Alone on the road

Life is like a bicycle race, whose aim is to fulfill our personal legend, which, according to our scripters is our true mission on this earth.

We all set off together, sharing friendship and enthusiasm; but as the race progresses, that initial happiness gives way to the real challenges, tiredness, boredom, and doubts about our own abilities. We notice that a few friends have, in their hearts, already given up. They are still cycling, but only because they cannot stop in the middle of the road. There are more and more of them, pedaling along beside the support vehicle-also known as routine-talking amongst themselves, full filling their obligations, following the dreams which are not up to their potential, circling in the same known small pond, but unaware to the beauties and challenges of the road.

We eventually leave them behind us and then we come face to face with loneness, with unfamiliar bends in the roads and mechanical problems with our bicycle. So, that feeling of coming ahead of the race, that pride of achievement has evaporated. At a certain stage, after suffering a few falls with no one near at hand to help, we began to ask ourselves, if it’s really worth all the effort.

Yes, it is. It’s just a question of not giving up. It’s question of being focused. It’s all about having that attitude to go ahead. It’s about our ability to focus at the time of confusion. It’s about putting all the broken pieces together and setting off for that march, yet another time. It’s all about that discipline with which we need to face the life.

Scripters says; we need to understand the life through four invisible forces; Love, Death, Power and Time.

We must love because we ourselves are loved by god.

We must have an awareness of death to fully understand the life. As such, as per scripters, the life doesn’t end at death. That is just a momentary stop.

We must struggle in order to grow, but without getting affected by the power we gained through this struggle. As there is a super power above all, and the life goes as per that power. The moment we understand how insignificance our power is when compared to that super power; that sense of achievement becomes humble.

Finally, we must accept that our soul is caught in the web of time, with all its opportunities and limitations.

Therefore, on our solitary bicycle rice, we must value time and do all possible thing to value each second. Play to our potential, and don’t get distracted by the road blocks. We can rest as and when necessary, but we must follow that dream.

Live that dream every day, every second, in whatever we do. That is what is called passion…

On a business trip

What I liked about my business trips is that it allows me to follow what I really like, walking. I just love catching up with different cultures and love exploring cities through walking. All packed and adequately dressed, its great fun to visit cities, understand the history and meet/observe people. There is tremendous amount of fun in uncertainty, and exploring the city as tourist (Without following the tourist guides) helps me to understand more.

A map, a water bottle and two bananas and few eatables will be in my backpack.

Recently I explored Helsinki in this way. Thrilled at its history, and its closeness to Russia. Visited an ancient church and got confused there what to do! Walked across sea shore and ended up getting confused about direction (That is also fun!)

I just lived my life on that day!!

Tour de France:

I got a chance to watch a documentary about this great cycle event. It’s amazingly great. It tests the endurance of a human being and it needs great amount of team work, calculation, meticulous planning and great execution.

I was just thrilled to see this documentary.

360 Degree Feedback

Feedback plays very important role in our professional career and we all grow if we get constructive feedback and work on that. But the feedback we get has to be very well articulated and constructive; it should be well connected to the growth/career development. But in reality the feedback session just becomes an hour spent to list out all the faults. And many a times its completely biased.

360-degree feedback is an evaluation method that incorporates feedback from the worker, his/her peers, superiors, subordinates, and customers. Results of these confidential surveys are tabulated and shared with the worker, usually by a manager. Interpretation of the results, trends and themes are discussed as part of the feedback. The primary reason to use this full circle of confidential reviews is to provide the worker with information about his/her performance from multiple perspectives. From this feedback, the worker is able to set goals for self-development which will advance their career and benefit the organization. With 360-degree feedback, the worker is central to the evaluation process and the ultimate goal is to improve individual performance within the organization. Under ideal circumstances, 360-degree feedback is used as an assessment for personal development rather than evaluation.

Recently I got an opportunity to get this feedback and I must say, the process and the result were learning experience. I found out what people perceive me as and it helped me to understand my strengths and areas of improvement. And honestly it also confused me a bit as well.

Offcourse there is a risk of not implementing this correctly and in that case it fail to give a correct feedback and it might derail the entire process. However it’s always nice to get the feedback and work upon the deficiencies.

Learning…

Philosophy, Psychology, Positive Thinking and Ageing

Contrasting topics!

This week has been strange for me. Generally I like reading business and management; this week I didn’t even touch my favorite Economictimes in the morning. I was completely shut down from business news all the week.

I started thinking about this, about my psychology, and why I am feeling so. There were many thoughts came in; maybe I was tired, maybe I had too much of business reading last week, maybe I was thinking negative, maybe I was philosophical where I started feeling there is no truth in material world? (I know it’s true early for me to feel thatJ) And found out that there is a connection between all the reasons I thought about.

Though the above topics look contrast to each other in the first place; in Indian context there is a perfect connection and they are very tightly integrated.

Indian philosophy is nothing but psychology. In the olden India there was no subject called psychology. Indian philosophy itself was psychology. The steps we see in our rituals, the scriptures, the essence of Vedas everything revolves around mental elevation of human beings. Just think about some of our morning rituals; be it getting up early in the morning, be it doing morning prayers, be it listening to light music or be it respecting elders and getting blessings; it all has a connection to psychology, pure psychology.

