Betaal is either arrogant or un-coachable :)

The City and the intellectuals staying in this city - all are raving about this "Landmark Education". Something that changes lives. Makes better spouses. Better kids. Better citizens. Fixes most of the problems above the shoulder.

Its a 4 days course (9AM to 11PM !!! ) about making one internally strong and see the right prospective.

Most of the people who came out of the course, say that at the end of the four days, its almost an orgasmic feeling ! Trans followed by tranquility ! And the Ohhhh of "I get it now".

Obviously intrigued by this, Betaal went for a Saturday intro class. This is offered as a miniature version for the people to see what is it and then sign on for the 4 day course that costs good amount of money !

As many other self-improvement trainings, this one started with one problem to pick, impact on current behavior because of the problem, missing actions, new possibilities - different stages.

After 3-4 hours betaal did not have any thing close to the orgasmic trance ! A few super-powerful ways of thinking that betaal does almost all sober moments of his life ;)

Truly arrogant or hopelessly un-coachable I say !

If you listen "only" to the customer ..

A giant company, leader in it field, went out asking customers what is the next best technology they can have that would leap frog them in to the gen-next in their business.

Focused around emerging markets - where the percentage growth in business is attractive.

And, yes ! Most innovations have happened by listening to the customer and management gurus have vouched for this technique generation after generation. So it was the apt thing to do !

What came back from the customers was shocking though ? They did not want any new path breaking technology. All the suggestions were around improving the reliability of the systems already out there. About combining the systems to create more scalable solutions.

Does that mean the giant of the company stops innovating new technologies ?

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That reminds betaal what Henry Ford said after building car. "If I "only" listened to customers I would have tried to breed faster horses".

Much ado about "voting"

... is worth it ! At least for the feeling of being a part of a change. A "billionth" part that is.
Nevertheless, a part.

The media and industry this year has done a tremendous job in terms of getting awareness up in urban population about the contestants, the process to register and vote and the complete nine yards.

Before going to the booth, there were profiles of the aspiring leaders and their stance on each of the critical issues outlined in leading daily. The profile even includes their net worth and if they have criminal records.

Information is king ! And the king makers (us the citizens) have access to IT to choose the best king.

As usual on voting days, I make it the first-thing-to-do-in-the-morning routine.

What is disappointing me is that it was declared a holiday. Voting itself is was a less than 10 min job for me including commute to the booth (yes - there is always a closer one to you). And if you go to the booth at 7:30AM, there is no line. Most companies declared Saturday as "compensation" working day for this holiday. Not ours !

Means of communication !

Ever wondered how many different ways we have to communicate today ? Tele-communicate to be specific !

Telephone. Texting. IMs. e-mails. Video conferencing etc. etc.

I ve come across a simple combo tool combination that works magic during the late night customer calls that are part of our job.

When multiple people are on a conference, people belonging to many functions and many sides of negotiation - surprising things come up ! Surprise questions that take you off-guard !

And if you the one talking, or the one listening while one of your team is talking, there is a risk of being out-of-sync right on the call ! Can be very embarrassing.

So while talking on telephone, keeping the IM window open in a chat group with your team, to react to such surprises in a cohesive synchronous way is very helpful !

Bring on the methods of communications, Betaal says ! ;)

Pun intended .....

(not an original post.. plagiarized from some chain mail off the internet)

Marc Faber's comment on the US economy -

Investment analyst and entrepreneur Dr. Marc Faber concluded his
monthly bulletin with the following:

''The federal government is sending each of us a $600 rebate. If we
spend that money at Wal-Mart, the money goes to China. If we spend
it on gasoline it goes to the Arabs. If we buy a computer it will
go to India. If we purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to
Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. If we purchase a good car it will
go to Germany/Japan. If we purchase useless crap it will go to
Taiwan and none of it will help the American economy. The only way
to keep that money here at home is to spend it on prostitutes and
beer, since these are the only products still produced in US. I've
been doing my part."

Thinking "inside" the box !

A lot happens out there in name of thinking "outside" the box. A lot good. And a far lot chaos !

There are many motivations today to think outside the box -

1. To break away from competition with something new

2. To be visible and for personal growth and blowing self horn

3. To look different and cool

While, as long as the result is good, any of the approach is good, the pre-requisite of thinking outside the box is not met by all who do so. For the gloss and rush of it !

Someone to be successful in thinking out side the box, need to at least know, what is inside the box. Else, this aids illegitimate birth of many dis-jointed, chaotic ideas which do not build on one another. And fail to stand on their own.

There is a *single* problem chansing a business today where I work. And most of the big heads, have chased the think outside the box dream to make it more unreasonable.

Time to look inside the box !

Power of "Non-working Days"

Non-working days - Leaves that one takes from work with pay or holidays !

Power to Employee: In a country like India, where family includes your dependent fathers, from generations, having them included in your health benefits is only logical. But it was not so for a few big multinationals (read US based companies, where one's family does not include the parents).
So, when genuine needs of employees needing health insurance for parents showed up and stirred up the HR policies in one of those big US based companies in India, the committee recommended to cut the Leaves or Paid Time Off by 2 days and fund extra premium needs to include parents in the health plan. Employees did not complain about working 2 days extra.

That is the power of Non-working days.

