App'ing our way to solving education's big problems.

Something is wrong with education. Why?

Presumptions such as “Kids don’t want to study “are highly misleading. They push us towards a conclusion that dulls our innovation and takes companies towards hard selling instead of working towards a product pull. We questioned these conclusions related to the way kids study and tried to find out why we reached here in the first place and what can be done better. Predetermining and fixating on consumer behavior is a big mistake, especially in industries wedded with technology. Education is fast becoming one of them and it begged further introspection. And that’s what we did.

We took a very close look at student behavior and suddenly found what we were doing wrong.

 We were trying to make the student bend to our behavior. We were playing headmaster and telling them what to do. Big mistake! It is important to adapt to children rather than the other way round. Kids run on instinct. It is interesting to look into what children enjoy doing the most and incorporate some of these features in their education methodologies. According to Clayton M. Christensen in ‘Disrupting Class’, children like to do two things. 

1. Have fun with friends and
2. Feel successful. 

We verified and arrived at the same conclusions after innumerable student interactions and pouring over almost a million points of student data.  We learned that we had to engage them on their home ground. Asking them to move was always wrong to begin with. Online tools help in engaging students more efficiently but this alone is not sufficient as these tools tend to be boring, mind numbing and definitely do not make students feel successful.Compelling evidence led us towards cognitive science and Gamification.

Gamification is the use of game mechanics in a non-game environment.  Health, education, HR etc. have lent themselves to such experimentation and emerged victorious-but we had to see it for ourselves.  In the online world, Gamification is directly related to the customer engagement. Users are exposed to very short feedback cycles that sometimes translate to urgency, points, levels, epic meaning and game like competitiveness that keeps them entertained and engaged. For kids, the process of having predefined goals and continuous feedback on their progress (and not in some obscure report telling them their weaknesses) was a way to implement this approach. 

We hypothesized that this would allow a mind to focus much better on accomplishing smaller short-term objectives while moving towards the larger goal. For children, it meant engaging them without making them feel like they were studying. Breaking the whole system down to a few manageable parts at a time for them was what we wanted to play around with. So when Horlicks came to us looking for something different to help their customers succeed at their exams, it was perfect timing. Got to thank our ad-sales guy for that.

We wanted to verify the effectiveness of Gamification but yet wanted to go lean. Hence, we created Android mobile phone apps. We obsessed over everything. We had to. Conclusions from this experiment could have large implications. Our in-house designers had to learn to design mobile apps, our content team had to suddenly work with byte sized micro portions of the syllabus and our developers had to learn how to code for the real time and in the cloud. It took a lot of coffee to get here. In the process we built a team that was great at wow-ing responsive design, node.js, amazon web services and mLearning. We discovered the world of multiple devices and how to design for them.

With the apps we built, a CBSE/ICSE/State Board student in class 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th or 10th can practice all chapters of selected subjects sitting in the comfort of his or her home or on the go. The easy to use and intuitive interface of the Horlicks Prepora  (Pandora of exam prep !) app helps to accurately practice a chapter and then review ones performance. The Horlicks Chapter Notes - Revise Anytime. Anywhere! App aims towards simplifying the revision process. A student can revise important concepts, explanations and formulae in just two steps.

After what seems like a million iterations, the apps finally looks like this.

Prepora

  

Chapter Notes

After a 2 months of late nights, caffeine and pizzas, what did we find? That 

1. Children were spending more time on a small mobile screen than a web app 
2. The Leaderboard was a hit. Kids loved to look at it and make sure they were winning
3. A remarkable 85% percent of users who started a test, finished it! A big win for intrinsic motivation.
4. Kids love to create and hate things that don't do everything
5. Lean innovation rules and constant experimentation is the only way to know what can work!

Encouraged by what we have achieved we shall keep moving, trying, failing, succeeding and pivoting. Maybe remote tutoring is next? Who knows.

Did Gamification work?

We don't know, but it's looking good so far.

For now, students can look forward to the next version which would be more narrowcasted, more local, more social, more beautiful and more effective. We even made a cool website to help everyone locate us better. Let us know if you have more ideas. Anything could work!

In god we trust. Everyone else we measure.

I'm a big believer in collecting usage data but most people don't share the same enthusiasm. They're not to blame. Daily grind and ops takes away so much of their time and energy that it's easy to get blindsided by it. Ops starts to seem like the great alpha of everything and terms like big data and analytics sound like jargon and theory. A classic trap of success - what got us here will get us there as well. Not likely.

Let me explain.

