Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?

Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? is an account of IBM’s historic turnaround as told by Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., the chairman and CEO of IBM from April 1993 until March 2002. Lou Gerstner led IBM from the brink of bankruptcy and mainframe obscurity back into the forefront of the technology business. After a brief foreword and introduction in which Gerstner provides his pre-IBM background, he jumps right into the story of his IBM experience. The book is divided into five parts: “Grabbing Hold,” “Strategy,” “Culture,” “Lessons Learned,” and “Observations.”

Part I, “Grabbing Hold,” is the story of how Gerstner wrestled with the idea of taking the IBM job (he turned it down at first), followed by highlights from his first year on the job. It provides an interesting insider’s view of the CEO recruiting process for a Fortune 50 company and describes how Gerstner addressed IBM’s severe financial crisis in the early ’90s and managed to keep the company solvent. It also reveals just how precarious IBM’s financial position was during that time, which many readers (including myself) might not have known. Still, although Part I is quite interesting, the real meat of the book is in the subsequent parts.

After stepping back to provide a brief history of IBM, Part II (“Strategy”) dives more deeply into how Gerstner repositioned IBM’s corporate strategy to keep the company together and pull off a successful turnaround. When Gerstner came on board, the conventional wisdom, from both industry pundits as well as many IBM insiders, was that the only way to save IBM from eventual disaster was to break it apart. But Gerstner looked beyond this advice and opted to preserve the real strength he believed IBM brought to customers. His decision to keep the company together and “teach the elephant to dance” was “the first strategic decision, and, I believe, the most important decision I ever made — not just at IBM, but in my entire business career,” Gerstner writes.

Fixing IBM: “All about execution”

What Gerstner realized is that IBM had a unique and unequaled capability to “apply complex technologies to solve business challenges.” It was this unique value proposition that would enable him to bring IBM back from near extinction. But to accomplish this, IBM needed not only a corporate makeover, but also a complete facelift and some liposuction as well! Gerstner likens his arrival at IBM to stepping through a time warp and arriving back in the ’50s. A massive, difficult, and painful reengineering feat was required to get the insular IBM to focus on bringing value to the customer in the marketplace. Ultimately, though, this led to the “new” IBM. It also gave rise to a hilarious statement that the book credits to a senior IBM executive: “Reengineering is like starting a fire on your head and putting it out with a hammer.”

In Gerstner’s own words, “fixing IBM was all about execution” and required “an enormous sense of urgency.” His whole approach was to drive the company from the customer’s view and “turn IBM into a market-driven rather than an internally focused, process-driven enterprise.” And it worked. It was all about execution — and honest ways to measure its effectiveness. Before Gerstner arrived, IBM had a tendency to fool itself with bogus indices and data (e.g., customer satisfaction numbers generated from hand-picked samples; subjective product milestones, etc.), but he changed all that. “People do what you inspect, not what you expect,” he explains.

I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps Gerstner took a peek at Rational’s mission statement and Five Field Measures to craft his IBM strategy, but then I know these things work because they are based on sound general business principles. As a new IBM employee, I was very encouraged by Gerstner’s maniacal attention to customers’ notions of success and his single-minded focus on responding to marketplace needs. If his market-driven approach to doing business really does pervade the “new” IBM culture, then it will be no surprise if IBM ends up dominating the technology landscape in this century, just as it did in most of the last one.

Culture is everything

Part III (Culture) was particularly interesting to me because one of the main reasons I wanted to work for Rational was the company culture, and I was concerned about its compatibility with IBM’s culture. Many Rational tech reps (myself included) say they have enjoyed working at Rational because the company culture empowers individuals to make a difference. Fortunately, company culture was another of Gerstner’s main targets for change:

Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization’s makeup and success — along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like. I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game; it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.

Gerstner’s most important and proudest accomplishment was to institute a culture that brought IBM closer to its customers by inspiring employees to drive toward customer-defined success. Now, the company’s strong customer focus will allow Rational to continue pursuing the same mission that has guided us for more than twenty years.

Wisdom and Insights

There are nuggets of wisdom throughout the last two sections of the book. In “Lessons Learned” and “Observations,” Gerstner points out that some integrator, fundamentally acting in a service role, controls every major industry. This was the basis for building IBM Global Services. Another shrewd Gerstner insight is that every major industry is built around open standards. It was this realization that led IBM Software to enable and build on open standards in a network-centric world, and Gerstner provides a compelling argument for abandoning proprietary development and embracing software standards (e.g., J2EE and Web Services). In fact, Gerstner argues that the most valuable technology companies are OEM suppliers who leverage their technology wherever possible; therefore, IBM must actively license its technology in order to be successful. The book’s three appendices contain, respectively, some interesting e-mail correspondence, Gerstner’s vision of e-business (including the IBM IT On Demand, autonomic, and grid computing initiatives), and a financial overview of IBM from 1992 to 2002.

The latter clearly demonstrates that Gerstner got results. Although many people criticized IBM for selecting a non-technical CEO, based on IBM’s performance during his reign (and the insight he reveals in this book), Gerstner was definitely the right person for the job. His reinvention of IBM was one of the most dramatic corporate turnarounds of the twentieth century, and the numbers in Appendix C of this book will certainly shut the mouths of any would-be critics.

Before opening this book, I had assumed it was Gerstner’s autobiography and would highlight not only his IBM career, but also his years at the consulting firm McKinsey and Company and his executive tenure at American Express and RJR Nabisco. I also assumed that, as is typical of many books by high-profile executives, the book was ghostwritten in part. Gerstner dismisses both of these assumptions in the foreword. Not only did he write the book himself, he claims, but also the book deals (as the subtitle “Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround” suggests) almost exclusively with Gerstner’s IBM years.

Under other circumstances I might regard this book as just another well written and interesting memoir from a captain of capitalism; both Rational employees and Rational customers now have a stake in the success of IBM and will gain a better understanding and appreciation of the company by reading this book.

INDIA UNBOUND

In 1997, when India celebrated

the 50^thanniversary of its independence, the world paid homage to its most populous democracy. Other countries had grown richer in those postcolonial years. Many had escaped the political and religious convulsions that had so often shaken the region. But almost alone in the non-Western world — barring a short interruption in 1975, when Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency — India had clung doggedly to its democratic convictions. A slew of books commemorated the achievement. One of the finest, Sunil Khilnani’s “Idea of India,” described India’s polity as “the third moment in the great democratic experiment launched by

the American and French Revolutions.

