Gone are the days when people spent decades with a company and moved through ranks and then the company took care to ensure the employee was trained for the next role, invested in getting them up to speed and the HR team probably had a big role alongwith the team in which you worked to ensure this happened. But with shortening spans of employment tenure, people shifting across different organisations and careers I am sure it is a nightmare for an organisational HR to take care of this. The skill sets are different, they are measured and recorded of where you stack up in a different way, the record of how you stacked up in the past place is never available, so IMHO training is being neglected in big manner or is being delivered in a way which is inherently flawed and badly targeted.
In my short career I have been with 2 large organisations and 1 small upcoming business, changed 3 careers and don't remember when I was trained for a specific skill set. My learning has been on the job mostly and on the softer skills - its training by watching your boss- more an apprentice model. So if you got a great boss and you could watch and pick up the skill, you honed yourself well. I was lucky I had some incredible bosses and picked decent selling skills, client management skills and people management skills. I am a reluctant cold caller and hate making a sales call on the phone but put me in front of a client and I will breeze through.
Every year in the offsite, during the appraisal discussion I have fought, pleaded, cribbed, requested for more training in areas where I feel a need - it just doesn't come through. I think its to do with the growth in the market, then business couldn't think of training people -you had to execute and the last 1 year we were surviving. We could have trained and made our people ready but we didn't know if we needed them then, if we could hold them or they would stay when things turned around - so we didn't train.
Now I have decided I have to tackle this myself - depending on the company is stupid. The technical skills are the easiest to capture although India is still way behind on offering specific short term courses which are friendly for working executives at a good time payoff. I am more scared/ worried/ occupied of where I can get those softer skill sets. I need a good feedback to understand shortfalls - a self appraisal should always be backed up by a 3rd eye. Post the identification, I am unsure of how to get them. I have written in the past about getting a mentor but I am unable to put into practice.
This is something I need to crack, I have specific requirements of areas I need to build on for the time I intend to be within the corporate world and then as an entrepreneur. Any ideas are welcome and leads appreciated. Will update once I have a game plan on this.
Showing posts with label general rambling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label general rambling. Show all posts
Monday, February 8, 2010
Thursday, December 31, 2009
End to an eventful year
whew that was quite a year...started on a very pessimistic note...life changed. I understood how it feels to stare at lack of job security, how to persevere and knock, knock and knock again and once more to get that business. How heavy the loan burden feels when you know mentally that it has a high chance of being around for the entire tenure it was supposed to stand in the first place....
Realised scenario analysis that we did never captured a lot of scenarios, new words like black swan, new normal, too big happened and I searched for a bailout myself...
Resolutions were to look at life in a different manner, lead a more balanced life, get some exercise, do good to others not so privileged but when it came to survival, that's all one did...
Learnt its so very easy to keep the morale high, take failure, try again, smile when other hit it well during good times and how self belief, esteem and faith are so important and only saviours when all chips down...
Learnt still not sure how to deal when loved ones fight their own battles without success and experience pain and you in turn feel helpless, when you lose loved ones, when you gain new parts in life...obviously growing old doesn't mean things come automatically ( it never felt that way, but thought it would be easier) , you still need to learn new tricks...
Learnt once more to join organisations and not people or teams - realized organisations are living organisms and evolve and kicked self for taking so long to understand when the Profs said so in the first class...
Bottomline - realized life is all about small events with people who matter, experiences which enrich. Salary slavery seems serious trouble...medium term goals required to increase things which matter.
Happy new year to you all and as most of the beautiful women in beauty pageants wish - AND WORLD PEACE!!
Realised scenario analysis that we did never captured a lot of scenarios, new words like black swan, new normal, too big happened and I searched for a bailout myself...
Resolutions were to look at life in a different manner, lead a more balanced life, get some exercise, do good to others not so privileged but when it came to survival, that's all one did...
Learnt its so very easy to keep the morale high, take failure, try again, smile when other hit it well during good times and how self belief, esteem and faith are so important and only saviours when all chips down...
Learnt still not sure how to deal when loved ones fight their own battles without success and experience pain and you in turn feel helpless, when you lose loved ones, when you gain new parts in life...obviously growing old doesn't mean things come automatically ( it never felt that way, but thought it would be easier) , you still need to learn new tricks...
Learnt once more to join organisations and not people or teams - realized organisations are living organisms and evolve and kicked self for taking so long to understand when the Profs said so in the first class...
Bottomline - realized life is all about small events with people who matter, experiences which enrich. Salary slavery seems serious trouble...medium term goals required to increase things which matter.
Happy new year to you all and as most of the beautiful women in beauty pageants wish - AND WORLD PEACE!!
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Does a customer matter?
This is a result of a chat I was having with Dhammo...
With most government services in India, it has been my experience now but I had not joined the dots to see the pattern. Getting enrolled into a new service is a breeze but try making a change or something which is slightly out of ordinary with a government service and wham the Gods of red tape get invoked and woe betides you.. let me give you examples....
1. So you have a landline with BSNL and now want to change it from your fathers name to your name - Why would anyone want it - I can think of countless reasons - You want to setup a ECS from your account to pay the bills, you want a proof of address are a few - end of matter, you will visit the office a few times, fill a few forms and then follow up. But try surrendering the old phone and getting a new one - it will happen in a few days and very efficiently
2. So you have a gas connection and want it shifted : you should hear to what Dhammo is going through - they will want a proof that the transfer order you got is genuine, but try getting a new connection - should be lot simpler
3. You want to change you rag tag paper book Driving licence to a smart card : ( for this I want to give out my villainous laugh!!) - try applying afresh ( still hard to get a licence - not cause of your driving skills but due to the random processes)
I can go on but you smart readers have got the drift. I think this is because, the customer orientation is very low in most of these places. There is a pressure to streamline processes which have the maximum impact and footfalls, new customer acquisition is a thrust area where you directly compete with private sector - so those processes get streamlined sooner, get watched for complaints and efficiency but those odd jobs get lost. Prof. Thiru, my marketing prof at IIM-B used to tell us that the real customer orientation and service should be checked by testing these out of ordinary requests. ( His favourite for a hotel was - call late night - ask for curd rice to be prepared from 'not hot' rice, fresh curds, with a little garnishing within the next 20 mins!!)
While I think the government has a long way to go in this matter, the private sector also struggles. 'My manual says so' is the attitude I run into. So all you consultants out there, doing BPR - keep this in mind the next time. Pareto is ok but the rest 20% also matters in customer service..
With most government services in India, it has been my experience now but I had not joined the dots to see the pattern. Getting enrolled into a new service is a breeze but try making a change or something which is slightly out of ordinary with a government service and wham the Gods of red tape get invoked and woe betides you.. let me give you examples....