Data, especially in India, is associated with sales figures and page visits (in case of web businesses). India is such a big country that even an average product can succeed and get big numbers. At the risk of oversimplification, I would say that if India were the size of Israel or Thailand then more than half of businesses would have failed in year one itself. The reason is simple : when you have lesser number of first adopters to market to then the focus usually lands in the lap of innovation and actual usefulness. Things starts failing when younger companies starts stepping on your toes and reach out to the cake in your hand. This is more important with B2C companies which might have large permutation and combinations of product engagement and interactions.

Sales data is always essential but's its only an effect. Until we start focusing on the cause which is visible through behavior and engagement, the daily grind will continue. One day when a company starts running out of money to keep selling to new people, a realization will dawn that we need to understand how the product is  actually being used and if it really solves a  task that the consumer needs to get done.  

This brings us to our credo- YOU CANNOT IMPROVE AND MANAGE WHAT YOU DON'T MEASURE.
Sales data flows in when people buy products, products sell only when they are worth using. People use the products only if they help doing an existing job faster and more efficiently. And the only way to know that is to listen to data that shouts out consumer behavior and the way the product is actually being used. You might have a growth of 50% each quarter but if your churn is 70% then it's just not sustainable (please exclude products like baby diapers!) This blog's message is to strike balance between sales and behavior and look forward to behavioral and engagement data with the same cool friction of anticipation as sales.

Firstly, Start liking it.CXO's should establish a bent of mid and get into the habit of assigning importance to real consumer engagement data. Our belief of what consumers will appreciate and what consumer will actually appreciate are almost always different. The fact might not be true in the case of new products and blue ocean markets but is a certainty as far as product innovation, pivots and continuous improvements are concerned.

Secondly, Decide what to get. Every decision that changes the product in someway should be attached to a success metric. For instance, we would consider a product UI (User Interface) and UX (User experience) overhaul successful if it increases engagement and online chatter by at least 30% within 3 months. Else we pivot again. This might not increase immediate sales but if it helps engagement then its a successful move.

Thirdly, Get the data. Critical user engagement points should be identified and ways to measure them should be put in place. Find the kind of user behavior that you would call successful in a product and then go ahead and stack a ruler next to it! Tools like Splunk and Mixpanel provide good ways to attach meters and semantics to behaviors which define good usage. For instance, an online video companies can understand a great deal by measuring the time spent by people watching specific genres of videos. How did you think TED came up with 10 minute talks? or how longer TED talks magically have a much deeper message  for a niche audience or how videos for a motivated audience with a purpose are usually longer and the casual ones designed to entertain and marginally educate are shorter. Everything has a reason.

Finally, Analyze it. periodic review meetings and management reports should attach equal importance to behavioral data than sales data. Doing this allows equal weightage to short term, medium term and longer term strategies and tactics. It will feed into the marketing plan to find new ways to market to people as well as provide insight into what is working and what isn't. Additionally, it will act as a ego balance where division leads will, in time, feel motivated to innovate. If at least 40% of your staff is not working towards what can be and what will be then someone else is going to dictate what you have to be.

"IN GOD WE TRUST. EVERYTHING ELSE WE MEASURE"
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Multitasking or Focus - What should we use?

It's been said, in a sweeping generalization that nevertheless has a grain of truth at its core, the the old world is obsessed with 'focus', and the new world is obsessed with 'multitasking'.

What do we know about focus and multitasking? For one, they both claim to be a factor that helps people reach the elusive and most misunderstood concept of our times. Success. But wait a minute, aren't both philosophies sworn enemies and polar opposites? Unable to survive simultaneously?

In school and in workplace the more popular opinion is of 'focus' or in academic terms 'specialization'. That is, in order to succeed or make money you need to 'focus'. It's been said that you can succeed if you focus on one thing and do it well. Conversely, the multitasking camp find their method to be an indispensable skill that helps you "deal with more at the same time".

My take- both are necessary. The answer may lie more in time than in space.

In all such arguments we often miss the fact that what gets people to rung A in their pursuit of success might not get them to rung B. Alpha to Bravo is not a straight line. As responsibility and authority changes, so do the working philosophies that people need to get things done.

Multitasking works well when you are at a level where a major fraction of your to-do pie is delegation, reporting, follow-ups or work of similar nature. I'm talking about managers, senior associates and the likes of them (read -'not leaders'. There is a big difference between the two) This form of work style gives results because once one has learnt the art of hiring right, delegating to a team, reporting to management and then monitoring results then there is little left for laser like focus for daily ops. In all the years that it took to rise to a managerial/leadership level, the manager has been honing this balancing act that finally becomes intuitive (which is why he became a manager/leader in the first place).

Focus, on the other hand, works well, ironically, for leaders and young professionals/workers alike. Both need to set examples, the former for others and the latter for oneself and both have to make sure they get  things right, basically because they are learning through the process and/or the job is extremely critical or new.

