Wind Power

Before the invention of engines, ships have for centuries relied on the power of the wind on their sails to move around the seas of the world. From the Phoenicians merchants of the ancient world to the English and Dutch traders of the 19^th century, it has always been wind power which has kept marine commerce alive across the sea lanes of the world.

And now, with oil prices skyrocketing and global warming becoming a concern for all countries, probably it is time once more to take a look at the possibilities of harnessing clean wind power for moving across the oceans.

Which is what the SkySail is all about. Invented by a company in Hamburg, it is a massive kite tethered to a ship that produces enough motive power to save 35% in fuel costs. A retractable mast slowly hoists the kite in the sky, where the wind unfolds it, and an autopilot keeps it in the correct position. It produces four times more energy than a regular sail, and if the winds are favourable the ship can use it to relieve its main engines.

Check out their website for more information and a short video.

Be a light unto yourself

Atmadipo bhava. Atma – self , Dipa – light. Be a light unto yourself.

This was the last instruction of the Buddha before he attained Nirvana. This was the last teaching he gave his disciples from his deathbed. Atmadipo Bhava . Be your own light. Depend on yourself and none else.

Have that faith in yourself, that you and you alone are the creator of your own destiny. That you, and you alone, are your own guide, your own friend, your own philosopher. You, and none else.

Samudragupta, the second Gupta king, and one of the greatest military conquerors of India, adopted the epithet swabhuja bala parakramaika bandhu – friend of his own strength and courage. History is witness to the truth of his claim.

The Gita puts it thus,

Raise yourself by yourself, do not let yourself down. For you alone are your own friend, you alone are your own enemy (6.5)

Be your own friend. Be your own light.

Atmadipo bhava.

LED City

Chances are that you have neither heard about the Holborn Viaduct nor about Torraca.

The first is the street in London where the electric streetlights were deployed in 1878 – a first in the world.

The second is a small city in southern Italy which can be termed as the world's first LED city, because all its streetlights now utilise LEDs, rather than the customary sodium vapour lamps. In Torraca, the orange twilight of sodium vapour lights has now been replaced with the bright white of LEDs.

In fact, unnoticed by most, LEDs are slowly taking lighting beyond incandescent bulbs and neon tubes. The reason is not difficult to understand - LEDs use only one-eighth of the power, stay cool and last for ten years or so.

A number of cars today use LEDs in the taillights, and soon maybe be used in headlights as their power increases, and so it is not a surprise that Torraca's lights were installed by Gelbison, a company that manufactures car components.

LEDs are also being increasingly used in portable lighting such as torches and lanterns, and the light they produce far surpasses that of traditional bulb powered torches. I had picked up one out of curiosity from Dubai recently. Though they very small, and running on just four cells, the amount of light this lantern produces is good enough for us to finish our dinner during a power cut.

Another advantage of LED lights, apart from their low power consumption and high intensity is that they can be implanted in to furniture and walls, and can also change colour, enabling lighting to be integrated into interior design. This is expected to give new ways of lighting our homes, making light bulbs and tube lights as obsolete as gramophone records.

For more information check out http://ledcity.org/ or the Phillips LED site http://www.lumileds.com/

 

Kindle

This November Amazon launched its e-reader, Kindle. The device allows readers to directly download e-books from the Amazon store through a wireless network, without requiring the services of a computer. It weighs around 300 grams, and uses an e-paper display, which, unlike a computer screen, has the look of actual paper. Though it is too early to say how things will finally turn out, some reviewers are claiming that Kindle will do to digital text, what the iPod did to digital music. The Kindle is not the only one of its kind, and there are other competitors, notably Sony PRS-505. But what makes the Kindle different is that not only can you use it to read books, but you can also buy and download e-books directly from the Amazon store with its wireless connection.

A promotional clip on the Kindle is available on the Amazon site here.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Yes, as you may have guessed it, this is the title of a book. And no, unlike the other books that I have mentioned in the past, I haven't read it. Not yet.

But that does not matter. For the purpose of this post is not to tell you about the content of the book, or discuss its literary value. The purpose of this post is to tell you about the superhuman effort it took to write it.

Jean-Dominique Bauby was a journalist and the editor of the French magazine ELLE. At the age of 43, on December 8, 1995, he suffered a massive stroke. When he woke up after 20 days, the stroke had left him mute and had paralysed his entire body. He could just move his head a bit, grunt and blink his left eyelid.

This entire book was written by Bauby by blinking his left eyelid. While someone dictated the entire alphabet, Bauby blinked his eyelid to choose a letter. This process required nearly two minutes to complete one word.

The book was published in French on March 6, 1997. Two days later Bauby died of heart failure.

To me this book represents the superhuman mental strength all of us have within ourselves. Bauby just had one eyelid to work with, but we have been blessed with so much. If we can bring his effort and motivation in whatever it is that we do, just imagine what we will be able to achieve. We shall pluck out the stars from the sky and crumble the moon to dust. That strength is in all of us. Believe it.

Storage

Increasingly, many of us have started to use our personal webmail accounts, such as Yahoo or Google, to exchange large files, because our official emails do not allocate to us the kind of space that the today's has humongous application files require. A number of us, who have to exchange large data files, are also increasingly using free file sharing services such as Pando or Rapidshare.

All of which points to a simple truth – online storage on the web is much cheaper, and sometimes virtually free, compared to local storage. So, over a period of time, will we progressively see people storing their data on the web, rather than on their local PCs? Only time will tell, but there are definitely signs which are pointing to that direction. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is planning to come up with paid service, which will allow users to store their data online, so that it can be accessed from multiple computers and mobile devices. This of course will not be something unique, for there are other online providers who also have this service. But whereas with these services, for example Yahoo Briefcase, file transfer is a multistep process that needs clicking through multiple screens, the Google service, internally known as My Stuff, promises to make the process much simpler, by allowing file upload and access directly from the desktop, and by having the online storage act like just another hard disk.

