Blocks and Floods

I like to write approximately 30-40 posts a year on this blog. Some years are more, but most of the years are in this range. At about December, I realise that I need a few more posts to reach this target and I crank my brain. As the thinking process evolves, as usual, it is difficult initially, but once it begins to move, post ideas start churning out - either via books, organization thoughts, some reflections from work or some observations.

What I have observed is that as the ideas gather momentum the flywheel continues to churn out ideas and hence on the blog, you will usually see a flurry of activity in December and January.

So, in Dec 22, I started writing a few posts and left a few as drafts and in Jan 23, many of those drafts will be published (not this one).

This is true for most ideation process as well, once you overcome the block, there is a flood of ideas.

Comments

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

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 ...

Zero to One

Zero to One by Peter Thiel is a nice read. (Yes - if I sit down to write a book review - the book has to be worth it - and usually good - so most of my book reviews are about good books.You can stop here if that's the information you seek.) Where this book scores is in contrarian thoughts and contrarian questions that make you think. It starts with a four big lessons learned from the 90s dot-com crash that is, Make incremental advances, Stay lean and flexible, Improve on the competition and Focus on product, not sales. Just as you warm up to it, he says, the opposite rules are more correct - which are: It is better to risk boldness than triviality. A bad plan is better than no plan. Competitive markets destroy profits. Sales matters just as much as products. And finally leaves with a simple definition of contrarianism - it is not to oppose the crowd (or follow a smaller or newer or older crowd) but to think for yourself. "All happy companies are different"...

Playing to win

This bright green book with a yellow title has always caught my attention, but I had never read it. Imagine my surprise that when I finally picked it up as part of a preparation for a workshop that it was such a fantastic book. Playing to win by Alan Lafley and Roger Martin is one of those books that is up there when it comes to learning about how strategy can be crafted and implemented in real business. There is much in the book - and unlike other books - this book is really a leaf out of P&G, but with frameworks and models that can be applied anywhere. Image from here . It is these 5 questions played in a loop (well, iteratively) that are the juiciest part of the book and as simple and obvious as they are, it is this place where the strategy play happens. So, yes, simply put a great book to be read by anyone who is anywhere close to strategy...

Serendipity and Learning

Search This Blog