Intrapreneurs Are What Dreams Are Made Of !!!

A new career development programme-learning intrapreneurial skills.

Bill Gates said, “I want to put a PC on every desk, in every home and in every office.” Ford said, “I want to put a car in every garage, in every home.” It is these dreams that led to great achievements. Dreams are what help people move ahead. Narayan Murthy never let go of his Infosys dream.

In a random survey of young executives, especially those in the IT industry were asked what they wanted from their careers. The good news is that most of them were happy doing what they were- but only right now! The rejoinder to their response would alarm any HR department. After all, hiring the right candidate is a Herculean task!

The story unfolds!

Well, the inevitable is that these employees will move on to pursuing their entrepreneurial dreams. But organisations can take advantage of the fact that while three-quarters harbour dreams of their own enterprise, most of them are unaware of how to get there! Once organisations recognise this entrepreneurial drive amongst their employees, they should also recognise the gold mine in it. Unfortunately, most consider this drive as a major obstacle in workforce stability.

Organisations don’t have to lose top performers to the desire of nurturing entrepreneurial dreams. Smart organisations should realise that in such dreams lies an untapped pool of initiatives. When given the opportunity within the organisation itself to realise a sense of ownership and satisfaction these individuals are bound to stick around allaying HR fears of high turnover.

In addition creating an environment in which creativity, innovation and entrepreneurial skills can be exercised would fan the individuals’ aspirations bringing out the best in them. This would reflect in their ability to perform better thereby impacting the organisation positively. Some smart managers pay attention to maintaining good relations with such individuals for future references. After all, history has it that entrepreneurs are celebrated the world over.

What next?

Having identified individuals with an entrepreneurial drive, the organisation would now have to give them the ‘ownership and satisfaction’ opportunity. How does an organisation cater to this need? It does so by developing intrepreneuring skills in such employees.

What’s the good word?

“Intrapreneuring is the process of encouraging employees to initiate and manage new ventures or improvements within the organisation.” Intrapreneurs closely resemble entrepreneurs. They are the hands-on doers who turn ideas into realities inside the organisation. The intrepreneurial process synergises individual aspirations with organisational objectives. When organisations create a culture, which allows individuals to satisfy their entrepreneurial itch without leaving the organisation intrapreneurs are born!

The lamenting lot!

Common exit interview remarks and retirement announcements are, “I’m leaving in search of something more.” “I’m leaving to start my own business.” The underlying message is rather clear. These individuals look for more than a paycheque at the end of their workday. They desire for opportunities where they can establish, nurture and hold responsibility for their work. When the HR department develops intrapreneurial skills in such individuals it provides them:

• Reasons to stay on
• Challenges that helps tap their potential
• Autonomy and leadership opportunities

The key to the success of any intraprenuerial initiative is to see that the new idea or an improvement venture fits into the organisational framework. While allowing employees to exhibit their entrepreneurial talent, organisations must ensure that the ‘new division’ complements its functioning.

The other angle

Not all employees desire to branch out and do something on their own. Infact most of them are not even ready for such opportunities within the organisation, leave alone their own enterprises. Managers should nevertheless remember that while these individuals are not ready to take on responsibilities they are ready to leave the organisation when denied the opportunity! Therefore, intrapreneuring is the safest way out!

Intrapreneurs at work

IHS Support Solutions started of as IHS Helpdesk Services company. It provided on-site services. A young employee whom the management had already identified as one with great potential suggested, “Why not provide 24/7 phone service as well? That way people looking for help at their client companies would call us and speak to an HIS staff member who would be the first to see if the problem can be resolved. This staffer can then determine whether the person on call should disturb the client.

This new division can be hired by clients to be their on-call persons".

The management promoted the idea. IHS has now diversified to providing help desk staffers both on-site and to various clients and organisations. The young employee stayed on to head the new division. This illustrates how the entrepreneurial desires of individuals can be successfully teamed with existing organisational framework. Texas Instruments is another organisation that is running high on its intrapreneurial successes.

A study of fifty of its new products revealed that:

• Intrapreneurs persisted despite obstacles
• Every failure lacked a dedicated intrapreneur
• Innovations were on the decline till someone donned the intrapreneurial role

Training intrapreneurs

Most training managers believe that intraprenuers are born not made. But a marked improvement in individuals post intrapreneurial training tells a different story!

