a post about advertising

The advertising industry does not need 6 holding groups. If one looks at any other industry of a similar size that provides undifferentiated services, the market has a few players so that the demand can be serviced without cutthroat competition which takes in it’s wake plenty of good talent as collateral damage.

The entire advertising industry is better off doing something else that’s better – better for the people in the advertising industry and works for the world.

Before we go on to that something else that could be, let’s go into a hypothetical situation.

Imagine it is January 1 and all governments of the world have come together to decree that for 365 days there would be no advertising allowed. No commercial entity will be allowed to advertise their products. So when you switch on your TV, you will not see that toothpaste ad that you used to wait for with bated breath. Or when you step out for your grocery trip, you wont see that giant hoarding that always succeeded in taking you into a trance every time you looked at it. And yes you won’t see influencers on your social media feed peddling botox to you.

A year has passed since, and now it’s 31^st December. Something is bound to be different isn’t it? You have stuck to your resolve of exercising and losing extra weight and you need to give yourself a pat on the back. Not just a pat on the back, you feel like you need to reward yourself for a job well done.

As you think about how you will reward yourself, you begin to tremble with a sense of anxiety that you have never experienced before. It’s a feeling of the unknown, a blank space because there is nothing in that drawer inside your brain called ‘Top of Mind’. An year ago, you would have instantly thought of a bag, a shoe, a pendant, a phone, a playstation. But you’re drawing a blank now.

NO, THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN.

WHAT LIKELY HAPPENED…

The ‘consumers’

Over centuries, a combination of coding and survival has ensured that we have absolutely no problem about deciding what we need, want and desire. We all know the drill that does justice to that trifecta. How all of us do that drill is a different blog post. So, deciding what to reward yourself with is not a hard choice at all. Not in the world we live in today. A world of smart selves, smart assistants and a sense of autonomy that has never been seen before.

So, I am sure that we as ‘consumers’ were just fine.

The advertisers…

The millions of products that were not allowed to be advertised for 365 days saw dramatic changes in their fortunes. Many of the brands disappeared overnight, companies shut down taking with them millions of dollars in shareholder value. That also did not happen.

These companies realised that the marketing department was paid for working 8 hours/day but were in fact working on an average 10-12 hours/day. By removing one of the 4 Ps of marketing from their responsibilities, they could work the 8 hour days stepping out of their office spaces more fulfilled human beings with time on their hands that they could use however they wanted.

They were all planning a reset of how they run marketing anyway!

The media companies…

This won’t be easy but it won’t be impossible. The existence of content is a pre-condition for the existence of advertising. Majority of content is news and the remainder is entertainment.

To conclude that removing advertising will remove all content from our lives making our lives dull and boring will not be right. However, it does make us wonder how this tiny advertising industry is supporting so much on it’s shoulders, yet not feeling appreciated enough. That, again, is for another blog post.

The role that advertising revenue plays for media companies is not debatable. So it would be foolish to believe that the disappearance of advertising will not impact media companies. There may be a way around this too but at this point in this post, it’s worth making a note about it so we can come back to it when we think about that something else that we’d much rather have the advertising industry doing.

The social media companies…

The social media companies are a boon. Not all of them, and not in their entirety. I love how social media helps me get by with a little help from my ‘friends’ – I sell and buy used goods, navigate through city traffic, post product feedback to companies on social media so they can consider me for a job. The utility of social media is immense, and removing advertising revenue from these companies will not go down well. I’m ok with not knowing that the neighbour’s cat got a pedicure. However I’m not ok if we’re not able to mobilise help for each other fast using the power of social media.

So if the advertising industry goes ahead and does something else, a viable alternative for the social media companies is needed.

The agency folks…

Like every other industry, the advertising industry also has an ecosystem. One that’s large but fortunately simple. Much simpler than some of the other industries that run the world. This simplicity may just be the cause of the under-appreciation.

10 years ago for an advertising campaign a marketing manager, from concept to culmination, would work with people at – creative and media agencies who in turn with work with production studios, PR agencies, media companies, social media platforms, who in turn will work with a host of people that will then shape the final campaign. This value chain is long and stretches till that person who prints hoardings, installs them come rain or shine OR that sound engineer who re-records the sound of crunchy fried chicken to perfection.

