartments small one BHK apartments with a kitchen, doctor on call, high security etc. It is targeted towards NRI children of elders who would not like to shift to the US but still need to be taken care of. That is a good concept. So staying in these studio apartments gives the elders their independence at the same time their children have peace of mind knowing that in case of emergency, help is quickly available. And this builder is planning a series of apartment complexes along these lines at different cities. Which means the business is a combination of a builder and a hotel cum hospital kind of a business Yes it is What about making children happy. I enjoy spending time with children, playing with them? My favourite show on TV is guess Tom and Jerry. I would love to
work in a business where I make children happy all the time. Walt Disney mission in life to make children happy. And he has constructed a business model of
amusement parks, movies etc to live out this passion. If making children happy is your passions try working in a kids playgroup, an animation company, an amusement park etc
Being healthy: Are your office friends healthy? Some Japanese factories have a fifteen minute aerobics session before starting work. Does your company have a gym? Then start the process to get one made. The budgets are always there. You are passionate about health. You jog regularly, spend a few hours at the gym every day, and believe that good health is the most important thing in the world. Networking. Say you enjoy networking, connecting with people. Two of the fastest growing businesses in the world Linkedin and Facebook enable the same thing i.e. enable people to stay in touch with each other. Philosophical? Maybe. Impractical? You might say Lets be realistic. Will this lead to happiness? Dont take
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Lastly, will this give me wealth? Will I be able to buy that bungalow on the beach, or that fancy car? Success is not just about money, it is about happiness. But money is important to live a good comfortable life. So lets look at money in the next section to balance our life better
Did you do the Discover your passion exercise? asked Ashutosh asked. Yes I did.
They were sitting at the airport coffee shop at Mumbai international airport. It was three months since their meeting where all four had a ball of a time that night. Ashutosh had come to see off his aunt to Singapore and Abhijit was meeting a customer who was travelling to London by the late night flight. I did. I showed it to my colleagues at work. In fact I showed it to my boss also. You know what came out as my passion? said Abhijit.
What? asked Ashutosh. That I like to develop systems and processes. In the three years with this company there have been only two instances where I have been happy. In both cases, I was introduced into the role when there was a problem. I stabilized it, trained the team, developed role clarity and fine tuned the whole system Tell me in detail what you did There was this branch office which was reporting high attrition. There were major complaints from the distributors against the Branch Manager. Staff was unhappy and vendors were complaining about late payments. The Branch Manager, it was discovered, was involved in fraud. I studied the operations and within two weeks made my recommendations. My first
recommendation was to fire the Branch Manager. They did that. Then they stationed me there as the BM to restore morale and design processes for the sales and finance people to work. I also met each and every one of the forty distributors in the branch area to get an idea of what was to be done to improve the situation. Within two months, improvements were visible. Within six
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taking 110 days to pay our vendors. The situation was so bad that the vendors had stopped giving priority to us. Situation was that bad? My vendor billing per region is almost Rs 5 crores per month. Thats almost Rs 60 crores a year. My agreement with them was for me to pay them in 30 days. That we used to achieve earlier, but then as the business grew and attrition increased We lost good people. That threw the systems haywire and then it was chaos So what did you do. My first job was to study and list out the activities that needed to be done to clear each bill. There were checks that each branch office has to do, and then the finance manager of the branch would send all the invoices to the regional office where they would get checked all over again. Some of these checks were redundant, but there were many that were unique. The whole thing was part of the audit process also and there were also issues of tracking and improvement And these checks were what was causing such a large delay? asked Ashutosh. No not at all. These checks were taking ten minutes each, thats it. At each of the locations branch office
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faster, but surely it would have had an impact on the companys working capital, that would have got strained? Not really, we are a cash rich company. But here is the beauty. The Regional finance head had this brainwave. He said, in phase one I will bring down payments to 30 days. Phase two, I will go to the vendors with a proposal. I will pay you in 5 days, give me a 5% discount. 5% of 60 crores is 3 crores. Thats impressive. This is only for the west region. There are four regions. So Rs 12 crores savings is what could be achieved. But there may be execution issues. So it may not happen everywhere. But we see a savings of approximately Rs 7 crores from this nationally this year said Abhijit. I think you are getting late for your flight. Run along now. And congratulations
Summary:
Figure out what you enjoy doing, then go find a bunch of people who will pay you to do exactly what you enjoy doing. Life is sheer bliss after that.
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No of course not. Are there people in the world who pay cash for a car? I picked it up on a loan from a private sector bank So what you mean is that you can afford to take a loan for it clarified Abhijit. If you mean, can you afford to pay the EMIs, of course I can. I mean everything that we buy is on loan. My house is on loan. My TV is on loan. We took a loan and went on holiday to Europe last year. We can afford to pay the EMIs, we have not defaulted so far Your wife Nalini also works, right. So this lifestyle and expenses you can afford because you are dinks? Dinks? Double income no kids Thats a good one. What happens when you guys decide to expand your family, have kids? Nalini will have to take a break. That means you will have to fund all this alone. Wouldnt that put a little strain on the finances? asked Abhijit Rajesh kept looking at Abhijit for a long long time. What is the point you are making? I am not so sure myself. All I am saying is that we spend with the assumption that the money will keep coming every year. Each of these expenses we make however only give temporary satisfaction. I think I was far happier when I was in college. Today I have a big house, a car, and every conceivable gadget in the house, we take holidays across the world and I am not
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Right now it is. But what is your point? asked Ashutosh. My point is, an important reason for our high incomes has been the growing economy which today looks distinctly overheated. So the crash has to come sooner or later said Abhijit. And thats when salaries will fall. Or no bonuses. My company has already started preparing for the crash. While all our competitors are hiring anybody with two hands and two feet, we froze the recruitment tap over four months back said Abhijit. Which means this high expense lifestyle is going to strain us once our salaries peak or even fall because of no bonuses Difficult to accept the fact that all of us are overpaid today. You said something about temporary satisfaction I agree with the temporary satisfaction part. Come on, even what we do at night is temporary satisfaction Ravi burst out laughing on that. Abhijit tried to keep a serious face, but he couldnt keep it on too long. Before long, all four of them were laughing and thats how their wives saw them after some time.
That felt good You love swimming, dont you. Said Rupali. They were enjoying a swim in the pool. They had taken long walks in the resort and had lazed in the hammocks next to the river. The other three couples had gone back to Mumbai
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I know what you mean; spending money has lost its charm if it is not linked to a purpose I am also realizing that we are completely dependent to our salaries Meaning what Our expenses and incomes match. We have practically no savings and we are therefore two months away from bankruptcy Thats more or less everybodys story Not really. I know one fellow in office who spends so little money. He is also a Senior Manager like me. No eating out. Drives a small car. Still lives with his parents in Borivali. Still takes the train to work said Abhijit I guess there is a fine line between simple living and kanjoosi We need to strike the right balance then. I was talking about this guy in the office. He is so confident at work Whats the connection? Dont you see it. The cold hard fact is that neither of us can afford to quit our jobs now, even if we wanted too. I am enjoying my job of course, but if we wanted to take a break for some time, neither of us can afford to do so today. Guess thats what our parents have been telling us for so many years, live simple. I read this book by Robert Kiyosaki Rich Dad Poor Dad where he defines the term asset and liability. He
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drives himself. Also Narayana Murthy, still moves around in a simple car. And both are worth millions of dollars. Guess there is merit in that thought process. And knowing the power of compounding, small savings invested intelligently should quickly reduce our dependence on salaries What do you mean? Compounding follows the Rule of 72. Meaning if we invested at 8%, our money would approximately double in 72 divided by 8 = 9 years. If we invested at 12%, then money would double at 72 / 12 = 6 years Where does one get 12%?. No instrument gives that Hold on for a moment. There is one instrument that gives 24% also. But have you applied the rule of 72 to 24%. See what happens What happens? At 24%, our money doubles in three years. Lets do this calculation with some specific figures. If we save a nominal amount of Rs 1.00 Lakh and put it in a financial instrument at 24%, do you know how much it grows to over a 36 year time frame? How much? Over Rs 40 crores. Youre joking I do not joke about money. Do the calculation yourself said Abhijit
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Hey hold on, we took Rs 1 Lakh in our calculation only once. Thats not the real picture. We will save money every year. So it will be Rs 1 lakh and more every year So you might want to recalculate the figure of Rs 40 crores So compounding depends on rate of return and time Also the amount of money saved. Yes, the concept therefore is, the earlier we start, the better. And let us manage risk to maximize returns. But isnt the stock market risky? Of course it is. So is life. Everything is risky. There is risk in driving on the road. But we drive safely, we wear seat belts, we in effect manage the risk. Twenty years it back it was risky for us to cross the road. As we get knowledgeable, we learn to manage that risk You are saying that risk is a function of knowledge Of course it is. The road is not risky. The driver is risky and the way he drives the car is risky. The stock market is of course risky. But an investor investing with ignorance is a far more riskier proposition. Said Abhijit
What does getting wealthy mean to you? The purpose of the exercise that follows is to help clarify what money means to you. Yes of course we agree that money is important and we spend most of our time every day doing activities that would increase our income. As somebody had once said, Money is necessary to live a comfortable life, but beyond a point, it makes no difference to our lifestyle For e.g. if say you today like to eat out at a restaurant twice a week and if
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2. If you had Rs. 50 Lakhs more, how differently would you live your life?
3. If you had Rs. 5 crores more, how differently would you live your life? ____________________________________________
5 Lakhs more, I am clear. 50 Lakhs more also I am clear. 5 crores more I have no idea. Thats the point. Most of us live hand to mouth, one paycheck to another. If we had a situation where there are no EMIs and all bills get paid effortlessly without tension, most of us would be lost Wow, no EMIs, plenty of money in the bank, that would be bliss Really? By that definition, the richest people in the world would be the happiest I know, that is simply not true
4. With more money available to you, how would the following aspects of your life be different from what it is today?
What kind of TV / Music System, electronics items would you have in the house? ______________________________________ How would be the interiors of the house?
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What model car would you own? ___________________________________ What brands of clothes would you wear? ______________________________________ What jewellery would your wife be wearing? ______________________________________ What quality of life would you enjoy with spouse? ___________________________________ What quality of life would you enjoy with kids? ___________________________________ ___________________________________ What kind of work would you be doing? ___________________________________ ___________________________________ What hobbies would you enjoy doing? ___________________________________ What sports would you play? What would you do in your spare time? __________________________________ What books would you read? What people would you meet?
