He’s a spitting image of his father. One would have expected Kavin Bharti Mittal to be part of the leadership team at Bharti Airtel. But Sunil Mittal’s son decided to be an entrepreneur. In October 2011 he led Bharti Enterprise into a joint venture with Japan’s Softbank Corp to offer mobile Internet services under Bharti Softbank Holdings (BSB). The focus was on social media, gaming and e-commerce. He launched mobile messaging application 'hike' in December 2012. Soon after it crossed 5 million users, BSB invested $7 million. With over 1 billion messages on the app every month, the aim is to hit 10 million users soon.Hike has just launched Stickers and Walkie-Talkie basically to ensure that you type very little on the smart phone. It has also improved privacy levels by restricting the Last Seen to just a circle of friends. Kavin Mittal, head of strategy & new product development, BSB spoke to BW| Businessworld’s Anup Jayaram.Excerpts:You have over 5 million users now. What is the profile of the 'hike' users?The profile is mixed — half male, half female. But our target demographic is the youth. We believe that a lot of the features that we are building today are targeted at the youth who much more than simple messaging. That’s definitely our target market.It’s fine to have over 5 million users. How do you plan to monetise 'hike'? Do you plan to have tie-ups with telecom operators for this?We are working on a bunch of different things. Before we go and figure out how the business model works, we have to figure out our product. We are almost there. When we get to 10 million active users, we’ll be at a point to know what the user wants, based on which we will craft our business model. The relationship with telecom operators is different. We believe that the only way to monetise micro transactions is by partnering with the telecom operators. We are not going to put out advertisements. We feel that there is no point putting advertisements and spoiling the fantastic experience.If you look at what messaging apps are doing in the East, more than half of their revenues comes from games. That is something we are looking at very carefully in 'hike' and BSB as well also. We’ll be announcing our first game in July. We’ve got very cool stuff around music and games.What is the advantage of 10 million users? How do you plan to compete in a space where there are well established players like WhatsApp and BBM?Ten million is the new one million. In a world where we have billions of smart phones, the number becomes very large. That’s the target we have in mind for now.I do feel that messaging will be diversified globally. You already have Tencent and WeChat in China, Line in Japan and Kakao in Korea. You have us and WhatsApp popular in India. You have WhatsApp in Europe. So there’s a lot of competition. And I feel that it is always going to be there especially in emerging markets. The question is who succeeds. The people who cater to the needs of that country will have big advantages,For example, the 'hike' Offline feature is very complex. It allows you to communicate with friends even when they are offline. We feel there will be six-seven messaging apps across the globe. If you look at where the messaging sphere has gone, people are using more than one app. There is a lot of overlap. Fundamentally people have one address book, but there are different value-adds in different messaging apps.Do you see a situation where you can send a message from one app to another?The asset that a company like us has is our users. So why expose that to anyone else in a messaging world. That is why I feel that people will have multiple messaging applications. In most countries there is usually one dominant messaging platform like Line in Japan and KakaoTalk in Korea. Our goal is to be the Indian platform. We are confident on the basis of our numbers and the missing blocks. We have been listening to the market for the last six months.What are the new things that you have introduced now?People find it difficult to keep typing on their smart phones. So, we have introduced beautiful stickers, which express a lot. That same applies to Walkie Talkie. It allows you to send a voice message to friends. But the most important thing we have introduced relates to privacy. In most applications, the Last Seen is visible to everyone, especially girls. So how can they cut them out? What we have done is restrict it to a circle of friends. That improves privacy levels.How many people are there in your team?We have 45 people, of which 40 are engineers and product guys.How did you achieve initial growth considering that 'hike' was not really known?A lot of the growth that we had initially was from a very smart referral scheme called TalkTime Rewards. If you join 'hike' you get Rs 10; if you invite a friend you get Rs 20 and the minimum you can redeem is Rs 50. Some people thought we were crazy to do this. We realised that the cost of acquiring a customer was $2, that’s Rs 110. Let’s say I acquire a customer, I do not know whether I can get back my money. Rs 110 is a large amount in India. Second, in 'hike', you inherently need friends and services. So you can’t acquire only one consumer. The idea was if you incentivise friends, then he will get friends. And the cost of acquisition came down to one-tenth. That’s money we can make back, sooner or later. There has been some churn.We’ve built in some smart things—like the ability to share Stickers seamlessly to Facebook and Twitter if you want to. Look at the stickers. They are so beautiful and expressive. I have a feeling that the world is going that way. Typing is tedious. I think it is phenomenal. Time will tell. A messaging app has to be word of mouth driven. We plan to do some marketing activity towards the end of the year. We’ve already offered free auto rides to students at Delhi University. Hopefully, we would take that pan India, if we have the budget for it.
