Do you worry about your Socks?

12 years ago I used to work in my father’s socks factory.

After a few years of struggle, I landed my first export order of ‘baby’ socks from a huge European Retail Chain. Excited, I went to their office for signing formalities. In that meeting, a senior European Gentleman asked me – ‘Alok, what do you think babies will do with your socks’? I looked puzzled and said ‘Sir, I have no idea. Please educate me’.

He said ‘Well, babies will put your socks in their mouths because that’s what babies like to do with everything they find. Then, your socks will run their color inside the baby’s mouth, the mother will freak out, she will come running to the store, sue us and drive us nuts. So, to prevent all this from happening, please collect our special ‘Baby Saliva’ testing chemical from our labs – to use in checking your socks before you send them to us’. 

I gulped and agreed. Just as I was leaving, I asked him, ‘Sir, did this happen in the past with your group’? He looked solemnly at me and said ‘No. Not yet. But I always worry that it will’. 

This gentleman was the uncrowned ‘Chief Worrying Officer’ of this billion-dollar conglomerate and he was doing a splendid job. 

In 2013, every aspect of business I see around reminds me of that warning. For instance, didn’t the big book store Companies in the world  ‘worry’ about the Internet and how it was changing the way people bought books?

If they were blind to that, didn’t they worry about a queer but fast growing Company called Amazon.com?  Where were their ‘worrying officers’?

I suspect they didn’t have any.

CEOs and top Management in most Companies are mired in day-to-day business operations that make them blind to the ships of disruption and the opportunities that may appear as small specs on the horizon. 

I believe India Inc needs to hire a tribe of professionals I like to call ‘XXOs’ – a set of people who are not bound by corporate etiquette and politeness. They are simply unusual people. 

Allow me to introduce:

–       The Chief Opportunities Officer. 

She is not a strategist or a vision maker. She simply sifts through the various opportunities that are available to a business (be it a start-up or a conglomerate) and actually decide what to do with each of them.

Can the opportunities be tested with minimum risks? Why should any idea be tried? In a booming market like India, there is a potential for more hits than misses. So, this ‘CXO’ takes the call, and is not embarrassed to be proven wrong.

Her KRAs (key responsibility areas) are to try – not to succeed. 

–       The Chief Speculation Officer. 

This dude speculates. To be clear, he is not a Baba Wishdev projecting the future. He just thinks ‘what happens if I make my mobile Company’s tariff plan free and charge only for SMS? Will that drive more subscribers to the Company and increase my ARPU (average revenue per user)?  

Alternatively, he is a consultant to a MNC (Marwari National Company) and speculates ‘if we fire all the unproductive sons and nephews and hire professionals instead, what could this Company’s bottom line improve by?

You cannot hire blue chip Consultants to do such speculation because their business model forbids it.
 

–       The Chief Rebellion Officer.

Ms. CRO is a natural rebel. She walks into a successful radio station and announces that radio will die because 4G and mobile phones will just massacre it. The Chief Rebellion officer using past and present examples shows that in this bad world, pirate entrepreneurs feast upon old business models to create massive value for themselves and predator VCs.

If you examine her purse, she has a photo of her grandfather’s study with the complete Britannica Encyclopedia set adorning the shelves. Ms. CRO is a small girl in the photo and is looking at her grandpa. In red, above her head she has drawn a speech bubble that reads ‘Grandpa, this is not making sense…Haven’t you heard of wikipedia.com’?

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Play some games. Invite some XXO monsters into the house. Treat them to an academic buffet of your business and beliefs.  Trust me – they will burp out loud and leave you really thinking. 

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