Get, Set, Go!

JUNE 2012

Why your chief marketing officer must know how to use technology Page 16

Five Case Studies

Get, SET, GO!

The Magazine for Growing Companies New Research

How to Avoid an Employee Revolt

Fast Growth In a Slow Economy Page 48

Get, Set, Go!

Page 14

Seven super productive company builders on what makes them race ahead Page 28

The magazine for growing companies

For Bhavin Turakhia, founder, Directi, the 800-people plus web company, productivity is a science

June 2012 | `150 | Volume 03 | Issue 05 A 9.9 Media Publication | inc.com Facebook.com/Inc

@incmagazine

June 2012

contents

28 Mission Productivity Entrepreneurs are compelled

to function at efficiency levels that seem impossible.

Demolishing their many to-dos even as they set aside time for strategic thinking is a difficult balance to strike.

Here, seven entrepreneurs lay out their productivity philosophies and tricks. by shreyasi singh

44 How I Did It Diwan Rahul Nanda His is a journey fit for the movies—a school boy who was thrown into salvaging an ailing family business is today a powerful CEO at the helm of TOPSGRUP, the 93,000-people security services giant.

as told to ira swasti

48 Fast Growth in a Slow Economy

Meet five business owners who turned down times into their best years yet.

photograph by khushi mishra

Elevator Pitch Shaifali Agarwal wants to build a business by repairing homes. Will investors find EASYFix a good bet?

on the cover

Bhavin Turakhia, founder and CEO, Directi. Cover design by Anil VK. Imaging by Anil T. This edition of Inc. magazine is published under license from Mansueto Ventures LLC, New York, New York. Editorial items appearing on pages 12, 14-15, 21-22, 25-27, 48-52, 57-61 were all originally published in the United States edition of Inc. magazine and are the copyright property of Mansueto Ventures, LLC, which reserves all rights. Copyright © 2009 and 2010 Mansueto Ventures, LLC. The following are trademarks of Mansueto Ventures, LLC: Inc., Inc. 500.

by jennifer alsever

64 The Way I Work

Atul Phadnis, founder of Whats-On-India, prefers meeting his teams at their workstations to huddling in a conference room.

Doing so helps him figure out what they’re really thinking. as told to ira swasti

june 2012 | INC. | 1

contents

June 2012

26

08 55 22

07 Editor’s Letter

20 Get Real

Companies that keep the Ambika Pillai salon in perfect style

By Jason Fried How do you know when to stop tweaking and release that new product? You don’t.

11 Launch

21 The Goods

08 Behind the Scenes

Viewpoints: Why sales is people-science Business blogging fizzles The Ticker A slow start doesn’t worry SecureNow, an insurance start-up Research Corner: When to lay down the law The Inc. Data Bank Skimmer’s Guide to The Wide Lens: A New Strategy for Innovation, by Ron Adner

16 Earn Your Spurs

By Jessie Paul Tech up your marketing plans.

New technology doesn’t end with social media. Go beyond. The results are worth it.

18 Passions

Why Vimal Kedia finds magic in vintage packaging

2 | INC. | june 2012

New mobile document scanners Bluetooth watches that sync with your smartphone An app that brings a Windows desktop to your iPad Tech Wise, by Soham Raninga: Why the iPad 2 is better than its newer sibling Things K Manjunatha Can’t Live Without

Guidebook, No. 5

How, when and what to share with employees when it comes to company financials. Find the guidebook following Page 24.

26 Balancing Acts

By Meg Cadoux Hirshberg The worst source for funding is probably the closest at hand.

That’s right: your spouse.

Strategy 55 managing Good intentions logically lead to smart branding. Make CSR your trusted tool for thought leadership 57 leadership Why a great team trumps a bold strategy every time 60 design An edgy comic-book publisher aims for the mainstream with a new logo.

68 I Wish I Knew Then...

Ranga Reddy, founder and CEO, Maveric Systems, wishes he had the wisdom to focus on one thing at a time when he began his software testing company in 2000.

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Contents

The Takeaway

the best of inc.com

The Fine Art of Strategic Leadership The best leaders are those who can deal not only with today’s problems but also with the issues and challenges forever gathering on the horizon. In a recent column for Inc.com, author and researcher Paul Schoemaker discussed the things that forward-thinking leaders do better than the rest of us. Here are three.

1. Interpret

Ambiguity is unsettling. Faced with it, the leader is tempted to reach for a fast (and potentially wrong-headed) solution. A strategic leader holds steady, synthesising information from many sources before developing a viewpoint.

3. Learn

As a company grows, honest feedback is harder and harder to come by. You have to do what you can to keep it coming. This is crucial, because success and failure—especially failure—are valuable sources of organisational learning.

2. Align

Consensus is rare. A strategic leader must foster open dialogue, build trust, and engage key stakeholders, especially when views diverge.

Three Phrases You Should Never Say to a Customer

Want to avoid a customer service meltdown? Inc.com columnist and customer service guru Ron Burley shares three things that should never pass the lips of a customer service rep.

“That’s our policy.”

That’s a destructive phrase. Its primary purpose is to shut down a conversation. Even worse, for some customers, it’s a declaration of war. Every dispute-gone-viral tracked by my firm has involved some version of that terrible utterance.

“There’s nothing I can do.”

There’s always at least one thing you can do—return the customer’s cash. Give your team the freedom to find creative alternatives. Reward them for innovative solutions.

“That’s the manufacturer’s responsibility.”

Your customer doesn’t have a financial relationship with your partner, supplier, or manufacturer. You took the customer’s money, so it’s your responsibility to fix the problem.

4 | INC. | JUNE 2012

Give Your Employees Unlimited Vacation Days Joe Reynolds is the founder of the event production company Red Frog. In his column, Leaps and Bounds, he recently explained why taking time off at Red Frog is encouraged (and even celebrated) and why it’s not abused. Employees simply make sure their work is covered, and that’s it—no questions asked. Here’s why.

It treats employees like adults. If they’re

incapable of handling unlimited vacation days, they’re probably incapable of handling other responsibilities.

It reduces costs.

Tracking vacation days can be cumbersome work— eliminate those headaches.

It’s a recruitment tool.

When you combine fantastic benefits and a positive culture, it’s noticed.

For more, check out www.inc. com/author/joe-reynolds.

MAIL

OUTSTANDING WORKPLACE VALUES

HOW TO BE AN EFFICIENT LEADER

The Magazine for Growing Companies

Cover Story

Outstanding

Workplace

Page 50

VALUES

A Valid Point

Just received your latest issue of Inc. India. It always makes great reading MUST-HAVE and we especially like WEB TOOLS your editorials! The reference to Tata Steel and Jamshedpur is indeed very pertinent.

The Tatas truly created an empire built on work ethics and value systems that sometimes get overlooked. I personally started my career in a Tata company (Voltas) and realise that it was such a valued experience and the perfect place to begin.

Diversity | Feedback | Personal Touch | Rewards & Recognition

THE WAY WE WORK

Cracking the partnership code

The MAGAZINE for GROWING COMPANIES

“Marketing is not a substitute for a great product that people love. In fact, a great product that people love will market itself, and any noise you make beyond that just supports the growth naturally. As start-up founders, we all need to chill out until we have a product that deserves praise.”

NEW RESEARCH:

Page 44

Tara Hunt

CEO of shopping recommendation site Buyosphere

What Entrepreneurs Really Want

APRIL/MAY 2012

Some words of wisdom from Inc.com columnists:

LEARN FROM FOUR AWARD-WINNING COMPANIES INLCUDING:

MakeMyTrip BrickRed

Two buddies on how they achieved hyper-growth

Page 28

Page 56

Hitesh Dhingra (front) and Amanpreet Bajaj, co-founders of LetsBuy.com, are confident they can work as well with Flipkart which recently acquired LetsBuy.

TO ENGAGE CUSTOMERS ON YOUR WEBSITE

SPECIAL COVERAGE:

April/May 2012 | `150 | Volume 03 | Issue 03 A 9.9 Media Publication | inc.com Facebook.com/Inc

@incmagazine

3rd Annual Inc. India 500 Awards

COVER-01.indd 1

Page 18

3/21/2012 11:34:48 AM

— Sumedha Saraogi, Vice President, DQ Entertainment

Not Just Another Business Magazine I read your magazine occasionally and like the content and the format. Fresh, short stories and informal treatment makes it light reading and differentiates it from traditional business periodicals. ganesh jivani, Matrix Comsec

John Vechey

Co-founder of video-game maker PopCap Games

“It’s easier to get agreement in oneon-one meetings, but it’s often better to get everyone in the room. Pay attention to people’s inconsistencies, and notice when they’re avoiding conflict. It’s vitally important that everyone get things out on the table and discuss their differences openly.”

Totally Inspirational In all the bad news that we read in our newspapers and magazines, and all the gloom of a slowdown, it’s always wonderful to hear stories of people who are doing, not just complaining. Entrepreneurs are role models for our young. Congratulations to Inc. India on bringing us closer to symbols of a positive India. rakesh bedi, via e-mail

A Rare Find I chanced upon your magazine at the airport in Delhi recently, and my flight to Mumbai went in a snap thanks to you. As a management student, we read about case studies of companies. But it’s so important to understand the journey of the person behind the company. Kudos to you for setting forth the emotional context of an entrepreneur’s life; it’s such an inspiring way to treat content. I’ve been determined to be an entrepreneur after my MBA, and your magazine just reinforced those ambitions. amarjot bhatia, via e-mail

To submit a letter, or alert us to an error, write to us at inc.india@9dot9.in. Letters may be edited for space and style. Submission constitutes permission to use.

JUNE 2012 | INC. | 5

MANAGING DIRECTOR: Dr Pramath Raj Sinha Printer & Publisher: Anuradha Das Mathur Editorial managing Editor: shreyasi singh assistant features editor: rohini banerjee feature writer: ira swasti Copy Desk Managing Editor: Sangita Thakur Varma DEsign Sr Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan Art Director: Anil VK Associate Art DirectorS: Atul Deshmukh SR Visualiser: Manav Sachdev Visualisers: Prasanth TR, Anil T & Shokeen Saifi Sr Designers: Sristi Maurya & NV Baiju Designers: Suneesh K, Shigil N, Charu Dwivedi Raj Verma, Prince Antony, Peterson, Prameesh Purushothaman C & Midhun Mohan Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul Sr Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

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CONTRIBUTORS

Jen Swanson Jen Swanson first became interested in business and entrepreneurship in 2006, when she worked for our parent magazine, Inc., in New York. But it was her first trip to India in 2009, as part of a two-month travel writing assignment that left her hopelessly attracted to the growth and energy of the subcontinent. Happily, she has since found a way to marry these two passions; by living in India’s version of the Big Apple, where she writes for Inc. India and other publications as a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.

6 | INC. | JUNE 2012

Khushi Mishra Khushi Mishra is based in New Delhi and loves photographing people, places and nature. An avid nature enthusiast and an admirer of all things beautiful, she specialised in fine art, travel and nature photography from the Light and Life Academy, Ooty. Also a qualified lawyer, she believes that, “It’s not the destination. It’s the Glory of the Ride”. She is currently living her dream of being a photographer and is wondering whether she should wake up or let the dream continue. Her first solo photography exhibition was held at India Habitat Centre, Delhi, in April 2011.

Charu Bahri Charu Bahri would like to say that she writes for the sheer love of it. But, in truth, she earns her living as a freelance writer. She enjoys writing on subjects as diverse as business and spirituality. She likes talking to people to learn more about how things work, almost as much as arranging words in a way that benefits readers the most. In the past five years, she has written 500plus articles for a medley of Indian and overseas publications and websites. Bahri lives in Mount Abu with her parents and her dog.

editor’s letter

At the Heart of Success In his much-discussed, eminently readable book, Breakout Nations: In Search of the Next Economic Miracle, Morgan Stanley economist Ruchir Sharma makes an interesting observation about India.

Along with Brazil, he calls us a “high-context” society, using the term popularised by anthropologist Edward Hall to describe cultures in which people are “colourful, noisy, quick to make promises, and a bit casual about meeting times and deadlines”.

It’s tough to disagree with Sharma’s characterisation, or, in fact, with most of what he says in this book. Yet, to me, his reading of who we are seems so much at odds with the people I meet most often for Inc. India. Founder-CEOs of high-growth enterprises— subjects of most of our stories—defy many of these stereotypes.

They stand out because they “do”, not because they wait and dither. Entrepreneurs are called in to do more, and work harder than most Things I Learnt of us. Plus, they must also nail the art In This Issue of masterfully moving across When you want to functions, decisions and skills as say no, don’t cop-out with a maybe. Being they erect companies out of ideas polite, but honest is the and business plans. smartest way to get Our cover story this time things done fast. explores the different personal Don’t underutilise the productivity systems that successful technology available to business builders have shaped for you. Make the effort to learn and deploy it. themselves, and the technological

aids and tools they rely on to work smarter and better. Bhavin Turakhia, who you see on our cover page, is the founder and CEO of Directi, the rapidly-growing internet products company. His productivity secret sauce is having six monitors attached to his PC­—three for all the dashboards he needs to stay on top of, and three for him to work on.

There are other equally fascinating philosophies and practices in the cover story on Page 28.

Personally, this issue is perfectly timed. Over the past few months, I’ve consciously had to evaluate my own productivity as I manage two special publishing projects along with editing this magazine. Inspired from Anita Dongre, the designer who has fashioned a `150-crore high-street apparel business (and features in our cover story), I’ve also tried to put in place a system where I devote different days of the week to the different projects I’m working on. I’ve picked up many other tricks and apps in the course of writing this one. I hope you’ll find reading it as productive.

Shreyasi Singh shreyasi.singh@9dot9.in

JUNE 2012 | INC. | 7

BEHIND THE SCENES

Companies at the Heart of Everyday Life

Architecture and interiors The site of Ambika Pillai’s flagship hair and beauty salon was formerly a lounge bar and night club. That meant a lot of re-conceptualisation and reconstruction for architects Rahoul Singh and Lakshmi Chand, founders of the Delhi-based design and architecture firm RLDA Studio.

Started in 1997, the 12-people firm was asked to create a spacious feel for the salon’s elite clientele. The duo responded with two mezzanines and an eighteen-foot long mirror at the entrance that imbues a studio-feel to the salon. With three offices in Delhi, RLDA has also worked on Grant Thornton’s Indian headquarters, fashion designer Varun Bahl’s boutique and several outlets for the high-street fashion brand Chemistry, among others.

A salon that caters to the capital’s celebrity circuit needed a décor fitting its premium image. A fabric-clad eight-foot wall has been built at the reception to give the place a sense of controlled expansiveness. Both the reception and its furniture were designed by Delhi-based interior and furniture design firm Inline. Preeti Jain Knowles along with her husband Michael Knowles started the 15-people firm in 1990. Since then, the firm has worked for the royal families of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, along with several projects in India.

8 | INC. | june 2012

Gutter Credit here

Furniture

Ambika Pillai Salon, Hotel Clarion, Delhi

09.05.2012 5:30 P.M.

Flooring Located on the second floor of the hotel, the salon space was organised to bifurcate the main work space into twoâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;one for hair cutting and the other for hair styling and make-up. To cater to the footfall of more than 300 clients every day, Nitco Tiles completed the flooring for the 3,500 sq ft salon. Part of the Nitco Group founded in 1953 by Prannath Talwar along with two other partners, Nitco Tiles was incorporated in 1966, and is currently run by Talwarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s son Vivek.

The `700-crore firm has 65 exclusive showrooms in the country and exports to Africa, Europe and the Middle-East.

PHOTOGRAPH BY Subhojit Paul

reported by Ira Swasti

News. Ideas. People.

launch viewpoints

Selling It Right

“Doing sales helps you understand people. It trains you to see their invisible smiles even when they maintain a poker face.”

Alok Kejriwal, founder and CEO of the 2win group, the company that runs popular websites like games2win.com and contests2win. com, recently wrote about the top seven lessons he’s picked up while making sales pitches on his popular blog rodinhood.com. He believes the art of selling is not in making the sale but in understanding the people being sold to. “Before you understand the how or the what, it’s so important to understand why someone will buy your product.” Undoubtedly, Kejriwal knows more than a thing or two about bumper sales.

According to comScore, the global internet research company, he’s led his gaming website to become one of the top 20 online gaming businesses in the world. The serial entrepreneur also did a master selling job when Walt Disney acquired the China division of mobile2win.com, his mobile marketing company, in September 2006.

Photograph by Jiten Gandhi

JUNE 2012 | INC. | 11

launch

blogging

Social-media use at Inc. 500 companies

facebook

twitter

71% 74% 59%

50%

64%

37%

2010 2011

Where Have All the Bloggers Gone?

Business blogging on the decline Is blogging dead? Not quite, but a recent survey of Inc. 500 companies reveals that it could be on its way out as a marketing tool. The study, conducted by the University of Massachusetts’s Center for Marketing Research, included interviews with executives at 170 companies on the 2011 Inc. 500. Last year, only 37 per cent of Inc. 500 companies maintained blogs, down from 50 per cent the year before.

According to Nora Ganim Barnes, Companies that director of the Center for Marketing do have blogs are Research, it’s not that these businesses very happy with blogging; it’s that they never them. Ninety-two stopped blogged in the first place. “A lot of the per cent of those Inc. 500 companies weren’t in exisbusinesses called tence in the early blogging years,” says the platform Ganim Barnes. “They are newer coma success. panies that moved directly to Facebook and Twitter.”

Still, the companies that do have blogs are very happy with them. Ninety-two per cent of those businesses called the platform a success, up from 86 per cent in 2010. Facebook, though more popular than ever among Inc. 500 companies, saw its success rating decrease 3 percentage points in 2011. Eighty-two per cent of the companies that used Facebook deemed it a success.

“Blogging has gotten a bad rap for being too time-consuming,” Ganim Barnes says, “but it’s an invaluable tool to these companies. It’s the only place where you can really be a thought leader in your field. You can’t do that in 140 characters.” —Issie Lapowsky

12 | INC. | JUNE 2012

The Ticker A wrap-up of people news and investment deals From Infosys director to chairThe Incubator man, Manipal Universal Learn- Mohandas Pai’s newly formed PE fund invests ing, TV Mohandas Pai donned in four companies. another hat in April last year when he floated a `500-crore PE fund with partner Ranjan Pai. The fund has now invested a total of $35 million in two Indian-based and two US-based companies.

