Boss's Day Out

Remember the early days when you were learning Maths.How your teacher used to say “Students, Math is all about 4 to 5 operations.Substraction, Addition, Multiplication, Division, & the parentheses. All other stuffs are just derivation of all these”. Remember how simple life looked when you found out these basics & how enjoyable the subject became.

If someone tells you the same thing about business how will you feel???If someone tells you that profitable business is all about mastering some basic fundamentals,,, won’t you look at him with a bit of surprise??? Won’t you treat the person with little bit snare when he or she says all business follows the same principles whether it is the business of a street vendor or the business of a huge MNC like WAl Mart or GE. To be very honest I felt quite the same when I saw the cover page & reviews of the book “WHAT THE CEO WANTS YOU TO KNOW” authored by Ram Charan who has done his DBA & MBA from Harvard University. Anyway since it was recommended by personalMBA list, bought it for the sake of self satisfaction that I have one of the books of the list. On a cool Monday morning while coming to office in the bus thought of giving it a try & to be frank enough I was not disappointed either. Have you seen Maradona playing in World cup 1986??? A small creature if you compare the average football player with him, but see him dribbling the ball & tearing apart the opposition’s defense & it is unbelievable how power packed his play is. They say small is beautiful & after reading this book I would wholeheartedly support that view. Just 135 pages of book can be so educative I didn’t know it earlier. Read it & you feel as if the intricacies of the business world are being cleared & you have a clear picture of how a business is run.


Starting from chapter 1 where the author gives you the fundamentals of every business which are 1- Cash Generation 2- Margin 3-Velocity 4- Return On assets 5- Growth 6- Customer, till the end where the author tries to put some basic questions for you to ask whenever you look at an organization or an industry as a whole, the book is thoroughly educative. To add to the readers’ delight the author has put some small cases in point like Wal Mart’s Sam Walton using these fundamentals. Michel Dell of Dell, Jack Welch of GE & some other high profile ceos also find mention in the list of high performing businessmen, who have honed the skill of mastering these basic fundamentals. Small comparisons here & there of the successful companies with the companies those could not succeed, helps to clear the intricate web of running a business for a layman to some extent. Not to miss the point which author mentions which being “To be a profitable business every manager or CEO should try to involve each & everyone who is involved in the business”

The book looks to be a kind of pocket book for the entrepreneurs who just want to get a refresher course in 3 hrs. Or so. So even if the subjects are not dealt exhaustively that should not be taken as a drawback. Pick up this book. Read it & go through it again & again till you master the vocabularies of business like Growth, productivity, efficiency, core competency, Consumer & customer. Read it & you will get the business Acumen that is required to run an enterprise & to get started of your own.

Uncle Sam with Stuffs Made In AMERICA

How do you feel when someone tells you that it does not take a Harvard degree or a over hyped IIM degree to start a venture of your own. What is required is a strong conviction in your dream & a persistent effort to pursue that dream whatever the world around might have to say about your dream.

I can feel that “C’mon we all know that” feeling already brewing inside your head. But believe me that is what is required when you want to get started of your own. You can ask how I know that. Well, It required just a 3 hrs daily 10 days session with the greatest merchant to have ever lived on this Earth Sam Walton to assure me of that. If the name sounds unfamiliar to you then it is better to stop thinking about business & start thinking about something you are good at. Because no one denies knowing the founder of the Number one company in Fortune 500 list.Hey I am talking about WAL-MART & the dreamer( I would love to use that word for the founder) Sam Walton behind this huge corporation.

Got to know about his life from the book “MADE IN AMERICA” which I just bought from the book store out of curiosity. But the book proved to be a gem of a thing. Narrated in a lucid way the book holds you in a superb grip of the story of a person who believed in providing the customer the best ever service they can get in retailing & held on to that belief throughout his life. In a candid way the founder who is also the coauthor of the book along with John Huey, has put down anything & everything that had something to do with WALMART & the process of making it as big as it is now.

The book is embedded with so many gems about how to go about a business, that you feel sometime it is more of a study book than a leisure book.
Customer is the king, Communication gap is the worst trouble you can imagine your organization to be in, treat your employees in a dignified way, give them responsibility & see them growing up, Believe in your dreams, be in the place where the real action is rather than inside a fancy office space,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,the list of gems in never ending.
Aren’t these stuffs they teach in Mgmt schools & how much do we pay to listen to all these things told over again & again?

