Kuch Meetha Hoo Jaaye....

Let’s explore a simple question, how any company will expand its business; answer could be like expanding in to new geographies, add new offerings/products/services. But given the global competition it looks difficult to attain the growth if you try only these.

But there are few visionary companies who create new markets and thus expand. Apple, for example created new market with MP3 player, even though there was an existing competition, iPod created a new market by itself. Similarly, Apple products like iPhone, iPad created new market segments and thus boosted the business growth.

There are other examples as well, like 3M’s Duct tape, J&J’s Bandaid, Tata Motors Nano are few such examples where a new market segment was created through innovative products.

But there is some interested phenomenon happening with Cadbury Dairy milk chocolate. Cadbury is growing business by expanding in to new target audience and thus reaching new set of consumers.

Let’s look at traditional chocolate industry market reach, its generally kids or the collage going young generation. But Cadbury is slowly changing this.

First it reached to the festival celebration time, and marketed Dairy milk as a sweet which can be exchanged during the festival like Diwali or can be gifted to brothers/sisters during Rakhi. Secondly, it started marketing dairy milk as a substitute to a sweet you can take home when you are really happy and wanted to celebrate, like salary day or when you get a job or when marriage gets settled.

Now, Cadbury has reached to your dinner table literally. It is now marketing Dairy milk as a substitute to the sweet we use on day-to-day life. It’s been projected as a normal sweet we use after dinner as dessert.

Let’s look as how it expanded the target market. When they expanded in to festival celebration, they expanded out of traditional young market in to a household mass, but still limited to some part of the year, like Diwali, Rakhi, New Year etc. When they expanded the reach to happy moments, they reached our happy moments and became part of our lives. Now, in the process of reaching our dinner table, the target market has even expanded in to possibly each and every house!

This is very smart positioning of a product, expanding the business through innovative approach. In this process, the same product is being expanded in to different market segments, creating new consumers. Compared to traditional way of creating new products, this is clearly a different way of expanding.

What’s the sweet at dinner in your house today?

Papularity and Leadership

Question is what is the probability of all successful business leaders having high score on popularity barometer?

In tough business environments like one we are in to, all the times leaders are tested against the ability to make tough decisions in the better interest of the business. Be it asking a unit head to leave or asking management to take pay cut, or it could be deciding to walkout of a deal (Remember Infosys deciding to walk out of GE business when Mr. Murthy was CEO and when it accounted for 40% of its business) leaders are being constantly under situations where they need to make tough calls.

Given kind of media attention, impact on the morality of the employees and the stock market beating for any wrong information; one has to be extra careful on the decisions taken or the communication aspect of the decision (It is told, that Infosys informed stockholders about GE deal upfront and the steps being taken, when the deal with GE episode happened)

Now having understood that the business leaders have to make tough calls, how successful business leaders are still high on popularity chart? Mr. Murthy made so many tough decisions; still we treat him as icon of software industry, Mr. JRD took some tough calls in his lifetime, he is regarded as one of business icons of modern India. There are countless such examples around us, in the past and present.

First, we all appreciate the fact that why this tough decision was made. They all were made in better interest of the business. Secondly what makes a big difference is the approach as how a tough call was executed (I have seen several wrongly executed decisions in the past, which impacted more negatively). Third is all successful leaders handled the person in question or situation with so much of delicacy that the impact was minimized. Empathy makes a big difference.

As it is rightly said, CEOs don’t run the popularity show but make tough calls all the times. But what appears to make a big difference between a successful leader and ordinary is the approach to the situation or person in question.

That’s about leadership!

Two different nations and different people

This weekend I drove to Wagha border and the whole experience of driving to Indian border was thrilling. The site of other side of the border prompted many questions.

Every common Indians, to large extent, don’t like Pakistan as country. And I know through couple of my Pakistani friend’s that Pakistani media and Pakistani people hate India and Indians. Quite strange but true! While I was in US, I had long chat sessions with my Pakistani friend and had understood many perspectives about India.
Seems Bolloywood is a great hit though.

We might say, we were same country about 60 odd years back and we had similar culture before that. But so many changes have happened in the last half-century. I was actually told that unlike in the past, today’s generation in Pakistan is growing up without having Hindu neighborhood.

These are the thoughts that came to my mind when I was cheering for India and looking across the border and trying to think what might be going through a common Pakistani’s mind standing across the border.

I concluded, we are two different people, belonging to two different nations!!

World Cup Cricket, Indian Team, India and Business Lessons...

First of all, congratulations to all of us, to every proud Indian to be part of this dream achievement of winning the world cup. It was a great emotion. After all, Cricket is our national passion and we all take very pride and emotional when comes to Cricket. And after all its world cup!

However, though I didn’t follow the entire set of matches, I thought there are set of business lessons.

1) Having a Dream, a Vision: Indian team had a vision or a dream to win a world cup. And team started preparing towards that. Look at the recent records of India before world cup, they have been constantly raising the bar of performance.

2) Having a bigger picture: No doubt, Indian team did face some setbacks during the journey, they lost to SA, almost managed a tie with England, didn’t win with comfort while playing with minor teams, however, team had a bigger vision, they could let these things to and regroup to accomplish a bigger task. And peak when it is required.

3) Leading from the front: Dhoni led it from the front, be it promoting himself in batting order or marshaling his forces and keeping his cool during tension times. It’s a great leadership lesson, keeping a cool head when things start going wrong and focus on end result. I personally picked few things from Dhoni’s leadership skills. It is pretty impressive.

4) Having Strategy in Place: It appeared that Indian team had a strategy in place, for every team and for every opponent. Every business leader should have a strategy in place to execute.

5) Admit Mistakes Openly. Dhoni few times admitted the mistakes he or team made. This is a leadership lesson, if things are going wrong, leader should accept the mistake and make sure it is not repeated again.

6) Celebrate Victory: Celebrate every win and success!!

7) Have Mentor: Its important to have mentor in life, as Indian team had Garry as coach, who can tell you when to change the gears and can analyze you.

8) Mental Stability: Indian team seems to have lot of mental strength, which builds the confidence and to say never die when things are going bad. Leader should have this mental stability to face the worst and take action.

It might appear that since India won world cup all of a sudden all looks very positive. But again, this is what corporate life is all about, keep wining….