One of them is the California-based medical technology company Insightra and the other is online book buying portal bookadda.com...

Staying with investment news, Manipal Hospitals, a wing of the `1100-crore plus Manipal Education and Medical Group plans to raise `500 crore from India Value Fund Advisors by offering a minority stake. The capital will be used to fund expansion plans and set up new multi-speciality hospitals in Pune, Bhubaneswar and Hyderabad...Also, the International Financial Corporation is set to invest `50 crore in Ujjivan Financial Services, a microfinance company founded by Samit Ghosh, that lends to urban and the semiurban people. In an earlier round of funding in February this year, Ujjivan had raised $25.5 million...Moving from investFrom shoes to jewels ments to acquisitions, PanaWill Manmohan Agarwal’s latest sonic acquires 76.2 per cent acquisition sparkle stake in the Bengaluru-based his company’s future? fire protection and security firm Firepro Systems for an undisclosed amount...In more acquisition news, Yebhi.com acquires online jewellery retailer Stylishyou.in for a reported $1-1.5 million in a cash-cum-stock deal.

Launched by Manmohan Agarwal in 2009, yebhi.com was earlier known as bigshoebazaar.com and only sold shoes.

Since then, it has stocked up apparel, bags, mobiles, cameras, eyewear and more. —Inc. India

launch

A Secure Future?

An insurance broking firm banks on SMEs for growth Kapil Mehta has the air of somebody who is hardwired for success. A top-notch corporate professional, (in his last assignment, he was the managing director of DLF Pramerica Life Insurance), Mehta forego the trappings of a steady job to turn entrepreneur with SecureNow, an insurance broking firm based in Delhi. Mehta believes insurance is a hugely under-penetrated market in India. “Even the little insurance that is sold is investmentoriented, and not pure risk insurance,” Mehta says. Bootstrapped with `1 crore, SecureNow wants to correct this anomaly, and although conversions have been slow and gestation periods long, Mehta is confident his fullservice company can consistently grow three to four times each year. —S.S. How is SecureNow different from the other online providers of insurance policies, or financial schemes? What is your core USP?

SecureNow’s differentiation comes through the market segments we serve, the products we select and our full-service business model. We serve both individual and corporate customers. Online providers are not equipped to deal with the non-standard, diverse requirements of corporates. That is a business we value, particularly SMEs. SMEs are seldom able to get good insurance advice, they procure expensive insurance and their claim servicing is poor. Our intervention saves them lakhs of rupees. For individual customers, we sell only term life and health insurance. That choice distinguishes us from other distributors. These are protection products and fill a basic gap in the market place. As a broker, we are able to make comparisons, sell insurance and complete fulfilment. Other online providers are not able to compete in all areas. For example, web aggregators are not allowed to sell insurance, agents can market only one company’s products and so on. We provide full-service capability.

What opportunities do you see in India for this service? What are your growth projections?

The opportunity is huge. India is one of the most attractive financial services markets in the world today. It is large, growing steadily and hugely underpenetrated. In corporate insurance, less than 15 per cent of companies purchase insurance through a broker. In other markets, this is over 50 per cent. SMEs are particularly underserved. Just the act of introducing a broker in a corporate sale sig-

Well Insured Kapil Mehta is looking for the perfect balance—steady sales with minimum cash burn—to grow his firm.

nificantly brings down insurance costs. Individual consumers are rapidly becoming more aware of term and health insurance.

These segments are growing at 40 per cent and are still undeserved. Distributors do not sell these products because they are so cheap.

We see a big opportunity in selling. We would like to reach 100 corporate and 2,000 individual clients by the end of this year. I would expect our business to grow three to four times each year. In our business, once we acquire a customer, we should be able to retain them year-after-year as their insurances get renewed.

It’s early days for the company yet, but has the feedback surprised you in any way? Have you felt the need to tweak your business model?

We have had to do more than just tweak our

business models! On the corporate side, our first learning was to avoid the very large companies. The insurance purchase decision in these companies has been pushed down to procurement teams who do not value expert insurance advice that much. Also, the level of competitive intensity makes these accounts unprofitable. The real opportunity is with SMEs where we work with the senior team and can demonstrate considerable value. So, we are reaching out to SMEs in a substantial manner. Similarly, on the individual side, we initially assumed that enquiries would get converted into insurance over two to three calls. However, we find that there is a very strong need for several more conversations and so we have to accept larger gestation periods and lower conversions.

What are the main challenges—in the short-term, and long-term, in achieving the growth projections you’ve laid out?

In the short term, our biggest challenge is to get the right people. The quality of talent that we see is not good and, unfortunately, the good people prefer to work in large organisations on a fixed salary. The other challenge is to reach SMEs in a cost-effective manner. We are breaking away from face-to-face interaction as much as possible. The internet, B2B market places, affinity groups are excellent ways to reach SMEs. In the long term, I think our biggest challenge will be to build a recognisable brand in a cost-effective manner. My natural inclination is to build the business steadily with minimal losses. However, many companies operate on the paradigm of burning cash fast to build scale. So, I am working to find the right balance.

JUNE 2012 | INC. | 13

launch

Laying Down the Law When policies have wiggle room, more people rebel

research corner

Management experts have long touted employee buy-in as the key to organisational change. But new research suggests that if you want employees to support your decisions, you should take a hard line.

The Findings

In the study, researchers found that when new rules seem bendable or changeable, people are more likely to revolt.

But when rules are definitive and absolute, people are more likely to support them.

This response may be a coping mechanism, explains Gavan J. Fitzsimons, the study’s co-author and a professor of marketing and psychology at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. “If there’s no chance you can change the rule, it’s not really functional to have those feelings of resentment, because you’re going to be miserable,” he says. “But when there’s a small chance it can be reversed, a backlash could lead to the outcome you want.”

The Methodology

The study was based on two online surveys. In the first, researchers told participants that elected officials were planning to reduce local speed limits for safety reasons. Some participants were told the legislation would definitely pass, and others were told that it might pass. The participants then rated their feelings about the new law. Those who thought the new law was a done deal were more supportive of the new speed limits.

In the second survey, participants were told about a new law banning the use of cell phones while driving. This time, researchers told half the participants that the new law would affect drivers in India and told the other half that the law was for U.S. drivers. Participants were told that passage of the new law was either very likely, somewhat likely, or definite. Then they were asked to rate their feelings about the legislation. Those who thought

14 | INC. | JUNE 2012

the law would definitely pass and directly affect Americans were most supportive of it.

When there was uncertainty about whether the law would pass, participants had a more negative reaction to it, especially when it affected Americans.

The researchers say they based the surveys on driving laws instead of business scenarios because they wanted a restriction that would apply to virtually all Americans. “We were interested in the basic psychology of how people react,” says Fitzsimons.

The Takeaway

Business owners should make decisions authoritatively and broadly. For instance, if you want to change the sales team’s pay structure from commission to salary based, don’t make exceptions, says Aaron C. Kay, an associate professor of management and psychology at Fuqua and a co-author of the study. To avoid resistance, one might be tempted to make gradual changes, first making it an option for those employees who would like to switch. But that’s a mistake, says Kay. “Once you finally make the new pay structure mandatory,” he says, “you will be up against a work force full of employees who are adamantly against the idea.”

Affects people here

Affects people in India

Somewhat likely to pass

2.34

1.53

Very likely to pass

2.13

1.33

Will definitely pass

1.07

2.07

Accepting Change

Participants rated their feelings about a new law limiting cell-phone use while driving. (A lower number indicates support for the law.) The most positive reaction to the law came from participants who were told that the law would definitely pass and would directly affect them.

But that doesn’t mean you have to leave employees out of the decision-making process, says Fitzsimons. You can gather input from workers before an important change is made. Just make it clear that your decision is final. “Many leaders have misinterpreted the common wisdom that you should solicit the input of the people, but that should only be done up until the point the decision gets made,” he says. “If you suggest it’s open for discussion, it’s going to undermine your decision.”

—J.J. McCorvey

illustration by Prince Antony

launch

inc. data bank

Crunching the numbers

Cashing Out

Ethics

Going prices of private companies sold from 1995 to 2012:

Portion of employees who say they witnessed ethical misconduct at work in 2011: 45% (down from the record high of 55%, in 2007)

2%

More than $2 million

4% $1,000,001 to $2 million

9% $500,001 to

Share of those employees who reported the misconduct to a manager:

Portion of employees who say their managers behave unethically:

65%

34%

( a record high)

$1 million

18% $250,001

to $500,000

67% $250,000 or less

BIZCOMPS; Scott Shane, Case Western Reserve University

Bargain Hunters

Portion of whistleblowers who say they experienced retaliation from managers or co-workers:

Share of employees who felt pressure to compromise their ethical standards in order to do their jobs:

22%

13%

33%

Misuse of company time:

Number of coupons redeemed by U.S. consumers in 2011:

Health or safety violations:

81%

3.5 billion

Total amount U.S. consumers saved using coupons in 2011:

$4.6 billion

Discrimination: 15%

13%

Lying to outside shareholders: Stealing:

12%

12%

Falsifying timecards: 12% Sexual harassment:

11%

(a 12 per cent increase from 2010)

Accepting or offering kickbacks or bribes:

NCH Marketing Services; Parks Associates

Ethics Resource Center

5%

local businesses

How often consumers use Google to find local businesses: Never

24% a few times a year

Almost every day

14%

Every week

17%

17%

Once a month

Two or three times a month

12%

MDG Advertising; Search Engine Land

16%

The book: The Wide Lens: A New Strategy for Innovation,

by Ron Adner; Portfolio.

The big idea: Invention used to be 1 per cent inspiration, 99 per cent perspiration. These days, it’s probably 50 per cent collaboration. Companies trying to commercialise innovations won’t succeed unless suppliers, distributors, and other partners can and will do their parts.

Out, out, weak links: Adner, a professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, explains how to map relationships among all constituents who touch your brilliant idea and evaluate their ability and willingness to deliver. Even if an innovation benefits your customers, it could flop if it negatively affects a partner.

Portion of employees who witnessed the following behaviour at work:

Portion of consumers who use coupons regularly:

A skimmer’s guide to the latest business books

The sections of a local business’s website that consumers find valuable: List of prices: 65% List of services: 55% Contact information: 43% The physical address: 42% Driving directions: 24% Customer testimonials: 17% Photographs of the business: 15% Links to the company’s social-media profiles: 5%

—Compiled by Andrew Shafer

If you read nothing else: Chapter Two evaluates co-innovation risk—your reliance on partner companies to innovate. Adner points to Nokia, which was the first to market with a 3G mobile phone in 2002. The handsets failed to take off, because the company paid insufficient attention to the software makers whose offerings would have made the devices more attractive. Chapter Three calculates adoption-chain risk, your reliance on retailers and distributors embracing your innovation.

Movie studios, for example, were excited about the potential of digital cinema but had trouble persuading theatre chains to adopt the technology, because it involved expensive upgrades.

Rigour rating: 8 (1=Who Moved My Cheese?; 10=Good to Great).

Adner spent a decade researching innovation, including a deep dive into the semiconductor industry. —Leigh Buchanan JUNE 2012 | INC. | 15

EARN YOUR SPURS BY

JESSIE PAUL

Jessie Paul is the founder of Paul Writer, a marketing advisory firm based in Bengaluru. She has also authored a book titled No Money Marketing. She is a serious technology enthusiast.

Tech Up! Great ideas and clever people aren’t the only arsenal your marketing plans need.

Often, technology is the missing link.

Does your CMO have a tech strategy? Nope, that’s not a typo. I am talking about a technology strategy, not a marketing strategy. And before you ask, for a markerter, technology isn’t limited—and definitely should not be mistaken to be limited—to social media.

Technology for marketing is a different ball game, and has significant implications on how you run the function. For example, marketing technology can mould how v a lu able c ompa ny information is being treated. A little-pondered over corporate secret is that most sales teams and recruiters have their most-current data on public platforms like LinkedIn. Not because—as is popularly whispered—they want to hide it from the prying eyes of their bosses; not even because they are planning to scoot from the company with the data. Most simply, they do it because many companies have not provided an in-house equivalent which is as easy and intuitive to use. I’ll bet even most of you have your most updated contacts database either on Facebook or LinkedIn as well.

Customer contact information is just the tip of the iceberg, although that is mission-critical information. It goes without saying that customer knowledge is the biggest marketing weapon. If your marketing team has information on them in their personal social networking accounts, they

16 | INC. | JUNE 2012

have access to the customers’ wedding dates, birthdays, food preferences, annual income, credit card number and a whole lot more. That’s a lot of data, and makes predicting milestones, like pregnancy, for example, a breeze—as one retail chain did! They used that information well to promote their baby care business, where catching them as early as Illustration by Prince Antony

EARN YOUR SPURS

possible hugely impacts sales and of course, loyalty. The retail chain began by sending expecting parents coupons for things that would be relevant to be a new parent. To reduce the big brother effect of the exercise, they made sure they added offers on other household items too.

Almost every company today is drowning in data—very valuable data, very BIG data. But unless you have the right analytics system in place, it’s not data, it’s just noise. Depending on how big the data trove is and the size of your business you could consider simple, free, cloud-hosted tools, or go in for a highpowered solution like Unica.

For example, as a marketer, one of the most frustrating things is to go for tradeshows, collect a 1000 cards, and then have sales tell you six months later that nothing has converted. In fact, half the prospects have not even been contacted.

Now, depending on which team you’re on, it’s tempting to blame the quality of the event, or the quality of the sales approach.

But actually the problem is a technical one. If you had a system in place which could triage the leads, automatically map them to existing prospects or clients, remove those locations where you have no dealer network, and then send an automated message to all of them, imagine how much faster and more efficiently things would move. Imagine, further, that this was linked to the customer contact system and you actually could see and control how often and how each prospect was contacted. This isn’t sales utopia—it is simple tool usage. Sadly, it’s the bit that somehow gets left out when IT buys its sales system.

There are other obvious smart tech usages possible. Many of us have tablets now, and playing games, reading and doodling on them are absolutely wonderful. But does your firm have an app that allows customers to interact with you, and learn about your products? Think about it—wouldn’t it be cool if they could?

Often, when someone begins talking about IT solutions and smart apps, many marketers switch off. They dismiss these ideas as only viable or executable for big

companies. But, that’s old-tech thinking.

Today, thanks to the cloud, there are solutions priced as low as `1000 a month.

For example, you can host your contacts on constantcontact.com and run your newsletter from there. Surveys can be run on surveygizmo.com and there are many such options available. Deploying apps and IT solutions suited to your needs can strongly impact your company’s ability to deal with your customers.

Brands not knowing us well enough is a situation we all face. I’m actually quite fond of certain brands I use; I’m even loyal to some of them so it hurts when they treat me badly. Given a choice, I don’t go back to the brands that have done that to me. Mostly though, the person giving me the brush-off has no idea of my past

a higher status card. You’ll also find yourself being offered loans and vacations. Behind the ability to do this is a lot of technology which analyses customer information. Ever wondered why you get a call from the bank when you’ve suddenly spent a lot of money on your card? That’s a fraud prediction engine at work. Here, technology makes customers happy, brings in revenue and reduces losses for the firm. What’s the equivalent of that for your firm?

I recently came across a very interesting story on a medical product. A reputed pharma company wanted to reengineer their product—which sold at around $20,000—to be able to price it at $4000 for an emerging market like India.

The R&D team (that was outsourced to

CMOs should analyse the customer experience and identify how technology can improve that. history with the brand. In the rare cases that they do, they are not incentivised to treat loyal/profitable/happy customers any differently. (Here, I’m not talking about employees who don’t care enough about their company’s reputation to deliberately ignore customers, although that is also not that uncommon!)

Every company hunts for that one sharp differentiator—the usual levers are supply chain, distributor network and product uniqueness. But what about knowing your customers better than anyone else? Wouldn’t that be the ultimate differentiator? And, what if you could use that knowledge to customise their user experience to make sure that different types of customers are treated in the manner they find most welcoming.

Wouldn’t that be great for business?

Banks like Citibank, ICICI and HDFC do this. Once your spends are consistently high, you’ll find an automatic upgrade to

India) analysed the bill of materials and realised that they could reduce the cost by around 40 per cent by dropping all the customer experience bits. That was the engineering viewpoint. But the marketing viewpoint was that the 40 per cent is what made people pay the balance 60 per cent!

Do you know what component of your product is customer experience?

So, what should a CMO do? How can she use technology to enhance customer experience, and derive insights from it?

Here are my three rules. First, analyse the customer experience and put down all the ways in which technology can improve it.

Second, study all your stakeholders, and understand how your relationship with each of them can be improved by technology. Finally, understand current business bottlenecks and see how technology can improve those.

You can reach Jessie Paul at jessie@paulwriter.com JUNE 2012 | INC. | 17

PASSIONS

Life Outside the Office

As a boy growing up in Assam, Vimal Kedia, founder and MD of packaging firm Manjushree Technopak, often wondered whether time stood still in his hometown: his own house was filled with ancient wonders—old paintings and antique watches—and Kedia loved them all.

Decades later, when business forced him to move to Bengaluru, Kedia carried the flotsam and jetsam of his childhood including an old typewriter and Cadbury cocoa tins. He placed these in an empty room in his factory which has now morphed into Manjushree Heritage Museum, thanks to Kedia’s growing collection of vintage packaging collectibles. His whimsical collection comprises tins from Parry's Nutrine, Lactogen and Amulspray. A derelict Philips radio sits right next to a bottle of VAT 69 alongside Pepsi and Coca Cola bottles at least four-decades old. As he adds on to his 250-items-and-growing collection, Kedia also learns their history and takes cue from their manufacturing processes. Almost like an indulgent parent, Kedia loves showing off his collection, and can often be seen escorting guests around the museum.

The First Items: n A Cadbury Nutties tin which was his childhood coin bank n An old office typewriter (he does not know the make, just that it sat in his father's office ever since he remembers) Things he’d make a mad dash to save in a fire: n The Cadbury Nutties tin—it's his good luck charm n A glass bottle made in 1923 with a special double seal gifted to him by an international client

18 | INC. | JUNE 2012

Vimal Kedia

Heritage Museum

“Packaging has come a full circle—it started with paper, moved to metal, glass, plastic and now is back to paper.” photograph by S. Radhakrishna

reported by Rohini Banerjee

Get Real

BY

Jason Fried

Jason Fried is co-founder of 37signals, a Chicago-based software company.

