One Pleat At A Time

I am told that efficient and important people are opting to wear the same clothes to work, daily. Apparently it improves overall quality of decision making as brain cells are not engaged on "idle matters such as clothes". Last evening stumbling on one of those typical self improvement reads - '4 ways to avoid decision fatigue', I found the latest on this list were President Obama and Mark Zuckerberg. Agreed, some may have a very good reason for such a choice. The story of Matilda Kahl, an Art Director was doing the rounds on social network for some time. She owns some half a dozen black trousers and a dozen odd identical white silk shirts and has found this dress code de-stressing.

 No matter how sensible, I don't see myself opting out of my a 'different' saree, daily, choice. The ritual begins with me standing in front of the array in my cupboard (here again, I have not understood friends who plan in advance and pair saree, shoes and handbags for a full week). Temperature, daylight factor, meetings through the day and particularly my mood jostle to decide on the right color. I must admit over the years I have brought some process improvements with silks and cottons clearly assigned (separate wardrobes) to winter and summer, respectively. Saree decided, the next few minutes of silent cursing commences in search of the normally elusive blouse. The new trend of matching blouse pieces, in an offsetting tone admittedly makes the saree look smarter and the temper frayed. Petticoats are another story altogether and I shall share, later, my let down tale.

 The part, I like most is drawing the pleats. There is something quite calming in getting the folds in uniform parts in place. Gathering the folds over my shoulder, particularly if the saree has a decorative border, makes me feel lovely and happy. Safety pin in place, by now, the crucial minutes are ticking away. A recalcitrant starched cotton saree does make the calmness vanish in seconds. Frequently and especially on a summer morning, sweating with all this effort I vow to shift to churidar kurtas.

Many a modern girl finds it difficult to wear a saree to work. Complaining about the time it takes to tie one to holding it in place. May be I was born to wear one and took to it like a fish. A college event or even friend's birthday was a good enough reason to wear a saree. In Mumbai this was rare and revisiting college photographs I find myself the odd one out. There is definitely a practical view on the subject and my early days at work I too had opted for skirts and salwar kurtas. Given my petite built it was undeniable that the saree added weight to frame and personality. Even if not 5 days a week, then, post marriage those few odd days were also plugged in with my mother in law clearly in favour of sarees.

 In an itinerant sales job I was lucky to have many saree destinations on my list. Initially, Chennai, Lucknow and later Udaipur, Kota. It was however the Internet that increased my awareness and the real discoveries were Bhagalpur and Raipur. In the late 90s The Kolkata Chennai flight would land around 9:00 pm and allow me time for a quick dash to Nallis before heading for the Hotel. The most treasured collection, of course, is the Jamdanis from Dhaka. A special mention here for the additional travel by my sister and husband and their contribution in both numbers and exquisite choice. If my cupboard weighs a little heavily on Ikats and Jamdanis mostly in shades of beige and black - I owe these to Sumit and my best colourful silks to Didi's Bangalore tours.

 While travel only means more sarees, preparing and packing for one brings it's own challenges. In a fairly organised life of practically weekly tours it is funny how Murphy knew when to strike. We had several Group HQ changes in 2015 with an impending merger. The new Chairman was just announced and we were to go to Mumbai to present the business. The meeting was at The Taj and I opted to stay at the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, which is a hop and skip away. Understandably, with only an hour to go I began to get ready. Out came the saree and blouse. Oops! I had forgotten to pack the petticoat. Over 20 years of touring and this had to happen before an extremely important meeting. Carefully wrapping my saree (thankfully a somewhat heavy kantha work silk) over my track pants I made it to The Taj. It was a first-hand experience of finding out that a five star hotel can handle your every need.

And, no, I have never forgotten to carry a blouse. Not so far.

A Team Player

On a flight back home after two charged days at an offsite, reflecting on what really is team dynamics.

Firstly to provide the reader with an understanding of the format. This program was structured in a theatre workshop style. On day one, we first started with a simple exercise, a notch above dumb Scheherazade. One member  of the team received a role and had to silently enact it - in the sense be the charachter. The others had to guess his part. The role had a particular emphasis element which had to be correctly interpreted eg first time air traveller or man taking dog out for morning walk - where the first or morning had to be guessed correctly. It was amazing how colleagues just slipped into the part impersonating young, old, ailing or opposite genders, without any hesitation. Clearly lessons learnt were planning, passion and team engagement (inputs) led to correct answers (output). What I observed was reticent colleagues twisting into ridiculous postures, shy ones breaking into a jig, lying down on the floor - in that moment totally lost in the role.