______________________________________ Any other aspects of a wealthy lifestyle you would like to elaborate ______________________________________ ______________________________________ 5. Do a quick review of your current financial situation. For a detailed philosophy of this concept of Wealth Ratio, please read the entire series of books Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, available at all leading book stores. Below write down your monthly income today on a post tax basis. If your pay package has some annual components, then take the post tax amount; divide by twelve to arrive at a monthly figure. If you are married, then do this exercise for your spouses income also and get a total figure. Post tax Monthly Income for Self = Rs ______________ Post tax Monthly Income for Spouse = Rs ___________ Total Monthly Post tax Income for Family = Rs _______ 6. Next, list down your regular monthly expenses in as much detail as possible item wise. These would be the expenses that you would incur to reflect a decent comfortable standard of living: Home Provisions: __________________ Fruits & vegetables: ________________ Telephone Landline. ______________ Telephone Mobile: ________________
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7. Next write down your net Monthly Other Income i.e. this is that income, which comes from sources other than salary or profession. This is that income that would continue to accrue to you even though you quit your job, etc. Fixed Deposits: ________________ Interest from FDs: ______________ Dividends from Shares:___________ ______________________________ Capital Appreciation (Avg): __________ Other Income from Financial Assets:___
________________________________ Rent from Property : _______________ ________________________________ 8. Next calculate your Wealth ratio = Monthly Other Income / Monthly Expenses. Express this figure as a percentage. (Refer to Robert Kiyosaki Rich Dad Poor Dad for detailed ideas on this)
Am I Wealthy Today? Lets review the situation today. We have expenses, we like to live well, provide a good lifestyle for our children, have fun, go on a holiday and all this requires money. This money comes from either the Earned Income (income from salary or profession) or it has to come from Other Income. Since the Other Income component for most of us is quite less (zero also), most of us therefore need to fund our lifestyles from salaried income. Therefore most of us are completely dependent on the job. Now lets take a hypothetical situation. Supposing, just supposing your Other Income were more that your Expenses on a month on month basis. Lets take an example. Say your monthly expense is Rs. 20,000. Suppose you had so much money in a fixed deposit that the interest was more than Rs. 20,000. Suppose you had say Rs. 75 Lakhs in a FD. The interest would be more than Rs. 20,000 per month even after factoring in taxes. With this financial situation, how would your life be different? How would your day-to-day behaviour
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Are you going to talk about retirement? Not the way the insurance companies talk about it. They are all talking about something that would happen at 60 years of age. I am talking about financial retirement Whats financial retirement? It is defined as the financial situation where the need to work is zero Need to work is zero? Other income greater than expenses on a monthly basis Cash is King, everything else is nonsense So by this definition, financial retirement may happen at 30, this may happen at 45, or we may not even retire at 60. Yes, life would be so much different There is no need to work, since expenses are being met out of other income. Since there is no need to work, we would be more secure, freer and chances are that we would take more risks. Also one is likely to move to a role that would give greater satisfaction. There are also lifestyle benefits Yes, usually lifestyle dips after retirement, partly because needs reduce, partly because expenses adjust to reflect the lower other income. If other income exceeds expenses, lifestyle would never dip, we are therefore committing to an ever-increasing standard of living. And the best benefit I see is that we would be free to pursue our passion immediately.
Next, lets look at the behaviours of the people and the impact that each of these expenses has on these three components of Salary income, expenses and Other Income. What does the average working professional do with his money? Invest it in property, gold, shares, fixed deposits, insurance etc. Spend it on consumer durables, entertainment, buy cars, go shopping, purchase a house etc. The three biggest expenses that we would incur are buying a car, buying a house, marriage, not necessarily in that order. Let us now look at the financial impact of buying a car. Suppose we buy a car on loan, some down payment would have to be given This down payment was earlier generating an other income, so the first impact is other income dips. What about expenses? Loan installments, fuel, maintenance, parking charges, all add up to increased expenses. So by buying a car, we reduce other income and add to expenses. And what impact does this have on our need to earn money? That right, it makes us more dependent on the job. We need the money, so we end up becoming more dependent. So less freedom. At this point, look at the definition of asset and liability provided by Robert Kiyosaki in Rich Dad Poor Dad: Asset: something that puts money in my pocket. Liability: Something that removes money from my pocket. By this definition from a cash flow perspective, indicate whether the following are assets or liabilities:
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Place of residence: __________ Property bought for investment: _______ Property rented out, expenses more than rent ____ Property rented out, positive cash flow _______ A lot of us start with some money and never generate wealth because we buy liabilities thinking they are assets. The wealthy buy assets. Assets, which put money in their pockets, assets that increase the negotiating power, assets which bring freedom
Buying assets is the secret to wealth creation. Smart people buy assets. Everybody else buys liabilities!!!!! So lets look at some systematic steps that would lead to steady wealth creation in the long run:
Step 1: Decide your age of financial retirement NOW. Thats right, put down a timeline when you would not need to
work for money, your other income is taking care of all your expenses & you have a few savings left over. I will retire at the age of _______ in the year ___________________. Step 2: Buy liabilities to the extent of need, not desire. Before you plan for the future, do a quick analysis of your financial situation today. a. You have already listed down your familys monthly expenses in detail home provisions, purchases, loan EMIs, electricity, petrol, entertainment, etc. b. Also you have already listed down your familys monthly Other Income arising from your savings. c. Take a cold hard look at all those expense figures. Ruthlessly slash all those expenses, which you feel are wasteful & unnecessary. Cut down on all spending that you can, without feeling miserable about it. d. Now plan for your liability acquisitions in the next few years. Clearly specify the liability that you would want to acquire e.g. if you are planning to buy a car, then visualize which car, variant, colour, accessories, etc. If you are planning to buy a house, then elaborate what location, area in square foot, floor, etc. i. The car I want to buy will be _____________________________________ ii. The house I want to buy will be
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Step 4: Plan liability acquisitions at least a year in advance. This step involves putting deadlines to every asset and liability acquisition. For every liability purchase, ask yourself when will the seller be desperate to sell? When does this product go on sale in the next one year? Analyze sales patterns over the last two / three years to do this. Liability Corresponding Asset Deadline
B segment
6 months
Step 5: Increase cash by increasing K.A.S.H. This concept was explained to us wonderfully well by Mr. Krishnan Venkatachalam of Tata AIG General Insurance who was giving practical guidance during one of our training programs. Plan goals for next three years. Where, what role, what job responsibilities do you visualize for yourself over the next three years? How do you foresee your professional business growing over the next few years? What knowledge, skills, attitudes and habits will you need to achieve these goals? Outline a process that will get you there - job rotation, training, regular book reading, taking feedback, etc. My One-year K.A.S.H. Goal: ____________________________________________ My 3-year K.A.S.H. Goal: ____________________________________________
Step 6:
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Step 7: Have targets for Income & Freedom Ratio. Consolidate all the numbers into the following sheet: I want to BREAK FREE in the year ________ Current Next Year Year Yr year year 2 5 10 A. Earnings B. Expenses C. Savings = A - B D. Avg rate of return of savings E. Other Income = D*C F. Freedom Ratio % = E/B
So lets look at the benefits of being financially free: 1. Freedom to pursue our passion & dreams. 2. Much greater ability to negotiate therefore more bargaining power with others. 3. Less stress, more happiness. 4. Easier to pull the plug, in case things do not work out. So becoming financially free is one of the fastest ways of skyrocketing our productivity and moving into a discover your passion role. ************************************************************ I liked the point of linking liability targets to asset targets said Rupali What do you suspicious. mean? asked Abhijit, sounding
I will buy my diamond necklace after you put Rs 5 Lakhs in mutual funds. Cool. Add that designer saree that you liked in that mall. By the way, what exactly are we going to do the whole day after we financially retire? Abhijit looked at Rupali and winked.
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Appraisal is a long long way off. It is the daily pressure that is getting to me. You know what he does; he does not give clear instructions and then keeps yelling when we dont deliver as per his expectations Atleast you boss talks said Rajesh. I had one boss in my previous company who was an expert at written communication. The only communication from him was on sms or email. All feedback used to come from his Blackberry Wouldnt it be a lot easier to just pick up the phone and talk? Why write? My boss spends the whole day in meetings. Gives vague instructions. We are all waiting for him in the evening for clarity. Then the yelling happens from 6 to 6.30 pm every day. Then we all work till 10 pm. I am becoming this Sunday wale Daddy I know what you mean. You must be seeing your kids grow horizontally more than seeing them grow vertically I agree. These are the best years of my childrens life and I barely get to even see them. My daughters annual day coincided with my annual offsite, so I missed that. This has happened three years in a row But that is not anything to do with your boss remarked Abhijit. I agree, I could have planned this better. But what about the vague instructions part? I cant do anything about that Maybe it is easier to complain than do anything about it.
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Exactly. He says we are so busy because we tend to focus on the urgent activities and tend to forget the important ones. And suddenly the important activities are remembered by the bosses and then we feel it is a question of changing priorities Explain please Think about it. Of about say ten things that your boss has told you to do this week, how many were activities which you knew that you had to do in any case About seven of them Then why does your boss need to remind you to do them It was the other three things that we ended up wasting time on Why Because the sky is so high. It is easy for you as a business man to ask these questions. You try working in my role. When your boss tells you to do something, you have to do that I have a different take on that Rajesh interrupted. We used to have that approach in our company till recently. You cannot disagree with the boss. Rule No 1 - Boss is always right. Rule No 2 When in doubt, refer to Rule No 1. But in that training program, we got an idea from the trainer. He said, there is a way to say No without using the word No. He said the word No is the most blunt word in the English language, it puts off people. When your boss gives you some work and you are in the midst of a lot of work already, point that out to him. Say I was working on the MIS report, if we do this it would delay that. When do you actually need this? It
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What do you mean, I wont let them You do have a tendency to poke your nose everywhere. You poke your nose in the kitchen also. You know it drives your wife nuts I like things to be perfect Good morning, rise and shine, its a beautiful day. Things never are perfect. And thats exactly why you are so stressed out. Switch off your mobile. Two hours every day. See what happens. Before that, train your subordinates well. They are quite smart, many times a lot smarter than we are I know, a great leader had once said that the only difference between us and people who are learning less than us is that we happened to be lucky enough to be born to richer parents We all carry notions of indispensability with us. We think we are the center of the universe; the company will collapse if we are not there. My company organizes a series of three day training programs at our Mysore training facility. First day the boys show major attitude problems why am I being sent to this program? Send my boss, he needs the training far more than I do. Etc etc My entire middle management should be sent to this program Very good program. We cover goal setting planning, team building etc. On day one during the breaks, these guys are on their mobiles. They are all area and regional managers from our sales teams from the branches, home loans, car loans, credit cards etc. In breaks, they have 40 missed calls or so
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Come on its not so bad I agree, I am just being cynical. I dont have to be positive all the time So true What was that other point you mentioned dont prioritize your schedule, just schedule your priorities? Sounds the same to me It's not. Let me explain the difference. You understand this and you will understand the difference between being reactive and being proactive. Most of us react. React to colleagues, subordinates, family members, etc. These people push us for our time. We then schedule these people on our calendar. I will send you the MIS first thing tomorrow, then meet the finance team, etc. So what else is to be done Imagine nobody called you. No email. No sms. No mobile call at all Wow Now what would you do? I would focus on those three things that I need to do to improve my work processes. So Thats it. You know your priorities, all you have to do is schedule them in your day to day calendar Oh now I get it. What I was doing earlier that I was only prioritizing my schedule, a schedule that had been set by someone else
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Very true. Some days I feel like I am running on a treadmill. Years have gone by and I am still in the same place Most of us working in jobs or in our own small businesses are so busy servicing demand and running from pillar to post every minute of the day, no wonder we feel so stressed out. The opportunity for growth only comes when we free some time from our daily schedules and focus on the future, how we could add more value to ourselves and our companies, only then are we creating demand, otherwise we are just busy, like on a treadmill, running hard just to stay in the same place. The classic burnout case. Earning lakhs of rupees, no inclination to spend it or no satisfaction from spending it And no spare time too. If somebody asks what you do in your spare time, response is what spare time? I was talking to one of our friends from the stock broking business. He says the guys there are simply cracking up under pressure. Market is down. Nobody trades when market is down. People only trade when the market is up. What can they do? And many of them have worked in only one industry all their lives Whats common across all of us? We are all are hardworking executives who keep firefighting the whole day at work. We face lots of pressure because of our jobs, our pay packets. We want to succeed and live a life of satisfaction. But we are so busy the whole day that we have no time to think or plan or take control. Part and parcel of modern day living
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AM I AN ACE TODAY? 1. My regular time for finishing work & leaving for home is ________________________________ 2. On an average, I work _________ hours every day. 3. I would ideally like to work _________ hours every day. 4. If I could work _______ hours every day, I would do the following activities in my spare time______________________ 5. I do firefighting most time_________________________ of the
6. I use a To-Do List. ____________________ 7. I follow it regularly _______________________ 8. I plan a week / month / quarter / six months / year / 5 years / more into the future. (Pl circle) 9. I have goals for my life ___________________ 10. These are written down___________________ 11. These goals relate to aspects of finance / career / family / health / community. 12. I evaluate my performance against these goals regularly._______________________________ 13. My daily / weekly / list of activities is generated from these goals.________________________ 14. I tend to wait till the last possible moment before starting a task___________________________ 15. My activities are slotted in time bands & scheduled as per priority___________________ 16. I know broadly my schedule____________ 17. My boss broadly schedule__________ bosss weekly
knows
my
weekly
18. My team members share their schedules with each other regularly_____________________ 19. I can usually predict happen__________ fires before they
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30. At work, I allow others to keep interrupting me for general chitchat_______________________ 31. I keep interrupting others whenever I feel like__________ 32. During this time of the day I am most productive________ 33. I do my planning / creative work during the time of the day when I am most creative_______________________________
34. When I delegate, I agree with my team members on accountability and deadlines.____________ 35. I find it difficult to others__________________ say No to
being
37. I find myself spending an inordinate amount of time doing tasks which could easily be done by others________________ 38. When I delegate, I specify deliverables & give freedom to my team members to do the task in whichever manner they seem appropriate_____ 39. I can usually see __________________ 80% of my desk
40. I never have to search for any paper or mail for more than 30 seconds____________________ 41. I can work on multiple simultaneously___________ Quite thought provoking What did you respond to - Do you have a life other than work? asked Ashutosh. OK OK, fine yaar. You play tennis twice a week, we all know that For this question, most of us would answer in the negative. Said Abhijit. We have got so involved with our work that we have forgotten that we have an identity tasks
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of others or threatening them. After two to three weeks when you have managed your schedule well, advance the time by another 30 minutes to 8 pm. Practice this schedule for two to three weeks more and within a few months you should manage your work better and others would have accepted your timings with respect. I think I also want to get back to my badminton game said Rajesh And I want to get back to reading books Good activities to do. There needs to be an incentive to get out of office. An enjoyable activity at home like playing with kids, is another one such activity. Badminton is a great game. Relaxing and also physically challenging if you find the right partners All this should be done with a time frame of one year. We should plan 20% of your next year, 50% of your next month and 80% of your next week at any point in time. 20% of your next year time with family, breaks, etc. 50% of next month and 80% of next week. Why not 100%? Because priorities may change, new developments would come through. If we schedule 100% of next week, then even one change or development will upset our schedules. Scheduling 50% of next week means: Anticipating the organizations priorities. Understand bosss style of working and planning for the next one month. Use a paper scheduling system or computer / mobile or Blackberry. Schedule important activities into the month, activities which need to be done. Put a start time and an end time for each activity.
