The Empty Chair

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Forbes has a good story on Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com. The one theme which came out strongly was Bezos’s focus on the customer. And he uses a fantastic strategy in my opinion for that.

Field Of Empty Chairs

Jeff Bezos’ managers at Amazon find him formidable enough. But the figure that overwhelms their lives goes by the internal nickname “the empty chair.” Bezos periodically leaves one seat open at a conference table and informs all attendees that they should consider that seat occupied by their customer, “the most important person in the room.”

If the empty chair is the ultimate boss at Amazon, then Bezos is its billionaire enforcer, the guardian of what he calls the “culture of metrics” that tries to give that inanimate object a loud, clear voice. Amazon tracks its performance against about 500 measurable goals. Nearly 80% relate to customer objectives. Some Amazonians try to reduce out-of-stock merchandise. Others race to build a bigger library of downloadable movies. Intricate algorithms turn one group of shoppers’ past habits into custom recommendations for new customers. Hourly bestseller lists identify what’s hot. Weekly reviews keep track of who is on course—and where corrective attention is needed.

I this is an extremely powerful metaphor to use and a very good one to use too. As Drucker reminded us, “the business of a company is to create a customer” and to do that you need to know how you are performing for the customer.

I think this is even more important in the social sector. If you are working for families or children or aged people or disabled or inner city youth or homeless or anything else to be able to leave a empty chair in meetings as a metaphor and continue to focus on that is quite important. In the myriad number of decisions that we make everyday and the effect of the now and urgent on our thinking its so easy to forget whom we are trying to make a difference for and our mission.

The empty chair is a good metaphor for that.

Lafarge is transforming construction in the slums of Mumbai

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From Firstpost:

Lafarge supplied a few contractors of Shivajinagar ready-mix concrete to construct several houses. One problem encountered was to manoeuvre supply trucks within Shivajinagar, whose streets are too constricted for two-lane traffic. Like good entrepreneurs committed to developing a prospective market, Lafarge thought laterally. They devised a means of supplying concrete in plastic buckets. Buckets of 15 litres each were neatly stacked in the modest back-space of a tempo and brought to site, traversing the narrow alleys without obstruction. The buckets were unloaded by hand by the contractor’s team, upturned into plinths and formwork and returned to the tempos that departed instantly. The speed of this process was as astonishing as its efficiency; high technology and world-class quality hand in hand with labour intensive building methods. By working with contractors who build affordable homes in areas of the city hardest to reach, an international cement company may just have changed the paradigm of the construction industry in Mumbai.

This unusual collaboration has benefited the contractors of Shivajinagar. With quality assured and concrete available in retail quantities, the ease of supply and of actual use can transform site work. The cost of ready-mix is currently more than that of hand-mixed concrete on site, but the time (and space) saved more than adequately makes up for it. Their clients get a home built with the best of concrete, long-lasting and pucca to the core. There is now an increasing demand among several contractors from other neighbourhoods.

Lafarge now has gained access to vast potential retail market in addition to upper-end builder and contractors. That they were willing to go beyond a comfort base and adapt to changing work circumstances and clients is to their credit. This may be strictly business, but is one with a potential for transformation. Supplying concrete to build small homes in Shivajinagar may become as profitable as supplying concrete to build that other large home in Mumbai, Antilla.

Social Entrepreneurship needs good management like anything else

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Akula launched SKS Microfinance in my home city of Hyderabad, India and grew it into one of the biggest lenders. In recent time SKS came under the microscope for aggressive debt collection techniques which lead to farmer’s suicides.

I always viewed micro finance with skepticism in the sense that not every poor person can become an entrepreneur with a micro loan and make money to get out of poverty.  Every single developed country and developing countries like China and previously Korea etc moved their citizens out of poverty through jobs and mainly manufacturing jobs. History tells us that especially for the size of populations in India, Bangladesh or African countries that is the only way out.

Akula talks here about his learnings and wants to help social entrepreneurs.

Other than the first round of 3Cs I propounded earlier for microfinance and social entrepreneurship – access to capital, dealing with capacities and costs, the new 3Cs are vital for social enterprises,” Akula said. Asked by audience members on what were the key mistakes he made at SKS, he skirted a direct answer, saying, “I just did not focus on the three Cs: did not focus on culture, code of conduct and control.”

Well, the main thing is that as he said he cannot be naive and run a large organisation. Any organisation whether it be government, not for profit, social enterprise or the private sector need good management. Ask Drucker.

Infact, as Drucker argued that for organisations in the social sector which do not have a bottom line like for profit companies they need more management and not less. Akula should start reading Drucker and others and learn from the history of the last 100 hundred years like all other people who work in the social sector.

The Right to Education Act and Gujarat

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Gujarat is a real path breaking state in India. If only the other states can learn from Gujarat.