Our ancient Indian scriptures give lot of assurance about life, about wellbeing, about ‘God’ taking care of all the things. This is nothing but pumping energy and thereby making us to think positive. Indian philosophy never says to leave your normal duties to attain self-knowledge. It says one must mentally purify oneself by positive thinking and having a stronger mind.

There is much detail knowledge in our scriptures as how we can train our mind to elevate ourselves. It is said that our mind is our stronger friend when you train it and otherwise it can become a great enemy.

Lastly ageing, it is now proven that having a balanced life and positive thinking increases your immunity and one can live longer!! Our ancestors thought about all this and put these rituals in place which elevated us psychologically, trained us in positive thinking there by living longer/happier.

Such great is the knowledge of our ancient culture is that it draws a parallel between how we live and what we think. It is amazing knowledge but it’s so sad that we are not aware of what we have.

Stages of Spiritual Life

Indian philosophy is about pure psychology and the entire vedic procedures are aligned towards giving a great amount of mental strength.

The entire spiritual journey, as per the ancient Hindu scriptures; is mental elevation of human beings. And one such example is 6 stages of spiritual life.

Krishna in Bhagavad-Gita explains that there are 6 stages of spiritual life.

1)      Stage 1: This is elementary stage, where we all believe this material form of body is one in all and we don’t go beyond this material state of mind. This is kinder garden definition of life.  

2)      State 2: This is slightly elevated state where a human being starts thinking about existence of soul and the relation between body and soul. This establishes the fact that the soul inside me is an eternal truth and is responsible for all the activities of this physical form of the body.

 

3)      Stage 3: This is the stage where one starts understanding the existence of different gods or devatas who will be responsible for each and every organ of the body. Like, Sun god for eyes, Moon god for listening etc. Though we feel we are in full control of our body organs actually it is not right. Even if we feel we don’t want to see a particular scene our inner voice wants to see it, thus it is evident that these organs operate as per instructions of devatas. The third stage of the spiritual life is this where we understand that we actually don’t have control on our own body.

4)      Fourth Stage: If the body parts are being governed by different devats, there has to be a binding force by which there is a perfect coordination between different parts of our body. When in fear our legs start running, when something comes on our way hands automatically come in between to block it. This is the stage where we understand the existence of ‘Paramatma’ or ‘Super God’ who is responsible for all activities of my body, mind and soul. Who is a super power who controls entire working of my body.

 

5)      Stage 5: This stage is extension of knowledge of stage 4 to the entire universe, in other words the relationship between ‘Paramatma’ and this universe. While we establish the relationship between super god and this universe, we also understand our position in this whole universe. This is the stage where we understand what is the role of ‘Paramatma’ in running this whole universe and as how entire system is interdependent and interlocked.

6)      Stage 6: This is the last stage, where one understands the true meaning of ‘Karma’. Since we have understood the meaning of ‘Paramatma’ in stage 4 and extension to the universe in stage 5, it gives a different platform for Karma at this elevated state. This establishes the true sense of Karma where one starts thinking that what all happening here is as per instructions of ‘Paramatma’ and there is a cause/reason in this universe for all our actions. This stage truly burns down our ego as we come to believe that we are not responsible for our karma and neither have we own the outcome.

It is truly amazing to notice as how these stages gradually train us in our real life; to face life, to be a stable minded and to lead a life with full of purpose, energy, positive sense and meaning.

Incredible India!!

During my recent Norway trip, during a dinner and casual talk one of my client asked me about the safety of tourists in India. His point was towards Delhi gang rape case and also series of rapes on foreign tourists in different parts of the country.

The question was, is it safe to travel to India as a tourist?

This kept me thinking.

Recently I read a piece of news where Ministry of Tourism has expressed concerns about reducing the number of tourists visiting India. This is really a thing to worry.

Tourism is a best platform for establishing a healthy relationship between two countries if tourists go back with a positive mind. In India we don’t put effort to attract tourists and on top of this whoever comes, we treat them bad. This is not going to help at all.

We all need to focus on building a service mindset when comes to tourists and build a positive image about the country.

I believe that is true Incredible India!!

Lessons from School’s Basketball League

Arpita’s school’ Vivek High Sector 70; has started a new initiative where the parents will be involved in the school basketball league; as managers or as coach. This league will have three sections and each section has 6-8 teams. They play basketball among themselves and the aim is to build sportiveness with young kids.

I have volunteered to be coach of ‘Royals’; which is Arpita’s team. We had our first weekend matches and it was fun working with kids, motivating them, working out the strategy and rejoicing in their win. Trust me, it’s not a simple job to coach J

I learnt few lessons in this coaching work:

·         Kids Execute Really well: It was amazing to know that kids have excellent power to execute the plan once decided. Before both the matches we worked out a strategy and each and every kid worked as per the designed plan; be it was defender or point guard. It was told them that you need to guard couple of good shooters from the opposition and our defenders exactly did that. The kids switched their game as per the tempo of the situation; between defense and offence styles.

·         Strategy works: Another lesson for me is to notice that strategy works. During one of the games, we clearly laid out a plan as who should play what role in the overall strategy of the game. Due to this, we could able to contain the opposition. The plan was to contain school’s best shooters and the strategy was to deploy two guards who will watch those two shooters. It worked out so well that the shooting really struggled; while our defenders do this our offence took chances and did baskets to end in a winning note.

