While corporate leadership is an oft discussed subject, within and outside business schools, there isn't enough research or analysis about the evolution of a good leader and the role of behaviour modification in an organisation; so believes Gerard Seijts. An associate professor of organisational behaviour as well as the executive director of the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership (Richard Ivey School of Business), Seijts' teaching and consulting focus on crisis leadership, goal setting, training and development, organisational justice and performance management. He is currently in the process of compiling a book on understanding leadership by profiling exemplary leaders from across the globe.. In an interview with BW Online's Alokita Datta, Seijts talks about the responsibilities of the leader in the importance of communication within organisational culture, how case studies serve as important learning tools and what global leadership entails; and why we aren't quite there yet. How do you intend to explore the idea of leadership in the new book you are planning to write? The previous project I worked on was the book called Leadership On Trial: A Manifesto for Leadership Development which was based on the financial crisis, how it happened and what we can learn from it. At the end of the book there is a call to action - for business schools, current and next generation leaders, board of directors and people in organisational development. The next generation of leaders is an important group. One of the things that has not been very clear and has been one of my major areas of interest is how good leaders learn to lead; or how they learn to become even better leaders. In business schools typically we don't really focus on that; when they leave school they are faced with a lot of challenges. That was one consideration. The other is that I have a terrific job; I get to meet a lot of amazing people and tell their stories. Sometimes when people come to our school (to talk to students) you can't help but wonder why someone did something. For example, we had a very unfortunate crisis in Canada a few years ago with a food processing company. The CEO almost immediately took ownership, was very candid in his communication, very transparent, at great cost to himself and the company. How does a person learn to take accountability? We had a general (in the army) come to our school some time ago and it was interesting because he deals with life and death. Every leader wants to communicate with his/her employees when times are good but it is when times are bad that people need to see the leader the most. I don't there has been a lot of research or guidance on how a leader should develop empathy and the right communication skills. Therefore, I along with a few people, including the dean of the Richard Ivey School Of Business, Carol Stephenson, decided to conduct a series of interviews -between 25-30-with people we consider to be terrific leaders who have done exceptional things; for the most part they are business leaders but we also have people from the government, arts, sports among others. I hope to get some great stories with life and leadership lessons. For each leader there will be a set of specific questions about certain circumstances that I want to find an answer to. I will be talking to three people in India then two leaders in Hong Kong. We have spoken to about 15 leaders in North America as yet. On what basis did you zero in on the three people in India you have chosen to interview? Both aspects are important. In Canada, there are some people who are seen as universally good leaders, whom Canadians admire. To some extent a great story (or not so great story) determines who we talk to. I don't want to talk only to people from the financial or food processing industry so I focus on different industries and people. All stories are unique; there may be similarities. One of the similarities is that leadership requires an enormous commitment, some people made real sacrifices; it takes time to do this right. If all interviews are the same with similar learning it will not make the book very entertaining or informative. The three people I chose in India are Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (Biocon), Gautam Thapar (The Avantha Group) and N.R. Narayana Murthy (Infosys). Both Narayana Murthy and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw have built their businesses from scratch so I wanted to know how they learned to deal with obstacles and setbacks, disappointments and slowly built things over time. Someone informed me about Gautam Thapar and I started to watch YouTube videos to learn a little bit more about the company. Family owned businesses were not originally in my sample but these businesses also come with their challenges which could make for an interesting story as well. Your first book dealt leadership in the time of crisis. Post crisis, under changed (economic) circumstances and disillusionment what should corporate leaders focus on most when managing employees?I would say that the biggest challenge, the way I see it is communication: to make people understand what is happening, why it is happening as well as when and what to expect in terms of outcomes. Transparency, candour and building trust are essential. I learnt a very interesting lesson from Rudy Giuliani once: he had come to the Ivey school several years ago to share his leadership insights based on his career and the 9/11 attacks. Something that stood out for me was what he said: Weddings optional, funerals mandatory. The leader has to be omnipresent when things are bad; he can't send his second-in-command to do the hard work of leadership that you should be doing. At times many of our leaders have missed this crucial point and seem autocratic. People want to get a sense of hope that whatever happens there is a plan, a vision behind it and they need to be involved with it. If that doesn't happen questions will linger. If the leader doesn't provide information, people will invent things themselves and what they come up with maybe be farfetched from reality. Communication could prove to be tricky as well since transparency can only work up to an extent; not all info should or can be made available to employees. How can a system of dialogue be established? In the Ivey Leadership Institute website we feature many interviews with leaders. One of them is with Peter Aceto, the CEO of ING Direct, Canada. When the financial crisis occurred and people were concerned and worried about the bank, in his words, he found this crisis a 'galvanising opportunity' because it really brought people together. He was in constant contact with the other CEOs, in Europe, Australia and the US to talk about what is happening in the industry and to ING Direct and Aceto very much communicated this email correspondence to his employees which created a great sense of trust and community was built. Often in a crisis situation, we ask for people's trust and followership but we have done nothing in the years prior to the crisis to build credibility. So why would people trust you suddenly? People like Peter Aceto are visible, in contact with his employees over Twitter. This is relatively easier to do in an outfit where there are 1000 people or less because chances are if you travel, people will see you, but he made it part of his behavioural repertoire. There aren't too many leaders I know like Peter. I have heard and read very good things about Narayana Murthy who is very humble and people write a lot about how he relates to people within the organisation and communicating with them. I am sure there are other examples of autocratic leaders in India, as anywhere else and sometimes they are successful as well. There is a distribution of practices across North America, Hong Kong, India and elsewhere and it is difficult to single out and label them. How is the style of leadership determined by the industry to which a company belongs? Also, is it subject to change along with changes in the business cycle? To a certain extent the industry ( a company belongs to) dictates what the leader does because they follow the standard, common practice. But there are moments when people are faced with experiences that leave a profound, resonating impact which sometimes revolutionises their style of leadership. If people have a failure and afterwards they take the time to really learn from it by reflecting on it. Having said that though, you would think that those seminal events would have some kind of effect but it is like when someone has a heart attack: they do things differently for maybe two or three months and they get back to their old habitual routines, so constant reinforcement is required. I study behaviour and also have a background in health education and I know that behaviour modification is one of the most difficult things to achieve. We need people around us who can be candid but it is difficult because who is going to tell the boss that things are not going the way they should? I am working on a case study in Iceland. No society can operate without banks yet people lost all trust in the Icelandic banks, recently. All the old CEOs and board of directors were fired and the new leadership were put in place. The new leaders faced the same problem even though they were not in charge when the bank dropped a ball. So it is almost as if the institution suffers a lack of trust and not just the individual leaders. So, one also needs to examine the culture of leadership, the system. Car