1. So you have a landline with BSNL and now want to change it from your fathers name to your name - Why would anyone want it - I can think of countless reasons - You want to setup a ECS from your account to pay the bills, you want a proof of address are a few - end of matter, you will visit the office a few times, fill a few forms and then follow up. But try surrendering the old phone and getting a new one - it will happen in a few days and very efficiently
2. So you have a gas connection and want it shifted : you should hear to what Dhammo is going through - they will want a proof that the transfer order you got is genuine, but try getting a new connection - should be lot simpler
3. You want to change you rag tag paper book Driving licence to a smart card : ( for this I want to give out my villainous laugh!!) - try applying afresh ( still hard to get a licence - not cause of your driving skills but due to the random processes)
I can go on but you smart readers have got the drift. I think this is because, the customer orientation is very low in most of these places. There is a pressure to streamline processes which have the maximum impact and footfalls, new customer acquisition is a thrust area where you directly compete with private sector - so those processes get streamlined sooner, get watched for complaints and efficiency but those odd jobs get lost. Prof. Thiru, my marketing prof at IIM-B used to tell us that the real customer orientation and service should be checked by testing these out of ordinary requests. ( His favourite for a hotel was - call late night - ask for curd rice to be prepared from 'not hot' rice, fresh curds, with a little garnishing within the next 20 mins!!)
While I think the government has a long way to go in this matter, the private sector also struggles. 'My manual says so' is the attitude I run into. So all you consultants out there, doing BPR - keep this in mind the next time. Pareto is ok but the rest 20% also matters in customer service..
Saturday, September 19, 2009
In praise of the government departments...
We have been programmed to expect less from the government services but there is a change, am not sure what is driving it and God knows that the change can be faster but yeah my once in a blue moon interaction with them is not a pain anymore. I have been a critic far too often on this blog but let me be constructive once more....
BESCOM - the erstwhile KEB, ages ago I remember standing in long queues waiting to pay the bill, waiting for the engineer to order some staff to be sent over for some work when a meter had blown. Cut to a few days ago, one fine morning ( over a weekend, thanks for small mercies) - we realised only our home was without power, so went to the local BESCOM office and lodged a complaint. First, the lady at the counter insisted we should have called and not personally gone, 15 mins later a team arrived with tools and diagnosed that the cable from the pole to the house has given way and cant take the load. It would involve road digging et al which would take time, so immediately gave an alternate cable connection overhead and asked me to get the permanent thing done over the next few weeks. all in a flat 30 mins. Brilliant I thought, but the best was yet to come. Late in the night around 10:30 we got a call from BESCOM, a guy asking us what the issue was. We told him it was resolved in the morning itself. The said whoever took the complaint had forgotten to mark AM next to the time of the complaint and he had to attend it and not let it for the next shift. Brilliant, I was blown away. Guys in the S6 sub division, thanks for the brilliant service, I am amazed and pleasantly shocked !!!
A few days later I had to go pay my BWSSB bill, so post dinner, walk I took and went to the local office. They have an automated machine now, touchscreen and all...I had used my pessimistic logic that it might not accept old notes, so took new notes...but the machine refused to accept. A helper appeared from nowhere and said since not all people could get new notes, the system accepts old notes and new notes it usually rejects !! and then he pulled out old notes from his pocket, swapped my notes and voila work done...he thanked me for using the services and left....I usually have a ECS for most of my bills, this was the only one left but after this experience maybe I will take the walk every month
We shifted homes recently, so my BSNL connection had to be shifted, BSNL screwed up big time and my brother had to make visits across 4 offices twice and then it took ages before the connection came through. All this while, knowing we had shifted newly, both airtel and tata indicom guys had already visited us with a immediate connection and we had refused. So a day after the connection came, it got disconnected. I sent a stinker e-mail to the person incharge and voila next day connection is back.
Paying property tax used to be a shady affair. I remember days as a kid when the BCC, the earlier avatar of BBMP guys would land up and ask for a bribe to reduce the tax or else pay up and my father coolly telling them to levy the full tax and he would pay. SAS has helped, but the beauty this time was the online payment - went online, paid, receipt generated, work done - took me 3 attempts and 40 mins but it was done...They also got a reporting system for offenders and 4000 people were reported by neighbours for wrong reporting. All this was in a confidential way an I am given to understand, no harassment since the complaint was matched with the GIS records.
Could each of these interactions be better? they could, fine tuning the touch points, the interactions, the technology but they are light years of where they were. we are still behind developed countries, but yup sometimes even my cynical self and pessimism goes away...
Keep up the good work guys...
BESCOM - the erstwhile KEB, ages ago I remember standing in long queues waiting to pay the bill, waiting for the engineer to order some staff to be sent over for some work when a meter had blown. Cut to a few days ago, one fine morning ( over a weekend, thanks for small mercies) - we realised only our home was without power, so went to the local BESCOM office and lodged a complaint. First, the lady at the counter insisted we should have called and not personally gone, 15 mins later a team arrived with tools and diagnosed that the cable from the pole to the house has given way and cant take the load. It would involve road digging et al which would take time, so immediately gave an alternate cable connection overhead and asked me to get the permanent thing done over the next few weeks. all in a flat 30 mins. Brilliant I thought, but the best was yet to come. Late in the night around 10:30 we got a call from BESCOM, a guy asking us what the issue was. We told him it was resolved in the morning itself. The said whoever took the complaint had forgotten to mark AM next to the time of the complaint and he had to attend it and not let it for the next shift. Brilliant, I was blown away. Guys in the S6 sub division, thanks for the brilliant service, I am amazed and pleasantly shocked !!!
A few days later I had to go pay my BWSSB bill, so post dinner, walk I took and went to the local office. They have an automated machine now, touchscreen and all...I had used my pessimistic logic that it might not accept old notes, so took new notes...but the machine refused to accept. A helper appeared from nowhere and said since not all people could get new notes, the system accepts old notes and new notes it usually rejects !! and then he pulled out old notes from his pocket, swapped my notes and voila work done...he thanked me for using the services and left....I usually have a ECS for most of my bills, this was the only one left but after this experience maybe I will take the walk every month
We shifted homes recently, so my BSNL connection had to be shifted, BSNL screwed up big time and my brother had to make visits across 4 offices twice and then it took ages before the connection came through. All this while, knowing we had shifted newly, both airtel and tata indicom guys had already visited us with a immediate connection and we had refused. So a day after the connection came, it got disconnected. I sent a stinker e-mail to the person incharge and voila next day connection is back.
Paying property tax used to be a shady affair. I remember days as a kid when the BCC, the earlier avatar of BBMP guys would land up and ask for a bribe to reduce the tax or else pay up and my father coolly telling them to levy the full tax and he would pay. SAS has helped, but the beauty this time was the online payment - went online, paid, receipt generated, work done - took me 3 attempts and 40 mins but it was done...They also got a reporting system for offenders and 4000 people were reported by neighbours for wrong reporting. All this was in a confidential way an I am given to understand, no harassment since the complaint was matched with the GIS records.
Could each of these interactions be better? they could, fine tuning the touch points, the interactions, the technology but they are light years of where they were. we are still behind developed countries, but yup sometimes even my cynical self and pessimism goes away...
Keep up the good work guys...
Sunday, May 31, 2009
What does brand 'Me' stand for?
Straight out of B-school and the painful placement process we have in the IIM's ( its awesome in a good year and really bad in a bad year!), you are mostly bothered about the company you join, the pay and mostly other random things like location, will there be right accommodation etc rather than the role ( mostly standard job descriptions don't do justice to most roles in terms what they entail unless its a straight forward role like sales manager). But in days where you are likely to shift jobs, shift companies and shift careers I think it is very important for you to personally stand for something as a professional. If you are in professional services, more so as some part of the relationship stays with you and a large portion with the company but as you grow the ratio changes. So who "You" are as a professional and stand for what determines the interaction with the client too.
So I keep thinking what is it that I might stand for in the minds of my client after 5 years of being a service professional and what is it I might want to change to become a better one.
