Mini Bombay

I happened to visit Indore (my birth place) which is also known as mini Bombay and I was astonished to see the way it has developed in last 5-10 years. Indore which is a major trading & educational hub, business capital of Madhya Pradesh boasts on its location on National Highway and good connectivity with Mumbai and other trading centers and that is the reason it is also called mini Bombay.

The founder of the Indore dynasty was Malhar Rao Holkar (1694-1766). In 1724, the Peshwa at Pune,delighted by his soldierly prowess, gave him command of 500 horseback soldiers and appointed him as the Peshwa's chief general in the Malwa with headquarters at Indore. In 1733, Peshwa gifted him the Indore area, thereby catapulting him to the ownership of a vast domain stretching from the Deccan to the Malwa table land. He gradually became independent of the Peshwa central rule and by the time of his death, he was the de facto ruler of Malwa.


Though Indore dynasty was ruled and established by Marathi speaking people, today Marathi language is heard rarely rather it is lost in the city. I remember real gentlemen (Marathi manus) of Indore and the congested streets which have been taken over by swanky buildings and roads and life style has taken a sea level change.

There is no one to take care and preserve the heritage (I mean language here) of the city and worry for the Marathi manus, the story does not end here, there are other cities who have the same story, Ujjain, Gwalior, Boarda (Vadodara) are the other cities which I believe are in the same league. There are lot many Palaces which has been converted to school, colleges, hospitals, museum but people living in the vicinity of those palaces, or enjoying the services hardly know the history and neither the people living in those cities try to preserve the heritage.

People are busy with there own agenda’s and the common man is getting lost in the concrete jungle. City has progressed a lot in last years but at a cost of what?

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Copenhagen Before & After

Before Copenhagen meet Indian government projected a 20-25% reduction (From year 2005 level) in carbon emission by the year end 2020 under the U N framework, even though this commitment is not presently quantified. It is anticipated that Indian foreign policy has to face immense pressure from the international community to have quantified limitation or reduction commitments.

Developing countries have a parallel market for carbon trading among them with potential to implement it, especially among India and china, who are the largest sellers of carbon credits and Japan which is the largest buyer of the carbon credits

At the moment, India has drawn up a National Action Plan on Climate Change, which includes increasing solar power generation and other non conventional energy resources and improving energy efficiency.

To bring down carbon emission at the national level government will have to promote non conventional energy projects and plantation immensely and will be offering high incentives on the same. At present, India is largely agriculture and service sector based economy (which is low carbon intensive) but is expected to grow in manufacturing sector (which is high carbon intensive). And this growth might experience difficulties as a result of the new target.

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What is Strategy

Being strategic is nothing but being different in the context you are operating. Being strategic is nothing but being different – the moment you are not unique, you get copied and you lose your market share.

Strategies exist at several levels in any organisation - ranging from the overall business (or group of businesses) through to individuals working in it.

Corporate Strategy is concerned with the overall purpose and scope of the business to meet stakeholder expectations. This is a crucial level since it is heavily influenced by investors in the business and acts to guide strategic decision-making throughout the business. Corporate strategy is often stated explicitly in a "mission statement".

Business Unit Strategy is concerned more with how a business competes successfully in a particular market. It concerns strategic decisions about choice of products, meeting needs of customers, gaining advantage over competitors, exploiting or creating new opportunities etc.

Operational Strategy is concerned with how each part of the business is organised to deliver the corporate and business-unit level strategic direction. Operational strategy therefore focuses on issues of resources, processes, people etc.

How Strategy is Managed - Strategic Management

In its broadest sense, strategic management is about taking "strategic decisions" - decisions that answer the questions above.

In practice, a thorough strategic management process has three main components, shown in the figure below:

Strategic Analysis

This is all about the analyzing the strength of businesses' position and understanding the external factors that may influence that position. The strategy evaluation and choice depends on the analysis of the following five key factors

1. PREST Analysis - a technique for understanding the "environment" in which a business operates. Political, regulatory, environmental, social and technological analysis


2. ICA: Industry and competitor analysis (includes Five Forces Analysis)


3. RCS: Resource and capability analysis


4. Cultural analysis


5. Stakeholder’s expectation
   

The result of above analysis help in swot analysis

PREST+ICA = Opportunities and Threats
RCA +cultural analysis = Strengths and weakness
Stakeholder analysis = Vision and goals

On the basis of above analysis, strategic options are generated. Strategic options nothing but different business models
1) Customer selection
2) Competition selection
3) Value =P+S+E (Products+ Solution +Experience)
4) Value delivery model i.e. the way value is delivered.

References :
Prof. Ranjan Das Professor IIM-Calcutta
thestrategyacademy.org
&
tutor2u.net

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When boss losses respect

There is some basic requirement which a boss needs to address and understand in order to win respect of his team.

1. Employee should be respected : Respect reciprocate, to win respect of the Employee, Employee should be respected first.
   
   
2. Employee dislike micro-managers and under- managers: Employee like to be treated like adults by there managers and hate micromanagers, they also don’t like under-managers where they receive little or no support from there managers.
   