Microsoft also has a service called Windows Live SkyDrive, which is currently free, and here's a quick list of a few other online storage providers too:

• Omnidrive.com : 1 GB free. 10-50 GB for $40-199 per year.
  
• Box.net: 1 GB free. 5-15 GB for $7.95-19.95 per month.
  
• Xdrive.com/AOL: 5 GB free. 50 GB for $9.95 per month.
  

Question : Once the data deserts the desktops and takes refuge online, will the applications follow suit too ? So what shape will future PC s take, if there is a place for PCs in the future? Hmm, time to think deeply I think.

Yotel

What happens when you apply the space saving designs of the business class of airlines and of luxury yachts to hotel rooms? Answer : You get an Yotel.

Currently available at only two airports in Britain and Netherlands, a Yotel is a set of cabins which passengers can hire on daily or hourly basis, if they have a long waitover period between connecting flights. The standard cabin, about 75 square feet in size, houses a bed, overhead storage (yes, just like flights), a fold away table, a flat panel TV, free internet connection and a bathroom with shower.

Go to www.yotel.com to take a virtual tour of a cabin.

The Yotel is proof enough that innovation is not necessarily invention. Borrow the ideas from one industry, apply it to another, and voila, you have innovation.

The eight appeals

Well you are trying to sell something to someone. Yes you know that your product/ service is probably the best thing that has ever happened to the human civilisation after the discovery of fire and the invention of the wheel. In fact you are absolutely, absolutely certain of it, as certain as night follows day. But does your prospect care? Is it worth her time, her risk, her inconvenience, her natural inertia and her poor experience from past bad buying decisions? Well, maybe not.

In order to reach the mind of your prospect, you must appeal to any of the following things that your prospect wants to be :

1. Happier
   
2. Smarter
   
3. Healthier
   
4. Richer
   
5. Safer
   
6. More secure
   
7. More attractive
   
8. More successful
   

Any sales or marketing message that does not appeal to any of these eight desires, is not likely to succeed.

Salmon Leadership

Customer leaders need the guts of a salmon. Some might say delirium. Think about it. The salmon goes head first against the current. It pushes on to its destination, unscathed by resistant forces. The salmon leader turns the company from facing itself to facing the customer.

Quoted from Chief Customer Officer – Getting past Lip Service to Passionate Action by Jeanne Bliss.

Note for the uninitiated: The salmon fish swims from the ocean into the river, battling its way upstream against the current and rapids, travelling nearly a thousand miles, to lay eggs.

And here we go once more...

And once more, back to our old game of Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis. Here goes.

Thesis: In school computer labs, since there are not enough PCs to go by, children sharing a PC must take turns at the mouse. Antithesis: Though there are not enough PCs, and children must share them, it is not necessary for them to take turns at the mouse. Synthesis: Create software that allows multiple mice to be connected to a single PC, using multiple USB ports; let each cursor be of different colours and shapes so that they can be recognised.

Sounds fairly simple, doesn't it? It is simple. And it is actually the solution that Microsoft Research India is working out. The additional plus of this innovation is that apart from allowing for better sharing, the system encourages a lot of collaborative learning among children.

Here's one more.

Thesis: If one wants to check whether an official document is original, then he has to get the document verified by the issuing authority. Antithesis: It is not necessary to get the document verified by the issuing authority. Synthesis: On one corner of the document print a bar code that carries the same information as the document. If the information in the bar code corroborates the information in the document, then the document is genuine.

As the one before, this solution too is fairly simple. And elegant. Being developed by HP India, the additional advantage of this approach is that it is easy and cheap – unlike sophisticated technologies like holograms or RFID chips, it can be simply printed by an ordinary printer.

So before I sign off, once more, what is your Synthesis today?

Once more, about struggle

Not many of us heard about Izumi Tateno. But he happens to be one of the top Japanese pianists, with more than 3000 concerts and a hundred recordings behind him.

In 2002, while performing onstage in Finland, his right hand began to shake. He finished the piece with his left hand and collapsed.

He had suffered a stroke. A stroke that left the right side of his body paralysed. In his own words, "In an instant, I lost all the music that I had accumulated inside me for over 60 years".

But he did not give up. No. In fact he is back on stage giving dozens of concerts, though he has not gained control of his right hand. He plays music especially composed for the left hand, sitting on a bench that stretches the length of the piano.

"...I am not interested in taking it easy. I don't even know how to. I want to perform as I have done in the past 50 years..." , he says.

And then in a performance last year, he had an urge to play a simple melody with his right hand. He tried it, and it worked. His wife sat in the audience with tears in her eyes.

He wrote that whenever he plays with his right hand, he gets the feeling of new leaves coming out in spring. "They are still delicate, but maybe in time, they will grow strong."

All our new initiatives are like new spring leaves too. They are delicate and need a lot of care. But as Izumi Tateno says, maybe they will grow stronger with time.

Let us all nurture more new leaves in our work. For what else is spring, if not new leaves?

Biomimicry

The TIME magazine, in a recent special issue on "Heroes of the Environment", has honoured a number of people, who are, in the words of the magazine, "speakers for the planet". And one of these people, who find mention in the section "leaders & visionaries" is Janine Beynus, who pioneered a new field of study called biommimicry with her 1997 book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.

Biomimicry, as the name of the book suggests, is a science that learns designs and processes from nature and uses them to solve human problems. Biomimicry has resulted in development of paint that cleans itself like lotus leaves, synthetic sheets that collect water from fog and mist like desert beetles and ultrasonic canes for the blind inspired by bats.