Most organisations provide training in intrapreneurship only to those who volunteer! The assumption is that only those who are courageous enough to volunteer can succeed as intrapreneurs. Training success is partly because these individuals look around the training room and realise, “My goodness, there are other people like me in this world and it seems that the corporation is really serious now about wanting this aspect of me employed.” In other words, training allows these individuals to use a part of their potential that they failed to recognise. Training boosts their drive and vision.

An intrapreneur possesses complementary skills. He needs to be knowledgeable HRD, finance, sales, marketing and quality control. Training is crucial if these skills are missing.

Getting started

An organisation needs to develop an environment, which supports individuals with new ideas. To encourage intrapreneurial initiatives organisations should:

• Identify individuals with new ideas and risk taking abilities
• Look for ways to retain then from the start as such people are most likely to leave
• Provide opportunities to develop their strengths and work on their weaknesses
• Align individual goals with organisational objectives
• Ask the most-likely-to-leave employee what would make him stay- he might take on the ownership of his idea and stay on!
• Implement and support ideas whenever possible

Career development opportunities is one of the first ‘carrots’ organisations offer bright employees. Developing intrapreneurial skills in employees not only keeps talent in the organisation, it also keeps them satisfied and happy.

Reference:
The ManageMentor

Wooing a Smart Employee?

Trap the Ocean in your Puddle.

Wooing a smart employee away from a large company to join your startup can be tough, challenging but rewarding. This is how you should go about it.

In the early 80s, Steve Jobs asked John Sculley, the then president of PepsiCo, whether he wanted to continue selling sugared water all his life or change the world. Jobs was looking for a man to run his little computer company. He saw a man with the skill set needed to market his dream and he went all out to get him bite the Apple. All big companies are full of people who are firmly ensconced in fancy positions but are thirsty for a bigger challenge. The extreme comfort at the top of the corporate ladder can sometimes be suffocating to entrepreneurial people. They are looking for one chance, one compelling argument and one opportunity to create something from the ground up and they’ll quit their jobs.

On the other side, is the startup business that has a wonderful idea that is beginning to work. Now is the time to scale up and manage growth. It needs top-notch managers who will own the company’s fate and show enough dedication to stay with it irrespective of the modest initial benefits.

Put the two together and a success story unveils itself. But a startup has to be careful not to bite what it can’t chew. Done carefully, the hiring can be rewarding to both sides. The very first precaution, of course, is not to choose the wrong guy. An unfit candidate who can’t adjust to a startup environment can actually prove downright fatal for the small company. A venture capitalist, who did not wish to be named, drew from his experience and said, “We once hired a highly qualified and extremely focused CIO for one of our companies. In fact, he was so focused that he was a bad team player. He would end up working alone a lot. A lot of people started quitting because they just couldn’t work in that environment. And they would tell us, during the exit interview, very candidly that it was the CIO’s fault. So not only do you have a senior person who is not performing, but you also have performers who stop performing.”

Sanjay Anandaram, a founding member of Jumpstartup and adjunct professor at INSEAD, Singapore, points out that there are certain attributes needed for any position — team spirit, integrity and relevant skill sets. However, a small company identifying a candidate in a large company must check if the person has the self-confidence to give up the comforts of the large organisation. S/he also must cherish the operational freedom the small organisation allows and s/he has to be able to make do with less as the smaller organisation will have a lot less resources at their disposal.

A person who recently made the move from handling a large-scale operation to a company with revenues a tenth its size, is Manoj Dawane, the current CEO of Mauj. Until earlier this year, he was handling Bharti‘s telecom operations in western Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal. In that region, over 2,000 people reported to him in some way or the other, while in Mauj, the number tightens to a mere 150. He says, “The biggest comfort that you leave behind in a large well-oiled company is the systems that are in place. Here the systems need to be created.” The comforts of the club privileges that his former employer provided were also left behind.

He says he gave these up for a fresh dose of adrenaline that can come only from growing a small company. He got his first fix of this earlier this decade when he ran a company called Net Decisions. He adds, “Even if it is a general managerial role with a large breadth of operations, in a large organisation you are put into a matrix-like structure.” He says that with a company like this, he gets to run a business end-to-end.

Given that the smaller company would have far fewer people than the previous employer, the candidate needs to ready take on jobs that one performed at the beginning of the career. As s/he grew within the organisation, s/he will have to take on work that got delegated to juniors. “It is important that the candidate fits into the ‘execution’ mindset as opposed to the ‘managerial’ mindset. They now have to take on a contributor role more than the managerial role,” says Manik Arora, managing director of IDG Ventures India.

