Can we hold this band wagon???

Yesterday I was reading the book "Chindia" which talks about how countries like China & India are changing the face of this world. Suddenly some thoughts struck my mind - Why is India so special? Have we worked hard to achieve this GDP growth so far OR is this because of the natural advantage that we already have (vast english speaking population available at low cost). Is there any other nation preparing to take on India next decade? Do we know our strengths & do we have a vision? Or are we going to see a US like situation down the line?

Well, honestly I have no clue!!! Neither do I feel that we have worked hard (Unlike Japan) to reach this state. Most of our success so far are primarily because of the natural advantages that we have. But how sustainable those advantages are? Are we not sailing a boat without bothering about it's fuel capacity? If that is the case, the boat is definitely going to stop sooner or later. And you know how difficult it is to survive when your boat stops in the middle of a ocean!!!

I feel no strength is sustainable unless we work on it & make it better than yesterday. If you talk about players like Schumi, Fedrer & Tendulkar; these guys definitely had some natural advantage in the begining over their counterparts. But they were intelligent to understand that it's easy for counterparts to replicate their techniques  and come to their level sooner or later. So they never stopped working on their strengths & weaknesses. They got rid of all possible weaknesses to remain successful over decades or so. My point is: Even a genius has to work hard to sustain his success.

So lessons for India & we Indians would be - work hard on weaknesses, strive to make our strengths non-replicable & remain innovative to maintain a substantial lead over our immediate counterparts!!!

Health Insurance Reform - Quite a Good Idea

I briefly watched the speech by Barack Obama on Health Insurance Reform. I liked the fundamentals that he is trying to address here. The vision is quite clear - "Let no American broke just because (s)he is sick". Fundamentally I found it to be quite a noble thought, yet execution of such a reform would remain quite a tough task. As he rightly said, insurance companies play a foul game when it comes to paying the bills/reimbursements. They come up with reasons which are beyond comprehension at times. There is a tendency to delay payments. They instead look out for one small mistake on the part of the customer so that they can be denied the reimbursement. So in such a scenario, the ideal thing to do would be to introduce competition where the competitor would provide easy insurance options & easy norms so that people get "really benefited". And that's exactly what he is trying to do. He is creating an entity which will be called as a "Insurance exchange" where every individual/ small business firms can get health insurance at a competitive & affordable price. These are still only on papers. We need to wait & watch the real success of this!!! Who knows, this might become a key propaganda for politicians in next election in India as well....

What will you do if...

One fine morning, I took the news paper, sipping a cup of tea & a question cropped up in my mind: What would I do to keep myself busy if all my materialistic requirements being taken care of? Will I leave my job? Will I go for playing golf? Will I go and watch all Cricket matches across the world? Will I travel to all places? 

Well, it's a tough one. I wish I had a clear answer to this question. At least few things are clear - Every year I will go for 2/3 exotic vacations with my wife and spend good time there...I will probably join a Golf Academy...I will pursue playing Tennis more regularly, I will create a modernized sports academy to train kids for future olympics....

Let's see :) 

Consulting in Education Space

This idea came to me while reading the book "Imagining India" by Nandan Nilekani. I was shocked to find that only ~20% of all graduates who pass every year are employable. This essentially means there is a huge opportunity to develop the quality of education. 

In an idealistic world the idea should be to develop the qualiy bottom-up, ie start from school. But by looking at the current situation where India is treated as a young nation compared to the developed economy, we can't afford to let go the opportunities that are coming our way. We need to make more and more people employable. And it has to be imminent. This essentially means the immediate focus should be to develop the quality in Engineering/MBA space and then go top-down. We can't afford to wait till the time government do something. That will probably be a fatalistic approach. 

Well at this moment, we can't afford to have a static curriculum in our system. To keep in pace with current economy, the current curriculum has to be dynamic and more practical in nature. It requires somebody to continuously keep track of recent developments and ensure that the curriculum reflects those changes atleast on a yearly basis. Secondly there has to be more autonomy given to the colleges so that they can choose their curriculum. I am essentially indicating at the idea of setting up a consulting team for educational space who will guide the instituions to design better curriculum year after year.

