Towards excellence

We grew up with many sage words such as 'early to bed and early to rise' as the way to be successful in life. Yet, there are situations in life where the reverse works better. I have a friend whose day starts when the sun is down and he is extremely successful. Life has its ways of behaving in many different ways.

Since childhood we have been told to aim high and go for the best. Even if one succeeded in doing so at successive stages of life, it did not necessarily transpire into the best possible outcome when the sum total was considered. It was possible for one, not scoring the best at each stage, to do even better. This was due to a chemistry of interaction between the stages. When put together, the interaction changed the outcome. Thus, the impossible equation of two plus two being greater than four was born. A ground breaking relationship in league with the best-known equations in science and technology.

The business world is very competitive, there being hundreds of brands competing on the same platform for selling similar products or services. Each claims excellence, a much-overused term in business vocabulary. Yet the term has precise requirements. A product or service, to be excellent, has to fulfil many of them. Again, a requirement is not a fixed thing and can change over time.

Going one step further the term excellence applies to people as well as products or services. Every company wants to hire the best available person. Consider a person as he appears for interview in a selection process. How to evaluate him based on so many different attributes that range from academic qualifications to ability to communicate to perform in various kinds of tests? Some subjectivity can get in. Again, it is possible that additional requirements are introduced such as personal preferences of selector. Can be good if unbiased, but risky otherwise.

In a similar manner the concept extends to corporates. Consider a corporate that is a mix of diverse businesses. Minus synergy between businesses it may not perform as well as it could. This creates an opportunity for intervention of breaking up the corporate into smaller units. We have not seen any of this happening in the country, though it has been a rave in the western world for long time that made some people fabulously rich.

Brand is another name for excellence. People buy a brand trusting its quality. McDonald is a brand name. One can buy a Mac Burger in any of their restaurants, anywhere in the world, assured of the same quality in products and services. The brand name helps the customer decide beforehand on which one to go for among alternatives in the market. It aids the seller in marketing. If there is a mismatch in customer expectation, the brand suffers. Hence, both developing a brand name and maintaining the expectation are important. Unfortunately, this brand perspective is at best weak in the country in spite of proclamations of super brands by various brand forums. We do not yet have any name that elucidates desire for purchase. For example, consider your weekly trip to the supermarket. Would you have names, other than non-local ones such as Harpic,in your list of items apart from item type such as rice and bread? Similarly, what about trips to the restaurant? The best we talk about are preferences for Chinese or Biriyani without any name. Brand is a loyalty that requires consistency.

A brand is a pull factor to create desire for buying even before trip to the market. It can pervade from a locality to a country to the world. Country name can aid a brand such as Germany being synonym for excellence in cars. Gaining acceptance and winning over other names are successive stages of brand development. Garments are our products that have now gained global acceptance. But winning is a more difficult job. At present what we sell are mostly outsourced products. Hence, the tag labels of items display the country name together with the company such as H&M. The country name in this case is a weakness. This needs to be turned into strength such as happened to South Korea. This may take a while as there is still hesitance among buyers, even among us, about the country name. The country name can be a pull factor for a product if it wins buyer trust such as Japan. We have a long way to go to attain the goal, a la confidence, among the buyers. How long it takes, such as we see for Hilsa from Padma in the country, to gain global acceptance will determine the future of the country name as a brand.

Branding is not automatic. This needs promotion by producing companies as well as external agencies such as brand forums. This is a business and hence attracts sharks. This leads to confusion about which one to trust among the many. External agencies do the selection through a sampling process. If the process is faulty the outcome can be doubtful. However, there are trusted names that are worth their weight in gold. For example, Times Higher Educational Supplement is one such name that ranks universities across the globe. Disregarding their findings, when it is contrary to one's likings, can be risky such as the mythical bird burying the head in the sand when chased by hunters.

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