In the earlier decades, organisations had supersized their brand portfolios through bold expansion strategies. Brand portfolios were doubled overnight through a slew of brand launches with the singular objective of catering to finely segmented consumer groups. Communication was crafted around consumer demographic and psychographic profiles encapsulating lifestyle, aspirations and beliefs. While organisations could be proud of owning mammoth brand portfolios, they quickly became aware of the economic hazards of portfolio obesity. High costs, slow decision making and inflexibility made them eventually cut the fat off.But slimming a brand portfolio is a delicate exercise. Companies seek to rid themselves of second- and third-tier brands that consume large resources with low returns. This job has to be executed without losing the retail advantage. Some, instead of losing out on a cultivated consumer audience, club the consumer audiences together by combining two brands into a single product. While this may seem like a middle path, I would simply equate it with greed.Jahnvi Pandya is representative of the baffled consumer audience that is forced to rethink its consumption behaviour due to the waywardness of brand management. By clubbing two brands into a single product, brand managers are creating a mutated version that relates to neither consumer segment. This is the fastest route to kill both the brands and deal a mortal blow to the organisation's role in a consumer's life.The core of the brand lies with consumers. A brand is a repository of values, beliefs, aspirations — intangible but powerful bonds that keep a brand relevant to its consumers and profitable to its marketers. Brands belong to organisations only to the extent of executing the tangible activities around it. In reality, the ownership of a brand resides with its consumers.When organisations create mutated versions of trusted brands, they are meddling with an entity that they have long ceased to be owners of. The entire Classic Coke and New Coke episode was a backlash by consumers to such ‘illegitimate' activity.So what is the best way to prune the brand portfolio without stepping on consumer toes and keeping intact the organisation's role as influencer? As Charmy asks, "Should not the process be more sensitive?"One, recognise the consumer as a partner. Extensive consumer research is needed to understand the complex relationship between the consumer and the brand. Too many times, decisions taken at a management level are thrust down the throats of retailers and consumers. Such actions create insecurity and distrust. Sure, you would have a branded product on the shelves. Only, it will cease to be on the minds and wish lists of consumers. Two, if you do need to abandon a brand, ensure that you do not abandon the consumers of the brand. One of the major reasons why an organisation abandons a brand is that it may have one or two or more brands catering to the same audience. In that case, the organisation needs to hand-hold consumers while they adopt the new brand — a process that may take time and requires patience. The ideal time to prune a brand from the portfolio is when the event is barely noticed by its consumers.Three, the distance between the brand to be pruned and the brand to be adopted should be as short as possible, in every sense — demographic, psychographic and sensory.As Gunjan states, Stepp is the no-nonsense brand communicating effectiveness without frills. The positioning is carried forward in the geometric, bold lines of the packaging. Whereas Comma is positioned as a genteel, premium brand with delicate white packaging. Common sense dictates that these brands are positioned in different orbits that cannot overlap.In a brand pruning exercise, the newly adopted brand should be in the same price league as the pruned brand, it should be employing a similar communication strategy and it should deliver a similar sensory engagement. The objective should be to minimise dissonance and make it an easy transition. As brand managers, we are taught to be practical beings governed by practical aspects of economics and management. But at the core, we are all emotional beings, as are the consumers we are catering to. While we marvel at, and even mock the attachments that audiences of soap operas form with the characters, it should give us an idea of the extent of emotion that the audiences of our brands are capable of. The detached brand pruning and brand mutation exercises that we undertake have far reaching consequences that will tangibly present themselves over time. Before the negative effects reflect on the balance sheet, it is crucial that organisations become aware of whom the ownership of the brand truly lies with.Suma Mandagiri is a strategic branding consultant based in Mumbai var intro = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#commenth4').text()) var page = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#storyPage').text()) if (page.indexOf(intro) < 0) { jQuery('#commenth4').attr('style', 'display:block;') } (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 22-11-2010)
Read More
Portfolio rationalisation is an issue facing many large corporations as they grow exponentially — especially when this growth is inorganic, through mergers and acquisitions at a global level. The resultant organisation often has competing brands in its portfolio, offering similar benefits and value at usually identical price points. Shareholder value, and sheer management priorities, dictates the decisions to cull out slower moving brands. Therefore, in 2000, we saw Unilever realising that out of its 1,600 brands, only 100 contributed 75 per cent of the turnover. It decided to narrow down to a more manageable 400 power brands. Or in 2007, when Nestle realised it was making 130,000 variations/SKUs of its brands, and 30 per cent were not making money, it put in place an aggressive plan to jettison weaker brands and simplify the organisation. More recently, Kraft, after acquiring Cadbury's, is in all likelihood taking a close look at the brand portfolio.But what happens to the consumer in such drastic ‘slimming'? The case of Jahnvi Pandya shows that they are disappointed, confused, and dissatisfied.One issue is what would have happened to Stepp's consumer base? What brand would they have shifted to? Would they really have ‘migrated' to Comma, as the management would have hoped? This is unlikely because, as we all know, consumers buy not just the product but buy into the brand. The most famous illustration of this is the case of Coke versus Pepsi — Coke loyalists do not easily switch to Pepsi, even though innumerable blind tests show that consumers cannot distinguish easily between the two. If Stepp made its consumers feel they were making a rational no-nonsense type of decision, they would not get the same feeling with Comma. Therefore, the management decision to migrate the bar product of Stepp under the Comma name would carry some consumers with it, but usually only in proportion to its existing market share.But Jahnvi is not a Stepp consumer, she is a Comma loyalist. So why was she so unhappy? It is less about seeing the ‘Stepp' branding on a Comma pack — her dissatisfaction is caused by the product quality she experienced. There are many brands that introduce variants up and down the value chain — take a look at the number of variants under Colgate or Whisper or Fair&Lovely. This is when the question of brand stretch and elasticity arises; brands need to soul search and decide what defines them, and then keep certain core values consistent. With Comma, even if ‘premium-ness' is not a core value, the corresponding core value of high or better quality needs to be maintained. So if Comma introduces a detergent bar, it needs to correspond to the same quality wash experience as before — and it definitely should not melt and leave blue stains on clothes!The related issue here is not just product quality, but also Jahnvi's confusion at the proliferation of Commas she saw on the shop shelf. The choices facing her did not create delight, but actually overwhelmed her.How much choice do consumers really want is a hot topic of discussion today. A new corporate mantra that is emerging — not just because