manufacturing units in North America used to have very strong unions. In northern Ontario there was a plant of the company manufacturing company Caterpillar who recently closed a plant after a lot of confrontation between workers and mangers. The difficulty then lies in the process of rebuilding organisational structure after a conflict…You need to start from scratch but it isn't like that either because remember the past , it's not a clean slate and then how do you do things differently? Every leader should know what (s)he stands for and therefore what employees can expect from him/her. People don't like unpredictability. Soon people will evaluate whether there is consistency between what a leader promised and what (s)he delivers. Hopefully over time the leader starts building some credit. But people will often hold you accountable for things you weren't even responsible for. Reputation management becomes important. It is very much in vogue to talk about the concept of global leadership, how can one define such a leader and what would the facets of such leadership? Nobody really knows what global leadership is. I was at a conference about three weeks ago in Boston and one of the conclusions was that very few people actually know what it means because if you read 10 papers about it and the skills required, you get 10 very different results. It has become a fashionable term, everybody is using it and because of that it starts to lose its significance. Just as it is with leadership, we use this term for everything but what does it really mean? But one would think that when it comes to the global leader, there are a number of common traits and characteristics: an observation was made that that's not there yet. One would expect the global leader to have a broad interest and outlook where (sh)he is flexible and understanding of local customs and habits. When I go to teach in Hong Kong, they are always interested to know how people in the US would do the same things they are talking about. I try and tell them that before we go there , it is important to realise that may not necessarily be the right approach; it might very well be the approach that fits with their context. There is no one theory of leadership, it is very contextual. To me, you are a global leader if suppose you are on your way from the UK to Shanghai, Jordan and you're able to work , you understand the context and are able to function in those systems, but that is quite a challenge. In the event of a merger or acquisition, the cultures of the (old and newly formed) organisations change invariable. How does the leader tackle this challenge? First of all I hope that the 2 companies in question do a lot of work prior to the actual merger to see to what extent their cultures are even compatible. I worked on a case with Arthur Andersen and Deloitte Touche in Toronto and when Arthur Andersen went kaput and Deloitte picked up some of the pieces. Before that they really assessed the differences between the two companies and where they would need to work on and where overlaps exist so there would be very little to work on. What has worked with a lot of companies is the notion of creating common history. Some people consider it best practice to put teams of different people together, watch, support and see them develop. It helps people realise that what I contributed and you contributed both has merit and that helps build momentum towards a common goal. It is vital to monitor things and always jump in when things are derailed and provide feedback. Does it become necessary to hire a management consultant therefore? Yes and no. I have seen companies who are able to negotiate with their employees without the need for consultants and there are others who attribute their success to management/performance consultants. The risk with consultants often is that, best practice is to train the trainer. We need to trained the people who own the company because if you rely only on a consultant then after he goes things derail. Yet consultants can serve a very useful purpose in many companies; sometimes consultants act as facilitators and sometimes the internal people do so. break-page-break Could you elaborate on your involvement with companies such (Deloitte, Air Canada, ING Direct) . Do you conduct leadership workshops or approach them for case study collaborations? One of my favourite cases is WestJet, an airline company in Canada; I found them to be an interesting company. I wrote to them that I wanted to write a case on their corporate culture, no problem. We have had an ongoing contact with them; I've spoken at their annual general meeting. I had asked them for an hour in their flight simulator where their pilots are trained. They (WestJet) routinely come to our classes: to improve public relations, second, there may be an interesting insight and third they can benefit from faculty expertise. It is very much a two way street: they benefit from us and we from them. A company such as Maple Leaf Foods is a client of Ivey in the sense that we hold executive development programmes with them and sometimes they present us with interesting cases, they have a challenge and we write a company specific case which we only teach in the Maple leaf programme and talk about the challenge featured in the case. So it can be a problem solving session for a company as well. Some companies believe it is important to document their success but they have no illusions that somehow this is going to benefit them. Thus, there are different motivations and different ways in which we run into case opportunities. The bottom-line for us is that they must be a great teaching tool and cases are in fact just that. In terms of building your pedagogy what are the things you look for, when designing a corporatecase study?It has to be a great story, to begin with, which is compelling, interesting and has some hard hitting lessons in it. I want full disclosure for the company because a case which only has 40 or 40 percent relevant information isn't very helpful; it needs to have actionable information for debriefing. Here is the case and the learnings, here are the two, three things that we can do differently. It would be nice if we can have some theory inform our course of action. It helps to have the CEO of the company on which the case study is written be present in class or address the students over video. What have been some of the major shifts you've been able to observe in organisational behaviour, over the years?There are some people who are trying to do things differently but it is hard to change organisational culture, because of the pressures of a system people are compelled to act a certain manner. When the BP oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico (2010) happened, everyone noticed what went wrong with communication. For a lot of executives in the oil industry it was a watershed moment where they realised that is not how we should act because it gives the organisation and the industry a bad name. Less than a year later there was an oil spill in Michigan and the CEO of the company, Enbridge went straight to where the oil spill had occurred, was very visible, hands-on was empathetic and took accountability. One could say that he looked very carefully into what had happened in the Gulf of Mexico and realised what needs to be done differently. That's the great aspect of crisis management: you learn from how other people mess up. But it isn't always that these actions translate into concrete action. In the cycle of a crisis people pay attention for a year or two and then the lessons fade away. Performance goes up, people start taking risks and eventually that turns into recklessness and before you know it there is a crisis again. This is where risk management comes in…From a behavioural aspect I think risk management to a large extent is about asking the right questions with confidence: even if isn't a great question or to want to know how to articulate doubts or require explanations. But that didn't happen a lot; people started to underestimate the amount of risk involved and a false sense of security is created. In the banking industry one may not want to be labelled risk averse by asking questions. Often senior people may not understand what their comples financial structure mean and how it works. In what ways can leaders influence employee behaviour (corformity) to get desired results? What are the most effective methods of conditioning?What people reward gets done in an organisation (not necessarily monetary rewards) gets done in an organisation. If you want people to act a certain way but you don't talk about or measure that behaviour or don't celebrate it that sends one message to the employees: it is not important. If it doesn't become part of the vocabulary it is lost. There is often a discrepancy between what an employee is expected to do and what (she) actually does, in the corporate context..That's because no one talked to them or frankly couldn't care to direct them and we end up seeing crazy behaviour. What is the CEO or the upper echelon of management doing? Are they sanctioning what employees are saying or doing? I always ask people, particularly in service oriented companies, how big do you think the marketing department of your company is? Someone would say 150 and someone else would say 5,000 which is in fact the correct answer because all employees in their role are the company. You are the company and people make generalisations based on their experience with you. Behaviour is everything, therefore.