He believes in testing for doneness.

Ready for Its Close-up? How do you know when to stop the tweaking and release a new product? The short answer: You don’t You’ve been working on something for months. You’ve

gone through dozens of iterations, countless tweaks, tons of testing. You’re pleased with the results but can’t quite let go: Is it really ready for its debut?

Good question. In fact, this is one of the hardest questions an entrepreneur can face—because it is almost impossible to answer.

Sure, some things are more obviously done than others. Food, for example, needs to be taken out of the oven if you expect anyone to want to eat it. But I founded a software business, not a restaurant.

In general, here’s how software firms test for doneness. At the outset of a project, the company drafts something called a functional specifications document, or spec. The spec clearly documents what the product requires in order to be considered shippable.

Once the items on the spec have been checked off, the product is ready to go.

This method works. But I’ve never much liked it, mostly because it requires you to define the finished product months or even years in advance. So we’ve always taken a different approach. We define, in general terms, the problems we’re trying to solve and begin by designing around those. We don’t try to predict the product’s final form, or even its full feature set. The only thing we know is where to begin.

And that means we never really know where to end. In fact, in theory, a software project could go on indefinitely.

For a while, it seemed as if that was going to happen with the redesign of Basecamp, 37signals’ project-management tool and our best-selling product. When we started, back in March 2011, a January 2012 launch seemed reasonable.

But as that date approached, we began to feel uneasy. The new Basecamp looked good and dealt with most of the key problems we had set out to resolve. But it didn’t feel done. The problem was, none of us could articulate exactly why.

Different people had different ideas about what needed to be added—or cut—before the product went live. Most of these were good ideas. But if we tried to do them all, the new Basecamp wouldn’t come out for another year. And that wasn’t an option.

I briefly considered putting on my dictator’s hat and simply declaring when the project would be done. But that seemed wrong.

ILLUSTRATION by Shigil N

I wanted all of us to feel good about the product. And besides, releasing something new to the world should be a source of confidence and pride, not anxiety attacks.

As our January deadline came and went, we decided to seek the counsel of our best adviser. Fortunately, that adviser is Amazon. com founder Jeff Bezos, who bought a small stake in 37signals in 2006. We scheduled a call and bent his ear for about an hour, painstakingly detailing why we were so stymied.

Jeff responded with a simple question: What was the single most important feature that we all felt was missing? That was easy. We all knew that the product needed a calendar. In fact, we’d already planned to add one—after the launch. Then Jeff asked us about the second most important feature we all thought was missing. The fog broke: There wasn’t a single No. 2. There were a bunch of smaller things that some of us agreed on, but none were nearly as important as the calendar. Suddenly, the answer was obvious. Build the calendar, and Basecamp would be done—or done enough to release.

In retrospect, it seems so obvious. But that’s so often the case with business decisions. We were all too close to the project to see.

In any case, we learnt an important lesson. And the product debuted in March.

Follow Jason Fried on Twitter: @jasonfried.

JUNE 2012 | INC. | 2 0

Your Business Toolbox

The Goods A.

b.

c.

The Royal Scan Scanners that go where you do

d.

Before You Buy

If image quality is not a concern, consider mobile apps such as Genius Scan and DocScanner, which let you scan documents using the camera in your smartphone or tablet.

Tired of keeping track of all those documents, receipts,

and business cards? Mobile scanners let you scan and organise them on the go. We tried out four models with features such as wireless capability and easy syncing with Dropbox and other cloud-based storage services.

Here are the results. —Adam Baer

courtesy company (4)

a. Xerox Mobile Scanner

Like all the scanners we tested, this model works with PCs or Macs and scans in colour or black and white. It takes documents up to 8.5 inches by 11.7 inches, saves them, and lets you send them wirelessly as JPEGs or multipage PDFs to a computer, an iPad, iPhone, Android device or to online sharing sites.

Or, connect to a computer with an included USB cable. You can scan about 300 documents with a fully charged battery; charge time is about four hours. Scanning at maximum 300-dots-perinch resolution takes 10 seconds per page. Configuring the scanner’s Eye-Fi wireless card was a bit confusing. cost: $250

b. Doxie Go + Wi-Fi

This compact 14-ounce model lets you scan documents as large as 8.5 inches by 12 inches. You can transfer scans wirelessly to an iPad, iPhone, computer, or plug in via a USB cord. The included software lets you save scans as JPEGs or searchable PDFs, send them via e-mail, or save them to cloud-based services such as Google Docs, Evernote, and Dropbox. You can store up to 600 scans on the device itself.

Easy to set up, the Go produced clear 600-DPI scans in about 15 seconds per page in our test. It charges in two hours via a USB cable and produces about 100 scans per charge. cost: $239

c. NeatReceipts Mobile Scanner + Digital Filing System

Although this device has no Wi-Fi capability and works only if plugged into a computer with an included USB cable, its ease of use makes it our top pick.

Scan pages as large as 8.5 inches by 30 inches, and the software will convert your data and enter it into many popular spreadsheet and database programs. A cloud service will launch this spring, providing access to scans via the Web or an app for iPhone and iPad. (An Android version is planned.)

In our test, the device scanned four small receipts a minute at 600-DPI resolution. cost: $200

d. Epson WorkForce DS-30

Instead of a battery, this 11.5ounce model draws power from a laptop or desktop computer using an included USB cable. It comes with a software that lets you scan documents as JPEG files and send them directly to e-mail, a website, a specific folder on your computer, or to any one of a variety of cloud services, including Evernote and Google Docs.

You can also create editable text and searchable PDFs. During our test, the device, which can handle documents as large as 8.5 inches by 14 inches, scanned about four pages a minute at 600-DPI resolution. cost: $180 JUNE 2012 | INC. | 2 1

the goods

Products + Services

2.

3.

1.

Must-Haves

laura downs owner hearthstone computer repair huntersville, north carolina

As a solo entrepreneur, I spend a lot of time on online forums to stay in touch with other members of the tech community.

Tapatalk, an app for my Android phone, helps me consolidate all my forum accounts for easy access when I’m on the go.

As long as a forum has enabled Tapatalk on its website, there’s no limit to how many forums you can add. I’m currently subscribed to six. The app has tabs for easy navigation, and I can search for topics within the forums. I can also upload photos with my posts.

One of my favourite Tapatalk features is the ability to set up push notifications for forums and threads I’m subscribed to, and for private messages from other users.

I also enjoy giving advice on Tapatalk. Recently, another female technician, in California, posted to a forum looking for a specific Dell laptop. I knew a supplier here in North Carolina who had it, so I bought it on her behalf and sent it to her, keeping in touch every step of the way using Tapatalk.

Tapatalk has a one-time fee of $2.99. The computer-repair business is constantly evolving—it’s no longer a simple desktop or laptop situation.

Now, it’s about, “Can you fix my iPhone?” or “I broke my tablet screen,” so it’s great to be able to use Tapatalk to bounce ideas off other techies.

—As told to J.J. McCorvey

2 2 | INC. | JUNE 2012

Face-off Bluetooth watches tested New Bluetooth-connected smart watches act like remote controls for your smartphone to let you monitor calls, read text messages, check your calendar or e-mail, and even control a PowerPoint presentation with just a tap on your wrist. Has their time come at last? —John Brandon 1. InPulse Smartwatch

The InPulse syncs with only Android or BlackBerry phones, and at 2.4 ounces, it’s on the bulky side. It shows incoming calls, text messages, and e-mail messages, but you can’t use the watch to answer calls on a headset. It does come with games, and you can connect to your laptop over Bluetooth and use the watch to advance PowerPoint slides. You have to press and hold touchscreen icons to open apps, which isn’t intuitive, and we ran into a few bugs, including not being able to go back to a home screen. The watch runs up to three days, or one day if you are connected to your phone. There are 40 face styles available. cost: $150 (silver), $199 (black), at getinpulse.com 2. WIMM One

This stylish 0.7-ounce watch (available at amazon.com) works with most iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry phones. As with the

InPulse watch, you must long-press to select apps. You can check incoming texts and calls, but you can’t answer calls from the watch using a headset. Apps let you sync with Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange or show your Starbucks loyalty bar code. Battery life is about 30 hours, or 20 hours if you stay connected to your phone.

There are 14 watch-face options. cost: $200 3. Sony SmartWatch

The smartest watch of the bunch, this halfounce Android-only model features a bright, responsive touchscreen that displays text messages and incoming calls. Just tap to answer on a headset or send callers to voice mail. Use 17 apps to access e-mail or music, or control a PowerPoint presentation when your phone is linked to an HDTV. Battery life is two to four days—one if you are connected to your phone all day. The thin plastic band comes in six colours, and you can choose from two face styles. cost: $150

app of the month

Delivering desktop productivity to the iPad OnLive Desktop, a free app available on iTunes, lets you run virtual versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on your iPad. The programs run on remote servers, but given a reasonably fast internet connection, it feels as if you’re working on a desktop.

The app has accurate handwriting recognition as well as an onscreen keyboard. Paid versions add Internet Explorer, Photoshop, and other applications.

Free and Plus versions come with 2 gigabytes of cloud storage; Pro gives you 50 GB. Versions for Android devices, iPhones, PCs, and Macs are in the works. cost: Free to $4.99 (Plus) or $9.99 (Pro) per month —Caitlin Berens illustration by Shigil N

From Left: courtesy subject; courtesy company (3)

My favourite tool for managing online forums

Products + Services

tech wise

soham raninga

Old really is gold Ditch the glamour of a new launch. Snap up the iPad 2!

The latest Apple iPad (For starters, lets clear the air over the naming scheme for the Apple iPad. The latest iPad is not called the “iPad 3”. Apple chooses to brand it as the “iPad”, which is what the original iPad was sold as. I choose to call it the “new iPad”, to ensure it does not mix with the original iPad!) boasts of an ultra high-resolution screen (the retina display) and a more sophisticated camera with Full HD video recording. It also packs in a powerful gaming processor.

Undoubtedly, these dream specifications makes it seem like a no-brainer, and it’s easy to think of the new model as being much, much better than the older one. But, in reality, the added features and the pumped-up hardware capabilities are really mostly for power users, those wanting to run graphics-intensive applications like 3D games and/or advanced photo or video editing tools.

For business users, the new iPad in many ways is a step backwards compared to the iPad 2. It is heavier, thicker, and consequently more cumbersome to use for longer durations. The beefed-up dedicated graphics chip generates more heat, and makes it slightly less comfortable to have the device rest on your lap for longer durations.

The most significant disadvantage in having the “latest” model is the reduced battery life, and the longer charging duration. Approximately, the iPad 2 has an eight to 10 per cent edge in terms of battery life. Plus, it takes less time to recharge—a full battery charge (0 to 100%) takes about four hours. In contrast, the new iPad clocks in a six-hour recharge time. What further strengthens the case for the iPad 2 is the fact

that the more recent lots of the iPad 2 models (and certainly all the lots going forward) are upgraded with the newer power-efficient processors which translates to almost 25 per cent more battery performance compared to the new iPad. The only possible productivity feature that the new iPad can boast of over the iPad 2 is the voice dictation feature. The new iPad does allow you to use voice input for taking notes, and sending mails or messages. But, in terms of practical usage scenarios, over the course of my review, I found the voice dictation feature seriously limited and very inefficient for Indian accents. It’s unlikely to be a feature one uses regularly, or depends on heavily.

Another very obvious benefit in opting for the iPad 2 over the newer model is the 20 per cent price differential—roughly `6,000. That money can be put to better use.

It’s enough to buy you some cool accessories such as a case with a built-in Bluetooth keyboard (`2,500), and an extended one-year Apple warranty (costs about `3,500).

For business users, the new iPad is a step backwards—it’s thicker, heavier and has less battery life.

Who can upgrade?

In short, if you already own an iPad 2, hold on to it unless you really need the gaming graphics and higher-resolution display.

Given the pace at which the tablet market is evolving, waiting for another year is a wise option; the fourth generation of the iPad will surely offer a slimmer profile, better battery life and more performance. And, considering Apple is known to support its products for a minimum of three years, the iPad 2 is sure to get all the software updates and improvisations the company launches till the end of 2013.

the goods

TELECOM

Hanging on the telephone

You don’t need a receptionist—or a pricey PBX phone system—to handle your business calls professionally. New cloud-based office phone systems run on mobile devices and automate answering so nobody is left hanging.

Line2 Pro, an app for Android phones, iPhones, and the iPad, can forward incoming calls to up to six other phones (landline, mobile, or other Line2 numbers) simultaneously.

You can set up routing by department—so callers can, say, press 2 for Accounting—or automatically route recognised callers to a particular line (say, always sending a key client to the same salesperson). Text messaging is included in the plan, and voice mails are sent as MP3s by e-mail. The main line costs $15 per month; additional numbers are $10 per month with a 99-user max.

AT&T Office@Hand

requires an AT&T phone (BlackBerry, iPhone, or Android) as the main line.

If no one picks up, the system can forward calls to up to four other numbers, one at a time or simultaneously. As with Line2, you can configure department routing and automatic routing of specific contacts. The system doesn’t support texting; voice mail is sent via e-mail. The iPad app doesn’t run full screen.

Cost is $16 per month per user, with a two-line minimum and an 800-user limit. —J.B. JUNE 2012 | INC. | 2 3

the goods

Beyond Business

Things I Cannot Live Without...

Blogging I am passionate about making our country more ethical so issues about honesty and individual integrity find ample space on my blogs.

Internet I visit CNN, New York Times and Mashable. com every morning.

Samsung Galaxy Tab I also own the iPhone but it is so much easier to browse the internet on the tab. co-founder, Kenscio

K Manjunatha Magazines I need to read both Indian and international magazines to know what’s new with the world.

2 4 | INC. | JUNE 2012

His is a classic case of—it’s never too late to start anew. After working in leading technology firms in India and the US for more than two decades, K Manjunatha decided it was time to start a digital marketing firm of his known in 2009, along with three other partners. The knowledgebuff claims the internet has been his “closest companion”, keeping him updated with the latest innovations and strategies in digital marketing. But his sources aren’t limited to the web—everything from The Economist to the National Geographic magazine finds space on his desk. His love for reading has also evolved into a passion for digital writing, as he writes at least once a week on the company or his personal blog. —Ira Swasti

...and What I Covet

Once I complete my professional and personal responsibilities, I want to pack up my bags and go on a world tour with my wife.

Everything you need to know to run your business in today’s economy

: : : : : : : : : : : A monthly guide to policies, procedures and practices

Remove booklet along dotted Line

05

Share Company Financials While need to know is a critical filter in an organisation’s flow of information, transparency and sharing information—beyond, and irrespective of what employees must know to do their job—can often be an effective way to drive earnings, and get everybody in the company to feel like stakeholders. Being upfront about the company’s finances, in particular, can help foster employee buy-in for your business mission as well as day-to-day decisions. Management author John Case called this “open-book management”, and suggested that when done well, it both engages and challenges staff to move the numbers in the right direction.

Many companies—bred on a hierarchy of information needs­­might be reluctant.

But, Case believes keeping employees in the dark on how the company is faring really serves no good purpose. First, staff can feel alienated from long-term planning and growth. And, worse, they are forced to make assumptions—both good and bad —about the organisation’s financial wellbeing. If business isn’t good, this could lead top performers into believing not-so-favourable grapevine buzz, and even seeking work elsewhere. As music entrepreneur and marketing whiz Jim Long put it, “…no one wants to play in a game where you don’t know the score.” So, share the score and see your workers transform into star employees. Read on to learn how to present numbers without intimidating staff. —Charu Bahri

Vol. 03 No. 05 | inc. guidebook

05

share company financials : : : : : : : : : : : : :

Establish Guidelines Identify content: The biggest challenge in sharing financial information with employees is to decide what behind-thescenes data to share with each segment of workers. According to Dipak Ashar, CFO Partner at Wealth Tree Consulting, a firm offering Virtual CFO services, “Insights of the company performance must be shared keeping in mind employee seniority. Broadly three tiers can be differentiated for this purpose—unionised staff, managerial cadre and top management.”

For unionised staff and workers, it’s important to explain the key reasons for performing better or worse than the last period alongside a message to the team to enhance performance. Details of major events and milestones that depict strength and stability can be conveyed.

Managerial cadres must additionally be presented company results by financial performance ratios (margins by division, employee, branch, plant and other operating ratios) for each strategic business unit. Sharing performance indicators of close competitors from publicly available information can help identify learnings for the future. The top management should ideally be privy to in-depth comparative (with previous period) performance reviews and budget discussions held at Board meetings.

Define classified information: While it is a good practice to share financial information, management must refrain from disclosing top secrets even if employees ask for these details. Defining what data constitutes classified information helps prevent lapses in protecting restricted files.

“Details of commercial contracts, agreements with confidentiality clauses and other sensitive data should not be inc. guidebook | Vol. 03 No. 05

shared with employees,” says Jaiprakash J Desai, CEO, Metro Shoes. Best financial practices also dictate that private information such as individual salaries should never be made public.

Create policies: Framing policies to consistently share specific financial information can help manage situations where employees ask questions that are best left unanswered. There may be a possibility of the information leaking out to competitors or compromising company prospects. Or, the

Defining what constitutes classified information helps prevent lapses. company may be subject to restrictions on sharing information about ongoing projects and developments. Policy provisions would make it easier for management to withstand such requests.

Employees holding stock options might be an exception to that rule. Jayant Tewari, who runs an outsourced CFO services firm, explains, “As a rule, summary financial statements should be made available in the internal employee domain if the aggregate ESOP is more than 15 per cent of the company stock.

Information (apart from legally confidential items) cannot be denied, in fairness, to any ESOP holder with more than 1 per cent share.”

Present Well

Include appropriate data: Many companies nowadays accrue profits from arbitrage. For example, businesses

offering outsourced services earn by ensuring that their transaction costs are lower than their competitors. Consequently, sharing financials with senior employees can have far-reaching consequences. Information should ideally help employees become aware about the causal connection between employee input, compensation, sales and profits.

