Cast with care...

IIPM, GURGAON

A peek into the HR initiatives that have helped Parsvnath Developers build sky high dreams, alongside skycrapers!

“iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone,” said Steve Jobs announcing Apple’s cellular foray early January. But this small 4.5x2.4x0.46 inch, 4.8 ounce touch screen based handheld has conjured up a storm that could easily weigh down Apple and cause it to lose millions if things go out of hand.

Linksys, under the Cisco Systems’ umbrella, has alleged that Apple has stolen Cisco’s trademark ‘iPhone’ name, under which it retails its net telephone (VoIP) based telephones. In fact, it is alleged that Apple had approached Cisco six years ago, pleading with the networking giant to give the trademark to them. “Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco’s iPhone name,” said Mark Chandler, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Cisco, “There is no doubt that Apple’s new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission.”

Cisco even alleges that Apple has set up a front company by the name Ocean Telecom Services LLC, to try wrangling away Cisco’s trademark. “It was interesting to discover that another US firm, Ocean Telecom Services LLC Ltd., submitted a trademark application for iPhone as a cell phone in September 2006. And on January 8, 2007 – the day before Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at Macworld – Ocean Telecom submitted 7 more trademark applications for iPhone for categories such as clothing, entertainment services, periodicals, data storage, communication access services, accessories and retail store services. None of these trademark applications had been granted, but Ocean Telecom appears to have established prior claim to iPhone,” says Roger Grant, President & Chief Brand Strategist, Identicor Marketing Inc.

Apple’s lawyers refuse to comment on Ocean and term the entire lawsuit “silly”, saying that they are separate products and there is no infringement whatsoever. This is, however, an interesting debate from Apple’s end as a company that protects its own trademark even “pod” closely and has known to have insisted that even the podcast term should be Apple’s intellectual property and they would charge royalty for its use.

All the way in Canada, a company by the name Comwave, which has been retailing VoIP phones branded as iPhone since 2004, has threatened to take action if Apple enters the Canadian market.

Experts, however, comment that though Apple may have deliberately wanted to create such media frenzy, but has lost out. “The dispute with Cisco deflected attention away from the merits of the new product and refocussed the story on Apple, needlessly wading into another trademark battle. It costs Apple important marketing momentum in the crucial early days of a product’s life,” comments Grant.

Even so, the iconic company that rewrote the MP3 player industry with iPod, has the creative genius to come out with another one soon. Though the battle has cost the company to have developed a new convergence product name that would have perhaps become the iPod of the cellular industry. Watch this space for more on this battle and future of the Apple’s iPhone.

The real estate giant also lays a great emphasis on its second pillar of support – culture. The culture propagated at Parsvnath is ‘target-based working.’ Dhaka is of the opinion that improvements can only happen if targets are measurable. So everything that anyone is doing should be converted into physical activities and deliverables so that it can be counted and there should be a basis to measure the deviations and thereby take corrective actions. In terms of structure the company believes in following a ‘box-type approach’ that is also prevalent in many organisations.

However, Parsvnath has deviated slightly and has evolved ‘ball-type structure’. States Dhaka, “The advantage of using a ball-type structure is that it does not assume water tight compartments that a box-type structure demands. In this case whether there are two balls, three or ten, there is always a void that allows overlapping & sharing, allows for greater flexibility and chances of getting support from other people is also high.

Flexibility is not the only tool available to the employees of parsvnath. Another hallmark is empowerment. Each employee has the freedom to do his job (that is well defined) as he wishes to do, with only one string attached – the past and the present should not be affected due to this.

Parsvnath operates in an industry where there are no ready to eat cakes available so they need to recruit laterally. As the number of trained people – architects and civil engineers are in short supply, therefore, the company’s mantra to resolve this problem is through OJTs – On The Job Trainees. The HRs job is to identify people in the organisation who are good at what they do and appoint them as mentors. A charter too is floated for every employee every week, where they can express what they want to learn in the following week. This process is then followed up with a facility for employees to obtain those learnings and then a system to monitor how much of the learnings are reflected in an employee’s actual performance. The orientation towards learning is very high in Parsvnath but ironically they do not recruit the best of the people. The anthem for the organisation is to train the best and retain the best. Dhaka in his poetic way puts it as, “Jo mil gaya usse muqadar samajh liya, agar koyla tha to heera bana diya, aur heere ko nagine ki tarah tarash diya.”

Committment towards learning and development is complemented by an emotive style of leadership. Adds Dhaka, “Infusing in people a feeling that they fall in love with themselves gives them the drive to do more.” The mantra to follow is not to motivate each employee but to inspire. However, setting high standards and philosophies in an organisation are not adequate to address the problems that India Inc. is talking about – attrition. Till about a year ago the attrition figures for Parsvnath were 20%, but now they are down to 10%, which Dhaka confirms are healthy. In his opinion, “Attrition is as important as breathing space as it gives the company a change to find a still better person to fill that position.” Just like building blocks help build homes, or a residential complex, similarly each person helps to build a successful organisation. How beautiful the building would be will depend on the precision of these buildings and the technique that is followed to lay the foundation. Well, it just seems that with players like Parsvnath on the scene, the Great Indian ‘Real’ty Show is truly on and ready to convert our dreams into reality.

Edit bureau: Surbhi Chawla

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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