The Weaver, the Princess and Goldman Sachs

A friend forwarded this story to me. I thought I should preserve this!!

Everyone knows that we Indians invented the zero. Without zero and the decimal number system, writing and calculating really large numbers would be very difficult.

This would be awful for people in the financial industry, whose work depends on having really big salaries. Fortunately Brahmagupta came to their rescue.

Another thing which is crucial to the financial services industry is the concept of being too big to fail, which has been put to good use by Citigroup, Bear Stearns, and Goldman Sachs over the past few years in sucking money from American taxpayers. This beautiful concept was also invented by an Indian - Vishnu Sharma, the author of the Panchatantra, in the story of the Weaver and the Chariot Maker.

The story of the weaver and chariot maker is one of the Panchatantra stories that usually doesn't make it to primary school textbooks or Amar Chitra Katha, mostly because it's full of sex, war, and moral hazard. Since you probably haven't read it, here's a quick summary.

A weaver sees a princess during a festival and falls in love with her. As a weaver, he has no chance of marrying her, so he sinks into depression. His friend, a chariot maker decides to help him out. He designs a flying chariot in the shape of Garuda, dresses the weaver up as Vishnu, and tells him to fly the chariot into the princess's room, tell her that he is Vishnu and wants to marry her Gandharva style. That is, the wedding is kept a secret from everyone except the princess and the faux-Vishnu. The princess agrees, and the weaver comes back every night to consummate the marriage.

Eventually, the maids notice that the princess is spending her days in total bliss, suspect that she's in love, and tell the King. The King asks her what's going on, and she tells him that she's married to Vishnu himself. The King is absolutely delighted, and decides that there's no point in paying tribute to the Chakravarti now that Vishnu himself is on the kingdom's side. The next night, he catches the weaver as he enters the princess's room and asks him to fight the Chakravarti' s army.

The weaver is horrified. Pretending to be Vishnu was fine when it allowed him to make sweet, sweet love to the princess, but taking on the role of Vishnu to face an imperial army single-handed is another thing altogether. On the other hand, if he confesses to the King that he is not actually Vishnu and has been boinking the princess under false pretences for the past month, he will have his head chopped off. So he decides to get on to the battlefield and do the best job he can, while the King is whipping up enthusiasm in the population by telling them that Vishnu himself is going to do all the fighting.

By this time, Garuda (the real one, not the mechanical one) has tipped off Vishnu about what's going on, and warned him that if the fake Vishnu doesn't win the battle, the people of the kingdom will lose all faith in him. Vishnu doesn't want to see this happen, so on the battlefield he enters the weaver's body and annihilates the Chakravarti' s army. The entire army. Every single soldier. After this, the weaver marries the princess, everyone goes on worshipping Vishnu, and the king becomes the new Chakravarti.

The moral is that you should conduct your affairs in such a way that if you fail, it will lead to someone or something even bigger or more powerful failing too. This lets you get away with anything. The weaver got away with having sex with the princess on false pretences (this is rape under Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code), pretending to be a god (awesomely enough, this too is a criminal offence under Section 508), and annihilating an entire army that was fighting a just war - after all, it was the king who broke the treaty (you could make a case for this being genocide under Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide).

American banks and financial institutions were very good at absorbing this lesson, and leveraged themselves up to such an extent that if they failed they would take the global economy down with them. And just as the weaver lived happily ever after with the princess, banks have lived happily ever after with taxpayer-funded bailouts.

But no matter how hard American investment banks try, Indians still remain the masters of this art. If the whole truth surrounding Lalit Modi is revealed, big politicians might be trapped. Modi is, thus, likely to get away lightly -- as is A Raja, who might have given away spectrum at bargain basement rates, but whose sacking would lead to the government collapsing. All this goes to show that no matter what the anguished elderly gentlemen who write letters to the editor feel, Indians are still in touch with our ancient and glorious culture Sphere: Related Content

How to collaborate with SME and Corporates?

Yogesh M. A. (OOH Media Entrepreneur) asked this question:
I have seen SME and corporates both have their own potentials and entrepreneurs need to work with both of them and both cultures are different I would be very glad if you explain us about how to collaborate with this biggest marketplaces.

My answer :
A SME vs a Corporate typecasting would depend upon "your" own business strategy. So my SME could be your corporate!! That being the basis of my answer the rest is as follows:

There is no logical answer to this that could be termed as generic. I tend to think that every organisation big or small has their own culture, hierarchies, bureaucracies, process and procedures of their own. The idea is to understand that carefully before and while you collaborate.

