Category: Business

Media Response and Labor action in a deregulated economy?

I am aware that labor strikes are contrary to middle class sensibilities in India, and take them as relics of a pre 1991 India which everyone in the media is keen to relegate to the confines of history as if Reliance Jio launch is the stuff of history rather than an archaic national strike. Welfare protection in a deregulated economy where credit card is cool rather than a non existent medical insurance.

In an era where labor bargaining and protection is akin to foul language in our media and every day discourse, we have something a miss. In the papers and on the TV, the strike was dismissed as a failure in which unions that are a relic of the past were defeated. If we do not get paid for three months, like Kingfisher, or if a TV channel shuts down, where will these corporate EMI slaves run to for redressal ? Understand the politics behind the discourse, do not buy it at face value.

Scale or Intellectual Independence: the funding holy grail for non profits

It is a well known fact that non profits and policy thinks alike generate funding from corporate sources to influence the discourse on ideas rather than the normative objective of independent research, which is often spewed about with zero conviction. Nothing is independent if the staffer bills are not paid and the rentals are due. Both the stakeholders are cannot claim to hold the moral ground than consultants and lobbyists.

The reputational capital is compromised; so why maintain the charade?

Fund raising always has strings attached. ‘Please read the T&C carefully’ one does not have to read The New York Times reportage  to be aware of this funder- grantee conflict of interest tangle. Just read out a grant call aloud to understand the politics of development. Oh yes, a grant needs to be filed to study it right?

The only way to retain independence is to self generate revenue or be self funded. The scale is then impacted. Impact should be an outcome and not an indicator. The moral entrepreneurs are no better than the real estate agent around your block.

Rebooting Consulting Value

Consulting is a knowledge centric industry where the client needs are met through knowledge solutions rendered through reports, training sessions and on site deployments of the ideas suggested. Thanks to the Web 2.0 era, the consulting malaise of Cntrl +C and Cntrl+V  can be easily detected, and fortunately the client too has the secondary same data set and information asymmetry is on an even footing.The fourth industrial revolution with the advent of machine learning driven predictive modelling and data gathering through bots, is ratcheting up the game for the consultant.

The best package for the consulting space is to merge the professionalism of the Investment Banking sector with the intellectual rigor and writing of liberal arts academe and to remove the ‘expert’ pretensions and work on delivering value, by thinking out of the box and delivering expectations at the correct price point. The transition from vendor to partner cannot happen cannot occur sans a value driven culture.

Long term collaborations between client and consultant is a rare commodity unless a Master Services Agreement is available, and this alone is the domain of the big players, where the niche, small sized consulting firm cannot even bid for them many a time, for a retainer services arrangement as they cannot match the scale.

The pressures on the margins on every report churned out is significant and the focus is on the billings of the quarter rather than investing in long term bets which are capital intensive such as technology deployments and training.

Consultants will have to be agile and intellectual with an eye for implementation potential in order to demand top dollar as the sharing economy of freelancers (with many  hiring independent contractors) is further reducing margins. Overheads such as a big office on the 21st floor seem like a luxury that few can afford. The shared working space or the friendly neighborhood coffee shop is more like it for small players. Big ticket contracts in the public sector are increasingly being made accessible to start ups in Singapore and India, as the best bang for the buck is expected.

Consultants have to walk the talk on their ideas with the client, with implementation support on the ground. The new mantra could be ‘Be implementable, or perish’ inverting the academic adage.

 

 

 

Unlocking Value in Start Ups: Refocus on Operational Processes

I have been fortunate enough to work for Fortune 500 Consulting firms at one end of the curve to advising a migration non profit focused on cultural activism in Singapore at the other end. The bigger picture and the rhetoric, often boils down to dollars and cents during performance review, as donors/funders need to evaluate the ROI. We live in a business environment dominated by mega trends of political shocks, declining oil and commodity prices and flat value chains; where the consumer/client knows the set of data as you, the product manager. The information asymmetry between client and vendor has vanished. Machine Learning and Big Data is transforming the service economy, where specialists will dominate and entry-level jobs will disappear in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In this scenario, operations is often under rated in the every day running of the business. They maximize the leverage available make sure the product/service is delivered at the right price point to the consumer. Ideas are simply not enough; there needs to be implementation excellence to unpacking the black box called value, easy to define, harder to deliver though.

