min-myinnersoul

China is a producer’s economy. The marketer seems slightly out of place in the factory to the world. This post is completely from my perceptions, with no research and I could be dead wrong. But I think, China could learn marketing from India. In my local supermarket, their pricing astounds me. An veritable mountain of stock of say white T shirts arrive. Dead cheap today. Tomorrow more expensive. One weak later triple the price. Why ? because the cost of carrying the inventory adds up each day !! I would have thought things get cheaper because they are lying unsold. The opposite. Next week, black T shirts … One week I can get Kellogg’s corn flakes. Next week Nestle. Both on one day – no chance. Pack sizes of consumer products are mostly “big”. I haven’t seen a single sachet in Guangzhou. This is not America – this is also a poor country. Single unit packs – no way. Why ? Its easier to produce large packs. The organization of street markets also is revealing. A whole street is a computer...

Education, as we all know, is a fundamental driver of a society’s development. Both China and India, with massive populations, roughly spend the same % of GDP on education. But China’s economy is three times larger than India’s – so per capita China spends a lot more on education than India. China is developing institutions of higher learning with a vengeance. And therein lies a lesson for India to learn. In the good old days, IIM Ahmedabad was considered the best business school “east of the Suez” and one of the best in the world. The Asian Institute of management at Manila was the only real competitor and this was often derisively dismissed . And for years and years IIM A stayed still. Today, in the Financial Times listing of the top 100 business schools in the world, IIM A does not even feature. The eighth rated school in world is the Ceibs in Shanghai. In the Academic Ranking of Word Universities (across all disciplines), there is not a single Indian or Chinese university in th...

Innovation is not the greatest of strengths in China. China is disciplined, but that is a strength as well as a weakness. Innovation, and even entrepreneurship, is not on the same page as in India. That’s a difficult lesson for China to learn. In the last post, I argued that Chinese are disciplined in their work. I said “In the BPO business that I was involved in, you could rely on the team in China not to deviate from the standard process”. That’s also a weakness. The average Chinese employee is uncomfortable in an unstructured situation. “Tell us what to do and we’ll do it well” is a mindset that’s common. “You’re the boss, why are you asking us ?” is another phrase , which is often unsaid, but meant many times. Hierarchy counts for a lot here. When I ask colleagues to challenge the process, innovate, rationalize, argue, and fight, there’s fidgeting and discomfort. It doesn’t come naturally to them. Indians, by nature, are an argumentative lot. Challenge comes naturally to them. Its...

The word “follow up” is rarely used in China – at least by me. I would like to dreamily believe that there is no word for follow up in Mandarin (not true of course). The Chinese work hard, but with a difference – and therein lies a lesson for India to learn. In the office, once the job is well understood and within the capability of the individual to perform, you can leave him alone. He needs little supervision. The job is done precisely as it needs to be done. No short cuts, no scrimping on the edges. Nobody needs to look over his shoulder. No lounging around over coffee, no extended lunch break, no going missing. In the BPO business that I was involved in, you could rely on the team in China not to deviate from the standard process. And you didn’t need to check on it. At home, the maid does not bunk. If she’s not able to come , she tells a day before. If she’s to start work by 9.00, she comes at 8.55. If we call a plumber or an electrician, he comes at the appointed time. And finishe...

Chinese are reluctantly going global. Indians are enthusiastically going around the world. And therein lies a lesson China can learn from India. This is another counter intuitive lesson than I am proposing. After all Chinese have gone everywhere in the world. There’s a Chinatown in virtually every city. And yet, I say Chinese are reluctant globetrotters. In the past, Chinese migrated and travelled enthusiastically. I think they lost that globalizing spirit during the Cultural Revolution and haven’t still regained it. Today, they’d rather stay at home. Indians on the other hand are going everywhere. Even the junior most Indian employee will jump at the chance if he is sent to any country in the world to work. Walk into any company anywhere and you are likely to see at least a few Indian nationals working there. This is a huge advantage for India. Many Indian professionals today have some experience of working in a different country. They have learnt what it takes to work globally. The...