I wonder why don’t people switch off their TV & get started with the reading habit because so many worthy books like this are floating around . Rather than making the book complicated with all the numbers & statistics, the authors have tried their best to keep it as simple as it can be to let everyone venture into the mystic that WAL MART has become for a lot of people.If you ever want to start a business then better go for this book rather than running here & there for tips & if you want to go into retailing then this is the only book you should pick.
Enjoyable reading & enlightenemnet guaranteed. No doubt it made to the best sellers list.

Mythology And Myths

Holding the fiction 'Yanjaseni' in my hand I was thinking why do we crib when the west points a finger towards us accusing us of hypocrisy.Aren't we all hypocrates.Even our mythology which we are so proud of also points blatantly to the only fact that, we don't do what we preach.

The book is a best seller in it's original language(Oriya) & the English translation was recommended by my friend.Since I was brought up with all those English fiction stuffs, didn't have an idea how mgically can a vernacular author spawn a story & bind you with it's magical spell till you finish the last page.Spellbinding I would rather say.

The writing though a fictional creation tries to address the trauma & dilemma that the character Draupadi had to undergo in her life in the great epic of Mahabharat,the name that has come to be ridiculed and has got associated with all vulgarity in today's society.The author tries to critically analyse the standing of the character vis-a-vis the incidents those have happened in the great epic of Mahabharat,which we all respect for it's portrayal of all human emotions & sentiments & for the creation of Geeta from the battlefield of Kurukhetra.

It was absolutely a page turner.While going through the book I saw the various shades of the Pandavas,their behaviour vis-a-vis Draupadi who by tragic or whatever you want to say became the wife of the five brothers who are known as Panadava.The story revolves round Draupadi starting from her birth till she takes her last breath while going on pilgriamge in Himalayas.Though the book comes under the ctaegory of Fiction,it has raised some valid question regarding the behavoiur of men towards women.Don't know if it was the thought of the author who is a woman herself. But the fact remains that the character which has been most humiliated & had been deprived of her due respect is, Draupadi of the Mahabharata.If the story is true & if any woman has to bear this kind of sacrifices for the betterment of the world & prevalance of Dharama then let no woman be subjected to this kind of sufferings.

Starting from her birth which was for the sole purpose of keeping Dharma & let the adharmas die,the character comes out magnificently victorious in in every type of trial & tribulations, whether it is in the married life with 5 men, or when she has been dragged to the the king's court by Dushasan for the most harried part of the epic which is so shameful that it gives me goosebumps when I think of describing that episode.Can men be like this???That question always crops up.Is it the way we have been brought up where male chauvinisism prevails, where no woman has a say even if the deciosion relates to her????

Why did the society allow kings to have more than one wife ??? Why can't a queen have more than one king????Why is it that everytime some sacrifices needs to be done it has to be done by the ladies of houses????Is it the way our society have been brought up which the author of Mahabahrat tried to paint which is nothing but a story that have been fabricated out of the way society was functioning during that period or it is only a fictional account????

If the way Krishna behaved whom we consider the lord of all the lords,then why do we call him god????I don't have any feeling towards him if he lets someone suffer so that he or she can be closer to him.......Don't we think he is fit to be a saddist who only enjoys giving pain to someone who loves him.In none of the religion on this world you will find the god giving pain to the devotee for the sole purpose of keeping him or her attached to the lord himself.Why is it that Draupadi had to undergo so much trauma only because she was a woman????Is it that a woman is considered to be the privileged one to have such a vast heart who is capable of undergoing all these hard things in life????

My mind was spinning around.Tried to think a little deeeper & voila another thought came to my mind.Why we have only five brothers called Pandavas,they could have been six or seven or say they could be ten also.Doesn't it say something abt ourselves. How many senses we have???
Five ..... Right???? & who is Draupadi??? Isn't she everyone of us???? Surrender to five senses. You will have all the troubles in the life.But surrender yourself to god,you will find peace & tranquility in life.You will find the real meaning of life.

Is it the later message that Mahabharat gives us??? or is it the former???

Still I am searching for the answer.If you have any answer you can always put them.