of shareholder value — is to narrow down the choices as they only lead to confusion. A famous case is the ‘jam study' done by Sheena Iyengar of Columbia University, described extensively in her book The Art Of Choosing. Experimenting with a ‘tasting booth' in a store they found that when a multitude of jam flavours were displayed for sampling, only 3 per cent customers went on to redeem a coupon and make a purchase; whereas when a limited assortment of six flavours was offered for tasting, redemption jumped to 30 per cent. This was validated by observing the consumers in the ‘jam aisle' of the store — the ones who were offered more choice were more confused, and found not buying a simpler decision.The explosion of choice gets all the more pronounced in the modern shopping environment — even classic neighbourhood stores have converted to an open format, where consumers walk through narrow aisles and pick up their purchases. This ‘self service' means that they need to pick up packs and evaluate them — after they have arrived at a brand decision, they still need to distinguish between the different variants and price points. And the only marketing or communication tool at this point is the pack itself.Therefore, at the most basic level, this case is about packaging design. Jahnvi Pandya did not realise that she was picking up detergent bars instead of detergent powder. Her anger and disappointment is also likely to be a reaction to cover how foolish this made her feel, resulting in her sense of betrayal from the brand. The makers of Stepp and Comma need to relook at the packaging graphics and elements, and ensure that they are ‘talking' to consumers.Atishi Pradhan is the account planning head, Delhi and South, at Contract Advertising var intro = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#commenth4').text()) var page = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#storyPage').text()) if (page.indexOf(intro) < 0) { jQuery('#commenth4').attr('style', 'display:block;') } (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 22-11-2010)
Read More
Jahnvi Pandya stared aghast at the underclothes she had tried to wash. Before her, in the white plastic tub, sat four white garments, badly streaked greeny-blue. In fact, it was impossible to believe these clothes were once white.Four years before Jahnvi left India, Comma Deluxe was the detergent she had used on all clothes. Out of India the brand stories remained incomplete. Today, Comma had behaved in a most surprising manner.Last week, at the supermarket, she was faced by a plethora of Comma variants — Comma Plus, Comma Real, Commatic, Comma Swift. Suddenly she saw Comma Smart, in an aqua green square tub. The purchase was done.On reaching home, Jahnvi noticed the lid bore one more name quietly in a corner: Stepp. Now Stepp was really meant to lure consumers who, finding Comma expensive, may reach out to the low-priced brands instead.But ‘Stepp' had no context on the lid of Comma, thought Jahnvi. Yet there it was, just like that, in an obscure corner of the lid, without any link to the rest of life, like a mistake. Then came the next level of shock.She had bought it thinking it was Comma powder but on opening it turned out to be two greeny-blue bars! Now who would have thought detergent bars came in boxes? Comma had never been a bar detergent. Hopelessly she had collected the underwear and socks in separate tubs and gave them a Comma bar wash. Day one and day two were event free, but on day three, when she reached for the detergent bar, she saw it had spread out like butter on a hot day; worse, when she picked it up, it quailed to her touch and shrunk in the center developing a ‘neck'. This cannot be Comma! Tearfully, Jahnvi ran the bar over the under garments and whoa! It left thick layers of itself onto her white Marks & Spencer clothes.In panic, she scrubbed the under things quickly and ran fresh water over them. The horror of horrors: her white underclothes were an angry greeny-blue in patches where the soap had stuck. If Jahnvi sobbed in frustration, her husband quipped: "This is India. The consumer is not king here."The only ray of hope came from her childhood friend Srinita Khuller, who taught at a B-school in the city. "I don't know what to say, but it so happens my students are dealing with ethics in brand management. Can you forget your grief and come and share your story with my class? It will help them knead and toss what they have learnt so far. Help them, and find your peace in their debates maybe?" Srinita's class of 30 students of marketing ethics heard out Jahnvi's story. Bhrigu: What has angered you most?Jahnvi: It's a brand I have grown up with; everyone from my mom to my kid sister swears by it. Comma was our family wash powder. After a 30-year dependency on Comma, I am suddenly seeing that Comma isn't Comma at all! There is an imposter wearing Comma's colours!I am angry with Delta India for thinking I am stupid. Yes, I agree that the brand must have undergone changes during the four years I was away; but this is not just change, this is drastic. You said you are Comma and my whole family adopted you. Now, you are behaving just like Stepp and worse, you seem to have lent your name to Stepp! But Stepp is not your child. Stepp was only your security guard. And now you have sold me Stepp and called it Comma! That has shaken me very much. You know what? People talk about Indian heritage and all that. But in my everyday life, some things need to be unchangeable. And a detergent is one of them. The perfume of Comma for me is the smell of India. I remember my grandmother by her smell of Cuticura powder.A wave of incredulousness swept the class. They were experiencing consumer sadness first hand. "Gosh, I am so overwhelmed to know that a brand goes so deep into a psyche! The power of a brand is amazing," said Charmy.Bhrigu: A brand can change in many ways — packaging, printing, design, form, colour fragrance, tactile improvements... It seems Ms Jahnvi has a book where four chapters in between are missing and she cannot relate to the story as it continues in chapter 7.Taarik: That analogy will fail badly, Bhrigu. A company can make positioning changes to make the brand more relevant to consumers. Srinita: Companies can change their whole ideology as well consequent to economic conditions that can cause them to redefine quality, customer service, economy, and so on. Thanks to the recession, many organisations have had to relook their brand portfolio and rationalise portfolios. It appears to me that Delta must have realised that it does not need two brands with five variants each, and decided Stepp should die.Bhrigu: Is this a case of Stepp dying or Comma growing bigger?Taarik: How has Comma become bigger?Charmy: Of course, it has no? Its platform has increased, don't you see? Earlier it stood for dependability — ‘Always a good wash!' Now it has taken on Stepp's ‘no stains' platform too: ‘A Stepp to No Stain!'Bhrigu: Ouch! That is so messed up, since Jahnvi ma'am's experience shows that Comma in its expanded state has added stains where there were none!