Management Lessons learnt from the Mumbai Dabbawalas

Management Lessons learnt from the Mumbai Dabbawalas:

1 Build your organisation around people:

2 Commitment and attitude trump qualifications - Educate employees about the importance of what they do.Once they know they will make sure that errors are minimized and even in the absence of a code of conduct they will strive to deliver better results for their customers – internal or external.

3 Give employees a sense of purpose -

4 Stay true to your core purpose

5 Recruit carefully

6 Don’t be too lean, build in buffers

7 Encourage self discipline - It is important to promote self discipline rather than discipline among your employees and don’t be shy when it comes to penalizing wayward behavior. Bad behavior gets imbibed faster remember no one taught you smoking but you picked it up just by looking at your friends.

8 Create a sense of ownership

9 Maintain a flat organisation - Various Hierarchies in the organisation can boost egos not the business.Let your people take their own decisions as far as possible.

10 Abandon bad customers - hard to admit but a reality of life.If you have bunch of bad customers who bring down your efficiency, dump bad customers before the good ones dump you.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

•simplicity with innovative service

•coordination, team spirit

•Customer satisfaction

•Low Cost

Weakness

•Depend on local trains

•Funds left for the organisation is very less.

•Caste-based

•Customer satisfaction

•Low Cost

Oppurtunities

•Low operational cost

•Publicity

Threats •Direct competition from other caterers

•Indirect competition from other food joints.

•Office canteens

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