What I am currently -
1. Analytical approach : I am fairly analytical with what I do, have consistently looked at data and can wring stuff out of data. This has been a winner for me till now but I am sure once I grow further this might need to be more of looking at analysed data and coming up with insights. The transition is important and will be key to growth I think
2. Approachability : I am sure most clients will rate me high on this aspect. Most of my clients still are in touch with me and after our professional engagement have been friends and business acquaintances. This has allowed me to build a decent network and given the nature of work I intend continuing to do, I think this is an asset which should stand in good stead.
3. Industry knowledge : Given my commerce background, I claim no or very low deep understanding of any industry ( I think if you as an engineer or a pure science graduate choose, you can get a slightly deeper understanding of atleast one industry), but I have worked in a host of industries - Auto components, Jewelery retailing, General retail, FMCG, Power equipment, Government advisory - and I have some insights in most of these industries which gives me a broad range of frameworks to work with when I am trying to grasp newer industries
4. High ethics : I still remember the orientation at IIMB which cemented my position on this - when Prof RT Krishnan said the simple test for most things is to figure out if you would be comfortable doing an activity if someone else was watching it. Positioning is different from lying I think. Use facts to strengthen your arguement and stay your position is what I follow. In the longer run, standing up for the right way pays off ( I hope, dont know for sure :) but it has not hurt me till date)
5. Organisation : When I work with a company, I have usually high affiliation with what it stands for, I might not like so things ( fairly par for course) I make it known, try to be constructive but external, you can be sure I will put my best foot forward to be what my organisation stands for.
What are areas I need to work on :
1. Time management : I still think I am poor at managing my time and that is mostly linked with my own efficiency cycle - which swings. If I could stamp out my own inefficient cycles, I think it will be better in terms of what I can do and achieve.
2. Need for sounding board : I need a sounding board at the beginning of large tasks where I can set a broad set of objectives and plan my tasks planned out, most organisations are bad in this and this leads to me needing time to get a cohesive package together - I need to figure out a way to work internally on this and get an algorithm together
3. Multi tasking - My 2 years in investment banking now has helped on this, but I can be a lot better - I still don’t use the right tools for this I think. Need to get this right
So I keep thinking what is it that I might stand for in the minds of my client after 5 years of being a service professional and what is it I might want to change to become a better one.
What I am currently -
1. Analytical approach : I am fairly analytical with what I do, have consistently looked at data and can wring stuff out of data. This has been a winner for me till now but I am sure once I grow further this might need to be more of looking at analysed data and coming up with insights. The transition is important and will be key to growth I think
2. Approachability : I am sure most clients will rate me high on this aspect. Most of my clients still are in touch with me and after our professional engagement have been friends and business acquaintances. This has allowed me to build a decent network and given the nature of work I intend continuing to do, I think this is an asset which should stand in good stead.
3. Industry knowledge : Given my commerce background, I claim no or very low deep understanding of any industry ( I think if you as an engineer or a pure science graduate choose, you can get a slightly deeper understanding of atleast one industry), but I have worked in a host of industries - Auto components, Jewelery retailing, General retail, FMCG, Power equipment, Government advisory - and I have some insights in most of these industries which gives me a broad range of frameworks to work with when I am trying to grasp newer industries
4. High ethics : I still remember the orientation at IIMB which cemented my position on this - when Prof RT Krishnan said the simple test for most things is to figure out if you would be comfortable doing an activity if someone else was watching it. Positioning is different from lying I think. Use facts to strengthen your arguement and stay your position is what I follow. In the longer run, standing up for the right way pays off ( I hope, dont know for sure :) but it has not hurt me till date)
5. Organisation : When I work with a company, I have usually high affiliation with what it stands for, I might not like so things ( fairly par for course) I make it known, try to be constructive but external, you can be sure I will put my best foot forward to be what my organisation stands for.
What are areas I need to work on :
1. Time management : I still think I am poor at managing my time and that is mostly linked with my own efficiency cycle - which swings. If I could stamp out my own inefficient cycles, I think it will be better in terms of what I can do and achieve.
2. Need for sounding board : I need a sounding board at the beginning of large tasks where I can set a broad set of objectives and plan my tasks planned out, most organisations are bad in this and this leads to me needing time to get a cohesive package together - I need to figure out a way to work internally on this and get an algorithm together
3. Multi tasking - My 2 years in investment banking now has helped on this, but I can be a lot better - I still don’t use the right tools for this I think. Need to get this right
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Words....
One of the gifts my father gave me was my love for reading. For me even textbooks were more reading material and I used to read up all text books of my neighbors the day the books were issued at school (ok don't call me a freak and wipe the smug smile). I started reading magazines and would read most weeklies and the graduated to reading anything I could lay my hands on in the library....although now work and general tiredness have cut down on my reading ( I surely don't read as much as I did or as much as lets say Dhammo), I still do...
I can think, read and write in 3 languages - Kannada (my mother tongue and a beautiful language), English and Hindi. I can read and understand Sanskrit but I don't think in that. Can understand lil bit of a lot of other languages.....and I have read in all these languages and some words stick for the beauty and the depth of meanings that they can conjure...some that really stick in my head are : (short list across languages)
Kannada :
Daaridra Vyraagya : It literally means the renunciation felt when poor..such an awesome concept. You can renunciate when poor, when its not so much of a choice and its easy...renunciation when you have everything is what is difficult. Which is why Rahul becoming the Buddha is such a powerful act, or Ashoka quitting after Kalinga war or Bahubali giving up when he has his brother Bharata at his mercy. I read these words first when I was reading Mankuthimmana Kagga by DVG and I think I spent a day thinking about this word. By the way if you are a Kannadiga and can read, please read Mankuthimmana Kagga, its an enriching experience.
Nityotsava : literally translated means Daily celebration but can mean eternal celebration. Such a strong concept - life is an eternal celebration, to wake up every day to celebrate it. I heard this in Nissar Ahmed's Nityotsava - where he speaks of the evergreen forests being the daily celebration in honour of the motherland. Such an awesome word and concept
English:
Aeon : Maybe it is us Indians who can appreciate the depth of time and the continuum that brings with it. Wikipedia says the Indian mode of measuring time is probably the most articulate amongst. Maybe we Indians can take more crap doled out by life due to the karmic view, the length of time we understand, the cycle of life you are tuned to believe. Aeon is an indefinite period of time...
Pedantic : means to be ostentatious in ones learning. The day i heard this definition from a dictionary, I said what does ostentatious mean and then spent days thinking if one could be ostentatious in learning anything? - coming from a culture where you are expected to respect vastness to things to learn and learn humility about ones shortcomings in knowledge, I never understood this concept :)
Sanskrit:
Dwirepha : is what Kalidasa calls a bee. It literally means two "Ra kara" and is derived from the word Bramara - the two "ra karas" in the word. Its such an awesome concept to take a word and play on the word construction to create a new word
Paadapa : means a tree, means someone who drinks water from the feet - shows a brilliance of understanding the structure of the subject referred to derive the word to represent it. I also think it shows the depth of scientific understanding which existed in our culture, because I think the western world conducted experiments where plants were sequestered and fed water to the roots, shoots, leaves separately as late as a few centuries ago to conclude that it was indeed through the roots plants took in water....we had a word maybe 3000 years old to represent the same concept...