G C Jayaprakash, Asia Pacific Regional Practice Leader-Technology, Stanton Chase explains it as “helping employees work backwards from the profit figures they hear about, and understanding exactly what costs reduce sales into profits.” This awareness helps employees follow the action, keep the score and make genuine contributions to drive profits. Senior staffers, when engaged well, are more invested in improving operational efficiency. “An appreciation of pressures on profitability and costs is the best way to prepare the ranks for a cost-cutting exercise,” adds Tewari.

Include data that provides the intended recipient a clear “line of sight” to achieve this. One way is to break down an average net sale of Rs 1000 into each line item, and show much is left over in pretax and after-tax profits. Here, employee compensations must be highlighted.

Format information: Apart from identifying what to tell employees, the information must be communicated well to make a big impact. According to Ashar, “Financials are best imparted by speech and presentations made by the CEO/ CFO team.

Circulars listing raw financials are a no-no as they can be misused and wrongly interpreted.”

“Words chosen to communicate a message are extremely important.

While good news is easily shared, bad news must be handled well to make sure the information is not demoralising or counter-productive. “Communiqués must be technically correct and keep the flag flying, that is, keep employee morale high,” cautions Tewari.

Present the data in a simple summary format so even employees who don’t have a head for numbers can make sense of it.

Visuals like bar graphs and pie-charts help simplify the message and avoid sharing exact digits.

Time it right: Timing is crucial when it comes to sharing financial information.

For employees, it’s demoralising to hear about major happenings from external sources. Companies should share updates regularly, and maybe have bigger presen-

tations on special days or occasions.

Tewari says, “There isn’t a one-size fits all solution. The frequency, method and scope of financials shared depend on the managements’ transparency, philosophy and scale of operations.”

For example, Metro Shoes sends out a a monthly newsletter to all employees.

“Presenting overall and category-wise monthly (and cumulative) sales works well for us,” says Desai. Staff is also kept abreast of indicators like sales per employee, conversion rates, new store and product launches, employee innovations and awards received. “We also use the newsletter to recognise top performers.”

Engage Employees

Engaging employees better is the ultimate aim of sharing financial information. But

that isn’t enough. More aware employees will be keen to use their knowledge, says Stanton Chase’s Jayprakash. “If then their inputs are not asked for, or not acted upon, it could adversely impact their morale.” There is no greater let down than being informed but having no opportunity to make a difference.

Giving informed senior employees an expanded work scope and a direct stake in the company’s success is a good way to encourage better performance and greater involvement with the business.

Staff can be made stakeholders by tying bonus pay to sales figures.

Remember—getting employees invovled in company financials takes time. But it’s worth the effort. A team that doesn’t understand how finances work can’t help your business make money.

05

share company financials : : : : : : : : : : :

Don’t Fear Sharing Some employers don’t share financial information with employees for fear that employees could leak information to competitors or demand higher compensation packages. Sample some of the likely wins that will come from sharing.

Helps introduce a participative culture vis-à-vis a patriarchal culture Satisfies employee curiosity. Put yourself in your employee’s shoes, you’d want to know!

I n a small firm, sharing company financials is the precursor to framing employee financial involvement schemes and inviting employees to buy a stake in the business. This enhances the rewards available to employees, shares the responsibilities of ownership with others, helps attract and retain good employees, and raise capital by selling employee shares outright or in lieu of lower wages. Studies also indicate that “employee-owned” businesses perform better. haring the numbers sends out a strong message about the business S having implemented appropriate financial and audit systems. Only transparent businesses are willing to put out figures. Improving the company image helps attract clients.

Notes:

Open-Book Management Management author John Case first used the phrase Open Book Management (OBM) in 1993. OBM means that employees should be privy to information that helps them perform at work and understand how the company is doing. Case says, “a company performs best when its people see themselves as partners in the business rather than as hired hands.” But OBM involves more than just sharing financial statements. The ideal situation is when numbers come bottom-up, meaning that employees are so clued in with business numerals that they can also offer realistic estimates.

To move towards OBM, a company must first identify the “Critical Number”, essentially the break-even point. A “Scoreboard” emerges from that, and lists the items/figures that affect the Critical Number. Employees are asked how they can influence the “Score”, and consequently the Critical Number. Bonus plans and equity sharing linked to the outcome, and the Critical Number is a good way to offer employees a stake.

Resources The Open-Book Experience

http://www.amazon.com/Openbook-Experience-SuccessfullyTransformed-Themselves/ product-reviews/0738200409

How to Share Company Financials with Your Employees,

http://www.inc.com/guides/201108/ what-company-finances-to-sharewith-employees.html

Understand why you lose out when your team isn’t clued in

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000 142405297020474090457719322044 6383072.html

inc. guidebook | Vol. 03 No. 05

Balancing Acts BY

Meg Cadoux Hirshberg

Meg Cadoux Hirshberg writes about the impact of entrepreneurial businesses on families. Her book For Better or for Work will be published next month.

The Breadwinner Gets Crusty Troubles arise when the spouse’s pay cheque supports a family and a business During the perilous early years of Stony-

field Farm, I didn’t work outside the home. My husband Gary and I managed to live on his meagre income. But many spouses of entrepreneurs are their families’ sole financial support. While their entrepreneurial mates are off pursuing a risky vision, these forced-to-be-practical husbands and wives work as hard as they can in the most secure jobs they can find so that they and their loved ones don’t have to go live in a tent. People can get tetchy in arrangements like that, and not just because they’re stretched for cash.

In these situations, the family endures the stress of two working parents but must survive on the income of one. Making matters worse, part of that income frequently gets shoveled into the ravening maw of the business. It’s probably not fair 2 6 | INC. | JUNE 2012

to compare such situations to the melodramatic cliché of long-suffering wives surrendering their pay cheques to ne’erdo-well mates who squander the money on drink or drugs. That would imply entrepreneurship is expensive and addictive and may end badly. And I, of course, would never suggest that.

Normally, when only one household head is earning a wage, the other takes up the slack at home. But company founders are often busier and more preoccupied than are their salaried mates, who consequently reap no stay-at-home-spouse premium. Sole-supporting spouses also fear that their sacrifices may come to nothing.

If a husband plays breadwinner while his wife pursues higher education, brighter postgraduation job prospects will likely reward both. The same is true if the wife is

an entrepreneur whose company succeeds. But that’s a much bigger if, and the timeline is unpredictable.

Many sole breadwinners report feeling professionally trapped and jealous that their entrepreneur-spouses are able to chase their dreams. I spoke with a former investment banker who had quit her job to launch a company. One day, her husband, a physician, called from the office to announce that he had a buyer for his practice and was considering selling. “I freaked out,” she said. Turns out the husband wasn’t serious. But he wanted her to understand that her decision to launch a business had left him feeling cornered, forced to work longer and harder than he might have preferred.

Gender stereotypes can also ramp up guilt and resentment, even in 2012. Some ILLUSTRATION by MANAV SACHDEV

balancing acts

male entrepreneurs worry that they’re not fulfilling their traditional bringers-homeof-bacon roles. One told me he was failing at being “a provider and protector.” A woman whose husband is an entrepreneur said that even though she has the job and the credit cards, he grabs the cheque at restaurants, ashamed that the waitress will see who pays the bills. “Sometimes I’d look at him and think, wow, you are useless financially,” she told me. “That is a horrible, destructive thought.”

Matters get worse when the spouse supports not just the family but also the business. Though most couples make early commitments to keep business finances separate from the family’s accounts, young companies are like baby birds with gawping beaks, always needing to be fed.

When Andrea Mealey’s husband, Jim, started a company that rehabbed houses, she used some of her salary as a Boston attorney to pay for equipment, subcontractors, and other business expenses. “For several years, ‘B of A’ meant ‘Bank of Andrea,’ ” she told me. “Jim said he was happy not to be ‘some wage slave working for the Man.’ But the fact is that his decision to start a company forced me to be a wage slave, and much of what I earned went right into the company.”

In these situations, joint accounts become hubs of domestic drama. The spouse deposits; the entrepreneur withdraws; and then the spouse withdraws from the entrepreneur in anger for not being consulted. Or the spouse demands a say in company expenditures, irritating the entrepreneur, who resents being slowed down or second-guessed. “Jim hated having someone to answer to,” said Andrea, who insisted on oversight of the rehab company’s spending. “It took me a long time to say, ‘You also have to answer to me.’ ” (Jim has since dissolved his company and now works as an economist.)

Perhaps even more debilitating for the marriage than resentment is guilt—even fear. Entrepreneurs know they are indebted to financially supportive spouses.

A sense of obligation naturally arises from the request, “Sweetie, could you start

working overtime so I can realise my life’s dream?” And the spouse has the option of removing support at any time. One entrepreneur told me that she became so desperate to remain in her husband’s good graces that she travelled less, cooked more, and rarely challenged him on family issues, such as how he disciplined the kids.

Anxious to keep his salary flowing to her new venture, she tried to make her husband happier in other ways too—becoming, in her words, more “accommodating” in the bedroom.

needed,” she said. “I feel much more accountable now. It’s no coincidence that I’m at breakeven.” Kris’s shift in perspective improved not only her company but also her marriage. “We’re now on the same team,” she told me. “We’re both investors.

Of course, it also helps that I no longer need his financial support.”

Like Kris and her husband, couples can drain much of the emotion from solesupport situations by treating the business as a shared investment and setting expectations and ground rules up front. Long-

A sense of obligation naturally arises from the request, “Could you start working overtime so I can realise my life’s dream?”

And, of course, every penny diverted to the business is diverted away from the family. That can lead to queasy confrontations, such as one the described by Kris Boesch, founder of Choose People, a Colorado-based company that helps businesses improve their cultures. Kris reported feeling vexed that her husband would cheerfully spend his income on art school for their child but wouldn’t pay for an airline ticket to a convention that was important for her business. “I asked him why he was willing to help with our child’s dream but not mine,” she said. “When he placed limits on how much I could use for the business, I wondered where that limitation was coming from. Was it financially based or just what he was arbitrarily willing to do?”

In time, though, Kris came to see things differently. She realised her husband was putting money into the company as an investment, not as a favour to her. That insight, in turn, made her more hardheaded about the business. She began focusing more on closing sales than on marketing and became a frugal bootstrapper, staying with friends when she travelled on business trips. “I had been giving my company a longer runway than it

horizon, detailed family budgets are critical. And spouses need assurance that the I-give-the-company-takes dynamic will eventually reverse. For several years, Jacquelyn Draplin’s web-analytics job has supported her husband Justin and their young daughter, while Justin and a partner have built PowerCapes, a Livonia, Michigan, company that sells custom superhero costumes. Justin, not surprisingly, wanted to plow everything back into the business. But he agreed that once the company inched into the black, 15 per cent of profits would return to the family’s personal account. Fifteen per cent “may not be much,” said Jacquelyn. “But it makes me feel he’s putting the family first, not the company.”

In the best of all possible worlds, the business thrives and the spouse proudly shares credit. At that point, she is free to take a break, continue her education, or tackle a new, more fulfilling career. She may even choose to start a company. She already knows someone who can help out with the money.

Contact Meg Cadoux Hirshberg at mhirshberg@inc.com. Follow her on Twitter: @meghirshberg.

JUNE 2012 | INC. | 2 7

Entrepreneurs have several rare privileges— an opportunity to shape their own destiny, unparalleled freedom to put in place a work style that is their own, and the chance to dive headlong into every aspect of the companies they build.

Together, these ensure the ride of a lifetime but they also throw up incredible challenges. Working hard isn’t the way to surmount that; super-efficiency is called for here. Seven successful entrepreneurs, each from a different industry, talk about their personal productivity systems that reflect their values, goals and leadership styles, even as they align themselves to what their company needs to surge ahead.

By shreyasi singh JUNE 2012 | INC. | 2 9

Mission Productivity

A Game of Business

Turakhia, 32, judges how he spends each minuteâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;much like a sprinter clocking miles.

Any which way you look at it, Bhavin Turakhia, founder and CEO of Directi, a $350-million (valued by Deloitte), domain registrar and web products company, has got productivity pat down. He's admittedly “fanatical” about it—constantly keeping score, and making sure “today’s excellence is tomorrow’s satisfactory” is Turakhia’s model for lightning-fast growth. His ideas aren’t empty management speak though.

They have evolved from carefully designed experiments in Directi’s five offices across the globe.

Photograph by Jiten Gandhi

At Directi, not just me, everybody is kind

of fanatical about productivity. Maybe I championed it but there has been a very successful trickle-down effect. We like stretching ourselves to the maximum, and as an organisation, we are constantly thinking about the various deployment, technology, hardware and software solutions that can help us become more effective. It’s an obsession really, and an issue around which a lot of experimentation happens here.

For example, every single individual in our offices has multiple monitors linked to their PCs or Macs. I began the multiple monitor experiment some five years back. After reading a tonne of material on the subject, I found that multiple monitors significantly enhance productivity. It goes like this—if one uses two JUNE 2012 | INC. | 3 1

Mission Productivity

monitors, productivity goes up by 37 per cent. Add a third monitor to it, and productivity spikes up by an additional 20 per cent. Personally, I use six monitors. Three of them—the ones placed on the bottom layer—are the ones I work on. I believe business is a sport.

It’s a game, and you don’t know how you’re doing if you don’t keep score. So, the three monitors placed on top are used to display reports or dashboards that track various metrics—revenue, hits and downloads. With these monitors, I can track the overall health of our different businesses, verticals and clusters. You have to be hyper about keeping score.

Most other people have on an average two to three monitors.

But we didn’t stop at just getting more monitors. We spent a lot of time in researching the exact kind of monitor arm we wanted—we

shortlisted three and finally chose one which would enable monitors to be rotated, revolved or swivelled. Our monitor arms can pretty much move in any three dimensional way somebody needs them to. So, when developers are coding, the length of the document is actually more relevant than the breadth. If you’re writing the code, and can swivel the horizontal monitor to make it a vertical one, you have far more screen space. On the other hand, designers need horizontal screen space. The monitor arms and structure allow both those kinds of layout, and lead to greater productivity.

Office design is the new productivity initiative we’re working on now. Most offices are built as a one-size fits all, and that’s problematic. Why should all floors look identical, and have the same size cubicles and cabins? I have been working with two of my

A scheduled call becomes a Doing Now because calendar times are blocked. We all have a certain number of these calls every day and week.

A few years back, Narendra Barhate internalised a difficult truth— that until he changed himself, his technology training, staffing and consulting company, SEED Infotech, would never realise its inherent potential. “The skills and competency I had wasn’t enough for the growth of my business,” Barhate confesses. So, he enlisted himself in Mission Control, a well-known executive leadership programme that focuses on teaching individuals the “doings” they should focus on, and to wipe out irrelevant tasks out of their schedule. Mission Control’s aim is simple—to elevate organisational performance. Barhate has clearly managed that. From a turnover of `6 crore in 2007, SEED Infotech is now a `54-crore enterprise. Barhate takes us to the core of the programme, and to the productivity dividends it’s given him.

3 2 | INC. | JUNE 2012

“Most offices are built as a one-size fits all, and that’s problematic. We want to move away from that.”

designers for the past three months to war room mode where team members need to sit custom-create work environments for together, and thrash out, or brainstorm, how to different work types. For example, a deploy the product. For these teams, we’re creating a customer support staffer’s job is different workspace with several two-people pods that are from a software coder's. Logically, then, sound-proof and encapsulated away from the rest of office design and furniture should not be the office; there are also war-room zones big enough Bhavin Turakhia the same for these two people because their for eight to 10 people. We are determined to move needs are different. We’ve been working on away from the cookie-cutter approach. an experimental plan where we are creating a floor space that allows We began this experiment with the software and design teams but for different work areas. We have begun with the software and we’ll eventually take these ideas to each department, and devise workdesign teams. In software, a product’s development life goes through spaces for them. We started by filming on camera each team for a full different stages. In the beginning, programmers or coders need to 24 hours to understand their work flow, and to make sure that the new work as lone rangers in total peace and quiet. Later, work reaches a designs are specific to their requirements.

Then, there are tasks that don’t have a defined or scheduled time slot but need to be done, say a presentation. These are called Not Doing Now. Mission Control teaches you to define and write down each Not Doing Now, and to look at that list every day, and schedule them in your daily calendar.

Mission Control

addresses and helps individuals manage their short-term and long-term objectives, as well as their short-term and long-term objectives with respect to the organisation.

One of the key things I’ve changed is the way I managed my daily and weekly calendar. Using Outlook Calendar or any other available calendar tool doesn’t help.

They’re technological aids—they don’t influence the way you make decisions. In Mission Control, there’s a concept that has three parts—Doing Now, Not Doing Now, Never Doing Now. Structuring activities this way has been an incredibly

The Never Doing Now isn’t something that is an immediate priority, for example, a holiday I’m planning to the Himalayas after a few months.

powerful change for me. It works quite simply actually. Mission Control has a very solid understanding of how the brain and the heart work, and because it takes into account both these tendencies, it makes sense.

Classifying tasks isn’t enough though.

You need to figure out the optimum ratio of one kind of a task to another. In my case, 60-70 per cent of my time gets locked in the Doing Now—meetings, discussions and client visits. That leaves the rest for either strategic thinking, or the other tasks that have piled up.

When I didn't use this system, I'd allot and schedule a time slot for even those

things that I could have easily delegated. I had a tendency to do more and more myself. Now, I actually think about before doing everything—can the other directors or senior managers do this better, or sometimes, can I avoid it altogether as it might not add value to my organisational or personal goals?

Say, a vendor wants to come meet me, and I know we don’t need those services in the near future, do I still need to slot in time for a meeting? This programme has made me much more judicious and careful about how, what, why and when I entertain the variety of requests I get.

JUNE 2012 | INC. | 3 3

A Rare Quiet

Annurag Batra is reversing his productivity style—meeting fewer people is one new way.

trying o 3 4 | INC. | JUNE 2012

Photograph by Subhojit Paul

Mission Productivity

Till recently, Annurag Batra, founder and CEO of Exchange4Media, took great pride in his ability to do multiple things at the same time. That skill was in ready display when we met for an interview. He effortlessly worked his iPad, and battled a stream of phone calls without once losing track of the conversation. Yet, Batra who’s built his company into a specialty publishing house with six magazines, and a two-lakh plus circulation, is now penning a different style. Strategic productivity can come only from doing less, not more, he says.

