Oh..how can they do this...

Since I have been brilliantly been busy doing nothing, the blog seems all desolate and lonely where there has been nothing new growing....

But then the world is the same, so why should I not have the same post again? Well now that I know Aishwarya and Baby B (as NDTV calls Abhishek) went to Banaras together (oh..my god...how can they go to a holy town together...chee..chee..) Well..too lazy to write anything..so here goes...

An Appeal to a Cable Operator (written in July)

Seriously, cant we have a holiday for one news channel a day? Maybe Monday, CNN-IBN, Tuesday:TimesNow, Wednesday: NDTV... you get the drift...its disgusting how unimaginative television has become...

These guys are spoiling the one enjoyable thing of television...channel surfing....I mean, an orgy over a 5-yr old boy falling into a well and now everyone has Mumbai, one year later...

If there is one thing where the cable operator should exercise his right of autocratic customer service,it should be in not screening one news channel a day...

Thank God for Seinfeld...

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish

~ From Steve Job's Convocation Speech at Stanford....

It's 'I' all the way....

There are different viewpoints on advertising. Supposedly the biggest challenge to advertisers is that with the latest technology (TiVo) and pay-per-view etc, consumers are now being given more and more the choice to NOT see ads. That creates a huge problem since the number of consumable items demanding the attention of the consumer is infinite while the 'attention pie' is just going on shrinking. So what does that translate into? How do advertisers hold attention...but this post is not about the challenges there..

The most recent ad that made me sit up was this one from Sony Ericsson for their Walkman series of phones (Low Bandwidth link). I think this was brilliantly executed and really would touch a chord with those groups of people for whom music is an integral part of life. But what struck me more was the images that they convey. All of the images in the ad are of individuals who are just enjoying the moment, their private moment with their own music even if they are surrounded by a huge sea of people. These people could be having huge problems but here they are at this moment, just immersed in the music and the only important thing being 'I'. Do we all not go through these moments or at least crave for these moments when we just can be what we want to be not thinking about what the next moment will bring?

I am quite sure, when they put the storyboard they probably did not think of it in so much detail. But I guess that is what makes a good ad. It should connect to people in different ways.

So if I look at it, what works for me in this ad is:
1. The images of 'ordinary' people in their daily setting
2. The music score for the ad, unobtrusive but still very much the soul
3. Most importantly, the concept of the music being their liberator...

I think Sony Ericsson is really getting this piece right.....

(Well, I guess I must also add that I am a die-hard Sony Ericsson fan all my mobile phones having been from this stable)

The other ad I do like from the recent ones on TV is the Ponds one showing these women all in a introspective kind of mood..have been trying to get a link to it online...even there it works because there are no gimmicks..its just ordinary people.I like all of these ads for displaying the importance of 'I'...People just tend to forget the 'I' in their daily dose of existing....

Kudos to the ad agencies...

Send me an angel...

The wise man said just walk this way
To the dawn of the light
The wind will blow into your face
As the years pass you by
Hear this voice from deep inside
It's the call of your heart
Close your eyes and you will find
The passage out of the dark

Here I am
Will you send me an angel
Here I am
In the land of the morning star

The wise man said just find your place
In the eye of the storm
Seek the roses along the way
Just beware of the thorns

Here I am
Will you send me an angel
Here I am
In the land of the morning star

The wise man said just raise your hand
And reach out for the spell
Find the door to the promised land
Just believe in yourself
Hear this voice from deep inside
It's the call of your heart
Close your eyes and you will find
The passage out of the dark

Here I am
Will you send me an angel
Here I am
In the land of the morning star
Here I am
Will you send me an angel
Here I am
In the land of the morning star

~ The Scorpions

The Science of Employee Motivation....

Employee motivation is a big challenge for any HR professional especially in the Indian IT sector where expectations management is a big issue..

This piece is a cool satire on the whole thing of employee motivation...would love to see managers using this....

The conclusion is pretty simple:

¤ When your company says "Great companies are made by great employees," they aren't talking about you.

¤ When your company insists that "Each employee makes a special contribution," that's not you either....

¤ When your company discusses its relatively low turnover rate, it wouldn't mind if it went up another point, if you catch our empirical drift.

