What are you waiting for?

As the world's most popular cliche goes, We live in interesting times. Gone are those days when we used to look at classifieds to sell stuff. Gone are those days when we used to send e-cards to friends with some cool sound and graphics, especially with acquaintances to impress them. Gone are those days when parents used to put ads on Sunday Newspapers about our marital status to find us good "homely, beautiful " girls for us. Gone are those days when we depended on brokers to find homes for rent. Gone are those days when we depended on lineage and right connections to land up at the right job.

With the advent of I - age, I has gained enormous power, thanks to technology,which has unshackled all the barriers of information and pre-requisites which existed before. Most of the successful marketing campaigns are now driven by I- ers. I- ers are the latest advertising gurus. I'ers are the latest product design gurus. No wonder Apple's successful products begin with I. If the success of crowdsourcing across various companies, including biggies like P&G and millions of start ups, have anything to teach us, it is this You have infinite potential. What gives this I-ers infinite power is the access to information. However, despite sea changes happening, many have not woken up to the infinite potential waiting to embrace you.

Take the case of Job-search. While most of us have have become old enough to choose our partners, why are we still shirking the responsibility of getting a cosy job to our parental institutions(read as B-Schools) , and in few worst cases, to even our parents too.
If changing times have showcased that the good ol' idea of letting parents choose our life-partners is no longer relevant, then its high time we take reins to find the best job in town.( ofcourse I dont mean geographical town....Wake up, the whole world is in your town..Didnt you know this..?) When we begin to do that, we would choose the one which befits our attitude and our personality. Such an act of volition obviates the need to crib those good-old "my job sucks big time" stories.... So what are you waiting for....???


I know you are tempted to ask this question, "All said and done, how do I choose the best job in town"? Well, if you are reading this in internet and still asking this question, you seriously have to get out of your slumber... You are living in I-age. Wake up...

Mean is Mean

While I was sitting in my boring quantitative techniques class, I suddenly gained new surge of energy while an insight struck me about what i was doin monotonously using my calculator. I was calculating mean average stopping time for visitors who are likely to visit a barber shop. It was a part of simulation exercise wherein using Random Numbers, I calculate average waiting time and utility factor for the barber, thus deciding whether he is busy enough to employ a new worker.

While working in this tool, I somehow could see the entire gravity behind average mean. Average mean as most of us know calculates the average value for a bunch of values. It, in a way, reduced each individual values (time taken to do an activity or any other human related metric) to homogenous entities, dissolved them and produced a value which it claimed to be the sole representative for the entire bunch of values. It was the perfect mathematical expression that could develop in a hierarchy where the person wielding his power at the top looks to bring in one substitute for the diverse set of values. Scientific thought prevalent in the times validated it and soon scores of management tools were made using this concept of mean. Several complimentary ideas such as mode, median all came in handy to help in deciding one value that could be broadcasted as the value for the millions of values.

Most of the old concepts of management, esp. the taylorism era of management grew up on these techniques where they began to find single solutions that optimized the diverse solutions. All these techniques of management worked on one to many concept..

With the advent of New era, mean is now defunct. 'Mean' sounds mean these days cos it makes anachronistic mistake of dissolving individual values. We can no longer to stand to accept that. If we want to make good decisions in this new era, I think we have to unlearn all the baggage of mean we've learnt so far and set out to find new ways to measure performance. I think performance would be much tougher task to measure in this new era, cos it cannot be measured the way we used to, using metrics of the new era..

Shashank Redemption

It has been hardly two months since I entered the most memorable phase of my life-my college days. The excitement never ceased to stop. My college had everything I could dream of. Far from the conservative societies of South, it had the perfect liberal, cosmopolitan ambience. It was an NIT, the second rung of premier institutions in the country, next to the IITs. The campus was located in the heart of city with sprawling 250 acres of lush greenery. It had lots of adorable girls to drool for. What more could I ask for?

Life,Pyar& Celluloid

I wrote this incomplete anthology few years back when I was crazy about cinema. I tried hard to convert this into a book..however, it didnt fructify...Vinnai thaandi varuvaayaa movie kinda brought back this anthology to me.. Will be posting the two stories I wrote under this anthology here... When i read this today, few parts sound funny. However I didnt want to edit it..

You can read the stories I wrote under this column  here

1) Shashank Redemption

2) Pyar Actually

Introduction

I am one of those countless movie buffs living in a movie crazy nation called INDIA. Since time immemorial, Indians have been so fascinated by movies. The reasons are hard to find. May be it has been embedded in our genome. May be it’s because of the eternal Vedas. Puzzled? The ancient Vedanta Philosophy talks about living life in a detached way, akin to watching a movie. On the surface, you are attached to it experiencing a gamut of emotions. Yet, in your deep consciousness you know that you are a mere witness watching the whole movie objectively. As soon as the lights are turned on, you walk out of the theatre as if you have just come out of a dream. Though several Indians may not really practise this kind of living, they will definitely find it impossible to think of a life without movies. 

