A Leader

I have heard multiple times about the difference between a manager and a leader. I have also seen numerous books on Leadership, Developing leadership abilities. But Who is a leader? How do we become a good leader. There cannot be a single answer or a common formula to answer this question. In this blog, I will try to answer these two questions, from my experience.

My stint as a manager / team leader started in 2012, in Kolkata. I was in Airtel then, and handling a Direct sales agency, selling high speed internet connections. Looking back at the stint now, I think I did terribly, both in sales and also in team management. After an year in Kolkata, I moved to Bhubaneswar where I led Airtel's m commerce platform, for 8 districts of Odisha. This was my first stint where I handled a geographically distributed team. After 15 months of this, I moved to Vijayawada, where I led Airtel's brand retail, for the state of AP. These stints in Bhubaneswar and Vijayawada, where I was part of highly competitive business environment, leading high performing teams, gave me great learnings in team building, management and helped me with my pursuit to become a leader.

Who is a leader. According to me, anyone who is able to lead his team, or a set of people, in one, focussed direction, is a leader. The length of the definition in no way depicts the complexities involved in this. If we take the CEO of a company, for him to be a leader as per the above definition, firstly, he/she has to define what the direction is. Then aligning the entire organisation, mainly, their immediate team, defines whether they make a leader or not. Now, after defining the direction or roadmap, identifying aligning everyones professional and personal goals, to this direction, on a periodic basis, make the leadership abilities of the CEO. Even for this, there are various skills that play a role in determining the success of the above exercises; which is precisely my statement, that the definition of a leader is not as simple as it sounds.

What are some of the major leadership traits? Now this is a difficult question. As the saying goes, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. The leadership traits are majorly defined by the expectations of the team, which are not constant. In spite of this, I have learned that there are few simple traits, if displayed, can take one a long way in their role as a leader. Please find some of them, below.

1. Lead from the front

This one goes without saying, definitely. Be it discipline, sales, customer service, discipline, or even punctuality, if you want to see it in your team, lead as an example. Lead from the front in any unusual crisis or situation, irrespective of it being major or minor.

2. Build Roadmaps, show direction

We all love leaders who show us grand visions. Be it Modi, Trump or Steve Jobs. We all love a great grand future. Building roadmaps for your team, and highlighting what their role is in it, helps them not only understand the roadmap of the company or team, but also helps them plan their work/objectives. This exercise also helps leaders track their own performance and also teams, basis the objectives set as part of the roadmap.

3. Take new initiatives

Teams love leaders who take new initiatives. In business as in life, we expect perpetual improvement in anything we undertake. And this improvement is not going to happen by doing the same tasks again and again. Teams appreciate leaders who solve problems with new initiatives (major/minor). This also gives the team a sense of excitement in undertaking something new, which is out of their daily routine.

These are from my experience of the last 8 years, and have helped me during my various roles, in different companies. Are these enough - Definitely not. Many of the skills that are required to display leadership traits, are also learned through learnings from our experiences. For Ex: I have worked in six different states, and have lived in 8 different states so far. And I strongly believe that this has helped me to understand and appreciate various cultures, helped me to learn to work well with diverse teams. Similarly, there can be many many experiences from life, which help us to build important traits, which eventually help in the pursuit to become a leader.

An Entrepreneur..

"Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can't" - An entrepreneur

An entrepreneur is a person who has possession of a new enterprise, venture or idea and is accountable for the inherent risks and outcomes. This is the wikipedia definition of entrepreneur. Though the word 'Entrepreneur' seems a little heavy in itself, most of us dream of starting something of our own at some point in our lives. But in a society like ours, there is very little chance that this wild dream of ours ever comes true. But yes, there are people who go ahead and realize their dreams. I had a wonderful opportunity of working with one of them, Mr Sanjay Singh, an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, founder and Director of Swas healthcare. This post summarizes the things I learned working with him and also from his interviews with the media. I have found them very interesting and also very essential for any budding entrepreneur.

