Every dog has its day!

Ok, the way I have scripted this story is by starting with a story of a dog, and how I used it to satiate my ego and also bring out the underlying theme of value system.

It was a cloudy day with nice breeze and no signs of an imminent rain! Basically a nice weather and no one was in a mood to work. Since the set up was a small unit, we could sense the mood in the organization right from the CEO to the office security. Everybody wanted to have some fun and was in no mood to work. So, people took to some activity other than core work in which ever possible way! My CEO started off for a campus visit to the new office campus which was getting constructed near by our old campus. I too joined the entourage. During the visit, we noticed an event, which, I think brought out the real qualities of many of my associates and the company values could easily be showcased with that single event.

A stray puppy entered the construction area of our new campus. It was a beautiful, small, spot less black mongrel puppy. The security on duty, in a strong display of his sense of duty, threw a stick which hit the puppy’s leg and rendered it immobile instantly. He had a sense of pride in his smile that he had accomplished his duty of prosecuting the trespasser. My CEO and rest of the staff from admin department were shocked to see that and immediately one of our admin officers stepped into action. He took the puppy to a vet, got its leg fixed and brought it back to our yet to be constructed office campus. Over a period of time the puppy grew up into a beautiful and fit dog called “Rani”. One of the values that my organization’s has is, “Treat people the way like to be treated” and this was a terrific example / motivator for a new joiner to experience the values being lived in day to day life!

This was some time ago!

4 years since. It was a lazy Saturday afternoon and one of the boring training sessions had come to an end. The group that I attended training with was composed of some senior managers and power mongering, hot headed individuals. Their brash comments not withstanding, I wanted to prove a point that they were not the end of the world and that there could be someone/something which they were not aware of. We were having a cup of coffee and discussing about values and stuff. Just then I noticed a young lady patting Rani and feeding her with biscuits. People’s attention was obviously drawn towards the girl (not Rani for sure!) and the conversation took an ugly turn of belittling and gossips. I then realized it was time to unleash my gyan and hence started off.

I asked if anyone in the group knew anything about that little beautiful mongrel! There was a long silence. They were expecting a rude joke but what they got after that was something which even I was quite surprised and taken aback. I started telling the story of Rani and how it got there and how special it is to the company and many folks in the organization! I also explained how the values have eroded in our system that though the stray dog’s breed was mongrel, we in India call it pariah! Then I was rebuked as to how their comments were not a reflection of the value system they hold.

The way I see it is, “values” is something comparable to a person’s soul. Values give birth to beliefs, which form the foundation of our opinions and then finally gets rendered to the world as our reactions to day to day transactions. If our underlying value system is to trust and respect each other and treat people the way we like to be treated, we would believe that it is our duty to take care of our fellow creatures. This in turn will shape our opinion of an incident that we witness in our day to day life. These opinions result in our reaction to be of a positive nature.

In the case above, people had strong value system, which is why we have Rani in our campus in the very first place. We could feel the pain which the little Rani would have had to endure when it was badly hit. As the organization grew, we had to recruit at a maddening pace and it was not only getting difficult but became practically impossible to get people to practice the values.

The discussion was pretty useful as I had made half the crowd leave and the rest who were still around got an earful. The story and packaging was good enough to drive home the point in few people’s head the importance of the value of treat people the way you like to be treated and to trust and respect each other!

To get people to start reacting positively, it is essential that we get them incorporated into their value system and start believing it.

This is what many successful commercials aim at these days. They don’t just appeal to your senses. They are aimed at incorporating values into our system and changing our beliefs so that we react positively to an advertisement or a product promotion. For example, I am sure many of you would have seen the advertisement for Hamaam (very famous bathing soap brand in India). The advertisement is about young kid asking his/her mom as to what is being “honest”! The mom responds telling that being honest means “Hamaam”. The soap was also pretty good one, with no frills attached like for example, “germ/bacteria killing, “24x7 body odor preventing”. It was a pretty simple every day family soap with just basic ingredients that are healthy and gave you a nice refreshing bath. It was also packaged and priced appropriately. The advertisement appealed to the value system of the people and not to their senses. This is why its market share of 25% in a state and overall 10% market share and its existence over 70 years is vindicated.

This incident helped me to satisfy my ego component and prove that after all every dog has its day!

Unless you agree with the fact that our actions/reactions are a direct result of our innate value system, and get into the act yourself of educating ourselves, our generation and generation next with values, I think it would not be a bad idea to try and imbibe righteous values via commercials. After all, the advertising agencies seem to have got the essence of governing an act of purchase by appealing to the value system rather than their senses.

-Ciao