‘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

Happy New Year!

Time flies so fast; it’s yet another year end and it gives lovely feeling if I reflect on how this year has been.


At national level; it’s incredible as how the entire nation has become more aware on the social issues like black-money, corruption and safety of individuals. It gives a clear message that the limit of tolerance has reached and this, in my opinion, is truly an amazing change in the social fabric of India. The evolution of social media as an instrument in bringing this change is worth noticing. The nationwide response to such issues makes me feel that India is changing and youth are becoming more decisive and expressive, which is a very good sign from political standpoint.

Another great thing is India’s performance in Olympics, which was best so far. With no visible support to sports and when the facilities are of not world class, the achievement done in the sports arena makes one feel proud. I am hopeful that this gives a lot of hope to the thousands of dreams which are being nourished some part of the country.

Politically this year saw many new and young leaders coming up in the country. Not many changes in the state heads, but good governance made the headlines. Though there were few low points in terms of series of ill-timed and ill-intentioned statements and barbaric acts of few individual.

Internationally we saw Obama re-electing as president of USA amidst the gloomy economy and uncertain future. The healthcare reforms of the western world are the new thing which is being seen by the entire world.

Rivalry on the technology ground has been elevated with Samsung and Apple fighting it out on smart phone and tablet market. Google and Microsoft saw different innovative products and Facebook being questioned on its business model.

News of Europe slipping in to recession (Or recession like) situation made most of the headlines this year. Though Nordic market evolving much better. Asia did a decent job with China leading in economic front. India saw new wave of reforms through series of new pushes from government though India Inc felt it’s not good enough.

IT and Automobile were growing from Indian economy perspective, with companies in these segments unleashing much bigger dreams of becoming more global. Real-estate was much stable (Low?).

Personally specking had much better year, with great growth in business, new paths of journey, much more agile and more sense of accomplishment. Got inspired by few individuals, felt great by reading few books, got enriched by just exploring or interacting with life. Took some steps which I never thought I would, explored many things which so far seemed as strange to me; finally no regrets. I am thankful to god for all has been provided to me in 2012.

A happy and prosperous new year 2013 to you and your families; may all your dreams come true.

One day cricket will not be same without him

After 22 years of glories years at field, Sachin has declared his retirement from one day cricket. His contribution to Indian cricket has been remarkable; in terms of making tons of runs, pulling out victories, making India look better on the field and more importantly carrying hopes of one billion+ people, year after year; whenever he went to bat.


A fitting career glorified with World Cup win and holding record for almost all aspects of the game; talks about Sachin and his contribution. He has all the qualities to be able to successful in the sports career; just to name few;

Desire to Dominate: He has such a strong mind that no matter what reputation the bowler might have; he wants to dominate. This was evident in many ways, the manner in which he went after bowlers and won matches for India. He raised his bar so high that if he gets out not scoring hundred; we started feeling he didn’t play at all. This desire along with his cricketing brain has put him on one of the great cricketers of the world. He could sense the situation of the game and adjust to that.

Ability to improvise: He has greatest ability to improve his skills, game after game, for many years. It is very common practice to see him practice for long times at nets and he would study the video tapes of the matches as how he got out and improve on that. This ability to learn made him so relevant even today as other talents have gone dusting. His discipline has been one of his trademarks; where he would come prepared with which bowler to attack, where to hit the bowl and what should be the chasing strategy. He adjusted to the playing conditions really well and changed his gear from fast scoring to anchor or visa-versa. He is said to be one of the players who would study the pitch early morning of the match day and do his own analysis of his opponents on this pitch conditions. How about his physical fitness level even after 22 years of international career?

Humility: The greatest asset we all can learn from him is his humility, staying simple and grounded. We have seen many players who could not able to manage the success. His near emotionless approach when he bats tell about his stability of mind. We can see a boy within him when he talks. Have you ever seen his responding to any media criticism?

There are many stories about his greatness and how he conducted his game all these years. Statistics say it all. Can we forget his desert storm of Sharja? Can we forget a little boy who picked up the ball from his caption and bowled that final over in Hero Cup? Can we forget his match saving innings?

Thanks Sachin, for carrying our hopes all these years, for making us to watch cricket, for making us feel if you are batting means India is in game still, for fulfilling our expectation from you, for being an Indian such that we can proudly say Sachin is from India.

Cricket will not be same without you; we will miss you.

What they don’t teach you at school

It’s rather obvious that the most important lessons of life cannot be learnt within the classrooms. It’s obvious that the life teaches you more than what you learnt during your school days. But the question I am asking is what our best of the schools doesn’t teach us?


