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Tag: Excerpt

Cracking the Code of Transformation

Posted on by Penguin India

Comparing theories of change
Our research has shown that all corporate transformations can be compared along the six dimensions shown here. The table outlines the differences between the E and O archetypes and illustrates what an integrated approach might look like.

Dimensions of changeTheory ETheory OTheories E and O combined
 
GoalsMaximize shareholder valueDevelop organizational capabilitiesExplicitly embrace the paradox between economic value and organizational capability
 
LeadershipManage change from the top downEncourage participation from the bottom upSet direction from the top and engage the people below
 
FocusEmphasize structure and systemsBuild up corporate culture: employees’ behavior and attitudesFocus simultaneously on the hard (structures and systems) and the soft (corporate culture)
 
ProcessPlan and establish programsExperiment and evolve
 		Plan for spontaneity
Reward systemMotivate through financial incentivesMotivate through commitment—use pay as fair exchangeUse incentives to reinforce change but not to drive it
 
Use of consultantsConsultants analyze problems and shape solutionsConsultants support management in shaping their own solutionsConsultants are expert resources who empower employees
 

This is an excerpt from HBR’s 10 Must Reads (On Change Management). Get your copy here.
Credit: Abhishek Singh

Dealing with Dual Transformation

Posted on by Penguin India

With the ever-changing environment, the adaptability of a business determines its height of success. A leader’s ability to percept the changing environment and act in accordance with it marks the sign of true leader. We have umpteen numbers of cases for both, the success and the failure in leading the organization towards change. Often, the path to change is seen as a one-dimensional one. However, the authors of Dual Transformation beg to differ. They firmly believe in the dual course of action required to take the company out of turbulent waters. The following excerpt clarifies the fundamentals of Dual Transformation by keeping Deseret News at the pivot:
‘Our bedrock case study comes from coauthor Clark Gilbert’s firsthand experience leading a transformation at Deseret Media. The Deseret News is one of America’s oldest continually published newspapers, tracing back to 1850. Ultimately owned by the Mormon Church (which also owns the local KSL television station), the paper historically competed in Utah with The Salt Lake Tribune under what is known in the industry as a joint operating agreement, wherein the two companies share facilities and printing presses but have independent journalists, brand positions, and so forth. As the number 2 provider in its market, Deseret Media was hit particularly hard by the disruptive punch of the internet; between 2008 and 2010 the Deseret News lost nearly 30 percent of its print display advertising revenue and 70 percent of its print classified revenue.
In 2009, Gilbert—who had done his doctoral research at Harvard on the newspaper industry and had consulted to the industry before he became head of online learning at Brigham Young University-Idaho—was asked to launch Deseret Digital Media, a newly formed organization that contained Deseret Media’s collection of websites.
Five years later, however, Deseret Media had a vibrant print publication, including a national weekly that was one of the fastest growing publications in the United States. It also had built an impressive array of quickly growing digital marketplace businesses tied to its KSL classifieds products that collectively produced more than 50 percent of the organization’s combined net income. These digital businesses shared brands, content, and a few other resources with the core business but largely functioned autonomously. Deseret Media had revitalized its historical core business while simultaneously pioneering the creation of a new hill on the media landscape. By the time Gilbert left in 2015 to become president of BYU-Idaho, net income at Deseret, in the midst of an industry in free fall, was up by almost 25 percent from 2010.
Deseret’s success, according to Gilbert, is attributed to organizing the company to adapt to two very different types of change. Rather than view change as one monolithic transformation process, Gilbert organized the company into two parallel change efforts: one to reposition the core newspaper business, and another to unlock new growth in digital markets.
We call this change effort dual transformation.
When you take your first algebra class, you’re introduced to the Greek letter delta. The capital form of the fourth letter in the Greek alphabet, Δ, also serves as shorthand in math equations for change. The kind of change we’re talking about here is indeed a very large delta. Achieving that change requires following this formula:
A + B + C = Δ
Here’s how it breaks down.
A = transformation A. Reposition today’s business to maximize its resilience.
B = transformation B. Create a separate new growth engine.
C = the capabilities link. Fight unfairly by taking advantage of difficult-to-replicate assets without succumbing to the sucking sound of the core.’
For in-depth knowledge about the theory of Dual Transformation, click here .
This is an excerpt from Scott D. Anthony, Clark Gilbert and Mark Johnson’s Dual Transformation. 
Credit: Abhishek Singh

