The War of the Wallets

A recent hoarding at Metro Station in Delhi took commuters by surprise. The eye popping 50% cashback offer on mobile prepaid recharge was not from a usual suspect Paytm but from American online retail Amazon. Amazon Pay the digital arm of Amazon aims to make the digital payment experience seamless for customers. By launching mobile recharges, it is extending the same convenience to everyday uses for the customer.

Though Amazon might offer a simplistic view of venturing into a segment where Paytm overwhelmingly dominates, the fight for share of Indian wallets will get bloody and dirty as incumbents fire fresh salvos. The rules of the game are changing; it won’t be just survival of the fattest. As big boys flex their bulging financial muscle, the winner would be one who offers the best deal both in terms of money and experience.

The online payment landscape in India is set for exciting times. There will be a combination of innovation and offers like never before. Though Paytm has a head start, there is a long road ahead for the leader as well as other players. With less than 5% of retail payments being digital and a massive government push towards and incentives to adopt digitization, the field is wide open.

Launched in September last year, Tez – Google UPI based digital payments app claims to have 13.5 Million active users, and has processed 250 Million transactions. Tez is a made for India product, designed specifically for Indian users and is available in seven Indian languages. Amazon has also enabled cash customers to pay for their recharges online by offering a cash load service at their doorsteps. Once a customer loads cash, they can enjoy the convenience of recharging their phone online.

It’s not only Amazon and Google who are stepping on the gas. India’s biggest smartphone maker, Samsung, too has been doing its bit to push its mobile payment service – Samsung Pay. It is the only payment platform that can be used at retail outlets by tapping the phone at existing point of sale terminals. It eliminates the need to carry physical plastic in the form of credit and debit cards. As big players penetrate deeper into the market to expand their play, the fight will get intense.

The players have their work cut for them, while discounts and freebie grab early users. The last men standing will be the wallet that customers gravitate to, even after the dust raised by freebies settles. It boils down to providing not just the best experience, but answering questions about security and conflict resolution.  

Become an Indispensable Employee

They say nobody is indispensable. Yet, companies go to great lengths to retain workers who are seen as critical for their operations. They give huge increments, offer promotions and even stock options as inducements to keep these employees from leaving. Here’s a look at some attributes that can make you indispensable at work.

Master tasks - Having a USP can make you indispensable. This doesn’t mean you monopolize that skill and put up hurdles for others who want to learn that task. But you become so good at it that no one else is entrusted with that function. Upskilling has become easier now with the launch of massive open online courses.

Mentoring - Organizations value employees who mentor and train junior colleagues. Mentoring engenders trust among teams and inspires employees to perform to their highest ability. At a broader level, it helps develop and retain talent. The idea is to become valuable by supporting and adding value to other employees. The support can even be in the form of help in everyday functions or stepping in to firefight when a teammate is in a spot.

Volunteer to do more - Your willingness to take up new tasks and challenges will send a signal to the management that you are willing to go that extra mile to add value to the organization. If the company or your division is facing a problem and you have a solution in mind, go to your boss with a rational decision making model and a detailed action plan. First identify the cause of the problem. Then think of all the potential solutions. There could be several options, each having its pros and cons, analyze the feasibility of each solution and then select the best option.

Adaptive Learning - Individuals who embrace change and are able to quickly adapt are seen as more valuable than those who cling to outdated principles and concepts that are past their expiry date. Don’t be afraid of change but welcome it. Experiment with new ideas that are meant to improve productivity and performance.

Take responsibility - This requires a pro-active approach, especially because this work is not part of your assigned duties. Find out the tasks that irk them and then look for ways to do these tasks. If you do this regularly, your boss will start relying on you more and more. Remember, the more irksome the task, the happier he will be that someone else is doing it. Once he gets used to it, he will ensure that you are retained by the company at all costs.

Demonstrate Integrity - Treat others the way you want to be treated. This ensures that one gives due respect to colleagues and customers. Honesty also encourages healthy relationships within an organization. Teams work better if their boss is honest about the objective and outcome of the project. Honesty does not extend to compromising the confidentiality of certain information. A person of integrity will maintain confidentiality if required.

