Leverage on the Rush or the outcomes from the Rush

It is evitable that Sri Lankan society is going through significant socio cultural environment changes. With effects from globalization Sri Lanka is shifting more towards a westernized culture.

Walawwa is no longer luxury

40 years back, if a Sri Lankan lived in a Walawwa they were considered to be the richest people living in this country. Walawwa used to be a symbol of inherited wealth. Living in a Walawwa was the luxary 40 years back. If you observe the current Sri Lankan social behavioral patterns it is evitable Walawwa is no longer the luxury living place but apartments are. Real Estate industry has cleverly positioned apartments as the ultimate luxury mainly through the choice of place of the apartment buildings where most are located in prime locations. They also augment their product offering through value additions like fitness centers, community socialization areas, and security services in addition to luxurious furniture and state of the art apartment designs.

Healthier Life Styles

Nowadays the society is becoming more and more concerned on healthier life styles. Generation before this was not concerned on health and they are increasingly having health problems which are indirectly pushing the younger generations to be more concerned on healthier life patterns. The modern society is pushed through various stimuli around them to spend time and money on physical fitness. So many business opportunities are out there leveraging on these transforming life styles.

Sri Lanka among top boozing nations

Sri Lankans drink till they die. Sri Lankan culture was enriched with its routes strengthened through core

principles of Buddhism. The fifth core principle in Buddhism is you should not booze. The reason is it affects the “Samma Ditti” or alcohol effects the state of mind. But now Sri Lankan society is boozing for purposes like fun or devastatingly because life is a problem to them. Sri Lankans no longer looks for solutions they drink alcohol for temporary sensation. These trends are shifting the core routes of Sri Lankan culture and there are a lot of businesses leveraging on these life style shifts.

 New Sri Lanka Rushing

If you closely observe these trends societal trends a question that arises is the new Sri Lanka rushing. If you look at the core reasons of why a preferred luxury living option is apartments, or why people are concerned on healthier life styles. Or why they booze don’t you think that new Sri Lanka is rushing.

Key reason for opting for apartments is the convenience of place, less travel to office. An average Sri Lankan now spends more than 55 hours at office where as the expectation is only 45 hours. The workplace has become more competitive that people are making all their decisions based on the career that their involved in. Healthier life styles, more than anything else Sri Lankans are having health concerns because of the enormous stress levels. Unbearable stress levels demands for people to look balance both physically and mentally.  Even boozing it is the same reason; people look for a temporary escape from their current state of mind. Percentage increase of working women is directly proportionate to the increasing trend of women boozers. Sri Lanka is rushing at a deadly pace.

From a business perspective, majority of the businesses are centered on the outcomes of a rushing nation. But there are fewer businesses focused on the root cause of all these outcomes. Sri Lanka is rushing there is tremendous opportunity both while rushing and around the outcomes of rushing.

Kumbhakarna Syndrome Explained

Most of you have heard about King "Rawana". King Rawana defines the prehistoric era of Sri Lanka with his kingdom still seen as the highest state a Sri Lankan king has ever been in. King Rawana had a brother named Kumbakarana. Kumbakarana is known for this very famous trait of his where he sleeps for days. Not a single person in this world is able to wake Kumbakarana up. Even today a person who sleeps too much in Sri Lanka is called a "Kumbaya" evolving from the Kumbakrana story. 

One fine sunny warm day Kumbakarana went to sleep. Since it was warm day he was not wearing the typical heavy King's clothes but was dressed in light clothes since he was going to sleep and he orderred his servants to keep the window open expecting that breeze flowing through the windows will suit the warm weather conditions. He went to sleep on this warm day and he went on sleep for days and days. One fine day he wakes up and starts shouting at the servants why they have kept the windows open? Kumbakarana has slept througout a season. It was the winter season the environment has changed and you can't keept he windows open in the winter season. 

This is an amazing example of how important it is for us to understand that the enviromment around us is changing. If you do not adapt to the environmental changes then you end up being just another kumbakarana.

Walt Disney any childs dream with 200 outlest across the globe with a theme "It's a small world after all" ventured in to France where 17 millino Europeans live less than a two hour drive and 310 million can fly  there in the same time or less. Everyting sounded perfect French Government granted $ 1 Billion worth incentives expecting 30000 jobs. Company made a blunder in understanding the French Culture.

