The King in Disguise

"Life main Lion ban-na hain to bakra ban-ne ki himmat honi chahiye" 

(To become a lion in life, you got to be ready to become a goat (bait). 

A hard-hitting dialogue given weight by the dhai-kilo ka haath actor, Sunny Deol, in the recent movie, CHUP. Besides, the many notable things from the movie, this dialogue stuck with me. 

If you have Aspirations to become a leader, be ready to start from the bottom or at least understand the individual at the bottom of the pyramid AND your customer & consumer. 

Lets look at it with a couple of examples ... 

There was a recent post by Vivek Subramanian (VP Finance at Flipkart) where he became a 'delivery person (also called 'wishmaster') for a day as part of their Big Billion Sale. He has talked about his experience as a wishmaster. I am sure it would have been an eye-opening experience as he got to experience the joy as well as the pain of the delivery person. The boardroom conversations about improving the working conditions of the delivery person will have a far different mindset and understanding now. 

Reminds me of the 'Helping Hands' initiative we had/have at Landmark Group where, for one day, the corporate office staff would go down to one of the stores and become 'retail staff'. I had chosen the Splash store in a mall near me. I spent 4 hours doing the simplest of activity that the store staff does - folding garments and putting them back on the racks. Oh What a humbling experience it was. Customers would walk in, spend 10 minutes in the store and ruffle through literally 40-50 garments, and leave (sometimes without buying anything). And then the store staff spends 20 minutes folding the garments. And this is just one customer. 

Ever since that day, I don't ruffle through garments on the rack. if I have to see or try, I lift the whole pile and pull out the specific one and keep the rest of the pile back. Or ask for a staff member who does it with minimal ruffling. Having seen the garment, I fold it and keep it back on the rack. Store staff are surprised at my treatment of clothes and I can see the silent 'thank you / gratitude' in their eyes. Feels good :) 

Yet another example: For the annual supply chain conference, our then Chief Supply Chain officer at Landmark Mihin Shah gave us a simple 'homework'. We were to place 2-3 separate orders on different brand portals of Landmark (Max, Splash, Babyshop, Shoemart, Centerpoint, Home Center, Home Box etc) and document our eCommerce experience from finding the product, ordering it, waiting for it and receiving it. We were also to return the products and experience the return process right up to refund. Since, being in supply chain team, we were party to the process itself, we were asked to order from another part of business. This simple exercise threw up a large number of insights and our team had a whole long list of improvements that could be made to improve the experience of the customer as well as ease out things for the supply chain team. It included suggestions for the portals, its design, internal supply chain and logistics processes. Oh what an experience it was!! 

This is akin to certain Kings of old times, disguishing themselves as commoners, and going out into their kingdom to experience life from the perspective of their subjects. It was always a journey of revelations.

This is one aspect of true leadership and true concern & care for your employees and customers. The CXOs and senior management need to 'disguise or role-play' themselves to experience what their employees and customers experience. This will not only generate some fantastic insights but also make the individuals in the ivory towers far more sensitive to the problems they are working toward solving. The mindset change is phenomenal.  

The same applied at Manager level can lead to them being more sensitive to their teams. Walking in their shoes (figuratively speaking) gives the manager a first-hand experience of the problems faced so that he/she can solve them with first-person sensitivity rather than 3rd party interest.

Walking in someone else's shoes is a piece of sage advice since ages. Great for business.

#mindset #kings #onthegroundexperience #customerfocusseddesign #userexperience #customerexpereince #cxo #seniormanagers #managers #teams #customerfocus #customerorientation