Be Reliable - Be consistently reliable in everything you do. Also, make sure you don’t make false promises. Before you make a commitment, be sure that you will be able to keep it. Instead of promising too much and delivering too little, it is better to scale down the promise and then delight the boss by doing more than you committed. This way you send out the message that you don’t want to make false promises but are willing to go that extra mile to deliver.

Build ties - It is important to build good relationships, not only within your team and with the people you report to, but also with others in the organization. Relationships with clients are also be critical. In some situations, an individual’s relations with a client can make him indispensable. A company may not want to let go of someone if knows that his exit might take away a lot of business. Invest in your relationships with clients to improve your standing within the company.

World without Albert Einstein

Can you imagine living in a world without the discoveries made by Albert Einstein? Regarded as the world’s greatest scientist of all times, his theories on Energy, Gravity, Matter, Space and time paved way for significant advances in these fields. Let’s take a look at some of his theories on modern science.

Albert Einstein and NASA - In the year 1905, Albert Einstein’s theories about light, gravity, motion, mass and energy began a new era of science. These led to the big-bang theory which focuses on how the universe was born while also leading to concepts like black holes and dark energy. Many of current space science projects are built on Einstein’s famous work for NASA “Beyond Einstein” research programme.

Brownian motion – This could by far be the biggest of Einstein discoveries, where his observation of the zigzag movement of particles in suspension, helped in proving the existence of atoms as well as molecules. Einstein’s theory helped in significant statistical predictions about a motion of particles which are randomly distributed in a fluid.

The Sky is Blue – Albert Einstein finally settled the case, “Why Sky is Blue?” in 1911 after calculating the detailed formula for the scattering of light from molecules and this was proved right with an experiment.

Theory of Relativity and E=mc² - This theory helped explain that time and motion are relative to absorbers, as long as the speed of light is constant while natural laws are the same throughout the universe. Einstein proposed that gravity is a curved field which is found in the space-time continuum that is created by the existence of mass. This theory changed much in the way how scientists look at the world and also set the foundation for several modern inventions, including the nuclear bomb as well as the nuclear energy.

Einstein Refrigerator – Albert developed a refrigerator design which used Ammonia, water, butane and required no energy to work, but it is still one of the least known inventions by the scientist. Considering the energy demands, companies throughout the world might realize the importance of cooling and refrigeration without the need for consuming more energy, and develop this concept even further in the near future.

Manhattan Project – Einstein created the Manhattan project which is a research supported by the US that in 1945, led to the development of the atomic bomb. However, after learning the destruction which was caused by the atomic bomb in Japan during World War II, he started campaigning for a ban on nuclear weaponry.

Quantum theory of Light – This theory highlighted that light is a composition of small packets of energy which are called photons and have wave like properties. In this theory, Einstein also explained the process of emission of electrons from metals which are stuck by lightning. This was called the photoelectric effect and the theory later led to the invention of the modern day Television, which gave technologists a new vision to come up with devices having screens. The Quantum theory of Light became an important discovery for several branches of science and Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for the same.

Planning Career in Job changing Market

Remember good old days. The streets were safe. Goods were cheap. Jobs were aplenty. You got promoted every few years. You had an income for life. But the world has changed. Neither your city nor your job is safe anymore. Hiring intentions are at a 12-year low in India as a Manpower Group Report. Businesses are evolving rapidly. Whatever you do now will transform in three years or your employer will get it done cheaper and faster either through technology or by a younger placement.

Dying Assets

Skills – Sticking to your current skill set is a sure shot way to becoming redundant. Are you an accountant who knows how to keep books? This single skill earlier could get you a job and keep you there for a lifetime? Just a few years back, this skill became useless if you could not use accounting software. Similarly, a single change called GST meant that your contribution to your employer dropped dramatically unless you were willing to learn new skills.

Knowledge – The knowledge that you held today and spent years in acquiring and polishing is worth far lesser if you take a single year sabbatical from continuous learning. With Internet penetration, knowledge is incredibly cheap and even the youngest patient and legal client questions and double checks the service he is getting versus the price he is paying. Similarly, companies are learning that it is noncompetitive to pay senior professionals more than their knowledge alone. A youngster with less than half the experience can acquire that knowledge at a substantially lower salary.

