Archive for May 5th, 2008

OWN A HOUSE

There’s no substitute to owning a home. Your comfort level is incomparable when you don’t have a landlord reminding you that your lease is running out. On reaching the age of 40 or 50, many people often make a mistake of buying another home with the aim of renting it out. As a pure investment, this is unwise because residential rentals don’t give a return of more than 3-4%. In contrast, on fixed deposits and equity mutual fund gives 15%, if one isn’t too risk-averse. By and large, landlords receive a low rent from apartments because rentals don’t rise like property prices do. Home prices in Delhi have doubled in the last two years but the rentals have risen only by 30-40%. Not only do landlords lose out on low rentals, they suffer a recurring blow. They lose one and even two months’ rent every two years when one tenant vacates and before another comes in. To make matters worse, they have to pay half a month’s rent to the broker for a new tenant. Another expense is on repainting a house before the new tenant arrives. In short, the economics of renting drills a permanent hole in the landlord’s pocket. Sadly for landlords their income is driven by their need for safety.  Their biggest nightmare is their property being taken by a tenant who doesn’t vacate. To avoid that nightmare, landlords seek safe multinational and other big companies as tenants. The trouble is that too many landlords chase too few big companies. The result is under- cutting among the landlords to get MNC tenants. The under cutting allows the MNCs to beat the landlords down on rent. There is a supreme irony here. Rich establishments companies getting bargain renting deals because of the trust their names inspire. The companies gain but the landlords lose money. The prices of all goods and services have dropped in India. From computers, TV sets or cell phones, to services like flying or telecom. There is no reason why future home prices won’t drop too.   

WITHOUT EXECUTION, VISION IS USELESS.

Does India Inc have good leaders? Well you may agree in response to these questions drawing your opinion from the fact and numbers when you look back at the growing economy of the country. However, please underline it that same is not the view of majority of management and human resource experts. We had some of the greatest leaders however they were just head honchos.  It was in fact a good thing since India Inc was struggling hard during the last decade to break the socialist shackle and turn into the liberal form. Now we need the leaders who can guide as to where to go, what to do be it a team of two or 2000 people. There were great leaders but they were just visionaries and not executors. They can just realize the opportunity and the challenges that may come and there is complete mess when the actual situation occurs and need for execution is there.   There is one tool that helps leaders to invade and develop the capacity to create a team. The transformational capability. This is the tool that would help complete the execution part. 360 degree also helps identify potential leaders in the organisation. Inability to create a sense of urgency in the team is another area where most of the Indian leaders lack. If the team does not deliver the required result within the specified time frame the entire effort put in by the team goes in vain. One more area of opportunity for the Indian leaders is leading by an example and actively interacting with the team. Reflection is the part of the management process in the US culture. This is the process where leaders dissect and understand the problem that they have faced, how better it could have been managed and what can be done if a similar problem arises. A strategy is ready with this exercise so that if there is a situation with the similar challenges it can be dealt with minimum errors and without missing on any opportunity to deliver the desired results. Though India Inc is going global, it has not yet mastered the global perceptively adequately. Due to this improper understanding of global ground realities, the executive could find it difficult to deliver results.