Today, the same marketing manager is the CMO and believes that it’s possible to cut this chain and produce even better advertising. They are right, and they should do it sooner rather than later. After all, they need to reset the way they do marketing, isn’t that right? Also, the entire industry feels constantly overworked anyway, so AI will be of great service.

So if there is no advertising at all, what will become of the folks working at various types of agencies. Will they have something else to do?

The advertising industry has seriously good talent – adaptable, strategic, articulate and most importantly passionate about the work they do. I will now replace advertising with communication – a more apt description of what this industry does.

More than a 1000 words done and still no sign of a resolution it seems. That’s exactly when we need a recap or an interval as anyone who has grown up watching Bollywood movies will know.

We now have:

-          A void formed by the removal of all advertising. It’s not hard to imagine so I will leave that with you to imagine so you can soak in it’s beauty.

-          A whole industry without work. This is hard to imagine so a description is due.

o   The people at agencies who make the ads, and make sure they run at the right place at the right time

o   The people at media companies who bring in the advertising revenue and produce the content

o   The people at social media companies who spend their food allowance on toothpaste (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgdyzq3wz5o)

And we need something:

-          That fills the void with something better

-          That keeps the people busy with something better

Let us first tackle the people. The communication professionals. They are, for the most part, adaptable, strategic, articulate and most importantly passionate about the work they do.

When you need to keep people busy, you need to give them a problem to solve. And problems are aplenty - https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/01/global-risks-report-2024/

I also believe that most problems are solved through communication.

So here is the idea.

What if all holding companies are folded into a single entity, which gets taken over by a council appointed by the governments of every country. For the sake of argument, let’s call this council ‘Earth Forever Foundation’. The purpose of this foundation is to get the world to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

As per https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2024/The-Sustainable-Development-Goals-Report-2024.pdf - ‘The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2024 makes for sobering reading. It finds that only 17 per cent of the SDG targets are on track, nearly half are showing minimal or moderate progress, and progress on over one third has stalled or even regressed.’

Getting back on track will take a lot, and the ski resort summits barely cut any ice.

The Earth Forever Foundation (TEFF) is an organisation that is made up by combining all the communications professionals of the holding groups. They have only one client – The Earth. The 17 SDGs get split between the entire workforce at TEFF and are rotated across the organisation so that everyone gets to work on each of the problems. No silos of media, creative, data, tech, events and all the other acronyms we have created for ourselves. The only goal that matters is what we leave behind for the generations that come after us. The professionals that make up the TEFF are a mix of disciplines from the 6 holding groups, mixed and matched relative to their skills, experience and where most urgent action is needed to get back on track against the 17 SDG goals.

Once this TEFF gets to work, they create communication campaigns targeted at people to get them involved in our own ways to affect change. They also lobby with governments and corporates to come together for the cause.

The ads that are created by the TEFF need to see the light of day. The airtime for running these ads will be sold to TEFF at a flat rate locked in for perpetuity. Remember that during this time, there are NO ads running for ANY product of ANY company across the world. So the risk from not advertising is removed for all advertisers.

The media companies now air only ads from TEFF. Now it’s understandable that all the advertising airtime going to ads about the earth may become an overdose so the total advertising airtime will be reduced considerably.

Which leaves us with a content void.

The content void is easy to fill, because there’s no dearth of good content. And for sure, there’s no dearth of content. And realistically speaking, we need to think of options only for entertainment because the remainder (news, live sports and the like) will take care of themselves. The options to fill this content void can be a combination of a host of options:

-          Re-runs of shows from the last 50 years. And when you make this cross borders, the potential is immense

-          Surface content that has not been able to breakthrough beyond artificial or self-imposed limitations – indie content like films, documentaries, music – there’s no limit

Then there’s a revenue void. Come to think of it, it is not really a void if we assume that revenue never existed in the first place. In that case, what would be needed is funding to cover the costs of production. There are a few ways this can be done:

-          The top 20 percentile of the global workforce contribute $10 from their salaries

-          We take the top 2000 companies of the world, and reduce the salary of the CEO by 1%, it will be enough to fund the cost of production. It would hurt no one, and who wouldn’t be in favour of a maximum wage!

Last, but not least, there’s a void in the social media companies who thrive on the content. I’ll let that be.

Why this thought and why now – having been in the business for 18+ years, I have seen some good and bad sides of it. When I saw far too many warning notes and quasi-obituaries written about the industry, it got me thinking too.

