TAKE A CHANCE

ost of the times, when I see a #job posting, I notice that experience of that industry is mentioned as a prerequisite. Recruiters shortlist or reject applications basis the filter of whether a person has worked in the industry or not. I believe that this approach often makes you lose out on lot of good talent.

One can learn about the #industry on the job too, as long as the person comes with the right values, attitude and aptitude that blends well with the #culture of the organisation.

In my career, I have changed industries thrice. I moved from #retail to #FMCG and then to #B2B in Nutrition. Every time, I was able to do it because someone was willing to take a chance on me, and go beyond the requirement of the industry experience filter. I am thankful to each one of them.

In fact, if you look at some of the successful corporate leaders, they have changed paths, moved to different industries and yet done so well in their careers.

Whenever I recruit, I never let the lack of industry experience stop me from shortlisting an application if the rest of the CV is interesting and exciting.

So my message to all the recruiters and the managers out there is this: Take A Chance and you will be surprised to find some rare gems.

ASSISTANCE OR NO ASSISTANCE?

Shopping behaviour differs from shopper to shopper. Some shoppers prefer to get help and assistance while they are shopping while others like to browse on their own and then reach out for help only when they need it. 

When it comes to beauty products, the shopping experience is even more personal, and hence some customers want assistance while others are happy to shop on their own.

Sephora understands this quite well and therefore, in a lot of their stores, it provides two kinds of shopping baskets (black and red). Shoppers can choose the basket based on their need. This allows the different shoppers to get exactly the kind of #retail experience that they want and it also gives a clear indication to the store staff on who needs to be assisted and who doesn't. 

Such a simple and effective solution!

NIKE - SUBSCRIPTION BUSINESS MODEL

#Nike has launched a subscription model for children between the ages of two to 10, where kids can get anywhere between four pairs to 12 pairs of sneakers every year, depending on the subscription model that the parents take.

I think this is a brilliant #marketing strategy and business model because I see the following benefits:

1. Nike makes lives easier for parents as they don't have to go to shop for sneakers regularly for their growing kids. 

2. Once subscribed for a year, kids stay only with Nike, thereby blocking the entry of any other brand in their lives.

3. By giving exposure and experience to kids with Nike at a young age, they are trying to convert them into #brand loyalists at a young age so that even when they grow up, they only think of Nike as their brand of choice.

4. Parents who are not wearing Nike today may convert or shift to Nike when they see their kids comfortable and happy in their sneakers.

5. Once Nike tests and learns from this #business model, it can easily replicate it across other age groups - teenagers, adults and scale it up across geographies. This will open a new business frontier for Nike.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/08/12/business/nike-sneaker-subscription/index.html?__twitter_impression=true

FC BASEL : 125 YEARS

hashtag#FCBasel, Switzerland's most famous football club celebrated its 125th Anniversary last weekend over a three day event - #football matches, signing by the stars, matches between the legends, music in the evening and much more.

DSM, being one of the sponsors of FC Basel had a very good representation through its #products and #solutions from personal care, human nutrition and animal nutrition business. It was wonderful to see my colleagues smiling and enjoying the interactions with visitors across ages.

Watching a football match live in the stadium was a great experience! 

hashtag#emp #nutrition #personalcare #animalnutrition

WISHES DO COME TRUE - TOUR DE FRANCE

Two years back, I finished reading the autobiography of Chris Froome who is one of the world's leading cyclists having won the world's most difficult cycling race #TourDeFrance four times. 

That book was my orientation into competitive cycling. After finishing the #book, I thought that someday I would love to see the Tour de France live.

Soon that thought went into the back of my mind as I got busy with life, until a few weeks back, when a colleague mentioned that he would be going to see the Tour De France live in his town. I knew I had to take that opportunity so I told him that I would join him. But just a few days before the event, he got to know that he has to go out of town for an official trip on the day of the race. I thought that I will have to wait another year to see the race live.

I casually mentioned this to my line manager over a coffee. She saw my excitement as well as disappointment, and so she decided to have a team bonding session at the Tour de France!

There were five of us who went to see Tour de France live yesterday and it was an experience of a lifetime! 

                                              #gratitude #leadership #team #experience

TODAY AT APPLE

When you are #Apple, you are not in the business of selling products, you are in the business of selling an experience. The question is that once you have opened hundreds of stores all around the world, how do you keep generating footfalls continuously, not only from your existing customers but also from your potential customers? By offering them new experiences in the retail stores! 'Today at Apple' is a series of creative and educational programs that take place at the Apple stores, designed to inspire customers to learn new skills and take their passions further. Launched in 2017, this simple yet effective activation strategy ensures that people keep coming back to the stores to learn, to play and to form a stronger emotional bond with Apple, which is the ultimate goal of every brand. This case study won the Brand Experience & Activation Grand Prix at #CannesLions last year.

