Social Media is a Pied Piper

As a part of the ISTD conference the last session of the first day was conducted by Rajiv Dhingra the founder of WAT media. Who spoke about Social Media and how it has really taken off and gave us a critical insight and rubbished the myth that Gen Y grew up with social media at all time.

The social Media revolution took off only in 2004-05 when Hi-5 began to operate and people could start reaching out to their friends, peers through a digital platform and the people who took up to it were between the age of 18-22. Why you ask ? Blame it on the hormones is what I would say ! Social needs started to grow and individuals needed to be a part of it as it was the coolest thing around. Imagine what it is like for an Eighteen year old to have the latest edition of A Ray Ban Glasses or Levi jeans. It morphed into a type of craving which people have and it gave them a second chance of virtual existence as the Digital friends you have may have never met you and you can talk about your positives to them and start boasting but no one will recognize. Then like a Blitzkrieg “Orkut” Emerged and it quashed Hi-5 and it was a rage because it was not open to public and you had to be invited by someone who was already a member to be a part of it !! What more would you need to add to the Ego than being invited to the newest thing on the planet and it was drawing a huge crowd in India and it gave us a global platform to connect and collaborate with Global friends.

For eg: I had friends in orkut who were from brazil and they were friends with me because they wanted to sharpen their English skills and I networked with them to get access to the latest Music and coolest downloads which led to a symbiotic association but soon the darker side of orkut emerged and there were issues about privacy and profile hacking which triggered women to move out and slowly but conformingly emerged Facebook with improved privacy and security and soon the women folks moved out to that and the men soon followed facebook offered more than Orkut as it allowed you to post notes, tag people, Update what you were doing and play games like Farmville and the best you just showed it to people who you want not to everyone. But as you have noticed a trend emerged and soon came Twitter but unlike its predecessors Twitter was a real time people to celebrities interaction and something which Rajeev Mentioned and I was in total line with it “Twitter is an Exhibitionist and submissive platform” people follow you to be in touch with you appears over the top.. But it has not only been social networks business networks like LinkedIn have also been growing rapidly and In India. LinkedIn has added 2-5 million members in the past Six Months and the number does not seem to go down this all just point to one direction that people need connectivity people need an appearance be it physically or digitally

Gen Y are we scared of Thy ?

The hottest topic around the HR and HR scene is about Gen Y and how in the next 3-5 years they are going to enter into the workforce and change the organization, How to work with Gen Y is the Million dollar question and the ISTD student convention is aptly titled “Leading in Gen Y”

As One of the speakers Usha Devaguptatu rightly said Gen Y are like the the David Ogilvy quote “The consumer is not a moron,she is your wife” The employee is also not a moron but neither is he a threat.

The Convention has been very good in the fact that it has thrown light into the areas what are required to “collaborate” with Gen Y. This is essential as the recent Harvard Business Review talks about these crunch issues

• One out of every three high performers is not engaged
• One in every four high performers feels their aspirations are not met
• One out of every five high performers is doing a job which does not interest them
• Four out every ten high performers are not in sync with the vision and value of the company they are a part of


These sort of issues need a top down solving approach and it cannot be solved overnight and other key area where Indian Organizations miss out is a strong Induction system so that the people can relate themselves to the organization

And as a member of Gen Y I can strongly relate to the facts like “Work to live not live to work”. I look at the value I can add to the organization and what the organization can do for me, If they cannot reward me instantly I would try to find out someone who will reward me. I want learn things by doing it and not reading about it, But that does not mean am standalone I need a team I need a coach I need support I need a peer section together with me I need to be looked after I need my personal life.

We all have wants and immediate gratification and Gen Y looks at ways to fulfill and not have the “chalega” attitude. We want the horse to drink water and gulp it down.

I wanted to blog about this fantastic event event and am doing it right now :)

Jai ho Gen Y

Bajaj's Branding Chaos

Quote often i love to introspect on marketing and Branding strategies of organizations as they ultimately seek to reach prospective customers and also employees sure people love to say "I am an IBMer" and so on.

The last few years have witnessed the upswing in the two wheeler automobile sector and Hero Honda faced great competition mainly from Bajaj and to a lesser effect from TVS and Yamaha.

Bajaj Revolutionized the Bike world with the launch of its Iconic bike "Pulsar" and apt with catch lines like "Definitely Male" which took on the Section of 150cc and later in 180cc 200cc and 220cc. Simultaneously it launched Discover which packed style and substance meant for the middle class as it had style and then Platina which rocked the 100cc market thanks to its low price and high mileage.

Thinks looked all right till they launched Bajaj Xcd in the 135 sector and it also proved a success but then they made a catastrophic error they pulled out of 100cc market and made platina also 125 cc and discover as 135cc and Xcd was dropped

2009-10 was the ultimate chaos where i was personally baffled by what Bajaj was upto

They released Pulsar in 135cc version and released Platina in 125cc and discover in 100 cc and 150cc and finally platina in 125cc which is unlike its competitors like Hero Honda which has kept clear names to distinguish its product lines this kind of mixing creates chaos and confusion if i were a customer. The iconic Bajaj Chetak and Bajaj 150 was the Hallmark of this company which grew by 1000% in the 1980's. Lots of money and creative energy is spent on creating these brands and a brand lines but this melange creates ruffles on the product.

