If you take a spoonful of salt and add it to a cup of water, it turns salty. If, however, you add a spoonful of salt to a river, it does not turn salty. The heart of a lover is like a river - immense in its capacity to receive, embrace and transform.
When our hearts are like a cup of water, we suffer. To cultivate happiness, we must develop the heart of a lover.
Wish you a Mindful New Year! Be a lover. Be free.
Traditionally, companies are set up with the intent to earn income. They provide a service or a product in return for money. They strive to keep their cost price lower than their selling price. They invest in plant and machinery, employees, expansion etc. Some of them come out with IPOs allowing small investors to participate in their growth.
The valuation of a company does not necessarily depend on the income it earns, it depends more on what it can earn in the future. People are willing to shell out more for shares in companies which operate in segments like Ecommerce, Internet of Things and electric vehicles, which are likely to grow at a fast pace.
Companies like Flipkart command valuations based on their growth. They don't make profits. Flipkart and its subsidiary, Myntra, report their performance in terms of Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV). If they sell 10 units of a product with an MRP of $100, the GMV is $1000. GMV does not take into account the cancellations, returns, discounts etc.
GMV can be easily inflated and companies can show rapid growth even when there is little or no growth. By showing rapid growth they can attract investment at higher valuations. Investors play along as they hope to exit at higher valuations through or post an IPO, dumping their shares on small investors at astronomical valuations.
Companies which represent performance in terms of GMV will not see their GMV reduce if your order is cancelled, undelivered or returned. In fact, they may be able to increase their GMV by selling the product again. If a company delivers a $100 product in great condition to a customer, it will have a happy customer and $100 in terms of GMV. If a company sells a $100 defective product to customer at 80% discount, it is returned and sold again, it gets $200 in terms of GMV! Surprisingly, the second company commands higher valuations! In many cases, the MRP is inflated to inflate GMV. Be careful with those private labels!
Some ways in which Ecommerce companies inflate the GMV are:
1. Cancelling orders - Customers often find their orders being cancelled. The company may not really have those products. They may just let people place those orders attracting them with huge discounts and in the process inflate their GMV. They may be more than happy to issue a "goodwill coupon".
2. High RTO - RTO stands for "returned to origin". These are undelivered orders. Managers set high targets for their delivery staff and ask them to "deliver or RTO or don't come to work again". Unable to deliver all orders, delivery agents end up marking some orders as "RTO". These products are sold again! All that adds up to the GMV numbers. A company representing performance in terms of GMV may show growth even if all their Logistics staff go on a strike!
3. Tender Liquidation - Certain Ecommerce firms allow customers to place "cash on delivery" orders, pay using a credit card at the time of delivery and then return the product and obtain a refund into their bank account. A lot of people just place orders to convert the credit limit on their cards to cash.
4. Shipping damaged and wrong products - Companies deliberately ship defective merchandise to customers. If they are returned, they are sold again. Higher GMV!
5. Inflating the MRP - ACSI recently pulled up Flipkart for displaying a higher MRP on the website than what was printed on the MRP sticker. In order to prevent getting caught companies may be shipping many products without the manufacturer's MRP tag. They may just be printing the price on the barcode sticker. Watch out! Those prices may be inflated.
Mindful customer care staff may stop a lot of such activities, like high RTOs and returns. They may highlight issues to delivery centers and want improvements, so the companies insist that communication with DCs take place only through an established hierarchy. To prevent customer service staff from following up and taking ownership, companies set high targets and allow the system to be gamed. Those who can game the system, are rewarded will higher performance ratings, more money and are promoted.
The people who come up through such a system which is rigged, may be excellent at the following skills:
1. Disconnecting calls while making it look like a technical issue.
2. Exploiting loopholes in the CRM software to increase their email count.
3. Avoiding difficult or time consuming work (a.k.a skipping).
4. Providing meaningless responses like asking you for "more images" or requesting you to confirm if "product is unused" even if you might have already selected that option while initiating the return.
5. Networking with TLs, Managers, QAs etc.
Those who are good at these skills will be able to show higher productivity and quality scores and are awarded supervisory roles and perform functions like reviewing return requests and employee performance. Don't be surprised if a perfectly sensible and straightforward return request is rejected.
Companies induce their employees into acting in this manner by applying pressure, initiating disciplinary action, offering rewards and recognition and watering seeds of greed. Companies offer high salaries to supervisors to attract staff into chasing supervisory roles. At one Ecommerce firm, the customer service staff are paid as low as Rs. 200000 a year while team leads are paid Rs.700000 a year. Flipkart paid Mekin Maheshwari Rs.18+ crores in FY 2014-15. That's 100 times the salary of India's Prime Minister and over 1000 times the salary of a delivery agent.
