51 posts on sales, startups, leadership, and AI.

We wanted to remodel our new house and sought the help of a renowned Interior Designing Company and got the estimates.

They gave us three estimates. It was reasonably a big size interior work. So they gave estimates accordingly. We chose the middle one and paid 1/3 as advance.

Due to the pandemic, the work got delayed in-between and was moving in a slow phase. In the meantime, we have decided to add some more additions to the current one. The trouble started then. The designer from the architect team, the site coordinator, and the materials coordinator started giving their opinions. When we correlated those opinions, we have started feeling a lot of gaps in our requirements.

We chose an inbuilt dishwasher and they were mentioning a standalone. We chose Philips lighting. They were discussing Hafele. We chose a double bowl sink from Hafele. They were mentioning another brand. We chose a wooden design gypsum ceiling. They were discussing a pure wooden one. We chose a quartz countertop and they were discussing granite. So on and so forth.

We called the sales guy who closed our deal and showed our unhappiness. The answer he gave was shocking to us. He said this is all happening because we have changed our requirement from the initial one that we agreed and signed. We asked in what way it can be a problem when we are always asking for a revised estimate, where our current estimate will be more than 35% from the original one.

He told me he is responsible only up to the first estimate and contract execution and thereafter only the execution team is responsible.

I have immediately correlated this to the Software services side. This is exactly the main hidden reason for most of the bitter relationships between a company and a client. Nobody is ready to understand and accommodate the client here. In my case, it is additional revenue to the company. But even if the client is ready to cut short certain features, a company should be ready to accommodate it. The difference in the amount can be considered as the marketing cost to bring on new clients if we keep this client happy.

A sales target cannot be the revenue alone. It must be both the Revenue and the New Clients. But the revenue must be divided into two. Revenue from the existing client and revenue from the new client. If we notice the trend, the revenue from the existing clients will always be more than the revenue from the new clients in a given year.

Whatever is said and done, today's new client is our existing client of tomorrow. So retaining an existing client will bring in more revenue in the current year than the new client. And this is a cycle. A recent study shows that we need to put in 60% more effort to bring new business than to get additional business from our existing clients.

So teach your team about the importance of keeping our clients happy. Here I said team and not "sales team" because it is always a collective effort to keep the existing client happy.

The airline industry has long been driven by innovation and digital transformation. Technological advancements can be the difference between profitability and stagnation for Low-Cost Carriers (LCCs), whose business models rely on efficiency, cost-cutting, and maximizing ancillary revenue. One such game-changer is Amadeus's introduction of DAPI (Digital API), which is reshaping how LCCs manage their digital distribution, customer engagement, and revenue streams.

What is Amadeus DAPI?

Amadeus DAPI is a modern, RESTful API platform that allows airlines and travel agencies to connect seamlessly to Amadeus' vast ecosystem. It supports New Distribution Capability (NDC) standards and provides modular, scalable, and real-time access to airline content, bookings, payments, and ancillary services. For LCCs, which often operate with lean IT infrastructure, DAPI offers a lightweight, flexible, and efficient solution to expand their distribution reach without significant overheads.

1. Improved Direct Distribution Control

LCCs have historically preferred direct sales channels (own websites/apps) to avoid third-party fees and maintain control over their low-fare strategy. However, traditional Global Distribution Systems (GDS) lacked the flexibility to cater to LCCs' unbundled fare models.

With DAPI, LCCs can now:

• Integrate easily with OTAs and third-party platforms without sacrificing control.
• Push dynamic, real-time fare and ancillary offers, ensuring consistency across all channels.
• Customize offers based on customer preferences, preserving the LCC brand identity while expanding visibility.

2. Efficient Ancillary Revenue Management

LCC profitability heavily depends on ancillary services such as baggage fees, seat selection, in-flight services, and priority boarding. However, promoting and cross-selling these extras through traditional channels has been limited.

DAPI's capabilities enable:

• Bundling and unbundling flexibility: Airlines can dynamically present different fare families and ancillaries, tailored to customer behavior.
• Upsell opportunities in the booking flow: Agencies and partners can easily access and sell ancillaries, maximizing revenue.
• Real-time updates on ancillary inventory and pricing, which is critical for flash sales or route-specific promotions.

3. Lower IT Costs & Faster Time-to-Market

One of the challenges LCCs face is balancing technology adoption with tight IT budgets. Building custom integrations for each partner or OTA can be costly and time-consuming.

DAPI offers:

• Pre-built connections to major OTAs, metasearch engines, and corporate booking tools, reducing the need for expensive custom development.
• Cloud-native architecture that scales based on demand, eliminating the need for heavy infrastructure investments.
• A self-service developer portal, enabling faster API integration and quicker deployment of new features.

4. Enhanced Customer Experience Across Channels

LCCs historically struggled to deliver the same personalized experience across third-party platforms as on their direct channels.

With DAPI's advanced API capabilities:

• Travelers receive consistent, personalized offers, regardless of where they book.
• Loyalty programs, promotions, and tailored fare bundles can now be easily integrated and presented through OTAs or corporate channels.
• Faster response times and real-time availability improve customer satisfaction, especially during peak demand periods.

5. Compliance with NDC Standards

As IATA's NDC adoption accelerates, LCCs need to comply without overhauling their systems entirely.

DAPI supports NDC natively, offering:

• Future-proof compliance without disrupting existing workflows.
• Interoperability with various partner systems, ensuring smooth data exchange.
• Simplified shopping, booking, and servicing processes aligned with industry standards.

Conclusion

For Low-Cost Carriers, the introduction of Amadeus DAPI marks a pivotal step toward achieving digital maturity without the typical overhead. It empowers LCCs to expand their distribution reach, maximize ancillary revenue, and deliver a unified customer experience—all while keeping operational costs in check.

In a hyper-competitive market where differentiation is key, adopting DAPI enables LCCs to stay agile, customer-focused, and profitable in the long run.

Why TechAffinity?

TechAffinity, with its proven track record of delivering innovative and scalable technology solutions for the airline industry, is well-positioned to help Low-Cost Carriers (LCCs) seamlessly adopt and integrate Amadeus DAPI. Leveraging its deep expertise in API integration, cloud-native development, and airline-specific application modernization, TechAffinity can accelerate the implementation of DAPI, ensuring a smooth transition with minimal disruption.

From customizing the API workflows to aligning with the LCC's unique ancillary and fare strategies to providing end-to-end support for system integration, testing, and optimization—TechAffinity ensures that LCCs can fully capitalize on DAPI's capabilities, driving increased revenue, enhanced distribution, and superior customer experiences.

SAAS (Software as a Service):

Model: Subscription-based.

Payment: Customers pay a recurring fee (monthly, yearly, etc.).

Access: Users access the software over the internet; it's hosted by the provider.

Upgrades & Maintenance: Handled by the vendor, often included in the subscription.

Flexibility: Easy to scale up/down, cancel, or switch providers.

Examples: Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Zoom, Slack.

Key Point: You don't "own" the software; you're paying to use it as long as you need.

Perpetuity License (Traditional Licensing Model):

Model: One-time payment.

Payment: Customers buy the software outright with a large upfront fee.

Access: Own and use the software indefinitely (perpetuity).

Upgrades & Maintenance: Usually require separate annual fees for support or updates.

Flexibility: You own the version you bought, but may lag behind newer versions unless you pay for upgrades.

Examples: Older versions of Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite (before Adobe moved to subscription).

Key Point: You "own" the software forever, but ongoing support/updates may cost extra.

Business Angle:

SAAS = Recurring revenue stream for the vendor, predictable cash flow, easier for customers to adopt.

Perpetuity = Big upfront revenue, but less predictable future income, harder to retain customers long-term.

When to Choose SaaS?

• If you prefer low upfront costs
• Need frequent updates and support
• Want cloud accessibility and collaboration
• Your business scales and needs flexibility

When to Choose Perpetual Licensing?

• If you want a one-time purchase with long-term savings
• Need full control over software without worrying about subscriptions
• Use software that doesn't require frequent updates
• Operate in an offline or highly secure environment

Many startups and even publicly listed companies continue to burn cash—can they withstand public scrutiny? Will investors continue to embrace new-age companies, or will valuation corrections hit hard?

Over the past five years, 91 companies have gone public globally, with 13 IPOs in India in 2024 alone (Source: Angel One). But how many of these companies have managed to turn a profit?

Profitability Trends Post-IPO

In the U.S., the percentage of companies achieving profitability after their IPOs has fluctuated significantly. According to Statista, 81% of companies were profitable post-IPO in 2009. However, this figure dropped to just 22% in 2020 before recovering to 46% by 2023.

In India, the scenario among IPO-bound startups is mixed. As of early 2024, only four out of 12 startups planning IPOs were profitable, including Go Digit, Unicommerce, PayU, and Garuda Aerospace. The remaining eight, such as FirstCry, MobiKwik, and Ola Electric, reported combined losses exceeding ₹8,000 crore.

These observations highlight that while some companies achieve profitability post-IPO, a significant number continue to operate at a loss, particularly in technology and biotech sectors. Investors must conduct thorough due diligence when evaluating IPO opportunities, considering both current profitability and long-term growth prospects (Source: Statista).

Challenges Facing Modern SaaS Companies

SaaS companies today face numerous challenges that hinder sustained growth and profitability. Key factors include:

1. Market Saturation & Competition Intense competition leads to price wars and shrinking margins. Differentiation is difficult as new players disrupt established businesses.
2. Rising Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) Increasing costs of digital ads and paid marketing make customer acquisition expensive. Free trials and freemium models are losing effectiveness, demanding costly enterprise sales efforts.
3. High Customer Churn Rates Customers frequently switch providers or consolidate tools. Poor onboarding and lack of product stickiness contribute to high churn.
4. Economic Uncertainty & Budget Cuts Businesses are prioritizing essential tools and cutting non-essential software expenses. IT and procurement teams are scrutinizing ROI more than ever.
5. Freemium & Discounting Pitfalls Over-reliance on free-tier users limits revenue conversion. Deep discounting to close deals damages long-term profitability.
6. Shifting GTM Strategies & Lengthy Sales Cycles Internal conflicts arise between PLG (Product-Led Growth) and traditional sales models. Enterprise sales cycles are lengthening due to more approvals and customization requirements.
7. Poor Unit Economics & Profitability Challenges A "growth-at-all-costs" mindset has led to unsustainable burn rates. Investors now demand a clear path to profitability, forcing cost-cutting and operational efficiency.
8. AI & Automation Disruptions AI-driven solutions are replacing traditional SaaS tools. Companies failing to integrate AI effectively risk obsolescence.
9. Regulatory & Compliance Hurdles Compliance with laws like GDPR and CCPA adds complexity and costs. Security breaches and regulatory failures can erode customer trust and lead to legal repercussions.
10. Talent Retention & Leadership Challenges

• Retaining top talent in engineering, sales, and customer success is becoming increasingly difficult.
• Leadership struggles with balancing innovation, cost-cutting, and scaling effectively.

The Need for Course Correction

The SaaS industry must take a step back and reassess its strategies before the number of failed startups and struggling SaaS companies reaches an unsustainable level. Investors and founders alike must focus on sustainable growth, clear profitability roadmaps, and strategic differentiation to navigate the evolving market landscape.

The success of a startup isn't just about how much money the CxO makes; it's about how effectively they drive sustainable success within the industry.

As of April 1, 2025, the possibility of a U.S. recession within the next year is a topic of active discussion among economists and financial institutions. Goldman Sachs has recently increased the probability of a U.S. recession to 35%, up from a previous estimate of 20%. Similarly, J.P. Morgan's chief economist has indicated a 40% chance of a U.S. recession this year.

However, it's important to note that these are probabilistic assessments, and a recession is not a certainty. Economic forecasts can change based on evolving policies, consumer behavior, and global economic conditions.

A recession in the USA will bring both challenges and opportunities for the Software industry. The extent of the impact will depend on the company's financial health, industry focus, adaptability, and customer base.

1. Revenue Slowdown & Customer Churn

Reduced IT Spending:

• Businesses (especially mid-market & enterprises) will cut discretionary software expenses and delay purchases.
• Customers may downgrade subscriptions or switch to cheaper alternatives, impacting Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR).

Cash Flow Challenges:

• Late payments, contract renegotiations, and cancellations may strain cash reserves.
• SMBs dependent on one-time license sales or project-based revenue will struggle more than those with strong SaaS models.

Opportunity: Software that improves operational efficiency (AI-driven automation, cybersecurity, cloud cost optimization) may see sustained demand.

2. Increased Competition & Market Consolidation

Price Wars & Customer Retention Battles:

• Larger software firms may aggressively cut prices or bundle services, putting pressure on smaller players.
• Free trials and extended payment terms could become a necessity, squeezing SMB margins.

Rise in Mergers & Acquisitions:

• Weaker SMBs may exit or be acquired, leading to industry consolidation.
• Companies with solid financial health and niche positioning may attract buyers.

Opportunity: SMBs focusing on customer-centric pricing, superior support, and feature differentiation can retain and win market share.

3. Workforce & Cost Adjustments

Hiring Freezes & Layoffs:

• SMBs may pause hiring, reduce team sizes, or shift to contract-based roles to manage costs.
• A decline in venture capital (VC) funding will force startups to focus on profitability over aggressive scaling.

Rising Offshore & Automation Trends:

• More SMBs will outsource software development or adopt AI-based automation to reduce operational costs.
• Freelance and gig-based workforces may expand, replacing full-time roles.

Opportunity: Companies investing in lean operations, automation, and remote teams can remain agile and cost-efficient.