While this industry is much less a victim of path dependence compared to other industries, always reinventing itself and that spirit now needs to be applied to a totally different kind of reinvention. A reinvention that is more than breaking silos, more than horizontality and more than integration.

And as for the timing, there’s never a better time than now!

a post about culture

 

a few days ago, a question was asked on a radio station - does growing up in a multi-cultural environment come with its advantages?

responses to this question were solicited via whatsapp text message and voice notes.

i was driving so by the time i got to recording my voice note, the show was over.

but the question stayed in my head. especially because i’ve convinced myself into believing that i’ve grown up in a multi cultural environment.

on the radio show, the question was meant as one in which multi culturalism broadly meant living with many religions around oneself given that religion shapes most behaviours and behaviour shapes culture.

ever since the question i’ve tried to take my mind as far back in time as possible. i now have some flashes of 1990, a few grainy but long visuals from the early 90s, some well formed acts from the late 90s, and some very vivid acts from the 2000s.

Let’s get the flashes from the 1990s

A culture of contentment

it’s 1990, i am 8 years old and an only child. we have moved to a new apartment complex and in my first week in, my father takes me to a small group of boys playing indoor cricket close to our apartment. to my horror, he then also introduces me to them. not only should he know that interrupting a game of cricket is hazardous, but also that his son doesn’t really know how to play cricket by then. after that day and several other occasions, life has made it clear to me that parents seldom make wrong calls.

the boys welcomed me with open arms (as i later realised they didn’t have enough players) and thereafter began my journey with cricket. The friends I made on that day, are still with me as friends and if it weren’t for that introduction, pragati vihar of new delhi wouldn’t have gotten in their midst a seriously good all-rounder!

this apartment complex that we had moved in to was one which was only meant for government ‘servants’. so each and every kid there belonged to a house where almost 100% of the household income was coming from working in a job for the government of india.

so in a way we were all paying for each other in that apartment complex. which also meant that no one ever purchased or indulged in anything that wasn’t affordable for the others! that’s a point worth explaining - except for those homes where both parents were working with the government, most homes had similar if not same incomes. apartments are allocated by the government based on designation so the higher up one is, the bigger is likely to be their home. in this apartment complex, ALL units were exactly the same. all 792 of them were exactly the same in size and design.

we all went to similar schools, had similar cars (maruti 800), and behaved in a way that shaped culture in that apartment complex. it was frugal but never wanting, it was tight knit but never invasive, it was competitive but never cut throat.

power cuts were common and invariably brought everyone out and together. the ones at night were even better as they allowed the kids an hour of hide and seek while the parents chatted about inflation, their commute and a strong desire to buy a personal computer.

as children, we were shielded from conversations on religion, crime and negativity in general. it was possible, hence it was done.

this was culture too, and i call it a culture of contentment.

…Some well formed acts from the late 1990s

A culture of desire

life, in it’s simplest form, is our ability and willingness to balance the triad of needs, desires and wants. One look at your credit card statement and your bank statement and one already knows which way the balance is tilting. Last month, did you have more desires than you should?

The 2 people this article will get read by, will be from people who will know that the economic liberalisation of the 90s had a large part to play in the consumerism that enveloped urban india. And our apartment complex wasn’t shielded. Although as kids we went to similar schools, which happened to be the best schools in new delhi, the schools were also attended by other ‘rich’ kids some of whom came in cars, some walked to school and the others came in the same school bus but received pocket money which they lavishly spent in the school canteen.

I, for one, didn’t have that luxury. While we did have uniforms to which we had to adhere to strictly, however once in a while some kid would come in wearing their latest nike sneakers because they were either in the basketball team or because their shoes tore on the way to school.

Nothing adds up like desire, especially when it flashes in front of you every day of the week in some way or another. Adding up soon turns into bubbling up, and in a teenager it’s a lethal combination that can show up a variety of ways. One of the ways is upward pressure on parents to buy you the sneakers, the t-shirts and somewhere slip in a recommendation to your father that he needs to buy a car!

This was also the time that I turned from an only child to a sibling. So needless to say, the upward pressure on my parents doubled considering we were two boys, 8 years apart and the same toys won’t work for both of us!

