2 Min SKSM

  70% reduction in face-to-face interaction when firms switched to open office - as per an article published in HBR . Just like actors or basket ball players try to isolate from chaos and distractions to focus on scene or game, employees also tend to create invisible walls to maintain privacy and focus on work. it's called fourth wall. So open offices are possibly not so open.  Surprisingly, new age companies are still in favor of open spaces which can supposedly increase collaboration and happiness among employees. But personally I have never found any employee happy about open offices except for those who suggested the change. Somehow, this employee friendly decision, always, came top-down. Isn't it demeaning or condescending? As if the management does not have faith on employees to collaborate, suo-moto; and so the employees have to be conditioned in an enforced surrounding. Theoretically, open office architecture compromises privacy for collaboration and vice versa for th...

New Consumer applications have taken the human centric design and simplified UX to such a great height that its influence on Enterprise application is inevitable. But are Consumer applications and Enterprise applications comparable in terms of its users and complexities? When I see enterprise applications (like SAP, Oracle, even Salesforce), I see this  Now in the name of simplicity, it will be foolish to expect this in cockpit (within budget) Consumer Applications and Enterprise applications are different. A simplified and minimalistic App design may score high in Learnability ad Delightful but will be Useless and Ineffective for most of the advanced users. This is "TRAP OF SIMPLICITY".  There is also no second opinion that enterprise Apps are less human centric and look drab in the name of "Complexity" and "Flexibility". That is "EXCUSE OF COMPLEXITY".  The scope of improvement in Enterprise App UX is humongous but may lie in different directio...

COVID may have brought the media industry to a point of no return. it gave individual and family enough time and environment to think and get conditioned; conditioned to get better entertainment. This condition does not bode well for Television industry.  Normally we will consider channel A as a competitor to channel B as both are competing for audience's hour which is a rival good i.e. if A consumes my watching hour then B cannot consume it. However, the audience watching hour itself is being targeted by On Demand Video , Gaming and Social media industry. The definition of pie itself is shrinking for TV industry.  Your next TV is a smart TV Just like the smart phone, the television is seeing unbelievable reduction in price and increase in smart features. It is a certainty the next television purchase will be a smart TV. Now, a Smart TV without internet is just a "Dabba" (a dumb box) and is not a good social status. This TV is going to complement On Demand Video industry ...

 Let's do an exercise which was given to us by our prof Saral M,  Statement 1: A system designed to  succeed , succeeds when it succeeds .   Statement 2: A system designed to fail ,___________ when it ___________. (now complete this before you scroll down). Are you thinking why the hell, a system will be designed to fail. Think about fuse box, circuit breaker or software tester.  ... ... (no cheating...fill the blanks) ... ... You will be in top 99% of population if your answer is   A system designed to fail, succeeds when it fails , or A system designed to fail, fails when it succeeds Very few, almost none will state "A system designed to fail, fails when it fails to fail . Right? We are schooled systematically to be successful; to such an extend that we cannot form a statement without using word "Success/ succeed". Human might be social, but it is designed to be competitive and be successful. What is a better place than Group meetings to be compet...

Imagine a mall hosting 3.7lac sellers selling 20 Cr products.  Will it not look like a tropical jungle, so dense that anyone can be lost. This is Amazon.in, literally the Amazon forest in ecom industry. Designing Amazon.in in a way that user can easily maneuver and reach required lane of products can be a dream as well as a nightmare for the best of best Designers. But unfortunately, when I think of bad design, Amazon comes up in mind. Let's conduct an user journey of a buyer searching for Realme mobile phone. I am selecting Mobile phone, because 80% traffic in e-com takes this route and so at least this path should have been developed matured, right?  There are two users:  Amy, the browser. She does not like to ask help from anyone in mall and searches the product by strolling across lanes. Online, she takes her time to browse through the pages and find the the product.  Bill, the searcher: He asks for help as soon as he enters the mall, takes the directions and pic...

Prisoner's dilemma framed in 1950 is such a powerful depiction of individual behavior that we need to revisit this again in today's digital era;  Digital era where new tech companies are disturbing Goliaths.  Before we discuss about this framework, I will like to introduce two terms: unstable/ stable equilibrium point using below drawing. Gravity ensures that any push from equilibrium point will  lead the ball to Stable equilibrium point.  In prisoner's dilemma, two prisoners can either cooperate with each other and get punitive punishment or defect keeping own interest in mind. This is classically known as non-zero-sum game where one's win does not mean another's loss.  Here the stable equilibrium point is where both defect because of self-interest and get moderate punishment.  In today's era, where startups and tech companies are disrupting the industry, the funding houses are investing in them assuming that they are going to unlock value and create new m...