4. Shift in Customer Demand & Industry Trends

Discretionary SaaS Categories Will Suffer:

• Non-essential software like marketing tools, analytics platforms, and employee perks software may see budget cuts.
• Sectors like hospitality, retail, and luxury goods may reduce software spending.

Resilient & High-Demand Sectors:

• Mission-critical software (e.g., cybersecurity, cloud cost optimization, fintech, healthcare tech) will retain or grow market share.
• Companies offering AI-driven efficiency, compliance, or automation solutions will benefit.

Industry Diversification as a Survival Strategy:

• Software SMBs may shift focus to recession-proof industries (e.g., healthcare, government, supply chain).

5. Funding & Capital Constraints

Venture Capital (VC) Will Dry Up:

• Investors will favor profitability over high-burn growth, making funding rounds harder.
• Bridge rounds, layoffs, and cost-cutting will increase in the startup ecosystem.

SMBs Dependent on Credit May Struggle:

• Higher interest rates & stricter lending will limit access to growth capital.

Opportunity: Profit-focused SMBs with strong ARR, cash flow discipline, and efficient GTM strategies will attract investor confidence.

How Software SMBs Can Navigate the Recession

Cost Optimization & Efficiency

• Reduce burn rate (cut non-essential expenses, renegotiate vendor contracts).
• Optimize cloud spending & infrastructure costs.
• Leverage AI and automation for internal efficiencies.

Customer Retention & Revenue Protection

• Focus on customer success & flexible pricing to reduce churn.
• Introduce high-value, lower-cost alternatives for price-sensitive clients.
• Expand globally to diversify revenue streams.

Strategic Positioning & Market Adaptation

• Pivot toward recession-resilient industries (fintech, healthcare, cybersecurity).
• Explore M&A opportunities if capital-constrained.

A USA recession will stress-test Software SMBs, separating resilient businesses from vulnerable ones. Companies that focus on efficiency, adaptability, and customer value will emerge stronger, while others may face consolidation or exit pressures.

1. Generative AI (GenAI):

Definition:

Generative AI refers to models that can create content—text, images, code, music, video, etc.—based on patterns learned from training data. Think of it as a very smart assistant that responds to prompts with creative or informative outputs.

Examples:

• ChatGPT writing an email or essay
• Midjourney generating an image
• GitHub Copilot writing code snippets

Generative AI responds to prompts but doesn't take the initiative or make decisions autonomously.

2. Agentic AI (Agent-Based AI):

Definition:

Agentic AI refers to systems that can act autonomously toward a goal. These agents can plan, make decisions, take actions, and interact with tools or environments on their own.

Examples:

• AI agents that perform tasks like booking travel, managing emails, or handling customer support
• AutoGPT or BabyAGI style agents that decompose a goal into subtasks and execute them
• AI that can read a report, write a summary, send it by email, and schedule a meeting, all without needing user intervention for each step

Agentic AI is goal oriented, autonomous, and can act without continuous human input.

Which One Is Preferable?

It depends on the use case. Generative AI is preferable for creative content generation, brainstorming, ideation, and co-writing code or content. Whereas for customer service automation, personal productivity assistants, and autonomous business process execution, it is always better to use Agentic AI.

• Generative AI is like a very intelligent content generator; you ask, and it answers.
• Agentic AI is like a virtual employee; it can understand goals, plan steps, and execute.

If you're in strategic operations or business optimization, Agentic AI offers far more transformative potential, especially for process automation, decision support, and scaling execution without scaling headcount.

As we navigate through 2025 amid a prolonged U.S. recession, the IT outsourcing industry is undergoing transformative shifts. Faced with tighter budgets, increased financial scrutiny, and workforce optimization mandates, companies are reevaluating their outsourcing strategies. Economic pressures, rapid technological advancement, and shifting client priorities are driving businesses toward leaner, more agile, and value-driven outsourcing models.

1. Embracing AI and Automation

In response to labour cost pressures and the need for operational efficiency, AI and automation have become foundational to outsourcing strategies. Providers are deploying AI-powered tools like chatbots, predictive analytics, and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to reduce manual workloads and drive down costs. With U.S. companies under pressure to do more with less, AI-managed customer interactions are projected to handle 70% of service engagements by year end, helping improve service levels while significantly cutting support costs.

2. Prioritizing Cybersecurity and Data Privacy

Economic downturns often see a spike in cyber threats, making cybersecurity a non-negotiable priority. Outsourcing partners are now expected to provide enterprise-grade protection with capabilities such as end-to-end encryption, multifactor authentication, and compliance with regulations.

3. Growing Demand for Specialized Skills

Amid hiring freezes and internal budget constraints, U.S. businesses are outsourcing to fill critical gaps in high-demand areas such as AI, cloud computing, and cybersecurity. Outsourcing has become a strategic lever to access specialized talent quickly and affordably, enabling innovation without the fixed overhead of full-time hires.

4. Shift Towards Outcome-Based Models

Cost-conscious enterprises are moving away from T&M contracts toward "outcome based outsourcing" models. These agreements minimize waste and maximize accountability by aligning payment with clearly defined business results, making them particularly attractive in a recessionary climate where ROI must be demonstrated.

5. Nearshoring and Regional Outsourcing

With global supply chains under pressure and the need for real-time collaboration rising, U.S. companies are increasingly turning to nearshoring and regional partners. This approach supports better communication, reduced geopolitical risk, and improved time zone alignment, making it a pragmatic strategy during times of economic uncertainty.

In a recession-defined 2025, the IT outsourcing landscape is marked by a blend of cost-conscious innovation, elevated security expectations, and a growing emphasis on sustainability and inclusion. Companies that proactively adapt to these realities, by forming strategic partnerships with agile, tech-savvy, and ethically aligned outsourcing providers, will not only weather the storm but emerge stronger and more future ready.

Why did the Indian IT stock market lose 7%, nearly ₹2 lakh crores (around $23 billion) on February 4, 2026? This was the steepest fall since March 2020.

Yes, it followed the US market decline the previous day. But after studying the sequence of AI releases and their enterprise implications, this was more than just a spillover reaction.

I'll go ahead and start with the background.

OpenAI and Anthropic are separate, competing AI companies today. But they share historical roots and similar research philosophies.

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers, including Dario Amodei, who was previously VP of Research at OpenAI, and Daniela Amodei (his sister). They left OpenAI due to differences in views on AI safety governance, commercialization pace, and long-term alignment strategy.

So in many ways, Anthropic is a spin-off founded by former OpenAI leaders.

Both companies emphasize responsible AI development, alignment research, and frontier large language models. However, their approaches differ. Anthropic's flagship model is Claude, while OpenAI builds the GPT-4 and GPT-5 family models.

Now, what triggered the fall?

On February 3, 2026, the company that strongly positioned itself around AI safety governance, Anthropic, released 11 plugins inside Claude Cowork.

On paper, they looked like business productivity enhancements:

1. Productivity Plugin
2. Sales Plugin
3. Marketing Plugin
4. Bio-research Plugin
5. Plugin Management
6. Product Management
7. Data Plugin
8. Finance Plugin
9. Customer Plugin
10. Legal Plugin
11. Enterprise Plugin

But the real shock came from the Legal Plugin.

This plugin, available in the premium version of Cowork, can review contracts, identify NDA violations, detect copyright infringements, draft agreements, and handle multiple routine legal workflows. Essentially, it automates a significant portion of corporate legal tasks.

Now consider the economics.

Legal professionals often charge $100–$500 per hour for such work. If a $20 monthly license reduces the need for large legal teams or expensive legal hours, what happens to the premium legal services ecosystem? And that's just one plugin.

If the remaining 10 plugins mature and get deeply embedded across enterprise sales, finance, product, and research, the implications are far bigger. This is not automation of a task. This is automation of functions.

As markets absorbed this, another announcement amplified the anxiety.

OpenAI released GPT-5.3-Codex with a bold statement on X: "You can just build things." The company described it as its first model that was instrumental in creating itself.

That line alone raised eyebrows.

GPT-5.3-Codex is focused purely on coding. In an industry where IT services and software development form the backbone of revenue, a coding-native AI system that accelerates or partially automates development directly challenges traditional service models.

On the same day, Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.5, claiming that five hours of human work could be completed with a single instruction.

Whether one agrees with that claim or not, the direction is clear.

AI is compressing human effort.

When AI can draft contracts, write production-ready code, manage enterprise workflows, and potentially improve AI systems themselves, markets begin to reprice the future of knowledge work.

So the 7% fall was not merely about one bad trading day.

The fear wasn't about IT services revenue next quarter. The fear was about human effort compression.

• If AI can build software.
• If AI can draft contracts.
• If AI can manage finance workflows.
• If AI can review research.
• And if AI starts improving AI…

What happens to human purpose inside knowledge industries?

February 4 may not be remembered just as a market correction.

It may be remembered as the day investors publicly acknowledged that the AI acceleration curve is steeper than most industries are prepared for.

As a startup our first requirement is the best team to work with us. When I say team, I don't mention just humans who are SME alone (Subject Matter Expert). We start our business with a vision. If we are not able to sow our vision and mission into our core team then we surely cannot reach our goal at the correct phase.

So what is required?

The main need to have a strong core team is to transform our vision and mission through them. If the core team, even one of them, is not convinced with our vision then our failure starts there.

Is it an easy task to implant our vision and mission to our team? The answer is NO. It is not an easy task. It will take months together or even years to build the core team with the same vision. Once it is done we are all set and the team can take us to the goal and even beyond.

The real problem starts here again. The human ego or human expectation is not a stable target. Two moving targets are the toughest to handle. When we say we have vision and mission for our company, we have to accept that every human has their own vision and mission of their life.

As a startup we should learn to bridge the gap.

How will we do that?

The universal standard is, we will show them the roadmap of their growth with us. In the initial period their goal of growth will be a constant target. But when they see their growth through us, their goal of growth will become a moving target. Can we judge this as right or wrong?

No again. We are not here to gauge the growth of anyone. The problem starts when the shift of our vision is not in phase with them. So either one will get fed up with the other.

The solution is don't feed them fully. Leave an acceptable vacuum on their goal achievement so that they will know the value of what we are giving. Else they will expect to grab more than they deserve. It's not their fault. It's human psychology. If we are not able to maintain the acceptable vacuum on the roadmap of their growth, automatically their expectation will overshoot than what they actually can.

Eventually the fault lies on us. Since we are not able to gauge the growth vs expectation we start losing our core team which will be the last thing we like to happen in our business.

Now correlate the title picture with this concept and you can understand this concept!

Like I said in my earlier blog, "Copycat or Lack of Innovation", any entrepreneur should have a strong concept before he starts his venture. New ideas and brand new concepts are very important to maintain the growth of any business.

A business could be product based or service based. This article was written on the service based perspective.

Initial Period

A software service company can be started based on two scenarios. There is a strong financial back up to build step by step and reach a sustainable stage, OR we already have a client who is ready to give projects so that we can grow the company on the back of that project.

On both the above two scenarios the initial growth is very steep. Risk level is low and building the team is not a big task or deal.

There is another scenario which is very rare. Business getting started by SME – Subject Matter Experts. Initial period of this scenario will be very tough and also the risk level is very high. But this will be a real Unique achievement.

Team Size Vs Revenue Ratio

On both the scenarios, one thing can be a common factor. We will never start a business as a 100 member initial team. It will be from 1-10 and then it will grow to 11-50, 51-200, 201-500, etc.

Initial strength up to 200 members is what we normally see from any start up company in the first 3–5 years.

Alternatively on the revenue side it is easy to reach .75 to 1 Million dollar revenue in the first 3–5 years along with 51-200 member company.

But there will be a stagnation stage at this level for every business. Either we will see the revenue remain the same for years along with the number of team members or the revenue will not change but the team size will come down to 120–160 level.

Both the above scenarios will require a total new business and operational change with a new set of clients and deal sizes. If a company is able to cross this chasm within a period of 12–18 months then their growth will accelerate to the next stop gap at 1001–5000 member company and 12–60 million growth.

This science is a cycle and it will happen at each level of the growth.

What will make you cross that chasm?

It can happen only if we have a strong vision and all new Next Level Growth Plan with real leaders with you to implement it. It will be a real litmus test for any Entrepreneur at this stage and those who have the following commitment only can survive that and cross the chasm.

What are those Commitments?

"Dominate or Dissolve. No more Compete"

Yes, we can take a tough stand to Dominate the market with our New Strategy or all new Next Level Growth plan or to Dissolve or windup the show forever. Because we cannot call ourselves an Entrepreneur if we Compete with others with a stagnated Revenue or Head Count or Same level of Clients for a long period.

So remember the phrase "Dominate or Dissolve. No more Compete", if you really want to get called or call yourself an Entrepreneur!

It's scary nowadays to read about the shut down of companies which were earlier earmarked as the most successful startups. Example Quirky today. Actually speaking their products are really good. But what went wrong?

The bubble burst is yet to come. Before that we are witnessing many companies that are getting shut down. First of all we need to understand that all startups are not successfully running forever. Even the Venture Capitalists are not expecting all their ventures to run successfully. They are quite happy if they make money from one venture out of every 10 they make.

Groupon has shut its operations in 7 countries and laid off 1100 employees. Quirky has filed bankruptcy. We are getting to know these because they are becoming NEWS in the media. But there are 100s of startups that are getting shut down even before they take off. No one is getting to know that.

What will be the impact if we get to know about all these failed startups?