Like many of these books, Gurcharan Das’s “India Unbound” is a broad summing-up of the last half century. Part memoir, part journalism, part history and part management bible, the book begins shortly before independence and continues until the new millennium. A former C.E.O. of Procter & Gamble in both India and America, and currently a venture capitalist and consultant, Das is less concerned with political than with economic history. And where authors like Khilnani cherish the revolution that began with independence in 1947, Das does not find full cause for jubilation until 1991, when India unleashed a series of economic reforms, the start of an “economic revolution” that he believes “may well be more important than the political revolution.”

Those reforms were forced upon India, adopted less than enthusiastically when the nation found itself with foreign exchange reserves worth only two weeks of imports. Over the course of what Das calls a “golden summer,” a newly installed government surprised everyone by easing foreign exchange restrictions, devaluing the rupee, lowering import tariffs and undoing the byzantine controls that had stifled Indian industry. Many — Das included — feel the reforms should have gone further, but the results nonetheless have been dramatic: after decades of chugging along at the so-called Hindu rate of growth (a dismal 3.5 percent per year), the economy grew by an average of 7.5 percent in the mid-1990’s. The growth in disposable incomes, and the opening up of the country to world markets, has altered the face of Indian society, creating a new consumer middle class. Das argues that these changes are only the beginning of a dramatic reversal of fortunes. “The theme of this book,” he writes, “is how a rich country became poor and will be rich again.”

At the heart of “India Unbound” is a deep ambivalence about Jawaharlal Nehru, the architect of Indian independence but also of its disastrous economic policies. Das recognizes the political contributions made by Nehru, and he writes of the admiration he felt as a young man for the handsome leader whose lofty ideals inspired a nation. But, echoing an increasingly common attitude in modern India, he feels that Nehru’s faith in Soviet-style central planning cheated the nation of the prosperity enjoyed by some of its Southeast Asian neighbors. Nehru’s revolution, Das argues, was incomplete, delivering political liberty but failing to unshackle the nation economically. In one of the more eloquent expressions of this sentiment, he tells of a meeting at which the industrialist Rahul Bajaj is threatened with imprisonment for producing more scooters than permitted by his quota. “My grandfather went to jail for my country’s freedom,” replies Bajaj. “I stand ready to do the same for producing on behalf of my motherland.”

Such stories enliven what could easily have been a dull piece of economic history. Das had a ringside seat at the events he describes, and the result is an engaging account that moves easily from the big picture to the telling anecdote. Through Das, we are introduced not just to the standard pantheon of political figures but to a range of lesser-known characters from the corporate world. These include old-fashioned industrialists like Bajaj and also a new brand of businessman — entrepreneurs like Narayana Murthy, the C.E.O. of Infosys, India’s most successful software company, and Subhash Chandra, the founder of a global Hindi satellite television channel, often called “the Murdoch of Asia.”

Das’s sympathies clearly lie with this later generation of managers. He sees the earlier breed as dinosaurs, pampered by a protectionist government and doomed to oblivion. His enthusiasm for the new order becomes most apparent in the book’s final section, where he succumbs to a certain giddiness over India’s prospects in the 21st century. Das is particularly excited about India’s software industry, a sector whose great success has led many to predict — as the head of India’s largest mutual fund recently did — that “what oil is to the Middle East, infotech is to India.”
Such optimism is not entirely misplaced. India’s high-tech industry has been the most visible success of the reforms, generating fabulous wealth and great opportunities. What is less clear is the extent to which this wealth is trickling down to the 300 million Indians who still live in poverty and the 75 percent who live in the countryside, far away from the new economy. Das is undoubtedly right that poverty has tarnished India’s democracy, but he seems less concerned that unequal prosperity may have the same effect. To be fair, he does argue that democracy and capitalism need not be mutually exclusive, and cites from the work of Amartya Sen, who has repeatedly written on the importance of integrating the two. But despite his professed preference for “democratic capitalism,” Das’s faith in free markets can come across as overly zealous, as when he complains that too many Indians “are still listening to the background noise of democracy when we could be listening to the music of entrepreneurship.”

However, one doesn’t need to share Das’s unbridled fervor for markets to appreciate this book. “India Unbound” is like an opinionated but insightful guide to a rapidly changing nation in which old clichés about spirituality and poverty are increasingly irrelevant. Near the end, Das writes about his son, who has decided to leave a job in New York and return to India to start a company. “He’s caught up in the spirit of our times, when every young person is willing to risk the security of a job to pursue his passion,” Das writes. That “spirit” signals a dramatic widening of horizons, a new self-confidence. Something tremendous is happening in India, and Das, with his keen eye and often elegant prose, has his finger firmly on the pulse of the transformation.

The Alchemist

An alchemist traveling in a caravan in an unspecified place and time recounts a fable that he read along the way. The story is a modified version of the myth of Narcissus. The twist in this version is that the lake in which Narcissus drowns weeps for the death of Narcissus not because of his beauty, but because the lake could gaze at its own beauty in the eyes of the young boy. This idea is taken from a short prose-poem by Oscar Wilde called ‘The Disciple’.

Santiago, the protagonist, grows up with poor parents who struggled their whole lives to send him to seminary. But Santiago has a strong desire to travel the world, and so his father allows him to use his inheritance to buy a flock of sheep.

As a shepherd, he spends several years traveling the countryside of Andalusia in southern Spain, enjoying the care-free and adventurous life of a wanderer. As the story begins, we learn that a year ago Santiago met the beautiful daughter of a merchant in a town he is soon to revisit. Even though he spent only a few hours talking with this girl, his strong feelings for her make him question his life as a shepherd and make him consider the merits of a more settled life. He sleeps in a church where a sycamore tree grew where the sacristy once was (refer to end).

When he arrives in the town where the girl lives, he first decides to go to a gypsy fortune-teller to help him decipher a recurring dream that he had been having. Santiago always dreams that a child is playing with his sheep and then takes him by the hand and brings him to the Pyramids of Egypt to show him the location of a hidden treasure. But Santiago always wakes up just before the child is going to reveal to him the exact location of the treasure. The gypsy says that he has to go because if it is a child that tells, it exists.

