The Hills Are Alive - A Holiday Offline

                          "The hills are alive with the Sound of Music
                           My heart wants to sing every song it hears"

This opening number from The Sound Of Music is a particular favourite in our family. 

My son was in grade l , when we bought this CD. Every afternoon, he would return from school, listen to this song and switch off just before the nuns made their entry. Once, a close friend borrowed the CD. My son would gently remind us to bring it back but as tends to happen in our busy lives, we fail to estimate the joy from little things for our dear ones. Anyways, there came a day when our friend hailed us out on the road, rolled down the glass of his car and thrust the CD into our car. The next day, my son sat down to watch the song, opened the CD cover, only to find it was empty! The five year old mentioned very solemnly to my husband that evening, "Papa, Bappa Uncle liked the movie so much, that he kept the CD for himself". There was wise understanding in his eyes. After all who could resist the warm story of love, family and endurance and those very hummable, foot-tapping numbers.

My boy is a young adult, today and my daughter is married. After many years, the five of us decided to take a break in the hills. The place was Wales but the rolling hills were just like in the movie. "Are you sure you can do it, Mama?". My daughter asked me this question for the third or fourth time before going ahead with the bookings. The concern was Cwmwr Uchaf (rough Welsh translation being farmhouse at the top) where we had booked ourselves had no internet connectivity - poor signal, no wifi. The children keep teasing me about my tweeting and instagram. This also entailed being cut-off from contact with the office. I decided to ignore that funny feeling in the pit of my stomach and endorsed the plan.

glow across the hills

We took the long winding road up and arrived at our cottage a little past seven in the evening. Daylight stays long in August and there were still a couple of hours before the hills got engulfed in the dark. There was this mild glow across the hills and alternating hues of green and gold. The sheep had done their grazing for the day and some were hanging around the fence, observing us lazily. The only sound you could hear for miles was an occasional bleat or moo.

We dropped our bags and went for a short stroll. My husband stayed back to prepare dinner. We had this fully furnished cottage with all amenities to ourselves - just that. No more souls around. Later that evening, we explored the house, figuring out what to do for the next five days. 

The weekend, my son-in-law's parents joined us. There was a grand barbecue planned for the evening and they arrived with a variety of marinated meats. Also, lots of Perroni. The day was spent in intermittent walks, setting up the barbecue pit, lazily chatting as we sat overlooking the hills and doing some good justice to the Perroni. While the sun went down at 10 pm and we all went indoors, we were still not sleepy. The children pulled out a scrabble board (the place had a wide selection of books and board games. Also, a baby piano, which I insisted on pounding industriously with two fingers much to the irritation of others). The moment took us back many years (count lost) when carrom and scrabble used to be our foursome evening engagement. 

The evening was nippy, offering us a good excuse to light the fireplace. I will always remember that family evening, huddled around the fireplace, chatting, playing. The warm glow about us, for sure, didn't have to do with just the fire.

Ploughman's platter

The next day was Monday. Ah-ha, the weekend was over! Back in India, office was well into midday while I was just waking up. My son-in-law's parents were driving back into a new working week. I must admit to a vague discomfort and feeling of being cut-off. Maybe, honestly, some anxiety and moments of boredom. We decided to just stay back in the cottage and laze. There was a good bit of leftovers from the previous barbecue and little reason to cook. My daughter, always innovating, laid out a Ploughman's platter which would have done any star rated pub proud! 

In the evening, my son and I sat up till way past midnight. We chatted about uni, his room mates, his course and career options, my work and our common bonding point - exercise and fitness. He has been helping me manage my diabetes and between teasing and gently chiding, manages to keep me on track. A chat, which for a year had happened only on Skype. What was special (and very different from Skype) was not the moments we engaged in active conversation but more the silence in between. The sense of being close to someone you love. Letting the mind flit gently over the many subjects you want to discuss. Picking and dropping these, basis our mutual interest to pursue further. Time stood still. We were in no hurry to finish the conversation and retired at a certain point, knowing there would be more time the next day.

