Opinion Ivory tower fat

Once you’re a smartphone user,you’ll never go back to the dumb phone. This is the current social trend across age,income and geography in India,which has 8.6 million mobiles already,although not all are smart yet. Most Western businessmen and young moneyed Indians swear by smartphones for the convenience and functionality this single little transportable palmtop device can provide. Anytime,in a cab,restaurant,restroom,airport or elsewhere,it makes you productive and playful offering applications from Apple (800,000 apps),Google (700,000 apps),Blackberry (100,000) and Microsoft (50,000 apps). IDC reports that 2013’s first quarter saw smartphones outnumbering basic phones in worldwide shipments,of 418.6 million shipped devices,216.2 m were smartphones.

Qwerty smartphones of Rs 5,000 to 50,000 have features like email,Internet access,GPS,video chatting,gaming,app downloading and music storage. In contrast,T9 keyboard dumb phones costing Rs 1,000 to 5,000 just make and receive calls,send small messages and lack access to information. Is there an equivalent to the smartphone way of working in the corporate office? We cannot copy the American top management business style in India. Being the first implementer of industrialisation after Britain’s Industrial Revolution,they can afford that high cost stratum. They’ve trained their bottom employee layer in craftsmanship and what a customer is,so customer centricity flows from the bottom. The top is left to ideate on the strategic leap to make the enterprise global. But when India follows the American management style,we choose leadership jargon without cascading to the bottom,the delivery key.

In every industry,the last-mile connect,from the company’s product or service to a customer,is the most critical ritual. Yet top management of B2C companies that are highly connected to retail channels is generally oblivious to what’s happening with their and the distributor’s frontline salespersons who interact with customers. Their salary ranges from Rs 5,000 to Rs 25,000 per month; their sense of job ownership is minimal. Rarely do companies train them on soft skills required to convince customers. In manufacturing industries,there’s severe lack of craftsmanship,with products have no sustaining quality. India,the world’s most heterogeneous society incomparable to none other,unfortunately lets discipline go for a toss. People interpret every process in different ways as per their social culture.

Caught between a top-heavy ivory tower and an unskilled,unstable bottom,the middle management is sandwiched. The delivery system operations can be quite crude from every angle. Aside from non-conducive infrastructure,an IT blip,to possibly an archaic supply chain system,they have to deal with a workforce they do not understand in social terms. In Mumbai’s 5 star hotels,a large part of the housekeeping staff is recruited from the chawls (slums). Waiters in most restaurants come from small towns in search of the glitzy city life that television and Bollywood expose them to. They are generally boys,and just for being born as boys and not girls,they’ve been pampered all their lives by their families. Yet here they are,fending for themselves,living in cheap cubby spaces in city outskirts. There’s no mother,or sister to cook and feed them,their daily grind is fighting traffic snarls to get to work on time,do a standing-up job all day long. So it’s not unusual that there’s extremely high attrition; the boys hop for even an additional Rs 100 from lower-paying to low-paying jobs.

Unless initiative is taken to make the bottom imbibe high execution excellence,Indian companies will not make a dent in the global market. Smartphone world leader Samsung followed by Apple and LG have proved that also being sensitive to customers and innovating on their desires is profitable. So enabling your customer,serving employees with knowledge,skill and passion through the smartphone metaphor can break your ivory tower,bringing customer connect for market success.

Shombit is an international consultant to top management on differentiating business strategy with execution excellence (www.shiningconsulting.com)