1. Monday Vs. Friday - Friday and Fun both starts with "F". Friday is the Fun day in the calendar. Walt Disney went with the same assumption and capacity planning was done in away that they expected more people to come on Friday. Assumption was wrong majority came on Monday.

2. No Wine - In Sri Lanka serving wine on a Themes park would have been a crime but in France people have wine for their every meal its a part of their culture. Not having wine in restaurants was a disaster. 

3. Europeans don't eat breakfast - Again incorrect assumption, Americans eats the Lunch and Breakfast together. But French had breakfast, breakfast was very important to them. 

Walt Disney had made a blunder in analysing the evironment. Walt Disney being the giant it  failed to realize that the seasons change, envirnments change.

There are some companies that levrage heavily on changing environmental conditions. An example is Diet Coke, in 1981 Coke invested on Diet coke predicting that peopl'e life styles would chagne and be centric towards being healthy. Diet Coke is now ahead of Pepsi and second to Coke 2nd Best brand in the carbonated drinks market. In 2013 Sri Lankans are concerned about being healthy eating less sugar where as Coke predicted this trend way back in 1981. 

The envirnoment is changing everyday observing these changes will define how successful a comapny or how successful a person is. 

Finding your True Passion

Over the years we have seen many personal development gurus talking about how important it is to find what you like to do, what you are so passionate of doing. The reason is this passion will drive you to go beyond your capacity. These statements was misleading me and I was talking with few of my other friends with similar backgrounds, are you doing what you really like, and are you passionate about what you are doing. They were doing exceptionally well at their current positions and surprisingly the responses were not in line with what the famous personal development gurus were thinking.

Majority of us are not sure of what we really want out of life or what we are really passionate about. For most of us life is a mystery, which at times does not make much sense. But further analysis showed the success behind some of the young executives is not mainly due to their passion on what they do. They are challenge seekers. Generation Y unlike Generation X are driven with challenge and there is red ocean competition between young executives to prove that one is better than the other. 

Generation Y has built a lot of self-ego around them and continuous challenges has proven to become a critical motivator for these young executives representing the Generation Y. Time has come to revisit the traditional techniques and methods that were deemed to be the mantras of success.

One has to challenge himself to understand his boundaries; it may as well be limitless. Time is ripe for most of us who spend 9 hours working on the same old job, same old role to rethink and challenge our status quo. More comfortable you are in what you do, the opportunity to grow is hindered. Time has come to challenge ourselves to go beyond what we have already achieved. 

May be you could be wondering why your next promotion is not working, what to do to ensure that you get your next promotion. I was going through a motivational video and the advice was very simple. You need to “Work on  Your Work”. You need to continuously improve on the way you work, how you work, processes or tools used, invest on skill building or it could be investment on a professional qualification. Unless you are willing to challenge yourself, our horizons will always be limited.

Be Different - Be an Eagle

Eagles Fly above the Clouds when it Rains

Nature is amazing. The way nature adapts with impossible solutions to problems is amazing and there is lot to learn in all aspects. I was going through this video and the presenter was taking this amazing example to depict how different animals adapt different approaches to the same problem. 

If you look at the sky when it is raining all of you can see birds flying all around searching for shelters under trees and other shelters. But there is this special bird that adapts a different tactic to the same problem of avoiding the rain. This bird does not fly in search for shelters, this bird flies above the clouds to avoid the rain. By this simple change of approach in solving the same problem, Rain is never an obstacle for the eagle to go its destination.

Steve Jobs way

Similarly in life also we come up with so many problems but we continue with the same approach even knowing that for a fact that it is not the ultimate solution. One of the amazing innovators in our own time Steve Jobs the master mind, Master craftsmen, specialist designer had the same attitude from him it was never about trying the same solution for the same problem. For him it was always about looking for ways and means to innovate , find better and effective ways and means of doing it better. If not for Steve Jobs all of us would be carrying with us the difficult to carry walkman CD Player with less storage space for our mobile entertainment. Steve Jobs saw the world differently he came up with this amazing concept of     i-pod which has changed the mobile market like a storm.

In our lives we should also challenge our perception, we should challenge our attitudes and thinking differently think innovatively. What is innovation from a conceptual framework Innovation is having a conceptual idea, Technical knowhow to execute the idea and the ability to commercialize.  But starting point to become great innovators like Steve Jobs starts from the little changes that we do in our lives, the little things that we do to innovate and improve our normal lives.

