Share Taxi - The next big opportunity

Share Taxi, Uber has done it in west and the players who does this effectively in India is going to revolutionize the transportation in this country. This brings in huge productivity improvement not just the stakeholders but to the whole society.. Its as good as travelling in your own car economically and still having the luxury of having a driver. Imagine 10% of car travelers start using the Shared Taxi, it can bring huge benefits to the society..

Customers - Increases the productivity, effective use of the time of driving down

Taxi Drivers & the Operator- More people transported in given time and more money

Society - Less Traffic and all its associated benefits

Economy - Less Fuel consumption, lesser imports

Environment - Less Pollution

Ola, the biggest player in this country has started this and this is the way they can kill it.. Actually its very difficult for a big operator to kill this idea!!

1. Put more people in the car particularly during peak hours, drop/ pick up people in heavy traffic areas so that even a slight turn from the actual route will take hours, send communication to drivers after they crossed the place of pick up, take U turns to pick up people, take more time to cover the distance by picking up people from different directions & kill the customers productivity, frustrate the customers and make them stay away from this option.

2. Ensure the early adopters are not satisfied and not propagate on this concept, Ensure few people use this option, few cars using this service, frustrate the travelers more and make it unsustainable

3. Focus only on small set of customers who don't mind spending more time for their travel and ignore the whole gamut of office goers

4. Force them to pay as Prepaid so that they will not run away without paying after travelling, Don't allow the customers to give feedback on the ride for making any process improvements

5. Focus on making profits on this from the first journey, short term profits are more important for sustainable operation!!!

6. And then say India is not yet ready for such a revolutionized idea..

Maladies of Organisation 2

In the "Lack of Awareness" in Organisation, the biggest problem is Understating the needs of the customer.. The problem is much bigger than anyone can imagine..

The Longer the time to make a product, the larger the sale of the product, the bigger the issue is.. We don't know what's the customer requirement so we make 10 models with 3 varieties with 3 combinations and then struggle with 90 products inventory and their complexity and worse still not satisfying the exact needs of the customer..

This is more evident but why do companies struggle.. In lot of Organisation, people with good execution capability grow fast until they reach the Top management levels and most of them lack this expertise. One more reason is not getting the right team for the product function, even if it is, probably they get lost.. We need a more intuitive team for this role who not just go by the data they analyse but also understand the nuances of the customer requirement and they should stand above all, including the so called strong sales guys in the organisation.. Understand why Apple Inc Chief Design officer Jonathan Ive directly reported to Steve Jobs and was kept above all..

The product team need to remember these key things..

1. Do we know where & how to get the effective information on customer requirement

2. Where  the market goes and what it is now

3. Doing what is right for the customer rather than what does customer want. Customers are not aware what is good for them until they experience, sometimes even after experiencing.. what is right will pay off in long run if properly communicated to the market.. Snacks are bad but zero trans fat snack is comparatively better for the customer even with a small compromise on the taste. The dilemma is much stronger in situations like safety of an Automobile Vs fuel efficiency, Quality of the product Vs pricing.

4. What are the most valuable functions of a product in your customer segment? Is it the fuel efficiency or Driving comfort of a Truck, Versatility of a Tractor or Application specific, Image of a car brand or pricing..

5. Listen. Listen to your employees, partners, channels, customers, competition.

6. Organisation capability, Aspirations should match with the current capability of the Organisation, one cannot produce a quality product if there are inherent weakness in R&D and Quality functions, so prepare yourself for trial and error launch, until the capability issues are fixed.

Today lot of companies waste their time in bringing the wrong product, then pushing their sales team, worst increase the sales team size, not satisfying the customers then give deep discounts for selling that product, absolute waste of resources and time..

The need of the hour is that there should be simple models which can capture the needs of the customer to a greater degree of accuracy and also the adoption of the same across Organisations, It will benefit the customers, will raise the bar for the competition and bring in greater revolution in satisfying the customer needs..

When you Dream big!

When you dream big in an organisation, when you aim to do 10x, its natural that the people surrounding you, who will get affected, will get the going tough for you.. The important things to take care are
1. Conviction, keep moving forward rather than doubting your goals & effort
2. Give credit to everyone around you, Top, Bottom, peers
3. Perseverance, How long you can withstand
4. Speed, Vary the speed, to keep it on rails..

A Leader

Enough has been written about leadership, can we make it simple? here is my thoughts..

Who is a leader? What does she do? A leader is one who makes/facilitates significant contribution to the work that she undertakes..

Everyone wants to be a leader, but the real leader doesn't really want to be the one, she just focusses on getting things done.. The work takes the center stage and everything else goes backstage.