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People who feed on absurdity must have rolled about on the ground laughing hysterically at the spectacle of a loose political cannon shooting off allegations in all directions through October 2012 with no particular target in mind. Its Diwali time for sure and the rockets are aiming for heaven! Were these farcical incoherent ravings or the dawn of another historical inflection point?At a pinch I would say both. “Incoherent ravings” because the central conceit of the Vadra Gate story flies in the face of our whole cultural construct. In India, the son-in-law tail unfailingly wags the top dog daddy and you can never be damned for what your son-in-law does or does not do. Conversely, this is also an inflection point because thus far - be it politics in India or mafia gang wars in New York - “civilians” are not fair game for hit men. If you are not in the ‘family business’ and stay out of politicking or racketeering or whatever the family does, the competition does not make collateral damage out of family connections. Not anymore. Nevertheless, when the dust does settle on Vadra Gate as dust inevitably returns unto dust, the fruitiest piece would undoubtedly be the explicit acknowledgement of real estate as perhaps the biggest generator of political funding in the banana republic of the mango people.Historically, this has above all been true: since the dawn of agriculture and till the substantial advancement of the industrial age, land revenue has been the chief financier of the political classes. India today remains substantially an agrarian society. Just because the government doesn’t tax agriculture any more doesn’t mean that agricultural land is not still the primary generator of political revenue. The difference is only that this money has been channelled entirely into the parallel economy. How have we achieved this feat? This particular grease ball sofa on which our political classes recline in genteel generally ill-gotten luxury has four legs. First, within a decade of Independence, we went about enacting limits to the amount of land that a man could own because naturally, we wanted everyone to be a land owner in the emerging socialist paradise. The Delhi Land Holding (Ceiling) Act 1960 for instance limited land ownership to 30 standard acres. There was no corresponding minimum that a small family was allowed to hold and many owned a few acres in the first place. In this way, we kept the toiling masses on the land, slaving away using primitive methods because they hadn’t the education to understand new methods or, the money to buy the tools of the new methods if they did. In the fifty years since, expanding families divided; sub divided and re-subdivided: today, every small plot of landmay be owned by 20 or 30 people. Second, India went about creating laws telling farmers what they may do on their own land. Rural land was to remain rural and it could be only used for what the government thought was an “agricultural purpose”. This was a matter of national importance because we were a poor people who need every inch of land we can to grow enough food to feed our starving people. Naturally, commercial activities that generated a profit or materially expanded the economyor uplifted marginal farmers out of poverty were manifestly not agricultural purposes!The result has been that farmers are engaged in a vicious cycle of low productivity and unyielding self-perpetuating subsistence living. The cumulative effect of these two legs of the grease ball sofa has been the argument that land yields are low because land holdings are small but land holdings can’t be increased because it would decrease land yields! Third, where land can only be used for agricultural purposes, how do we ever set up an industry? As always, our license-quota-permit-maibaap government decided to arrogate to itself the power to drive the construction of the temples of modern India to the exclusion of substantially everyone else. For this purpose, it perpetuated a draconian British era land acquisition law that has done more to spread the joys of poverty and disease than most other laws. If you are not a regular reader of Fineprint already bored out of your mind with my intermittent return to this subject, you will find a summary of my thoughts in Land versus Industry, Pandora’s Real Estate Box and Land Acquisition Angst. I’m not going there again but the upshot of this third leg is that for a long time, the government alone acquired land for private people and it didn’t do it for nothing. If you wanted a piece of land, you “lobbied” the government and when enough mutual back scratching had been done, the land ended up in your hands. Of course, the compensation for the land almost never ended up in the hands of the farmer but I am not going there either. As we now learn, there is a limit to how much misery and violence you can inflict on the powerless without facing an unmanageable backlash. Control of something like a quarter of India has slipped to ‘Naxels’ and some of what remains is ruled by deliverers of diabolical diatribes like Didi whose main claim to political fame is to try and give the land back to the powerless. To this developmental challenge, the government has responded by gleefully manoeuvring to avoid acquiring land for private parties at all. Why?Ask yourself this: how will you privately buy a small plot of the land from each the 18 cousins who hate each other? How do you get them to act in concert? Do you even speak the same language? What is your leverage? You need influence, right? Believe you me, in the village, the man who has that influence is also the man who was made the sarpanch and has a voice in the community Khap. He is also the man who every politician pursues for his vote gathering abilities. There is a web of relationships out there and it can’t be done without political contacts at a high level. Net, net, you need political leverage to buy agricultural land and that leverage is at its highest when there is no law which allows a government to help you get your land for your upcoming industry or whatever.Thisbrings us directly to the last and fourth leg of our grease ball sofa. Since all you can do with agricultural land is engage in agricultural purposes, only agriculturists are ready to buy agricultural land and most haven’t the money to do so.Those who do have the money to do so have no intention of tailgating aromatically flatulent bullocks riding ploughs. This is why agricultural land costs nothing in India and urban land costs the moon.If you want to buy land to set up an industry, the law requires you take permission to change the use of the land. Here in Gurgaon, you go to the Director Town and Country Planning and