Finally Mobile

My UAE licence lapsed in 1998 soon after I left Dubai for India. When I returned to the UAE in 2009 I assumed that my old UAE licence could be renewed and that I need not appear again for the notoriously difficult road tests in the UAE.

Much to my horror I was told that since my licence had lapsed more than 10 years ago I would need to appear for a fresh road test. The road test was scheduled to take place at the RTA office located on the campus of the Emirates Driving Institute.

Not wanting to take any chances, I enrolled for 8 classes at the EDI – reckoning that my chances of clearing the road test at EDI would be higher if I took some driving lessons at the EDI.

Despite this, I flunked – or was flunked. The examiner indicated that I need to take another 8 classes at the EDI before I could appear for a re-test.

Fortunately in the re-test carried out a week later I cleared the re-test – and now am a proud holder of a UAE driving licence.

I cannot describe the relief that I felt on clearing the road test. At one point after flunking the 1st test (and I consider myself a pretty experienced driver having driven in different parts of the world), I had lost all semblance of self-confidence.

When a person believes that he is very good at something, and then somebody tells him that he is not good at it, then it does result in a crisis situation.   This is true in life - whether in one's career or in simpler aspects such as driving.

All I can say is that I am a lot more humble now after this experience.  Humble is good.

Starting All Over Again

I believe some of us are destined to keep starting and restarting our lives constantly.

It has its pleasures and pains - but sometimes the pain overshadows and you wish that you had your old comfort zone back, with everything set and neatly organised.

There was the initial stress regarding school admissions - that fortunately was amicably resolved.

Currently I am struggling to get my driving licence in the UAE.  Cannot drive around, and need to depend on Taxis - not a situation I relish.  Ultimately I know this too will pass.

I knew that restarting our life peridically has its share of pain and trauma - but I wonder what is that makes guys like me forget the pain involved while taking the decision to move on.

Perhaps if people only remember the pain associated with a move to a new situation/location, then not many people would venture out - that seems to be the only explanation I have right now.

At the moment though I am quite envious of those guys who are quite content and happy being where they are!

Elasticity

It was about time for the train to leave the Railway station. People who had come to see off their guests were clustered around on the platform near the train - engaged in last minute chatter before the train left the platform.

The station bell sounded – and the train started to move slowly. Some people continued to walk along with the slowly moving train bidding their final good byes to the passengers.

A person standing on the platform in the shadows suddenly darted forward and started running towards one of the compartments with his arm stretched out. It seemed as if he had forgotten to hand-over some stuff to his friend on the train.

His hand went straight at the neck of the plump lady sitting near the window. She was wearing a heavy looking necklace – and it was obvious what the person was trying to grab.

His hand went around it and he pulled, all the time running alongside the train that was rapidly gaining in speed.

The lady screamed, and tried to ward off the chain snatcher – but he had got a firm grip, and started pulling with all his strength.

The tug-of-war continued for a full 30 seconds with the chain snatcher now running at terrific speed beside the train - huffing and puffing – but still refusing to let go of his prized catch. The lady continued to hold on tightly. The other passengers were too shocked to react.

Suddenly the chain snatcher realized he had lost the battle – he could not run any faster or any longer with the train – and the necklace for some strange reason was not yielding despite all his repeated and forceful tugs at it.

He let go, and ran off into the bushes at the edge of the platform.

The bra strap of the lady recoiled back with a loud sound. His hand had missed the necklace and had instead got hold of the lady’s bra strap.

The lady sat back – happy that she had not lost her necklace – but embarrassed at the way the events unfolded.

The shell-shocked passengers too sat back – relieved, but with an amused expression on their faces.

Little is known about the feelings of the chain-snatcher. There is honour even among chain-snatchers – and it is likely that he retired from his profession not being able to bear the taunts of his fellow professionals.

How is the MR industry different from the Airline industry?

The fact is that the MR industry is very similar to the troubled airline industry. It is a difficult comparison to swallow. We have a high Fixed cost component like the airline industry - basically trained people whose salaries have to be paid, investments in systems, communication equipment etc. These Fixed cost component cannot be easily changed/reduced to reflect changes in business situation.