At times the real leader will not be seen, her contribution may not be visible, but she gets things done..

Blame it on Execution!

Most of the management team believes that they have a perfect strategy but a poor execution and they blame it on their team..

Possibly true, But if their execution is bad what should be their strategy? What is the role of management team in execution?

First on strategy, its a continuous process and should take shape according to the response from time to time.. A good strategy focusses on what is right, what is possible for the organisation and adjusts itself to their executional capabilities..

A good execution is based on the team belief in the strategy, their engagement level and their capability. The management team has a major role to play in all this..

So next time you wanna blame it on execution, think twice..

Short & Simple 2

Books are one area where the technological revolution is happening after long time but still long way to go.. Books particularly non fiction need to be short & simple, gone are the days where people can read hundreds of pages.. Today we have TED talks which explains the content of a whole book in just 20 mins.. And we are seeing summaries of books being published, podcast and live TED video shows..

The future is going to be book summary written by Author himself, Summary Podcast, Book video shows, movies on books.. How good it will be if we can watch a video for one hr or so, the author explaining his book..

Books educates and transforms the world, the responsibility is more on the authors to make it short, simple and attractive..

Short and simple is beautiful

How big should be our mail communication, we receive hundreds of mails each day and will spend maximum two to three minutes for each of the mail.. So the ideal way of communication is to ensure the mail message is restricted to two or three sentences, simple, precise and clear..

What if the message goes higher than three sentences? Break into pieces and communicate periodically..

Recently seen a Aon Hewitt communication, they wanted to communicate the importance of taking Employee Engagement Survey and it was beautifully communicated in a picture representation in pieces.. Everyday short sequence of dialogue is sent by mail followed by a question which gets answered the next day.. The message was Simple, precise and creates curiosity to read the mail next day..

And the same is true for any mode of communication, the attention span is very small across audience and its important that we ask this question, how do we keep our message short and simple?

Maladies of an Organisation

As i look around and talk to my colleagues and friends, i am really shocked to see lot of wrong decisions, poor strategy and execution across organizations.. The main reasons are

1. Lack of awareness

2. Short term goals

3. Personal Benefits

And those wrong decisions are taken by strong guys in the organisation and no one can question them and worst is that, this takes the company in the reverse direction and a point of no return..

The first one can be managed by continuous learning, listening to your employees and having trusted advisors.. Even the most intuitive and successful leaders listened to their employees, not adamant on their belief.. The concept of advisors is underestimated in today's organisation and i am sure one day we will have a vertical called Advisors in every organisation.. Today atleast we can have it for the top brass..

The second one is by setting clear long term goals for the organisation, rewarding the employees on long term performance and not succumbing to the short term pressure.. Remember, focussing more on short term benefits takes the company to a dead end.. So the ability to convince the management on long term benefits, proven track record and perseverance are most important for leaders..

The third one is the most pervasive, everyone asks what is in it for me rather than what is right for the organisation.. This Peter Trucker principle need to be communicated clearly to all the employees and should stand above all personal benefits.. Easier said than done but leaders can walk the talk, rest will follow..

Management theories

The main difference between Einstein and typical management theories are, the former leaves it to the world to prove his theories experimentally, could be proved hundred years later and the later wants to prove it with statistical analysis however biased or inaccurate it could be..

Management professionals should not waste their time in trying to prove their theories with statistics, they should believe in their intuition and leave it to the world to test it out.. Right theories doesn't need any statistics and the readers will connect it with their own examples & statistics..

Peter Trucker's "Principles of effective executive" doesn't need any statistics and any reader can connect and relate the same easily to their lives..

So the next time someone ask you to prove your theories, tell them the readers will do it..

The Next Big War

The next big war is not going to be fought between two strong nations but between the weak & the strong.. The world is well connected than ever before and provides a platform for the weak to join hands, and the weak in large numbers is not a weaker force. History has proved that the weak can be destroyed or controlled by strong irrespective of their moral grounds until the weak is out numbered.. The weak is not always right but a weak will become stronger than ever before.. What we are seeing in the world today are the smaller versions of this war..

Its time the strong understand the strength of the weak, focus on taking a stand on moral grounds rather than their ability to control the weaker forces, understand the plurality of this society and relinquish the need to dominate one another..

Its only in this way the weak can be held small and less destructive force.. But to me, looking at the intolerance in this world today, we have a long way to go..

Feeling Insecure

If you feel insecure in your job, you are not learning & growing and if people around you are insecure, you are learning and growing.. In the first case you are to be blamed, start working hard and in the later you don't need to worry about, just continue what you do..

Live and let die

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