We also need to understand the organisational dynamics in terms of HR structures vs actual on the ground functional structures. By differiantiating you respect the individual organisation and thats what will finally bear results. That does not mean similar strategies do not work with multiple organisations. It could, but I believe they are never exactly the same.

I would agree to disagree amicably that Corporates only look for fast results, or SME's look for customised solutions. It depends!! I will need to find that out!!! Sphere: Related Content

Office near Home? (Linked in Q)

Office near home could have the following benefits:

1. Reduce stressful travel time and allows your mind to be more healthy and productive.
2. Contribute to lowering pollution since you would be travelling less.
3. Work time and home time...both are important constituents of the day and having an office near home helps maintain a good balance.

On the lighter side:
1. You could go back home for a short siesta to be fresh for the long haul.
2. Go back home for fresh food rather than stale food packed early in the morning and also avoid junk food in office or vicinity. The best would be to have a flexi time HOME office and these days inceasingly thats the way to go!! Sphere: Related Content

Is Sales a part of Marketing? Or is it the other way?

Philip Kotler said that Marketing was all about satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process. I like another definition by The Chartered Institute of Marketing where they have defined it as the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably. There would be others too and I am sure people would have studied them.

So as per concept there is no denying that Sales is a function under the umbrella of Marketing. Marketing to me is the whole end to end process of understanding needs, developing products and services to satisfy those needs, reaching them to the customer, support, maintaining relationships. It would also include market analysis, branding, promoting, product management and almost everything to do with a customer. In spite of views that may not agree with mine I am quite unwilling to change my stand on this!!

For people who think otherwise it is due to the perceptions that dictate their views. They would have been exposed to the fact that typically in most organizations you have a separate Sales Department and a separate Marketing Department.

Typically the marketing department in most situations carries out the marketing support functions like advertising, brand building and promotions. Some of them also bring in Product Management under this department though I have seen situations where Product Management is a separate group and they are responsible for the whole cycle for that particular product. Marketing Dept in the latter companies would perhaps just provide OVERALL Corporate Marketing Support.

Sales is a very important process since it deals with the bottom line(others do too). It consumes a lot of energy in dealing and converting the unknown and also tests the concepts on ground. Most organizations find it easier therefore to separately handle the marketing portions(other than sales) and sales. There would be aspects of Marketing that is broken up and handled by different departments or units. What is however important is that all the marketing activities that would include sales need to be in tandem. The entire mega process is marketing while sub processes are delegated to specialized people.

Let’s say there is a marketing project where a new brand of toothpaste has to be introduced you would find even R&D and production people getting involved. If the manufacturing is outsourced your external partner gets involved too.

Therefore without confusing ourselves, like some have already explained, everything has to work together. Every unit has a given deliverable to accomplish. Deliverables could be one time or repeatable. They all contribute to the big M.

It depends upon the “culture/direction from top management” on how the organization is structured and how processes will be carried out. The debate that carries on therefore is purely semantics and not worth considering.

Sphere: Related Content

Isnt the 'Proactive marketing approach' more of a disturbance to the customer? (Linked In)

My Answer:

I am not particularly in favour of using an adjective like Proactive. I am not sure as to how Marketing can be otherwise!!

The concept of disturbance again could be relative and diverse based on people, their background, culture likes and dislikes.

Typically any marketing approach and the particular activity undertaken will have to define customer touch points. So it could be an ad in the morning news paper sports section, a radio jingle in a particular program slot, a salesperson cold calling on and ringing your doorbell, an ad during Prime Time Friends, an email, an ad on a website and many more. Each of these again in many different ways.

Now any marketing approach must figure out the target segment and then decide how to reach them. An understanding of the segment that is being targeted is therefore of extreme importance. Understanding would be in terms of their social norms, behavior, culture and other attributes.

When you do all these and then carry out your marketing activities, that's what I would term as being proactive. This means that you try to understand a customer in terms of their thoughts, beliefs, feelings and needs.

Any marketing approach is intended to utilize those moments with the customer effectively. I reckon that if you are offensive or creating disturbance then you are not being effective and therefore you are not being proactive!!

An example:
It was 10.00 at night the other day when our doorbell rang. I live in an apartment in a typical residential high rise building Through the eye-hole I could see a lady and a gentleman. I opened the door with the door chain on, when the lady explained to me that they were doing some survey on tap water and wanted fifteen minutes of my time to conduct the experiment!! I mentioned that we do not consume tap water and then suggested to them they could conduct that experiment at the source itself and should rather contact the building supervisor instead of knocking apartments and that too in the night. She was awed by my suggestion but insisted that I should give in since it would hardly take a while. I immediately asked her if they were trying to sell a water purifier to me and she agreed. I told them I will not buy one and was polite with my 'thank you"!! She made a big face, rolled her eyes away, looked at her partner, shrugged, bid a rude "have a nice day" (@#$&**?) and waled off to next apartment.