We always see the successful startups and draw a line. But we never even get to know the failed startups at all. A couple of years back I met a CEO of a startup in USA who was manufacturing stands for holding books and laptops and tablets. The speciality of this stand is that we can adjust it to suit all positions even when we are lying down or slouching on the couch, so on and so forth.

We had dinner together and he was very positive about it. I had a question in my mind. This is nothing but our table-mate which is already popular in USA that time. Last year I saw him working as a Technical Lead in another company. When I enquired I came to know that his business didn't take off well and so he shut it down. His product would have been a successful one if he had thought of tweaking it so that people could carry it along with them wherever they travel. Just to use at one location we already have table-mate and its many replicas. This is a Good Idea But in a Competitive Market.

In 2012 I met another CEO who was trying to raise money for his new concept of Internet for Blind people too. The concept is still a most innovative one and I have even experimented with his POC which is designed for Patients to access their records at a particular Hospital and make new appointments or to access their pathology report or for anything related to hospital management through the net. His aim was to expand it to all possible verticals. But 3 years passed and it didn't take off well. This is a Business Model Problem. He doesn't have an internal competent team to build and iterate the product.

We can pass negative comments on every concept we get to know. But the CEOs are able to see the positive aspects more than the negative aspects. I wish all these CEOs had an R&D team which gives every finding in a very candid way. This is evident because of Resisting Deep Thinking and Analysis.

Last year I met another friend of mine with the concept of bringing one perishable product door to door. Just one product and then based on the success he planned to bring in many more in the same way. He can sell that product only for a quarter in a year and he doesn't have a plan to run the business for the next three quarters. He did a good move. Since he was asked about that Business Model for the entire year, he stopped it at once and saved the money and time. The best part is he DIDN'T IGNORE THE FEEDBACK.

9 out of 10 startups fail. This is a hard and bleak truth. The one who WINS becomes the yardstick for everyone to get into new startups. This should not be the real model. They should be the motivation. But the experience of those who failed should be the yardstick of what not to do in business.

Despite taking off, 1 in 10 businesses crash land. This is nothing but a Management Problem of not knowing how to scale up or not knowing how to recover from small hiccups in the initial period.

The top most reason for any well took off business to crash land is their abnormal rapid growth in the first 3–5 years where they fail to meet the cash requirement with their growth rate.

The one who succeeds has done something different than what the other 90% of people have done.

Well begun is half done. But don't forget that we have another half to be done correctly to call it a SUCCESSFUL Venture. Else every business will crash-land for sure.

This proves that getting funded alone will not assure your success in Business.

Safe Sailing

After 20 years of experience in Building a Team, Operating them for the first toughest 5–7 years and then making it sail smoothly is my zest. I always feel energetic whenever I define the rule and then follow it myself so that I can be a role model for my team.

Success is not an easy path to travel to any destination. It requires a lot of planning, idealising and implementation. When we start reaching success, it will be the sweetest thing in the world.

I have faced the question of "Am I a part of the board or the founders of the company" that too when I travel with my CEO on roadshows. I used to reply, I am sailing on a safer side so that I will get my pay check (cheque) at the end of every month without fail. It's not an easy task to become a Successful Entrepreneur. Until the starting point of success, Entrepreneurs are the ones who never get paid or financially benefitted. A person like me cannot afford to take that risk in my life.

The Unique Entrepreneur

If I am asked to answer the question I have faced most number of times in the last 5 years, then it is, "Why Am I Not an Entrepreneur." My unchanged answer to everyone who has asked me till date is "I know my strengths and weaknesses as a professional person and so becoming an Entrepreneur is not my cup of tea."

I always wonder why I should become an Entrepreneur in my life. Just because I have "Ideas" can I call myself an Entrepreneur? If you analyse the needed qualities of an Entrepreneur then I am sure that most of the so called Entrepreneurs are amateurs in their profession and not serious.

The statistics show that earlier 1 in 10 entrepreneurs reached success. After the 2000 and 2007 recessions, it has increased to somewhere around 1 in 30.

The main problem with Concept Based Entrepreneurs is, most of them are not confident enough to say that their Concept or Idea of their business is "THE UNIQUE ONE" in the market. They always pacify by saying that though there are others with the same concept, their concept is different from others. In recent days the most spoken about and funded companies in India are also falling into this bucket only.

Businessman Not Entrepreneur

They get funded millions and millions. But can they claim that their concept is unique in the market? No, they cannot. My question to these Entrepreneurs is "If you are not able to bring a unique Concept to the table then how can you call yourself an Entrepreneur?" You are nothing but another Businessman. That's all right.

If you took the core concept from the company where you were working, modified it with customer feedback, white labelled it and then called yourself an Entrepreneur, how can you justify this?

If getting funded is the only quality needed to call these guys Entrepreneurs, then of course these guys are THE ENTREPRENEURS. No doubt about that.

Don't Compare – Differentiate

Coming back to where I left off earlier, Real Entrepreneurs come with their own unique Vision. They give the spark to ignite. They lose the most when they fail. They know how to bounce back even if they go bankrupt.

Intrapreneurs are those who take the spark from these Entrepreneurs and make the flame burn continuously. They work within the organisation whereas Entrepreneurs work outside the organisation. Intrapreneurs don't need to worry about the funding. It's the toughest task assigned to Entrepreneurs.

Though all Entrepreneurs are Independent, they bear the most risk in the organisation. If an Entrepreneur is compared to a Spark plug then an Intrapreneur is compared to the piston which accelerates and runs continuously so that every other part runs smoothly and safely.

Both are different and being an Intrapreneur requires more in-depth knowledge in Operations and Business Management. They set the rules. They have to follow those rules so that others follow without any hesitation. They have to walk the talk so that the organisation is set to fly on the correct course to reach its destination.

Since the Entrepreneur and Intrapreneur roles are entirely different we can only Differentiate them but cannot Compare them.

Entrepreneur, Intrapreneur and Employees

If vision is the role of an Entrepreneur then we can say mission is the role of any Intrapreneur. The only common point where they both meet is the Mission. Defining the mission is also again the role of the Entrepreneur only. But driving the mission to Success is the role of an Intrapreneur.

As mission happens to be the intersecting point between Entrepreneur and Intrapreneur, business involvement happens to be the intersecting point between Intrapreneur and Employees.

It will be a little smooth sailing for an Intrapreneur if he becomes an Entrepreneur. But an Entrepreneur should never take the role of an Intrapreneur. You have proved something more than that. You should look out for an Intrapreneur to run the organisation if your vision and mission is of greater success.

Funded

On a day to day basis every layman will hear the word "Funded".

I am writing this article as a layman who is seeing the activities of funded and non funded companies around him every day.

The illusion being created by the so called Funded companies will surely try to crush the non funded companies' growth. If a company is totally depending on one revenue stream alone then they will be the most affected soon.

Brain drain onshore is now Brain Theft.

The funded companies are hiring people at a very unrealistic salary. The non funded companies hire normal guys, train them in live projects and make them up and running to handle the load of the projects. The funded companies will easily target and hire those employees with higher salary and indirectly crush those non funded companies.

The main reason the predominant funded companies are lavish on salary is they don't pay from their earnings. They start this lavish salary culture only after they get funded. Until then they are ready to operate out of a two bedroom apartment and can operate effectively with limited human power on a market realistic salary. They provide the vision, get the fund and spend it. There is a huge difference between the way funded companies and non funded companies operate.

To get acquired

The non funded companies carry their vision and mission for the long term whereas funded companies carry their vision and mission for the short term with one goal: "to get acquired."

So the moral responsibility of any funded company is to make quick money and sell. If they were not able to take off properly they can shut down and wind up the show. Their loss is less here.

But this is not possible for non funded companies because their loss is huge here.

Bubble burst

The record shows the number of successfully took off funded companies is less when compared to successful non funded companies. Even if I start funding, my goal would be first to secure my money rather than profit.

Once I cross the chasm of securing my money then my next goal will be how much I can make as quick money rather than profit in the long term. This will eventually end up in the concept of bubble burst, where, as a funder, I would also wish to see the bubble burst happen so that I can close this venture and start my next round of speculation soon.

Revenue Stream

The non funded companies normally cannot shut their company very soon. They will have to fight up to the last moment with the hope that there will be some light at the end of the tunnel.

This is because of two reasons. First, this is their money and second they cannot put this loss on someone else's shoulder and run away.

For companies whose revenue comes from two streams and who are non funded, they are the best placed to withstand any turmoil.

2016 will see a lot of closures of funded companies and non funded companies will see a lot of brain theft by the funded companies.

Prepare yourself to handle the situation!

For 12 of the last 20 years, I have been engaging in International Sales and so have come across many Product Developments from our Services Division.

Startups / Entrepreneurs / Funding are the best-used terms I have come across in the last 10 years or more.

Following are what I have learned from the mistakes which will take any startup to failure.

• Unsearched Concept
• Wrong Partnering
• Poor Quality MVP
• Unrealistic Spending
• Unwanted Quick Hiring
• Not Having Plan-B

Unsearched Concept

I will start a product company once I have a great idea and enough funds, either my own or from my circle. But is that all we require to start a company? The answer is NO.

How much market research have we done about the concept or idea which we are considering developing as a product carries more weight than our idea or concept.

But how many of us are spending our valuable time and initial money on this research?

Out of the many products we have built, very few made our eyebrows raise at the concept. The rest always gave us the feeling that "haven't we seen a similar product already like this?"

The answer will always be "no, we have a unique concept in this than that product."

Not everyone can come out of a Product Development Company and start a new company with enhanced features of the same product and succeed in the industry.

Our concept is just the very first step of a journey of miles to make to succeed. As soon as we finalize our concept then we need to spend more time researching the concept. Not just days. Maybe even weeks and months to shape up our concept.

When we start to do that we can see an invisible pattern from the history of many startups which "failed" to take off.

The biggest push for our success should come from the history of successful people. But our path to follow or pattern to follow should come from the history of people or concepts which failed.

Wrong Partnering

Not all friendships can make a successful partnership in any Startup. We need to analyze our core strength and should find a partner who has something else than what we have.

Example: If we are good in sales then we should have a partner who is good with technology. Even though money plays a vital role we need to have a good combination of Techno-Sales partnership to make a good product company.

Even if we hire a Product Head, that will not substitute for having a Technical partner or Sales Partner or vice versa.

Poor Quality MVP

Our MVP should be a real miniature of our product. When I say miniature it doesn't mean that we need to have a miniature of all the features that we are going to have in our product.

Build an MVP in such a manner that whatever we are going to showcase to our funders will make them immediately understand the next phase of features we are going to build on top of this.

Unrealistic Spending

Listen to the story of people who have already walked the path and draw a pattern. Depending upon the product, certain spending will carry more priority than other spending. This differs from product to product and we should take an appropriate call on each spending.

Unwanted Quick Hiring

The main problem of quick cash drain or derailing of our plans mostly happens because of our unplanned, unwanted quick technical hires.

At the very initial stage, we don't need a sales team or a marketing team at all. We need only a product development team and that team doesn't need to be big enough to develop the entire product.

Our product, until we get funded, is ONLY our MVP. So even one developer more than our requirement is a big mistake. For any ad-hoc needs, we should always have a service company in our known circle to step in and help us on resources or development.

Not having Plan-B

Having a Plan-B doesn't always mean that we are preparing for failure. Having a Plan-B could be the course of the next planned action to correct the path. We can call it "course correction."

Well begun is half done. So if we prepare well then we can take off well too. To prepare well we need to follow the pattern formed by our seniors on this line and it should echo the "Déjà vu" whenever we are on the right path or on the wrong path.

Success is determined. Plan it and achieve it.

The answer could be yes when compared to 2014 and 2015, where it was about 7.1 Billion USD and now we are not even sure of reaching half of it.

According to Traxcn data, Indian tech startups raised nearly 959 million dollars in the last quarter of 2015, which is less than a third of the 3.2 billion raised in the earlier quarter. But it is again just half of what they raised during Q4 of 2014, which was 1.9 billion.

Does that mean the Funding has dried up totally?

No, the number of startups that arose in the last two years is huge and most of these startups got really well funded in 2014 and 2015.

But the real problem started here. Apart from the very well known Startups, many of them are not able to get the next level of funding. Especially sectors like Food and Real Estate, which got hit hardest. The companies that failed to get the next level of funding are predominantly from these segments.

There is huge competition in these segments and so the factor that determines the uniqueness of these companies is missing.

Real Scenario

The real scenario is that investors are becoming more concerned about large funding, and if they really see some traction in any such startups then their expectation of stakes is really high when compared to 2014 and 2015. This clearly shows that investors are aiming for quicker profitability.

On the other hand, the Startups are on a different path. Since they have understood the market very well, their main aim is to get funded as much as possible, as quickly as possible, and exit as quickly as possible too.

To be frank, you can very well see that there is not much long term aim or goal for most of these small startups.

Cleanup

This is nothing but a real froth which will not continue forever. There needs to be a cleansing required, and it has already started. There will be a vanishing stage for most of the "one more startup" companies, following which the funding will once again come to the normal track.

Did the froth affect the genuine Investors? No, funding for the deserving startups is still going on as normal.

Need of investors

Investing is the prime purpose of any investor. But the investing firm also needs to sail through this slowdown. End of the day, the balance sheets of these investment firms are going to impact their existence too. They want to show a good balance sheet compared to their rivals for their existence too.

Plan B – Course Correction

As I always say, the best practice of any firm or industry is to have a Plan B. That is the course correction. This is exactly what is happening in the Indian Tech Start-Up Funding Industry.