¤ Your deep-seated fear of being revealed as a fraud who doesn't really deserve the job you have is unfounded. Everybody knows.

One Life to Live and Love....

It is fascinating to think how the whole algorithm of life and mannerisms are programmed to change with age.

I happened to observe closely some of the mannerisms of my niece during these holidays. It is indeed an enriching experience. Maybe this was what was meant when they said 'the child is the father of man'.

I am not sure if all adults are like this but I think we all do lose out a lot of the 'child' in us. Anyone who can retain the persona of his/her childhood while gaining the wisdom from experiences will be a happier person.

If you observe a child closely, you will see that they do not think when it comes to articulating affection. There is no holding back...It may be a special hug or just an attempted conversation when they feel affectionate...

What changes as a person grows up? Why do we as adults become hesitant to show affection? What changes in the algorithm and when does this change happen? It could be love for a partner, respect for a parent, affection for a friend. Maybe the articulation is more subtle once you grow up...but i guess it might just help enrich the relationship if you do say it once in a while....

I am not saying all adults stop doing this but it may be worthwhile searching out the child in us…..

Home No More....

I stumbled on this from a blog (via Ash) but I thought it was so perfect for all those people who have been living away from their homes...

"Andrew Largeman: You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone.

Sam: I still feel at home in my house.

Andrew Largeman: You'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place."

~ From Garden State

A little cynical about family but some of the things said is true.....i guess..

Make Something Happen

I am not a big fan of Seth Godin though a lot of people seem to follow his blog and writings. But I like this post of his:

"If I had to pick one piece of marketing advice to give you, that would be it.

Now.

Make something happen today, before you go home, before the end of the week. Launch that idea, post that post, run that ad, call that customer. Go the edge, that edge you've been holding back from... and do it today. Without waiting for the committee or your boss or the market. Just go."

The URL to his post

Extending this a little further, seriously, I think we do tend to overestimate the importance of what we are doing, the report, the meeting, the deliverable that we stop thinking and just keep doing and stop caring about the real things....

I have this business.....

It's always an experience to meet new people. You always get something new from people...but then ever so in a while, you get these googlies...

When in the US a few years back, I used to get accosted by desis on the street. They would make very polite conversation for a few minutes, boost my ego to the stratosphere (lots of energy, charisma..blah blah) and then the innocous remark...

'I have this business activity that I am involved in addition to my job. I have become pretty successful and I am looking for spreading this amongst more people.'..the first time I got conned into thinking this was something interesting. After a couple of meetings is when the dreaded word 'Amway'(now known as Quixstar in the US) comes out..

The thing about it is all these folks who do this business are trained in exactly the same manner. By now, probably everyone has been approached at least once. Get it guys, you are either interested the first time or never.

In the last 2 weeks, I have been approached by 2 people. I didnt know this was catching up so much in India. By now, I have become so used to the drill that when they use the word 'part time and business proposition' together, I ask them directly 'Is it Amway?'...unlucky that I couldn't see the expression on the face through the phone.I was almost rude to these guys...

But I guess, the one thing, the company needs to realize is,they are not going to score brownie points by doing what I can only term 'an attempt at deception'.
Guys, get a life!!! Don't trouble me with your fake attempt at polite talk!!

Time to move on....

What is the motivation for a person to continue on their job and provide transition to another person who is going to replace them in another 30 days?

With the number of layoffs in my organization in the US and Europe, it is quite a strange situation to attend meetings where the host for the meeting announces that they will be leaving the company in the next few days. There is a strange awkward silence for the next 30 secs before someone makes an appropriate remark wishing them the best.

On the other hand, in contrast, Nilekani and co are sitting in the studio promising a $3 billion bonanza at the end of the year and a 40-45% growth expectation. The world is really turning around...

Now I am reading the book 'Three Billion Capitalists' which talks about the shift of power to the East. It sure is an interesting time.

But the real question is how long before we start thinking about our jobs under the scanner? I dont think it is as far as people might think it is.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Come to think of it, actually manufacturing companies have been doing it for a long time whenever they shut down factories. I guess the more protected class of white-collars have been left alone until now...