get approval under the Haryana Development and Regulation of Urban Areas Act. What do you think this means? You know that you can buy land for a hundred rupees and if you get permission to change its use, it will be worth a few thousand. The man who is expected to give you this permission knows it too. Why should he give it to you and what interest has he in making you very rich very quickly? So who is going to get the land use converted for you? And how are you going to compensate him for it? You could give him a stake in your construction company, and since he is not putting in money to buy shares in your company, you would probably have to give him a loan too. Or you could give him a property for a song, and since the property is reward for services rendered, you need to give him a loan and then reverse the transaction later by some surreptitious means. The real estate business is awash with stuff like this. When people talk about real estate company shares being hammered because of poor corporate governance, I am speechless. Real estate and corporate governance? Whoa!So should you be surprised if you hear that 15 per cent of all of Gurgaon is owned through a cluster of front and benami companies by one political family? You may hear that another 20 per cent of Gurgaon is owned by other political facilitators and service providers. I have myself as a lawyer steered more than a few Gurgaon infrastructure projects featuring inevitably a significant but very quiet shareholder who had no visible business or domain expertise and no reason to be there. This guy never brings a lawyer, never demands shareholders rights and never displays any nervousness in the negotiation: he doesn’t need to because he doesn’t think paperwork is what twists necks best!So when people talks about the print media’s “conspiracy of silence” thus far about what has been going on since 1947, I shrug my shoulders and say: but this is what India has always been. You buy land in Kochi because you are amidst the clutch of politically connected people who control the decision to build a particular set of bridges for a new road or not. You then buy the land in various names, making sure the road is aligned along these parcels of land. Then you have the land use converted to residential or commercial and you sell it for billions to people who want to build townships and malls along that road. That’s AbracaVadra! Money for nothing, as it has always been in India: Why is Team K having seizures about it now?So as I sit here pondering the bullshit quotient of Vadra Gate, it comes down to the flowing Ganga and the man who the power to wash his hands in it but doesn’t. Everybody who could, did and those who didn’t, would, if they knew how to. This is the central truth about real estate in India. Bad mouthing someone because you don’t like his mother-in-law, or foster father in law, changes nothing. Deregulating land changes everything. But that topic isn’t even on the agenda, and if it was, are you sure it’s in your long term interest if you have political ambition? (The author is managing partner of the Gurgaon-based corporate law firm N South. He can be contacted at rcd@nsouthlaw.com. Many of the views expressed in this column are amplified in his new book “Bullshit Quotient: Decoding India’s corporate, social and legal Fine Print” )
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It’s a business dictum that when uncertainty is high, you don’t dig big holes. Companies in two industries that may be in big holes just now are telecom and power. So one has to wonder: does it make strategic sense for the promoters of Sun Pharmaceuticals, the largest drug company by market capitalisation to diversify into those sectors?On October 26, Sudhir V Valia, the brother-in-law of Dilip Shanghvi, managing director and founder of Sun Pharma, hit the headlines by entering into a joint venture with Norwegian telecom firm Telenor; Valia’s Lakshdeep Investments & Finance will be Telenor’s partner in their new venture Telewings Communications, which will participate in the forthcoming 2G spectrum auction.Lakshdeep Investments & Finance holds just over one per cent of Sun Pharma. Media reports cited InGovern Research Services, a consultancy firm that advises investors on corporate governance and proxy voting, as saying that Lakshdeep’s 26 per cent equity in the Telenor joint venture is in the range of Rs 2,000 to Rs 2,500 crore. The firm’s current funding sources amount to Rs 1000- Rs 1200 crore; the balance will have to be loans, Ingovern adds.Earlier this month, Sun Pharma’s board approved a resolution that would allow the company to raise Rs 8,000 crore in loans; the firm also has about Rs 6,000 crore in cash and cash equivalents on its books. So there has been speculation among industry observers that this could be used to part-finance the telecom business.But Sun Pharma denies the move. "We don't have any plans to fund Lakshdweep Investments,” says a company spokesman. “The resolution passed by the board was an enabling resolution; we will be seeking shareholder approval to raise the money.”"This is baseless speculation, and at this point of time even I do not know how much assets we (Telewings) are going to get in the auction (2G spectrum),” says Valia. “We have to wait till the auction to decide how much I will have to invest." He says that he has various funding options available in his personal capacity to complete the deal.In fact, both the telecom and power generation ventures – more on that later – are personal investments of Shanghvi (he is worth $9 billion, according to Forbes magazine) and Valia, not part of the company. Is it possible that these moves were in the offing for quite some time? A few months ago, in May this year, Dilip Shanghvi stepped down as chairman of the company in May paving way for Israel Markov, the former CEO of Teva Pharma to become chairman. Valia also stepped down as chief financial officer (CFO) to make way for Uday Baldota, another long-serving Sun Pharma executive.Readers may recall that a year ago, Shanghvi made the surprising announcement that he was setting up a power generating business with a 2,600 MW plant in Andhra Pradesh. He also then picked Valia to spearhead that venture, Alpha Infra Projects.But since that time, the scenario has changed somewhat. "We have the various clearances in place and are waiting for coal linkages and other problems related to the thermal power segment of the sector to settle down to launch this project," says Valia.Will there be other such investments? Valia doesn’t duck the question. “We are looking at good opportunities (to invest) and that may take time,” he says. But for Shanghvi, Sun Pharma will continue to be the center of his solar system.