The logic of biomimicry is not difficult to follow. Since evolution ruthlessly eliminates all design flaws, what is left behind after 3.8 billion years of nature's stringent quality control, must be worth emulating. In the words of the TIME magazine article, biomimicry is "treating nature as model and mentor, cherished not as a mine to be stripped of its resources but as a teacher"

Read about mollusc inspired fans and termite inspired air conditioning at the Biomimicry Institute's case studies
page, or watch Janine Beynus herself present a few biomimicry ideas in this video.

And, once more, ...

Thesis: If you are a jogger, you need a stopwatch to measure your running speed. Antithesis: You do not need a stopwatch to measure your running speed. Synthesis: Devise a sensor embedded in your shoe that measures your running speed.

The solution is the Nike Plus shoe, that has a sensor embedded in the sole which can talk to an Apple iPod. When used together, the iPod Nano will measure the distance, time and pace of your run, while playing your favourite music. The results can then be uploaded on nikeplus.com for comparing your achievements with fellow jogging enthusiasts.

Rock 'n run, as the Apple site http://www.apple.com/ipod/nike/ describes it.

So, again, what's your synthesis today?

Success

What brings success? Three things in my opinion. Unwavering focus, the strength to keep on trying undeterred by repeated failure, and an ability to unfailingly seize any opportunity.

The first two qualities are summed up in a Sanskrit verse. Though actually meant for describing the qualities desired in an ideal student, it nevertheless is an apt description for any striving professional

Kako chesta bako dhyanam shayana nidra tathaiva cha

Attempting like a crow, focusing like a crane, with but little sleep and rest.

Those who have seen a crow attempting to snatch away some food laid out in the sun on the balcony or terrace will know how steadfastly it keeps on trying. Throw a stone at it, chase it out with stick or just shout at it, it caws and flies away a little distance, just to come back and try once more. Kako chesta – keep on trying like a crow.

And what about the crane? It stands in water on one leg, focusing so deeply on the fish below, that it seems lost in its own world and oblivious to the world, just like a meditating yogi. Bako dhyanam. Only thing is that it is not meditating, it is just focusing on one thing, and only one thing. It has withdrawn its mind from everything else.

And then there is the ability to seize an opportunity. Opportunities are like those sharp, low catches going past the third slip in a one day cricket match. Not only are they are difficult, they also do not come by too often. But then success rewards the team which can make the best use of these rare and difficult chances. And so does it reward those in life who are willing to go after the smallest of opportunities without dragging their feet and inventing excuses. In Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, Brutus sums it up,

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Take the current when it serves. Seize the opportunity. Do not hesitate and drop the catch.

Once more...

Once more,

Thesis: The functionality of electronics is limited by its principle, which depends solely on the charge carried by electrons. Antithesis: Electronics need not be limited by the charge carried by electrons. Synthesis: Create applications based on properties of electrons other than charge.

The solution is the newly founded science of Spintronics, which depends of the spin of electrons, as opposed to conventional electronics which harnesses just their charge. Spintronics devices store information as a particular orientation of spin, up or down. As spin is a property that makes electrons act as tiny bar magnets, since 1998 hard disk drive heads have been using a spintronics effect called giant magnetoresistance to detect the microscopic magnetic fields on the disk representing the 1s and 0s of the data.

Another spintronics application is a non-volatile memory technology called MRAM – Magenetoresistive Random Access Memory, its non-volatility stemming from the fact that it stores information as magnetisation. It requires far less refresh than conventional DRAM, and its speed is compatible to SRAM (CPU cache memory), and it is likely to lead to more storage in mobile devices with longer battery life.

Freescale Semiconductor, a Motorola spinoff, has been selling MRAM since 2006.Though MRAM is currently very expensive and available only in low densities, and targeted at a few specialised customers, a MRAM disk could be expected sometime around 2010, possibly replacing current hard disks and giving us computers that can be instantly turned on.

Look around yourself. What is your synthesis today?

Struggle

The 2007 Nobel Prize in Medicine was shared between three scientists, Mario Capecchi, Sir Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies, for, as the Nobel site describes, "their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells". Dr Capecchi's contribution, in the words of The Economist (Oct 13-19 issue), was to "work out how to define and excise particular pieces of DNA from a cell while leaving the rest intact".

But what interests me here is not so much is the science behind his work, but the struggles of his childhood.

Mario Capecchi was born in 1937 in Verona, Italy. During the Second World War his airman father was killed in Libya, while his mother was sent to the Dachau concentration camp for belonging to an anti-Fascist group. And at the age of four and a half years, he was on his own on the streets of Northern Italy. For four years he lived in orphanages and moved around with groups of homeless children, nearly dying of malnutrition. His mother, after being freed from Dachau, located him in a hospital after a yearlong search. He had a fever, and was surviving on just chicory coffee and bread crust.

He moved with his mother to America in 1946, after an uncle sent them money. In 1961 he received his BS degree in chemistry and physics and in 1967 completed his Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard.

From a homeless street child to a Nobel Laureate; a difficult journey indeed. In fact much more difficult than any of us is ever likely to face. So if you think that your own struggles are too difficult, and you are almost ready to give in, do recall once more the life of this great man.

Learning from Apple

In a cover story about Apple, the June 9-15 issue of The Economist points out the lessons other organisations can learn from it.

1. Innovation need not come only from inside. Though seen as an innovator, Apple's success lies in putting together technologies from both outside inside, but adding its own polish. The iPod contained off the shelf components as well Apple's own ingredients. Even iTunes was bought and the spruced up.
   
2. Products need to be designed around the needs of the user, not the demands of technology. Many tech firms think smart technology is enough to sell products, but Apple has always combined technology with simplicity and ease of use. Though the iPod may not have been the first digital-music player, it was probably the first to make the transfer and organisation of music easy enough for anybody and everybody.
   