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Several years ago Air Canada introduced a new service between Toronto and Beijing. The route, which crossed the North Pole, eliminated the need for a stop and shaved some seven hours off the average travel time. Ivey professor Paul Beamish, Canada Research Chair in International Management, has made the trip on a number of occasions. "This flight makes a huge difference," he says. "We're all willing to absorb a certain wear and tear in travelling, but there's a tipping point at which we say 'I'm just not going to do this.'" Business people know intuitively that travelling can be a huge drain on productivity. Yet there is no empirical research to show how travel times affect the bottom line. Beamish and Kevin Boeh, a former PhD student and now a professor at Pacific Lutheran University School of Business, decided to measure the impact of travel times on the location and performance of subsidiaries. "One of the big themes in international business is foreign direct investment - should you invest, where should you invest, and which entry mode should you use when you invest," says Beamish. "The literature doesn't talk much about what we call the hassle factors of doing business." In a June 2012 article in the Journal of International Business Studies, Beamish and Boeh studied a sample of 1,200 Japanese multinationals with subsidiaries in the U.S., over a 13-year period. To establish travel times, they took a door-to-door approach, carefully calculating time on the ground, including taxi, bus and train, wait times for connecting flights, and time in the air. They found that travel time has a significant impact on the profitability of subsidiaries, their location and relocation, and leadership turnover. The mean travel time between Japanese headquarters and their U.S. subsidiaries was about 16 hours, which the researchers found to be a "tipping point." For example, they found that a subsidiary 17 hours away - an hour over the mean travel time - was 7 percent less likely to be profitable than a division that's an hour closer. The research was careful not to confuse travel time with distance. Some locations might be closer in distance to headquarters, yet are longer in travel time because of connecting flights. Boeh and Beamish give the example of Lexington, Kentucky, and Houston, Texas. Both cities are about the same distance away from Tokyo, but the trip to Lexington takes three hours longer. Beamish and Boeh found that, everything else being equal, a Japanese subsidiary in Lexington was about 25 percent less likely to be profitable than one in Houston. Successful multinationals tend to choose cities and physical sites that are within striking distance of a major airport, says Beamish. Their study shows that companies that choose destinations for subsidiaries beyond 16 hours from headquarters are more likely to relocate. One additional hour of travel increased the likelihood of relocation by 11 percent. Many people wrongly assume that travel time is just a minor inconvenience, and underestimate the productivity loss and stress on managers. "Walking between gates, waiting for connecting flights, boarding and getting off, collecting luggage - this is nothing but down time, and it's gone forever," says Beamish. Their study found a strong link between overall travel time and manager satisfaction. General managers of subsidiaries that were farther than 16 hours from headquarters experienced 23 percent more turnover. This research has important implications for managers who are involved in making foreign investment decisions. When choosing where to locate a subsidiary, managers should argue for a more accessible location. If a subsidiary already exists and is difficult to reach, managers can influence the question of whether it should remain or be relocated. The study also has important implications for those involved in local economic development, including the size of local airports. "This research really underscores the importance for policy makers in various cities to think about travel time in attracting and retaining foreign investment," says Beamish. "Subsidiaries move for a variety of reasons, and the reality is that this is one of them." As someone who travels frequently, Beamish wasn't surprised by the results of the study. "Nobody ever gets on a flight saying I hope it's delayed by two hours, or I hope they take a routing that takes me six hours longer to get there," he says. "The moral of the story is that travel time matters hugely to business people."
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The Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI) filed its 13th FIR in the coal investigation against Rathi Steel and Power limited - a Delhi-based company on 19 June' 2013.Earlier named Rathi Udyog Limited, the company was allocated the Kesla North coal block in Chhattisgarh for its sponge iron plant in August 2008. CBI claims the company has misrepresented facts while applying for the coal block. So far, CBI has registered FIRs arising out of its preliminary enquiry covering allocation between 2006-09.The investigation bureau is looking into 192 coal block allocations made between 1993 and 2011, which have been divided into three preliminary inquiries - allocation between 2006 and 2009, between 1993 and 2004 and allocations given to joint ventures.