From Firstpost:

Instead of focusing only on input requirements specified in the Act like classroom size, playground, and teacher-student ratio, the Gujarat RTE Rules put greater emphasis on learning outcomes of students in the recognition norms. Appendix 1 of the Gujarat Rules is the one which has a path-breaking formulation for recognition of a school: this will be a weighted average of four measures:

Student learning outcomes (absolute levels): Weight 30 percent.
Using standardised tests, student learning levels focussing on learning (not just rote) will be measured through an independent assessment.

Student learning outcomes (improvement compared to the school’s past performance): Weight 40 percent.
This component is introduced to ensure that schools do not show a better result in (1) simply by not admitting weak students. The effect of school performance looking good simply because of students coming from well-to-do backgrounds is also automatically addressed by this measure. Only in the first year, this measure will not be available and the weightage should be distributed among the other parameters.

Inputs (including facilities, teacher qualifications): Weight 15 percentStudent non-academic outcomes (co-curricular and sports, personality and values) and parent feedback: weight 15 percent.
Student outcomes in non-academic areas as well as feedback from a random sample of parents should be used to determine this parameter. Standardised survey tools giving weightage to cultural activities, sports, art should be developed. The parent feedback should cover a random sample of at least 20 parents across classes and be compiled.

This is one of the first times in India’s history that public policy has focused on children and parents, instead of focusing on the public sector producers of education services.

Vivekananda – Religion is not for the weak

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As I think about the science of evolution, scientific thinking and faith, Atanu Dey (a dear friend and my intellectual guru) has pointedto this WSJ article “What Did J.D. Salinger, Leo Tolstoy, and Sarah Bernhardt Have in Common? on Swami Vivekananda. A really great tribute to this monk from India.

Excerpts:

Although all but forgotten by America’s 20 million would-be yoginis, clad in their finest Lululemon, Vivekananda was the Bengali monk who introduced the word “yoga” into the national conversation. In 1893, outfitted in a red, flowing turban and yellow robes belted by a scarlet sash, he had delivered a show-stopping speech in Chicago. The event was the tony Parliament of Religions, which had been convened as a spiritual complement to the World’s Fair, showcasing the industrial and technological achievements of the age.

On its opening day, September 11, Vivekananda, who appeared to be meditating onstage, was summoned to speak and did so without notes. “Sisters and Brothers of America,” he began, in a sonorous voice tinged with “a delightful slight Irish brogue,” according to one listener, attributable to his Trinity College–educated professor in India. “It fills my heart with joy unspeakable…”

Then something unprecedented happened, presaging the phenomenon decades later that greeted the Beatles (one of whom, George Harrison, would become a lifelong Vivekananda devotee). The previously sedate crowd of 4,000-plus attendees rose to their feet and wildly cheered the visiting monk, who, having never before addressed a large gathering, was as shocked as his audience. “I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world,” he responded, flushed with emotion. “I thank you in the name of the mother of religions, and I thank you in the name of millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects.”

[...]

Vivekananda’s genius was to simplify Vedantic thought to a few accessible teachings that Westerners found irresistible. God was not the capricious tyrant in the heavens avowed by Bible-thumpers, but rather a power that resided in the human heart. “Each soul is potentially divine,” he promised. “The goal is to manifest that divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal.” And to close the deal for the fence-sitters, he punched up Vedanta’s embrace of other faiths and their prophets. Christ and Buddha were incarnations of the divine, he said, no less than Krishna and his own teacher, Ramakrishna.

[...]

Fascinated by the erudite and polyglot monk—who could pass an entire day sitting motionless in silent meditation—the esteemed philosopher William James roped in many of his colleagues, students and friends to attend Vivekananda’s Harvard lecture. They were not disappointed. “The theory of evolution, and prana [energy] and akasa [space] is exactly what your modern science has,” their exotic visitor blithely informed them. Nor were they unamused. When asked, “Swami, what do you think about food and breathing?” he replied, “I am for both.”

[...]
Bernhardt, in fact, introduced him to the electromagnetic scientist Nikola Tesla, who was struck by Vivekananda’s knowledge of physics. Both recognized they had been pondering the same thesis on energy—in different languages. Vivekananda was keenly interested in the science supporting meditation, and Tesla would cite the monk’s contributions in his pioneering research of electricity. “Mr. Tesla was charmed to hear about the Vedantic prana and akasha and the kalpas [time],” Vivekananda wrote to a friend. “He thinks he can demonstrate mathematically that force and matter are reducible to potential energy. I am to go to see him next week to get this mathematical demonstration. In that case Vedantic cosmology will be placed on the surest of foundations.” For the monk from Calcutta, there were no inconsistencies between science, evolution and religious belief. Faith, he wrote, must be based upon direct experience, not religious platitudes.