·         Kids express great emotions: Kids now a days show lots of emotions and bondage as a team. Imagine 8 year old kids discussing strategy with coach and coming back with suggestions that some part is not working fine.

Main focus area for me is to build the team spirit; if everyone thinks about the team and understand the role he/she is playing towards winning of the game; that is half job done. And I truly believe it’s a learning for the life.

I must appreciate school’s initiative to bring parents to the league and it’s amazing to be part of this. I am really enjoying my role and each day is a great learning experience for me to work with kids.

Why do we need Leaders?

“Select 100 lions and make a dog as their leader; all the lions will die like dogs. Select 100 dogs and make a lion as their leader, all dogs will fight like lions”.

This is a statement I read in Facebook sometime back. Though it will be a bit exaggerated story (With all due respect to Lions and Dogs); but it sums up the importance of having a good leadership or having a good 

leader to lead us, direct us and do a course correction.

I have seen multiple examples and read about many stories; where lack of proper leadership has impacted the company’s future. Though it might be datable; but in current scenario companies like TCS, Cognizant, HCL; which seems to have a solid leadership seems to be doing better in this time of crisis where the whole industry seems to be under pressure.

Recently I came to know one of our customers has initiated a change; the fundamental business processes is being rediscovered. This needs a great amount of thought processes before you embark such journey. Earlier leadership didn’t understand the importance of this change and thus never been able to make any dent. But, change in leader bought in a sea difference and now I see a huge difference in the mindset of other employees of customers.

This raised a question in my mind. How important this leadership is?

Simple reason of why some companies are successful and some are not? 

Road Trip

I had been to a road trip recently when I went for a vacation.

I did many things, walked, hiked, enjoyed rain, witnessed a flooded river; blocked road, just formed waterfalls. Prayed to god and got lost. Amazingly beautiful nature, excellent people and royal sea shore.

More importantly I learnt how to breath!!

It was much needed break and allowed me to spend some time to myself.

I spoke to many people; a professor, a priest, a high school teacher, a farmer, an old age man with many difficulties. Enriching experience!!

After I came back; I went to Manali for office trip; it was an excellent experience. I lived my dream. Walked, did fishing, spoke and more ever just connected back to self. Manali was never so beautiful.

Amazing time spent. 

An Inspiring Person and A Powerful Dream

I am on vacation for two weeks to my native place and I happen to visit my alumina, P.G.Halakatti College of Engineering and Technology; where I did my basic engineering.


I met Prof. V.V Katti; who had been my mentor and guide during my student days; he used to guide me, motivate me, push me and more importantly excite me with his passionate lectures in Heat Transfer, Mechanical Vibrations and more.

He is now HOD of mechanical engineering department after his PhD from IIT Mumbai.

He passionately showed the new department, labs, computer section and about his dream of building a world class teaching/research facility. What really impressed me are;

1) Vision and Mission: He has defined a vision and mission statement to mechanical department and drives everyone around this. This is such a powerful thought. Imagine running an academic institute with a corporate rigor!! Excellent thing.

2) Building Research Facility: He passionately, tirelessly explained to me about his efforts to push his fellow colleagues to think and drive themselves to build research facilities and think outside the box for innovative ideas. He is not stopping there, but leading by example by building nice heat transfer lab; where it seems he is inspired by many simple tools like stereo, used lathe machine etc. His eyes sparked when he proudly said, ‘each and every instrument of this lab is designed, manufactured and calibrated in our college’. This is such an inspiring thing!!

3) Attention to students: During the course of four hours I spent with him, he was listening to many students, solved many issues related to couple of students and motivated couple of them to give their best and gave instructions to couple of guys. What amazed me is his ever expanding time!!

4) Hard work: He juggles between his research, publishing papers, guiding his masters/doctorate students, managing the department, being busy in academics, building a world class research lab and mentoring/guiding his fellow professors. And yes, he also mentors his son, who is an engineering student by himself. This is simply an excellent stuff and made me wonder how he manages his time and still has that everlasting energy.

5) His Dream: He has such a big dream for his students; he wants to integrate industry with academics; bring in more industry focus to students. I could see a clear dream in his eyes about his students to do well in life; have successful careers and establish themselves in industry and make a little dent to universe! He says ‘I want to change the direction of thinking of this department’. Such a powerful thought, it was just great thing for me.

Personally; the time I spent was a huge learning experience, I got inspired, motivated and amazed by one individual’s dream to change the world and his efforts towards this. His simple truth of life of keep working for the fun he is getting out of it and a clear self-driving force behind him.

Thanks you sir; for motivating me (One more time after 17 years); inspiring me by sheer size of your dreams and your passion to build this institute; for being such a simple yet positive personality to guide many students and above all having a clear focus towards social causes. I will be fortunate to contribute anything towards fulfillment of your dream.

After this trip, I have one song on my iPod which is going repeatedly, ‘Give me some sunshine, give me some rain, give me another chance I want to grow once again”

Three Rule for Making a Company Truly Great

April edition of Harvard Business Review has an interesting article about three rules which makes any company great. Authors have studied many companies and identified companies who followed these rules and stood apart in the long business cycle.


I thought of these rules after I read this article and I felt this can be applied in day-to-day business operation there by gaining from it with immediate effect, or perhaps to change the culture of the company in small steps.

