Lot of people might disagree with me on this, but trust me no matter how much they try, they (including me) are a victim of this syndrome. Typically couples where both are earning and have lots of disposable income or single people who have only themselves to spend on.

These people have lots of extra money and they don’t know what to do with that. And because they don’t know what to do with that money, they spend J

And they spend it thoughtlessly on all kinds of non-productive, perishable, short lived activities viz. movies, eating outside (fully aware of the fact that eating outside every week is unhealthy in the long run), roaming around, clothing (often more than required), buying gadgets which are often used not more than 2-3 times in a year etc.

While wasting one resource (money), what they don’t realize is the fact they are also wasting another equally important resource (time). All of it in non-productive activities with zero or minimal returns.

And often we come home and wonder why we bought most of the things. Only a few are necessary, rest are a result of impulse buying. (another bad disease)

Very few of us actually spend time and money thoughtfully. Thoughtful spending does not mean spending for society’s good (however, trust me, that is the best use of money and time, “Social Responsibility” in true sense). But money and time can be spent thoughtfully on yourself by investing (there are so many investment options available now), saving, helping the needy.

We probably avoid doing it because investing involves following lot of procedures and the pipeline of activities to be completed is also long: determine the investment option, go to the office, get the form which is no less that 5-6 pages long, fill up the form, attach a dozen photocopies with every form and go and submit it. And during maturity there is no guarantee of recovering even the principle.

We might start investing more if the overall process is made easier. While I am sure it will definitely happen some day. Till then lets start thinking and come up with innovative ways of spending (time and money) productively

I think none of us has ever thought about writing emails by speaking into your machine. That will surely save us a lot of time sitting in front of the machine, save energy, save time.

Its surely not a very popular way of writing emails. However, if developed and used to its fullest potential, can save us a lot of time, energy (human effort) and the pains of sitting in front of the computer and staring the screen for long hours.

We can then start investing our time for more productive activities, leading to better and faster results from our efforts. And who would not want to be more efficient.

Think about it …

AGILITY, STABILITY and CONTROL – “mantra” of the new world order

• The mantra seems contradictory, however in the new world order Global Inc. cannot remain averse to CONTRADICTION as that will be the new definition of INNOVATION and everybody understands that every industry thrives on innovation.
• Organizations in the new world order would resort to fast & furious approach to sustain profitability without loosing focus on stability (AGILITY & STABILITY) and there would be heightened government participation and self-vigilance by every organization in governing the unbridled growth (CONTROL)
• Those who don’t follow this mantra, will fall prey to the SLOW-Motion syndrome
• The recession was market’s way of brining new upgrades in the way organizations function
• The new world order is the beginning to achieve an AGILE World Order

 The current economic situation and the ensuing social turmoil (which I sincerely believe is an offshoot of organization excesses or should I say human excesses as organisations are comprised of humans) has helped all of us as individuals as well as organizations to grow to a different level and become wiser. We can say the situation is an accentuated version of the great depression of 1929 and the dot com burst of 2000. During 1929 and 2000, only handful economies were affected and because they controlled the maximum wealth, everybody felt that the entire world was affected by these economic catastrophes. However, with the world becoming flatter and more and more countries integrating with one another, more and more companies setting up their operations across the globe, this time the effect is distributed among multiple countries & organizations.

The mighty American corporations like Lehman Brothers, General Motors, Merrill Lynch, Chrysler, which are (or should we say ‘were’) the face of the western corporate world, failed to resist the turbulent times and fell within no time, Banks across the world performed poorly, manufacturing organisations had to stall production due to slack in demand and lack of enough credit, technology organisations had to cut down their staff to sustain their operations. The irony of the situation is, people vouched by their success stories and B-schools used their success stories for teaching their students.

Individuals and organizations which are in the thick of this financial and economic quagmire are now forced to be more cautious, thoughtful and wary before treading into new areas. The crisis has taught employees a lesson to stop trusting their organizations for securing their jobs and be prepared for such situations by themselves. On the flip side, organizations have discovered a very unscrupulous, unexplained and illogical weapon of making employees redundant whenever such a crisis recurs. No organisation has till to date come out with a persuasive explanation of resorting to this measure to save cost. Surprisingly none has opposed or even shown discontent over such measures. Probably the worst is yet to happen given the fact that such decisions not only affect the employee, but also his/ her family. Multitude of such instances affects the entire social fabric. No wonder the psychiatrists’ business is on the roll these days.