I started thinking about these recently and I wish someone would have told me about these points back then!

Grades are not everything: Grades do not really matter, if it is 70.2% or 79.9% there is not much of difference. I was told, you need to get good grades to get a better company in placement; true. But most successful people of the class are not really the nerds. I wish; I could have understood this fact back then and taken my student life a bit relaxed, focused on complete personality building rather than just being tensed.

Ability to build Relationship: Corporate life or in general just the life is all about building or managing the relationships. With the new global village concept, one probably needs to build a global network and have a global perspective.

Power of Perspective: I think one should get some insights on how the world can be seen with different perspectives and why it’s important to have clear thought process about any matter of life. All successful people have a clear perspective of what is right and wrong in life. It’s also important to respect other perspective and how to balance. This is a great quality in corporate life.

Life is journey: Education is all about having a goal and figuring out how to get there, be its internal exam, or an entrance exam; we have cut-off and we want better numbers. But, today I realize life is a journey and is not a destination itself. The more we reciprocate with life, we learn from it.

Follow your heart: Heart is at your left but it’s always right. I wish I was told back than to follow your heart and do something which you truly, really love doing. I wish I was told to find something which interests me and start following that dream. Life is not all about the books, magazines, research papers or internal exams!

Money: One major goal of life while we were in college is to make money and more money. But, life’s satisfaction is somewhere else. Some colleagues, some different perspectives of people made me to realize, money will just follow if someone is capable enough. Money is a by-product but back then money was the only goal!

Global Perspective: How important to have this global perspective? About how people have evolved, what global history might teach us? What students in another country are doing research on? Or just, having a wide perspective about life?

To sum it up, I was just fighting for the placement process to get a ‘dream job’. But it looks like a mirage now. I might have done well in exam by memorizing few things or might not have understood anything in one of the subject; finally I got degree. What stayed with me is the confidence that I can solve any problem that comes my way.

And that is the ultimate gift of any education.

Need for Change

Everyone in corporate world has to go through constant changes, all the times. It could be change in profile, change in team members and sometimes change in complete set of environment (If you are changing the job)


The change I am talking about is the one which we need to go through all the life, irrespective of companies we work for, boss we report to, or colleagues we are surrounded with.

For example, let me assume that I am working as a team lead at some point of my career. Where I will be much involved in the details and completely hands on. My small module forms my world to me and I will probably want to make all the decisions related to this module.

Let us assume, I got promoted to project manager, where 5-6 team leads report to me. Now, I need to unlearn the way I was dealing with the work, and start thinking about the whole project. I need to understand that I can no more be completely hands-on to the work I am responsible for and I need to get the work done from others.

Cut few more years, I am a business leader now. This is a different ball game now. I need to have vision, and a plan to build a business. I need to have an operational blueprint and means of measuring the success of a project. I need to be an influential leader who can abstract the work from my team members, while connecting with my customers to provide value to them.

If I am a CEO of any company, I need to look my profile in to a completely different way.

I need to move from tactician to strategist: shift fluidly between the details and the larger picture, perceive important patterns in complex environments and anticipate and influence the reactions of key external players.

I need to move from being specialist to generalist: understand the business models, tools and terms used in key business functions and develop templates for evaluating the leaders of those functions.

I need to move from being supporting cast member to lead role: where I exhibit the right behavior as a role model for the organization and learn to communicate with and inspire large groups of people both directly and increasingly indirectly.

Imagine, if I fail to change my mindset as I move up in the organization? Imagine being involved in all the details like project manager when I am a CEO? It will create issues among the team members as they can’t understand the role I am playing and more importantly I need to spend time to strategize the things.

I have seen some examples where compromising this clarity led to complete breaking down of the business operation.

What The CEO Really Wants From You: Book Review

This book is a classic for young managers who need guidance and directions on how to charter a successful career


The author uses the frame work of “Four A’s” to describe the competency set and behaviors required of a successful manager. These A’s are Accomplishment, Affability, Advocacy and Authenticity. Briefly here is what he has to say of the four A’s.

Accomplishment: While this seems simple enough most managers make the mistake of thinking that all the doing is at the executive levels and their role is to be the thinkers. Coordinating and enabling execution is something that they miss out on. Also getting results needs influencing other interdependent departments which requires skills that a manager may not adequately possess.