Michael Burns Gives the Tips to Hack into Your Creativity

Posted on by Penguin India

Michael Burns is a university teacher, writing coach, actor, editor and storyteller. He has directed five films for international television and his work has been seen in over twenty countries. He moved to India in 2011, and founded Tall Tales, the country’s longest-running, live-storytelling event series. He also conducts popular writing workshops around India.
Here’s what he has to say about his book Hack Into Your Creativity
Everyone has at least one great story. What’s yours?
If you’re reading this book, welcome.
I’m so glad we’ve found each other.
This is a book of story prompts: ideas, questions and thought experiments for you to enjoy and to write on. They’re designed to stimulate, energize and challenge you (the third of these being the most important). They’ve been written in a particular manner so that the maximum number of people can relate to them in some way. The writing that they inspire is best when it’s detailed, original and sourced from deep inside the writer’s heart and mind. There are eight categories of prompts:

  • What Happens Next?
  • Character-Building
  • Incredible India
  • Genres
  • Everyday Magic
  • Two-Parters
  • Integration
  • Every Hair on Its Head

Each of these subjects starts with a mini introduction to the category. Work your way through them or skip around if there’s a particular skill that you need to work on. I’ve added extra pages at the end of this book for you to write in, but I would recommend combining this text with a notebook so that you never run out of room for epiphanies.
This collection differs from other story-prompt resources in a few important ways. First, the prompts that follow are not random, provocative words or phrases designed to stir you to write just anything. While there is something to be said for that style, I’ve elected, instead, to put together prompts that help you to investigate visceral, transformational and pivotal moments in storytelling. This way, your writing is targeted and helps fabricate a tool that you can use on a regular basis and even in the most dramatic points in your future stories. So, there’s a special emphasis on dramatic tension. Second, this collection also readily explores both fiction and non-fiction because both are essential skills. As all writers know, your ability to find depth and nuance in fictional characters is only possible if you’re willing to, at some point in time, turn that high-powered lens back on yourself. Third, in the vast majority of cases I’ve kept the prompts targeted but very simple, steering clear of the types of prompts that shout, ‘Look how clever this story starter is!’ and instead tried to keep the focus right where it should be: getting you started down a path to discover how clever you are. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, as suggested above, this book offers you a curated sample of many different kinds of prompts that speak to the many different kinds of storytelling that a writer will likely indulge in—from introspective questions and sentence integration to science-fiction plot twists and character development. In other words, there is a substantial selection of varied prompts to suit your particular interest, mood or even work-related priorities.
These prompts are both specific and flexible. Just like an exercise machine at a gym, the prompts are designed to get you to work on a specific skill, but they can and should be adapted as necessary. I have randomly assigned pronouns (he or she) to the prompts, details that are obviously yours to change at will. I have also suggested goals for the amount of writing you should do after each prompt. This is just a minimal suggestion to help you create a proto-story, a foundational core that can give rise to a story over time. (Having said that, obviously, if you’re set on fire by a topic, with sparks flying off the end of your pen, keep writing!) Having a proto-story as a goal is important because a quality story is not something that usually reveals itself in one inspired session. It evolves over time and builds like a snowball. Some ideas are discarded while others are expanded. Therefore, a reasonable goal for yourself should be to meet at least the minimum lengths I’ve suggested and to infuse those seeds with so much love that they’re busting to grow. A more advanced goal might be to pair this book with your understanding of the universal story structure, giving your writing exposition, rising tension, and a satisfying but unexpected resolution. At the very least, consider three short acts for a simple story structure: let the prompts set things in motion, then let disaster strike your scene, and then finally, see if the characters you’ve created will be ingenious enough to survive or be overwhelmed enough to be snuffed out.
Treat this book as a source of inspiration when you need some. Treat it like a partner to help you get under the surface and beyond the barriers that might be temporarily blocking your creativity. Perhaps, above all, treat it as activation energy. Every chemist knows that reactions need a little push to get them going. And once the reactions start and combinations begin to agitate, percolate and transmute in the unpredictable ways that they sometimes do, you never quite know where you’ll end up.
So, as we get started on creating together, peace be the journey—the alchemist’s journey.
This is an excerpt from Michael Burns’ Hack Into Your Creativity.
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The Third Way to Innovate

