The freakonomics blog carries an interview with Karen Abbott, author of the book Sin in the Second City. The book claims to provide a detailed account of a high class brothel run by Everleigh sisters from 1900 to 1911. The interview is a very interesting read and the book also carries good reviews on Amazon. I hope this gives more ideas to Steven Levitt and he provides us with a Freakonomics 2.0 soon.
Invite a customer to speak to your employees. He will tell them exactly what is required of them. This is not only a great way to train your employee about customer expectations but also to build honest and transparent relationships with your customers.
While I was talking to a customer of one of my clients (an accounting firm), she remarked, "We believe that your firm is more focussed on the manufacturing firms rather than service firms." ...Yikes!! I was aghast. When did that happen? I learned an important lesson in Marketing - If you don't differentiate yourself in the marketplace, your customer will do it herself. If you do not want your customers to confuse you with something that you are not, you better start telling them what you really are. (The assumption here is that you know what you really are.)
Seth Godin writes:
Most organizations need a good reason to do something new.
All they need is a flimsy excuse to not do something for the first time.
And they often need a lawsuit to stop doing something they're used to.
Well if there is one lesson that young MBA Consultants should remember while they're on an assignment, I want it to be the above. It ain't so difficult to find out new ideas for your business but it is a great problem to get people to do new things to translate that idea in action. We better give them a good reason every time we tell them to do something new.
It was really great to be at BGRC 2007 at CEIBS, Shanghai. It was a series of many firsts for me. It was for the first time that I visited China, attended a CSR conference or met fellow MBA students from so many different Asian BSchools.
It was a pleasure hearing Chandran Nair from Global Institute for Tomorrow. He argued that the current approaches towards social responsibility may be too little too late. He is in favor of stringent laws to be enforced to protect environment. It was also a pleasure meeting Fred Dubee from UNDP. He is Senior Advisor at UN Global Compact , an initiative of ex-Secretary General Kofi Annan. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has accelerated this initiative of his predecessor.It is quite enlightening to see how a purely voluntary initiative can make its presence felt in the corporate world. It was also really interesting attending workshops of Prof. Henry Paul de Bettignies from CEIBS and Prof. Andrew Crane from Schulich. Both of them know how to engage their audience and have a meaningful discussion on a difficult subject like Business Ethics. Andrew is also the author of the book 'Business Ethics'. He recognizes that the book might need to modifications for Asian readers. This leads me to think about the existence of 'universal ethics'. Do we all really share some common values cutting across the religions, countries, races and sexes? If we do, why can't the corporate world adopt a Universal corporate ethic charter in their code of business conduct? But someone needs to come up with the charter first. Does Global Compact have a role to play here?
I along with my colleagues Priyaranjan Singh and Dexter Ampong shall be attending the BGRC 2007 conference at CEIBS, Shanghai from 11th-13th of May. The conference aims to spread the awareness of CSR in Asia-Pacific region. I hope to meet some interesting people and catch some interesting ideas there. This will be my first visit to China.
How do you show your customers that you care? In answer to Prof. Francisco Bernardo's question, a student mentioned that you serve them with a smile. Prof. Bernardo wanted to know what kind of smile should we show to the customer. He emphasized that we should not treat this issue as trivial. For a smile to convey that we care for the customer, it has to be 'sincere' and it has to look so. You may not be aware but your smile may be perceived as mischievous or mocking. You can get your people trained to smile sincerely. Encourage them to practice this skill. Other ways to show you care is by keeping a direct eye contact and calling them by their name. Small things like this help build trust and relationship with your customers. Lesson we must not forget.
On your daily morning commute to your office/school/home, you hear some exceptional music being played at your Metro station subway. Would you stop to listen to him or go on and catch the daily 7:10 before it leaves? ... Would your answer change if I told you that the musician was one of the greatest violinist of our time performing on his $3.5 million dollar worth Stradivarius handcrafted in 1713? You can read the full story on the experiment conducted by Gene Weingarten of Washington Post here.The violinist was none other than Joshua Bell, also the recipient of the coveted Avery Fisher prize for this year.
Seth Godin says that he'd ignore him too. He uses the story to prove the prior knowledge of marketers about context, permission and worldview, what some of us may call 'perception'. But Seth is also bothered (and apologetic) like most people who read the story. As per Gene, this story got the largest and most global response of anything he has ever written, for any publication. You can read some of the responses here. Seth is apologetic because he feels that marketers have created a lot more noise instead of trust and it is this noise that makes us ignore truly beautiful things.
I believe it goes beyond that. I think the noise not only makes us ignore beautiful things, it is making us oblivious of truly beautiful experiences. Gene writes "...the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away". Perhaps this is not statistically significant but it does make me suspect that many of us have lost our natural ability to enjoy beautiful experiences. What can we do to regain the ability? Can the kids help us? What can we do to reduce noise and build trust?
EMI announced yesterday that it will start to sell DRM free music online. Seth completely rejects the idea that it is possible to lock up ideas because they are connected to physical objects. WOW! You can read Seth's thoughts on it here. Steve Jobs established precisely that in his beautifully written 'Thoughts on Music'. Steve says that there is no theory of protecting content other than to keep secrets. Steve describes it as a process of locking and hiding the key on the user's machine. He argues (correctly) that there are many smart people who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get the content (music) for free. Music companies further sell 90% of the of their music DRM-free anyway through CDs. As per the data available with Apple, 97% of the music being played of iPods is unprotected and can be played on any player capable of playing open formats. Therefore, DRM is redundant for music companies as well as Apple and other player manufacturers.
This changes the way people think about the future of distribution of licensed content online. Does it also change the way people think about the creation of content? I don't think so.
Does this also contain lessons for the firms fighting DVD wars right now? A good reason for fighting the wars in the first place was the different views regarding the appropriate protection level built in the standards. I would suggest that they listen to Seth.
The entire blogosphere is flooded with views (and counter views) about the Kathy Sierra episode. I must say that I am overwhelmed and amazed by the whole thing. However, I did get exposed to a great concept that I wish readers of this blog to learn. The simple yet profound concept is YOYOW (You Own Your Own Words). I found this on Chris Locke's (aka Rageboy) weblog. We shall all do well to embrace this concept in letter as well as spirit. Chris Locke is the co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto. I have not read the book personally but would love to hear from someone who has.
Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz sent an email to CEO Jim Donald and other top executives on Valentine's day. You can read the whole text here. There are a ton of blogs & newspaper stories on Internet about the subject. My question here is not about the Starbucks' strategy but about the memo itself. Do you think Howard did the right thing by sending this email? Could he make a similar or stronger impact by any other mode? Is there a need for new communication startegies when you're not confident that internal memos will remain 'internal'? (or can we write an internal memo keeping in mind that it won't remain internal?)
It may be the right time to do an 'Amul' in the Indian retail sector. The more I think about it and the more I talk to others familiar with Indian retail scene, the more convinced I get. It seems to be the only way to enable existing retailers to compete effectively with the Wal-Marts & Carrefours of the world. However, it took a V.J. Kurien to create an 'Amul' in the dairy sector. What is it going to take in retail?