Indian Tech startups got heavily funded in the last 2 to 2.5 years and many of them are not able to cross the Series A funding stage. This is the major reason for the funding industry to slow down and take a course correction.

So there is no need to worry that the funding industry has completely dried up. It didn't and it will not either. This is just a cleansing happening. Moreover, the so-called funding industry has nothing to do other than fund again rather than keeping their money parked in one place. They are not meant to park money. They are there for the purpose of rotating the money and growing it as much as possible.

Conclusion

The amount of money and the number of startups funded in the last 2 or 3 years is phenomenally high and either they should get funded to the next level or shut down. This has already started and that is what is being seen as a slow down. The sooner this cleansing happens the earlier the funding will get back to its original speed.

Are we blowing small things out of proportion, or is our startup situation really this bad?

I remember the 2007 recession and this was exactly the scenario on all tech news sites that time. Social media was not this prominent then. But since I was in the US at that time, I read a lot of shut down news like these.

America was mature enough to handle the 2007 recession because they had already learnt from the 2001 recession.

Recession 2001

2001 was the dot com bubble burst and though it was recorded for 8 months only, the effect lasted for three years and unfortunately, Sep 11 happened at the tail end. The total unemployment was just above 6.3% then. It was 10 years after the earlier recession, which gave a big room for companies to play safe (the earlier recession was during 1990-91).

Recession 2007

But the 2007 recession was a housing bubble burst with banks going into a huge financial crisis. The recession lasted for one and a half years with the unbelievable unemployment rate of 10.3% and a GDP dip of -4.3%. It was called the Great Recession of the US after the 1929-33 recession.

Since all of the above was centred in America, they had the courage and experience to overcome those.

Asia's Great Recession

The current Indian IT recession is of Startup and Marketplace together. The profitability of this predicted 2016 recession would be as bad as 10%, predicted by Morgan Stanley.

Even though the economy of India seems to be at a steady growth rate, the Government will not be in a position to bail out anyone here since it is from the Startup and Marketplace sector and not from large players.

Even if the Indian Reserve Bank wishes to lend a hand to these Startups and Marketplace players by lowering the lending rate to banks, they don't have much elbow room this time like they did earlier to come to the rescue.

Recessions are compared to Flu. They will surely affect you even if you are in the vicinity. This recession was earlier mentioned as "around the corner." But the signs we are getting across the globe, particularly the hopping of the Chinese bubble, have now made it fair to say "India has already started walking into the recession."

Recessions are very much part of macroeconomics that happens from time to time across the entire world. Since this time it is going to be the Great Recession of Asia, everyone is keeping their fingers crossed and making all arrangements to cross the chasm peacefully.

Flipkart cannot be a yardstick or trendsetter to be worried about. Flipkart is one such operational failure and not an idea failure. So don't take Flipkart "alone" as a yardstick and worry.

As I mentioned in my earlier blog, goo.gl/EPF6vQ, there are many reasons for a startup to fail. Also, it is not true that every startup will fail because of the unavailability of funds.

It's been almost 5 years since the funding fever started and it was at its real peak during 2012-14. After 2014, the slowness in funding started and now it is taking a different course from the concept of "funding."

Before taking any further step, just sit back and evaluate whatever you have done with your startup till date and take the correct course correction. But you should try this exercise only if you are ready to accept your mistakes and, more than that, ready to correct yourself.

Else this exercise will not yield any expected result. The foremost action to be taken is to cut down the unwanted salary paid to people who are really not required for your company.

They may be very good in their respective subject. But they may not be required at this stage in your company. So do the evaluation properly. Don't send out any required resource from your organization.

We have done this exercise and we were able to increase efficiency by 23% in the last 2 quarters. This has given us a ray of hope. We have started seeing a direct increase in our profitability.

So before running after "funding" just look back, evaluate, and redo your math and see what exactly your financial situation is now, and if it really matters then go for funding. Else increase your sales by deploying good sales professionals and sales methodologies.

In spite of this, funding is not going to happen the way it did earlier. So do I close my company then? No. After every trend change in the business Industry, there will be a new trend taking birth. Take the track record from 1986 if you have the data. There was a paradigm shift in the global business line happening after every slowdown.

If you don't do the course correction within that time, you will end up in failure. If you evaluate 1M as your requirement and compromise with 250K, you are already screwed. You cannot hold your breath and sail until the next round of funding.

What is the new trend then?

It is called Consolidation. Yes, don't just go for the funding. You could have seen the real scenario by this time by going after the funding.

The new trend is, take Flipkart and Snapdeal as an example. They are now in real bad shape on their revenue. But do you think that they will wait for another round of funding or just go ahead and shut the business? Neither, they will go for strategic purchases.

In the year ending 31 March 2015, there were 69 technology M&A deals in India and in the fiscal year ending 31 March 2016 it doubled to 146. That means 146 startups had already taken a wise decision to make the required profit by taking the course of M&A rather than waiting for funding or the next level of funding.

Of course, those large giants are not going to give a premium value for the forthcoming acquisitions. They will make you settle for a much lesser price.

End of the day, the trend is, nobody is ready to spend much cash on transactions and wants to take the path of stock transactions only.

Make Money and Sell else Sell and Make money!

Vision:

I have a wonderful concept for business.

Mission:

I am going for funding.

Above is the common scenario we can see now. No need to think of your funding at the very initial stage as long as your business is unique in nature.

To build we need funds. But to run, the product should earn at the appropriate stage. If the product is not earning enough to have a smooth run, then I am sure the product is not "unique" or didn't impress the market as you think.

Determine the purpose of raising money. If the purpose is to build the basic model of your product then you are making a mistake.

If you are not able to nail down the absolute necessity for raising the money then you are again making a mistake.

You cannot go to market if you don't have any uniqueness in your product. The market and the VCs will have seen many products of the same nature as yours and so it may neither impress the market to buy nor the VCs to fund.

If you can afford it then you should bootstrap and bring the first version of the product to the market. See the impression it creates in the market and then draw the roadmap for expansion and go for funding.

Everything comes with a "price" and so does funding. You have to determine the price you can afford to pay by getting the fund. Else your identity will be lost in front of your product.

Bootstrapping is considered the best option depending upon the nature of the product you are going to build and the span it is going to take. If these are well within your limits then it is better to bootstrap.

If the supply is getting drained then work out the best way to go to market for funding. Don't bring in funding too early. Else it will get diluted early too.

Also, make sure that you are aware of the following when you are going to pitch to a potential VC.

• Understand the complete weakness of your product along with its uniqueness.
• Don't bloat your projected revenue to an unrealistic number.
• Understand your big competitors and compare yourself with them in all forms and shapes rather than hiding them or exaggerating yourself.
• Don't approach every known VC. This will dilute your business identity.
• As the VCs evaluate the businesses to be funded, the same way you should do a thorough evaluation of the VC firms too.
• Make sure that you are not pausing or using too many fillers during your prime pitching.
• Don't do the routine presentation. Do it in a very innovative way. Your pitch and your presentation should impress the VCs from the very first instance. Else even if you go to them for many levels of discussion you will not succeed.
• The bio of your team should get sold before your product does. So bring in the right people with you. Else it will become the worst reason for your failure.

Getting Funded

Rather than considering Success as the ultimate goal of any business, New Age Entrepreneurs are considering "Getting Funded" the ultimate success of their business.

Yes, your business will not get funded unless they see some flesh on the bone.

If you are getting funded for the expansion of the business on the basis of success it has already shown, then it is acceptable. But if you are not able to run the company because of financial crunches and then go for funding, that will not be considered an intelligent move by an entrepreneur.

Business getting sliced

Another important point to be noted here is, your hard earned business is going to get sliced and shared with another party, just for the money. From that moment, you cannot have the pride to claim this as your brainchild because the other person is rightfully going to take his slice out of it. Apart from this you will lose your freedom to run your business.

Loaned rather than Funded

There is another hidden drawback in this. If the person going to fund you does not have any basic knowledge of your business, then your freedom is totally screwed. Here it is better to call it Loaned rather than Funded. Also, if you are getting funded by small VCs, their own work tension and pressure will also impact your business.

End of the day, your pride and satisfaction as a business person itself will be in a stack.

Can you avoid this?

Yes, you can.

You need to keep the concept of Funding on a back burner until you have used all your trump cards.

As the VCs choose who to fund, you need to choose whom you are going to get funded by. Seldom will just shutting down solve more problems than running on funded money.

Keep in mind, if you have shut down your first business without getting funded, then understand that you are the best placed to run a funded company at a later stage.

If you take "pride" as the yardstick and go for funding rather than shutting down, your self-esteem will be lost and will eventually stop you from getting into any new venture.

If you keep "getting funded" as the goal of your business, then you are reinventing the wheel again rather than reading from the past market during a bubble burst.

So don't get into the wrong assumption that "Getting Funded is Success."

My Presentation @ NASSCOM Product Forum

Date: 19 December 2016

Venue

Hall: Board Room, Cyberpark,

Nellikkode PO, Kozhikode-673 016

How do you quantify your #success as an #Entrepreneur?

Starting or running a company is not a huge task. But running a successful company is the matter here.

But again, what is success?

In today's hyper entrepreneurial world, success means a "boatload of money" and for some, getting "funded or acquired."

But — did we ever think that there is another Entrepreneurial world still in existence where success is not quantitative and only qualitative?

The company where I started my career was shut down in just 5 years. We were all asked to search for jobs and we did. 20 years later, we are now in a WhatsApp group with the #CEO, #CTO, #CMO, and #CFO of that company. The former employees started a private chat and that is when we realized that everyone had the same feeling. Yes, we are in these successful top management positions because of the foundation we got at that first company.

Is this not the great success of that company and its management? Of course, by the stereotype of today's entrepreneurial world, that company is an utter failure.

I am not an entrepreneur. But I am a successful professional. I have handled more than 2000 team members in my 22 years of career and I am very proud and happy that I have been able to show the right path to my team members all these 22 years and they are doing super duper well. I am not claiming their success is because of me. But I am convinced that I am also a minuscule reason for their success.

Maybe the world would say otherwise.

But do I need to worry about that? If my mind is happy to think of that then what more do I require to call my career a success? Someone else's valuation? Then I won't be a successful professional throughout my life.

If a company shuts down due to a financial problem or any other failure, at first, it will be very painful and can lead to an inferiority complex. But that will only be at the starting stage. If your self-consciousness tells you that you did your best and it didn't affect anyone, then you learned a lesson from that venture. That's all.

We listen to, watch, and hear only the stories of successful people in terms of money and not in terms of good deeds. That is the problem of society and not us.

Millions of #startups are getting started every year. If you keep on counting only the successes, then you are fooling yourself about the real success of your career or profession.

Foot Steps and Foot Prints

Two types of scenarios exist in professional life. First, following Foot Steps, second, creating Foot Prints.

Following footsteps requires a lot of compromise and enthusiasm to learn. Whereas creating Foot Prints requires a lot of confidence and innovation.

The latter will become an entrepreneur and the former will become a business person. Though we tend to think business men and entrepreneurs are the same, the above is the difference between these two.

Whether you are a businessman or an entrepreneur you should have Plan B in place to run your show. Every entrepreneur should keep in mind that Plan B should not be people oriented. But Plan A must be people oriented only.

Plan A

If you want your idea to become reality, even if you are backed by Capital, you need PEOPLE to carry out your vision and mission. This helps your idea become reality. Then your realised idea can start earning for you. You are a perfect Entrepreneur only if your idea starts to earn for you. Else you are just another short time Amateur Entrepreneur ONLY.

Your core people should start building your company with their teams under them. Management should make sure that this core team is well equipped and empowered to carry out these tasks. Even though you have handpicked these core team members, you cannot expect everyone from your core team to be of the same caliber. It is your management skill that will better utilise their individual capabilities and form a fully functional core team.

If the core team is trained and given tasks up to their limit, that will help them expand their team size and in a short duration you can realise your company has crossed several milestones on the growth front.

Can this scenario continue?

No it will not. Because every individual will have their own ambition in their career and life. On the other hand your core team will have learned a lot of additional skills which they will love to show off in front of others, who would really appreciate that more than you can. If their increased remuneration also gets added to this then they will surely try to unfold their wings and start flying on their own.

In spite of the above situation being true, every Manager will have “that one person” who will not leave in spite of knowing all the above. If you get one, then you are the most successful professional person. Wish for one!

Plan B

Losing your core team is inevitable for sure. What will be the next step? That is what is called “Plan B.”

People are the core of the growth and success of any company. There is no substitute for that.

But people should not drive the company. Your people should drive the process of your company and if that happens, then all you need is KT time and not individual presence. Time invested in formalising the Process by any Management will give huge returns compared to any other form of investment, including investing in individuals. End of the day, individuals will leave you for their own aspirations, however much growth, knowledge and money you bet on them.

Plan A Vs Plan B

Being said, can we invest in process and run the company without people, or invest in people and run the company without process? Neither is possible and this is the core issue for many Entrepreneurs whose vision ends in failure.

You should invest in both side by side, else you will be LEFT ALONE in the middle of the road. This scenario will happen to most of the companies that are on the growth path year after year for the first 5 years. But if you have crossed the chasm of 5 years then you would have automatically formalised some processes in operations which will eventually lead you to strengthen your Plan B and carry your company forward smoothly.

Sales is the Face and Marketing is the head of any organization. It is very true and if we don’t understand the difference then we will end up hiring the wrong person for the right job.

Sales Vs Marketing

To get into that we should know the difference between Sales and Marketing. Whenever I get a chance to interview sales guys I ask them this question for sure.