3. Sometimes companies may need to ignore what the market says it wants. The iPod was ridiculed when it was launched, but Steve Jobs stuck to it.
   
4. Fail wisely. Apple has had its share of failures, but has always learned from it. The attitude should be not to stigmatise failures, but rather tolerate it and learn from it.
   

Customer Service

In the book Chief Customer Officer, Jeanne Bliss lays down three primary reasons why customer service suffers: Motivation, Metrics and Mechanics.

• Motivation: Employees will follow the path laid down by the leaders of the organisation. They will always want to be a part of what is of the greatest importance to the organisation. So if the leaders are not clearly signalling the importance of customer service through their actions, and not just words and catchy slogans, the rest of the organisation will simply follow suit.
  
• Metrics: Metrics are criteria by which success is measured, and are clear guidelines to employees how they should focus their efforts. Very few organisations have metrics measuring customer satisfaction that are followed with the same zeal as revenue and profit targets. Without metrics, there is simply no initiative for the employees to drive performance in customer satisfaction.
  
• Mechanics: When a customer interacts with an organisation, he/she has to often move along from one part of the organisation to the other. If the processes for moving the customer along from one department to the other is not well oiled and the departments act and behave as water tight compartments, it causes the customer a lot of pain. In many organisations, the mechanics to move the customer seamlessly across departments is often missing, leaving the customer bewildered and often disgruntled. How often we ourselves have said, "Don't you people ever talk to each other?"

Thesis- Antithesis-Synthesis

The phrase, Thesis -Antithesis -Synthesis, forms an important tenet of Marxism, and is said to have been developed by the German philosopher Hegel. Thesis stands for a proposition or theory that is widely believed in. Antithesis is a negation of refutation of this theory. Synthesis is a new theory that reconciles these two opposing viewpoints. Though mostly associated with Marxist thought, this line of thinking can also be applied to any new innovation. Let me illustrate this by a few examples,

Thesis: Men cannot fly. Antithesis: Men can fly. Synthesis: Create a flying machine which can help many fly.

Thesis: Cars can run only on petrol. Antithesis: Cars need not run on petrol. Synthesis: Develop cars that run on electricity.

Thesis:
People need to go the bank to draw cash.
Antithesis: It's not necessary to go to the bank to draw money. Synthesis: Develop ATMs that can dispense cash at convenient locations.

Most innovations in fact come from a desire to break accepted conventions, and the Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis model can serve as a good tool to look at the world around us and come up with new innovations.

Since the above examples showcase solutions which are common, the model make seem somewhat like hindsight and not too applicable in real life. So here's an example of an innovation that is not too widely known. But first, once more the model,

Thesis: Riding a two wheeled vehicle requires the rider to have balancing skills. Antithesis: Balancing
skills are not necessary to ride two wheeled vehicles. Synthesis:
Develop a self balancing two wheeled vehicle.

And now the solution. Segway PT is a two wheeled self balancing vehicle that uses tilt sensors to keep itself upright, removing the need for the user to be skilled in balancing it. In fact, it is hailed as one of the most innovative transport system. Check out their web site and this Wikipedia article for more information.

Look around yourself. What is your Synthesis today?

Rewind 1999?

I do not want to sound like a pessimistic doomsayer, but are we seeing signs of a creeping return to the crazy times of the dot com boom of 1999 ? Or else why do we see ad blitzes for portals ranging from social networking to travel bookings across print and electronic media? And why is there a repeat of websites with such funky names as Orgoo and Zipidee? And then what is the business logic behind a company such as PlaySpan, supposed to have been founded by a sixth grader?

Another mad rush or creative genius waking up once more from hibernation?

Quotes

Here are a collection of quotes from leaders and management gurus:

• Failing organisations are usually over-managed and under-led.
  

  Warren G. Bennis, Management Author
  

• If you can run one business well, you can run any business well.
  

  Richard Branson, Virgin group
  

• The market, like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.
  

  Warren Buffet, Investor
  

• Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
  

  Peter Drucker, Management Guru
  

• Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning
  

  Bill Gates, Microsoft
  

• In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product and profits.
  

  Lee Iacocca, Chrysler
  

• The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.
  

  Aristotle Onasis, Greek Shipping Tycoon
  

• There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
  

  Sam Walton, Founder of Wal-Mart.
  

• An organisation's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
  

  Jack Welch, GE
  

• In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing.
  

  William Wordsworth, English Poet

Duty

Anyone will take up an easy job whose success is guaranteed. Many will also take up a task which though difficult, is not impossible to accomplish. But how many are willing take up a challenge that they know is doomed for failure, only out of devotion to duty? Not many I think.

In the movie The Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King, when the nation of Rohan is mustering its troops to march against the might of Mordor, a cavalry captain looks at the inadequately small force, and remarks to his king, "We cannot win."

"No, we cannot."
King Thedoen replies "But we must fight."

Or recall the story of Abhimanyu in the Mahabharata, who takes the battle to the impenetrable chakravyuha of the enemy, knowing quite well that he will not be coming back.

Such devotion to duty is of course the stuff of fiction and mythology.

Correction. Such devotion to duty is also a fact of history. It has been recorded time and again. And one such incident was the heroism of the British cavalry in the Crimean war, immortalised by Lord Tennyson in his poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade.

This incident took place on 25 October, 1854, during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War. Because of a miscommunication, Major General Lord Cardigan, the commander of the British Light Brigade, led around six hundred men in a near suicidal cavalry charge against Russian positions. The attack led the British cavalrymen into a valley defended by the Russians with canons placed at its back as well as both of its sides. .

Before charging into what was sure death, the soldiers must have realised that someone in the chain of command had probably made a terrible mistake. Yet no one objected. No one disobeyed. When they charged into the valley, the canons in front fired on them. They were fired upon by the canons and infantry men on both sides as well. Yet they carried on.

