After seeing this talk by Simon Sinek, author of ‘Start with Why‘, I couldn’t agree with him more. The synopsis of his theory or idea is that most businesses and their leaders fail to inspire because they focus too much on communicating two things to their clients. Two things which they think are important, ie., 1) what they do and 2) how they do it. Both of these are important, but not quite as important as the other thing i.e.,‘why do you do what you do’.

The Why is nothing but the purpose of the organization or the reason why you do business. He showcases this simple idea through what he refers to as the ‘Golden Circle‘ pictured below. He cites examples from Apple, Martin Luther King Jr., The Wright Brothers and Tivo to drive home his point. Communication he argues happens effortlessly and trust comes naturally, when you feel, think and act with the ‘why‘ firmly in your mind.

Simon Sinek - The Golden Circle

In my opinion, it is a fact that most businesses don’t know why they do, what they do. And still seem supremely confident that if they merely create / have a good product and communicate its benefits / advantages (the how you do it), it should basically do its job. Unfortunately, it is not that simple.

We need to remember that people essentially buy whatever you have, because they believe what you believe in. You actually managed to create an aspiration that people share in. That’s how loyal customer base is built. The corollary is also true. People may not buy your product / service despite it being very good at what it claims to do because something just doesn’t feel right. It is that unexplainable feeling that can’t be communicated in any better fashion, due to lack of better words.

Watch this wonderful talk by Simon on TED.

Let me give you an example of this by taking a leaf out of our own book, the GetFriday story. While I do that, let me also admit that we are plainly glad (not immodest) that we just happened to get it right without being aware of Simon’s golden circle or doing it any conscious manner. It was a mere hunch that this was the way to go, at that point of time. And we were lucky the hunch turned right.

GetFriday was a pioneering and innovative concept in 2005 and there is absolutely no doubt about that. But to consistently sustain the interest of people all around the world and grow, it needed something more than just being a cool idea for its time. And for the idea to further spread to people in more than 50 countries, it definitely required something extra. That something extra that differentiates you from the rest is the ‘why‘.

Get Friday - Snapshot

If you carefully look at our communication (the site hasn’t changed that much since inception), we didn’t talk about what we did or tom-tom our coverage in the international press on our home page. The ‘what‘ we do is pretty straight forward. We are a Virtual Assistant Service.

Does the ‘how‘ we do things matter? Yes, it does. Though technically anyone with a home computer, a VoIP phone and email connectivity could become a VA. The how we do things is what differentiates us from the rest and helped us scale up. But that still doesn’t qualify to make it the single most important thing in business.

Why do I say this? Around the period 2005 – 2008 (till the recession), we had at least one new competitor or clone arriving on the scene every week with a ‘me too‘ service. Some went to the extent of even using closely resembling, confusingly similar brand names to leverage on the popularity of the GetFriday service. Some tried to copy our processes and many may even have succeeded to some extent. But none or very few really survived through the economic crises. Probably the biggest reason you can attribute apart from bad luck would be that they were in business because it seemed cool, it seemed easy to copy, it seemed to be the ‘in thing‘ and yes, it seemed like you can make money easily.

So that leaves us with the ‘why‘. Why were we in this business? Each time we asked ourselves this question. The answer was this -

We wanted to help people gain time for the things they really wanted to do in life, which they couldn’t till that point for lack of support.

That was the whole purpose of this business. And the communication comes through clear in our tagline ‘Life gets better‘. The tagline didn’t read; the World’s Leading Virtual Assistance Service or something on those lines. The imagery of a father and son / child spending some quality time together went along with the central idea that our goal was to create more time for the things you love, family for instance. The communication was consistent with the why we thought we were in business.

The orange man icons were meant to provide a friendly, but helpful feel to customers. Conveying the expression of being there to help people cope with things.

And thankfully all this combined to possibly convey the magical idea of what we believed in and what we aspired to create. Leading is all about inspiring people to share in your aspirations. We believed that we can make a difference to people’s lives. Help them not to be overwhelmed with things that they are unable to manage or can’t find time to. Help them lead better lives.

Sunder P
CEO

““Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well” – Voltaire (French philosopher). And what good is appreciation that is not delivered openly.

Now that we are back to being active on the blog, we decided to showcase the Star Employees of the last quarter on this wonderful platform. They put in their best efforts towards their work, exceeded their targets while also delivering near impeccable service to their external and internal clients.