How about a comparison with the hotel industry? After all the hotel industry too has a high Fixed cost structure - but has been reasonably successful in consistently maintaining high margins.

I think the difference between the hotel industry and the airline industry is that the airline industry relies only on ticket fares for its revenue source i.e. it has only a single source of revenue. The hotel industry - in addition to its basic room tariff - also provides Value added service (such as food, laundry, business desk etc) and actually charge the clients for it. In other words it has multiple sources of revenue, and uses every opportunity to provide VAS and actually charge clients for it. That is the reason why the hotel industry has remained relatively profitable.

The MR industry too should start genuinely providing value added services on each project - and charge clients for that service (in addition to the usual project fee). Until the MR industry starts actually DOING this (rather than just talking about it), we are destined to go the same way as the airline industry.

Incidentally, the airline industry is now trying to emulate the hotel industry - witness the fact that on most airlines passengers now need to purchase food on the aircraft. But I wonder whether this model will work for airlines when they have tampered with the basic bread and butter revenue source i.e. the ticket fares. How can the airline make up for the lost revenue when it is selling seats at Rs 1 on certain sectors?

Why the Market Research industry is into the volume game

Currently I am reading an interesting book on Financial Management - sort of brushing up my basics in Finance.

One of the chapters that caught my attention was on Cost Structures of an organisation/industry.

What it basically states is that industries that have a high Fixed cost structure need to play the volume game to survive i.e. constantly push up volumes. Industries that have a high Variable cost structure can play the margin game i.e. chose to turn down business if the margins are not attractive enough.

Examining the cost structures of the MR industry, it is obvious that the MR industry has a high Fixed cost structure - anywhere from 60 - 75%. Which explains why despite so much talk about pushing up margins, the MR industry has always been pursuing a volume game - constantly under-cutting each other, picking up any business that comes in - so long as it covers the direct cost and contributes to the fixed cost.

For me reading the book was an eye-opener - and helped explain why despite the noble talk of raising margins, the industry still plays the volume game.

The Delight Factor

A colleague of mine returned to Bangalore after a visit to his home-town Delhi. While talking about a colleague he had met in our Delhi office, he mentioned that “she is a delight – an absolute delight”.

What took place was a dialogue that Wodehouse would have been proud of:

I : What? You said she is a delight?

He : yes, absolutely …..

I : but what makes you say so?

He : because she is …… I know for a fact….
I : but what makes her a delight? For instance, am I a delight?
He : Of course not, you are not a delight, everybody knows that …
I (now positively miffed) : Oh really?

He : yes, everybody knows you are a South Indian …..

Recognition dawns …..

I : oh …. You meant she is a Delhi- ite?
He : yes, people from Delhi are called Delights.
I (with an embarrassed smile) : oh, now I understand ……
Absolutely delightful - no doubt about it!

Quitting At The Top

Today’s papers announced Nandan Nilekani’s decision to quit Infosys - and that he is moving on to lead the National ID card project.

He has become my hero.

It requires exceptional courage for anybody at the top of his game (like Nandan) to quit what he has been very very successful at, and venture into doing something totally new - where the expertise required is totally different, and the chances of failure are high.

But that is what makes such people really great – moving on to new things when they are right at the top – and making people wonder why the decision was taken so soon. Most people would prefer to continue at it until they either gently fade away or where they end up eroding all the halo they had previously built up.

I believe people should quit and move on when they get the “feel” that they have reached the top i.e

- You keep doing the same stuff you were doing a year back – but probably on a bigger scale. In other words qualitatively you have not acquired any new skills although you may be managing greater volumes (And forget cosmetic designation changes)
- you have a bunch of very good talented individuals lined up who are even half-ready to take on your role. You should be proud when people you have mentored step into your role, and you help that process by voluntarily and happily moving on

Most people hang-on in their positions for years. Like some of our cricketers, they believe their best is yet to come – but alas this is usually a self-perpetuated myth. The longer they clutch on to their existing roles, the more insecure and stale they become, and the more incapable they become of moving out of their comfort zone into a different role - either within or outside their current organisation.