In the words of Tennyson,

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

They reached the Russian lines, killed a number of the enemy, and turned back, only to be shot at once more, from the back and both sides,

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

Theirs not to make reply/ Theirs not to reason why/ Theirs but to do and die. Immortal lines from Tennyson quoted by generations. History. Fact. Not legend or myth.

 

Knowledge

Within the boundaries of some variation in pronunciation and spelling, in a number of Indian languages, the word for alphabets or letters is akshara.

But this word has another meaning. In Sanskrit the word akshara also means imperishable. Take for example this fragment from a verse in the Bhagavad Gita - Tvam aksharam paramam veditavyam (11.18) - You are the Imperishable, the supreme Being, the One thing to be known.

So the word akshara not only means alphabet, it also means something that is imperishable.

Men took the first step towards civilisation when he developed language. For language allowed him to communicate knowledge. A dog can learn how to switch on the TV by pressing the remote with its paw. But no matter how well it can perform this trick, it can in no way teach its fellow dogs. They have to learn it by themselves, for the first dog has no language with which it can communicate its knowledge to other dogs. For a human being, however this is a small matter. Through language he can easily communicate and teach his own knowledge to others. So, with language, knowledge gets passed on between people.

The second step was taken by man when he developed writing. Whereas language that is spoken could be used to communicate knowledge only among people in close proximity, language that is written could help carry knowledge across any distance and across any length of time. Knowledge could now be made available from distant lands and distant periods of time. Knowledge could now survive the death of individuals. Knowledge had now become imperishable.

Developments of alphabets made writing possible. Writing made knowledge imperishable.

Akshara. Think about that.

Speed

Here are a few interesting statistics from Seth Godin's book, Unleashing the Ideavirus.

Time taken to acquire 10 million users

• Radio : 38 years
  
• TV : 13 years
  
• Cable : 10 years
  
• Internet : 5 years
  
• Hotmail : 1 year
  

Still in doubt that traditional ways of marketing may be losing their teeth ?

Waves

Long, long ago, when there were no planes, trains or cars, a man, from the heartland of our country, came to the seashore on a pilgrimage. To come here and take a dip in the sea had been his childhood dream, but now that he was here, he was somewhat apprehensive. He had never seen such a vast body of water, and the truth was that the he was scared of the waves that kept rolling in one after the other.

"Let the waves die down first, then I will take my bath," he thought "no point taking unnecessary risks."

And he waited patiently on the seashore for the sea to calm down and become as placid as a mountain lake.

And he waited. And waited. And waited. And waited.......

Well, you get the general drift. He never took that dip.

Life is also like that. Urgent issues and problems keep coming at us like waves, one after the other. No sooner have we sorted out an issue, and then another one follows closely at its heels. So we keep attending to them in sequence.

And we keep postponing some of the important things, which we know at the back of our minds that we must absolutely do. Finish off that book that we bought at the airport and read only two pages. Write to that old loving aunt convalescing in the hospital since last month. Read that great magazine, which has tons of stuff relevant to our profession.

We always keep telling ourselves, that we will take these up as soon as the urgent issues, the rolling waves of problems, calm down once for and all.

They never do. And before we realise, opportunities have been missed, crucial time has been wasted, and events have left us far, far behind.

You will need to take that dip among the waves. To succeed you will need to brave those waves.

So next time even if you have deadline to meet, please find some time to complete that book, send that aunt a "Get well soon" card, and go through that great journal.

Do them because they are important, though they may not be urgent.

Urgent things are for today. Important things are for a better tomorrow.

Manage your today by all means, but do find some time to invest in your tomorrow also.

Winning

Winning is all about taking an uncompromising attitude towards accepting no goal less than the very best. In his book "Speed is Life", Bob Davis, the founder of Lycos, claims that he fired an operations executive, who presented a business plan guaranteeing only 95% availability. "To this day I do not understand his reasoning", Bob Davis says.

In business, either you have done your job, or have done better than your job, or have not done your job at all. There is no 70% achiever, 80% achiever or 95% achiever. You are either an achiever, an over achiever, or a non achiever. Period.

This tag line from a Nike ad sums it up very succinctly –

"You don't win Silver. You lose Gold."

Flight

From the earliest of times, man has been fascinated by birds. With a dream of soaring in the blue skies, time and again he has tried to imitate their flight with wings fashioned out of feathers, which he has attached to his hands and tried to flap.

The results have been, well let's say, not quite up to his expectations. And always without fail, many a budding aviator's dreams have come crashing to the ground, both metaphorically as well as literally.

The reason is not difficult to understand. What we see is a bird flapping its wings. What actually makes the bird fly is a host of aerodynamic features, including the build of its muscles and its hollow bones, features that are not readily observable.

Which brings us back to the iceberg principle.

An organisation which tries to take on a competitor based on an observation of its obvious behaviour is quite likely to fail, because it misses out on the balance two-thirds of the competitor's strengths, since they are neither so obvious, nor so readily visible.

Branding iceberg

This is an iceberg. Impressive though its size is, as even a schoolchild knows, most of it is actually underwater, hidden from the eye. Two-thirds of an iceberg is always below the water. It's only the top one third that is visible. This is elementary science.

So it is with an organisation's brand.

What is visible to the public are its logo, advertising, commercials, uniforms, buildings......

What is not visible is its internal culture, the motivation of its staff, its support and service policies and generally all that goes on inside to keep customers happy. So, strange as it may sound, two-thirds a company's brand building practices takes place inside.

Only one-third of branding is related to marketing. The balance two-third is all contributed by the rest of the organisation.

Just clever advertising does not build a brand. A brand is built by the solving customer problems correctly, by delivering products on time, by keeping all commitments, by being polite on phone, and by doing all that it takes to make customers feel that we are there to take care of them.