You might Die Tomorrow

One of the greatest psychological philosophies that Steve Jobs had was he always thought what if I die tomorrow. He had that feeling everyday and wanted to ensure that he wants to live the life he did. Who knows we might die today, tomorrow or day after tomorrow. Are we living the life that we want to live.

Gamification - New Performance Management Mantra

Traditional Performance Management Systems

There are many reasons why the traditional performance management systems fail. One of the most common reasons for these performance management systems to fail is the in ability to objectively measure a person’s performance, because performance is measured by people and human subjectivity can play a significant role in the accuracy of performance predicaments.

There are many evolved concepts of performance management systems like 360 degree appraisals, Balance Score card which attempts to minimize the subjectivity towards a certain individual. These performance evaluation systems are further strengthened through concepts like performance normalization which eventually increases the number of people who evaluate a single person’s performance leading to lower levels of subjectivity.

But still with all these evolved performance management systems in place don’t we still hear conversations, “He got a better ranking due to this manager and not because of he is a great performer”. Still these performance management systems have not been able to accurately diminish the top down approach to performance evaluation and possible subjective appraisals.

Concept of Gamification

Gamification is the new buzz word in the field of performance evaluation. Gamification techniques strive to leverage people's natural desires for competition, achievement, status, self-expression, altruism, and closure. For example game players play to earn more points and get a  good rank amongst the other game players. They are concerned about a socially engineered brand. Likewise evolved version of this concept is used in performance management.

Gamification utilized for Performance Evaluation

This challenges the traditional performance measuring mechanisms and takes performance measurement to a next level optimizing social networking dynamics. Rather than a manager evaluating the performance, the whole society evaluates the performance. For example an employee helps another employee on finishing some task where the manager would not have the exposure of this. Hence aspects like team working may  not be taken into consideration. But what if the second employee who was helped by the first employee goes and thanks him on a social network for helping him with the task. The concept of like’s, raves, badges are utilized by the gamification performance management system.

Through concepts like gamification a person is socially evaluated and also this encourages organizational wide appreciation. This will eventually mould the workforce into social team workers constructively contributing towards company growth.

Pricing your Product Accurately

In few of the previous blogs, I discussed a number of theories around strategy, strategic directions of the company and competitive strategies. Whichever strategy a company adapts, Pricing plays a significant role in adapting a differentiation or a cost leader strategy.  (Porter, M.E., "Competitive Strategy: Techniques for analyzing industries and competitors" New York: The Free Press (1980))

Buying behavioral analysts affirms the point that majority of lower, middle and middle upper class market segments are highly concerned on the price tag, and price plays a significant role in purchase decision making. From a seller’s perspective having the right price on the product will ultimately determine the successful sale or the product

There are three main views on Pricing strategies,

Economist View on pricing

In understanding the economists’ view to pricing, please see the graph which highlights the movement in supply and demand with Price and Quantity as key variables. As it is inevitable when the price is low there will be a significant demand on the product and as the price increase the demand goes down with affordability.

When the price is low, supply will be low and as the price increases there will more suppliers with the possible margin improvements due to price increases. Thus the ultimate price will be defined by the equilibrium of supply and demand.

Marketers View

Pricing plays a significant role in the marketers view towards pricing. As you already may know marketing tactical strategies are built around four main pillars which are knows as the 4P’s in marketing. 4P’s include Product, Price, Place and Promotions.  Pricing is the second most important pillar in marketing and as per marketers view the pricing is defined by the customer. As per the marketers view a product should be priced at an amount which the customer is willing to pay.

This is also in line with the Japanese concept of target pricing. Where the pricing for the product is first defined and then manages the cost structure to have an acceptable margin for the product.

Accountants View

 Accountant’s view to pricing is does not work on a hypothetical framework as the economist or the marketer’s view. Accountants view to pricing considers the total expenditure (Both Variable and Fixed) for the product and adds a standard profit mark up to arrive at the pricing for the product.

Three main pricing views takes into account different dynamics, a company to leverage on pricing as a key market strategy should take into consideration all these three views in deciding the correct price for the product. 