Here’s how he’s unplugging himself—to really get going.

Over the last 10 years, I’ve only thought tactically. But I know what got me here won’t get me to the next stage. I’ve not achieved the kind of success I wanted so I have to think more strategically. Over the last six months, I’ve been changing a lot about myself. Basically, I want to free my time— that’s one thing I’ve realised I need to do to move ahead.

From a productivity standpoint, I’m less connected and meet fewer people now. I’ve genuinely delegated—my assistant will answer a lot of e-mails I get. I know 30,000 people atleast, and can confidently say I know 20,000 people in the media, marketing and publishing industry. I built the business that way—by really nurturing relationships, and being in touch—all the time. But I need to curb my interaction with people. Now, when people want to come and meet me, I tell them to talk on the phone instead. This isn’t easy for me. I’m a person who thrives on meeting people, and I would earlier just take a flight to Bengaluru or Mumbai for even a half-an-hour meeting. But now, I’d rather just do a 15 minutetelephonic call, and finish it. In fact, these days I keep two days of the week absolutely free so I have time to think, and to read. In fact, I’ve stopped coming to office more than twice a week.

This process of changing myself, and being less available extends to how I use my gadgets. I’m a guy who would respond to an e-mail, or any correspondence right away. In fact, even the number listed on our company website till today is actually my mobile number, and I would receive all the calls that came on it including the random queries. That is the kind of person I am innately, but I am slowly learning to hold myself back—mainly because that would take up too much of my time, and second, because when you are constantly communicating, you tend to reply on the fly. I was paranoid about the speed of response earlier. I believed every correspondence should be answered to right away, and I expected that from others too. To be honest, I’m still tempted to do this.

The Landmark course I recently took has helped. In my last class, I made a note to myself—be in the moment, don’t multitask, and be nobody. All three of these are huge challenges because prioritising has never been my strength. Honestly, I didn’t really respect people’s time earlier. So often, I’d have my editorial and marketing teams in my room for a meeting but I’d take every call, and answer every mail. In effect, a half-anhour meeting was actually just 10 minutes long. I’d irritate everybody this way—my wife, colleagues and friends—by dividing my attention, and not focusing. People make a big deal of multi-tasking but I think it eats away into your productivity. The same tasks take you longer, and you don’t do it as well. Now, I feel calmer when I speak to

n calm

somebody without having to look at my computer, and phone. I’ve learnt to structure my time better. I split my time three ways. I spend 20 per cent of my time on administration and people issues in office, another 40 per cent talking to my editorial and business teams, and the rest with other people in the ecosystem.

JUNE 2012 | INC. | 3 5

80-20 Rule: Maximum time on being a designer, not a manager

Anita Dongre is that rare Indian designer who has successfully created several highstreet, prêt brands with a combined annual turnover of `150 crore.

Her labels—the popular AND and Global Desi— are spread across 80 standalone stores and 250 shop-in-shops across India. She also runs a wellness centre in Mumbai. Clearly, she’s mastered productivity. Here, she lays out her top productivity drivers—an early day, a work wardrobe that has the same outfit in 20 colours, a hawkish control on her creative time, and the book she’s read more than a hundred times.

Brain is most alive and kicking first thing in the morning

Using technology well—saving notes on BB, or sketching on iPad

Vedanta Treatise is a book I’ve read a hundred times. It's my work Bible

For me, the most productive day is one where I get to design,

create and think. When I began the company, I worked with the 80-20 philosophy—80 per cent of the time would be spent on tasks that needed to be done as an entrepreneur. In the beginning, you have to deal with those things because you can’t employ that many people. You start being everybody, and do every role. As the company grows, you put in the right people in the right jobs, and just supervise them. Today, honestly, even the time needed in supervising them irritates me, and upsets me because I want to reverse the 80-20 principle completely.

Now, I want to spend 80 per cent of my time on the creative aspect because that’s something only I can bring. Only 20 per cent of my time should go to things you are forced to do because you run a business.

3 6 | INC. | JUNE 2012

Every season, I get a work outfit made in 20 different colours

Mission Productivity

But, forget these formulae—all of that goes for a toss if I’ve had a late night. I’m totally messed up the next day which is why I limit my late nights to weekends. In fact, a late night is the biggest thing you can take from me because my productivity comes down to 20 per cent the next day.

I’m then harrowed, grouchy and grumpy, and everybody at work can tell she hasn't slept properly. I do most of my creative thinking in the morning. At 6.15am, most of my staff begins getting e-mails from me because my brain is the most efficient after my first cup of tea in the morning. I’ve also now learnt to note down my ideas in my BlackBerry, and to sketch them on my iPad. My productivity peak lasts till lunch time so I make sure I do all my thinking before 1pm. To be the most productive you possibly can be, it’s important to understand your body clock, and not to fight it.

Designers are typecast as a tribe that works late, and party into the night. Many of the young girls who work with me can’t believe I get up at 6am.

Vedanta Treatise by Swami Parthasarthy is one book that I’ve read, re-read and re-read. It’s my work bible, and everything in that book helps you to deal with life, and that extends to how you work as well. I read it the first time about seven years ago—now, it’s my bedside book and travels everywhere with me. I must have gifted 50 copies to everybody I know. That book has changed my life. In fact, I wish my parents had given it to me when I was 18. I would have made fewer mistakes in life. Actually, I don’t know where I’d be if I’d read it 25 years ago. It should be made mandatory reading in schools!

Every season, I get a work outfit made in 20 different colours. For example, this season I’m just wearing shirt dresses. A lot of people meet me and say, "Oh, another shirt dress", but I don’t care. It saves me a lot of time in the morning. I pull out any one from the 20 I have. It works for my body type, and the same bag, shoes and belt go with it. It simplifies my morning, and that is what productivity is about.

A Productivity Junkie’s Favourite Picks

Mala Bhargava has been a prolific technology journalist for the past 17 years, and has been a witness to the tech revolution which has transformed the way we live and work. She confesses she’s impossibly gadget-hooked herself —“technology has become a part of my DNA”—and has a special love for productivity software. Here, she gives us an addict’s fix of the best productivity tools out there.

AnyDo: AnyDo is an incredible app for Android phones. It’s tiny but it’s filled with features, and yet manages to be absolutely simple. It’s also intuitive and has a smart gesture-based interface. Simply, AnyDo has four main headings—today, tomorrow, next week and later. You can type in your to-dos, and can also input it in by voice.

Soon, you will find that you can set priorities and categories without anyone having to explain it to you. Items on your list can also be easily shared on e-mail and synced with Google Tasks. Of course, you can set reminders; and the joy of swiping and crossing out to-dos is hugely satisfying! You don’t need sticky notes anymore.

PDF Highlighter: On my iPad, there’s a combination of two tools that I use when working with other people—Office to PDF, and the PDF Highlighter. The Office to PDF takes any document, and just with a touch converts it into a PDF—easier than even doing it on a PC. Then, I use the PDF Highlighter which beats any similar tool on the PC. This app gives you a bunch of tools to work with, and they are all touchenabled so it’s amazing. With the PDF Highlighter, you can mark up the PDF with notes and highlights, and it can also annotate the document so it’s super useful.

Writepad: This app works on the iPad and the iPhone. But, at $9.99, it isn’t free.

In fact, you have to pay for it in each device you use it on. Basically, Writepad is a handwriting recognition tool, and is one of the most advanced, if not the most advanced available. Writing on a tablet or even on the phone is not easy, no matter what they tell you. If you’re a touch typist, it’s even more difficult. With this app, you can use your fingers and write like you would with a pen. Caution: Messy handwriting might not work on this. Use it only if your handwriting is fairly clear because then it quickly learns the way you write. Be careful while buying it because there are a lot of versions available across many languages.

Instapaper: There’s not even a day that I don’t appreciate Instapaper. It has to be one of the most productive apps, and I use it on my phone, laptop and tablet. It’s a free app although it does have a paid component to it if you want to search your article.

Instapaper basically organises all the articles you come across, and want to read, into read-later archives. You can put them into different folders, and read them when you’re offline. It offers great reading comfort—font sizes and text colours can be changed. Why it’s productive is because you don’t have to stop your work to read articles useful for you—that's not a smart prioritising of time. For someone like me who relies on research for work, this app is extremely useful. It especially boosts my productivity while I’m commuting. I read my archived articles en route.

Dropbox: Dropbox is a must-have for anybody who uses multiple devices. I have it on all my devices—three laptops, two tablets and a smartphone. Everyone is more likely than not to at least glance at a file on the phone, or on the tablet, but work on it on the laptop. Dropbox is a cloud-storage service that you can set up an account on and get 2GB of space free. You pop in whatever files you want to keep there, and work on them from any device. All your working documents are always a click away.

Mission Productivity

Since they founded The Chopras in 1995, Naveen and Natasha Chopra have grown their overseas education consulting company to a thriving brand of 500plus employees in more than 20 locations across India. Of course, their pedigreed international experience across blue-chip firms in the US, UK and Australia has contributed to this success but the couple has also honed a work style deeply influenced by a perfect mind-body balance. It’s the core of productivity, they say.

3 8 | INC. | JUNE 2012

Photographs by Subhojit Paul

Mission Productivity

The Inner Focus

Deep breathing makes Naveen Chopra effective at work by letting him get to the core.

Naveen Chopra: The fact that since I was 21 or 22, I’ve been heavily involved in meditation has been of tremendous value in my work life. I can reach that stage of thoughtlessness, and a lot of my business decisions emerge from those deep intense experiences. Meditation can be habit-forming when you do it well, and do it regularly. Now, I take slow, deep breaths even when I am just sitting normally. This focus on being aware of the most natural thing—one’s breath—has instilled in me the orientation to really focus on the origin of something, to unravel the secret of the seed, as they say. Even in business, most people get caught up in the leaves, the flowers, the branches and the tree trunk’s shape but really getting to the seed is key—that contains the outcome. Once you manage that, the tree will automatically be unravelled. I urge my colleagues and my teams to do this all the time. Get to the seed of the problem, what is the root, in fact, even beyond the root—how did it begin, what impetus allowed it to get there and grow, what are the inputs that is facilitating it now? Is the problem an outcome of a personality characteristic, or is it a corporate phenomenon? Once you get answers to questions like that, the solutions just emerge.

I use this line of questioning on myself all the time. When something goes wrong at work, I’ll look into what my role has been. In organisations like ours, cultures are top-down. So, have I given an input that wittingly or unwittingly has contributed to this problem? For example, if a student is dissatisfied with our services, where did we go wrong—did we communicate erroneously, or did we not communicate enough? Having the ability to peel away every distraction, and notice your breath gives you the discipline to be able to really see things as they are. There are no problems in life, they arise when we are either resistant to change, or too lazy JUNE 2012 | INC. | 3 9

Mission Productivity

to find out why. As in life, the same truth applies to the office—every problem contains the solution, and within every solution there is the inherent problem.

Natasha Chopra: The world is a mad place, and you have to put some sense of self into all this otherwise it just won’t work. For me, the two hours I spend in the morning doing my yoga, going for a run or playing badminton is

your body adversely. Think positively about people, and they’ll be good back to you. Looking at the bigger picture has helped us stay the course—it gives you strength and positivity when things don’t go according to plan, or people don’t perform according to expectations.

We’ve tried to imbue our company with this sense as well, In fact, each of our offices every morning begins with people coming together for a prayer. My husband introduced this a few years back

“Having the ability to peel away every distraction, and notice your breath gives you the discipline to really see things as they are.”

Naveen chopra the reason that I can do what I do. In fact, the one book that changed the way I live and work, and has made me more productive is Ageless Body, Timeless Mind by Deepak Chopra. He’s such an inspiration. Chopra believes how you think is how your body reacts. If you have negative thoughts, they’ll affect

to basically bind people—get them to come together and work for a common purpose. We’ve asked people how they’ve felt about it, and I know a few might wonder if this is a good practice for a workplace. Yet, others have found that it does foster team work, and makes them function better.

A

to Ashish Hemrajani has clicked his way to internet history with his ticket bookings website, BookMyShow. Founded in 1999, the engine sells more than a million tickets a month, today. His journey has been anything but smooth though.

Hemrajani has survived two rocky business phases, and routinely lives through insanse peaks—like the IPL or F1 seasons. His ability to ride these waves isn’t due to quantified benchmarks. His productivity philosophy is simpler—say no to seeminglytempting deals and the urge to always be connected.

Yes

Mission Productivity

No!

In high-growth companies, there entrepreneurs must be. For example, I are a lot of things that come your way. Employees, investors, get invited to several events and talks on advisors and other companies might want you to do new things. I entrepreneurship. Apart from believe in the art of saying no to what you shouldn’t do, can't do, invitations by colleges and schools, or would not do. As a where I try and attend a company, this art of saying session they’ve asked me no has evolved for us. to take, I don’t like being Earlier, we’d go ahead and a talking head. I just do a lot of things. Now, I’m refuse to go for those on the border of being a business conferences recluse, and either don’t where people register and respond or politely decline pay money, and I’m one many requests. Some people of the speakers. I don’t might even find me understand—why and abrasive. But, really, I’m not how much should you Ashish Hemrajani rude. I’m just very network? What does it do transparent because it’s for you? Honestly, I want better to be direct and to get rid of my cell honest. You don’t get a lot of honest answers in India. It’s a very phone at some time. Why does the company need me to have it?

Southeast Asia thing; people don’t know how to say no. Either When I’m not travelling, I’m in office, and can be reached on the they don’t want to lose face, or don’t want to answer an e-mail and phone here. If I’m not in office, I’m at home. When I travel, I will be honest to say something doesn’t work for them. carry the phone. Recently, I jumped off the Facebook bandwagon Saying no isn’t enough though—you’ve got to live by those by deactivating my account. It’s been amazing, a huge relief. There’s decisions because sometimes things you don’t agree to do can just too much information and interaction out there. I don’t want so turn out to be huge partnerships and alliances for somebody else much around me. I like that my life is pretty boring. Actually, if in your industry. Over the years, so many people have told us that somebody had to murder me, they’d find it very easy. On weekdays, online travel is a big segment, and since we already have a I’m at office, then at the gym, and then I’m at home, that’s it. On booking engine, we should get into it. But we’ve maintained that weekends, I’m at the yacht club in the afternoons, at Cafe Mondegar we wouldn’t do it because that’s not our focus. in the evening, at the Yacht Club Bar after that, and finish with Similarly, I find it extremely unproductive to always be dinner at the Goodside Inn. I don’t see the reason for change. It’s available and networked—something people believe like clockwork, and it's possible because I can say no.

“Saying no isn’t enough. You’ve got to live by those decisions because sometimes, things you don’t agree to do, can turn out to be huge partnerships and alliances for others.”

JUNE 2012 | INC. | 41

Mission Productivity

I’ve recently put

Vishnu R. Dusad is definitely somebody who has “made it”. Nucleus Software, his software product company, is a leading provider of solutions for BFSI clients across the globe. The company, which has won a clutch of awards, including the Best 200 Under A Billion Companies in Asia (Forbes), closed financial year 2011-12 with `282 crore. Yet, Dusad admits productivity is a continuous work-in-progress and he continues to learn new tricks even after 25 years in business. Here, he lays out his latest productivity weapons, and how they help him lash his to-dos.

4 2 | INC. | JUNE 2012

filters in my inbox that ensure that only e-mails which are addressed directly to me are the ones I see first. E-mails that come from databases, are MIS reports generated, or those that I’ve just been CCed to, go to different inboxes. I’ve been filtering out MIS e-mails and other information-related messages to another inbox for a couple of years now. Data and information should be available to you when you want, or need it. It shouldn’t have to be disruptive. That worked well for me. So a few months back, I began doing that to e-mails that have been CCed to me. It’s been an incredible relief.

Every click to open an e-mail also takes time. What’s more—it puts pressure on you, and your mind is forced to take in too much information. In my case, I knew I needed to do something to uncrowd that space. Now, I save at least 20-30 minutes a day because if you get 100 e-mails or more, and you manage to filter out half of them, it’s a big time-saver.

That’s not all. The mental freedom is even greater.

To organise my travel, I put clients through the ABC analysis. Clients are categorised into an A, B and C on not just today’s revenue-basis, but also potential for growth. So, Group A might have several of our high-revenue clients.

And it might also have clients who give us smaller revenues right now but offer us a big potential for growth. I try not to go to clients in the B and C category more and more. My business development people will like to have me on a lot of those meetings too but I need to control my travel. And, classifying customers like this has been helpful in making sure my travel schedule is optimised.

Mr. R. G. Agarwal, Chairman, Dhanuka & Ms Ellen J. Kulman, CEO and Chair, Dupont, USA during her visit to India to commemorate two decades of partnership between Dhanuka & Dupont.

Our Vision Our Mission Our Commitment Our Inspiration Our Value

Mr. R.G. Agarwal, Chairman,Dhanuka along with Mr. Milton Steele, President, FMC Agricultural Products Group; Mr. Marc Hullebroeck, International Business Director, Eurasia

Food Security Crop protection Safety R&D Respect

Dhanuka bags a place in â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Forbes Asia-200 Best under the Billionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; list for the Second Consecutive Year

HOW I DID IT

Securing a Global Future

Diwan Rahul Nanda has built his business on ambition, forward thinking, and being ready for the long haul.

HOW I DID IT

Lock, Stock and Barrel Diwan Rahul Nanda TOPSGRUP

Diwan Rahul Nanda was thrown into his family’s sick restaurant business when he was just sixteen. After six years of running and reviving it, Nanda took on another failing family business and turned it into a 93,000-people global conglomerate comprising of 11 businesses, the TOPSGRUP. With a current market valuation of $372 million, the security services giant has an impressive clientele including the Tatas, Reliance and Trident hotels. A living image of his business, the 41-year-old army kid with a doctorate in martial arts has secured an aggressive growth path for his company with a bevy of acquisitions at home and abroad. as told to IRA SWASTI / Photograph by Jiten Gandhi

I was born in Ranchi but I grew up in Mumbai. I was introduced to entrepreneurship very early in life. In 1987, when I was only 16, my father suffered a paralytic stroke and someone had to take over the family restaurant business Tutkuks.

