the power of CHOICE.....

I remember long time back I had gone to an “Art of Living” workshop during my MBA days, actively trying to hide the fact from my friends that I had been there. If the news got out – I could have faced ridicule amongst my friends group I had thought. Now the entire fact has shrunk to a point that now I am, or rather would be proud if I could proclaim the same act repeated by me again.

Going back then - it was a very powerful workshop, full of so much useful information, and insights into various aspects of life, intentions, manifesting and of course the art of living. I definitely learned a lot but I also felt like I’m was getting to a point that because of the amount of information that I constantly fed myself, the kind of interactions I had with people but at the end I always felt there was something lacking in my life and that I was not learning anything new, anymore.

Well what seemed like a load of trash coming out from an equally weird looking (read calm) person in front of me – these days I look back with a change in heart for the same. Well there have been numerous changes in the last one year of my life – family troubles, change in my job, my marriage and moving to a new city and starting afresh. I too have brought about a lot of changes in my life of late – and the fact has made me realize that it was time enough and I had in fact began the art of practicing. In many ways I felt flooded with information and emotions galore – living life in a new way and actually enjoying it. Actually, let me change that word flooded to overflowing instead, and now all that’s left is simply putting it into practice consistently on a day to day, moment to moment basis.

With every interaction with people and life there is an opportunity to practice the art of living that life – that promises a lot more. With every new event there is an opportunity to practice and put in use the principles one upholds in life. Often the trick is remembering to practice and not letting old habits take the wheel so to speak. That is the battle - it’s an art of war against my old habits with my new ways of thinking.

I guess I have tried to see every moment as an opportunity to practice the fine art of living and therefore slowly but surely growing happy and being better prepared to make the most of life. That I guess is the power of choice.

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life: as is……..

well some years back a particular movie caught the fancy of most of my friends in IIT Delhi. The movie ‘Life in a Metro’, narrates the individual lives of a few ordinary people living in Mumbai and deals with topics like extra-marital affairs, sanctity of marriage, and love, failures, tragedy, happiness & so on. Though a ordinary film with lots of flaws in production & direction - the film somehow touched one and many – probably due to the failures that one face in life and maybe the happiness, ultimately when (like in a typical hindi movie) everything turns out fine at the end.

In reflect often why failures are important in life and why does a normal human being attach so much importance to failures. I am no different with my fair share of failures in life. It got me thinking this weekend as I went through over 700 kms of travel over tons of laid out uneven gravel, that we call roads in India. As my family managed to doze off amidst the rocking of the Chevvy – my mind raced through as I relived every moment of my life as it had been played out in the last 27 years. And gosh that was something.

Life comes in certain packages and our past is more or less a part of that package. When I say past, the only thing that comes to our mind are often unpleasant and bitter memories. We all must have dealt with it at some point in our life, but we never seem to come out of it. When I recall an era of my life, the only things that come to my mind are my mistakes. It puzzles me all the time that why is it that, I regret my mistakes so much that i almost forget to acknowledge my own achievements? Why is it that we always end up regretting our mistakes all our life? And I am not really talking about the end (i.e. end of life when these things hardly matter anymore)

My dear friend had an altogether different take on that. According to her she never regretted making mistakes because if she wouldn't have made them, she would have never known how to correct them. Though it sounds very sweet, but I was never convinced with her theory. Another cousin of mine thinks time is the best healer and everything settles down with time. I really don’t think so because if this was the case she would have long gotten over her first love. From where I see she is still in the ruins of her past relationship.

In my search for the truth, I happened to read something. According to it the only path to liberation is truth and the truth is, “YOU WILL HAVE TO GIVE UP THE HOPE THAT THE PAST COULD BE ANY DIFFERENT ".

This is the best thing I have heard in ages. I don’t know if it liberated me but it certainly took off the baggage I had been carrying for years.

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change....not quite !!!

Well not quite. It’s New Year according to the Bengali calendar and things haven’t turned out quite rosy for me. Had to get up at 6 in the morning to help my better half with Pujas i.e. morning prayers (the usual norm on a day like this back home). Got to work and somehow the greetings from my colleagues all fell to deaf ears almost. I had a long day ahead of me – had to visit a temple in the evening and take my wife out for a dinner. That too, with a long list of queries and mails to be answered back in office. Boy I had a long day ahead of me.