At first, the boy does not mind what the gypsy says, but when an old man, who calls himself Melchizedeck, the king of Salem, tells him that it is his Personal Legend or his purpose to live, he is interested. Melchizedeck tells him a wonderful story about a man who found true happiness by fulfilling his Personal Legend. The king gives the boy two stones, Urim and Thummim, one black and the other white, the black meaning “yes” and the white “no”. These, he says, are for making decisions, although it is best to make them himself. Santiago decides to travel to Africa. He sells his sheep and goes to Tangier, a port in Africa near Spain. But in Tangier, he is robbed. Losing hope, he decides to walk about the city; up in a hill, and finds a crystal shop. He finds that business declined when the nearby city developed. When the boy enters the shop, he cleans the dusty crystal glasses in exchange for some food to eat. As he is cleaning two customers enter the store and buy some crystal glasses. The Arab merchant says that it is a good omen, and hires the boy. Santiago learns that every person’s fate is written, and that there is a Language of the World (unspoken) learned partly by his dealings with his sheep.

After almost a year, the boy decides to leave the crystal shop since he has enough money to buy a flock of sheep twice the size of the one he had before, and since he has since learned Arabic, can sell to Arabic merchants too. But he never buys a single sheep. He decides to fulfill his personal legend – to find his treasure.

He joins a caravan going to the desert where the Pyramids are found. In the caravan, the boy meets an Englishman who for twenty years has searched for true alchemists. The Englishman has many books on alchemy that are unusual to the boy. In the caravan, he learns the language of the desert and the Soul of the World.

As the caravan rolls on toward the oasis, the two people in the caravan decide to learn from one another. As the Englishman attempts to observe the desert and learn its language, Santiago reads the Englishman’s books and learns about alchemy. The Englishman tells him that the goal of alchemists is to purify metal by heating it for many years until all its individual properties are burned. After a while, Santiago stops reading and returns the books to the Englishman, and each tells the other he is not able to learn anything. Santiago concludes everyone has his or her own way of learning things.

When it arrives in the oasis, the caravan is welcomed and told that it will not be permitted to proceed further because of tribal wars. Santiago helps the Englishman look for the alchemist. He meets a desert woman named Fatima who tells the group where the alchemist lives. The boy is infatuated with Fatima’s beauty at first sight, and tells her that he loves her and wants her to be his wife. At the very same time, the alchemist living at the oasis realizes that he will meet a disciple who would learn from him the secrets of alchemy. Apparently the disciple turns out to be Santiago.

Santiago meets the alchemist after averting a threat of tribal attack on the oasis through a vision he has after reading about the flight of two hawks. The alchemist tells the boy that he will never be happy unless he fulfills his Personal Legend. Reluctant to leave the oasis because of his love for the desert girl Fatima, Santiago tells the alchemist that he wants to stay there, accepting the new role of councilor which was offered to him by the chieftain when Santiago saved the oasis. But the alchemist warns Santiago that in the future he would lose his ability to see omens because he stopped listening to the omens that told him to find his treasure and fulfill his Personal Legend. As a result he would lose his position as the councilor and he would regret not pursuing his destiny of finding his treasure.

Eventually, Santiago decides to leave the oasis with the alchemist in pursuit of his treasure. While traveling through the desert, the boy learns from the alchemist. He learns that each person who fulfills his personal legend enhances the Soul of the World, and that the world is just here to show to show God’s glory. The alchemist also tells the boy to listen to his heart and understand it so it will not betray him and tell him in fear that it is not wise to find his treasure. Santiago and his heart become one, and Santiago’s heart tells him that he has learned the unspoken Language of the World.

Santiago and the alchemist are captured along the way by one of the warring tribes. The alchemist tells the chief that they have brought money to give to him. the money is accepted without question as it can buy many arms; the alchemist then declares that Santiago is a powerful alchemist and can turn himself into the wind and destroy the military encampment if he wants to. The leader demands to see this and tells the boy he has three days to demonstrate his power or the two will die. This is the ultimate test of Santiago’s knowledge of alchemy. On the third day, Santiago leads the group to the top of a cliff and tells them that the action will take a while.

Using his knowledge of the Language of the World that he learned from his heart on his journey, Santiago talks to the desert, and teaches it about love, and eventually the desert allows Santiago to use his sands, saying that he would also need the wind to blow them. Santiago turns to the wind, and tells it that it hasn’t met its full limits. The wind, curious about what it could do, strikes up a conversation about love with the boy. The wind is unsatisfied, and suggests the boy talk to the heavens (the sun). The boy tells the wind that it must blow the sands so he will not be blinded when looking at the sun. The boy proceeds to talk to the sun, and after the sun tells him that although he is wise, he doesn’t know how to turn Santiago into the wind. The wind, overjoyed that he knows that the sun has its limits, blows even harder.

The “Sinum,” the sandstorm that results, almost destroys the camp. Two commanders with the chief are fearful and tell him that they should stop this. The chief replies that he wishes to see the greatness of Allah, the Muslim god, and makes a mental note to remove the two from command as true desert men are not afraid. Santiago is told to talk to the hand that wrote all, that is, the Son of God. The boy and the Son of God have a silent conversation, and the soul of the boy becomes one with the Soul of the World, which is the Soul of God. The Soul of God can perform miracles, and Santiago turns himself into the wind and moves off the cliff to the far side of the camp next to a sand-covered sentinel.

After turning himself to wind, Santiago and the alchemist travel on to the pyramids with an escort party provided by the general-chief. They stop at a monastery, and the alchemist tells the escort party to return to their camp. There he meets a monk and they talk in the Coptic tongue. The monk invites them in. In the kitchen, the alchemist shows Santiago a demonstration of turning a pot of lead into gold. The alchemist divides the gold into four quarters and gives the monk one of the pieces for his generosity and hospitality. He gives a piece to Santiago, and one for him to return to the oasis. He gives the final piece to the monk for Santiago in case he ever needs it. Santiago and the alchemist separate not far from the pyramids. Santiago’s heart tells him that he should dig for his treasure where he weeps after getting to the pyramids of joy.

