Management Musings

Tien Tzuo, the CEO of Zuora, has written a powerful book that is wholeheartedly and unabashedly about subscription monetization. Brilliantly structured and extremely well researched and written, it makes for a compelling read. Of course, the author was at Salesforce.com before he founded the company, Zuora which specializes in the subscription economy. It is hard to argue with the points made by the author and the book is undoubtedly thought-provoking. As he asks repeatedly in the book, "what product or service do you have, that cannot be moved to a subscription model?" It is difficult to find an answer to that question. A few did come to my mind - something like a TV or a Washing Machine - surely, these cannot be on a subscription model. But, I am wrong, of course. There are any number of online sites that nowadays rent TVs. A simple Google search for "TV on rent" threw up 4 advertised results, followed by numerous hits. I even know that I can rent a 40 inch TV ...

Pritam was late in reaching office one day. He knew that he was in for a difficult conversation with his Manager, who had insisted that he be there on time. Of course, he knew that he was late for a crucial meeting with a customer. He was already 15 minutes late and he was the key presenter in the session. But, he had had to drop his wife off en route to the office and later realized that he had forgotten his phone at home. Returning to his home and getting stuck in traffic - one thing lead to another and he was in this situation yet again in his professional life. Srinivas was getting impatient. He was having to stall for time with the customer, who was understandably anxious to get started. He had messaged and called Pritam multiple times in an attempt to ensure that he would be in the office for a 10:30 a.m. call. All of this seemed to be to no avail. Brain cells were dying with the stress building up. Srinivas was relatively new to the role of a Manager and was already beginni...