This means that the candidate needs to be ready to work the 15 hours a day that they did when they started out, as that is the attention a start-up needs. Considering the high stress-levels of the start-up, very few who have crossed age 40 take it up. VCs and entrepreneurs say that the ideal age for a potential core team member is from their late 20s to their mid 30s. “Sometimes we do hire people with over 20 years of work experience. In this case we need to see if they are okay with reporting to a CEO who is younger than them,” says Alok Mittal, managing director of Canaan Partners. In the 40s, the average Indian usually has a family to tend to and is coasting in their careers. There is a need for stability at this point of their lives.

“Sometimes we find a senior person who has nothing to lose as they are in a secure place,” says Rahul Khanna of Clearstone Ventures, adding, “This person is in such a high position that they simply have to oversee the operations. They are not really doing much. These people want to make a difference. For instance, the rush of going from 0 to 40 million users of a cellular operator is high. The rush of taking it from 50 million to 100 million is far less. There are people that you can tip over, but they need to be near that tipping point themselves. It is difficult to approach a person who is in the thick of a battle and woo them out of that.”

People who have always been steeped in a large organisation as an employee are highly unlikely to leave their current set up for a start-up. These sort of people are also lower down on the preference list of VCs and headhunters. “In my experience, we look for people who have worked in large as well as small companies. It is preferred if they have been part of a start-up before. If they’ve come from a large company it needn’t have been a start-up, but they should have been part of growing the company significantly,” says Mr Mittal.

Increasingly venture capitalists want to see the potential candidates show their belief in the venture. “One way to test if a person is in line with the vision of the company is to give them equity and have them settle for a lower salary. It is a signal that the person is interested with the long-term success of the company,” says Mr Arora. When a candidate is willing to do this, it is almost a sure shot that he believes his role growing the company, can pay him back greater than a salary could afford.

Mr Khanna says: “The DNA we are looking for is someone who understands the trade-off between cash and a stake.” These sort of people see money as a derivative of their work, and not the other way around says Mr Anandaram.

Seeking out these sort of people can be done through referrals, head hunters, or through ones own phone book. Mr Khanna cautions that many times startups move so fast that “people hastily pull people out of their network of contacts. That’s one way of going about it. The other way, which I feel is the better option, is to write out a detailed job description and look for the person accordingly.” The ideal option is to get someone who has worked with the current team before.

Article Resource:

Jacob Cherian is the Chief Editor in the The Economic Times, Mumbai and the article appeared in one of their successful columns on Entrepreneurship/Start-ups called "Starship Enterprise".

Building A Core Team.

START-UPS NEED TO WAKE UP TO THE IMPORTANCE OF BUILDING A CORE TEAM

It’s the quality and performance of the top few executives that decide the success of any new business, says S Srinivasan

FOUR months ago, Bangalore-based optical networking company, Tejas Networks, staged a coup of sorts by roping in 46-yearold Rangnath Salgame as its president. Mr Salgame had made his name by developing a $1 billion business in India for global networking giant Cisco. Technology industry veterans were surprised to see him move to a company with revenues of less than $100 million.

Mr Salgame had then said he was surrendering to his entrepreneurial impulse and the temptation to build a product company out of India. Tejas was lauded for getting a visionary leader for its core team. The next news, many expected to hear from the small company, was how it had crossed another revenue milestone.

But, the news that came out of Bangalore was different and stunned the industry. Mr Salgame suddenly quit Tejas under conditions that neither he nor the company explained. His profile was removed from the company website and Mr Salgame was tight-lipped. A job that was negotiated over a year crumbled in just 16 weeks. Was it a clash of vision, a clash of personalities or a systemic defect at Tejas? But one thing was clear: the core team that Tejas was putting together failed to stick together.

The incident highlighted how difficult it is even for a company, with a solid grounding, to build and keep a core team. For a startup, the difference between success and failure is primarily the result of the quality of its few top champions and their collective endeavour. But entrepreneurs often grapple with issues within this small group and lose much energy that could otherwise be spent on building the business.

“Some entrepreneurs think they need to know and do everything. This is wrong,” says business mentor Saurabh Srivastava, who has proven his team-building skills at a number of technology companies and also in the founding of software trade body, Nasscom. He says it is not practical for a business executive to have all the skills and strengths required to take a start-up to success. A small team with common beliefs is a key necessity.

