Rajesh Tripathi

The article contributed in the monthly HR Magazine " Human Capital", November-2015 issue

Success begets success. An old idiom and perhaps the genesis of competitive benchmarking or different strategy matrices. The reason of benchmarking is to get ahead of competitors. It has been used extensively across one and all type of industries and companies. Essentially for reasons where companies easily get business performance numbers to compete for, like performance parameters, process parameters etc. But the question is, does benchmarking get the expected success for organisations? I see an inherent fallacy in this process of what I call - imitating others. What goes in benchmarking, I examined and found that the entire process is faulty. In general, organisations try imitating other successful organisations on certain characteristics which seemingly has brought success to them. These characteristics could be defined by a business strategy – a culmination of various processes to run a business. Even ‘personal benchmarking’ has its parallel where individuals get into this t...

My views were published in the Hindustan Times, 3-Nov-15

Strategy is the one word in Corporate that is being used & misused by individuals in their own ways. A highlight of these mis/interpretations to me is, when it is used for a plan. There are many more such examples. However, there is a catch here: Even if people use the word strategy for various other distorted reasons & meanings but still can strategize & achieve what they want to, perhaps, word meaning should not count much. But, reality is far from this? I have come across organisations which could not distinguish between their present and future needs and;  strategize  around  them. Mere focusing on the present may give you short term profit; but believe me “A strategy cannot run a short distance”. The strategy has a soul and a body – something to be seen now and something to seen then - the future. Aptly defined “It’s fundamentally the movement of an organisation from its present position to a desirable but inherently uncertain future position. ...

In this cut-throat environment wherein anyone and everyone aims for success, getting success at last is what one should look for. Nevertheless, the success differs from person to person.  Some seeks solace in financial success and some look for spiritual or like that in their life. But, one thing is quite clear that one cannot sit idle and has to look for success coming one’s way. Success has to be planned, efforts are to be made. Real, sensible efforts. In my eyes, success is generally aimed for, without choosing its direction. The decision where people generally struggle is in taking a decision. Aimlessly, as the world makes some float and look for success, people in mass you may find around. This will not let one even inch closer to the success, one desires for. In Indian context, collective wisdom, sprinkled with parents and well-wishers at large defines the direction for people in mass, without realising capabilities and interest of people. Perhaps, main reason for n...

Read the full article as Published in the HR Katha http://www.hrkatha.com/news/398-are-we-really-facing-a-talent-shortage

Once again yesterday I was confronted by an employee who inquired about his not getting growth despite his doing wonderful job since so many years. This confrontation again brought to me back the same old  query  – Does spot running make you run a distance? Interestingly, since the day of my joining the corporate,I am hearing and is generally advised that it is the soft skills which are more responsible to succeed in career then functional & technical skills; still people do connive with and do not want to understand it. People however, in private discussions, accept and vouch for the behaviour’s importance in success. I see two reasons of this immature behaviour of people - Education system & Culture in corporate - responsible for giving growth to employees based on their technical/functional skills. At Education level, primarily focus is on imparting technical knowledge and to some extent in whatever way, providing opportunity to students that can make ...

In one of my earlier blogs, talked about undue importance being given to ‘Experience’ while ascertaining relevance of a person to a job. It is being proved time & again by youngsters today who are yet to graduate out of their colleges that it is not experience but certain mettle which counts more. Some, at this point may get into arguments with some numbers about a large number of start-ups failing to prove that experience is more important, but so is the case with ‘experienced CEOs'.  Count, how many CEOs do give back to their shareholders continuous better than average returns. At the same time, even I go to the extent of not denying peeved impact of  experience  on many decisions, where we feel, right decision are taken due to having some experience. But  experience alone is not what makes one successful.   Observations around and top of that research in the field of Neuroscience has made considerably clear that experience has its own biases wh...

While doing a study of companies which are been seen successful in market, I have not come across a single company - having rested on the glory of a product or even products in its portfolio; that has given better than average returns to its shareholders for a reasonable period of time. I say 10 years. Question comes to mind, why is it so? Going through many a renowned & successful CEOs speeches, I found one thing common- no one talked much about the basket of products they have. They primarily talked about the culture, people and adopted processes which made people to come out of award winning products for their organisations, continuously – that made their respective organisations successful. In total, I can say it is their Winning Aspiration which made it happen. Many CEOs have categorically put across their views and success mantras that they were or are successful due to their ability of laying down ‘Aspirations’ that helped them getting a continuous stream of pr...

Contingent Workforce is the tactical strategy to meet quality manpower requirement. This is well captured in the magazine People & Management, August-2015 issue.

In a research , it was revealed that the role of IQ in success is limited to 20% and rest is due to EQ. But, there are three other Qs which are as important as EQ. In my attached article , I tried giving some insight on it.