Most of them will fail to explain it. Some will explain it in a very professional way. I will then ask them to summarize it in a single line. I have seen 99% fail to explain it.

Maybe I am expecting them to tell me what I wish to hear, that could be the reason. The answer I always wish to hear is “Sales is an art and Marketing is a science.”

This is the reason we have Marketing as a discipline even in Business Administration courses and there is no specific degree for Sales. You can teach marketing to any person. But you can only train and bring out the naturally occurring sales capabilities of a sales guy. If you force sales onto a person who doesn’t have the flair for it then he will surely fail.

Who should I hire?

International Cold Calling sales teams have existed for only the last 13 years at most, and even of those, very few companies have had that capability in-house for more than 5 years. Most other companies have the conventional face to face meeting model, with sales guys or an inside sales team fixing the meeting and seniors going to do the real sales face to face.

So if a company wants to set up a new sales team, they will eventually look into those companies which specialise in selling through cold calling and hire from them.

Typical Interview with those sales guys

Interviewer: Hi, how are you?

Sales guy: I am good.

I: Can you tell me about yourself?

SG: I am so and so, working with so and so company and have closed nearly 500K out of two deals this year, both F2000 clients.

I: (in his mind voice) WOW

I: Were you able to reach your target?

S: Yes, I even got adjudged the best sales guy for reaching my target last year.

I: What are your salary expectations and notice period?

Typically it will go on and they will hire that guy.

By the end of the sixth month this guy will be the worst performing guy and either we will have fired him or he will have left the organisation.

I have seen this in many companies out of my experience.

What could be the reason the best performer of the earlier company is not able to perform here?

The reason is us. Yes, it is us!

He said he closed 500K with two F2000 clients. We typically took that as “he closed it.” The real scenario could not be the same.

He would have reached the right person with his cold calling skills and the brand of his earlier company would have taken care of the remaining steps to get that 500K deal.

Here, we have seen 500K, F2000, one year target, etc and failed to see the real fact that he was not the reason for any of the above — he was reaching the right person through his cold calling skills and only his company was able to do the rest.

Conclusion

He is not just the nonperformer, we are also partly to blame for the total failure. We have overrated his capabilities based on whatever he bloated up and told us during the interview, and failed to judge his real capabilities.

So whenever you are interviewing someone from a very successful company for your sales team, try to evaluate his personal capabilities rather than what the company was able to achieve through his cold calling.

Typically, if your company has fewer than 150 employees, then avoid hiring sales guys from companies with more than 200 employees.

One good idea out of 1000s will give birth to a startup. It is the fiduciary responsibility of any Founder to evaluate all the 1000s and choose the best.

Never start a business if you don’t have some knowledge about the new business you are starting. After choosing the right idea out of the 1000s, spending enough time gathering sufficient knowledge and history about that concept should be the first stage before doing market research about the new idea or concept.

After spending on all of this and investing the first chunk of money, we will make our concept take off and start showing growth.

Here is where we will form our core team to take the business further. Each member of the core team should not only work as an employee but should also consider themselves a founding member of the company/team.

If we are able to get a core team with this virtue, I bet there won’t be a stage of closing down the business.

This applies and plays a vital role not only in founding any company but also in starting a new business unit within an ongoing company.

There will be differences of opinion among these core team members, both conceptually and on the nature of the work. The duty of the person who balances these and runs the show is called a “leader.”

Two types of people

In spite of being a leader, there will be two types of people who will become the real bane of the core team by playing a spoiling game.

They are:

• People who believe responsibilities are to be given rather than taken, and
• People who believe they should be the key member on all initiatives.

Both of them are the real bane of the core team. They not only spoil their own roles but also spoil the morale and cohesion of the entire core team. Both of them will knowingly or unknowingly inject negative thoughts into the minds of everyone around them.

How to identify them?

It is one of the tough jobs of any leader of a team or a company to identify these people. Because their thoughts would have already taken deep root in the team, and if any action is taken against them for any genuine reason, it will be seen as they are being vindicated.

1. Both of these characters would have been outstanding performers but started showing a slowdown now.
2. They would have the best knowledge of their respective roles but started playing the silent spectator in recent days.
3. They would have been the most flexible during the starting days but have become very rigid now.
4. The first one would have started to whine about their current responsibilities and will not show any interest in taking on new responsibilities.
5. The second one would not have completed the earlier given role but would assume he is smart enough and expect to be made the key player in all new initiatives.

How to eradicate them?

Even after many personal discussions, their ego will not allow them to accept reality and change. We will tolerate them for months just because they were the most wonderful people we had earlier.

But the need of the hour will not allow us to give more room to tolerate them. So rather than tolerating them, it is better to let them go so that at least we can maintain the friendship with them.

With a new company and new environment, they will automatically revert to their original capability and flexibility.

So it is good for both the company and the individuals to shake hands and “call it a day.”

During the initial stage of your business, you will concentrate only on revenue. Later this will move to profitability. But once you reach a stage of a steady stream of revenue with profitability you will start slicing and dicing the revenue. This is when you will first concentrate on the share of revenue from repeat business.

New business gives room for your growth acceleration. But repeat business gives stability to your business.

Take, for example, if your total revenue is 10M and if you have a track record of 4M in repeat business year after year, then you should never reduce your yearly target to 6M in new business. You should again keep 10M as the target for the year from New Business.

This will give a huge growth acceleration and out of my experience, I will say that you should concentrate on keeping your operational cost within the repeat business revenue and use the revenue from new business for venturing into new ideas or expansion.

Apart from the revenue part, there are also other important key factors we can get from our repeat business.

1. Strategy

Repeat business is the best contributor to designing the growth strategy of your company. You can get an in-depth vision by analyzing the data of the repeat business in terms of Technology, Customer Satisfaction, and the common needs of these customers, so that even with a very small tweak you can make magically positive changes to your business.

2. Understanding the work culture difference

This has proved to be the most important factor in the success or failure of the relationship.

It will take time for the customer to understand your work culture, and the same way for you to understand the work culture of the client. I have seen many business relationships fail during the trial project or after the first project itself.

It will take its own sweet time to understand both sides, and particularly if it is offshoring then it will take much longer than near-shoring. Once you both cross this chasm then it will save a lot of time in the execution of the project.

3. Best Practices

Even if you have a defined business practice for your company, because of repeat customers and businesses it will be easy for you to adopt a different practice with different clients. This is initially not possible with new customers as it may sometimes hurt the relationship itself.

How can you increase your repeat business?

It is not an easy task or a quick task to accomplish. To understand this you should understand when you will call your business a successful one or not.

The best answer I can give is the quote from Ilya Lichtenstein: “it usually takes at least 5 years to build a company to exit or profitability. They’re built piece by piece, making one user or customer at a time, getting to the next milestone and waiting for the next major opportunity to reveal itself.”

What is the right percentage to have in repeat customers or revenue?

It is practically true that you have to run a business for 5 years before you can call it a profitable one or not. Until then you have to struggle and put in your best possible effort to accomplish the task of running it.

There is no exact percentage to cap this at. But the industry norm is to be between 25-50%.

If we have to make a call at the end of 5 years then you should be getting between 5-10% of your revenue from repeat business, or at least by the end of the third year your repeat revenue should be above 25%.

If you are able to cross 50% in the 5th year, then you are very well placed in the market for the next 3-5 years minimum on profitability. If this is achieved then your focus should shift to New Business with 30% growth every year.

If the above is reached in a Small and Medium Business in the IT service Industry, then you will be at a headcount of 150 in the 3-4th year, 250 in the 5-6th year and would have crossed 500 by the end of the 7th year.

So concentrate on New Business for the first 2 years, then Repeat Business till the 5th year, and then onwards your business will accelerate exponentially as you will have already started splitting the revenue between new and repeat businesses successfully.

The best question in the current entrepreneurial world is, “Do we need a Strategist?”

We can conclude with an answer only if we analyze this situation in depth. Let us break this into two major divisions of an IT Company: the Sales team and the Development team.

Let us take the Sales Team into our analysis first. If we bring a Strategist into the team, then they will say the following:

• I want independence
• I will form the strategy
• If that strategy gets implemented correctly, we can generate revenue.

Now on the Development team:

• I want independence
• I want to implement what I have learned in my previous companies
• If that strategy gets implemented correctly, we can develop projects seamlessly

The above statements will always give very high confidence in our growth. But the situation will change if the following happens:

Sales side:

• I will train someone to implement my strategy
• So that person is responsible for the result and revenue and not me.
• If that person fails, then we need to change that person and bring in a new one.
• And this change happens on every failure.

Development side:

• I will train someone to implement my strategy
• He should handle the projects
• He is responsible for the utilization and realization
• I am not here to handle escalations and failures.

It is better not to have such a Strategist incurring that amount of expenditure and time. What is the use of their strategy if they do not know how to implement it or do not want to implement it?

In a Small and Medium Company, a strategist who doesn’t know how to implement or doesn’t want to implement the strategy is a burden. On the other side, if the company is funded or loaned, then they don’t need to account for this expenditure loss because it is not their money getting wasted. If a company runs on its own revenue, this loss due to the expenditure is a loss of profit.

If a Strategist is not aware of how to implement the strategy or does not consider it their responsibility, then it is always better to hire executives/developers to run the team.

This makes much more sense given the current situation in the industry. The ultimate goal is to generate revenue with or without a Strategist.

The company was formed and is running successfully with an already existing strategy. If we bring in a New Strategist to implement a new strategy, then that change must bring in new revenue. Else that change is a waste of time and money.

Unless the current strategy is not generating any revenue, the new change should not overturn the existing strategy.

My opinion.

The biggest reason for many failures is keeping things on the to-do list for a longer time. We fail to understand that others are fighting hard to fill the gap during your “longer period.”

Others turn longer periods into shorter periods for the clients, and so the client goes with them.

Success requires constant review to make sure that we connect all the dots without missing even one.

We feel elated when we get one such success!

At any level of the organization, never accept back-to-back calls or meetings. Calls and meetings are not rituals. They are steps with follow-ups. So after every call or meeting, take a break of 15 minutes to recollect whatever we discussed and script an action plan around it.

The same way, before every call or meeting, take 15 minutes of prep time. This will help us to ask more focused and productive questions.

So eventually there should be a 30 minute gap between two calls or meetings.

Growth is not about how much you earn or how much you spend. It is a multi-faceted question to be answered.

Some of the few questions are:

• Are you cutting the salary check without any delay year after year?
• Are you able to pay all the bills before the net period?
• Are you able to sustain the revenue if not growth?
• Are you able to increase the headcount?
• Are you able to provide a salary hike every year?
• Are you able to achieve all the above even during a bad revenue year?

If the answer is “yes” to all the above, then you are running the company with a very well calculated strategy.

But can we grow just with the above? No, we cannot. What do we need then?

We need innovative ideas.

But if your innovative idea is going to pull you down on any of the above, then that idea is a liability rather than an asset.

Ideas are split into two.

• Idea potential
• Idea achievement

Idea potential is the ability to propose novel and creative innovations. But idea achievement is the ability to implement those ideas. Idea potential can remain daydreams. There is nothing to lose from it. But idea achievement is a risk-taking measure. It may alter all your current operations together. Idea achievement can be achieved only with sustainable revenue growth.

According to Forbes, a company’s failure to take off to the next level is often due to the wrong association of Idea potential and Idea achievement being present in the same mind.

So an idea achiever must take only calculated risks. It will not just end in the failure of the idea achiever alone. It may end up shaking the very base of the company’s existence.

Idea potential comes from the most creative people. Idea achievement comes from the most operational people.

Asking the question was the best way of showing intelligence in yesteryears. But today, answering those questions is also seen as the best way to show intelligence.

The new term coined by Dr. Glibkowski is Answer Intelligence (AQ)™.

We can always ask questions out of curiosity. But the answer we give should be influencing. That’s why they say, “Questions are for Curiosity, and Answers are for Influence.”

AQ is a must nowadays for every entrepreneur and professional. If you want to become an influencer, your answers should be of the following types: story, metaphor, theory, concept, procedure, and action.

A question can be constant all the time. But the answer can always be learned and improved.

What is Loyalty?

Have we ever thought of this word before? The answer would be yes. But the truth is “for others” and not when it comes to us.

If we take the direct meaning of the word loyalty there are different ways to use it. First, in Confucianism, it is meant as “do the best you can do for others.” Second, in Christianity, “if loyalty to man conflicts with loyalty to God, the latter takes precedence.”

But what does it actually mean?

We almost correlate it with “slavery.”

How?

If my employee quits, it’s against loyalty.

If my friend speaks to my enemy, it’s against loyalty.

If I engage in healthy debate with anyone from another company in my line of business, it’s against loyalty to the company, so on and so forth.

But, hang on. Did we ever do a self-analysis about us on this so called myth “loyalty”? No we won’t. Because whatever we do, it is all because of a cause, and if the same is done by others then we immediately weigh it on the Loyalty scale. This is not just for you or for me. This is happening with most of the people I am able to acquaint with.

We forget that we were also working with someone else yesterday and will be working with someone else tomorrow. If we had worked with others and come to our present company, then are we “not loyal”? We won’t accept it. Why accept it? We won’t even analyse ourselves from that angle.

When we recruit people from other companies we won’t question them about “loyalty.” We even go the extra mile asking them to bring other people from their earlier company to our company. Some may even do that.

But when they quit, we first give them a lecture on so called “loyalty” and particularly we will advise them in a commanding tone about loyalty.

Does quitting a job mean not being loyal?