Tuesday morning was a little more difficult. I waited impatiently for the family to get ready. We were doing a day visit to Hay-on-Wye, a quaint book village. This was to be another really long drive. My immediate interest was to take a peek at my mailbox and get up-to-speed with happenings back in the office. That evening, as we drove back, a quietness engulfed all of us. Not of a peaceful kind but a little impatience to get back to the cottage and some bickering as the cramped feeling inside the car began to drag down our mood. Just at that moment, we took a certain turn in the hills and noticed the sun going down behind a cottage. We still had a couple of hours drive ahead of us but I insisted we stop to take a few pictures. We piled out of the car, stretched and watched in silence as the sky took on varied hues. The sun was setting on another day and our hearts filled with a sense of peace and the need to treasure these moments of togetherness.

I write here, not a day to day travelogue. It was necessary to give a little backdrop before I get back to my purpose. To share with you that feeling, being "offline". What is a holiday if you are not posting pictures on Facebook and checking out the "likes". The kind of holiday that we are getting increasingly used to. The next few days, for me, settled into a routine of one visit a day to the nearest town, where I could access the internet, while the family picked up the provisions for the day. I connected on video call with my colleagues, handled some urgent mail and then returned to a device-less day.

rainbow

We shared many sunsets for the rest of our holiday. We noticed that the sheep in Scotland have black faces, spotted two Llamas (unexpectedly in a farmhouse we drove by) and came within hand shaking distance of yaks. We picked up fleece and sat by little brooks with our toes dipped in icy cold water. We stopped by lakes and lochs and saw purple heather covered hills. Scrabble and carrom, preparing beautiful meals, long walks and standing by in awe to watch a full arch of a rainbow - touching the Earth at both ends! Of course, we returned to full connectivity for the rest of the trip but I noticed that I had comfortably settled down to the new routine of "connecting" two to three times, daily. 

I have been back for nearly three weeks now. In the evenings, I browse through some lovely photographs and have been posting a thing or two. My exercise and reading has settled into a better disciplined routine. There is greater consciousness about the quality of engagement on social media, with a shift from opinions to knowledge developing feeds. There is actually a physical change as I am carrying my phone, itself, a lot less. What used to be in my hand or pocket, is today waiting for me on a desk or cabinet. 

Capturing the spirit of the English countryside and taking a little liberty with one of my favourite poems, I would say :

                       For the present, when on my couch I lie, 

                        In vacant or in pensive mood, 

                        There is more that fills the inward eye 

                         And less do I seek out my phone.

The last word on Rafale

Taking a purely marketer's view on the Rafale communication battle, I'd say "Advantage BJP" for three good reasons :

The first mover advantage :

Be the first one out there. BJP took the lead through an innovative piece of communication to tell its version of the Rafale deal. In a country where many probably don't even know how to pronounce the name (I have faced the marketing challenge of getting channel members, influencers and consumers to pronounce the cement brand Lafarge) a slick video, clear diction, comfortable delivery by a controversial (in this context) actor is sure shot for eyeballs. 

Simple message :

While the first impression is why this bizarre lock analogy, on reflection it does make a lot of sense. Power deals, French Company (equally challenging to pronounce Dassault), VVIPs are difficult to relate to. Put it in the context of the tension, bickering and backbiting of a residential society and you have a picture everyone is somewhat familiar with. What, over and above, can be more symbolic than a lock for security? The first principle of communication is clearly visible; keep the message simple and and comprehensible.

Instigate reaction from competition :

This is where you round off the advantage by putting your competition on the slippery ground of a rebuttal. As the claims have already been made, these cannot be ignored. Do you breakaway and tell your own version or do you take on the argument in the manner of a high-school debate? Rebuttals only reinforce the original message and sound like beefing about, in contrast. While the original had a slick reference to potato factory (must say Pallavi's ravishing smile lent additional finesse) , the rebuttal goes OTT with many words like mitr, pakora seller, gutter gas and chowkidar. A clear error in this occasion was to rush in with the 'real explanation'. The real story should have been executed in a fresh setting and without reference to the first film.

