Get OUT GET NOTICED

THE ONE WHO CAN PUT HIS FOOT OUT OF THE DOOR, IS THE ONE MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED. EVEN IN TODAY’S WIRED WORLD, DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF THE PERSONAL TOUCH. SO GO ON, AN. NOUNCE YOUR PRESENCE...

This is the story of a simple woman, a story of an Indian girl, born into a conservative family in Chennai, who went to the US to pursue higher studies and who while studying also worked as a receptionist from midnight to sunrise to earn money. Finally, after a lot of hardships she passed out from Yale University and got her first call for a job interview. She struggled hard and somehow managed to scrape together $50 to buy herself a western suit. Not having much idea about western wear, she landed up for the interview wearing a trouser that barely reached her ankles. She was rejected. Dejected and disheartened she turned to her professor at Yale for help, support and advice, and she got the simplest, yet best possible advice – “Be Yourself”. She wore a sari for her next interview and got the job. Today, Fortune ranks her as the most powerful woman in US business.

Yes, you guessed it – she is Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo. And the Indiaborn Nooyi has been named as the most powerful woman in the US business for four straight years now. This Queen of the business world, and my personal favourite, has shown the world how if you need to survive you need to change; you need to adapt and reinvent yourself. Today, if she continues to sit pretty at the top spot, it is because she has consistently changed and reinvented herself, in tune with the times. Her secret – “being visible”. According to her, people need to know that their CEO cares about them and has a realistic vision. She feels the need to see and be seen. After becoming CEO, Nooyi’s goal was to visit 80 countries in her first five years as CEO so that she could see and also be seen. This strategy seems to be working for her. It was during her visit to China that she saw the resurgent trend of people eating according to traditional Chinese medicine. She immediately knew she had to find ways to incorporate Chinese medicine into Pepsi- Co’s products. China is such a huge market after all and one could not ignore it at any cost. Clearly, just ‘being there’ can work wonders for you and your organisation and help you choose the right path.

GET OUT, GET NOTICED
It is a highly wired world that we are living in today. Technology is doing all it can to help you stay connected. Be it SMS or e-mails, or Facebook, or LinkedIn, or the latest craze – Twitter – all these have made ‘staying-in-touch’ easier. Yet, while searching for excellence decades ago, Tom Peters and Bob Waterman discovered a very simple and effective trick that great leaders and companies put into use extensively to manage people and work. They called it MBWA – Management by Wandering Around. The strength of an organisation lies in its informal communications. One needs to know who they work with, what drives them, what their passions are, what are their fears, their dreams – everything. You need to stay “intimately in touch,” says Tom Peters, “if you want to manage well.” E-mails, Twitter and others of their ilk fail here.

In 2004, Peters was asked to give a talk to retailers. He talked to experts, searched the web and prepared a beautiful speech. But it took merely two hours of wandering in and out of shops, for Peters to scrap this speech and write a better one. Those two hours helped him understand the retail environment better. His advice – get out of your cubical. The ability to go out and talk and understand is the most important skill. If you are just relying on e-mail, it’s time you stopped and pondered on the importance of human-touch. Excellent companies are a vast network of informal, open communication, which is only possible when there is an environment of trust. Walk around to build that environment. When people see you, they will know you better and trust you more.

‘GET OUT GET NOTICED’ ...YET AGAIN
If you need to be visible to be successful, then the same applies to your brand too. You need to make sure your products are ‘visible’. How do you make your brand visible, is the moot question. Branding, after all, is a pivotal task for any company – some work out extensive advertising campaigns, while some use expensive celebrities to attract attention. Some others, however, take a different path.

In 2005, Nestle entered into a partnership with Coca-Cola. According to an agreement, Nestle could sell its Nescafe products through the world’s largest beverage makers’ vending machines and sales outlets. Suddenly Nestlé’s products were more visible and as expected in a few months, Nescafe’s market share, as well as sales revenues, increased drastically. Coca- Cola, on the other hand, used McDonald’s to increase its visibility. If McDonald’s sells Pepsi Cola instead of Coca-Cola, it would not take long for Pepsi to defeat Coke!

