Marketing = half of the truth at best?

The perennial debate about marketing ethics is matched only by the ceaseless shenanigans of marketers themselves. There is a whole spectrum of ethical standards in marketing and advertising that is in full public view at any point in time.

At one end of the spectrum is the whole slew of online and offline ads that promise you everything from the bizarre to the sublime: hair re-growth, near-magical enhancement of various parts of the male or female anatomy (bigger is always better, right?), the chance to own a piece of land on the moon or an oil field in Nigeria, ideas to make millions of dollars while sitting at home, miraculous healing for all kinds of ailments, spiritual attainment and even immortality! You may say this is not just marketing but corporate fraud, and I would concur. What amazes me even more than the brazen ubiquity of this kind of marketing messaging is the sheer gullibility of people: I read recently that a website that sells ownership certificates for plots of lunar land for USD 100 a pop actually managed to sell a few thousand of them!

At the next level of the spectrum are marketing claims that are not totally false, but are significantly exaggerated. Several cosmetic and health supplement products readily come to mind in this category, as does a lot of tourism marketing.

For instance, a recent Malaysian tourism ad stirred controversy by featuring a Balinese dance under its umbrella theme of "Malaysia, truly Asia", putting an ironic spotlight on the word "truly" in the slogan.

Move further along the ethical spectrum and you come across marketing that misleads by omission instead of by commission. The most common - and irritating - form is the "conditions apply" type of promotion, which promises you something but then puts multiple eligibility criteria that become unacceptable to most buyers. A variant of the trick is to hide the conditions in footnotes in font size 6. Hidden charges for various "free" or "low cost" offerings also fall in the same category.

That brings us to the ethical end of the marketing spectrum. Here we find brands that (more or less) fulfill the promises they make to consumers and do not grossly exaggerate their benefits or suppress critical information. I would argue that this end of the spectrum represents about half of the truth. In other words, at its ethical best, marketing gives us half-truths.

Let me explain my argument. Marketing is about persuading people to buy into a proposition. This proposition could be a product or a service, a job, a charity, a cult, a religion, a political candidate, a war or a concept like marriage or parenthood. It could be anything, but that doesn't matter. Any proposition is made up of two components, or two halves. There is the benefit half, or what the proposition gives you, and there is cost half, or what the proposition extracts from you in return for offering the benefit.

Given that its goal is to persuade (and not just inform) people, marketing focuses only on the benefit half; embellishes it to make it appear highly appealing and then shouts it out loudly and repeatedly to catch our attention. No one "markets" the cost half in quite the same way. Not even close. The cost half is left to buyer's "due diligence" or "self discovery". In other words, the principle is, "buyer beware". But given the information asymmetry and the gullibility of buyers, is that a sound principle or just a convenient one?

For instance, do you believe real estate developers could sell as many apartments if their marketing focused on the full cost and dramatized the emotions associated with servicing a 30-year mortgage as powerfully as it focuses on the pleasures of home ownership? Would as many people would buy into the proposition of a credit card if the marketing shouted out the message of a 24-36% interest rate per annum as loudly as it shouts out the (rather gimmicky) benefits? High profile jobs would find fewer takers if the long hours and burn out rates were advertised as effectively as the salaries, and less people would buy investment products if the risks were as well marketed (not just mentioned) as the returns are.

Marketing deals in half-truths, simply because it is much easier to seduce people with the benefits and then let them self-discover the full impact of the costs post facto. It would be way harder to have a fully balanced conversation with the consumer that describes and dramatizes both the benefits and the costs equally, and then let the consumer sign up not only for the benefits, but also for the costs.

What if marketing were to be a pure, unbiased and entirely accurate information sharing service that fully communicates both benefits and costs with equal weightage to allow consumers to decide whether or not to accept a proposition? In other words, what if we lived in a world where all marketing told the whole truth, all the time? I think this would result in less sales for all the propositions in the world. Hence the world economy would be much smaller, the difference being equal to the economic value added of marketing. But would that also mean less consumerism, more stability and less frustration due to unrealistic expecations being missed?

Would we be better off if marketing told the whole truth? What do you think?

Guest or host?

Shakespeare famously wrote in his play As You Like It, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts …"

Like him, many thinkers have reflected on the nature and the purpose of our life as humans and there are some themes that emerge very clearly from this thinking. One of these themes relates to our transience; the ephemeral nature of our existence, our inescapable mortality. Another one relates to the notion that we're not fully in control, that the script of our lives is being written (or has already been written) by something or someone other than us.

In other words, we lead an uncertain life that is hurtling towards a certain death. How does this knowledge affect our view of life and how we relate to the world around us? One response is what I call the 'guest mindset', in some ways similar to being an actor on a stage. There is this sense that we are just passing by, that we don't really belong here, that we're visiting on a tourist visa. By extension, this would mean that the world also doesn't really belong to us, that we are just guests here. An actor may play his part with the fullest of sincerity, but the costume he wears and the props he uses don't really belong to him, the lines he speaks are not really his, his relationships with the rest of the cast are make-believe and even the emotions he feels are conjured or manufactured by him in response to the demands of the script. An actor is invited to play his part, he is a guest: the play and the stage do not belong to him.