Bonsai is not merely an art form – it is a way of life; a way of thinking; a way of practicing patience. When I think of culture especially "Company culture", I see a Bonsai tree, a tree cultured for many years taking shape as visualized by the artist. When it goes through many hardship and care like pruning, trimming, clamping, and wiring for years, you see beauty in it like Wabi-Sabi. What is culture? It is a set of behaviors. If the behavior is not in-line then there will be consequences which then establish the expected behavior. This defines the culture. Culture is driven by the top management and not the values/ statements written over the pillars or walls. However once culture is set, the entire organization and its components i.e. employees behave in a way to keep the culture intact like a living entity. Organization is autopoietic i.e. has capability to self-produce itself irrespective of employees coming or leaving. The company culture is maintained like body temper...

 "Loyalty" is such fuzzy word that everybody wants it but nobody knows the definition. After reading and introspection, I could conclude that when a person is presented with options, loyalty acts as a moral compass. Everyone takes decision based on logic and magic. Probably this magic is "Loyalty". This magic may come from a product, employer or your life partner! This magic is known as Brand.  In Economics, one of my favorite graph was indifference curve i.e. Consumer can select various quantity of Good A or Good B to get same level of satisfaction. Similar relationship can be explained  between level of Capital (Technology) and Labor to get constant level of output. So, I am coining a word iso-guilt curve. i.e. One balances between logic and magic to decide on options with same level of guilt.  In current capitalism era, the brand loyalty has become questionable. E.g. based on price discount (logic) one may select Flipkart or Amazon, Ola or Uber, Swiggy or Zomato....

What will it take to be successful in digitally transforming a company? Agile/ Lean management? No, it's Cheetah's philosophy and then Lean & Agile.   The main objective of digital transformation is to question legacy assumptions e.g. "do we need processes for expense claim at all?" rather "can process cost be decreased by 30%". The later is an example of incremental improvement and falls under Lean philosophy. Agile comes in to the picture when the final solution is being implemented by IT team.  My prof Mr. Saral M  once said "most of businesses fall in two categories: Elephant and Cheetah". Elephants are gigantic, conservative, cost conscious and utilization driven business houses. Cheetahs are flexible, change driven,  margin & customer conscious business houses.  Cheetah will have surplus of capacity (human/ physical resources) to capture new opportunities and to leverage sudden changes. Elephant will have resources 90+%  utilized and...

Scope creep is seriously injurious to health of engineers, project managers and in the end customers. Apple phone is highly user friendly because the designer knew when to stop. Product exists because it does not exist outside of it. And this is the Yin-Yang moment.  You are defined by what you are not...Light exists because there is darkness...One is true because others are zeroes... Yang is there because yin exists outside of it... You have something everywhere. What defines an object is drawing a line stating outside of this is Nothing. That is why you have to reject hypothesis to prove something. As my professor once said "Strategy is the art of closing doors". He did not say opening doors but closing doors. The same philosophy applies to scope statement as well. Scope statement should clearly mention what not to do.  "We will implement mobile application to do xyz. However, iOS development is excluded in this phase." Now you decide which statement has given mor...

It is really easy to misconstrue Strength with Fame. Even Management can forget the true Strength in the period of success and noise. One or the other day, we consultants, must have used SWOT or GE-McKinsey Matrix, plotted so called "Strength" and proposed strategy. But how easy was it to find out "Strength" of a company?  Case study: Kodak.  There is no doubt anyone, during 90's, would have opined Kodak's strength was in imaging and printing. Then camera went digital and then disappeared in smart phones. Suddenly noise during Kodak's heyday dropped its decibel. All strategic framework failed since Kodak was "Disrupted", it became "Myopic".  In my opinion, it forgot what its real strength was. It was never imaging/ printing but its knowledge in specialty chemical. It knew the best chemical composition to capture the "Kodak moment". Never the less, in the moment of silence, it found thyself and continued its journey. Today, d...

Continuing my previous blog  FASCINATION AND TRAP OF AI, ML, BLOCKCHAIN , this lure is not limited to management only. Industry, as well, such as Agriculture has seen much pompous joy towards these technologies and talking "Agriculture 4.0" day in and out. More and more entrepreneurs are creating startups, impressions and scaling up horizontally across globes and then vanishing serially without making a scratch on surface. Industry has a prestigious name for this post as well "Serial Entrepreneur". Because the problem statement here is not to create "Painkillers" but to use new-age technologies and possibly make some "Vitamins" as by-products.  Case in point: One of the Indian Company used Image processing, AI and ML to predict possible pest attack. When I asked what is the efficacy, the ground staff said it's accuracy is 50-50. Well my coin can do a better job than this because it costs not more than 1 Rs! How and when of Industry Revolution...