Posted on by Penguin India

There is a big flaw in innovation thinking today – a false dichotomy. Conventional wisdom says that to survive, companies must move beyond incremental, sustaining innovation and invest in some form of radical innovation. “Disrupt yourself or be disrupted!” is the relentless message company leaders hear. Don’t be fooled. David Robertson in his book, The Power of Little Ideas shows there is a Third Way that is neither sustaining nor disruptive, but is, in its essence, complementary. This low-risk, high-reward strategy is one that all managers and executives must understand and practice in order to achieve competitive advantage in today’s dynamic economy.
The Third Way, isn’t a new concept altogether. Some companies have used the concept in their own way to maneuver their businesses into profit. However, no one has explicitly defined and described this form of innovation as a replicable process. To understand the concept in a concrete way, one should know its three distinctive traits.
First, and most obvious, the Third Way consists of multiple, diverse innovations around a central product or service that make the product more appealing and competitive. We refer to the product at the center of every Third Way project as the key or core product. It is always a key or important product; making a marginal product the focus of so much effort would make no sense. But the product does not always have to be a company’s core product, as its sports drink was for Gatorade and used cars were for CarMax. For Novo Nordisk, its HGH drug was certainly important, but its insulin product was, at least for the period covered in our story, the company’s core product. “Always key and often core” is the way to understand any product that is the focus of the Third Way.
By diverse complementary innovations, we mean that they should fall into a wide range of business categories, such as pricing, marketing, operations, sourcing, and partnerships. Likewise, the innovations should appear in a host of different forms, such as auxiliary products, support services, and social media activities.
Second, what makes this approach work is that all the complementary innovations operate together as a system or family to satisfy a compelling promise to the customer. Gatorade promised peak performance for serious athletes through a complete nutrition and hydration solution. Norditropin promised to make HGH therapy as trouble- and pain-free as possible for all involved. And CarMax promised buyers a hassle- and worry-free experience when they were locating and buying the car they needed.
Third, and perhaps the least obvious in the stories, the family of complementary innovations must be closely and centrally managed. It’s not an ecosystem of interrelated but autonomous companies and products that compete, collaborate, or otherwise co-evolve according to their own needs and priorities. Instead, each complementary innovation is created or selected and then closely managed, usually by the owner of the key product. Indeed, the careful selection and proactive management of this system is crucial to the success of the Third Way.
This is an excerpt from David C. Robertson and Kent Lineback’s The Power of Little Ideas. Get Your Copy here.
Credit: Abhishek Singh
 

When a Bomb Rocked the Wafi Mall in Dubai — An Excerpt from 'In the Name of God'