Different customers and various products together give a complex matrix to deal with by selling people to change and fine-tune their selling behaviour. This is the catch generally being faced by organisations & fail to understand their falling sales. Distinctions in selling behaviour therefore is of paramount importance to understand to succeed in selling. In a research done by McKinsey on more than 1200 managers who were ‘Purchasing Decision Makers’, a big gap was found in what managers ‘said’ was important , generally it was price and product features and what actually drove their decisions about vendors. The study clearly identified that the Attitude Scales & Responses thereon do not come out to be positively effecting buying decision. It means, factors like Eco-friendly products, green products although being talked about a lot, but study shows that in reality, such attitude does not influence positively buying decisions. Another factor which came out of the M...

It is a fact that 'experienced' people emphasize on their experience rather on the content they gathered when they were being experienced.. Getting old, no one can stop. Watch keep ticking. The said article focus on how mindful actions make a difference and not the mindless experience. The article published in the magazine HUMAN CAPITAL, JULY -2015

Products manufactured has no value, until sold and money due realised. Conversely, selling if not tuned to a product, it remains a heroic act. It can therefore be said that it is the alignment of selling behaviours with sales tasks i.e. critical to managing performance of the organisation. Selling behaviour alignment has come into prominence as research conducted to find out reasons of failure of start-ups. It is found that nearly 44000 companies were founded in the year 2000. Out of them, fewer than 6% achieved more than $10 million in revenues by 2010 and fewer than 2% more than $ 50 million. Companies generally begin with the ‘ Product Performance Advantage’ – advantage that product drives into the market, finding a gap in a product category. This advantage is diluted slowly as other products or even new products in the same category start filling in the gap and companies first fail to comprehend reasons of their product failure and eventually not able to build on their...

Growth generally stunts due to lack of ideas. Homogeneity builds up in ideas & thought process when a set of people lives for a longer time, together. Therefore, there is no other option but to bring someone from outside to take care of business growth through heterogeneity.

Every organisation that is in the market for profit, aims to having equal access to all information pertaining to economic actors, so that it can formulate and execute winning strategy for itself. It thus means, although preferring to be alone but having no option, organisations fight for market information. Thus, giving rise to ‘EFFICIENT MARKETS’. In essence market is built of many organisations but is characterised & known by behaviours of those actors which are dominant in the market. Consequently, prices are known to every one for a product, as they are in a chain from raw material to finished goods; only changing their role of input to output.  It does mean that one has to price its product in such a way that it is neither overpriced nor under-priced.  Overpriced products will not get sufficient buyers and under-priced products will be deluged with buyers and therefore may not be able to supply to all. Automatically efficient markets eliminate odds and works for b...

Zone 11 skills successful organisations must have Comments By Admin on Jun 1, 2015 A high-performing team comprises of distinctly defined roles and well-rounded collection of personality archetypes  By Rajesh Tripathi Working with a team can be exhilarating and challenging too. In the world of business, this means that when individual roles and responsibilities aren’t well-defined, individuals get testy, the team dynamics go haywire and the project suffers as a result. Popular theories say a high-performing team comprises of distinctly defined roles and well-rounded collection of personality archetypes. Here’s a guide to 11 personality types that forms a successful team: 1. An expert : Expertise is the one skill a team cannot do without. Every new team needs at least one genius to get off the ground.This is the person that possesses intimate knowledge in a field that your project encompasses. This person gets dow...

Of late, a challenge is being seen in organisations to pursue a model to compensate their employees in such a way that motivates them, as well as does not impact their profitability. In the same context, I tried simplifying all related concepts, here. Industrialisation brought in the challenge of how and what to be paid to workers being employed to undertake certain jobs. These jobs primarily were having tasks which were repetitive in nature and therefore, once a skill was developed, more or less all workers were equal in their performance. This sowed the seed of Pay for Position or Job based Pay , whereby based on the knowledge and skill, a person was having and were being utilised by him to perform to achieve certain pre-determined level of performance, equal wages were paid. This led to a model that focused on compensation tiers tied to job titles. In a way, additional levels of responsibility combined with senior level job titles with higher compensation are a clear path for...

“A recent research has revealed that organisations that excel in project management meet their goals two and a half times more often and waste about 13 times less money than organisations that are poor at project management.” Seems something new, as research is supported by some data – making a reality more real. But fact remains as it is. When an activity is taken without having a goal, a well thought of ‘where to reach target’, activity only provides some people some experience. In my words experience is nothing but repetition of same mistake again and again. Therefore no learning occurs, even at the cost of expenses incurred by the organisation. On top of that it brings to the organisation a culture of negativity and avoiding change. Every activity, should therefore be taken as a project with well-defined path and target to achieve them. It will help in providing learning and overall, successful organisation to its people.

Published in the Hindustan Times, 19-Nov-2014