Changing roles of Mobile devices - Productive or Disruptive

What is the role of my Smartphone? This question aroused in my mind when my mobile did not have network for around one week and I was little bothered. Why? Simple because I could message free of cost using 'Whatsapp'; and I can call almost all my friends free using 'Viber' or 'Skype'. All I needed was internet connection.

Then I reflected back to see how have I been using my mobile device. The list includes checking and updating my calendar, checking my emails in a combined inbox, listing 'things to do' in my Memo app, glance my social networking updates on Facebook and Linkedin apps, reading News from Google News app and Financial Times app, texting to a group or individual friends on Whatsapp, scrolling through my WordBook app to improve my vocabulary; and reading my books online. Oh Bravo, it stands-in as minicomputer rather than a mobile device.

According to the estimates of Key Global Telecom Indicators, mobile subscription penetration has increased to 96.2% globally and had crossed fixed telephone lines subscription by 6 times (http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats/a#subscribers). The mobile broadband has increased 3 times than fixed line broadband. In 2012, the market share for smart phones was 60.1%, tablets was 10.7%, portable PCs was 16.8% and Desktop PCs was 12.4%. Further analysis revealed an year on year change for smartphones was 46.1% over 2011 with the negative figures for portable and desktop PCs.  (http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23958513#.UTCkuDd4DlZ).

With smartphones ever increasing approach and elimination of the information barriers, here is the time to make use of the technology in the productive manner - manner to improve your personal efficiency and productivity. Because that small little slim figure in your hands reduces distance, conserves time and trim down the costs as exemplified in second section of this blog. Here are the few tips to smartly use your smartphone:

1. Organize: In these days expeditious life, it is crucial to stay organized. Every person has to balance the work schedules as well the recreation. At same time, in-line are the regular time outs to obey social obligations. Only the machine can align the mechanical life. Use Organizers and calendars in your smarty to make yourself smart.

2. Combine all your email accounts: Combined inbox feature provided by both Apple and Samsung is the great idea to save time scrolling through several inboxes. In fact, many smartphones provide options to combine inboxes through several platforms like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Aol and others. There are some third party apps as well that support this feature.

3. Choose whom to Subscribe or Follow on Social Networking website: Following Warren Buffet posts would be plus for investors, Harvard Business Review blog posts would add value to management though leaders, fitness posts would help to remain fit, photography club would provide utility features to shoot. So choose apps that lead you to stay motivated and informed.

4. Choose on apps you should spend time on: Fun is an indispensible, but question yourself about the degree. Young generation often end up using gaming and graphics features. Transform to reading news apps like Financial Times, read books when you are travelling and

I am sure that the hi-tech smart minds of Generation Y and millennial could evolve even better usage of technology. 'When there is a will there is a way' So what our Gen Y and millennial would like to propose to put in best use of Smartphones?

Action and Reaction : News Broadcast and Stock Prices

(conceptual)

The entire business broadcast channels are flooded with the news of acquisitions, mergers, ventures, introduction of the new product, rendezvous new managers and their corresponding impact on the stock prices. As soon as any such announcement manifests the market, all the news broadcasts get jam-packed with the analysts reviews about the reaction (stock prices) of the action (news announcement).

Recently, the news dated 20 June of Facebook's introducing 15 minute video sharing on Instagram has been reviewed positively by the analysts, however,  the stock market did not reacted as expected by analysts and the new announcement failed to give immediate return to the shareholders. Another news of McDonalds dropping two halal products from its menu articulated that the stock price traded low on that day. Similarly, the launch of Ford EcoSport SUV in Indian market or acquisition of Jaguar Land Rover by Tata projected distinctive corollary on their stock prices. The illustrations are incessant.

Well, what is this action and reaction called?  The reaction (stock price movement) due to respective action (broadcasted information) is called Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). EMH as defined by Shiller(2001) 'this is the hypothesis that financial prices efficiently incorporates all public information and the prices can be regarded as optimal estimates of true investment value at all times'.

 Researchers have investigated this action and reaction in three subsets i.e. Week Form Hypothesis, Semi-strong hypothesis and Strong form hypothesis. Week form hypothesis tested impact of historic prices on the projected stock prices. Semi-strong hypothesis regressed the impact of broadcasted information only and strong form hypothesis tested the impact of all the information on stock prices i.e. historic prices as well as announcements.