I am looking for more ideas in this space so that we can take this figure of 20% to atleast 60% in next 3-4 years!!!

Aren't banks opportunistic

If you are going for a new housing loan, you will be charged ~8.5%. But existing housing loan customers continue to pay ~11%. 

I appreciate the fact that banks are trying best to boost the economy by giving housing loans at a cheaper rate. Currently people are holding back to their cash under market apprehension. This hurts the economy. Fundamentally banks are doing a good thing by providing opportunity for movement of cash within the market. I hope this works and make more people to buy houses and there by helping GDP growth. 

But!!! what about the current housing loan holders? Shouldn't bank do something to ensure even such a set of people need to be taken care by the system. If bank lowers the interest rate for existing customers, that will mean customers have more money to spend and hence will help to boost the economy by utilising that money in some other space. Banks will anyway increase the interest rate when economy bounces back. So then why not reduce the interest rate on existing loan!!!

AR Rahman - Redefining Globalization

Truly, AR Rahman proved: "if you have passion for something, it's worth dreaming the best!!!". I heard a lot about him from people. If a person can lock himself up in a room for days to come up with a staisfying score, his dedication is definitely laudable. And there is hardly any possibility of such dedication going waste. 

With Oscar, AR Rahman has redefined the term “Globalisation”, giving Indian Music Industry a much needed impetus. A truly global image is just few miles away for Indian Music Industry. It’s always seen that the 1^st step is usually the toughest one, after that things fall into place. I am quite sure that in no time, we will get to see more Indians winning Oscars and more Indians playing Music for International movies. But one thing will not change soon, ie, People like Rahman, Tendulkar, Lata Mangeshkar will remain as rare breeds for generations to come!!!

All my wishes with Rahman. I am sure Oscar is just a stepping stone for him to achieve more in future!!! Good luck to him!!! 

Parking - Do we need Government Regulation

Yesterday, on 14th Feb, I had been to Metropolitan Mall and figured out that they were charging Rs 100 for parking. I was taken by surprise, but then started thinking is it right to charge exorbitant price for parking? Aren't we taking too much advantage of "free market economy"?

Well I got the following definition about "free market economy" from Wikipedia:

"A free market is a market that is free of government intervention and regulation, besides the minimal function of maintaining the legal system and protecting property rights"

In a free market, the price is primarily determined by demand-supply equilibrium. In the above case, the supply of parking area is limited in a place like Gurgaon. We also have the problem of limited public transport within Gurgaon. This forces people to take their own vehicles and give whatever price charged at parking. In some cases, people take the risk of parking on “Non-Parking Zone”. Well, I won’t put the complete blame on those people. We need to analyze the alternative as well to ensure that neither the parking charges are high, nor people go against the law to park at Non-Parking Zone.

1st Question: Do we have enough public transport in Gurgaon? The answer is NO. 2nd Question: Do we have enough parking facility provided by Government? ( I am sure they are intelligent enough to understand the fact that in the absence of Public Transport, more no of personal vehicles will be on road) Again, the answer is NO. In such a situation, I am a little uncomfortable to apply the concept of Free Economy in the case of infrastructure which is mostly influenced by Government. I think in the above case, parking charges should come under Government Regulation in the absense of sufficient alternative infrastructure.


My 2 cents. I would appreciate your comments on it!!!

Is your job protected against recession?

The word recession is common place now. People getting laid off is catching an upward trend in India, thanks to the recent global meltdown. Though this presents a lot of uncertainties around one's career, yet it gives you an opportunity to sit back and evaluate areas where you think you can add better values than others.