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In India, like elsewhere in the world, consumption patterns are often geography specific - certain products and services are popular or cater to only a particular region. Thus, to appeal to a wide range of people, geographic or geo-targeting of advertising has become an essential feature in the digital world. But instead of internet or mobile, Bangalore-based Amagi Media Labs came up with a unique platform, Smart TV Advertising, four years ago that allows geo targeting on television. Simply put, it means if viewers in Delhi and Bangalore are watching the same TV channel, they will still see different ads, depending on their geographical location. Amagi was founded by Baskar S, Srividhya S. and Srinivasan K A. In an interview with BW Online's Tanuja Chatterjee, Srinivasan K A (Srini) talks about Amagi's journey so far, their clientele, their strategy and growth plans in the near future. Can you explain the concept of Smart TV Advertising?Successful and smart advertising begins with delivering relevant information. Amagi works towards making large advertising reach all over India. Regional SME brands which are present in only a few states and cater to minimal consumers, find it very expensive to advertise themselves nationwide. For instance, I am a Gujarat-based detergent company having my product distributed all over Gujarat and Rajasthan. So if I want to come on television today, I have very few choices that can fetch me the viable reach I want. To go national it would be way too costly for me to advertise my product all over India. My key holding market is in Gujarat and Rajasthan. Rest of the advertising will be 80-90 per cent of wastage. The whole world is going towards targeting: online, newspapers, radio and others. Amagi offers the advertisers a phenomenal reach to its customers at a very low cost. Now it is possible for consumers to buy a product aired on television only in Gujarat, or Rajasthan or Delhi and advertisers pay only for that. What inspired you to conceptualise the idea of 'limiting' TV advertising?Earlier we (Baskar S., Srividhya S. and I) started a technology company named Impulsesoft in 1998 which was later acquired by SiRF Technology (a US based semiconductor firm) in 2005 for its technology leadership in Bluetooth. That gave us an initial structure to spot the research and marketing strategy for Amagi. Suppose you want to do something new and change the way a certain industry functions, you need to consider multiple options. There hasn't been much technological change in the television media from past so many years, except DTH, if you will. Broadcast is being carried out more or less in the same manner in which it started. Technology plays a prominent role in our lives. Television being the largest media, from advertising prospective, has a lot to offer to advertisers as well as consumers. Can we get an option for advertisers who have the reach of TV but will get the kind of targeting that internet will provide. If you marry these two you have, what we will call smart advertising on television. We tried to make use of that USP of TV and make it much more fruitful for people. What kind of research did you engage in prior to Amagi's launch?We started off by gaining knowledge about this domain extensively. We spent a lot of time talking to various advertisers associated with different categories such as real estate, FMCG and so on. That gave us a complete idea of the direction where we were heading. With smart advertising on TV, a huge number of businesses who have never been on TV have been able to advertise on premium TV channels at fairly low budgets - almost as low as a radio spot.Did you deliberately plan to start with small companies and then proceed towards big firms?We started in 2008 (in Bangalore). Till late 2009 we were involved in creating our business model and setting up our commercial deployment. In 2009 we started with our drive in Hyderabad, with couple of channels and then moved on to more. At the moment we have covered 62 cities across India; in some particular states we even cover the villages around the place. We are in talks with more companies and even had a meeting with one of our clients in Singapore but it is too early to comment on that.Can you name some of the SMEs with which you are working already? Some of the SMEs that we are working with are Infraline Batteries , which targets Delhi and UP, Womenskart.com, EaseMyTrip.com, Melasma beauty cream, Naturoveda, which is one of the leading SMEs in Kolkata. We deal with SMEs that have an approximate value of Rs 300-500 crore. We also cater to education and are associated with companies such as Framebox Animation, IAMS and others. These SMEs are not pan India but in their area they are huge brands. We give these local and regional products to advertise themselves on the national platform all over India.Has the focus been largely on national channels (Aaj Tak, Zoom TV) or regional channels (for instance Maa TV)? Dominantly the focus was on national channels. Regional channels were mostly an add-on to us. We focus on national television channels and regional advertisers. Our target is to bring these FMCG companies and other regional players to the Hindi speaking markets. What kind of challenges did you face with advertisers as well as the television channels, initially?From the channels' perspective, there was initial scepticism that will this cannibalise their sales. We said that we will make it more efficient: today an advertiser is forced to buy an all India commercial slot, even if he wants only Gujarat and Rajasthan. Channels were concerned that their advertiser will spend only 20 or 30 per cent of his (advertising) budget if they are only buying slots for specific regions. Channels were worried that is this an option that is going to kill them (in terms of sales)... It took us one and a half years to tie up with our first television channel. Over the last few years we have been able to bring 95 per cent of our regional advertisers on TV, who have never been on television. Some advertisers are desperately looking for an option to get themselves introduced to their target audience. They are willing to put their budget accordingly. From the advertiser perspective, when products are being offered at a local radio rate, people tend to raise questions like 'are they advertising it illegally?', 'How can it be really possible to advertise and avail the concerned product at such low rates'? and similar queries. So clearly we need to focus on educating (people) and marketing (our products) simultaneously. What is the technology behind producing target based, smart advertising on television channels? Initially, we target the ads locally, very much like split-runs on newspapers where you can buy ad space on a local edition instead of buying ad space on national edition. We have partnered with a number of TV channels to buy spots nationally from them and then use our technology to split those spots by region and sell these regional/local spots at a fraction of the national rate. So, for an SME, a TV ad spot can now cost up to 80-90 per cent less compared to a national TV spot, often making it even cheaper than a radio-spot locally. We use the finger printing technology in which we barcode the content (regional advertisements). It is an audio visible barcode that is added to the content that is to be aired. When the barcode is coming in , it is be able to recognise that automatically to carry out all the regional acts. How do you plan to grow organically now?In the next couple of months we are adding some big channels on our list. We have started looking overseas; in fact we just did a couple of trials on large broadcasters in Singapore last month. We have started our distribution in South America, the US and Singapore.Where is Amagi headed in the near future…Every year we have grown 5 times more than the previous year. On an average we have grown 4-5 per cent year on year. We have grown up to 20 times from the last three years. In my opinion, media is completely value for money, and the consumers are very particular about each penny they spend. People are quite brand cautious, so I want my product's advertisement to be aired on big channels. National television is very inspirational. We are adding 100-150 advertisers on our list. This medium has been able to offer a wide reach and content to its customers.
