USA - Lessons to be learnt

I've been in the US for the last 2 weeks and there's a major contrast with life in India. Not only on the outside, but also the inside. There are a lot of things we can learn and adopt from the Americans. Of course, there are several things we we may be better off maintaining our way.

Externally there are several stark contrasts. My top 5 (in alphabetical order) would be
A. Cleanliness
B. Discipline
C. Independent Teenagers
D. Infrastructure
E. Processes

A. Cleanliness

Many of us in India believe that Westerners have an inbuilt tendency towards cleanliness and we Indians don't. This in my mind is a far cry from the truth. The US works very hard at keeping the environment clean. The fine for littering in highways could be anything from $500 to $2,000. One day of the week is kept for clearing garbage from homes. Only the garbage kept out the previous night is taken away. One day of the week is kept aside for street cleaning. And clearly marked. Cars that remain parked on the street on those days are towed away. And have to pay a fine of around $500 to get their car back. Lawns that are not kept manicured could draw censure from teh city. And you guessed it right, a hefty fine. Eating places need to ensure that their surrounding are garbage free, else the license to operate gets taken away. Even common littering attracts stiff fines. Little wonder you have surroundings that are clean, well maintained and beautiful.

B. Discipline

The sense of discipline starts at the Immigration line for non Americans. On an average, expect to spend a half hour if you are lucky and an hour and half if its a normal day. People try all kinds of things to move to the front of the line. Such as, "I'll miss my connecting flight". The response, a stern, "Sir, That's not my problem. Get back in line, else I'll send you to the back of the line." No exceptions even when the airline staff try to get someone ahead. The system isn't heartless. People with disabilities, unaccompanied children, all have their own separate line that is much faster. Its amusing to see Indians comment about "How systematic the system is," and then grumble about the chaos when they have to stand for five minutes in an Immigration line in India. There are lines everywhere, whether its to get a cup of coffee, or a table at a restaurant, or even to go to the bathroom. The difference is that everyone follows the lines, and the few who attempt to break it are promptly sent back by the majority. Hence, since everybody is tuned to standing in line, that by itself ensures that the minority are not allowed to break it. The other example is driving. People yield to pedestrians, drive sensibly and all in all ensure that driver related traffic jams are minimal. Guess what. Every sign carries with it the cost of breaking. "Speed limit 50 mph. Minimum fine $350 for violation". "Car pool lane carries 3. Minimum fine $800 for violation". It doesn't end with the fine. There are points put on your license and after the second one you need to go attend a driving lesson. Not to mention the increase in your insurance premium.

C. Independent Teenagers

It is expected that teenagers between 16 and 18 will leave home, and start living by themselves. It also means they need to find a job to not only survive, but also pay for college should they choose to attend one. They quickly learn the realities of life, and the value of work and money. This lays a very strong foundation for the American economy with a work force that has a clear sense of understanding that you need to work and work hard to earn money. It also gives it a large, young workforce that is extremely productive.

D. Infrastructure

The difference here is mind boggling. The founding fathers and all who followed realized that the growth of a country is directly related to its infrastructure. And have ensured that the infrastructure created is not only well maintained but creation of infrastructure is an on-going process that will cater to the growing future needs that are projected by the city planners. China has figured out that infrastructure is critical and has built an unbelievable amount, especially in their main cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Indians appreciate the necessity. And have made a few motions in that direction. But as of now its too little, too late. This is an area where if radical reform does not happen quickly, our growth will be limited, not only current, but also future.

E. Processes

In India every process, has 10 exceptions. And the intelligent populace on both sides invest a lot of time and energy to interpret, and figure out ways in using loopholes to break or short circuit the process. This is mainly because in almost all processes a lot of freedom is given to the individuals implementing the same. As an example, when caught breaking a traffic light, most will spend significant time in arguing, justifying, comparing and then bribing to get out of a simple Rs 100 fine. In the US, the complete interaction is recorded and its very difficult for either to get out of it. A ticket almost invariably gets written. All discussions and arguments can happen in court, when the case comes up. Another classic example is check-in. Simple rule, if you have bags, you have to check in 60 minutes before the departure time. The system has been designed that a baggage tag will not get generated of there is less than 60 minutes to flight time in economy class. By removing subjectivity as to whether 1 minute late or 5 minutes late is okay, the process becomes very effective. And once people realize that there is No Way Out, they follow the processes.