(Much laughter)Taarik: How come you are noticing this now, ma'am? This integration happened more than 18 months ago, I understand.Jahnvi: Oh, sorry, I did not mention, but I was living overseas for the past four years. I came back to memories like Swaati snacks, Bachelor's strawberries with cream and New Yorker pizzas... Funnily, these three have not changed at all but my poor Comma is all messed up!Srinita: Can we then say that when organisations make these changes to portfolio, they have to tiptoe around them ensuring that everything else is kept intact, if not, at least relevant? var intro = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#commenth4').text()) var page = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#storyPage').text()) if (page.indexOf(intro) < 0) { jQuery('#commenth4').attr('style', 'display:block;') } Gunjan: I also think that just because the organisation is redefining its brand personality, the consumer does not make a shift in her mind. Unless you involve her. Stepp was the stepping stone brand. Stepp was the brand you bought if you were a low-price consumer but a Comma wannabe. Stepp was the brand you bought when you were done with the others. But Stepp was never close to Comma. So now by merging Stepp and Comma, I do think you have brought down the stature of Comma...Bhrigu: Absolutely, and this has been neatly corroborated by the ‘confused' Comma's performance and staining.Srinita: What else is objectionable here? Since you are all saying the brand is confused.Ankita: See, either you believe that a brand is a person or you say it is an inanimate entity and I the brand-builder can make it behave the way ‘I' want. But you are also saying, when it suits you, that if the brand Comma was a person, it would be dependable; its script would read: "I always deliver a great wash; elegant, gosh, classy people use me. I am discerning, hence for better clothes. I am evolved. Among my consumers are activists, authors, tree savers, water savers... so I too, as Comma, advocate saving water, trees and energy." Now you have gone and merged Comma with Stepp or the other way round. But at no point did Delta say ‘elegant, dependable, etc.' about Stepp. Now when you say Stepp is Comma, aren't you also saying Comma is Stepp? Taarik: I think the dissonance would have been far lower had they simply withdrawn Stepp altogether. Now, when you have merged Stepp into Comma, is Stepp available as a brand? Is it an existing personality? No. But by merging you have done something very weird because while it works well for Delta, it has upset the consumer's perception of Comma! After years of painting Comma as premium, etc., you just yanked in Stepp which you always painted as a few steps lower than Comma! The erstwhile Stepp user is feeling mighty kicked, but the erstwhile Comma user feels like she has to share a room with her cleaning lady!Srinita: Hmm... quite interes-ting... I did not think of all this!Jahnvi: I hope you guys realise that I am the aggrieved party here... hahaha. (Students laugh with her.)Ankita: See, this is very unthinkable when you consider how much segmentation each brand has been engineered for; it is stupid really; I can see that recession must have forced rationalisation on them. Or simply Stepp had no role to play anymore and had to exit. But Stepp could have exited gracefully! Why the drama of merging Stepp and Comma? What was the purpose?Ajit: And the marketing costs of communication, rebranding, renaming, etc.? Bhrigu: Exactly. As Ankita rightly says, if Stepp had to go anyway, it could have simply been withdrawn because, in either situation, Stepp the brand cannot come back as itself. If Delta wanted to stop Stepp yet did not wish to lose the customer base, I wonder if the only solution was to shovel Stepp into Comma?Gunjan: Actually, what does a consumer think about all this? Don't marketers find out before the event? If you do ‘focus groups' before a launch, then why not before a withdrawal as well? Worse, as it happens here, Comma's consumer is angry! Okay, look at this differently. This morning, I read that my favourite skin care brand, Glo, is launching a rich moisturiser.Just seeing the ad, I sensed the beginnings of a great romance. I imagine the company researching my skin and coming up with a solution for me... I see Glo rich moisturiser as a new formulation with new ingredients, new expected results, new fragrance... then suddenly you spoil that, inelegantly putting two brands in one basket and saying, "They are the same"! Do you see what I mean? Delta is now saying Stepp is Comma; to Jahnvi ma'am's mind they are not.Ajit: Aiyyo, brilliant, Gunjan! You guys heard? What she is saying is ‘all that differentiation and segmentation I did for the last 20 years, positioning Comma as exclusive, was all bakwaas... So finally, Stepp kya, aur Comma kya! Dono ek eech!' That also means differentiators like elegance, discerning, etc., is hogwash! Premium is bakwaas... there never was any difference. I, the marketer, ‘created' a perception of difference! And worse, I even charged you extra just for that perception.Gunjan: Something else occurs to me. The very roles the two brands played was telling. Comma was for machine wash. Stepp was for the lady who bucket-washed, tap-washed, scrubbed and rinsed and wrung clothes herself... only because she refused to give up the traditional wash and she swore Comma was pricey! Now, is Delta saying that all those bucket-wash gals will continue to bucket-wash on the same street as the Comma ladies? That only means the Comma lady has been brought down a few rungs.Bhrigu: Accha, guys, we are training to be brand managers, not emotional consumers. We are romanticising the marketer-consumer relationship; even if the marketer ‘woos the consumer', ‘courts the consumer', it would be foolish for the consumer to fall for this. So, Gunjan, to expect that the marketer should check with the consumer before he withdraws a brand or does stuff with its death, is unrealistic, no ma'am?Srinita: Interesting! Now add to this drama the price bands of the two brands. What do we see? Is there a story emerging there as well?Silence followed as the students consulted each other, then... var intro = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#commenth4').text()) var page = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#storyPage').text()) if (page.indexOf(intro) < 0) { jQuery('#commenth4').attr('style', 'display:block;') } Ajit: It's like if Action shoes merged with Adidas; where will the man on the Vespa find expression for his shoe needs? Will he walk into an Adidas store? Personally, I would feel cheated of my comfort zone. My kid brother still wears Action shoes. They are not cheap or low grade shoes; they are shoes that identify with your socio-economic profile and speak to you accordingly. Now when Action shifts home to Adidas... I will stop at the door, feel difficult, and leave. I will now see Adidas as the traitor, the stealer... you agree?Bhrigu: I tend to agree, even if not so dramatically, haha. But yes, Stepp was the aam aadmi brand... Not your poor common man, but the middle class who is yet saving money for various things.Gunjan: Hang on... it is Comma that has lost out, not Stepp! What was the dissonance you felt, Jahnvi ma'am?Jahnvi: That Comma would work without my effort, like my family, honest and capable of speaking the truth; I always thought Comma was another name for washing soap, because granny used to say, "Comma lavoon ghasaycha nusta! Just need to put some Comma and give it a scrub..." Comma to me was what Windex or Duck tape is to the American! I just believed that Comma was decent. But it was all wrong from the word go! Comma Smart is a bar not a powder, a mushy bar! Now my underclothes have all become the colour of Clearmint!Srinita: Amazing! So Comma actually downgraded itself to become Stepp than upgrading Stepp to be a Comma? Jahnvi: I don't know all that, but when you can't have your old detergent, some people do feel extremely disoriented and... lost.Srinita: So sorry... heart broken by a brand!Ajit: Something is not making sense. Can we actually vacate a spot below the premium brand and not be threatened? How did we assume that that spot is unnecessary? By gathering a low-intensity, high-performance, low-form product into itself, has Comma lost something? After spending two decades explaining its VFM proposition, how can Comma, a brand that rose higher by simply building newer brands under itself, just choose to fall in a huge mush?Charmy: One second, please! Is this a situation about brand management or is it about consumer dissonance? Taarik: How do we know that today what we see in that box is neither Stepp nor Comma but a new formulation with a known name ‘Comma'? See: what Jahnvi ma'am bought was seemingly Comma. What she saw in the box was not a form of Comma she knew. What she experienced in use was not Comma at all... so, in order to align what she saw and experienced with what she read on the packaging, the only tenable conclusion would be that the Comma she bought is not the Comma she knew!Ajit: Wow! So make a new product more like Stepp, so that the Stepp user has continuity, but give it the Comma name so you can charge a premium, have the Comma users anyway, and support all this with Comma kind of advertising. Charmy: The greater question here could be: how does one trim the brand portfolio without