Our carpenter Ayub does all this and more. Call him at whatever time of the day, and he will be there to address your concerns. Point out a mistake, and he will rectify it without even so much as a murmur of protest. Give him a deadline, and he will go all out to meet it.

He seems to have grasped the essence of branding. Even though he did not take a Rs. 5 Lakh MBA course. Or perhaps, precisely
because he did not take a Rs. 5 Lakh MBA course!

So once more,

Brand Management = Reputation Management. Period.

Brand Management

Brand Management = Reputation Management. Period.

The Starbucks Ways of Being

For its employees, Starbucks defines its core "ways of being" as:

1. Be welcoming
   
2. Be genuine
   
3. Be knowledgeable
   
4. Be considerate
   
5. Be involved
   

Hmm, looks to me like something that every service company should be adopting. Including IT service companies. Especially IT service companies.

PS : You now know what is that is missing at our banks.

Quality

What is quality? Dictionary.com gives a number of meanings, starting from "an essential or distinctive characteristic, property, or attribute" to "native excellence or superiority". Wikipedia, on the other hand, unequivocally states quality to be the "non-inferiority, superiority or usefulness of something."

We all know a number of buzzwords about quality, words such as ISO 9000, SQC, TQM and Six Sigma. We all have heard about the names of the quality experts who matter, names like Demming, Taguchi and Juran.

But beyond all these, and all of them, I think primarily quality is a state of mind.

It is quality, why a grandmother keeps her kitchen and her pots and pans spotlessly clean. It is quality why we spruce up our leaving room if guests are expected. It is quality why we caringly wrap up a gift, even while knowing that it will soon be torn and thrown away. It is quality, why we print a marriage invitation on special paper, knowing all the while that its life will be short lived.

Opposite of quality is not poor quality. Opposite of quality is apathy.

Take away that mindset about quality away, and no amount Quality Management helps. Then no matter of how much of SQC and TQM practices you put in place, you cannot prevent the production of shoddy goods and services.

Quality is all about 'I care'. Practice that attitude, and the rest will all fall in place.

Conceit

It is conceit when an organisation starts following practices that are meant to make its own life easier, rather than the customer's. It is conceit when an organisation takes advantage of a sudden shortage in supply to artificially inflate prices and make a quick buck. It is conceit when an organisation disregards the anguish of a mistreated customer, because there are many others like him/her queuing up to the buy the company's products or services.

Customers put up with this as long as they do not have a choice, though a slow anger burns in their hearts.

And then a smart competitor comes in, recognises that anger, and then comes up with a product or service that address that specific cause of pain. And voila, customers desert the older established player in droves, and starts flocking to the new upstart.

Twenty years ago, there was only one car manufacturer. People stood in line to buy their car. Bookings were taken even ten years in advance. And the hapless population got foisted with an old obsolete model because they had no choice.

Who cares what the suckers think? We are not going waste money upgrading ourselves!

That was conceit.

And then suddenly the Lord, sorry, the Government, said, "Let there be competition!"

And suddenly the party was not so hot any more. Their car, from being the only choice of an entire country, became just the choice for taxi drivers and travel agencies.

Last time I applied for a loan, the bank made me sign at three places on each page of a fat booklet filled with fine print. A total of fifty two signatures, I counted! Fifty two ! And I have no idea at all what all that fine print meant, because nobody bothered to explain it to me. I signed, because I needed the loan, and I did not have the time to hire a lawyer to comb through all that legalese. All I am sure is that the bank has kept enough legal provisions in place to put my neck in the noose, should I ever overstep my mark and ask for my rights.

That fat booklet with its fifty two signatures is made to make the bank's life convenient. Not mine.

Conceit.

Well, enjoy the party as long as it lasts my friends. Sooner or later, some smart bloke will find out that this is what cheeses off customers, and come up with an alternative. Good luck to you after that!

If you travel frequently, then one day you may suddenly discover that your hotel has suddenly nearly doubled its tariff. The room is the same, the service is the same, the decor and the food is the same, but the price has suddenly gone up two times.

Why? Because there is a three day convention happening in the town, and most of the hotels are all booked. Snicker, snicker, let's rake in the moolah, the suckers don't have much choice.

Conceit !

Conceit stems from, what I call the SSM attitude. The "So? Sue me" attitude.

No my friends, customers cannot sue you. But they can and will desert you as soon as there is an alternative. Keep that in mind before you get too conceited.

Faith 2

Deepika has posted these famous and oft quoted lines in the comments –

Khudi ko kar buland itna, ke har taqdir se pahle,

Khuda bande se khud puchhe bata teri raza kya hai

Meaning :

Raise yourself so high, that before each act of fate

God asks his servant (you), tell me what you wish for

The lines are by the Urdu poet Mohammed Iqbal, the author of the famous Sare jahan se achchha.

My own favourite are his lines,

Taqlid ke rawish se to behtar hai khud kashi

Rasta bhi dhoondh Khizr ka sauda bhi chhor de

Suicide is better than servile imitation

Find your path and look not for a guide

Any explanation here is of course unnecessary.

Five Cardinal Sins

In his book Presenting to Win, Jerry Weissman points out the five cardinal sins of a presentation. They are, in short, and in my words :

1. No clear point. You go through the entire presentation, without understanding what was it that the presenter was trying to state.
   
2. No audience benefit. You are treated with slide after slide about the features of a product or the achievements of a company, without being told how it all helps you.
   
3. No clear flow. At the end of the 75^th slide you wonder, 'how the hell did the presenter reach here?"
   
4. Too detailed. You are presented with so many detailed and irrelevant facts, including the name of the presenter's favourite cat and what he ate for breakfast, that you lose sight of the overall picture.
   