Festival Times

I started writing this post when Dussehra was happening and I was travelling to Kerala. I was trying out mobile blogging and found it too much of a pain. Now that I am back in Bangalore and Diwali is almost here, fitting enough to continue the post..

There was a time when I used to like and enjoy festivals. But over the years, as the family started moving to different locations, the excitement over festivals has kinda come down. I guess it was also a growing up thing when it started becoming less 'cool' if you showed too much enthu about the whole fireworks thing. Also, Kerala was never big on Diwali.

But one thing is for sure, festivals really liven up the spirit of people. Everyday someone is asking me what's your plan for Diwali. People are going for long vacations. They are much nicer to each other (excluding Hosur Road). They are more sanguine about the month with the bonus expected for Diwali in the rest of the country and for Onam in Kerala. It's the same for Christmas anywhere else in the world. It's almost contagious.....(hey, I even remember the time when my company used to provide a large package of sweets...well those were the days of a small company...)

But I wonder how many of us really understand each of the festivals. If our generation itself has such a bad understanding of the history, what will happen when it comes to the next gen......But i guess it is still nice to see that even the yuppie couples of today with their kids, try hard to inculcate the festival spirit. I think these may be the last strands of 'culture' that we may need to cling on to if we need to continue talking about 'the great indian story' for years to come.

After all, it is the age when families rarely sit down at the dinner table together (despite what all the Karan Johar movies and the soaps might show) giving precedence to the TV and the mobile. I just hope I can continue the tradition of sitting at the dinner table forward....cant say thanks enough to my dad for that...though I have cribbed so many times about this during my childhood.....

Maybe Someday....

Not too many taglines are as in your face as this one from Tata Safari...I guess it is to do with the phase one is in..I am sure a lot of my batchmates are saying...this maybe me... :)

When passing out of the corridors of a premier business school (some years ago), there were hopes, idealism, excitement..now it is just plain being content with smaller successes (which I call 'cheap thrills'). In my work area, I do have an option of interacting with people from different batches and it is interesting to see where each one of them are... it's almost worth an empirical study to see when cynicism sets in and when realization again sets in that it is actually upto you to turn that cynicism into productive energy....

Eternal Souls

....
Jesse: Most people, you know, a lot of people talk about the past lives, and things like that, you know, and even if they don't believe in it in some specific way, you know, people have some kind of notion of an eternal soul, right.

Céline: Yeah.

Jesse: Okay. Well, this is my thought. 50,000 years ago, there are not even a million people on the planet. 10,000 years ago, there's like 2,000,000 people on the planet. Now, there's between 5 and 6 billion people on the planet, right? Now, if we all have our own, like, individual, unique soul, right, where do they all come from? Are modern souls only a fraction of the original souls? Because if they are, that represents a 5,000-to-1 split of each soul in just the last 50,000 years, which is like a blip in the earth's time. You know, so, at best, we're like these tiny fractions of people, you know, walking... I mean, is that why we're all so scattered? You know, Is that why we're all so specialized?

Céline: Wait a minute, I'm not sure I ... I don't...

Jesse: Hang on, I know, I know, it's a totally scattered thought, which is kind of why it makes sense. ..

From 'Before Sunrise'...Celine & Jesse...

Interesting thought....

Air Deccan - A second innings

After a long time, I travelled by Air Deccan. There seems to be something happening over there. It almost seems like Capt. Gopinath got up one day and said 'I am sick and tired of people cursing my company. My employees are all becoming demotivated having been shouted at so many times.'

Let me run a market research to do a perception map for Air Deccan. So now we have the dear Captain making enough announcements about how they are making it on time 88% of the time and we are only late 12% of the time.

So he gives all of his employees this bright yellow T-shirt asking his customers to give Air Deccan a second chance. It's an interesting exercise to change the negative perception of the public.

In many ways, this is an important exercise for the company. They need to boost up their sagging stock, their customer satisfaction scores and their employee morale.

Let's see if the captain manages to pull this off too...

ps:Btw, captain, it is perfectly legal to provide some directions to passengers when and where the flight is going to take off from at least 30 min before departure

Hedonism - the only way to be

I had almost forgotten how different Chennai was from Bangalore. After many months, I made a visit to this so deliciously Tamilian city...i have become too hedonistic these days to be really charmed anymore by Chennai.