Rule 1: Better Before Cheaper:

Every company faces a choice: It can compete mainly by offering superior nonprice benefits such as great brand, exciting style, an excellent functionality, durability or it can meet some minimal acceptable standards along these dimensions and try to attract the customers with lower price. The long term business players typically choose the former one.

Bear in mind the before in “better before cheaper”. When the competitive landscape changes, you can lower your price and still adhere to the rule. What matters is not where your prices are lower than it used to be but that they remain higher than your competition.

For all its virtues; a nonprice position isn’t without danger. Typically a company that competes on this dimension other than price must constantly battle rivals that have figured out its formula. At least me-too-competitors might confuse customers with exactly similar looking products.

So, companies need to focus on destructive innovation and be in constant pursuit of higher margins through focusing on less-demanding market segments.

Rule 2: Revenue Before Cost:

Companies must not only create value but also capture it in the form of profits. Exceptional companies deliver superior profits by achieving higher revenue than their rivals through either higher prices or greater volume. Very rarely the cost leadership is a driver.

Just as you can lower prices while adhering to better before cheaper, you can drive out inefficiencies and lower your costs while following the revenue-before-the-cost model. But summary is don’t try to achieve a profitability advantage through cost leadership.


Rule 3: There are no other rules:

This rule underscores the uncomfortable truth that in pursuit of exceptional profitability, everything but the first two rules should be put in place.

Here is how we can implement this in to day-to-day life. Next time when we are budgeting among competitive priorities let’s ask the question, which initiatives will contribute most to enhancing the nonprice position of our product/services in question and which will allow us to sell ourselves at much higher price.

If our operational effective program is all about cutting the costs; then let’s focus on innovation of building more for less there by clearly we can attain the required service level agreement with customers while still focusing on building much higher revenue.

Profitable growth is the name of the game.

Mr. Murthy is Back

Mr. Narayan Murthy is back in to Infosys as executive chairman which is by all means an operational role. This means, Mr. Murthy will be involved in providing the strategic direction to company and will be consulted in all major decisions.


What makes it more interesting is time, where Infosys is struggling in ever changing software market.

He is coming back from his retirement and try putting company back on track.

When asked he said, he will have to study Infosys 3.0 model and them come up with course correction measures. It is largely believed that company management has not clearly articulated what exactly Infosys 3.0 is.

There are debates in media about second layer leadership and all.

What really draw my attention is Mr. Murthy’s answer for one question;

Q: How do you look at your second innings?

Answer: Tendulkar is a great hero of mine. He adapted himself even when he was 40. If he can do that, then I can do that. If I can do that I will be very happy.

Inspiration can come from any one. But look at a man who has probably achieved anything in his field wants to learn from others?

This is what I call ability to improvise, day after day after day…

It’s dirt everywhere!

Corporate practices, professional propriety, political conduct, sporting spirit, seems nothing is sacred in India, anymore.


From political corruption, nepotism, corporate malpractices, spot-fixing, to sexual misconduct at work place, India is making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Ranbaxy & the Singh Brothers

THE SCANDAL: Ranbaxy has been held accountable for falsifying drug data, dangerous manufacturing practices and compromised drug safety. Former promoter Malvinder Singh dismisses the claims of whistleblower Dinesh Thakur as sensational.

Bansal, his Kin & his Fiefdom

THE SCANDAL: Former railway minister PK Bansal had to resign after his nephew was allegedly caught accepting a bribe. Ministry of Corporate Affairs has ordered a probe into the 105 companies Bansal and his extended family are alleged to own.

Phaneesh Murthy & iGate

THE SCANDAL: IT services firm iGate terminated its CEO Murthy's contract for not reporting a relationship with Araceli Roiz, a former head of investor relations. Her lawyers say Roiz is pregnant with his child and that when she refused to have an abortion, he attempted to get her to leave the company. Murthy's defense is that the charge is an attempt at extortion and he denies sexual harassment charges.

S Sreesanth & the Dirty Money Trail

THE SCANDAL: Delhi Police pick up India fast bowler Sreesanth and two of his colleagues from Rajasthan Royals for alleged spot-fixing in IPL-6. The trail gets murkier with the arrest of Gurunath Meiyappan, son-in-law of BCCI president N Srinivasan who also owns Chennai Super Kings.

At global front India is standing at number 90 in ‘World’s least corrupt countries’. [Denmark, Finland, New Zealand at number 1; Sweden at 4, Singapore is at 5; Norway 7, USA 12].

Though we claim India is shining and it’s on path of growth and next decade belongs to India etc; this corruption is certainly pulling us down. It’s like accelerating your car with hands brake on! First question is why this is happening?

This is a tough question to answer and to prevent.

Still, even if the likes of Sreesanth, Murthy and Bansal and the Singhs are forgotten, you can bet your bottom rupee that there will be another sportsperson, corporate executive, politician and business promoter who will be under the arclight of corruption in the days ahead

Do Your Part

Via Robin Sharma:

Big question for you: “what are you doing to help build a new and better world?” Don’t blame the politicians. Don’t blame those around you. Don’t blame your parents or your background. Doing so is playing the victim and this world has far too many people playing the victim when they could be shining and making a profound difference. Mother Teresa said it so much better than I ever could: “if each of us would only sweep their own doorstep, the whole world would be clean.” Nice.