Robbed once again near the pyramids, Santiago gives up hope, but the robber tells him that he is stupid to have traveled so far. He then tells the boy of a recurring dream in which he had seen a treasure in a church where shepherds and their sheep slept, hidden under a sycamore tree growing where the sacristy once was. The boy, who slept in this church as a shepherd himself at the beginning of his adventures, goes back to the monk to get money for the return trip and finds the treasure, a chest of Spanish gold coins.

The idea for this story is taken from a short prose-poem by Oscar Wilde called ‘The Disciple’.

THE MONK WHO SOLD HIS FERRARI

The Deepak Chopras and Eknath Easwarans have done a great service in calling attention to ancient scriptural wisdom that is in danger of being forgotten.

And now there is a new kid on the block. Robin Sharma, a popular media personality in the US, who runs an institute that, conducts leadership and life-enrichment programmes and has authored several books on related subjects.

His latest foray ‘The Monk who sold his Ferrari’ unravels the miraculous transformation of successful but overworked lawyer, Julian Mantle who, having reached atop the success ladder suddenly stops to take a long look the life he is leading.

His search for spiritual solace takes him to India, to the Sages of Sivana where he drinks from the fountain of higher knowledge and unlocks the secret of youthful vitality.

‘The Monk…’ imaginatively reiterates the ancient truths of Sivanan philosophy in a very forceful manner. The Monk…. effectively expresses ancient truths in a modern idiom.

Sample a few messages from this book: “There are no mistakes, only lessons”, or “Life pretty much gives you what you ask from it. It is always listening”, or again, “Stop spending so much time chasing life’s big pleasures while you neglect the little ones”, and so on.

This is one book that perhaps the corporate-variety or the workaholics would do well to read, along with their ‘One minute manager’ or ‘Think and grow rich’ handbooks.

Julian Mantle could well be their alter-ego.

The book has interesting fables and innumerable anecdotes, but one attributed to ‘ancient India’ is suspiciously similar to Oscar Wilde’s, “The Selfish Giant’.

Having said it all, I’ll say book is a stimulating read.

Wisdom Revisited
A tale of a modern man’s discovery of the transforming power ancient wisdom

Dilbert..Strikes AGAIN?

63% of all statistics are made up… including this one.

Accept that some days you are the pigeon and some days the statue.

All of your co-workers are fools. You must learn to pity and tolerate them. An optimist is simply a pessimist with no job experience.

And bring me a hard copy of the Internet so I can do some serious surfing.

Change is good. You go first. Consultants have credibility because they are not dumb enough to work at your company.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.  

Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.

Feedback is a business term which refers to the joy of criticizing other people’s work.

This is one of the few genuine pleasures of the job, and you should milk it for all it’s worth.
 I get mail; therefore I am.

I respectfully decline the invitation to join your hallucination. If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a fool about it.

If you give a man a fish he will eat for a day. But if you teach a man to fish he will buy an ugly hat. And if you talk about fish to a starving man then you are a consultant. If you spend all of your time arguing with people who are nuts, you’ll be exhausted and the nuts will still be nuts.

I’ll be happy to make these unnecessary changes to this irrelevant document.

I’m slowly becoming a convert to the principle that you can’t motivate people to do things, you can only demotivate them. The primary job of the manager is not to empower but to remove obstacles. In Japan, employees occasionally work themselves to death. It’s called Karoshi. I don’t want that to happen to anybody in my department.

Managers are like cats in a litter box. They instinctively shuffle things around to conceal what they’ve done.

Mondays are not part of the productive work week.
- Dogbert’s Theory of Mondays.

Most problems go away if you just wait long enough. It might look like I’m standing motionless but I’m actively waiting for our problems to go away. I don’t know why this works but it does.Never answer a question unless you know exactly who is asking, why it is being asked, and what will be done with the information.

Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level.

 No one believes forecasts, but we all want to hear them.

Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.

 One “oh shit” can erase a thousand attaboys. One way to compensate for a tiny brain is to pretend to be dead.

 People enter the marketing profession after they realize that they have grown up without any particular skills.

People who work in accounting departments often work 12 hour days creating reports that nobody cares about. This gives them a very bad attitude. Do not attempt humor around them. Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness.

 Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.

Stupidity is like nuclear power; it can be used for good or evil. Technical people respond to questions in three ways: It is technically impossible (meaning: I don’t feel like doing it); It depends (meaning: abandon all hope of a useful answer); The data bits are flexed through a collectimizer which strips the flow-gate arrays into virtual message elements (meaning: I don’t know).

Technology: No Place for Wimps!

 The best things in life are silly.

The best way to avoid criticism is to establish a reputation for being irrational and belligerent at the slightest excuse. The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers.

 The Dogbert method of eliminating guilt is simple. All of your problems are caused by invisible people named Juan and Cindy. All you have to do is find them and kill them.  

The entire economic system depends on the fact that people are willing to do unpleasant things in return for money. The longer you work here, diverse it gets. The universe is mostly empty space, and so is your job.The world is full of attractive people whom you will never meet. Your only hope for romance is to lower your standards until co-workers look good.
- Dogbert, “Dating Co-Workers” There are many methods for predicting the future. For example, you can read horoscopes, tea leaves, tarot cards, or crystal balls. Collectively, these methods are known as “nutty methods.” Or you can put well-researched facts into sophisticated computer models, more commonly referred to as “a complete waste of time.”

There are two essential rules to management. One, the customer is always right; and two, they must be punished for their arrogance.

There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives.

We must develop knowledge optimization initiatives to leverage our key learnings.
We’re a planet of nearly six billion ninnies living in a civilization that was designed by a few thousand amazingly smart deviants. We’ve gotten some complaints about your hostile behaviour. At a recent meeting you crossed your arms. That is unacceptable body language.

When did ignorance become a point of view?

When you grow up you’ll be put in a container called a cubicle. The bleak oppressiveness will warp your spine and destroy your capacity to feel joy. Luckily you’ll have a boss like me to motivate you with something called fear. Why aren’t you signed up for the 401K? I’d never be able to run that far.

Why is it that the nuttiest people define reality? Women don’t like to be around a man with substandard footwear. Women won’t admit this, but they consider the men around them to be free-range accessories for their own outfits.

If you clash, you’re hash.

Work is for losers. A winner says ‘That’s on my list’ and never commits to a deadline.

You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.

Your boss reached his/her position by being politically astute. Don’t turn your back.
Corollary : To be a successful manager, you must learn to be insensitive to the needs of your employees.