My father was doing well for himself. He got himself a Ph.D, was now being sent overseas to learn and come back so the government of India could benefit. He made trips to Australia, U.K., Singapore and all the places which at that point in time were names on an atlas for me. The 2 people who will read this will know what an atlas is so I won’t need to add in explanatory notes.

When my father returned from a trip to the U.K. he got me a pair of sneakers by the brand name of Ascot. It’s been 26 years to that day and I remember the name, which to me is still obscure, because it was so obscure! I was very courteous in saying thank you to my father on seeing the shoes but behind the courtesy was absolute disgust for the shoes because Ascot didn’t look or sound like Nike, or Reebok, or Adidas. I couldn’t say that to my father. Watching Bollywood movies from an early age teaches one to act well in everyday life.

This was culture too, it was the culture of desire

…Cut to the vivid acts of the 2000s

the score card culture

for me, the decade of 2000 contained in it a cut-off which for every individual is the start of an era. That’s the time when one begins to work. Unlike the days of growing up, which was the decade of 1980s and 1990s, life was a straight line on which one ran. Off and on, there are some hurdles and hoops to go over, but one gets by with a little help from friends and family.

The first half of the decade of 2000 was a good preparation for me.

It started with that first step into university. It feels as if one has stepped on to a pedal, which has transported you into a different world. In the blink of an eyelid, there’s a concoction of power, freedom and elation that gets injected into your bloodstream and all you can see is blue sky. When you realise that you’re lying flat on the ground after a speeding cricket ball hit you on your balls while batting in your first cricket match on your first day of university, the embarrassment can be damaging!

Prying eyes, judgement and calculation starts on that day. I was fortunate that a bunch of my close friends from school were in the same college as me so we eased ourselves in and didn’t have to confront a whole new world of people on the first day. However, we had to on the second day.

It’s only after finishing Delhi University that I realised that scorecard meant more than the marks you secured in Std 12. That from day one of entering Delhi University, or for that matter, any/many universities, your worth is relative to someone else’s.

By and large, the factors that play in to your scorecard – how you commute to university, the clothes you wear, how you spend your Fridays and very importantly the language you converse in. Thankfully none of the friends I ended up making, cared for these factors. All we cared for was getting high, on minimum attendance.

Every time I think of my time at Delhi University, I have flash of some extreme memories that I feel have shaped me. In the first few weeks of university, I recall being invited to a night out by one of the new friends I had made. This was new to me. Not because I didn’t know what it was about but the fact that it wasn’t any more one of those things you did 1 day out of 365 days in school. This was going to be the way life was going to be. And that meant permissions (from parents), preparations (you had to look good and not look like you were trying hard) and back up plans in case anything got out of hand. I was cautious on the first one which happened to be at a 5 star hotel in Delhi. My friend picked me up from home, as we were a one car household and I had restricted access to that car.

Our friend, of course, had a Toyota with a driver. I remember having nothing to say to any one of the people I met at that dinner. Through the 3 hours I spent there, I uttered a total of 13.5 words. My scorecard was sub-zero and without hope.

I am thankful I didn’t lose any of those friends that took me to the party in the first place. We bonded over cricket and basketball which turned out to be the antidotes!

This was the time we finally moved to a larger apartment. Once which would house the ambitions of 2 boys – one stepping into teenage (my brother) and the other stepping into the slippery surface between adulthood and pretence of adulthood. More about this slippery surface later.

New apartment brings new neighbours..

Not in our case.

Housing provided by the government of India, ensures that as you move to a new housing complex, one way or another the same people that you lived with are bound to be around you. So when we moved in to the new apartment complex, more than half of our neighbours were from our previous life. This apartment complex and the apartments inside were bigger, and when anything becomes bigger it tends to start holding within itself much more than it’s supposed to.

In this case, more and better televisions – now that the age of satellite TV had dawned on India, and new TV channels were being launched almost every other day.

Better refrigerators, microwaves, airconditioners – back in early 2000s, these told you if the breadwinner of the household was actually winning.

This was culture too, it was the scorecard culture. A score card of what one had done.

 

Enough and more has been said about Delhi, a city that I love and belong to. Making the switch to Pune was life changing for me. The 2 years I spent in Pune prior to starting work in Gurgaon, were the best years of my life.

Worlds collided in those 2 years. The worlds of Delhi, Bombay, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Calcutta, Goa, Hyderabad all collided under one roof. The battle was not about where biryani and street food is best, but something more complex.

