Being Awesome!

During an engaging discussion with a fellow colleague, I was taken back to the memories of some wonderful motivational and self development sessions where Nick Bate advised us with clinical sharpness – ‘one way to succeed and to be happy is by being awesome in whatever you do’

The same discussion happens year after year. Nick says just be awesome. Students say, its just not possible because political correctness and ability to keep ones boss happy is of far greater consequence than just being awesome.

Nick’s absolutely right but students have a point.

Every process has a gestation period. Employees take a while before they establish their brand equity in an environment. It may be a new job, an academic cohort or just amongst friends. Till such time that this brand equity is established you have to be ‘correct’. At this point do not be tempted to assume that once the brand equity is established, you needn’t be correct.

Is it difficult to be awesome? – No it isn’t
Be a good human being.
Treat others (employees, customers, friends and relations) as you would want to be treated by others.
Assume that you are the CEO of the company and its 100% shareholder too (to ensure best intent).
Have knowledge of your domain.

It takes a while before you can establish yourself as an awesome human being (gestation period) and once you have done so, simply maintain it and don’t be bothered about anything else.

Success, brand equity, growth, money, happiness, confidence which is all so superfluously relative would then be incidental. And don’t get too busy being awesome!

Bernankonomics

Economics is quite simple really. Ask your mother who manages a home in the resources available to her. She has no problem in managing her home or saving a kitty for a rainy day. Irrespective of one’s position in the pecking order of financial freedom, the lady of the house always manages within her means.

Ben Bernanke (BB) thinks otherwise. He wants the eastern world to spend beyond their means to subsidise the imbalances caused by the western world. He says ‘progress can only be made to remove imbalances when Asians start saving ‘too little’ ’.

He wants every country to run a trillion dollar deficit. When every single country on the planet is precariously debt ridden (as bad as the US) the imbalances will wither away.

Great idea!!

In the meanwhile he needs to learn a thing or two from a prudent homemaker.

The Global rant about carbon emissions

Top leaders of the world O, B, S and the likes amuse me. Their rant never stops about CO2 emissions and the impending urgency of doing something about it. And they want India and China to reduce the emissions to half.

The developed world (read G8) has enjoyed the pleasure of depleting the world of its fossils and fuels for the last 100 years and have failed to acknowledge their own contribution to the green house gases - all this while.

When suddenly they realised that they have brought the world to a precipice of destruction, they started blowing the trumpets of concern and are leaving no stone unturned to suffocate the developing world in the name of global urgency that might deprive the two most progressive nations of their share of development and growth.

The following statistic is a bit of an eye opener.

China and India are at 80th and 113th position amongst countries emitting CO2 emissions per capita.
C and I are not even amongst top 40 countries in generating CO2 per $ of GDP.
The developed countries are not even amongst the top 100 countries in terms of preserving the forest cover as a percentage of total land mass.

So is there a solution? Well practically ‘No’, which implies that the rant will continue forever.

Academically ‘Yes’ – The maximum amount of CO2 emissions happen because of heating, cooling and driving habits of a country’s population. Increase gas prices to a point that the emissions get reduced to the level that is targeted or to a level that will allegedly save the planet.

Isn’t this a simple economic principle of demand and supply (usage) curve.

Do these countries have a will – NO.
Can a structural and moral change be induced amongst the population of the developed world – NO

Developing countries have been a catalyst in retrieving the world from an abyss of severe depression recently. Let these countries develop and grow. Please do not snatch the right of these countries to their share of development.

And in the meanwhile the top environmental police party - Stop speaking and start acting.

Dollar’s hay days are almost over

Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and he cannot get any sympathy for any of his actions. But he was not executed for what he did to the Kurds or the alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction. He was executed because he started selling his oil in Euros.

For a significant period of time the US of A has been an effective global policeman. And rightly so – because if not US then who?