Posted on by Penguin India

What happens when you have to choose between faith and logic? Temples are places of worship, oceans of tranquility, or so everyone thinks, till a series of murders threatens to destroy the carefully cultivated reputation of the royal family of Thiruvanathapuram.
In Ravi Subramanian’s latest novel, we follow Kabir Khan, Additional Director, CBI, as he breezes through a complex maze of fact and fiction, faith and deceit, religion and commerce to unravel the mystery and unmask the killers with only minutes left at his disposal. Slick, riveting and fast paced, In the Name of God is a truly gripping novel.
Here’s an exclusive excerpt from the book.
It was a deafening sound. The kind that is heard when metal crashes into glass, bringing the whole thing down. The ground shook. It almost felt like an earthquake.
Visitors at Wafi Mall, the largest and possibly most exquisitely designed luxury mall in the area, stood astounded. No one could fathom what was going on.
Gate 1 of the mall was to the right of the central courtyard and a few minutes away from the main parking lot. The ground floor, accessible from Gate 1, was home to a variety of luxury gold and jewellery and accessory brands—Chopard, Cartier, Damas, Rolex, Omega, Breitling and a few local biggies were within shouting distance from the gate.
Moments later another piece of glass came crashing down amid the perceptible sound of cars rumbling close by.
At precisely forty-eight minutes past noon—no one knew the significance of the time, if there was one—two Audi A6s, one black and one white, had driven up to Gate 1. It was not uncommon for cars to drive up to the mall entrance. It was some distance from the main parking and the mall clientele, the rich and famous of Dubai, were not used to walking with their shopping bags. Ordinarily, the cars stopped on the carriageway built for them, waited for a couple of minutes, picked up their masters and drove out. But at 12.48 that day, the two Audis did not stop at the main gate. However, that was only half as strange as the manner in which they drove up to the gate: The black Audi was furiously approaching in reverse, followed closely by the white one, their bonnets almost kissing each other.
By the time the lone security guard at the gate could react, the black Audi had already crashed through the glass-and-metal door with a deafening noise. It drove further into the mall, right up to the main lobby on the ground floor, and screeched to a halt, the white car following suit. It almost seemed as if the black Audi was the pilot car, clearing the way for the second car. But why was it being driven in reverse? No one knew. No one cared. All that anyone in the mall was worried about was saving his or her own life. What ensued was mass panic as scared shoppers started running helter-skelter.
Amidst the confusion, four masked men, all dressed in black, got out of the cars, while the drivers stayed back, keeping the engines running. Armed with Kalashnikovs, they fired indiscriminately in the air, sending the already panic-stricken crowd into a state of hysteria. Everyone assumed it was a terrorist attack. At the time, that’s what it seemed like. Nervously vigilant, the four men strode towards the aisle to the right of the entrance. It was narrow, short and housed only three shops: Cartier, D’Damas and Ajmal Jewellers. At any given point in time, the cumulative stock in all the three stores put together was worth over a hundred million dollars.
The leader of the group stopped in front of Ajmal Jewellers and gestured to the other three to take up their positions. It took just one bullet to neutralize the shop attendant who was furiously rolling down the safety grille. The men entered the store. Once they were in, they were cut off from the rest of the mall.
All anyone could hear was the sound of shattering glass and indiscriminate gunfire. In three minutes the men came out of the store and ran back to the two Audis. Each of them had a bag in one hand— clearly booty from Ajmal Jewellers. But as they were rushing, the last of the four tripped and fell. The bag slipped out of his hands and rolled ahead. The contents of the bag—jewellery and gemstones—spilled out on to the marble floor. ‘Damn!’ the leader swore. ‘Quick! Three more minutes and the cops will be here. We need to go!’ The fall had delayed them by forty-five seconds. They had to leave, else they would be sitting ducks for the Dubai Police. He continued towards the Audi even as his fallen team member recovered, and tried to gather the loot on the floor and put it back into the bag. He quickly got into the second Audi though he had not managed to collect everything that had fallen out of the bag.
Immediately the engines roared to life. The cars vroomed and this time, the white Audi reversed out of the shattered mall entrance followed closely by the black one. In no time, they had disappeared from sight.
The moment the cars left the mall, people rushed towards the jewellery showroom, a few stopping on the way to pick up the pieces of jewellery and curios that had fallen out of the robber’s bag.
Ajmal Jewellers was in shambles. Glass from broken windows and display units was strewn all over. There was blood everywhere. Seven people had been shot—six store staff and a sole shopper.
All of them were dead.
This is an excerpt from Ravi Subramanian’s ‘In the Name of God’.
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The Beginnings of the Syrian Christian Kitchen in Kerala