5. Too long. There are so many slides that you are bored to, if not death, then at least slumber.
   

I am sure you yourself may have actually fallen victim to one or a few of these sometime in your working life. So while giving a presentation, avoid inflicting them on your hapless audience whom you may have lured with the promise of a good lunch in the first place.

PS : And one more thing. Please avoid too many animation or transition effects. You need to impress people with presentation ideas, not presentation effects, as Weissman puts it.

Followership

The opposite of leadership is followership. I am not sure whether such a word exists in the English language, or if I just made it up, but I think you get the general idea what it means. There are two kinds of followership that I have encountered, idea followership and social followership.

Idea followership takes place when people do things in a particular way either because that is the exact way it has been done in the past, or because it has worked successfully for someone else. If you go to the web site of any IT company, you will inevitably be greeted by a web banner of smiling people milling around computers and laptops. Inevitably.

Why ? Because that is the way that it has always been done.

In any kind of trade shows it has become a standard practice to hand out brochures. Whether somebody reads it or not is a moot question. A few months back, we had put up a stall at an IT job fair. The second day that I went to see how my colleagues were doing, I found all the aisles between the stalls literally carpeted with brochures. These were laid so thick that the red coir carpeting below was no more visible. Enthusiast sales people in the booths were forcefully pushing the brochures onto the visitors who were immediately throwing it to the floor. Immediately!

Then why were they still being handed out? Same answer. Because that is the way that it has always been done.

Idea followership is also sometimes euphemistically referred to as "industry standard". Industry standard? Or industry status quo?

Now on to social followership. Certain species of living beings, such fish and herbivores like sheep, move together in big groups, relying on large numbers of their fellow kind for their safety. Since there are a lot many of them in a group, and they look and seem alike, it's very difficult for a predator to focus on any single individual member and attack it. Therefore it is prudent for a group member to behave and act exactly like the others, and not do anything different, that attracts a predator's attention to itself.

Unfortunately, evolution seems to have hardwired this behavioural pattern in humans also. Which is why, when I ask people in a group to come up with a few suggestions in the light of what I have just presented, everyone remains mum. Or if a is mail circulated in the organisation, asking people to come up with ideas which could be implemented, none are forthcoming. Or at a seminar, you find people filling up the back rows first, even though there are plenty of seats left at the front.

If you keep your head down, just do what you are told to do, and don't do anything that calls attention to yourself, you will be safe, seems to be their way of life.

You are perfectly right. By remaining unnoticed, you will remain safe. There's also a good chance that you will also remain a perfect nobody. Good luck to you, Mr. Nobody. Only, next time when someone is promoted over your head, please spare us all your tantrums about the unfairness of it all.

Leadership

Once upon a time, a young man, thoroughly beaten and defeated in life, decided to renounce the world and become a monk. So he went around searching for a sage, a sadhu who could become his Guru, and teach him spiritual practices.


He searched near and far, till one day he came across one such sadhu, living in a small hut deep inside a forest, along with a few of his disciples.
Our hero accosted this holy man with folded hands, “Maharaj, I am fed up with the difficult ways of the world. I would like to renounce it, and become a sadhu like you. Please make me your chela (disciple) and teach me.”


The holy man, though, was not unwise to the ways of the world. So he tried to dissuade our hero. “See beta, becoming a chela is not easy. You will have to get up very early in the morning, take a bath in the river, whose water is absolutely freezing, then chant and meditate upon God’s name for a few hours. After that you will need to collect drinking water from the river, and firewood from the forest. That done, you will have to walk with the rest of my chelas to the village ten miles away to beg for food. Then coming back, you will again need to practice meditation for a few hours. The villagers themselves are very poor, and the bhiksha they give is never enough, so it’s quite possible that you will go hungry in the night. So my son, think carefully about the sort of life that you are about to choose. It’s very hard work”.


Our hero reflected on this reality check for a few moments, and then was quickly seized by a flash of inspiration, “Then Maharaj, I do not want to become a chela. Please straightaway make me a Guru instead”.

“Guru miley sawa lakh, chela na miley koi”, lamented Sant Kabir, in one of his couplets.


Unfortunately, interaction with a few ambitious people that I sometimes come across during my work also evokes the same thought in my mind. The common myth that these people subscribe to seems to be that becoming a manager is a ticket to plenty of perquisites and absolutely no responsibilities. “Once I have a few people reporting to me” their attitude seems to speak out “I can just relax and manage them, while they do all the hard work and get me the results”.


Sorry to disappoint you folks, but it just does not happen that way!


First, a leader, apart from being responsible for himself, also becomes responsible for the actions and failures of those he leads. He therefore must have the skill and strength in him not only to complete his own tasks, but also make up for the mistakes of his subordinates. For, though he has the freedom to delegate authority, the responsibility remains his and his alone. So, in reality he needs to work not less than his subordinates, but more.


Second, the word ‘leader’ implies to lead, it implies being in the front, ahead of others, in the thick of action. A leader consequently is the first one to take damage, when the situation is out of control. A person who hides behinds his troops is no leader, and his team is bound to fail.


Leadership does not mean just an overlordship over a few individuals. Leadership means the ability to shoulder responsibility on behalf of the entire team. “Sirdar sardar”, as Swami Vivekananda has succinctly put it. Sir means head. Sirdar, a man who can give his head, is a sardar, a leader.


Sirdar, sardar. That is the definition of a leader. There is no other. Leadership is not access to power and privileges, and an escape from responsibility. Leadership is in fact agreeing to more responsibilities. Ponder on this before you look for ways to an instant leadership.

Corporate Vision and Mission Statements

Mission and Vision statements are meant to provide a sense of direction to the entire organisation. Unfortunately however, the way most corporate mission statements are framed, with a liberal sprinkling of management jargon, means that it remains incomprehensible to most people in the organisation, except perhaps a few at the top. Consequently, there is little similarity between what the mission statement professes, and the organsation practices.