There is a slippery space between adulthood and pretence of adulthood in which all 18-22 year olds play. During this time, you either need blinders or a pair of shoes with an amazing grip. If one has both, one can bypass this slippery space and just enter adulthood straightaway. However a handful of people possess both.

I will not speak about whether I carried a set of blinders or shoes or neither. To me, my time in Pune opened my eyes and my mind. Until the Pune chapter, life had been about moving from contentment, to desire to keeping score. All looking at the present, and relishing the past. It was during and after the two years in Pune, that life would become about potential, and about the future. Much like the time when you’re learning to ride a bicycle – the first few times there is someone to give you balance, however there comes a time when you know that in the next 3 minutes you are on your own.

Our class was +70 people strong and had the sharpest people, with a point of view on almost everything and the courage to say it like it is. On one occasion in the first week of joining, as we all rotated people trying to find the group where we all could make friends, I took a walk with one of the guys. By the end of the conversation, he told me I was arrogant. My first reaction was of shock, disbelief and in defence I said I was not. He told me not to interpret his statement in the strictest definition of arrogance. It doesn’t always need to come with negative connotations. If one makes others feel good about themselves while also coming across as arrogant, what is the harm? Being true to one self is what matters most.

This was culture too, it was the culture of truth. Of what is and what could be.

The trigger to this post was a simple question on radio and it took me back almost 30 years. The beginning of this post was typed on a mobile phone as it came to my head, and subsequently finished on a laptop. It’s important to document this too, to remind myself to do this more often.

 

 

 

Life is water, let it flow

I have now come to the unshakeable conclusion that no matter how many chances you get to revisit your decisions from the past, your life will be the same as it is today.

Every once in a while, and especially after my first child, the question about how life would have been different makes an appearance. And it's no coincidence that the question always comes up either when I'm starting to write another beautiful powerpoint deck or getting ready to take the kids out a weekend. Thereby transporting me into an utterly miserable state of distraction from where only the worst outcomes emerge. 

I knew this question had to be resolved or at the least fool my brain into ticking it off so I could focus on what lay ahead.

The genre of time-loop movies came to the rescue. Back when it was released, Run Lola Run and Groundhog Day were great entertainment pieces. They never made you think about anything else except the entertainment itself. Strangely enough, after a point in life they do make you think about everything else except the entertainment. 

So I started my immersion into the genre, re-watching the older movies and then watching the newer ones on Netflix like Two Distant Strangers, The Russian Doll and our desi version Loop Lapeta. What really helped was the end of the movie called Dobaara. While it isn't exactly a time-loop movie as it's a time travel movie, the end of the movie was the clincher where the lead character tells her husband  that no matter which world he was in, he would be unhappy with his marriage. There's obviously the need to watch the movie to understand the weight of the dialogue but that was it for me. 

A conclusion that no matter what, life will present the same box of chocolates no matter which way you get to it! 

A person's basic character determines how they make decisions. By the time one reaches a point in life when they are making consequential decisions themselves, a basic character has formed in full. All that means is that when presented with choices, the basic character will prevail. And if you are lucky to get the opportunity to go back in time and change the choice you made, then good for you. In a few years another choice making point will present itself which will take you back to where you are today. 

I'm in no way saying that the exact same position that one is in right now, was destined to happen. I am right now typing on my desktop, sitting in my home office in KL, covid+ and in a general state of bewilderment and uncertainty about my future. 

I go back 10 years and change the decision I made to take up a job overseas or for that matter change a decision from 4 years ago when I decided against taking up another job that paid 2x. Granted, that I would not be typing on my desktop, sitting in my home office in KL, covid+ BUT I would definitely be in the exact state of mind and battling the same basic questions albeit in different conditions. 

When I thought of putting this down on paper, I had a grand idea that I would during the course of penning this down, land at a brilliant way of thinking about life. Something so good that when I re-read it I would be marveling at my stellar intellectual capability. 

None of that happened. 

All that happened was I pushed myself closer to resuming the habit of writing. 

Does anything really change?

I was recently watching Episode 11 of Wagle Ki Duniya - a 30 min primetime TV program that aired on national TV in the late 80s and early 90s in India - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfaP1BSs8IA

I was watching it because I'm a Shah Rukh Khan fan (yes he's in this episode), and because I was yearning to feel like I was a pre-teen! When I was actually a pre-teen and watched this episode on TV with my parents more than 30 years ago on a small TV set, it was the best form of entertainment - replete with my parents prompting me during the scenes to imbibe some of the lessons being imparted in the show. 