Managing your Personal Finances 1

There are so many discussions around defining an optimum equation to manage personal finances. Managing personal finances has become so difficult nowadays and many are drowned in huge debts. This vicious debt cycle starts right at the point a person starts earning money.

Second day at Work

The very first day we start working in our first job, the next day we will be getting a call from a fancy reputed bank offering a credit card. We think that these banks love us so much and they perceive us as wealthy men and the next thing we know, we end up with multiple credit cards. Credit cards nowadays come with fancy credit limits and into the bargain they couple credit cards with very attractive credit card shopping offers. All of a sudden we start spending forgetting whether we can afford or not.  Spending money Vs. paying using a plastic card psychologically affects the spending patterns and credit card companies successfully leverage on this. And this continues, then they offer us car loans, then housing loans and by the time we are in mid age all we will be having would be huge debts and higher percentage of income is spent on interest.

Overcome the Vicious Credit Cycle

How to overcome this vicious cycle? What are the specialist views on this vicious cycle? Rich Dad Poor Dad defines the ultimate finance freedom is where your investments generate earnings similar to your investments. Warren Buffet advises, that we should never depend on a single source of income.

Majority after reading these statements will say it is easy said than done. The starting point is to know what an investment is. In very basic terms it is an asset which will generate an income. The common assets that can generate income are publicly traded shares, savings accounts, fixed deposit accounts.

Do we need huge capitals to start investing? It could be 5% of the monthly salary or even 1% of the monthly salary.  If we start investing the investment would accumulate monthly and grow monthly. 

Increasing your net wealth can be done in two ways. You can increase the income, through multiple sources of income, investments increasing your asset base. Or you can reduce your costs. Reduce credit card expenditure which will result in decreasing both interest and debt costs. 

Personal Branding as a Rocket Science

There are so many discussions over the concept of personal branding. I did some research on this concept of personal branding to understand the underlying principles over it. Well it does not sound rocket science at all if you have a goal and an action plan to achiever the goal. 

What is your Brand?

If you take a brand like Body Shop for an example. What is the first impression that you get. It is a brand with a social purpose. Body Shop never use animals to test their cosmetics products. For us to perceive Body Shop as a philanthropic brand with a social purpose every time we see or hear about it, is a result of years and years worth of work. They knew how they want to position themselves in the market and they did it over the years keeping to its key principal never to test cosmetics on animals. 

Personal branding process is also similar. Its about how you want yourself to be perceived others. What values you want to be represented by. It is simple, for example if "Being Macho" is how you want others to perceive you, you better start going to a gym and karate classes so that you build your physical appearance to suit how you want others to perceive your self.

Action Plan 

First step,  is that you have to know exactly how you want others to perceive you.  These are called brand values. The key messages your personal brand represents. Next step is you need to have an action plan. The time span will vary based on the deviation from the current brand positioning. The time span will be longer if there is a significant deviation from the current brand positioning.

Well congratulations, with the amount of social networking in the modern days life makes easy to launch a good communication plan for your personal brand. Each and every post, each every page you like, each and every status update that you put represents what you are. You can take control of this. You can purposely ensure that your posts are in line with your brand values. 

Accepting the Motivation Cycle

What is the mantra for the optimal performance? Day in and day out management theories will talk about how to optimize performance, and there is a science supporting effective performance measurement systems. But at the end of the day it all boils down to motivating the workforce to perform at their best capacity.

One of the key weaknesses that I see nowadays is the whole practice of bench marking  I think we all should agree with the fact that different people are of different skill levels, different competencies. In my personal opinion a good manager should not push his team members to be someone they are not, a benchmark figure. A good manager will motivate an employee to reach their personal best, and will leverage on his abilities performing at his personal best. I have been lucky enough to be led by best managers in my short career span. They have adapted many different leadership styles to motivate their workforce and all of them were experienced and mature enough to know motivating the team is the only way to succeed, and they invest both financial and time resources in building the team with a long term view to exceling as a team.

But there are instances where your team is hyper motivated but you feel that your motivational levels are less than zero. This feeling forced me to do some research on the concept of self-motivation.

Whether we like it or not life is a cycle filled with ups and downs. Unless you learn to accept the life cycle and the cycle of motivation it will be difficult to succeed in the corporate life. At certain times you will be motivated with challenge and you will seek for responsibility and it will motivate you. But at times you will not want to take any responsibility and not face any challenge.