Lenovo too knew it had to be ‘visible’ to be seen as a successful company by the world. It went ahead and bought IBM’s PC business in 2005 and changed its image instantly. Now it was perceived as a “global brand” as opposed to a Chinese brand – because it used IBM’s distribution network to make itself visible and hence available world over. When Coca Cola abandoned its Indian operations in the 70’s, Ramesh and Prakash Chauhan decided to fill the void by launching Thums Up, with the punch line ‘Happy days are here again’. People loved it and the company soon set its cash registers ringing.

Ironically, it was the same Thums Up that Coca Cola acquired for a meager $60 million to get a one up on competition. Buying Thums Up also meant buying its distribution network and overnight Coca Cola was visible everywhere in India. Not just this, Coca Cola worked hard on its supply chain to cater to India’s vast rural market. It increased its ‘visibility’ like no other beverage company had done before and the strategy paid off. Today, rural markets account for almost 80% of new Coke drinkers and 30% of its total volumes.

This is a trick that Coke learnt from its senior – Hindustan Lever Limited – which entered India years ago and had mastered the art of being visible. In 2002, Sanjeev Gupta, Coca-Cola’s Deputy President said, “We want to be the Hindustan Lever Limited of the Indian beverage business.” Look carefully and you realise that it’s HUL’s fantastic distribution network that has prevented any competitor from even coming close to this FMCG giant in terms of overall market share. Great distribution means great visibility and great sales.

In fact, it is distribution that helped ITC Foods make its maiden profits this year. From being the tiniest company of the multi million dollar Group that was losing close to Rs.60 crores annually, it has indeed come a long way. With brands like Bingo and Sunfeast in its portfolio, the company’s revenues this year would be Rs.2,200 crores. It has indeed been ITC’s tremendous reach (through its extensive distribution network) that has given ITC Food its competitive advantage. Bingo’s marketing plan included ITC Foods’ distribution of more than 4,00,000 brand display racks at all points of sale. The strategy created such a powerful impact that competitor Frito-Lay also had to come out with their racks.

Yes, advertising gives a brand its visibility. But don’t forget the powerful impact of distribution and partnership strategies too. When Acer entered into a partnership with Ferrari, it started putting Ferrari logos on its laptops. This made Acer laptops standout and increased not just their visibility but also brand value. They began to be perceived as highly as Ferrari cars.

GET OUT – GET NOTICED... NOT JUST IN BUSINESS
If you want your career to go places – you need to do similar. You need to market yourself. You must be your own best advocate – otherwise your hard work may actually go totally unnoticed. The more visible you are, the more likely you will be remembered – especially during the time of raise or promotion. A recent study found that one of the reasons why women were not occupying more high level positions was they did not understand the art-of-self-promotion. So sit up, and find ways to become visible, to make your brand visible. If you want to win, you need to get out – and get noticed!

JUST ONE

‘One’ is not just the lowest single digit numerical value; neither is it just a show of miniscule strength. Instead, the digit has the wherewithal to change national destinies, unflinchingly challenge mighty emperors and irrevocably alter your life condition!

It is just another day, yet today, this one date has begun to signify something of great importance to all of us. Its impact has been felt all over the world. Yes, 9/11 or September 11 today symbolises terrorism. One incident on this day shook up the entire world. Overnight Kabul and Kandahar became the most talked and written about places. The world became more knowledgeable about bombs and forget about our way of thinking, even our manner of speaking changed. ‘Ground Zero’, the original meaning of which was the epicenter of a nuclear explosion, now meant something else entirely. ‘Terrorism’ was no more an activity that happened in far away places for Americans, but something that took lives in their own home. One event and look at the profound impact it has had on all of us.

In fact, one way to judge the impact of any event is to see how much it affects the language we speak. In that sense at least, 9/11 has added words like jihad, holy-war, Taliban and Twin-Towers to our collective vocabularies. Another event had similarly enriched the English language – World War II. Words like jeep, blitz, java, flak, sonar, radar, bazooka and atom bomb didn’t exist prior to World War II.

