Observation - The mother of all learning!

A mother of a mischievous child hit upon a bright idea. She presented him with torn pieces of a world map taken from a magazine and asked him to assemble it back. She thought that she would have peace of mind for a long time

To her consternation the child was in the kitchen within fifteen minutes with the assembled map. Accepting her defeat, she exclaimed “how is it possible that you could assemble the world map so easily and that too in a jiffy."

Her son answered "I never knew anything about countries of the world. The other side of the world map had a picture of a man’s face. I assembled the face and reversed it and the world map was made." Hats off to his keen sense of observation.

The mother of all learning is observation. One of my favourite books is "How to read a person like a book" by Gerard I. Nierenberg and Henry H. Calero. This brilliant book details how to gauze a person’s behaviour and read him like a book just by observation. The book is a great primer for learning and practicing the art of reading body language– a language that we all silently speak but very few have learnt to decipher and master.

Observation is the action or process of closely seeing, listening, monitoring and processing something or someone. Observation can also be a statement based on something one has seen, heard, or noticed. Observations can be natural, experimental or mechanical. Natural observation is observing something as it happens, where as an experiment is set up artificially and mechanical observations are not made by humans, rather we use mechanical devices, machines, cameras and computers for observation.

Next time watch a slow bowler in a cricket match. Seeing the spinner the batsman would try to charge the bowler by dancing down the pitch. Observing the batsman the bowler might bowl a short ball or bowl it wide or pitch it full. Meanwhile the wicket keeper is on his toes for a missed shot and waiting to whip off the bails. Helen Keller had once remarked, “Give me eyesight for three days and I would see and observe things that a sighted person would not have seen or observed in a life time.” Some interesting concepts and incidents based on the art of correct observation.

MBWA (Management by wandering around): Popularised by executives of Hewlett Packard, MBWA refers to a style of management which involves managers randomly wandering around in an unstructured manner through the workplace to observe and interact with employees about the status of ongoing work.

People greeters: People greeters are employees of a store who greet the customers at the entrance and welcome them. People greeting is a concept that was started by WALMART. Most shoppers of Wal-Mart remember and recognise the smiling greeters with the vest asking "How may I help you?" The greeters had a dual purpose, to make people feel good about coming in and to make sure people weren't walking back out the entrance with merchandising items they hadn't paid for. Thus people greeters help reduce shrinkage at the store that happens in the form of shop-lifting. It is the 'hello' while coming in, the 'eye' while going out.

Now-a-days people greeters have a third role, they are counting the footfalls. The popularity of a store is measured by the footfalls which are the number of visitors a store gets in a day. The people greeters have a small device that counts the number of visitors. This data can further be crunched to find out the footfalls per hour, bills to footfall ratio and other marketing metrics to measure a stores efficiency of operations.

Vanity sizing also called labelling down, sizing up: One dreaded question that all shoppers hate is “Sir, what is your waist size?” Shoppers in USA are in for a pleasant surprise. US sizes are at least two inches more than what is printed. Most people would not notice and it would result in a happy shopping experience.

The actual size of a garment is bigger than advertised in an effort to flatter the customer. Vanity sizing might not all be only because of vanity, most don't intentionally buy a smaller size for reasons of vanity. They just continue to grab the size that they've always bought.

Selling shoes in Africa: A shoe company sent its Head of Sales to a remote African country to observe and find out the sales potential. Within a few days came a telex “No one wears shoes here. 100 per cent market share can be expected.” Not totally believing the Sales Head, the Managing Director sends the Finance Controller. The telex arrives within a few days “No one wears shoes here, zero market potential.”

Alarmed at the variance to the two reports the Managing Director then sent the Head of Strategy. After two weeks he received a detailed report. "Both the Sales Head and the Financial Controller are correct. No one wears shoes. So theoretically there is a possibility of 100 per cent market share. But in a country where no one wears any footwear the Finance Controller’s observation is also correct.