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Long before the time of Christ, spice merchants and travelers from around the world would visit Kerala. The important seaport of Muziris or Cranganore was populated with Greeks, Syrians, Jews, and Chinese traders who lived in harmony with the people of the region. It was on one of these trading vessels, plying between Alexandria and the Malabar Coast, that Saint Thomas the Apostle is believed to have arrived in Cranganore in AD 52. He began preaching the Gospel to the people of these areas, and eventually established churches in Cranganore, Paravoor, Palur, Kokkamangalam, Niranam, Malayatoor, and Nillackel. Among those early conversions were several Namboodiri Brahmin families, from whom many of the present-day Syrian Christians trace their roots.
As legend has it, the upper caste Brahmins of Palur were converted after a miracle, whereby Mar Thoma (Saint Thomas) suspended water in midair as a testimony of his faith. Most of these early Christians followed the ancient Eastern Nestorian faith and were known as Malabar Christians until the advent of a Syrian merchant—Thomas of Canaan—who arrived in Muziris with four hundred Syrians, including several priests and a bishop. The Syrians were welcomed by the local Malabar Christians as the countrymen of Jesus and Saint Thomas. The two communities eventually intermarried and merged to become Syrian Christians, now recognized as one of the oldest Christian communities in the world.
The present-day Syrian Christians of Kerala are also known as Nazaranis, the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, and though they are now divided broadly into four sects—the Knanaya Christians, Jacobites, Marthomites, and Syrian Catholics—they share many common religious and social practices, and intermarriage is not uncommon. Collectively they retain a distinct identity and remain independent from other Christians in India because of their unique lineage. Life is centered around their liturgy and the observance of days of fasting and abstinence. They follow old Syrian church rites, chanting their singsong Syriac liturgy. The saga of the St. Thomas Christians is narrated in their song and dance forms—Margam Kali (the way of St. Thomas) and the Rabban Pattu (the songs of Rabban).
Syrian Christians are identified by their family names which reflect the profession of a family elder, place of origin, or sometimes nothing but pure whimsy. My own family, a large Syrian Catholic clan from Kanjirapally, is called Pallivathukkal, meaning “at the church gate,” as many centuries earlier my ancestors had settled near a church in Nillackel. My husband’s family name, Thekkekunnel, means “south hill.” Thadikaren, another family name, means “bearded man,” and the poetic Myladi means “peacock dance.” First names are biblical, and customarily the firstborn is named after a paternal grandparent and the secondborn after a maternal grandparent. Thereafter, aunts, uncles, and saints lend their names to the newborns. The second name is taken from the child’s father, but a Joseph George, say, may be anonymous until, when paired with his family name, he can be immediately placed as Joseph, the son of George of the Pottenkulam family. Syrian Christian names are distinctive and a George may also be known as Varkey or Varghese; a Paul can be Peeli or Paulose; and an Abraham can be called Avira or Ittira. Similarly, the female Syrian Christian name Rachel may be Raahel; Elizabeth can be Aley or Elamma; and Bridget, the melodious Uschita.
Most prominent Syrian Christian families are close-knit and connected by an intricate web of marriages. I have vivid memories of my mother and sisters spending hours disentangling family connections, the links being the women who married into each family. With many of these large clans expanding into several hundred members, some families now hold periodic kudumbayogams, family get-togethers which allow members of the family to reconnect.
Christianity in India has long been synonymous with education and the Syrian Christians have made a significant contribution to this field, partly by means of their large number of clergy. Today they have evolved into a distinct, indigenous community of agriculturists, scholars, industrialists, and professionals. A large number have moved to other cities in India as well as to distant lands, and though erudite and cosmopolitan, they are still attached to the traditions and customs of their ancestors.
Described as “Hindu in culture, Christian in religion, and Syro-Oriental in worship,” Syrian Christians enjoy the status of a prosperous and socially prominent community.
Sautéed Squid
Koonthal Varathathu
Squid turns rubbery if overcooked, so once marinated they must be quickly stir-fried and served hot, with a fresh sprinkling of lime juice. Serve with rice and accompaniments or as a snack.
Grind the garlic, chilli powder, turmeric, and pepper- corns to a coarse paste in a mortar and pestle.
Mix the garlic paste with the rice flour, salt, and lemon juice and rub into the squid. Let the squid marinate in the spices for at least 2 hours at room temperature.
Heat the oil in a skillet and add the squid. Stir-fry over high heat for 3 to 5 minutes, removing from the heat when the spices brown.
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This is an excerpt from Lathika George’s ‘The Suriani Kitchen’.
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Foreword from Anna Chandy’s Battles in The Mind by Deepika Padukone

