Awarded the
“Rodinstar” Post
of the week!!
You may not believe this, but I have an incredible set of friends. Every heard of Sam Walton and Wal-Mart? Richard Branson of the Virgin group? Or maybe you have heard of Akio Morita and a small company he made called Sony. All of them have personally told me their life stories.
Ok fine. I’ve just read their biographies. But I have to tell you, that is probably the best way an entrepreneur learns. You can read Kotler all day, but that’s bullshit. Did Kotler make facebook? Or does he even run a ‘kirana’ store? Hell I have more faith in my Kirana guy than Kotler.
My personal vendetta against established text book lords of management aside, there is a good reason for you to spend time reading further. I’ve just finished with a book titled ‘Delivering Happiness’ by Tony. Tony was the dude who grew Zappos and married it off to Amazon for over a BILLION dollars.
Let me give you a summary of the most important things I’ve learnt from him.
1. Decide your focus. And put your people where your mouth is.
What is the focus of your company? And does it have a life beyond the word file titled ‘Company culture’ sitting on your desktop?
Tony had a brilliant system. They decided to focus on customer service. And the aim was to make it integral across the entire company.
So how do you do it?
Every single employee Zappos hired spent the first few weeks answering customer service calls.
Please go through the significance of the above sentence once again. Read it once more. Everyone in Zappos, irrespective of whether he was a lawyer or a software developer, spent time answering customer’s calls.
The way this percolates culture into the entire company is just amazing. And you can’t create culture by making people learn some document by heart.
Take Games2Win. (Note to self: I keep referring to Alok bhai all the time. Need to get to know more Rodinhooders)
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Hi Alok bhai,
Does everyone in games2win play parking frenzy? I mean right from the watchman who thinks he’s a big daredevil to Sumant Mandal?
And play means not ‘play a few hours’. It means in the next board meeting/watchman meeting (or whatever that is) they have to show you the completed game.
And if the answer is no, please do this experiment. You might have to gift your watchman an iphone but trust me it will be worth the feedback. And let me know how it goes!
Your unpaid consultant,
Ankur
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Now back to you. How can you incorporate this in your organization? Identify the critical area. And make sure everyone goes through it for some time. I can bet my ijjat on it that the change you will see will be amazing.
2. You don’t sell out if you have the flat screen television:
Tony’s first company was LinkExchange. And just a small time after he started, he garnered quite a bit of success. So much so that he got an offer to sell it at a million dollars.
Now this might be a little racist (I’ve never managed to quite understand what qualifies in that regard, hence I ignore trying to avoid being racist), but being of an Asian origin I am sure this is what would have gone down at Tony’s place during dinner:
Tony: “Dadi Ma! Muzhe one million dollars ka offer aya hain. Kya karu dadi?”
Tony’s Dadi: “Beta, to quote olx, BECH DE!”
Tony: “Par…”
Tony’s Dadi: “Beta bas bech de. Wo paise Fixed deposit me rakh lena. Aur fir shadi karke ladka bhi paida karna”
So, did Tony listen to his grandmother? I guess not.
Instead he decided to give it a thought. What he wanted in life was a short list. I don’t remember it. And I don’t like breaks during writing. So let’s just say it was something like a house and a flat screen tv.
And the funny part is he already could get both.
Hence he used some brains and decided to skip the offer. And soon enough there came another offer for 2 million $.
He again skipped it. But this time I think it was without consultation from dadi ma.
Guess what finally happened. He sold it for 265 million $. And the sale was not for the money but because he dreaded the culture of greed that had formed at the company.
So keep striving hard. Yes in the initial few month/years you might have to drive an old beat up Alto fitted with compressed natural gas. But don’t give up on something you know will grow.
(Side note: You don’t even have to drive the alto. Ping me and I will help you find a brilliant used Accent/Fiesta at that price. And if you have cash, a few lakhs can get you a nice old accord.)
3. Don’t play the wrong measurements game, change the metrics!
What metrics does your industry use? It may be page views or installs. Or it may be annualized-gross-net-of-taxes-forged-bank-notes. It does not matter. What you do is that you change the metrics.
Now change for the sake of change is not good. But based on what I have observed, almost all the fields are using the wrong metrics.
Getting back to what Tony did. Generally call centers measure performance in the number of calls they can handle in a day. That is unbelievably narrow minded and industrial. Instead measure how much the customers get WOW’ed.
How you ask?
Go figure that out yourself. Don’t be lazy.
Summing it up:
Make your investor play your parking frenzy. Don’t sell out only for the Mercedes. It may not make you happier. And lastly, don’t measure underwear by how quickly it can be made. What matters is how comfortable it is. Ye andar ki baat nahi, sabse upar ki baat hain!
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Another interesting read by the same author: Don’t listen to Alok!
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