HOPE NEVER DIES

Organizations are now fed up of being fed up, of being stressed, of being pushed to the limits. A lot of hard work and thinking has gone in averting and containing this crisis. Everybody wants a break, a change, with a hope that things will be normal again. This desire would bring in a ‘new world order’, and it would be manifested in the way we behave, the way we live and the way we operate, not only at an individual level, but also at the household, organization, social, economic and political level. The underlying “mantra” of this new emerging world order would be “AGILITY, STABILITY and CONTROL“. Sounds contradictory, however, if not, organizations should be prepared to be the victim of the SLOW-Motion syndrome.

 

SLOW-Motion Syndrome:  S – Sluggish in reacting to the industry changes L – Lenient in acknowledging change parameters O – Outwitted by competitors W – Wait for the next good opportunity

One does not have to go far; the recently concluded Indian election result does coincide with this new “mantra”. People have opted for a stable government at the centre, without paying heed to any caste or religion based agenda promoted by most of the political parties; hats off to the common people for their wisdom and perception.

Transformation is the key:

For all the organizations, a lot of initial time has gone into salvaging the situation. The new world order would see the most agile and most responsive surviving this crisis. By this time organizations have figured out new business drivers, identified their KPIs and defined control processes. In the new world order, emphasis will be more on

1. Stringent monitoring key business drivers and critical processes

2. Making every attempt to stabilize and control expenses

3. Maximize returns on capital invested

4. Rationalize every investment

5. Ensure every strategic and capital intensive move is scrutinized till the last level of details.

6. Ensure the supply chains are more agile

They cannot afford to be laggards in implementing these processes and begin controlling the KPIs as otherwise there is a risk of them being imperilled by the SLOW-motion syndrome.

Historically two phenomena have been observed:

1. The stock markets across the world have been hovering close to the GDP of their respective countries. This means, the governments will try to keep the markets above a certain threshold by fine tuning the economic and industrial policy.

2. It takes 2 – 3 years for the markets to return to their original peak levels.

Help these phenomena is the improving credit situation across the markets. The trust factor that had been dealt a major blow, is gaining ground again. Nowt is up to the organizations to proactively grab these opportunities made available to them and make the most of it. The faster they act the faster they will reap the benefits.

 Local Governments: New Superpowers

 The local governments will play a very crucial role via Economic and Monetary policy route to govern and monitor the growth (read unbridled growth) of the organizations. Its policies will be more conducive to domestic investment thus encouraging investors to keep the money within the country at the same time to lure foreign investors. Governments, in the process of shelling out stimulus packages and acting as saviours of the mega organizations, will be recognised as Superpowers in its own stride. This will bring the local government closer to the industry

 LEAN Sourcing – a strategic tool

 Two things have come out very evidently in this recession.

 First – Push people to any limits and they will deliver, not because of love of work, but to save their jobs.

Second – there was no rebellion or effective opposition by the people of any of the free nation to stop job cuts. This should and will happen as people have realised how such harsh measures disturb the social fabric affecting not only the person himself, but also his family and social environment.

Though the job cuts might have given sleepless nights to many, however it has given organizations a very efficient and agile tool to control costs. LEAN (Or Agile) sourcing will be developed as a strategic tool focussing on need-based sourcing rather than forecasting-based sourcing. This is because, organizations in the new world order have learned that firing excessive employees is rather an unpleasant activity and nobody wants excess people costs on their balance sheets.

The People Advantage – Supply driven growth

People will behave wiser and start managing their lives better that they have been doing till now. They will be inclined to do more saving rather than splurging on unnecessary luxuries. More saving and deposits will mean more money with the banks for lending thus encouraging industries to borrow. As industries invest and produce more, they will have more to sell and offer to the people. More production means more employment and more money in the hands of the people which in turn means more spending thus increasing demands for the goods produced. This is a self powering cycle which will be supply driven rather than demand driven 

To summarise, the new world order will see a new set of rules being implemented and followed by the organizations. There will be no right or wrong moves till we reach a stage of stasis. In fact the stasis itself will be the new world order however it will take a little longer to come by as compared to the time it took in previous recessionary times, because as I mentioned, this recession has affected many closely knit nations at the same time and that too unexpectedly. The new world order is not the goal to be achieved, but a beginning to reach where we start thinking about achieving an AGILE WORLD ORDER

Satyam might have lost the respect it enjoyed till the fateful day when its founder Mr. Ramalinga Raju released his resignation letter to its board, however the one thing that its saviors should not forget is the huge workforce that it has deployed on the various projects.

The new management should not undermine the value that they have brought to the company.

It’s a no brainer that all the contract resources should be asked to leave once their contracts are over. As for the permanent staff, rather than trimming them, they should be given leaves without pay with the assurance that they could be called back whenever there is requirement. At the same time they should be given the liberty to find alternative jobs. Why should Satyam’s 50,000 plus employees suffer because of the wrongdoings of a few top management personnel? What does a programmer or a project lead or a project manager got to do with the board room decisions? They are committed to their work. How ridiculous it sounds to tell somebody to leave the organisation because the owner defrauded. In my opinion, in situations like these, even a bad performer should be given a second or a third chance.