Sukhashayanpruchikka : is another word by Kalidasa from Abhigyana Shaakuntala - this world literally refers to the person who wakes you up to find out if you slept well. Its such an awesome notion I cant even voice what I feel about this word, think of it, a peaceful nights rest, to be woken up someone with a concern of how well you slept and if you were comfortable.....so different from the random noises my alarm makes bringing in thoughts of how the day would turn out to be.
Anyways, am sure there are millions of words in the many languages I know, their usage by those wordsmiths, the poets and gifted writers, which I will never learn or know....but some words stick with you...let me know a few you have spent time flipping in your mind, rolling your tongue and using to communicate a thought...
I can think, read and write in 3 languages - Kannada (my mother tongue and a beautiful language), English and Hindi. I can read and understand Sanskrit but I don't think in that. Can understand lil bit of a lot of other languages.....and I have read in all these languages and some words stick for the beauty and the depth of meanings that they can conjure...some that really stick in my head are : (short list across languages)
Kannada :
Daaridra Vyraagya : It literally means the renunciation felt when poor..such an awesome concept. You can renunciate when poor, when its not so much of a choice and its easy...renunciation when you have everything is what is difficult. Which is why Rahul becoming the Buddha is such a powerful act, or Ashoka quitting after Kalinga war or Bahubali giving up when he has his brother Bharata at his mercy. I read these words first when I was reading Mankuthimmana Kagga by DVG and I think I spent a day thinking about this word. By the way if you are a Kannadiga and can read, please read Mankuthimmana Kagga, its an enriching experience.
Nityotsava : literally translated means Daily celebration but can mean eternal celebration. Such a strong concept - life is an eternal celebration, to wake up every day to celebrate it. I heard this in Nissar Ahmed's Nityotsava - where he speaks of the evergreen forests being the daily celebration in honour of the motherland. Such an awesome word and concept
English:
Aeon : Maybe it is us Indians who can appreciate the depth of time and the continuum that brings with it. Wikipedia says the Indian mode of measuring time is probably the most articulate amongst. Maybe we Indians can take more crap doled out by life due to the karmic view, the length of time we understand, the cycle of life you are tuned to believe. Aeon is an indefinite period of time...
Pedantic : means to be ostentatious in ones learning. The day i heard this definition from a dictionary, I said what does ostentatious mean and then spent days thinking if one could be ostentatious in learning anything? - coming from a culture where you are expected to respect vastness to things to learn and learn humility about ones shortcomings in knowledge, I never understood this concept :)
Sanskrit:
Dwirepha : is what Kalidasa calls a bee. It literally means two "Ra kara" and is derived from the word Bramara - the two "ra karas" in the word. Its such an awesome concept to take a word and play on the word construction to create a new word
Paadapa : means a tree, means someone who drinks water from the feet - shows a brilliance of understanding the structure of the subject referred to derive the word to represent it. I also think it shows the depth of scientific understanding which existed in our culture, because I think the western world conducted experiments where plants were sequestered and fed water to the roots, shoots, leaves separately as late as a few centuries ago to conclude that it was indeed through the roots plants took in water....we had a word maybe 3000 years old to represent the same concept...
Sukhashayanpruchikka : is another word by Kalidasa from Abhigyana Shaakuntala - this world literally refers to the person who wakes you up to find out if you slept well. Its such an awesome notion I cant even voice what I feel about this word, think of it, a peaceful nights rest, to be woken up someone with a concern of how well you slept and if you were comfortable.....so different from the random noises my alarm makes bringing in thoughts of how the day would turn out to be.
Anyways, am sure there are millions of words in the many languages I know, their usage by those wordsmiths, the poets and gifted writers, which I will never learn or know....but some words stick with you...let me know a few you have spent time flipping in your mind, rolling your tongue and using to communicate a thought...
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..
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....
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....
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
THIS TOO SHALL PASS....
what an year it has been...it truly drove home the point the little prayer tries to make - give me the strength to change what I can and to accept what I cant...as one of my friends said : Macro eco is the luck factor you cant change in your life and if you are from the finance field, all I can say mates is the moral of that story we should remember all times - "THIS TOO SHALL PASS"
But to create a personal note, this year probably has driven home a lot of points in life, the highs of closing large deals, agony of things falling away, best laid plans coming to a naught, the insignificant feeling and the lack of control on lots of things but yes, as the year comes to a close, as I told a few people, for the first time, clarity has occurred in career life : Simple truth realized : acquire skill sets, make great friends, deleverage, build capital, enjoy the journey while moving closer to the ultimate goal of starting out by self....I dont have an idea, but the scare of being on own in the unknown without trappings of an organisation behind self is gone...yes the map is not the terrain but yeah hopeful this surrogate pain will show way...
Personally I always told myself : one day I shall create an organisation which will provide employment to 10000 people - 50000 lives touched - but starting small (driven home by the humility felt in this mayhem) I think I should try to change atleast 1 life : My favorite cause has been education and I have been regularly donating money, Come new year : let me see if I can do more...
When I was 25, the goals I set myself as Prof Ramc would call : ghosts to set at rest by 35 : Tick off basic assets accretion, Investible surplus of 1 cr, work for self, be a role model to atleast 1 person : all slightly superfluous goals but on way for 1, nowhere close to 2, clearing mental cobwebs for 3 and not started on 4...so 5.75 more years....looks like i stand a decent chance :)
and more easy events to tick over the next 18 months:
1. See the pyramids
2. Get involved in the community - will probably assist some school build some assets - a library maybe - I hopefully know enough people who will buy me books :)
3. Plant a tree - a small anecdote about this...when this thought came to my mind, my mind immediately did a ROTI - Return On Time Invested- i realized I had sold my soul to the banker in me - A tree is to me my version of being able to think about someone else other than me...being able to measure growth in cms/ inches in a year and not seconds/ days - my penance in patience
4. Get back to playing chess - a game which I stopped playing since it brings back very painful fond memories
5. Scan all the photos in my home : memories are too precious to be let to the mercy of the elements
So ask me how I did a year from now...
Till then, its just another BRN ( big round number!!) 2008, hope there is peace, joy and happiness all around..
But to create a personal note, this year probably has driven home a lot of points in life, the highs of closing large deals, agony of things falling away, best laid plans coming to a naught, the insignificant feeling and the lack of control on lots of things but yes, as the year comes to a close, as I told a few people, for the first time, clarity has occurred in career life : Simple truth realized : acquire skill sets, make great friends, deleverage, build capital, enjoy the journey while moving closer to the ultimate goal of starting out by self....I dont have an idea, but the scare of being on own in the unknown without trappings of an organisation behind self is gone...yes the map is not the terrain but yeah hopeful this surrogate pain will show way...
Personally I always told myself : one day I shall create an organisation which will provide employment to 10000 people - 50000 lives touched - but starting small (driven home by the humility felt in this mayhem) I think I should try to change atleast 1 life : My favorite cause has been education and I have been regularly donating money, Come new year : let me see if I can do more...