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Handling procrastination: Most of us tend to wait till the last possible moment before we start an activity, a habit that we developed in college, studying only before the exams in the last 15 days. Procrastination tends to build pressure and stress and causes mistakes to happen. The solution put a start time for an activity in the To-do List. A good driver is someone who tracks traffic ahead of the vehicle in front. Most drivers are reactive; they react to the vehicle in front. Therefore they drive in jerks, starting & stopping abruptly. Good drivers however keep track of the traffic ahead. They already know what the vehicle ahead of them is going to do based on conditions ahead. So they drive more steadily without any sudden starts or stops. Corporate planning is something like that. A lot of us
complain my boss is disorganized, he does not plan. So what we ask. Bosses do not operate on their own, they also respond to priorities of their bosses further up. If you have been working with your existing bosses for more than three months, you should be able to analyze and spot trends and requirements in the senior leadership even before they happen. Thus one can get greater control over schedules. Thus the steps to do would be: Keep track of the bosss weekly schedule. Communicate your own fortnightly schedule Youll be surprised with all due respect, your boss does not know your weekly schedule, you are simply not that important to him. Do the same with team members. Study deadlines, anticipate bottlenecks, plan plan plan. Then execute in discussions with key people. If you want to get promoted, make yourself redundant The first question HR is going to ask while thinking of promoting you is If we promote this person to the next level, what would happen to status of work in this level. If the answer turns out as work will collapse, there is no one else who can handle that work, then the individual is stuck, he will never get promoted. So good time management involves identifying resources who can handle the work in your absence so you can be free to aspire higher. Some foreign banks even go to the extent of compulsorily forcing people to take leave of absence as per entitlement. This way, the organization comes to know how dependent the processes are on that particular individual. It also comes to know what tricks the manager is upto to achieve his numbers.
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Be a parallel worker
The higher up the ladder we move, the more will be the demands on our time, simultaneously. As an individual contributor, one has to be focused on one activity. Whereas as a manager, there would be ten things vying for your attention all the time. Good managers learn to work on multiple things simultaneously so they are able to get many things done with subordinates. Inefficient managers work on just one or two things, end up doing them well but other work suffers because they do not pay attention to it. Thus the incomplete work gets all the negative publicity, the good work gets no credit. Different ways to do this include using waiting time during meetings, receptions, travel, airports to catch up on follow up.
Explain why, then how When delegating or explaining work to others, most of us have a tendency to just explain the work without giving the other person an idea of why the work is important in the larger scheme of things. For e.g. one way could be prepare the MIS report by 4 pm. Same thing said differently we need to present data to the VP at 6 pm, lets get the MIS report done by 4 pm has a different impact altogether. Communicating vision and purpose reduces the need for follow up with a greater sense of involvement being built up Learn to Say NO Taking control of your life starts by saying No to others. No to others demands on your time. No to time wasters. Sounds very obvious but a lot of us find it difficult to say No to others because:
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Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. George S Patton When a boss gives us work, he does not yes does not expect the work to be done by you alone. If you have subordinates, this work could be shared with others. However delegation is a process that has to be learnt and practiced. The following could be used as a quick checklist every time you delegate to anybody. The more detailed the responses, the better the delegation process. The Task In the task that I am delegating, I am clear about: The results I expect_________________ The resources available to do the job._______ The norms to be followed_________________ The deadline___________________________
The Person: I have considered the following about the person I am delegating it to: Ability to do the job. Willingness. Current workload. Future capability required. Current role type. The Process of Delegating: When I explained the activity to the person, I took care to: Explain why the task was being delegated. _________________________________________ Describe the end result expected & how it fits into the big picture. _________________________________________ Discuss plan of action, resources available, scope of decision-making authority _________________________________________ Agree on regular & control measures. _________________________________________ Taken feedback regularly _________________________________________ Appreciated the effort of subordinate, reviewed learnings. _________________________________________
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Consider the following situations at work. Mark whether you feel that the situation is such that delegation would be appropriate or not. 1. My top subordinate wants my job and is eager to push me out of it. 2. I am not very good at planning & coordination. 3. I am the first one into the office and usually the last one to leave. 4. We do so much of fire fighting around here that there is no time to plan. 5. Some job openings are coming up next year, at the next level up from where I am now. 6. Nobody around here has any commitment to work. 7. I am overloaded with work, and the task is such that if it goes wrong, it will mean serious consequences for the entire project. 8. The job market is good, lots of my subordinates have moved on for greener pastures & I have also received calls from headhunters. 9. If I delegate my work & the department functions well without me, I will end up making myself redundant. 10. My work is sensitive, if I delegate it, can I trust my subordinates to keep it confidential.
11. I am the only one who can do this job so well. 12. My boss is the type of person who expects me to personally do the work he has given. 13. I am a highly detail oriented person; I personally check each & every work done by my subordinates. 14. I believe people are good for nothing and need to be kicked else they will simply goof off. 15. I am a management whiz kid; I have identified the 20% of my job that will give me visibility and growth. 16. At all times, I must know every detail about every task, just in case my bosses ask. 17. I am the most important person in the group; my absence leads to the workflow simply collapsing. 18. The culture in our department is such that subordinates usually take their problems to the bosses, who come up with solutions, which the subordinates implement. 19. I am a perfectionist. I subscribe to the belief if you want something done right do it yourself! For solutions to the above exercise, read on: My top subordinate wants my job and is eager to push me out of it There cannot be a better reason to delegate. An insecure person would say here is a fellow who is out to take my job, I need to control him. A secure fellow
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and life goes on. 5 days later, you would not even be missed. We do so much of fire fighting around here that there is no time to plan. Classic chicken and egg situation. You need to do firefighting because you do not plan. Start the planning process for activities due about two to four weeks hence. Initially the workload would increase, but as people get more trained and learn to anticipate bottlenecks, the fire fighting would reduce. Some job openings are coming up next year, at the next level up from where I am now. Perfect time to plan career moves with subordinates. Sit with your team explain the way the role is changing and lay out clearly the expectations. Chart out clearly what skills need to be developed and over what time frame. Nobody around here has any commitment to work. I am the only one who can do this job so well. I believe people are good for nothing and need to be kicked else they will simply goof off. I am a perfectionist. I subscribe to the belief if you want something done right do it yourself! Mr. Arrogance all over again. All the above statements are indicators of attitude problems. People behave the way we expect them to behave. The world behaves like a photocopying machine; it behaves exactly when we want it to. This is what is called a self fulfilling prophecy It works like this if we expect subordinates to goof off, we will tend to track them closely, we will tend to micromanage them. Employees will resent the micromanagement and switch off. Whereas if we trust employees to do a good job, we will
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Immediately go to HR and ask them to promote you. Because you have done your job as a leader exceedingly. To train and develop others so that the work functions equally well without you. My work is sensitive, if I delegate it, can I trust my subordinates to keep it confidential. If you do not trust your subordinates, they should not be in the company at all. People do keep secrets at every level. The key question is do you trust them or not? My boss is the type of person who expects me to personally do the work he has given. Then better do it yourself. Build a climate of delegation first, and then do the activity
I am a highly detail oriented person; I personally check each & every work done by my subordinates. With this approach, you are unlikely to succeed at delegation. Because delegation means the work would be done by people less qualified than you are. That means some mistakes would happen. Your tendency to pay attention to detail would put more stress on your team members who would eventually hesitate to take more responsibility.
At all times, I must know every detail about every task, just in case my bosses ask. Doesnt your boss have better things to do? With this behaviour he cannot really be your role-model.
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Bhushan Lawande, the CEO of E4, the training company of Eureka Forbes has this rule called Power of One We used to cover this in detail in our training programs at fmcg companies. Every day sell to one more outlet than what you sold during the last beat and at each outlet sell one more SKU (stock keeping unit) than what you sold last time. The overall impact on sales can be a growth of over 20% over a period of time. Bhartendu Kapoor is one of the senior leaders at Mahindra and Mahindras Auto Sector. His simple rule reply to every mail received by end of day. Simple rule to understand, should be easy to follow right? Beneficial reduces clutter, good for taking quick decisions. To the best of my knowledge, Bhartendu is the only one who is following this rule. Why cant the others do this too? Whats the pattern here? Everybody knows exercise is good for health. Why do so few of us exercise regularly? Not because we dont know the benefits of exercise, but because we are not disciplined enough. Everybody knows it is good to read books for mental stimulation. How many of us read books regularly? In the home of every rich man you will find a library. Question to introspect on what came first, the library or the wealth? Undoubtedly the library. Great leaders are voracious readers. They devour books regularly. We know all this. How much do we apply all this? They say only one out of hundred people buys books. Of those, only one in ten goes beyond the first chapter. So if you start reading books, you are already one in a thousand. There is no competition. We know all this. So why dont we apply? What is the reason? Because I am too busy. Because my work timings are too long.
