strategy

Who is good for your business?

Performance in simplistic terms is a function of two key factors – ability and willingness!

Ability to perform is something to do with physical constraint of an individual like that of lifting 200 kgs of weight, fasting for 21 consecutive days, Singing for 48 hrs, working for 80 hrs a week, etc…

Willingness to perform is to do with the inherent interest to contribute – cheerful compliance to the job!

If one is willing, they can find ways to build the ability to perform. However, lack of willingness can only guarantee below par results – irrespective of the latent ability!

Who is good for your business – highly willing but not so able guy or highly capable but not so willing type? 

It depends on what is your business – if it is people centric, keep and invest on the first type and shamelessly weed out highly capable but not willing ones! They might be best suited for political parties, I guess! They will add lot of weight, as long as someone can lift them!

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Frugal Luxury as a product/service strategy!

It is surprising to see how many people associate frugality with poverty, cheap, affordability (or lack of it!).

Instead, it is refreshing to see frugality as associated with – novelty, value for money, fit for purpose. True power of avoiding waste! That’s what Frugal supposed to mean!

Be it  Frugal Healing,  Frugal Engineering or  Frugal Product/Service Strategy, the focus is on cutting everything unwanted/ not essential and offering no compromise on use/ application.

Luxury on the other hand is an indulgence rather than a necessity! It is associated with the quality believed to be possessed by something that is excessively expensive!

Given the most unpredictable nature of our current global economy, ever-changing consumer behavior and necessities around cost reduction, quality improvement and reduction in time-to-market, it is useful to adopt Frugal Luxury as the product/ service strategy.

Frugal Luxury as a theme can influence creation of products & services that will be novel, fit for purpose with a value for money approach but provide the best user experience and loyalty. This will also make the company offering this product / service innovate a lot more rapidly, be efficient and care for the eco-system!

This can also help shift the operational focus of companies from cost, quality and time pressures to growth, profitability and business sustainability priorities.

Be it  TATA NANO, HLL’s Frugal Innovation, HUL’s  Pureit, or  A Little World  the theme is simple – Frugal Luxury! The objective is preserving luxury of user experience at no extra cost than required! This benefited the customer and more than that the company itself! A true Win-Win!

Indulging in Frugality helps in immediate, short, medium and long run!

Focusing on Frugal Luxury while proposing, pursuing and promoting sustainable product/service strategy will soon be a necessity irrespective of the target – be it the always   emerging markets or currently struggling developed nations!

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Making relationships work is easier than making them fail!

Yes!

Every customer takes their own time and process of evaluation, references and careful design to enter into a relationship with any product or service of a company.

Once in this relationship, the expectation is to make it work – at any cost! Every mechanism of monitoring, governance & evaluation of an ongoing relationship is just to ensure that it is always on-track! – not to make it break!

Even when we buy a product or service for personal use, the story is the same – we always would like to know about the warranty, maintenance plans, recharge plans, replacement plans….

Making the relationship break requires a lot of effort on all dimensions – continuously failing service delivery, product performance, always slipping promises and constantly evading responses across the organization!… No one leaves a relationship on a single account of failure!

Making the relationship work however requires one small act – Submission!

Relationship is always two-sided. It is always subject to test of time. At tough times, when one exercises the act of submission – a demonstration of “lack of false pride”, the other falls in place!

One way of submission is to express your concern clearly and precisely so that the other understands, appreciates and acts in a way to help both! That’s the power of true submission!

Any company, individual or a group that has no false pride will keep their relationships – naturally bounded!

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