As I See It

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Friday, May 7, 2010

Hi-fliers: Birds in Arizona

Arizona has a great variety of birds, commonly found even in city area. Here are a few I could capture.

American Robin

Field Sparrow

Lesser Rosefinch (Female)

Swainson's Hawk?

Northern Cardinal

Sunday, April 25, 2010

A look around: Mayo Clinic and Munnabhai

Today, I was reading about Mayo Clinic and its exceptional customer service. At Mayo, “patient’s needs come first” and “the interest of the patient is the only interest to be considered.” These things are easier said than done. It is one thing to frame these sentences and hang them on walls and a completely different one to live these values as an organization. In my opinion, it definitely takes more than a smart, service oriented business motive. It takes intrinsic alignment with the principles and a genuine desire to care. Agreed that better service leads to customer satisfaction, which leads to customer retention and loyalty, which leads to repurchase and positive word of mouth and a high lifetime value of the customer. But imagine Mayo’s case where many of their customers, despite the best efforts of Mayo staff, have very little lifetime left! Mayo clearly doesn’t treat the customers who will live, and thereby spread positive word of mouth, any different from those who have little life left. (As the 80:20 rule or the CRM principles might suggest – “Focus on your most profitable customers!”). In fact, some of the most famous incidents relate to seriously ill patients. What then is the motivation here? Of course, the patient’s relatives may spread positive word even if the patient doesn’t live, but I hesitate to believe that this fact is the basis of Mayo’s service.

This brings me to the fundamental question that was discussed a lot during the first trimester of the MBA program. “What is the role of corporate social responsibility in business? Is it just to do good or is it aimed at helping the business in some way?” Even beyond this, “Are the interests of employees, shareholders and customers always conflicting? How do you reconcile them?” I think Mayo provides a good answer. Look at the possible reasons why Mayo may provide excellent service:
1) Better service leads to differentiation, superior brand and profitability (shareholder motive)
2) Desire to be the best in class - just for the sake of it ( personal achievement goals of top management or organizational )
3) Desire of employees to serve the people and help the society (they choose people for this attitude)
Any one or more of these may be the actual reason, all reasons get taken care of, creating a wonderful win -win situation for patients (customers), employees and shareholders.

Mayo also reminds me of the bollywood movie “Munnabhai MBBS”. Munna, a bully enters a hospital and medical college with the desire to become a doctor. His ways clash with the dean who believes that emotional attachment with the patient is a doctor’s weakness. In his own strange ways, Munna transforms the hospital into a loving, caring unit, sometimes even bringing miraculous medical results, purely through care and attention. This film shows many aspects of leadership and management such employee appreciation and motivation (the scene where Munna thanks the sweeper), understanding and catering to patient’s needs (getting the boy, who has eaten poison, admitted without registration), going above and beyond the call of duty ( what he does for a patient called Zaheer), using the knowledge of customer’s preferences to better serve them ( what he does for a patient who likes to play carrom) and creating a tangible action to represent and inculcate the values ( the famous hug – referred to as ‘jadu ki jhappi’ in the film). Although, he or the hospital has nothing to gain financially, and he is just following his values, were director Rajkumar Hirani and producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra thinking “services business” when they made the film? Or was it just plain–simple “do good”? I think it’s the latter. Well, whatever the case may be, hats off to them for such an entertaining film which also has an important message!

Monday, April 19, 2010

A beautiful world: Devil's Detour

It was Saturday morning and a group of around 25 students from different programs at ASU had gathered near the famous Horses Statue to board a bus. It was Devil’s Detour for spring 2010, to the Dessert Botanical Garden. Soon, the bus arrived and all of us boarded the bus. We were given back the $5 deposit we paid at the time of RSVP. The tour was free!

Within 10 minutes we reached the botanical garden. Although, I had heard about this garden being really cool, I did not know what exactly to expect. But what I saw was way beyond my expectations. There were uncountable different kinds of cactuses and other dessert plants. Many cactuses had beautiful, bright colored flowers in full bloom. For a nature lover and photography enthusiast like me, it was complete treat but even to a person not so interested in these things, the experience was quite unique.

Blue, violet, purple, yellow, white – name the color and there was representation among the flowers for that one. But actually speaking, I had fallen so much in love with the place by now that even the plane thorny cactuses without any flowers were beautiful to me. There were cactuses 4 to 5 times as tall as adult humans and birds nested in them. (What protection from snakes etc. with all the thorns!) I saw a bird hiding behind the bushes. I went closer. It was white and brown streaked with a long curved beak. It was the ‘Cactus Wren’, the state bird of Arizona. I could also spot its nest in a big tall cactus. Then as I walked ahead, some very red thing flew in and sat on a tree. It was a bright red “Northern Cardinal”. I was lucky to get a picture. There were other cactuses of various shapes and forms. Some were spherical, like a huge soccer ball, some flat while some had soft thorns that formed a mesh and reached up to the ground. I thought I had seen it all, but the best was yet to come!

I proceeded to the butterfly enclosure. This was a greenhouse like enclosure, fairly big, inside which butterflies were kept. There natural trees and flowers they could feed on. They were free to fly around but not to go outside the enclosure. People could walk straight into the enclosure and the butterflies would be flying around, sometimes even landing on us. There were at least eight different varieties of butterflies and all were very beautiful ranging from single colored bright ones to multicolored. I could get good pictures. It was a great experience.

One thing I must mention about the garden is the quality of service. The entire garden was extremely well maintained. Employees in uniform were moving around with informative brochures, distributing them and giving directions and information about various plants and flowers to interested guests, even without asking. One of us lost a cellphone. We searched but could not find it. We went to one employee and asked where the lost and found desk was. He immediately asked “ Have you lost a cellphone? We have found one”, and directed us to the desk. At the desk, the lady returned the phone but as we were about to leave, she asked “Are you from India? “, and when we said “yes”, she quickly flipped the pages of a notebook in front of her and said “Dhanyawad!” (Hindi for “Thank you”).

I could have spent the whole day at the garden if not for the time limit set by the organizers. We took a group picture and came back in the same bus. The whole trip was about 3 hours. Devil’s detour is a part of international programming and is organized once every semester. It has two parts, off campus and on campus. The above trip was the off campus part. Such events not only provide a much needed break from studies but also make international students aware of the natural surroundings in Arizona and give them chance to interact with students from other programs.