I know some friends who justify their decision to keep doing what they have been doing for years by explaining that that is the only thing that they are good at – and that there seem to be no other alternatives (especially in the depressed times of today). Again I believe this is just an excuse to stay in one’s comfort zone.

Enough of preaching – do you think I or you would have the guts to take the plunge into uncharted territory? Would I have the guts to seize unconventional opportunities and risk it all?

Consequences of poorly guided summer interns on Market Research

I take weekend classes on Market Research at one of the premier management institutes in Bangalore. The current batch has started their 2nd term after completing their summer internship. I was looking forward to starting the new round of classes. Teaching these bright minds tend to keep me going and freshens-up my own perspective on various issues of MR.

However, an aspect that I have been steadily observing over several batches is that students return from their summer internships somewhat more cynical and skeptical about the field of MR. This largely happens because most organizations use their summer interns to carry out “quick and cheap” market research. There is very little guidance from the organization on the correct way to carry out MR – so the summer interns basically are left to fend for themselves, and asked to produce the “results”. I was quite horrified to hear of some of the ways in which some large (and apparently MR savvy) organisations had mis-used MR through deploying poorly guided summer interns.

What is happening therefore is that the whole aura that used to exist around the hallowed MR field is rapidly getting tainted as the “to-be-managers of tomorrow” come away with the wrong impression of MR based on their summer internship experience. They come away feeling that MR is a low tech science used to interpret data collected from doing largely bogus fieldwork (with a few exceptions, most of the summer interns admitted to me that they cheated on fieldwork – and that it did not seem to have any impact on the way the findings were received by their guide in the organization).

For me therefore the task is usually difficult in the first few sessions as I need to re-establish their faith in MR and human values. I don’t know how successful I am in my attempt to change perceptions – but it certainly gives me sleepless nights thinking about what impressions the thousands of young management graduates (our future clients) will carry with them about the sanctity and rigour of the MR processes. The value and usefulness of MR has to be sown in the young manager’s minds when they begin their careers so that they will continue to be good clients who appreciate the value of MR for the rest of their professional lives. Unfortunately, at the moment young management trainees – at least quite a few of them - start off in their organizations with the wrong perceptions about the sanctity and value of MR.

As an industry we have been struggling to raise prices. I believe to succeed in this, one of the urgent steps that the MR industry needs to do is to provide some kind of support to summer intership programs in at least the larger organisations - so that the experience, and hence perceptions about MR, is correctly managed.

Industries Under Siege

Today's business newspapers reported that the industry leader in the logistics industry – Fedex – has made a huge loss this year. Apparently the number of consignments that they have been shipping around the world has been slipping continuously due to the steady in-roads by the digital media. With digital signatures in place, most organizations prefer to transmit documents electronically – hence hitting the traditional courier business quite hard.

Last week I was chatting with my cable operator – he mentioned that his revenues are down as most households in our colony have shifted to DTH as it offers clearer receptivity and uninterrupted service. At one point of time I used to think that the cable operator had an unshakeable business model because he was a monopoly operator in our area - the municipality used to allow only 1 cable operator in a particular area to dig up the road and lay the cables.

The other industry which is under siege is the old-world distance education institutes which used to thrive in the last decade by sending across bulky study material printed on paper to students. Most of these institutes (e.g. Brilliant Tutorials) have lost to the newer institutes who now offer on-line courses with the ability to interact with the faculty over webcams while sitting in the comforts of one’s home.

The publishing world – including giants such as the New York Times and Time – has been hemorrhaging for quite some time now – though consumer’s need for information continues to be insatiable. The publishing world actually is in a peculiar situation as they indeed did try to migrate to the digital world – but consumers seemed unwilling to accept the “pay-per-view” model that the large publications experimented with, and the advertising revenues generated in the virtual world by these publications was not sizeable enough to make up for the loss of revenues in the “real” world.