This was surely disturbance!! I do not want to blame the salesperson right away here.

It is all a question of marketing approach and the right way of doing things. Some organizations do it well, while most do not. Many products sell in the market, but you would always like to remember and emulate people and organization who do the right thing, the right way and are friendly to the world and its inhabitants.

Marketing is surely about understanding consumer needs and then conceptualising, developing, promoting and delivering the product or service to fulfill those needs again and again. The marketing approach could be Push or Pull but I am quite clear that both approaches have to ensure that they are not offensive or causing disturbance. That's one facet of being proactive after all!! Sphere: Related Content

Customer Service - Should it be a part of sales (Question in Linked In)

My Answer:


1. My first contention is that there should not be a stereotype Customer Service Department in an organisation let alone it be under Sales.
2. All organisations have customer touch points for give and take of contractual promises, delivery, problem solving, help, information, relationship building. Even cold calling sometimes in very esoteric thinking could come under the perview of customer services.
3. Now all these different touch points typically would be a start or culminating point of different internal processes managed by different departments/functions/individuals based on the org structure and process structure.
4. The question is to manage these processes efficiently (led by customer expectations) and ensuring that the orchestra team is playing each instrument at the right time.

Customer Service is all about managing expectations and is an ART that should be managed using Science. Is therefore not a question of whether a Customer Service Department should be under Sales. Most often than not the answer would be negative. But that is not the issue. The point is to ensure that your touch points are well defined and they are delivering right, again and again, in same and different circumstances. That brings in the subject of how to understand customer expectations and that's perhaps a separate discussion, Lastly I feel that anything to do with the customer needs to be strategic!!! Sphere: Related Content

Why do organizations emphasize on team work but reward individual contributions more promptly?

1, We do not try.
2. We do not understand team dynamics
3. We almost always commit the same "mistakes" without understanding that they are mistakes.
4. We as a race like the concept of heroes.
5. We still do not understand the power of the "middle". We only reward the top and discard the bottom. And we continue our process with the disgruntled middle.

Managing an organisation is a game all right but not so simplistic. This is a complex process with complex situations and complex answers. So just rewarding a hero is not the answer. It has to be a holistic reward system that motivates the people at all levels. Aspirations could be different in terms or money or recognition or other aspects of life. Very few organisations and the people in it invest time to figure out these issues. Therefore it's good to talk about teams, team recognition and rewards in forums, discussions, blogs et al but when going and acting there is much left to be desired between practical theory and actual practice.” Sphere: Related Content

How do we know if there is any Strategy present in a Strategic Plan?

English as a language is ever evolving and words used can be perceived by us in different ways. Vision, Mission, Strategy, Goals, Objectives, Targets, Deliverables, and so on and so forth.

So I could have tactics, but one could also term it as a short term strategy!! Is Mission a Goal? Are objectives met by a strategy or every strategy must have a plan that should include tactics? Vision comes before Mission or vice versa!! Finally everything is relative and depends upon what time frame and accomplishment(oh another new word) we are looking at.

Restricting to the question and using the words listed I would say that a Strategy Plan must have the following:
1. What are we planning to achieve and in what time frame? Why?
2. Is it implementable, actionable on the ground and is the "how" defined and tested.
3. How would you measure the implementation and effort?
4. Is the strategy in sync with the top level areas of Vision, Mission, et al.
5. Is there are a Work breakdown Structure available?
6. Are the resources identified?

A mere Intent white paper is not a Strategic Plan. However the detailing might differ depending upon which level of the organisation is discussing it. Sphere: Related Content

DECISIONS

Decisions!! Are they more from the brain or the gut. The answers could be more brain, or guts or a mix of both.

Then somebody also mentioned that there is a third dimension to this in terms of influence or being a catalyst. It is the Heart!! So there you go!! For further information click on this:

HEART and decisions!!

That would give a new perspective.

The attribute of skill (another dimension) I have assumed to be part of the brain, though you could disagree!! Sphere: Related Content

How Indian companies using Internet for Marketing their Products and Services? (My answers in Linked In)

This question has been lurking in my mind too but I have reconciled to myself that the answer is not a simple one. In fact like ART any of the answers could be perceived and interpreted differently.

The first question to ask is what is the product you are trying to sell and to whom? The second question would be in terms of your sales strategy that would mean pre sales, lead generation and finally connecting with the potential segment. There is also a question of your branding and brand building activities.

All these require resources. Resources would be in terms of money, people and knowledge.

