Can we mimic ourselves to be an Apple or Google? Can we?

This is just a thought about what individuals can adopt from top companies like Google or Apple?

Can we raise our risk appetite constantly? Trying something new in our job?
Can we take a forward looking approach, instead of living in our past glory?
Can we try to innovate ourselves and our skills significantly?
Can we stop regretting on what went wrong; take only lessons learnt and move on?
Can we re-invest our earnings significantly in ourselves?
Can we be someone with whom people feel proud to be associated with?
Can we measure our performance quarter on quarter?
Can we inspire people around us and show new reality?
Can we learn to differentiate ourselves by our unique capabilities?
Can we mean and stand for so something special?
Can we present ourselves well, professionally and ethically?
Can we learn to turn our performance down cycle to up cycle instead of quitting?

Though we are individuals, I think we can still operate and measure ourselves like a company. Like a top company. Like a Google or Apple.

Masala Chai

Well here is the glass; we (all the people who attended the conference) were severed Masala tea / chai in at the Grand Hyatt Luxury hotel. If this glass was used in a road side tea shop, our reaction to it would be "normal" (because we all know this is what they can afford for the money they charge us), if the same glass is used by a two star hotel / decent restaurant, we would think it's a "compromise" by them, and when used by a 5 star luxury hotels, we think they are being "authentic" or "original" about it (Hyatt smartly served coffee side-by-side in expensive crockeries to make the glasses look more authentic than compromise). 

Same glass, different place, different opinion. 

Is Gartner losing its edge?

Was part of Gartner's IT Symposium at Goa, though its a great place to network for IT service providers focusing on India, I found most of Gartner analyst sessions not so engaging enough (except keynote sessions), partly may be they were throwing too many figures on the screen, than showing some real-time compelling success stories or could be that information today has become so ubiquitous (because of Internet, socialmedia & mobile) that you already know most of what Analyst is talking about or may be what the Analysts were speaking was resonating with People who were not in the IT services business. Whatever may be the reason, my take is that with information becoming more and more ubiquitous, Gartner needs to innovate more in their offerings..... sorry if I am sounding arrogant here trying to comment on Gartner...but this is just my perspective based on my world's view.

All things being equal

Some of the products in the market offer features which sounds futuristic or one which are not needed immediately by the consumers or those which are helpful only for about 10% to 20% of the consumer base. Let me give few examples, selling NFC (near field communication) mobile phones in markets like India which doesn't have an ecosystem yet for NFC, Samsung trying to market its tablets on charts App, which probably will not be used by majority, Fevicol marketing its products showing furnitures thrown in water, but the fact is majority of us would keep furnitures away from water.

Then the question is why are these companies providing these features or promoting their  products around these features? Because in the age of high competition, you need to answer this question in the consumer's mind, 'all things being equal whom should I go with', in that scenario the features like Charts, NFC or Water proof furnitures will pop-up in their mind. Even though these features are not mandatory for them, they gave a one-up score to a company compared to others. And it also managed to capture their mind and their interest, hence consumers buy them.

So when the consumer is asking the 'all things being equal' question, is your product popping up in their mind?

Patience and Aggression at work

If you can balance between the two, Patience and Aggression depending on the situation, then you have a winner in hand. Being patientful all time doesn't help and same is the case with aggressiveness, but if you can moderate these two behaviours of yours appropriately depending on what you are dealing with, you can make a world of difference in your approach, decision making and execution skills. That's my thought.... let me know yours.

Sales not working out?

Here is an incomplete list on where you or your organization may be going wrong on sales


Always me-too strategy

Never a head of curve

No passion for BHC (Beat-the-Hell-out-of-Competition)

No value proposition

Not aggressive (No Speed)

Not working hard

Don’t realize that good is bad in this world (be exceptional)

Internal Collaboration sucks

Poor or No retrospection

Not performance driven

No one to confront problems

No outside-in approach

Collective thinking is missing

Incompetent Sales Team

Focusing on too many things

Trying to make everybody happy internally

No distinct positioning

No Monitoring No Measuring

Don’t know how to beat down-cycle with up-cycle

Trying to sell poor products or services

Not engaging with prospects

Athletes

Athletes become champions not when millions of people are watching them on TV, not when 1000s of people are chanting their names on the field, not when they go and receive the medal but in the early morning silence, when no one is watching them, no one is encouraing them, no one is rewarding them.... yet they go out and practice every single day in anticipation of that winning moment. That is when they become champions.

Did you practice in your area of work today?

Be an athlete.