Affability: Managers need to convince, cajole, coerce and even crucify people in the course of striving for results. It is a skill that needs to be learned and practiced to perfection. The affable manager knows how to disagree without being disagreeable; how to separate rivals views from his feelings or opinion about the rival and how to listen carefully with an open mind and yet be focused and single minded.

Advocacy: In the words of the author, “In the early stages of one’s career, you are the recipient of instructions and the effects of power. You accept them by adapting. You realize that the boss expects you to exercise your leadership on the people who report to you and make sure that things get done. In the middle management phase, you find the need to influence people without their directly reporting to you. In the senior and leadership roles, you may exercise no control over people you need to influence. This is the manner in which your skills of advocacy develop.

Authenticity: Once again in the words of the author “It is the perception of who you are and what you stand for that produces followership. Followership is used here not in a hierarchical sense but in an egalitarian sense. It is the voluntary desire or inclination among followers to follow a person, emotionally and physically.”

A must read

Oh My God!

Why I like this movie?


First, OMG makes its point without fuss and without going over the top. Provoking as the subject is, the film was clearly not intentioned to insult faith. It is a script idea that could have easily gone wrong. Films adapted from plays often tend to get too melodramatic. OMG avoids that trap.

Secondly, the film works for its lead pair. Akshay and Paresh share crackling chemistry as God and the man who will finally learn to accept the concept of God as a positive presence in life. Together, the two actors lend the film its biggest USP.

More importantly, this strengthens my belief in what I mean as ‘God’. Through a comedy path, but the essence of this movie or the message is what I have been following. Though people call that as rebel, but this is what I think should be the way of life.

Interestingly this is what exactly all our philosophies preach, if we notice India is only country where we have a belief of seeing god in everything. As Krishna details out in Gita, there is god in everything, in mountains, rivers, sages, letters, flowers, in everything. But sadly as the time passed this message was misinterpreted as we started fearing god rather than worshiping.

I firmly believe, if my god gets angry only because I didn’t salute him or worship him or didn’t offer a prayer, then that is not a god. Or if my god gets so pleased by my offering that he/she will give me everything in life, than that is not the god. Though different characters this movie gives that message.

It’s completely true that the god has become a means to business for many people, who don’t even understand the meaning of god or his/her message. They all point out to the rituals one must do in order to please god. On the contrary all the rituals have great significance towards our psychology.

Infact Indian philosophy is nothing but a psychology!!

One simple example, many suggest doing gayatri prayer in the morning will enhance the meaning of life and it gives richness. Let’s analyze this, if we look at the meaning of Gayatri prayer, it says ‘let me pray gods to increase the peace of the universe through everyone’s health and prosperity’. What a noble thought? We will feel relaxed if we have this universe belief and thus we get our meaning of life.

Similarly, rituals suggested coming around banyan tree will solve the problems if you are expecting a child and having difficulty. Science today proves that the oxygen output of banyan tree is more than that of normal trees and that actually helps to conceive. But, over the centuries we forgot the meaning of it and started worshiping the tree without understanding the reason why we are doing it, thereby giving an opportunity to others to loot us.

This movie establishes my belief and that’s why I liked it.

May god bless all of us!

What is leadership?

Leadership has nothing to do with the title on your business card or the size of your office. Leadership is not about how much money you make or the clothes you wear. Leadership is a philosophy. It's an attitude. It's a state of mind. And it's available to each one of us.

The most successful human beings are wildly focused. They have a very clear picture of what it is they want to create by the time they reach the end of their lives and then they have the discipline (and courage) to stick to their mission – saying “no” to everything that is not mission critical.

I experienced the leadership recently.

I was supposed to take a Spicejet flight to Chandigarh while I was returning from Norway. I booked this ticket as I thought I want to reach destination early.

When I landed at Delhi airport from Oslo, for my surprise I found out that they have preponed the flight by one hour and 10 minutes and they didn’t even care to inform me. I get an answer that they expect their guests to be reporting three hours in advance.

Ticket says departure at 8.20 AM and flight took off 7.10 AM

What happened next is what is interesting; there were many guests like me and we all got an answer that they can’t do anything as its company policy and the schedule got changed due to winter time, which apparently was not known to them when I booked the ticket last week. I would have expected to handle situation more carefully and with empathy.

If that manager shown little interest and some leadership all guests would have been happy. He would have worked in resolving the problem and would have worked with us to give alternate solutions. He didn’t just show that leadership neither assumed the responsibility.

He didn’t focus on what was our problem and if he wanted he could have solved that problem. But caring for guests, it seems, is not in the company culture.

They might have just lost a future customer!