My mind wandered back - around couple of years to be precise. We were discussing life with a couple of friends back at the Nescafe stall in IIT Delhi. One of my friends from engineering days, an architect who was doing his masters in Design from IIT Kanpur had dropped by and we were busy recollecting thoughts and sharing amusing anecdotes of life in campus when we got caught up on a discussion of things we had learnt from life. Scribbling on a piece of paper we tried to make a “dhobi-list” of things we as individuals have learnt and follow religiously in our lives ahead. And the fun we had that day…..

Things look so different today in perspective.

And then I realized nothing around the world has changed – the change has come in us that somehow leads us interpret the same things in a different way. The following small story might reinforce my idea…..

Once upon a time in a certain village in India there lived a guru. Every evening the guru would sit on his seat and deliver a lecture to the public. It so happened that the guru had a cat, and just at the time of giving the lecture the cat would create a big disturbance.

Being greatly annoyed by the cat, the guru decided to tie the cat to a tree before starting his lecture. So doing, the guru then delivered the lecture without disturbance. It worked so well that the guru regularly tied the cat to the tree before beginning his discourse.

After some years the guru died. His disciples carried on the guru’s program. They also continued tying the cat to the tree. When the cat died, they bought another cat and thus the ritual of tying a cat to a tree continued generation after generation.

In the fifth generation that followed the guru, one of the renowned followers wrote an elaborate treatise on the spiritual significance of tying a cat to a tree before beginning one’s studies of the scriptures.

“For the current of our spiritual life creeds, rituals and channels that may thwart or help, according to their fixity or openness. When a symbol or spiritual idea becomes rigidly elaborate in its construction, it supplants the idea which it should support.”

- Rabindranath Tagore

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the beauty of simplicity.....

"......the time has come to unleash the creative potential of our scientists and innovators at grassroots level. Only then we can make India truly self-reliant and a leader in sustainable technologies....propose a national foundation for helping innovators all over the country. This fund will build a national register of innovations, mobilize intellectual property protection, set up incubators for converting into viable business opportunities and help in dissemination across the country.''

This is what screams out loudly on the homepage of National Innovation Foundation. I was scouting through a pile of documents looking for a particular one when I suddenly came across a certificate that I had obtained from them during my MBA days at IIT Delhi – me and my team of 4 AV, KB & N reached the zonal finals of a b-school competition hosted by NIF & IIM Ahmedabad. How we reached & finals and that too managed to actually do the scouting in record time & submit the B-plan is a different story altogether.

I don’t remember the dates specifically but it was the second last day of entering the competition. That we registered – it was good till then. Then we sat on it for over 20 days thinking that one would finally take the initiative. Then with 6 days till deadline the panic bell rang. Two from the team decided to give it up and not submit the plans at all – while dutifully me and AV decided to go forward. The night we were supposed to leave for Rampur a remote town in UP, AV walked out citing some problems. Some insane force actually took over and in an hours time I was off with KB to the bus depot to somehow reach Rampur minus any concrete directions to it.

We managed to change a couple of buses & hitch a ride of a tempo and then take a hike for a couple of kilometers – reached our destination took the info of the ‘tile making machine’ and off we went. (It’s a different take that we took a detour to Nainital that afternoon and got back somehow to Delhi next morning – bouncing all night on the last seats of a dilapidated Volvo).

With 3 days till submission we were in a dilemma – the plan was on tile making machine.(figures are close approximations of what we obtained from the inventor)

Cost to setup = Rs 8000-12,000

Raw Materials = Rs 100 /day

No of tiles made = 50/day

Labour Charges = etc

Price of tile = 3 (approx including labour charges)

Cost of a similar tile in market = Rs 5-8

Cost advantage per tile = Rs 2-5

Now looking at the overall picture and the rural economic conditions we decided the best use would be for someone to set up a sort of small workshop with say 20-50 machines which then would not only provide steady employment to people in the locality (believe me the peoples’ economic condition in Rampur was deplorable), and our concept was supported by the inventor as well. Also although the cost advantage of Rs 2-5 per tile was huge one had to keep in mind logistics and sales costs. So individually selling tile making machines we found out was not a viable option at all.