Watching it in 2022 (thanks to the power of YouTube) has prompted a totally different view on the episode and led to (what is excusably the feature of a 40 year old brain) some deeper questioning. 

The question that it led me to was 'Does anything really change at all?'

And the reason that question came to mind is a few distinct scenes in the episode, which depicts India around the year 1990. 

The first scene starts with Mrs. Wagle walking into her house, returning from a grocery run. She enters and exclaims how the traffic has turned insane. How it's impossible to cross the road with so many cars zipping by every second and motor cyclists now adding to the chaos. Traffic was a bane in 1990 too? Yes, it was beginning to become a bane then as it's becoming/become one now, 32 years later!

I am very sure that if I watch a movie from the 1960s, the mention of traffic as a new and evolving bane will surely come up. I am equally sure that when I watch a movie in 2052, it will make an appearance too. 

The other scene which is even more interesting is when Mr. Wagle averts an accident with a car driven by the character played by SRK (by the way, the name of the character played by SRK is not revealed in this episode) who is visibly portrayed to be a youthful, energetic, upwardly mobile individual (albeit cigarette smoking). While the accident itself is a non-accident as none of the characters involved get hurt at all. However passers by (which are always in plenty on the streets of India), huddle at the 'crime scene' and within the blink of an eye, are all in a police station along with the victim and perpetrator. The victim and the perpetrator, in the meantime, are obviously clueless resembling the face of someone who is told to run on a treadmill with no option to stop!

The equivalent today is what happens on Twitter, or for that matter on any social media platform. Posts with genuine intent are plastered with hate, creating a narrative that is neither close to the intent nor really needed. A vocal minority is always ready and available to spoil the mood. 

There are a few other scenes in this episode which triggered this question for me but there are two that stand out. 

It made me wonder if anything really changes at all. The world we see around us, at any point in time, is a slice from a long thread of mankind. A thread long and wide. And on this thread, our experiences and interpretations are just our fast analysis of what we see. 

Sometimes I wonder if any of the hot topics of today are real issues or just issues we're hearing for the first time, while nothing has really changed in the decades that have passed. Asking questions and going in-depth requires time, energy and the desire to form an objective view, but who has the time. In our desire to be accepted as part of a community we follow narratives and strengthen them without realising how quickly we can move from a position of not knowing about a topic, to a position where we are so intently supporting it even without knowing enough about it. 

While this post started from a seemingly skeptical and innocuous view of the world, it makes me very hopeful. Hopeful because we seem to be worried that a lot has changed, but IF in fact nothing really has, there's nothing armageddon-ish is really going to happen. 

I recently had a conversation about this over dinner, and it didn't go anywhere because the waiter came with the bill and it was already getting late. I wonder where we would have landed... I wonder where we will land...  

What a diaper, a restless toddler and a restless toddler in a diaper tell me

 First, about the diaper…

It is 7 pm on a weekend, when I’m tasked to get my son ready for bed. At this point he’s so wired that he jumps about the bed like someone tripping on a dance floor for the first time. At this point, 2 choices present themselves to me – either I restrain him and amidst mad howling, change his diaper and clothes OR I jump like him within the confines of the bed and without him realizing, change the diaper synchronizing my movements with his while changing his clothes. I choose the latter, every weekend.

I choose the latter, as much as I can, every weekday too. I’ve realized that a young and energetic workforce needs to wander through working life at their own pace and organisations have to meander around them, nudge them back if they’re too close to the edge and only occasionally just restrain them. However pre-defining ways of working puts anyone off. Agreed we live in times of agility and quick response, but leaders need to juxtapose that with the knowledge that there is never a dearth of opportunities to teams which are hungry to learn and succeed. So never let a deadline come in the way of a creative expression.

Now about the restless toddler…

It is 8 am on a weekday, when my wife and I are tasked with feeding milk to our 18 month old son. Having resolved to feed him without a screen, we tend to organize a full circus for him with multiple toys, displayed one at a time. Where it gets stressful is having to think 3 steps ahead of him to line up the entertainment in an order that keeps him engaged which requires us to think of the line-up well in advance. So we know that when he gets bored with one toy, which one needs to come up next!