But the question which is arising in my mind that if the market incorporates the impact so quickly, how the investors could even benefit from such market cues. The Facebook news, televised on 20 June, was followed by immediate reaction on stock prices. Same with McDonalds and many more markets news. In fact, the news announcements are comprised of their reactions on the markets.

There are many collateral studies that must be studied together to answer this question like rational and irrational behaviors of investors, arbitrage, prospect theory, expected utility theory, etc. which would be followed in our auxiliary blogs.

Wise Tree Training and Consulting (WTTC)

About WTTC:

Wise Tree Training and Consulting (WTTC) aims at

1. Training - bridging the gap between industry and academia by offering training resources to corporate and management students.

2. Consulting - knowledge dissemination by writing articles, book reviews, research paper reviews and comments, and blogs exhibiting applied management theories.

1. Training

WTTC believes that industry and academia go hand in hand and are two sides of a coin to provide holistic knowledge. On one side, the academicians educate corporate personnel about recent research developments and re-iterate management theories that adds value to organizational processes. On the other side, corporate personnel offer to share their valuable real world experiences and business processes.

To bridge the gap, WTTC encourages both corporate and management trainers to register for free with their training requirements or offerings per email at wisetreetc@gmail.com. We will constantly attempt to find an adequate match for the required resource.

At present, WTTC offers training in person in Munich and over skype or web platform worldwide in the following areas:

          i. Financial Accounting

ii. Management Accounting
iii. Financial Management/ Corporate Finance
iv. Academic Coaching
v. Report Writing
vi. Basic Statistical Analysis
vii. Advanced Microsoft Excel
viii. Decision Making
ix. Drafting Surveys

2. Consulting

Wise Tree Consulting offers following services:

          i. Create Blogosphere for your organization.

ii. Create content for Newsletters.
iii. Consult in content development for your organizations' knowledge management activities.
iv. Preparation of reports for the organizations' internal processes.

Website content is the fastest means of silent communication/ marketing that leads to brand development. WTTC targets the knowledge management activities of Business schools and corporate and aims at creating research oriented management content for your websites by writing plagiarism free blogs and articles:

i.  depicting applied management theories.
ii. reports on illuminating surveys
iii. exemplified management concepts
iv. learning from renowned management books, and
v. reflection on educational research papers.

The sample articles and blogs are available at http://wisetreetc.blogspot.de

The language used for the blogs has been intended to be rather a blend of simple and technical to be in synchronization with the proletarian's understanding. However, WTTC is flexible in terms of customization of content to suit your target market. WTTC is adaptable to offer services as ghost writer as well.

For subsequent information, queries and service requests, please contact the undersigned:

WTTC Team
Email: wisetreetc@gmail.com
Blog: http://wisetreetc.blogspot.de
Facebook: WTTC FB

Say no to Artificial Sweeteners during Pregnancy (report on published surveys)

It has been well documented that mothers' eating habits during pregnancy determine the Childs' immune system. The recent study on the impact of artificial flavored soft drinks consumption during pregnancy on child health in terms of asthma and allergic rhinitis is an eye opener for the women who are in initial stages of their conception or are planning in future. The study laid its foundation because of high association between diet yogurt consumption and the adolescent's asthma and allergic rhinitis founded in a research conducted by Danish National Birth Cohort. The reason propounded was the presence of artificial sweeteners in diet products.

Alarmed by the aforementioned results, Maslova et al.(2013) under the funding of Danish Council for Strategic Research examined the impact of artificial sweeteners consumption by mother on child's asthma and allergic rhinitis. The results of the study has been based on 60,466 pregnancies during 1996 and 2002 for women in Denmark. The research methodology used was the surveys administered at different stages of gestation period about the food habits of mother as well as the surveys on post conception health of the child. The mode of surveys used were primarily the questionnaires and telephonic interviews. The study incorporated four types of beverages : sweetened and diet(artificially sweetened) carbonated and non-carbonated drinks respectively.

The multivariate analysis of the study proved that the children are at 20% or more risk to get asthmatic if the mother consumes artificially sweetened carbonated drinks even once a week as compared to those who never consumed. The figure is more than 10% risk for artificially sweetened non-carbonated drinks. However, no association was found between children asthma and consumption of sweetened carbonated or non-carbonated drinks. The previous results were based on 18 months post delivery. Even follow up for allergic rhinitis after seven years post delivery depicted 30% more chances of getting allergic if artificial sweetened drinks are consumed on daily basis.