Was like a sojourn to the old days...had a meal in one of those messes you find only in Chennai (and maybe parts of Malleswaram in Blore). great food..as clean as you will get for a 10Rs meal.

Living in South Bangalore amongst all the yuppies in Koramangala for a few years now, its almost become a given that the only joints worth existing are those that you can blow a lot of money for some normal food. I think it is good once in a while to do these kind of deviations...

It does feel I have come a long way on the road to hedonism...long live self-indulgence...one of my friends would agree.. :)

Smart Companies and the MBAs

This is definitely a question that I have thought of on multiple occasions. What makes a company diversify into a totally unrelated field, burn up their own cash cow and finally sell the business to focus on their 'core areas' after a few years at a loss?

I liked this article by Guy Kawasaki. I think it is a nice way to put things in perspective..

Of course, I like point 5 best... :)

5. Restrict the use of experts to narrow areas. Never use experts to create your product roadmap or marketing plans unless you want MBAs who have never run anything larger than a school snack bar to decide your fate.

Ms.Bansal has also talked about the yuppie MBA. Looks like we are not a very well-liked group not withstanding the so-called money (havent seen it yet myself though...but i guess hope is the way to the future) ;-)

New York, New York

New York is a great place, a city full of energy and a city that never sleeps..but when I am travelling back tomorrow to India, I feel good..

I feel so ready to travel back...I am usually the kind of person who likes visiting new places and try and understand the 'character' of the city.

New York should have been perfect. Dont know if it is due to the amount of work or the team I was working with...am sure glad India is calling...

I guess there are times when you want to be the adventurous one in the world exploring new corners and there are other times when you want to get back into the comfort zone that you are used to....

What a person is, I suppose dependent on how comfortable and what proportion of the time he/she likes to tread into the unknown...

The one good thing about this trip was the number of old friends I caught up with. I realized I knew so many people here - school, college, ex-colleagues, IIMB and some of them I had lost touch over the last 3-4 years and some of them I have not talked to in about 10 years...But its good to know that there are so many people who you can just pick off where we left off from...

Makes me think, I should definitely try living in Mumbai...

Sept 11 all over again

Its that time of the year here in the US. The day that changed the world (atleast here) ..Sept 11 is coming up...

I managed to visit the World Trade Center site today. I do not know if it is always the case or specially decked for the day. There was this photo exhibition that presented different facets of the disaster...As I was looking at all of this and looking at all the TV channels here going on about '5 years and after' (probably even NDTV and CNN-IBN are doing this back home), a lot of thoughts went off in my head....

Why is it so much simpler for us to accept disaster? Mumbai has had many such catastrophes in the last decade. Still I cant think of any memorial for the victims or the public even stopping to think about the unfortunate victims. In the US, the media and the political machinery ensures the public dont put behind the event.

I guess this event sure shocked a nation that had become complacent and arrogant about its own superiority. It was unfortunate that this happened with the lives of so many innocents being sacrificed. However, maybe we do need a machinery within our country to give the respect to the dead....we are almost at the other end of the spectrum...

Life - A Multi-Act

This is not the best of times... While the world may be fighting over larger things, my own little battles go on....for what is life without those?

No one has claimed life to be easy....but I now believe that life is as easy as you want it to be or as complicated as you want it to be....of course, if you have the luxury of a premier business school education, you are doomed for you are now destined to do a 2x2 framework for everything...

Which brings me to the long discussions I have had with 2 of my very good friends about the line between taking a rational decision (the MBA one) and the one about listening closely to the inner voice...especially wrt career, jobs and the way forward. I have personally gone through those times when I did my own share of analyzing to the nth degree whether I should do this or not....havent regretted it yet...even today I am making some decisions which for an outsider would seem irrational but to me it feels right....both the folks I talked to did not agree with me fully about feeling right....

The way I see it, end of it all, this Act will end and the next one will begin. So enjoy the time while you are in it......and dont worry, you will still reach the next act in good shape....this way or that way...It's difficult to feel this way all the time for me too (after all I am part of the 2x2 crowd...)

It is but no wonder that Shakespeare is so great...
'All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players'

Ever so often you are brought crashing back to earth,
That's the thing about life....