When I was 25, the goals I set myself as Prof Ramc would call : ghosts to set at rest by 35 : Tick off basic assets accretion, Investible surplus of 1 cr, work for self, be a role model to atleast 1 person : all slightly superfluous goals but on way for 1, nowhere close to 2, clearing mental cobwebs for 3 and not started on 4...so 5.75 more years....looks like i stand a decent chance :)
and more easy events to tick over the next 18 months:
1. See the pyramids
2. Get involved in the community - will probably assist some school build some assets - a library maybe - I hopefully know enough people who will buy me books :)
3. Plant a tree - a small anecdote about this...when this thought came to my mind, my mind immediately did a ROTI - Return On Time Invested- i realized I had sold my soul to the banker in me - A tree is to me my version of being able to think about someone else other than me...being able to measure growth in cms/ inches in a year and not seconds/ days - my penance in patience
4. Get back to playing chess - a game which I stopped playing since it brings back very painful fond memories
5. Scan all the photos in my home : memories are too precious to be let to the mercy of the elements
So ask me how I did a year from now...
Till then, its just another BRN ( big round number!!) 2008, hope there is peace, joy and happiness all around..
Monday, October 20, 2008
Death of a tradition?
Typically a language is not a standalone entity. It coexists with a culture, a way of life and comes bundled with folk tales, proverbs, folk songs, literature, slang, mythology. There is also the script, the grammar, pronunciation which are the building blocks of a language but I am not going to talk about them here. I am more concerned with the first few things I referred to. Ofcourse there do exist languages which might not have all the elements, but I am concerned about every single one of them
Supposedly we have 6912 active languages today ( Source: Ethnologue) and more on the verge of extinction every day. So everytime a language is lost we lose each of the elements I named. There are scholars and researchers about loss of languages and their preservation and efforts are on, but I feel every stone in the foundation is important…. Ok that was a long preface to what I wanted to say
I have friends from Bengal and the joy that arrives (and the sluggishness if I may say so) in their lives with the arrival of Puja is to be seen to be believed. Navratri or Dasara is a celebrated widely in India and the pandal culture of Bengal, the dandiya culture of Gujarat, the ram lila in parts of North India are all distinct forms of celebrating the same sentiment - victory of good over evil and worshipping the feminine form of 'shakti' ( although I am itching to deviate here and talk of how this is derided by certain cultures as 'pagan" I Desist). Karnataka has a very distinct form of celebrating Dasara - days of pooja - I remember Saraswati pooja, where my books got all the attention, to Ayudh Pooja, the day when we as kids got together and cleaned the vehicles and worshipped every form of tool , to vijay dashami a simple pooja to seek blessings - a part that never was practiced in my own home but have seen is the "Doll arrangement". It is a unique form of depicting mythology, themes from the texts and anything considered worthwhile….. As a kid although I have seen such arrangements I never appreciated it.
This time, I kept thinking, it’s a part of our tradition as Kannadigas (maybe a sweeping generalization, not sure if the practice is so prevalent in North Karnataka or in other Dravidian states) but I don’t see the sensitivity to this dying aspect of a festival. Also I kept wondering how and why is it that we don’t have such things on a grand scale in the form of pandals like we celebrate Ganesh festival or why didn’t it evolve into the Pandal culture of Bengal - Giving it a public form might bring back this practice of our culture which served a interesting purpose of being educational while fun.
As an aside, the practice of "doll arrangement" is associated with some wonderful songs in Kannada movies, so if it doesn’t revive very soon, those movie clips will be the only record of this bit of culture….hope it doesn’t come to that
Supposedly we have 6912 active languages today ( Source: Ethnologue) and more on the verge of extinction every day. So everytime a language is lost we lose each of the elements I named. There are scholars and researchers about loss of languages and their preservation and efforts are on, but I feel every stone in the foundation is important…. Ok that was a long preface to what I wanted to say
I have friends from Bengal and the joy that arrives (and the sluggishness if I may say so) in their lives with the arrival of Puja is to be seen to be believed. Navratri or Dasara is a celebrated widely in India and the pandal culture of Bengal, the dandiya culture of Gujarat, the ram lila in parts of North India are all distinct forms of celebrating the same sentiment - victory of good over evil and worshipping the feminine form of 'shakti' ( although I am itching to deviate here and talk of how this is derided by certain cultures as 'pagan" I Desist). Karnataka has a very distinct form of celebrating Dasara - days of pooja - I remember Saraswati pooja, where my books got all the attention, to Ayudh Pooja, the day when we as kids got together and cleaned the vehicles and worshipped every form of tool , to vijay dashami a simple pooja to seek blessings - a part that never was practiced in my own home but have seen is the "Doll arrangement". It is a unique form of depicting mythology, themes from the texts and anything considered worthwhile….. As a kid although I have seen such arrangements I never appreciated it.
This time, I kept thinking, it’s a part of our tradition as Kannadigas (maybe a sweeping generalization, not sure if the practice is so prevalent in North Karnataka or in other Dravidian states) but I don’t see the sensitivity to this dying aspect of a festival. Also I kept wondering how and why is it that we don’t have such things on a grand scale in the form of pandals like we celebrate Ganesh festival or why didn’t it evolve into the Pandal culture of Bengal - Giving it a public form might bring back this practice of our culture which served a interesting purpose of being educational while fun.
As an aside, the practice of "doll arrangement" is associated with some wonderful songs in Kannada movies, so if it doesn’t revive very soon, those movie clips will be the only record of this bit of culture….hope it doesn’t come to that
Saturday, September 20, 2008
so it serves them right?
A lot of my friends speak to me about the current market mayhem and the feeling they seem to have is it is wrong for tax payers money to be used to bail out the excesses of a few 'rich spoilt bankers - let them fry in hell'. yes I am one of that creed of bankers, those arrogant self professed 'masters of universe' as Thomas Wolfe put it.... but hear me out...
what did these bankers do which has brought the great market to its knees? a simple concept called leveraging....using 26 bn dollars as in the case of Lehman to create a balance sheet of ~400 Bn...thats the beauty of the system and this is not the forum to explain what was happening...
Just that, remember when these same bankers were driving up prices of that corner plot (directly by investing or indirectly by giving money to that builder to build his land bank) we didnt hear too many cribs from people who flipped that apartment they bought during construction for a 50% return in 12 months....or when these banks needed backend support on research and spawned a few 100 of KPO's in India creating jobs or giving those great IT companies large amount of business....remember financial services probably has the largest trickle down effect after pure manufacturing in terms of ancillary jobs created.... so lots of wealth was created...
and where did this wealth come from : the main investors in all this were supposed to be hedge funds and sophisticated investors who knew what they were getting into (different point that I dont think anyone knew what the heck was happening) and ofcourse those pension funds - again with well paid fund managers...so hopefully some wealth got shifted in this process..... a lot of it got destroyed but was it all created by this swell of financial engineering....
so dust to dust is what has happened....and as it is said great fortunes are made in the ruins of financial markets and realized in bull runs....so keep investing.... dont listen to the experts on TV, do your research or else just buy an index fund...and while you are it, spare a thought to all those people who lost jobs, lost pots of money....a fool and his money part ways, but it still hurts to be a fool...
and yes, when we were back in school, Lehman, Bear, Merrill were the ones we dreamt about....great institutions having been through 100+ years seen the great depression, the meltdown, the dot com crash....gone...RIP
what did these bankers do which has brought the great market to its knees? a simple concept called leveraging....using 26 bn dollars as in the case of Lehman to create a balance sheet of ~400 Bn...thats the beauty of the system and this is not the forum to explain what was happening...