The deserving winners of this award were:
1) Dhinesh Kumar (Virtual Assistant – Team EST)
2) Karthik K (Virtual Assistant – Team PAYG)
3) Adarsh Paul (Research Assistant – Team EST)
4) Saladi Sriram (Executive – Team MIS)

I wanted to profile them and sent out a bunch of questions and received some prompt and honest replies. One common thread I could see in all of them was their matter-of-fact humility and pride in their work. Here we go, let’s find out more about them.
———

Dhinesh Kumar - Get Friday (Team EST)

Hails from Pollachi a small town in Coimbatore District, Tamilnadu. He has a B.Sc in Maths from Texcity College. Has a lot of passion towards travel, music and food. Started his career working as an online tutor for math with an online tutoring company Planetutor based at Coimbatore, then joined GetFriday in the month of April 2010.

1) How do you feel getting this recognition?
I am feeling great after getting such a good recognition from the CEO of my company.

2) What is the thing you like most about your work and why?
I like the support that I receive from my fellow colleagues at work in getting things done, as and when I need help.

3) What is the most difficult part of your job? Why?
I find it difficult when my clients turn inactive. My worries do increase.

4) Which was your greatest moment at work?
The greatest moment is when our RAs (Research Assistants) understand my instructions on a task (the way I understood it) and give a 100% correct result.

5) If there was a message that you would love to send to all your clients, what would it be?
I would like to thank all my clients for their support, guidance and their clear cut instructions. Am also glad to share this happiest moment with them.

6) If there is something you want to share with your co-workers today, what would it be?
“Hard work will be recognized” A Hearty Thanks to all my colleagues, TL’s and my manager for their support.

7) How would you describe yourself in 3 simple words.
Motivated, Enthusiastic, Hardworking
———–

Karthik K - Get Friday (Team PAYG)

Hails from Madurai (city with a 2500 year old cultural heritage) in the state of Tamilnadu, India. A graduate in science. Was working in BPOs for the past 4 years in technical and customer support position. Likes to speak a lot and is keen on learning technical things. Loves to play shuttle badminton and carrom.

1) How do you feel getting this recognition?
I am very happy about the recognition I got for my hard work.

2) What is the thing you like most about your work and why?
Different tasks and different clients everyday, give me a better understanding about life in general, and also the nature of my work.

3) What is the most difficult part of your job? Why?
Understanding some tasks where I don’t have any idea or prior experience.

4) Which was your greatest moment at work? (this recognition apart)
First appreciation email given by my client Oliver Wolf for an ongoing task.

5) If there was a message that you would love to send to all your clients, what would it be?
I always used to send my clients some inspirational quotes which I liked. I believe those quotes are my messages to my clients.

6) If there is something you want to share with your co-workers today, what would it be?
Don’t care much about recognition. If we do our work with love and understanding, it will follow us.

7) How would you describe yourself in 3 simple words.
Understand the nature, Love the need, and Observe the position.

———-

Adarsh Paul - Get Friday (Team RA-EST)

A computer science graduate (B.Tech) from Vimal Jyothi Engineering College, Kannur in Kerala state, India. His hometown is Kannur (port city, host to the world’s third largest naval academy). Driving is his passion.

1) How do you feel getting this recognition?
Surprised, because I never expected that I will achieve this.

2) What is the thing you like most about your work and why?
My approach to work. I try to make my work as simple as possible.

3) What is the most difficult part of your job? Why?
Understanding tasks. Because each person will have a different way of looking at things. So it is very important to make sure that you have understood the task the way the client wanted you to.

4) Which was your greatest moment at work? (this recognition apart)
My first appreciation…

5) If there was a message that you would love to send to all your clients, what would it be?
Thanks for being with me.

6) If there is something you want to share with your co-workers today, what would it be?
Enjoy your work.

7) How would you describe yourself in 3 simple words.
Simple and soft spoken

——–

Saladi Sriram - Get Friday (Team MIS)

Hail from an agricultural family in Amalapuram(a scenic little town on the east coast) in Andhra Pradesh state, India. He completed his B. Tech in (Electronics & Communications) from Pondicherry University in 2008.

1) How do you feel getting this recognition?
Ans:) I am happy partially. I still feel that I need to improve a lot to get this recognition.