An organization works well when both these forces work in tandem.

Order within the competitive chaos is achieved when the management understands that their worker bees need to focus on a few achievable tasks if quality is expected and use multitasking to manage the whole team. Expecting multitasking of the actual workers will always be a big mistake.

Yes, there are exceptions to the scenario. But really? Do we want our task force to keep shifting their attention or do we understand that their focus can have organizing power. After all, we could always use more of that when vital things are getting done.

Chains and Shocks: The perfect consumer experience!

It’s been a while since I’ve written or shared an insight. Like for most things that happen, there were many reasons for this gap but the most profound one was that I had let life-as-usual interrupt my routine of penning down management insights that I live and learn each day. What this post talk about is probably the most simple and effective key to dramatically increase the possibility of success in any task that one would want to put his or her mind to.

I have read cases on exceptional companies, I've worked with organizations and grappled with the nuts and bolts of execution, I've seen movies that worked and I saw people who have clicked. All these seemed to me like different scenarios with different winning set of strategies and formulas. There was a struggle to understand each separate story as I ripped them apart looking for what made them work. But then after all these years a pattern started to emerge. Suddenly there was something common between all these seemingly disparate successes. The pattern I noticed is this: Every successful undertaking appeared to shock the hell out of its lead consumer at each level of evident or invisible contact and they all spent their time worrying about the process. Let me explain. ( and yes there is a very good reason why I used ‘evident’ and ‘invisible’ instead of ‘direct’ or ‘indirect’!)

This is a blog on management and strategic thinking and unfortunately we can’t keep away from jargon forever. A project can be seen as a combo of two value chains. First the steps that a company must take to arrive at a product or a service. These steps lend the final output a character that it displays under ideal conditions of use. Second, are the steps that a consumer takes to reach out to product or the service and then consume it, either immediately or over time. Successful (we can always debate what success means but let’s just stick to a definition that ‘something can be known as successful when the person offering it and the one consuming it are both happy’) companies have a knack to first anticipate the positive consumption shock that its product should have and develop a supporting ‘first value chain’ and then finally makes sure that the second value chain piggybacks on the first one and actually works to deliver those shocks.

What I mean by this is that, internal company processes and daily rituals are set in order to polarize the results towards achieving an optimal perceived reaction from the consumers. Then the company moves onto provide an experience with genius levels of delivery where each interaction with the company, either evident (e.g. Customer Service) or invisible (e.g. advertising, HR) are different and shocking. Take any example of an outstanding product from GE, P&G, 3M, Southwest Airlines or even famous movies like Toy Story, Shawshank Redemption or Finding Nemo...the same pattern emerges. Every time the product is touched or used, one is shocked. Every scene one watches, either makes one laugh or cry or left the viewer deep in thought. Internal processes make sure the product is competitively good; HR makes sure people are always happy; the leader makes sure he never sulks and is always radiant with infectious energy and all this translates into a shocking experience for the consumer. It’s the many small strategic plays that add up and leads to something that is inimitable and sustainable.

But the main point is that this seemingly simple and effective formula seems to elude many companies. Some sequences are good but there are boring parts to a movie, the drinks are great but the wall is chipped, the product is great but the service IVR loves to chat! A sincere look at the distinct parts of an offering and an equally sincere effort to make them all delightfully shocking in their own little way will mostly pay off. Back an offering with consumer research to know what knocks them out, set-up a system that can deliver it and then actually deliver it!

Just make sure you shock more than your competitors do and can sustain it over time.

Guide to Retailing: Part 2

There has been a lot of economic tectonic movement since the past year and we would all agree that retail has been one of the most severely hit industries. Most of the hit was due to the fact that organized or modern retail is only 5% of the total consumption in India and comprises of modern towns and cities where people are getting fired or going bankrupt. But the most important reason is the deteriorating market sentiment, the fear of dwindling personal cash flow and increase in savings.

Now, what I am writing about today is a piece of news that was released a few days by the leading modern retailers of India who claim that they are now planning to share backend functions and resources in order to lower costs and ride the storm. The news is good. I have mentioned earlier as well in my blog post 'The Downturn Brotherhood' that faced by an external threat, competitors usually shake hands to fight it together. However, the situation is a little different in retail.

It cannot be compared to Coca-Cola and Pepsi hiring a lobbyist to fight the pesticide campaign together neither can it be compared with telecom industry sharing towers. Why? Well it’s just because the real source of value lies somewhere completely different in these industries! One needs to further drill down into these pacts and realise the logical distance between the core and pact.

