Ageing - the absolute truth !

Ageing and the body’s final demise is inevitable! It is nature’s very beautiful way of recycling and regeneration! Ageing cannot be reversed. It cannot be wished away. When you are young and bubbling with aspirations and boundless energy, the world is your oyster and ageing seems to be as improbable a possibility as your neighbourhood puppy growing a pair of delicate wings. It initially dawns on you in your early 40s with the first signs of a receding hairline and unrelenting puffiness under your eyes. It brightens up in the horizon in your mid-40s with an incorrigibly expanding waistline, with your facial vegetation showing its first signs of unmistakable greying. It stares tenaciously into your eyes as you start pushing your 50s, with you suddenly waking up, wide-eyed, to the idea of the inevitability, making spirituality a very real alternative to exuberance and flamboyance. As you painstakingly wade towards your 60s, you finally reconcile to the fact that you indeed have aged and that it was always a one-way street!

So what do you do with it – about something that is inevitable and that no human ever had any influence over, whatsoever? Well, the answer is simple – learn to enjoy the process! You are not the first one. Trust me, you will certainly not be the last one! So, why fret over whatever is left in you and what’s gone? So, go out and enjoy your moments under the sun. Make hay while it shines. Take care of your body, mind and soul. Start ageing gracefully!
I have tried to adopt a simple 7-pronged approach during this cycle of ageing and ultimate regeneration. Let me share the same with all of you, though I am convinced that everyone is incredibly unique and will have to design their own very personalised approach.
1. Exercise at least 3-4 days a week – walk, jog, run, swim, practice yoga, hit the gym, pump iron, enroll in marshal art classes, learn the latest dance form – pick up any activity of your choice.

2. Make right choices of food. Eat in moderation. Cheat occasionally. Share your food.
3. Inculcate a hobby – reading, writing, painting, music, gardening, traveling – any hobby.
4. Form new friendships. Go beyond the surface and connect with people and nature at a deeper level. Spread love.
5. Start contributing back to the society in whichever way you can. Help! Help! Help!
6. Pamper yourself – take an occasional facial treatment or a relaxing massage. Reward yourself for even the most inconspicuous achievements. Try not to be too harsh on yourself for all your goof-ups. Loosen up a bit.
7. LAUGH more often! It takes nothing, yet it’s incredibly rewarding for you and everyone around you. Initially it may need a bit of an effort, with time it will become an inseparable and lingering part of your persona.
Be kind, forgiving, respectful, graceful and of course, grateful. Protect nature. Let go your regrets. Live your life as it is offered to you, to its fullest!

Live | Love | Share !! ... ... Happy Ageing !!

5 Emerging Trends of Modern Retail

Emerging technologies and platforms will fundamentally transform the way buyers interact with their preferred merchants and brands. New battle lines are being drawn across various channels of retail and radical shift in buying pattern and preferences will exhibit pronounced shift from traditional standards.

5 trends that will contour retail in the immediate future:

1. Brands will increasingly represent a certain culture or ethos

Shopping, these days, are being increasingly driven by emotions than by sense of utility or the size of the buyer’s wallet. Millennials are gravitating towards brands that either demonstrate character or that seem to represent their personal attitude and preferences. Changing preferences and growing social consciousness has added newer dimensions and challenges to how brands represent and position themselves. More often than not brands are having to re-engineer their internal culture to align with and emanate a certain kind of external identity.

Funnily though brands and their ambassadors are increasingly becoming culture-coders-and-shapers, pushing consumers out of traditional strictures and shopping parameters. The consequences will only emerge with time, but businesses today proactively and decisively absorb and reflect the contemporary cultural buzz across the whole plethora of media – traditional and new age. Ostensibly more brands are influencing and shaping people’s choice, almost setting up wire-frames and stereotypes of a collective external cultural identity that ensures one’s integration with the modern world out there. Yet the brand themselves cannot be absolved of their views and responsibilities towards the emerging world views, values and cultural transformations.   