This is clearly not the last of what we shall see and hear on the subject. Whatever follows, though, will only enhance advantage to the first mover.

Put it in the Oven

It was a summer afternoon. My friend Meena & I were comfortably ensconced in her room, just back from college and talking incessantly. All that chatter, so important then but so little of which one remembers, today. Meena's mother must have known this or she must have been a tad fed up of our afternoon routine, while she worked hard to run a popular cookery class from home. "You lazy girls join my class and learn a new skill. Madhu, I will have a word with your mother", she chided us. An afternoon I have looked back upon, fondly and thanked Aunty in the quiet corner of my heart.

My story, however, goes back a few years prior to that afternoon. It is so important to start on a learning journey with the right words of appreciation and encouragement. My first attempt at baking was in school in our vocational training class. Our Principal, a distinguished Welsh lady looked at the texture of my cake and called it perfect. You have to have a "light hand for mixing the ingredients", or something similar, she said. Her lovely smile, twinkling eyes, have stayed tucked away in some corner of my mind.

It was from Aunty, though, I learnt every type of traditional cakes - Victorian sponges, Swiss rolls, meadlines, éclairs, fruit cakes, gateaux, shortbreads and more. When she had shared all that she knew, she put us in for a professional training on icings - royal, butter, glaze, fondant & marzipan.

Training was one part of it - I learnt. Encouragement, was what made it stick. Rustling through my academic documents, a few days back, I came across this neat handwritten note (embedded picture) from Dad’s colleague. "....very frankly the cake, apart from being very delicious in taste, it could be compared to ones made by professionals like Macronell’s.....". No wonder this very important certificate has been gently saved over the years.

Another time Dad was making a Bombay to Calcutta tour and I baked a cake for my Aunt's family. The praise appeared a little disproportionate for my efforts, even after discounting for doting relatives. On prodding Dad, he mentioned that the icing had got messed up in transit. He handed it over to the Chef at Oberoi's who obviously did more than a touch-up!

Friends’ birthdays, sister's wedding anniversary, a thank you to Mom's doctor after an operation, house parties, calling at a friend’s, whatever the occasion, I baked. My interest got further sealed with some early orders. Particularly, in those days, a swiss roll was not common. I used to keep the earnings (a princely Rs 25/- for an eight inch roll), the ingredients and electricity charged to parents.

Then came the children's birthdays. When I look back at the photos of my nephew's first birthday, the cakes sure look amateur. As the family extended, birthdays and anniversaries helped me perfect the art. However, somewhere, along the journey, the work and travel pressures slowly relegated this interest to the background. We turned towards bought out cakes, as I rushed in and out of the city on multiple sales tours. One year, probably on my daughter’s 12^th birthday, she refused to have a cake ordered out and that became a turning point. A cricket bat, Noddy or Spiderman for my son and dainty Barbie doll dresses to jewel boxes for my daughter; I returned to baking birthday cakes.

The daughter is a perfectionist

There comes in life moments of deep stress, abject boredom and career plateaus. Baking has helped me to navigate through such times. Then there is the satisfaction of inspiring my daughter to follow in my footsteps, those many mother-daughter things that hold special memories. Like Aunty, I too pushed her to train from a professional. A keen learner, in fact, a perfectionist, she knows many more tricks than I do now. Though the miles separate us, this is one thing we share over WhatsApp photographs and exchanged recipes.

 

Today, we are empty nesters and I read cakes as calories! Life, though, has made a full circle to house parties and friends’ birthdays and anniversaries. I specialize a little, these days in low calorie cakes and dessert gateaux.

There is a lot of joy in such gifting!

Giving Salesmen their daily read

The other day our CEO spoke to one of our sales team members and urged him to be an 'inspirational leader'. A senior member in the team, my colleague reached out to me to help him understand the what and the how of turning inspirational. I urged him to look back on his career and identify the seniors who had inspired him. His response " the boss who chatted with me about many things but never found it necessary to tell me how to do the job", set me thinking.