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Founded in 1994, Zicom was the first to offer home security systems in India. With operations in over five countries, 400 cities in India and over one million customers and with Rs 450 crore in annual sales, Zicom Electronic Security Systems can be seen in the popular reality show Bigg Boss season six, where it acts as the CCTV surveillance partner. Pramoud Rao, the promoter managing director of Zicom Electronic Security Systems, oversees strategic planning, local and international partnerships, acquisitions, marketing, sales, technical and branding of the security company. In an email interview with BW Online's Poonam Kumar, he explained the advantage of installing security gadgets at home. Who is the target customer for your security products? Zicom provides security as a holistic solution across all verticals, B2B, B2C and B2G (business to government). We offer services as a strategic differentiator using hardware and software only as an enabler. It's our belief that consumers, don't buy products, they buy safety. With our holistic services approach, we are able to offer consumers end-to-end solutions aimed at delivering peace of mind, at a nominal rate. Who are your clients? We have clients across various verticals. In retail, we service Bharati Walmart, Gitanjali, D' dmas, Kimaya Fashion, McDonald, William Pens. In banking we serve HSBC, Kotak Mahindra, ICICI, Saraswat Cooperative, Indus Sind, Federal, etc. Among NBFCs, we service IIFL, Mini Muthood, HDFC Ergo to name a few. Who are your competitors? When it comes to pure product sales, we compete with all the multinational companies, like Honeywell, Schneider, Bosch, Tyco etc. Since we have just started pioneering the Make Cities Safe (MCS) and e-SaaS (electronic security as a service) projects, we expect competition in the next few months. You have tied up with Tulip Infratech. Can you tell us more about the project? The Tulip Housing project located at Sohna Road, Gurgaon, is one of the biggest projects with more than 5,000 flats. We will provide security to the project via state-of-the-art technological innovations and services, including video door phones, access control cards and radio frequency identification (RFID) sensors. The apartments will have video door phones (VDP) with two-tier security that will include installation of a lobby station that will have RFID-based access card system as well. Any visitor will be required to dial the respective destination flat. The resident will be able to see the visitor in their lobby from inside their house before opening the door. The entire project will require 5,000 VDP and seven lobby camera stations with integrated card reader. A resident will simply have to show the card at the lobby panel and the main glass door will open automatically with the help of electromagnetic locks. What is the Cities Safe concept?The eco system protecting our homes today is unreliable and unsafe. The buildings where we live have practically no security. There is no authentic record of visitors, services staff, food delivery services, etc. Further, housing societies are shy about investing in security due to cost, technologies obsolescence, daily management of security devices, concerns of service and return on investments. Under Make Cities Safe project, Zicom offers CCTV surveillance systems to housing societies with all the benefits without having to own or manage it. There is neither capital investment nor the headache of what technology to purchase plus the added advantage of not having to maintain or manage the system daily. The housing society pays a monthly nominal service fee to Zicom. We launched MCS on 26 January, 2012 with a pledge to make our cities safe. Currently our system is installed in over 1,000 residential buildings in Mumbai in just six months, Zicom takes the responsibility of awareness, education and training of residents on various household safety and security aspects. What are all the products Zicom has to offer? a) Home Alarm Systems - Door Sensors, Motion Sensor, Glass Break Sensors and Gas Leak Sensor; b) Finger Print Locks; c) Video Door Phone ranging from a 4 inch screen to a wide variety of 7 inch screens including Touchpad Technology; d) CCTV Cameras - IP based DIY kits are also available. How beneficial are the security products for household system? Nowadays, families are nuclear in nature, with both parents working and children being left to be taken care by others. Our dependence on outsourced resources has increased drastically and so has the crime conducted by these "dependable" outsourced resources. It has therefore become imperative for us to protect what we value the most. The advantage of installing security gadgets at home is that they make you and your loved ones feel safe. While CCTV is reactive in nature and would only be able to provide circumstantial evidence of any wrongdoing, alarm systems are more of an active measure that detect unauthorised intrusion and deters the criminal from carrying out his intentions. The alarm can be raised locally as well as remotely. What is Zicom's most popular product line in India? Our hot selling products are our video range- video door phones, low-end CCTV cameras and digital recorders. What is your business plan post sale of integration business to Schneider Electric?Zicom has always been driving the markets with pioneering initiatives. We pioneered the category of Electronic Security in 1994. Currently, we are pioneering a new concept called e-SaaS (Electronic Security as a Service) and another new concept called Make Cities Safe (MCS). Both concepts are pathbreaking and unique in many ways. We have no competition in e-SaaS and MCS. What are the services offered under e-SaaS? Under E SaaS, Zicom Command Centre is the focus of attention. The current services we offer are :- Remote monitoring and management of Fire Alarm SystemRemote monitoring and management of Intruder Alarm System MAaaS - Managed Alert as a Service ( Monitors the health of Digital Recorders )Time and Attendance on Cloud People counting solutions for retail stores What is Zicom's new business strategy? Zicom is re-entering the retail security business by offering our products in shop-in-shop formats, large format stores, electronic retail stores, e commerce portals etc. There is now greater focus on brand building, expanding our services offering with geographical spread and profitable growth.