In India, most people take a career by force, not by choice. And situations like this create an opportunity for people to sit back and evaluate their options. If you are a software engineer working on some very low level activity where you feel there is very little value addition for the end customer, then you have all reasons to get worried. You need to sit back and ask yourself: are you working on something which is considered valuable by your customer? Is it a high priority item for your customer? Is customer deriving advantage from your work? If answer is NO, then you better re-evaluate and change your focus area as soon as possible.

Just go by one principle: "If there is no taker for your product/service, there is something wrong with your job. And such inefficiencies will be dealt by your company during such bad times."

Not Just ROI, but A Quicker ROI – Enterprise Software

When bad time comes, every company goes into a “cost-cutting” mode to ensure a relatively better bottom-line. And I believe, from a strategy perspective, controlling bottom-line is a better & cost-effective strategy during such time than trying to pep-up top-line. Cutting costs, in other words, means improving operational efficiency. And Operational Efficiency means “doing things better in relatively lesser time”. And Enterprise Software enables to achieve such a goal in an organization. So companies should focus on investing in Enterprise Software to maintain the bottom-line. In the same time, the key challenge for such a company is to ensure a Quicker ROI so that they can stop bleeding in fastest possible time. Hence the focus of an Enterprise Software Company should be to ensure “Not just ROI, but A Quicker ROI”…. 

Consumer Sentiments during Economic Downturn

Economic Downturn has hit hard the consumer sentiments and consumer spending is substantially low at present. Let's try and understand; what is the effect of such a situation on the consumption of different types of products.

I divide the whole range of products into 3 categories; Essential Products, Luxury Products (Designed for high class people), Semi Luxury Products (Considered as luxury for middle class).

Essential Products like Food items are always critical for consumers. Unless the economy is like the one in 1930, it's difficult for such items to see a downward trend in their consumption.

Luxury Products like Mercedes cars which are primarily designed for high class & cash rich people, are unlikely to see a heavy downward trend since the economic downturn has very minimal effect on the pile of cash that these set of people are sitting on.

Semi Luxury Products like Nike shoes, Jewelry items; which are primarily considered as Luxury for Middle class people will see a heavy downward fall in the consumption pattern. A middle class person often goes to a Nike showroom when he/she has good amount of disposable income, doesn’t think much about value-for-money and emotionally attached with the brand. Then he/she doesn’t mind paying 100% extra on his/her shoes. During economic downturn, middle class often faces the maximum risk of loosing jobs. Mostly his source of income is through salary and his cash reserves are normally not good enough to sustain his family without a job for even 12 months. So it essentially for him to cut down on the fatty expenses (he will be happy not going to Nike showroom) and ensure his cash reserve increases so as to face the effect of bad time in near future.

My 2 cents on it!!!

A true Leader's best friend - Ethics

A leader’s role goes beyond just making money for his followers and company. A leader stands out as a role model for the followers. It’s critical for him to be aware of his own responsibilities and, more importantly ethical values. When it comes to ethical values, Narayan Murthy stands out as a true role model. He probably understands the importance of ethical values more than anybody else. And he being at the helm of Infosys, I am sure the company will never face a Satyam like situation. In my view, Satyam's failure is more of ethical in nature than anything else. 

I just want to close this with one simple remark: "For a leader, Doing what is Right is more important than showing what is Right." I know it is common sense, but often common sense is very uncommon!!! 

IPL~ICL Competition - Good For Cricket

Success of Corporate world purely depends on the level of competition that goes with it. Otherwise the companies end up performing lethargic. It has been seen that competition keeps the companies on their toes and pushes them for maximum innovation. At the end, it results in them achieving beyond their own expectations.

Now let's see what's happening in Cricket. For quite long time, we have the concept of test and one-dayers. Absolutely zero innovation, and its popularity is not increasing at a rate which is impressive. Yet, players get paid well, board of cricket control doesn't have to worry about inflow of money. And basically the end of cricket was approaching. Somebody was supposed to give it a jolt. Somebody was needed to challenge the existence of cricket control board. And then came ICL promoted by Kapil Dev & Zee TV. ICL may not be as successful as IPL, but atleast it has a very strong effect on the sports of cricket. It forced the control board to innovate and walk few miles extra. It forced them to come out of their comfort zone. And then came IPL. I would tend to say, it's a good success by far. With more innovation, I am sure it is going to be more popular in more countries.