The second round had a higher order of challenge. Here, one person had to play the lead. The other four to five team members had to interpret and join in, playing their own parts (without prior consultation). So, if the lead was doing a jig and bowing with folded hands, others had to correctly understand he was the bridegroom and seamlessly join the wedding party. The takeaways were on need for leader to understand with full clarity his role, demonstrate purpose and vision and communicate clearly. Team members who had never worked together (some even meeting for the first time) as well as those who had their daily workplace bouts coordinated like a well orchestrated choir.

For day two we were given a topic and asked to construct our own skit - storyline, charachters, dialogue, props, costumes - the works and put up our show. Male colleagues cheerfully stepped into roles of pregnant woman and gangster's moll (Mona darling). At the planning stage individual skills were recognised and roles for dialogue writing, prop preparation and setup were assigned with astute judgment. The actual part in the play was either taken or assigned in full consensus mode. There was no heighrarchy in this teamwork but just a clear recognition of the right talent.

As the flight touches down I am challenged with the thought of how to get this great set of colleagues to make the workplace a permanent stage and every week a box office hit.

Bird Hit - the Making of a Brand

In the late eighties, The Maruti car had redefined the way we lived and worked. Particularly the latter for me as we were the battery suppliers. Suddenly, technology, scale, a new generation of customers and stiff competition, catapulted us from a manufacturing to a marketing Company.

Where S&M strategies had revolved around channel motivation alone, came the new need to understand the end user. We commissioned, for the first time, a consumer research. While many things emerged in terms of our imagery, consumer expectations etc a single term sticks to the the mind even after two and a half decades. A battery was described as a "grudge purchase". You couldn't start the car without it and never really knew when the expense of replacement would hit you. Additionally, being under the bonnet it had practically no "brag factor" and was therefore seen as a dead cost.

What we had to build a brand was this research docket and the canvas of the battery box. The Maruti car had redefined the technology and look of the battery (some of you readers might recall a black rubber battery box, which could, if required, be repaired at a local workshop). The new technology meant a white plastic container (in later years made more colourful with added pigments) which was sealed and non-repairable. This white container was like a palette on which we could write (screen print) our story.

The next question was what story ? And here is where I come to the point of this piece. Consumer knowledge needs to nestle in the marketeer's mind, be a dialogue point with the Team and the actual idea might come at a point away from the office. On one such afternoon, with my Boss away from office, I was planning to leave a little early. About the time, colleagues were packing up, my Boss charged into the office, glass shards on his shirt and a huge grin on his face. Exide Freedom, he said, "freedom from worries about your battery". His Eureka moment - on a customer visit and driving down the highway a bird hit the windscreen and his mind made this association of worry-freedom-flying bird. 

We were charged with his excitement. Called up our Agency Rediffusion and asked the team to stand by for our brief. I will always remember the creative energy as we drafted and re-drafted the story and finally took it across to our Agency office. There, we had it first torn to shreds by SG (Subhabrata Ghosh) and his team. Then we built it back to something much larger than an advertising campaign. Placing the consumer at the centre, defining our promise of a tension free LSI (Light-Start-Ignition) service, we first constructed his expectations from our channel. This meant, changing the face of the dealer store from practically a garage shop to a consumer lounge, equipped with state-of-the-art service equipment. Releasing the consumer from worries meant a pro-active service call record with our dealers and desirably a computer with a customised CRM. All this might sound very elementary today but this was not so in 1988. We were on the look out for everything that was consumer friendly - including the first to tie up with Citibank and offer battery purchase on credit cards.

Thereafter, we selected a Corporate case study on Organizational transformation, well identifying the need to migrate the mind-set from manufacturing standards to consumer experience. The scale & technology came to our rescue, once again, as we needed to invest hugely in the plant on new production lines. Working from scratch, the plant teams and facilities reflected our new commitment to our consumers.

Finally, came the launch. We had this beautiful logo, with a bird in flight and a manual on model dealer stores. We had to capture the imagination of the network and show them a future "Shoppe" from a hole-in-the-wall garage shop. The battery had to move back-store and consumers would be walking into a lounge space, waiting while their battery was being attended to. We decided on a launch without the product. At Taj Hotels 4 metro properties, we had our event with a 120 square foot area model store. Dealers were given the walk-through experience of the new-age stores. On the sidelines, there are many stories to share of how we stayed up all night (the hotels could hand over the convention space only post 11 pm). When fatigue took over and we made mistakes, re-worked, dozed-off in turns, worried the Agency team and each other and needed Sujit Sanyal's humour to keep us going.