This scene repeats itself at work too. I have come to realise that learning and growth with everyone in the organization needs to address certain pre-agreed goals but if you have a young team, you need to think about their next-to-next gig while you think about their next gig. For a large section of the youngest of the workforce in your team, learning is about breadth than depth. A generation for whom the world is a playground, knowing just enough about everything trumps knowing more than enough about a few things. For hunger such as that, every leader needs to think ‘what is next-to-next?’ and not ‘what is next?’ when it comes to thinking about growing people.

As leaders our only job is to pass the credit and take the blame. So in this season of appraisals and goal-setting, let’s not forget about everything that happens in between. So let’s create the spaces for people to run wild!

 p.s. -  I have nothing against deadlines. To quote someone I wish I knew – ‘I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by’.

Aadhaar PEC: making pandemonium out of chaos with effortless charm

Typed on the phone at an Aadhaar PEC in Kolkata while in action at the battlefront!




The scene is the municipal corporation office in salt lake that houses a permanent enrolment centre for Aadhaar.

The protagonist is the Good Samaritan in the blue t-shirt at the Center right of the frame. He has been here since 8 am with a pen and a sheet of paper which now has a list of 80 odd names carefully hand written by the people in the picture. One of whom happens to be me.

The story goes like this - each morning one Good Samaritan walks into this hall every morning, most likely running only on a quick cup of tea, and jots their name down on a sheet of paper. In a matter of minutes our Samaritan is joined by a stream of people who add their names on the list and shooting a barrage of questions to our Samaritan. The depth and breadth of the questions are measured in units of ignorance. Partly out of habit and partly out of lack of any available information. 

After 107 minutes of generally dull existence, there's a flutter introduced by the man who is supposed to have been in this cubicle pictured here. He's evidently annoyed by the fact that people, most of whom are 50+ years old, in a most blatant display of lackadaisical action have parked themselves on chairs under the only two working ceiling fans within sight on the floor. This man is the supposed clerk/peon on the floor. 

In the meantime the hallowed sheet of paper has exchanged many hands but out Good Samaritan has followed it like a leech and ensured it always comes back to him. No prizes for guessing why.








At the 127th minute mark, the doors to the office open guarded by a man so zealous I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the irony. He announces that only the first 60 people on the list will be entertained. This leads to chaos but we're immunized early on against that type of virus. Arguments and counter arguments, fuming tempers, general war of words. 

There on the wait begins. I am no.47. 

By now I know what's coming my way because the doors are now open and we can see the desks, piles of files, trunks and cabinets in a large hall. 

What lies ahead is another stroke of randomness, in that an old woman calls out your name to come and fill up some forms. Although you're the rightful owner of this privilege of time with her, there are others jostling for her attention with inane questions that are better answered by no body in particular but everyone in general. She fills up a form on your behalf and then asks you to wait. Then there's the 20 something girl who is assigned to a workstation which unfortunately blocks Facebook so has to use the precious bytes on her mobile to access Facebook while people are lining up around her for their turn. 

The next few steps in the process are phenomenally simple but take some time because they are dependent on the speed of the guys who operate the computers where all your information will be updated. Things start moving, my turn is announced and I go about the process of updating my Aadhaar card by updating my biometrics, getting a picture clicked and sharing my latest email and mobile number. The process takes a total of 12 mins - quick and easy. I'm given a receipt and then I scamper home.


I'm at a loss for words when it comes to giving feedback on this experience. The same government has put in place a good mechanism for passport related work and other public services too, then why can't it be done for Aadhar cards. It may just be a state level problem of bad implementation at the ground level but that's where audit and monitoring mechanisms play an important role

Feedback to ensure chaos doesn't become pandemonium. 

1.   Just put up a display that clearly mentions the process and what the customer needs to do 

2.   Have a fixed seating arrangement in the waiting hall and introduce some air conditioning!

An analogy for an analogy

What is the similarity between Dick Fuld, Pablo Escobar and Osama Bin Laden? Actually, none. But if we think a little more there is a common thread across the stories of these 3 men. Apart from the fact that we all know them as criminals, they are glaring examples of what I like to call Crossfire Casualties. I googled this term to check if I can lay claim to it and so far it looks like a reasonable choice to claim rights to the coinage!