Net-net we aired the same views in the competition and the entire crowd was appreciative of our logical conclusions (even the team that won gave us a standing ovation), but in the end we could not make it to the all-India finals because of the simple fact – we had gone out of scope. The B-plan was that of a “tile making machine”, and the judges contested that I should have prepared a plan that would have enabled them to sell these machines to individuals – how weak an argument when the per capita income is less than Rs 10,000. Just imagine that of uneducated simpletons in rural India. Take again in consideration sales & logistics costs – how would that be borne. These were questions they never addressed. Sigh………

Today I look back and the entire episode makes me smile – with due respect to the judges, I felt then and still feel that simplicity is often the key success factor in innovation. While in retrospect the business model would probably make sense with people with management degrees tweaking the business model every now & then making it complex at each stage to juice out efficiency, the end user who was the rural Indian would be completely at sea manufacturing the stuff, distributing it, and selling it subsequently. That to after spending a couple of years earnings for buying this machine.

Whoa!!! I never saw any sense in that then. Even now as I study various businesses and interact with various people both in and outside my company, this fact emerges every time that simple process planned & executed efficiently, was the indication of success in every organizational function.

“This single point of administration ultimately increases the simplicity of running complicated systems while reducing the cost of ownership a great deal. This is what enterprises are looking for and need”

- Don Becker

Maybe that’s why we are in business.

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coffee: anatomy of the soul....

Horrendous!!!

That’s what could best describe the coffee from the vending machine in office. Well while most people will agree with me on the quality of coffee served out of vending machines in office, I would beg to differ as I have come across perfectly acceptable coffee in many instances in various offices I have visited during my work stint over the last 2 years. Well most people might call me a difficult person to satisfy (most people actually still do) I wasn’t always a coffee snob.

When I started drinking coffee during my MBA days in IIT Delhi (Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi – for the uninitiated), I did so for purely utilitarian reasons. It was part of a desperate plan to improve my plummeting finance grades – the only subject in which I had managed to score a C in my semester. I figured that staying awake during class or maybe 6 hours before the exam, (trying to best leverage many best practices and niche strategies for solving problems at the last minute) would be a key step in this effort. It didn’t help--either with nap-prevention or with my grades. I repeated my performance again in the 3^rd semester (well I was no fool with the subject – just that I hardly had any interest playing with numbers; well my math marks during school and my chemical technology days will vouch for that)

One important thing I did learn during that semester was that there are few beverages more repulsive than nestle blended apple ice-tea, which was available albeit a very short period of 6 months during my 2 years stint in IIT Delhi. To this day, whenever I get a whiff of apple ice-tea I’m hit with a sudden wave of nausea, followed by an odd compulsion to diagram Porters 5 forces model (presumably on the repulsion theory)

After my Business Administration academic years, I began my journey toward a full-fledged Sales & Marketing habit, taking tentative steps toward the grown-up world of real coffee consumption.

A good cup is an absolute must before any business interaction!!!

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karma.....the balancing act !!!

Did you ever give karma a thought???

This strange but somehow deep question from my better half a couple of days back caught me on the wrong foot. Well I have tried my level best all my life to ensure that I always had a direct perception of truth and never use it to take advantage. Also whenever I did commit positive deeds, rarely had it been to get ahead in the rat race – it was outcome of the simple fact that the end usually made me happy & satisfied.

But lately I have come across so many people – many my long cherished friends who have somehow lost the way in life, compartmentalizing lives thinking it in terms of boxes. I wish we gave our lives a second thought. We gave karma a thought.

Karma literally means action, whether good or bad, right or wrong. When it comes to spirituality we define it as the fruit of our actions.

Each time we think, speak and act, we are setting into motion the laws of karma. We are planting a seed. The kind of seed we have sown is the nature of the sought, word and action we set in motion; fear, hate, judgment, love, blessing, anger, joy etc. And every time we think and act similarly we are nourishing the seed. The seed eventually grows to a big tree bearing tons of fruits. This is the consequence, our reward or punishment, however one likes to perceive it. We are hated, judged, loved, and blessed many times over depending on what the seed contained when it was first sown. We reap what you sow many times over.

The key to a successful life is the transmutation of karma into dharma. It is the ability to make of the past a prelude to a noble future. Evil is essentially the refusal to move toward the future. The ultimate meaning of karma must be identified with interconnectedness and interpenetration of all there is. Anything is possible because all there is a network of multi-dimensional relationships.

It holds true for every sphere of life even in our careers & every job function I feel – marketing, sales, human resources and so on. Somehow I wish that the present generation can step back and look at the totality of life not at the random opportunities that come their way. It is not the frequent change of jobs, a random increase in pay slip that gives us happiness after all – it is the collective smile on the faces of people we care for, or the number of lives we touch through our actions that ultimately matters.

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BIG fight......the entrepreneurial way

There are three sets of issues that one must consider when thinking about how to become an entrepreneur, particularly if you are born into a middle-class family of professionals like yours truly…….