 

The press is more to be blamed for tarnishing the image of the company which is resulting in more and more of its customer deciding to stop doing business with Satyam. This will only degrade its cash situation, further worsening the existing credit crunch. The Indian government showed great agility and prudence by appointing some of the very distinguished and credible executives on Satyam’s board. That might salvage Satyam’s image to some extent.

 

Satyam’s employees are a great asset which can prove to be a huge plus point in bringing the company back to number 3 position. This time, not in terms of revenue or profit or size, but probably in terms of credibility.

 

I have some time before I leave for the day, so just thought of writing down some thoughts that have circling my mind for last couple of days. Looking at the crazy fan following that Cricket has in India, what if the same set of over- enthusiats start putting the same time, energy, analysis, passion and their heart, that they otherwise waste in prattling about the game, in their profession. The improvement in personal productivity, Organization efficiency and quality of the output will be tremendous.

I am still trying to figure out why has Cricket reached the level of “mania” and sometimes to the extent of “manic disorder”.

 

 Ever thought why Exit Interviews are always taken on the last day of the person who has resigned from the organization? (Mostly it is the last day. I have arrived to this conclusions from my own experiences, from the experiences of my friends, relatives, acquaintences and from whatever I have read so far. There might be exceptions to this) As I understand, the purpose of the Exit Interview is to understand the grievnces of the about-to-leave employee and their expected outcome is to find a workaround so as to stop the employee from leacving the organization. The grievances, gripes, complaints of exiting employees are noted during the exit interview. Employees are made to express their frank opinions about the company policies, reporting officers, management decisions, pay hikes, remunerations, perks. And they, frankly and sincerely, reveal everything that they have been thinking about the organization and its people (mostly their reporting officers) because its their last day of work in that organization. Efforts are surely made to stop the employee from leaving the organization by working out a workaround. These interviews typically happen during the last few hours of that day. Post lunch, one can say. This definitely not the case everywhere. In some cases, they do happen during the initial few hours of the day.

However shouldn’t these interviews be held when the employee puts his papers and the long wait for the notice period to end begins for him/her. Why wait for the last day to come? Why wait for the notice period to get over? Shouldn’t discussions be held immediately between the employee, HR and concerned authorities to solve the grievances. I personally feel that there are very high chances of the person not leaving the organization and this might be one way to reduce the turnover rate of employees.

I might have missed out on some point, because of which I hold this view. If anybody has the answer to this question, please let me know?

Indian Idol contest aired on Sony Entertainment Television, Celebrity Couples dance competition, Nach Baliye, aired on Star ONE (a Star TV channel), Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, aired on Zee TV, and many more have made ordinary people like you and me, Stars. They are BRANDS unto themselves.

I have very high regards for all these winners. All these winners are, without a doubt, one of the best in the areas in which they have managed to achieve top positions. Achieving the top slot was never a cake walk for them and like every other contestant, even they had their share of failures, struggles, hardships, pains, disappointments. Yet they persistently strived for what they wanted to achieve and in the end … they acheived. However one component which had a major contribution to their success was SMS. A seemingly simple technology, a cliche in the world of communication, but it managed to turn them from ordinary to extraordinary (Here I would like to differ. Taj mahal is an exception to this statement … It is extraordinary and will always remain one). Had it not been for SMS, the world would have seen someone else in their position. Welcome to the era of deciding winners by sending SMSs for those we want to win. However there are some cautions that we, as ecstatic SMSers, should take note of before we SMS for any competition.

·         Who sends the SMS? —- The Consumer

·         Who earns from those SMSs? —- The Telecom Operator, because of the increased number of SMS traffic

·         Who else gains? —- The Program or the Competition Co-ordinators, as they are get sponserships from the mobile operator and other companies because of the viewership to such programs / competition

·         Where from do the sponserors pay the cost of sponsering? —- The Consumers, i.e. we might be paying for the sponserships in the form of increased prices. The SMS’s sent by us for voting, if they are charged at a higher rate than the normal rate, the service provider might use that money for sponsoring the program. So remember we, the consumer might be paying for all the programs. We might not realise it immediately but I surely have a hunch of this happening.

·         What Happens to the winner? —- He also earns money in the entire transaction, “The Prize Money, Sponserships, Publicity”.

·         Who is the looser? —- We, the consumers have lost money from our pockets, without realising that someone else has grabbed and snatched our hard earned money UNNECESSARILY.