Nice(r) guys finish(ed) first

Crossfire Casualties are the first ones to take the bullet in a murky, competitive and generally insidious environment. They are the guys who held the placards before the firing started, and become the face of the insidious environment. But in fact, the other players in the environment are FAR more vicious and dangerous BUT are mostly either ignored and gradually forgotten because we’re busy celebrating first and then life catches up. The guy with the placard, who was most likely the loudest, brashest and most self-confident is the first one to go but is not the end of the problem.

Treasure and crap, both are found by digging

Let me be a little more specific here. At the end of season 2 of Narcos, Pablo Escobar is killed and the Cali Cartel ensures that all his wealth is taken away from his wife. The viewer is also made to understand that AFTER Escobar’s death, there was more cocaine flowing into the U.S. than when Escobar was flourishing. And incidentally 80% of all the cocaine that went into the U.S. was controlled by the Medellin Cartel run by Escobar. So there, the guy who took the bullet was evil but that was really not the end of the problem. The Cali cartel, which operated in a much more calculated and shrewd manner took over the reins after which the problem has compounded over the last 20 years spreading beyond the U.S. The end of the season also shows that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is cognizant of this issue but I don’t know if the media played it’s part in ensuring continued coverage and deep analysis of the deeper issue.

Greed, Lies and pin stripes

The world of cocaine smuggling has parallels (at least in the sense of it’s criminal nature) in Wall Street too. At the risk of a detour it is worth mentioning that the financial crisis of 2008 brought with it many explanations of what happened and all of them tried to simplify it for the man on the street like me. What was a common baffling revelation in each one of these pieces was that it was all a result of a very basic problem – greed. Not intelligent use of data, not slow and calculated manufacturing of information and also NOT the use of political power it seems. It was all just lies and a slew of pin-stripes who gave the impression that they knew what they were doing. That easy!

In the financial crisis of 2008, the political establishment got involved to save the big guys but they couldn’t save all of them obviously. In his book ‘Too big to fail’, Andrew Ross Sorkin has put the chronology in great detail. And again the fall of Lehman Brothers was just because one guy was unfortunate enough to get the bullet before the bouquet. The TARP was agreed upon and dispatched a few days after Lehman Brothers went down which meant that the other big boys who were hand in glove in the large scale financial massacre went scot free. Large parts of the book are dedicated to describing the growing up years, parents, education and professional lives of the bankers. In some sense it creates some sympathy for some of the characters who went down and also creates disgust for others. Disgust, because the problem still exists in a way more compounded manner.

‘Killing is my business, and business is good’

Cut to the end of that thread uniting our 3 characters - Osama Bin Laden. He was killed in May 2011. Now whether he was really killed, or whether he even existed are theories and discussions for another thread but the point is that his death did not bring in the end of organized terrorism. I say organized terrorism because I am excluding deaths from mass shootings, gangwars and other forms of terrorism that take many lives too but are not orchestrated by organisations. Osama Bin Laden was the loudest advocate and practitioner of terrorism but it surely did not go away with him. ISIS his risen, Al-Qaeda has become more decentralized, sheer number of attacks has increased and there are more smaller terror groups today than there were before 2011. I did some of the data crunching from here: https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/contact/

I won’t quote sources here but a google search will have enough and more material on this topic.

The cases of Pablo Escobar and Osama Bin Laden are a miniscule proportion of the many that exist. There, the point is that there are no right guys and chasing them down is a relentless journey. Often times we confuse the symptom and the cause. What is in fact a small victory (an incremental) is made out to be a great conquest (moonshot). For world issues, the role of mainstream media is so critical in being analytical and persuasive in chasing down governments to not wear these as badge of honors and not slow down on the real job. Understand and acknowledge it’s incremental nature and just keep going at the wrong guys.

In the case of financial crimes, it’s a little different because the wrong guys need to be brought to justice so that the right guys can work in peace.

Incremental raised to infinity equals a moonshot

I chose to post this here too because I believe our organisations face similar issues – we are blindsided to the power of incrementalism, in favour of the moonshot. In no way am I saying that we should not be favoring moonshot thinking, however the fact is that many incremental changes together make up a moonshot and there may never be one sweeping change that will come every quarter. Those usually come only once in a generation! So if we wear the mainstream investigative media hat in our companies, we must continue to question why a victory is a big victory? Acknowledge but celebrate small victories and communicate the role of incremental in adding up to a moonshot!