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Try this. Our friend did this. Rs 2500 poorer after a week, we suggested he increase the payout to Rs 500 per cigarette. He stopped smoking the next day. The technique of reward and punishment works because there is a psychological basis to it, the concept of personal reward and punishment. The ability to postpone gratification is power Some more examples of this technique applied to personal and professional lives: I will buy the fancy mobile phone after I achieve a 50% increase in sales. I will buy a suit for myself after I reduce collections outstandings from 90 days to 45 days. I will spend time with friends over the weekend only after I go to the gym four times a week. If I am not able to achieve my no of cold calls a day, I will not drink tea that day. I will buy the bike after I achieve a 200% increase in sales nos this quarter. So what is servicing demand? It is managing the work that we are expected to do in our roles in the organization. If and only if do we do this well, do we stand a possibility of being considered for higher roles in the company. After we start servicing demand well and have time left over that we can start looking at creating demand for our services.
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Life had turned topsy turvy for Abhijit Joshi ever since his Head of Human Resources had resigned about three months back. Abhijit was heading the Branch Banking operations for his bank and his CEO had called him up at 9 pm to ask him just one question. When could you take additional charge of human resources? And Abhijit would do anything for his CEO Thomas Watson. Little did Abhijit know what he was getting into. The next three months Abhijit clocked more air miles than in the previous ten years of his corporate life. Ten days into the job, his CEO gave him a brief Abhijit, the Board is getting worried about twp things this year. One - the tremendous attrition at middle levels in the organization has severely depleted our Leadership Pipeline. We have lost six Regional Managers over the last three months, three in your business alone. Do something about it. Second the board is very worried about customer satisfaction. Customers are complaining like anything and many of them write to the board with complaints. We have got to stop making so many mistakes. We have got to get things right the first time. Abhijit remembered the meeting he had with his Head of Distribution Sales Sachin Joglekar on why productivity is so poor. You want to know why our Unit Managers struggle. We first hire star performers who are basically individual
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leaders and send them to Executive programs at the IIMs or foreign universities We dont have budgets to send nine hundred people to these courses I am not asking for an IIM course. Why dont you and your team design them? You have the capability inhouse, your team is strong. You are a Business Head also, you understand the challenges, and you know the issues. Thanks for the compliment, but I think we could use some external help here. Branch Banking is different, there is a particular profile to be managed. Sales is another cup of tea altogether Whatever, you decide, I just want some in-depth customized Leadership training at this role before we throw them into the deep end. Abhijit was intrigued by this idea of Leadership development and called up Professor Raghunath from IIM Bangalore. The professor heard him out and asked first of all congratulations on your new role. Let me make sure I understand your problem better. You are saying that when we promote a star salesman to the role of a sales manager, we often not only lose a star salesman, but we also get a lousy sales manager Yes Tell me, how do you handle promotions within the company? The usual process I guess. We have a pretty elaborate appraisal system with targets and each manager is measured for achievement of these targets
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Wait a minute. Competencies are for roles. Which means a junior manager will need to have a set of competencies, a middle level manager will need to have a different set of competencies and so on Absolutely. Read up on leadership books. Especially on GE. There are excellent books on GE that elaborate the concept of leadership pipelines. Authors like Ram Charan are considered experts in their field. Read The Leadership Pipeline by Ram Charan I will. Ok I guess I have taken enough of your time. Let me do a little research, and then I will call you back All the best. Take care
One month later, Abhijit had read eleven books on leadership. His wife, Rupali had started getting suspicious with his night time readings. Abhijit was getting more and more worried about his companys methods of leadership development. He knew very clearly that the current promotion approach would have to be dramatically altered to create better leaders. He now realized that there were a huge number of over promoted people in the system. And he realized with regret that he was partially responsible for the problem, he himself had forced HR to promote some of his stars, who had been unable to duplicate the success they had given in their earlier roles. He decided to talk to his friends in other companies across the country to get their ideas. His first call was to Suresh, Head of Sales for a services company. Hi Suresh, hows you? Good da. How are you doing?
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successful. They continue to be action oriented doers. However, the role change now means that they have to learn new skills and ways of working to manage their teams. Teams which may be of people who are different from them, maybe lesser or more academic qualifications or even older. Some of them are able to manage the transformation, many are not. And what happens when they are unable to manage the transformation? They end up competing with their subordinates. Competing with their subordinates? Exactly, they only spend time with their best people. Their average and below par team members are ignored and feel neglected. How does this competitive behavior show up? When they go on joint calls, the boss takes control. You cant sell; I will show you how to sell This must surely affect the managers productivity Immediately. The Manager is unable to achieve his targets. In effect, the Sales Manager is effectively behaving like an individual contributor. Now somebody still has to do the Managers job. That job now gets done by his boss the Regional Manager. Said Suresh And then the chain reaction starts The Regional Managers role which is supposed to be operational and strategic now becomes only operational. The strategic part of the role remains undone.
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When does he get promoted? He gets promoted only when he shows some of the qualities of the next level. Further grooming and handholding in the form of training needs to be done before we introduce them into the new role. Sometimes we give him a trial role before giving him a permanent position On his way back home that night Abhijit thought about what he had heard today. Reward for performance, promote on potential. That was radical. How could he get his managers to agree to that? And what exactly do we mean by potential? How does one measure it? If I ask ten people in my company, I would probably get ten different answers. Daddy, play with us his kids Mallika and Sidharth squealed in delight as soon as Abhijit stepped into the house. Where is your momma? Abhijit enquired about his wife. Mummy is reaching home in ten minutes said Mallika. Sidharth had already laid out the coins for his favourite game Connect 4. They had already played
three games when his wife Rupali entered the house. Hi, How was your day? Tiring both replied together. Abhijit thought about his action plan for the next day. I have to put my team on the job immediately. The Steering committee meeting was just twenty days away. In my previous company we had designed a program First Time Manager which we was designed to prepare individual contributors to successfully manage the transition to a managerial role. said Neelmani Singh, one of his best VPs. This program was mandated across the system and ran for four days. Abhijit was sitting with his HR team on their Monday morning meetings. His team consisted of two VPs Neelmani Singh and Vikram Bector and six AVPs and senior managers Pradyot Singh, Shailesh Rawal, Sanjivani Sadani, Abhishek Taliwal, Ajay Aurora and Nikhil Mathur How was the objective of the program defined? asked Sanjivani. Motivation, goal setting, planning, team work and coaching Isnt that too much to cover in one program remarked Vikram. There was a module on each of these topics. We did not go into depth, just an overview. This was more like a flagship program, to create a training culture within the company I think before we get into training programs, lets get the foundation set? said Abhishek Taliwal who had been sitting quiet till now. What do you mean foundation?
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Are we fighting the same fires every day? Is manpower allocation appropriate? Do we knowingly ship out lousy quality products & work every day? Trying to get people to think like owners and not just workers in the company? Absolutely. He looks upwards and starts to understand the role of his boss and super boss. What do they do the whole day? What do they get paid for? And he sets a goal to develop skills and knowledge to move into that new higher role in a few months. But wont we have a problem if we raise expectation very high and cannot meet them. I mean, we cant make everybody a vice president My company used to operate on a concept like employability. We knew we could not make CEOs out of everybody, so we said lets develop them to such an extent that even if we are not able to offer them challenging roles, they could get jobs outside and meet those challenges Thats why today 90% of marketing people are from my earlier company That they are. Lets have a vision to create that kind of employer branding for our company in the financial services industry There is one more agenda to work on. Boss has asked for an action plan for the customer service mess also Both Neelmani and Vikram groaned. Cant we do this first and take that up as the next phase, say six months later
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Abhijit read a part of it, looked up and asked If I understand this correctly, if you are a sales officer or
channel manager, your immediate customers would be your distributors, dealers, channel members, etc. Precisely. That everybody knows. But are these the only customers you have? If we expand the definition of customers to include all people who I need to serve well, so that I can be productive in my job. Then so many other people come into the picture. They would also be your colleagues working in accounts, supply chain or logistics functions. Your boss is also your customer. Thats right. Very difficult to think like this especially when you are having conflict with your bosses. Your employees are also your customers. One of the finest examples of this is Narayana Murthy when he said my employees are my greatest assets. Every evening my assets go home. I dont know whether they are going to come back the next day. They will do that only when I take good care of them. Others have said take care of your employees, and your employees will take care of your customers. He is a true inspiration If you are in the finance or accounts team, then your vendors would also be your customers. If you are in supply chain or logistics, then your transporters are your customers. If you are in human resources, then your front line employees are your customers. OK so this part clarifies who all are my customers. Then what happens? Next step is to understand clearly when will my customers say that I am doing a good job? Critical features refer to what is important to the customer. Current performance is an indicator of how well we are doing on this parameter today. Goal refers to the target
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And this performance measure has to be met consistently, else it is useless And the only way that can happen is when the processes are strong. Which means this program has to be followed by an initiative on how to design and implement better processes Designing is simple, it is the implementation that is the key part What all points did these discussions throw up? Give me some examples Sure. Take an example of accounts. An accounts manager would ask - when will my front line employees say that I am doing a great job? It boiled down to just one thing how quickly my travelling expenses get reimbursed (salaries were on time here). In reality travelling expenses were being reimbursed 60 days late. No wonder customer satisfaction scores were poor. How about the channel partner? If your customer is a channel partner, he would say you are doing a good job when you send him stocks as per order, process his claims on time and add value to him
when the ASM visits him. Now if you dump stocks on him which he is unable to sell, or generally put pressure on him for sales without any value add, very poor customer service is being provided. And how exactly can we link all this to the leadership process? If you are the boss and you look at your subordinates as your customers, when would your employees say that you are doing a great job? When you inspire, guide, motivate. When you provide learning and growth. They say we join organizations, but we quit bosses. When your employees joined, they did so on the basis of the companys reputation, its brand name, the perception they carried of the office etc. after they join, their opinion of the company is formed on the basis on little daily interactions with you the boss. And if that experience is not energizing to your subordinate (your customer, yes), then this customer is going to walk away. It is therefore the job of leaders also to keep their employees and subordinates happy. And all this has to happen consistently That is the final point of the exercise. We drill down to a handful of tasks that each person needs to do on a consistent basis to achieve these superb results 4. For me as a service provider, to be able to consistently deliver superior performance on these features on a monthly, fortnightly, weekly & daily basis, the critical activities that I need to focus on are: a. __________________________________________ b. __________________________________________
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B. Schedule these activities into the monthly, weekly & daily planner. C. Establish targets to measure whether these activities have been productive or not.
The Steering Committee meets in two weeks now. We need to get this entire thing designed and ready to roll out in two weeks Consider it done said Vikram 6. Finally, I would like to visualize the benefits of doing these five steps: By understanding my role in the organization, the expectations of my customer & what critical activities I need to do consistently to deliver superior service, I can visualize the following benefits coming my way:
Therefore Creating demand involves: Thinking beyond the present. Visualizing a future state of being for the organization setting goals. Aligning others to that vision. Ensuring the vision is achieved through strong processes.