Margin game

Writing this blog from Istanbul Ataturk International airport. (Having my favorite Starbucks coffee while I write this). It’s a different experience to visit a different country, which has loads of history. I was first amazed by the cultural mix of this city.


Back to business, TCS has toppled Relience Industries as number one in terms of market capitalization. Given the global economic situation, the kind of growth TCS has reported is tremendously impressive. Not long ago, many investors believed, even within Information Technology sector, that rival Infosys has bright future. Though TCS was always ahead in terms of revenue, Infosys got all the attention. Over the years, not only it has reversed but TCS is the biggest company in India in terms of market capitalization

While the two successive downturns of 2008 and 2011 in the US and Europe- from which Indian IT companies earn the bulk of their revenues- ravaged rivals like Infosys and Wipro, TCS has held its grounds. The TCS scrip, at 526.80 RS on Jan 1 2008 (Adjusted to bonus issue in June 2009) gained 147% since then to 1305 RS on October 18, 2012.

Since 2009, TCS has more than doubled the revenue gap over Infosys. Infosys is always known for its better margins but in recent years TCS has bridged the gap as well.

Imagine improving the operational efficiency while managing close to $ 11 Billion revenue.

What TCS have done correctly?

• It focused on infrastructure management much earlier than its peers and that is the fastest growing service line in the Industry. This clubbed with business transformation deals pushed TCS ahead of curve. Customers just seem to love the pro-activeness TCS brings in to its engagements.

• It has been able to maintain leaner cost structure than Infosys/Wipro. That has helped it maintain profitability despite getting into low billing contracts in emerging markets or running infrastructure systems. This is what its rivals call ‘Under Cut’. But amazing part is, even if playing cost game the profitable numbers look good because the attention to cost angle.

• It has been aggressive in investing in new growth geographies such as Latin America and parts of Asia Pacific and Europe. Clearly understanding the difference between cost and investment.

Another angle to this whole story is the management and the leadership. It’s extremely important to have a clear strategy and work towards that with great amount of energy and passion. TCS seems to have done exactly that while Wipro and Infosys struggling to align their management structure. TCS restructured to position itself to serve customers better, constantly focusing on customer needs and reinventing itself to make business simple for customers; doing all these while focusing on delivering the quality services and adding value.

This strategy seems to be working for now.

Pain-Gain of reorganization

The company where I used to work earlier, used to get reorganized on regular basis; then it didn’t hit me much because reorganizations doesn’t really change how a junior management guy works.


But, I am experiencing yet another reorganization now and I was thinking about the difficulty of this whole process. Every reorganization seems to be aimed at ‘better alignment with customer needs’ and ‘to become more nimble and responsive to customer needs’.

However, imagine a major structural change at the top will have eventual impact at the operational level. New guy, different strategy, middle management have to align themselves to this need and it all takes little bit of time.

And top leadership do matter, I have been advocating this aspect since for a while now. Change in CEO/top management can change fortunes for company (Look at Geometric, it seems to have completely transformed with new leadership)

Question really is how much customers will be impacted by all this? Any changes done without impacting the operation and for better focus towards customers will be appreciated largely. However, what if customers have to adjust to new way of working regularly?

Answer is not simple.

But, reorganization done at correct way, brings lot of energy, brings competition & focus. This also allows executives to re-align, refocus and re-prioritize themselves.

A Journey called life

We have celebrated our company’s 9th anniversary, on 6th October.


We have gone through many milestones, metamorphosed ourselves, made mistakes; learnt from them; started many initiatives, as management team made some decisions; most importantly we grew; in business, in size and in experience.

Personally speaking this also marks my three years in SPAN (Earlier IONNOR); incidentally I gave interview on this very day. It has been a satisfying, rich experience so far. Started with a Norwegian company, (I had to admit, I didn’t know about Norway before this) started working on IT Operation kind of business (I again need to admit, I didn’t know about IT Operation work, never heard about ITIL and never knew there is some business to do with servers/networks/storage; looks quite funny now); met some wonderful people who only enriched my experience.

Most importantly it gave me an opportunity to build a business from scratch. It was wonderful experience, setting up processes, business models, offerings, presetting to prospects (Without getting disappointed), sales processes and importantly start working towards winning business, making partnerships and creating customer base and don’t get defocused when criticisms were made. It all seems now as if it just happened during the course.

I need to admit, the team made all this possible and I am just a medium to do my part of the job. However, what is important is the experience I personally gained during this journey; which can’t be matched.

