The Small Company disadvantage

What happens to companies that start late in any industry that is growing phenomenally?

They are behind in the learning curve to begin with. They are perpetually smaller than the average. They are always playing the catch-up game. They try hard to differentiate. They compete for small deals. They get beaten up on margins pretty badly. They nether have the breadth of service offerings, nor depth in the service offerings they do have.

These small companies find it harder to attract people, retain them and offer them the range of opportunities that the big companies can offer. In-fact small companies offer lesser opportunities for rapid growth, if there are senior people already at upper levels.

Do these companies survive? Some of them do, but most either stagnate or get acquired. It will be interesting to watch where MindTree Consulting ends up being.

Blind Marketing

I just received a special offer to join an esteemed association of professionals.

This highly reverred (at least they pretend to be so) association has been in existence for more than 30 years and becoming its member has seemingly helped people grow professionally. And of-course, by accepting to join this network, I will also be issued a Master Card credit card as a privilege.

Now, I am very grateful for this organization to have gone through my profile available with all the spam mail marketing companies, and deciding to offer me a Master Card through along with the membership to the professional association. Oh! I got it completely wrong - it is the Master Card that comes with the membership!!

While I would love to join the National Association of Female Executives - I am certainly not willing to change my sex to do it!!

One aspect of a high cost economy

My car needs an oil change every 3500 miles. The oil service station always puts a tag for oil change at 3000 miles. I drive around 18000 miles/ year. If I follow the 3000 mile routine, I need one additional gas change - an additional $40 per-year. Assuming that there are 100 million cars in the US, and there is an additional $40 million expense being incurred on them, which is avoidable, as a country the US incurs $4bn extra on car oil change alone.

To be able to afford this additional $4bn, individuals collectively have to earn an additional $4bn. This effectively pushes up the average salaries that all the people will be willing to accept on the average.

Now spread this phenomenon to all other areas of our economy and you will see that a number of such expenses - which do not necessarily contribute to "a good life" consume a significant part of the earnings in the economy, which effectively puts the fixed cost of the economy to a much higher level than is needed.

The other side of this story is that the additional expenses create additional jobs for others, which then sustains the demand in the economy. Maybe the additional job creation outweighs the jobs lost because of high fixed costs. We will know for sure someday.

The Brand Lingers on!!

AT&T - the company is no more. With California approving its acquisition by SBC Corporation, the final nail in the coffin of the creator of the telephone industry has been hammered in. But the brand lives on as SBC renames itself as AT&T.

Brand Managers of the world need to look back at what created a brand so strong that it survives beyond the demise of the company that created it. AT&T as a brand was not built by legions of MBAs "strategically managing" its growth. Actually the brand lost a lot of its sheen in the era where brand managers as a group were on an upswing.

So what created the AT&T brand and what can others learn from it? I would hazard to say - nothing very fancy. Rather - it seems to be more a reaffirmation of the basics:

1. Meet needs by offering something that people want - not just once - but consistently evolve as needs change
   
2. Clearly articulate your offering - and build an organization to support the articulated offering
   
3. Communicate far and wide about your offering - set expectation about what, where, when, why and how to expect - internally as well as externally
4. Build trust - internally and externally by consistently meeting promises

SBC has come a long way from being the smallest of the Baby Bells way back in 1984 to being the largest telecom service company in the US. While it will certainly benefit from the AT&T brand value, it will remain to be seen if the AT&T brand is enhanced or diminished under the new AT&T!!!

Bangalore - End of a Dream Run?

Imagine an idylic city in India - where the climate is moderate, there is lush greenery all around, where it takes 30-minutes to drive from one end to the other, where the people are well mannered, intelligent, accommodating and cosmopolitan in their outlook.

Now start adding more people to the city, start building more houeses, start growing educational/ engineering institutes in and around the city to churn out thousands of engineers. But don't yet start on expanding the infrastructure - electricity, roads, sewage, drainage. Worse still start building and expanding the city haphazardly, without any evaluation of the impact on the roads, traffic, pollution. Assume that these problems will somehow solve themselves.

What will you have? Something like what Bangalore has become today. While it is still the capital city of Indian IT, a lack of planning and foresight by the city's administrators has brought the city to a situation where everyone is disappointed and frustrated.

The companies are disappointed that the Bangalore that they were promised (or marketed) is not the same as the Bangalore that exists on the ground today. The migrants into the Bangalore realize that this is very different from the promised land that they had the dreams of. And to top-it off, the local populace who been painfully seeing the deterioration of the city, have started blaming the outsiders for this situation.

All these put together can create a very potent mix - of choked infrastructure, stymied growth and increased regionalism (reduced cosmopolitan nature). This can turn tide away from Bangalore (like increased parochialism did Calcutta in after the 60s).

Is this a real possibility? I would think that the chances are remote, but it surely has the chance of happening.

As citizens and well wishers of Bangalore, let us ensure that we do not lose focus of the real problem - lack of investment in infrastructure and most importantly - a lack of foresight and planning.

What you get is in proportion to what you aim for

It is kind of perfunctory to state it, but I have just experienced it and can relate to it much better than I ever did so far.

My project had a scope increase and everyone was very clear that we were not going to hit the deadline. However, I and the leadership team above me persisted in pushing us towards meeting the deadline. A week before the release, we were in deep trouble, with system testing issues all over the place. With just a week to go before the release, everyone was about to throw in the towel and resign to a delay.

My boss still persisted that we had to go on as per the deadline. We worked hard, late and over the weekend after that to ensure that we get in better shape. Our efforts paid off and we are now in a position to go in for the release.

Looking back, I think about the what our behavior would have been if the leadership team would have agreed to us and our deadline would have been deferred. We would have not stretched hard and even though it might have been possible, we would have most certainly not met the deadline. It is the aim that drove us to perform as much as we could and achieve our goals. A lax target would have relaxed us, and even though the release might have been possible we would have most certainly not made it.