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Shibu Paul, Country Manager, India, Middle East and ASEAN at Array Networks, recently visited Delhi. In an exclusive interview with BW | Businessworld Online's Poonam Kumar, he spoke about the product line of Array Networks and how WAN optimisation works in the system.Can you describe the security division of Array Networks and its role in the growth of the company?We started our journey in 2008 end. We were nine years too late in entering the market. In 2008, we were supporting largely US customers like Oracle. In 2009, we started our media operations and sales operation. Though we are a very American company, we realise the need to go local. Most of the companies (IT companies) we deal with have great influence in the Indian market. We are looking into local sales and marketing strategies.Most of the solutions we offer in the market have security at the foundation level — our application delivery controller, which has application firewall, SSL tunneling and acceleration or our SSL VPN-based application gateway solution. We also have highly secure mobility solution for remote access called MotionPro. It allows customers to log in to their desktop or applications from any devise anytime and anywhere. Moreover, it restricts users from downloading data out of their corporate network. Another solution we are offering in the market is the web-application firewall which secures the application from attacks like DDoS, which is not prevented by a network firewall. Security hence is a part of all our product offering and so an inherent part of our growth story.Cloud computing is the next big thing. Everyone is going for the cloud computing these days. Do you have any new offerings for cloud service providers?Array was one of the first ADC (Application Delivery Controllers) vendors to offer virtual ADC solutions in the market. We have launched AVX (Advanced Vector Extensions) range of solutions on ADC. All our solutions namely application delivery controllers, application gateway and WAN Optimisation are today available in the virtual form factor.In the cloud, Array's multi-tenant and virtual application delivery controllers provide the management integration and flexible pricing models infrastructure service providers (IaaS) need to profitably offer load balancing as a service.And in the enterprise - where tablets and smart phones are popping up everywhere - Array enables applications running on office PCs and laptops to be securely delivered to mobile devices. With Array, businesses can get mobile today using existing infrastructure and transition to HTML5 and native applications on their own terms.What is your strategy & growth plans for India?Our strategy in India is to align globally but think and act locally. We will adapt to the local markets that have a clear plan in place for garnering the local market share. Our sales, marketing, channel management strategies will think and act like we are a local company and close to our customer wherever he may be. Also we will be focusing our energies on a few verticals rather than spreading too thin. Some of the verticals we see good traction for ADC are government, BFSI, telecom etc.What are your future plans? What is your projected revenue for the coming year on a half-yearly basis?Our immediate plan is to be among the top three OEMs in our product segment. Our growth has been in 3 digits for the last two years and the momentum will continue. We are strengthening our enterprise team and focus in India.How do you approach government and banks?We work at the customer level at a very initial stages understanding their pain points and working with our channel to develop a comprehensive solution. We have separate teams which work in central government projects as well as state government projects since we are empanelled OEM in the government.Please brief us about the product/software line of Array Networks and how does it work for the channel partners?I have already mentioned application delivery controllers. Array APV Series application delivery controllers address the challenges faced by enterprise, service provider and public sector organisations in the areas of application and cloud service delivery.For instance, if a server has a long queue, our job is to search which server has a shorter queue and send you to that server. We call application delivery controllers the intelligence in-between. Similarly, in a data centre, loads of data come in and my product can take the pressure from the server.Our second solution is the Access Gateway. Secure access gateways centralise control over access to business critical resources, providing security for data in motion and at rest and enforce application level policies on a per user basis. So I will be the gateway where you come and login to my device and then I allow you inside the application based on whatever credentials you have. It is a security which is in front of your application and not on the network. This is a SAP app.The third solution, WAN Optimisation system is very critical for a country like India. Basically data travel from point A to point B into packages. For instance, there is a six lane road, and vehicles are like package, going left to right - right to left like in a typical congested road. There is no specific structure by which specific data travel via a specific lane. WAN Optimisation is like a traffic cop which sends the data on a less congested row. What does DesktopDirect do? How does it work as BYOD?Everyone wants a personal device. Most of the people in any organisation have company provided laptops and devices. DesktopDirect is an appliance-based remote desktop access solution, capable of extending physical and virtual office desktops to any user on any device anywhere. Moreover, DesktopDirect is fully secure and delivers unmatched ROI as compared to alternative remote and mobile access solutions. You need an Arrey infrastructure to use it. As for BYOD, everyone has a different story. Customers are confused about what BYOD exactly means. In my case there is no extra work involved. There is no antivirus to apply. You are not allowed to download anything. BYOD is still very foggy. Lot of POC (proof of concept) is happening. Lot of meetings are happening. Still, US is much ahead in the market in term of BYOD.What opportunities do you see in India? What is your structure in India?Of course, we have customers in India. Our customer Orcale has 10,000 users. But BYOD as a technology have been adopted by very few companies in India. May be in the next six months, this concept will catch up.In India, the kind of solutions we provide are sold mostly by security service providers rather than a normal IT system integrator. So that is the one thing we need to be identified as. If a security consultant and a security partner sells them these products, they will trust them.Has there been any recent security solution tie-up in India or abroad?We have recently done a project with SBI. We are developing an application and a data centre. We have done a number of treasury projects in India. Punjab was our first treasury project, Madhya Pradesh was the second and we have just won Andhra Pradesh treasury project. The AP project was with NIIT and the rest with TCS. Now they are setting up a data centre to develop applications. Today you can file your income tax online. Do you do channel sales? Or do you sell directly to enterprises? Will you please explain about your sales structure and strategy?Array's sells are completely channel driven in India. Along with our distributors we cover the top national system integrators (SIs), regional SIs and SIs in the tier 2 and 3 cities in India. Array has a very select elite set of partners who has the skill sets and credentials to sell advanced remote access solutions, be it new sales or migration from existing technologies.poonam(dot)bw(at)gamil(dot)com