First please understand. QUITTING is not anything against LOYALTY. When we feel something is not to our comfort or if we want advancement in our career, we have to quit and move on. Else both our company as well as us are not going to advance, why advance, we won’t even feel comfortable in the profession.

What is loyalty then?

Loyalty is a virtue, or we can say it is the top of all virtues. So it is not something that has to do with Profession at all.

Just be “true,” that is what is required in a profession. True to your profession and true to your work ethic. Non-solicitation is the ethic of any job. Just don’t solicit anything which rightfully belongs to others.

According to me, Loyalty is a very bad quality against Professional and Personal Enhancement.

If your Boss or your company speaks about Loyalty rather than trueness, then you are in the wrong place in your career.

Loyalty will bring in a slavery mentality within you which will stop you from coming out of the cocoon even though you may feel or want to.

If Loyalty is defined as “not quitting your job” even if I am sure that I won’t advance myself in the current position, then I prefer to be Not Loyal.

If professional loyalty means “being true” to the position I am holding and have held, then I prefer to be Loyal.

Blind Sheep Syndrome

I am worried, I didn’t quit my job yet but my fellow team members already quit. If you can understand the above sentence, this is the exact meaning of “Blind Sheep Syndrome.”

People without any self determination, or people who think they are always perfect in taking decisions, are the victims of the above syndrome. This can be seen a lot in professional life. If a horror movie becomes successful, all of a sudden you can see there will be 4 to 10 horror movies coming out one after the other.

This same blindness is always followed in careers too. The moment your close colleague quits his job you will become restless and very detached from your job. You will start worrying that you haven’t quit your job yet, or at least you will start analysing whether you are right to continue with the current job.

The other way people get affected by this syndrome is through people who have the quality of influencing others. The moment these guys hand in their notice they will somehow make others think twice about continuing with their current company.

Can we avoid this?

The answer is NO. But we can control the situation.

Believe there is always an antidote available for any epidemic. The Managers are the role players for this, and if they have complete hold of the team then this situation can always be kept under control.

Flat or Hierarchical Organisation Structure

What if the Manager quits?

The classic case for requiring a combination of flat and hierarchical organisation arises if your Manager controls the entire team. Gone are the days of having either a Flat or Hierarchical Organisation Structure alone. Today the need is always a blend of both of these structures.

If you think people are your core asset then you should avoid going to a Hierarchical organisation. A Hierarchical Organisation will always create a professional gap between different layers of people, which will eventually end up in attrition. Same way, a Flat Organisation will result in a tough situation of satisfying your people on their growth roadmap.

The Blind Sheep Syndrome will always affect the Hierarchical Organisation more than the Flat Organisation.

If we have a combined structure of Flat & Hierarchical Organisation then we can avoid the wild situation arising out of Blind Sheep Syndrome.

After all, a job is the need of any individual. But the company as a whole is the need of any Management.

If you are the breadwinner of your family this should be the question surfacing at the top of your mind all the time.

Why do we fear recession?

For that we should know when the next recession will tentatively start. According to economists, first the Federal Reserve correction/action should happen and then the tentative timeline for the next recession would be 12-15 months from that date.

The best predictor with the nearest possible accuracy of the occurrence of a Recession is the Stock Market. So far the stock market has predicted almost 5 recessions accurately since March 1961.

The recovery period, or the average growth period of the economy between two recessions, is around 5-6 years, taking the past records from the WWII era. But if we consider the last recovery from the earlier recession, which happened in 2009 with a 6 year average growth period, we are almost exactly at the 6th year. So by this calculation the recession is somewhere around the corner for sure.

What is the first sign?

As I said earlier, stock markets alone can predict the scenario more accurately than others. If we take the stock market data points, the first sign of recession already happened on August 24, 2015 with the big crash of the Chinese Stock Market, amounting to a loss of nearly 40%.

The second sign is, during 2007 the Federal Reserve had only 500 Billion whereas today it has 1.6 Trillion. The 1.1 trillion dollars is now idling with just 0.25% interest in the Fed reserve. Can the Fed reserve let it sit idle for a long time?

Banks are not ready to lend this money to others as they don’t see any credit-worthy borrowers. When we take the above two data points alone, we can predict that the recession is almost around the corner. Markets were able to recover from the August 24 crash. But it is still 12% below average to date.

So we can conclude that the next recession will not be delayed beyond 12-15 months from December 2015 – February 2016. The peak period will be between mid 2016 and early 2018. If this doesn’t happen then don’t worry till 2020.

Now let us come to the original question. Will my job survive till the next recession?

It all depends on which path your current or new company is going to take.

Companies will first focus on Profitability. They will do all they can to increase the Gross Margin. The simultaneous step any company will take is to Cut Costs even if they don’t see any reduction in the inflow of money. This will help the company Preserve Cash.

Cockroaches thrive more during disaster periods, not just in Personal life but also in Professional life too.

If the company is going to increase the Gross Margin, they will automatically stop recruiting high paid profiles. If required, they will let go of the non performers in those same high paid profiles. Since the company itself is going to apply every possible strategy to escape the recession, it is implicit that every employee should go the extra mile to increase their performance at the current company and secure their job.

If we join a new company now it will take no less than 6-12 months to prove our efficiency beyond the luck factor. By then it will be the actual starting point of the peak recession. If we fail, then we will be the first one the company lets go.

So apply your common sense and take a decision to secure your job wherever you are.

Big Banner company or a mid size company?

It is an undeniable dilemma everyone faces after their very first job. Have we ever analysed why we get this dilemma in our career path?

Before getting into that let us analyse the difference between these two segments. A job is always a job. Then why do we differentiate between Big banner companies and other companies?

Following are the very basic needs of a job:

Salary

Title

Growth with learning curve

Satisfaction level.

Let us take one after the other.

Salary:

Who doesn’t want more salary? If X is our salary then our expenditure would always be X+1. This gives us an insight that whatever our salary, our expectation is +1, or our deficit will be X-1. If this scenario is true then the banner of the company is not going to make any difference for us.

Title:

Title in the first 10 years of our career will be seen as a pride to handle with power. But after a while we will certainly understand that an increase in title will come with an increase in responsibilities. An increase in responsibilities will also bring an increase in work pressure.

For example, let us take sales into consideration. When we are an executive we will carry a target of X. But if we get promoted to Senior executive our target should be nothing less than X+1. Even if our company gives us the same X as our target, we will be the first to get called a Non Performer for not reaching the target. But if we reach the target there won’t be much appreciation because we are carrying the same target as our junior.

So what is seen as a pride is seen as a burden at a later stage. But can we continue without a title hike? No, that’s also not possible. So we have to handle the pressure to grow in our career. Else we will not get recognised whether we are working at a big banner company or a startup.

Growth with learning Curve

Growth in terms of Salary and Title are already discussed. So this growth pertains to the potential of getting involved in the knowledge and learning of new aspects of business or new technologies and getting involved in new projects.

Our resume will carry enough weight only if we can say that we have been involved in different stages of sales or different technologies on the development side. After a stage, if we say we specialise in one area of business or one technology, then our potential to get into our dream jobs at a later stage will be very remote.

Satisfaction Level

End of the day, all the above discussed aspects will become irrelevant if our career satisfaction level does not meet our expectation. But again, we have the scope to live up to our own satisfaction alone. But that is not possible in the current competitive career world though.

So knowingly or unknowingly our Satisfaction Level will become a matter of consideration only if we are able to achieve all the above, viz. Salary, Title and Growth with Learning Curve.

If we have started our career with a large company then most of us will tend to continue our career in a large company itself. It is because of the sophistication we would have seen in the big banner companies.

But if we have started our career with a midsize or a startup company then naturally we will have a passion to get into a big banner company.

So in both scenarios our vision or mission is to get into big banner companies only.

Then why are people from startups or mid size companies more recognised than people at big banner companies?

The answer is simple. KNOWLEDGE.

It is an undeniable fact that people from small and mid size companies carry more work related knowledge than people from Large companies.

It is not because people from Big Banner companies are not capable of learning or performing. It is because the scope of being involved in every aspect of the business or diversified technologies is not possible at big banner companies. They will have a limited KRA at large companies, and at small companies you will automatically get involved in every aspect of the business or most of the technologies your division deals with.

Now apply the title here and you will get the answer.

“Better be the Head of the Bee than the Tail of the Lion”

There is no concept of Winning all the time or Losing all the time.

Success and Failure happen one after the other. But if we feel that we are failing most of the time, or we failed at most of the important things, then we will automatically start analysing why we failed.

Actually, analysing why we failed is good. But if we didn’t analyse how we succeeded earlier, then we cannot correlate what mistake we made to fail this time. The human mind always requires a comparative study to determine anything.

Overthinking about failure happens to be the reason for our next failure. We should learn to accept failure with the attitude “YES I FAILED.” Move on. But the human mind will not come out of that failure until we see the next success.

So without any limitation, our mind will whirl around the failure, instead of thinking about success. If we are not thinking about success then how can we expect success to think about us?

There is a saying that in any crime, without even realising it, the criminal will have left evidence at the scene of the crime. Criminology calls this the “Hands of GOD.” The same way, we will have left some evidence in our success for sure. If we are able to analyse both success and failure situations we can find the “Hands of God” there.

Success or Winning is a combination of 100% correct steps. Whereas Failure or Losing is a combination of 99% correct steps and 1% wrong step. So the gap between Success and Failure is just 1%. Is it not worth correcting that 1% and calling ourselves a Winner?

Finally, both Success and Failure are not constant incidences. They are both just the next step of the current action, or the first step of a future action!

Periodic changes or transformations are the sign of GROWTH. If we are not ready to make periodic changes then how can we expect continuous success? You have to lose your childhood to attain adulthood. You have to lose being single to become a parent, and so on and so forth.

Can you crawl and walk at the same time? You have to leave crawling to start walking. You have to start walking to start running, and so on and so forth.

The same way, if you analyse your Success and Failure you can understand that you may have to leave something Existing to get something New. If we are able to identify that step then every step will take us to Success for sure.

Whether it is professional or personal, we have to make an impression in both our absence and presence.

Let us take the professional part here.

Whether we are an entry level employee or a Management person we have to create our impression. I have seen situations where I didn’t even recognise the absence of some guys for days together. I used to think, what if my situation was like this?

Nightmare, isn’t it?

To have an impression in both Absence and Presence we should ESTABLISH ourselves first. Unless we establish ourselves in the crowd, we will get lost and so it won’t matter whether we are absent or present.

To have an impression in our Absence we should have built up our Presence. So Presence is very important to be felt by the crowd. Presence doesn’t mean silent spectator, rather being a contributor. No one can get into our mind and find out what we are thinking. We should participate in all healthy discussions in professional life and should add value to any discussion. If we start giving ideas and suggestions which don’t carry any value, then our absence will be much appreciated over our presence.

If our Presence cannot add value then our Absence is also not going to make any difference either. But at the same time we should present our ideas in a way that echoes our team’s thoughts. Always try to go along with the team. This will always make people enjoy our presence.

Skill and competence are more important when we present ourselves, and that will make everyone wish to have us in the discussion.

During any discussion, even if we are physically present, say less so that people will expect us to speak more. Here our absence should be present and recognised. Also, if we speak less, there are more chances that we are keeping ourselves at a distance from speaking foolishly. Because once the words are out we cannot take them back.

That said, however smart we are in contributing our skills and competence, our absence alone will give value to us. So set a schedule for being physically elsewhere and unavailable, and stick to it.

The more we are seen or heard the more our value will degrade. So we should learn the skill of withdrawing ourselves from Presence so that our absence is felt in a very positive way.

So once we are back from absence to presence, our presence will be felt more than normal.

But we need to attain power through our presence. If we are absent without attaining that power, then we will just be forgotten instead of creating any positive impression.

Gain Value to your Presence and it will Give Value to your Absence!

First set – Luxottica Group, American Apparel, Centerplate, Pimco, Volkswagen

Second Set – Gerard J. Arpey, AMR, Bill Gates – Microsoft, Coby Brooks – Hooters, Meg Whitman – eBay, Mohammed El-Erian – Pimco

All the above CEOs quit. But the difference is, the second set quit realising that the company would be a better place without them. The first set quit for various other reasons.

All the CEOs in the second set became role models.

Do CEOs really need to quit?

If there are behavioural mistakes on their part then quitting is the only option. But for the mistakes of others, do the CEOs really take moral responsibility and quit?

Is the company not going to be the loser again?

Wouldn’t stepping in, correcting the mistakes, and bringing the company back to its original height be the best thing these CEOs can do for the company?

Whoever quits is surely going to get a job somewhere else. No one is going to be jobless or go to a lonely island and spend the rest of their time there.

The company has spent a lot of time and money on these CEOs. If a mistake happens they should correct it and pay back the company. Quitting cannot be a viable option for CEOs.

These CEOs will surely lose money and reputation by quitting and there’s no denying that. But by quitting, are they not doing more damage to the company than what had already happened?

In the current situation in India, the most unwanted word is “attrition.” During appraisal time every management and HR team will think more about attrition and burn their midnight oil.

Out of my experience, I would say attrition is a healthier scenario than people sticking to their job without any innovative contribution. We need a core team who can transform our vision into the mission. But if we are not ready to bring in new blood, either by replacing or expanding our core team, we are not actually growing.

Attrition also gives room for the next level of people to take the steering wheel and start driving.

Some of the advantages of managed or Healthy attrition are:

• New Blood
• Best Ideas from their experience
• Monotony
• Cost

Let us see one by one.

New Blood

Think of where we were a couple of years back and what the contribution was from those people at that time. They would have contributed many best practices and ideas to our vision, which would have taken our company to this level.