The "guest mindset" makes our world a little less real for us, because nothing really matters that much to a guest, nor is the guest in full control of his surroundings. So the guest does not need to take ownership or responsibility, either; after all, he is just a guest. He checks in, stays for a while, and then checks out. By this token, the world's problems are not really ours and the task of making the world better should belong to someone else - to the host, whoever that is.

Wait a minute - if we are all guests, who is the host? Yes, I know, God; but the guy seems to delegate almost everything back to us. So now it seems we're guests with at least some of the responsibilities of the host. Or are we, in fact, the hosts?

Does our reality become less real just because it is short-lived and not eternal? Is our control useless just because it is partial and not absolute? Perhaps not. A positron might exist merely for a millionth of a second, but it is real for that duration. And while it does not control its destiny, it can still make a contribution (PET scanners powered by positrons are saving many lives today).

I think a "host mindset" is more empowering and useful. We own this place, albeit on a short lease. We are not just visiting on a tourist visa. It is both our privilege and our responsibility to do what we can to make this place better, as opposed to just checking in, staying for a while, and checking out. We fulfill ourselves by investing ourselves fully and engaging completely with our world and with all its issues, as opposed to being a mere actor or even worse, a spectator. We create the next generation of hosts and bequeath to them our life's work, for them to take forward. We enrich our soul by enriching our experience of life, long or short.

As you think of how you relate to your world - your work, your community, your country - how do you see yourself, as a guest or as the host?

Watch that "best before" date!

I'm sure you've experienced this: you buy your favorite fresh snack in the supermarket, bring it home and keep it in the kitchen cabinet. Then something distracts you and you forget about it. You remember it again after a few days and rush to get it, only to discover it is past its "best before" date.

Question is, does this happen more broadly in life, too? Do life experiences also come with an expiry or a best before date?

My son, Yash, loves candies. I did too, when I was his age. I can still remember how my heart used to beat with excitement, making me squeal with joy, when I got one! Can I enjoy candy the same way today? Sadly, no. It is the same candy, but it doesn't taste the same, and it doesn't feel the same. Not even close. In other words, the "best before" date for me to enjoy the experience called "eat candy" has lapsed. I can still buy as many candies as I want to and even eat them, but I cannot experience them in the best way anymore. The age or date for me to do that is long gone, and I either had my fill by that time or missed the chance!

Does this apply to other experiences? I think so. I remember watching James Bond or Amitabh Bachchan movies as a kid. In my eyes as a little boy, my heroes could do no wrong and could never lose. Still, my stomach would be in knots when they were in trouble, and I would sit on the edge of my seat, fists clenched, until they beat up all the baddies, won the girl and saved the world yet again. I would give a lot to be able to experience movies today with the same wonder and hero worship, but I can't. Neither can I read my favorite spy and action book authors anymore. In fact, I haven't read fiction for many years now.

Similarly, there is a "best before" date to go to school / college prom, have a debut, a first date, a first kiss, drive a car - or even better, a bike - really fast, drink or smoke on the sly, dance the night away ... the list can be expanded. You can't do these things ten years after that date. Well, perhaps you can, but it is not the same experience anymore. Touring Europe with friends in your 20's is not the same as doing so in your 30's or 40's. It is a different experience - it might still be nice, but it is not the same.

What are the implications of this "best before" date concept? I think it is very important to be conscious of it. Think of the top 5 life experiences that are most important to you. And then ask yourself, what is the "best before" date for these experiences? If it is approaching fast, drop whatever you're doing now and bring your desired experiences into your life before the date passes you by.

Too often, we are too busy working for, saving for and investing for our "future" and keep planning for that golden age when we will finally do what we actually want to do after having removed all the constraints that prevent us from doing it today. Well, the best before date for most of our desired experiences may well be gone by then. Don't wait to grow up before you eat candy, and don't wait till your 50's to do what is best done in your 30's! So if you're waiting for your kids to go to college before you take some time off to go around the world, think again!

Of course, it may not always be within our power to make our desired experiences occur at a time of our choosing. Priorities will have to be decided, trade-offs made and we will still win some, lose some. All the more reason to be conscious of the best before dates so that we get the most out of life and its experiences. And by the way, if you're someone who is tempted by that snack that's past its best before date, don't. Just go get another one!

The Age of Mammon?

Meet Mammon. You may or may not know him, but he's been around for a while. Biblical texts describe him as the "false god of wealth", worshipping whom was avarice, one of the "seven deadly sins". Despite Jesus having made himself pretty clear about his stance on Mammon, the guy is still around two millennia later. In fact, I strongly suspect he is  pulling more strings each day in our lives.