Clearly, one event can change a generation’s outlook. ‘One’ may be the smallest of numbers, but ‘one’ is all it takes to have a profound impact. It’s interesting to see how ‘one’ has influenced us in more ways than one. To start, take the date 9/11 and flip it once. This one change brings us to a date dramatically different from the previous one. If one stood for terror, and destruction and ruin, the other symbolised unification, hope and brotherhood. The 9th day of November or 11/9 was the day the Berlin Wall fell. If 9/11 divided the world, 11/9 was an attempt to unify a city that had been divided for over 30 years. The 28 mile barrier dividing Germany’s capital was built in 1961 to prevent East Berliners fleeing to the West. ‘One’ of anything (even the flip of a date) can do wonders.

ONE WORD, ONE ACT – CHANGE...
One word and its wrong interpretation caused irreparable damage. The Americans issued an ultimatum demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan. Nearing breaking point, the Japanese wanted to negotiate for peace, but not surrender unconditionally. They issued a statement using a Japanese word ‘mokusatsu’, which technically meant ‘refrain from comment’, but had another interpretation i.e. ‘ignore.’ And that is how the Americans decoded it. Keeping the Japanese ‘refusal’ in mind, Americans continued to fight and eventually dropped two atom bombs – an event that changed Japan forever. One wrong translation caused so much destruction. In contrast, one statement shot this actress to fame and resurrected her failing career. Yes, one racial slur shot Shipla Shetty to fame and made her a fortune. So much so that now everybody seems to want one!

But, it was bravery of a different kind that changed the world. A simple seamstress from Alabama refused to relinquish her seat on a city bus to a white man. It was her one act of courage that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and brought the Civil Rights Movement to national attention. Jack Kemp ‘once’ said, “the power of one man or one woman doing the right thing, for the right reason and at the right time, is the greatest influence in our society.”

ONLY ONE, YET NOT INSIGNIFICANT
It may look small and insignificant but sometimes ‘one’ can have tremendous impact. It was one vote per precinct in key states that gave victory to George Bush. It was one vote by then Vice President Al Gore that approved President Clinton’s budget, which included the largest tax increase in American history. It was one vote that made Hindi the National language. History proves that one vote absolutely does matter. So next elections, remember that your vote could be the crucial deciding factor.

Compared to this vast universe you may look like a tiny dot but you have the power to control this vastness. However small, but you do matter. When in doubt hum the Song “Everybody makes a difference.”

ONE – IS ALL IT TAKES
It was ‘one’ film and ‘one’ title of the ‘Angry Young Man’ that changed the career of Amitabh Bachchan and catapulted him to fame. When he was deep in debt and was ‘written off’ by the industry, it was one game show – Kaun Banega Corepati – that again saw him riding the high wave of fame and fortune. Not just Amitabh, KBC even changed the fortunes of television. Suddenly, TV programming was hot & happening and worth watching again.

Back when Indians were fighting their war of independence from British Colonial rule, the favourite British jibe was that “Indians were not ‘manly’ enough to rule themselves.” Mohammed Salim was a simple boy from Calcutta, known for his ability to keep a football in the air. He, together with his team used football to give a firm retort to the British. He proved the British wrong by defeating them in their own game and showed that Indians were not inferior to the British in any way. Most interestingly, the Indian team played the game bare foot and defeated the haughty English men in boots. That ‘one’ victory sent a strong signal to the whole world!

Large numbers are simply no good because sometimes just ‘one’ is enough. One album ‘Thriller’ shot Michael Jackson to fame and made him immortal.

Napoleon was obsessed with the idea of ruling the world. He seemed unstoppable, conquering one country after another. It took one man, one day to smash Napoleon’s dream of invading Britain. In the Battle of Trafalgar, inspite of being outnumbered by the French, Nelson won and that too without losing even a single ship. The Trafalgar Square in London stands testimony to that beautiful victory.