In the spring of 1992, Deng Xiaoping visited Shenzhen and uttered 9 words that changed China. “To get rich is glorious, Poverty is not socialism”, he said. The rest is history. Remember, where China was at the end of the Cultural Revolution and the Mao era. For Deng to say that is the most visionary thing that has happened in the world in the 20th century. Some 300 million people were yanked from abject poverty to a good standard of living in a very short period. Whatever may be his other faults, for this achievement alone, he is one of the greatest leaders of that century. In China, business and economic activity is considered glorious. There is little backlash against industry. Agriculture and industry do not confront as much as in India. The migrant labour that has enabled China’s manufacturing miracle all came from agriculture, willingly. Businessmen are not generally seen in China as rogues . The mindset of the people in China is massively in favour of economic advancement. It is ...

This might come as a surprise, but China is not as cost competitive anymore. China has a cost problem it does not recognise. I am alternating posts between what India can learn from China and what China can learn from India. This is the first of what China can learn. China’s great strength is that it can produce at low cost and on scale. There are other countries which are cheaper eg Vietnam. But none could match the scale and deliver the cost advantages. That was so in the past. Not true anymore. India is cheaper and can match the scale. What has happened in China is that costs have risen and risen in the eastern seaboard where much of the economic activity has happened. And the currency, the RMB has strengthened. The twin impact has been that China no longer enjoys the massive cost advantage it had. Like for like, India is cheaper than China. Cost of living in a top city in India vs a top city in China. Cost of labour in a small town in India vs a small town in China and so on. Indi...

China’s wonderful infrastructure is an obvious lesson for India to learn. This is a no brainer , but it is so much of a competitive advantage for China, that even though its glaringly obvious, I am covering it as one of the things India must learn from China. China is an infrastructural marvel. Everything is being built on a scale that will stagger the imagination. Cities, Railways, Airports, Roads, Ports, Power, Water supply – name it and China is building 20 years ahead. That’s the difference with even Europe or North America. China is building for the coming decades. The West is trying to catch up with last year’s requirement. India is trying to catch up with the last century. Business is “physically” easy to do in China. Factories don’t have to build power plants – there is no market for generator sets here. In offices, the term UPS is unheard of. If you want to ship your container 17 days from now, you can – there is rarely port congestion and delay. In cities, public transport is...

It had to happen. An Indian living in China, cannot but compare these two great countries. So I am going to post for the next 10 days “Five things India can learn from China” and “Five things China can learn from India”. Purely in a business context. It has to come with lots of statutory warnings. While I know India very well, I can hardly claim to know China. I’ve worked only in one city Guangzhou – China is as diverse as India and you just can’t generalize from a single place. And in any case all generalisations are suspect. I haven’t travelled well enough in China to even reasonably understand this fascinating country. But still, this blog is a personal perspective and I could be as much right as wrong ! So I’m plunging on. I don’t mean to rub either my Chinese friends or my Indian friends, the wrong way. Take it for what it is – my perspective and view. And feel free to disagree ! I start tomorrow with the first of what India can learn from China.

Only in politics, and especially in India, are competence and performance irrelevant words. I am reacting to the sacking of Laloo Prasad Yadav as the Railway Minister of India . He was, without doubt, one of the most competent ministers of the last five years. He was probably the best Railway Minister India has ever had. Indian Railways is one of the most complex business organisations to run. It is the largest commercial employer in the world. Its scale is incredible. It carries a staggering number of people each day. Its historically been beset with problems with various Railway Ministers treating it as a gravy train (pun intended). It has suffered from chronic underinvestment. It has suffered from gross overmanning where its not needed and scarcity of talent where it is desperately wanted. It was making a significant loss. Into this organisation , five years ago, stepped in Laloo. The rest is history. He seemed buffoon like and expectations were low. Instead he astounded the world ...

For the last three days, I have been watching the Indian stock market with utter amazement. On Friday, the BSE Sensex closed at 12173 . On Tuesday, it closed at 14302. A full 17% increase in two days. You would have made a killing if you bought on Friday and sold on Tuesday. Nothing has changed in India except that the Congress won an unexpectedly comfortable victory in the general elections. On “sentiment” , paper wealth of Rs 350,000 crores (US$ 75 bn) has been created in two days. This is pure nonsense. Unfortunately, the stock market gets a disproportionate share of public interest. And where the media and public watch, politicians follow. So economic policy starts to be dictated by the mayhem in the stock market. The stock market is NOT the, or even the most important, barometer of the economy. Its just one of the many markets that exist. In the long run, the stock market as close to a perfect market as humans have ever invented. But the operational word is “long term”. In the s...