To summarize, all we need to do is create processes that cannot be short circuited, make them transparent and have penalties and fines that pinch the pocket. All of rhis is easy and simple. Provide we have the political will to implement.

The Maharaja Strikes Again

I was to travel to the US for 3 weeks around May 10 and was looking to book tickets online. I usually fly Air India for 3 reasons. The first is the cost. Its normally one of the more economical. (Turkish and Egypt Air are even cheaper). It flies direct and non-stop. And last but not least, if we Indians don't fly Air India, who will ?

 

I found tickets that were direct and reasonable and was in the process of booking online. Fortunately for me the Air India website was as is not unusual glitchy. Which meant my booking didn't happen. After 3 tries of filling in the same data and getting thrown out at various stages including at the payment gateway, I was frustrated and decided to look at other options. I used various portals and on makemytrip found British Airways more cost effective and would enable me to fly directly back from San Francisco as opposed to coming back to New York if I were to fly Air India. I was able to complete the process in a few minutes, as opposed to the over 1 hour struggle at the Air India website.

And guess what. 2 days before my scheduled flight date Air India pilots stopped showing up for work. Since the courts had rules that they could not go on strike, they came up with the brilliant plan if all being sick at once. I guess I got lucky and am in New York as I write this piece. Unfortunately Air India continues to be on strike, 12 days later.

 

So what exactly are the pilots issues ? An Aero blogger Rohit Rao has written an interesting piece outlining the perspective of the striking pilots.
http://aeroblogger.com/home/blog/air-india-strike-ipg-perspective/

The primary cause is apparently the fact that Air India is sending pilots from the pre merger Indian Airlines for training on the Boeing-787 Dreamliner. They have a few more demands including being able to fly first class when on duty between stations. And the fact that they should be promoted to Commanders within a fixed period regardless of the fact that vacancies may not exist.

Prima facie, all of the above sound like utter nonsense and totally unreasonable. Maybe, we don't know enough to judge whether or not these demands are reasonable. But there are a few things we do know. Firstly, some of these demands are in court. And the court ruling has been against the agitating pilots. The option is to appeal to a higher court.

In other words, the strike or sick leave is in defiance of court orders. That effectively means holding their employer, Air India to ransom. And the price. A whooping Rs. 150 million per day. This is in addition to the Rs. 70,000 million the airline is losing annually when they are flying without disruption.

The Government has recently sanctioned a bailout package of Rs. 300,000 million for the airline. This money is coming from you and me. Its the poor taxpayer who ends up paying as usual. What I find hard to understand is why exactly are we paying for the Government to run an airline. Especially when its only effective purpose seems to be to generate employment for its employees. And these employees who are grossly overpaid and are the worlds least productive in comparison to any other airline. This is not what I think but is based on employees / passenger or even employees / aircraft or any other parameter you may choose to compare.

You could understand if these employees are working hard. And serving a national need. Like the Armed Forces. But in the case of these fat cats, "Hardly" is more like it. And they go on strike once a year and threaten to go on strike twice a year. Leading to disruptions thrice a year. In the last 3 years they have gone on strike for 4 days in Sept. 2009, given a strike notice in November 2009, gone on a major 10 day strike in May 2011 and now 12 days and counting in May 2012.

Ironically the first Dreamliner which has now become a nightmare was to have been handed over to the Civil Aviation Minister, Mr. Ajit Singh around May 30th. This has now been postponed for a couple of weeks.

The Government has taken a tough stance and suspended around 80 pilots. They plan to do more. Which is very good. Unfortunately history has a way of repeating itself. And the sad part is that in all likelihood, all of the suspended pilots will be reinstated and the Government will give in to most of their demands. Thus giving a message that when you can't win in court, hijack the Government Airline and terrorize the passengers. You will get what you want. Without any consequences.

The only way this kind of blackmailing by Unions will end is when the consequences of breaking the law are unaffordable. For Air India and India's sake, I hope I'm wrong and this time around the consequences will be real and hurt the pilots exactly where they hurt all of us. In their pockets.

Art of Interviewing

In the last few months we’ve had to do major hiring and so several interviews have been conducted. We did a fair bit of experimentation and gave opportunities to all levels of persons to conduct interviews. We found several interesting things. Not only about the candidates, but also about the interviewers. And several traits were consistent across the interviewers, barring one or two exceptions.