Blaming others is excusing yourself. Telling yourself that you – as an army of one – cannot have an impact is giving away your power. A couple of college kids got their hands on empty school buses and drove them into New Orleans when everybody else said the city was unapproachable. A little man in a loincloth named Mohandas Gandhi freed an entire nation. A college student named Richard Branson took some initiative to start a record label on a shoestring that has since morphed into the Virgin empire. You are no different from them. We are all flesh and bones – cut from the same cloth.

In a recent issue of Vanity Fair, Jennifer Aniston said that she gives herself one day to play victim after a challenging event. After that day of feeling sorry for herself and powerless, she wakes up and takes ownership over the way her life looks. And if she doesn’t like a piece of it she sets about to change it. That’s personal leadership.

What don’t you like about your life or the organization you work for or the country you live in? Make a list. Write it down. Shout it out. And then do something to improve things. Anything. Start small or go big. Just do something. Today. Now. The world will be better for it.

Books to Read

A list of books to read compiled by Robin Sharma: great list and will transform lives for sure...

1.Jonathan Livingston Seagull. By Richard Bach.

With lines like: “Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation,” this book will move you deeply. I re-read it in Thailand. Still amazingly good.

2.Think and Grow Rich. By Napoleon Hill.
Fantastic book. Not so much about financial wealth as it is about the making of a rich life. You’ll learn how important it is to have a burning desire (this galvanizes your focus and causes the release of your creativity) + the imperative of setting clear goals + the value of “a mastermind alliance”. This book truly changed my life when I was starting out as a self-published author with nothing but a dream in my hands. Times were tough. This book got me through.

3.The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. By–well, Marcus Aurelius.
Marcus Aurelius was a warrior—who then became a Roman emperor. He wrote his lessons on greatness and a life well lived during a multi-year military campaign. Someone got his notes. And put it into this book. I go back to this book often. It strengthens my character. And resolve to help more people.

4.Steve Jobs. By Walter Isaacson.
One of the best books I’ve ever read. Period.

5.Long Walk To Freedom. By Nelson Mandela.
Nelson Mandela’s one of my heroes. Noble. Courageous. Focused. A visionary. If I could be 1/100 of who he is, I’d be overjoyed. This is his autobiography. You’ll walk with him through his days as a lawyer, his time as a disruptor, his prison years and his period as the positional leader of South Africa.

6.Stop Acting Rich. By Thomas Stanley.
Thomas Stanley became famous for “The Millionaire Next Door”. But this book–not so well known–is exceptional. He explains the concept of “The Glittering Rich”, shares how too many of us live beyond our means and how to create true financial freedom. Like most of the books I read, I listened to it.

7.As You Think. By James Allen.
Maybe 10 times. That’s at least how many times I’ve read this book. And like all great books, it seems better+wiser and deeper every time I read it. Of course, the book hasn’t changed. Just my ability to grasp the information. And understand the concepts. This book is all about the power of your daily thinking. And how it drives your life’s behavior. As you know so well: your behavior shows us your beliefs. And this awesome book will inspire you to build new ones.

8.The Magic of Thinking Big. By David Schwartz.
Uber-practical. Tons of value. Great concepts, like “Go Through Life First-Class.” Every student, teammate and human being should read this book (along with “How To Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie–that work should also be on my list. True.).

9.Talent is Overrated. By Geoff Colvin.
Read this one a few years ago. Changed the way I viewed Genius. Confirms a lot of the work of exceptional performance researchers like the famed Anders Ericsson that talent is less about natural gifts and far more about devotion to a skill, relentless practice and patience. Another superb audiobook.

10.Spark. By John Ratey.
One of the best books I’ve read in years. I’m on my 3rd reading. Shares the latest (and so fascinating) research on how exercise transforms the brain, our performance, our productivity and even builds a new type of brain that is excellent at resisting stress. Please do your life a giant favor. And read this book. Today!

Lessons of Life

One Kannada song has caught me up since last two days, and it is so beautifully written. It has great meaning and lesson for life. Trying to translate it…


Learning can come from any corner!!

enagali munde saagu nee,
bayasiddella sigadu baaLali
nannaaNe nanna maatu suLLalla
----------

whatever happens, you need to go on with this strife
whatever you wish for, seldom you get in life
Swear on me, my words are not mere lies…
----------

[chalisuva kaalavu, kalisuva paaTava
mareyabEDa nee, tumbiko manadali]
[indigo naLego, mundina baaLali
gelluvanta spoorthi daari deepa
ninage aa anubhava]
ninage aa anubhava
--------------

time that moves on and on, and teaches lessons beyond
you don't forget those, fill it in your mind
for today or tomorrow, later on in your life
let the winning spirit be the guiding light
for your experience
---------------

‘Insanely Great’!!

Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.

Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted

Mr. Isaacson takes his readers back to the time when laptops, desktops and windows were metaphors, not everyday realities. His book ticks off how each of the Apple innovations that we now take for granted first occurred to Mr. Jobs or his creative team. “Steve Jobs” means to be the authoritative book about those achievements, and it also follows Mr. Jobs into the wilderness (and to NeXT and Pixar) after his first stint at Apple, which ended in 1985.

In that respect, Jobs the man is consistent throughout, expressing little regret or dissatisfaction with himself, except for his repeated wish that he had spent more time with his children, who, he says, were his main motivation for cooperating with and encouraging that a biography be written at all. In a world where people and media will pay actual money for one glimpse of a dying and frail CEO, Steve Jobs will not be the final book on the man, but it will be the only one told largely in his words, and the only one in which he had the final say on its cover.