I had a discussion with a life coach regarding this matter. The simple advice he gave me Sajith accept the motivation cycle. The other important question he asked me was how bad I wanted to be successful and he asked me to watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPsnqwmn21g.

Most of us so badly want to succeed; we have our own interpretation of success. But do we actually do anything about it. He went into explain many people want to succeed but they do not take any actions to succeed. Desire to succeed without an action plan can demotivate anyone, hence it is the small actions that we take will make the difference. Accept the motivation cycle, have small executable actions which will keep on pushing you for success. Make things happen, do little changes to your life that will help you to succeed. 

Emergent Strategy

What is Strategy?

There have been many discussions

over the past years around the concept of strategy. Management Guru, Michael Porter defines strategy as the direction  a company should take. This definition expands the scope of strategy into wider array of possible sub definitions. Lets try to break this definition into understandable elements.

1) Long Term view on the future of the company
2) Does not cater to a set of actions but governs where actions should lead to
3) Strategic Apex (Top Management) must drive strategy

Examples of Strategies

Let us see some examples of strategies companies have adapted to get an understanding of the practical adaptation of the strategy concept. 

3M's Strategy is to Innovate.

3M is known for innovation. It has been among the top 5 most innovative companies for years. This strategy is governed by underlying strong KPIs like, 33% of the company revenue should be from products introduced in the last three years. These types of KPIs, directs the company towards the strategy to Innovate

Facebook strategy is to connect people. Any new project Facebook team undertakes will be driven with the direction to connect people. When they introduced the social tag, the intention was to connect people in the photograph. Like wise the strategy provides direction to a company.

Emergent Strategy

The traditional definition of strategy was challenged when Mintzberg came up with the concept of Emergent Strategy. Today's environment is highly volatile, no company can have a strict strategy. So Mintzberg view was strategy is not a hard and fast rule. It can vary depending on the environmental conditions.

Hard economic conditions would push a company to revise the Pricing policy, the product policy. In Sri Lanka during the times Economic Turmoil most of the packet products which used to be 500g or 1kg went into sachet small packets to make it affordable to the wider majority of people. I am taking Rin as an example. Rin is mainly targeted to medium class and it is considered as a high end product compared to other washing products. But with the economic turmoil it went with sachet products which expanded its market grasp to lower income families. 

Like wise Mintzberg insisted on the concept of strategies being emergent. Honda introducing bikes is another classical example of emergent strategy. PESTEL factors will have an impact on the trajectory of the modern organization and these factors will influence the modern organization to sway from the original destination to continue with the organizations effort to maximize shareholder wealth. 

Game On - Fight Your Competition

How do you manage your competition? This is the money question. If you are clever enough to manage, fight, and fight back your competition that is the success mantra to survive in the modern environment. There are many theories around how you fight offensive warfare against your competition. 

This post contemplates on revealing this accepted theories. Most of the theories have evolved with the evolution military strategy. Military strategies have been cleverly adapted in a corporate environment in fighting competition.

a. Frontal Attack

Frontal Attack focuses on direct attack, Head-on attack with your competition. You go ahead with same products fighting on functional benefits, similar prices tightening for cost advantage and fighting head on with promotional tactics. This strategy attacks competition in all 7 P's tactics. Adaptation of a Frontal Attack has so many risks associate with it since with this strategy they are competing with strengths. Hence Frontal attack is not the most advised strategy in competing.

In a Sri Lankan Context Munchee biscuits adapted a frontal attack on the "Cracker Market Segment", Malliban was the market leader in the cracker market with its superior Maliban Cream Cracker product. Munchee went with a frontal attack with an improved product (Heavy Investment on Manufacturing Methodology), in par pricing with a huge investment in promotions Munchee was able to attract the market in an accelerated rate. And now Munchee is the market leader in the Cracker market. 

2. Flanking Attack

Flanking attack is direct adaptation of military strategy. In war attack is first done on the weakest point the competitor. In a corporate environment too the same strategy is adapted companies attack on a weakness. A weakness could be an untapped market, Product benefit not offered.