Power to the employer: When economy nose dived, and companies started looking for every possible ways of saving a few bucks and stay afloat, many announced mandatory time off for couple of weeks, during Christmas (when very less work gets done anyway). Way to push off liabilities from the balance sheet and hence making the balance sheet more positive than it would have been with those promised paid hours of no-work !

Why am I remembering those events today ? Well.. because today is a holiday in India. And I can not understand why ?

Good Friday - even in some real Christian countries it is not a holiday. I think it is wastage of a powerful tool like "Non-working Time" !

Money Talks !

A story - betaal was telling to Vicky ! About setting priorities around money, and misplaced priorities.

Once there was a high tech company. Small and nimble. High on innovation - in productions, pricing, positioning and packaging ! A true Engineering and Sales driven company.

They produced hardware and sold them. Now, every hardware sold went with software, which was never sold separately. But half of the development cost was in software. Then enabling services on the platforms (Hardware PLUS software), was through partners or through education directly to the customer.

Then the company grew. Some wise brains thought of a silo called "services". To recover the money for the software and services on the HW the company built. Very good business idea.

One hole in execution though !

The so called new Silo, "Services" did not have expertise to provide the services customer wanted. That expertise still stayed with Engineering. So, they ended up being a wrapper layer, punting problems from customers to engineering.

So, engineering, spent same amount of time as before. Sometimes more. But the company had more than twice the amount of employees. A boatload of them hired for "services". The wrapper layer !

Now, everyone who counted money loved those people. As services was like lost money found.
Growing at high teen. Customers coughed up more for their speed of deployment. Engineering kept on doing the work in the back ground.

The accounting showed all the money coming in under the PIE of Services. Then money started talking !

When a budget cut came, engineers got cut. Services continued to splurge ! Less engineers more wrapper deadwood ! But more money in wrapper pie.

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Betaal took a pause from story telling. For Vicky, it was not unknown ! It was more re-instating the fear he always had. The company evolved from the technical thought leader to a white elephant ! Nicely decorated and wonderfully presented. Standing on the back of dead engineers who worked and saved all thir life for the elephant to splurge and look good.

Wasteful attention !

Customer Escalation handling is the holy grail for many corporates. It builds business and more importantly builds careers within the company. So it attracts a lot of visibility seeking people in to it.

While, the intention is noble and essential, that is - paying attention to customer, the implementation of it hugely opportunistic and wasteful.

Last night, I went on a call where for one issue, there were 3 program managers, 3 technical managers, 1 escalation manager and 2 technical support engrs, 4 engineers and one customer representative.

There was one hour of internal call and one hour of external call.

2 hours of 13 people, for one issue, which is in root caused and fix found state. Two people talking. Others watching !

Betaal mused the words "efficiency" and "frugality".

Corporate-Govt nexus !

I happened to be in the "south block" of a big corporate. You know what I mean by that.
An area with a lot of ultra white color strategy makers.

Whenever I spend some time here, I get some new insight. Today was not different.

When I went in, there was a special task force working on a completely non-technical thing.
A bunch of people on phone, trying to get in touch with all famous women of India. When I say famous (I can not take all the names here), reaaaaalllly famous ! Like head of state, like ex-super cop, like founder of Biotech in India etc.

And there were a bunch of people celebrating something in a corner. Wondering what is it all about, I started probing few of my privileged friends.

Here is the summary of my findings !

Govt of India in last 15 years have developed many concepts to attract multinational business. STPI and SEZ are part of these gambits. Now, there are still archaic laws that makes it very expensive to move resources between these two bodies. Very very expensive. Mainly because SEZ was created to encourage new business with new tax holiday and STPI tax holidays are over(10 yrs). But corporations do find loop holes.

So, after a long standing negotiation, the corporate has own a battle - make this movement free.
And thats the cause of celebration. Understood ! So whats up with looking up famous women ?

Here is the link - Govt. has asked, industry to encourage "Women Enterprenuers" !
Hence the rush to set up talks. Motivation speeches etc.

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Betaal is flumoxed ! He knows its poll time and he knows, for getting something free for corporate, there is a one time favor to party that would be appropriate during poll time. Betaal also knows Govt. wants to put a official, society friendly spin on it. What better than - "We gave industry a break from duties in leau of them investing in building next-gen women enterpreneurs" ?

A story of two trees ..

Once I went to an ancient temple in Orissa with my father. I was a kid then (I still am :) .

There was one of natures wonders. Two Ashoka Trees believed to be thousands of years old.

One of them Bigger than the other. Shadowing the smaller one. Lil gray leaves.

The smaller one had luscious green leaves. But it was smaller. It was in the shadow of the bigger one ! All along.

They were both planted on the same soil. Same place. Same number of years. One had better leaves than others. But it was smaller than the other one.
And in the shadow !

Somethings happening lately, that reminds me of those trees. The smaller one in particular. The one that exemplifies "Threat perception". Its time to break out !

A tree does not have to move for its food. And anything that can move and does not move, for food and growth, becomes like a tree. The smaller one of the twins in particular.

To touch or not to touch !

There are explosives around me. But not exactly in the territory I am supposed to guard.

I smell them. Know that they are around. Just can not defuse them. Or may be I can, but at the risk of being court Marshall.

This is a tricky issue that bugs many up us while we try to walk through the corporate corridor !

If you see filth, you supposed to walk away or clean up ? Dilemma is while cleaning up, if you enter someone else's house, it is trespassing !

Betaal believes - you should clean it up, entering others house ! But only if the sheriff is your friend !