Posted on by Penguin India

I feel privileged to write this foreword for Anna Chandy’s book.
This book is about Anna Aunty’s life.  A life that has been strife with trauma, pain and difficulties. And yet what emerges from all of this is a person with immense grit, courage and acceptance.
Anna Aunty has been a family friend for years. I’ve literally grown up in front of her. She has more recently been my therapist when I went through clinical depression two years ago.
In all the years I’ve known her, I have experienced her to be authentic, effective, focused yet empathic. There is a sensitivity and acceptance towards life that is very rare to come by.
Anna Chandy is now the chairperson of The Live Love Laugh Foundation that we set up to create awareness about and destigmatize mental health in India.
Many of us are on our own journeys of self-discovery, or aspire to be. This book has something for all of us to connect with. More importantly, this book communicates energy, resilience and hope for people struggling with various kinds of mental health issues.
This is an excerpt from Anna Chandy’s Battles in the Mind.
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‘Only Idiots Aren’t Afraid of Flying’: Scaachi Koul and Her Fear of Flying

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Only idiots aren’t afraid of flying. Planes are inherently unnatural; your body isn’t supposed to be launched into the sky, and few people comprehend the science that keeps them from tumbling into the ocean. Do you know how many planes crash every year? Neither do I, but I know the answer is more than one, WHICH IS ENOUGH.
My boyfriend finds my fear of flying hilarious at best and deeply frustrating at worst. For my twenty-fourth birthday, he booked us a trip to Southeast Asia for two weeks, the farthest I’ve been from home in more than a decade. Plenty of people take a gap year between high school and university to travel, or spend a summer back- packing through Europe to “find” themselves. (A bullshit statement if ever there was one. Where do you think you’ll be? No one finds anything in France except bread and pretension, and frankly, both of those are in my lap right now.) I never did this. I talked about wanting to, sure, listing all the places I would go one day, hoping to have my photo taken next to a crumbling edifice in Brazil or with a charming street merchant in Laos. When I was thirteen, my mom asked me where I’d get the money to travel and I said, “From you, of course.” She laughed me straight out of her kitchen nook. Travelling tells the world that you’re educated, that you’re willing to take risks, that you have earned your condescension. But do you know what my apartment has that no other place does? All my stuff. All the things that let me dull out the reminders of my human existence, that let me forget that the world is full of dark, impenetrable crags. I have, I think, a healthy fear of dying, and marching forward into the uncharted is almost asking for it. But it was my birthday, and my beautiful idiot boyfriend was offering to take me some – place exciting. He suggested Thailand and Vietnam, because he likes the sun and I like peanut sauces. I agreed, my haunches already breaking out in a very familiar rash.
As we made our way from Toronto to Chicago, then Chicago to Tokyo, then Tokyo to Bangkok, he was a paragon of serenity. (He’s older than me by more than a decade, and acts it whenever we do something new, largely because, comparatively, almost everything is new to me and nothing is new to him.) He was a latchkey kid, permitted to wander his small town in the ’80s and ’90s in a way that feels nostalgic to him and like the beginning of a documentary about child abduction to me. He smoked and drank and cried and laughed and was freer at twelve than I have ever been. While our plane started to taxi, I squeezed his meaty forearm as if I was tenderizing a ham hock—rubbing his white skin red and twisting his blond arm hair into little knots— and he just gazed dreamily out the window. When we took off, my throat started to close and I wanted to be home, stay home, never leave home.
I wasn’t raised with a fear of flying. My parents were afraid of plenty of things that would likely never affect us—murderers lurking in our backyard, listeria in our sandwich meat, vegans—but dying on a plane was all too mundane for them. We used to take plenty of trips together and separately, and lengthy air travel played an unavoidable role in their origin story. They emigrated from India in the late 1970s and flew back for visits every few years. For vacations or my dad’s business trips, they flew to St. Thomas and Greece and Montreal and New York. Mom didn’t like bugs and Papa didn’t like small dogs, but I don’t remember either of them being particularly fearful.