losing customer base? Should not the process have to be more sensitive? If you consult me before extending the brand, should you not also consult me when you change it? Did they try and find out how consumers relate to each brand after this change? Gunjan: Put both brands on the table, as they were known once, originally. Stepp was the no-nonsense brand which did as it spoke, charged as it gave, no frills. Its body language was clear. One solid colour, geometric in shape, bold lines and heavy; clearly communicating a body language that says: I am what you see, I am all that you see; I just work, dammit. Even its advertising was frill-free. Whereas Comma and all its brothers in the super premium range were genteel... white, pretty, delicate, powdery, used the support of high-valued endorsers... did not speak directly... So if you actually go to the start and see how the various brands Comma, Stepp, Talum, Ronz, Capra, etc., were designed and offered and ideated... they were all intended to be completely different from other brands in the home stable and competition brands. Sure they are all detergents — but they are completely different in cultures, communities, look and feel; so how can you merge any two here?The dissonance of our times! Once you could not get the woman to accept the powder, so you sold her the powder in bar form because she insisted on scrubbing by hand and rinsing in the bucket. Today, when she has fully converted to the powder, you sell the bar back to her? Gosh, this is schizophrenic!Bhrigu: Jahnvi ma'am, suppose on opening, the box did have a powder Comma, but a less hardworking Comma; would you be happy?Jahnvi: You forget that I went to buy bucket wash Comma powder because that was my need.Taarik: See the pathos here: she sees box, she reads Comma, she thinks it is powder, comes home and finds it is bar! And worse, it behaves exactly like Stepp! So Jahnvi ma'am, had it been a Comma bar, from the packing material onwards, would you have felt less cheated? I mean the whole confusion seems to have come from the tiny name ‘Stepp' on the lid that completely swung your vote against Comma and made you feel ‘OMG, this is Stepp!' It is a lot like I felt when I ordered vegetable biryani and found egg pieces in it!Jahnvi: Had I seen Comma bar, would I have felt better? Can't say. Then maybe a completely different persuasion would have taken over. I guess I might have found it a nice experience for the purpose of socks and things which do need localised effort, and I may have even said, ‘hey, this is nice.' But not anymore.Classroom DiscussionIs the consumer a victim of her greed for choice or the marketer's top line anxiety?casestudymeera at gmail dot com var intro = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#commenth4').text()) var page = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#storyPage').text()) if (page.indexOf(intro) < 0) { jQuery('#commenth4').attr('style', 'display:block;') }
Read More
You can't expect your employees to exceed the expectations of your customers if you don't exceed the employees' expectations of management." — Howard Schultz, CEO StarbucksNayan Shorey of Kosha International did two things wrong. One, his reaction to introduce incentives schemes to counter competition was knee-jerk. Two, he equated money to be the major motivating factor for increased productivity and performance.In a people-centric business, it is important to have each member of your team feel invaluable. Feeling valued is the key to employee loyalty. In situations like this, it is best to avoid anything that sets up a winner and a loser.Shorey turned to incentive programmes to counter expected competition pressures from Silky Weiss. Even if it was a route to take, it was necessary to create the incentive programme after getting into details about how it will best suit the participants.Any successful incentive program requires clearly defined rules, suitable rewards, efficient communication strategies and measurable success metrics. This was clearly missing in Kosha. Mubina was pro-active, loyal and displayed great commitment in a crisis.Money does serve as a metaphor in telling your employees that you value them. However, one must explore other currencies to buy loyalty and commitment as well.The incentive-earners in an organisation are seen as high performers, while low incentive earners are seen as laggards. Shorey made the mistake of not syncing the rewards programme with the efforts required, and used sales as the only measurable metric to evaluate performance. This often demotivates employees.While challenges in a larger store are high — with more walk-ins, larger transactions, larger teams and possible higher competition in a high street, a smaller throughput store has its own set of unique challenges of developing the catchments and working aggressively to build consumer equity. But, for a consumer, the experience with a retail brand, whether in a high street or otherwise, should not be any different. Every business wants to build an enduring relationship with the customer; mom-and-pop shops thrive despite the advent of big-brand retailing. Therefore, an inclusive incentive programme that rewards everyone, including the cashier and packer, is crucial. In short, every effort in "making a consumer experience a delight" would need to be recognised. Shorey did not factor these into his incentive scheme to encourage true performers and reward them for their efforts in building the business. Yet, to be fair, it is a huge challenge to be able to put in place an incentive scheme with so many variables.In my own experience with a reputed FMCG organisation, we had incentives designed keeping in mind the overall short-term brand objectives and the ultimate objective of dominating retail shelves. The incentives were driven from top. The managers were required to give weekly updates to their respective sales teams. This helped us understand targeting better; identify good performers; help weaker links to improve progressively; weed out non-performers; and, most importantly, get managers involved in their teams' earnings. Incentive was one of the key strategic tools to dominate the brands in the market, and to retain good employees.Kosha's is clearly a failure of leadership. It is also, in some ways, a failure of understanding human nature. Poorly structured incentive programmes can be seen as a shift in the company's perception of what makes a valuable employee — as was amply illustrated by Mubina. For her money was not as motivating as being valued by the employer.It took nine months and a Darius to come and realise that the sales numbers have just not moved, while costs have escalated. Bottom line apart, there is also erosion of employee morale that one cannot put a value on. More Mubinas can be lost if not already; and these are the very employees Kosha needs when it is growing.Very often the problems are not easily perceptible to top management. Unless one is hands-on, these problems do not come to the surface so easily. However, in this case, they have had valuable inputs from their current and ex-employees, leading to an accurate picture. Once the problem has been identified, it is best to act as Darius has suggested.One has to take some hard calls that send the right signals to employees at large — that performance is valued, and loyalty and commitment are paramount. This may lead to some short-term repercussions on the business. However, it is also equally important that the right employees get motivated, so that the organisation grows into a healthy business. Therein lies the message for building a bigger and better business.Murali Krishnan is the chief operating officer of Nilgiris chain of supermarkets var intro = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#commenth4').text()) var page = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#storyPage').text()) if (page.indexOf(intro) < 0) { jQuery('#commenth4').attr('style', 'display:block;') } (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 11-10-2010)
Read More