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Our main challenge here is alignment Agreed. Getting the yes from the Steering Committee should not be a problem if we design this well. But this will really pick up speed in the organization when we are able to link the organizational goal to personal goals. The biggest personal benefit would be that we will all be able to go home earlier We need to link all this to process and personal goals. Like reducing customer complaints by 50%. Or reducing time taken to open new accounts to two days from the current 16 days. Managers who achieve these gains for their processes should be rewarded well. They should therefore see a big jump in their incomes
The real benefit of goals comes when we have them written down; else they are just a wish. Written goals keep us charged up, ensure commitment and accountability to self and serve as reminders. Some areas of life where goal setting works? Finance - I will earn Rs. 1.50 lakhs per month by March 2014 Career - I will handle Mumbai area and lead a team of 20 people by March 2008
Health - I will lose 2 kgs every month for the next six months Family - I will take my family out for one picnic every month. Community - I will spend four hours every fortnight doing society work. THE S.M.A.R.T. GOAL SETTER Focus on what you want, not what you dont want My SMART (Specific / Measurable / Achievable / Realistic / Time-Bound) goal in the area of Finance / Career / Family / Health / Community ______________
I will enjoy the following benefits by successfully achieving this goal. ____________________________________________ The critical activities I need to perform within set deadlines to achieve my goal: ____________________________________________ The barriers to productivity (my own habits / other people / unexpected events, etc) that I need to guard against:
Abhijit looked around the room at the sixteen suits seated against a U shaped table. They had reached this beach side resort yesterday evening. This was the Steering committee meeting that happened once every six months. They had given him exactly 45 minutes, more than enough he felt, to present a leadership pipeline plan for the company and a method to improve customer service. Neelmani and Vikram along with their teams had worked tirelessly for the last twenty days designing, arguing, brainstorming, presenting,
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There is no job more important for a leader than to invest time and money in developing future leaders
I have a feeling, if we cut this guy loose within the company, he will transform the sales organization within a year remarked Abhijit. Thomas Watson replied he is already doing that. A lot had happened in the last three years.. The Steering Committee had given the go ahead to the Leadership Pipeline project with some small modifications. The private equity representative on the board was useful in connecting them to a Business consultant who clarified the thought process well. They had rolled out the first pilot two months later. Job roles had been clarified and the business was rolled in to execute some of the sessions. The company had invested in a state of the art Leadership Institute at Mahableshwar with 150 rooms, 12 conference halls and state of the art video conferencing and training aids. Thomas Watson, the CEO himself made it a point to take atleast two sessions every month here. And Abhijit himself used to spend an average of four days at the Institute. Within a year, complaints had dropped by 90% and employee surveys reported a huge jump in satisfaction. Thomas Watson had moved to Singapore as Chairman of a telecom conglomerate a year back. Abhijit had got promoted to Business Head of Branch Banking. But he had also got somewhat bored of doing the same job. Banking was getting monotonous; he needed a new
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Sandy continued at the conference We have a trend now of MBAs from institutes learning about marketing, brand, Philip Kotler etc for two years and then in the first ten years of their corporate lives discounting their way to glory. And this is when all MBAs know how discounting destroys the brand. Any fool can sell at a discount. It takes knowledge; it takes a different capability to sell on value I must say I agree with him said Thomas. Our margins are under pressure, the analysts are screaming and the stock is down 40% from where it was a year back Six new competitors have come in the last four months Still, lets not dismiss Sandy. He knows what he is doing; let us give him a free hand. Find out what he wants to do, then cut him loose. We have accumulated a lot of baggage over the years. Abhijit called Sandy over for a long discussion on Saturday. What do you want to do? I have worked in six companies in the last 14 years and believe me we have in this company the worst sales force around. Abhijit could not help smiling. The brand is quite strong That is no excuse for the sales team to be so pathetic What do you have in mind?
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meet me please please It is not following up to the point where they stop picking up your calls fine line between being persistent and becoming a pest. It is not getting 70% of the sales in the last six days of the month. It is not running around all over the place without any focus. To make them understand better what selling is, lets talk about why do people buy products and services? Proceed A man felt hungry after working in the market for six hours. He goes to a restaurant, grabs a burger. Why? An organization is hiring people, it needs new office furniture. It contacts salespeople, gets quotations and decides on a vendor. Why? Because there is a need. Yes. So People buy when they have a need, a problem. They look for solutions to problems. They wish to solve these problems by using the services and products that we sell. We go to movies because we are bored, we want some excitement. We eat because we are hungry. We use mobiles because without them we have communication problems. We use laptops because we have a need to present our ideas better. We use cars to address our need to be comfortable. Every purchase of a product or service happens because we have a need. Yes. And? What we need to get into their DNA is that selling is the process of identifying expressed and unrealized needs and providing an appropriate solution. Customers see value when our solution addresses their needs.
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I see your point. These are therefore artificial distortions in sales patterns brought about by inefficient salespeople Our cricket team is also like this. They tend to play only during the last few overs. T20 is probably the best thing that could have happened because it forces them to play well throughout the 20 overs. This habit of working harder closer to a deadline starts off from our college days. We knew there was an exam happening six months later. First four months what do we do nothing. Fifth month is spent in understanding the syllabus, who attended classes, photocopying notes. Last 15 days is spent in some crazy studying, trying to mug some outdated concepts. And still we all get a first class!!. You are like a breath of fresh air. Have you discussed this with your regional managers. What is their take on this? Not yet, I think I will announce the plan next week and roll it out after involving the Regional heads and Area managers. We have our quarterly offsite ten days later. I want to start with the concept of the Sales funnel The Concept of the Sales Funnel. What would that be? Three outstanding contributors to the world of selling who have influenced my thinking on sales. Zig Ziglar, one of the greatest motivational speakers in the world, Miller Heimen who wrote an outstanding book Strategic Selling and Neil Rackham who wrote SPIN selling among others. Lots of sales authors basically talk about the same things That sales is a process. Can it be predicted?
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Customers
A salesperson starts with D a database of prospects. This could be a mailing list, a list from the market or a list of past customers (subject of course to the Do Not Call registry). As the calls are made to these prospects, some will agree for a meeting, many would not. Those that are met become C Prospects met once. Certain discussions happen in the first meeting, basic
information about the companies are exchanged, needs are understood. Meeting gets over. Salesperson then sends a proposal. Then the follow up starts. Many say No, not now, not a priority now, etc. After a few follow-ups, some of the prospects met ask for a second meeting. This is a prospect in B stage. This time the discussion is longer, more people are involved, discussion revolves around more detail, etc. And then the final negotiation begins. The senior leadership gets involved, anxiety rises, delivery schedules and payment terms get agreed upon. Then the deal closes. Prospect is now a customer. Yeah, but I know some sales which closed in one meeting itself 10% will close like that. Another 10% would never close at all after so many meetings. The majority 70 80% would follow this pattern. And how do we measure the effectiveness of this sales process? asked Abhijit. Most companies give standard sales targets to their employees. But that can lead to some unusual behaviours which benefit the employee without necessarily benefiting the organization or sometimes even damaging the organization. Take an example of a car loan manager. Rakesh Sharma was a sales manager with a car loan team at a private sector bank. For the month of Jan, he got a target of Rs 1 crore. On the 3rd of the month, he closed a deal with a customer who wanted to buy three Mercedes cars. Target achieved in 3 days at Rs 1.15 crores. We had stories like that. We were shocked, took us some time to figure out how to get around it.
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started personally losing points, hence they switched to a new behaviour. We need to encourage the use of standard sales processes. Is there a way to track the sales funnel for productivity? Yes, I know a few examples. A paint company my friend used to work with used to track conversion ratios for customer calls. 60% of the target was for results, 20% was for conversion ratios. Plus other parameters. And how would the conversion ratio be calculated? Very simple. Conversion Ratio = Customers / D measured over a period of time. This conversion ratio could be broken down into four specific conversion ratios namely CR1 / CR2 / CR3 / CR4. Customer / D => (C / D) * (B / C) * (A / B) * (Cust / A) (CR1) * (CR2) * (CR3) * (CR4). Isnt that way too much of detail. I know how the sales team will react. Do we do sales or keep tracking this? Let me explain how the details, then we will take a call on whether to measure or not?
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Arun Paul
C Prospects met.
B Prospects met more than once, also meeting competition. A Prospects in final stage
1 0 0 5 0 45
40 10
14 10
Customers
Lets say we have two star salespeople. Abhijit Dabhade and Arun Paul. Both are smart, confident and sure of themselves. Both start off the month with a database of 100 people. At the end of the month, both generate sales from 10 customers. At first glance both have reported a conversion ratio of 10% (10 / 100). Both therefore appear to have the same productivity measured by conversion ratio. However a closer look reveals a different picture. remarked Abhijit While Abhijit called 100 prospects, he managed to get meetings with 90 of them. However after the first meeting, the sale progressed with only 50 of them. Once the second meeting happened with the 50, most of them, about 40 went to the final stage but in the closing stage again only 10 converted. What about Arun? The other star salesman Arun however showed a completely different picture. Of the 100 he called, only 50 agreed to meet him. He had excellent first meetings
and managed to advance the sale in 45 of them. However, after the second meeting, the sale progressed in only 14 prospects and finally of that 10 converted. Our sales people could be like Arun or Abhijit or any combination in between? Exactly. This could be the story for any salesperson in any industry ranging from banking to insurance to auto to mutual funds. How do their conversion ratios look like? How do they look like for our teams? This would help our area managers analyze and plan areas for improvement and training for our team members. Explain how? Why could CR1 be low? Poor telecalling skills no permission taken, calling at wrong time, etc. It could also be poor quality of database. It could even be overselling. Selling too early - trying to sell on the phone itself. They need to remember that the call is only to generate interest, to get an appointment, not to pitch. Look at what the other ratios tell us. Why would CR2 be low? Because of poor research done about customer. Or poor probing skills. Or poor company knowledge. Or even poor knowledge Poor own product knowledge would affect CR2. Poor competition knowledge affects CR3 Any other reasons for CR3 being low? Yes. In the first meeting basic information gets discussed. In the subsequent meetings, detailed
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stage of the funnel. To get to 6 in A stage, 12 have to be in B and atleast 36 have to be in C stage of the sales funnel. Therefore his weekly activity target is 36 meetings in 6 working days. That is 6 meetings a day. He could then estimate his activities to plan for those Yes. Another example. Another friend of mine Jatin Doshi investment advisor is probably the only one of his tribe to actually sell term insurance policies uses the same technique when he sells mutual funds. Assuming an average ticket size of a investment of Rs 100,000 and knowing the commissions and targets, Jatin has calculated that he needs to close 8 deals every week. Working upwards the sales funnel, he has calculated that he needs to meet 4 investors every day to achieve his targets. I think it would be easier to implement this if we give standard planning worksheets to our sales teams Worksheet Activity Planning Long-term financial targets ____________________________________________ Drill down to short term: My current year financial target is __________ My current quarter financial target is _________ My current month financial target is _________ Assumptions on Sales Funnel / Conversion Ratio: To achieve the above target, Rs ______ business to be made per month. Assuming average business amount Rs _______, I need to convert ______ number of customers every month.
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What is this Reward and Punishment concept? Give me a minute. Let me take you through the worksheet. Being successful in a sales role requires us to do a set of activities on a day to day basis. However it is also important to reward ourselves after achieving a week of success, take a bit of rest and plan for the next period. Therefore a disciplined weekly activity plan could be like this: I will pick up investments of Rs 5.00 Lakhs next week. In case that happens, I will reward myself by spending a night out with friends. Else I will avoid all fun activity and do 6 extra calls next week.