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A ‘shoppers survey’ jointly carried out by consumer engagement portal Foreseegame.com and Kolkata-headquartered brokerage firm Microsec Capital suggest that majority of shoppers prefer modern retail shops over small corner shops and traditional kirana stores.Online shopping has also caught the fancy of Indian shoppers, the survey, which sought comments from 15,000 respondents across the country, reported.“The traditional corner shop is moving further to a corner and the majority prefers modern retail shops followed by online shopping,” the Foreseegame-Microsec report said.Around 45 per cent of the respondents said they shopped at modern retail outlets while 38 per cent bought their wares online. Only 17 per cent opted for traditional shops ‘around the corner.’“People like traditional corner shops owing to personal attention and a segment of people still feels traditional corner shops provide value and offer low prices,” the report said.Low choice of selection and absence of quality benchmarking are taking away customers from traditional corner shops. Slow ‘past-lanes’ and long-winding queues take the sheen off modern retail formats.On the spending side, Indians prefer cash over credit. And whenever they need credit, they prefer using credit cards, the report said.Most people use online shopping portals to buy electronic goods, followed by clothes and books. “Freedom of choice and atmosphere are the major attractions for modern retail shops while ease of shopping is liked in online shopping,” the Foreseegame-Microsec report said.shailesh(dot)menon(at)abp(dot)inalertsmenon(at)gmail(dot)comTwitter: (at)alertsmenon
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Keyuri Singh, VP, Blue Star Infotech, has over 25 years of multi-disciplinary experience in Consulting, finance & accounting and HR. Her management consulting experience has taken her across companies like Grow Talent, Hay Group, PDI, PricewaterhouseCoopers and A F Ferguson & Co in various capacities. But she has found her calling in HR. In the knowledge industry where people are key, HR has a significant impact in an organisation’s ability to achieve its strategies and Keyuri enjoys being a key contributor to the organisation’s growth through developing people’s capabilities.HR departments are often accused of becoming bureaucratic and behaving like policemen and Singh believes this needs to change with HR professionals being more flexible and approachable. HR professionals need to learn the ability to balance between organisational needs and employee needs and emotional intelligence should be the key competency for an HR professional, says SinghExcerptsWhat has been the biggest achievement in your career?In my HR role, my biggest achievement has been getting people across levels to realise the importance of metrics-based goals and timely, quality performance management. Effective performance management is the single biggest contributor towards the alignment of corporate and employee goals. Managing the transition from viewing Performance management as a tool for getting increments to a way of improving organisational productivity has been a major achievement.What have been the primary traits/qualities that have helped you attain your present position?My understanding of key business drivers, combined with my ability to manage change, has helped me attain my present position. Some qualities which have helped me along the way are empathy towards people, strong executional capabilities combined with persistence in getting things done, effective communication skills, relation building skills, willingness to learn from others no matter at what levels, and passion for achieving excellence in whatever I do.What are the challenges you are facing in the organisation?The biggest challenge has been growth in some of our target markets, especially during the recent years of economic turbulence. Managing change in a company which hadn’t seen too much change till a few years ago is a huge challenge. Lack of accountability for results is another challenge which is being addressed. Difficulty in hiring the right talent in time and making employees more customer focused and business savvy are other challenges that we face.What are the steps a company should take to develop and motivate future leaders?The most critical step is to spot the high potential talent and train, coach and mentor them to take on higher responsibilities. It is also important to help employees plan their career path based on their own competencies so that they can see how they can grow. As a part of this, it is critical to provide cross-functional roles to develop multi-skilled leaders. Keeping future leaders engaged through regular communication and challenging assignments keeps them motivated.What is your rate of attrition? How do you prevent it?Our attrition hovers around 20 per cent, in line with industry standards. Constant interaction with employees to understand and address their pain points before he/she decides to leave and taking measures to keep them motivated by aligning personal and professional goals are the ways in which we try and prevent attrition. Employee friendly policies and a close relationship between subordinates and supervisors encouraging upward communication helps us to understand the pulse of the organisation and thus prevent attrition. How do you retain talent in your company?Our key focus is to provide our employees with an open and conducive work environment where they feel energised to come and excel at whatever they do. We provide employees opportunities to develop and grow by giving them a wide variety of assignments and the freedom to perform and express their opinions. Our managers mentor their employees by providing them guidance and support as well as opportunities to interact with customers. We also encourage our employees to travel onsite to spend time with customers and to work in different