Moral of the story - Healthy Competition provokes innovation & innovation results in success beyond boundaries.

Help him, if not Pamper him

It's just too early to compare Dhoni with the likes of Captain Gopinath and other leaders. He might have the hunger, attitude and other ingredients to become a good leader. But probably we need to wait and watch, rather than just drawing conclusions from the feet he achieved. I am sure if we would have lost the game against Pakistan, he would have been the centre of criticism by now. I just don’t go by such immature mentality of our media and other sources. He is good, but not good enough as yet to be compared with big leaders. Allow him to perform atleast in atleast 3-4 series and then draw some conclusions. I am sure post Australia series, he would be in middle of criticism. I wish people can really become constructive. I wish the media and other intelligent sources help to build a leader in him than spoiling him by over exaggeration of his world cup win.

I hope he is not a regular reader of our news papers :)

T20 World Cup – A Memorable Victory

A real tribute to the young Indian Cricket team for winning such a sensational match against Pakistan in the T20 final. They showed lot of enthusiasm and character. I think more than their talent, their character helped them to win all the tough matches. Really, it was a true example of “Give your best, rest will be history”. The euphoria in Indian public was also worth noticing. I am sure the kind of reception the Indian team got while returning home is something for them to treasure for rest of the life to come. It doesn’t happen often.

Ok, now with all these euphoria, time has come to think about future. It’s true that these young lads showed a lot of courage. We probably need to think of introducing them in the longer version of the game. At the same time we must keep them under a good stewardship of Dhoni, Yuvraj & other senior players. It’s just the beginning, probably they need to be trained both physically and mentally to perform better in all forms of the game. We need to think of good and healthy combination of senior and junior players in the team. It will be wrong if we say, Seniors are no longer required. They may not be a good fit for T20, but longer version of the game requires a different kind of mindset which these guys have. In the same time, these guys will prove as good mentors to the young guns if used properly.

I am sure the experience of Seniors and enthusiasm of Juniors will help us build a winning team for future. Good luck to Indian Cricket Team.

4 Obsessions of Leadership

I read a brilliant book off late named as “The Four Obsessions of An Extraordinary Executive” by Patric Lencioni. It’s inspiring and talks a lot of common sense. The book is designed around 4 basic principles which are essential to build an extraordinary organization.

First, it talks about creating a Cohesive Leadership Team. It is about building a leadership team that understands each other well, works towards same goal and more over goes beyond the day-to-day politics to achieve efficiency. Normally the meetings are intense, and full of critical discussions. They confront each other with their points and they hate the “yes-yes” type of discussion. At the end of it, there is no personal attack, there is only room for “what is best for the organization”. I would say, we build a family(among the leadreship team) within an organization. Unless we understand each family member well, there can't be happiness and success within the family.

Second, it talks about creating organizational clarity. This is essential since everybody must understand clearly about where the organization is heading and hence their efforts will remain unidirectional. Each one of them must be clear on the reason behind organization’s very existence, their competitors, their values, their responsibilities. I believe when the goal is clear, people throw ideas in multiple directions to achieve the same and that diversity of thoughts is key to the future success of the organization.

Third, it stretches on over-communication of organizational goal among the employees. Organizational goals are not very straight forward which can be digested in one go. There has to be multiple mediums in which the same communication has to be conveyed and again it has to be done multiple times. It has to be kept simple as much possible. Unless the whole of organization understands the goal, it will be difficult to achieve success.

Fourth, it talks about reinforcing organizational clarity through human systems. Health of an organization is key to its success. Hence there has to be stringent process for hiring the best suited employees, evaluating their performance at work place, rewarding them as and when required and firing them when they don’t meet the organizational goal. It identifies the human resource development as one of the key criteria for a successful organization. After all the organizational success depends on how each individual contributes to the overall success of the organization.

