26 and counting.

Birthday blogs always leave me feeling philosophical about life. As each day passes and every moment fades into the next, never ceasing, never waiting, an overwhelming sense of perspective envelops me and my thoughts. Questions that I had not paid much attention to earlier, questions that I had always earmarked to be answered for when I was ‘older’ seemed to come back and haunt me now. What has my life meant to this world? Has my existence on the planet made it a better place to live? Or has it made it worse? What is my true purpose, my calling? And, most importantly, what do I intend to do with my time ahead?

As soon as I begin to ask myself such questions, several things became apparent to me almost at once: one, the fact that I was in a condition to worry about stuff like that meant I was already a privileged citizen – someone who was well fed, clothed, educated and had access to most creature comforts, unlike the majority of the country. Two, it meant that I was quickly becoming more independent about my decisions, unfettered from familial endorsement or reliance. And three, it also meant that I was growing older – a process the Indian audience is particularly fond of describing as becoming ‘mature’.

While I continued to ponder where the answers lay to the questions I sought, I began to realize something else – maybe the reason why I had kept procrastinating facing these questions was because I already knew the answers in the first place – and didn’t like them for what they were. Sure, I was an honors student with excellent habits; had a trusted circle of family and friends; and fortunately, had not deviated from the straight and narrow (at least, not yet). But, if I were to be asked to describe how I had made the world a better place, I disappointingly drew a blank.

In times of self-doubt, one's conscience automatically swings into overdrive and starts assuaging our fears and qualms – the mind's reflex action, or defense mechanism if you will. Mine told me that I was probably over-thinking things; that I was way too young and ingenuous to be worried about stuff I had no business being worried about. That may be true, but it did not change the fact that I still had no answer to my central conundrum. 

What was the point of writing all this down? Ultimately, I realized that while I may have been a model son, student or employee at different stages of my life, it still did not absolve me of the responsibilities that lay ahead for me. After all, I was a resident of the earth too, a unit of society, a citizen of the country - and that meant I had to do more. Coming to terms with it was the first step towards that realization – and it provides for a strangely sobering start to my 27^th year on earth.

When satisfaction needs an echo...

There are a lot of things that are wrong about me – but if there is one thing that irks me the most, it is my apparent apathy towards contributing to social causes.

I am not sure if my South Indian roots had anything to do with it, but I remember always being warned to think twice before indulging in, quote unquote, “helping people”. This cynical attitude towards altruism was drilled deep into me from a very young age, lest I be conned into doing something I regret later (the fact that Indians are among the most uncertainty-avoiding people on the Hofstede Index lends credence to my earlier suspicion).

It is said that a weakness can only last as long as you let it – and I was determined to correct this enervating character flaw of mine. Hence, when I was presented with an opportunity to visit an NGO in the region to observe how they “make the magic happen”, I jumped at the chance.

The NGO, called ‘Goonj’, was a 14 year old institution based in Delhi/NCR that had pioneered the notion of providing clothes for the needy as a means of remuneration. They had a track record for producing and completing a string of rural projects across the country with the help of their flagship program ‘Clothes for Work’, under whose aegis they enabled the local populace to productively employ their time in building something of use (be it a makeshift hut, a small school or even a 240-metre long footbridge) for the inhabitant population. In return, Goonj provided the workers with pieces of custom-fitted second-hand articles of clothing.

When I visited their local sorting centre in South Delhi, I was immediately struck by its abject surroundings – cramped, congested and crawling with donated clothes, utensils and other discarded refuse, the place resembled a battlefield sans the arsenal. Yet, as I listened to what our tour guide had to say on their work processes, I realized that there was a method to their madness. 

Donated articles, be it clothes, books or otherwise, were meticulously sorted and classified according to their degree of degradation. All sorted items were then packed into coded gunny bags with military precision, bound for the regions that needed them. At Goonj, local requirements at villages that fall under their support programs are determined and analysed before being serviced – they do not do charity for charity’s sake.  