Don’t we need the same type of new blood again now to take our company to the next level?

Best Ideas from their Experience

The new guys will surely bring in their best ideas and best practices out of their experience, which will enable us to take our company to the next level.

Monotony

The main reason for anyone becoming less productive is their monotonous work routine. It could be the need of the company or project. But these guys also require a change in their work routine.

Since monotony leads to productivity loss, it is always better to leave that scenario.

Cost

Though I bring up cost as the last element here, it is also a very important factor to consider. If a person becomes less productive because of any known or unknown reason, is it not better to bring in someone with relevant years of experience for that position at less cost?

Last one, which is most important

If the people who leave us shine at another place, is that not a pride for us too? If you are a leader you will surely feel so. If you are just a manager you will hold a grudge against them. The choice depends on your level of maturity.

Conclusion:

Not all attrition is “bad.” There should be managed attrition which is good for the company, and so it is called Healthy Attrition. The growth of any company should be process and people oriented, not just people oriented alone.

So there is no need to burn the midnight oil thinking about Annual Appraisal.

Change is the rule of nature!

Maybe this is applicable for human life. But does this need to be the standard for electronics and mobiles?

Have we ever thought “it would have been better not to have an upgrade”? Not every application or every mobile should have a continuous upgrade. We should come to a state where we have a base version which can be used irrespective of any upcoming upgrade.

I would like to bring in the most beautiful phrase here: “Need and Want.” The time has come where we should differentiate between the Need and Want of the upgrade.

An upgrade could be of two kinds. The company is upgrading it because they want to add new features into that app or device which are really essential to further use of that app or device, OR they want to make some extra money out of the new release.

If we start thinking about the real need for a new phone beyond what we have now, then every mobile manufacturer will delay their new phone release by another two years for sure.

Who isn’t ready to save some extra dime by cutting our expenses?

Innovation to Product

“Innovation” is one of the most coined words used by many companies, alongside “acceleration,” during the growth stage. But does that really suit them? The answer is almost No in many scenarios.

Innovation in a service company carries a different meaning than in a product company. Service innovation is mostly on the process side and Product innovation is on the usability and functionality side.

If we take any new product on the market, it will mostly not be its own brain child. Companies normally bridge the gap between the available products and brand it as their new innovative one. Or at least the core or base concept of the product will mostly come from one of the other products available in the market.

One thing we cannot deny: after a point of time these products will totally change their identity from the base and become the so called innovative product by itself.

But I am not earmarking every product that way. Because there needs to be some real innovative products to serve as the base for the other new brands for sure.

Product to Innovation

On the other hand, the core or base product needs to bring in more and more new features to handle market sustainability. They are under more pressure than others to bring in more changes to their product for their mere existence in the market.

What if they experience a lack of new innovation?

They will also start thinking or doing what the other product companies do. Just Copycat!

Example: iPhone. Apple released their first iPhone with new innovation in the smartphone arena when a Smartphone was not a must at that time. But today the situation is different. To explain it more clearly I could say it’s a “Vitamin pill to Pain killer” difference.

iPhone was a vitamin pill when it was released. But since a smartphone is a must now, iPhone is a pain killer now.

But today the new iPhone 6s has many new features which they claim as their new innovation. Innovation should be newly invented and cannot be inherited.

I have the following doubts about their new features.

1. 3D touch – Already available in Blackberry Storm2
2. Live Photo – Already available in HTC Zeo
3. 4K video – Already available in Sony Xperia Z2 and LG G3
4. Flashback zoom – Already available in Samsung Galaxy
5. Hey Siri – Already available in Google Now and MS Lumia
6. Aluminium parts – Already used by Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge

So on and so forth.

So can we conclude that Apple didn’t innovate anything new of their own and they just consolidated the features available on several devices into one device?

This proves that the so called Father of Innovation also has to copy the features, or at least take the cue for a new idea from others and make it a new feature in their upcoming products.

This is happening for the sake of survival in the competitive market. Coming to the Top is harder. Being at the top is the hardest. So to stay on top we are even ready to Copycat, which is exactly what was not our claim when we were struggling to reach the top.

“Full stack developers” are the buzz word of today’s technology and business world. What does that mean?

A full stack developer is one who has expertise or knowledge in each layer. That is, a person with adequate knowledge of each stack.

Full stack

The full stack mostly refers to Data Modeling, Business Logic, Server side, Networking and even Hosting, API/MVC, and also UI/UX design too.

If we expect a person to be well versed in all the above stacks then why should he work with us anymore? His role will be nothing less than job hopping to get into a better place than where he is now.

If I am not wrong, the first organisation to go with Full stack developers was Facebook. That too when FB just had a simple PHP backend. But today they have moved out of this vision and currently moved into more specifically skilled developers. This is the same situation with Google too.

If they are experienced, then the definition of a full stack developer for them will also increase. We start expecting them to be more into Data Modelling, optimising content delivery and tweaking hardware accelerated layers in CSS, followed by implementing an async non-blocking backend and pushing to an AWS cluster and even more.

Assessing a Full stack Developer

End of the day, when we assess them on their skill sets, which one will we prioritise and assess them on? If they are skilled in one and not so much in another, should they be called a non valuable member of the team or the organisation?

I would say, if I am expected to be a full stack developer, then my insecurity will increase over how skilled I am at acquiring new skills. Is this what we should be expecting from our assets? If we think our developers are our assets then this is not the right expectation to have of them.

Advantage?

Yes, I agree, the full stack developer will have significant knowledge in understanding the project at a very macro level, and so the employment opportunity for any Full stack developer is very high when compared to a specifically skilled person in the market. But for how long?

Leonardo Piero da Vinci

Leonardo Piero da Vinci was an Italian musician, mathematician, engineer, polymath, geologist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, writer, and anatomist. But the world recognised him most as a “Painter” only. The same way, however much we call a person a full stack developer, end of the day he is also skilled in a limited stack only.

We hire people for a job. So they will come prepared for that job only. We cannot harass them to be prepared for all our needs. In fact, organisations don’t have a fixed need. When organisations don’t have a fixed need, then how can we expect our developers to be Full stack?

What should we expect from a Full stack Developer?

If the need of the hour is to make all our developers Full stack, then set the limitation. Differentiate the expectations and be realistic. If we expect the Full stack developer to be an expert on all the stacks they know, then we are not going to get anything specific out of them.

If we set our expectation of a Full stack developer to be “he doesn’t need to be a master of all stacks, he just needs to be comfortable understanding and working on those stacks,” we will have a very structured development team with us.

GP Vs Specialised

We can rightly compare the difference between a GP and a specialist in Medicine. The GP is more important than any specialist in most scenarios. He can understand all the problems. He can find a solution to move ahead until we meet a specialist. He can suggest the solution. He can even dissect at a lower level or even do small surgeries too. But understand he will be the one analysing and suggesting which specialist to consult next.

So the GP has a more primary role than a specialist. But at the same time we should not expect the GP to be a master of the entire medical field.

Start-ups: the root cause!

Technology start-ups need full stack developers at all times because they want to get their hands dirty on all aspects and also for their versatility to have success early on. However, as an organisation matures we want our product/service to follow the highest security, efficiency and design standards, and at that stage we will give less importance to Full stack developers and place more emphasis on specifically skilled developers ONLY.

So I conclude, the definition of Full Stack matters more in Expectations than in Skills.

Social Media

The evolution of Social Media has come so handy that we can get any information we request within seconds. Be it religion or education or medical science or even sex, it gives information for both knowledge and pleasure.

We know and accept that there are always flip sides to anything in this world. Particularly with Social Media, the flip side was thought to be less significant in the early stage.

But are we prepared to take the flip side as the flip side?

Mostly the answer is NO.

NEWS Agencies or Houses

The information passed on by any NEWS agency is more a combination of information plus their own standpoint. They are always cooking their standpoint into any current affairs or information, and the general public automatically adopts their standpoint or viewpoint.

In the fast running world, because of the availability of more and more social media, we get more and more standpoints, and it becomes very difficult for us to form our own standpoint or point of view. We are forced to take a standpoint, and before we even think of analyzing that, the next important news surfaces on top of what we were thinking about before.

If this is the scenario with NEWS Agencies, the other, more dangerous scenario comes from Individual Stand Point Imposition.

Individual Stand Point

When NEWS breaks out we have the option to shift from one agency to another, and so there is at least a little choice for us to analyze that and come to a conclusion. But if the information is passed from an Individual to a Group or Groups through limited Social Media penetration, then we are left with no option other than to take it as real FACT rather than the author’s thought.

Fearful Thoughts or Real Facts

We fail to understand, or we fail to get options to understand, whether the information passed to us through these Individuals is just their thoughts or real facts.

We trust people from our known group. If they are an SME (Subject Matter Expert) then we have 100% trust in them and also have no option to doubt their standpoint, just because they are an SME.

Universal Garbage of Information

The birth of Facebook and LinkedIn came as the most innovative discoveries in Social Media. Yes, that is true too. But today they have become a Universal Garbage of Information.

Examples:

I came across three such scenarios in the last couple of weeks. All of them are the authors’ own thoughts only. But when they publish them on Social Media, because of their position in their known group, those thoughts are earmarked as facts.

Rather than passing the buck to the readers, I personally feel the responsibility lies more with those people who are writing these articles or comments.

Scenario 1: Supplementary and not Alternative – Less Dangerous

My known SME on International Sales wrote an article on LinkedIn saying Business Through Cold Calling is a yesteryear concept and now the new trend is just Digital Marketing.

This one is absolutely wrong and the facts are totally against it. SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) still run mainly on Cold Calling, and Digital Marketing and Inbound are supplementary to the cold calling concept. Not just Digital Marketing alone. Even the Offshore-Onsite Meeting model is also another form of supplementary, and not an alternative to cold calling as per the current situation. But the author has emphasized his personal thought as a fact, that Digital Marketing is the new trend for getting more business now.

Scenario 2: Situation Changed so History Changes – Medium Dangerous

This one is about a social stigma and is family related. A person who normally writes about family situations on FB wrote this. A retired working couple feels some heat from their own family members due to incidents that happened in the past. The husband doubts his wife all the time and so she is accustomed to living a no-freedom, nutshell life.

They got retired and now due to age, the husband wants more day-to-day assistance from his wife. But since she has been like this for more than 40 years she is not able to independently go out and do any work. All she was allowed in the past was to shuttle between her workplace and home.

The author wrote: The situation has changed. Why is she not opening up now and enjoying her life? I am amazed. I am not writing that she cannot change or open up. But who is this author to conclude that since the situation has changed, the history will also get corrected automatically?

Scenario 3: Time passed so forget the impact – Most Dangerous

This one is an atrocious imposition of the author’s thought as fact on others via Social Media.

He is a known Medical Practitioner in Child Health. He has written that “why are these adults who were abused in their childhood still carrying those thoughts and living a wrong life. He went one step further and wrote that since they have grown up they can erase the past from their memory and lead a decent and normal life.”

There are several journals published so far about the effect of childhood abuse on adults in their later life. A woman who was unable to live with her own sons was found, after hypnosis, to have been abused in her childhood at the age of 4, and that memory surfaces in her mind whenever she sees any male, including her sons.

Clinical Psychiatry still sees the effect of childhood abuse in adults as a mystery and they feel sorry for not being able to find a solution for these adults to live a normal life. They live a pragmatic life and die. Even though high anti depressants are prescribed, they are in no way going to wipe out their memory of the abuse during childhood once and for all.

One psychiatrist from Boston University has written an article stating that these adults live a more cruel life than eunuchs their entire life.

If this Doctor had spent some time researching and reading journals by Herman and Finkelhor before writing his comment on FB, I am sure he would have abstained from even thinking of writing about it. He just wrote it for short term appreciation or publicity. Nothing more.

Responsibility

In all of the above scenarios the authors happened to be either an SME or related to the field they wrote about.

What gave them the confidence to write about these things, or who authorized them to write like that? The answer is NONE.

Because there is no moderation available on any of these Social Media platforms for any article we write, including the one I am writing now.

If we claim ourselves to be an SME then the responsibility lies squarely more with us than with anyone else.

Social Media has given a lot of room for valid information, and everyone who is writing on Social Media also relies on referencing this Social Media now to emphasize their facts.

Writing is a super skill. But check that your thoughts are correct before you impose them as real facts on people who trust you and your writing.

So don’t write for short term appreciation or publicity. Social Media is already becoming a Universal Garbage Container. Don’t let your stinky unauthenticated information stink it up more.

What is the next big thing in the IT world?

Anyone can say it’s IoT. Yes, Internet of Things is going to be the main topic discussed for a much longer period than any other technology discussed so far.

There are going to be more than 20 Billion electronic devices connected to a network through IoT.

We are going to use IoT without even knowing that we are using it. The best examples of areas where we will automatically be connected to IoT are:

1. Media
2. Infrastructure
3. Manufacturing
4. Home Automation
5. Transportation
6. Healthcare
7. Energy, etc.

If every device is going to use a unique IP address, can IPv4 work with its limitation of 4.3 Billion? No, it cannot. The minimum number of IP addresses required by 2020 would be nothing less than 20.8 Billion. So the use of IPv6 will come into the mainstream here.

All of this is acceptable. But how secure are our data, or ourselves?

This is something very important and crucial in the IoT space. With just one mobile device we feel highly vulnerable. Cyber attacks are more prominent even now. Think of the situation where we are going to connect even our Refrigerators, Televisions, Kitchen Appliances, Cameras, Thermostats and what not.