This era in history is often described as the Information Age, which of course is true to a large extent. But when historians a few centuries down look back on our era, how will they describe our civilization: its values and culture? Is there a chance they will call it the Age of Mammon?


Shocked? Offended? Well, consider this. When I was working with the UN's World Food Program a couple of years ago, I saw concrete data that says we live in a world today where there is enough food to feed all humans. Yet, we "choose" - whether consciously or by virtue of sheer apathy - to let thousands of little kids die of starvation, which is an excruciatingly painful way to die! Why? Because it does not make "economic sense" to transport the food to where it is needed.

How will history judge us for images like the one on the left, especially in light of the knowledge that the food this child needed was in fact available, as was the transportation infrastructure and technology needed to bring it to him in time? What was lacking was the collective will to do so, and that was because that will was being fully exerted to advance economic interests, and anything that did not fit well with our wealth accumulation goals was simply ignored.


In our day to day lives, there are less shocking, but equally telling examples of how we prioritize Mammon over other things. If media reflects society, I often don't like what I see in that mirror. All those reality shows and contests where people are willing to do anything - injure or humiliate themselves or others, or destroy their relationships - for prize money, tell us something about the world we live in and its priorities.


You might wonder, is this now or was it always like this? I think money was always important, and surely excesses were committed in its pursuit in past eras as well. But it was not a single-minded obsession of mainstream society the way it is now.


Ancient Christian, Hindu and Buddhist societies actively discouraged wealth accumulation as a life goal, describing it as a distraction from the more worthy goals of salvation, moksha or nirvana. Past worlds used to value and celebrate their thinkers, artists, spiritual leaders and scientists much more than rich businessmen. The Greeks celebrated Plato and Aristotle, the Renaissance celebrated Da Vinci and Michaelangelo, not whoever was the richest at that time. By contrast, the heroes of today's world are its billionaires, and success - maybe even self worth - is measured in dollars and cents. Today, we know more about Bill Gates and Warren Buffet than we care to, and most of us won't be able to name the top physicist or the best spiritual thinker of our time.


Similarly, our education system today is mostly geared towards economic goals like employment and entrepreneurship. In other words, we want to train our kids to be money spinners when they grow up. I have seen many parents tell kids not to get "distracted" by other stuff like arts and humanitarian pursuits. Again, this was not always so, i.e. the goal of learning was to understand our broader purpose in life and our role in society was not defined just in economic terms.


Today, we are better described as a collection of individual consumers rather than a society of thinking and caring beings. Consumerism has taken over our collective psyche in this era more than it did in any past era. In fact, the current economic crisis has been caused by greed, or the love of Mammon! Everyone from investment bankers to home owners wanted more, more, more. The bubble burst as it had to, and how!


While we all hate the economic downturn, I hope this shock will give cause for pause. There is some evidence of this kind of introspection starting to happen. Maybe we are meant not just to be employees or employers, consumers or shareholders but also thinkers, artists, explorers, lovers and dreamers. And maybe if these other pursuits don't make money, that's ok. Maybe we need our friends and families more than we need stuff. Maybe we will be respected and seen as valuable even if we don't have huge net worths to boast of. Maybe this age will defeat the designs of Mammon and put money back in its place as a means and not an end, as a tool to be used and not as a God to be worshipped!


Maybe ... or maybe not? What do you think?

The Philippines

I have had a decade-long relationship with the Philippines, both personal and professional. As I find myself here in Makati once more today, my thoughts go out once more to this rather unique little country.

One of my senior colleagues recently - and somewhat uncharitably - described the Philippines as a "formerly developing country". Sadly, the sarcasm rings true. It is hard to believe today that at one time the Filipinos, who are now best known for exporting domestic workers to the world, used to import domestic workers from Hongkong! Or that Manila, and not Singapore, was seen as a "hub" location in Southeast Asia, especially from a US perspective.

The Philippines has been quoted as an example of how "a free-for-all democracy" may not always work. Personally, I think it is more a case of their system being hijacked by one individual (Marcos) who damaged the growth trajectory, the institutional architecture and the governance ethic so much that the country is yet to recover from it.

But the highlight of this country is not its politics or its ecomony ... it is the people! Happy, smiling, courteous people! I think it is well worth the time of a team of social scientists to explore this phenomenon. How do these people remain happy, and what can we learn from them?

Let me explain. It is hard to find a more disaster-prone place than the Philippines - well, at least among countries with over 75 million population. Every year, thousands of lives are lost to typhoons and landslides (the latter caused and/or aggravated by the blatant rape of the naturally forested landscape for timber). Every few years, thousands more are lost to earthquakes, and every few decades, to volcanic eruptions. If that doesn't kill enough people, the inept ferry companies make sure they drown a thousand or so every now and then. The country has suffered terrorisim and unrest in the south (much less now, though). Those who manage to live through all this face the prospect of widespread poverty, unemployment, corruption and sub-par infrastructure and services. The country's resources were plundered by a dictator for almost two decades. And yet, the people are always smiling and seem genuinely happy.

