RESPECTING RESOURCES
In these tough times of lock down due to Covid 19 pandemic, the reset button has been triggered for many countries, individuals and businesses. There are some universal business lessons that can be learnt from this phase.
The first one is Frugality. Being frugal was a way of life about 3 decades ago. It was a default filter. Then the phase of abundance started setting in, lifestyles changed and spending, sometimes, excessively was a quality that people admired and wanted to be seen as doing. So, frugality dropped from a powerful positive way of being to being perceived as miserly or a quality attributed to the ‘have not’s’.
And now in these testing and really hurting times, frugality has gained back its lost value and is ruling across the board. The kitchen is a good example to start with. Ingredients that we used to take for granted, now need to be used with care for both monetary and availability reasons. Those who have not hoarded groceries will agree with me. When you have to now pay Rs. 20/- incremental per kilogram of rice because there is no choice available, you start calculating the loss, not notional but real, in cash flow. One tends to use ingredients with care, mindful of not wasting food. If one shopped earlier in the malls for veggies, one just picked things up and billed a total at the counter. Now is when you carefully note the price of each individual item that you buy. Earlier you may have noted it casually, but now you are very aware of the smallest buy and may make different decisions of buying that are frugal yet totally effective. If we look at the smallest and the last part of cooking, which is the Tadka (garnishing a dish with spices roasted in ghee/ oil for flavour and taste), one is careful to use all of these things only in required quantities and not over do it. Surprisingly you retain all the flavours, texture and taste yet you have been frugal. Could be around 25% saving in ingredients.
Being frugal, I would say is simply put, ‘Respecting Resources’. And this realisation of respect for resources is high impact in terms of delivering quality output, cutting down wastage, improving efficiencies and most importantly gives one the ability to stretch the resources longer, leading to real profits.
In the digital board rooms of corporates, frugality will be a key strategy in this phase to conserve resources, stretch them and continue to survive and stay afloat till the situation gets better and business improves through activity of demand, unobstructed supply chain and resources to make & deliver the products. And if frugality is looked at with a lens of Respect for Resources, then the action plans will become empathetic, sensitive and hugely effective. And frugality will not be burdened on a default one or two middle line items like talent cost or marketing but in a more wholistic and mindful way. It will create an innovative way of seeing how all parts of the business can look at frugality, now and moving ahead too, to stay alive and stay ahead.