We had four restaurants in Mumbai at the time. It was a failing business though which was burdened with a lot of debt. My father’s ex-partner had cheated him and left us a lot of liabilities to pay. I had a single aim while taking charge—to clear these liabilities and restore it to its original state. It seems like a strategy now. But, things were very different then. I was nothing more than a school boy who was suddenly asked to manage a dying restaurant chain. Initially, it seemed impossible, and it wasn’t easy, but once I got the hang of it, I started enjoying my work.

I ran that business for six years but didn’t

want to continue with it once the finances were back on track. The restaurant business is a very capital-intensive enterprise. We were doing full-capacity business already, and I knew to grow bigger, I would need to start more restaurants. That meant I needed more capital. Each new restaurant required a spend of `1-3 crore. I didn’t have that kind of cash.

Honestly, I didn’t enjoy the restaurant

business very much. I had to sit and wait for people to come to me unlike other businesses where one can go out to the market and sell. So, some days, the restaurant would go empty and some days, it would be full. The owner of the restaurant can’t do anything except just sit june 2012 | INC. | 4 5

HOW I DID IT

and wait for people to walk in. I didn’t like that. I decided to get into a business that was more service-oriented, where the capital required was less, and where I could reach out to people and sell my service, my brand.

I started looking around for other oppor-

tunities such as public relations and advertising which didn’t require huge capital.

Eventually, I didn’t have to look far for that big opportunity. My family owned another business, make that another sick business— the Tops Security Group. In 1992, we were doing a turnover of only `30 lakhs a year.

And, we barely covered our costs.

them to secure their people and property was a hard sell because many of them looked at it as an expenditure, not an investment. Some would tell me they had chowkidaars, and did not need our security guards.

They didn’t see the difference, or why they needed more than that. So, the first few years were spent in educating our customers. I told them we could provide inventory analyses of the stock of goods every day, monitor visitor movement vigilantly (for example, which car or visitor came in on a particular day), and carry out investigations when required. Many were amazed at this offering. They had never thought a security service could do all of this.

“Although my gut said this would be a big opportunity for us, I decided to do my research well before jumping into it. One of the biggest follies an entrepreneur can commit is not doing thorough research.”

Having travelled abroad, it struck me that this business had great potential. Only, we hadn’t realised it yet. At the time, security wasn’t an industry as such in India. People would just employ chowkidaars for opening and closing doors.

Although my gut said this would be a big

opportunity for us, I decided to do my research well before jumping into it. Again and again, I’ve noticed that one of the biggest follies an entrepreneur commits is not doing thorough research. We tend to go along with our goal and gut. But I attended seminars in Mumbai and the US, understood the market, and studied the potential of the business before plunging into it. Finally after running the restaurant business for six years, I decided to devote time and concentrate on the security business in 1992.

In the early 1990s, most potential clients we went to didn’t think they needed security for their businesses and establishments. Telling

4 6 | INC. | june 2012

By 1995, we had made traction, and had nearly 250 customers. Even though I wanted to deliver all the above services to my customers, I didn’t have the talent that understood how to carry out these activities. I had to hire professionals who would train these guys on how to do stock checking or MIS reports. A whole lot of training and orientation processes were involved. One year into the company, I needed to recruit a manager and when I found the perfect person, he said to me, “I am very expensive. I will charge `8,000.”

That was what I made annually and he wanted me to pay him that much every month! But I knew to deliver good quality services to my customers, I needed smart people, and so I hired him. That was an important lesson—as an entrepreneur, you have to bring in people who are better than you, who may even sometimes be more expensive than you because you have to provide quality all the time.

Business teaches you a lot. I’ve learnt the ropes of the trade as I went along.

Although I studied commerce from Narsee Monjee College of Commerce and Economics, Mumbai, along with running my company, real life trumps education.

I’ve always believed that education in theory is important but the bigger education for an entrepreneur is the practical knowledge he acquires while being out there.

Things tipped for us in 1996 when we

signed on Shoppers Stop that became one of our biggest clients. Slowly, people began to understand the value of what we were offering, and started approaching us to secure new hotels, offices and factories.

Soon, we were working with Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers, the Jawarharlal Nehru Port and Oberoi Flight Services. By the turn of the century, we were recognised as a leading player in the security business. We had 6,000 security personnel, around 45 offices and a turnover of `65 crore.

In fact, it was around this time that I had my first “yahoo” moment, when I felt proudest of what we had managed to create. In 1999, I was barely 28 years old.

Yet, the security association had nominated me to be the body’s president. I still remember when I stood up to speak, the room which was full of much-older peers and competitors from the security industry, fell silent. Everyone was paying attention to what I had to say. It was incredible. The outgoing president was 51 years old, yet 91 out of the 100 association members thought I could lead the industry. I was the youngest CEO there and it was sobering to have elders look at you as a future leader.

Incidents like those, and each of the nearly three dozen awards we have won encouraged the mega global dreams I had for the TOPSGRUP. Even as early as in the period between 1999-2001, I explored international opportunities. I began a greenfield security venture in the United Kingdom. I was pretty confident that if we had made things work in India, why couldn’t we do the same in London?

HOW I DID IT

Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought things through. The landscape there was so advanced, and customers so well educated that they were never going to give out security to a foreign man who’d just opened shop. I lost a lot of money there. A few years later, we also tried to setup a partnership in Abu Dhabi. But once the wining and dining with our to-be local partners was over and it came to business, they didn’t show interest. Again, we lost quite a bit of money.

After two failed attempts, I realised that I

could not become big internationally by starting up brand-new ventures abroad.

The only way to do this smartly was to acquire an established company. I set out a clear shopping mandate for ourselves—any company we looked at should be in the top 10 in its field. In 2008, we raised `150 crore from ICICI Ventures and Everstone Capital, and spent it on acquiring 51 per

cent controlling stake in UK-based Shield Guarding, a `483-crore security service provider. Since then, we’ve received contracts to keep important buildings like The Gherkin, The Barbican Centre and the Oracle shopping centre safe in UK. Closer home, we acquired 100 per cent stake in southern India’s leading security company Guardwell Detective Services which had a revenue of `40 crore and 5,000 employees.

Quite recently we also acquired a strategic stake in India’s leading security system integrator Adtech Systems. With this, we’ve entered into the system integration vertical, the only security solution vertical where TOPSGRUP was not present in.

Looking back, I credit two things for helping me turn around a sick enterprise into a `1250-crore empire of 11 businesses.

The first is ethics—especially critical for a business like ours. In fact, till we came on to

the scene, the security industry was notorious for players who openly violated laws. We changed all that with our ethical way of operating, and the quality services we offered our customers. That’s why we are where we are, the biggest security company in the country with customers who respect us, employees who trust us and investors who love us.

The other thing that has been crucial is being able to stay ahead of the game.

I’ve always believed in planning for the next four to six years instead of the next year, or the one after that. The TOPSGRUP today has a market share of 25-29 per cent. We are number one in the industry but being number one is not going to be enough going forward. Our eye is on the game ahead. We want to increase our sustainable, competitive advantage and the distance between us and our next competitor.

Proven strategies to spark sales when no one is much interested in buying

fast growth in a slow economy five case studies

At this point, most entrepreneurs would probably prefer to forget 2008, 2009, and a big chunk of 2010. And who could blame them? Those years were, after all, some of the toughest economic times the nation had seen in decades. Yet the five business owners profiled in the pages that follow managed to turn a deep recession into their best years yet.

How? By acting quickly. And boldly. And by exchanging tired, old ideas for bright, new ones.

And keep this in mind: If their strategies worked in a down economy, imagine how powerful they might be now, as things finally seem to be turning around

by Jennifer Alsever

illustrations by Prince Antony

4 8 | INC. | JUNE 2012

1.

Drop your worst customers Paul Heffington lives by a new rule: Pay up, or you’re fired.

The CEO of Allen Printing in Nashville is talking about his customers, and he learnt his lesson the hard way in 2010, shortly after the 85-year-old business filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Buffeted by the lousy economy and the rise of digital printing, Allen Printing hired turnaround specialist Steve Curnutte, who issued his customary advice: Get rid of debt, raise cash, and fire your worst customers.

The first two made perfect sense. But Heffington hadn’t thought much about the third.

Then he looked at his financials and found that about a quarter of Allen Printing’s 45 clients were more than 90 days past due and owed more than $200,000.

That spurred the company to launch an aggressive phone campaign, in which it told the late payers to settle up or face late fees now and higher prices in the future.

Those who complained were told to take their business elsewhere. The company wound up shedding about 15 clients, some of them longtime customers. But it collected about 80 per cent of what it was owed, by either working out payment plans or acquiring the assets of the late payers.

“It’s a very painful and difficult thing to do,” says Curnutte, whose firm, Tortola Partners, acquired a stake in Allen Printing.

“But after you do it, it’s liberating.”

With the lousy clients off the books, the company was able to focus on serving its core customers—the ones who paid on time.

It offered 5 per cent discounts on jobs that could easily be done by a rival shop, a move designed to give clients an incentive to stay with Allen Printing. It worked: The company’s top 30 accounts spent about 20 per cent more with Allen Printing in 2011. Beating the competition on price also helped the company land another eight solid customers.

Heffington also renegotiated prices with his vendors—asking for breaks because of the tough economy or discounts for prepaying. All of them agreed. “It is amazing how much you can get accomplished just by asking for it,” says Heffington. The company’s 64 employees, meantime, agreed to a temporary 10 per cent pay cut (their pay was restored within 12 months).

2.

Get help from those who know you best: your customers

With the lousy clients off the books, the company was able to focus on serving its core customers— the ones who paid on time.

Thanks to all those changes, sales hit $5.7 million in 2011, up from $4.1 million the previous year, Heffington says. Profit margins on most sales doubled. With some cash on hand, Allen acquired two small, local printers—both of which were delinquent customers who owed Allen Printing a total of $50,000. “We said, ‘Either figure it out how to pay us, or let us take over your accounts,’ ” says Heffington.

Those accounts wound up bringing in $250,000 in new revenue.

In addition to a stronger financial position, the changes have led to a wholesale change at Allen Printing. For years, Heffington and his colleagues were so fearful of losing customers that they let customers fall behind in paying.

Now, he and his team have no problem

being bold. In fact, Heffington recently confronted a past-due client and struck another deal to acquire its accounts.

The deal is expected to add another $1 million to Allen Printing’s top line.

action plan Define your ideal customer. Is it the one who provides the best margins?

Pays on time? Is the most pleasant to deal with?

Raise prices. That will weed out the problem clients. If they balk, graciously tell them to take their business elsewhere.

Reward your favourites. Discounts and other perks can entice your best clients to do even more business with you.

Tim Barrett knew he should have felt fortunate. His business—Barrett Distribution Centers, a Franklin, Massachusetts, provider of outsourced warehousing and distribution services—had been spared much of the pain of the recession. In 2009 and 2010, as countless companies struggled to survive, Barrett was expecting the same 15 per cent annual growth rate it had enjoyed for years.

But Barrett was worried. He felt as though his company had dodged a bullet.

Driving that concern was a sense that after 17 years of working at the family-owned business, he felt oddly disconnected from his customers, no longer confident that he understood what they really needed or what they truly thought of Barrett’s service.

This was doubly unsettling, because Barrett, the company’s COO, always considered the company to be customer centric.

He and his brother, Arthur, the company’s president, were fans of Net Promoter and paid close attention to what clients said about their services. But the Net Promoter surveys were getting stale. They asked the same 10 questions year after year, and the number of people responding to the surveys was dropping. “We needed more insight,” Tim Barrett says.

So Barrett Distribution hired an outside company to survey its customers. The Brookeside Group, based in Acton, Massachusetts, created a detailed e-mail survey designed to predict customers’ future buying behaviour and assess the quality of their interactions with the business.

“So many companies get information through internal reflection and don’t go to the client and just ask,” says Bryan Solar, head of strategic partnerships at Brookeside. “If anyone should be deciding your strategy, it’s them.”

Solar advised the Barrett brothers to survey half their customers in early 2011 and save the other half for later that year.

Gathering information in manageable chunks is key, he told them, because most people expect you to act on the JUNE 2012 | INC. | 49

fast growth in a slow economy

information they just gave you.

About 30 per cent of Barrett’s customers wound up completing the 12-minute survey, which asked 56 questions about how well Barrett was doing its job. Six weeks later, Brookeside produced an hourlong presentation on the results, which it delivered to the Barretts and their customer service teams.

The findings were surprising. Some clients, for example, did not know the company had operations in Memphis and in Northern and Southern California—a serious problem, because many actually needed warehouse operations in those regions. The brothers also discovered lots of little things that led to small but significant changes. One client expressed frustration that he had to explicitly ask for inventory reports. Now, reports are sent automatically every week. Another complained that account managers were not detailed enough in e-mail exchanges.

So the company trained employees on improving their communication skills.

One customer, Vibram FiveFingers, a maker of athletic shoes, indicated in the survey that it needed help in two areas: handling product returns and creating an electronic ordering system for large retailers. Barrett came back with detailed plans for both. “They really took the survey results to heart, and they were able to help us figure out our path,” says Michael Martin, a Vibram vice president. The volume of business from Vibram wound up quadrupling.

The process cost just $30,000. Last year, Barrett logged revenue of $28 million, compared with $16 million in 2010. To be sure, not all of that is the direct result of the survey. But Tim Barrett gives the process a lot of credit.

“We found out where we really stood with a customer,” he says, “and what they wanted us to change.”

action plan Make listening routine. Inform clients that once a month, once a quarter, or once a year, you will ask them to weigh in on your performance.

Be honest. Give people an idea of how long the survey will take. Fewer questions means more responses but less valuable data.

Be specific. And general. Open-ended questions let customers share ideas or concerns. Specific ones let you make measurable comparisons.

5 0 | INC. | JUNE 2012

3.

Act locally. Not globally For years, M.P. Mueller, president of the Austin ad agency Door Number 3, had a very specific dream customer in mind: It was the national account, the big brand, that would bring credibility—and new business—to the 15-person firm.

The company went to great lengths to land those accounts. And it had seen some successes, including the Dallas Cowboys. But there were also episodes like its 2009 bid to get the attention of Saucony shoes. Door Number 3 went all out, creating a spoof issue of Sports Illustrated that was packed with articles explaining the firm’s vision for the brand. It printed 100 copies and paid someone to create and staff a newsstand in the lobby

of Saucony’s Boston headquarters.

The result: Mueller never heard a word from Saucony.

With more firms bidding on fewer jobs, that experience was growing increasingly common, and Mueller recognised that she needed a new approach. She looked at her firm’s most successful and satisfying accounts and noticed a couple of things: First, they were solid relationships. And second, almost all of them were located in or around Austin.

So, in 2010, she made a change: No more Hail Marys aimed at snagging prestige accounts. Door Number 3 would focus on becoming the go-to ad shop for clients in its hometown.

Now, 80 per cent of the company’s

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4.

clients are in Austin, up from 15 per cent a year ago. Among those accounts: Cirrus Logic, a local maker of audio chips; American Bank; and the Austin Film Festival. “We booked three times the amount of work last year that we did in 2010,” says Mueller.

Some of these accounts may be smaller than the national accounts the firm once coveted, but Door Number 3 makes up the difference in the amount of time it saves. Bidding on national accounts generally meant days spent preparing proposals and presentations. Staff members often had to

No more Hail Marys aimed at snagging prestige accounts.

Instead, the company would become the go-to shop for clients in its hometown. travel out of state. And there were far more people involved in campaigns— that meant more opinions, more meetings, more phone calls. With large clients, says Mueller, “There’s the expectation to do quite a bit more for less, and they made it clear that there was a line of companies willing to do the work.”

Today, most of Door Number 3’s accounts come through referrals and word of mouth. And the firm is no longer competing against dozens of agencies on a national account or sending proposals to big companies it doesn’t really know. “We’re seeing a higher return on our marketing dollars,” Mueller says.

action plan Be a joiner. Get active with local businesses and charitable organisations.

Speak up. Find local speaking opportunities and share your business expertise.

Be an expert. Exploit staff members’ knowledge of local issues to wow accounts.

5 2 | INC. | JUNE 2012

Treat everyone you know(and even everyone you don’t) as a potential employee When the economy began to crater in 2008, Tom Koulopoulos had no illusions: He knew that the advisory and research services offered by his Andover, Massachusetts, consulting firm, Delphi Group, would be the first thing many of his customers would cut. He also knew that Delphi could ill afford to waste time and money bidding on requests for proposal, or RFPs, it had low odds of winning. So Koulopoulos decided to try something new: he began using his network of contacts—many of them experts in their fields—as de facto partners in those bids.

Koulopoulos first tested this model when he bid on a contract from the city of Anaheim, California, to help develop new permitting procedures for utilities. Delphi’s record in process consulting, Koulopoulos thought, would be attractive to the city.

But he lacked expertise in city planning or public works. He knew someone who had it, though: Nathaniel Palmer, a former Delphi employee who had since built his own consulting practice. Palmer in turn knew Michael zur Muehlen, an expert in process consulting who had helped create one of the largest academic centers focused on process, at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Koulopoulos asked the two to help Delphi prepare the response to the RFP, in exchange for a share of the contract’s value—if they won. It turned out to be a smart gamble: the team won the contract and has since received several more with the city. “There is no way we Start with those you know best. would have gotten it otherwise,” KouloFewer degrees of separation poulos says. usually means better results.

Carefully vet all people, no matter He hasn’t looked back. Tapping his who refers them. networks, both online and off, has helped Koulopoulos win more work on Create some ground rules. larger multiyear consulting projects, Spell out issues such as how you are some of them in new industries, such going to communicate and who will keep the client informed. as energy and health care. Thanks to the outside talent, he says, Delphi can Get a lawyer involved. pull together proposals that once took Get partners to agree about issues two weeks in two or three days. The like intellectual property—in writing. practice has turned a 15-person consulting shop into a 115-person powerhouse. In 2011, Delphi recorded revenue of $10 million—twice what it logged in 2010—and half of it was won by these kinds of virtual teams. “We’re banking on this to be the growth engine for the company going forward,” Koulopoulos says.