Unusually Usual

No one could have imagined my pleasure when after a long time(To be precise it was around 11 months and 10 days) when my manager nodded approvingly to my leave application.To add to that pleasure my roommate who hails from the same place also got his leave approved.So it was kind of a great happiness that we both started for Orissa via Chennai.But as the train slowly moved towards our station, a confusion was raised by my friend who asked me " Arey yaar what you are going to do in village for 14 days???" That was a question for which I didn't have a correct answer."What should I do??? Let me think..... I will visit my relatives. Then I will meet some of my city friends.Thats all". I said as a matter of factly. Then why are you staying for so long in the village."He asked me amusingly.I was confused totally.Where does my village come in to the scheme of things now.Is it that only my parents are staying there, that is why I am going there????

To be very frank I don't feel my village as my own after staying away from it since when I was ten years old only. Don't know how fast times leapt by & I became man of 28 years old from that shy kid of 10 years. I remember the day when father received the formal communication from Sainik School Bhubaneswar informing him that his son has qualified for the prestigious school.I don't know how he felt when he came to know that his son belongs to that elite group of 100 something students who have successfully able to clear the hurdle(which I feel was quite tough considering the fact that I was from an oriya medium school from a small and unknown village).

Ayway I still remember the joy in his voice when in that small room in our thatched house which we(Me and my sister) shared with our parents after dinner when he showed that communication to my mother.Though bou (We call our mother in that name in Oriya family generally) was not comfortable reading that letter she could make out from her knowledge of English that his son has got through the final exam.. You could see that sense of pride in both of their faces.I guess if human skin would have been able to generate power which is directly proportional to the happiness he or she gets then on that day our whole village would have got the supply from our house :).

Though I was unaware of it's importance to my parents, I was glad that I have cracked something & being a kid who deos not like to take failure in any venture especially in studies, I was more than satisfied with the attempt & the result.After that as far as I remember for 15 days there was no school for me as my transfer was in process.Father being the headmaster of the school, where I was having my primary education, there was no problem in getting a TC(Transfer Certificate).Then came the painful day of bidding farewell to my mother. I still remember her face on that day,though grief stricken she did not let me know that she was revolting in side to let her only son go to a boarding school about which he heard a lot(Like getting up early in the morning, doing physical exercises, harsh punishments etc. etc.. It came to such a point that someone told her that once she lets her son go to that school he is bound to join army).

But my father a great pillar of strength, confidence, optimism(even now also he has not lost any of these ) was very firm on that day.Since I was bit closure to my mother , she used to sometimes let me know how badly we are faring financially & what problems father had faced to arrange the money.The list of things to arrange for the admission was quite a lengthy one I would say.6 sando banyans(don't ask me what that means,even no one in our family including father had a clue what that means for which we had a good word from the hostel suptdt when we marched in to the hostel. Anyway I will later tell what happened in my hostel), 6 briefs( I still wonder was it necesary ????:-\ Father ironed my clothes(you can imagine the love I got), folded them properly & put it in a trunk. Though it was written, in the list of things to be brought while coming to join that, we have to take a black trunk, we didn't have time to paint the trunk.Then one big mattress was folded up nicely which father had specially ordered with extra cotton to make it bit more thick so that his dear son can have a nice sleep.We folded everything. For the first time in my life I wore a black pair shoes with full trousers.Had a small meal as I was not in a mood to eat anything as the pain of leaving my dear village was creating a sense of revulsion inside me.
One air bag which father used to carry his things was arranged for me.With all the things at their place, me and father started for the bus stop. Bou came till the stand to see me off. Her eyes were red out of crying. I could not hold my tears back.I was thinking can't I stop here. Can't father change his decision to send me & ask me to go back to home.

I still vivdly remember those few lines which father said at that moment."Life is very short, son.Now 7 years may seem to be a long period. But when you will pass out of the school with something to preserve and cherish for your life, those period will look very small in comparison to the memoery you will have.Today you may feel bad, but later you will feel that this was the most appropriate decision that we have taken."

I can't imagine anyone can be so true. My school helped me to eveolve as an individual, geve me the friendships those I even cherish nowdays,gave me so many beautiful incidents which I treasure close to my heart.The person I am today, the profession I profess today is due to the outlook I got from my school. But in turn what I have given back to my village, village friends,my parents???? I guess father missed out that on that day thinking that it would be upto me to decide how much I will give back to my dear village & my dear family.

