Profit+- I at Vijayawada : Participant Feedback

FADA – Transforma takes immense pleasure in sharing with you, through this mail, feedback from some of the participants at the just concluded Profit+ - I workshop at Vijayawada

Ajay Garje, Sr. Manager – CBD, Piaggio : 'What is so great about cost cutting? It’s an easy action to take. Anyone can act on it’. This was the approach or understanding I had before attending PROFIT+ - I. Believe me, this workshop is a paradigm shift. One has never measured cost-cutting on the parameters that the workshop introduced me to. For me, it was an eye opener. What I gained most : understanding the real meaning of cost-cutting and more importantly, the true approach towards cost cutting. I would like to thank FADA-Transforma for this workshop. They themselves raise the bar and we are looking forward to future programs

Profit+ I at Vijayawada - A Message from Mr. Nikunj Sanghi, President, FADA

The FADA-Transforma initiative to launch training workshops across the country got off to a flying start on Fri, Jun 15 at Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh

Within four days of the first formal communication on May 31, we were booked for more than twice the number of planned registrations

A wonderful surprise was that confirmations came in not just from AP, but from across the length and breadth of the country. 23 participants from dealerships in Patna, Ranchi, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Jabalpur, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad and even Alwar made it to this program! Three OEMs : Eicher VE, Tata Motors and Piaggio, sent in participants too. We will share with you feedback from those who were there

Profit+ Level I - Breakthrough Practices in Cost Cutting

An initiative to helping the dealer community - Message from Mr. Nikunj Sanghi, President FADA.

Dear Fellow Dealer :

In the nearly 50 years since its founding, FADA has endeavoured to play the role of a trade body that has facilitated dealerships in conducting their business

Over the past year, we have sought to take our existing activities to greater levels : the Auto Summit this year and the FADA Journal being but two examples of this

In the coming months, FADA plans to launch a series of initiatives aimed at benefiting the dealer community, especially in areas where the community needs assistance to address its concerns and problems

Profit+ is an initiative being immediately launched to address an area of concern to dealerships : how much they actually earn. It seeks to both :

• Introduce to the community unique and proven paths that have helped dealerships earn significantly superior profits, as also in going forward
•  Provide them assistance in implementing these frameworks at their dealerships

The Ekalavya Column - May 2012

Those who do not learn from History are condemned to repeat it

Here’s a quick test of investment acumen. Based on facts presented for roughly the same period, not at two vastly different points in time, choose the company to invest in

Option I : The company deals in petroleum products, has 90% of the world’s capacity in oil refining, 20,000 oil wells, 6000 km of pipelines, 5,000 tank cars and 100,000 employees

Option II : The organization makes soaps and candles, employs 80 people and has a turnover of USD 1 million

Made your choice? Was it Option I : Standard Oil, or Option II : Proctor and Gamble?

The Ekalavya Column - April 2012

In the March edition of this column, we’d spoken of how after assessing tens of thousands of employees over almost a decade, we at Transforma had stumbled upon a key benefit of conducting these assessments : a sharp reduction in the level of attrition

However, this does not capture the full picture. While reduction of attrition levels by over 80% is certainly a benefit that has made us sit up and take notice of this ( for us ) unanticipated benefit of assessments, a larger story lies not in the quantity, but the quality of attrition : not just how many, but who is quitting

Reductions of the order of magnitude that we have witnessed in the quantity of attrition do make for compelling reading. And the magnitude of benefits to the organization is easier to identify, and therefore, comprehend. Let us take one example of this

The Ekalavya Column - March 2012

Over the past now nearly a decade, we at Transforma have assessed thousands from across India. During these assessments, we have always focused on the values and beliefs of those who we have assessed, not their skills and knowledge

Based on the findings out of these assessments, we have made recommendations as to what the organization should do. In a number of cases, we have subsequently worked with these organizations to help them implement these action plans

During this nearly decade-long journey, we have sometimes stumbled upon benefits that have accrued to these organizations that were not part of our central focus when we started out with the first step : assessments based on qualities, not qualifications. One such area is the impact on employee attrition

In the past 18 months, the volume of evidence on this count : attrition rates, has made us sit up and take notice of it in manner that we had not till date. And the quantum of impact has made us recognize that the correlation between actions taken out of assessments conducted by Transforma and attrition rates at these organizations is far wider and deeper than we had envisaged

The Ekalavya Column - February 2012

 Why do we frequently fail in assessing others correctly? Why is it that those we thought to be great candidates while interviewing them turn out to be disappointments later?