I was here in Manila in 2001 on the day of "People Power II" when the corrupt Estrada was thrown out of office. I was tense when I heard the news: people revolting to throw out a sitting president evoked imagery of arson and bloodshed. Instead, the Filipinos ate, sang and danced on the streets ... and threw out a president they did not like. How does that work?

Another people phenomenon worth exploring is the "overseas Filipino worker", or OFW. There are about 12 million of them, which means close to one in each household. They work as nurses, teachers, caregivers, entertainers and domestic helpers around the globe, but also increasingly in shipping, engineering and managerial roles. The interesting thing about them is that they practically spend their entire lives overseas without losing one bit of connectedness back home. As a % of their income, OFWs remit more money to their families back in the Philippines than do NRIs or NRCs (Indian and Chinese overseas workers).  Sometimes, this percentage is as high as 60 to even 80% of their income. So essentially, one member of the family (usually the eldest female child) leaves the home country to work for their entire life in a foreign country, often in a low-end job, and sends back pretty much her entire lifetime income to lift the rest of the family out of poverty. And this person is happy doing so!

Given the happy and friendly disposition of its people, it is hard not to have a soft spot for this country. I hope their development trajectory accelerates along the fragile recovery path it seems to have found in the last few years. Or is it that I am just getting infected by two other Filipino phenomena - eternal optimism and a tendency to root for the underdog!

Generation gap?

I was born in India in the early 1970's. Looking back at that time from the perspective of today's world, it seems like that was a very, very long time ago. Things have changed so much that often I feel the world in which I was born no longer exists, except in the memories of those who experienced it.

We used to live in Kolkata (then Calcutta). There was no TV at that time. Yes, I mean no TV at all. Television was introduced in Kolkata in 1975, and our family was among the early buyers of an "imported" black & white set (color TV transmission was still almost a decade away). "Imported" was a big status symbol in those times, by the way. Our neighbours used to come over to our house to watch the few Bollywood songs the state-owned media would deem fit to telecast once or twice a week. Folks used to look forward to watching these for days before the telecast, and discuss them for days after.

There was no phone at home. You could apply for one to the (state-owned) telephone company, either under the "ordinary" category for Rs. 1000 or under the "urgent" category for Rs. 8000. The expected waiting time for the ordinary category at that time was, hold your breath, 30 years! The "urgent" category, being urgent, came through in just 7 years! Little wonder we had already moved out of Kolkata by the time our phone was ready for installation. When we did get our first, clunky, black phone installed in Chandigarh, I remember the occasion warranted a small celebration with neighbours and friends. It was the done thing to have a party to celebrate a phone installation.

Most families did not own cars. Those who did had exactly two choices. Both were pathetic and outdated even for their time, but at least they were cars. When I was seven, my father bought one of those two types of cars, which we kept for the next 15 years.

You had to be someone important to reserve a seat in a train and air travel certainly raised eyebrows. I was eight when I first flew - from Chandigarh to Delhi - on the (state-owned) airline. We were treated like royalty, and I refused to remove the airline tag from my bag for several months thereafter.

The most sought after jobs were those that were handed out by the government, because they provided job security, housing and retirement benefits, too. Having said that, having any job at all was a good achievement for a young person at that time.

Banks and postal services were state-owned and specialised in being customer unfriendly; I remember being told to be extra polite to the "government lady" at the bank or the post office, and I was always a bit apprehensive to enter their offices. All their processes were manual, of course (I never set eyes upon a computer until I was 16). Good hotels and clubs were clearly for the elite, and I had never seen a mall, a condominium or a casino before I first traveled out of India at the age of 25.

Today, my two-year-old, Yash, has lived in three condos so far, has flown a total of 28 times to five countries, visits malls everyday, watches his nursery rhymes on wireless broadband on my Iphone and makes systematic efforts to ruin the electronic controls of my Mercedes!

If the world changed so much in the three and a half decades between me and Yash, how much more will it change by the time Yash grows up? Will Yash ever be able to appreciate the world I grew up in, and will I be able to comprehend his world when he is a young man?

Scary thought. Well, my Mom (who was born more than two decades before the dark ages I described above) uses a mobile phone, phone-banks, sends greeting cards over the internet, and even reads my blog! Much more important, we still share a few enduring values and time-tested principles that help us appreciate each other's situation, however different it might be from our own.

So, my dear Yash, as long as we come to share the same enduring values and as long as we love and care for each other, the massive differences in our external environment won't matter. I certainly hope so ... time will tell!

Let's be unreasonable

Ever since I read it as a kid, I have been fascinated by the following quote from the insightful and witty George Bernard Shaw:

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Alright, replace "man" with "person" if you must: Shaw did not live in the politically correct era (although I doubt if it would have made any difference to him even if he did). But that is besides the point.