So the need – whether it is for conveying documents from one location to another, or for entertainment, or for distance learning, or for news – has not vanished. Those needs are still there and probably growing stronger. However, those businesses which did not see the impact of technology on their business models and did not change rapidly enough, have lost out in a dramatic manner to nimbler, swifter start-ups working to a different business model.

The Market Research industry – as defined by the venerable giants that define the MR industry today - is at similar cross-roads. Despite being in the information business, most of the large MR agencies have not been able to keep pace with the rapidly evolving consumers. The industry as a whole is still struggling to come to terms with a way to deal with social media – though the need for quick, reliable, cost-effective and integrated information continues to be strong.

My guess is that the next 3 years will be critical in determining the fate of the large agencies as they exist today. The question is whether we can make a rapid and deep enough change – or would we get swamped and throttled by the hordes of KPO and small tech-driven agencies which seem to be mushrooming all over, and seemingly innovating a lot faster.

The jury is out on this one…..

Egypt - Brazil football match

Really enjoyed watching the Egypt-Brazil football match couple of days ago. The Egypt team came 1-3 from behind to equalise at 3-3. Egypt finally lost 3-4 to Brazil, but not before they gave a severe scare to the Brazil team. My son and I were of course rooting for the Egypt team, and both of us were quite crest-fallen when Brazil were awarded the penalty kick. Watching the match on TV reminded us about the Egypt-Congo match in the Africa cup which we had watched live in the huge Cairo stadium 3 years back. The atmosphere was electric and for us Indians it was our first exposure to how intense the atmosphere is in a football match compared to that in a cricket match.

The Characteristics Of Greatness

This is not meant to be a eulogy - just a sincere appreciation of the qualities that make certain individuals stand out from the rest.

Quite a few people have asked me as to why I continue to have such tremendous respect - and liking - for a person who is no longer an active member of the market research industry : Stuart Campbell-Morris (now enjoying his retirement in a sunny locale somewhere).

It is difficult question to answer...

I don't think my admiration and liking for him is just because of his management skills. I have worked with people who have been as good managers as Stuart - though of course Stuart is the person with whom I have worked the longest.

It is not just the fact that I have learnt a lot from Stuart about good Research - how to write well, how to do good qualitative research, and how to handle clients.  I have learnt this from other managers too.

Why Stuart tops my list is because of some rare traits and qualities that he possesses - which unfortunately is now rapidly going out of fashion in today's management world. Some of these being:

- how to lead with fairness (Fairness is easy to profess - difficult to practice)
- being genuinely democratic in the way he led such a large organisation : always ready to listen to a contrarian view-point
- taking pride in understanding and teaching the craft - rather than just seeing it as a source of revenue.

But above all he has a certain humaneness, warmth and "old-world" values that is evident right from the moment you meet him for the first time - whether the way he greets you, the respect he gave to staff regardless of their seniority, and how he tried to understand and respect the individuality of each person that he worked with.

And of course : Humility, and a typical endearing British (Scottish) trait - the self-deprecating sense of humour.

And then it is the nature of 'residual impact' that he leaves - when you feel that you are a better person now after interacting with him. There are a lot of instances in my personal dealings with Stuart that I treasure, and which left me enriched in my professional outlook - whether it is in the kind of books and authors he introduced me to, or the anecdotes from his own life which gave me glimpses of how to lead my life. 

Above all I like Stuart because - despite being a private and under-stated person - he still puts in all his energy and charisma when he engages with people - something most people will find very difficult to do.

The hall-mark of greatness is when the person is no longer near you - but you still think of him whenever you need to take critical decisions.  You ask yourself : what would he have done if he was in my place today - what is the RIGHT thing to do?  I do that whenever I am at a fork on the road.

It is said that imitation is the best form of flattery. I have no qualms about admitting that in many aspects, the way I TRY to conduct myself - whether at work or outside - is closely modeled on what I have learnt from my long association with Stuart.

Our industry desperately needs more Role Models.  May there be more such people!