Eleven Minutes: A book review

An international bestseller by the author of The Alchemist tells the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heartbroken. At a tender age, she becomes convinced that she will never find true love, instead believing that "Love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer ..." A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, where she dreams of finding fame and fortune. Instead, she ends up working as a prostitute.

In Geneva, Maria drifts further and further away from love as she develops a fascination with sex. Eventually, Maria's despairing view of love is put to the test when she meets a handsome young painter. In this odyssey of self-discovery, Maria has to choose between pursuing a path of darkness, sexual pleasure for its own sake, or risking everything to find her own "inner light" and the possibility of sacred sex, sex in the context of love.

In this gripping and daring novel, Paulo Coelho sensitively explores the sacred nature of sex and love and invites us to confront our own prejudices and demons and embrace our own "inner light."

Coelho elevates his readers to a passionate realm of love, sex and divinity. Through the interaction between Ralf and Maria, the readers are made part of the furious, furtive passion of these young lovers. We are taken on a spiritual journey on the route of love and through the realization of our central characters; Coelho elaborates his ideas of sacred love. He challenges us to question everything that we know about love and life and makes us see something from an alternate perspective.

He adopts an almost fable like approach to tell a story about love and passion. He uses deft brushstrokes like an artist and colors every tiny speck of space on this canvas with myriad hues from his imagination. This is what makes his style of writing so unique and the taste or the essence of his books linger in the reader’s minds. He catapults you to the height of your own imagination and where you will go from there is left to you.

Among the many ideas that I gained from this book, the most poignant of them all was the realization that one must lose oneself completely in order to be found.

So, on this note, I ask myself: do you prefer a life mapped with reason to guide each and every step of your journey or would you rather take a leap of faith into the unknown with nothing but a dash of hope to take you there?

Without so much as blinking

(From Paulo Coelho)

During the civil war in Korea, a certain general and his troops were advancing implacably, taking province after province, destroying everything in their path. The people in one city, hearing that the general was approaching and knowing his cruel reputation, fled to a nearby mountain.


The troops found the houses empty. After much searching, though, they found one Zen monk who had stayed behind. The general ordered that he be brought before him, but the monk refused to go.

Furious, the general went to him instead.

‘You obviously don’t know who I am!’ he bawled. ‘I am capable of stabbing you in the chest with my sword without so much as blinking.’

The Zen master turned and replied calmly:

‘You obviously don’t know who I am either. I am capable of letting myself be stabbed in the chest by a sword without so much as blinking.’

On hearing this, the general bowed low and left.

The concept of work and being proactive

There were two friends who worked for a marketing company. Both of them were hard working smart young guys. Their boss had lot of confidence on them and hence enjoyed working with both of them.

Like in any corporate company, both of them got to work with multiple positions and both of them got opportunities to work with new initiatives.

While all this is happening, John got promotion among both of them. So Pran decided to reach out to boss and asked him directly that both of us were working equally hard and why only John got promotion? Pran simply believes that John is among many ordinary team members.

Rather than answering his question directly, boss told him ‘go to the other side of the market and check if Mango fruit has come to market’.

Pran rushed to the market and came back with an answer yes. Boss then asked about the price, Pran went again to check the price. After return boss asked about what is the quantity of the supply, for which Pran has to return back to market. After 5-6 trips boss got all the answers he was looking for.

Now boss called John and asked him the same question.

John went to the market and came back with the analysis. ‘There are 4 tons of supply of mangoes in the market, there are three vendors selling them. There seems to be a tough competition between them. One of them is selling at competitive price but the quality is not so good. If you want to buy the fruits then we need to buy it from one particular vendor because though the price is high the quality of fruits is good. And since the market is expecting more fruits from other vendors the price is expected to fall down further”.

Pran got his answer.

This is what being proactive means!

The game of chess

Recently I downloaded an app on my phone and started playing it and started drawing parallel to business. I thought there are many lessons we can learn from game of chess.


When building strategy for an organization at any level, a business, and its competition, can be viewed from an outside perspective like a game of chess. Business strategy flows much like strategy in a game of chess, where each piece has its purpose, distinct movement, and anyone can play.

What if a CEO were playing chess and the pieces started to move themselves uncontrollably? What if the competition could start adding new pieces that did not exist on the other side of the board? This is what happens in business, and this is how many organizations operate. In addition, this is how several businesses miss the path to adaptation, and take the fast track to extinction.

It also teaches how to take a step backwards, analyse the risks and prepare the mitigation plan. This is precisely how you start thinking when your opponent makes her/his move. You start thinking about potential threats and you make a move to counter that risk. This is exactly how business needs to run, constantly keep inventing the model.

There are some parallels between chess and business and following are few of them which I can think of,

1) Business warfare. Definitely true. Many companies act as predators and use many of the same tactics and strategies seen in chess. Killing the competition is always a favourite statement. In bid management we tend to build differentiators such that our business looks appealing.