This was inevitable in the Dialog and Mobitel (Sri Lankan Communications Service Providers) battle grounds. Mobilte launched this huge marketing campaign targeting the governmental sector, state employees. Dialog is the market leader in the communications market in Sri Lanka. Although Dialog had an excellent product portfolio catering to a wider spectrum market segments. But this state sector market segment was un-touched. Mobitel Acquired this market segment with their "Upahara" Package and was successfully able to strengthen the Mobitel brand with many values in positioning the brand as a brand which serves the community. 

3. Encirclements Attack

This is a multi-pronged attack aimed at Diluting the defender's ability to leverage on its strengths. In this strategy the competitor is ready with to head on the defender in any aspect. The attacker is one step ahead all the time and is has the flexibility to adapt to any action which is taken by the competitor. 

4. Bypass Attack

Adapting this strategy attempts to avoid confrontation with the competition by moving into new and as yet contested field. This might be developing new products, diversifying into new Geographies. This strategy attempts to avoid competition and seek to capture market through by passing. 

5. Guerilla Warfare 

With this strategy the attacker attempts to do as much as damage in a limited time frame. Involves in small attacks in different locations. In applying this in the hospitality industry a Guerilla Strategy would be 5 star hotel which has less market share announcing a significantly reduced price for a buffet for a short period of time. This will surprise the market leader keeping him in question whether to retaliate, whether to wait, whether to attack. 

Choose your battlegrounds wisely and adapt these well practiced and accepted strategies.

Gen Y and Motivation

Over the reason past we could see that there is significant urge for career development from the youth employee segment. Youth which represent the Gen Y have different levels of aspirations in lives and are more concentrated on fast evolving careers. Being motivated by challenge, Gen Y constantly seeks opportunities to progress in their careers and this continuously challenges the traditional human resource management approaches in motivating employees. 

I always thought how motivation tactics should evolve with the significant differences in Gen Y behavior and attitude to work. 

Hierarchies are important?

Some companies are re-considering to restructure the flat hierarchical structures  which were implemented earlier to increase decision making speed. Restructuring into multiple hierarchic will ensure  more levels of vertical career growth opportunities.  Is it growth that the Gen Y is after?

Fun Filled Culture

This is the new trend where companies focus on implementing a fun filled culture. This radical shift from process orientation to a fun filled culture is mainly taken with an Assumption that Gen Y is motivated with Fun. There are many schools of thoughts on this tactic. Gen Y has its own way of having fun, whether the company culture is fun or not, they ensure to have loads of fun through parties. 

Money - Always work

Whatever said and done, money does play a major role in employee retention. We have seen numerous instances where Gen Y reconsidering resignation due to monetary rewards the company is willing to have. 
But to what extent can money motivate the Gen Y.

Challenge

Gen Y's make it a habit to prove a point. They always want to prove something. This psychological characteristic is utilized by companies and tend to challenge Gen Ys. Challenging working environments does motivate Gen Ys


In near future Gen Ys will take a higher proportion of the working staff. Thus companies need to adapt different strategies to motivate Gen Y's

AVK - You know him?

Know him before building rapport 

There have been so many schools of thoughts in defining a correct method in defining the best ways of building rapport. In all those methods the key starting point of building rapport is identifying your target market or the person that you want to build rapport with. There are so many different methodologies in identifying or categorizing the person that you want to build rapport with. I learnt this method in one of the training that I attended which aimed on improving communication skills. I have been using this since the day I learnt this and this has given me good results. 

According to this method there are mainly three types of people.

1. Auditory 

Auditory person is a person who gives importance to auditory messages. The key sense which drives decisions is through sounds. Auditory people will have a nice voice, and likes to associate people similar voices confirming to the importance of "likability" concept in building rapport. When you are talking to Auditory people they will use worlds like "Sounds Great", "Nice to hear", "Heard that the company is doing well". 

I am sure you might have met numerous people using this types of words while they speak. If you further observe you could see that they have nice voices, they listen to music. In your next powerpoint presentation that you do to an Auditory category person make sure you speak out the message clearly. No matter how lucrative your powerpoint slides be the auditory person will grasp what you communicate from your voice. Using a correct blend of Vocal variations will help you to ace a power point presentation to an auditory person.

2. Visualistic

Visualistic sees the world through images. They are known to be imaginative, they remember things through images. Logic for them will be a link between two images. Visual people are easy to identify as they always wear nice clothes with matching colors. Ensure the clothes are ironed properly and comes with neat hear. For them the image that they create to the external world is very important. 