I understood the concept. I am all game for this. Lets start this quickly. Now I am thinking of something else. Why is the Sales Funnel a funnel? Why should it not be a pipe? Typical boss question. Idealistic but impractical expectation. Every sale cannot close. Some will not have budgets; some will be won by competition. Some will decide to postpone the purchase. However I got the idea of asking that question is to focus on the difference between efficiency and effectiveness of the sales process. Now we are discussing how to manage the sales funnel? Two ways: Efficiency: Assume efficiency is constant. Study the existing sales process, set targets, work backwards to calculate call ratio and derive number of sales people required. Effectiveness: Why should conversion ratios be as low as 10%. Can we work towards improving them to 40%? 100% is impractical; it could mean your sales team is not making enough calls. Tell you what Sandy, I understand your philosophy, lets roll on this. Why dont you work with Pradyot and Ajay from my team on this module. Both have done some work on this in their previous companies. ARROW to the Heart!! Chalao teer dil pe. Wow thats a nice name for a sales program remarked Pradyot. Sandy, Pradyot and Ajay were meeting to finalize the training calendar for the team. A lot of debate had
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Approaching in a professional manner. Researching Customer Needs and Wants Represent ideal product. Handling Customer Objections. Win with effective closing.
The first step is to create a great first impression Thats right. Therefore professional manner What would this cover? A professional approach involves showing respect and courtesy to the prospect. Approaching in a
How is this to be done? Everything else being equal, we will buy from a friend. Everything else not being equal, we will still buy from a friend. The world runs on relationships. Knowing this to be true, an approach based on cold calling would be an unnecessarily slow and tedious process with a low probability of success. We will have no problem with that. None of our guys believe in cold calling in any case Neither do I. I consider cold calling an idiotic activity & a frustrating, neurotic waste of time. There was stunned silence in the room. A statement like that coming from the National Sales Head was radical What do you mean - waste of time? Suvajit finally asked in his most polite tone. Let me explain. Cold calling is barging in not having any prior information about the prospect and not having done homework. That is what I am against So what are you advocating? I am suggesting a way to approach prospects in a friendly consultative selling manner by using existing relationships. Existing relationships? Right. How many numbers are stored in your mobile? Approximately 100 to 200. Lets take a conservative figure 50 nos.
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I am not just referring to customers. I am saying that our salespeople should take references even from those prospects that do not buy from them Why would somebody who has not bought from you give you a reference? I will make a radical statement here. You are thrice as likely to get references from prospects who have NOT bought from you as compared to customers who have bought from you. Why? When we ask for references from a customer, he may feel I am giving you business so fine. But many times sales do not happen for no fault of the seller. Budgets may not be there, priorities are different, etc. Now here the salesperson has done a lot of effort, which is acknowledged by the buyer and when the sale does not happen the buyer is feeling somewhat guilty. He wants to make it up to the seller. So we need to teach them how to tap into this guilt If at the right time therefore the seller asks for references, then the buyer, because he wants to make up to the seller, would give lots of leads. But how can the buyer refer the seller to another buyer if he has not tried the service himself. We make it simple for him to do that by avoiding using the term reference but using the word friends or colleagues. Eg Could you refer us to friends or colleagues of yours who may have a need for telecom services? Could you refer us to your colleagues who may be facing productivity issues in their IT teams?
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Brilliant. You now have Dexter doing the sales pitch to Murali on your behalf. And the best part is you do not have to pay Dexter a single rupee in commissions for this. I am getting quite excited about this. What about taking appointments? That should be the next module. Introduce yourself professionally by giving the true real reason for calling. Good Afternoon Mr. Snehal Shah. My name is Ajay Marar, I am calling in connection with elearning services, and I am calling on a reference from Abhijit Baxi. Is this is a good time to talk? Snehal replies I am busy, pl call me later Giving these scripts in the workbook would be a great idea. Then they have a readymade reference manual which they can refer to Yes. Continuing.Do not put down the phone immediately. Ask what would be a convenient time to talk to you?. Do not propose a time, let the client do that. Snehal might say after two hours Reply OK will call you at 5 pm. The salesperson might be in another meeting at that time. Or he might just plain forget. So, Set an alarm in the mobile for 5 pm. At 5 pm on the dot, call up Snehal Shah again. Sir, I think I disturbed you in the middle of a meeting some time back, is this a better time to talk. Snehal replies you are still disturbing me in a meeting. So sorry, again, when would be a better time. Not now, please says Snehal and cuts the line. You call again at 7 pm. Are you free to talk now Mr. Shah That is being persistent
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Very simple steps to be followed. Follow basic norms of etiquette reach 15 minutes before the appointed time. If not possible for rarest of rare reasons, inform atleast one hour earlier. Gentlemen - Carry visiting cards in top pocket. DO NOT pull out card from a smelly wallet in front of the customer. Ladies - carry a card folder for this. I have seen some east Asian cultures do this. Bending down and bowing. Are we recommending that? No No. a simple presentation with one hand with the card held in the center is good enough. Next is to introduce self, introduce your company, and refer to the person who helped you set up this meeting. Most immature salespeople immediately start going into the hard sell at this point of time. That puts off the customer. We have to drill it into the sales team to avoid doing this now. They have to understand needs first True. Selling is the process of identifying expressed and unrealized needs and providing an appropriate solution. Our guys, under pressure from us or because they have poor pipelines go into a detailed pitch about various features and benefits of the product. They sell too early. And end up showing their desperation And desperation repels You know, the message we need to send out strongly is that customers are not buying products and services. They are trying to solve the problems and issues they are facing. And our products solve those issues. Does the team know that?
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We have a range of banking services for you but before I provide you information, could I know something about current financial orientation. We have the Scorpio in petrol and diesel variants with seating options from 7 / 8 / 9 seats, but that would depend on your family requirements. Tell me sir how many members in your family? To recommend the right amount of accident insurance for you, I need some information about your work and lifestyle. Tell me sir, where all would you travel?. We have 60 varieties of TV sets here, tell me sir, and how big approximately would be your drawing room?
We have a range of talk plans depending on the kind and time of conversations you have. Tell me sir, how do you usually operate at work? We have digital cameras for different requirements and budgets, could you tell me how long you have been into photography? Our cars start at Rs 3.5 Lakhs to Rs 9 Lakhs for different needs and driving patterns. Tell me sir, how much of driving do you usually do a month?
How does a salesperson probe without sounding like a police interrogator? I mean he cant just keep asking questions, that would put off the customer Yes it would . Two ways to handle this. First he given a reason as to why he is asking the question and second, he alternates between probing and giving information. Are we still in Stage two of ARROW? No, now we are in the next R Represent ideal product Oh yes, after a series of probing questions, the salesperson would have enough idea of what the customers challenges are. At this stage R of ARROW, the product knowledge and depth possessed by the salesperson is important. This stage consists of discussing how product features and benefits are relevant and match the criteria mentioned by the customer.
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Since you travel to a series of meetings in the hot sun everyday, we suggest this shirt at Rs 1450. The material is a fine type of cotton that breathes well, good in hot environments This camera is easy to operate and is also shockproof. Good to teach your small children photography on this camera. Even if by mistake it falls or slips out of hand, that would still be fine; the camera would not be damaged. Since your old parents are staying with you, they would enjoy the garden view which is excellent from the third bedroom of this flat on the first floor. We therefore would recommend the first floor flat and not the tenth floor flat which has a sea view but may be inconvenient for your parents to travel by lift Since your wife also drives the car, let me show you how convenient the power steering and turning radius is to turn the car effortlessly Let me guess O must be objection handling? Even after the best of sales conversations, understanding needs, representing the right product and managing the process well, there may still be some objections coming from the customer. But the likelihood will be low. Even then, we still need to structure this into the training input Why do customers object? Just four reasons: Just fishing for discounts. They have a misunderstanding. There is a drawback in the product.
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We have 18000 customers who are enjoying these services till date. So many customers cannot be wrong. As per the latest sales figures from the Society of Indian Automobile manufactures, this car is the second largest selling car in this segment for the last twelve months. I will send you the names of three of our happy customers; you could call them up and take a feedback. They need to be provided this information during the training If it is a drawback admit it, do not hide. Refocus attention on the pluses. I agree our price is 20% higher than competition, let me tell you about the five features in our product that are not present in their product. This is quite an in-depth module.
Thanks. The message we are sending across is this you are highly unlikely to ever meet a customer who says wow, where were you, I was waiting for you, what amount do I write on the cheque?. Objections are statements thrown by customers to get discounts. All good customers do that. And a good salesperson is prepared with responses to each of these objections. The most common objection is the price objection. And our guys start dancing to that one The price objection can be managed with various dialogues The 9 responses to a price objection Customer says Give discounts / your price is high 1. Good things are not cheap, cheap things are not good. Then explain the quality of your product. Maybe I did not explain the value of my product well! This assumes that a price objection is a value complaint, implying that the customer does not see value in the price being charged. 2. Nobody gives discounts because their products are selling too well. Explain in detail by giving examples from within the industry of products which are heavily discounted because they are not selling. This response creates doubts about why others are giving discounts. 3. Are they so desperate? This is in response to a specific statement by customer Your competitor is
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got 10%, thats 10 times better. The message positioned the credit card as something meant for special people. 9. xxxx customers cannot be wrong (give national sales data). We have 2800 customers who are using our AMC services across the country. They are also at more or less similar prices across. We understand what you are thinking, others have also felt that prices were high, but after trying out these services, they agreed it was value. I have an idea here. Lets float a mail across the system asking for a list of standard objections that the sales team encounters. Then we can brainstorm responses to each of those objections And we could also do mock calls at this stage to ensure they practice and internalize these dialogues Customer says Let me think over it
Is there something about my product or company that you are unsure of? Is there something about me that you are unsure of? Quite simply, your business is important to me & you will not regret your decision to purchase this product. Could we start the paperwork now?
Stop selling immediately. Besides you, who else would be involved in the decision? Do not sell through, use relationship to map account. Plan to meet decision-maker directly going topdown is faster.
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Definitely, lots of xxx owners Share examples from similar profile. The best time to look for a new supplier / job is when you are happy with your old job.
The worst that would happen is that both of us would have made a new acquaintance. Ask for references. Ask for permission to call later.
Whats W - Step 5 of ARROW? - Winning with Closing Skills After the entire sales is over, many salespeople have a tendency to keep the sale hanging by not closing. Here is where the ability to close becomes important. Now there are books by Zig Ziglar which lists out hundreds of closing techniques.. The Americans have everything developed to a fine art We discuss two of the simplest and most powerful techniques to close One must be the most basic. Ask for the order The simplest and most effective. The other one I like is the Balance Sheet Close. To be used during competitive sales pitches.
