Dublin Airport and a couple of impressive Ad campaigns

Last year September, when I landed in Dublin airport, I was welcomed by a series of impressive visuals with a catchy phrase –

“It’s who stands behind you that counts”

It was a campaign by a telecom company supporting Ireland’s dream on the eve of Rugby world cup.

This year same time, when I landed in the same airport, I was surprised to see the transformation. And welcomed by another impressive advertisement campaign –

A picture of a tiny frog with a caption below – “Prince en route”

In the same campaign, there are other visuals – “Swan en route” and “Butterfly en route”

This campaign is to highlight the expansion and modernization project the airport is going thru’.

These nice visuals definitely reduced my agony while waiting for the luggage.

Bangalore Traffic management – another ‘solution’?

Recently there are Sign Boards erected along the ORR (and may be in other roads also) – Prohibiting Heavy Vehicles on the right lane. It is a bi-lingual sign with pictorial representation – nicely done, I should say.

There has never been dearth of ideas – the problem remains in implementation and enforcing (by this time, it is proven that only enforcement works in our country). I could see series of heavy trucks on the right lane all along my 20KM daily journey from house of office. My simple question is – what happens if the trucks are found on the right lane?

I would also like to ask what happened to plans launched earlier (needless to say, with lot of hypes) –

> Blackberry to the Police
> Cheetah squad
> No headlight in M G Road
> Cameras in traffic junctions
> No bus stands on the junction
> The solutions given by the experts – good road, working signals and decent footpaths
> Etc. etc.

Along my route to office, there are ten odd bus stands; all are spot-on the junction. It is not difficult to imagine the havoc they create. Is it so difficult to relocate them with proper bus-bays? We all know that the main culprits are the BMTC buses. Are they not been regulated by the same government?

Jalahalli circle, a nightmare to all, is a classic example of government’s apathy – one can see all problems at one place and its impact on daily commuters – a perfect candidate for conducting case studies. The stretch of Subrata Mukherjee road, between Ayyappa Temple and Jalahalli circle is out of this planet – ISRO can conduct Lunar Vehicles testing there.

I would like to highlight another issue I have been affected by – broken down vehicles – of all size and shape. Every day in last 1 ½ year (yes, every day), I have seen traffic pile up caused by broken down vehicle. I do not know, what to blame – bad roads or horrendous traffic – but the onus of clearing the mess remains with the traffic department.

At the last, let me come back to the mother of all questions – where the Tax Payers’ money going? We all pay hefty tax while buying vehicles and fuel. We are also paying cess, income tax, sales tax, property tax, betterment fees etc. It is the time to make the authorities responsible – monsoon comes and goes, the pain of daily commuters worsens.

A comparison of GDP

In all our discussions and reporting, we always highlight our country’s high rank in the Global GDP (& PPP) list. Yes, the attached table gives the statistics – we are in the twelfth position in the globe.

The other half of the table gives another perspective – how we manage our resources in comparison with USA and other emerging countries. The scene is not as pleasant as we normally tend to believe –
- For the size of our nation, our GDP is better than Brazil and Russia, almost equal to China BUT way below USA
- For the size of our population, we have the lowest GDP – another indication of our low productivity levels. The nearest contender China is 2.5 times of ours and USA is nearly 50 times!
- As far as the environmental impact goes, we do better than China. It will be interesting to look at Brazil’s figure – they are probably the best in the world

I leave the inference to the readers…

Farming on City Roads!!

Every time I see a tractor on our city roads, I wonder – what this is doing here? How stupid I am, answer is very simple – it is carrying / pulling something. Yes, it carries all sorts of living and non-living things in the trailer it tugs.

But is it fit to be driven on city roads? It is a specially designed machine for a specific application. Any tractor would have limited acceleration, speed, breaking and agility. With the trailer, it becomes much more unpredictable on city roads. It is another reason for traffic congestion. The worst thing is none of the trailers has the Tail Lamps!

What does our City Traffic Department say about this?

‘Who Dare Wins’

“Future belongs to those who dare” - these were the words written on a poster framed in my Divisional Head’s office wall. I observed it in one of the early visits, more than a decade ago. I was attracted to the poster because of two reasons –

> The sketch of two galloping horses was very dynamic
> The caption caught my eyes

I am sure; many of my colleagues would have seen that poster and some of them should be able recollect even today.

After reading the caption, I kept on thinking about the relevance of the caption. The question in my mind was “dare to do what?” May be to think or act differently – I was answering myself. But the bigger question was whether our society and corporate world accepts any “daring” move.

Since my childhood, I have always been preached to not to take paths less traveled. In middle class families of that time, “How dare you?” was very common. It was very true in organizations also. Even thinking (forget about Acting) ‘out of the box’ was not encouraged. At times it used to be misinterpreted to be disrespect to the prevailing norms (to be read as ‘people’).

Today, after many years, I keep thinking - have we changed? From Indian perspective, the whole thing is moving in circles. As a nation, we are confused – whether to stick to the tried and tested, old philosophy or to embrace some of the newer ideas. As we are deciding, time is passing by. We need to break free – earlier the better.

A Nation running low on Pride

I have been conducting a secret little survey on my own since quite some time. My target segment is the circle of my friends and colleagues. Obviously this segment represents average intellect, middle aged, middle class population of our country. Objective is to find out our “top of the mind” answers to the questions –

1> As an Indian, what are you proud of?
2> Which brand/product represents India in the globe?