Only this morning, we were in conversation with a 52-year old CEO of the Indian operations of a Fortune 500 company, whose CV reads like this : Bachelor’s from one of the most renowned colleges in India, MBA from one the best known institutions in the world, and 30 years of work experience, the first 20 years of which with an MNC that is probably the most respected in India

He brought up the matter of a recent recruit, a Mr. X, with national-level responsibilities, taken on board to provide strategic thrust in an area of critical importance to the organization. ‘The way it’s going, looks like things might not work out with him’ said the CEO

Our immediate response : ‘Things will never work out’. In fact, we’d said so months earlier when we’d met with Mr. X for the first time at one of our organizational transformation sessions

Let’s pause here

The Ekalavya Column - January 2012

 Transforma is not a consultancy. It is not a training agency. And certainly not a HR firm

We define our involvement not in terms of the input side, but the outcomes achieved. And we work long years with our clients to achieve, not trivial improvements in performance, but of a magnitude that defies conventional logic

None of these dramatic improvements has been achieved by a focus on the commonly followed path : processes. Our obsession has always been people. The right people. People not with the right qualifications, but with the right qualities : the only thing we look for in our assessments

The conviction to do so is underlain by the story of our inspiration, - Ekalavya, one who overcame the status he was born into and rejection by the teacher he so craved. Through sheer tenacity, long years of application and a steely determination, not the resources poured into him, he got to being acknowledged the most skilful archer in the Mahabharata. It’s these qualities that made the non-availability of resources irrelevant as an impediment to his extra-ordinariness

We find a real-life echo of this in a study of 7000 SMEs undertaken by Keith McFarland recently. 9 of these broke through from an SME to being a large company. A primary driver of their breaking through was ‘people’. So what is noteworthy about ‘people’? Two eye-openers :

Live Webcast - Workshop On Strategic HR at the Auto Summit

9 Jan 2012.

You are not in Delhi today ?  Missing - "Ordinary Men. Extraordinary Deeds – Meet Our Ekalavyas at the Workshop On Strategic HR at the Auto Summit in Delhi. ".

Do not worry - we have arranged for a live webcast of the event, so that you do not miss out on this interesting event. The telecast starts from 1615 and ends at 1730 ( IST).

Click on this link for live webcast: www.livestream.com/gotransforma

Enjoy the Workshop!

Team Transforma

Ordinary Men. Extraordinary Deeds – Meet Our Ekalavyas at the Workshop On Strategic HR at the Auto Summit - II

Transforma is not a consultancy. It is not a training agency. And certainly not a HR firm

We define our involvement not in terms of the input side, but the outcomes achieved. And we work long years with our clients to achieve, not trivial improvements in performance, but of a magnitude that defies conventional logic. Let’s try some of the numbers below –

·         A 1200% increase in productivity in an exchange business : from 12 vehicles done by a team of 5, to 100 vehicles done by a team of 3

·         A 140% increase in the number of rotations : from 5 times in a year to 12 times in a year, underlain by a reduction in credit period from 75 to 30 days

·         A 1000% increase in productivity in new vehicle sales : from 1.25 per person to 12.5

·         A 84 % reduction in repeat repairs : from 10.28% to 1.71%

None of the above has been achieved by a focus on processes. Our obsession has always been people. The right people. People not with the right qualifications, but with the right qualities : the only thing we look for in our assessments of employees at dealerships

Not a single member of the team that achieved any of the above has any academic qualification that would make you take a second look at them. But while assessing them 2 years ago we saw them as Ekalavyas. Ordinary men. Capable of extraordinary deeds

At the Auto Summit ’12, held at  Le Meridien Hotel, New Delhi, at 1600 hrs on Mon, Jan 9, we proudly present members of this team, out of a dealership in Vijayawada. So that you can listen to them. Speak to them. Ask them questions

Do join us

Team Transforma

Ordinary Men. Extraordinary Deeds – An Invitation to the Workshop on Strategic HR at the Auto Summit

Transforma was founded on the belief: ‘Talent is universal, opportunity is not’. Out of this belief, we defined our mission: ‘To make opportunity a little more universal’

While in effect the belief might not sound as being exceptional, what is starkly different about us at Transforma is the way we define, assess and identify true talent: based on attitude, not aptitude. During assessments, we at Transforma ignore completely the functional competencies an individual possesses; - we look only for behavioural competencies. Not by administering tests at a distance, but by direct observation, in the person

Once we have zeroed in true talent we deploy a 2-year development initiative: The Ekalavya Program, named in honour of the one iconic figure who best exemplifies the belief we were founded on

Since our establishment, we have consistently endeavoured to bring to life this mission with the organizations we have worked with. In the process we have delivered spectacular results: outcomes that were not even expected by the clients, and in the targeted areas, a quantum of improvement that defies conventional logic

At the Auto Summit ’12 in Delhi, where Transforma has been invited to deliver a workshop on Strategic HR, we proudly present to you at 1600 hrs on Mon, January 9, ’12, a team from RAMCOR and Garapati, Vijayawada: dealerships we have been working with, to enable you meet with and hear directly from a team what are the magic moments they have been able to generate for their organization

For us at Transforma, it would be a delight to have you there to meet true Ekalavyas: Ordinary Men. Extraordinary Deeds

 

The Ekalavya Column - Dec '11

‘Finding good manpower is such a big problem’

Heard that one? Ask what is meant by ‘good manpower’, and the answer you’ll get is : ‘qualified people’. Not ‘quality people’ mind you, but ‘qualified people’

 

So why do we want ‘qualified people’? In the belief that those with academic credentials, industry experience and domain knowledge can guarantee results? And that’s why, while interviewing a prospective employee, we focus only on gauging what he already knows about the job we are planning to recruit him for

So let’s deal with this profile : has had a total of 3 months of official schooling ( his teacher called him ‘addled’), been with hearing problems from an early age, sold candy and newspaper on trains as a child, supplemented his income by selling vegetables, and finally, the seventh and last child of a father who was a runaway because of his participating in an unsuccessful rebellion