Retail, the business of Kosha international, is a very nascent sector in India. Kosha will face rapid but inconsistent growth, new and different competition, and the reality of diverse and changing Indian customers.Whether it is CFO Darius, CEO Shorey or the store manager Mubina, all key people at Kosha would, typically, be joining from outside the retail sector — from more settled and stable organisational environments. Retail's charm is the ‘zing' of high growth and the challenge of shaping a new sector. While assessing the current incentive decision dilemma at Kosha, I would, at the back of my mind, keep this key aspect of why people join Kosha in the first place.All modern, scaled up organisations have to build an ethos of being performance driven, predictable, fair and merit-based. Only then will a large number of Mubina, Kartik and Jennifer-like managers join them.It is easy for Darius, with the benefit of hindsight, to find obvious flaws in the current incentive structure. The shortcomings are apparent — you should reward the teams for the difference (for example, growth, margin improvement) they make and not punish or reward them on factors beyond their control (say, location, catchment profile, historical sales). You link the incentives of support functions also to those of the sales functions so that the two teams pull in the same direction. Though the current design is flawed, CEO Shorey's intention to incentivise teams based on performance is definitely not. The current reward plan must be revisited and corrected, in this light.Every employee joining Kosha is making a choice: a choice to be in a high-growth, challenging industry that is closer to the customer than most. There is a sense of purpose and a feeling of being a leader. Kosha's leadership should capitalise on this reality while approaching team building and reward design. The current design is seen by teams as unfair, and it will not encourage the desired behaviour. It needs to change. However, if people were really seeking the most measurable, stable and fair incentive system, they would work in old, mature industries that have predictable 9 per cent per annum growth with stable forecasting and target setting mechanisms.Leaders like Shorey, Ami and Balu should first build in their teams a sense of purpose that is beyond any targets, that is almost evangelical in nature. This is part of the success recipe to win businesses in sunrise sectors. High growth year on year, busting targets set, inter-store rivalry for breakthroughs should be the lifeblood of Kosha's journey. It must make temporary ‘heroes' out of store managers like Mubina, even if this is not entirely ‘fair' or ‘measurable'. Managers at the store level must see themselves as entrepreneurs and leaders of teams with possibilities of dramatic internal opportunities thrown up by rapid business expansion.Every individual employee needs a mix of three aspects of reward — financial, intellectual and emotional progress. Intellectual reward comes from a sense of learning and developing oneself. Emotional rewards have to do with pride, recognition and reputation building. More motivated people link their personal journey to an organisation's where all these three aspects are given importance. Kosha, like most retailers in India, has an inherent advantage on the intellectual and emotional growth of people. They must capitalise on it.I also notice nice cross-functional flow of communication in the leadership. It behaves almost like an informal management council. This is a strength and will allow faster course corrections. In this progress, Shorey must build a stronger second line for himself. The impending high growth will require that, soon.Variable pay and incentives are tangible manifestations of ‘shared progress' in organisations, which are otherwise a collection of heterogeneous people. Having started the journey, Kosha must stay on the path of team incentives. The design flaws are apparent and the leadership can quickly correct them and put Plan B in place. Goals must have components of growth, margins, customer, process and learning, to make them balanced. Simultaneously, the leadership must create a cultural glue that binds people to the organisation's vision and prepares them for more, not less, change. This is a must. Retail is built store by store, each distinct catchment at a time. Till the marketplace and retail organisations mature, it is smarter to have store managers as empowered kartas (holistic leaders) bound by a common business and service philosophy. Measurable and standardised ways to motivate and reward people will evolve as the sector matures. As for Mubina, her business head must quickly have a sandwich lunch and a store walk with her, and personally wean her back. There should be no fear of making exceptions for good people.Damodar Mall is director, food strategy, at Future Group. A seasoned food retailer, Mall is known for his shopper insight and has been involved in shaping of retail concepts such as DMart, Food Bazaar and KB's Fair Price var intro = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#commenth4').text()) var page = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#storyPage').text()) if (page.indexOf(intro) < 0) { jQuery('#commenth4').attr('style', 'display:block;') } (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 11-10-2010)
Read More
Darius Mistry was puzzled. he was surprised to know that Mubina Shaikh, who managed the store in Bouquet Hall, Hyderabad, had quit three months ago. Mubina had been there for four years having started her career as a sales assistant in Chennai. Darius had always known her as a very good resource; bright, effervescent, deeply involved with customers... she was a girl with a lot of poise and presence. And, in all her six years with Kosha International, she had never asked for anything.Why was she leaving then?Mubina wore two hats for Kosha International. One was as store manager of the Bouquet Hall store; the other was an informal role — Kosha International received and held stocks for central India in Hyderabad; Mubina managed this warehouse as well.Darius had an opportunity to meet her when, in 2008, a terrible burst of water pipes in the warehouse caused flooding in the basement, damaging the stocks held there. Darius had spent two weeks in Hyderabad handling the insurance company, and Mubina had been swift and capable with making arrangements, calling the right people and putting in place an alternative plan to resurrect the goods. He had come back and told CEO Nayan Shorey that Mubina was the sort of person they needed to head the logistics function.Darius was the CFO of Kosha International, a chain of retail stores that catered to women's needs from clothing to wall accessories to comfort footwear to home enhancements. Kosha was positioned as the one-stop shop for a house-proud woman — for herself, and her home. It had been growing fast ever since it began in 1998, and today had 45 shop-in-shops (expected to reach 300) and 36 stores across the country.The news that Mubina had quit more than surprised Darius. She knew she was valued at Kosha. Then, what went wrong?Darius examined the financial statements sent to him — top line, revenue growth... nothing much had changed since he went on a long medical leave. Last year, Darius had suffered a fall from the treadmill which caused two discs to slip and dislocated his hip bone, leaving him bedridden for nine months. Shorey valued him and had chosen to wait for his return from leave, managing the accounting ledgers with outsourced help. Shorey would never delegate the management of finances; whereas Darius ‘minded his own business', yet ensured that Shorey saw light when he needed to.But the cost lines had changed, noticed Darius. He was shocked to see an increase in payroll figures. Juthika ‘Jo' Vaidya, the consultant who had taken his place for the year, explained: "Soon after you took ill, Shorey began to panic. First, you were not there and, to top that, Silky Weiss opened its chain of home enhancement stores, one of which was right next to our flagship store. To steal a march over them, Shorey set up kiosks at airports, five-star hotels and malls. We were already struggling with our vendors; now he went and added more shop-in-shops."I cautioned him that these were straining his cash flow, and that he was in a low-credit business. Arstyle, which supplies us carpets and dhurries, had withdrawn credit, and