Salesmen are put through many formal training programs. These encompass time management, goal setting, effective habits, selling skills, product training and more. Good formal principles and important for development. What is missed out though, is that engaging with customers requires knowledge over and above the product and the selling skills.This, in turn requires a lot of reading, being actively curious and gathering knowledge from different fields. Sadly, it is only an exceptional salesman who makes the effort to read. With the current disruptive pace of development, this is a matter of greater worry.

Having been an itinerant salesman, I relate with this. The sheer exhaustion of travel, wrong kind of food and also at the wrong times, the pressures on one's time from the family and a few more good reasons to put off that daily reading.

Observing many salesmen and their supervisors and senior bosses, though, I found that salesmen are quick to learn by role modelling. A wealth of experience is exchanged during sales calls. This, then, becomes something like a game of chance. How does one find a boss with good reading habits, an ability to share this knowledge over a cup of tea or as is more often a glass of whisky and who treats you like a mentee and not an errant student? A boss who has more than targets and numbers on his mind and can in an un-harried manner stop to share that inspirational story or experience that educates without the boredom of formal learning.

Working with and studying many salesmen I have also, sadly, seen many bad habits perpetrated. Inhibiting ego, misplaced sarcasm, brusqely interrupting the customer, indifferent and one-sided pitches are also picked up consciously or sub- consciously. Further, many good salesmen get promoted to being bad bosses, when the learning cycle totally collapses.

A salesman's read should be able to create that ambience of a fireside chat. One should be able to smell the aroma of a favourite tipple or cuppa chai listening to stories. Stories that inspire, provide fresh insights to satisfy customers, excel in one's profession and emerge as better leaders.

Case Study published in Strategic Marketing - Economic Times Brand Equity

A to Z Work Travelogue : Carefree in Colombo

"Mita, when you firm up your plans, do make sure you keep a day for Kandy". That was my good friend and colleague, Bandara, from Colombo. His ever smiling face would only be punctuated by a spontaneous guffaw but more about that and his famous quips, later in this piece.

In those days, with both my children under 10 years, I followed a simple formula of first flight out and last flight in, trying to pack all in a day's work. International tours were different and some destinations I had to necessarily put in an extra day or two, given the flight frequency. Colombo, by that measure was not too bad. I planned the tour over three days. We had our office there and I was visiting more for a strategic partnership between two group companies and was not bogged down with the pressures of customer visits and negotiations. 

Top right - an aerial view of Kandy Lake

Hanging on the wall, in prominent view, was a framed degree of law. Bandara quipped, it was to remind visiting overseas Bosses that he had an alternative profession. Our conversation began with the Kandy visit and he summarily brushed aside any suggestion that it would not be possible. "Let us focus on what work we need to get done, work late and squeeze out a half day for your visit".

Wattalappa
 

This settled, next on the agenda was dinner The fact that I loved seafood was a very important detail in my favour. This was further sealed when I asked for Wattalappa for dessert. Memories of that evening at Beach Wadiya are slightly fading now, but for the smiling faces of my host and hostess. "Every man accepts his wife as the Minister of Home Affairs. I give her the formal title", quipped Bandara, as he introduced me to his wife, Mantri.

The first impressions of Colombo are the different drape of the saree and either gently smiling or inscrutable faces - never a frown. Despite being a bustling metro, it retains the charm of a beach town. On that first visit, I covered a fair number of dealer counters traversing winding roads, lined on both sides by single storey houses with a fair green cover. One particularly long stretch between two counters, I figured was also a detour as the sales manager had a personal errand! Such is the gentle pace of life and work, as I witnessed in Colombo.

I made three more visits; the last one a lovely holiday when we stayed at the Colombo Swimming Club (featured in my blog Club-a-Holiday). In between, we had a dealer conference and returning to the city after a ten year gap one saw the normal progression of freeways and better connectivity to the airport. Today, we do have Noritake outlets in India but not the variety and definitely not the almost 40% lower prices. Tea is celebrated as a priced tourism offer and you can pick up some lovely souvenirs of tea pouches housed in tiny copper kettles to gilted china elephants or cups. Equally interesting are the wooden masks. 

