Shake shake scale

GROWTH MANIA, THE need to scale up, is the American spirit of blossoming. From business, entertainment, living style to science and research, Americans always see everything big. From them, I lear nt how important it is to design products for mass-scale production.

When Europeans arrived in this gigantic island since the 15th century, they got wealthy very fast. Land was free, vast forests gave them animals to hunt and wood for home building; there were many kinds of minerals like coal and oil to extract. They overpowered the native population and became the first industrialised capitalistic society. It’s possible that because the large immigrant population combined to form one continent-like country, speaking one language, the feeling of scale is embedded in Americans. For six centuries now, the world recognises bigness to be their culture.

I was recently watching Michael Jackson’s last rehearsals for his comeback concerts in London in 2007. After his shocking death, the rehearsals became a famous documentary film called This Is It. The enor mity of the rehearsal preparation is unbelievable. He had advertised for and auditioned the best dancers from across the globe, then invited the rapturous chosen ones to join him in perfor mance. The largescale and global dimension of this rehearsal, its high-quality routines, maintenance of clockwork discipline, hundreds of people controlling the stage lights and settings, and Jackson’s passion for perfection is great entertainment by itself. The public would never have seen this in the actual perfor mance. Only those present as participants during rehearsals would have enjoyed this phenomenon of the King of Pop’s gigantic practice sessions.

Another American example is of a Xerox Corporation salesperson, the first from a poor Jewish family to go to college, who then joined a Swedish drip coffee-maker manufacturer called Hammerplast. In 1981, he was curious to know why a fledgling whole-bean coffee shop in Seattle had ordered so many plastic cone filters from Hammerplast. Impressed with this client’s passion and knowledge of coffee, he joined them as marketing director the next year. On a business trip to Italy’s Milan, he noted that almost every street or public square had espresso coffee cafes that people frequented for social or official meetings. Italy boasted of some 200,000 such cafes across the country. Returning to Seattle, he tried persuading his employers to adopt the cafe concept, but they were not interested. Fired by the coffee retail business he totally believed in, he took a gamble to become an entrepreneur. His enthusiasm was such that even his previous employer gave him $100,000 to start business. By 1986, he raised $400,000 to open his first store and, two years later, bought his previous employer’s coffee shop and brandname for $3.8 million. This big dreamer is Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks. He aggressively grew and expanded Starbucks from the US to 40 countries.

Just imagine how the big idea made Schultz throw up his job to chase his conviction and the big gesture of his previous employers to back his adventure towards global success. Isn’t it hallucinating to lear n this spirit of scaling up?

Now, American ways have spread so far and wide that even their distance from India’s heterogeneous society is reduced. Around the corner, if you live in a metro, is McDonald’s where, after a client meeting recently, my colleagues and I dropped in for a quick lunch. As I was biting into my Big Mac (even the name has the word Big in it!), I saw one of our teammembers return to the counter with the French fries I got her and come back shaking a paper bag. That’s when I discovered McDonald’s incredible marketing localisation.

They’ve created a special “shake shake bag” for customised spicing of potato chips. A special piri piri, which means chilli in Africa, spice mix sachet and paper bag is available at the counter for R15. My colleague put her potato chips, a certain quantity of the piri piri mix into the shake shake bag. When she emptied the bag of chips on her tray, we saw coloured, spicy, Indian French fries. This incredibly simple localisation attracts even vegetarian Indians to enjoy American cultural offerings while creating their own spice levels. She said in Indian food outlets they give her what they cook, but here she can adjust her spice and sauce levels the way she wants to and in a hygienic way. Isn’t this a great way to scale up by connecting with the local spirit?

Personally, with my teams from France and India, I’ve been to the US several times for different work, including consumer research for farm machines to FMCG product and pharmaceutical products. After the research, we’ve had consumers encouraging us, saying our work will certainly help our clients increase their business. This attitude of egging on people to become big and global, to smile, talk and share with strangers is a very North American trait. Their ability to simplify, to sell an idea differently while understanding the competitive environment has helped Americans to scale up business.

Another advantage I’ve observed in the US is that people often shift residence from one state to another with no regrets of having left a home state. They seem to have no root or attachment to any state and consider one another and any neighbour as American. This ability to adopt the whole country as their own certainly helps as a scaling-up metaphor for business. American know-how is to simplify any grand complex; they have outstanding customer centricity and the bigness of mind to appreciate others in the competitive world. My learning here has been that simplification and an openmindedness to benchmark with the beats enables business to scale up.

Shombit Sengupta is an international consultant to top management on differentiating business strategy with execution

excellence. Reach him at www.shiningconsulting.com