Just that, remember when these same bankers were driving up prices of that corner plot (directly by investing or indirectly by giving money to that builder to build his land bank) we didnt hear too many cribs from people who flipped that apartment they bought during construction for a 50% return in 12 months....or when these banks needed backend support on research and spawned a few 100 of KPO's in India creating jobs or giving those great IT companies large amount of business....remember financial services probably has the largest trickle down effect after pure manufacturing in terms of ancillary jobs created.... so lots of wealth was created...
and where did this wealth come from : the main investors in all this were supposed to be hedge funds and sophisticated investors who knew what they were getting into (different point that I dont think anyone knew what the heck was happening) and ofcourse those pension funds - again with well paid fund managers...so hopefully some wealth got shifted in this process..... a lot of it got destroyed but was it all created by this swell of financial engineering....
so dust to dust is what has happened....and as it is said great fortunes are made in the ruins of financial markets and realized in bull runs....so keep investing.... dont listen to the experts on TV, do your research or else just buy an index fund...and while you are it, spare a thought to all those people who lost jobs, lost pots of money....a fool and his money part ways, but it still hurts to be a fool...
and yes, when we were back in school, Lehman, Bear, Merrill were the ones we dreamt about....great institutions having been through 100+ years seen the great depression, the meltdown, the dot com crash....gone...RIP
Sunday, September 7, 2008
What governments jobs do.... a positive side effect...
Most kids in India today would'nt want to be caught in a government job (when I say a government job here, please read it as quasi government, public sector undertakings, nationalized banks and such) but a small thought crossed my mind the other day. Our generation, the post liberalization, middle class generation is aiming higher, dreaming big and trying to reach out we should realize that a major part of this is due to our education ( oh yes, there are cribs there too, but still the base is education). Our education irrespective of public/ private schools etc was mainly possible due to the stability of earnings offered by these government created jobs in our parents generation... combined with the middle class interest in education and the quest for a stable 'service sector job' parents skipped meals, gave up promotions, stuck to lower paying jobs just to keep their kids education intact. Basic necessities like books, food, private tutions, cycles/ bikes to school were all financed by the salary of these government sector anchored jobs. The government created a large working middle class which created our generation of 'aspiring to beat the world to reclaim our spot under the sun' generation.
So it is quite understandable that even today a government job is something to clamour for. The fight for reservations, the huge army of clerks, peons, sweepers, gardeners that have been created will hopefully push more and more people out of the 'safe zone' of a government job. Ofcourse there is the whole side income which a government job creates, the sense of power, the 'mai baap, ji hukum' sense…. The perks of being government, but yes the government has served some purpose.
It takes a generation of stable job to take a family out of poverty to middle class ( not withstanding 'acts of god' like medical emergencies, loss of wealth due to bad habits, low financial education that leads to low capital creation, etc) and probably takes a generation of entrepreneurship to lift a family to the 'rich category' - the disconnect I see in my own case and many of my friends is we have gone through the former phase, but have very little clue of how to do the latter - we lack role models in close circles, capital large enough to allow the freedom of a large gestation period and maybe the ability to take a risk and bite the bullet….
But yes, the above view probably helps me think, the taxes I pay is doing something to the country since a large part of it is being used to pay this army of government employees…. Since I don’t see the roads, don’t have enough power, lack basic infrastructure or a social security system being created…… yes it’s a sorry view to take, but atleast I get less frustrated !!!
So it is quite understandable that even today a government job is something to clamour for. The fight for reservations, the huge army of clerks, peons, sweepers, gardeners that have been created will hopefully push more and more people out of the 'safe zone' of a government job. Ofcourse there is the whole side income which a government job creates, the sense of power, the 'mai baap, ji hukum' sense…. The perks of being government, but yes the government has served some purpose.
It takes a generation of stable job to take a family out of poverty to middle class ( not withstanding 'acts of god' like medical emergencies, loss of wealth due to bad habits, low financial education that leads to low capital creation, etc) and probably takes a generation of entrepreneurship to lift a family to the 'rich category' - the disconnect I see in my own case and many of my friends is we have gone through the former phase, but have very little clue of how to do the latter - we lack role models in close circles, capital large enough to allow the freedom of a large gestation period and maybe the ability to take a risk and bite the bullet….
But yes, the above view probably helps me think, the taxes I pay is doing something to the country since a large part of it is being used to pay this army of government employees…. Since I don’t see the roads, don’t have enough power, lack basic infrastructure or a social security system being created…… yes it’s a sorry view to take, but atleast I get less frustrated !!!
Saturday, July 19, 2008
In the land of the color challenged...
when we were small kids we used to play this game of colors.... one person was out of the group, and would name a color and people who had that color could walk over to the other side, more like a free passage, those who didn't would then try to reach the other side without getting caught, if you did then you are out..... I used to consistently get out....becoz... now i know, i didn't know what color was being referred to....
move forward by a few years, I get stumped when people call out colors and say things like ecru or beige or algae green.... I feel lost.... for some reason I am color challenged... not color blind mind you, just challenged and i suspect its more in being able to name them.... for me its the primary colors and maybe some standard other colors and then its light or dark..... i cant identify parrot green vs. algae green or brown vs. beige. ecru or milky white to curd white or elephant grey vs ash grey or jet black vs. clear black ( i don't even know they exist, so how can i recognise them?)....
I am not color blind mind you, I am what you can call color ignorant :)
So the next time you meet someone who talks about colours in two shades, light or dark, and
is slightly confused with any other color than blue.... you have met me or one of my kind.... please show some kindness and talk our language...
move forward by a few years, I get stumped when people call out colors and say things like ecru or beige or algae green.... I feel lost.... for some reason I am color challenged... not color blind mind you, just challenged and i suspect its more in being able to name them.... for me its the primary colors and maybe some standard other colors and then its light or dark..... i cant identify parrot green vs. algae green or brown vs. beige. ecru or milky white to curd white or elephant grey vs ash grey or jet black vs. clear black ( i don't even know they exist, so how can i recognise them?)....
I am not color blind mind you, I am what you can call color ignorant :)
So the next time you meet someone who talks about colours in two shades, light or dark, and
is slightly confused with any other color than blue.... you have met me or one of my kind.... please show some kindness and talk our language...
Thursday, July 17, 2008
save me from the serial killers....
There has been an explosion of daily sitcoms in Indian television, family fights, saas-bahu serials, corporate wars but mainly woman characters, adultery - every possible theme running across years beams into households captivating the imagination of the women viewers and the men too (although the latter will not be caught dead discussing about it!!!) - but give me a break.... I come home tired wanting to watch something which can be fun, informative (yeah even after 10-12 hours of just business related thinking at work, I still watch CNBC and NDTV profit, so sue me!!) but the TV is taken over at 8:30 and till 10 PM , mostly the time I would have reached home or just before dinner am subject to this torture........
Don't mistake me, its not that I have anything against these, each has his/ her own poison, but this is literally my poison!!!! I cant see wailing women, overacting, conniving acting as though they will bring the world down and pseudo commentaries about what is happening in our society thru this nonsense.....
aarrrggghhh the family that dines together stays together they say...... if this nonsense doesn't end soon, either my dinner time will be very late in the night or the family doesn't dine together.....
Ektaaa kappooor (or whatever her the latest form of name her spelling has morphed into) and all your ilk , I curse you solitary confinement with 1500 days of continuous crap you are dishing out....