Shorey did not even protest. The next thing I knew was that he had declared a new scheme where 35 per cent of the variable component of salaries would be pegged to sales. He felt this would keep the pressure on the staff at our stores and kiosks to work harder.""Didn't he discuss it with you?" asked Darius."No," said Juthika; "Strategy, they don't discuss with me; I am to only take care of the general ledger and the payroll, and some minor MIS. But I was talking around and Ami Valecha (HR manager) hinted that Shorey valued scorecards to appraise people. He felt that they removed subjectivity. I asked her then what about the qualitative aspects, how did he expect to evaluate those?" var intro = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#commenth4').text()) var page = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#storyPage').text()) if (page.indexOf(intro) < 0) { jQuery('#commenth4').attr('style', 'display:block;') } Shorey's new remuneration strategy differentiated by store in an unusual way where a formula was applied on the sales of each store, which was then shared in a given manner among the employees, weighted for current salaries being earned. So if you sold more (as a store), you earned more as an employee.Darius: Who was meant to keep track of the performance then?Juthika: No one. The sales at the end of the month or year is the only real criteria. It accounts for 60 per cent of the scorecard.Anyway, Darius, nuts and bolts is that 60 per cent of the scores are pegged to sales, and the rest to task objectives. And before you ask, let me add, cost reduction was not one of them! Since I had not been asked to advice, I could not point this out. But I tried to tell Shorey that if he does not put a weight on cost efficiency, the store managers will freak out; and they did just that. Within the next two months, costs on promotion, layout, etc., shot up. And quality of delivery was not even talked about."As soon as the incentive scheme was announced, 14 stores began spending their annual layout budget in the first quarter — huge bills for lighting, laminates, decor layout, etc., were received at HO.In August, Northern Region head Anil Gupta wanted a new team for a new store in Laika Palace, Udaipur. He wanted a well-heeled store manager (SM). The natural choice was Kartik Kawra, SM of the largest Kosha store in Queen's Pavillion, Delhi. But Kartik said his mother was ailing and he could not risk relocating. Jennifer Dey, SM of the store in Gurgaon, also declined — she had just bought an apartment and work was going on, she said. When Anil asked Aparna Saha, regional manager, West, for help, she laughed at him and said, "People from large, higher-revenue stores will not be willing to move to smaller, lower-revenue stores, Anil, now that your incentives are pegged to sales! Udaipur is new! Sales will be slow to pick pace!"At this point a very worried Darius interrupted, "A store has employees other than sales staff as well; like the person who packs, the person who bills, and the chap who checks you at the door... what about these people? Did they get an incentive? You mean their role in the delivery of a shopping experience as well as their role in the pre-shopping experience was not considered?" Jo shook her head and said, "They knew they were not part of the incentive."Darius was most uncomfortable. Kosha was a formal organisation with informal processes. He wondered why Shorey had not kept him informed even if he was laid up in bed. And now looking at the excel sheet before him, he said, "I am uncomfortable with excel sheets calculating salaries... where is the human in this? I am not paying them to be a payroll number. I think each one brings a lot of himself and herself into the work they do. That is what we must reward!"Instead what he was seeing was an X-axis and a Y-axis and a formula that apportioned a number. "Where is the weightage for the ‘me' factor?" he asked.Elsewhere in the organisation some people saw huge jumps in their salaries, some saw none; the management staff saw a lot more increases. And then Darius was told that Mubina had joined Banyan Tree, a new chain of book stores that was reputed to pay very high salaries. He called her and said, "Mubina, you left us for money? How stupid is that?" And her reply: "Maybe you will have the answer as well, Darius. You have just resumed I see... hope you are well now? Well, at Kosha people get paid based on their location. Sameer and Rahul work at Churchgate in Mumbai, which is huge, and they stand behind rolls of carpets and send text messages to their girlfriends. Yet they take away higher salaries! If that is not ‘money', what is it?" Now it began to piece together... this incentive thing had caused grief.Darius called Anant Rego, the regional HR head for Central India, and said, "Mubina is clear management material and yet you did nothing to keep her back!"Anant: I did baba! But she refused. I actually offered to promote her, to move her out to a bigger store in Mumbai, but she declined!Darius called Mubina again, "You must give people a chance, girl, to create opportunities for you! Why did you decline Anant's offer?"Mubina: Darius, it was a ‘correction' to save Kosha's soul for the time being! But what about the others? I get a bigger, better store as appeasement! Is that fair? Tomorrow you need someone in a smaller store, that person will see it as a punishment, won't he? Why should a store be a ‘good or bad for my salary' store? And when I get posted in a smaller store, do you need my qualifications and skills and past performance, or you don't because it is a small store? If yes, then do I get rewarded for exerting my goodness in a small Dadar store or the Pune store? No! Why? Because they are not crowd pullers so the bounties for a shared percentage are that much less na?"So why would anyone work at these stores, Darius? Anant's offer was kind but I felt threatened. Won't he later say, ‘Okay Mubina, you have had it good for two years, now be ready to move to the Kipauk Street store, a smaller store...'" Darius called in Vijay Singh, HR manager, Mumbai region. This needed a regional manager's view, he thought. "In Anant's place, could you have protected her remuneration? Would you?"Vijay: No, that cannot be done, that much is obvious bhai!Darius: Why obvious? Say I am in the Mozart Mall store. I have tonnes of expats and rich people coming to my store. Naturally sales are high, opportunity-to-sell is high. Based on this I book a flat in Malad and start my EMI. Then you move me to a smaller store. How do I pay?Vijay: Well, first you don't peg your variable income to the EMI... but then coming to Mubina, I can try and protect her variable if she wants to return. Shorey saab did it for Param Deol.Darius: Talk sense! For how many people can you do that? Sooner or later you will have to link my earnings to the store I am in, and then? Ka-put! I am demotivated! So...? Chalo, let us shut down all small stores then, yes? They don't seem to be worth rewarding people!Pari Guha (head of operations): I don't think it's that bleak, Darius. Yes, we have been miserable with this policy... some of us at least. Now that you are back and can see the results, let us ideate.Darius: Ideate? Say I am a store manager in Parel and there is X who is a store manager in Andheri. Both of us are the same age, same academic background; both of us have the same grade of experience. Now, the Parel store sales lead to me getting score ‘A' and the Andheri store gal gets score B. Please give values to A and B and tell me how their salaries will look? var intro = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#commenth4').text()) var page = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#storyPage').text()) if (page.indexOf(intro) < 0) { jQuery('#commenth4').attr('style', 'display:block;') } Pari: Yes, the Andheri lady will earn more anyway... assumption being that the Andheri lady will have to work more, I mean more footfalls... Darius: Aaaa-ha! See how silly that reasoning is? The Andheri store is just located better! In a mall close to a huge residential block, in upper crust society, many new constructions coming up, so many new home makers, so automatically great buying of dinner sets, and