Serendipity and Learning

The entrepreneur life can get quite lonely. My views  come from my perspective as a newly minted learning consultant entrepreneur. There are times when the market doesnt care if you exist. And like any other entrepreneur, such times have to be navigated. Here is where the story of Pumpelsdrop (previous post) comes in . Suddenly, out of the blue, one gets a phone call. To make a proposal. For a company you have always wanted to work with or sounds too exciting to be true or some work which you have always wanted to do or a new opportunity to learn something. And then, the works begins in right earnest. There is a flurry of activity, a few phonecalls, data, research, books to be read and much reading about the current state of the company, industry, concept. It elevates the energy to a different level. Powerpoints are made. Structures are created. Frameworks are conceptualised. Meetings are arranged with alacrity. And with that last minute scramble, the said proposal is sent o...

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and ...

Steve Jobs is perhaps the most quoted (or misquoted) person in business today. Perhaps even more than Peter Drucker and Warren Buffet. Every business presentation that you go through has some reference to Steve Jobs or other. Recently, I attended a program where almost all speakers quoted Steve Jobs. Now, dont get me wrong, there is nothing wrong in quoting a great man such as he. But the fact is, Steve Jobs was unique - there is exactly one person like him in the universe. Nobody else is even comparable. In terms of vision, execution, creative ability, ability to almost visualize the future and take the team there, talent, hard work. Therefore, using him as an example, will only get you so far, because you are talking outlier among outliers. When people quote Steve Jobs and point to him as an example, mostly they miss the hard work that went into making him the icon he is today. He failed and failed big. He took an immense amount of risk. He spent time on getting everything...

The Box is a highly acclaimed book by Marc Levinson about how the shipping container made the world smaller and the world economy bigger. The shipping container is an innocuous piece of equipment - as he calls it - the standard container has all the romance of a tin can. Cut to 50 odd years later, the container is an ubiquitous symbol of shipping today. Till the time containers came to the shipping world - the entire process of shipping was by a process known as ' break bulk ' - another fascinating story. How the container came to break the back of this trade and make shipping easier forms the story of the book. However, the takeaway for me was three fold. One, the idea came from someone outside the industry. A person who ran a trucking business. His name was Malcolm McLean. And he was trying to solve a different problem - that of turning around his trucks faster and getting them from one place to another in the most efficient manner. As he went through this process tryi...

Clash Royale is back in the centre at our home. After saying no to the algorithm, we are now back with gusto. And I have learnt some interesting lessons. In Clash Royale, one tends to fall back on certain strategies that work. And like most strategies in the real world, they reach their sell-by date quickly as opponents adapt or levels change. And like most strategists in the real world, we tend to get stuck in our own world view. In the latest edition of our on off relationship with the game, it is with inputs from my son that I have been able see a different world view (and if I may add  - vice versa to some extent as well). This has led me to trying different combinations and trying out things that I otherwise would not have tried out. Why? Because it was working. It was after a lot of permutations and combinations that it began to work. Why should I change now? Because one, it is not working and two, it is good to change - was the advice I got. I also got the advice that...

When you think of a team or a company culture what comes to mind? One part of the culture is how the company treats hierarchy. Now, in these days of start ups - and this has been so since American tech culture came to India - on paper there is no hierarchy. Gone are the days, when people had to address their superiors as 'Sir' or 'Sahab'. Most companies operate on a first name basis. And by and large, companies also have an open door culture. Lets call this level 1. Most companies are well beyond this level. However, the breakdown of hierarchy does not stop there. In most places, people find it difficult to say no to their bosses. Which is why the jargon - HIPPO is so prevalent. HIPPO stands for HIghly Paid Persons Opinion. The HIPPO is the new elephant in the room. Lets call this Level 2. In my experience, in most companies, it is fairly ok to question the boss, though the hippo may win by default. The third aspect where hierarchy shows up, ever so often, is in ...

Faram is the local market lingo for farm. Naati is the local lingo for country. Farm is the good looking, beautiful, colourful, ruddy vegetables. But farm chillies are not spicy. Farm tomatoes have no flavour. Farm eggs are 'artificial'. Farm bananas have all colour and zero taste. What to say of the industrial tangerines - they started off as 'Australian Oranges' and sold for a premium a few years ago, but now they are lower priced than their so called inferior cousins - Nagpur Oranges. Country on the other hand has zero looks. The tomatoes are smaller, but rich with flavour. The bananas are sweet. The eggs are smaller, but tastier. The oranges drip with tang and juice. And the chilies are spicy. Between style and substance, one can take the market for some time with style, but the educated customers come for substance. Incidentally, my education came from my maid who taught us to distinguish from the two and go for the rustic ones... And this works in the mar...