Our company has to make people believe the advantage of wearing shoes over walking barefoot. Product trials have to be done and opinion leaders have to be won over. So costs will have to be incurred before some of the local population starts wearing shoes. Once some of the people start wearing shoes there will be a cascading effect and many more will follow suit.”

The head of strategy does not stop here. He goes on to add “The Company will have to invest in new machinery. This is because the typical shoe sizes in India are 7, 8 and 9. In Africa the typical shoe sizes are 9, 10 and 11. The country is very poor and people have less spending power. But the country is very rich in cloves production.” The head of strategy suggests a barter system where the shoe company ties up with a local entrepreneur and supplies shoes in wholesale and take cloves in return. That is the power of correct observations and making valid and smart deduction from observed behaviour.

Marketing Detergent powder in Middle East: A detergent company from India was doing excellent business in the Middle East in the seventies. The detergent company was using the franchise model. The company was sending the detergent powder to the Arabic countries and the local businessmen were taking care of the marketing and selling functions. The company wanted to increase the sales. It set up an office and sent out its marketing wizards. The marketing hot shots created a well thought out campaign, executed the same and waited for the moolah to roll in. But to their utter shock and despair the sales dropped off. It was so bad that the stocks started piling up. Research was conducted to find out what went wrong.

It all boiled down to the new campaign that was put in place. The literacy levels were quite low so press advertising was not feasible. And in the seventies TV had very limited presence in the Middle East. So the company used the billboards/hoardings or outdoor media.

The campaign theme was simple. The billboards had three panels. On the left most panel there was a very dirty cloth, the middle panel showed the dirty cloth being dipped in the detergent and the third or the right most panel showed the cloth coming out clean – sparkling clean. A simple, effective and universal theme that is popular with the homemakers of the world. So what went wrong with this theme and campaign?

The marketing team and the marketing research team were mulling over this perplexing issue. One of their local Arabic employees happened to come into the office. She burst out laughing looking at the billboard sample put on the OHP (overhead projector) “Who would like to buy a detergent that makes clean cloth dirty and that too after washing it with the detergent. My son can do it free of cost.”

Looking at the puzzled faces who were looking at her in amazement, totally confused and lacking comprehension, she went on to explain “Oh Oh, You people don’t know it - right. I should have guessed it. Unlike most languages in the world Arabic is read from right to left and not from left to right. While you wanted to convey the meaning of dirty cloth becoming sparkling clean, the exact opposite was being conveyed to the Arabic customers– that the clean cloth becomes dirty by using our detergent.”

Allowing readers to read to their hearts content: American book shops have mastered the art of display and enticement. They invite the readers to come to the book shop, pick up a book and read it to their hearts content. There is no pressure of buying. One can sample the book and buy it only if one wants. It works to the advantage of the book shop as the book shop appears to be crowded. Observing a crowded shop would be a trigger for others to walk in. It is a win-win for the book shop.

Japanese management practices: There is always a point of discontent or a point of disagreement between the boss and the subordinate. There is no boss in the world who is liked by all his subordinates. When a boss makes a point to his subordinate, he has no choice but to listen. But the subordinate could be upset in many cases.

The upset subordinate would go back to the work station and take it out on his poor computer. He would nastily fiddle with his air conditioner. He might accidentally drop hot coffee on very important papers. Or he would type “snakes would be served at 1600 hours” (instead of snacks). All these are forms of discontentment.

In Japan most of the organisations would have a cellar or an area that is only accessible to workers. A worker who is unhappy with his boss can go to this area. There he would find clay pots. He can take a stick and smash as many pots as he wants. He could also go to the punching bag, draw the face of his boss and punch it as many times as he likes.

Twenty minutes into the exercise the worker would have let off enough steam and he would cool down. This way his destructive frustration is channeled into inanimate objects and he neither harms himself nor his organisation. The beauty of this system is the observation and understanding that all people are not equal and that there is always a chance of discontentment. Taking care of that discontentment is the only way out.

By: Dr M Anil Ramesh