crockery and table ware and place mats and what not! Effortless selling is happening in these stores, Pari, that is my point. The only chaps who work hard here are the billing boys, the cashiers, the packing girls and the cleaning ladies!Pari: Actually there is another problem. Both with the same experience could be in different grades. For example, the Parel store being a store with less footfall, cannot afford a higher grade staff. So, you know, she will be a Grade 4.Darius: Fantastic! Now this complicates the situation even more! Now I see why Mubina quit! It did not make sense to me that she did... such a bright girl! Her job at Bouquet Hall was always uphill — central warehouse management, tough targets, worked harder, got less and because she is Grade 4, her base is low, because Bouquet Hall is not a premium store! Oh man!Pari (groaning even more now): Okay, Darius, just shoot me; it gets worse. Because BH Hyderabad was a low-value store, she had tighter budgets and hence could not even afford peripheral staff; her budgets did not permit even temp staff! All in all she was in the dog house.Darius called the marketing head, Balu Krishnan, and asked him. Balu said, "I explained to the board that this remuneration policy does not incentivise a desire to excel. See, to begin with the targets were upped by 50 per cent over last year's best estimates, can you believe it? The fallout was crazy. Say, the new target is 100. If I achieve it, I get bonus; if I don't, I get no bonus."I had at least 55-60 per cent of front-end people who were not being fairly compensated and who could thus impact productivity. It was like working with your hands tied behind your back. You are seeing it as a potentially unhealthy financial policy — arre, what finance when your sales itself are threatened because of an incentive scheme that is damaging more than encouraging?Ami: Look, I stand to be blamed. I didn't have the script you people speak. I was told this is what we want... and the man who designed this was our ex-HR head who is the MD's advisor! Right in the first month, I saw some salaries being out of whack — there was demotivation at all levels. You know how our sales are region-based; Mumbai and Delhi are already exalted being ‘expat filled' cities, so they have English-with-an-accent-speaking store heads; and they are already at a high salary level. So, for example, Kartik Kawra in Delhi earns 32 per cent more than someone like Mubina in Bouquet Hall! And Kartik is not hot property anyway. Balu: My fear is the brand erosion. Just yesterday, one lady, the admin head of a large MNC brought back some cutlery sets she had bought from our South City store. She had spotted rust marks on some of the pieces and was annoyed that they had not been checked before packing. The staff told her, "Leave it here, the head office will get back to you." The South City store manager is not proactive! The customer's angst then slowly seeped into the periphery: ‘I had to wait so long, no queue system, such indignant behaviour, people not wanting to help...' I went to the store to check, and found that her complaint had not even been addressed! The vendor had not been contacted!Darius: I thought if the bill is Rs 88,000, you would simply replace her goods immediately and wring your vendor's neck later?Balu: That is correct, but truth is they didn't have stock. And this is our fast-selling item! My question was: how come you don't have stocks? I checked the order book — orders were placed last month but no follow-up. And that customer had come to the store thrice about her complaint! A proactive manager will take the call, close the matter and report to HO for quality issue resolution; if it is a smaller store, then he will call the regional head and conclude!"Darius recalled Mubina's continuous engagement with her regional head for resolving the stocks crisis. He said to Balu: "If there are rampant cases of customer dissatisfaction, it can reach you only if a market head or market region head tells you?"Balu: Correct.Darius: So, as marketing head how and in what manner did you experience brand erosion? Or are you saying you were noticing the brand was losing steam but you had no hard facts that pointed to the reason... so you decided to do store visits during peak hours?Balu: Simple! Customer feedback.Darius: So... you, as marketing head, had on hand the fact that salaries were unfairly skewed; that good people in small stores could be unfairly paid less; that inefficient people in big stores could unfairly reap largesse just because they were accidentally in the right place at the right time. Now you are saying you also saw feedback that showed customer dissatisfaction. So what did you do? Did you link the unfair incentive scheme to the problem?Balu: I spoke to the MD and explained to him that I did not see the new remuneration strategy motivating people to excel. If anything, it increased the people cost of the business, that we were probably going to start a virus.Darius (interrupting): I don't like the size of our wage bill. I know this is a people-driven business, that it is not self-service but aided selling — all that is fine if the strategy is good for all. But it's not helping anyone. Worse, every key performance parameter has gone haywire. I understand there is an aggressive plan to take the number of mall kiosks up to 300; that end of the business is not for me to comment on and I guess the business side can advice. But if that 300 is good for business then we will soon be knocking on HSBC's door for working capital line enhancements... and these new performance ratios are embarrassing, to say the least.Ami: So...?Darius: So, the incentive scheme will have to go.Ami: Oh! That will be dicey, Darius. After eight months of having had this incentive, won't this bomb employee morale?Darius: Who knows? Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Yes, it will impact work to an extent. But that will wear off.Ami and Balu exchanged glances, they did not think so. Worse was going to follow they knew.Classroom DiscussionWhy do employees have to be challenged or incentivised to do what they ought to?casestudymeera at gmail dot com var intro = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#commenth4').text()) var page = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#storyPage').text()) if (page.indexOf(intro) < 0) { jQuery('#commenth4').attr('style', 'display:block;') }
Read More
This case illustrates how customer behaviour impacts organisational systems, and also gives an insight into the unique situations the front line employees from airlines industry experience in everyday operations. The airline industry is influenced by several factors that are beyond its control. It is capital-intensive, which impacts margins. It is people-intensive, which throws a challenge in delivering consistent service. It consumes a volatile commodity (fuel), which impacts business plans. Then there are other factors like safety, security, weather, government policies, taxes and airport infrastructure concerns. On top of all these, competition and limitless customer expectations exist. The combination of multiple touch points and services makes the airline processes prone to several fail points. Most airlines try to identify and address those fail points. In doing so, safety takes priority, which most customers don’t understand. From a traveller’s perspective, airline business may seem like a cakewalk wherein all that is required is to check-in the customers, board them and drop them to their destinations. It is also considered a glamorous business. Most customers don’t understand the inherent limitations and uncertainties of the business. With the increased competition, customers today have more choices. So organisations are spending time, money and effort in enriching the customer experience. While there is improvement in service and choice for customers, the tolerance levels have gone down. Our culture drives the way we interact with our environment. As a high power distance society, hierarchy among citizens is encouraged. People who have wealth and power expect a different treatment and often expect the frontline staff to be available at their beck and call. Competition within the industry ensures