I wasn’t always afraid of flying either. When I travelled with my parents as a kid, air travel was exciting. I got to buy new notebooks and travel games, and flight attend- ants packed cookies and chips and mini cans of ginger ale in airsickness bags and handed them out to the kids mid-flight. 9/11 hadn’t happened, so our family wasn’t yet deemed suspicious at Calgary’s airport. I once loudly asked my brother while standing in a security queue how, exactly, people made bombs out of batteries while waving around a pack of thirty AAs intended for a video game. My parents let me eat a whole Toblerone bar and then I threw up in a translucent gift bag while we waited in line to board. I was alive!
Flying became a necessity by the time I was seventeen, the only way to stay connected with my family rather than a conduit for mile-high vomiting. When I graduated from high school, instead of doing what so many of my classmates did—a month in Italy here, three months in Austria there—I moved across the country almost immediately to start university. If I wanted to see my parents (and I did, as my homesickness burst wide open the second my parents dropped me off at my residence), I would have to fly. Three, sometimes four times a year, I’d take a four-hour flight to see people who I knew were at least legally obligated to love me.
But by my early twenties, years into this routine, something shifted and made room for fear to set in. Turbulence wasn’t fun anymore; it didn’t feel like a ride, it felt like the beginning of my early death. I’d start crying during take-off, sure that the plane would plummet. Flight attendants assumed I was travelling for a funeral and would offer extra orange juice or cranberry cookies to keep me from opening the emergency exit. Before I take off now, I text or email or call anyone I think would be sad about my death and tell them I love them and that the code for my debit card is 3264 and please help yourself to the $6.75 that may or may not still be in there, depending on if I purchased a pre-flight chewy pizza-pretzel, the World’s Saddest Final Meal. My stomach churns and my palms sweat and I think about all the things I should have said and done before his plane nosedives and the army finds parts of my body scattered across the Prairies. My legs in Fort McMurray, my arms in Regina, my anus somewhere in Edmonton.
This is an excerpt from Scaachi Koul’s ‘One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter’
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Narrating Stories with Data

Posted on by Penguin India

As director of analytics and A/B testing at Visa, Ravichandran supports executives, leaders, and decision makers in product, marketing, sales, and relationships. He explained to me that “we are the custodians of the data, so our responsibility is to enable our users to have confidence in the decisions they make using that data.”
One of the biggest changes the analytical era of marketing has brought about is that things need to happen much faster than before. “We used to have a very linear approach,” Ravichandran told me. “Now when something is going live, there’s already an immediate need to respond. We need to be able to take action on the fly.” Because of those changes, marketers can no longer think about analytics as something that supports them or a function that just one person, like a chief digital officer, would perform. Rather, analytics is now an integral part of marketing’s value chain.
Ravichandran said that numbers by themselves are historical. That’s why, while data is needed to inform campaigns, at the end of the day, it still comes down to marketers using their gut feelings to make the best decision possible. “And we can use data and analysis to inform and guide us in the right direction,” he added.
Because data and analytics are now so intertwined with marketing strategy, expectations for leadership on the marketing side have changed. “It’s no longer acceptable to say you’re a marketer, but you’re not a numbers person,” Ravichandran said. “Executives are demanding more data literacy as a precursor for being a good marketer.” And it’s not just in the marketing space. He added, “All of our chief executives are comfortable with numbers and data-driven approaches.”
Ravichandran was quick to clarify, however, that a focus on data, numbers, and quantified measures should not replace the value of vision: “I have an enormous respect for data, but I also believe all of it has to be driven by strategy, the business case, benchmarking against the industry, all those things that provide a broader perspective. You have to understand what specific metrics you’re trying to impact with your actions.” He advocates the importance of understanding your company’s business model, applying and measuring the right metrics, and truly understanding your competitive position and your customers’ needs.
The big mind-set shift we need to make, therefore, is recognizing how our intuition is now informed by data and analytics. When someone comes to a marketing manager or leader with a proposal to spend, say, $250,000 on a campaign, she had better come armed with data, analysis, testing plans, and expected outcomes, as well as what her gut is telling her.
This is an excerpt from Adele Sweetwood’s The Analytical Marketer. Get your copy here.
Credit: Abhishek Singh
 