Most Indian companies have been using the websites as an electronic form of the Corporate Brochure. A selling medium and especially an unconventional one need to be promoted. So not only are you promoting the product but you need to also promote the medium through which sales has been planned for.

The last point is the most important and that’s all about the consumer. Is your segment ready for responding through internet for the buying process? Is the consumer ready only to absorb knowledge but not purchase through the net? The marketing strategy that is willing to consider the web needs to answer these questions. Sphere: Related Content

Do you need sales experience to be an effective SALES MANAGER? (My answers to Linked In Questions)

Sales as a concept to me is generic rather than being operational in a small boundary. So to me a Finance Manager could also be in the selling profession and similarly a Compliance Officer could also be selling. Selling ia locating customers who would need your value proposition and convince them to buy it.

The Finance manager would be selling his organisation to Banks and FIs for getting working capital or other fundings. A compliance manager in a Bank could be selling his org's value proposition to the Central Bank for various clearances.

Given this perspective, it is not about having a title Sales Manager and showing years of experience in sales that counts for me. I would look deeper into the person's competencies in terms of convincing, presentation, analysis, relationship building and team building skills for him to be a sales manager.

Most HR cosultants and experts and line managers have this habit of slotting people based on resumes and experience write ups and that's not a good thing. Like most of the things in life there is no hard and fast rule and your answer cannot be a digital Yes or No.

I know of excellent sales managers in the IT industry coming out from hardcore engineering production backgrounds. I know of industrial engineers having experience of more than 20 years running successful consumer durable sales operations.

You need to find the right person for the job, and its the aptitude, intent and capability that counts. The capability factor further dissected in terms oif attributes mentioned earlier.

Rule of the thumb is not a good way of going ahead, if you want a successful, sustainable organisation. Sphere: Related Content

Why won't Salespeople call on executives? (My answers to Linked In Questions)

This is not a sales rep related problem, at least that is what I think. Over the years I have noticed that most organisations are spending even lesser time on their army in terms of strategic training that would constitute product traimings, customer acquisition methodology and bare sales training. Relationship building is not a lottery and requires careful planning and actual field level actions.

Depending upon the organisation, as a sales person you would sometimes need to attack at all levels and its not just a question of meeting different levels. For the problem that you are going to solve for the organisation, who are the key decision makers, who are the influencers, who are against you in terms of concept or competition. All of these need to be mapped.

It is again not a question of where you would start. Its more a question whats the easiest opportunity of opening that door and once you have opened it how would you cover the full building - the relevant areas of the building that is.

Sales perople need to be trained and monitored for such activities. Sales Strategy and Results monitoring are a given. It's measuring the efforts and taking corrective action is where most organisations lack in intent and design. Sphere: Related Content

Can Creating Heroes within an Organization Motivate Employees? (My Answer to Linked in Questions)

My answer:

All of us know that management concepts do propagate the concept of recognising and announcing heroes. However we need to remember two important points:

A. Motivation of a person is directly linked to his/her own aspirations in that organisation and also generally his/her outlook towards life.
B. Is the "Hero" really a "hero"?

A lot of times Heroes would automatically come up due to performance or any other special achievements in the organisation. But typically msot recognition schemes are based on past results and that's typically not a good management practice in spite of the latter being the most practiced "practice".

Management and Senior Managers are typically fixated ONLY with results and deliverables and do not delve into the depth of the "HOW". Therefore the "effort" that goes into accomplishment is never understood, recognised, monitored and appreciated..In a soccer match while goals are scored by strikers, the midfielders and the defenders need to play their role and create the situation and that requires serious planning and execution for the final outcome to happen as desired.

Yes, success stories are required but we need to find out and highlight the successes that led to the final succesful result and highlight the men and women who worked for it along with the last striker who sent the ball into the goal. Sphere: Related Content

Going Back Home

Irrespective of your thoughts on the issue I know for sure and strongly feel that the capitalist greed manifested through a system of debt based society is one of the major causes of this gloom in the world economy. Whether communism could have saved us from this is perhaps not a correct hypothesis but then that’s a separate debate. Here I am just talking about people like you and me that have been affected by all this.

Now as soon as we were hit the first that got affected were the support industries. The Core started looking at reducing costs and manpower is obviously the first choice. You might realize that during economic doom somehow the “goodwill” value in the balance sheet is the most non liquid asset!!

So now the corporation gets into this act of off balance sheet measure of what best human beings can do. Create complications for other fellow human beings. I am not saying here that the measures are uncalled for. It was the most logical thing to do. Get people to multitask, while ask the others to leave.