Founders must evaluate their strengths and weaknesses objectively before deciding to build a core team, he says. This exercise will expose the gaps that must be filled and the areas that must be reinforced. MS Pillai, founder of Sadhana Centre for Management and Leadership Development, says that many great businesses have failed for want of a cohesive top team. “You may be anybody. But without collaboration, without mutual dependence within a small group of people with complementary strengths, it is extremely difficult for you to achieve lasting success,” he adds.

A human resource expert, who specialises in senior executive search, said one-man shows may be good enough to achieve the proof-of-concept in a business, but a core team, often with skills brought from outside, is necessary for the firm to move to the next level. “As an entrepreneur, you may be the initiator of business. But it is not the rule that you must be the leader too. The leader can be another person in your team,” explains founder chairman of Executive Recruiters Association and Sampoorna Computer People managing director Satish Doshi.

Many first-time business dreamers start with the support of family and friends. It is a natural choice for those who start operating out of their homes. This strategy has both positives and negatives, experts say. The founder can use a family member, who will fill up a talent gap and communication will be easy between them, but personal relationships and professional co-existence can weigh heavily against each other, they say. So, what are the golden rules of core-team building?

FINALISE MEMBERSHIP

Entrepreneurs must draw up a list of the most crucial skills necessary for the business and assign job positions to them, experts say. For instance, writers and creative talent may be crucial for a content company, but back-end process management may be the one crucial aspect for a travel agency. So, having a clear list of priority skills is the first step. The talent mix must be individually intensive and collectively exhaustive.

SET INSPIRING GOALS

Any business idea has to be larger-than-life and even slightly unrealistic, says Mr Doshi. If a business idea was easily achievable, why would anybody want to do it? A core team comes together when there is a larger purpose they all want to serve together. A lack of this inspiration will make it impossible to attract outside talent and may eventually lead to the company straying into unimportance.

SHARE AUTHORITY AND OWNERSHIP

If an entrepreneur builds a core team and then decides to keep all the strings in his palms, his colleagues will feel under-used and lose their connection with the company’s vision. The attitude to keep all the profits and all the power to oneself has destroyed many business aspirants. “The question is simple. Do you want to have full control over a small pie or part-control of a larger pie, where that part is significantly larger than the small pie?” asks Mr Doshi.

HAVE A CLEAR LEADER

Many entrepreneurs assume they are the leader for their business. Experts say this need not be the case. The best entrepreneur hires people better than him or her and lets them direct the journey. This would lead to a situation where there could be multiple leaders within the team. The issue must be quickly resolved and one person assigned the task of leading the core team.

SET CLEAR RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Great teams fail to deliver when they start quarrelling over a decision here or a plan there. Mr Doshi feels before the team starts its first discussion, the ground rules must be set on how the members are going to work together. It must be made clear that all criticisms and suggestions are welcome and none would be taken personally. Mr Pillai says there have been start-ups, where family members got together with good intention, but suffered a fracture in their relationships due to workplace stress. Complaints about some member not contributing enough or another taking advantage of the business abound in such enterprises, he says.

ACHIEVE ENTREPRENEUR-PROFESSIONAL MIX

All core teams have to start with high entrepreneurial focus, taking calculated risks and being flexible to move fast. But as the business begins to grow, there is an immediate need to put systems and processes in place. Professional managers free the entrepreneur’s time so that he can focus on the long-term strategy. Businesses often go haywire when they fail to bring in the discipline of professional management, Mr Pillai says. “A professional in a start-up team must be the personification of an entrepreneur himself. The professional need not have a Harvard-qualification, but must have passion to create something new.”

BE REALISTIC

When hiring an outsider, it is important to understate the benefits of being in your team, because over-promising will lead to failure and frustration, experts say. Mr Doshi says it is a good idea to leave a positive surprise, such as a better title, company-paid house or a training programme, open and unsaid at the beginning. People will like them that much better if they earn it for their performance.

Even after all this, it is possible that a core member could leave. It is a contingency that a start-up must learn to tackle, but the larger question the entrepreneur must address is whether it was because there’s something wrong with the business. “If the dream had been sold and the partner dropped everything to join you but still left midway, then something may be going drastically wrong. You must ask yourself if you are being fair as a leader. Are you tolerating competing agendas? Are you not able to give direction? Are you not able to resolve conflict?” says Mr Doshi.