2. Quicker fulfillment & deliveries for online commerce

Most brands that have online presence, with similar product offerings and mixes, have started appearing largely homogeneous and are scampering to demonstrate differentiators. Recent studies indicate growing consumer impatience while waiting for product shipments. They are unwilling to wait more than 4 odd days now, down from nearly from a 6-day wait in 2012. Drones may only add the ‘Wow!’ element. In order to stay sharp and deliver distinct value to their customers, in the increasingly saturating e-commerce ecosystem, e-commerce platforms will have to comprehensively re-work their logistics and supply chain to ensure shorter wait for consumers. 

 3. Experiential merchandising on the rise

The millennials clearly are wary of the old model of retailing where businesses focused strictly on products getting sold! The millennials are increasingly demonstrating their affinity towards the experience rather than the product itself that they actually purchase, in-store or online. This trend of penchant for engaging and engrossing experiences while shopping is here to stay and grow, and it won’t just be served by re-modelling of stores or web pages. Technology will play a huge role in adding layers and astonishing experiences around tradition retail models. Advent and proliferation of social, mobile, analytics, cloud, virtual reality, IoT and AI will encourage brands to reinvent their merchandising strategies.

4. Subscription … subscription … subscription

Going by a McKinsey report, over 15% of internet shoppers signed up for subscriptions in 2017 and there are no signs of that going down anytime soon in the future. Curated products and assortments, in keeping with one’s past buying pattern and experiences only adds to the experiential retailing paradigm. If a consumer gets extended commercial benefits for signing up, along with assurance of deliveries of preferred merchandise on pre-defined frequencies, he would be more than happy to stay hooked as a loyal shopper, for long. This simmering pattern of curated personalized merchandised, delivered to the consumer’s door on a regular basis has started to look like a trend that has arrived to stay and will continue to gain momentum.   

5. Omni-Channel is here to stay

Proving detractors’ doom’s day predictions wrong, brick-and-mortar stores are not going anywhere, anytime soon. Their roles have transformed from just being the last mile point-of-sale counters to being an important cog in the much larger scheme of things as far as merchandising, interest generation, customer experience and branding is concerned. It is no more a dichotomy, rather an emerging truth that businesses will have to adopt, adapt to and grow across multiple channels.

Shoppers belonging to different decades have different shopping patterns, tastes, methods and choices. Whether they’re from the 70s, the 80s or the 90s, or whether they’re the Gen-X, Y, Z or the Millennials or the Baby Boomers – they all have their primary preferences of shopping methods and platforms. It has been observed that individual platforms and shopping experience have a direct and measurable impact on their buying pattern and decisions. The challenge for the retailers lie in being able to be seen and be actively present across platforms. At the same time, they need to create a framework of logistics, empowered by technology, to keep fulfillment streamlined for business across channels. For consumers, they seek a seamless shopping experience across various channels including but not limited to physical stores, kiosks, shop-in-shop, b2c websites, social media, marketplaces, etc. 

The evolving retail landscape entails preparedness for brands to be able to charm and capture the buyers’ imagination at one or multiple channels of sale, keeping them engaged throughout the cycle of their decision making and eventually monetising their preference at some point-of-sale, online or brick-and-mortar. Focus on post-sale service, across channels and quick resolution of consumer grievance, if any, are bound to hold retailers in good stead, in the long run. Embracing these emerging trends and the transforming pattern of preferences and leveraging rapidly evolving and fundamentally disruptive retail technology landscape, brands and businesses can keep their nose ahead in the blitzkrieg of upcoming brands and aspirational retail players.   

Conflicts are good !

Conflicts are good!

The world today is not as much worried about the next world war, that could potentially shove humanity towards extinction. It is far more distressed with the fall-outs of the hundreds of geographically dispersed, localised, smaller geo-political and military conflicts and skirmishes. These scuffles are far more complex, heterogeneous, multi-polar and unique where a ‘one-fits-all’ solution doesn’t work. No wonder minds go numb whenever we are informed about the next big conflict that’s brewing in our neighbourhood !

   

Now then, we are not here today to discuss about global conflict mitigation strategies. Let’s leave that bit for the elected governments, their well-oiled battalions and their astute national security advisors.

