When I was training in Italy to make socks, I was taken to a factory visit.
When we walked into the production floor, I saw long rows of machines but no human operators. The machines were all humming.
I was shocked.
In my father’s factory, one worker operated 4 machines. Here I could could count at least 50 machines running. Where were the workers?
Suddenly, a machine on my right stopped and the statutory red light light up. And lo and behold, from the far end of the room, a petite girl ON ROLLER SKATES came right up to the machine, fixed the twisted yarn, jammed the Green Start button and then smiled at me…
I asked her how many machines she operated.
“40” she said. “Both these rows of 20 machines are mine”.
I asked her her salary. “US$ 1000” she told me before gliding away to another machine.
My head was spinning. I did the math quickly. In my dad’s factory, each worker got Rs 4000 (this is 1994). 10 workers were required to operate 40 machines. That means a salary of Rs 40000.
This girl costs 1000$ = Rs 40,000 and this was Italy!! And this meant there was NO labor arbitrage between India and the ‘expensive’ west!
She was 10x more efficient than my father’s workers, did not shout anti management slogans and certainly had no life membership to the elitist club of the Shiv Sena.
She was the real worker.
Circa 2011
Games2win is 5 million monthly visitor site and we employ 50 people. We manage 350 games across 4 sites, and also an entire suite of iTunes games. We do everything ourselves, and the work day is quite challenging. Lots of people tell me that they can’t believe it considering that Zapak has some 200+ folks with less than 1.5 million in UU’s. However, each time I walk into Viacom’s addictinggames.com office in San Francisco, I am stunned. They are a 10 man team and serve and entertain 20mn Unique users a month!
I always wonder if we in India really understand productivity. It’s definitely not about slogging like a donkey for 10 hours in an office but really about getting things done efficiently. It’s the smallest things like keeping discussions pointed and agendas specific, about ticking off daily tasks and just USING common sense to do things.
One of the most common issues I have is when people don’t know how to do something and spend a whole day figuring it out rather than just asking for help.
Adding employee strength is the weakest strategy to getting things done. I think it’s all about getting your existing employees to do their best.
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