Article Resource:
Author: Srinivasan S. is the Chief Editor in the The Economic Times, Mumbai and the article appeared in one of their successful columns on Entrepreneurship/Start-ups called "Starship Enterprise".

Unleash the innovator within

Unleash the innovator within

Five key ways to unleash the hidden potential for innovative thinking in your business and achieve high levels of success:

THINK TWO GENERATIONS AHEAD

Envision your company 50 or even 100 years from now, even if you don’t foresee your product or service lasting that long. Such forward-looking reflection creates an umbrella for long-term innovation to occur. Working back from your 50-or 100-year vision plan in 10-year increments, ask and answer the critical “who, what, where, when, why and how” questions about your business. For instance, who will your target demographic be; what will your core products and business focus be; where will your office(s) and facilities be located ; when will key business milestones be achieved, why will your business matter 10, 15 or 50 years from now and how are you going to achieve your business goals.

CONFRONT & PARTNER WITH THE UNCONSCIOUS

Experts suggest that of all the experiences, knowledge and data stored in our minds, we are only “conscious” of and actively use just 10% of it. The other 90% resides in our “unconscious” — it’s this part of our mind we can tap into for valuable insights daily. For the next 21 days, write one paragraph about some aspect of your leadership process that you want to improve. The more you write about a problem, the more you’ll tap your unconscious for innovative ideas about solving it.

AIM TO INCREASE ENERGY, NOT JUST EFFICIENCY

Do a quick energy audit of your employees to understand what energises them and fuels their personal growth. If you understand what energises them, you’ll be able to implement actions that motivate your employees and increase productivity. Ask every employee to identify the three things that energise him or her the most about their jobs. Also ask them to identify the things they’re not currently doing that would energise them. Then match your employees to the energising activities that best fit their talents and skills and needs. Also ask your staff to identify the three things that steal their energy. Help your management team reduce the activities that de-energise the workplace.

ESTABLISH THE FREEDOM TO INNOVATE

Creativity drives change. So tap into your employees’ intuitive side by ritualising “ingenuity time” on the job. Utilising creative techniques can often help people see issues more clearly. Set aside enough money for your team to compete for an industry-related contest. It will keep your top people on their toes. Encourage people to draw a diagram or depiction of their business problem or challenge in the form of a character or situation. Then ask that they sketch the conclusion they envision that would resolve the matter. Seeing their problem put to life often helps people envision the best solution.

START TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

Any problem you’re directly involved and which you wish to solve requires reflection on your role and responsibility related to that problem. While you may not be the primary cause of the problem, reflecting on your role will help you better understand and acknowledge how you may have contributed to it. When you have a problem employee, start the fix by asking yourself: “What changes do I have to make in myself to help this person perform better?” You may not always identify something that needs changing, but the mere matter of asking and spending some time on reflecting will make you a better leader.

Reference:
(Adapted from http://www.entrepreneur.com/ )

Eight Costly Marketing Mistakes.

Eight Costly Marketing Mistakes

MARKETING ONLY IN THE SLOW TIMES

To grow your business, you need an ongoing, targeted marketing programme you can manage year-round along with the day-to-day demands of your new business. One mistake start-up entrepreneurs often make is to put marketing on the back burner and focus exclusively on the few customers they’ve got. Marketing only during the slow times dooms you to living on an economic roller coaster.

FAILING TO FOCUS

Often, start-up marketers fail because they try to tackle too many types of prospects on a limited, start-up budget. Going after everyone who will listen is a shortcut to failure. On the flip side, when you narrowly focus your marketing efforts on a qualified target audience, you’ll get spectacular results.

OVERLOOKING TESTING AND RESEARCH

So you think millions of people will want to buy your product or service. What makes you so sure? Before committing lots of cash to launching your new business, do some market research. The internet is your best source of published information. You can test the market using surveys. Testing can keep you from making costly mistakes based on false assumptions about your product, service or customers.

RELYING ON JUST ONE OR TWO TACTICS

It’s only natural to rely on the marketing tactics you’re most comfortable with. If you like meeting and talking to new people, you may focus on networking. If you’re shy, on the other hand, you might rely solely on direct mail. Such singlemindedness is a major marketing mistake because it prevents you from exposing a full range of prospects to your message.