In this melee, my problem is of a different kind. Why did you plan for an organization structure that had so much excess fat? It required an economic debacle for the organization to realize their wrong planning. The irony does not stop here. On one side you had executives taking one way flights back home while his colleague was going to his local home with a bonus wired to his bank account!!

Some of the establishments have been so blatant that the grants they have received from the Government have been treated as Income in the Profit and Loss Account and they have posted a profit in the books for the the board and the limited shareholders to run away with huge dividends.

The world is a funny place and somehow we have been our worst enemies. The two big Es in our life is slowly killing us. Economy and the Environment are the two things the future need to concentrate on since we cannot do anything with the past other then blaming it. I am not even sure of the learnings the past has to offer. Finally, Nature will act on the environment, but God help us and our Economic System Sphere: Related Content

Linked to Nostalgia

Most of us are members of this professional portal named LinkedIn where like a spider’s web we are connected in the virtual world. I have been of course rather late in joining up and am still getting used to the power of the portal. But that’s not what I have in mind.

It’s about the connections I am making. Long lost connections, names are coming in and am searching for the same and hopefully getting connected. Though it’s virtual somehow I can feel the warmth and affection coming across from most of the people. There are of course some of them who are connections but I guess for the heck of it. They typically don’t reply or respond.
I got connected to some of my colleagues when I started my career way back in Hyderabad. The past years perhaps have changed us in appearance, thinking or attitude. But I was pleasantly surprised to meet up with this motley crowd who are constantly messaging each other and even meeting up.

Now that I have joined, I promised myself to keep in touch. Better late than never is the approach. Sphere: Related Content

Size ém UP errrrr. DOWN

This was a comment I sent in response to a poll on downsizing in a blog I follow. Basically the writer was asking a few questions on reasons behind downsizing. I thought I should not lose what I wrote and therefore this post. If you are keen to read up the original post by the writer I have given the web address at the end of this post. Being a bong, there is this socialistic streak in me. Given that, I feel its a larger question of whether its the right economic system where absolutely everything is decided upon by the market. Most companies, when the going is good, do not ever strategize for bad times in spite of the finance manager trying to be the internal devil’s advocate. There is also this issue of most organizations not strategizing in a scientific manner regarding human resourcing. Most HR managers are not really allowed to apply their skills and thoughts in an organization, where most of then not everything is decided upon by line. If you take the IT sector, these body shopping guys(Infosys is the largest!!!) kept having huge benchstrengths where the people had no work. And then there is some catastrophe and people have to be sacked. More and more now, people should be careful about selecting organizations who they think are employee prone in thought and practice. HR cult has to flow from the operating managers. And of course the “D” of the HRD is a mostly a joke in most Indian companies. And organizations need to build a culture of truth. Most metrics that are published are not true and window dressed. The Balance Sheet is ofcourse the biggest lie of them all. An instance I want to share with you. A bank in Dubai published their 2008 figures last week where they declared a Net Profit of 500 Million AED. Would you believe that 1000 million AED was received as a grant(due to liquidity crisis) from the Emir which was shown as an Income instead of increasing the capital or reserves. They had actually made a loss of 250 million AED. In Indian companies we have over or under invoicing, there is no standard of ethics for human beings, the system is corrupt. As I mentioned earlier, the truth is only know to the top and the people below and the general public are thought to be stupid. so when senior managers talk about work ethics and the philosophy of developing their human resources, I take it with a pinch of salt. The proof after all is in the eating.

The link: www.bullzi-inc.com/polls/05052009/when-is-it-right-to-downsize/ Sphere: Related Content

Shameless Truth

Indian companies are prone to fraud and do succumb to unethical practices at different levels. So when Narayan Murthy said that it was a shameful affair referring to the Satyam case, I was not really amused. Either NM lived in a world of his own or perhaps I am plain stupid. The latter perhaps is not so true.

By the way, and why should I pin point only Indian Companies. This is a global phenomenon. Frauds are invented and implemented by intelligent people whether company executives, owners or bankers or the small trader down the lane. What about us? We are also into it. That extra bribe to get a passport quicker, Mr. Devil is ever ready to extend his hands and we gladly embrace them.
I am not sure what dawned on Mr. Raju to confess his deeds. Was he threatened by somebody? Did God appear in his dreams? Was he in the brink of a mental breakdown? The answer to these question can be answered by none other than him and no amount of investigations would able to resolve the questions we have in mind.

Do we expect more such confessions? Who knows? Till such time we will keep exclaiming about the blunder Raju has made.

My question is - When will YOU the reader, confess about your own sins? Or perhaps resolve to be truthful and act where there is no shame attached. Sphere: Related Content