But the world’s biggest consumer of goods and services has been brought down to its knees by its over zealous spending population and the country is running a deficit of trillions of dollars that is likely to be its waterloo.

For as long as Americans continue to be the world’s largest (and biggest) consumers, no one can take the mantle away from the US. But gradually as the spending patterns shift and wealth shifts from the west to the east, the US$ will slowly and gradually bleed itself to death as the worlds reserve currency.

History has it. This is exactly what happened to the erstwhile reserve currencies of the world - Roman Dinar, Spanish Reale and the British Pound. The reserve currency status has allowed the country and its populace to live beyond its means and eventually be displaced forever.

UN says ‘New reserve currency must be found to end dollars undue privilege’, and rightly so. Because dollar has been and is the reserve currency, Fed could afford to simply add a few zeroes to it’s balance sheet and print money. Some say and ‘couple’ of trillion dollars.

If any other country had created a financial mess that the US and its bankers created, it would have been worse off than Zimbabwe, with a billion dollar note cheaper than the intrinsic value of a toilet roll.

This cannot happen overnight for dollar. It will remain strong for a foreseeable future but small incremental deterioration in its strength is inevitable and the world is beginning to take cognisance of this fact.

Is there an alternative? - No!! No country yet has either the intellectual or financial capital to challenge the dollar. China is too autocratic (almost harmoniously dictatorial), India a bit too nascent. But these two countries are formidable forces to reckon with.

It doesn’t matter how much China rants about the US$. They have financed the American debt of over 770 billion dollars in addition to their dollar reserves of over 2 trillion. So they need to ensure that the value of their investments is maintained. But future investments by countries must be in line with simple rules of portfolio diversification.

The moral of the story – Portfolio diversification reduces the un systemic risk. Invest while the world is still sceptical or else market efficiency will eliminate potential profits.

Where to invest – Renminbi, Indian Rupee and Euro…..

Mahatma Gandhi’s (Bapu*) greatness was His simplicity

Google paid a befitting tribute to the apostle of peace Bapu, on his 140th birthday, by putting his simple picture on its mainpage. Bapu achieved through non-violence what the wars of the world have failed to achieve.

Bapu says…

I have found that life persists in the midst of destruction. Therefore there must be a higher law than that of destruction. Only under that law would well ordered society be intelligible and life worth living. If that is the law of life we must work it out in daily existence. Wherever there are wars, wherever we are confronted with an opponent, conquer by love. I have found that the certain law of love has answered in my own life as the law of destruction has never done.

In daily life, it has to be a course of discipline though one may not like it, like, for instance, the life of a soldier. But I agree that, unless there is a hearty co-operation of the mind, the mere outward observance will be simply a mask, harmful both to the man himself and to others. The perfect state is reached only when mind and body and speech are in proper co-ordination. But it is always a case of intense mental struggle. It is not that I am incapable of anger, for instance, but I succeed almost on all occasions to keep my feelings under control. Whatever may be the result, there is always in me a conscious struggle for following the Law of Non-violence deliberately and ceaselessly. Such a struggle leaves one stronger for it.

I call myself a nationalist, but my nationalism is as broad as the universe. It includes in its sweep all the nations of the earth. My nationalism includes the well-being of the whole world. I do not want my India to rise on the ashes of other nations. I do not want India to exploit a single human being. I want India to be strong in order that she can infect the other nations also with her strength. Not so with a single nation in Europe today; they do not give strength to the others.

President Wilson mentioned his beautiful fourteen points, but said: "After all, if this endeavour of ours to arrive at peace fails, we have our armaments to fall back upon." I want to reverse that position, and I say: "Our armaments have failed already. Let us now be in search of something new; let us try the force of love and God which is truth." When we have got that, we shall want nothing else.

Einstein wrote “will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth”

“Happy Birthday Bapu”

* The nation calls him ‘Bapu’ (Hindi for Father of the Nation) as a mark of respect

My first week at school a year ago!