   
3. Meeting an necessary evil: Employees don’t like meeting as a rule; but managers can make the meeting interesting by planning meetings carefully, imposing strict time limits, making goals and action items clear, and by creating a conducive environment where employees can voice their opinions.
   
   
4. Employees need appreciation: All creativity, ideas, innovation should be appreciated, awarded and acknowledged in absence of which employee feel de-motivated.
   

Management by Democracy

In my previous article "Human resource management"I have put across a comparison and tried to re-present “management” in a more easy and understandable way. Human resource is a functional area of the organization and many such functional areas lead to overall organization, and the person who is leading the organization has more responsibilities to deliver and is the only individual responsible for the fate of the organization.

Now the question is that whether that individual should be free to take decision or is there a better way to do that. “Prudent decision”.

I suggest that there are ways to take prudent decision; the key for that is “management by democracy”. Being the person in charge doesn't mean that he needs to have all the answers and neither he/she should pretend that he knows everything (Real business geniuses don't pretend they know everything). Decision should always taken in a democratic way by gathering subject matter experts and domain experts. But if the boss thinks that he knows everything (Aham Brahmasmi: Ravana had a gut-feeling that he knows everything and his decision are correct) and those decision are leading to fatal problems and downfall of the organization then there should be a provision of employees vote their boss out of office.

Management by democracy will reduce concentration of power in one hand and will reduce the possibilities of individual treating/ thinking himself as God. There will be provision of employee generating a trouble ticket the way customer raising ticket and for which a response is required.

Management by democracy requires A 360 Degree feedback implementation. Generally senior managers don’t want to be exposed on there flaws and try to avoid anything that evaluates there way of managing the things, they avoid answering the queries and avoid responsibility of bad outcomes.

India being a Command and control society from centuries; we have a habit of controlling our kids (by virtue of our power & age) till they get married and have there own kids. Command and control is the easiest management style but it may not be very productive for the organization, while democratic accountable model is very difficult on management but it is very productive.

Note: “Innovation emerges from the bottom up, unpredictably and improvisationally, and it's often only after the innovation has occurred that everyone realizes what's happened. The paradox is that innovation can't be planned, it can't be predicted; it has to be allowed to emerge."

“Boss is always right” is an adage but if boss believes in the said concept, then he might be instrumental in downfall of the. If the top notch carry this attitude, they are bound to loose respect of there team members and have to face there rage. Rage need not be a direct expression but may be in there action and behavior.

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Human Resource Management

I have observed/ read lot many blogs, articles regarding human resource management and to my surprise the readership & respoponses to these sort of articles is amazing; might be the readers try to read the story as if it is written for them and try to correlate there personal experiences with the story.

The same observation was for my earlier post of “How to retain talent”, “People leave managers not the company” & “Making a Happy workplace”; people candidly written there observation and comments. As far as my opinion is concerned HRM is the easiest job in the organization functional area; having said this it is also the toughest job among all the functions.

I consider this as an easy job because if the employees are treated well, nurtured well, given an opportunity to grow well, motivated properly then they can be an asset to the company in years to come. It’s the job of parenting; we treat our kids in well manner, we try and encourage them to excel in various areas, we provide them opportunity to grow, we motivate them to do difficult jobs and so on so forth. We even create ground rules in the family which will allow kids to take the shape of vessel and excel in the right direction of life. Human resource management is as simple as that; managing many kids at single time.

I consider this as toughest job because giving right direction to kids, imparting them human values, a sense of understanding, love & maturity is a difficult proposition and think of implementing all the things to many kids simultaneously.

Would like to have your opinion on the article.

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Email marketing: Efficiency & effectiveness

In my earlier post “ROI Advertisement” I have elaborated the ways and means to track the advertisement. Now days email marketing is emerging as a cheap and convenient way to stay connected with the customer and to promote the product & services (the obvious reason being the high cost of print and broadcast marketing and there limited reach)

When any of the process of methodology is in nascent stage we hardly talk of effectiveness and efficiency but as the time passes we put efficiency and effectiveness clause in the counting.

You might be wondering as if how to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of email marketing process.

An Email marketing campaign as process can be gauged on the below clause for measuring efficiency.

1. The % of emails delivered out of the total email executed
2. The minimum time duration in which email can be executed.
3. The % of email read by the end users (ensures that mails were delivered in there inboxes and not in junk mail; email can be tracked for opened/ not opened even for the accounts in hotmail, yahoo etc. though they do not allow any build in feature where the users can send a read receipt. Readt ROI Advertisement)
4. The % of email bounced with categorized reason like inbox full, blocked at the gateway etc

An Email marketing campaign as process can be gauged on the below clause for measuring Effectiveness.

1. The % of email read by the end users. Email marketing campaign considered as effective when the number of email opened/ read is very high; indicating that the subject line was effective and forced the recipient to open the email.
2. The % of user replied or took any action in the mail like clicking the link, button etc.
3. Last but not the least the % of goal achieved for which the email marketing campaign was targeted for.
   
   I will also elaborate measures to increase efficiency and effectiveness of email marketing; so keep visiting…..

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