The candidates themselves were typically bright young men and women. In most cases when we found them unsuitable, it was not a reflection on the candidates but more on the institutes where they had graduated. The teaching seemed to have focused on theory and examinations and the level of practical knowledge, the ability of doing as opposed to the ability of knowing seemed to be lacking. The ones who made the cut were typically those who had taken the effort of exploring on their own. They were the ones who had actually taken up projects, done them, understood the process and had the ability to apply it to real life.

The more interesting aspect was the interviewers themselves. In almost all cases, they were asking questions that they knew. And had a standard answer they expected. All of this was based on their knowledge and years of experience. They seemed to forget that they needed to measure the candidates based on their current knowledge. A candidate who was lucky at having some ideas in the areas questioned, and gave the expected answers got to the next round. Others were given a “NTY” short for a “No, Thank You”.

On further looking into the behavior pattern, we realized that it seemed like a similar pattern was being followed in almost all assessments. Whether its Vivas in schools and colleges or job interviews or professional exams. The next step was to speak with friends in other countries, and see what the patterns there were.

We had a pleasant surprise. The only 2 countries about which we could gather credible data was the UK and the US. And in both places, this did not seem to be the pattern. Here, the assessor typically took the trouble of finding out what all the candidate knew. And then try and get as much information about those areas. Thus assessing the candidates abilities in an area he is very comfortable with. This gives a very good insight into not only the capabilities of the candidates but also their potential.

We obviously need to change our methodology. But that cannot happen overnight. I guess it’s a slow and evolving process and will happen when enough of us realize that we are missing some amazing talent and hiring mediocrity because of their ability to answer standard questions.

As a first step, in addition to sensitizing people to the issues we are facing and our errors and omissions, we have put in a system where the interviewer has to fill out a form about areas that the candidate knows. In other words they are forced to find out as much as they can about the candidate, since their report reflects their ability. Hopefully, our stars will be able to detect and hire Brighter Stars.

Don’t Care. Want More.

ike most urban resident Indians, I’ve been getting e-mails and calls from several consumer product companies. The 3 main types are telecom and banks. Each of them is competing with their rivals to gather new customers. Which is great. Competitions is typically good for the consumer since he ends up getting better deals. But here’s the twist in the tale. No one seems to care about their current customers. It seems strangely ironic considering that conventional wisdom and data has shown that retaining customers is much easier than acquiring new ones.

The customer service that one gets from the service providers, specifically telecom companies is pathetic. Let me give a few examples.

Telecom
Postpaid customers account for 5 - 10 times revenue per customer that the pre paid customers. Yet  the offers and deals for prepaid customers are invariably better. A data plan that costs Rs. 199 for prepaid costs Rs. 299 for postpaid. A 33% additional premium to be paid. To their favored customers. They seem to think that all prepaid customers are Idiots. And maybe they’re right. Why would a postpaid customer want to remain postpaid or even a Vodafone customer ? Until recently the telecom companies knew we couldn’t shift because retaining the number had value. With number portability, this is no longer an issue. Fortunately for Vodafone, Airtel and Reliance are equally bad, if not worse.

Banks
Let’s take HDFC and ICICI, two of the premier banks. Recently I needed some information about a foreign remittance. Being a favored customer, I have the privilege of having a personalized relationship manager. So I tried calling them. Surprise, surprise, they had changed banks or were not available or were no longer linked to me. So after a few calls to customer service, I’m able to get the e-mails of my current relationship managers. And so I write to them. I have a timeline in which I have to complete the transaction. And so when I don’t hear from them, I write a reminder. This time after a few more days, I get a response that they have forwarded the queries to their foreign exchange department and are awaiting their response. A week later, once again a reminder, and same response. Finally I go to the Bank, sit with the Manager and since the timeline is now almost lapsed manage to get a part of the transaction done. Quite unhappy, I write to the person who sends out the Marketing Mailers, or at least signs them. Within hours I get calls from 5 people all willing and wanting to do in minutes what I was unable to get them to do in a month. I’m assuming the signatory must have been pretty high up. And kicked some serious butt.

Today the Indian consumer has several choices. However the quality differential is marginal. Hopefully in the near future, we’ll have options where the service provider is committed to doing what they set out to do, “Providing Service.”  And that’s when we’ll have improved service levels and the question we ask today, “Why can’t a customer get service when he asks ?”, will become redundant.

p.s.: Isn't it ironic that all of the baseline revolve around the Customer
Vodafone - Power to you
Airtel - Express Yourself
HDFC Bank - We understand your world
ICICI - Customer First