In the corporate world ‘one’ is the new buzz word. Top executives globally are facing criticism for drawing hefty salary packages and the growing financial crisis. CEO’s are now pruning down their packages to just one dollar. Vikram Pandit the CEO of Citigroup will now take home a one dollar salary, Larry Ellison the Oracle CEO too would take home just a dollar this year as salary – a cool $999,999 less than last year.

Steve Jobs and even the founders of Google have been old members of the ‘$1 CEO club’, which now seems to be getting bigger and bigger. We hope that it also helps the economy – but one thing that it is doing for sure is attracting attention.

‘One’ is small, but has the power to make a big difference. Sometimes the number of chances that you get or need to completely overhaul your whole life is just ‘one’. As Abraham Lincoln said, “It matters not the number of years in your life. It is the life in your years.” Seize the moment now; know that this is your one chance to change everything. Strength, my friend, doesn’t lies in numbers, but in just that ‘ONE’ opportunity. Don’t miss it!

“Shut-up and dance”

A critical part of communication is not what we had thought it to be all along. If history had commanded corporations to ensure that they ‘speak out’ their advertisement campaigns and product features in as forceful a manner as possible, contemporary times are destroying that strategic belief to forward a line of thought that perhaps quite the opposite is true now, if one wishes to succeed fantastically!

I teach a course in communication. After I have taught students the importance of making a good first impression, of the power of words and how to use them effectively, of the factors to keep in mind so that one is understood properly, of how to use one’s voice to make a speech most interesting, I tell them, “Now you know everything about speaking in public, but you still are not a master communicator.” And that is because there is still something more to communication than speaking. Speaking is just 33% of communicating. Then what’s the rest? Well, let’s try to figure out that.

LINCOLN NEEDED IT TOO!

This was decades ago when America was torn with the Civil War and Lincoln was fighting hard to abolish slavery. He wrote to an old friend of his and asked him to come to Washington to discuss some problems. When his friend came, Lincoln talked to him for hours. Lincoln went over all the arguments, letters, newspapers, articles, which had arguments both for and against abolishing slavery. After talking for the whole night almost, Lincoln finally bid goodbye to his friend without even asking him his opinion. His friend later commented that that night, Lincoln did not want advice, he wanted a friend.

A man once met Stephen Covey and put forward his problem, “I can’t understand my kid. He just won’t listen to me at all.” A visibly surprised Covey commented, “You don’t understand your kid because he won’t listen to you? But I thought to understand another person, you need to listen to him!” The father looked even more surprised.

To put it simplistically, what is it that Lincoln’s friend did, which the father in the second case did not do? Yes, listening! That night, Lincoln wanted a sympathetic listener to whom he could unburden himself. And perhaps the father in the second case did not realise that most children want absolutely nothing from their parents but an empathic listening. Children are waiting to open up if only they were listened to without being ridiculed or judged.

HOME OR WORK, IT’S THE SAME

Toyota was designing its Tundra Truck, but considerable inputs come not from designers, but from farmers. A team from Toyota spent days visiting different regions of US – horse farms, factories, construction sites and more – to meet with truck owners. They did not just ask them about their preferences for towing capacity and power (in a truck) but even silently observed them at work. Through this, the team learnt the ideal placement of the gear shifter; they also learnt that the door handle and radio knobs needed to be extra large because pickup owners often wore gloves all day. Clearly, no amount of discussions or brainstorming sessions could have possibly revealed these nuanced preferences.

Earlier, while Burger King used to serve Coca Cola, PepsiCo was trying very hard to convince Burger King to add Pepsi to its menu; but Burger King kept saying it had room only for one beverage. To this, PepsiCo argued that Burger King promoted “choice” in its advertising and offering Pepsi was a way of giving consumers a choice. The negotiations reached nowhere. Finally, somebody in PepsiCo listened, and really listened to what Burger King was trying to say; and consequently changed Pepsi’s pitch. The new pitch stressed the similarly between Burger King and Pepsi. The pitch forwarded the proposition of how both Burger King and Pepsi were number twos gunning after the number ones; and how, therefore, it made sense for Burger King to kick Coke and bring Pepsi in.