geographies so that they can broaden their horizons.What sets your company apart from other companies as far as work culture goes?We provide a truly open culture where employees are free to express their opinions and views, and work independently. There is close interaction between employees and senior management without any hierarchical boundaries. Employees are given the freedom to share their ideas directly with senior management. The work environment is friendly and employees are explained the objective of what they need to do and then allowed the freedom to work without being shackled by regimented narrow boundaries.What is the biggest challenge you face when selecting people?Selecting people with the right attitude who will fit into our work culture is our biggest challenge. There is often a mismatch between the skills and attitude available and the expectations that we have. Finding people who are passionate about their work and who are willing to be accountable for the results is often a challenge. People mostly have the knowledge and skills, but lack the required attitude which is very important. Especially in the IT industry it is easy to find people with technical competencies but hard to find people with the right behavioural competencies.How do you keep track of employees' satisfaction or dissatisfaction?The HR team regularly meets employees to find out what is going well/badly for them. The managers who interact with team members also feed in information when they sense a person is unhappy. We conduct periodic employee satisfaction surveys to gauge the level of satisfaction.How HR has been important to the bottom line of the company?Since people cost is the most significant contributor to the bottom line of an IT company, our ability to attract talent at the right price points as well as retain talent (without incurring the high cost of attrition and consequent re-skilling) has made HR very important for managing the bottom line of the company.How has the downturn affected HR?HR has had to be much more budget conscious especially when it comes to hiring as well as learning and development, since those are the first budget freezes that are imposed in any company. When hiring, they have to hire the right candidate at as low a price point as possible. HR also has to focus on preparing the employees to handle the challenges of a recession and become more business savvy. Constant communication on how the company is faring in the downturn is required to ensure that employee engagement and morale is well managed.How should HR be integrated with the core line of business?All HR initiatives should be aligned with organisation and business strategies. It is very critical for HR to have a deep understanding of the business strategies and drivers and to support the employees towards achieving their goals. Regular two- way communication is required between business heads and HR to make sure that all HR goals emanate from business goals. A dedicated HR partner who understands the business and for whom the interests of the business are of primary concern can be of great help.A recent survey has questioned HR's actual contribution in an organisation. Would you like to comment on it with particular reference to your organisation?I would not agree. HR plays a key role in enhancing organisational capability through various mechanisms including learning, development and mentoring. HR plays an important function in ensuring that there is a match between organisational goals and the capability of our people since people are the ones who are ultimately responsible for strategy execution. Another major task is to make sure that employee issues are addressed in time to prevent attrition. Though employee engagement is the prime responsibility of line managers, HR makes sure that the work culture and environment supports such engagement.If you could change three things about HR practices, what would they be?The first thing I would want is for all HR professionals to realise that HR is not an end in itself but a mean to achieve organisational goals. Most HR practices are still transactional and don’t look at the big organisational picture. Many HR policies/practices become so inflexible that they cannot adjust to the dynamics of organisational changes. HR professionals need to learn the ability to balance between organisational needs and employee needs. Secondly, I would like to change the focus of many HR departments on managing processes without seeing the impact of these on the employees. HR professionals focus on becoming experts at a process and forget that they need to be employee centric. HR departments are often accused of becoming bureaucratic and behaving like policemen – this needs to change with HR professionals being more flexible and approachable to employees. Third, many HR practices become so mechanical that human touch is lost. HR professionals need to learn that becoming empathetic is crucial to employee engagement. Emotional intelligence should be the key competency for an HR professional to be effective.(As told to Poonam Kumar)
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Chinese love their hogs, but so do the Americans. And the last thing US President Barack Obama would have wanted to hear days before he met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a summit in California was that the famous Smithfield bacon on the table would soon be owned by a Chinese company. But that’s what he’s had to – a sign of the changing times, some would say.For the Chinese, increasingly keen to acquire American businesses, the friendly takeover of Smithfield Foods — the world’s biggest pork processor — by Shuanghui International for $4.5 billion is yet another step towards meeting global ambitions of its companies. For many American politicians, worried over trade with China and Beijing’s alleged cyber-attacks on US. institutions, this is bad news. They would try and stop the deal. American bacon can’t be taken away by the Chinese, they would argue.But for Obama and Xi, the buyout should provide an opportunity to focus on what needs more attention in bilateral relations between the world’s two biggest economies — cooperation. A succulent piece of Smithfield bacon, as yet American, should give them a good reason to look at their relationship differently — more as two large countries trying to adjust to each other’s needs than be seen as distrusting foes.The importance of the summit can’t be negated. It is the first meeting between the heads of the state of the two countries since the leadership transition in China. It is also being held in an informal setting, away from the official trappings of a visit to a capital. Most important, the visit comes at the end of a whirlwind tours to key nations by the Chinese leadership.China’s new leaders are keen to show their faces to the world. For Xi, who began his foreign visits with a trip to Russia, a neighbor China