UNDERSPENDING ON MARKETING

It’s just as important to set aside marketing funds as it is to budget for tools you’re going to need to run your business. If you go to a bank for financing, you’ll be expected to show the banker your marketing budget — because without marketing, there’s very little chance you’ll be able to repay your loan. Even if you’re funding your company without help from a bank or other lender, you need to follow the same guidelines.

FAILING TO PRESENT A PROFESSIONAL IMAGE

Your marketing materials sell your company image to the world. To be successful, you need a cohesive family of tools that stand up to those of even your largest competitors. If you hand out shoddy, poorly produced marketing materials to prospects, don’t expect to be picked for plum jobs. Also be aware of how your company ‘sounds’ when prospects call.

IGNORING CURRENT CUSTOMERS

As your business grows, you may become so focused on getting new customers that you overlook current customers. That is a major mistake, since it generally costs more to win a new customer than to ‘resell’ to an existing one.

OVERLOOKING WHAT TECH CAN DO FOR YOU

Contact management software and e-mail marketing are just two options that can streamline your marketing efforts and improve your productivity. Without a good contact management programme, business contacts may be lost and call-backs missed. Don’t overlook these valuable tools that can help your business grow.

Reference:
(Source: Microsoft Small Business Center)

Biggest Customer Service Blunders .

While howls of protest over poor customer service continue to be heard worldwide, there remain some businesses that manage to consistently deliver superior customer service year in and year out. Foremost among the lessons to be learned from such flashpoint businesses are the blunders to avoid — those fatal mistakes that trip up just about everybody else.

MAKING CUSTOMER SERVICE A TRAINING ISSUE

Businesses of all kinds invest huge amounts of money in training programmes that do not — and simply cannot — work. The function of such training is to identify the behaviours workers are supposed to engage in, and then coax, bully or legislate these behaviours into the workplace. At best, this is almost always a recipe for conduct that feels mechanised and insincere; at worst, it intensifies employee resentment and cynicism. Instead of dictating what your employees should be doing to delight customers, the better approach is to give your workers opportunities to brainstorm their own ideas for delivering delight. Your role then becomes to help employees implement these ideas and to allow workers to savor the motivational effect of the positive feedback that ensues from delighted customers.

BLAMING POOR SERVICE ON EMPLOYEE ‘DEMOTIVATION’

Businesses looking for ways to motivate their workers are almost always looking in the wrong places. Employee cynicism is the direct product of an organisation’s visible preoccupation with self-interest above all else—a purely internal focus. The focus in flashpoint businesses is directed outward, toward the interests of customers and the community at large. This shift in cultural focus changes the way the business operates at all levels. The reality in most business settings is that employees are demotivated because they can’t deliver delight. The existing policies and procedures make it impossible. Instead of “fixing” their employees, flashpoint business set out to build a culture that unblocks them.

USING CUSTOMER FEEDBACK TO UNCOVER WHAT’S WRONG

Businesses often use surveys and other feedback mechanisms to get to the root causes of customer problems and complaints. Employees come to dread these measurement and data-gathering efforts, since they so often lead to what feels like witch-hunts for employee scapegoats, formal exercises in finger pointing and the assigning of blame. Flashpoint businesses use customer feedback very differently. In these companies, the object is to uncover everything that’s going right. Managers are forever on the lookout for “hero stories”— examples of employees going the extra mile to deliver delight. Such feedback becomes the basis for ongoing recognition and celebration. Employees see themselves as winners on a winning team, because in their workplace, there’s always some new “win” being celebrated.

RESERVING TOP RECOGNITION FOR SPLASHY RECOVERIES

It happens all the time: Something goes terribly wrong in a customer order or transaction, and a dedicated employee goes to tremendous lengths to make things right. The delighted customer brings this employee’s wonderful recovery to management’s attention, and the employee receives special recognition for his or her efforts. This is a blunder? It is when such recoveries are the primary—if not the only—catalysts for employee recognition. In such a culture, foul-ups become almost a good thing from the workers’ point of view. By creating opportunities for splashy recoveries, foul-ups represent the only chance employees have to feel appreciated on the job. Attempts to correct operational problems won’t win much support if employees see these problems as their only opportunity to shine. Flashpoint businesses celebrate splashy recoveries, of course — but they’re also careful to uncover and celebrate employee efforts to delight customers where no mistakes or problems were involved.