2) Planning. With the acceleration of the business cycle and the abundance of information managers’ face, predicting future trends is becoming much harder to do. It may be more practical to think only one move ahead. This appears more accurate than thinking 20 moves in the wrong direction.
3) Time. In a war game like chess, each side is given resources, both material (army) and immaterial (time) in which to accomplish a strategic end. Of course, in business the playing field is not level and companies may enter a market with all types of advantages and disadvantages. However, managing time may be one of the most important factors in business success. Timing of market entry or withdrawal; timing of international expansion, timing of supply chain; timing of cash flows. In business, time is everything
4) Initiative. There is a classic connection since time is a major factor. However, what also matters is what you do with that time. A company cannot sit on its advantage as if time is unlimited. In chess, some schools of thought state that initiative may be more important than material. This means that the company on the initiative has the advantage of determining the direction of the market. There have been many cases where industry leaders have lost the edge because they failed to maintain the initiative. Some reacted too late to market changes and thus lost any advantage that they may have had. A few examples are: Ford, IBM, Microsoft, Kodak and of late, Yahoo!

Chandigarh Marathon-2013

Two weekends back, I ran my first ever 21 kms Chandigarh marathon. Though I took three hours and five minutes to complete it; perhaps no way near the international standards; but the whole experience and the feeling and most importantly the lessons learnt are most valuable for me.


Every marathoner has their first marathon story. If they've run a lot, they might forget the details of other races, but the first marathon lives in their mind - each and every kilometer. And most find that marathoning is like eating a bag of potato chips - it's nearly impossible to stop after just one.

Around same time last year, while traveling to Oslo, I watched a documentary on Boston marathon, where there was a story on how participants prepared, practiced and executed. The effort and planning went in to it and most importantly the sheer feeling of completion made me think, why can’t I run one?

It was a great motivating and I kept on practicing long walks and some efforts of building stamina through biking and hiking etc. I will be honest; all these efforts were not keeping the marathon in mind, but wanted to stretch myself.

I never thought, I will finish 21 kilometers. I had my self doubt on my stamina.

The first 7 kms very simple, it felt like I am doing my normal walk. I kept mixing walking and jogging; to conserve my energy and more ever I don’t think I am good in running. The environment and encouragement from my daughter kept me on second stretch. While I completed 14 kms, it was pretty evident that I will complete the last stretch as well. The sugar cubes or may be the energy building music or the just enthusiasm of finishing the race kept me going. By this time all the professional runners completed their run.

The last 3-4 kms were very tough; with pain in my ankle and knee. It was fantastic feeling to complete the race, it was a great test of my stamina and I enjoyed every step of that distance.

In reflection:

• I felt, this is more of psychological than physical: After a while, I felt the body strain gets out, it’s more psychological, what all it needs thereafter is mental toughness. It’s a great learning for me, for all these years I thought it needs physical strength.

• What it needs is to start, it ends by itself. The very process of running marathon takes care of finishing it. I really mean it. The energy you get in after initial 10 kms takes care of pushing you through the rest of the race, unless you want to quit.

• The feeling of completion: this is fantastic feeling. You feel light, you feel like full o energy and off course lots of pain.

I know I am crazy; but I am looking forward for my next race! Preparing to build my stamina and determined to complete the distance in less time.

‘This nation wants to know’

It may sound flippant but if I was to name the Indian of the Year for 2012, my choice would be Arnab Goswami of Times Now. The reason has nothing to do with the fact that I am a regular follower of his prime-time debates.


Nor is it connected with his hectoring style which I find enthralling at times and quite energetic all the times. Arnab's foremost contribution to the public is his unending search for what "the nation" wants to know.

In projecting the "nation" as the theme Arnab has succeeded in doing something quite remarkable: he has successfully made "nationalism" the core attribute for assessing public life. In positing the "nation" as the ultimate arbiter of the larger "national good" and doing so with passion, verve and eloquence, Arnab managed to create a constituency of people who refused to be patronized by the superior assumptions of a handful of the "enlightened".

On issues relating to Pakistan, he refused to be cowed down by the sentimentalism of the Aman ki asha pseuds and on China he ruthlessly questioned the "nuanced" sophistry of the professional ‘knowledgeable’ in South Block. On corruption, he was single-minded in his determination to cut through this core issue. And on mundane political fights, he was both skeptical and irreverent, asking right set of questions all the times.

There was an additional feature to Arnab's discourses each week night that I find both amusing and encouraging: his polite insolence and his high energy. You feel he is talking for you and your nation. His questions look very honest.

Arnab, is "reasonable" only off camera. On air he becomes a voice of indignation, anger and even insolence. He wants to kick the errant netas. Since we can't, we are happy for Arnab to do it for us.

New Business Model: Story of Airtel

Airtel altered the economics of industries not by developing state-of-the-art technologies or great product but by creating new business models. Airtel set inexpensive price-performance points and changed the way consumers could access offerings. It is a clear example of innovation that changed the business dynamics. Innovation need not to be a great product all the time!


When Airtel got license to operate the mobile telecommunication in Delhi circle to begin with; the company has to pay huge amount as license fee and in addition to that the investment was made in towers, telecom networks and support systems such as billing systems and customer case support centers. And obviously the subscribers had to pay for all this cost and soon competition started catching up; thus Airtel has to cut operating expenses in order to grow.

Airtel at this point of time started thinking of itself as a factory that produced wireless minutes.