Labor – Work hard and you will succeed is terrible standalone advice in the current job market. For every job that requires human hours, someone somewhere is working on technology to reduce time required to do a task to make you either more productive or redundant. From manufacturing to services to knowledge work, your labor hours are being replaced by technology solutions that help your company reduce costs and increase productivity.

Technology – Massive changes in the technology that you used 2-3 years back forced you to head back to the classroom to upgrade or become irrelevant. Relying on your comfort with current technology in your job is the fastest route to losing your job to the next savvy professional who comes along. Artificial Intelligence in language/data, robotics/3D printing, Internet of Things in goods/manufacturing/labor and Internet/computing in knowledge/education are rapidly evolving technology spaces where your comfort levels in using them needs to keep pace to stay professionally relevant.

Growth Assets

Sales – The Primary difference between being merely skilled being successful lies in how you work with others. To achieve this, you require the ability to communicate and sell your ideas to others. Work on your negotiation skills to master the art of reaching agreement on common goals and process.

Learning – Stay curious and stay hungry. If your current skills and knowledge are redundant, the only thing that you will ever require is the ability to learn. This is an acquired skill. The first step is to be intensely curious. Observe children who have the steepest learning curves simply because they are constantly curious about the world around them. No learning will ever go waste and no employer will ever let go of someone who can connect the dots across business and solve problems.

Creating – You will do well to set aside at least two hours every weekend to just pause and think. Ask yourself what happened in the previous week or month, what new knowledge you acquired and how you can improve your plan for the future.

How to Survive

Be Paranoid – What could go wrong in your job? How will you find your next source of income?

Double Up – Get a second career, work a second shift, sell to a second client or acquire a second skill.

Stay fit – Investing in achieving high fitness levels increases ability and time required for learning and growth.

Stay Sharp – To stay alive and kicking in your career, keep your mind ticking by constantly challenging and feeding it.

Grow People – The way to attract and lead people is to teach them, help them solve problems and unlock their potential.

Promoting Yourself

Inherent excellence is not always enough to fetch recognition. Potential sponsors need to know about your skills, competencies, accomplishments and experiences to be encouraged to make a positive difference to your career. Being memorable equals getting picked. Self-promotion is a delicate art because if you overdo it, you come across as a braggart, and if you underplay you don’t get the accolades. There should be a line between gaining a following and becoming sickeningly self-promotional. Here are few strategies to generate more visibility -

Prepare your story – Whenever you meet any potential sponsor, seize this opportunity to promote yourself by highlighting an accomplishment or two. The trick lies in being prepared with your story and arming yourself     with data points that you can reel off at the drop of a hat.

Redefine self-promotion – Just as the objective of marketing a product is to generate awareness about its key benefits to help customers make sound decisions, think of self-promotion as a responsible communication of your talents and accomplishment to those who can leverage and benefit from this information, thus making it a win-win proposition.

Clothe it in anecdotes – Share your success story in the form of a story. Share your strategy and challenges in cracking the deal, enabling your team to learn from your experience. Engage with humility, focus on facts and ensure that those stories are relevant.

Impactful Introduction – Make your introduction audience centric and impactful by incorporating elements that differentiate and lend a recall value. For instance, something like, “I am an avid trekker, I did the Everest base camp trek last year,” is likely to stick in the minds of the audience.

Engage beyond your core work – As the organization expands, it is not easy to get noticed outside your immediate circle. Participating in forums outside core work, like knowledge sharing forums, organizational committees, corporate social responsibility initiatives, diversity etc. will help in garner visibility and connect with people beyond operational network.

Communicate with your Manager – Tracking your accomplishments and feeding your manager with regular updates is mutually beneficial – it would not only help you promote yourself, but also offer your manager data points to identify areas where you could contribute.

Engage on Social Media – Start with posting an impactful profile, portraying your expertise by engaging in discussion forums, posting articles and commenting on posts, thus creating visibility by yourself.

Reverse Promotion – When you promote others, guided by the principle of reciprocity, they promote you in return. This reverse promotion, besides enhancing your visibility and highlighting your achievements, also helps you build relationships and earn goodwill. So, be open to connecting with people, learning about and promoting, their talents and achievements.