Consider the "unreasonable" person. We have all met him/her, sometimes in the mirror, too. Think of the aggressive negotiators ("Here's a great deal for you: I will buy twice of what you're offering for half the price you're quoting for one"), the bosses from hell ("I expect you to divine what I want before I say it, and then deliver it before I expect it. With top quality, by the way. That's all"), the perfectionists ("Detail 34 on page 345 of the Appendix may be off by a couple of decimal points: could you please re-check?") or the hard-charging bulldozers ("My business has doubled in the last two years. Now I want it to double again .. this time in one year. What do you mean that's impossible?") and many other types of unreasonable people you might have come across.

They can be irritating, painful to endure or even outright annoying. But is Shaw right in saying that we owe our progress to such people? And if "reasonable" can be approximated to "nice", can Shaw's quote above be loosely interpreted to mean, "Nice guys finish last"?

By extension, does this also mean that there is a tension between progress and happiness? Because even if unreasonable people create progress by pushing boundaries and driving change, they sure don't create a lot of happiness. Not inside them, and not around them. They are perpetually dissatisfied and usually insecure, always feeling a need to validate themselves via their next achievement. By contrast, reasonable people, who adapt to things as they are, seem more happy with themselves and with the world around them.

Is this all part of a grander design? Do these unreasonable people exist to challenge the "impossible" so that that they can create new possibilities and make the world a better place for the rest of the reasonable population to enjoy? Would it then be right to see them as martyrs to the cause of our greater collective happiness?

But before we jump to that view, here is another perspective. Unreasonable people drive change, but is all change good? For instance, unreasonable people like Hitler drove regressive and reprehensible changes. It was therefore right for these people to have been stopped in their tracks.

Even if we talk only of constructive change, does more progress always mean more happiness? There is research out there that questions our entire developmental paradigm, which implicitly assumes that higher GDP / capita leads to happier populations. While that is certainly true for countries struggling with basic economic issues like a lack of food, housing, education and employment, perhaps the GDP-happiness correlation weakens at higher levels of GDP above a certain minimum, as this "world happiness map" seems to suggest.

The color coding of this map - brown = unhappy, yellow is in between and green = happy - raises interesting questions. I must caveat this map, however. The methodology is still being debated, and I cannot vouch for the validity of the results.

So what does this all mean to us? Should we encourage the unreasonable instincts within us to drive progress, or be reasonable and happy, but not too progressive. Arrgh! Choices!

My vote is to be "unreasonable" in order to be a change agent, but do this consciously in a way that creates constructive change, progress AND happiness. Think of Gandhi or Lincoln as the iconic role models of this kind of unreasonableness.

Let's be unreasonable ... but still have a soul and a heart! Come on, be reasonable!

Always better to be first?

In their 1993 marketing classic "The 22 immutable laws of marketing", Al Ries and Jack Trout forcefully argue that "it is better to be first than it is to be better". In fact, this aphorism was bestowed the honor of being the first of their 22 laws!

I have come to believe that this "law" is a lot less immutable than they suggest. Think of the dotcom bubble of the late 90's. Boatloads of folks who all wanted to be the first to enter the brave new world of the internet went bust at that time. Painfully so. And what is happening a decade down the line? Web 2.0 is taking over our lives, and folks like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Larry Page (and others) are billionaires by riding this second wave.

Let's take a closer-to-home example. Quite a few of my friends bought plasma TV's when they were first the rage a few years ago. I remember they paid about S$ 10,000 for a 42" plasma at the time and proudly took it home. I'm not sure how they feel a few years down the road, when far better performing plasmas are being sold for as little as S$ 2000, but I am sure I don't want to be in their shoes.

It is not always better to be the first.

Why? I think that sometimes inventors, innovators and visionaries tend to be too far ahead of their time, and can get too carried away by their own steam to carefully see the ground beneath them.

Let's go back to the internet example. The dotcom era visionaries missed simple facts around low internet penetration especially outside of the US, a non-existent consumer habit to go online, miserable bandwidths leading to low speeds for most meaningful applications and content, the lack of meaningful applications and content and the relatively user-unfriendly interface on most platforms. Similarly, simple issues around revneue models and payback periods were ignored by investors. These critical factors were swept aside as being "mere details" and the people who raised them were shut up for being "old foggies who did not get it".

Indeed, the vision and the world-changing power of ideas of taking entire industries like banking, retail, news, entertainment, communication and social networking online was too intoxicating for anyone to notice the devil in the detail.

The vision was not wrong. Today, people (at least in the developed world) go to Google by default to search for anything, log into their hotmail or yahoo accounts to communicate with each other, increasingly meet each other on numerous dating sites, say hi to friends on facebook and do their banking and airline ticketing online as a matter of course. They buy their books on amazon, watch and post their videos on youtube and get answers to their questions on wikipedia. Some even live out their fantasies on secondlife or play games or gamble in online casinos. Low-end executive search firms are being made redundant by Linkedin; travel agents are getting real heat from airline and other online vendors, and all print newspapers I know are evaluating strategies to deal with the Web. Even as this is happening, the internet is going mobile in a very big way (the iphone alone is a driver), and the developing world is catching up on all of this ... fast!