Firstly management starting focusing on three elements; gross revenue and profits; the ratio of operating expenses to gross revenues and ratio of revenue to capital expenditure. This was drastically different from what the telecom industry is measuring across the world; ‘Average Revenue Per User’. The moment company started thinking on gross revenue they stopped thinking about how many new subscribers they have enrolled, but started thinking on how to expand more in to other areas. This number of new customers is very confusing in India as Indian consumers are known to purchase the SIM but just use it for just incoming calls, or keep it as making calls to with-in the network. They don’t use that SIM for multiple purposes like data, games, voice or money.

Bharati Airtel also had to find a way to grow without worrying about financial resources. One way to do that is to have a sense of expenditure on its non-core operations. Only way to do that was to outsource all non-core operations. Airtel outsourced all their IT support to IBM in 2004, promising to pay the provider a percentage of monthly revenue and guaranteeing a minimum monthly payment. By typing IBM revenues to its own growth, Indian company got supplier’s skin in the game.

Similarly Airtel chose to pay its telecom network equipment vendors, Ericson and Nokia; as pay-per-use model. Thus, the company decided when there will be additional capacity required while suppliers ‘installed, operated and maintained’ the network equipments. It measured network quality in terms of calls dropped, blocked calls and voice quality. It thus converted fixed costs and capital expenditures into variable operating expenses, greatly reducing its dependency on expenses.

Although the company recognized that distribution would be critical for future growth, it didn’t have time to create their own channels. It decided to piggyback on distributors for consumer product companies like Godrej and Uniliver. This is when we started seeing the Airtel services being distributed by Kirana shops. To enter the rural market, Airtel started working with fertilizer manufacturer like IFFCO.

Bharati Airtel even collaborated with competition in order to save capital. As it expanded in to Rural India, putting up passive infrastructure such as towers, air-conditioning, and generators became a large expense. In 2007 Airtel, Vodofone and Idea had struck a deal to set up Indus tower, in which Bharati Airtel and Vodofone own each 42% of equity and Idea owns remaining 16%. This structure allows the three companies to share the cost of setting up passive infrastructure and reduces the investments.

This is a very unique business model which all telecom companies of the world are trying to simulate. Where Airtel reduces the cost per call to around 50 paise, which is lowest in the world!

We need to take a stand

Pakistani army’s atrocity across LoC yet again demonstrates the disadvantages India has imposed on itself.


A soldier falling to enemy bullets is part of the tragic reality of conflict. Mutilating a soldier’s body, beheading it, is unacceptable, because at that point it crosses over in to the realm of barbaric terrorism. Even our normally inarticulate defense minister acknowledged it as ‘the turning point’ in the latest corss-LoC conflict between India and Pakistan.

When Pakistani soldier crossed over in dense fog to attack Indian soldiers, it also exposed the fragility of the Indian government’s insistence on peace at all the costs with Pakistan.

As a normal citizen of India, I failed to understand why we can’t take a firm stand and decide on what kind of relationship we need with our neighbor?

Just imagine, if this has happened to countries like US or Israel, they would have counter-attacked and would have made a big international issue. We have examples in Afghanistan, Iraq etc. These countries don’t hesitate to attack even the foreign land in order to take revenge.

I failed to understand why only India needs peace with Pakistan? Why don’t they also reciprocate? And why we need to beg for peace? Why can’t we send a strong message across the border stating we don’t accept this kind of duel-stand, where on one hand you talk about peace and on the other hand you try to unsettle the entire process? What is the use of bus journeys, train journeys, cricket series, and music and trade exchange?

Fundamentally we need to honor our countries pride before anything else.

Look what has happened in case of Mumbai terrorism case? We made big statements in media, in spite of having the proof we choose to sit and talk about peace. This gives a message that whatever we do on India soil there will be a noise to begin with later on everything gets settled. Again imagine how USA would have reacted in such cases. Each time we tend to think what would be Pakistan’s reaction if we take some action.

India, it seems, doesn’t have a clear Pakistan policy; the strategic way with which we can stand up and say, this is enough guys and anything more than this will cost you much. Get rid of this peace and double standard policies. Country’s honor comes first.

Are we afraid of trade? Go and develop new markets. Are we afraid of attacks? With such a strong military we can take the enemy on their land.

Go and take a stand and make every citizen a proud citizen.

Jai Hind!

Change Yourself

Once upon a time, there was a king who ruled a prosperous country. One day, he went for a trip to some distant areas of his country.


When he was back to his palace, he complained that his feet were very painful, because it was the first time that he went for such a long trip, and the road that he went for through was very rough and stony. He then ordered his people to cover every road of the entire country with leather.

Definitely, this would need thousands of animal’s skin, and would cost a huge amount of money.

Then one of his wise servant dared himself to tell the king, ‘’ Why do you have to spend that unnecessary amount of money? Why don’t you just cut a little piece of leather to cover your feet?’’

The king was surprised, but he later agreed to his suggestion, to make a’ shoe ’’ for himself

There is actually a valuable lesson of life in the story: ‘To make this word a happy place to live, you better change yourself –your heart; and not the word.’’

Change yourself first

(PS: This blog was typed by Arpita)

New Year Resolutions

I am making these resolutions because its trend to make one, it’s because I fulfilled all of my last year’s resolutions so I am motivated to make a new one :)
• Stay fit and lean

• Read more, explore more and reciprocate more with life

• Develop the ability to see a bigger picture and long term view of business

• Play a mentor role to my daughter