Cyber attacks are already taking the main stage even now. What would the situation be when we are completely into IoT?

The recent article which I was able to read this morning emphasises the vulnerability of using third party tools even now. But it is not possible to completely avoid using third party tools at all. So what is the solution? Where is the checkpoint then?

Major Vulnerability in Freshdesk – Results from a recent Wordfence Red Team Exercise

What would be the level of exposure we will be under once we get into full IoT, and what level of security would we require by then?

Let our Scientists bring a solution before IoT arrives, and let us be aware of the intensity of the impact of using vulnerable third party tools now.

The definition of this will vary slightly based on whether you focus on a Service based or Product based business.

If we are a product based company then we should never consider technology as the criteria at the first stage itself. Any product based company should focus on being Market-based rather than technology based. The success of a market-based product is much, much higher than that of a technology based product.

Technology should be determined based on the market need of our product, and the market should not be determined based on the technology proficiency of our company.

Example: A product should be analytics based and not big data technology based. Hope you can understand the difference. We cannot build a product on top of big data technologies. But we can leverage the advantages of the various big data technologies to develop our product.

So the steps would be:

Market need → technology selection → Development Methodology → Go-to-Market strategy

If we develop following these steps then we are driving on the freeway to success. This is well proven on large scale products, and for any quick product we can derive our own steps.

Now let us analyze the same for a Service Based Company.

A service based company can be Technology Focussed (TF) or Technology Driven (TD). There are many differences between TF and TD. A TF company will be built on a specific set of technologies only.

TF example:

A company will say they are CRM specialized or E-commerce specialized or M-commerce specialized or Mobile App specialized, so on and so forth. Here they focus only on the technologies required for the specialty of service they provide.

TD example:

Any company that brings its core value as providing an End-to-End Solution for the client would automatically be a TD company only. Here they will suggest to the client which tool or technology would be the best fit based on the requirement of the client. Example: based on past experience, a TD company would be in a commanding position to suggest which Framework, which CMS, which Payment gateway a required E-commerce or M-commerce Web or Mobile App can be built with maximum efficiency and optimal utilisation with TCS (total cost savings).

If someone still says, “Jack of all and good for none,” then consider that he is still living in the past, and this phrase has no meaning in the current trend of the technology world.

Also, this phrase is still used only by Technology Focussed companies.

They should understand that even developers are now “Full Stack” and not focussed on one specialty. It means you cannot keep a developer on board for a long period in the name of technology focus. The percentage of people sticking to one technology is now draining fast, and because of this trend, they will tend to move to where they can satisfy their appetite for learning.

A Technology Driven service based company is the most versatile kind of company to build our product with, rather than arguing with a technology specific company.

The TD companies are on a fast track of new technology adoption and they bring more value to the table rather than technology focussed management companies.

Especially in developing countries like India, where the opportunity for developers to learn new technologies is huge, if we restrict them from getting involved in new technologies based on our company focus we will see more brain drain than the industry standard.

The heavy use of Big Data and Analytics is behind us now and we are in a world of integrating technologies and concepts together. Yes, we are now stepping fast into IoT (Internet of Things), and imagine where we will stand if we still speak about technology focusing.

IoT is nothing but the combination of Targeting the Customer with Electronic Gadgets for Data Capturing. Can we now say IoT is a combination of Marketing, Electro-Mechanical, Software Development, and Analytics?

So is it now possible for us to restrict our service to one set of technology alone? The answer MUST be NO for any Technology Driven Company that sees its company’s growth in a next generation vision and mission.

If we still say that we are a Technology Focussed Company then we will miss our bus at the wrong time.

If we are a Service based company with tomorrow’s vision, working with SME or SMB companies, then we need Full Stack Developers driving our Technology Driven company.

No other social media platform has a useless feature like LinkedIn does.

Yes, I am talking about the endorse feature only. There is a difference between recommendation and endorse on LinkedIn.

The recommendation is written upon request, and endorsement is unsolicited.

People send a request today to connect. Upon our approval, they endorse us the next day. That too, the automatic options given by LinkedIn are not based on fuzzy logic. They’re based on puzzle logic.

Why should LinkedIn give an option like CRM when I have been in Operations for the last 10+ years?

If LinkedIn wants to do a better data analysis, http://www.techAffinity.com can immediately assist them with our patented Sorting Algorithm.

Above all, it would be better if LinkedIn did not exploit this to such an extent.

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Where do we place ourselves by the type of service we do?

If a company is doing custom software development and one fine day they find it easier to make money doing body shopping rather than focusing on development requirements, should we still call this company a Software Development Company?

Many successful Software Companies in the industry started as pure development firms, and in due course they started providing manpower to clients instead of doing development themselves.

They do both custom development and body shopping. Can we still call them a software firm if the majority of their revenue comes from body shopping?

Different types of IT Services

1. Custom Software Development
2. Maintenance and Support
3. Product Development
4. Body Shopping
5. Staff Augmentation

Earlier there were differences between them. But today most Software Companies do all of these except Staff Augmentation.

Is the trend changing? If so, should we need to coin new terminology to describe these companies?

As we expand, are we getting more confused about how to express our line of service due to a lack of clarity?

After the Second World War, workforce behavior across the globe was mostly built on a single structure. The change to this structure happened only after the evolution of the Software Development/IT industry.

From the early 1990s to 2019, across the globe, there was a uniform workforce behavior. But the pandemic has changed the workforce world.

What was a positive sign earlier has now mostly become a negative sign. For example, the much-awaited WFH has become a pain now. Today people are not happy to have WFH forever, as they want to go to the office at least once a week to experience the work environment and meet their colleagues.

On the other side, people have become more self-organized and productive. They know how to handle both personal and official things in a given day. In my case, the productivity of the teams has not decreased, if not increased.

The maturity and handling capacity of Managers has increased a lot. We can see more entrepreneurial behavior in most middle-level managers.

Same way, the pain of commuting to work, felt earlier, is now seen as individual personal time.

The IT world is always a world of stress. Socializing was a norm for the IT workforce to alleviate stress. Now that there is no scope to socialize, people are becoming more stressed and heading toward depression and even anxiety.

On the employer side, we find certain aspects very challenging. When we had the team in one place, there was more coordination and understanding between teams. Now even small gaps are leading to intervention from others to make things normal.

Companies can save operation costs to some extent but the additional infrastructure cost to make things happen in WFH is increasing on the other side.

On the HR side, remote onboarding is easier than off-boarding, as off-boarding takes more work to collect all the official assets back. Leave Management has become a more painful process for them.

Airlines still feel Business Travel can become normal only in late 2022.

Taking all of the above into account, business and workforce management are not going to have a standard norm anytime soon. The pandemic may see some light at the end of the tunnel, but workforce management and business operations may not.

We will google for any information. Be it personal or official, we will get answers. Will we get an answer that is suitable for us? The answer would mostly be NO.

We will tend to fit ourselves into that answer and get satisfied.

Keeping the same situation in mind, let us analyze the business. There are countless business houses in the World. But very few create footprints in their arena. All the remaining business houses blindly follow those footprints as if they are also equal to those others.

We can see a lot of this in my business line, the Small and Medium Business area. There are not many similarities among the business houses of the SME segment. But we all feel that we can follow others to become like them.

The best example is in hiring salespeople. During the initial days of a company, sales guys play a vital role in the growth of the company by formalizing the sales strategies.

But when the company stabilizes the business, sales guys will not get the opportunity to play many roles in new strategy formulation. They will sometimes only get to fine-tune those already formalized strategies. The company brand or current client references will take the role of spearheading the sales.

It is not a capability problem of the sales guy. He just didn’t get the specific opportunity to play the strategist’s role. He will be a good sales guy to run the already formalized sales strategy.

What happens in the market now is, a new company will check the profile of these sales guys and feel that since they have won many large deals, if they hire those sales guys, they are going to bring such deals to their company too.

It may or may not happen. Predominantly it will not happen. This is where the CEOs or the Management of the new company fail. Mostly, only those who have played a vital role in formalizing the business strategy can play the same role in a new company too. If you hire a hardcore sales guy who was successful in bringing in new clients and deals with the collaterals and portfolios of the company, he may fail big time to play the role of a strategist.

It may not be a failure of the sales guy alone; it will also be the failure of the new company.

You can crosscheck this against the frequent job changes of sales guys in the market, or the frequent firing of sales guys by companies.

Next: No Same Rule Applies! (Business Travel)

Yes, the current pandemic has changed the Business travel structure too. Roadshows or Business travel, Business events, Summits, Seminars, and Trade shows play a vital role in every industry. Particularly in the IT/Software industry, they happened to be a game-changer.

Popular events like Disrupt by Techcrunch, or GITEX in Dubai, or even Refresh by Freshworks gathered a large crowd in the IT industry.

Apart from networking, the other uses of IT roadshows are the following:

• Brand selling
• Spreading the thoughts of the Leadership team
• Demand Generation, and
• Making the sales team penetrate the region to sell what they want

Even these uses are now in question due to the current situation.

Does that mean Events and Roadshows are not going to happen? The answer is mostly YES, and in a few cases NO.

What would be the reason for the answer to be NO?

They are:

• Safety
• Budget
• Hesitation or Anxiety of the Crowd
• Above all, the new Normal called “Virtual event”

The organizers had to spend more on safety features. Even if they are ready to spend more, there are no fixed norms available to handle the safety features now.

On Budget, every company is decreasing their spending or wants to divert it to other uses.

One company I know had to cancel their annual event at the last moment because of the anxiety of their regular crowd about traveling and being in a closed space.

On Virtual Events, all the other hindrances are taken care of, so any company can organize a well-planned event with 1/3 of the regular event budget.

According to Bizzabo, 93% of regular Event-goers are ready for a Virtual Event rather than a physical event.

In a survey conducted by them, ONLY 62% of people are ready to attend an in-person event even after getting vaccinated.

The current Covid19 situation has made people trust others less. Companies are not ready to allow others into their conference room to run their presentation. So no in-person appointments are given.

Event Management Software saw tremendous growth in 2019 itself. Due to the current volatility, it is going to grow several-fold. It is also going to save more than 200 hours a year for the people who attend events.

Until late 2021, due to the air bubble flight operation, there is no hope for in-person meetings or events. Also, due to the repetitive waves of Covid19, all personal meetings, events, seminars, and summits are going to take a step back.

Singapore is planning to open a new lane for business travelers, housing them in a bubble. But this is not going to be affordable for SME segment companies.

Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, and Microsoft Teams have become ubiquitous during the pandemic. We are soon going to see many more follow them. Also, funding is going to pour into that segment in the years ahead.

Finally, Business travel is going to take a step back for sure for the next two years.

The first and foremost thing a salesperson should do is “keep selling.” It is not that there is a “no need” situation in the market. There is only a “no want” situation in the market. So a salesperson should not stop selling.

A new norm is everywhere. So it should be in the sales presentation and pitch too. Rewrite your sales pitch. Redesign your presentation. Revisit what you are selling.

The conventional “cold email” and “cold call” are going to be tactless in this situation. The same old “one-stop-shop” way is not going to hold water anymore. Adjust your team to the new reality.

According to a survey, it requires six times more effort to convince a client to make a deal than it did earlier. So the best approach is to hold your clients very close to your heart. Speak to your customers often. Communicate proactively with them.

Reassure your client that you understand their pain because they are also going through the same situation.

Whatever the situation, closures should keep on happening. Revisit your old leads. Engage with your earlier prospects. Analyze why they didn’t give you the business last time.

Finally, speak to your delivery organization to bring them on board with keeping the “Customer First” attitude.

Personal tip to sales guys: don’t change jobs now. Sell what you are well versed in, rather than moving into new selling. It is not just you who are selling. It’s the brand name of the company that is going to help you sell.

The synchronization between what you have with your company and your selling skill is your real motivation. You cannot sell yourself and the brand at the same time. It is a risky move.

The professional behavior of teams has changed a lot in the last nine months. We have personally seen this change in many employees.

As a Manager, I tend to do the analysis and found that the pandemic has created a deep scar in many minds and hearts.

The first thing we noticed is anger. Nearly 42% of employees are getting angry with or without genuine reasons.

People are getting short-tempered sooner. The reason is, their mind is not shifting between job and personal life at the end of the day. The mind lives in the job even after closing the laptop. And this was not the scenario before the pandemic. When we packed our laptop bag and left the office, we had many things to visualize in reality to adjust our minds.

The human touch between team members is slowly vanishing, and it creates a rough situation between teams. Personal activities like chit-chat, team-breaks, movie times, and road trips had brought personal bonding among people. We are losing those forever now.

According to a survey by 7th Fold, 36% of employees are affected by mental health issues and 17% by physical health issues. The survey revealed some interesting data. People with less than 5L annual salary are worried about personal finance and career prospects. But surprisingly, people with more than 20 or 30L salary reported burnout and poor mental health.

These are the people who are going to lead the team. If they feel burnout, they are going to burn the bridges between others. Actually, stress is leading to burnout.

Deadlines alone are the reason for 48% of stress. These were not the main reasons before the pandemic.

Actually, with very small efforts, we can come out of this work-related stress very soon.

• Draw the boundary between work and life
• Self-care
• Work-life balance
• Write down what you can and cannot do, and follow it religiously.
• Remove the fear. Get involved in activities which will make your mind carefree.
• Resilience. We need to learn this. It is the ability to bounce back from any trauma.

Above all, connect with your close friends. Even if you are not in contact with them, call and speak to them. Maybe they are also sailing the same boat.

Finally, self-care is not selfish!