Cotton can only grow and flourish in black soil. How about YOU?

A white paper worth $1,000,000,000.00

In 1998, 2 Stanford students published a white-paper. Today, that paper has built a company worth $1,000,000,000.00.

Lary Page and Sergey Brin introduced Google in a paper titled: The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine — Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page.

In the paper, they mentioned two distinct features of Google that would make it different from current search products. [features explained at the end of post]

These two features allowed Google to retain ‘context’ about a page, beyond just its ‘content’.

At that time, web-search was non-contextual. Most engines relied on manual listing and indexing, while many simply ‘sorted’ based on simpler aspects. Google broke through the clutter of information to add ‘context’.

Today, this ‘context’ is what drives digital marketing’s hyper-local, hyper-targeted approach. Who YOU are becomes more important than what is being sold. And with that information, marketing has completely transformed from brute ‘push’ to intelligent ‘responding to the pull’.

Now apply this to people.

In your career, you will meet and possibly lead different type of people. While it is nice to believe that ‘tough times makes tough people’, or ‘coal turns into diamond under pressure’, you must also remember that NOT everyone responds to stimuli in the same manner. People have ‘context’, and that context tells you how to ‘market’ to them — how to get them to perform, grow and respond to you. You can’t ‘push’ work upon people anymore. You have to respond to the ‘pull’ people create — people will tell you what they want from a manager, and providing that will allow you, and them, to grow better than brute ‘pressure’.

Not everyone thrives under pressure. If you boil an egg, it hardens. But if you boil butter, it melts.

Context is important. Ask ChatGPT.

Here are the two features they mentioned in the paper:

a. PageRank: people’s subjective idea of important of a page. Simply put, how many people ‘refer’ to a link. More reference, more importance. If an article written by me has been referred to by 1000 people, while one written by world bank has been referred to by 1, my article become more ‘popular’.

b. Anchor text: this allowed for valuing non-cralwed/non-text elements — media, images, documents and so on. How a piece of information was ‘referred to’ on the internet became equally important to what it contained. e.g. If I say — here’s the best article about investing, and then link to a page, Google would not just consider the content of the linked page, but also my ‘best article’ adjective about it.

Companies should share interview questions with candidates in advance.

Let’s think about this a little deeper.

B-schools give you essay questions well in advance that candidates take months to draft, refine and answer. Would you say that candidates lie on their essays and in the subsequent interview due to this?

I believe asking so-called “googly” questions and putting candidates on the spot may make them nervous or probably not leave them with enough time to think through everything that they’ve done effectively and draft a reasonable answer.

And in such cases, people who are more extroverted and can communicate confidently (and not necessarily sincerely) may be selected, with great candidates possibly left out.

What if you could tell all candidates to think through well enough to answer any of the following questions:

- Think of a time when you added maximum value in your previous job? Was it a solo role or a team project? What initiatives did you take? What was the quantified result? Any lessons from it?

- Please read about the company’s industry and major competitors based on publicly available information — we would want you to tell us 3 core areas where you think our company should focus on to stay ahead of the competition?

Most jobs would preferably evaluate people on the work they’ve done, their learnings and reflections from it, and not based on their ability to be witty and think on their toes with a ready response to everything. Our lives are an amalgamation of our choices — good and bad. Sometimes our bad choices are right in front of us, other times they are hidden in the closet or the kitchen. Since I love trying out new products, especially in the food category, my kitchen tends to have many tried and disliked products.

A rational person would get rid of them, such a person would even give away clothes that don’t fit. But instead, we hold on. Deep in our cupboards lies the hope that we will lose weight and fit into those again.

There is also hope that maybe I will eat this product again. In reality, I will wait for the expiry date to hit, before I allow myself to throw it away. The journey from the purchase to the expiry allows me to mentally depreciate the product and write it off. I get enough time to forgive myself for the poor decision.

The mental write-off for clothes also happens in tranches when you move up from one slab to another to another. The first one clearly has no chances anymore, the hope is shifted to the second slab, and the first set is discarded.

But when you are able to recover value from the products that you buy, it positively affects your experience of the brand. How can brands also think about usage and not just purchase? Because usage drives repeat.

In India, it was fairly common to stitch larger sizes of blouses/uniforms and alter them to meet your current needs. As you added weight or became taller, you opened up the stitches and continued to derive utility out of clothes. But in the world of “fast” fashion, clothes are supposed to be changed faster than the changes in your body. But the brands whose proposition is sustainability should at least help increase the life of products by providing some room to grow. The brand Damensch helps consumers get more value out through durability with their 500-day collection.

When it comes to food, the taste is paramount, but can also be subjective. Providing options for experimenting can help. I once bought a garlic caper spread but didn’t like it. It died its slow death in my fridge. Maybe I could have made a yogurt dip out of it had I been educated. I will surely not buy that product again, but at least my perception of the brand wouldn’t be tainted.

Another category where there is an opportunity to focus on usage as much as purchase is watches. Often analog watches run out of battery and end up on the side, waiting to be rejuvenated. But I fail to overcome the friction of finding a shop and getting this done. When it is so easy to change sim cards, can’t we design watches where it is simple to change the battery ourselves and actually use the product longer?

Many of the new age brands offer “No question asked returns”, this helps in two ways, it reduces the risk associated with the purchase, and second in case you are unhappy post-purchase you can return it taking away the guilt of bad decision making. The interaction with customer service is also a great place to understand the needs of the consumer and help them make a better decision.

Let me know if you disagree.