If you don’t leave your comfort zone and enter the enthusiasm zone, be ready to go to the danger zone – thundered motivational speaker Jagdish Joshi to a consortium of professionals from the food and grocery sector on the second day of Food & Grocery Forum India 2012 being held in Mumbai.
He said that change is a revolution, a kranti. We need to adopt a mindset of change. Stressing the importance of change Joshi revealed that 80 percent of customers never complain – they simply switch over! Who has the time to complain he asked. More than half of the Fortune 500 companies die because of their inability to change. Be agile and future oriented if you want to do business was the message.
He advised that every company should develop two teams namely Current Business and Future Business. The Current Business team should focus on developing the business, marketing, manpower development, and promotions. The Future Business team instead should focus on developing and nurturing ideas of the future. “If you spend all your time and energies into developing your current business who is going to think of the future?” he asked. Over 2,800 people work in the Future Business department of HCL. These are the people who are thinking of revolution and innovation which will hit people in the next 15 years.
Urging the delegates to expand their product offering Joshi cited the example of Nike which offers 37 styles in the men’s baseball shoe category and Puma which offers 127 styles of footwear in the women’s category. “If they can think so niche, what’s stopping you,” he said.
Today, competition is not about offering better and differentiated products but about differentiated marketing strategies. Joshi added that how a good product is marketed determines its success in today’s highly competitive business environment.
Organisations should never undermine the potential of crazy ideas. “Encourage your staff to come out with the most bizarre and crazy ideas. When you do get them, do not react…respond. Don’t stop creative thinking. Crazy people create history, wise people normally read history.” It was these and other anecdotes that kept the food and grocery doyens enthralled throughout the 45 minutes session.
Driving home the significance of manpower, Joshi urged the congregation to focus on manpower building to build business. Organisations that focus on business make money but organizations that focus on people build empires, he added. Customer is not the king anymore, employees are. Companies need to manage brain equity to be able to build brand equity was his message.
“Cost cutting is out, concentrate on cost innovation. So instead of running on the threadmill run around in the market and you will make money,” Joshi added.
-Nivedita Jayaram Pawar