Working with strangers, of course, carries a certain amount of risk. Koulopoulos tries to mitigate that by carefully vetting would-be partners. He also asked his attorney to draw up specific contracts that carefully outlined expectations in areas like the handling of intellectual property. Delphi typically sets up its contracts to include a 10 per cent to 15 per cent finder’s fee to those who bring in the work; a similar amount for whoever pulls together the response to the RFP; and a split of the project fee based on the standard daily rate of each consultant.

Koulopoulos has developed a reputation among many in his network as a reliable source of work. “When he picks up the phone, he’s not wasting my time,” says Michael Cunningham, a Marlborough, Massachusetts, software consultant who has worked on several projects with Delphi. Koulopoulos, for his part, has become such a believer in the model that he wrote a book about it—Cloud Surfing, which will be published by BiblioMotion this month. “We’re becoming hyperconnected,” Koulopoulos says. “And it’s creating a whole new set of business models that were unimaginable two to three years ago.”

action plan

continued on the next page

fast growth in a slow economy

Their decision: to drop nearly everything the company had done for years and focus on something it had been providing to clients for free

action plan Think small. In today’s economy, depth often trumps breadth.

Analyse your expertise. Find the thing you offer that no one else does, and stop trying to be all things to all people.

Treat rivals as potential partners. Tell them about your newfound focus—and try to work as a consultant or subcontractor.

5.

Get small to get big.

(In other words, it’s all about the niches) Two years ago, Medisys Health Communications was in big trouble. The 12-year-old biotech-consulting firm hadn’t won a significant contract in months. Revenue, which hit $5 million in 2008, was down to $1.4 million in 2010. It wasn’t hard to see why: the sagging economy meant a lot fewer RFPs from major pharmaceutical firms— and a lot more competition from rivals, especially large ones that could offer a

5 4 | INC. | JUNE 2012

wider array of services. With no relief in sight, founder and CEO Anna Walz had no choice but to lay off 12 of her 18 employees.

So when she was invited by one of her clients, Johnson & Johnson, to attend a weeklong programme for female CEOs at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, Walz jumped at the chance. Perhaps the event would provide the inspiration she needed to rescue her business.

She spent hours with Tuck professors analysing Medisys’s financials. She learnt she had few options; filing for bankruptcy was one of them. Then a professor suggested she read Blue Ocean Strategy, by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. The authors argue that companies in highly competitive markets can grow only by finding and owning uninhabited niches, and Walz devoured it. “I got whipped into making a decision and taking a risk,” she says.

She called her office in High Bridge, New Jersey, where her six employees were bleary eyed after spending hours putting together a response to an RFP from a

major drug company. Walz told them to stop what they were doing. Medisys, she said, was shifting gears. Rather than being a one-stop shop offering marketing, advertising, and medical promotions, it was going to become a niche player. “For a lot of us, it came as a shock,” says Scott Buell, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing. “But it was obvious our strategy needed to change.”

Over the next few weeks, Walz and her husband John the business’s chief financial officer, hammered out a business plan. Their decision: to drop nearly everything the company had done for years and focus on something it had been providing to clients for free—consulting services that helped disparate groups within large drug companies collaborate effectively. The idea is to get scientists, marketers, and health economists to figure out how to tell the story of a drug— before the marketing or advertising begins.

It turned out to be a smart move. So far, no one else provides the kind of service that Medisys does, says Paul W. Tebbey, senior director of global marketing at Baxter Healthcare, which now works with Medisys before going to its advertising and marketing people. “They’re at the forefront of this area,” he says. Indeed, rather than competing with the larger consulting firms and ad agencies, Medisys collaborates with them.

Revenue doubled in 2011 to $2.7 million.

Managing Mastering a true win-win with a fresh take on CSR this page Leadership Why a great team trumps a bold strategy every time page 57 Design From edgy to mainstream: a logo’s journey page 60 The Way I Work Atul Phadnis believes in giving and receiving blunt and honest feedback—it’s the fastest way to speed up business page 64

Elevator Pitch

Can EasyFix nail itself a `5-crore cheque from investors? page 62

strategy

Last year Anupam Mittal, founder and CEO of People Group, that

Managing Good karma is good forbusiness...

(And, it’s not too hard!)

Illustration by SHIGIL N

runs India’s leading matrimonial website Shaadi.com, finally found himself a perfect partner to carry out a much pending task—implementing a strategic corporate social responsibility programme. Mittal had wanted to do this for a while, he says, but didn’t want to limit CSR to scattered donations and random charities. “CSR should be sustainable, differentiated and good for business,” Mittal explains. “Unless we align things together, there really is limited benefit.” Innovaid, a Mumbai-based consultancy run by Emily Harrison, helped Mittal do that.

They began by brainstorming ways in which Shaadi.com could make a difference, considering only opportunities and initiatives that fell within the company’s area of expertise. “Evaluating CSR from a business perspective is at the heart of what Innovaid does,” says Harrison.

Even before meeting Harrison, Mittal had realised that there was no JUNE 2012 | INC. | 5 5

one working in the anti-dowry space. “This was an area where we could design a programme to help out, and also promote our brand,” he says. Innovaid helped him flesh that idea out. And, Shaadi.com launched Angry Brides, a parody of the popular game Angry Birds. In Angry Brides, players amass points by throwing red stilettos, rolling pins and baked goods at those propogating the dowry culture. Within days of its launch in January this year, the game earned 2,70,000 “likes” on Facebook. (At the time of writing, the game had just over 4,90,000 “likes”). “The results were tremendous,” says Mittal. “It got everyone thinking about anti-dowry causes, and positioned us as the facilitator. We got great press and prompted people to think about ways they can help,” he says of the “virtuous cycle.”

Innoviad’s Harrison says Shaadi.com’s example perfectly demonstrates what she calls “embedded CSR”—a key management

ing paper and a commitment to public transportation are simple ways companies can help their employees cut back.

Recently, at Bajaj Auto’s plant in Pune, a worker introduced a tweak that enables motorcycles to save the tiniest amount of fuel. “It wasn’t a huge change but when that change was implemented corporationwise, it made a big difference, cost-wise and to the environment.” Plus, it gels with the company’s line of business.

Both in Bajaj Auto’s and Shaadi.com’s case, their initiatives are part of a long-term business strategy that does more than appease individual conscience. It has multiple benefits—better bottom lines, and an impact on the issue tackled.

Similarly, Deccan Healthcare, a Hyderabad-based vitamin and supplement group, recently launched a foundation to eradicate malnutrition; and Thwack, a Mumbai-based sports lifestyle brand has started laying the

Angry Brides was a sell-out success. It has got half a million “likes” in five months.

decision that is strategic, focused and aligned to corporate goals. It’s this model of corporate philanthropy that she and Prrashar Kamra, Innovaid’s co-founder, want to help more and more Indian companies with.

Shaadi.com’s mission was to position its brand in a certain way. But well thoughtout programmes can help in a myriad of other ways, says Harrison. Conserving resources is a commonly-overlooked component to CSR, she explains, even though it can lead to huge cost and efficiency savings. “People don’t realise that minimising resources is also CSR.” She cites recycling programmes, switching to CFL bulbs, sav5 6 | INC. | june 2012

groundwork for a foundation that will foster public awareness about the benefits of exercise and healthy living in India through community campaigns and new opportunities for disadvantaged youth to play sports for the first time. “There’s a lot of room to take a leadership role in promoting the benefits of sports and exercise in India,” says Reji Matthew, founder and CEO of Thwack. Because this campaign falls under the business expertise of his brand, it gives him an opportunity to play a thought leadership role.

Shaadi.com’s Mittal wants to occupy that space as well. The next step for him will be to find ways to harness the company’s clout to encourage customers, vendors and even the

government to take a similar stance against dowry. “Companies have a huge sphere of influence, as do celebs,” Harrison says, offering that there are plenty of ways to encourage stakeholders—by choosing suppliers with shared values, or by simply applying some good old social pressure.

Yet, this version of “embedded CSR”, marrying social and environmental responsibility with sustainable business practices, remains a relatively new notion in India, where charitable giving was till recently the primary way for giving back. But, Harrison sees a “modern karma revolution” underway. Four years ago, she had to hard-sell the idea of CSR and its potential to clients, she recalls. But today, several smaller companies have dedicated resources for CSR, and consultancies similar to Innovaid—like Bengaluru-based Four-D, the Indian arm of a Swiss CSR company— have emerged on the business landscape.

Four-D was founded in 1999 to implement safety and other business efficiencies in clothing factories, and has now branched out to other sectors as well. Likewise, Mumbaibased Greenden Consultancy and Ozg CSR work with companies like IBM, UBS and Indian Oil to craft programmes that embed business practices with do-good belief.

These consultancies can be a lifeboat for mid-sized companies like Shaadi.com that want to implement a CSR programme but don’t have the time or resources to dedicate an entire team. “With so many other things going on, CSR always gets pushed to the backburner,” Mittal says.

Plus, these consultants also become a valuable bridge between companies and not-for-profits, most of who would benefit from a partnership but often speak an entirely different language. “NGOs can be very good at their specific jobs but few are strong in business terms,” says Harrison.

Understanding the needs of both sides is the first step to inking a fruitful partnership— identifying an NGO that a corporate can use to facilitate its CSR objectives, and helping NGOs get access to corporate expertise.

“Business skills and expertise is often more useful than simply cutting a cheque. A company can help an NGO review its working processes, cut back on inefficiencies and become more effective.” —Jen Swanson

Courtesy company

strategy

strategy

Leadership Attitude adjustment Why CEOs need to think less about strategies—and more about building healthy organisations If you have your health, you’ve got

just about everything. So says Patrick Lencioni, the consultant, speaker, and best-selling author, in his new book, The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business. Lencioni is best known for popular business fables like The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. But The Advantage draws on real-life case studies to convince business executives that fielding Real World Patrick Lencioni’s new smart strategies is less important book is his first based on actual than building a healthy and effecbusiness case studies. tive organisation. Lencioni spoke with Inc. editor-at-large Leigh Buchanan about the CEO’s role in promoting a well-adjusted company.

Ask an entrepreneur what she wants for her business, and she’ll talk about financial success, a fabulous culture, irresis­tible products. Ask a new parent what she wants for her child, and she’ll say, “I want her to be healthy.” Should founders think more like parents?

Let me make the analogy a little tighter. The real job of parents is to give their children an environment in which they can thrive. Ultimately, parents can neither predict nor control how their kids turn out, but they can give them a life free of unnecessary dysfunction and stress— and clarity about boundaries. Similarly, the head of an organisation has to make it healthy. The key is to create an environment where people can thrive, without unnecessary dysfunction, confusion, and politics. This requires a cohesive team at the top, clarity, communication, and reinforcement through human systems. By doing this, founders can provide their people with the opportunity to succeed in ways that even they couldn’t have anticipated.

The Advantage talks a lot about leadership teams. So let’s discuss the CEO’s role. For starters, given the weight his opinions carry, should the CEO hold his peace until the team has hashed over a subject?

You do have to solicit others’ feedback before you

announce your own opinion. Because even if you’re a humble CEO who thinks of himself as just one member of the team, you still have undue influence.

And if your people don’t weigh in on a decision, they’re not going to buy into it, either. That doesn’t mean you’re seeking consensus. The leader’s job is to listen to everybody and then say, “OK, based on what I just heard, here is how we are going to go.” If you have a really cohesive team where people know they can push back and have conflict with the leader, then guarding your thoughts becomes less important. If you’re not sure you have established that yet, it’s better to be reticent.

If you already know what you plan to do in a given situation, should you simply forgo discussion?

What you can’t do is tell people their opinions matter when they really don’t. We see this all the time in organisations. I’ve seen it in churches: “We’re going to select a new pastor. Let’s give all the parishioners a chance to vote.” But they already know whom they are going to pick. You have to come clean and say, “I think I know what I’m going to decide. I would love to solicit input, but it would be disingenuous.”

The earliest members of an entrepreneur’s leadership team are usually friends, relatives or former colleagues he or she started the business with. As you start hiring more experienced executives, how do you manage relationships between old friends and new kids on the block?

When you bring on new people, you have to rebuild the team, to rebuild trust. If you adopted two children into your family, you wouldn’t just say, “Oh, they’ll catch on.” You’d have to integrate them. The new people and the old people have to figure each other out. Once they understand each other’s personal histories, someone may find she can relate better to a new person than to people she’s worked with forever.

I can see why you would want people with different backgrounds and personalities on leadership JUNE 2012 | INC. | 5 7

strategy

teams. Is it also a good idea to include people with different tolerances for risk?

I think that’s huge. When we work with teams, we profile their members’ approaches to work, and risk is part of that. At my company, The Table Group, I can go around the table and tell you who will promote a conservative, keep-it-the-same-way approach and who will say “throw it out the window.” I love that. I balance listening to the risk takers with “let’s make sure we’re not doing something stupid here, folks.” There are a lot of ways to think about diversity on a team. You have to remember that people can look very different but have similar approaches to things like decision making and risk.

Is it OK for a CEO to behave differently in meetings than in one-on-one interactions?

The chief thing is that people should say the same things one on one that they say in the group. When leaders say different things in meetings and personal conversations, that’s a sign of trouble. But I’m a great believer in fewer one-on-one conversations and more team conversations. Ninetyfive per cent of difficult conversations should take place in a group, so everybody around the table benefits from what is said, and the CEO doesn’t have to repeat it eight times. If you’re going to call someone on his or her behaviour, do it with the whole team, assuming you’ve built that level of trust and are willing to let people call you on things as well.

They say parents shouldn’t let their kids see them fight. Well, my wife and I argue in front of the kids—I’m Italian and Irish, so I can’t help it. But we make up in front of our kids, too. That’s how it should be at work.

one else will agree: “Yeah, if we don’t do that, then my department is screwed, too.” And everybody says, “Yep.” Now that becomes everybody’s priority. And suddenly people are saying, “I have three open hiring slots that you need more than I do. You should take those.”

When we were looking at this, we asked ourselves, “What kinds of organisations don’t have silos?” Well, emergency rooms. Fire departments. Soldiers in the field. Because those organisations have a common rallying cry. “Save this person’s life!” “Keep this building from burning down!” “Protect the platoon!” Companies experience the same thing when they go into a crisis. The challenge is keeping employees from going back to their silos once the crisis is over.

You’re no fan of terms such as alignment, empowerment, and world class. How can leaders restore potency to their written and verbal communication?

Repetition is more important than novelty. Tell your people, “You may think that ‘the customer is always right’ is a cliché. But you are going to hear it in orientation. You are going to hear it in training. You are going to hear it in your performance review. We are going to build it into every system we have. And after a while, you are going to say, ‘You know, I think they’re serious.’ ” So even though the words might be degraded, in context, they actually mean something.

We worked with Southwest Airlines when they were codifying their values. They talk about having a warrior spirit and a servant’s heart. Are they serious? Well, their stock symbol is LUV. At another company, that would get only snickers. At Southwest, nobody thinks what the leaders say is just a bunch of words.

“When leaders say different things in meetings and personal conversations, that’s a sign of trouble.”

If you’re encouraging conflict, do you need a “no-asshole rule” to weed out people who get mean when they argue?

At my company, we have three core values. We look for people who are humble. That means we instead of I. Hungry—we like people we have to tell to back off, not to work harder. And smart— not intellectually smart but interpersonally smart. If a person is humble, hungry, and smart, that’s our no-asshole rule.

A key challenge for all companies is getting employees to think about the business as a whole, rather than their own specific jobs or departments. What can CEOs do to make that happen?

It starts at the top. The CEO has to make it very clear that when we’re together, you take off your marketing hat, and you take off your finance hat, and we all put on the hat that says XYZ Company. One tangible way to do that is the rallying cry. You ask the team, “What is the one thing we have to do as a company in the next three to nine months? The thing that if we don’t do it, we will fail?” People will toss that around, and then someone will say, “If we don’t solve the capacity problem, we’re in trouble.” Then some5 8 | INC. | june 2012

You write that “Every organisation must contribute, in some way, to a better world for some group of people...” But let’s be real. Can a company that makes, say, self-adhesive returnaddress labels talk about mission the same way as one that makes cancer drugs?

You can’t inspire someone by saying something that isn’t true. But there are multiple core purposes a company can have that can inspire people. We asked the leaders of a paving company we work with about their core purpose. They were saying things like, “We’re making the world a better place.” And the founder finally said, “Guys, you know why we do this? We do this so we can give these great people jobs. If the paving industry wasn’t good, we’d do roofing.”

Maybe frame the question like the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. If my company didn’t exist, how would things be different?

That’s a great way to look at it. If we weren’t here, then the town wouldn’t have the pride it has. These people wouldn’t have jobs.

Some CEOs might say the only difference is I wouldn’t have as much money. If that’s true, then be up front about it. Don’t pretend to care about something you don’t.

strategy

Design Devil in the details?

A comic-book publisher trades its horns for a logo with wings

before

The Detail The Oni character was highly detailed—so much so that it was difficult to read when scaled down to smaller sizes, in both print and digital products, Wood says.

Founded in 1997, Oni Press has tended

The image The laughing trickster, which also is the company’s mascot, was based on a trinket Nozemack’s brother gave him as a souvenir from Japan. It was intended to convey an air of fun and mischief, but some parents simply winced at what they thought was a horned, evil creature. “That was a barrier,” says Wood. “Younger readers don’t have their own disposable income and are relying on their parents to purchase titles.”

The Font Wood found the original Oni font a bit dated, and its bulkiness made it difficult to add other elements to the logo. He also thought the font used for the word press was too small and narrow.

option 1

option 2

The Icon This image—an O, an N, and an I stacked— was simple and iconic. But it was deemed too radical a departure.

Keeping It Simple This logo scaled down easily and looked good on Oni’s comics. But Nozemack couldn’t envision a logo without the trickster.

Expert opinion Fix the font The silhouette of the new logo is great. The word-balloon shape is comic-booky but also looks very modern and current. The negative space is instantly recognisable and will jump out at customers from far away. However, what’s inside still needs some fine-tuning. The O-N-I should be spaced out to improve readability. The new logo is about 80 per cent there but still has a little way to go.

John Roshell, design director, Comicraft, Los Angeles

6 0 | INC. | june 2012

Make it more dynamic I like the speech bubble; it is an apt reference to comics and a signal that the logo is talking to the customer. However, I find some elements of the face inside the bubble distracting and had trouble figuring out what it was. I would suggest that Oni also use that space to promote its other comic-book characters. It has plenty of titles with very cool art, almost all of which could be cropped to fit in that square.

