From start of this series – 38 Ways
became 52 Ways have become 75 to-date. The new additions are inspired by
Sridhar Vembu of Zoho experiment with village offices. Thanks
for your contribution.
Automation
1.
Explore
automation of processes that are manual and monotonous to improve employee productivity
2.
Re-skill
resultant displaced workers to generate more productivity from them without
loss of employment
Brand Engagement
3.
Help
customers to engage with the brand through surrogates like a branded ‘boardgame’
or other devices that captures the elements of the brand when playing the game
or instrument
Brand Demand Pipeline
4.
Virtualize
the game with ‘actions’ taken rewarded with vouchers, redeemable when business
opens to: induce visits, build momentum, leverage underutilization of
facilities to make the voucher value cost-free, and even profitable by spurring
additional spending on site
Brand Salience
5.
Be
in the news as related to the consumer / customer profile and needs to
demonstrate the brand’s commitment to their well-being
6.
“Delighted
to inaugurate online Bosch Make in India mask line which will produce 100,000
masks a day in Bengaluru. The 3-layer mask has efficiency > than 95%. These
will be distributed free of cost to Covid warriors. Bosch has pledged INR Rs 50
Cr to combat pandemic. Congrats!” (Tweet from Amitabh Kant, CEO, of government
think-tank NITI Aayog)
7.
Create
characters and merchandise related to your business that has utility for the
consumer
8.
Go
online and promote the merchandise aggressively
9.
Crowd
source ideas for building brand salience for above activities
Capital Deployment
10.
Fund
Small Business in the Community
11.
Buy
their products for self or for wider distribution through company distribution
channels
12.
Share
depreciated plant, property and equipment – free or at a small cost with the
small business
13.
Buy
new equipment to boost the industrial equipment industry
14.
Redeploy
working capital arising from employees working from home generating savings in
transportation, power and water consumption, and subsidies such as for food
15.
Provide
employees (as Google has done) allowances to set up a comfortable facility to
work from home including smart phones, tabs, connectivity for the family to
pursue online education for their wards
Community Support
16.
Build
a common kitchen on company grounds to provide food for the unemployed
employees and the community at cost or no cost as part of CSR
17.
Fund
personal expenses of the community, such as child’s education, by setting up a
school for the community and funding the school expenses as part of company CSR
obligation
18.
Provide
in tie-up with product and service providers smart phones, tabs, connectivity
for the community’s children to pursue online education
19.
Support
educational institutions in the community to address online teaching challenges
including shortage of proper equipment for teachers to do so from home but also
tweaks in pedagogy to teach in an online environment
Government Support for Business
20.
Provide
land, water, power and road connectivity for businesses and employees to Work-From-Anywhere-Anytime
(WFAA)
21.
Provide
tax holidays to encourage moving businesses away from cities
22.
Provide
support to educational institutions willing to set up schools and colleges in
these clusters for talent development
23.
Design
policies that makes agriculture remunerative with land held by employees to
generate additional sources of income scientifically managed to build up the food
chain
24.
Make
provision and grocery requirements of these clusters self-sufficient through a
funded grow-and-consume scheme reduce carbon footprint in goods flowing in and
out of the cluster when they can be produced and grown locally
25.
Provide
sanitation and clean drinking water for these clusters linking up streams and
rivers and building water pipelines to these areas
26.
Focus
on water harvesting and sewage treatment plants to promote hygiene and
self-sufficiency in these areas
27.
Provide
public transportation that makes travel easy including airports for short haul
flights
28.
Through
MNREGA and other schemes provide employment to the rural poor in the
development of these clusters
29.
Provide good local government that policies
are implemented and businesses are not constrained in anyway
30.
Design
housing, commercial properties and recreational areas that fuses with the
heritage and culture of the area (like Cochin Airport)
Human Capital Development
31.
Tie-up
with an EdTech company to help employees upgrade or develop new skills
32.
Engage
employees – “Be CEO For a Day”- to crowdsource ideas for what would they do in
the situation the company / industry finds itself in
33.
Deploy
employees to tasks outside the company so they stay engaged doing good in the
community and building relationships for the company for future growth
34.
Deploy
underutilized company’s talent in public sector projects where there is a lack
of such talent especially engineering talent
Product Design, Pricing and
Packaging
35.
Make
the product affordable yet profitable through volume sales when the purchasing
power in the hands of mass consumers is going to drop drastically
36.
Make
the soap wrapping paper into ‘soap’ to make it utilitarian instead of the
wrapper crowding the wastepaper basket
37.