Advantage 99 - Sachin & Team

Will you prefer Sachin making 17,99,8,55,71,94,30 or 17,110,0,7,31,17,51 in a 7 one-day match series? I am sure, the 1^st one looks a much balanced contribution than the 2^nd one. Though in the 1^st option Sachin’s “personal record” will come as “4 half-centuries”, yet it is much better a contribution wrt team than the 2^nd one where he has “1 century” to add to his record. Having said that, let’s analyze Sachin’s psyche and it’s relationship to his performance.

There are quite a lot of player who are very much concerned about their personal milestones. Though they play for the team, yet their personal milestones are also equally important. Sachin is one of them. This is quite evident the way he plays when he is between 90 and 100 (trying to save himself from all possible ways of getting out). Obviously when he got out 99, it would be like a heart attack for him. But when I saw him disappointed after scoring 99, I was quick to realize that he is going to play well in the whole series. It’s because he couldn’t reach his milestone, ie 100 and that will always push him to do better and better in upcoming games. He gets complacent as soon as he reaches his century and he feels very relaxed in the very next game, that complacency costs him dear in rest of the series. Untill and unless he is blessed with a century, he is not going to put his gun down. And that’s what happened in the recently concluded series with England. 99 in second match helped him to play better in rest of the matches. Had he scored a century, I am sure you would have found a different and struggling Sachin. It sounds very out of place, but that’s the fact. As long as he remains a little away from his goal, he is always a better player to watch out. Once he reaches there, suddenly you will find him out of form.

If I have to think from team perspective, I will say it is better if Sachin gets out in 90s in one of the earlier matches of a series. That will push him to perform better and better in the further matches and there by help the team in a greater way. That’s why I call it as “Advantage 99- Sachin & Team”.

Chak De...

Though most part of it is a copy of Miracle, yet it is worth watching. I liked it very much.

The support from the men’s hockey team, losing to Australia in 1^st match, the furious match against Argentina and the one-to-one marking tactics in the match against Korea; all give different perspective to the movie.

Men’s hockey team couldn’t have done better than providing the much needed moral support to the Women’s hockey team. That was the start and the team never looked back. No matter how hard you try, unless there is somebody to support you big time, the going in life is always tougher.

Somehow I feel in every game of life, there is nothing bad to loose 1st time, learn from it and then win the next one. The amount of satisfaction, the feeling of glory and the sustainability of success; everything gets magnified in that case. Most importantly we tend to stay away from all complacencies since we know what failure means and how easy it is to turn the success to a failure. Unless Indian team lost to Australia in 1^st match, I don’t think they would have got the moral booster for the rest of the matches. It makes you try and remove even the slightest possible error in your approach. Probably it’s a human tendency to stay superficial till we commit some serious mistake. That’s why it’s good to commit it sooner than later.

It’s important that a team must be prepared to change its approach if required. And that too on the fly. The match against Argentina was a real example. The idea of treating the opposition with their own medicine was something appreciable. Do we really do that in our day to day life? At least in work place, I know most of us are stuck with the age-old processes. Probably a leader needs to identify that and take corrective action.

Keep a strong eye on the opposition. If you get to know their strategy, it becomes easy to design one for yourself. Most importantly, don’t let the opposition feel that you are playing against their strategy. Allow them to dominate for sometime, make them feel a little complacence and then attack when they are on the peak of their over confidence. Now you understand why Bindya Nayak(specialist on breaking the one-to-one marking) came as a replacement in the match against Korea, if not playing from the beginning.

All these things require a visionary leader to be on the front and that’s exactly where we had Kabir Khan. But I am still wondering about one thing. He noticed about the rivalry between two center forwards from the very 2^nd match. Then why did he wait till Final to bring that issue out? Was that a part of his strategy or was it something overlooked by him; a question that needs to be answered….