                                    #activation #brand #marketing #retail #strategy #Cannes

Retail: Starbucks opens its biggest store in the world

In a time, when #brands are struggling with their retail space, trying to maximize their returns per square foot and wondering whether brick and mortar still makes sense in the digital world, #Starbucks defies all convention and goes forward with a massive store launch in #Tokyo.

 It is not yet another cafe, but rather a #retail theater! It's an experience, and the moment you give #consumers not just a physical product but also an emotional experience, you have a winner on your hands. 

Calling it a 'Roastery' is a way to premiumize the Starbucks brand further. It not only acts as a brand amplifier but also as an #innovation lab where new menus, products and designs can be tested out before being rolled out at a larger scale.

The #coffee space will continue to get more exciting! 

You can read all about it the link below:

Starbucks opens it biggest store in Tokyo

2015: This is How I am avoiding Resolutions

Another year has dawned on us. Phone calls, emails, SMSes, Whatsapp messages wishing each other Happy New Year have been exchanged. 

Now step back and think. What is so special about the New Year? It is just a change of date in the calendar. The sun rose on 1st Jan in the same way as all the other days before that, the weather and the traffic out there is also the same. Even the shows on TV are the same ones!

So then what has changed? The New Year may not change any of these but what a New Year brings with it is something called HOPE. With the advent of the New Year comes a strong sense of optimism. The belief that things will change from here on is what comes to the mind of people. And it is all of these emotions that make one to put together a list of resolutions. Most of them are well aware that they are never able to stick to their resolutions for a pretty long time but yet, year after year, they persist and put together another list, only to get disappointed over the next few days/weeks or months. 

It’s been two years that I have been blogging about how I do not keep any resolutions but rather follow my own model of doing things through the year. The benefit of this model is that there is no disappointment of a resolution breaking. 

So then what are my plans for this year? Am I sticking to the same model or is there a new model that I have developed? I thought a lot about this and then realized that this E Model that I have developed for myself works perfectly for me and at this stage I should not let go of it. Maybe, I should enhance it further, which means retaining a few Es , removing a few and adding a couple of other. Like I had mentioned last year, this E Model is a dynamic model which will keep changing and evolving with each passing year. 

So with that, I once again present my E Model to all of you, with the hope that some of you may also use it and benefit from it:

1. Experience: There are lot of people who like collecting different kinds of things – stamps, coins, match boxes. I like to collect experiences and call myself ‘Collector of Experiences.’ I try and find opportunities to try new things which just make life more exciting and meaningful. At the start of last year, I jumped off a cliff to experience paragliding. Towards the end of the year, I got to experience watching two tennis legends playing live - Roger Federer and Djokovic playing a set against each other at the ITPL. This year also, I plan to try a few new experiences.

2. Exploration: Travel is an important part of my life. One has to have wanderlust in life to truly become an explorer. Travel and reading are the two biggest teachers of life. As long as you have these two teachers in your life, your learning will never stop. One of my personal goals every year is to visit and see atleast three new places. Even when I am travelling for work, I endeavor to check out a few interesting sites of the place that I am visiting. This year will bring its own set of travel diaries. 

3. Extraction: This is a big word. It means absorbing and learning new things either through reading, videos, work, training, etc. Extraction would also mean writing and blogging and extracting thoughts and stories from within. Last year was a slow year for extraction and the plan this year is to rectify that. 

4. Entertainment: All work and no play can make Jack a dull boy. Philosophy of life couldn’t be truer than this. There is so much of content that exists out there – movies, TV Series, YouTube videos, award winning ads. Amongst all the other things that I intend to do in 2015, keeping my entertainment quotient high will be clearly one of the priorities. 

5. Engagement: This is a new E that I am adding to this model. Social media has become an extension of our life and it is something that can’t be escaped. So the best way is to embrace it. But in 2015, I do not want to limit my engagement to the online world. I intend to engage with my friends and families in the offline world too. I will be taking initiatives of catching up with as many people as I possibly can and connecting with their lives once again. 

6. Evolution: This model is incomplete without the addition of Evolution to the model. While I get busy in new experiences and extracting more from the lessons of life, it is also important that I evolve as a person. This evolution has to be mental, physical, financial and intellectual. I would like to see my net worth and balance sheet evolving. I would like to see the log of my running kilometres evolving as well as my acts of empathy and kindness evolving. My relationship with my colleagues and my team should evolve towards a better side. 

Overall, I should evolve as a better human being and the true measure of this will only come from others and their opinion about me rather than my own opinion about myself. 

