Tuesday, January 13, 2009

It must be a wretched feeling....

This is a theme I have been feeling for the last few days and I had to blog it more for personal record and in the middle of a working week, I must be mad to be doing this...

Have you ever thought what it must feel to be lonely? to not be able to say your thoughts out? the only sounding board available is self? I was watching this movie, 'stardust' and a part goes where the guy says who wants to be immortal, it must be lonely.. when the Kraken is found dead in Pirates of the Caribbean, it supposedly has a sad look in its eye, one of the characters says, it must be sad to one of your kind...Ice age 2 , the mammoth goes into a melancholic mood when he discovers he is probably the last of his kind....A friend came back from a Vippassanna (Spell right?) and was in total silence for 7 straight days, it isn't being lonely, but still for me communication is atleast a part of not being lonely....

When ever I keep thinking of entrepreneurship, this theme haunts me....the idea is your baby, you need to believe it to the hilt, you might be the only person to believe it first, convince a team who trust your vision and deliver and then go to the butchers of such dreams - the VCs/ the bankers/ consultants who will try to see the risk and caveat any upside....scared of the success that they might get right by accident...

It must feel lonely, it must be a wretched feeling.....one wise man told me when i was lot younger - prove yourself and your ideas to self, for you will spend a longtime proving it to others....right now I am others...I need to keep moving to the other side..

Sunday, January 11, 2009

The problem of clutter....

In the corporate world, the cost of complexity and clutter is underestimated. It is captured in various cost lines, in various forms of inefficiencies that show up and the sub optimal decisions which are made...

Let me give you an example : one of my previous clients had manufacturing plants in nearly each state. The dynamics of the product were such and also the tax laws had necessitated that but then the contracts had a take or pay clause with contract manufacturers, so to avoid paying for products not taken, managers fear saying that you see, they would produce and then pay and transport the product half way across the country, when the closest plant was in the next town. And since you could not transport half a truck (the SKU had low volume) they would also transport a SKU which was in the made in the plant itself!!! The managerial bandwidth that went away in managing all this nonsense was so high, by the time we were trying to unravel it, no one knew why any of those activities were even happening.....so complexity had its costs and led to lack of clarity in thought process...

Why am I rambling? right now I am feeling the clutter killing my thought process...multiple streams of flux is killing my bandwidth and that leaves a lot to be desired in the end result...blogging is already suffering, i mostly snap and walk around dazed....need to declutter soon....results will follow...Its time to revisit fundamentals and ask hard questions from self....