Maria...

Greetings to you this Monday Morning.
I met Maria, or rather I should say that I observed Maria for a couple of hours on my Jet Airways flight from Kolkata to Mumbai over the weekend.
She was one of the in-flight crew members designated to ensure the comfort of passengers. Maria, I thought, was special for two reasons, one is that she had an extraordinary ability of developing a rapport instantly and very naturally with passengers of all age groups from a 2-year-old to a 70-year-old and second and more important was that she seemed to be one of the very few people who truly and genuinely loved what she was doing i.e. her job as an airhostess.
Observing her and the effect she has on her passengers took me back to the story of the famous turn around of the loss making Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). When Jan Carlzon took up the position as the CEO, he had only one message from the board, Turn the company around. That is what he precisely did. During the course of this turnaround he talked of what is called as a "Moment of Truth". He said that each year 10 million of their customers came in contact with approx., 5 SAS employees and each of this contact lasted for an average of 15 seconds. Thus SAS employees "created" in the minds of their customers 50 million "Moments of Truth" and these moments would ultimately decide, more than anything else, if SAS succeeded or failed as a company.
The message is simple-Top executives and managers may sit in the board room and make a lot of important decisions, but what has a more far reaching impact in business is what actually happens on the field, particularly in the services area. Managers have to get on the field and understand what kind of moments of truths their staff is creating in the minds of the customer. Managers need to identify, reward and create role models of the Marias that work for them because employees like Maria make their company successful.
Way to go Maria, wish you all the best for a long and successful career.
Have a great week.
Sudhanshu Pandit.
January 24, 2005.

Getting into overdrive...

Greetings to you this Monday morning...I recently drove a very powerful car on the expressway - and those of you, who drive, would know that most new cars are equipped with what is called as an "Overdrive". For those who don't drive, here's a brief explanation of what an overdrive is:- The overdrive is a gear in which the car operates at very high efficiency and high speed. This happens because every cycle of the car engine results in more than one rotation of the wheels of the car, thus resulting in higher efficiency and speed. Ideally we should always be driving in overdrive. But this is not possible because the overdrive is not really capable of moving a car from standstill. The overdrive cannot produce the power required to move the vehicle from stand still. It can only take over when the car is cruising beyond a certain speed after it has gained some momentum. Our daily used car provides an interesting role model for us as we begin new endeavors, take on new assignments and venture into challenging projects. Most of us including myself have made the mistake of expecting that our new assignments will straight away get into overdrive and that we will operate at very high efficiency. We need to appreciate that just like the car we have to initially get into the first gear where we burn more fuel, operate at lower efficiency and lower speeds too. This is because we have to generate enough energy to move from standstill. Only after we gain some momentum, we can shift to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and subsequently to the overdrive to operate at higher efficiency. What is important is that we need to be at our task till we get to the overdrive stage. And once we get there, the drive, I am sure will be a pleasure to experience.....Have a wonderful drive and a great week...Sudhanshu

Happy New Year...

Greetings to you this Monday morning…
I started sending out my Monday emails; over 4 years back…and till recently I was very happy with my consistency and commitment towards my Monday emails. Over the last 3 weeks though, travel and work pressure has taken its toll and resulted in me not connecting with you all on the previous 3 Mondays.
I am extremely grateful to all those of you who actually called me / emailed to find out if things were OK at my end……
To me your calls and messages meant a lot. Firstly they confirmed that you do read my emailsJ. Secondly, the Monday emails do mean something to you as you missed them in your mail boxes and most important, you took out time to call / email me to find out if I was OK. Thank you indeed.
This experience has reinforced in my mind the well known principle that consistency is vital. To make a positive and long standing difference, one has to consistently keep doing things that will create the difference.
Remember Narendra Hirwani? A specky leg spinner who came out of the blue with a dream spell to capture 16 wickets in one test match. Now, that’s brilliant. But what next? - We hardly saw him on the international arena after that. And now pitch the same player against a Kapil Dev or a Anil Kumble and the difference is stark.

While once in a while brilliance is good, consistency has a sense of solidarity. Without consistent performance we won’t make a significant difference. Consistency is the key to achieving long lasting positive effects of any good work.
As we begin the New Year I wish you the very best in everything positive that you do and I hope you sustain your positive new year resolutions with consistency.

We all have read the statement - “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one small step”. That step needs to be taken again and again and again.. with relentless consistency to cover a thousand miles……

Have a great year and a peaceful 2005 !!

With best wishes,
Sudhanshu Pandit.