When communicating they will use phrases like "I See", "Nice to see", "Looks good". If you are doing a presentation to a visualistic it should be full of images. They grasp messages through images. A pie chart would makes much sense to a visualistic than taking him through a balance sheet.

3. Kinesthetic

Kinesthetic people are very difficult to understand. They take messages from the outer world couple with their emotions. You might have heard many instances people complaining "It just doesn't feel right", "I don't trust him". Kinesthetic are not totally driven on logic but they often go with the sixth sense. 

Managing a kinesthetic person is very difficult and the only way is to build trust. Trust could be build with delivering what is expected. Or sometimes they say multiple touch points will help in building rapport. 

Auditory, Visulistic and Kinesthetic

Each person may  not fall exactly into one of the mentioned categories. But will have some of the characteristics. Understanding and analyzing and categorizing helps to succeed in the process of building rapport. 

Make you Team the Best

Making your Team the Best

I was going through some videos on simple techniques to categorize corporate employees. I came up with Amazing concept of categorizing employees through a framework called BEST. 

B - Bold

E - Expressive

S - Sympathetic

T - Technician 

Know your BEST

Bold category of people are highly charismatic and are keen on decision making. They take bold decisions and are clever in driving to achieve goals and objectives. Their are likely to be perceived as constructively impatient or tireless. 

Expressive people are excellent communicators with excellent imagination skills. They are deep thinkers and does not take things for granted.  They walk the talk with in depth understanding. They have significant skill to effectively communicate their thoughts. And expressive are seen as visionary people

Sympathetic people are social workers. They are sensitive to others needs and wants and often are perceived as excellent team players. Technicians are high logical thinkers, they spend more time in mastering rationale and relationships between action and cause which makes them master technicians. They are often seen as a highly intellectual set of group.

BEST Sent for Shooting

One of the interesting ways of understanding this classification of people is defining them through a Pistol Shot training. A Technician would spend hours studying about the correct technique for shooting, they will know the correct angle of shooting, how to hold the gun correctly and all the correct techniques of shooting. 

While Expressive category will come to Pistol Shooting training without attempting they will talk about Pistol Shooting without trying as if they are already masters, and in no time everyone at the training will be listening to the expressive category following their views. Sympathetic category will come and try to help others on how to practice shooting skills. 

Bold category will come and start shooting and then they will start aiming. Bold category are action driven, always want to do something. Always keen on decision making. Bold category wants others to follow them, they want to drive the decisions. 

Correct Equation

If you are forming a team of four people and you put four Bold you will end up making it a battle field. You put four technicians together in the team you will end up with an accounting firm or an investment analysis firm. Thus you should understand the potential of each category in building up the BEST team. 

You should FIRE the Star Players

It is a given fact nowadays that people do not stay in one place quite unlike the Japanese Culture where people stay with a single employer for their lives and employers taking care of employees for their lives. Nowadays companies also ensure that their HR strategies are strong enough to absorb alarming attrition rates. 

A company can never run on star players it is always the average people that ensures the achievement of corporate goals and objectives. He went on explaining how demanding star players are and their increased bargaining powers due to attraction by competition.

What is the correct formula or the correct balance a company should keep between star players and average? 

The categorization of employees as star players and average is mainly done through a performance appraisal system. Performance appraisal systems have matured with significant evolution in the area where a new science exists to accurately measure performance of employees. This cumbersome process filters a percentage of people who are identified as key players/star players in achieving corporate goals. The rest are in a common category called average.

Companies nowadays have the hygiene benefits associated with the performance appraisal outcomes and these benefits ensures lower level of dissatisfaction among employees. I always had the question why companies are not matured enough to understand the difference between motivation and reducing dissatisfaction. Their could be different motivational desires for star players like recognition,  challenge. Instead companies tend to overload the star players with good perks, where they could anyway get from any other company.

But the average, they get less paid, get less attention and further demotivated. This average accounts to about 90% of the company. A company can't achieve anything without the significant contribution from this less concerned group of employees. Even the so called star players perform well with the contribution from the average. 

If the money invested on retaining the star players are utilized on the average it will give a better ROI. 

I am of the view point that if companies cannot identify the difference between motivation and reducing dissatisfaction companies should fire the star players.