The problems of operating in this manner are:
1. Customers are losers. They lose money and peace of mind.
2. Honest workers are punished. Good delivery agents and customer service staff are replaced.
3. Employees are pushed into a habit of acting unethically.
4. A hierarchy functioning unethically makes all decisions.
5. Lack of transparency (to protect the hierarchy).
6. High income inequalities.
7. Poor work culture spreads across workplaces.
8. Government loses out on taxes.
This is not how things should be. We must always strive to maintain high ethical standards. If we reward the wrongdoers then there will be more wrongdoers. We are fast becoming a nation of cheats, corrupt and greedy. Economic inequality is at an all-time high.
If we want change, we will need to create awareness about this and demand action. Each one of us can do our bit. All states and the center must take appropriate action to protect our values. We need powerful agencies and laws to protect the consumers and non-supervisory employees. At a personal level, we must learn to treat everyone equally and not seek more than others.
(The author, Saurabh Singh, is a student of Thich Nhat Hanh.)
"The Wisdom of Equality comes from the seventh consciousness, manas. Manas is the number one discriminator. It says, "This is me. This is mine. This is not mine." That is manas's speciality. We have to keep this consciousness, so that it can become the Wisdom of Equality...
Wonderful Observation Wisdom transforms manas into the Wisdom of Equality. We are one. We are equal."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Just 100 people in India own about 10% of India's national wealth. Think about it. That's a lot of money in the hands of very few people. Flipkart paid its Chief People Officer, Mekin Maheshwari, Rs.187 million in the year 2014-15. That's about 100 times the salary of India's Prime Minister and 1000 times the salary of a delivery agent.
Just how much money is enough? I don't think many people think about it. They only compare. Seeking career growth and financial rewards has become a deep rooted habit.
Let us consider the example of a department in a fictitious company, Look Good Corporation. This department answers customer queries received via email. They spend 50% of their wage budget on the people who actually respond to those emails and 50% on supervisory staff like Quality Analysts, Knowledge Management Analysts, Trainers, Team Leads and Managers. It may be possible to write 35 emails in a day but to make financial sense they would need to write 70. The additional 35 to pay the wages of the supervisory staff. Naturally, this leads to unhappy employees as well as customers (as the quality of responses are of poor standard).
If they decided to eliminate hierarchy and implement pay equity, they could double their staff strength and each one would only need to write 35 emails in a day.
The hierarchical system is a manifestation of manas's habit of discriminating. Since we discriminate, one can be superior to others and earn more than others. To earn more money and for recognition and power, we are willing to push others into a life of economic difficulties and make them participants in unethical workplace practices.
If we let go of our desire for such kind of growth, we can transform our workplace into a monastery.
Monks don't possess personal wealth. They all have similar rooms. The teacher is also a monk and does not earn more money than other monks. They wake up at the same time, eat at the same time, study together and meditate without fail. They are disciplined and well organised. Decisions are made collectively. The attrition rate is lower than that at corporations like Flipkart.
We can only continue doing something for a long time if we are happy doing it. Unfortunately, in a hierarchy, the system can be rigged, causing dissatisfaction. Incompetence is rewarded more often.
At Look Good Corporation, they announce opportunities through Internal Job Postings. People apply for these if they want to be promoted. People who apply for the IJPs are looking for more money and better career opportunities for themselves. How can such selfish people make good leaders?
Almost everyone at Look Good Corporation applies for IJPs. If all of them can work by themselves, supervisory roles should have become redundant. If they can't work without supervisors themselves, what makes them think they can supervise others?
Supervisory staff rig the system to prove that they are still needed. If supervisors could really make staff better, staff would work without supervision and supervisors would not be needed. In fact, they do just the opposite. By breaking down a process into parts, constituting separate teams and introducing access restrictions, they hide information from others to create an appearance of possessing more knowledge. They require staff to seek approvals from them. They use their ability to distribute and evaluate work to hide reality and present a completely different picture. Ah! The machinations of manas.
Naturally, in such an environment, no one can be happy. If you make others unhappy, they won't just sit back and watch. There's stress and moral corruption. Politics and disruptions.
If we let go our desire for this kind of growth, it is possible to be happy. We don't need to become the CEO of Look Good Corporation. The 100 richest Indians should not be our role models. We should look up to the Bodhisattvas and follow their footsteps.
Each one of us has come into contact with Bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas are beings who selflessly help others. Mothers, fathers, grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, teachers etc. have frequently manifested Bodhisattva qualities, loving us without seeking money, worldly goods, recognition, incentives or designations in return. We must stop seeking material pleasures. They become necessities, then they enslave us. Then we lose our ability to stand up for what is right.
We must look deeply to see how discrimination manifests suffering and allow the Wisdom Of Equality to arise. Shantideva wrote this verse to strengthen his and our commitment to the Bodhisattva path:
"May I be a guard for those who are protectorless,
A guide for those who journey on the road,
And for those who wish to cross over to the other shore,
May I be the boat, the raft, the bridge."
(The author, Saurabh Singh, is a student of Thich Nhat Hanh.)