These last three years also marks my new stage of life, more exploring, more passionate, and more intense. Started looking life with different perspective, built passion on many new things and started dreaming again. In this journey called life, you meet some people whom you think are just made to share your dream, vision with. It’s all about finding those wow moments in life and I think I found my wow in last three years.

Incidentally, until now I am not able to come to a conclusion as how did I make this decision to come all the way to Chandigarh? What is that connecting the dot moment?

Our life has so many dots, which we never understand when we go through that phase. But, if we think back and try to connect the dots, the meaning comes out, the clear path comes out, and then we understand why those dots came in our life at first place. Simply put we will understand all these dots contributed to what we are today.

I am sure the future looks even brighter, even more interesting and canvas is even bigger now. Sky, it seems, is only the limit.

But, I felt of stopping for a moment, look back at life; smile and then move forward, in this beautiful journey called life!

CEO and communication

Given the enormous range of functions that CEOs of large organizations have to fulfill through the exercise of indirect and direct influence, CEOs have to decide how to best allocate their personal time and presence. At first blush, this seems straightforward. After all, the CEO is in charge and can do whatever he or she wants. In practice, however, everyone wants the CEO's time and attention, whether it is people inside the organization or outside. Most recognize that the CEO can't possibly meet all these demands for his or her presence.


Thus, where and how the CEO chooses to be present or get personally involved is a very important signal that accents his or her priorities and interests. CEOs need to be conscious, mindful and strategic about how they use their presence. Presence is not just about how the CEO allocates time across various activities and constituencies. It is the nature and quality of involvement the CEO brings to each occasion. CEOs must use their presence to decide, and even more importantly, to amplify the indirect levers they want to shape — by communicating, clarifying , educating and reinforcing how people inside and outside relate to the organization.

Communication

To accomplish their agenda, CEOs have to communicate it relentlessly. The CEO's agenda and related message (whether it be about the goals, the strategy, the execution priorities or the organization’s values) need to be communicated and understood as broadly as possible inside and, as appropriate, outside the organization. An effective CEO uses his or her presence ubiquitously to actively communicate and shape how all constituencies think about the organization. Communication helps the CEO frame issues for others, define what's important and relevant, and more generally direct the attention of the organization.

Communication also has the power to shape the language or discursive practices in the firm. There is always a possibility the CEO's message may be not be transmitted with high fidelity — it may be distorted, amplified, revised or modified. The same message may also be heard differently depending on the perspective and biases of the listener.

Information Gathering

The other side of communication is listening and gathering information. Given the paucity of reliable information available to them and the necessity of having good information to make sound judgments , CEOs make the gathering of information, like communication, a constant personal task. They are constantly asking questions that help them get a better sense of how their business is doing. Information gathered through field visits, open forums with employees, customer visits, industry groups, outside consultants and board members — for that matter, any credible source — is prized and valued.

Bottom line is, it would be simple task to have everyone in fold when you are small; however as the size grows; one need to adopt to different gear and start adopting new ways.

Who said its easy to be a CEO?

Age No Bar!!

I was reading Ashok Sotta’s interview about being serial entrepreneur; its amazing to see the energy and dedication at that age.

He has entered the market to start it all over again!!


This begs a question; what is the correct age to be an entrepreneur?

I am thinking on this…

Change in image: Infosys buys Lodestone

Infosys has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Zurich-based SAP implementation and management consultancy Lodestone, for about $350 million.


Lodestone, with 850 employees including 750 consultants comes with about 200 clients across manufacturing, automotive and Life Sciences verticals. Post acquisition, Infosys will have about a billion dollars coming from its SAP practice.

While it's still too early to say how the buy will play out, there are some immediately visible benefits.

1) Clients: Lodestone will bring in its more than 200 clients across sectors, including manufacturing, automotive, life sciences, chemicals, and consumer goods. Its clients like BMW, Allianz, Kimberly-Clark, Sandoz SHAPE, Warner Chilcott, Munich Re, Roche will now be with Infosys, which has a client base of 700 firms. The acquisition is also expected to boost Infosys' SAP client base.

2) Revenues: In 2011, Lodestone reported revenues of 207 million Swiss Francs (Rs 1,200 crore), up from 181 million Swiss Francs in 2010. This will increase Infosys' annual revenue and help it maintain its lead over other rivals like Cognizant and Wipro. Post-acquisition, the consulting and package implementation revenues of Infosys are expected to be more than $1 billion.