Nasscom in conjunction with Mercer Consulting has published a report on Gender Inclusivity in India. According to press reports on this study, India has more working women than any other country in the world. 30% -35% of the overall 400 million workforce is women. Nasscom sites (www.nasscom.org) has a link to the report. Click (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshowpics/4524928.cms) for a press report on the study. There are some blithe conclusions that the IT and BPO industry are responsible for the high proportion of women in the workforce in some way. I haven’t read the original report (I am not paying $60 for this), but I am reacting to the press reports. Balderdash. Indian corporate world is a male chauvinist pig. Period. I’ve worked in a number of places. Nowhere have I seen a more women unfriendly business environment than in India, although things are changing * Any employee is considered worth his salt only if he slogs like a maniac. Its often said that the office beg...

Well, my "tunnel" is dark, and I really can't see very well, so I'm using this post to communicate with my fellow bloggers as there is simply no other way. I can post on my blog, but can't add pictures. No control over formatting and I can't edit. Can't comment. But I can post, which is something. I can read all your blogs, for the moment. When you don't have access to a blog, is when you realise how important and beautiful they are - so my fellow bloggers, if I haven't said nice things lately, I am saying them now - you are wonderful. I can't leave a comment on anybody's blog, except Preeti's. Why Preeti alone , I have no clue , but that's how it is. So here are some generalised comments Aparna - You must be banned from blogging. Look at your last two posts - on Appa and the guest post from Chotu. Big lumps in the throat - if you write one more like this, I won't have a throat at all. Worth all this nonsensical tunnelling jus...

You can't keep a determined blogger out. I stumbled on a way to "beat the system". Don't know how long it will work, but I'll enjoy it as long as it does. Its a little painful, but hey what the heck - its a lot better than getting completely blacked out. Posts may not look perfect, things might be out of synch (thanks to the sneaking I am doing), but at least its something. If I go again missing for a while, it just means I have been caught and I have to find another way. But for the moment, I'm back. Hooooorrrrraaaay !

I woke up today to discover that Blogger has been blocked in China. I can’t read blogspot blogs or post in my own blog. Yuk ! This is how things are in China. Suddenly whole sites get blocked by “The Great Firewall of China”. Currently YouTube is blocked, WordPress is blocked and now Blogspot. I won’t be able to post on my blog, until I find a way out – either shift my blog altogether or find a proxy. I hope to be back in action in a week to 10 days. Unfortunately I can’t read your blogs too. This gets me even madder. So pardon my absence for a few days – I’ll come back for sure to your blogs. I’m requesting my good friend Adesh to post this in my blog for me from India. Many thanks Adesh. Sorry. Will be back in a while.

There’s a US TV reality show called “Are you smarter than a 5th grader ?” In this game, adult contestants make a fool of themselves trying to answer questions from 1st to 5th grade in schools. They mostly fail and prove publicly that they are not smarter than a 5th grader. I am concluding my current posts on education, with a non business post on something that’s intrigued me. Two questions come to mind. First an obvious one and the second, perhaps a not so obvious one. Firstly the obvious one - Why does an adult willingly subject himself to shame by being proved on TV to be less smarter than a 5th grader ? But the question that is more intriguing for me is – Why are 5th graders being taught stuff that honest adult Americans don’t know and  have no use for in real life . I am amazed at the sort of stuff taught in schools. I think the educational system has completely missed the revolution in our lives that the internet has caused and is still sticking with an outdated concept of ed...