Pepsi never in its wildest dreams could have thought of suggesting to Burger King to throw out the leader; but someone out there read between the lines, and bingo, the deal was done. Later, an executive at Burger King said – this is exactly what we were trying to tell them for months, we’re glad they finally listened.

‘Listen’ to succeed in business, for not many people are doing it as everybody is so eager to talk. In listening lies the formula for success. Albert Einstein has famously said: “If A equals success, then the formula is A=X+Y+Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut!”

READ PEOPLE, NOT BALANCE SHEETS

A master negotiator uses “silence” to sell. Silence helps him to listen and actually learn; and even when there isn’t much to learn, it gives you a chance to collect your thoughts. Ever wondered why Japanese businessmen use the help of human translators even when they might understand perfectly well what you are saying. It’s a masterful negotiation technique – it gives them time to frame their reaction and then respond cautiously. If you are too quick to speak/respond, you may make a mistake sometimes. Well, not the Japanese.

Everyone knows that in business, there are few places as delicate and important as the negotiating table. A master negotiator is one who listens well. Not just listens well, but listens aggressively. It goes beyond simply listening to words. A master negotiator listens with his eyes and ears. He observes the other person closely. It was Captain Michael Abrashoff’s ability to listen aggressively that helped him transform the worst ship in the Pacific fleet into the top ship in the entire Navy. He realized his young crew was very talented and full of great ideas, which came to nothing for no one in charge ever listened. So he listened aggressively, observed keenly and picked up every good idea the crew had; and a miracle happened – the worst ship transformed into the best. His simple logic – the crew sees things the officers don’t, all that the captain needed to do was to see his ship from the crew’s eyes. Business is no different. You need to see the business from the customer’s point of view. You need to aggressively listen – which means you see the body language, the facial expressions, the tone of the voice; and not just the words. You understand the feelings behind the words. As someone said, “The first duty of love is to listen.” I would say the foundation of any relationship is to listen, and listen aggressively – as a Chinese proverb says, “To listen well is as powerful a means of influence as to talk well, and is as essential to all true conversation.”

After all, those are aggressive observers and listeners who always get what they want. Remember, every teenager knows the best time to ask his dad for his car is when dad’s in a good mood (preferably in the evening, after he’s had a drink or two!). Good people observers are master negotiators and great leaders. If a teenager can be in the know of these tricks, it’s time you used them too. Customers always give a feedback – either by buying your product or the competitors’. Observe carefully. Listen to the market, watch your competitors aggressively. Many a time, we miss important clues as we are busy ‘acting’ (formulating strategies, changing plans etc). Stop and shut up! It will help you think better.

Motorola had a magnificent run of success in the 1990s when it grew from $5 billion to $27 billion in annual revenues in just a decade. It was around this time that a New Zealand mountaineer Rob Hall died on the Mount Everest. But as his life ebbed away, he talked to his wife; and his parting words, “Sleep well my sweetheart. Please don’t worry too much,” captivated the world’s attention – all thanks to a satellite phone link. Motorola took this as an inspiration and developed a bold and very expensive venture named ‘Iridium’. It planned to launch 66 satellites to ensure people were connected to each other always, irrespective of which part of the world they were in. By the time Iridium was ready to be launched, the world was already used to the traditional cellular service; and no one wanted a satellite phone whose handset was the size of a brick and that worked only outdoors. Iridium did benefit people who were stuck in remote places; however, the company forgot to calculate that not many people needed to call home from the South Pole or Mount Kilimanjaro. The company ignored the markets needs and wants. It failed to listen aggressively and change accordingly. As a result, Iridium – that was launched in 1998 – had filed for bankruptcy in 1999, sealing Motorola’s fate.

So if you want to really make it big and succeed, it might well do you good to shut up and simply dance your way to success.