2) What is the thing you like most about your work and why?
Ans:) The thing I like about my work is that the employee information that I present to the Management is key to their future in this company. I also like to do billing work like charging client’s credit card, sending Paypal invoices.

3) What is the most difficult part of your job? Why?
Ans:) Handling escalations and facing the situation when a mistake has happened from my end. I feel bad to stand before anyone with guilt, if a mistake happens.

4) Which was your greatest moment at work? (this recognition apart)
Ans:) I feel great if no one comes back with escalations or issues, when I send them reports or for any other work I do.

5) If there is something you want to share with your co-workers today, what would it be?
If you were honest towards your work, you will get what ever you deserve.

6) How would you describe yourself in 3 simple words.
Ans:) Silent, ready to work at any time, having stage fear

——

One question that may inevitably crop up with such recognitions is whether they cause more heart burn and demotivate people due to the selective nature of such awards. Yes they would if the organization focused merely on recognizing only the cream. In fact, I think such awards are merely a stimulus for people to try and emulate such performances. But I keep telling our managers that appreciation is a daily affair that will pay rich dividends. Never wait to accumulate it thinking that you can deliver it all in one go. Unfortunately it depreciates over time and loses significance if not delivered now.

So I take this opportunity to thank all our staff who did a splendid job last quarter in helping their clients gain better control of their time. In my opinion, each such person is an award winner. Give credit where it is due and you will notice how well people accept criticism, as well.

Sunder P
CEO

“Chance favors the prepared mind.” That was a quote from the French microbiologist, chemist and inventor, Louis Pasteur. Incidentally, he was a master of experimental research. Being not so interested in theory, he made many fundamental discoveries just by careful observation.

Serendipity; A word coined by Sir Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford in the 1700s to denote ‘accidental discoveries‘. Walpole was a prolific letter writer. In one of his letters to a friend, Walpole wrote about a silly fairy tale called ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’; “… as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of” (Serendip, old name for Ceylon, Sri Lanka) that had made a profound impression on his life. The tale described the fate of three princes who left their home to travel through the world. Rarely they found the treasures they were looking for but ran into other ones equally great or even greater which they were not seeking.

Interesting, ‘yes’ but you may wonder what is the context here? The point am trying to make is that Get Friday was also a stroke of serendipity, something that happened by chance. But did happen because we had cultivated a mind that was prepared. A mind that was open to ideas that had never been tried before. Let me tell you the story so that you can understand what I mean:

Before 2005, this company was only in the business of providing concierge services in India to Indian expats living overseas. Basically running errands for them and helping them manage their responsibilities and matters back home. That service went by the name ‘Your Man In India‘. Was a one of a kind pioneering service in those times and hence received a lot of media attention. (free publicity!!! chance was definitely helping us big time)

On 17 May, 2005 quite fortuitously I must add, we (Prabhu, my colleague and me) received a mail from a gentleman in NY. His name was AJ Jacobs. Luckily I was able to retrieve the exact mail we received. Here it goes:

————-
From: AJ Jacobs
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2005 3:04 AM
To: prabhu; sunder
Subject: American magazine

Thanks in advance,
A.J. Jacobs
————

We were kind of zapped by the request and were trying to figure out if this was some kind of a practical joke. More so because we realized later that Jacobs wanted to outsource a lot more than the quite innocuous sounding things, he mentioned in his first mail. He wanted to outsource his personal life to a company in India. That was a whole lot tricky. Back in 2005, it could have been an idea that naturally gets shot down because no one had attempted it before. So why should we even try!

Thankfully, we decided to pursue it. It all started with just one employee to boot and this person helped Jacobs over the next couple of months. Despite the odd slip ups here and there, largely due to cultural differences the experiment was a huge success.

AJ’s Equire article came out in September 2005. It went to capture the imagination of the American press and we were on Good Morning America, the next day. You can access this article here.
http://www.esquire.com/ESQ0905OUTSOURCING_214.

AJ Jacobs and Esquire

That is when we decided that we just couldn’t let this opportunity go. There was a potential and we were in the right place, at the right time. So we created a separate division and went out with a new brand called ‘Get Friday‘. (inspired by Man Friday from the Robinson Crusoe novel).

There, of course would be a question in everyone’s mind. If the character, Man Friday inspired this name then why was it not called by the same name. Why Get Friday?.
We weighed the pros and cons of gender bias in a brand name that was to go international. Especially, since we envisioned many girl fridays helping clients across the world. These things weighed in to settle the matter in favor of a gender neutral ‘Get Friday‘.