How does it work? Take a blank sheet of paper, draw a line down the center. On the left, list down advantages of your product. Atleast 7. By now they should be able to list out these 7 On the right side, put only the heading advantages of competition product. Pass sheet to customer. Ask customer to fill up the right column. Do not help the customer at this point. What happens then? Customer will most likely struggle. After some time say Our product really would be the most suitable for your needs So that is the full ARROW framework. How long will this take? To conduct the training, three days. Could be condensed into two days also. Great, that is set now. What about institutional selling? The broadband vertical has a different selling situation compared to the direct selling products
For direct selling, we would need to apply a completely different process. Actually I am not too familiar with it. Lets present this to Abhijit, let us see what he says ************************************************************ Abhijit said I have just two concerns. One what happens when there is attrition. We spend money, roll
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Tea or coffee asked Didmishe. Prasanna had set up this meeting within four days of the first connection. Even though technically this was a joint venture with an Australian company, the business behaved like a division of First Telecom. Check with Himanshu Dayal, he should also be in this meeting Manish told Prasanna. Pradyot looked at Neelmani with raised eyebrows. Didmishe said you must be wondering why we got Himanshu into sales training. The biggest problem we are facing is collections and discounting Discounting is common I know, but in institutional sales, we raise bills and collect in thirty days. Unlike in retail where we collect the money upfront. Himanshu will join us in fifteen minutes said Prasanna. Ok then lets start. See here in this business, we are fairly clear about what training we need to give. A lot of research has been done and a business consultant has come in some time back and done the first round of these programs also. So where is the support required? In implementation. See awareness has been created through the training. That happened about three months back. But until we get a bunch of people asking a set of process questions at regular intervals, the sales team will slip back into their old methods of selling.
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No, its not about simple or complex, just the challenges are different. The skills required to sell are different. Here a salesperson needs patience and the ability to understand the business of the customer. I would like to add said Himanshu who had just joined in he needs networking skills the ability to develop relationships at different levels in the target company. Our first module in the training was to give them an idea of the buying process of an institution. Because there are multiple buyers, it is important to understand how they play out their roles, that helps us sell to them The first role is the User Role. This group of people actually uses the product or service. Whether you are selling laptops, broadband solutions, training or consulting services, etc, this group of people actually uses the service you provide to make their jobs easier. And the importance of this role arises because it is here that the need for the service is felt first. Could you explain Supposing an organization has many salespeople who need to send proposals and be informed of new products. They travel frequently out of town and access mails only once in a week. They would sooner or later start facing productivity issues. They complain about poor productivity. This is where a need for a service like Blackberry would start. Supposing the office has a catering contractor who serves food regularly at breakfast, lunch and snacks. His food quality was excellent in the first six months after which the people start asking for change. Increasingly the users get dissatisfied with the quality of catering services being provided.
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Evaluators are different from Kings in that they can only shortlist, they are not in a position to take the final decision. Evaluators however are the people most in contact with the outside world. Himanshu came in at this point. And one of the biggest mistakes made by our salespeople is that they talk to Evaluators thinking they are the final decision makers. They are not No. They only control access to the King, who takes the final decision So how does the Buying process proceed? The King tells the relevant Evaluator get proposals from the market. The Evaluator meets salespeople, collects information, prepares a comparative analysis and presents it to the King. And the King then decides Yes, but not before consulting others before taking a decision. He consults many other people broadly called Influencers which could range from Users, other people, consultants, etc to and eventually takes a decision. So to summarize, how does an institutional buying process progress: 1. 2. 3. 4. Need is felt by User. Users influence King to do something. King tells Evaluator to source proposals. Evaluator does the groundwork and presents a comparative to King.
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A Acquiring a Research orientation Unlike retail sales, institutional sales requires the salesperson to do basic research about the following:
The companys basic operations businesses, products, key financials over last three years, funds position, key competitors. Ownership details, Key members of management team News articles over last six months. Challenges faced by the business today growth, profitability, competition, people issues, etc. Growth plans over next two years. Detailed knowledge of relevant processes, challenges faced. Key members of purchase team, reporting relationships. C Capture a High position: The higher the first approach to a company, the better it is. Most of our salespeople talk too low in the client organization and then get stuck in the organizational hierarchy. Talking higher must be helping in increasing the speed of selling Yes it does. There are other benefits. A better Access to the organization is obtained. Better price points can be obtained. And larger opportunities could be tapped We also do not get stuck with middle level managers. Biggest benefit I see is that it helps form a more permanent relationship with the account. There is usually less attrition at the top; most attrition is at junior and middle levels. We looked at three buying roles User, King and Evaluator. As we have discussed, all three need to be met. But who to meet first?
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Why not? Because we have so much belief in our products that we believe that a King should have no other role more important than to pay attention to IT systems I did not understand. What do you mean? Let me explain from an HR example. You get calls from trainers all the time. Yes So you are the Evaluators for a training purchase decision You could say that Now, our philosophy is that a trainer should believe that there is no job more important for a King than to invest time and money in developing future leaders. Absolutely Therefore in our company he needs to meet Abhijit Exactly Suddenly the logic became clear to Pradyot and Neelmani. Wow Take other examples. If you were a picnic organizer, your conviction about your service should be such that you say there is no job more important for a leader than to invest time and money to ensure employees stay motivated and relaxed.
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Eg. An IT person would analyze existing IT systems and draw observations on the way IT is being managed right now. A sales consultant would study the sales process and draw observations as follows on the productivity losses arising out of the current way of working.
CLARITY ON RESULTANT BUSINESS PAIN? Because of the above identified area for improvement, how is my customers business suffering? ____________________________________________ CLARITY ON RESULTANT PERSONAL PAIN? Because of the above identified area for improvement, how are my customers people suffering personally (how are they looking bad)? ____________________________________________
OPPORTUNITY ASSESSMENT Which of my companys products & services would be useful to my customer that would reduce the above identified pain? What would be the potential billing? _________________________________________ __
CLARITY ON BVA - BUSINESS VALUE ADDED? BY USING
MY SERVICES:
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CLARITY ON RESULTANT BUSINESS GAIN? By using my services and saving costs & time & improving process quality, how else does my customer gain? ____________________________________________ CLARITY ON RESULTANT PERSONAL GAIN? What can the User do, that he is unable to do today? ____________________________________________ What can the Evaluator do that he is unable to do today?
___________________________________________ What can the King do that he is unable to do today? ____________________________________________ The rest of the process viz. E S and S of ACCESS mirrors the steps of ARROW: E Educate customer about products and services. S Settle objections. S Summarize and close on a winning note. It seems you have done a lot of work on this model. How many people do you have on your sales team About 150 people But we expect them to be also extremely knowledgeable about the buyers they are interacting with You mean personal knowledge, over and above business knowledge?
PERSONAL INFORMATION:
Birthdate: _________________ Hometown: _____ Home Address: __________________________________________ Education: __________________________________ Schools attended: _____________________________
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FAMILY:
Spouses Name: ______________________________ Spouses Interests: ___________________________ Wedding Anniversary: _________________________ Childrens names, school: _______________________ Childrens interests, issues: _____________________
CORPORATE BACKGROUND:
Previous Employment: __________________________ Designation, roles & responsibility: _______________ Key Achievements: _________________________ Previous position in Current Company: _____________ Status Symbols in Office: ________________________ Long-term business objective: ____________________ Long-term personal objective: ____________________ Short-term business objective: ___________________ Short-term personal objective: ___________________ Key Challenge in business: _____________________ Key Challenge with people: _____________________
SPECIAL INTERESTS:
Political Orientation: ___________________________ Sports Orientation: ____________________________ Religious Orientation: ___________________________ Strong feelings on Other Subjects: ________________ Any Medical Issues (self or family): ____________ Drinking Habits: _____________________ Smoking habits: __________________________________________ Eating Out (favourite places, type of food): __________
Reading Habits: _______________________________ TV Viewing Habits: ____________________________ Favourite Holiday Spots: _______________________ Current Car: _________________________________ Desired Car: _________________________________ Key Achievement / favourite conversation topic: ____________________________________________ The salespeople are expected to know all this about the King? Not just the King, all the other roles also The standards are quite high here Yes sir that they are Pradyot was beginning to realize why Abhijit had sent them to meet Didmishe and Prasanna. Their retail module was looking quite ordinary compared to this institutional sales module. So what do you think? asked Abhijit. Pradyot, Neelmani, Ajay, Vikram and Nikhil were sitting in the conference room. They had just presented their ideas about how the learnings from the institution sales model could be incorporated into the retail module. Nikhil and Ajay had also finalized the rollout plan with the line coach concept borrowed from the other business. There are two more requirements that we have worked on said Nikhil. Whats that, the presentation skills and the Business Negotiations Workshop
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Fear is the single most important reason why speakers disintegrate in front of audiences. Why do we get scared while making a presentation? Fear of audiences Not used to making presentations Importance of the event. Not knowing the content. Not believing in the content to convince the audience. Not comfortable with the flow of the slides. Not comfortable with the environment. Fear of audiences Not used to making presentations 50% of the fear is simply fear of the unknown. Most of us are just not used to the limelight. Give us a topic; ask us to write an essay no problem. Ask us to speak on the phone or talk to two / three friends on it, absolutely no problem at all. But tell us to talk to a group of twenty people and we freeze!!!. The solution get practice. No amount of watching other people swim is going to make us better swimmers; we have to get into the deep end. The only way to improve presentation skills is to seek out opportunities to present at all occasions. Office functions, birthday parties, given the choice between meeting and presenting, choose presenting, Saturday fun events, etc Anxiety because of the Importance of the event. Is the year end appraisal so important? Can a presentation be so important that the entire years appraisal depends on it? Unlikely. If we feel that the yearend appraisal depends on one presentation in front of the board, then our goose is already cooked. We
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Not knowing the content. Not familiar with flow of slides. Only one solution to this. Know your content. No excuses, no beating around the bush. Just get the facts clear. If you are not ready, indicate that to the boss and get someone else to make the presentation. Else postpone till you get a chance to do a better preparation It is better to keep your mouth shut and let others think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. Not believing in the content to convince the audience. Many times we know there is a flaw in the data. Our product presentation is not absolutely true. Anxiety happens because we are afraid we would get caught. No other option but to build belief by knowing the product better and addressing the drawbacks in the product Not comfortable with the environment. Most important presentations happen in unfamiliar settings, a client location, a hotel, a board room. Try to arrive at venue atleast one hour before your scheduled talk. Set up your laptop and projector / sound system ten minutes before the arrival of the first guest into the room. Greet people as they come in, familiarity with
audience helps overcome some of the fear associated with stand up speeches. How long will this section take? About an hour at the beginning. The rest of the program develops the concept of Planning and preparation for the talk Tell me about it Planning and preparation for the talk. Objective of the talk Presentations, like meetings ramble on and on because many times the speaker himself is not clear about the objective of the talk. When that is the case, one question from the audience takes the speaker off on a tangent altogether with the rest of the audience wondering whats going on. Objectives could be of two types: To inform. To influence. However if merely conveying information is the objective, a presentation would be one of the worst ways to do this. Why? Because immediately after a presentation the audience remembers only 25% of it. One day later, they remember only 10% of it. A week later they remember only 5% of it. One month later, you would be lucky if remembered you!!. they
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Presentations need to be structured as follows: Opening Tell the audience what you are going to tell them. Body Do the telling Closing tell the audience what you are going to tell them. In opening introduce self, introduce the topic and provide a benefit statement. A strong opening remark or statement that will get the audiences attention straightaway. In the body, mention the points clearly outlining the flow. Support each point with examples. In the closing summarize the talk and call for action. This call for action should be linked to the basic objective of the talk Are we giving some kind of a preparation sheet to the speaker. Yes we are
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I have written down my objectives. These are specific and measurable They define an action to be performed by my receiver after the talk. I am using some of the following techniques to open my talk personal example or story powerful piece of data attention grabbing visual universal saying / management wisdom / quotation a joke / some humour a compliment to audience Series of "yes" questions In the body of my talk, I am using some of the following techniques personal examples / stories related to concepts being discussed Summing up at regular intervals Asking questions from audience regularly Innovative use of support material - pictures, cartoons, data presented in charts / graphs universal saying / management wisdom / quotation a joke / some humour In the closing of my talk, I am doing the following Summarize entire talk. universal saying / management wisdom / quotation Call for Action To achieve a powerful impact I shall be varying my delivery as per following Modulation / tone changes Volume Use of Pauses My speech will be clear I shall involve all sections of audience through proper eye contact I shall use the space available to me I shall stand with weight evenly balanced on both feet.
