How to become a talent magnet
BOOK EXTRACT
| It was not a long ride. We reached the honey farm "" a small clearing in the middle of the forest "" in less than ten minutes. There was a neat line of beehives set on stands, like tiny row houses. There were just a few people about. |
| One of them came over and greeted us. Grandpa shook his hand and spoke to him. The man smiled at me, nodded, and went towards one of the hives. |
| Lifting its "roof", he pulled out a small wooden frame and brought it over. There were a couple of bees clinging to it; the man shooed them away. |
| "There, look at it. Each and every comb a perfect piece of work, almost artistic isn't it?" Grandpa looked admiringly at the honeycomb that the man held. |
| "You know the beauty of it is that all the honeycombs that these bees create are similar in finish, similar in content, and made with the same amount of painstaking effort and they don't do it differently because the honey is going to be extracted. Isn't that marvellous?" he asked me. |
| "Yes, Grandpa, you're right. We are supposed to be many times more intelligent than the common honeybee, yet we vary in our output. We are not consistent unless we are forced to. |
| And look at these bees. They don't have a QA department breathing down their necks, they don't have a board announcing their quality policy to the world, they just produce quality. |
| There is no other work. Their work is their advertisement, their work is quality and you'd really be constrained to find one single comb that is not perfect or one drop of honey that is not excellent. Such is the marvel and the beauty of Mother Nature," I said. |
| We went around the whole farm and we spoke to the workers there. They seemed to be happy and they seemed to enjoy what they were doing. The man who met us first said that if they did not concentrate on their jobs, a sharp sting would soon bring them back to it! |
| We drove back to the house and I went looking for a cup of coffee. When I returned, Grandpa was in the conference room with the day's agenda for discussion scrawled on the whiteboard. |
| One more day, I thought; I was leaving the following day by the evening train from Xavier's Colony. I pushed away these thoughts; I needed to focus for now. |
| "Okay, today we are going to begin with a quiz. It may sound trivial, it may sound easy, and it may even sound ridiculous. But you will indulge me. I want to know your buying preferences," he said smilingly. |
| "If you had to buy running shoes, what brand would you buy?" he asked. "Nike," I said. |
| "If you were to travel around the country and could choose the chain of hotels to stay in, which would you pick?" he asked. "The Taj group of hotels," I said. |
| "Let's talk international travel. Which airline would you choose to fly with?" |
| "Singapore Airlines," I said without hesitation. |
| "If you were to send your son to college, which university would you choose? Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you could afford the best." "Harvard," I said. |
| "If you were to buy a car for your family, which automobile manufacturer would you choose? Let's presume that we have a few Indian companies too that you can choose from." "Ford," I said. |
| "Presuming that you have no budgetary constraints, which motorcycle would you buy?" |
| "Harley Davidson," I was dead sure about that."Which courier service would you choose?" |
| "FedEx." "Which photocopier machine would you choose?" "Xerox. " "If you had to buy yourself a wristwatch, which one would you buy?" "Rolex." |
| "If you were to choose a holiday for yourself and your kids, arid money was not an issue, where would you go?""Disney Land." |
| "If you were to choose between an unknown bottled drink and Coke, what would you choose?" "Coke." |
| "If you were given the choice of working for a high salary in a company whose reputation you suspect, whose credentials you doubt, versus a lesser pay in a better-known company, where you are sure of your career and your prospects in the future, where would you work?" |
| "For a lower salary with a better branded company." "If you were in an unfamiliar restaurant, would you prefer to drink the water they serve you or would you ask for bottled water? In case of the latter, what would you ask for?" "Bisleri." |
| "Which country would you choose to live in?" "New Zealand.""If you had to buy an aircraft, which manufacturer would you choose?" "Boeing." |
| "If you were to choose a hospital for your parents, would you choose a cheaper hospital where medical treatment was about average or a more expensive hospital with some great doctors?" "The latter." |
| "If you wanted to eat a burger, where would you head?" "McDonalds." "If you wanted to buy diamonds, which company would you choose?" "DeBeers." |
| "If you had to buy a CD player and a television, which manufacturer would you choose?" "Sony." "If you had to buy your own speaker systems, what would you buy?" "Bose." |
| "What brand of formal shoes would you buy?" "Bally." "If you needed to buy a mobile phone, which brand would you choose?" "Nokia." |
| "If I gave you a choice between accepting household appliances of an unknown manufacturer free of cost or buying the same appliances from Whirlpool, what would you do?" "Buy from Whirlpool." |
| "If you were buying jeans, which brand would you prefer?" "Levi's." ''And now my last question. Give me an answer in less than ten seconds," Grandpa said. "What is common about every single brand that you mentioned?" he asked. |
| "Quality. In fact some of them are market leaders despite being the most expensive as well," I said. "I rest my case, your honour," Grandpa said with a mock bow. |
| "We spoke about this the last time you were here. Quality is not a fancy board hanging in the foyer and in your CEO's room. Quality is a statement that you live by in your organisation. Quality is the currency you deal in. Quality is in the people that you hire. Quality is in the business cards that your people hand out at meetings. Quality is not a once in a blue moon exercise which many companies undertake just to tell the world that they too are a quality organisation," Grandpa said. |
| "It's my turn now to applaud you, Grandpa. Well said. I was racking my brains and wondering what you'd come up with today and I got an inkling when you took me to see the honey farm. But this was a unique exercise," I said clapping. |
| "Thank you; sir. I have just one more thing to add before I close. You see, quality is a commitment and that is a choice that companies have to make. Either you live it religiously or you avoid it studiously. In the short term you can convince yourself that price dictates a cut in the quality you provide and consider yourself justified. |
| In the long term you will find that there are customers who are willing to pay more for good quality products and services. |
| At one point of time, Japanese goods were considered cheap and tacky, until they took away the advantage that the Americans had over the automobile industry, over the electronic industry. |
| Today no one in his right senses will say that the Japanese manufacture products that are cheap and tacky. Today the world acknowledges the fact that quality is synonymous with anything Japanese. |
| "Never fool yourself into believing that simply by adhering to ISO standards or any other quality standards, your organisation has become a quality organisation. You, your people, and your products have to reek of quality. Then you will have customer satisfaction, then you will have products that are truly world class and then you will build a culture that is also a cut above everything else." |
| Brand-wise: leveraging people to build powerful brands |
| By Jyothi Menon and Pradeep Nevatia East West Books (Madras) Private Limited Pages: 88; Price: Rs 225 Reproduced with permission |