Living with Customers

"Connecting to customers" is an old way of interacting with customers..the New Buzz word is ...."living with the customers"..

How many of service delivery people visit customers and stay in their offices for certain period of time and experience real time issues.......face to face

Another example for "living with customer"

Airlines collect survey forms from customers and analyse...report customer satisfactions...

Instead if an Airline Director/VP sits in middle seat in a airline...interacts with the customer during the journey...gets loads of feedback and also gets the first hand customer experience.

Can any of the Railway minister or officials travel along with Passengers in 2nd class...will get loads of improvement ideas...

I believe one of the world famous stores (*$#) used to send their general managers to store fronts to learn from them and interact with customers.

Even in ancient days...Kings used to go and live with the public to get the gross root issues; except for a change they would take care not to get recognized. 

Many examples....... those did not survive, who neglected front lines, public at gross roots...

" Live with customers".........to survive....

Happy Republic Day

India,  a largest democracy actually become republic on 26th January, 1950 and is celebrating its 6o years of completion. 1 1/2  Billion people coming together under Tiranga,  its mighty display of military  power, Gallantry, achievements, different cultures etc etc... are true replica of a republic.... for the people, by the people and of the people.

Ruled by  Woman president, woman party president, woman chief minister in two states (Delhi and UP)....a true example of woman empowerment in this country. Good to see a lot of this displayed in the republic parade.

A Muslim vice president, a Sikh prime minister, a christian defence minister at top of the government shows how diverse is our republic.

Rich by its missiles Akash, Nag, Prithvi and Brahmos...establish a forte of defence.

60 Years India is becoming a self sufficient and self reliant by achieving in many fields, despite the challenges. Today is a proud moment for every Indian.

Jai Hind.

AR Rahaman

AR Rahaman is one of the prodigy Indian cinema produced, though we can not claim full credit to Indian cinema for Slum dog to millionaire being nominated for OSCAR. But definitely this is another phase for Indian cinema after LAGAAN and Range de Basanthi getting closer. Moreover there are two more documentaries nominated and lot of Indian work has been at nadir.

As AB said, OSCAR is not ultimate testimony for Indian Cinema..but definitely a moment of pride.

Jai Ho Rahaman for hoisting Indian flag high on the blue planet.

Swami Vivekananda

12th January was Swami Vivekananda's Birth Day, disciple of Ramakrishna Paramahansa. He is the only monk, who taught world what actually Hindutva means...His famous address in Chicago was a mesmerized one.
Let us see some of his teachings.....
"If you really want to judge the character of a man, look not at his great performances . Every fool may become a hero at one time or another. Watch a man do his most common actions;those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man".

"Truth, purity, and unselfishness - wherever these are present, there is no power below or above the sun to crush the possessor thereof. Equipped with these, one individual is able to face the whole universe in opposition".

"Three things are necessary to make every man great, every nation great:

• conviction of the powers of goodness.
• Absence of jealousy and suspicion.
• Helping all who are trying to be and do good.

"Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work or worship or psychic control, or philosophy -by one or more or all of these -and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines or dogmas or rituals or books or temples or forms are but secondary details".

Let us pay a great homage to a saint..who stood as true Indian...

Culture - A way of life

Culture plays a major role in one's life, be it in professional life or personnel life.

What is culture?

It is displayed in behaviours, beliefs, verbal language, customs, attitudes and practices by a group of people, be it in a organization or society, simply it is a way of life. The characteristics of culture are governed at center by core values set by an organization or society.

India is rich in culture, it varies from state to state, varies from region to region. Culture adopts changes over a period of time, it gets influenced by dominant factors in life. Indian culture is very ancient and influenced by many like Aryans, Greeks, Romans, Moguls...who ever ruled India left marks on the Indian culture. Now a days the political or super powers are governing the culture, like we are influenced by many western cultures today.

Organizations would like to set its own culture. General Electric co. set its values to imbibe culture across the organization .... known to be high with integrity, Trust, openness, boundarilessness etc... Their Slogan Mark used to be "Good things to life" in Jack Welch times and changed to "Imagination at work" now by Jeff Immelt.

Same way Symantec defined its values around Innovation, Action, Trust and Customer-Driven with a slogan mark of " Confidence in connected world".

Longevity in a organization transforms a person to possess its culture, when you change organizations, you may experience culture shocks.

It is important to find out the organizations culture, before jumping in to an organization or you may not stay long time or not succeed.

Time Management

In recent times some body asked me, how do you manage your time. There are lot of books written around this, but believe me it is all about what you think a priority to do now vs. non priority. A simple example....a person went to a friend's city and took time to call his friend and told him that i do not have much time to visit to you in person. His friend replied back to him saying, "do not say you don't have time..it is 24 hours as defined...say you have other priorities to attend to"...

You need to decide in a day what you want to do......some things you need to plan ahead...some things you need to think ahead.....again based on the priorities in your life and profession....

there is no rocket science....it's very simple indeed.

Srisailam - a Temple Hill

Happy New Year ...This is the first blog in new year after a looooooooooong break. I was in Hyderabad and visited Srisailam - LORD Shiva's Temple. This is one of the 12 famous (Dwadasa Jyorlingas) Shiva Temples in the country. Some of them are Kashmir -Amarnath, Somanath (gujrat), Kasi etc...  It is almost 80KM hilly and ghat road drive, about 200Km from Hyderabad. A very nice location surrounded by hills and a small dam. I also liked  the Shivaji memorial, which is built there, believe Shivaji the Maratha king visited this place and blessed with a sword to fight the invaders.

The river Krishna enters Andhra Pradesh from its birth place mahabaleshwer after travelling through Karnataka.