This shows the company's inability to drive home a message or a policy of exiting from the 100cc or also of having a premium 150+ segment. Hope Bajaj Sorts this mess out or it could lead them into a lot of chaos and dilemma

Employees are ....... Resources ? Capital ? Talent ?

Since the revamp of personnel department into the current forms there has always been a question which has been irking me ? Thanks to Neeyamo for reviving it up and this asks about the basic question of how do organizations look at their employees.

There are the Organizations who look at their employees as resources and the term human resource for those who help the organization in optimum use of this resources who like any other are not abundant


There are the second type of organizations and are emerging more in number who like to look at the people as capital and an investment for the organization and like any investment they want the capital managers to identify unprofitable investments and sort them out or sell them off


Finally the new set which looks at employees as talent and has clear distinctions as
talent Acquisition,talent management,talent development and try to ensure that their organization can have the best talent and enhance them and retain them.

These varied approaches on viewing the people of an organization baffle me. Branding may not make a huge impact on the type of people the organization is employing or its views towards them.

What needs to change is the way the organization looks at the value add from the individual and how it can share its passion of success with its people.

In this regard i would like to bring up about the open Book Management system made famous by Jack Stack where all the employees were stakeholders and dint do a firefighting job but enjoyed their work. That is where i wish people would give optimum performance

Flexicurity

The recent NHRD session was held at Hotel Savera on 30th and the speaker for the day was Saundarya Rajesh who spoke on the Broad areas of

(i) Diversity

(ii) Flexible working culture in Indian organizations

In terms of Cohorts classification India is almost same on the west but with few differences which are

Generation X in India grew up with a socialist Mindset but has adopted capitalism and Delayed Capitalism is not hindering them. They often rue about chances

E-Gen: This is the generation born between 1970 to 1980 which is very specific to India only. A very unique set which has had the best of both sides of culture. Contributes the highest number to attrition data. Very homogeneous in the desire to be heterogeneous i.e. in terms of career planning and orientation

Gen y: Who are aggressive consumers and are self motivated to be rewarded

An interesting fact which was shared was that annual attrition rate of Indian organizations is 17%

Diversity can be used to combat this type of attrition as has been used by companies like IBM and Accenture who have a seperate Diversity and Inclusion criteria.

In these organization Diversity and Inclusiveness becomes one of the KPI for the top management and has to be followed. The main criteria of diversity are

i) Gender

ii) Age

iii) Religion

iv) Experience

this helps a lot in organizations as it was explained because to grow in an organization you need the so called "Tribal Knowledge" which can be realized only by direct interaction with individuals and also in creating innovation which was explained with products like "Kurkure" which were developed by a diverese work team
and it also helps in battling attrition which was demonstrated by an example of an ITES sector where the average age of employees was 23 and it resembled a college locker room which was not pleasing the guests and management.

They were asked for solution and they came up with a diversity pattern of employing older men and women who brought in some calmness to the organization and thus helping the culture issue

The major topic was flexibility of work and work from home which was mostly themed on the Indian Working women and how on implementation it could help organization following which they moved on to talk about their organization's I-WIN product.

A crucial thing which struck my notice was the fact that while hiring people who have taken a break it is not the cost of recruitment which will trouble but rather the cost of re-skilling them to take on tougher challenges and that will only help people to help climb up to the top


Cheers

Arvind !!

Business is in the family

The month of July and August has transformed Wall Street into overtime working office thanks to the number of mergers and buyouts which are happening. McAfee, Hewitt Associates, 3Par have all become fully owned subsidies of Intel, Aon and Dell and more deals are in the offering which could see the merging of big names. The recent acquisition of CAIRN India by Vedanta also made the global headlines.
I was struck by the amazing pattern of mergers and was curious to find mergers or acquisition news between Indian companies and found that the only approved major merger was between Bank Of Rajasthan and ICICI bank and nothing else which is clear indication of our conservatism


It struck to me the essence of a business to an individual or an organization is much more than an entity to an Indian context there have been very few investors who have sold their company when it was making profits and was doing well. Mostly company sell of the loss making arm or the non profit one. Rarely has there been a breed of entrepreneurs who have dreamed about being a serial entrepreneur like H Ross Perot who created Successful enterprises like EDS and Perot systems which were later sold off to HP and DELL. Somewhere we romanticize about our organizations as a part of us and our social system and dream of the generations to follow be associated with it and that is why we have family run businesses which may not always look at profit maximization but more for social existence and the pride associated with it.


The day India will progress is when it starts treating business like an entity and not as an extension of themselves and their Identity. We may grow more if we could find serious innovators who could become serial entrepreneurs