What went wrong in the dotcom era is that since key details were missed, expectations around the time it would take to materialize and monetize some of these business models were very unrealistic. Being a trail-blazing visionary is great, but it is often the smart, yet level-headed follower with an eye for detail who makes the killing.

Pedestrian and uninspiring as it might sound, I think it is more accurate to say, "It is exciting to be first, but usually better to be the savvy second".

A penny for your thoughts?

Fight or flight?

Fight or flight? Stay or quit? Pursue or relinquish? Invest or exit? Nurture or dissolve? In different forms, we face this choice everyday on issues ranging from the mundane to the life threatening. Our ancestors all the way back to the cave man faced the same question many times over. And other species face this stark choice everyday, too.

Not only that, the choices we make in response to this question can mean the difference between staying alive or not, staying in a job or not, investing in a business or not, staying in a relationship or not, pursuing a new opportunity or not ... pretty significant consequences, wouldn't you say?

With the benefit of a million years of experience, Mother Nature (or evolution if you prefer) has hard-wired some of the obvious choices in our heads. So thankfully, when we find ourselves in the path of a speeding truck, we don't start a process of deep reflection to assess our chances of fighting it - we instantaneously jump the hell out of the way! This instinctive response keeps us alive, exactly as it is meant to.

Where we get in trouble is with the less obvious choices that modern life offers us. You've had a five year relationship with a great guy, but the guy has not proposed. Meanwhile, you're not getting any younger. Should you persist? You've put a lot into your marriage of five years, but it just won't work. Should you continue to fight for it? You've been at this job for the last six years and done very well, but now your new role and new boss both stink. Should you quit? You've started a small business which has done reasonably well and seems to have growth potential, but you need to invest even more for a few years before you can see a profit. Do you invest? What do you do with that stock that has "long-term growth potential", but has gone south ever since you bought it? Stay invested or cut your losses?

Words of wisdom abound, and are unabashedly in conflict with each other. Does "persistence pay" or is it better to "live to fight another day"? Is it true that "when the going gets tough, the tough get going", or is it just plain foolish to "throw good money after bad money"? Your guess is as good as mine.

Learning from one's own and others' experience can help, but only to an extent. While you can draw some parallels and distil some general principles, it remains true that no two situations are alike. Even you yourself are not the same person you were ten years ago, and so will not be the same person ten years hence.

Astrologers, numerologists, palm readers and the like offer the perfect solution by knowing the future and using that knowledge to help us make decisions. Yeah, right.

Often, even after you've made your choice, you will never know the answer to the "what if" question: that is, would you have been even better off or even worse off making the other choice? So we're not necessarily as much wiser in hindsight as we might like to believe!

I was talking to a decision scientist who made an interesting point: make the less choice binary, given all the uncertainty. The key is not to think in "yes/no" or "go/no-go" terms, but to think in terms of "decision horizons, exit timing, exit triggers and exit strategies, and review regularly". Sensible as that sounds, I wonder if it also fuels confusion and loss of focus.

At the other end of the spectrum, my father has a very different approach. His response is, "live or die, but never run away from a fight (or challenge)". Is that courage or egomania?

With such limited knowledge and foresight, are we really making "choices" or "best guesses"? If all our agonizing over these choices leads to making educated guesses at best, is it even worth the trouble? Or is it better to just "go with the flow", do your best and leave the outcome to ... whom? God? Destiny? Or blind chance?

What do you think?

Work hard, play hard ... sleep-less?

Why does life come across as a large number of priorities chasing a small amount of time? Or is it just me? I have to work hard at my job - now even harder than ever before, which I already thought was a lot - to get to where I want to be professionally. At the same time, I have many other priorities, and I would not like them to fall by the wayside as I pursue my professional goals.

For one, I am starting to fall more and more in love with golf, but golf is one hell of a high-maintenance lover (both in terms of time and money)! I played this morning (no better way to start a Sunday morning :), but will have to work a little into the evening to compensate.


I am already deeply in love with my two-year old son, Yash (pictured here trying to kiss the neighbour's daughter during his second birthday party: way to go, son!). He is a delight - a very caring, loving, and intelligent boy and I want to be there with him and for him through all those little, special moments as he grows.

Then there is my family and friends back in India, a few friends here in Singapore, there is my personal commitment to my fitness, there is blogging, there are places I want to vacation, movies I want to watch ...

How on earth am I going to fit it all? A lot of my friends who are in a similar situation tell me that the answer lies in adopting a "work hard, play hard" approach to life. Put more energy into it, get more out of it. Makes sense. The trouble is, this involves sleeping less, and I like sleeping, too!