The level of product innovation on display at the local factory site was fascinating – bags made out of used car-seats; old, worn-out jeans converted into snazzy handbags; used paper re-cycled to become entirely new drawing books for children and even audio-cassette reels of yore re-cast as pen-stands. The place was a little fantasy island that produced the most endearing allures from the smallest, most ordinary of items.

More than anything else, the thing that struck me the most from visiting Goonj was the people – they all seemed so happy, but in a simple, non-invasive sort of way. Right from our tour guide who greeted each of our myriad queries with cheery enthusiasm to the phalanx of workers that were employed at the sorting center making it run like clockwork, there was not a long face to be seen anywhere in the premises. And therein, I realized what a monumental mistake I had made all this while. 

True satisfaction comes not from knowing if that donation you made to that charity last week was ‘worthwhile’; or if all the precious old clothes that you took the pain of ‘donating’ reached the right hands – it comes from the knowledge that you are doing what you can to give back to society. 

Eliminate the cynic in you – and open the doors to real happiness.

The Internship

“Mr. XYZ, I’m pleased to inform you that you have been selected as an intern at ABC Corporation, starting April next year.”

These magic words that every student yearns to hear at the end of his or her internship interview has a decidedly invigorating effect on a person – a sense of accomplishment and success flows through our veins, our heads seem a little bigger than usual, and we finally begin to understand what it feels like to be labeled ‘responsible’. For a few fleeting moments of heady dizziness, nothing seems impossible and the world seems to be at your feet once we have 'cracked the code’.

Sorry to burst your bubble Romeo, but let’s put things in perspective – all you did until this point was to get noticed. Now, you may consider that to be an accomplishment in itself given you’re up against a batch of 600 other people, but it still doesn’t change one important fact – this is just the start, and you’re work is only about to begin. 

Unfortunately, this seems to be lost on most management interns – having won the battle (a.k.a. internship), they lose sight of the bigger challenge: winning the war (a.k.a final placement).

Here’s a set of do’s and don’ts that you, as an intern, need to keep your eye on while on the job:

·        DO: Always keep an eye out for yourself. The internship is the closest thing you’ll come to an actual job, before you plunge headlong into a career. The workplace environment, the office conversations, the people you work for, they’re all around you. And they’re all trying to figure you out, to one-up your next move, to take you down. I’m being cynical, but with good reason – it is what it is.

·         DON’T: Indians are so notorious for being late that it’s now the stereotype – do not let that bug affect you too. It may sound like a trivial detail, being punctual and getting to office on time, but it matters. You know what they say about first impressions? Never has it been truer.

·         DO: Talk. Now that you’ve made your way in, it’s time to make some noise. Start speaking out in meetings; venture your opinion to colleagues, sound ideas off your boss. You may come across as being pushy and overly inquisitive but hey, at least they’re talking about you, right?

·         DON’T: Do not, under any circumstance, indulge in office politics. You’re going to be there for a maximum 8 weeks - behave like it. Cosying up to your boss is the surest way to get yourself fired.

·         DO: Be honest. If you have a problem doing what you’ve been asked to do, or need help doing it, ask for it. ‘Jugaad’ may work in preparing a classroom presentation at the last minute in school but do you really want to be doing that at work too?

Your internship can be the learning ground that sows the seeds for your career – or it can be an extended 8-week vacation that you won’t remember a day after it’s over. It is what you make of it. After all, you’re the boss, right?

PS. My institute's summer intern placement process begins soon and hence the focus on the topic.  Here's wishing all the juniors the best of luck!

The Green Gene

You know that feeling you have when a friend you’ve known all your life gets a job before you do? When your closest paramours return from far-off lands and regale you with tales of revelry and wonder, while you listen agape? When you see near and dear get ahead in life while you’re still trying to find your feet? However hard you might try to suppress it, the feeling boils underneath the surface, festers in our gut and slowly consumes you from the inside – welcome, to the world of jealousy.

Don’t be ashamed, being jealous is a natural reaction – everyone has experienced it in their lives at some point or the other. Humans are a complicated species and nobody is immune to the feelings of insecurity, anxiety and fear. More than anything else, the greatest human fear of all is the fear of exclusion – and it can drive us to act in ways that we later regret.