Exide Freedom, redefined the manner in which car batteries would henceforth be sold in the country. We moved on to consolidate our position in all the new generation vehicles. What's more - one by one, we upgraded the battery technology on every 2-wheeler, truck and tractor. A couple of years later Swapan Seth summarised it in a single line "India Moves on Exide".

PS : In the making of this brand, lies my personal story of meeting and marrying a Citibank-er on exactly this date (April 14).

The Father Of Girls

While I shamelessly pinch the title from an old Perry Como number, the lyrics, understandably, are completely out of synch with these times. The relevance of the topic, however, isn't.

On Women's Day, this year we  invited the ladies in our office to share their "breaking barriers" stories and the best 3 were from small towns. A lady from Chiitorgarh wrote : "at the age of 5, my father encouraged me to cross the main road on my own and buy milk and bread. He taught me cycling when I was 9 years of age and gradually I shifted to a Scooty and finally a car. Today, I enjoy driving on highways" at the age of 18, this lady lost her father to a road accident. She had to step in and take charge of a younger sister and mother, complete her studies and get a job. Another lady, proudly stated that she is the daughter of a farmer and being good in academics, received full support from her father to get to where she is today. 

At home, the dinning table was our decisions space. A nuclear family, Dad daily (apart from the 10-12 days he traveled on work) risked being (over)ruled by the 3 ladies at home. Age was not a discriminator at home. Whether it was buying a TV (folks my age will recall this was a big decision in the early 70s) to traveling on an out-station school trip, I had a say even as a 10 year old. I remember in my early teens in Delhi, one evening we were driving around town and Dad stopped before a General Store. He pulled out his wallet and handed it over to me, so I could pick up some ice cream from the store, while Mom and he stayed back in the car. Mom was not certain this was very wise but I recall Dad's statement on that day "I trust her". A simple statement and one I learnt to value at a much later age. He meant more than trusting me with the safe keep of the wallet, the accountability for the money in it, the capability to look after myself and the ability to make the correct choices. It is this same trust that left him unfazed when I drove home late from work in a low reliability Gazelle car (makers Standard Motors which wrapped up business in the late eighties). 

A man far ahead of his times, he truly believed that a woman was capable of much more than a man. For him, this did not mean being a feminist. Quite to the contrary, he believed in his daughters learning everything. So be it Rabindrasangeet (as true blue probashi kids growing up in Mumbai), dress making, baking to short programs at Indo-American Society during summer breaks on topics from Public Speaking to Business Correspondence, Interior Designing and Speed Reading (his only regret being that I drew the line on Self-hypnosis which honestly I, too, regretted in later years) I did it all. While quietly preparing his daughters for the Corporate world, whether man or woman , he believed firmly in appropriate grooming. He was very keen that my sister and I take a formal course in make-up and hairdos - another thing on which his tomboy daughter disagreed (again a learning, which I corrected with my teenage daughter, who is today trained in professional grooming).

If there was another thing on which he had complete conviction, it was reading and learning. Prior to enrolling at the driving school he had us read up on driving. I literally learnt to swim from a guide book and had him take a very keen interest in my sewing machine and bought me dress designing accessories and Vogue magazines, during my college years when I stitched my own clothes. Once again, an early conversation with my sister comes to mind. My sister was academically brilliant and an avid reader. I started on Harold Robbins and Arthur Haley at an early age and remember him mentioning that there is never a given "right age" for reading a book. 

If I were to draw a direct connect to my current portfolio, it goes back to when I was in Class VIII. Our school project work and holiday homework meant preparing charts. Dad had one of his Sales Conferences and asked for my help with his charts. Just by chance, I happened to note some of the numbers and was able to pick up an anomaly. That established me as his regular assistant and I was soon a proud owner of a set of stencils, sketch pens and an 18" ruler for my first professional break. 

This theme has received some public attention, of late, with our PM flagging-off the #SelfieWithDaughter and Sheryl Sandberg endorsing an Ariel advertisement where a father rues the stereotypical role families impose on their daughters ~ http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/25/news/sheryl-sandberg-India-share-the-load/ . The ad reminded me of one of our most endearing memories of growing up - Mom and Dad making the evening rotis with him tossing the rotis on the tawa before Mom took over and placed each directly on the flame to make them puff up - when any failed the fault was Dad's but when they turned out good, she was the one who made them perfect !