[Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash]
Good morning,
In The Effective Executive, Peter F Drucker described how Alfred Sloan used to conduct—and even more importantly, follow up on—meetings. Drucker wrote:
“Sloan, who headed General Motors from the 1920s until the 1950s, spent most of his six working days a week in meetings—three days a week in formal committee meetings with a set membership, the other three days in ad hoc meetings with individual GM executives or with a small group of executives. At the beginning of a formal meeting, Sloan announced the meeting’s purpose. He then listened. He never took notes and he rarely spoke except to clarify a confusing point. At the end, he summed up, thanked the participants, and left.
“Then he immediately wrote a short memo addressed to one attendee of the meeting. In that note, he summarized the discussion and its conclusions and spelt out any work assignment decided upon in the meeting (including a decision to hold another meeting on the subject or to study an issue). He specified the deadline and the executive who was to be accountable for the assignment. He sent a copy of the memo to everyone who’d been present at the meeting. It was through these memos—each a small masterpiece—that Sloan made himself into an outstandingly effective executive.”
Drucker’s dictum that “good follow-up is just as important as the meeting itself” is especially relevant these days when many of our days are filled with end-to-end virtual meetings. Effectiveness comes from follow-ups.
Have a great day.
Reimagine digital journey
In his essay in Founding Fuel, Arvind Subramanian, Managing Director & CEO designate of Mahindra Lifespaces, explains why developers should reimagine a holistic digital journey for homebuyers.
“Embracing digital media for sales is a double-edged sword. With customers as captive audience in their sales galleries, realtors could control the narrative. What they chose to highlight and gloss over as they presented their product was entirely their choice. The skill and charm of the sales promoter had disproportionate influence on the customer’s decision.
“As homebuying moves to the web, developers will need to increasingly put their sales collateral online. To be read and understood rather than heard and felt. This immediately puts the projects being advertised in the crosshairs of comparison-shopping portals... Already customers, well-informed by their digital research, are arriving at developers’ sales galleries armed with uncomfortable questions they were never supposed to ask! As digital adoption accelerates, this will only get amplified.”
Build a regenerative economy
In a TedXGateway webinar, Navi Radjou, co-author of Do Better With Less, shares his ideas on how India can build a frugal economy that can enable all Indians to live better with less waste—sharing economy, decentralised manufacturing and regeneration.
“Today, many companies are applying the principles of the circular economy to recycle waste materials. But, I believe that India can take this notion of recycling to a whole other level by building a regenerative economy, where each time we recycle materials we also make life better for more people. Shailaja Rangarajan is one of the visionary entrepreneurs building this regenerative economy in India. Her company Rimagined up-cycles waste materials into beautiful clothes and home accessories, hence reducing the amount of waste that goes to landfill. But what I love about Rimagined’s unique business model is that it gainfully employs underprivileged women to design and craft beautiful products from waste. In doing so her company not only regenerates the environment but also regenerates the society by ensuring that we don't waste human talent, the most precious of all resources.”
The webinar also features two interviews with Vaibhav Chhabra (Maker's Asylum) and Prashant Warrier (Qure.ai)
Make your devices cat-safe
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And if you missed previous editions of this newsletter, they’re all archived here.
Bookmark Founding Fuel’s special section on Thriving in Volatile Times. All our stories on how individuals and businesses are responding to the pandemic until now are posted there.
Warm regards,
Team Founding Fuel