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The hypocrisy of the US and Europe never ceases to amaze me. Even when their dominance of world economy is crumbling, they continue to demand more from emerging economies than they are willing to give. Recently the lawmakers in US made an outrageous attack on India. They censured the Indian government's move to encourage domestic manufacturing of spohisticated communications and computing technology. The preferential market access policy announced by the government last week seeks to encourage domestic manufacturing of hardware that has so far been largely imported. The policy wants foreign investors to partner with domestic companies to manufacture in India. But have a look at the response of the US. The Congressional High Tech Caucus made up of 45 law makers feel that the policy would essentially halt the export of US made high-tech goods into the Indian market. This caucus has asked the US Trade Representative to take action against India for violating WTO norms. The irony is that the same lawmakers had bristled with rage and stopped the exports of similar hi tech products after the nuclear tests. Amazingly, now they can't get enough of the Indian market and are upset that India wants to manufacture and not trade. A country that has been promoting 'Buy American' for all its consumers is upset with the Indian move to boost its manufacturing. Even under the multi billion dollar stimulus programmes, the government of US had mandated that the money be spent only on US made products. They did not want the stimulus package be used for importing products. Read this statement by the same caucus. "We remain concerned that the PMA is designed to boost domestic manufacturing of information and communications technology (ICT) hardware through discriminatory, local content requirements, and more specifically, is aimed at forcing foreign ICT companies to establish manufacturing in India."The audacity of this statement is laughable and shocking at the same time. The caucus is actually upset that India will force US companies to manufacture in India. At one level, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner comes to India and seeks deeper partnership. But at another the government and lawmakers work to undermine India's efforts in self reliance. And this when the US and other countries in the EU have been busy blocking foreign companies from manufacturing and selling sensitive telecom equipment in their countries. All of them cite security concerns. But when it comes to selling their equipment to India, they carp about unfair treatment. The duplicity is unbelievably blatant. Not surprisingly, the Telecom Equipment Manufacturers association (TEMA) of India has fought back sharply against the US and other countries trying to pressurise Indian government to revise the policy. TEMA has used equally strong words to say that foreign companies want India to remain dependent on imports. India's policy of forcing joint ventures in critical sectors has helped create workd class manufacturing. The Indian auto sector is the best example. This policy was not detrimental to the foreign automobile investors either. It gave them a low cost manufacturing base that allows them to be competitive. The government of India has taken the right step in implementing the preferential market access policy. All government procurement must encourage domestic made telecom and high tech products. By allowing foreign investors to partner, the policy will ensure that there is collaboration in knowledge and competition in the market. India needs more such polices that increase it's manufacturing capabilities. (Pranjal Sharma is a senior business writer. He can be contacted at pranjalx@gmail.com)
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With organisations entering the new age of economic uncertainties, competing by capability maximisation may become the new name of the game, says a KPMG report on Workforce Optimization. The tough challenge here is to identify, synergise and leverage dispersed capabilities within the organisation; and the ability to do so may be the key source of competitive advantage in the current times. KPMG’s report “Creating an optimized organization” talks about the recent changes in the business landscape that have triggered the need to create an optimised organisation, leadership, delivery models and change management techniques indispensible for optimization of an organization. In the changing economic scenario, organisations can no longer take the liberty of continuing with misaligned workforce. The way you can keep ahead is by getting the right set of employees, at the right time, at the right cost and at the right place. It seems like organisations have to get a lot of things ‘right’ in order to reap the benefits from workforce optimisation. This often seems to be the reason why most organisations don’t even attempt it. Appropriate ‘workforce planning’ and negotiating the right ‘workforce contract’ (part time, temporary, permanent, contract employees) are the two key facets of workforce optimisation. Organisations are thus increasingly exploring diverse internal/external partnerships to realise the objective of workforce cost optimization. Key avenues of optimisation have to be explored around the four dimensions of organisational framework, namely, structure, workforce, processes and technology. Organisation culture and leadership also have a strong impact the creation of the optimised organisation. Leveraging The ResourcesOrganisations may need to leverage the existing resources by ensuring maximum efficiency, effectiveness and utilisation. The profit, in the current scenario, may come as much form cost as it may come from revenue. Consequently organisations are expected to have a comprehensive cost strategy along with a well crafted revenue strategy. In other words, now is the need to create an optimized organisation. There may exist multiple avenues of optimisation along the four dimensions of organisational framework- structure, workforce, processes and technology. Some of the key examples in this regard may be process re-design for efficiency, technology up-gradation, workforce planning, role clarification, goals cascading, skill alignment, cross functional/departmental communication, organisation de-layering and team based governance. However, it may also be observed that the real opportunity for optimization is locked in the way these dimensions interact with each other. Organisations deploy combinations of different delivery models to realise the benefits of optimisation. The delivery models define the nature of interactions among the structure, workforce, processes and technology. Some of the most commonly deployed delivery models are shared services model, outsourcing model, self service model or hybrid model. Implementation of the above mentioned delivery models may be a daunting task from change management perspective. Employees, team and organisations may have to deviate from their usual ways of working to new and unchartered ways of working. In case of creating a shared services organisation or outsourcing select work activities, significant number of employees may get relocated or even separated. Managing such people issues may hold the success of creating an optimised organisation.
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Ever since setting up shop in India, Harvard Business Publishing has worked towards establishing strong ties with India's B-schools, corporate world and book publishing industry. HBP works with faculty at over 90 Indian b-schools and about 50 Indian organisations are associated with HBP to train its managers. "India already contributes to about 5 per cent of the global revenue," says David A. Wan, CEO of HBP in an interview with BW Online's Sanjitha Rao Chaini. Wan stands on a solid 25-years of managerial experience and has worked on a global scale in publishing, consulting and consumer products. Formerly, President of the Penguin Group, Wan has also held three executive positions in Simon & Shuster, K-12 Publishing Group, Arthur Andersen, PepsiCo and Paine Webber. How has Harvard Business Publishing India grown since 2008, after setting up shop in India. Tell us a bit about the revenue generated in India?As a not-for-profit organisation and part of Harvard Business School, we are driven by our mission to “Improve the Practice of Management and its impact in a changing world”. We set up in India to further our mission in a region that has a strong appetite for knowledge and learning. We are very pleased with our progress in India over the last four years. Our team has been able to develop some very deep relationships with our stakeholders and we have had strong impact across all our three markets - individual managers, corporates and management educators. HBR’s South Asia edition now has over 10,000 leaders and aspiring leaders subscribing to it. Our website, hbr.org, has over 3.5 mn unique visitors per month, it has a disproportionately high number of engaged users from India. In fact, for the most recent quarter India was the second highest country in terms of visitor sessions on our website. Our books are extensively available and accessible through local pricing and distribution. We regularly conduct webinars for the HBR community in India with leading global management thought leaders. We work with faculty at over 90 Indian B-schools through our locally priced site license model. In addition to providing content such as case studies, simulations, articles and online courses, we conduct case teaching programmes in India with HBS faculty and provide faculty with teaching and curriculum