My Big Mouth

Stuart and I were once working on putting together a collage on a qual project that had just got completed. It was hard work – and at lunch time Stuart ordered for a couple of sandwiches from the nearby Subway joint. The sandwiches soon arrived – and I was exposed to the dilemma of having to eat a huge 12 inch burger and yet look dignified in that process. The whole problem was that no matter from which angle I attacked the sandwich it simply was too big and thick for my mouth to take a good bite. I sneaked a quick glance at Stuart as to how he was progressing on his Tuna sandwich and was astonished to find him calmly tucking-in the entire sandwich into his mouth.

The conversation proceeded as follows:

Stuart : “Please finish your sandwich quickly – there is lots of work to be done”.

Me (still trying to recover from the shock) : “I …. Um ….. eh ….”

Stuart : “What is wrong? Anything wrong with the sandwich?”

Me : “This large sandwich……” and then shockingly I heard myself blurting out “Stuart, you have such a big mouth …..”

It was Stuart’s turn to look dazed – and I had to quickly rush in and do a lot of explaining …… and fortunately my explanation was finally bought though with some amount of raised eye-brows.

English is indeed a funny language, is it not?

Job Perks

In MERAC Bahrain, we had a Filipino accountant called Sixtoe who had a very unique style of pronouncing English words – for instance when he said “Fax” it sounded as if he was saying “Fu.ks”.

He went to our GM, Stan (aka Sthanunathan, now in Coke, US) and asked him “ you know, Martin Van Herk’s hotel bill has just come in and I want to check whether we pay for his “fu.ks”. Without batting an eye-lid, Stan replied : “we pay only business expenses – all expenses for pleasure is paid for by the individual himself.“

Sixtoe did not understand the reply, but rumour has it that the 2 secretaries sitting outside Stan’s room had to be immediately admitted to the hospital. Apparently the hospital report cryptically stated that they were admitted owing to “severe stomach pain induced by an attempt to control sudden emotions felt on hearing descriptions of a humorous variety”.

Report writing skills

The 90's was the leisurely period when the final deliverable was a “detailed” report written as a WordPerfect document complete with a Technical Appendix and a Field report (and not the PowerPoint presentations which pass off as “reports” nowadays).

I wrote up my 1st report and took it to Stuart. I think the conversation proceeded as follows:

Stuart : "Interrresting. You write like Charles Dickens."

Me (Blushing with delight) : "Thank you very much. I grew up on the English classics and PG Wodehouse."

Stuart : "Excellent. Now go back and re-write this report completely – we don’t live in the 19th century."

The chastened new recruit collects the report covered in green ink and exits quickly left of center

The dying breed of the well-rounded researcher

Soon after I joined MERAC Bahrain in 1992, I was in for a major shock when a huge pile of transcripts landed up on my table accompanied by a terse hand-written note (in red ink) asking me to “content analyse”. I had come from a hard core quant agency (MBA Pvt. Ltd.) whose owners prided on having nothing to do with qualitative research – so I went into a state of deep shock. I rushed to Stuart – and gasped out – in the impetuosity of youth - that I would not like to do this as I “did not understand qualitative research”.

Peering over his spectacles, Stuart said “Young man, in this place we do not have qualitative researchers and quantitative researchers. We only have researchers who solve the client’s problems regardless of the methodology”. Chastened I went back and started on the rather difficult task of figuring out this mysterious field of qualitative research. The only thought that came to my mind was that these qualitative respondents talked too much – I mean for a simple question like “why do you like this product” the respondents would talk for 2 or 3 pages. I mean why did they not answer in a simple short sentence as they do in quantitative research – that would have simplified my life, and the world will be a much less complex place to live in.

Handling the first few qualitative research projects were a night-mare for me – but over a period of time I actually started loving qualitative research – to such an extent that at one point, there was the distinct “danger” that I would be labeled as a Qual researcher. This exposure to qualitative research was to stand me in good stead when I returned to the highly compartmentalized research industry in India where few people have a perspective of both qualitative and quantitative research.

I guess specialization is an inevitable consequences of growth – one is forced to follow global trends : compartmentalize and specialize. But somewhere at the bottom of heart I believe that the individual loses out as it narrows down his perspective.