The day I walked into my business school , all those years ago, I heard this term - "What ails XXX ?- substitute name of business school for XXX. Many years on, I still hear this rhetorical question. From many business schools. Its nice that they do ask this question, but often they stop at that and simply gaze at their own navel. Imagine an organisation, where you have virtually irrelevant performance targets, no serious performance evaluation, you are unlikely to be sacked, where you bristle against authority and do your own thing, where compensation levels are low, but have little relationship to performance and where demand often exceeds supply, so you don't have to worry about capacity utilisation. That closely approximates a business school - I am being deliberately harsh to make a point. Business schools rarely practice what they preach. That's probably why they hate to take anybody from the industry inside. Business schools must be run like a corporate - with all i...

A society can often be judged by the professions it eulogises. What are the professions that are aspirational ? What do people want to be ? Its a sad fact of our times that in no nation would the teacher figure at the top of the list. Very few people really want to be teachers anymore. If the best minds are not working at the schools, colleges and universities, how is a knowledge society like ours going to be sustained. This is true of business education as well, With all respect to my academic friends, the best minds in the business world are not at the business schools. Why ? The obvious answer is that there is little money in academic life. It is a well known fact that an outstanding professor with a lifetime of experience would earn less than a green horn passing out of business school on his first day at the job. So why would anybody, other than those laudable souls who do it out of passion, ever aspire to an academic career. But its not only money. Business schools often do not p...

Taking a commercial break from the sequence of posting on Business Education, to write on the Sudirman Cup going on in Guangzhou currently. I am a sports nut, and for those who are unfamiliar with badminton as a sport, the Sudirman Cup is the World Team Championship. China wins this all the time, but Indonesia, Denmark or Korea can give them a fight. India used to be in the top league not so long ago, but its now in Group III, aiming to get promoted to Group II. I've been going to see the matches live. Badminton live is something different altogether - TV is nothing like the real thing. China is simply awesome. My only grouse against them is that they have benched the beautiful Xie Xingfang and are playing Wang Yihuan in the women's singles. Xie Xingfang is a local Guangzhou girl - Beijing Games silver medalist no less. How could they do this ? (China's first couple of Badminton - Lin Dan and Xie Xingfang) India will win Group III easily. Indian badminton is actually on a h...

Management is one of the most applied of all sciences. Its not a theoretical science. You would therefore expect that in this field there is the closest of cooperation between academicians and practitioners. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The two mutually loath each other although outwardly its all bonhomie Managers think academicians are outdated, theoretical and of no use in the "real" world. They think what is taught at business schools is of little relevance to corporate life , even though they may have been from a business school themselves. Academicians see practitioners as non cooperative, contributing little to the profession and certainly irrelevant to the academic world, except for allowing professors to write cases. They see them as something of an intellectual vacuum. Interaction between the two is therefore largely restricted. Top notch professors sit on company Boards and do consulting, but the vast majority of academicians have retreated into their ac...

How obsolete are we ? If I were to judge myself, pretty obsolete. This week I am posting on Education, as the theme. Starting with an outrageous statement - the manager is obsolete the minute he steps out of business school (or whatever school) and then it is a long road to utter obsolescence until he retires. Management science is a pretty dynamic science. The body of knowledge is expanding at a terrific pace and we rarely keep up with it. Company training programmes are meant to missed, citing "extremely busy" as an excuse. How many times have we gone back to university to relearn or do a refresher programme - none , unless your company has sponsored you for one of the Advanced Management Programs (note to my company - are you listening ? Harvard would be nice !) Take for example the field of finance and accounting. A few years ago, in my company, we played a game - Who wants to be a Millionaire (or Kaun Banega Crorepati to my Indian friends) on basic IFRS principles. We pl...

Wow , what a beginning to the day. I was declared as a Blogger Friend by Rads. And then by Aparna. I am touched ladies. Here's my list of Blogger friends. They are super bloggers themselves, but above all, they're friends , whom I didn't know before, may have never met, got to know mainly through blogging and who are the epitome of kindness. In no particular order Hang - my Chinese blogger friend who writes a nice English blog and is hugely open minded. Preeti - she doles out the "bubblegums" and "candies" in bagfuls, that I am now addicted to, along with a few hundred others Reva - the best sense of humour in blogosphere Jonna - the Swede who writes a superb blog on China from Suzhou Mark - the Yank, ditto, ditto from Xian Richard - the most revered laowai blogger from Beijing Stephanie - Ok Kanmuri, as she prefers, who writes the best researched posts that bring Japan to life even if you haven't been there le embrouille blogueur - that's...