To invigorate and give direction to an entire organisation, mission statements should be simply stated and comprehensible. Popular leaders in history have proved this time and again.

Take for example, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. His mission statement can be very simply stated as :

Vision : Free India.
Mission : Dilli Chalo

That's it. Period.

So simple that even a schoolchild can understand it. So powerful that it arouses a whole nation.

Wish management moguls understood the power of such simplicity.

Crowdsourcing

I came across this term, while reading an article about Google Earth in the Economist. You will find a full definition here, but in short it is the throwing open of a job traditionally done by the organisation, to the general public. The content of Wikipedia, for example, gets built by members and the enthusiasts, rather than by employees. Members contribution of location specific information to Google earth is making it more information rich.

As the web becomes a part of our daily routine, and web communities come up around shared interests, content is becoming more and more democratised with individuals sharing the knowledge, ideas and viewpoints with the rest of the world.

But with the explosion of content comes the difficulty of managing it and finding what one needs. This has given rise to folksonomies (derived from the words folks and taxonomy) which allow user to tag and rate content, so that other users can find what they need. Users can now tag content and create social bookmarks using del.icio.us, digg it and reddit.

Will Web 2.0 one day completely bypass traditional media ? Only time can tell. But the times ahead are definitely interesting.

Faith

Faith on one's self is an absolute necessary for taking on stiff challeneges. The kind of faith as illustrated by this old story :

A bird had built its nest on the seashore, but one day the waves carried her eggs away. The distraught bird first prayed to the sea to return the eggs, but receiving no reply she threatened the sea that she would empty it. With still no response coming from the sea, she decided to carry out her threat. With a leaf of grass held in her beak, she proceeded to empty the sea with it, one drop at a time.

Empty the sea drop by drop with a blade of grass ! You must be joking !!Sounds pretty dumb, right ?

Yes it does.

But then when a school master's son called Dhirubhai had dreamt of building a global Fortune 500 company, I am sure a lot of people would have thought him to be dumb too.

Or when a school droput called Bill Gates had a vision of computers becoming personal and installed at homes, he would have also sounded dumb to a good number of people.

And when a hadnful of women monks of Sarada Math took up a barren garbage dump to build an ashram (see this post), I am absolutely sure people in the neighbourhood would have taken them as a good case study in dumbness.

There is an old Sanskrit saying :

Udyoginam purushasimham upaiti lakshmi
Daivena deyamiti kapurusha vadanti
Daivam nihatya kuru paurusham atmashaktya
Yatne krte yadi na sidhhyati ko’tra doshah

Lakshmi (fortune) comes to that lion among human beings who is industrious - the coward says that he depends upon fate. Throwing away all concepts of destiny be industrious through your own inner strength; in spite of all your efforts if you do not succeed , what is wrong in it ?

No achievement is possible without faith. A faith ready to take on seemingly impossible challenges. A faith that can proceed to empty an ocean with a blade of grass.

Common objectives

We get to hear a loing common goals for teams, to attain a certain level of organisational unity. Here is a famous verse from the Rig Veda, which talks about - guess what- common purpose.

And this is is what it means :

Meet together, talk together, let your minds apprehend alike, in like manner as the ancient gods concurring accepted their portion of the sacrifice. --- (1)

Common be the prayer of these assembled worshippers, common be the requirement, common the purpose, associated be the desire. I repeat for you a common prayer, I offer for you with a common oblation. --- (2)

Common, worshippers, be your intention, common be the wishes of your hearts, common be your thoughts, so that there maybe thorough union among you . --- (3)

Talk about good ideas being everlasting !!

The Perfect Pitch

I just complted reading The Perfect Pitch by Jon Steel, and he makes an interesting point - some presenters are to presentations, what Jack the Ripper was to medical sciences.

And as the author states in one place, haven't we all at one time or the other sat through a long, boring presentation and contemplated the choice between murder and suicide ?

Check out the Presentation revolution blog for some interesting presentation styles.

Struggle and Success

When we study the lives of successful people, the one common thread that we see binding them all is that they never gave up. They kept on trying and bettering themselves every time that they failed.

Success and struggle are two sides of the same coin; you can’t have one without the other.

Struggle can be hell - but it is a necessary step. Struggle hard, and you are sure to find success, as sure as day follows night.

We often have difficulty appreciating the truth behind this because we are so far removed the people who struggle and succeed – be it Walt Disney or Dhirubhai Ambani

So let me tell you about something much closer to you, something that you can see for yourself, because it’s right at the heart of Bangalore.

Sarada Math is the women’s wing of the Ramakrishna Ashram. In Bangalore their centre is on Nandidurga Road, just opposite Cafe Coffee Day, where apart from a temple they also run a primary school and a charitable dispensary for the underprivileged.

If you can, spare some time to visit it, because it is a beautiful place, not noticeable from the outside. With tall trees, a fruit garden and flowering plants, it's almost like an oasis in the concrete jungle that surrounds it. It is a serene and quiet place that somehow defies the roaring traffic just outside its gates.

See it once to get a measure of its serenity and then consider this.

When they received the land to build this ashram, it was a barren place devoid of a single blade of grass.

In fact it was actually a deep hole in the ground that was being used as a garbage dump.

From a barren garbage dump to a green oasis. And the transformation brought about by a small band of women monks living on charity.

In a country where women face challenges in every sphere of life, here are a band of women monks, who have made the impossible happen, all by themselves.

Think of the challenge they faced. Reflect on the difficulty of their task. Go take a look to see what has been accomplished.

And then think. Are your challenges stiffer than what they faced ?

‘Ask and it shall be given, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.’ So says the Bible.

Struggle, and you will find success.