Artificial sweeteners are nothing other than the sugar substitutes. These days, weight watchers easily fall in the trap of substituting products containing regular sugar (sucrose) with the products labeled as 'diet'. The diet products often use artificial sweeteners to replace the energy content offered by table sugar, as well as to contribute to the taste of the product. For example, diet coke taste sweet, though it gives different texture to our taste buds.

The results of the study may depend upon the type of the artificial sweeteners used in the drinks. Also, a detailed scientific research on humans is required on the topic to justify the findings of the above quantitative study. However, the indication provided by authors is valuable for the mothers to be and of course, precaution is better than cure.

Reference:

Maslova, E., Strom, M., Olsen, S.F. and Halldorson, T.L. (2013) 'Consumption of Artificial Sweetened Soft Drinks in Pregnancy and Risk of Child Asthma and Allergic Rhinitis' Plos One, Vol. 8, Iss. 2, pp 1-11.

Balancing Emotions in Enhancing Customer Satisfaction: Being Emphatic or Empathetic

Business is all about competitive advantage and one of the key lead indicators to gain competitive advantage is the foreplay of emotions to enhance customer satisfaction. Customers are human beings satiated by emotions and appropriate projection of emotional communication from providers of products and services enhance their overall perceived benefits for the money being spent by them.

Needless to emphasize the importance of customer satisfaction for the business. Customers are the one for which the business exists. The power of customers have increased multifold with the mounting social media where consumers share their pleasures as well as displeasures.  One annoyed customer's feedback on social media could spread like a fire in California forests. Just assume the impairment a business could face with discontent customer.

Now the pertinent question hovering the lucid world of business is about the effective communication - logical as well as emotional to satisfy customer. This is one of the reasons why the scope of behavioral economics have increased in the recent times.  Emotions varies from person to person and have several deriving factors like past experiences, education level, psychological and situational behaviors amongst others which is why it is difficult to measure.

'The essential difference between the emotion and reason is that the emotion leads to action and reason leads to conclusions' (Calne, 2000).

Emotion is valued along with logic because according to researchers emotions, to an extent, are derived from logic. For example, yesterday I went to shop some of the beauty products in a German store. All the products were labeled in German language. As a non-German, I could not really find the suitable product I was searching for. In one of the big stores, the sales person answered my queries being logical, but failed to understand my need and recommend me a product. However, being indecisive about the product, I went to another store where the sales person spend around 15 minutes with me. She was empathetic towards my specific requirement and explained me about some products that suited and how will they work for me. I would call this as emotion. Being logical, both the sales persons navigated me through the products, but the latter one projected emotional behavior to derive repeated business for her store.

But at the same time, the emotional projection must be properly communicated, failing which make the situation emphatic rather than empathetic.   The customer might not feel as being forced to buy that product, or as if the sales person is going to derive special benefits for promoting a particular brand. The customers must have some space to apply their logic after your recommendations. In this example, the sales person acts as a brand ambassador of the organization who must be trained to communicate apposite emotional behavior.

The management implication for the above discussion is that there can be several deriving factors of the projection of emotional communication and the corresponding feedback of emotional satisfaction. An organization must find ways to nail down what emotional services work for them and imbibe appropriate trainings to endeavor such emotional behavior at required levels of organizations.

Calne, D. (2000) 'Within Reason: Rationality and Human Behavior' Vintage Books.

Make or Break : A Man of Decision

Whether in personal life or professional life, each one of us ought to make decisions. In fact, decision making inaugurates right in formative years. Which toy to choose, what to eat, what to play, what to study, how much time to allocate to play or study and so on. Every child is born the alike, but these little decisions cultivate their personality subsequently. 

 

The organizational processes are rather more convoluted that need strategic decision making. Thus, learning systematic decision making lead us to train ourselves to assimilate necessary and relevant input pertinent for decision making, process the information accurately using adequate available information and then yield the desired output in the form of contemplative decision.

The decisions results could be positive or negative, but 'A Man of Decision' is the one who learns from his mistakes. Here are the few strategic steps or guidelines to effective decision making adapted from the several readings on Effective Decision Making.

1. Reflect on your experiences: Reflection is a very effective exercise in any story of enhanced experiences, so is here for being effective decision maker as well. Reflect on how much time you usually spend to finalize decision, did you analyzed the worst case scenario or best case scenario. Ask yourself questions? How effective I was in the past to take decision in a stressed environment? Do I always seek feedback on several alternatives before making the decision? Am I meticulous towards every aspect of my work? Am I generally a logical thinker, or rather an emotional person? Am I capable of making decision for the problem? Reflection on your past experiences would help you to ponder over the good and bad decisions you made and the contributing efforts that lead to those decisions.