planning support. Today all good Indian B-schools use PCL (participant centred learning) pedagogies and this trend is accelerating. HBP’s corporate learning division also works with almost 50 Indian organisations -– these include Public Sector, Family owned businesses, MNCs, and other Indian companies, to provide blended learning solutions for developing their managers. India already contributes to about 5 per cent of the global revenue while furthering HBP’s mission in the region. Do you feel the need to alter business models while dealing with India?Yes, most certainly. In fact, for any company to succeed, it is imperative that the value proposition be tailored to meet the needs and demands of the local context and culture. For instance, we recognised that business schools in India have limited budgets due to the significantly lower fee structure as compared to western schools but at the same time their requirement for content is quite widespread. To meet this challenge, we adapted our regular business model to offer a site-wide license where schools can sign up for a significantly lower flat fee and have access to all our materials. Similarly, to meet the needs of our corporate learning clients in India and maximise impact, we offer tailored leadership development solutions that blend various forms of learning such as self-directed learning, classroom facilitation, webinars, simulations, and action learning, On the HBR magazine and books front, India is the only international market where we offer locally printed and priced content in English language. As an ideas-driven organisation, we focus our efforts on making our content widely accessible. What are the case studies emerging out of India? We are constantly working on sourcing management ideas from India and other emerging markets for our global audiences -– this could be in the form of books, HBR articles, blog posts, learning videos, etc. We have been reasonably successful in the recent past, but see us accelerating our efforts in this area. HBS through its India Research Center at Mumbai, is growing its case collection from India. You are from the 1981 HBS batch, how has a manager's role changed across the years in your experience?I have seen and experienced the evolution of the manager’s role from directing a team to being a real leader. As the esteemed leadership expert Professor Warren Bennis wrote: “Managers do things right. Leaders do the right thing”. In a rapidly changing and dynamic business world, the “command and control” approach to leadership is obsolete. Leaders must be able to successfully influence many more stakeholders beyond their direct reports. Organisations are much more matrixed than in the past and many managers find difficulty adapting to these structures. In addition, globalisation requires leaders to be able to work effectively across borders and cultures. Since my MBA student days at HBS, the faculty there has greatly advanced the thinking about success and effectiveness at all levels of management. For example, Professors Garvin and Datar attribute leadership success to three interrelated components — Knowing, Doing and Being — and how managers need to continuously improve themselves in these areas. The Knowing component refers to the frameworks, concepts and theories that make up the fundamental understanding of business. The Doing component is the ability to apply one’s knowledge into actions and execution. The Being component refers to values, attitudes, and beliefs — the commitments and mindset of one’s leadership purpose. HBS Dean Nitin Nohria describes the Knowing, Doing and Being dimensions of leadership success as the combination of “competence and character”. You have been observing the global publishing industry for quite long. How do you think things have changed in the past decade? Good and bad.The publishing industry especially in our area of specialisation — business and management -- is surely observing some very positive trends; with people assuming different roles and organisations expanding their portfolio to include new services/ products, there is increased demand for content on best practices, new ideas, etc. People are seeking information that helps them and their companies grow. The most significant change has been a gradual shift from legacy media formats like print to digital media in most parts of the world; it is important for every publishing house to leverage the digital platform, and tap into the growing e-books market. While many publishing companies have viewed the shift to digital media as disruptive to their business models, HBP views technology as enabling a much richer experience for our audience. With print publications, and even a lot of websites, it is a monologue. Technology now enables publishing to be more of a dialogue between editors and their audience. A lot of what we do on the website (HBR.org) and the kind of blogs we do on the site are aimed at getting our readers to participate. You just can't do that in print. This approach is very aligned with the participant centred pedagogy of Harvard Business School. Are e-books a significant market by now? Or do we have to wait?Suffice it to say that it is rapidly growing, and will only accelerate in the future. Currently, it constitutes about 15 per cent of our business, which is also the trend amongst all English books’ publishers. In India, it is nascent; but as more people begin to have access to E-Readers, Tablets and smartphones, the market will only grow. Other factors which will help the E-Book market grow rapidly are the increasing availability of digital titles through a choice of retailers and increasing comfort levels with technology in the Indian market. While the digital format doesn’t require us to deal with physical inventory of the books or supply chain issues, we have to now maintain a balance between free and paid-for-content. Business books publishers are perhaps facing an identity crisis globally. Several general trade publishers are also coming out with dedicated imprints for business (for instance, Penguin Portfolio). Will you lose relevance and meaning in this process?No. Most other trade publishing imprints are not the distinguishing feature when readers are thinking about purchasing a business book. The imprint is subsidiary to the author. The Harvard Business Review Press imprint is arguably the only trade publishing imprint where readers recognise and value the brand equally as the author. In addition, the other trade publishers do not provide multiple platforms that are integrated in presenting the author’s ideas for reach and impact. We purposely work with our book authors to engage readers via blog posts and online forums on HBR.org, webinars, articles in HBR and of course, the book itself. How do you look at the future of business books publishing, say, in the next decade?I believe that business books will evolve from a static artifact of content to being a component of an integrated learning experience for readers. For example, we are already developing apps and tools that complement a number of our books (print or eBook) so that the reader can better grasp the frameworks and concepts that the author is describing, and more importantly, help the reader apply the concepts. I also envision greater use of social media tools to build and sustain a community of practice for the author’s ideas. On the demand side, I am optimistic that there will be a continuing desire among business professionals to advance their skills, strategic thinking and leadership capabilities. There is talk that the quality of non-fiction editing is falling or becoming too text-bookish or sensationalist. Do you think this is right, if yes, how can we fix it?I wouldn’t try to assess the quality of non-fiction editing overall. However, at HBR Group, including HBR Press, we invest in collaborating with our authors in what we describe as 'transformational editing'. Most other trade publishers focus their editors and investment on acquisition rather than developmental editing. For both our magazine articles and books, our editors work intensely with our authors to ensure that the end product successfully serves our readers and can answer two fundamental questions: (1) So What?-- What is the essence of the idea and why is it important? (2) Now What? -- How do I apply the idea to make myself or my organisation more successful? How do you look at India as a publishing market?Culturally, education has always formed an integral part of the Indian society, and now with the rapid pace of change, the need to continue learning well beyond formal education at the school level, is seen to be of the highest potential for publishers. An increasing number of executives are taking charge of their learning and development needs and investing on books and materials which can help them perform much better at the workplace and this is a significant trend for us. Companies in India are also investing in developing their people across all levels of the organisation to enhance their effectiveness, and build a strong leadership pipeline. Our b-school clients have strong appetite for quality content such as cases, simulations and videos. The market is also gradually getting accustomed to paying for quality content which again bodes well publishers. Like most other markets, we are also observing a gradual shift from a legacy media format like print, to digital media. We are very optimistic about the Indian market and look forward to accelerated growth across various media and increasing our reach to ensure that we improve the practice of management. (With inputs from Jinoy Jose P.)
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