Your brain is like your stomach in the sense that if it’s empty, you’re willing to put anything in there to fill it up.

DilbErT :- Word of Wisdom…

1. I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow, isn’t looking good either.
2. I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.
3. Am I getting smart with you? How would you know?
4. I’d explain it to you, but your brain would explode.
5. Someday we’ll look back on all this and plow into a parked car.
6. There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives.
7. Tell me what you need, and I’ll tell you how to get along without it.
8. Accept that some days you’re the pigeon, and some days you’re the statue.
9. Needing someone is like needing a parachute. If he isn’t there the first time you need him, chances are you won’t be needing him again.
10. I don’t have an attitude problem. You have a perception problem.
11. Last night I lay in bed looking up at the stars in the sky and I thought to myself, “Where the heck is the ceiling?!”
12. My Reality Check bounced.
13. On the keyboard of life, always keep one finger on the escape key.
14. I don’t suffer from stress. I’m a carrier.
15. You’re slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter.
16. Everybody is somebody else’s weirdo.

Apple iPHONE Commercial

APPLE iPhone

“Impossible Is Nothing” – Gilbert Arenas

You make dIffeRENCE

Great Leaders of Our Time

From the Mouths of Great Leaders

An Inspirational Video – The Law Of Attraction

Pay It Forward

Lance Armstrong Strikes BACK

indian commercial

Aamir Khan Cola Commercial

                                                                                     

Shahrukh,kareena,Rani,Kajol,Priyanka,Britney & Michael in different pepsi commercial

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

How to hold useless meetings: a step-by-step guide

So, lousy manager that you are, you’ve decided to waste everybody else’s time, huh? Great! Profits were too high, anyway! Well, if you want to waste everybody’s time, here’s a short list at conducting one of the greatest time-wasters in any organization: useless meetings.Follow these steps, and your meetings will soon become the most mind-numbing, time-wasting, spirit-crushing endeavors you could ever let loose on an organization. Useless meetings could easily be the top tool of most managers — bad managers, especially.

Number one: Start late. It’s clear your staff shouldn’t have any real reason to start a meeting on time. After all, if they had anything worthwhile to do, they wouldn’t be working for you! Start your meetings late…the later the better. After a few weeks, your staff will be just as late to the meetings as you are — and then you can reschedule them to start the meetings later still.Starting meetings late gives your staff a chance to talk amongst themselves while they’re waiting for you to show up — plus, it’s an excellent method to show them who is really in charge.

Number two: Never have a purpose to a meeting. If you want to be a world-class, time-wasting manager, this is your ace in the hole. Meetings held with no purpose in mind waste people’s time like nothing else in a manager’s handbook. In fact, most meetings have no real reason behind them. They’re held because they’ve “always” been held. When you actually have a purpose to a meeting, you risk the chance you might actually get something done. No self-respecting bureaucrat can risk that chance. Why, once you actually get something done, employees might actually feel good about accomplishing something. You can’t risk that!

Number three: Never prepare an agenda. Agendas are useless, since people (especially you) never stick to them anyway. Let the meeting wander however and wherever it will. Eventually, most meetings degrade into three different meetings, held concurrently in the same room, as various group members spend their time talking about sports, intra-office romance, and that nasty mess in the office refrigerator.

Number four: Never set an ending time. Letting meetings drag on forever is a useful tactic to suppress office morale. Start early in the morning, and order in lunch if necessary. Repeat the following day. This wastes so much time and resources, you’ll have to hire additional staff. This brings you a big bonus: additional staff means more employees for you to supervise, which means higher wages for you! The downside is you’ll have to remember to order towels to clean up drool from sleeping workers.

Number five: Keep changing your mind, or refuse to make a decision. Lively discussion is useful in any organization, but pointless discussion is a useful time-waster you can use to your advantage. Keep discussion running by changing your mind every ten minutes. If it appears a consensus is about to break out, detour any movement toward a solution. Agreement is an evil concept that must be stamped out in any organization, since it undermines your managerial control.

Number six: Talk about how the organization needs better meetings, but never do anything about it. Bring the topic up frequently. Hire consultants to spend meeting time teaching how to hold an effective meeting. Use the next meeting to review what the consultant said. After completely discussing the consultant’s advice, ignore the advice — and the discussion.

Number seven: Never form teams to study out and report. Self-governing teams can be a useful mechanism to cut back on bureaucracy — therefore, you must avoid these at all costs. Demand that each decision be brought before the meeting and discussed by all present. After each possible decision has been discussed, table each discussion until a later meeting.

Number eight: When you actually do something, never bring it up. You’re in charge, and it never serves your interests when people actually know what’s going on. Refuse to talk about upcoming projects. If people demand answers, assign status reports to the least-effective person on your staff.

Number nine: Always call another meeting. Meetings serve you well in your movement to the top. When higher staff calls, it’s useful for them to hear “he’s in a meeting.” Your bosses will see the meetings and think you know what you’re doing — and make them think you’re actually doing something. Remember: the longer your meetings, the more they think you’re accomplishing. Of course, the longer the meetings, the less you will actually accomplish.

DILBERT’s VIDEO

Twenty mistakes bosses make

Stupid management mistakes never cease to amaze me. Every day I hear stories from people that leave me wondering why smart managers can be so dumb. And it just keeps happening.

Got a problem? Set up a committee?

Want someone to do something? Throw them in to the deep end with little training, then come down hard on them when they stuff up.

Ask your workforce for feedback, then ignore everything that’s been suggested.

Want to treat your staff like demented idiots who can’t think for themselves? Just micro-manage everything and talk down to them when they come up with ideas.

Susan Heathfield at About.com has come up with her own list of Twenty Dumb Things Organisations Do To Mess Up Their Relationship With People.

Dumb things include failing to tell people what they’re supposed to do and then wondering why they fail, adding layers of paperwork and bureaucracy to stop things getting done and treating people as if they are untrustworthy.

Another one is telling employees to change the way they are doing things without providing a good explanation why, and then sending them off to change management training, or Siberia, when they resist.

Does any of this sound familiar? Any to add?

Learning from business failure

What do Walt Disney, Bill Gates and Abraham Lincoln have in common? They all failed in their first business venture but they didn’t let that stop them.