Love from the Skies!!- Few thoughts about Vinnai Thaandi Varuvaaya

Watched Vinnai Thaandi Varuvaaya ( Will you cross the skies? ) movie yesterday. It left me with mixed emotions. I loved the movie and began to do pro-bono talk amidst my friends who actually didnt like the movie when they saw with me. Of course this movie meant a lot to me, having dealt with few characters in the those 16-mm reels in my real-life. I am not setting out to write the review of the movie. While the movie would work depending on how you actually related to the characters, coz, unlike most the movies, the characters in this movie are complex, three-dimensional people. What I loved the most in the movie, was the beautiful use of cinema as a metaphor for the story that sounded so typically filmy in its surface until you cared to look at the complex emotional structures which lend all the seriousness the movie pretended to hide behind the veneer of the cliched smitten boy-girl love story. 

The Secret behind the Amazing Dabbawalas

I recently attended a lecture by the popular Dabbawalas in my college. I was initially apprehensive about this whole lecture thing, as somehow I felt that Dabbawalas had received too much of attention from the media that most of the popular folk could think only of Dabbawalas when they thought of innovation. However my apprehensions and inhibitions withered away in the after glow of the brilliant speech by the third generation family which runs the Nutan Bombay Tiffin Box Suppliers Association. The brilliant speech gave me some amazing insights regarding the secret which makes them so efficient and amazing. Although the founders mentioned the secret so casually that hardly few could have noticed it, it somehow struck a huge chord with me.

Let me come straight to the point without belaboring further.

Dabbawalas belong to a Varakari Sampradaya ( tradition) and the entire 4000 strong work force belong to this sampradaya. This tradition unites them and make them work as organism as compared to an organization. White caps worn by every dabbawalas symbolizes this tradition. Bono makes this point in some interview where he mentions that teams should work as one organism together. U2 is another amazing example which works as an organism

So what makes this tradition so unique and what drives them to work at unbelievable 6-sigma efficient levels? Every member of dabbawala is a passionate devotee of Lord Panduranga((Another avatar of Lord Krishna)

They consider their work as a form of worship to their Lord and they do it so religiously. My friends in Mumbai pointed out that they can be often seen doing kirtans of Lord Panduranga while coming to work. Their passion and devotion towards their work was so evident when the speaker spoke of their jobs in such high esteem during the lecture. Their reverence towards their duty was filled with such fervor that I suddenly felt a sense of gratitude and devotion when I was taking my food in my mess after the session. Most of us, in our fast track lives, do our work so mundanely that such things become a routine mechanical task to us. The secret to do amazing work lies in this reverence. The moment we revere an activity, it takes the entire attention of our mind. We begin to do it with utmost sincerity and dedication. Remember those good ol' days when our parents used to do the preparations for rituals or functions in house. Or think of moments when devout christians prepare the christmas tree or the manger. Or think of the moments when you decorated the room for the birthday party of your beloved. Such work is done immaculately because of the love that emanates from doing the work. I know what you are thinking at. How can I begin to revere my daily mundane work of copying codes in one server or say, testing codes ? Well, with the way the world shaping up these days, it is impossible to be good in the work we do, unless we begin to love it. Any amount of breaks, vacations, trekking arranged by desperate HR folks wont help either. The best part is, the world has shaped to such extent, that the job we would love to do, isn't tucked in fables written by evangelists who live in make-believe world, it is just a click away..

So to put it simply, we have two choices. Choice 1: Love the work we are doing. Choice 2: Find work which we love..

HR folks can really take some lessons on motivation through reverence from these amazing dabbawalas. When work turns into what we really love, work turns into a piece of beautiful art. If you are still sceptical, look at the way Dabbawalas work!!

Another interesting thing which came out during the lecture was the fact that all the workers, irrespective of how many years they worked, get the same share of money from the total share of profits they make. When each and every member is a part of one organism, how can anyone get more than other?.. Looking at the mess we've created in the wake of financial crisis, thanks to all the popular carrot and stick approaches of compensation, one cannot but notice the gem of wisdom that lies behind this.

The best part of the lecture was during the end, when the president ended his speech by letting them do the work they have been doing for centuries and urging us, the future managers of India, not to force or adapt them to the conventional ways of management, we've borrowed from the west.

However what he didnt say was this...

"Its high time you guys embrace our ways of working if you are really serious about getting good results!"