In retail, however, the majority of advantage has always been derived from the backend. Superior supply chain, purchasing power, optimised logistics, demand forecasting etc was always king. I don’t deny that front-end rationalization like shelving strategy, matching product characteristics with regional behaviour, location, format etc definitely are very important but it can never overshadow the advantage of a competitively better backend. Indian retail is very tricky and competitive and the players involved are aggressive. People who have stepped in too fast have got burnt on this field and are already suffering the consequences which were more to do with their impatience and lack of understanding than anything else.

One of the largest retailers in the country has no history of alliances and co-operation. They believe in backward integration which is deep -rooted in their philosophy. How can one then hope to share warehouses and purchasing with them when the only reason others are winning is because they have a better control over these factors?
My thought is this - the suggestion is honest and is the right thing to do considering the situation but it will never happen. Retailers in India can share power but never the source of power! In an industry marred with changing consumer behaviour and ever increasing value add, the stake is very high. What it takes to win here is not a single strategy but the whole package covering the entire value chain and all elements including culture working in tandem. Once the backend is exposed, the package opens for everyone to see which cannot be allowed. Low prices cannot be provided by merely competing on the front-end.

Factoring employee reaction in skill gap assement

Recently there was an article in the McKinsey Quarterly titled 'Identifying employee skill gaps'. The article is explores an optimal method to analyze skill gaps within and organizations and aims at focusing training programs on specific regions, management levels and employees. Doing this definitely saves a lot of training dollars by concentrating them on areas which actually need them.
This is indeed a the right way to go about analyzing the skill gaps in an organization. However, going one step further, in my experience, I have come to realize that when a skill gap assessment is announced, many employees subconsciously treat it as an appraisal of sorts. If there is a peer review of capabilities it almost sounds like a 360 appraisal.

To avoid these side effects, I would recommend that:

1. The motive of the exercise is communicated very well to the employees highlighting the fact that this is not an appraisal and the results will be used only to assign trainings.

2. Immediate superiors should not be involved in assessing skill gaps to avoid skewed reviews. Once people around the organizations know that their day-to-day managers will not be involved in the process, any attempt at collusion or artificially inflating or deflating the skills will be greatly reduced.

Competitor reactions need to be considered and factored into analytical equations before making strategic business decisions. Similarly, possible stakeholder reactions also need to be thought of and factored into before any mass strategic announcement is made to them. Every statement invites reactions and risks and some of them need to be hedged.

Turning around Service Based Companies

This current financial fiasco and economic downturn will definitely leave two sets of people very rich and happy. 'Bankruptcy experts' and 'Turnaround Consultants'.

Turnarounds have been extensively researched but most of the management writing and thinking has been around manufacturing companies or businesses with their outputs having a large tangible component. However, there is relatively lesser work done for turnarounds for service based companies in which the traditional strategies might prove to be counterproductive. This entry focuses on turnaround strategies for service based companies and how they necessitate a different mindset.

Fortune’s list of the “most admired” service companies is one of the most dynamic of the published company rankings marked by most number of basis changes every year. Thus, it can be safely inferred that service based companies are somehow more vulnerable and exposed to internal and external stimuli than other industries. Moreover, the basic nature of a failing service based business is quite different than any other manufacturing based company which makes it more difficult to borrow best practices from previous turnarounds.

A 'turnaround situation matrix' proposed by Marius Pretorius in the 'Journal of Business Strategy' provides different situations in which a company (not necessarily service based!) might find itself and also provides strategic options for each scenario.

Situation Matrix

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Strategic Options

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Now, I do understand that service based companies are fundamentally different from other industries but if looked at a little more closely, most concepts and terminology from these industries have non-tangible cousins in the service industry for instance Capacity, products, inventory, assets etc. most of which are employees.

Therefore, in the global interest of presenting all service based industries with a more intelligible framework (which they all would probably need when the sun starts shining again!)for them to work with , I have tweaked the situation matrix to make it lean towards service industries and provide service specific actions that businesses can take.


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of course, optimal capital structure for companies will now have to be revised considering various factors like future tax shields contributed by the current losses (No offense to anyone in particular!), high cost of debt, unavailability of funds etc.

Usually, combination of these strategies can be simultaneously pursued by the management to achieve the desired results. Application of a combination of actions suggested above can be usually seen in the’ last resort’ or the ‘forced repositioning’ preconditions.
As a disclaimer I would say that what follows after strategy is its implementation which is much more important and painstaking. Change is easier said than done and always leads to massive internal and external inertia. An entire discipline of change management is devoted to managing such obstacles. But as a general rule, we would advice all CEOs to make sure all key stakeholders are well informed of the process since their buy-in is indispensable to successfully carry out the effort.