Why Care About Superconsumers?

Posted on by Penguin India

Superconsumers Beget Superconsumers
The true value of superconsumers lies in their contagious nature. Those you meet are likely to have a crowd of other current superconsumers and potential superconsumers with them. For additional superconsumers, look to their family and friends. Capture and share the superconsumers’ stories, and watch as their knowledge inspires and creates new superconsumers.
Superconsumers Travel in Packs, Creating Super Geos
As the epicenter of demand creation, super geos can be tapped into to drive superior growth in your business. But you must locate and leverage them. The words national average are some of the most misleading in business. Many leaders have an inherent, subconscious belief that demand is spread like peanut butter, evenly and thinly. But the very presence of super geos means that passion for your offering will be patchy, with one set of consumers wild about your product while another group is neither hot nor cold. If you believe that demand is like the flat Midwest, then you’ll be ill prepared to climb the hilly terrain it really is.
Superconsumers Are Superconsumers of Multiple Products
A superconsumer of one category is often a superconsumer of other categories. Cleverly combining two or more important, yet seemingly different categories not only taps into a quest, but can also create a new category—just as American Girl crashed dolls, education, and experiential retail into one category.
Generac, the leading manufacturer of standby generators, found that people who buy three to four times more life insurance and lots of vitamins tend to be great prospects for proactively buying a generator for an extreme event that may never happen. These consumers are superconsumers of proactive protection.
Sometimes the connection between categories is not as clear, as some categories counterbalance one another. For example, superconsumers of milk tend to be superconsumers not of other healthy foods and beverages, but of more indulgent ones like cereal, cookies, and candy. Milk was the perfect accompaniment to sweets—and was probably considered something like an old-school indulgence you could buy from the Catholic Church in advance of a sin you were planning to commit. Counterintuitively, Harvard Business Review reported that shoppers who recycle their grocery bags tended to indulge more in junk food as well.
What Pleasant Rowland created and Mattel helped foster is amazing. American Girl’s remarkable growth may also feel intimidating. But it is more feasible than you might think, especially considering how low the success rates are for innovation in your core business.
The key is to take stock of the state of your business now. Are you hitting your growth goals? How good is your ROI now? What are the odds that your business will still be successful for the next five to ten years?
Of all new consumer packaged goods, 85 percent or more fail. Why? Often, the problem is that they aim too low by trying to solve the same job with a slightly modified product. Companies would do far better aspiring to solve a quest, but falling short slightly and finding that they created a product that consumers wanted to hire for a wholly more important job than its originally intended one.
The most successful businesses today have multiple business models, not just one. How well does a unidimensional business model do against a multidimensional one? Poorly, much like a boxer who runs up against a mixed martial artist who can box, kick, and wrestle. It is an unfair fight. This is both the beauty and the imperative of leveraging superconsumers to create new categories.
Are you looking at transforming your business through an adept use of your consumers? Get Eddie Yoon’s Superconsumers here!
Credit: Abhishek Singh

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