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 It has withdrawn its mind from everything else.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.