shares a more than 4000 km-long boundary and has followed it with swift touchdowns in Africa and the Caribbean, the United States is the final stop on his diplomatic iternary. Premier Li Keqiang has done his rounds, making another neighbor India his first pit stop and then travelling to Pakistan and Europe.There will be a lot more than the bacon on the table in California for Obama and Xi, both of whom face massive domestic challenges, when they meet and start a process to getting to know each other. Personal relationship between leaders is always helpful to diplomacy, and this will be a test for a second-term US president and his new, long-term Chinese counterpart to set the tone of bilateral ties that will influence global politics for at least the next decade and maybe beyond.If the two leaders can get along just as well as Ronald Regan and Mikhail Gorbachev did, or Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong did, there could be dramatic shift in the way the United States and China see each other and their respective global ambitions. Washington’s perception of the Chinese threat might change slightly, and the Chinese — who feel they are being kept out of the US economy — might feel differently.There are of course niggling bilateral issues that have strained ties between the two countries of late – North Korea, China’s muscle flexing in the seas off its coast, the US challenge to China in form of its Asian pivot policy, Washington’s charges of cyber-attacks against China and of course the trade battle. The hawks in Washington would want Obama to push the Chinese to address them.The focus, however, should be on the bacon, as the two economic behemoths battle domestic challenges of creating jobs and ensuring growth picks up again. China needs to restructure its economy to manage discontent among its people who are now used to double-digit growth that has fuelled prosperity. The United States is still battling to limp out of the global financial crisis that has shaved off growth in the world’s biggest economy. A turnaround in the US economy is good news for China, as that would only help raise Beijing’s exports.The math looks simple: Chinese companies have the money to invest in the American economy to create jobs that would help Obama. While they have been slow in getting into the US market – mostly because of scared American politicians and regulators – Chinese companies have the potential to increase their investments quickly if they have an opportunity.Like in the case of Smithfield, the Chinese may not want to change the management. They would, however, pump in more money to expand business and create jobs, a sore need for Obama and the United States.It is, however, not as simple as it seems. A battle for global influence will always come in the way of the normal relations between the two countries. But if Obama and Xi can work out a deal that helps them fix domestic problems they will help address some of their external challenges too. The need, therefore, is to ensure that the sausage doesn’t roll off the breakfast table. A stable China is good for everybody.(The columnist, a former newspaper editor, is President, Public Affairs, Genesis Burson-Marsteller and co-founder of Public Affairs Forum of India. He has a keen interest in China and Southeast Asia. Views are personal)
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What prompted you to write this book? Already, there are several books on decision making available in the market?Many of the ideas I study and write about are motivated by my personal experience and by what surround me - interesting patterns of behaviour that often, at first glance, make little sense. Sidetracked focuses on situations where we set out to accomplish specific goals but ended up reaching different outcomes - outcomes we often regret. Think of a time when you had a clear plan of action - a new career path, a diet you intended to follow, an exciting regular workout plan, a new saving plan for retirement, a new hire in your team, or a new car you were planning to buy after much research and deliberation. What happened when it came time to make decisions in pursuit of your goal? You may have found yourself following a course of action that took you completely off track. I certainly found myself in this type of situations many times in the past. I discovered that many friends and colleagues too shared similar experiences. In Sidetracked, I explain how even simple and seemingly irrelevant factors have profound consequences on our decisions and behaviour. Most of us care a good deal about being consistent - we care about following through on our goals and wishes. And we also aim to behave in ways that are consistent with our self-image as capable, competent, and honest individuals. But often, without our knowledge, subtle influences-often unexpected-steer us away, and our decisions fail to align with our best intentions.I wrote this book to discuss the main set of forces that prevent us from following through on our plans, and to identify a set of principles we can apply to stay on track going forward. My book describes theses forces, using examples and case studies from personal and professional domains, along with research that I conducted with colleagues over the past 10 years.Through the research discussed in my book, my hope is to challenge readers to better understand what affects their choices and to be more mindful and prepared for the many important decisions they will face, from motivating their team to change direction to understanding why organisational members behave unethically. My book also offers the tools we all need to decode the sometimes mysterious, hurtful, or unwise decisions our peers, co-workers, and colleagues make. Being human makes all of us vulnerable to influences that, even when subtle, can dramatically impact our actions. Sidetracked Francesca Gino; Harvard Business Review Press Pages 272; Rs 995What makes such an approach different? For decades, behavioural decision researchers have been studying the systematic mistakes individuals make under certain circumstances. Since the pioneering work of Jim March and Herbert Simon in the 1950s, and of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in the 1970s, scholars have provided mounting evidence that as human beings we are "boundedly rational." That is, our ability to seek and process information is restricted and often contradicts the assumptions on which standard economic theory is based. In the last few years, wonderful books have been written on this topic.The research discussed in my book starts by asking a different question than that asked by previous popular books on decision making. These books have focused on the systematic errors people make when seeking and processing information and have examined the ways in which people deviate from rationality. By contrast, I question the fundamental ability of people to make decisions