Well, I guess something's gotta give. And I know the answer is that I will have to give up on sleep to some extent. Some people are lucky in that their bodies naturally need less sleep - quite a few senior executives I know (including BCG's CEO Hans-Paul) tell me that they are quite fine sleeping only 4 hours a day on average. Sadly, I am not. If I sleep less than 6 hours a day, I become grumpy and irritable the following day.

Perhaps one idea is to get more out of the sleeping hours, i.e. improve the amount of relaxation achieved even with a short nap! Sleep research, here I come ...

The Last Yard Effect

The formula for winning an Olympic Gold is simple enough: you have to reach - and run - that last yard faster than everyone else does! If you think about it, it all boils down to that last yard. So the question to ask is not "how to win the race?", but "how to win the last yard?"

All athletes practice for endless hours and compete in several screening and qualifying events, then practice even harder for the big event, and then all of them run hard for the first 99% of the race. At the end of it all, the only guy who matters is the one who crosses that last yard a split second before everyone else does. The rest might as well not have bothered.

Almost everyone can do 99% of what it takes to win, it is the last 1% that is the hardest to do ... and hence the most rewarding. I call this the last yard effect.

You can this effect at work everywhere. Think about that last one kilo of tummy fat, that last millisecond of running time, those last 195 metres in a marathon (after running 42 km), that one really tough hole on a golf course or that one toughest question in a test that makes all the difference in our winner-takes-all world!

Of course, one still has to do the basic 99% to get to the final 1% in the first place, but the key question is: how to win the last yard?

Here are three thoughts:

• Choose the right "game": It is very rare to find people who are champions at more than one thing. Find the game that plays to your strengths and for which you have the passion. This may not be the most popular game, or the toughest or the sexiest or the most lucrative one, but that does not matter. If making burgers or drawing cartoons excites you more than physics, becoming the best in the world at it is much better than being one among many physicists toiling away at labs in NASA or CERN
• Practice, practice, practice: In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks of a "10,000-hour rule", referring to the threshold level of experience one needs for mastery at any task, be it playing golf, music or writing software. I buy it. Getting this much practice needs not only sustained passion, but also focus and discipline
• Take risk, innovate and differentiate: You cannot win the last yard by sticking to the safe, tried and tested approach or even by incrementally improving upon what others have done. You have to do something different, but something different that works better. Doing something different is risky, but here's where 10,000 hours of passionate practice help develop a strong base of expertise that increases the odds of success. Add some creative thinking to leverage that strong base and then be willing to bet the farm on it

Is this "winning the last yard" stuff hard to do in real life? Of course it is! But then again, the first 99 yards are not worth running unless you win the last yard!

I love the Singapore Girl!

There is this "aah...everything works!" feeling about returning to Singapore from an overseas trip in the region, and that feeling starts from the moment you step into the SQ plane back home! Contrary to the experience of many starry-eyed tycoons around the world  - who have discovered that launching an airline is one thing and making money in this business is quite another - SQ is one of the few consistently growing and profitable airlines in world! In the 15 years till 2008, they have maintained a 7% growth rate annually on both revenue and net income in an industry where bankruptcies, major restructuring and mergers / consolidations for survival are more the norm than the exception.

They have perfected the full-service airline business model and customer service model - and the latter has made their customers so loyal! Every aspect of the SQ experience is carefully designed and meticulously executed. Granted, it is so meticulously executed that sometimes it comes across as an elaborate drill, but hey, have you traveled on American or United Airlines recently! I rest my case.

SQ pampers you in the plane (being Solitaire PPS helps) and then lands you in Changi, one of the best airports in the world! Changi is another success story of excellent customer orientation from a (until recently) government-owned and run infrastructure. I exit the plane at 11:01pm and enter the taxi at 11:15pm (after clearing immigration, collecting a checked in bag and quickly buying a bottle of the French wine of the month duty-free and with a PPS discount, too!)

On the smooth taxi ride home on a clean and un-congested expressway that is dressed up to welcome APEC delegates, I can't help thinking ... I love the Singapore Girl!

The soft stuff is hard

Here's a little story. A man sees another man at a social event, and exclaims, "Hey there, aren't you my old friend, Peter?" Before the other guy can respond, he goes on, "Oh, you've lost a lot of hair since we last met ... and you're darker, too ... and what's with those gray colored eyes, you're wearing colored lens, eh?" The other guy finally manages to get a word in, "Errr...actually I am John Smith". Pat comes the response, "Ah, so you've changed your name, too!"

Once one's mind is set to see things in a certain way, tons of concrete evidence to the contrary could fail to change that "mindset".  And this is why the soft stuff - changing attitudes and mindsets - is the hardest part of my work as a management consultant.

As consultants, we are frequently tasked with bringing about transformational change in large organizations in a relatively short span of time. We typically begin with defining and hard-wiring the change (by changing structures, roles, accountabilities, performance metrics and hard rewards like compensation). This part requires a lot of structured thinking, quantitative analysis, modeling, process charting and the like: technical stuff. But it is in our control. We can do it; we've done it many times before. The hard stuff is easy.

