Today I received a mail forward, which had a speech by Chetan Bhagat at Symbiosis, Pune. He has spoken about how to live life happily. He says that you need to have a spark in your life and explains how can we give our spark the fuel, and save it from storms that may come. One of the best part in the speech was about what is known as "Work Life Balance". He has explained it so beautifully.
"You must have read some quotes - Life is a tough race, it is a marathon or whatever. No, from what I have seen so far, life is one of those races in nursery school, where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same with life, where health and relationships are the marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die."
He says that "There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup." just as their is no point having a great profit if you customers have started leaving you.
We need to have KPIs set for our life not just against financial (or other materialistic) performance, but use a balanced scorecard for life with 4 measure heads:
1. Health
2. Relationships
3. Mental Peace
4. Materialistic Achievements
Another good quote from the speech:
"If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It's OK, bunk a few classes, goof up a few interviews, fall in love. We are people, not programmed devices."
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Jargons
You can't be a MBA without Jargons and Frameworks.
Jargons First
Here is a some of the words:
1. Strategy (comes with a flavor of alignment/business/. Oh, how many times a day I hear that (even say). We keep reading and thinking of strategies by different people and companies. sometimes develop some also (at leaset we call them strategy). You have Marketing Strategy, which is different from Strategic Marketing. Put all your common sense together to run a company for long term and you can speak the wonderful word call Strategy. may it be STP, 4Ps, BCG Matrix, or Poter's Forces. It is common sense at tis best. Only thing is common sense is not common, so sometimes I really think that these Strategists are great people, not because they gave strategic frameworks, but because they could put common sense in such a structure.
2. Innovation.This is the buzzword. Every case will talk about it. I found that every company in this world has become innovative (as they say today you stop innovation, stop growth). Now, you do something different to survive in competition and you are innovative. It can be a product innovation, service innovation or process innovation.
3. Competitive Positioning. You don't hear this much, but still it is a fascinating word and you can use it to build impression on non MBA's and people who have not lived with them.
Just take an example. We were once talking that if we go to a 5 Start Hotel and do not have money, then we will be washing dishes. How to tell someone what we are doing, here it goes:
"We are involved in Quality Control and process innovation. We use a technique called the Clean Plate technique. This believes that to align your processes to your business strategy, you need to implement Quality control at the grass root level. So, actually I am involved in business strategy alignment with internal processes for achieving competitive advantage".
Jargons First
Here is a some of the words:
1. Strategy (comes with a flavor of alignment/business/. Oh, how many times a day I hear that (even say). We keep reading and thinking of strategies by different people and companies. sometimes develop some also (at leaset we call them strategy). You have Marketing Strategy, which is different from Strategic Marketing. Put all your common sense together to run a company for long term and you can speak the wonderful word call Strategy. may it be STP, 4Ps, BCG Matrix, or Poter's Forces. It is common sense at tis best. Only thing is common sense is not common, so sometimes I really think that these Strategists are great people, not because they gave strategic frameworks, but because they could put common sense in such a structure.
2. Innovation.This is the buzzword. Every case will talk about it. I found that every company in this world has become innovative (as they say today you stop innovation, stop growth). Now, you do something different to survive in competition and you are innovative. It can be a product innovation, service innovation or process innovation.
3. Competitive Positioning. You don't hear this much, but still it is a fascinating word and you can use it to build impression on non MBA's and people who have not lived with them.
Just take an example. We were once talking that if we go to a 5 Start Hotel and do not have money, then we will be washing dishes. How to tell someone what we are doing, here it goes:
"We are involved in Quality Control and process innovation. We use a technique called the Clean Plate technique. This believes that to align your processes to your business strategy, you need to implement Quality control at the grass root level. So, actually I am involved in business strategy alignment with internal processes for achieving competitive advantage".
Friday, January 25, 2008
DOCC Reflections
Inclusive growth is one of the most talked about topic today. It is so hot that in our Marketing presentation for the first trim, many of the groups presented their presentations on topics related to rural India like “Rural Telephony”, “Microfinance” and so on. Management thinkers like C.K. Prahlad are writing and talking about “Fortune at bottom of the pyramid” and all major multinationals are trying to get their share in that fortune.
After reading much in the books and newspapers and hearing much in many presentations, I got a wonderful opportunity through DOCC to see these live. I did my project in the village of Tamkor located in Jhunjhnu district of Rajasthan. I could see the telephony wave in India has reached the countryside and IT wave is at doorstep.
So far so good, but a lot of problems still exists. Rural India still does not have access to quality education, which is a major roadblock to its development. Students stop going to school due to unavailability of schools in and around nearby villages. Even those who go to school find it very difficult to go ahead because of the lack of quality education at primary levels, and the problem of unemployment is generated.
These factors generate a very interesting situation in terms of opportunities available for MNCs. Especially in the IT field for which the rural India is waiting for. No doubt, conditions are not that easy as in urban areas, but their lies the challenge to grab the fortune.
I saw the importance of NGOs and SHG in developing the rural India. They have the feel of the real problems and work with passion to achieve things people may not believe at conception stage. We can only learn from their commitment to make our professional lives more successful. I saw that NGOs are really working hard to make our country a better place we should imbibe this feeling in ourselves to do something good for our unprivileged countrymen.
I hope that the wave of development will become faster in the coming future turning all problems to opportunities so that our dream macroeconomic bull-run of benefits all our countrymen.
After reading much in the books and newspapers and hearing much in many presentations, I got a wonderful opportunity through DOCC to see these live. I did my project in the village of Tamkor located in Jhunjhnu district of Rajasthan. I could see the telephony wave in India has reached the countryside and IT wave is at doorstep.
So far so good, but a lot of problems still exists. Rural India still does not have access to quality education, which is a major roadblock to its development. Students stop going to school due to unavailability of schools in and around nearby villages. Even those who go to school find it very difficult to go ahead because of the lack of quality education at primary levels, and the problem of unemployment is generated.
These factors generate a very interesting situation in terms of opportunities available for MNCs. Especially in the IT field for which the rural India is waiting for. No doubt, conditions are not that easy as in urban areas, but their lies the challenge to grab the fortune.
I saw the importance of NGOs and SHG in developing the rural India. They have the feel of the real problems and work with passion to achieve things people may not believe at conception stage. We can only learn from their commitment to make our professional lives more successful. I saw that NGOs are really working hard to make our country a better place we should imbibe this feeling in ourselves to do something good for our unprivileged countrymen.
I hope that the wave of development will become faster in the coming future turning all problems to opportunities so that our dream macroeconomic bull-run of benefits all our countrymen.
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