Reference:
ENTREPRENEUR.COM

Brand building’s key to LONG-TERM SUCCESS

Becoming An Entrepreneur Is Nice, But Building A Brand Is Quite Special.

How Early Should Start-Ups Seek To Build Brands.

BRAND building started on day one for Riyaaz Amlani’s new venture six years ago. His Mocha coffee shop chain wanted to differentiate itself from others, which Amlani thought had followed the Starbucks template faithfully. He spent several weeks planning nuances such as the quantity of the dessert scoop and the mix ‘n’ match of furniture. He designed the whole project with a belief that a coffee shop is not a restaurant, but a place for socialising. All this got early visitors talking about how different the experience was. And Mocha had got its brand baptism.

On the other hand, Internet portal Sulekha.com didn’t begin a brand-building exercise until this year, though it had started as early as 2001. The company focused on developing a critical mass of users and let growth come from word-of-mouth. Unlike the flashy dotcoms that rose and fell during the bubble, Sulekha conserved cash for operations.

Start-up companies often grapple with the dilemma — whether to build a brand or not? While a strong brand equity can bring enormous value to the company, it also requires a large commitment of capital and management energy early on. Many businessmen wonder if they aren’t too small to attempt brand building or whether they can afford it.

Experts say new businesses should start planning for brand building as early as possible. For some, it might start at the pre-product stage, while some others would have to wait till they establish the core attributes of their product or service offerings. But, failure to build a brand and to start investing in it at the right time can bleed the company of much of its potential, experts say.

“A company should start building its brand, stagewise, as soon as it has validated its core,” says Harshal Shah of Reliance Technology Ventures. He says this ‘core’ comprises the team’s values, experiences and capabilities. For instance, when Steve Jobs started Apple in the mid-1970s, the computer industry was dominated by stuffed shirt veterans dealing in complex mainframes. Those who saw Jobs roaming about his office barefoot and in frayed jeans would have suspected he was going to convert the mighty computer into a gadget for everyone. And that’s exactly what he did. Today, the Apple brand enjoys a cult following as it stands for innovation and fun.

A strong brand is a profitable asset. People pay far beyond the manufacturing costs and nominal profit margins for products they recognise, trust and enjoy consuming. For an early stage company, it helps in defining the product to both potential customers and its own employees. It tells buyers that this company is investing for the long term, it will be around tomorrow and it will repeat the performance. Internally, it tells the team members that the entrepreneur stands for certain values which must be reflected in every action that they undertake.

Products without a clear brand definition eventually lose their direction, recognition and value. They will turn into commodities that will be bought from the cheapest vendor without a quality promise.

The identity of a brand flows from the organisational culture, experts say. It is the essence of the attributes of the offering, that will be consistently performed every time a customer experiences it. It is not mere advertising, nor even just marketing, but a clear recall in the consumer’s mind of all that a product or a service stands for. “Any moron can put an ad in the paper. Communication is the easy part. The process of communicating and then delivering on a promise builds the brand,” says Sanjay Anandaram of Jumpstartfund, who is also a visiting faculty at INSEAD.

But when does the core get validated? Shah says it typically is about a month from the starting day, but can vary depending upon the resources available and the opportunity at hand. For travel portal Yatra.com, which started selling to consumers before tapping business customers, the validation happened even before it started, he says. “When Yatra came to us for funding, we looked at a lot of other companies to understand the space. We found that these other companies didn’t have experience in the travel business. (But Yatra’s founders) came out of the travel industry and therefore had the domain experience and customer knowledge.”

With some companies, the first big customer win can propel a company into the branded league. Further customer wins become easier as a satisfied first buyer will provide the testimony. For WiMAX equipment supplier Telsima, such an opportunity came in the form of Reliance Communications. Shah says Telsima experienced its Big Bang moment with such a top name becoming its customer and there has no looking back since then.

The key to brand building is promising exactly what the business can deliver and delivering exactly what it has promised. Every time. From employee behaviour in front of customers to the words chosen for advertisement copy, every interaction that a company undertakes with the target audience defines, embellishes or destroys the brand. “Every interaction also gives an indicator. If a company promises to deliver on the next day and if they don’t, it is an immediate indicator,” says Baazee.com founder Avnish Bajaj, who has now turned a venture capitalist with Matrix Partners.

So, it is a good idea for a start-up to make sure that its product works well and is ready for brand-building. “You do not want to start brand building and then if your product doesn’t work, you will lose your customer and s/he won’t come back,” Praveen Gandhi of Seedfund cautions.