that are consistent with their intentions of being ethical, competent, and effective. My central question is: Why is it that what we accomplish is often not what we set out to do? By addressing this question, the book brings an innovative dimension to the study of decision making. Not only does it identify the psychological drivers that influence how we operate as individuals, but it also explores the ways in which our choices affect other people and the organizations to which we belong. Thus, the book provides a unique perspective by homing in on under-examined, subtle influences that derail our decisions. Importantly, my book also offers a clear set of guidelines for keeping decisions on track. Too often, behavioural decision scholars point to individuals' irrationalities without suggesting ways to fix or counteract them. My book addresses this by identifying and discussing concrete solutions to people's systematic shortcomings.What according to your research are the causes of distractions?I identify three sets of: from within, from relationships and from the outside world. Forces from within include factors that reside in people's minds and hearts. Examples include people's inaccurate and overly positive beliefs about their abilities and competence, the emotions caused by events unrelated to the decision at hand, and an overly narrow focus when evaluating information to inform their decisions. Forces from relationships refer to factors that characterise ties and interactions with others. People are social human beings, and relationships are beneficial to their wellbeing. Yet, bonds with others often derail their decisions due to various factors, such as the difficulty of taking the perspective of others, the similarities people share with others, and the comparisons they make between others and themselves. Finally, forces from the outside world refer to situational factors that sidetrack people's decisions. They include irrelevant information, subtle differences in the way decisions are framed, and the structure of the context in which people operate. Click here to read reviewSo, how to overcome them?I identified nine principles that can help us stay on track. They are: 1. Raise your awareness. Because our views of how capable and competent we are as individuals are often overly positive, we rely too much on our own information. By raising your awareness, you can keep your self-views in check and recognize when they may be taking you off track. Becoming more aware of the information that enters our thinking as we consider different courses of action, and of how much of it we end up using, is an important step toward making sure that our own opinions receive the appropriate weight in our decisions. 2. Take your emotional temperature. Although there are many situations in which our feelings about a decision we are facing tell us something about the decision itself, there are also many situations where irrelevant emotions-those caused by an event completely unrelated to the decision at hand-take us off track. They can lead to inaccurate analyses of the information. By taking your emotional temperature before making a decision, you can reflect on the causes of your current feelings and determine whether they were triggered by an event unrelated to the decision at hand, and you can examine whether irrelevant emotions are clouding your judgement. 3. Zoom out. We often focus too narrowly on the decision at hand and our own views about it. As a result, we fail to see the bigger picture, including other people's roles. Zooming out involves widening our focus when considering information to include in our decision-making processes so that we don't miss important details. By zooming out, you can include more relevant information in your decision-making process so that you can avoid decision derailment.4. Take the other party's point of view. There is always another side to a story: the other person's viewpoint. Failing to recognize the potential for a different perspective can prevent us from sticking to the plan. By actively and intentionally taking the other side's point of view, you can analyse the decision you face from others' perspective. 5. Question your bonds. As social beings, we easily form connections with others based on subtle factors, such as sharing the same birthday. These connections may expand our networks and be beneficial in several ways, but they can also derail our decisions. By questioning your bonds, you can carefully reflect on your ties and similarities to those around you and consider whether these bonds are affecting your choices for the worse. 6. Check your reference points. The people around us provide natural reference points to help us understand where we stand across a variety of dimensions, from attractiveness to performance. How we measure up in these comparisons matters and can easily result in derailment. By checking your reference points, you can uncover the real motives behind your decisions and readjust accordingly. 7. Consider the source. This principle highlights the value of carefully considering the source of information we would like to use to make decisions. We may not realise that the information is not relevant for the decision at hand. For instance, we look at the effort others put into their decisions to evaluate the quality of those decisions. We examine the outcomes of decisions to evaluate their quality. And we also discount how situational factors led to a given outcome. These biases cause us to judge others inaccurately. By considering your sources, you can carefully examine the information surrounding your decisions and evaluate whether you should rely on it or not.8. Investigate and question the frame. The same information can be framed in different ways. For instance, we can view the same glass as half empty or half full. Simple changes in framing can have large effects on our motivation to act, as well as on the motivation of others. By investigating the frame, you can ask questions about the way tasks, rewards, and choices are structured and learn how to avoid decisions derailed.9. Make your standards shine. Our plans commonly reflect our desire to be moral individuals and to listen to our moral compass. Yet, from the amount of lighting in a room to the amount of resources at our disposal, subtle forces can send us off course. By making your standards shine, you can remind yourself of the importance of keeping your standards salient and become more likely to stick with them. What's the key to making better decisions? Because For, most of the factors that influence decision making in general and business decisions in particular are of uncertain and unpredictable nature.The key is to recognize that we are human: we tend to believe our thinking and actions are most often changed by significant events and well-rounded arguments. In fact, subtle factors, such as the way in which a choice is presented, or the emotions