Just as the new set of students on the MBA ‘conveyor’ start their year long journey tomorrow, my memories go back to my first week at Warwick. Excitement levels to their hilt. It was an amazing amalgam of excitement and nervousness. Many amongst us were getting back to books after over 10 years.

Fellow students were regaling the groups with their past achievements. The class seemed infinitely large because of the urgency to speak to each one of the fellow students and make friends. Some were loud, some were muted, some were interesting and some……..

The first week was action packed. While we coped with the schedules of introductory classes, alumni meets and tried to make our airplanes to take a flight of success and achievement, some stumbling blocks came our way in the form of settling-in blues.

Bank Accounts – It’s a struggle, we needed to get a letter from the University house that we were registered students - to open a bank account. And this needed to be done fairly early on as the first instalment of fees was due soon. HSBC and Barclays charged 6 pounds a month just to keep our money with them. NatWest didn’t charge anything like this and was happy to give you a connect card (more easily acceptable in most establishments and online transactions) if your balance was over 5000 pounds.

Mobile phones – We were required to give our mobile numbers for the talent book that had an alleged life of a year and beyond. Most mobile companies have arduous procedures of giving out contracts. The least requirement is a proof of address in the form of bank statement and the first statement can take about 2 months to arrive. A pay as you go card can be as expensive as 20p for a minute’s call and 10p for a sms but a contract gave us almost 600 mins and unlimited texts in under 20 pounds. My advice – do not worry. Take a pre-paid card and convert it into a contract at a later date and retain your number.

Lunch – University house that is 5 mins of walk gave us a lunch in under 5 pounds and Rootes (Ist floor behind bar fusion) that is 8 mins of walk from the school served an elaborate buffet that costed less than 4 pounds. Needless to say – if we did justice to the buffet, it helped us better in catching up with our sleep during the afternoon class. Else for the benefit of pocket and weight watchers, the school – kindly and appreciably, served a splendid variety of fruits and muffins at the coffee lounge.

Grocery – Cost cutter (next to Rootes) was really a pocket cutter. It took many of us a month to realise this. Tesco is 30% cheaper. Is open 24 hrs Monday to Friday, till 2200 hrs on Saturdays and 1600 hrs on Sundays. Residents of Claycroft had an advantage here. Its 2 mins away. Residents of Heron Bank and Lakeside struggled a bit more as they stacked up their freezers etc in the initial weeks. But 2 or 3 of us always enjoyed our walk from lakeside to Tesco and took a taxi back in 5 pounds.

Extracurricular – Warwick has over a hundred societies to suit every enthusiast. Polo, salsa, golf, cricket, sailing and many more. This we could figure out only in the 3rd or the 4th week as we began to settle down.

Hostels – Computers took a while to adjust to the new environment. A data cable could be purchased at Tesco or Costcutter. Irrespective of our previous attachments with our old IP settings we had to let our computers find their new IP. The accommodation service was fast and efficient. If at all we had an issue with our accommodation we used our login starting with bs….. and logged in an online complaint. We only realised much later that all the spiders that we found in our rooms were pets. But if there was a strong aversion we could politely request their removal.

A high point of the first week was Nicholas Bate and his introduction to discipline and self development.

In retrospect I feel academics were a miniscule part of this amazing experience that we lived. Work smart and party hard was the mantra. This was an opportunity of a lifetime to make new friends and nurture relationships. Some amongst us made the most of it, some faded away into oblivion.

The rules of the global game have changed

US, Japan, Germany and UK (top 4) contribute roughly 40% of the global GDP and have held this position for a relatively long period of time.

Settlement in a western country used to be a thing of pride at one point of time and in some pockets of the world - it still is. In the hinterland of Punjab in India many people would erect large concrete airplanes on their rooftops to indicate that someone from that house is either settled in Canada, US or the UK. Within the village community, that family would be looked at with respect.