I am somewhat overdressed as compared to the seniormost member of the audience. I will not put my hands in my pockets I will refer to the past / present / and future in my talk. I shall highlight similarities between the audience and me
YES
Similarly the audience is given a checklist to analyse each speaker as he speaks. Abhijit said, let's spend more time on the negotiation skills workshop. Our purchase team plays a critical role in influencing the cost structure. At the same time, they need to be tough without being rude Agreed. Would you like to go through the module in depth No not really. But are you covering various tactics and counter tactics used in negotiations Yes we are. You do not get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. Skilled negotiators use a variety of tactics during negotiations and it is important to know what these tactics are and how they can be countered. The concept would be developed over a series of role plays. They would sell cars, houses etc to each other. Sounds like fun.
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the client comes to know what are the prices and terms the seller has offered to other clients. And the vendor comes to know what are the prices given to other vendors for similar services in the past and present. The Attitude of win-win comes when we consider the question. If the other party knew as much about the situation as I do, would he consider this deal worthwhile? The days of hiding information and winning with knowledge as a weapon are over. Are you defining an attitude of win-win Yes we are. Win win would be: Doing research about the other party. Keeping a value proposition where both benefit. Pointing out benefits to the other party which even they are not aware of. Looking at this transaction as an ongoing series of transactions in a long relationship. Explain the last point Lets elaborate on the last point. Many people have a transaction orientation. They look at the transaction as the only activity that would happen. Salespeople with a transaction orientation conclude win lose deals that leave the other party short changed, frustrated and angry. Customers do not get mad, they get even. They complain not only to the service provider but also to other buyers. The sellers reputation gets destroyed. He runs out of prospects sooner or later. He succeeds for some time with a win-lose approach and then finds success difficult to come by.
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Never say Yes immediately: This point we have covered earlier. It tends to create suspicion. What about No budgets Yes that is the next one And how are we responding to this? Our response would be something like this. If you are in sales, remember a cardinal rule in selling. There is no such thing as a budget, whether as an individual or as a corporate. Budgets are found or created when the buyer thinks is a priority. Look at a budget complaint as a value complaint. The budget is not being taken out because we have not been able to convince them of the value of our product or service. What about all those boss responses Like - My boss will never agree to this. Usually a smokescreen. Different tactics to use: Perhaps I could convince him differently Ask for a meeting to be set up. Appeal to ego But surely he agrees to whatever you recommend. Plan to go directly. Introduce a boss of your own. My boss would never agree to this. If I go with these prices, my boss will ask me to look for another job. Anything on the police interrogation types with two people involved? You mean Good Guy, Bad Guy Yes
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to get respect because of his designation. That way, the complete hierarchy does its job and everybody is happy Fine, lets roll this across the system. Make sure the purchase guys are involved in the delivery of this module also Can do, will do
I can get whatever I want in life, if I just help enough other people get what they want
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Ladies and gentleman, welcome to this round table on Talent Management. I am Vineet Singh, Chief Editor of the India Business Globe. With me are Abhijit Joshi, CEO of Telecom India, Prof M S Rao from Entrepreneurship Indiaworld, Santosh Nair, CEO from Travel world services, Rahul Sinha from Technoworld Financial Services, Krishnan Chatterjee from Foremost Digital and two gentlemen from the education business Atul Gopal from Bulls Eye and Arun Sharma from Mindworkzz Gentleman, welcome to you all. I would like to start with you Abhijit. Abhijit could you share with us what are your basic assumptions about the way you manage talent within the company? We operate on one basic assumption. Nobody joins an organization to deliberately do a bad job. And how this translate into a day to day operations implementation Well, let me explain what we mean by that statement. Most engagement programs by the leadership assume that something is wrong with the individual when there are productivity issues. For e.g. people are not motivated, they want to work less, they dont want to take initiative, they just want more money for as little extra work, etc. Our assumption is completely different. We say that if people are not as productive as they can
be, then the people are great, it is the system that needs some work. Rahul Sinha, who was listening very carefully, commented so your initiatives on talent management essentially work on the system in which the person works Right, it is a very difficult assumption to make because it is always easier to assume that people are the problem. When we assume that the system is the problem, then the area for improvement is then in the people running the system and that is the senior leadership itself In fact, I can give you a specific example of that principle we applied in our company, said Krishnan. We did something that was radical, we shared all relevant financial details of the company including costs, rentals, expenses, etc. We even shared everybodys salary on a mail to the whole company How did that help? Every employee wants money of course. But there is something far more important than money for every employee and that is the feeling of contributing to the organization. This feeling of contribution becomes clear when we see the financial impact of our own jobs on the companys bottom line. Thats interesting. Abhijit have you tried anything like that in your company. Will this work in a large company Definitely, we in fact did that and continue doing it. The first time we did that was about three years ago when the company had cost pressures. It puts tremendous
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Definitely. Organizations are large entities with complex operations. The average employees, the front line people who actually do the job, tend to miss out on the significance of their job to the bottom line. Two reasons for that - They do not know the financial performance of the company. And they find it difficult to link their day to day tasks to these results. Knowing the financial performance of the company mainly the month on month actual sales, collections, expenses, key cost heads and salaries of people enables people to understand how well their company is doing. Good companies post this information on the notice board or the intranet. Knowing this information enables people to point out waste and inefficiency happening in the operations to the leadership. Should we share salary information of everyone (including the boss) also? One of the most difficult things to do, and the one thing that sends out the most powerful message to the overpaid employees. Shape up or else. Once salary information is shared with everyone, everybody instantly knows who is an asset and who is a liability to the company. Including the highly paid person himself. Suddenly peer pressure builds up. The highly paid people stand out. So do the underpaid people. Consensus builds up towards rationalization of salaries. A superb strategy to follow in tough times. When times are bad, nobody wants to stand out. Because everybody knows that the highest salary earners have the maximum impact on cost savings when they go.
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We call these measures a dashboard. Something like an instrument panel that a pilot uses to fly the aircraft Precisely. And the dashboard helps us navigate the company What typically are the measures that go into a dashboard? Usually a combination of financial and process measures. In a channel sales operations like fmcg, it could be measured as lines per call, bills cut per day, total lines sold per day, no of productive calls etc. In a finance operation, it could be measured by days or TAT, turnaround times measured to do the process, time taken to send tds certificates, etc. In a purchase operation, it could be time taken to issue a new purchase order, time taken to introduce new design changes, etc Very few companies have such a process culture. Abhijits company being one shining example Agreed there are very few. But the tribe is increasing every day Professor Rao, what in your opinion could companies do to ensure better productivity of their people? Shut down at 6 You mean they should go home at 6. Lots of people here might have a problem with that A large private sector bank we worked with used to have a policy where the office lights would switch off at 7 pm. Its main effect was to make employees aware that they are now expected to go home.
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We have a policy that frequently moves people out of fire-fighting roles into process design said Krishnan. It's based on GEs Jack Welch who uses a technique called Work-out. Basically it consisted of getting practicing managers to brainstorm on new ways to do a task or a process. What is the philosophy? All jobs are repetitive. And lots of fire-fighting happens in companies every day. The leader asks the following questions. Why do we do fire-fighting every day? Are the issues we are fire-fighting on the same issues that we faced three months and a year back. And if the answer to these two questions is a resounding yes, then it is a leadership problem. Which is the case most of the time. So what is to be done? Then create a task force of relevant stakeholders. Get them into a conference room for two to three days. Ask them to brainstorm a new process that is lesser work and more effective. Get the bosses in to the final session. They approve or reject. New process goes into flow immediately. Forming task forces is a great way to empower people and identify potential leaders who could move into supervisory roles. I can give an example of why job rotation helps and how. In one of the banks I worked with, we had this daily problem in our business loan department. The sales team used to procure financial papers from business people and handover to the credit department. The credit department wanting to justify its existence in
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issues with existing customers. And huge advertising budgets to get in new customers. And large sales teams to follow up. Etc etc. What a waste. One happy customer tells four other people, one unhappy customer tells eleven other people. If we leaders of companies kept this basic fact in mind and handled existing customers well, the word of mouth would be so strong that our need to do business development via advertising would dramatically reduce over a period of time. The size of the service call center is a direct indicator of how good the service is. Ideally the customer should have no reason to call, if the basic service is delivered well. Handling existing service issues and tackling it on a war footing would enable the company to attract newer customers effortlessly without wasting money in the chase. What about the human resources function? What do you think should be their role? We are talking about talent management; shouldnt HR play a critical role here? Yes of course. They can play a critical role But they dont Not in too many companies. I think the main reason is their lack of comfort with business issues So you are saying, leaders should expect business knowledge from HR Most HR people are hr specialists. They know next to nothing about business. Ask them the turnover of the
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So true. Does your business have the same issues? I think we should just fire customers who do not pay us on time A customer who does not pay on time is not a customer we should keep; he is a crook and deserves to be treated like one. Irrespective of how much of pipelines we have or dont have customers who are bad paymasters affect the emotional strength of an organization. Many times such a customer is also a large customer who gives a lot of business to us. Ensuring financial discipline, billing at regular intervals, communicating well at all times about the late payments and implementing late payment penalties are all the hallmarks of a confident organization. How would this help in talent management? Direct link. These customers destroy the emotional energy of the organization. They start by asking for and getting discounts, then rising service standards to unreasonable levels so the organization struggles to cope. Senior leaders get into the picture to sort out issues and the costs rise. Net net it works out as a loss making proposition for the business. And then we spend hours debating how to address these issues in offsites I have a point to make on these offsites. The team tends to look at it as a picnic. It should be more than that. We need to run offsites as a series of events, not just one. To use offsites and management games to bring about radical process improvement.
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can this apply to sales, service, operations and finance? How can we see bottlenecks to customer service because of the way we work? Using these ideas as a seed, how can we quickly attack our most inefficient processes and target dramatic improvements in productivity. That would requires a lot of thoughts and design to get into the pre planning stage Yes. When an organizations people that work in their functional orientation at different locations meet in an offsite, a lot of emotional bonding happens. Junior managers get to meet their senior bosses and get a chance to show their skills and achievements. Senior managers get to reach out to their subordinates directly without going through the middle managers. Middle managers catch up with each other after a long time. This positive energy can be used to get commitments on the entire organizations proposed new direction. Quickly, action plans can be decided to bring about productivity improvements through multi functional task forces. These would be given people, support and put on a deadline. We take 90 days to pay vendors, could we do it in ten days. We take 15 days to respond to a customers changed order, could we do it in two days. We take 21 days to change a production order, can we target to do this in three days. We take 8 days to send a proposal to the customer, could we do this in four hours. We take 48 hours to respond to a service request, could we target a response with two hours at no extra cost. Well gentlemen, that kind of sums up our discussion on talent management. I think what we take away is working on the system is the best way to manage the talent, ensuring that they do not waste away doing unproductive and inefficient processes but focusing their attention on what matters most
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The Epilogue
The speaker cleared his throat. Distinguished members of the audience I present to you..
The hectic activity had started about three months back. Sir, we require your presence on 12 May. Why is that? This is to inform you that you are one of the five nominees for the Indian CEO of the year award. Congratulations. Wow. I mean, thanks Yes sir. Could you pl confirm your presence on 12 May in writing within a couple of days. Yes of course I will
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