It’s amazing how we regard failures as bad. When a business or project fails, it’s condemned for being a flop. That’s where we get the word “loser”, one of the most disgusting terms of the modern age! Failure doesn’t make you a loser. But try telling that to people.

Amazing too when you consider the different figures about your chances of succeeding in business. According to some estimates, two out of three small business will fail in the first year although I have seen other figures that have it at around 7.5 per cent. Still, if 8 out of 100 new businesses shut their doors every year over many years, there’s a big cumulative effect.

It not only applies to running a business. There are plenty of failed projects in the workplace too, which makes it relevant for employees too.

That’s what makes this piece from BusinessWeek, Starting Over When Your Business Fails so interesting. It talks about developing the ability in people to sit down and work out exactly what caused the stuff-up and ensure they don’t repeat the same mistake. Check the slide show too.

Also worth checking out is this other piece from BusinessWeek, How Failure Breeds Success. It gives examples of how some companies go about learning from flops.

Like at waterproof fabric maker W.L.Gore & Associates where managers behind flops are thanked, given trophies and then told write up what they learned from the experience.

So how many flops have you had? What have you learned from them? And do we put too much focus on success instead of learning from failure?

Can you mix friends and business?

So business and friendship don’t mix?

Tell that to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two PhD students at Stanford University, California who went on to create Google.

Actually, the Google story tells us that two didn’t get on at all when they first met.

“When Sergey and I met, we both thought the other was really obnoxious,” Page told BusinessWeek back in 2004.

But the two Trekkies shared a dream of building a computer as fast as the one on the USS Enterprise. So they managed to bury their differences and became close associates as they went on to develop the foundations of the world’s most famous search engine.

Still, as a rule, it’s not usually a great idea to go into business with a friend, unless you are prepared to lose a friend.

Partnerships raise a whole lot of questions. Do partners have to like each other in order to work together? How do you work out who does what? Does one partner have to be in charge, or do you split it 50:50?

To my way of thinking, partnerships are like marriage. Take out the sex, and you both still have to sort out issues of power conflicts, money, and resolution where you can hammer out your differences.

And like any marriage, that’s hard work and requires lots of mutual support.

Yes, there are always problems starting a business with a friend but there’s a real advantage when two people have a rapport. And if you want to go places, it’s always better when you don’t have to do it on your own.

That’s what interested me when Forbes decided to provide us with some good tips on How To Mix Business And Friendship.

They are just a matter of common sense: don’t split it 50:50, create an arrangement where one partner can offer to buy the other one out, put in place a lengthy vesting period of say 4 to 7 years so that one of the partners doesn’t slack off or throw it all in when the going gets tough, get someone to value the business, make sure you have the first right of refusal to sell a stake to an outsider if your partner quits, have an involuntary sale arrangement that allows you to buy your partner’s stake if he or she dies, and work out how much control you are prepared to dilute if you want to raise capital.

So does friendship and business mix? Have you had any experiences there and what advice can you give? How much of a rapport do you need for you to work with someone? And how do you know when it’s over?

How to stuff up a job interview

What are the biggest mistakes people make when applying for a job? What do you have to do to guarantee you won’t get past the first interview?

Recruiters and human resource specialists reckon the worst things you can do is producing a CV with lies and/or typos, turning up late, not preparing for the interview and knowing nothing about the company when you turn up, dressing inappropriately (jeans or gear showing way too much cleavage were cited as two of the most common incidents), swearing, giving inappropriate referees, and asking the interviewers not to contact your former employer.

Do anything like that, they say, and it’s a red flag.

BusinessWeek provides adds more with this piece and a slide show that lists more no-nos.

These include sounding too rehearsed, stalking HR (more than three or four calls and/or emails is not a great idea), asking the wrong questions (like “How much do you pay me?”), mucking up the salary negotiation process, failing to show enthusiasm, exaggerating your work experience, being rude and trashing your ex-boss.

Any to add? Any that you’ve experienced that you want to share?

Do you love your work or hate it? Or do you have mixed feelings?

If it’s mixed feelings, chances are you are more creative – and by implication, you’ll do better – according to a new study.

The study from University of Washington business school found that people who are emotionally ambivalent – the ones who simultaneously feel positive and negative emotions – tend to be more creative in the workplace than those who feel just happy or sad, or who lack any emotion.

Assistant professor Christine Ting Fong conducted a series of experiments where she found that people who have mixed emotions take it as a signal that they are in a situation that might contain lots of unusual associations, and therefore respond by being more creative and lateral.

The study also has implications for how you progress in your career. It found that women in supervisory positions were more likely to be emotionally ambivalent than women lower down the food chain, and women in high-status positions were more creative managers.

If the study is right, the implications for employers could be important. Does it mean, for example, that they have to create weird workplaces?

Fong says: “Due to the complexity of many organisations, workplace experiences often elicit mixed emotions from employees, and it’s often assumed that mixed emotions are bad for workers and companies. Rather than assuming ambivalence will lead to negative results for the organization, managers should recognize that emotional ambivalence can have positive consequences that can be leveraged for organizational success.”

I am not sure it means companies need to create odd working environments.

Still, to my way of thinking, this sort of study just confirms something about the way we are. Working life really teeters on a fulcrum of ambivalence. Do you save or spend it all now? Is it better to be part of a team or do you want to stand out from the crowd and achieve it yourself? People who can see the both sides of the equation, and who can take the good with the bad, would be more creative.

But then, I’ve come across lots of managers who are about as creative as a toilet seat. And lots of creative people who are totally happy, or totally sad. Nothing ambivalent about them.

How do you feel about your work? How do you respond to the peaks and troughs? And has being ambivalent got you anywhere?

So how do you feel about your work? Does it drive you up the twist one day, and then you feel ok about it the next? Do you give a toss? And if you don’t, has it helped you?

Top 8 ways to burn money

Having run a business 157 years ago when I was 21, and now in the process of developing a business plan for a start-up, you learn all about business mistakes. Even big companies make them. Leave them unchecked and everything goes belly-up.