Employment opportunities were galore. The great Western dream (derivative of the great American dream) was a reality and anyone who had the will could have his way.

The biggest catalyst that drives an economy is its infrastructure impetus. Roads, Dams, Bridges, Power plants, Industry. For a long time (many decades after the II world war) these sectors were in a constant state of development and progress.

Steel consumption in the US rose in the post-War boom years from 50 million tonnes in 1946 to peak at 110 million tonnes in 1975 and then started declining to reach around 90 million tonnes last year. More significantly, employment in the US steel industry has gone down from over 500,000 in 1974 to less than 150,000 now. The second fundamental structural change has to do with a decline in the cost competitiveness of western manufactured goods arising from a steady increase in the wage costs. This has caused a shift to low wage countries in the east, first of manufacturing and, later on, even of services. Ironically, the unionised labour in the west, which was responsible for the high wage spiral, has been the worst hit by job losses in the current slowdown.

More than often I wonder that if all the infrastructure that is required for a given country is in place, what will drive the economy of such countries with an aging population and torn social fabric. My assumption is that the infrastructure demand of the top 4 peaked out at the turn of this century. Smart people saw an opportunity and shifted focus to financial products that started driving the economic indicators. CDO’s came into being and the ‘top few’ managed to maintain that position for another decade before the bubble burst and the world almost reached a precipice of collapse.

And the rules of the global game changed!

The western world has made itself totally uncompetitive by its wage system, social system and artificially expensive currencies that have killed the local industry.

Protectionism in immigration policies and trade policies is providing a seemingly effective shield to the western world. It cannot last.

The world is flat now and if Darwin is anything to go by – “Only the fittest will survive”

Creation - Preservation - Destruction - Creation (CPDC)

Strategy Module has been intriguing. Many of my dear friends were punished with abysmally low marks. I only have one question to ask – is the marker’s belief in his connotation of strategy the final word in the subject? If yes, why can’t his/her ideas be utilized to strategise about dozens of things that are of immensely improvable order in an otherwise excellent school. (This isn’t a forum to ejaculate my frustrations) but strategy is neither about past nor present.

It’s about future. And to comment on future as mortal human beings is assuming oneself to be GOD.

We aren’t GOD!!

Companies continue to be cosy in their streak of luck or past achievements yet very few lessons can be learnt from the past. Past teaches you nothing. It only opens your eyes a bit more. The basic tenet of life is defined by CPDC. The three Hindu deities personify CPDC. Creation (Brahma), Preservation (Vishnu) and Destruction (Shiva). This applies not only to life form but also to product lifecycle, inventions, management styles and strategy.

The dynamic nature of every atom that makes this planet and millions of others ensures that life form keeps travelling to a higher plane (evolution) before it dies and paves way for new one. Strategy is dynamic too. It’s about future. It’s about the constant change in the state of things.

Companies can only ‘hope’ to address the following to survive:
What can we do to address future challenges and capture future opportunities?
What kind of leadership and culture we need to develop to tackle the unknown future?
What can we do to retain present customers to sell future products?

Are there any companies that have seemingly achieved this? Well if I was to say anything against Apple; half a dozen of my friends esp. Kasmira would put my life in danger because of their unflinching love and adulation for Apple products. So I suspect Apple has achieved customer retention for future products.

Leaders should continuously strive to define their future while addressing their present and believe in the CPDC cycle.

That’s all there is to it.

My last musing – Can strategy be theorised?

The world is still full of very nice people – and the planet has 'hope' for itself

Search for a room in London can be quite frustrating. As a student one not only fights against time, the onerosity of travel and a diminishing bank balance but also with the issue of potential landlords asking for references, large security deposits and the fear of unknown.

I kept my hope high and during one of these searches, I was pleasantly surprised to come across a family that had 2 rooms to-let. Big and small. The big was bigger than my budget, the small was smaller than my imagination. They not only sensed my inability to pay a large deposit but also sensed that I could not afford the room that I liked.