We as Consumers should and can always use our intellect to see to it that we also gain from every SMS that we send. Then this WIN – LOOSE situation can be turned into a WIN – WIN situation. Currently, as I understand, its only the Happiness or a Pseudo and a Temporary Joy that we derive out of looking at the person/thing we voted for, win. If that gain is worth the money we are spending, we can continue doing what we are doing. Before continuing think about how much the other stakeholders are gaining. Don’t you find too much mismatch in what we are gaining and what the others are gaining? Should they gain that much?

NOTE: There are many more programs / competitions / promos, apart from what I have mentioned in the first paragraph, that are using the same model of asking the viewers to send SMSs to know their views.

For all the Apple fans … I came across this link which shows all the products that Apple came out with since 1976 through 2007.

http://tofslie.com/work/apple_evolution.jpg

The emergence of virtual worlds like Second Life, Active Worlds, Red Light Centre and Gaia Online is touted to open ump teem number of opportunities for the organizations to experiment with their stratgies and models, be it organisational or departmental level, because of the ready access to the millions of users. Recruitment, Advertisement, Marketing, Research are some of the functions which I believe will be impacted immediately by Virtual worlds. The fact that virtual worlds have their own Residents (called as avatars), communication, transport, economy, real estate and even currency exchanges makes them a potent market place to reckon with.  They have membership going into millions of users. The virtual world environment seems to be a perfect amalgam of all the elements required to try new business ideas for all the budding entrepreneurs. (There are also political parties in virtual world fighting it out to control and govern in the virtual world) Virtual worlds are under constant development and provide an open environment where anybody with an internet connection can participate. They are facing a lot of technical issues and legal and moral criticism. However the marketing potential they possess is, in my opinion, so immense that, once realized it can actually bring down the cost of advertisement, endorsements etc.

One of the articles in CIO.com “Enterprises Experimenting With Virtual Worlds”  (http://www.cio.com/article/print/119955) aptly highlights the importance, the organizations world over are giving to these Virtual World. Coca-Cola has launched a competition to design an online “Virtual Thirst” Coke machine. This is just one example of how they can be leveraged to involve customers.

In what different ways an organization leverages their potential will actually impact its business model and corporate strategy. With increasing number of internet users, the importance of virtual world is bound to rise. It’s just a matter of time that businesses around the globe will have to come up with strategies with virtual world at its core.

On a different note, as I am writing this blog, some questions cross my mind. Can there be a company specific virtual world, where its employees will be its residents? Is there a Corporate Virtual World in the making? Will virtual-world-avatars replace the real-world-avatars? Think and don’t forget to comment.

Every year, billion of tonnes of waste – including particularly hazardous waste – are produced in the UK, US and EU and the figure is rising steadily. Stockpiling waste is not an advisable solution and disposing it is unsatisfactory due to the resulting emissions and highly concentrated, polluting residues. The best solution is, therefore, to prevent the production of such waste, reintroduce it into the production cycle by recycling its components where there are ecologically and economically viable methods of doing so. 

Environmental protection and Waste Legislation has become a key issue in the European Union, USA and UK. Most of the governments’ policies on waste management are to achieve a recycling & reuse based economy that conserves resources and the environment. To promote such policies, balance sheets for different substances and materials must be drawn up. A number of statutory ordinances and guidelines as well as voluntary agreements, containing requirements for waste supervision, transport licenses, specialized waste management companies and associations, waste management concepts, waste-life-cycle analysis and requirements for the disposal and recovery of wastes are been issued by the government.

The EU is having an ever increasing influence on national legislation by means of regulations and numerous directives, as well as Commission decisions. It is paving the way for a comprehensive revision of European waste regulations with the publication of a number of thematic strategies, proposals for waste framework directive and the adoption of the “Better Regulation” process, which gives priority to the waste sector.US agencies like U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Ecological Society of America,  are striving hard to raise the public’s level of awareness of the importance of ecological science and ensure continues supply of ecologists through educational and outreach activities, to increase the resources available for the conducting ecological research through efforts of the membership in both the private and public sectors, and to ensure the use of ecological science in environmental decision-making by enhancing communication between the ecological community and policy-makers at all levels of government and the private sector. EPA has been directed to come out with regulations to manage hazardous waste from “the cradle to the grave”.It’s a well established fact that the owners or generators of waste are in the first instance responsible for waste avoidance, recovery, and disposal. These owners are not only the industrial sector participants but also the general public at large. In an increasingly inter dependant economy it is becoming imperative for the public and the industrial sector to come together to effectively tackle the issue of environmental degradation and achieve sustainable development. All parts of society will have to share responsibility. It is in this backdrop that we as a responsible denizens of this beautiful planet should come together and work together to stop the gradual death of our planet