The first (the most difficult part I must confess) involves getting started, leaving a safe job or career prospects and jumping into the entrepreneurial fray.

The second issue (an equally difficult part) has to do with maintaining and building a viable business, successfully scaling up so that one has not just managed to 'survive' but also to grow the business and create great value for investors.

Finally, there's the issue of knowing when to move on, either by selling the business or handing over to someone who can bring new energy, skills and ideas to bear. Let's take each of these issues in turn, and examine some of the things you can do to address them."

I was reading the latest edition of Outlook Business for Decision Makers. The magazine carried an interesting article on the 10 hottest emerging businesses in India. Here is the list:

-Education
-Private Equity
-Design Services
-Next Wave BPO
-Packaged Food
-Retail Services
-Localized Internet
-Micro-power
-Cold Chain and Warehousing
-TV Content

So anyone amongst you wanting to start your own business/startup - you know where to go.

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the shades of life…….

Recently I was reading an article on an old newspaper that roughly equated every human being’s happiness chart to the English alphabet U, with the narrow tips representing the emotional & spiritual highs of youth and old age and the trough in U i.e. the obvious depression representing the vagaries of mid-life crisis.

Ah! Youth! The age of idealism - when the world was my oyster. I relinquished every luxury in order to change the world and romance, of course, conquered all. When my wife/girlfriend played a major part in my life and I was prepared to spend hours and hours hoping to catch a minute with my partner. At that age it is not possible for me to imagine that a good night’s sleep would become more desirable as age catches up with me. This is the story of life obviously when I was young. The recklessness, the urgency, the extremes of emotions felt. When people are in it, it is often wrenching and tumultuous. But it’s often love felt at its purest and happiness bordering on euphoria.

Again in old age, I believe from observing people around me - people are struck with ailments of old age and stuck with the age old marital partner. But there is a deep contentment among them for having stuck it out so far. They have a sense of achievement and both partners know that one or the other would die soon. This gives rise to a kind of detachment and appreciation for life. Just the thought of being alive is a big high for most of us, I believe.

Finally onto the period that I’m getting into - the mid-life. After reading that I will soon be in the deep flat end of the ‘U’ of happiness - I wallow in self pity. Less comforting is the fact that it would be some time before I start climbing the thin limbs of ‘U’ on my way to serene old age. Middle-age is probably a time when we lose our dreams and begin to accept the reality. We consolidate - we adjust somehow in our lives, careers, jobs, relationships and so on. We try to be happy – somehow trying desperately to pretend to be happy when deep down we know we wanted that little extra in our lives – that could have but did not ultimately materialize. People turn to philosophy and religion comes to the aid of many disillusioned souls who frantically try to mind the meaning of their unexciting lives.

But then again I believe all is not lost. These examples suggest that life eventually comes to a full circle. Or at least a full ‘U’. Somehow this Indian never gives up.

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the great divide...

well taking classes on marketing in B-school apparently did not help many of my colleagues who are still plagued by the oddity of failing to differentiate between marketing & sales. Recently a friend of mine got into a conversation with me on this and I had to spend 30 minutes of valuable airtime trying to educate him on the nuances of the business world.

If I try to follow the idiom "Dummy's Guide to Sales & Marketing", then, net-net

Marketing is everything that you do to reach and persuade prospects.

Whereas

Sales is everything that you do to close the sale and get a signed agreement or contract.

Marketing consists of the measures you use to reach and persuade your prospects that you are the company for them. It's the message that prepares the prospect for the sales. It consists of advertising, public relations, brand marketing, viral marketing, and direct mail. To add a few lines for my friends interested in the IT services marketing area, a person handling a marketing area will be responsible for one or all of this for a particular service line or industry vertical.

The sales process on the other hand consists of interpersonal interaction. It is often done by a one-on-one meeting, cold calls, and networking. It's anything that engages you with the prospect or customer on a personal level rather than at a distance. The keyword here (for most of my friend interested in IT sales) is networking, networking and more networking.

It is interesting to note that without marketing an organization does not have prospects or leads to follow up with, but yet without a good sales technique and strategy the organization’s closing rate is usually depressing. Simply stated, marketing takes the long-term view of customer relationships, paving the way for sales to occur in the short-term. One feeds the other. At the end of the day, its about integration and collaboration of both expertise.

PS: This article is also influenced by the fact that apparently 90% on the people I came across & discussed my job profile earlier, had absolutely no clue what IT services marketing was.

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