What they said later was quite beatific. “We will be happy to waive off the security deposit and you can take the bigger room for the price of the smaller one only if you promise to revise the rent on your own – the moment you get a job”.

This is what I call cosmic intervention.

Hope within individuals proves the mankind’s belief in God. Hope drives the macrocosm (It’s a different story that till some time back the investment bankers thought – they did). Hope for a better life, better job, better salary, more wealth. A man without hope is ‘hopeless’ and it would be very selfish to say that hope is a function of one’s belief in oneself. It isn’t. It’s a result of our hidden belief in ‘The Unknown’. The higher the hope the closer we would be to God.

The bottom line – Keep your hope high and your karma correct and in order. The cosmic hand will guide you thru and the temporal tribulations will melt away into the unknown.

Very Anticipatingly Yours

In 1928, philologist and lexicographer H. W. Fowler gave a new order to salutations and closures in letters and confused the world amongst sincerely, faithfully, truly and very truly. Even though I have utmost regard for the English language (as this is one common thread that binds the world), last few weeks of writing business letters (basically request for job letters) left me wondering. Why??

Gone are the days when letters were written to friends and relatives to remain in touch - text has taken that responsibility.
Love is no longer communicated thru perfumed, painfully handwritten calligraphic letters – facebook, online dating sites etc are enough.
‘Mate’ and ‘Cheers’ defines the entire spectrum of salutation and politeness even in this country where English language has some momentous roots.

And I strongly feel that with the exception of the readers of this blog, human race today is neither ‘very faithful’ nor ‘very sincere’.

We write letters because we expect something in return.

Why not do away with the false pretence?

Let’s stick to ‘very anticipatingly yours’!!

The British Summers

Human beings in general have a habit of being in a denial mode. Last year for the 1st 9 months of 2008 the economists of the world were in a denial mode about recession and made the world believe that recession might never strike and could possibly be averted. It took a Lehman and a dozen banks in succession to formally declare recession. And by that time it was too late. I kept wondering why were the economists in a denial mode.

A similar analogy can be drawn with the ‘British Summers’. The summer season is allegedly in full swing. People refuse to carry their umbrellas. On a cloudy day when the temperature is sub 15 degrees and the Cumulonimbus is ready to enact Shakespeare’s pathetic fallacy, it’s not uncommon to see people lying in the parks pretending to be scorched by the elusive sun.

Mortals like me who prefer to carry their jumpers and jackets are almost looked at with a degree of contempt. I am bemused when people say, ‘what a lovely weather’. I chuckle and say 'yes sure – only if you happen to be a duck’.

Why can’t we simply sacrifice this denial mode for good and be snug and warm in our jackets and avoid getting wet and catching a cold.

Britain has no summers. It only has winters and rains.

Dissertation Blues

One of the hot topics of discussion these days is the pending dissertation to be submitted by the ides of September. A paper comprising of some 15000 words.

I am convinced that this dissertation is a ‘high quality’ and ‘thoughtful’ – cut copy and paste. And people have been vehemently disagreeing with me. Some have made library their home. Some have become insomniacs and some are just too nervous.

Well if dissertation was to be a fruit of one’s intellectual or academic prowess then we don’t need literature review. Just sign off the dissertation confidently under your signature - no references required. I would love to do something like that. But won’t risk it. And if we could actually submit an original paper that gets accepted by the supervisor, doesn’t it qualify to be a theory?

If all we are doing is reading, mutating and reproducing the literature that already exists and referencing it with pages and pages of bibliography, why are we loosing sleep?

It’s an interesting thing that I observed recently. Every subject has thousands of books written on it and each paragraph has a reference to another journal or a book. Can I therefore assume that 99% of books are just clever mutations and reproduction of someone else’s work?

I would be happy to come across 1/1000th the number of theories or masterpieces as the number of books that have been written in the last 40 years.