All of these elements of the E Model are going to be subjective in nature and I will have no way of appraising myself if I do not put down a tracker that is quantifiable and measures how I am doing against each of these elements. So a Tracker has been put in place. 

Before you decide to implement this model in your life, do note that there are two other Es that come as companions for this model – Expenditure and Execution. You cannot win with this model if you do not take the companions along! 

Looking forward to the ‘Exciting’ times ahead in 2015!

Experiences - They vary

All of us know that no two fingerprints are the same. Maybe, we should add one more saying ‘No two experiences are the same’.

Just think about it – You must have had instances when two different friends had uploaded pictures of their holiday to Paris on Facebook, but the pictures of the two would be completely different. The pictures would be different in terms of their posture, their emotions and their expressions, etc. In fact, don’t be surprised when you notice that both set of pictures have been clicked at the same place, like the Eiffel Tower, but yet, the description put by the two people are as different as chalk and cheese.

Now why would a picture taken at the same place by two different people look so different (other than the Eiffel Tower in the background looking the same in both the pics!)? The simple answer to that is because the picture is actually telling you about the experience of that person in that moment at that place. And the reality is that the experience of each person is different due to a number of factors and place is just one of those factors that plays a role in building that experience.

In fact, if you think deeper, you will realize that not only are experiences of different people different, but even the experience of the same person is different on different occasions, even though the place may be the same or the event may be the same.

An experience is a summation of various things that are part of a given moment that come together and form what we call an experience. What that means is that even if one of those various things is different from the earlier experience, the entire experience would be different. Confusing?

Let me try and simplify. According to my hypothesis, an experience is formed with the help of a number of factors – place, time of day, your own mood and mood of others, friends/relatives who are there with you, the kind of music in the background, the quality of food and drinks being consumed, the kind of weather, the occasion, the kind of customer service being offered. (This is not an exhaustive list and one can easily add more factors that play a critical role).

The point here is that if any of these factors change either for you or for someone else, the experience will also change. Often, one hears the use of the term ‘A sense of déjà vu’. What this means is that what  one is witnessing or experiencing is coming pretty close to what one has seen or experienced before (may not necessarily be exactly the same). That is when one immediately comes up with this as the human mind knows that it is very rare that you get to experience the same thing again and again (unless it is a Monday morning blue!) and if you can manage to do that, either you are lucky or you need a change!

2012: A Year of Four Es

This is a blog that should have been out much earlier in the day… or rather in the year but taking the adage of ‘Better Late than Never’, I have gone ahead and put this together even now.The thought for this blog came to me when I was hearing a number of people talking about their New Year resolutions and how they can’t sustain it and it gets broken every year.

I sat back and thought that I don’t want to make any resolutions, which when broken have no meaning left to them and then you miss out on the rest of the months, waiting for the next year to return, to start with the same set or new resolutions once again. But yet, I wanted to put some goals for myself for this year so that I could push myself to achieve those.  

That is when I thought that a resolution gets broken only when you put a constraint or leash on yourself (Eg. – I shall not eat pizzas – Broken as soon as you enjoy one slice of it or I shall exercise daily – Once again broken the day you miss one of the days of workout). I said to myself ‘What if this was flipped around and I put a goal for the year, which cannot get broken because the more I do it, the more I gain out of it?’.

This helped me in putting a clear strategy for myself and I put a framework, which I call:

The Four Es for 2012: Exploration, Experiences, Extraction and Entertainment

This is how this approach works:

1.Exploration:  The idea is to venture out and see new places/new cities/new countries and explore  

India/world.

2.Experiences: This is all about coming out of the comfort zone and trying out new experiences of life. It could be a new adventure, a new skill, a new course. As long as it is something I have not done before, it will go as part of the experience.

3.Extraction: Instead of putting reading as one of the goals, I have broadened the concept and put extraction as the objective. This would then allow it to mean reading, writing, blogging and surfing.

4.Entertainment:  This one is pretty simple. This is all about movies, videos, TV Shows and the works. There are quite a few old movies and seasons to catch as well, so that gets covered here.

What is very interesting,  which I realized after putting this together was that each of these Es are interlinked in some way or the other. While I am indulging or achieving one of the Es, there is a strong chance that in some way, the other E is also getting achieved.  For eg. – If I am exploring a new city and I try out a new dish, it also means that I am experiencing something new.

Furthermore, there is no fear of this getting broken during the course of the year because the more I do any of the Es, the more I enjoy and gain and hence there is no fear of this getting broken.

The only hitch that I see is that to follow this approach of Four Es, I need to indulge in one more E and that E is the E of Expenditure! But that is the harsh reality so without bothering much about that, I would just say ‘Let’s do Eeet!’