3) Geography: The deal will bolster Infosys' presence in Europe, Middle East and Africa. The acquisition will also enhance the presence of Infosys in new markets like Latin America and Asia Pacific.

4) Employees: Zurich-based Lodestone has about 850 employees, including 750 SAP consultants. The consultants will help Bangalore-based Infosys to ramp up expertise in SAP-based solutions.

5) Perception: The deal will go a long way in helping Infosys shake off its image as a conservative company hesitant to make bold acquisitions.

It looks like a great-fit acquisition; however the time will tell how it will help and how far Infosys can leverage this to generate more business.

The Power of Perspective!

Its sad part of the world is that so many people see the worst in others. They see through their own eyes of anger, fear and limitation. We tend to see others through our own perspective and make judgements, rather than understanding the truth.


Only few human beings in this world get up every day in the morning and think how to screw someone else’s life today. Most of the mistakes people make are due to lack of awareness. So, a true leader sees the truth and analyse with other’s perspective.

I was watching an interview of Raj Thackeray in Times Now (This was in Hindi and I would have been more happy if this was in English because of the fact that both host and guest were struggling with Hindi and more ever I had a tough time in following the speed); I realised how important is thinking through other’s perspective.

Through many years I have been questioning the stand of Raj Thackeray when he says he will not allow North Indians (Read UP and Bihar) come and settle in Mumbai/Maharashtra. I always argued that what if, other states where people from Maharashtra have migrated start saying the same thing? I always felt constitution gives us right to migrate to any state and settle. I simply thought he doesn’t support anyone coming to Mumbai.

But now, I got the other perspective. What Raj argues is that he is never opposing the migration to Mumbai; in fact, he says; he never said anything against Karnataka, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh state people who migrate to Mumbai/Maharashtra; which is true. I never heard such opposition to at least Kannada people of Pune/Mumbai; where I have some contacts. They are being treated as part of the main stream and being actively involved in business and politics.

His argument is, the people from certain states migrate and they get involved in criminal activities and that is what he is opposing and he gives statistics to prove that. He proves through crime data that more than 50% crimes are being committed by certain set of people.

No, I am not defending Raj Thackeray or supporting his party or I support his thought process. But point I am making is the different perspective people might bring in to our thought process. In this above example, my thought process changed when I heard Raj’s perspective on the subject.

Point I am making is, how many times in our life we fail to understand other perspective and end up in making a mind-set which is not the truth?

How many times we failed to understand a colleague who is trying to give a true perspective about the business he/she is running and we have tried to pull him down saying he/she is not performing?

How many times we have simply failed to understand the underlying truth because we tend to see the things in our view rather than other perspective?

Forget about, migration, Mumbai, North India migrating and the political mileage someone might be trying to gain. What I am trying bring up is a pure learning of seeing the things from other’s perspective.

Great learning ..

Too big athlete to fail!

The biggest news of last week was Lance Armstrong’s decision not to defend himself against the latest round of allegations from US-Anti Doping Agency.


It was shocker to me and many sports fans, who idolize him. Personally I got interested in cycling after reading his two books, his survival story is motivational factor for so many cancel patients and the way in which he came back to win seven Tour titles is been an amazing story by itself.

As Lance himself says, he is ‘most tested athlete ever’; been tested around 500 times. I am not still sure or ready to believe that Lance has taken any performance enhancement drugs, or maybe I am commenting purely on emotional grounds. However the impact is much wider, stripping of all seven Tour titles, including return of $7 Million prize money, returning of 2000 Olympic bronze medal and a life time ban on participating in cycling related activities.

But Lance said, ‘There is a point in life for everything where you will feel that’s it and I have reached that point here and now I want to let it behind and focus on family and cancer foundation’.

There could be several arguments to this, one argument is; as when the situation is tight and rather than facing the testimonies of eye-witness comprising of several of his team members and fellow-participants; Lance decided to pull out. Hard to believe for me!

Armstrong accepted the sanctions as a way to limit his liabilities as any large corporation would do. Not only his image emerged intact but in pure financial terms he is benefited. A day after his statement, the donation to his foundation has increased many times and the sale of merchandise also took a new height.

All of the cyclist’s major sponsors- Nike, RadioShack, Okkley Unit, Trek Cycles and Anheuser-Busch- said they will honour their existing contracts.

Whatever the impact is, he is been a hero to many, like me; he is the one who motivates thousands of people around and constantly been source of inspirations through his ‘Livestrong’ foundation.

To his iconic status as a survivor, underdog, champion and philanthropist; he can add another distinction. He is an athlete too big to fail.