Ellen Shapiro, owner, Visual Language, Irvington, New York

spread: Books: Kelly Kollar (2); logos: Courtesy company (4); experts: Courtesy subject (4)

to think of itself as a grittier alternative for comic-book fans seeking something other than superheroes in tights. But recently, the company has been creeping closer to the mainstream. Two of its offerings, Whiteout and the Scott Pilgrim series, were made into feature films, and the company has been pursuing younger readers with familyfriendly fare. The problem: Many parents and retailers flinched at Oni’s logo—the face of a demon from Japanese folklore. What’s more, the old logo didn’t work well on digital products. So, in mid-2010, co-founder Joe Nozemack asked Keith Wood, the company’s art director, for a redesign.

The new logo was unveiled in January; the first books with the new trademark hit shelves in April. —J.J. McCorvey

strategy AFTER

The Face To create a new image, Wood decided to focus on a quarter of the Oni demon’s face, cropping out the character’s horns and emphasising the eyes and cheekbones.

“We needed an image that would reflect the original brand but translate to all media and ages,” Wood says.

q&A

Sagi Haviv, on what a logo can and cannot accomplish

The ColoUrS One imperative was that the colour scheme remain unchanged.

“We don’t want it to be too far of a departure,” Wood says.

The versatility The official logo (shown below) was designed with maximum flexibility in mind. So on promotional material such as posters and ads, the logo contains Oni’s web address.

On the spines of books (above), the logo lacks the word balloon. Says Wood: “We can do a lot more with it.”

The typeface Both Nozemack and Wood wanted a sleeker font. Wood, who designed the typeface, added space between the letters. He also used a new type for the word press, which was harder to read in the original logo.

option 3

A Hint of Old Japan This was an attempt to include a trace of Asian culture—the white band that wraps around the type is based on a Japanese book wrap called an obi.

the bottom line

It’s not easy to calculate the investment return on a new logo, especially so soon after its debut. But Nozemack says retailers have been impressed. On the other hand, many Oni fans have taken to the blogosphere to complain that the image is indecipherable and offer their own guesses for what it might be (many believe it’s a bluebird).

I don’t get it It’s hard to tell what the image is; my first impression was that it was a chicken. I hate to say this, but it also looks really phallic, which could be a problem if Oni is trying to build a more familyfriendly brand. One weakness with in-house design work is that people are tied to the imagery they already have. New customers who aren’t familiar with the previous logo are going to have a hard time understanding it.

Ryan Goodwin, founder and chairman, Struck, Salt Lake City

The hallmark of an effective logo is that it doesn’t alienate your audience, says Sagi Haviv, a partner at the New York City design firm Chermayeff & Geismar, whose clients include Chase, NBC, and Mobil.

Q: What should a logo represent about the company?

A: Many clients expect the world. They say, “It should tell the whole story.” We often have to tame and manage expectations and explain that the company’s image is the totality of its communications, not just the logo.

Q: When redesigning, is it a bad idea to stray too far from the original logo?

A: It really depends on how much equity there is in the current mark. The most important thing is to do no harm. When we redesigned Armani Exchange’s logo, we had to find a way to maintain the elegance of the A and the X, and accentuate the letters while making them bold. We solved the problem—and very few in the company’s audience even noticed.

Q: Is it a mistake to do it in-house?

A: Some in-house efforts result in some great successes. One of the best logos of all time, the CBS eye, was designed in-house. But it is important to be able to take a step back and look at a logo with objectivity.

Nice job. Now tweak the spacing The new logo has very strong visual impact. I love the starkness of the black and white, and the positive and negative of the icon and the word balloon.

When it reduces down, however, it’s hard to read— a common problem. When designing a logo, you have to make adjustments for different sizes, so it can work in a number of places, from large signs to websites.

Spacing out the objects would give it a little more power.

Ellen Woliner, president, CorchiaWolinerRhoda, New York City JUNE 2012 | INC. | 61

Mending Ways

Can Shaifali Agarwal repair this unorganised market?

6 2 | INC. | JUNE 2012

Photograph by Khushi Mishra

strategy

Elevator Pitch EasyFix brings home repair solutions to your doorstep. Can it get investors to fix up `5 crore?

Founder

Shaifali Agarwal Location

Based in New Delhi, operates in Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida and Ghaziabad Employees

260 LAUNCHED

March 2011 Seed funding

`20 lakh Services provided

Electrical, plumbing, painting and carpentry work Customers

5,300

Funding SOUGHT

`5 crore Funding sought for

Expansion to more cities including Mumbai, Agra, Chennai, Hyderabad and Chandigarh

Pitch: “Tired of haggling with carpenters, plumbers and electricians to get

work done in your house? At EasyFix, we come to your rescue by offering an online portal that provides professional technicians for home repair. Customers can call our helpline numbers or fill a request form online to tell us about a leaking faucet, a noisy fan or larger interiors projects they might want commissioned. We send only experienced, police-verified technicians to your home at the requested time. There are fixed rates for the services required, and these are communicated to customers before work begins at the site.

Because we operate in home environments, we make sure our team of 260odd workers is well-trained in soft and behaviourial skills. We have already served 5,300 customers in five cities and are looking to expand in eight more—the reason we need to raise capital now.” —As told to Ira Swasti

The Experts Weigh In HIGHLIGHT THE PROFESSIONALISM

TARGET APARTMENTS AND HOTELS

VIJAY SHUKLA, founder, Setu Ventures, Gurgaon

NIRUPA SHANKAR, VP, Strategy, Brigade Hospitality Services, Bengaluru

There is huge demand for reliable and consistent professional repair services. EasyFix must add service level agreement related information on the client promise, such as assuring that the turnaround time will not be more than an hour; or resolution time not more than a day. It appears that EasyFix is focused on the B2C market but Shaifali should consider the B2B domain (schools, market associations) to get more revenues.

If she delivers well, word of mouth alone can get a huge number of leads. They will need to build on technical expertise of the staff though.

Finding skilled and reliable carpenters and plumbers is a very common problem. EasyFix could tie up with apartment owners and associations of large residential complexes who can recommend the service to all their apartment owners. The idea also makes sense for the hospitality business as it would enable a company like mine to have fewer employees on our rolls. Most hotels require regular paint jobs and touch-ups to be done. Electricians could also be hired on busy banquet days in a hotel without increasing full-time staff.

WORK OUT THE SUPPLY SIDE

It is a strong urban value proposition but the venture would need to figure out ways to optimally reach out to individual plumbers and electricians across India, and get them onto the platform at the right economics. Also, end customers would hold the aggregating venture responsible for service quality so EasyFix will have to ensure rigorous monitoring of these unorganised service providers. Finally, pan-India scale up while maintaining quality could be slow, and expediting it could end up consuming a lot of capital. The venture would need to figure out a capital efficient yet rapidly scaling model.

SOUMITRA SHARMA, senior analyst, IDG Ventures India, Bengaluru JUNE 2012 | INC. | 6 3

strategy

The Way I Work | Atul Phadnis, Whats-On-India

“I prefer people who are blunt.

You can get on with business much faster that way.”

People in India generally switch on their television sets without knowing what to watch, claims Atul Phadnis, the founder of Whats-On-India, the country’s largest multiplatform (with a dedicated TV channel, web and mobile apps), multi-lingual electronic programme guide system that covers content on more than 550 channels and reaches more than 20 million set-top-boxes. Essentially, Phadnis helps people find content they want to watch. He calls himself a digital television evangelist and this religious focus has helped the television professional-turned-entrepreneur grow Whats-On-India into a 100-people venture. Also accelerating growth, Phadnis believes is his knack for getting blunt, honest feedback or what they refer to as BIH (Brutal Intellectual Honesty) in his office—from both customers and employees.

As told to Ira Swasti | Photograph by Jiten Gandhi 6 4 | INC. | june 2012

I am not very particular about the time I wake up in the morning, so it’s anywhere between

Catching Up Atul Phadnis makes it a point to sit with two of his teams every day, to get employee feedback on company products.

6.30 and 7am. I don’t have to go through any morning rituals either, like a morning walk or hitting the gym. But I am a complete breakfast person. The first thing I need in the morning is a healthy breakfast, which usually means muesli and oats.

That is also the time when my kids are getting ready for school and I like to spend that time with them. Once they’re off, it’s time to catch up with the day’s news and e-mails on my MacBook Air or the iPad. I check if there are any urgent e-mails from international clients who might have responded over the night. I also make sure I go through the host of reports that our servers generate about all the digital media properties we own i.e. our web portals and mobile phone apps. These reports tell me which of our properties are performing well and which still need to catch up with our users. june 2012 | INC. | 6 5

strategy

At about 8.30am or so, I get into my Maruti SX4 to be driven to my office in Worli via the Bandra-Worli Sea Link. It’s the most convenient route from my house to my office. On a good day, it takes me less than an hour to reach office. In the car, I usually have my laptop out to check mails or read articles online.

I reach office around 9.30am. It isn’t as early as I’d like though. The one thing I seriously envy about my friends in the banking industry is that they get to work by 8.30am in the morning. I’d really like to challenge myself to do that as well—come early when there isn’t anyone around. That one hour between 8.30am and 9.30am is the quietest time and it’s perfect to get all your thoughts in order. Otherwise, once you enter office, there are already a number of other things that demand your attention.

For instance, as soon as I reach my cabin, I’m off to checking trade journals, websites and blogs to see if there is anything interesting happening in the industry. I browse through them throughout the day actually. I have set alerts to keep abreast with the latest industry trends. Then I check my calendar to see what meetings are lined up for the day and see where else I have to be at different points of time. And finally,

general and specific discussions about the products we are building, what we should be building, mistakes we might have made and the big achievements we’ve had. I simply love these meetings.

When I am having these discussions, I make sure I catch up with people at their workstations. Instead of calling them up to my cabin or the office conference room, I prefer sitting with them at their work area because that gives me a very good feel of what is going on.

I usually spend two to two-and-ahalf hours with two teams on a day, on an average.

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“I make sure I catch up with people at their workstations instead of my cabin.”

I check the deadlines for various projects and prepare my task list that includes everything that needs to be accomplished on that day.

Everybody else in the company also comes in around the same time as I do. We are a tightly-knit team of about a 100 people and I am extremely close to my team. I allocate a lot of time to meeting with our different teams (technology, marketing, engineering) on specified days of the week. Some teams are smaller with just five people, and then there are larger ones with 20 people in them. I make it a point to rotate my time amongst them—to have both 6 6 | INC. | june 2012

eing with individual teams on a rotational basis is the strongest aspect of the work that I do. There is a particular product road map defined for the company, and board meetings or quarterly reviews may have plotted the direction in which the company is headed, but there still may be confusion about the exact interpretation of the product among team members. The pursuit of that product plan through in-depth discussions and meetings gives me both formal and informal views of the weaknesses in the team or problems they may be facing from other teams. From a management aspect, that’s one of my core areas of focus. Someone may casually or informally mention a problem he may be facing thinking it’s a trivial issue but it may actually be a big hole that everyone else may fall into.

I think my educational qualifications and professional experience (at TAM media research and Starcom Worldwide) have come in very handy to make this possible. I am an electronics engineer and my career expands in television and digital media. The WhatsOn-India office is then a great mix of essentially two kinds of people—media domain experts or technology and software experts.

My training as an engineer enables me to speak and understand what my software engineers are saying, and my media days ensure I can align very well with our overall understanding about the media industry and where it’s going.

After a good meeting or two with my teams, it’s time for lunch around 1.15 or 1.30pm. I am a big fan of Rujuta Diwekar, the renowned fitness professional. I actually follow some of her dietary principles every day. One of those principles is to eat something light every two hours. So I keep munching on fruits, salads or energy bars every two hours. I make sure I eat home-cooked food unless I am dining out with a client, which is when the diet goes for a toss.

After lunch, the routine resumes. The post-lunch period is usually when I step out for client meetings. I actively go out to meet our key customers because I measure success of my company in terms of the adoption base of our products. When you have a new product

strategy

“A principle I’ve driven home to my team is—work cannot stop. It has to go on, with or without anybody.”

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company, it really helps if your concept or idea or product is adopted by users. Everything else follows, whether it is monetary gains or the satisfaction of having a truckload of users.

This is also the time when I am my most productive. When you have been at it for the amount of time I have, you can switch on and switch off moods with a magic wand. If a customer calls me, and asks me to showcase our new product to them, even if I’ve had a very heavy lunch, or not got enough sleep the night before, every cell and nerve in my body comes together to make sure I deliver a spectacular presentation. This is why I love these meetings. I feel extremely energetic and articulate when I am in front of a customer. I am very confident about where the discussion is going, what direction it is taking and what is being said.

I am told that I am a good listener too which is probably why I can take criticism well. But I hate people being unnecessarily diplomatic. In fact, if I placed a new product idea to them, I would respect a customer who tells me outright, “hey, you know what, I don’t like it”.

But what usually happens is, you have to start peeling the layers, almost like an onion, when you’re dealing with a customer. If you ask them, what do you think of the product? They will just say, “haan achha hai, good or nice”. But when you go on to ask “do you like this or that or what’s good about it?” they’ll say “well you know, actually, to be frank, I don’t like this feature or that part”. I prefer people who are straightforward and blunt. It helps accelerate business. It’s a key philosophy that I’ve shared with my teams too. We call it BIH or Brutal Intellectual Honesty. If something is bad, it has to be said so. I ask my people not to be polite or diplomatic with their team members if they find something to be not as good as it should be. This philosophy has helped the organisation to mature and now even the politest individuals in the company have learnt to say—”I’m sorry but this doesn’t work for me”.

As a good listener, you listen to everything that comes your way as part of feedback. We are an in an evolving industry. The issues of last year are different from those taken up the year before, so it’s difficult to say which issues may concern clients this year.

If something has been written about us or if a customer sends us a feedback through formal or informal means, we have built information systems that ensure I get to know about it.

But when a problem is identified, we respond to them as a team, instead of me or the team handling it on their own. If it is positive,

perhaps a cake is in order or I might take my team out for lunch. If it is negative, we figure out how to address the issue internally with our team and externally with our clients. s the founder CEO, you have to do everything or at least have the knowledge of everything that goes on in the company.

There isn’t anything that I haven’t tried my hand at within the company. But I am not good at everything, say coding or writing software. We have specialists for each task.

But I have been involved in different ways with different teams.

Another principle that I have driven home to all my managers is something we refer to as “with you or without you”, which means that work cannot stop, with or without a member of the team. People’s availability, presence, mood swings or health concerns will not be obstacles to the progress of any project. The work has to go on and deadlines have to be met. The media industry is fast moving, and in a niche sector like ours, reputation is paramount, so you have to keep up with the times if you want to survive.

After an entire day of meetings with customers and employees, I leave office around 7.30-8pm. Some people are still in office working at that time. It takes me half an hour to reach home but I don’t go there straight. I first go and play badminton for two hours in a nearby club. I meet both business and non-professional contacts but we strictly keep the interaction to the sport. This is my time to unwind after a long day and I don’t think about anything else during these few hours.

I think work-life balance is crucial to keeping your sanity. I try hard to maintain it. After a good game of badminton, I head home to have dinner with family. The kids are already in bed by that time so after dinner, I catch up on some television news. I don’t get enough time on weekdays to watch TV shows so I record to watch them on weekends.

Till 1am, I stay in the small office in my house to send out presentations or write articles. Then I read for about an hour, mostly non-fiction since biographies, history and management books interest me. I am currently reading Pakistan: A Modern History

by Ian Talbot. Even though I don’t get much sleep in the day, I like to keep it that way. Sleeping is such a waste of time! june 2012 | INC. | 67

I wish I knew then...

Ranga Reddy, founder and CEO, Maveric Systems After working for nearly 14 years as a management consultant, Ranga Reddy realised the excitement and challenges he saw his clients face was a high he sought for himself as well. Unhindered by the dot-com bust that shook the software industry around 2000, he and his three colleagues started Maveric Systems, an independent software testing specialist based in Chennai. Today, the `82-crore company has offices in India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, UK, US, Singapore and Malaysia. Reddy shares some lessons he’s learnt during his transformation into a founder-CEO. When you’re a management consultant, every time you’re advising a client, you have the pleasure of advising them but you don’t gain the learning that comes from implementing new ideas. Time and again, I’d wish I could start something of my own where I could be my own adviser and implementer. That’s how Maveric Systems took shape in 2000. Two of my former colleagues and a friend of another colleague joined hands with me for the venture.

Around 2000, most software companies were finding it hard to get high ROI on technology because of the dot-com bust. We realised focusing on software quality would bring in good returns. But none of us—the four promoters—had much experience in software quality or development. Yet, as first time entrepreneurs, we were anxious to make things happen. Anxiety can sometimes propel you to do something out of the ordinary but often it can also make you lose focus. Anxiety did get the better of us—we saw the smallest opportunities as viable ones, and were tempted to explore more opportunities than we should have.

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To a large extent, we didn’t need to do so many things to reach the goal we had set for ourselves at that time—a `100-crore revenue in eight years. I wish I knew then that it was smarter to focus on one or two ideas, and make those competitive instead of playing around with five or six concepts.

By the end of 2003, we refined our business model to focus on only software testing, and narrowed even that down to the banking and financial services sector. For the next five years, we kept this singular focus. By 2008-09, we had a turnover of `79 crore. We were the right size to grow now so we added two The Right Focus Reddy has learnt to achieve his verticals—insurance and telecom. goals, one vertical at a time.

Because we did this at the right scale, managing the new businesses That was my big lesson in the first three was possible. It wasn’t like trying to master five years. When we started looking at the serverticals at the inception of business. vices our business would offer, we came up Our strategy changes over the past three with a host of ideas—project management, to four years have paid off. In the last two requirement management, software testyears, in nine out of the 10 projects we bid ing, technical writing and data warehousfor, our competitors were the Big 5 global ing. But it turned out to be very difficult to IT firms. We might be a small company but manage all of them with the finite we don’t compete with the smaller firms resources we had. Not just resources, anymore. We know we’ve arrived. applying your mind to so many different —As told to Ira Swasti services at the same time ended up in us stretching ourselves too thin.