Nowdays I feel it unusual for people to pee beside the roadside,unusual for people to shout at the top of their voices even if it a celebration time,people to crib when they feel injustice has been done to them by any elder..The sophiosticated way of living has installed in me a sense of looking at society from an unantural frame of reference.

Nowdays when I go to my village I want every one to have a disciplined way of life.Every one should obey the rules set by elders(Though I am opposed to it, but the seven years of strong discpline refuses to die) & everyone is bound to pay respect to the elders even when they say or do something wrong.My village friends no longer behave with me in antural way.No one now calls me to go to the village pala or nacha ( Folk dance) in night. No one asks me to join with them for a game of card play.Every one looks at me from that perspective in which Indian freedom fighters looked at the British rulers.Why such a schism??? Nowdays even my family feels as if I am cut off from their world.The unnatural way of treating me as someone special continues at every relative's place.Can't say what is it that I missed out while growing up or is it the natural way of treating someone who has lost his soul but to show off that he or she is still alive adorns beautiful clothes. Isn't it unusual or we have made it a habit of treating unusual in an usual way as if they have existed, they are existing & they will exist.

Brand Accessibility And Visibility

I really don't remember when I came to know about brands & the intricacies that comes along with them. Intricacies???? What does that mean???Does that mean brands are a cinfusing matter which should be left to the people who understands the world of brands.

Not necessarily I would say. Brands are there since time immemorial & even common people find it very difficult to live without brands even today. Tell me a person who does not swear by brands.Take a walk around your vicinity & you will find brands everywhere,on the face of the people(Did anyone notice the cream that drips sometime from peoples' faces),on the wrist of the people(saw that expensive jwellery watch??),on the body of the people(Hello, we are talking about Van Huesen,louis Phillip) and we swear by brands even when we want to have our food(Did u rememebr someone who didn't feel a sense of pride when he or she was talking about food in McDonalds or The Taj).
This is so much for brands. But what does a brand stand for?? Does it stand for an object or an emotion or something which is so abstarct that you can only feel it & can't describe it. I don't find any reason why we can't say a brand to be an emotion or a feeling that comes when you talk about an object associated with it.

It is as simple as telling that "all the mathematics of the world are confined to just four operations. Addition,subtraction,multiplication,division.All other stuffs really don't matter".I can hear some arguments abt this proposition. But to be very frank we don't need to look at a simple object like branding in a very complex way.When we say NR Narayana Murthy what comes to our mind? A person from a middle class background can achieve anything if he has that conviction & dedication& power of honesty.When we talk about Bill Gates what comes to our mind.It pays to be different.When we talk about Mallika Sherawat we picturise someone who is unconventional,gawky,& who swears not by the social rules but by going against them.
So we can see, these people endorse some philosophies & these philosophies are marketed by them.Try to picturise what comes to your mind when you talk about The Australian cricket Team.Assertiveness to the point of being known as arrogant,Tenacity,Never Say Die attitude,Teamspirit etc etc..So a brand endorses certain philosophy you can say.A philosophy which is not endorsed by any other.That becomes the USP of the brand. All brands have an aura built around them.If they become very common then, that aura is destroyed & people no longer find it mystical & no longer people are willing to go that extra mile to get that.Don't we remember in our childhood whenever our parents denied something to us we used to put twice of our effort to get those. And I beleive, still that child is lurking in every one of us even if we are old enough to be called as a kid.So to be very honest full accessibility of a brand is a myth.

Accessiblity & visibility should be addressed differently. Make the brand visible, but not accessible to all. Let there be some mystic attached to the brand wherein people can have a sense of achievement whenever they have got access to the barnd.If this is not the case then the prestige associated with the brand will diminish in a rapid pace & time will be there when your brand will become another face in the crowd.No longer they will be special brands.They will be commodities only & you know commodities don't give higher margin. A question may arise, if you decrease the accessibility,then how are you going to adderss the profitability of the brand,because at the end of the day it matters most, how much the brand brings home.There lies the hardest part.If you really want to make a killing out of the brand make it worth the difficulties that a person has to go through to access the barnd.Otherwise a bad experience of a customer with the brand after going through all the difficulties may be more harmful to your brand.And that means you have to really put that substance into the brand which will force user to come back to you again & again asking for the feelings which might not be easy to get anywhere.