The 8 most common mistakes I’ve noticed are:

1. Not planning. Every business needs some sort of road map that covers all sorts of possibilities and financial developments.
2. Not understanding the difference between cash flow and profit. One is what the accountants tell you, the other is the folding stuff that comes in through the door or into your account. And make sure there’s enough there to see you through the lean times.
3. Failing to keep an eye on your competitors. Even if you’re ahead, it pays to keep tabs and pick up new ideas and see where your weaknesses are.
4. Failing to keep your customers happy. More important than building your customer base. If you fail to do that, you end up losing them as soon as you get them in.
5. Spending too much money or going for the “hamburger and chips” solution of getting something that’s quick, nasty and of no real value. Top advice and services can make a huge difference and it’s false economy to skimp.
6. Keeping the accounts and business operations in your head. Wish I had a dollar for every small business owner I’ve met who does this.
7. Failing to stand out from the pack. You have to offer something that’s different, even if it’s just one point of difference. In managementspeak, it’s called a Unique Selling Position (USP).
8.Failing to look after yourself. Running a business is time-consuming, gruelling and it can chew you up. But again, it’s false economy to ignore the important stuff like family, friends, leisure and time out.

But there are other mistakes too.

for getting right ansWer,u shd ask right question

Jack and Max are walking from religious service. Jack wonders whether it would be all right to smoke while praying.
Max replies, “Why don’t you ask the Priest?”
So Jack goes up to the Priest and asks, “Priest, may I smoke while I pray?”
But the Priest says, “No, my son, you may not. That’s utter disrespect to our religion.”Jack goes back to his friend and tells him what the good Priest told him. Max says, “I’m not surprised. You asked the wrong question. Let me try.”And so Max goes up to the Priest and asks, “Priest, may I pray while I smoke?”
To which the Priest eagerly replies, “By all means, my son. By all means.”

Moral : The reply you get depends on the question you ask.

business opportunity

don’t let only the cups drive you… enjoy the coffee!!!!!!

A group of alumni of a reputed college, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups – porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite – telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: “If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for each of you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and were eyeing each other’s cups. Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn’t change. Some times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it.”

So, don’t let only the cups drive you… enjoy the coffee!!!!!!

Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt.

One day a farmer’s donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously forhours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally he decided the animal was old and the well needed to be covered up anyway it just wasn’t worth it to retrieve the donkey. He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him.They all grabbed a shovel and begin to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone’s amazement he quieted down. A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well and was astonished at what he saw. With every shovel of dirt that fell on his back, the donkey was doing some thing amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up. As the farmer’s neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon,everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and totted off !
Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick is too not
to get bogged down by it. We can get out of the deepest wells by not stopping.
And by never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up !-

Sometimes, when you think the other is dumb, you are making a fool of yourself.

A young boy enters a barber shop and the barber whispers to his Customer,“This is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch while I prove it to you.”The barber puts a dollar in one hand and 25 cents in the other,then calls the boy over and asks, “Which do you want, son?”The boy takes 25 cents and leaves.”What did I tell you?” said the barber. “That kid never learns!”

Later, when the customer leaves, he sees the same young boy coming out of the ice cream store. “Hey,son, May I ask you a question? Why did you take 25 cents instead of the dollar?”The boy licked his cone and replied, “Because the day I take the dollar, the game’s over!”

Moral: Sometimes, when you think the other is dumb, you are making a fool of yourself.

smart cock

A farmer rears twenty-five young hens and one old cock. As he feels that the old cock could no longer handle his job efficiently, the farmer bought one young cock from the market.
Old cock to Young cock : “Welcome to join me, we will work together towards productivity.
Young cock : What ya mean? As far as I know, you are old and should be retired.
Old cock : Young boy, there are twenty-five hens here, can’t I help you with some?
Young cock : No! Not even one, all of them will be mine.
Old cock : In this case, I shall challenge you to a competition and if I win you shall allow me to have one hen and if I loose you will have all.
Young cock : O.K. What kind of competition?
Old cock : 50 meter run. From here to that tree. But due to my age, I hope you allow me to start off the first 10 meters.
Young cock : No problem ! We will compete tomorrow morning.
Confidently, the following morning, the Young cock allows the Old cock to start off and when the Old cock crosses the 10 meters mark the Young cock chases him with all his might.
Soon enough, he was behind the Old cock back in a matter of seconds.Suddenly,Bang! ……before he could overtake the old cock..
He was shot dead by the farmer, who cursed, “What the hell ! This is the fifth GAY chicken I’ve bought this week!“

Always consider a business proposal in its entirety before agreeing to it and getting screwed!

Johnny wanted to have s e x with a girl in his office, but she belonged to someone else…

One day, Johnny got so frustrated that he went up to her and said, “I’ll give you a $100 if you let me screw you. But the girl said NO.

Johnny said, “I’ll be fast. I’ll throw the money on the floor, you bend down, and I’ll be finished by the time you pick it up.”

She thought for a moment and said that she would have to consult her boyfriend… So she called her boyfriend and told him the story.

Her boyfriend says, “Ask him for $200, pick up the money very fast, he won’t even be able to get his pants down.”

So she agrees and accepts the proposal. Half an hour goes by, and the boyfriend is waiting for his girlfriend to call.

Finally, after 45 minutes, the boyfriend calls and asks what happened.

She responded, “The bastard used coins!”

Management lesson: Always consider a business proposal in its entirety before agreeing to it and getting screwed!

smart wife

Letter from husband ( who is abroad) to wife
Dear Sweetheart:
I can’t send my salary this month, so I am sending 100 kisses.
You are my sweetheart
Your husband,
Allen

============ =========

His wife replied back after some days to her husband:

Dearest sweetheart,
Thanks for your 100 kisses, I am sending the expenses details.
1. The Milk man agreed on 2 kisses for one month’s milk.
2. The electricity man only agreed after 7 kisses.
3. Your house owner is coming every day and taking two or three kisses Instead of the rent.
4. Supermarket owner did not accept kisses only, so I have given him Some other items……. ….
5. Other expenses 40 kisses
Please don’t worry for me, I have a remaining balance of 35 kisses and I hope I can complete the month using this balance.
Shall I plan same way for next months, Please Advise!!!

Your Sweet Heart

don’t share critical information

A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower, when the doorbell rings.
The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs. When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next door neighbor. Before she says a word, Bob says, “I’ll give you $800 to drop that towel,”
After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob.
After a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 dollars and leaves.
The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs.
When she gets to the bathroom, her husband asks, “Who was that?”
“It was Bob the next door neighbor,” she replies.
“Great!” the husband says, “did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?”
Moral of the story: If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.