That led me to believe that a lot of things do happen by chance, but provided it encounters a prepared mind. And that pretty much has been the cornerstone of our innovation philosophy, to this day.

I hope you like this little story of how it all began.

Sunder P
CEO

This unusual request came in from a client on the Euro Zone, some time back (Dec-2010). Bouquets and brickbats from clients are part of everyday life in the services business. But appreciation that is thoughtful would go a long way to positively motivate employees or just about anyone.

Pradeep, the team lead on the Euro shift at that point of time received this request from a client, Kevin. Rini is her assistant. Read on…

Hello Pradeep,
As my usage has changed I will move to a pay as you go plan shortly. Before this happens I expect to have some un used time on my current plan. I believe there will be 2-3 hours left on the 14 of December.

Given the exceptional help that Rini has provided I wonder would it be possible to use my unused time to allow Rini to leave for home early one day as a thank you to her for all her help ?

Given I will have paid for her time I am hoping this unusual request is possible please ?

Thanks and regards

Kevin

So simple a request, but so very thoughtful. The client thought it would be so nice to let Rini go early for a day, while having already paid for those hours. Did we have a choice with such a request? Nope, we just happily obliged. Incidentally, Rini has a young child at home and she was mighty happy with this wonderful gesture. Thank you, Kevin. You made her day!

It is simple things that can make a huge difference in people’s lives and the way they perceive it.

On a different note but on the same topic. Here is a RSA video I love, adapted from Dan Pink’s talk titled ‘The surprising truth about motivates people’. Happy viewing!!

Sunder P
CEO

The world’s second most populous nation went into a tizzy on Wednesday, 30th March. All because of a cricket match. Well, it wasn’t just any cricket match though.

It was the World Cup semi-final between arch rivals and neighbors, India and Pakistan. It obviously had the advertisers and the media bandwagon salivating at the prospect of a never before kind of audience watching the Big Match. According to some initial reports, an estimated 67 million viewers were watching. In my opinion, a lot more would have, given that it is pretty hard to estimate the number of viewers per TV set, in a place like India. Any guesses?

Compare this with the Super Bowl (National Football League) in the world’s richest nation, the US. An estimated national audience of 100 million watch the Super Bowl. The most expensive advertising happens during this time. A 30 second spot on the network costs a cool US$3 million.

So what’s the rate for an ad spot during the World cup cricket match finals to be played this Saturday between India and Sri Lanka. Estimates put it at Rs.24 lakhs per 10 second spot or in dollar terms, that is US$ 160K per 30 second spot. Not bad, at all for a country where 410 million live below the poverty line of $1.25 per day!! Despite all that, Indian cricket with its own league format called IPL may just go past the Super Bowl economy, sometime in the near future. Why would I venture into thinking that such a thing could happen?

Am banking on the fact that this CricketMania has evolved into a New Religion in this country of 1.2 billion, uniting people beyond caste, creed or religion. It evokes passionate and intense emotions, especially when a match like this happens between the neighbors. Apart from the usual celebrities there was also a twist of diplomacy this time, with the Indian Prime Minister informally inviting his Pakistani counterpart to India, for the match. Imagine Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez or Raul Castro sitting together for the Super Bowl game. Not that such back door diplomacy has helped either of the two countries in the past to get over their squabbling.

India almost came to a stop for a good half of the day. While Pakistan officially shut down in entirety. My fellow colleague, Venky who can’t understand what the fuss is all about (he dislikes cricket, a rare breed in India) was raring to have a go at quantifying the GDP impact due to the productivity loss. Good luck to him.

Most leading companies closed down for half of the day or started their work early to close before the match. Some of them made arrangements for employees to watch the match at the workplace. Given that we couldn’t shut down completely, we decided to telecast the match live on our premises. The bottom line was pretty simple: Don’t miss any calls; don’t miss any deadlines; don’t let down any of your clients. But go ahead, this is a new religion!!

Here are some pics for you. (Click to enlarge)

Sunder P
CEO

Back in Action

We have been a little sluggish with our social media efforts till now. Reason why you haven’t seen too many blog posts since inception. But that is all set to change.

In the recent past, in general we have been initiating a shift towards more openness and transparency. We expect that this will help our clients make better sense of their long distance personal, business relationship with their VAs. It’s a push towards opening our doors a little wider, for the whole world to see. So you will get to see a lot more posts from us, very frequently on what is happening out here. Stay tuned!

