Paradigm shifts in Management!

Yo! I am furious…..with I don’t know who! I typed one whole Blog out and pushed the Publish button only to find that something had gone wrong. The post did not get Blogged! Would you believe it! After all that stuff I typed in! I lost it – it is neither in my drafts, nor in my recent posts, nor anywhere else! :(

I was wondering whether I should let it go and be careful the next time on, but I just couldn’t sit still. The post was too ‘important’ for me to let it go. So, here I am – typing it all out again! It is surprising how different your posts can be if you were to go back to them and type them out again. Only hope it is for the better! ;)

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I was channel surfing on my mobile (FM radio) yesterday evening on my way home when I heard the phrase “paradigm shifts in management” being uttered and stopped to listen. It was on 107.6 MHz. It was apparently a programme involving a discussion between a practitioner and some students on the subject. It was good that I stopped to listen, coz I learned a few things!

The first talk that I listened to was on the paradigm shift from USP to PoD as in marketing jargon. For the uninitiated, USP stands for Unique Selling Proposition and PoD stands for Point of Difference. It was surprising (come to think of it, maybe not) to learn how much away I am from some of the contemporary theories. The term USP was bandied about to the extent of losing its significance by us at the MBA School. I had no idea such a thing as PoD existed. Anyways, the theory and experience is that it is becoming increasingly difficult for products and their companies to talk about USPs as all products are similar and it is extremely difficult to differentiate between each of them. PoD on the other hand accepts that most products are similar and the only thing companies can do is try and highlight the minute differences between the features and the like. This got me thinking and here’s what me thinks! If companies were to innovate, there should be no necessity to run away from USP! There would be no need to resort to PoD! It would be a cake-walk to talk about your product’s USP. I don’t know about the international context, but in the Indian context, companies seem to be shying away from innovation! What a pity! It probably is because of the risks and investments (some would say costs) it calls for! But to be honest to myself, I wonder if I would hesitate/think twice about investing my life’s savings in one innovative idea that I had! ACTUALLY, I guess I would! After all, if one is extremely passionate about one’s idea, all other things in the world resemble a speck of dust. It’s not tough to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to them. Reva – any experiences? (Reva is probably the only battery-operated car in India)

Okay, going back to the programme, the other paradigm shift that I heard about was the shift from market-share to mind-share. Interesting, eh? Herein, the anchor (management prof/practitioner?) spoke about the trend wherein companies no longer focused on market-share but have moved to mind-share. Market-share focus could get many buyers but they’d mostly be one-time buyers. Focus on mind-share gets the company to think about the relationship it has with its customers rather than just getting them to buy the company’s products. It is obviously something that has long-term and sustained returns. Gaining mind-share of course involves branding. The topic crept into the ethics of branding (one of my favourite topics) and sometimes, what a company resorts to, to gain mind-share. That reminded me of the Hamam story. HLL’s soap, Hamam, has a brand that I like a lot. Hamam is branded to be synonymous with Honesty. But the other day, I heard from one of my friends that she’d read an article in a popular magazine that Hamam had chemicals that were apparently harmful for the skin. I am not sure if the article spoke the truth or was the work of competitors @ work, but it made me think about the sensitivities of branding and the need to be genuine. One wrong step and the brand (or rather the product) will surely die a sudden and gory death…

But commercial organizations have to be acknowledged for the challenge they face. Make great products, differentiate them from the rest, brand them, understand customers’ requirements and….fancies, and what not...but for God's sake, make pots of money at the same time, for we exist for, by and of profits! All this in a dog eat dog world. No wonder compromising on values comes easy for most of them.