Then comes a point in the assignment when all our concrete recommendations are "approved" by the top executive team. When I was less experienced, I thought of this as the end point of our assignment - our job was done.

Now I know that the real job is only starting then. Because now begins the soft part of actually making the proposed change a part of everyone's day-to-day reality. And that's when all hell breaks loose. Inertia, egos, prejudices, insecurities and interpersonal dynamics swing into action to create a tsunami of change resistance. Everyone agrees that the change program is a good idea for everyone else to implement. As for themselves, they are doing just fine, thank you. The soft stuff is hard.

Hard as it might be, the soft stuff can be done, too. Several proven techniques can be employed. But it takes time, it takes patience and above all, it takes conviction and dogged determination. Most new strategies and change programs fail not because they are conceptually flawed, but because the programs are diluted and compromised somewhere along the implementation pathway, lose credibility, then lose momentum and eventually just fizzle out.

During a long project to transform a client's sales force, the last few months were all about the soft stuff. Here's the good news: it is hugely rewarding and satisfying to see the results when you succeed with the soft aspects of change. Rather than have just the top management agree with the new sales approach, we saw the junior-most sales people actually changing their mindsets and doing their jobs differently: collaborating and partnering instead of just competing and negotiating, using facts instead of opinions to make decisions, replacing ad hoc-ism with structure and discipline. We saw middle managers coaching and reviewing performance instead of "delegating and abandoning" and senior guys starting to envision and lead instead of just fire-fighting and managing upwards.

As we concluded that piece, I felt that I spent the year creating some real change rather than just writing reports. The soft stuff is rewarding!

What runs you?

Recently, I was talking to one of our alumni who is now CEO of a mid-size company, and I asked him, "How does it feel to run a business?". He honestly replied, "I don't know ... actually the business runs me!".

There is this curious, Frankenstein-ian power equation between creator and creation, master and slave, principal and agent, hunter and prey ... after a point in the relationship, it becomes hard to say who runs who! I often find bosses so dependent on key employees that they are held to ransom by them eventually, distributors and suppliers giving headaches to the companies that hired them in the first place, spouses attempting to "run" each other, not to mention kids running their parents crazy :)

Perhaps it is inevitable that power equations in human relationships will change over time, so let us not dwell on that any further. Here is something even more curious: technology and tools start running people, too (think of all the people you know who cannot help but respond to every email on their blackberries or to every SMS or call on their mobile phones). Another interesting one: I have found that "to-do" lists run people: some of us are so fixated on checking things off on our to-do lists that we forget to enjoy the moments that life is made up of, or even lose sight of the fundamental reason why the item was on the list to begin with.

Why does this happen? Why do we cede control of our lives - albeit unconsciously - to the tools that are supposed to help us take more control of it? Is it that we get "addicted" to them and then the addiction runs us? Is it perhaps the instant gratification - a sense of achievement or a sense of connected-ness - that we crave?

My own to-do list is a tool that wields considerable power over me ... most people who know me well would say, "if you really want it done, make sure it gets on his to-do list". Does my to-do list run me? I fear that it could if I let it. So I make it a point to step back from it every week, and ask myself the broader questions, "These activities are all fine, but what are they all adding up to? Are they taking me where I want to go?" These questions are very important to ask regularly to keep the to-do list in its place and not let it run its author.

Fine, so maybe my to-do list does not run me, after all. The million-dollar question is: what does? I will return to this question in another post, but let me leave you now with a poser from me...

What runs you?

Hotel Kempinski, Jakarta

Checked in late last night. Newly renovated hotel with polite staff, but they have so much more to get right! Different clocks in the same room are set to different time zones somehow, the operator is unable to relay the correct luggage tag number to the bell desk, the taxi counter guy makes nice small talk but takes ages to actually do his job of finding a taxi ... the list goes on! Still much better than the Hotel Mulia, notorious for its thin walls and for what goes on within them ;)...they have way more things to get right!

But then, the world itself has so much more to get right, doesn't it, or at least my part of the world, i.e. Asia, does. I just read two side-by-side articles that talked about how India has topped the list for retail shrinkage levels (retail industry jargon for theft) and that the insurance sector is so under-developed there. Similar stories abound here in Indonesia. The world has faced and solved these and other problems many times before, yet there is so much work to do to apply, customize and implement the solutions for our countries. Easier said than done!  The fact is, these large developing countries are essentially work-in-progress, and there is so, so much work and relatively sluggish progress.

The task for my generation in Asia is clearly cut out: we need to invest our life time to erase the "third world" label from our dear countries, so that our kids have the same quality of governance, infrastructure, services and opportunities as their counterparts in the West! Will I do my bit? One look at my little Yash (my two-year old son) or rather at his picture which is my wallpaper, and my answer is, "Hell, Yes!"

And so I get off to start another day ... off to the gym now!

Chandan