Back in the News

Leah Milner from the Times Money (UK) did a story on GetFriday titled “Individuals are now outsourcing to India”. After running a thorough road test wherein she tested Madhu Abraham (our VA) on a variety of tasks including some mischievous ones where she tests his tact, here is her verdict.

“Testing the limits of the service, I request that he writes a humorous blog for Money Central on the cheapest wedding venues, but Maddy says that while he is happy to do the background research he is “not a good writer”. I reflect that it is probably just as well that I cannot outsource every aspect of my work or I would soon be out of a job.”

Thanks, Leah!!

Here’s the link, if you do have a Times subscription.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/money/consumeraffairs/article2926600.ece

(Unfortunately, the article cannot be accessed without a subscription and Times will take offense if we publish it without a syndication. Don’t quite get the logic. You take a picture and write a story about us for the entire world to see and won’t allow us to publish it without syndication!)

Sunder P
CEO

I thought it might just help to share my perspective (the inside story) of what went wrong with the German service necessitating a shut down in December of 2010 after a rather successful run. In fact, the German service at that point of time was adding clients, making money and had by then been featured in every popular magazine and media in Germany that I can think of. Something that not many services can boast of.

So to say“It had everything going for it.” Now having gone through it I will amend that to “Well almost!” So this is our story of failure at something that looked seemingly possible on the surface (at least to us).

On the journey, we did learn some valuable lessons. And most importantly and thankfully, the lesson was not too costly to drown us and throw us back into oblivion. Here we go…

02nd June 2009: It was a momentous occasion! We launched our German language version of the Virtual Assistant services. It was done after a rather elaborate pilot with a few select clients in Germany over a 6 month period where we overlapped the English service with German, on a test basis. We had hired a German native, but of Indian origin who had just relocated to India for personal reasons. At the end of the pilot the verdict was overwhelmingly positive. So we went ahead to assemble a team of German speakers in place and trained them as VAs.

The initial days were heady. Largely satisfied clients and employees who were even more satisfied due to the unique exposure such a job presented. This was probably the first kind of job where a non-native German speaker living in a non-German country gets the opportunity to speak & breathe German for 8 hours a day. Their proficiency in the language sky rocketed and so did their skills. Looked like a perfect model that could work because we provided a great platform for an aspiring German workforce in a predominantly English India.

A year went by and we added more clients and needed more people to serve them. This is when we started running into a hitch. We had estimated the German resource pool in India to be rather small but still good enough for us to scale it up to a reasonable level. But slowly and steadily, it became increasingly difficult for us to get people with right skills and the language proficiency (the package).

And we found that the companies that offered the most dreary jobs (merely translating documents) most certainly offered the biggest pay packets. We found it difficult to match them without being able to increase prices significantly. The market was still not ready to pay steeper prices on untried and untested things. Outsourcing at an individual or small business level for the German market was still a niche novelty and not mainstream. It was still experimental and not established.

Added to that, the resources we had were becoming really good at their language and hence were most sought after by the MNCs. This model could still have worked if there was a constant pool of resources being created in significantly large numbers. The German pool in India was too small for it. In hindsight, I think the German language pool outside of Europe is just too small to support any significant, scalable outsourcing activity. I have heard from other outsourcing companies based in Poland / Romania that even there, it is not as easy to scale.

Frequent attrition led to inability in providing stable services and that started affecting the quality of service that we delivered to our clients. We started getting frequent complaints and nothing much could be done about them. It was getting to a helpless situation and that was when we decided ‘it is OK to not provide services, if you can’t provide it right’.

September 2010: The fateful decision to shut down was made and it was indeed a really hard decision. We first took the step of informing the German team employees about it. They understood. They were given a severance package that was more than the stipulation as per contract and some of them stayed back with us till the last week to help clients wind up, before moving to their new jobs. My sincere thanks to them. Given the kind of skills they had, finding another job was never a problem.

We also informed our clients and gave them a 3 month notice period for the shut down. Our clients were incredibly understanding too. My thanks and apologies to them. Wherever possible, we helped them in the transition and closed the contract with every single customer, amicably by December 2010.

It was a low point for us. But the decision helped ease a lot of pressure and brought back the focus to things we possibly had a better control over.

Sunder P
CEO