Recently, one of my friends returned from a student foreign exchange program from Europe – that holy grail of tourist destinations. He had the unique opportunity to visit a plethora of exotic locales across a number of countries as a part of his semester abroad, including all of the “must-see” places – the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Swiss Alps & the Leaning Tower of Pisa – among others. His tales filled me with wonder and admiration relegating me to rue what could have been. But more significantly, that green-eyed monster that is synonymous with human nature reared its ugly head again – I was left feeling a tad jealous. 

How can you fight this feeling? Well, you don’t – it’s no crime after all. To deny one’s natural feelings or emotion is to deny the essence of being human itself. No, denial is not the answer – rather, acceptance and recognition of the sensation is the first step to dealing with it. Understanding the reasons behind your reaction is the next step – introspection is what separates men from lesser evolved forms of life. And with self-reflection, comes wisdom. More often than not, you will find your feelings of envy melting away. 

Ever heard of the word ‘vicarious’? Living vicariously means to live through others – experience in the imagination through the feelings or actions of another person. Sometimes, living vicariously is the best way to live.

The Spectre of Shopping – Like a Ghost

Ok, I know the title sounds a little creepy, but fret not; the truth is much less scary than you think. In this latest blog post, I write about a recent experience I underwent with one of the leading unisex apparel retailers in the Middle East – the Giordano International Fashions Group.

Giordano has over 1800 retail outlets in 40 countries across 5 continents – given their massive scale of operation, I was fortunate to cultivate a contact at Giordano Middle East. Having ‘sowed the seeds’ (so to speak), I was very determined to engage with them in order to understand what makes them tick.

When I met with their HR head, a lovely lady named Kashmira, and spoke about my intentions to work with them on a short-term basis, she was initially sceptical – and with good reason. Here I was,  an MBA student in an alien land coming at her out of the blue asking for an opportunity that did not exist (Of course, the fact that I wasn’t looking for any sort of monetary compensation didn’t hurt, but even so). It took a little bit of cajoling, but the moment I uttered the words ‘mystery shopping’ she seemed hooked – more on that in a minute. I had made my first sell and I was feeling good. Little was I to know that I would enjoy the experience more than I had cared for.

Imagine being asked to go out to malls all day, try on different articles of clothing, shop at a few places with money that is not yours with the added bonus of having the licence to act stupid/indignant/offended as a prelude to creating a ruckus at any store of your liking. Sounds like your dream job, ladies? Well this, in a nutshell, is what mystery or ‘ghost’ shopping is all about. It may sound trivial the way I describe it, but more and more customer-facing & service-oriented organizations in the world today, especially large retail chains like Giordano, are beginning to understand the importance and the associated benefits of religiously following the adage, “Customer is King”.

What exercises like ‘Mystery Shopping’ allows organizations to accomplish is to evaluate their service offering from a neutral, un-biased perspective. One of the major drawbacks in any service offering is its variability – services are rendered by humans, not machines. A sales store clerk who seems warm and inviting today may sport a cold shoulder the next time you visit the store. This makes evaluating such services extremely dicey. Nevertheless, ghost shopping can help iron out the chinks in the service armoury of major retail chains by providing organizations with the information they crave the most - consumer feedback (no wonder Kashmira seemed so interested).

Make no mistake though; mystery shopping is no bed of roses to walk on. Having worked out the details of the project, I was to be a part of a team tasked with visiting 22 different retail outlets of Giordano, in the three most populous Emirates of the UAE – Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah. Now here’s the funny thing: there’s a marked difference in our demeanour between when we shop at leisure to when we are asked to shop at leisure. Apart from having to notice a million different things at each store – right from observing if the sales store clerk was properly groomed to checking if the fitting rooms had sufficient hooks to hang clothes from – we also had to ‘perform’ a set of transactions or 'scenarios' at selected stores – yes, one of them was to pick a fight with the store clerk. Honestly, with all the observation I was doing, I felt like a modern day Sherlock Holmes after a while.