For an entrepreneur, it is always necessary to have a reason other money to get him going. There might be times when the cash flow turns dry and the future seems dim. But as long as we stand on our cause and motivation, it is the only thing which gets us going. Mr. Sanjay also says that keeping an eye on cash flows is always important. Saving a few bucks whenever possible comes handy in rough times.

My second learning is start quick and dirty, don't wait for a perfect business model. This is very important as we learn more working than contemplating an ideal solution. Also it has the capacity to give us an early mover advantage in this competitive world.

"Watch, listen and learn. You can't do everything yourself. Anyone who thinks they do is destined for mediocrity" - Donald Trump. This quote says it all. My biggest learning is to keep our eyes open. Sometimes people on the ground knows what works the best and what not. Hence to be receptive to ideas and also change is an absolute necessity for success.

"Choose a job you like and you never have to work a day in your life". This is the biggest motivation of all. In an interview with the media, Mr. Sanjay said "When I see our patients making the journey from “hope in eyes” to “smiling faces” it gives us immense strength to continue our efforts in spite of all hurdles". So it all boils down to our own happiness and satisfaction in starting our own venture.

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Latent demand, Psycho-graphic segmentation and Holistic marketing

"It is clear that the forces defining 21st century are leading businesses into a new set of beliefs and values. Today's marketers best recognize the need to have a more complete, cohesive approach that goes beyond the traditional applications of marketing concepts." The lines given in Marketing Management by Kotler and co. I couldn't think of a better introduction to this post than this. I am writing about a few amazing concepts, which I found are the amazingly relevant in todays world.

The meaning of the word "latent" is "potentially existing but not presently evident or realized". Latent demand is the demand which the industry does not know it exists. A good example is the ready mix masala. People never knew that ready made masala could make such a big market. Though masala had been used always, it was prepared at home with a lot of effort. But tapping such a big need just of no where was amazing. The other examples could be camera in a mobile phone, trolley suit cases etc. Though it might take a genius to invent a new product, all it takes is a good thinker/strategist to identify a latent need and with so many inventions already done, latent demand marketing is a wonderful way forward.

Gone are the days when the market segmentation, for promotion of any product, was done on the basis of age, gender, region etc. Though demographic segmentation is still a powerful tool, it is not conclusive. Consider the following example given by our prof yesterday, the real ages of a retired army person and a bank manager might not be the same. So here comes psychographic segmentation, which uses the psychology of customers along with the demographics to narrow in on a market segment. A simple example could be McDonald's which altered its global menu to match the Indian appetite. We also see several ads like mountain dew, where the spirit of adventure or cadbury's diary milk where the spirit of celebration is marketed.

Holistic marketing recognizes that everything matters in marketing. It is based on development of processes and activities which recognize their interdependencies. It has four main concepts, out which integrated marketing is a beautiful concept. It explains that the 4 P's of marketing i.e. product, price, place, promotion, should communicate and deliver the same value for customers. An example could be cadbury's celebrations. Here the only idea is celebration, which is clearly reflected in all possible ways.

Our marketing classes have begun from the last week of September and it was a different story altogether. Thanks to our prof, there were so many assignments and submissions from day 1, and this added to our misery as we were already flooded with company presentations, filling up applications etc. The good part was, there was never this amount of exposure to the industry, ground realities, which ideally should have been major part of the curriculum in an MBA. After two weeks of data overload, we had a market survey project on our plate, the first of the many to come. Our topic was book buying patterns of children and the location was an on going book fare in Lucknow. So we, as a team of 5, had done a good job in interviewing at least 20 children. The findings were common, like the books recommended by teachers or parents sold the most, books with lots of pictures had higher sales etc. One thing was a most interesting factor, we found among students of age group 10 - 12, the maturity or at least trying to look mature by flaunting books like the Oliver twists and Tom sawyers. The experience as a whole was enjoyable.

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