If you care for the local flavour, take a bus to the fresh foods market and pick up some dry semi-sambol spice powder,cloves, cardamom and mace. There is a very good chance that an apparently helpful stranger outside your hotel or a three-wheeler taxi, will take you to a gems outlet where equally smiling and persistent salesmen will try to sell you gemstone. Just look interested and remember to wear your smile, even if you are not interested in making a purchase. A dealer from Motihari, grumbled about the long travel time to Colombo with two transit stops but then grinned and thanked me for his bargain buy - a yellow sapphire.

Finally, a word for the local cuisine. A Sri Lankan's pride in their local dishes is unmistakable. For a non-vegetarian it is a difficult choice between seafood and mutton ishtew with hoppers. Seafood is not just about lobsters and crabs. There is a wide variety of fish, particularly the cuttlefish. The Wattalappa is probably a colonial legacy, a kind of caramel custard made with coconut milk.

Sun, scenic, seafood and smiles would sum up my Colombo memories.

Not All That Is New Is 'Innovation'

As markets get tougher, consumers get jaded and success stories rest around new age technology and technology integrated business models, one keeps hearing about the 'need to innovate'.

Having worked, all through, in Industries where the product solution is hundreds of years old (lead acid storage batteries to cement) and pushing teams and self to generate customer value, I have either been preached upon to innovate or have had to preach to sell an innovative idea.

All that is new is not necessarily innovative. Innovation is not about tweaking your product and service to increase sales. It is about empowering your consumer. Some essential questions to raise are, what does the new product or solution do for the customer.

Does it make the customer :-

Empowered to handle a situation with improved speed or quality

Empowered to take a better decision

Empowered to seek a better price or extract better value, in turn, from his customer

Realize, logically, how it improves his quality of life or brings him peace of mind

Pushing ideas through such a sieve of questions improves the robustness of the innovation process. While an ideal innovation story should begin with how a customer need was captured and a product or service solution emerged, in reality it is not always a chronological, step-by-step process. In reality, bright ideas are thrown up from many corners of the organisation. Validating an intuition or gut is a good start to encouraging innovation. 

Observation and listening are important elements in this process. While apparently sounding simple, this is probably the most complex part of the construct. If your systems are only about catching consumer need through formal customer discovery and research processes, you may end up with only those needs recognised through comparative evaluation of yours v/s competitions' offers. Ideas, therefore, need to be encouraged from many quarters. 

A customer facing field officer, many a times, captures needs but is not able to see the potential for development. It is very useful for the top management, from different streams, to make periodic market visits and capture these needs in conversation with the officers. In the peak power crisis times of the early 90's, in a previous battery manufacturing company, our insight was that customers staying in compact apartments had to keep their invertors and batteries in their drawing rooms. Batteries, then, were mere functional items designed by engineers to deliver efficient power. This organisation worked on the aesthetics and positioned their batteries as objects to put on display with pride. It enabled the customer to do away with an elaborate cabinet to store the system, delivering safety and cost savings.

Studying the category, might provide some important pointers. About a decade back, my current company, a cement major tested the hypothesis that an individual building his home and viewing it as a once in a lifetime project would be willing to pay a premium for the cement. Logical, as he was ready to invest in designer tiles, branded bathroom accessories and kitchen cabinets and surfaces. This triggered a survey to establish specifics about expectations from the cement. The insight - a consumer would like to leave the house unpainted till the first rains, to identify seepage points, if any. This provided a dual opportunity to design a product with assurance of void free bonding as well as a smooth and white external finish, that did not require an immediate coat of paint. Providing genuine value addition, to date this product remains best in class.

A recent debate in our organisation was whether driving innovation as a core value, we could build processes that encourage a new way of doing things across the organisation. And, also, whether this was sufficient to be recognised as an innovating organisation. While, encouraging new ways of streamlining operations, generating cost savings, driving collaboration and improving people skills is necessary, it is not sufficient. 

To be recognized as an innovating organisation, three essential requirements are : quantifiable customer value addition, significant time or cost advantage over competition and a demonstrated intent to improve on offers in regular frequency.