At the end of it all, the project proved to be an eye-opener – both for Giordano and for me. While they were made aware of the frailties in their service, I was presented with a unique opportunity to understand how theory was actually put into practice in the real world. A win-win. Of course, the free T-Shirt I got for my troubles didn’t hurt either. 

My tryst with "opinion"

I was recently involved in a short-term project with a Bank based here in the United Arab Emirates, one which involved me talking to people from various walks of life and getting their “feedback” on the bank and the services it offered. Yup, you guessed it; I had been hired by the bank to conduct what is often described in academic circles as 'market research', but is more commonly known by the layman as a ‘survey’.

Market research – which, by the way, happens to be among the most frequently used phrases in MBA jargon – can be loosely defined as an organized effort in understanding the needs of the market, i.e., the consumer. If you have a systematic mechanism for gathering the required information from your target market and are equipped with the tools necessary to interpret the acquired responses, you can come closer to understanding the markets' needs and thus, be able to serve them better (in theory, at least).  Surveys can be very illuminating to an organization if done right: there have been several instances in the real world where research has helped a company launch a successful product – or fail abysmally (HBS cases abound with such examples). As I found out over the course of the next few weeks, it is easier said than done.

Before I go into my experiences with the survey, let me outline the objectives of it: it was a satisfaction study carried out on a yearly basis by the bank to understand customer feedback on its services and offerings while trying to understand and address any grievances/complaints they may have (Yeah I know, it sounded pedantic to me too). I was a part of a 7-member team of fellow students and we were tasked with the responsibility of interviewing individual customers of the bank for their “opinion” - in total, we were expected to record over 2100 customer responses from 52 different branches spread across the 7 Emirates of the UAE. The entire exercise had to be completed in 3 weeks.

Now, you may not know it if you haven't met me before but, for the uninitiated, I am a sort of an introvert, a quiet and shy kinda guy who likes to be left to his own devices. Hence the thought of approaching random strangers in cities I had never been to before, in a country I was just coming to grips with was intimidating at first (the fact that the UAE is a melting pot of cultural interaction harboring over 180 different nationalities within its boundaries didn't help). However, as I got used to the grind of whipping out my ball-point pen and jotting down responses on a paper form, I started to realize there is more to a survey than meets the eye.

The sharp-eyed reader amongst you would have noticed the fact that I have book-ended the words ‘feedback’ and ‘opinion’ appearing earlier in this post, with quotation marks. Why? Well, while the intention of any organization behind conducting any market research or survey is to find out the target market's true needs/wants/desires, it often fails to do just that. This is because of a variety of reasons, a few of which I experienced while I was a part of the survey:

·         Non-responses. What is the first thought that comes to your mind when I utter the words ’customer satisfaction survey’? Probably something like – “I don’t have the time for this stuff; I have more important things to do” or, “Why bother giving feedback? Nothing is going to change anyway”. Non responses are the number one reason most surveys fail.

·         Response bias. Most survey respondents have a tendency (by virtue of being human) to either agree/disagree to anything you might ask them. Their true opinion is thus clouded by their proclivity to appear agreeable (or disagreeable) with you, the interviewer (this is especially true when the interviewer happens to be a lady).

·         Interviewer errors. One can never rule out the possibility of errors creeping in while recording responses by the interviewer, errors that are either inadvertent or deliberate in nature.

·         Practical considerations. The sample size of our survey was a mere 2100, for a bank that had a customer base numbering in the millions. No survey this small could ever be a true reflection of customer opinion.

So why bother doing market research? I am sure the managers at the bank administering the survey knew all of the above and more. Why do it then? That is when I realized the real purpose behind the survey – the exercise was not done in an effort to identify actual customer feedback, it was more of an effort to point management in the right direction towards identifying it themselves. Market research, more often than not, does not provide solutions to problems – rather it provides us with the hints and clues we need in order to find the answer by ourselves.

As for my experiences from the survey? Well, I had a whale of time interacting with a smörgåsbord of nationalities and quickly got over my initial inhibitions (I realized the respondents were equally afraid of me as I was of them). Overall, a very interesting experience I daresay.