2. Be prepared for the worst: Have you ever found yourself in a situation that one decision leads to dejection and other to ­­complete misery? The wise decision in such circumstances is to take the decision the end of which is less unwelcoming.

"Start with an end in Mind" -Steven Covey

3. Set your Limits: The organizational decisions must be made within a limited time. The opportunity will knock your door once and if you do not avail it, it's gone. The usual example is the hoarding of the smart phones in the market. Realizing the increased demand for varied features of smart phones, Samsung and Apple are two incorporations that outshined all other in 2012. Blackberry depicted the downfall for the obvious reason of not matching the market demand.

4. Systematic Decision Analysis: Train your mind to always list few things before coming out with the solution. Can you make this decision by yourself or this situation is beyond your limits? What is the cost involved if I alter it later on? List all resources that you have and the ones you will need in terms of men, money, material, machine and management (5Ms). Yes, last but not the least, do you have adequate authority to implement the decision?

Conclusively, reflecting on your own past experiences on the decision making process depicted in figure above, keeping all strategic information contained in four points listed above in this blog would help train your mind to effective decision making in future. After all, only a man of decisions survive at upper management.

Either I am in Love or I am Intelligent

Love or Intelligence? Heart or Brain? Have you ever felt that your heart sets back your growth professionally? Have you felt dilemma making the right decision between the heart and mind? And when the choice is made according to one, the other ridicules you if it goes wrong later. The conflict between the two is never ending. Everybody is expected to make wise decisions, but wise is always brain, then what about heart? What is the definition of a wise decision? Here are few suggestions with which we can train ourselves to make wise real life decisions.

Set your Content Driver

I read the following quote and the questioned myself "Will I be happy like that"? Or Can someone be happy like that?

"I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself” 
― Simone de Beauvoir

Then I answered that living this way is not my cup of coffee, but I know my friend who is very happy being in same feet as mentioned in above quote.

I believe one should do what makes thy content, satisfied and finally happy. After all, we all are mature and grown up adults and we should learn to take responsibility of what we do. We know finally that it is our choice and the responsibility for the results are ours. The decision for a similar situation offers different levels of contentness to different people. For example, women are more pleased with the word 'Sale' or 'Shopping' than men. Of course, other demand drivers like income, age, societal status, standard of living, ancestral background, habits, etc are determining factors of the individual buying behavior. Thus, every individual has their own criteria for defining their levels of Content.

The previous example indicates to the Gender Performativity theory of philosopher Judith Butler.  For example, two of my students Manick and Ronald, were offered an international placement in one of the Big five companies. Both joined (being intelligent), performed very decently over first six months but thereafter Manick outshined Ronald. Being their former mentor, I explored and found that Ronald felt home sickness, and he could not adjust and he came back to his home country (being in Love). Manick have always been an ambitious student, thus, that worked as his 'Content Driver'; Ronald, on other hand, has been ambitious but was more content living near his dear ones, thus that was his 'Content Driver'. I enquired henceforth after an year, Manick was doing very well in his position, was promoted and was happy. Ronald found a good job in his country and was happy with his family and work balance.

Build high on ethics and intrinsic values

Content drivers should be aligned with the intrinsic values and ethics as well. The reason for building on your ethics and values is to distinguish between right and wrong. Intrinsic values and ethics are not built in a day. The experiences, upbringing, socio-cultural environment formulate these values and ethics.

Alignment of content driver with intrinsic values and ethics will help distinguish between good and bad decisions. At least the decision should be socially acceptable.

For example, one of my colleagues had always been stealing office stationary. Who would not like to get free benefits, but is this decision feasible? It may give her content at first, but she faced a lot of embarrassment later when it was disclosed to the management. Even this led to loss of her job. Had she thought of being ethical, she would have saved herself from the situation for such petty reason.

Think forward for blacks and whites

"I don't believe in taking right decisions. I take decisions and then make them right"  Ratan Naval Tata.

What is the definition of right or wrong? What is right for one may be wrong for others. The only effort is to foresee possible results and choose the one where you can be prepared for the worst.

We should train ourselves to think forward for both black and white results. Black here refers to worst scenario and white refers to best scenario. Of course, the hidden motivation behind our decisions are whites; although we should analyze and be prepared for the black as well.

Conclusively, I would say that heart and mind go hand in hand. Build high on your intrinsic values and be prepared for the worst and then decide what makes you content.