Risk Averse Leader - Mr Dravid

I have few role models in life and Dravid is one of them. If you look back in his career, you will probably realize the fact that wherever he is today, it’s because of his hard work and determination. That’s something which I have learnt from him. But unfortunately I could never appreciate his leadership style. I will also go one step ahead and argue that Ganguly was a better leader than him. If I analyze the last test match between India and England in the recently concluded series, that will give some clues to some of the missing pieces (according to me) to his leadership style.

India got 300 odd run lead when England were all-out in the first innings. Instead of forcing follow-on, Dravid decided that India should bat. Reason – It’s difficult to chase in 4^th innings and Dravid didn’t want to take any chances. Also we were already ahead in the series with 1-0 lead and for him 1-0 is no different from 2-0 series win. So he decided a less-risky path. If he would have enforced the follow on, at worst case India would have to chase some 100 odd run to win the series. Unfortunately he showed his lack of confidence on the team. First thing – a leader mustn’t hold such low confidence on the team, that actually brings down the morale of the team altogether. Second, he shouldn’t have sighted physical tiredness as reason for opting out from the follow-on decision. That’s like showing an unhealthy approach to game of cricket. Bowlers were on their top of mental energy after bowling opposition out for such a small total (in compared to India). So I am sure they were not mentally tired. That flow would have helped them to take wickets in quick succession and continue the pressure on England. But Dravid had some different intention. He probably couldn’t visualize the mental enthusiasm in the team, instead he chose a risk-averse route.

Probably the worst part is - A leader mustn’t get into the complacency of “Whatever I have is good, I don’t need more”. That sets up a bad example for the team.

Are you a Visionary?

Often entrepreneurs are known for their visions. NRN, Premzi, Mukesh Ambani are to name a few of those visionaries in current arena. I asked myself 2 questions – 1. How different are visionaries from others, 2. What do somebody need to do to become a visionary in life?

Visionaries are the people who could see future. They probably have the best intuitive power. They tell you – what the industry may look like in 5 or 10 or 20 years down the line. I was thinking how people could make such judgments. I guess the essence lies in 3 things.

First, understand the pulse of current state of the industry. Second, understand the evolution of your industry [peep through the past] and forces behind such a change. Eg, if we look at software development in 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s we will get a lot of data points. Understand how and why changes took place between those decades. Third, understand the critical success factors for the future of the industry and the important change agents.

I believe based on these analysis, we will be able to make a good judgement about the future. There could be a different perspective altogether. You are welcome to throw your ideas.

Pizza Corner - An Experience

I went to Pizza Corner today, all alone in Gurgaon. Surprisingly in the outlet, there weren’t many customers. The well-dressed waiter gave me the Pizza Menu. I was just too hungry. Quickly ordered something to ensure my stomach gets some fuel to work further. In the meantime I was going through the Menu to find out what other offerings do they have in Pizzas. The reason of this blog is because of the innovation that I found in the menu. Starting from its design to content, everything seems to be well thought out.

The names are innovative like Sandwiza (for sandwitch), Conniza (for Cone Pizzas), etc. From a distance it looks very simple. But how many really make that effort to make even the simple things look innovative. Cone Pizza is an excellent innovation, I would say. It actually catches the attention of Ice-cream lovers. Similarly they have a promotion (probably “whizz kid”) for attracting the small kids. And more importantly they have a program going on since 1998 to support the underprivileged. There are quite a few more things which I am not putting here.

From a Product perspective, I would say they are trying their best to bring as much innovation possible. But probably what is lacking is innovation in the delivery of the product. I am not sure how many customers are really aware of various promotions they have. I am not sure how vigorously they are marketing their new offerings. Unless somebody goes through their menu, he/she can’t get to know about the promotions. Probably, the marketing team needs to look at more innovative ways of taking the innovative product to customers. Similarly, the operation probably needs to focus on delivery innovation part to ensure a good customer service.

Good luck to them!!!