Don't mistake me, its not that I have anything against these, each has his/ her own poison, but this is literally my poison!!!! I cant see wailing women, overacting, conniving acting as though they will bring the world down and pseudo commentaries about what is happening in our society thru this nonsense.....
aarrrggghhh the family that dines together stays together they say...... if this nonsense doesn't end soon, either my dinner time will be very late in the night or the family doesn't dine together.....
Ektaaa kappooor (or whatever her the latest form of name her spelling has morphed into) and all your ilk , I curse you solitary confinement with 1500 days of continuous crap you are dishing out....
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Some questions...
I kind of like the philosophy Hinduism propounds ( don't ask me what it is, there are just too many, so pick up something that suits you!!!) - not that I am religious - am more as someone once told me, karmic than dharmic - but I find it interesting that a single religion can allow thoughts where you can consider yourself one with God ( Advaitha - literally meaning 'not double'), dwaitha (literally meaning - two different ) and vishistadvaitha ( a form of advaitha - where thought goes that while in human form humans and God are different, once you reach God, you become same) - most religions I have basic knowledge of do not allow such wide spectrum of thoughts ( mind you : I am probably a novice in this region , so please feel free to correct me , will be really glad to learn more here). But then what gets my goat and given the fact that these thoughts have been with us for maybe 1500 years, why did we treat a section of our society so badly? I am a Brahmin, so while I can understand the power that might have resided in the caste due to knowledge, what I fail to understand is when we could be so tolerant to religious thoughts ( remember : belief based persecution is what is most prevalent in human history) , how is it that we failed to uplift the sections of society we left behind?
Even assuming there was no higher intention, someone should have moved these sections just for the power...why did it not happen at all? Interestingly, as a caste, while maybe Brahmins excelled in knowledge and maybe that allowed them to adapt to changing conditions sooner, my guess would be that most Brahmins would be the working middle class even today...so it was not money that drove the so called 'upper caste' to this...
I am all for affirmative action, maybe even reservation, maybe priority over natural resources as our beloved 'toothless' prime minister wants us to believe... but correcting a mistake does not mean you make the same mistake...
Even assuming there was no higher intention, someone should have moved these sections just for the power...why did it not happen at all? Interestingly, as a caste, while maybe Brahmins excelled in knowledge and maybe that allowed them to adapt to changing conditions sooner, my guess would be that most Brahmins would be the working middle class even today...so it was not money that drove the so called 'upper caste' to this...
I am all for affirmative action, maybe even reservation, maybe priority over natural resources as our beloved 'toothless' prime minister wants us to believe... but correcting a mistake does not mean you make the same mistake...
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Update on BIAL
I had an earlier post on BIAL and had noted how somehow the airport had not lived upto the expectations of many. Now that I have made a few more trips, I am beginning to see the airport come into its own... I read somewhere them claiming that a passenger will alight and be out in 20 mins... i actually timed it yesterday and i was out in 12... it helped that we used the aerobridge and and being a platinum on Jet my luggage gets priority, but yes it was impressive... in 20 Min's I was out of the airport, into a taxi and halfway to the trumpet changeover....
The toilets issue still remains, not sure what they can do about it, the check in counters is a mystery to me.... They seem to have ~65 (or was it ~50) counters, but I end up spending more time in a queue than the old airport, not sure what is happening here.... Traditional queuing theory suggests that single queues with multiple counters are more effective than multiple queues, and that has been put into practice here, but still it doesn't seem to work.... hmm I need to look at this tomorrow when I travel again..
The seating area is woefully short I think, we Indians are not too used to forming a single file line , usually 2 lines get formed, and close to the boarding counters, there is a vague formation of chairs obstructing the line formation...... somewhere I think the commercial area to seating area is sub optimal.... The number of options to eat is large, but the work flow is not well thought out of, for E.g : people collect their coffee etc outside the cafe near Gate 1 and that impacts the boarding at Gate 1 , near gate 3 there is this vague obstruction of a small bill board which impacts the movement of people ( its bang in the middle of no where!!!)
And dudes - where are the charging points for laptops ?
But bottomline, the airport seems to be improving in leaps and bounds every time I travel, hopefully, we will have one to boast of....
The toilets issue still remains, not sure what they can do about it, the check in counters is a mystery to me.... They seem to have ~65 (or was it ~50) counters, but I end up spending more time in a queue than the old airport, not sure what is happening here.... Traditional queuing theory suggests that single queues with multiple counters are more effective than multiple queues, and that has been put into practice here, but still it doesn't seem to work.... hmm I need to look at this tomorrow when I travel again..
The seating area is woefully short I think, we Indians are not too used to forming a single file line , usually 2 lines get formed, and close to the boarding counters, there is a vague formation of chairs obstructing the line formation...... somewhere I think the commercial area to seating area is sub optimal.... The number of options to eat is large, but the work flow is not well thought out of, for E.g : people collect their coffee etc outside the cafe near Gate 1 and that impacts the boarding at Gate 1 , near gate 3 there is this vague obstruction of a small bill board which impacts the movement of people ( its bang in the middle of no where!!!)
And dudes - where are the charging points for laptops ?
But bottomline, the airport seems to be improving in leaps and bounds every time I travel, hopefully, we will have one to boast of....
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Bengaluru International Airport Limited - BIAL - a shame
I have traveled from the BIAL twice now and I am so thoroughly disappointed with what is the result of a >15 year wait, i think the citizens of bangalore have been cheated by government apathy, profiteering private enterprise who give a damn to the customers comfort.....here are my observations....
Good ones first :
Sad part, everyone who has come back from hyderbad says the airport is magnificent.... so here we lose out again. Congrats GMR, pity a Siemens , L&T, Zurich airport cant get it right!!!
Good ones first :
- The road with all the media outcry is looking good.... there is still some work left in patches but it is in place. I live in south bangalore and its about 63 kms from where I live, so it seems like a mini picnic - it took me an hour to travel this distance, not in peak traffic ofcourse, that might take sometime more
- The look is that of a international airport.... suvarnabhumi, brussels , dubai - they look swank- this with the glass and open light looks so
- Unlike the old HAL airport, there is some space here.... but my concern is has someone thought of future - why didnt we think of a multi level parking in one shot?
- The aerobridges look cool
- They have very few toilets and hello , the whole damn place is water logged.... this is a new structure damn it, why cant we have a few more toilets......
- Who the hell is globe ground ? - BIAL says lufthansa has a stake and they are global partners who will provide international level ground handling - my foot - my flight landed at 12:30 yesterday night - after been delayed by an hour and then we waited for 20 mins in the plane since globe ground guys could not align the step ladder with the plane door - it took them 6 attempts. 4 guys were just pulling it back and trying to align it..... hello whatever happened to those tractors or vans which used to pull these around. Then we got down to find 2 buses for a plane full of people. Kingfisher, with its plush couches in buses has set the bar too high and here the same people were forced to pack people in as sardines. And then the heights they brought in Tempo travellers..... and then the driver gets confused and drops us off at a gate which is locked.....so here we have 4 elderly people, a lady with a bawling baby and another couple with 2 sleepy kids with other weary business travelers who probably have clocked a 18 hour day trying to catch someones attention to get the door opened.... and then trudge for 100 mts to sneak into another door... Look at what has happened - since one of the service providers messed up kingfisher and BIAL both ended up with a bad name.