Let us analyze them one by one –

What are we proud of? –

In most of the cases, the answer has come from ancient era – oldest civilization, expertise in old form of science & medicine, invention of Zero, oldest religion etc. In some cases, it has been some thing what we happen to be a part of – largest democracy, diversified culture and language. In few cases it has come from more recent time frame – fast growing economy, science and technology hub etc. Very few have referred to Rabindranath Tagore, Satyajit Ray and C V Raman.
If we consider the ancient glory as a measure of present national Pride then, Iraq and Pakistan should have been top of the list. The second set of reasons is happen to be by chance and we also know the problems associated with those. And for next set, conviction is too shallow. The current economic engine is running on only one USP – low cost labour – and we all know it is only matter of time before some other country emerges cheaper than ours. Little probing of the people in the last bracket revealed that they do not have much idea about these famous personalities and their work.

The bottom line is, the current generation is seriously lacking anything from the recent past to be inspired about. Here I use the word “recent” in a broader sense. In the time line of history, a period encompassing few generations can be considered as recent.
We, as a nation do not have any memorable and significant achievements in recent past which all of us would be proud to be associated with. We have not won any battle, nothing significant in the field of sports. There is no invention or scientific development what we can remember, neither there is anything in art and literature.
I know that there is some significant moments of glory but hardly any of them could touch the heart of the mass. Almost all of them are limited to a small section of population. Here problems are two folds – there are not many incidents and as a nation, we pay very little attention to those.

This issue is little more serious than it appears to be – it is one of the main reasons for our attitude towards our own country and its heritage. High level of corruption, no respect for national heritage, flag & anthem, alarming inefficiencies and umpteen numbers of social and political conflicts are some of effects. National pride is one thing that unites a nation beyond all differences and creates a unique strength for propelling to higher levels. We, as a nation, lack this. If you have any doubt, a soul search is solicited.

What are global Indian brands? –

The popular answers are –

Bollywood, Chicken curry, Yoga, Magic (rope trick and “Fakirs” included), Indian Music, Indian Spices (& Basmati rice), Indian elephant etc.
If you notice, all these are very generic and vague most of the times. Foreigners only have some hazy ideas about all these, nothing really concrete. All of these are not branded. At times philosophical and spiritual I believe.
I would recommend the readers to ask this question to any one from western (and eastern too) countries. You will see the difference on your own.

I asked this question to my Irish colleague. I thought he would be a softer target to try the question compared to Germans, Englishmen and Americans. He replied without any hesitation “Guinness” – a truly Irish brand – across the globe.

Human Resource – the most underutilized one

In every possible occasion, many of us acknowledge the importance of Human factor in today’s business. It is true that HR is the main differentiating factor between average and successful companies. In today’s world, capacity, technology and infrastructure, important ingredient of success, can be managed easily. What bothers me is the mismanagement of the most vital cog – Human Resource.

In complex business environment, the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization largely depends of the human factor. A motivated team can produce much better results even with limited technology and capacity compared to a depressed team with class-leading technology. I have seen this happening in my own career.

Let us see how we mismanage this – the gap between what we “actually do” and “should do” could be a quick measure of the current status.

- Human resource management & development is not a responsibility of Human Resource Department (HRD) alone. Everyone in the organization manages human resource in our daily life in one-way or other. It is important to be aware of this fact and impact positively. In real life situation, it is left to the HRD.
- Human resource is to be managed and developed in on-going manner. Most of us limit ourselves to a great extent to believe this. It is not an annual or bi-annual activity like conducting performance reviews.
- Managing small activities (shift scheduling, accounting attendance & leaves, salary calculations etc.) occupy organizations’ time and energy. Nothing is left for value added stuff. How many of us are involved in Competency mapping, Gap analysis, succession and development plans?
- We always say – “Recruit a person based on his attitude because skills can always be imparted” but do exactly opposite, time and again. Most often, the only question asked outside the work related area, is “Tell me something about yourself”. And almost in all cases, this is just for making the candidate comfortable.
- How many occasions the organization offers the employee a “career” not a “job”? I am surprised to realize that in most of the cases the organization does not have a plan in place for a new recruit beyond one year or the current project in which a person is inducted. What happens if a person decides to work with the same organization for his legitimate career span? Can the organization provide him with a challenging and satisfying career? I leave this to HR fraternity to answer.
- Lower the organizational level you are in, smaller the attention you get from the HRD. But logically speaking, the lower rungs need more attention and development. These are the levels in the organizational pyramid, which directly involved in generating the output. More motivated they are more prosperous & responsive is the organization.
- Money is the least motivating factor – the most is challenging assignments. Almost all organization increases the remuneration as a retention strategy and invariably fails in the process. In every annual review, salary increase has become a norm (considering inflation, it is a must), but who cares about enrichment of job content? In my career, I have seen many leaving job after getting a promotion. I have also done once. The fact is – with promotion, salary increase but in most of the cases, the job content remains the same.

- Every employee is generally categorized based on his or her expertise. In an organization, we all are compartmentalized based on our expertise and growth becomes limited automatically. HRD conveniently forgets that new expertise can be acquired. Lateral shifts are very important for individuals for gathering a holistic view of the business arena. With increased job satisfaction, it generates better outputs.