Make
the product last longer (a great value proposition) by ensuring just the
appropriate helping is ejected when squeezed or poured?
38.
Redesign
the product packaging and the delivery packaging when products in the future
are going to be ordered online
39.
Provide
consumer with EMI payment scheme even on provisions and personal products if
they order it as a hamper of x no of items?
40.
Repackage
/ refurbish products damaged during the sudden lockdown of people and goods
movement to salvage its costs and provide benefit to the consumer?
41.
Create
a platform for liquidating stocks in a bazaar kind of sale to create new
inventory?
42.
Rationalize
the product lines and variety for better production efficiencies?
43.
Create
a loose and packaged product lines as done by hypermarkets to offer the loose
as promotional items with the packaged?
44.
Run
co-promotions to improve offtake and offer better value?
45.
Provide
an opportunity for consumers to trade reusable or used product containers for
replenishing their stock and benefiting the packaging industry with recycling
the pack instead of adding to the landfill?
Senior Management Development
46.
Take
up Advancement Management Program to upgrade skills and get new ideas from
peers cross-industry to manage the company in during-and-post pandemic times
47.
Write
articles and publish books on learning-to-date to educate management students
and contribute to improvement in management, governance and employee
productivity
48.
Offer
mentoring services to colleagues including self-employed businesses by joining
their associations since they generate 70-80 percent of employment in an
economy
49.
Get
familiar with using digital platforms – LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube
– to educate and build professional profile
50.
Learn
to conduct effective meetings on Cisco Web, Skype or Zoom platforms
51.
Explore
new ways of working and managing the change without drop in productivity from
communal working environments to work-from-home (WFH) that obscures the separation
of professional work and demands of the home and family; including loneliness
if living in solitary confinement
52.
Seize
the opportunity to be creative in lifting the business out of potential
recessionary trends and sentiments
Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Mentoring
53.
Provide
management guidance
54.
Share
use of productivity tools
55.
Connect
them to company’s network to explore opportunities
56.
Help
them use supply chains better
57.
Teach
them negotiation skills
58.
Form
them into a community to generate pricing power for their product
59.
Brainstorm
opportunities that they should be exploring
60.
School
them in business ethics to build trust and long-term growth of their enterprise
61.
Develop
lines of business where the company becomes a buyer of their products or
reseller, improving the company’s strategic position in the industry and tap
into an additional revenue opportunity
Sponsorship of Events
62.
Select
events that can showcase community messaging of ‘social distancing’ by tweaking
formats: sprints, hurdles, relays are run not together but each runner is timed
to declare the winners like in Tour de France Bicycle race; what can that teach
us about tweaking processes in our business to maintain social distancing
63.
Tweak
‘contact sports’ rules e.g. Kabaddi as a creative exercise to observe ‘social
distancing’ and apply them to how we run our business through a creative
brainstorming session with company executives and innovation coaches
Work-From-Nearer-Home (WFNM)
64.
Sridhar
Vembu, Founder Zoho (SaaS) company is experimenting with village offices which is
nearer to his employees’ home
65.
Decongest
cities by letting employees WFM from where they hail with nodal offices 50-100
kms away that serve the purpose of a brick-and-mortar divisional offices
66.
Use
the vacated office spaces as residential complexes or guest houses for
employees and outstation visitors to engage more efficiently and be more
productive by saving on travel time and decongesting traffic on the road and of
course reduce the carbon footprint
67.
Education
department must encourage home schooling through blended / hybrid program
delivery to ensure the child’s progress to higher education
68.
Entrepreneurs
and corporates to develop local cluster environments by supporting community
aspirations and requirements to be self-sufficient
69.
Encourage
a new way of working where professional and personal development obtains a
balance in a village environment – an antidote to city work culture of burnouts
70.
Distribution
of skilled workforce in diverse environment is also an effective response to
pandemics / epidemics and natural disasters that tend to close down whole businesses
71.
Hitherto
people living in villages get the benefit of city dwellers rich educational
background for downloading the knowledge and skill base to rural folks by
teaching in the schools or home teaching several children together
72.
The
city allowance costs to be converted to village development allowance costs for
each employee to contribute to his environment
73.
‘Jugaad’
which India is famous should be encouraged blended with the scientific to
develop a global market for local innovations
Vision and Hope
74.
Build
larger visions and become champions of hope
75.
For
every discouraging statistic or news report counter with a positive one which
you are doing out of sense of nations growth, commitment to innovation, but
above all, because ‘defeat’ or ‘impossible’ is not a word that is in your
personal dictionary
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