Its the coder who has pulled India by its bootstraps and plonked it firmly on the world map. I know, she'll violently object to being called a coder - there are more politically correct, but boring terms available. With due apologies, let me sing an ode to the Indian coder. The coder ranks right up there, as one of the hardest working classes in the world. She works her socks off. Day and night. Especially night ; which other person, who has a graduate degree would willingly work in the middle of the night, for years on end, because timezones dictate it that way. And she will do what it takes to get a job done or to meet a deadline, which others wouldn't even try. She wasn't born into a privileged family. Her parents probably sacrificed a lot to get her educated. She studied hard and by her own efforts got a degree. And then post graduation. She let go of much of the fun in life to achieve this. She may be called a geek, but she can be proud of it. At work, she has often tr...

In all of history, there have been periods when groups of people have changed the world. Sometimes the soldier, sometimes the priest, sometimes the king, sometimes the philosopher, sometimes the writer. In my view, two heroes have changed the world at the dawn of the 21st century. Unheralded they are, but they have changed the world nevertheless. China's migrant worker and India's coder. Today it's a salute to China's migrant worker. There are lots of them. Some 200 million or so. They have built the skyscrapers, the roads, the airports and all the wonderful infrastructure that you see in China today. They make all those products that you and I, anywhere in the world, have been able to afford. They mine the coal that supplies all the power to the factories that churn out the goods that we all buy. They are the ones, who have made China, what it is today. They come from the interior of China. They come to the eastern coast where much of the economic activity happens. The...

I am delighted to present a guest post by Adesh Sidhu. Adesh runs his excellent blog Not being Sarkari . He is a "Customer Advocate, Apple fan, Desi and an avid reader". He writes passionately on customer service - his blog carries many excellent posts. Thanks Adesh for your post that follows Big boys make rules. Big boys want to rule the world by the rules they have created. They have created rules, which are convenient to them, and these rules serve as entry barriers to new players. For so long music industry worked on royalty and record labels were operating by the rules, which they have created. From music creation to marketing of music to enforcement of copyright, record labels handle everything. Singers and musicians were depended on record labels for their success. Record labels were the big boys and rules they created were suited to them. Customers had to pay whatever price record labels decided. If record has only one good song, customers also had to pay for 7 below ...

Remember ABN Amro. It was one of the largest European banks, operating in some 60 countries. This venerable institution had a history dating back to 1824. In October of 2007, it was acquired by a consortium of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Fortis and Banco Santander for a staggering price of $ 100 bn. By this time, the financial crisis had already started, although it was in its early stages. Still these three banks went ahead, paid a fortune and carved ABN Amro amongst themselves. Just one and a half years later, look at the scenario RBS needed huge bailouts from the British government to exist- its in effect nationalised. Its share price has plunged more than 80%. Its declared huge losses, in no small part due to huge writedowns of the ABN Amro acquisition. Fortis has fared even worse. Its now completely taken over by the Dutch government. Its effectively dead. Banco Santander is the only one standing , and perhaps smiling a bit. It took the Italian and Brazilian parts of ABN Amro an...

If your sales grew last month by 25% in the largest car market in the world (at the moment) ; if you were No 2 in the market behind a faltering market leader; if you had beaten the Japanese nicely; if your two most famous brands are household names and aspirational in the market; if your other American rivals are nowhere in sight; you should be over the moon - Right? Wrong - for this company is GM China. And because of the troubles a continent away. GM has got everything right in China. Its beaten the Japanese. Its beaten the other Americans hollow. Volkswagen is the leader because of historical reasons ; they came into the market very early. They once had a market share of 50% - which is now down to the teens. Just pause for a moment. Worldwide the car industry is in doldrums with the bottom falling out of sales. And GM China announces that in March their sales grew by 25% over last year. Wow ! So here's a wild thought for GM. Get out of the US and move your headquarters to China....

Today's post is a guest post in Adesh Sidhu's blog - Not being Sarkari . Adesh is an avid blogger and writes passionately about customer service. He is also an active member of the IndiBlogger forum. Click here to read my guest post in his blog.