What about the conflicts in our daily lives? What about the conflicts that exist within the contour of our homes, our societies, our offices? How bad are they? Do they rob us of our efficiencies? Do the simmering struggles lead to burn-outs? Does the organisation’s productivity remain compromised? Is it a reality that they are inevitable and unavoidable? Is it like that throbbing pile in one’s rectal canal that never really goes away completely – there are just good and bad days? So much so that you eventually accept its presence and learn to live with it?

Although, the word ‘conflict’ itself is considered blasphemous, I always felt there’s more to it than what meets our eyes. When we think of the word ‘conflict’, we usually tend to picture shouting contests, uncontrolled rage, frosty stares or nerve-wracking and stressful hostilities at workplace. Have we not made conflict synonymous with disharmony, discord and hostility? Well, not necessarily. Outcome of conflicts are generally expected to be binary, resulting in a classic winner-looser scenario. But there actually are many more dimensions to this that we often conveniently ignore or simply fail to recognise. Conflicts can be both positive and productive.

No denying the fact that conflicts are never easy, but it can also provide well-deserved ammo to growth and change, which is good. Pain is rarely desirable, yet it is pain that can wake us up, can prepare us for eventualities and stimulate us to react to challenging circumstances. Conflict is almost like tea leaves – you never know how strong they are until they are subjected to boiling water !

I remember one of my much celebrated corporate bosses once insisted that some degree of organisational conflict is actually desirable and may not be completely dysfunctional. It sometimes could be indicative of commitment to organisational goals, as individuals get competitive in trying to come up with the best possible solution. That in turn can encourage challenge, heighten the individual stakeholders’ concern and responsiveness towards the issues, and lead to increase in productive effort. This sort of conflict is essential, in absence of which an organisation tends to lose its zing and eventually stagnates !

 

In case of an organisational conflict, results vary, largely depending upon how the individuals involved in it choose to approach it. If approached positively, conflicts can be stimulating and can improve quality of decisions. Conflicts and disagreements many a times lead to lateral thinking and contrarian solutions. They may test positions and personal beliefs but they almost always help foster fresh ideas, approaches and alternatives. Lending firmer push towards goals, conflicts can help sprout creativity and imaginativeness of groups and individuals in an organisation. The raw energy of conflicts, if channeled aptly, has the latent potential of amazing organisational metamorphosis.

While dealing with a conflict, competent and healthy individuals tend to seek more information to achieve resolution and not browbeat each other. Strong disagreements can trigger deeper deliberations and examinations. Pragmatic decisions are often made in presence of empirical data, that may not have been available in absence of a conflict. Though some of the emotions associated with conflicts may be negative in nature, yet it also speaks volumes about involvement and participation. A powerful and engaging argument within an organisation is more often than not better than bland apathy. Individuals may either argue to make up later or agree to disagree with each other ! The idea is to be able to disagree without being ‘disagreeable’.

Conflicts are not only about someone winning at the cost of another. It should rather be about how the organisation or a group or even a cause could benefit. Avoidance can rarely be good and at best serve a temporary purpose. Conscious effort to stay guarded in order to avoid conflict can restrain groups from active participation and may result in frustration. On the other hand, conflicts with the intent of undermining the interest of the other, or even aimed at a personal win at all cost is a template for disaster. A purely win-loss model of conflict raises complacency in ‘winners’ with little incentive to improve. While ‘losers’ tend become captives of their resentment. In such cases, instead of resolution, conflicts tend to gather mass and become stronger, often leading to anxiety and re-surfacing of unresolved conflicts. Conflicts however should be managed, before they degenerate into low grade verbal assaults, that can cause irreparable damage to individual egos and sensitivities.  

Conflict almost always gets a bad rap on the knuckles. We inevitably assume that conflict leads to collapse of a relationship. Many of us avoid conflict like plague, thinking that if we close our eyes to a potential encounter, it wouldn’t exist. But if managed effectively, organisational conflicts can serve as catalyst, rather than as a deterrent, towards organisational growth. The key is to develop a high level of individual and collective trust within the organisation and not take conflicts and assessments made during such exchanges personally. Then it becomes fairly easy to deal with inflated egos and personality clashes and work collectively towards resolution. It is always good to talk more and not less!