- Business travelers need charging points for both a laptop and phone - hello people when u built a new airport, didnt any of those bright consultants tell you about this? holy cow.... AAI does better these days
- They have 10 gates which is good... but then hello you cant have me run around gate to gate trying to check where my flight is boarding - what happened to those tv screens which gave departure information? they have i think 2 or was it three....
- At 1:15 in the night, we tried getting out of the parking lot and they have one counter which is being run manually - so I was stuck behind 14 vehicles - 10 mins wasted.... can someone plz think of the value of my time at 1:30 in the morning?
Sad part, everyone who has come back from hyderbad says the airport is magnificent.... so here we lose out again. Congrats GMR, pity a Siemens , L&T, Zurich airport cant get it right!!!
Saturday, March 8, 2008
some random notes...
The 60k cr payout to the farmers led me on the same stuff I am sure you have read ad nauseum in the business press - how this will kill our banking system, about moral hazard, about how farmers will need to pay bribes to access this, how the ailing co-operative banking system will be dealt another death knell and all that. But then I also said ' if I can feel happy about the 40k tax I will save next year, and this is not life or death for me, unlike for some of those farmers I have no right to be sitting in a cozy room and spouting such crap. But I am still asking, why isnt the systemic issues not being addressed, why is there no market? when will we the middlemen who although are serving the cause of market makers are taking too high a toll on the system, about 80% of the credit in the system is unorganised - why not address it.... some questions I will not answer. For a country that votes, has a voice will we never demand these ? Will we need another 6 decades to redeem our villages....
Markets go up and down - its been a fortnight of pain for the markets - I am yet to read any report which tells people to start a SIP in a decent mutual fund and if the so called India story is intact to ride out this period of pain and volatility. If you can pick stocks, go ahead. nothing beats this time.
For what could have been - still think of those names we thought of
Some things I have been thinking of writing havent got around to - comparison of the in flight entertainment of Kingfisher and Jet, investment in public transport system, why the hell should I pay toll for roads, user development fee for airport when I pay tax - where in mighty hell is it going and so much more.....
Parting shot : to realise the value of time : everytime you are getting pained, are feel rushed... hold your breath and count down the seconds with the help of a timer in your watch or cell phone - see if you can hold it for more than a minute..... you will realise how long one minute is.... make use of it, dont rush....
Markets go up and down - its been a fortnight of pain for the markets - I am yet to read any report which tells people to start a SIP in a decent mutual fund and if the so called India story is intact to ride out this period of pain and volatility. If you can pick stocks, go ahead. nothing beats this time.
For what could have been - still think of those names we thought of
Some things I have been thinking of writing havent got around to - comparison of the in flight entertainment of Kingfisher and Jet, investment in public transport system, why the hell should I pay toll for roads, user development fee for airport when I pay tax - where in mighty hell is it going and so much more.....
Parting shot : to realise the value of time : everytime you are getting pained, are feel rushed... hold your breath and count down the seconds with the help of a timer in your watch or cell phone - see if you can hold it for more than a minute..... you will realise how long one minute is.... make use of it, dont rush....
Sunday, February 24, 2008
So which market will I focus on…
In my last avatar as a consultant, I have done typical market entry strategy studies for industries as varied as diamond jewellery, motor cycles, auto components and trucking. One question which you would invariably grapple with and try to answer was should I enter this product/service market, if so which geography/customer segment and in what order….
Assuming that the answer to the first question was a yes, the next was to answer the geography/segment and that used to be the toughest in my mind. Markets invariably tend to follow the pareto principle, where a few large clusters (either geographical or customers) will aggregate to most of the demand. So the normal response is to hit the largest market first. I used to look at this and wonder is it the right strategy, since in my mind it always used to be the most competitive also. So my question was, when you are entering a market where rapid growth can allow you a good toehold, should you get into a headon fight? The obvious answers entrepreneurs would throw at me was, dude we will get in, wean away some share from every player or from the weakest player and voila - I have got sales since a small share in a large market might still be in absolute numbers large. I had two problems with this
- If you are so good and have a marketing team which can pull off this approach, why not go to the second rung markets and develop them and improve your hold? Why get into a competitive war, which invariably leads to pressure on margins – higher ad budgets, higher discounts…
- Execution – its very easy to say I will gain market share, but rarely do we see huge swings in market shares, how viable is it to glean away marketshare from players in a stealth mode? If it is so easy, why the heck are you not exposed to it also?
I never could convince the managements that they need to look at the second set of cities/ markets ( Salem, Nagpur, vizag…) instead of heading into Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore by default…Very rarely can you come up with strategies which can make use of longtail based strategies with a low cost delivery model, or a bottom of pyramid strategy which then makes it geography independent in a country like India since the proportion of urban and rural poor is a huge number.
Yes, I heard the same stories, small town customers shop from larger towns, disposable incomes are low, market size low, people are not aware, I am a luxury/ top rung product/brand blah blah blah…but I have come to believe it’s the failure of the operational machinery and the marketing machinery which might truly not know how to work with these markets.
The reason why I got thinking about this is also very interesting in my mind. Indian IT companies are going through a trying period – slow down in the largest market, currency appreciation, cost inflation, benign tax structure change etc. And I was looking at our arm chair business analysts writing about the shift towards Europe to create headroom. Interesting today most of the large IT companies have similar sales mix – 60% US, 25-30% Europe, 10-15% Japan/Rest of Asia /Australia. I said hey, I have seen this before, the pattern is the same, domestic/ export doesn’t matter managements finally always move to the largest market, will follow herd strategy and move in the same cycle, very few take the other path to grow.
So I ask myself for the IT companies– isn’t there a market in the gulf countries? Why isn’t anyone focusing on South America? What about the African countries? Why not Vietnam? I agree these markets will not be ready to accept the Indian tag, might be lower on realization, might be difficult terrain to operate due to language issues – but did large competitive organizations get built following a standard recipe?
Doing this needs a different enabler structure in the organization – a HR which can manage issues which will arise, an operations team which can manage widely different operating models, a front end which sells very differently, a strategy setup which can identify these opportunities and can build sustainable advantage around such ‘discovered markets’. Competing on price, incremental changes are far easier and failure on building the eco system forces to follow the set path.
Maybe, I should run this test and see if investors reward different behavior ? and what time the market takes to accept a company is different and the results are sustainable….
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Happy new year
Dear readers,
Wish you and your loved ones a very happy new year. May this period bring joy, happiness and put you closer to what you seek in life.
I know a lot of you are regular, I dont know who you are or what specifically I write you like, but keep visiting. When I started to write about 6 months ago, I barely had a hit in few days, now a days I clock about 3-4 a day. Some of you comment and others mail me. I thank you.
I have been very tied up with my new job, so have come down to one post in a week, so here is my new year resolution - I will try to post atleast 6 times in a month.
Thanks for all the support, do write to me or leave a comment.
Wish you and your loved ones a very happy new year. May this period bring joy, happiness and put you closer to what you seek in life.
I know a lot of you are regular, I dont know who you are or what specifically I write you like, but keep visiting. When I started to write about 6 months ago, I barely had a hit in few days, now a days I clock about 3-4 a day. Some of you comment and others mail me. I thank you.
I have been very tied up with my new job, so have come down to one post in a week, so here is my new year resolution - I will try to post atleast 6 times in a month.
Thanks for all the support, do write to me or leave a comment.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)