Once an early-stage company decides to invest in brand-building, the first step would be to define its own genome and go about imprinting it on its products. R Ramaraj, who steered Internet company Sify in the early days of access business, says: “Our core was to encourage an innovative environment.” Having taken this decision, the company went about encouraging that culture within the organisation. “After all, we were one of the first Internet companies. We had to be innovative as there weren’t enough role models.“ Today, Sify is not only a large access company, but a complete content and telecom services provider.

In Santa Cruz, a Mumbai suburb, sits a little company that has no fixed work timings. People play computer games when they want to and the company gives an X-box 360 to their most successful business partners. During their quarterly off-site gatherings, they spend half the day playing football and basketball. This is a gaming company and their theme is “Play together”. Quentin Staes Polet, co-founder and CEO of Kreeda Games, says ‘playing’ is part of Kreeda’s core and the brand values flow from it.

Quite often, entrepreneurs fail to recognise such intrinsic values that will help a company win against competition and provide a lasting value to customers. “The lack of value creation is because people don’t know what to focus on,” brand consultant Ramesh Jude Thomas says. In other words, value creation is the eventual goal. Those who don’t see this and claim to focus just on growth are wasting their time.
The next step, of course, is to ‘live’ the values that a newborn brand claims to represent and communicate to the audience that the same results can be expected in all the transactions. Promod Haque of Norwest Venture Partners gives an example: “One of our portfolio companies based in San Antonio is called Rack Space. They provide web hosting services. The management of this company calls their customer support “fanatical support”. Here, the brand of the company and the company culture are intertwined. It is drilled into their employees that they will provide fanatical support.”

Infosys Technologies, the oft-cited example for entrepreneurship, enjoys arguably the best brand name among Indian software services providers. One of the chief attributes of its brand was its ability to bridge the cultural gap between the East and West. Early on, it focused on training its employees to understand the finer points of Western culture and conduct themselves accordingly while working on customers’ sites. This, eventually, has got it better billing rates than other Indian companies.

Longevity and profits in the long term are a good reason for early brand building.

Article Resource:
Author: Jacob Cherian is the Chief Editor in the The Economic Times, Mumbai and the article appeared in one of their successful columns on Entrepreneurship/Start-ups called "Starship Enterprise".

Now this is What I call Innovation!!!

Brand Logos

I am not sure how many of you have noticed a hidden symbol in the Federal Express logo:

Yeah, I am talking about the 'arrow' that you can see between the E and the x in this logo. The arrow was introduced to underscore speed and precision, which are part of the positioning of the company.

The SUN Microsystems logo is a wonderful example of symmetry and order. It was a brilliant observation that the letters u and n while arranged adjacent to each other look a lot like the letter S in a perpendicular direction. Spectacular.

The above logo is for an editing studio. I like the way the logo attempts to convey what they do.

The above are two magazines from the Readers Digest stable. Again, the attempt to communicate what it is about quite figuratively through the logo catches my attention.

I liked this logo of a hair stylist for the cheeky humour it brings to the (dressing) table.

This was a logo created for a puzzle game called Cluenatic. This game involves unravelling four clues. The logo has the letters C, L, U and E arranged as a maze. and from a distance, the logo looks like a key.

This logo is too good. For the name Eight, they have used a font in which each letter is a minor adaptation of the number 8.

Eighty-20 is a small consulting company which does sophisticated financial modeling, as well as some solid database work. All their work is highly quantitative and relies on some serious computational power, and the logo is meant to convey it.

People first guess that 20% of the squares are darkened, but that turns out to be false after counting them. The trick is to view the dark squares as 1's and the light squares as 0's. Then the top line reads 1010000 and the bottom line reads 0010100, which represent 80 and 20 in binary. Eighty-20 is a small consulting company which does sophisticated financial modeling, as well as some solid database work. All their work is highly quantitative and relies on some serious computational power, and the logo is meant to convey it.

Kinda like the surreal green screen of The Matrix, they want us to read stuff in binary.

This was a logo designed in-house for some internal event at IBM. I like that they are quite relaxed about the logo, unlike certain other companies who do not like the logo to be tampered with in any way even for internal promotions.

You might think the arrow does nothing here. But it says that amazon.com has everything from a to z and it also represents the smile brought to the customer's face. Wow, that is quite deep.