experienced when facing an event unrelated to the current decision, can have significant consequences on our behaviour.Can you cite a few examples of great, focussed decision making from the global businesses? One example is from a field research I conducted with Samasource. Founded in September of 2008, Samasource is a non-profit that secures contracts for digital services from large companies in the US and Europe, divides the work up into small pieces (called microwork) and then sends it to delivery centres in developing regions of the world for completion through a web-based interface. This is a very good example of focused decision making for two main reasons. First, many organisations start with a mission but then make operations strategy decisions that are difficult to scale or that are not in line with the company's goals. This was not the case for Samasource: the company was able to avoid being overly narrow-focused by always evaluating its decisions in relation to the company mission. Second, many organisations fail to consider how a certain decision will create pressure for their business, in a way that may lead the management to compromise on its goals. This was not the case for Samasource. When considering the various possibilities for growth (for example, changing the business model to a for-profit), the management thought through the consequences of each decision carefully to try to understand whether the option under consideration would lead to pressures to revise the mission. For instance, when considering whether to change the business model to a for-profit, the management spent time thinking how traditional investors would be interested in efficiency as their primary concerns when instead Samasource was mainly focused on developing workers below the poverty line. These two objectives could come into conflict and being a for-profit would pressure Samasource to change its focus. You are an academician and apart from decision making, you also teach negotiation. What are the few key point's dealmakers and people in similar roles keep in mind while they are at the negotiation table?The forces that sidetrack us as we implement our plans intervene also in negotiation settings. For instance, our own thoughts and feelings can be sufficient to derail our negotiations. Consider the funny scene from Albert Brooks' 1991 movie Defending Your Life. The film centres on Brooks' character, Daniel Miller, who dies and arrives in the afterlife, where he is required to justify his passive approach to life. In a flashback scene, Miller asks his wife to help him prepare to negotiate for a higher salary. Miller believes (and many negotiation experts would agree) that role-playing the negotiation ahead of time will increase his confidence and assertiveness. Throughout the practice session, Miller stands firm as his wife, acting as his boss, delivers a series of offers. When he refuses to accept less than $65,000, his wife backs down and makes some increasingly appealing offers. The next scene shows Miller's negotiation with his boss as it unfolded the next day. The boss delivers an opening offer of $49,000. Miller's response, before the boss even finishes his sentence? "I'll take it." Once he was face-to-face with his boss, anxiety overwhelmed Miller and derailed his plan to negotiate assertively. Ample research supports this fictional anecdote: the emotions we experience while engaged in tasks such as negotiation often thwart us from following through on our plans. Recognising that simple forces can derail our decisions at the negotiation table as well as the decisions of our counterpart is important. It'll lead us to better prepare for upcoming negotiations. You have written a lot about dishonesty in business. In the past few years, several dishonest practises were reported from businesses across the globe. There is a common perception that in business being honest means compromising your balance sheet. Is it not possible at all to be honest, ethical and truthful and create wealth? I believe it is very possible to be honest and to be profitable as a business. And the empirical evidence that several scholars have collected seem to agree with me on this point.You wrote: 'If Hamlet were to revisit his words today, he might conclude that, like computer software, the human mind also has bugs." Suggest us a few simple ways in which these bugs can be fixed, especially in business and governance.Using the type of focused decision making the Founder and CEO of Samasource uses is a wonderful example of how we can fix our bugs. More generally, by recognizing the limitations in the way we make decisions and correcting for them, we can be more successful in both our personal and professional lives. Through this approach, managers and organizations can adopt practices that lead to more successful outcomes. For example, after recognizing that patients often have difficultly remembering to take their medicine regularly, the startup GlowCaps designed a pill bottle with a special cap that sends reminders using wireless signals. And at Bridgestone Tire, company management wanted employees rely on data rather than their potentially biased intuitions when addressing product flaws. So managers taught employees to use two Japanese terms (which are key principles of the Toyota Production System) that served as salient reminders of the importance of investigating the actual product, or "genbutsu," in the actual place - "genba" - where a problem emerged. To take another example, my colleagues and I recently conducted a field study of Indian workers at a call centre. The managers believed that, to train happy and productive workers, the orientation process should focus on stressing why new employees should be proud to join the organisation. But in our research, we tested the senior management's intuition and uncovered a much more effective approach: giving new employees the opportunity to think about their personal strengths and how they could apply them to their jobs. Workers who were encouraged to do so were more satisfied with their jobs, more productive, and also more likely to stay with the organization than were those who received more traditional, organisation-centred training. In Sidetracked, I discuss many other examples of simple ways in which our bugs can be fixed, in both business and governance.What's your energy drink?The special latte my wonderful husband makes me every morning.What are you reading now? I am reading Simpler: The Future of Government, an interesting new book by Cass Sunstein. And I am also in the middle of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.What's your next book going to be on? As I mentioned, I truly enjoyed writing Sidetracked. So, I started playing around with a few ideas on my next book but I have not settled on one yet. businessworldbooks (at) gmail (dot) com; jinoy(dot)p(at)abp(dot)in
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