Non Profit Platforms and Business Start Ups need to move beyond the ‘idea’ that they are pursuing whether it is a cause or a product and invest into expertise. The disruption has to be backed by professional teams, which focus on long-term bets, in value creation. The ‘Big Idea’ is brand equity but operating teams have to aggressive in funding, program management and innovation. Building teams and products that the market needs is the simple truth. Non-profits need to invest in operations as much as for profit peers. Being sexy is not cool all the time. Think Rahul Yadav, and contrast it with Martin Sorrell of WPP, who built a holding company around which brands evolved (HBR, July/August 2016). Have patience and do the right thing otherwise being out of business does not take time; the same advice is valid for careers too. The career of the entrepreneur follows a particular product lifecycle too.

 

We are Widgets: Evolution towards a new social contract

May Day should be more than a public holiday, as employees in the knowledge economy are nothing more than widgets now a days to be replaced when a cheaper alternative comes across invoking Jeff Bezos sentiment . Organizations are high performance teams to execute, deliver and disband and not networks of conversations and aspirations anymore. These days, the pink slip is celebrated as ‘graduating’ and work alumni networks are created are automatically encouraged. The central driving force behind corporate teams at present is adaptability and productivity where permanent jobs are a figment of my Father’s generation. We are in the freelance and sharing economy where medical benefits and spouse/family packages are a thing of the past. Employee welfare is an overhead cost, and hence the vendorization of all non core assets is the norm.

The employee has to be an intrapreneur to drive their own projects, drive revenue and excellence. That’s the only way to revel in the uncertainty and chaos.

The fourth industrial revolution (already under way) is rather scary prospect with Artificial Intelligence taking over cars and jobs. With impending mass unemployment on the anvil as most fresh graduates in the developing world are not employment ready, it’s a huge challenge for the organized labor sector over all globally. And I have not even commented on the unorganized rural sector till now. The rural poor, with impending climate change, is not earning to support families with declining land holdings and yields, contributing to aggressive urbanization iterating the viscous cycle.

The factory worker in the sweatshops of China, Vietnam and Bangladesh will be soon replaced by enhanced automation as it is cheaper over the longer run and the bogey of labor rights impacts corporate reputations. The future for mass based prosperity is endangered as local jobs are getting displaced everyday to cheaper offshore centres from garments to call centres.  Governments across the developing world including India are diluting social protection platforms for workers in the name of attracting investment.  Uncles and Brothers in the early forties are being laid off as they get expensive or do not have the ability to adapt when they have kids in school and medical bills rising.  Re-aligning for the future should the mantra for Skills India/StartUp India or any Skill Credit points in Singapore labor policy platforms.

Happy International Labor Day.

Activists as Entrepreneurs: Boot Strapping to Fund Raising

Activists are pejoratively called ‘professional dissenters’, who do not create ‘value’ by the business community at large. In fact, to invert the lens, they are intellectual entrepreneurs who are bringing their thoughts to life. An idea is undergirded by tangible resources to last a while. Activists are traditional organizations in a very corporate sense. The bottom line lies somewhere else, only the quarterly reporting format differs. Ask any fundraising manager for a non-profit the reality and he would be speaking the same lexicon as a corporate manager. Boot-strapping for scaling is the forte of an activist, working on scant resources, long before the term became cool in contemporary literature. Hiring the correct talent becomes as headache as cash is often in short supply unless it is an INGO such as the International Rescue Committee which can hire David Miliband as its CEO. There is no Series A Funding round for an activist, as the funding rounds are perennial.

All social movements need resources and are limited by the same variables which start-ups are limited. Non-profits need war rooms to coordinate efforts for large scale projects. ‘Blitz scaling’ as coined by Venture Capitalist Reid Hoffmann (HBR April 2016) is performed out by mobilizing the common spirit of the times. #FeeltheBern or the Sanders presidential campaign is classic example of reaching out to small donors and scaling a movement. A performing social movement like a political campaign for elected office, serves a purpose. Activism such as selling a product is also selling an idea. The idea becomes the basis of the product cycle. The campaign for the food security legislation in India took decades to be written in to law, but the ground work intellectually started many years back by activists such as Aruna Roy, Jean Dreaze and Amartya Sen.

Activism needs the same skill set as an entrepreneur as the buy in is needed. The product being a normative idea makes it a very challenging sell in comparison to a FMCG product. Let us have the humility and listen to these struggles as lessons to learn.