that passengers are pampered in all possible ways. This further fuels hierarchical behaviour. But the airlines’ safety rules are the same for everyone, whether a normal citizen or a celebrity. So when the so called superior people are treated the same as others, often a conflict is observed. Another aspect driving customer behaviour is the intangible nature of service. Customers often seek tangible value out of the transaction. Being transported from one location to another does not give a tangible result in customer’s mind. For a customer, Rs 5,000 spent on the flight ticket is not as important as the availability of his meal choice. This intangible aspect of service leads customers to claim everything possible during the travel, ranging from meals, pillows, blankets and cutlery to even claiming a life vest. While airline staff is trained to check pilferage, there is little they can do in most cases. People will always opt for safety over service when you ask them. But the same might not reflect in their behaviour. Most people adhere to rules when there is huge penalty for non-adherence and robust monitoring. The same set, when travelling on an international flight, will follow all the rules because there is a system to monitor non-adherence and huge penalties are in place. An instance of a pilot offloading a passenger who was not obeying rules, as mentioned in the case, may not happen in Indian skies. Airlines have to make huge investments in training the staff because of the safety and service requirements. A cabin crew undergoes several months of rigorous training program on safety, service, first aid, grooming, crowd management, fitness, anger management, etc. and has to clear regulatory examinations before getting cleared to fly. While organisations and employees can make mistakes, customers are also not always correct. Southwest Airlines, known for its legendry service, follows the philosophy of ‘employees come first and customers come second’. The CEO has made it clear that a customer is not always right and in such scenarios the customer should be told to fly somewhere else rather then abusing the staff. Coming to Samoga Airlines, it definitely needs to focus on designing products and services that are simple, predictable, add value to the customer and can be delivered consistently, rather than adding services to the already complex business. There will always be certain customers who would be unfair and put pressure on the organisational systems. Similarly, there will always be a segment of staff who would not be customer centric. While Madhur may need to be guided on handling such scenarios more tactfully, Samoga management needs to spend more time in understanding the underlying factors before penalising the staff. The management must believe in treating the employees with care and concern so that they treat each other, and customers the same way. If one wants to offer legendry service, the employees need to be given a legendry service first. As they say great customer service begins at home. The author has over a decade of experience with three major airlines in India. Currently he is leading Customer Experience function at HCL Infosystems (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 05-11-2012)
Read More
Do you know who I am?” asks the irate passenger who expects to be accommodated for his late arrival at the check-in counter. The ‘I’ in the statement is clearly important. It should terrify anyone into submission. The person who says this has experienced privileges. His belief has been reinforced in the past, and it is now shamelessly second nature. The arrogance is matter of fact. It has surely worked in the past. He has got what he wanted. Out of turn. Privileges are known to be bestowed on people. It comes with position and power. The greater the power, the greater the privilege. It creates its own zones of exclusiveness and the ‘rest’ live quietly with it, grumbling usually under their breath. But here is a situation that suggests a kind of immunity that is far from exclusive. It is not just a single authority that bestows the privilege, there are multiple, ‘non-official’ authorities, spread out through the length and breadth of the country. There are all kinds of leaders, each with his own power base, who directly or indirectly confer the right to immunity and special privilege. Examples abound: passports, water connections, mining rights, taking over public spaces, yada yada. An everyday example is the use of mobile phone when a plane is taking off, or even at a theater or in a meeting. People embody the notion that the stated rule ‘does not apply to me’. There is an inner reference group that says it is okay. That viewpoint is backed by a power that can do what it wants, regardless. India works on real or perceived connections. If you expect a fair and level playing field, forget about it. It is as if the country is composed of numerous small oligarchs, with their own closed circuits of rank and power. On the one side is the government with its so called public mandate of power. And alongside are the much smaller sources of real power. They exist at the street corner level or the locality or the slum or any such small self-proclaimed units. Those who are part of these myriad oligarchies are well aware that they will get what they want. This gives them confidence. They also own or take over all the resources. There is a tacit understanding that “we take care of our own”, which includes a fairly spread out circle of connections. It is the psychology of gangs. When Madhur’s brother, Mayank, is unable to get the b-school admission because of his having been in a ‘vernacular’ college, the issues are similar. The word itself, ‘vernacular’, harks back to the varna system and its link with caste. Caste was pre-eminently about privilege. In this case you see two sides of the power equation: on the one hand is the boorish man at the check-in counter who believes, not without some truth, he has the right and privilege to over-ride the authority of the staff on duty. He has the confidence and shamelessness of one who knows he will be supported. On the other hand, you see Mayank who has also been, in a manner of speaking, stopped in his tracks. But he doesn’t have the connections to do anything about it, unless he decides to enroll himself in one of the multiple oligarchies that abound. What choice does he have? How does he survive such a system? Mayank just becomes one more to have fallen by the wayside. How can the individual himself be determined enough to not feel disappointed, begrudged and wounded. Can every person who has been insulted like this and treated unfairly, simply pick himself up and dust off the pain? Will the parallel governance of the oligarchies keep getting stronger and stronger? This parallel process can only be dealt with if those leaders in actual positions of power, the ones who have been conferred an office, a rank, an authority, step up and live the responsibility they have been given. It is only when these leaders are unable to provide the level playing field, that is, create conditions for fairness, that the alternative power bases kick in and start to take over, gradually getting stronger and stronger. It feeds on weakness of the prevailing system. If the duty manager and the officials of the airlines were to whole heartedly back the check-in counter staff, it would give huge confidence to them. The more confidence they have, the less they can be pushed around by those supported by the ‘powerful’. People like Madhur need to be celebrated for their courage but also gently reminded that losing one’s temper is definitely not the answer. If there was a functioning authority that could redress the blatant biases of the workplace, such as the rejection of Mayank on grounds of being from a vernacular college, then some confidence and strength can come into those pushed around. However, if that doesn’t happen, progressively the distorted perceptions, the biases, indeed the self-proclaimed oligarchies will become the leaders of tomorrow. Perhaps they have already! The author is at the Asia Pacific office of the Center for Creative Leadership (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 05-11-2012)
Read More
