Strategise and focus

In the French fighter jet Rafael,  the guns are so sensitively controlled,  that you can aim and fire the guns with just a turn of the head. This is so because being a fighter jet, the pilot needs to concentrate more on the fighting strategy than on flying the plane.

Leadership lesson: Once you have prioritised the actions your teams need to take, make the tasks around the key priorities simple to do and try to eliminate as many actions around the unrelated ones. 

Why Customer is King

ET Panache,  is a supplement which comes with the Economic Times. It calls itself an "Advertorial and Promotional feature," a polite way of saying  all news in the supplement will have to be paid for.  So in today's issue we have billionaire industrialist Yohan Poonawala complaining about his dissatisfaction with premium auto maker Porsche. His SUV caught fire and he is apparently unhappy about the way the company has handled the complaint. This is bad press for Porsche.

Now, whether Poonawala has paid for the news to be featured  as headline news, maybe pure speculation, but what made him vent his ire in this manner? He says he contacted the India director the morning after the accident, who told him he will revert within 48 hours with a solution. Next,  says Poonawala,  he was informed that the director has left for a 'pre scheduled meeting' to Germany,  where he would bring up the issue. An anonymous source has told the paper that it takes a minimum of two weeks to address an issue like this,  and that an investigator is  his way down from Germany.

So where did the India director go wrong in dealing with Poonawala? Considering he is a car aficionado and a billionaire to boot, should the director have been in constant personal touch with him? Should be have offered Poonawala another car as a temporary replacement?

There are several possibilities here,  but only one lesson in customer relationship management -  do not take your customers lightly. They have any number of forums, paid, and free, to vent their spleen on you. 

And that can have serious consequences for your company's image.