If you are not well informed in your job, you might miss a great opportunity.

A priest offered a lift to a Nun.
She got in and crossed her legs, forcing her gown to reveal a leg.
The priest nearly had an accident. After controlling the car, he stealthily slid his hand up her leg.
The nun said, “Father, remember Psalm 129?”
The priest removed his hand.
But, changing gears, he let his hand slide up her leg again.
The nun once again said, “Father, remember Psalm 129?”
The priest apologized “Sorry sister but the flesh is weak.”
Arriving at the convent, the nun went on her way.
On his arrival at the church, the priest rushed to look up Psalm 129.
It said, “Go forth and seek, further up, you will find glory.”
Moral of the story: If you are not well informed in your job, you might miss a great opportunity.

aLWAYS let ur boss have the first say

A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp.
They rub it and a Genie comes out.
The Genie says, “I’ll give each of you just one wish.”
“Me first! Me first!” says the admin. clerk.
“I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the world” Poof! She’s gone.
“Me next! Me next!” says the sales rep. “I want to be in Hawaii, relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas and the love of my life.” Poof! He’s gone.
“OK, you’re up,” the Genie says to the manager.
The manager says, “I want those two back in the office after lunch.”
Moral of the story: Always let your boss have the first say.

When you can’t earn an MBA

Recently while I was going thru review of book “When you can’t earn an MBA” by RajeshShetty. as per this book he inspired by one of Seth Godin article in which he suggested that “actual experience combined wit a dedicated reading of 30 or 40 books” might be a better use of time and money than an MBA degree.It’s a good book,describing abt what you can do when you can’t earn MBA degree… he give 10 step alternate approach to MBA.@ last, he write about 10 Things that one have that the people who are pursuing MBA won’t have !!! I really like it and after reading it.. I just tried to give a second thought to it..that to invest in an MBA or not to invest in an MBA?
I posted 10 things that author talk about in book…
1 More Timeyou have two more years of time on your side. Now, if you just spend those two year with “zero” investment in yourself, you can be guaranteedthat the MBA route is far better. However, if you design your life to take advantage of those two years, then the game is different!
2 More MoneyYou save $100K in fees and earned two more year of income – may be another $200K. So you literally save $300K

3 Short-Term career advantage unless someone is doing an executive MBA program, they lose two years of their career. You don’t !! Again, how your career grows during two years is entirely up to you. In two years, you should be able to add value to your organization and grow as a person. If not, you may want to check your attitude and behavior. There may be problem that even an MBA degreecouldn’t fix.

4. More varied networking opportunities While you miss opportunities to network inside the MBA program, you get to network in your workplace, your profession, and your community. The MBA folks are often so busy that they won’t have any time to network outside their school.

5 Fewer debts to repay since you don’t have to borrow money for an MBA program, you don’t have to worry about those education loan.
6. Opportunity to get more creative Since you don’t have an MBA and you know that it’s going to be a disadvantage you need to get creative to fill the gap. You will start looking for alternate option. Here’s a quick example. We all know that communication and public speaking are two important skills that you can develop in an MBA program. You could seek out other ways to develop these skills -may be bye joining a group such as Toastmaste International. Instead of spending $100K in tution, you might spend $100 a year in membership dues.

7. More time to develop your strength In an MBA or any educational program with a set coursework, chances are that you need to study a number of required subjects. This is true even when the subjects are :
- Not completely relevant in near future

- Not in your area of strength and/or interests.
Because you aren’t inside formal program, you will have the freedom to focus on the topics that interests you and will move you towards your goal. You can focus on continuing to read and develop your strengths.

8 Time to build your brand when you are in an MBA program, the course will be so intensive that you don’t get time to build your brand. Personal Branding is extremely important in this age of rapid commoditization. You develop a chance to build a reputation based on real-world action and achievement. Two years of focused investment in building your personal brand may provide you with a huge competitive advantage over an MBA

9 More Grounded I have heard time and again that several MBA graduates tend to be “over confident” and assume that they have that extra dash of smartness because of their MBA degree. You don’t have an MBA so you can’t have that problem. So, in essence you are more grounded on that subject that many MBA graduates.
10 TIME TO RELAX If you think getting into a good MBA program is hard work, you just have to wait until you get into one.One MBA student remarked to me once that before he joined an MBA program, he had difficulty in grasping the meaning of the term “Time Flies”. He had no problem with that term at the first quarter in his program.Once you get into an MBA program you really don’t have a choice but to keep running as fast sa you can. You are not alone. Everyone there is running.
If you are not pursuing MBA though, sometimes you can carve out some time to relax
Confused???? what to do??
well, It all depends on you.. on action you take… If you don’t take any action no knowledge in world can help you… this apply to both the cases here… to do MBA or not to do. If you don’t do MBA and don’t take any action to improve yourself it won’t work and if you do MBA and get the knowledge but still don’t take any action.. it won’t work either

5 tHings B-School don’t teach

Stepping out of B-school into the real world is like learning golf from manuals, or like teaching yourself cricket online. You have all the required theoretical inputs; a clear understanding of the rule book, the jargon and concepts; a dash of history to boot; and anecdotes and trivia as fillers.As this package comes in contact with reality, it goes through a range of emotions, starting with denial, wrath, angst, confusion, wonder, and finally settles into pragmatism, with bouts of nostalgia and a few clear learnings that are far removed from what the rule books preached.
The moral of the story: the real world teaches you some home truths that academia does not touch upon. In our journey down the road of experience, some of them get etched as gospels. If I were to pick a few of them, and share them here, they would be:
1. Brevity:
All the case studies, presentations, analysis and concept notes do not prepare you for the first reality of life. The world does not give you the opportunity to expound on theories over a 40-page Word document, or a 120-slide PowerPoint presentation.
In most real life situations, you get a tiny window in which you need to make your point, in as impactful a manner as possible. The more august the audience, the shorter the time.
From 10-second one-line summaries, to elevator pitches, to one paragraph e-mail, you need to cultivate the habit of being concise. There are no second opportunities in a real-time scenario.
Keeping that in mind, all your thinking needs to be crystallised and constantly carried around, to capitalise on the opportunity.
The clearer the thinking, the easier it is to say it succinctly. I would like to see the day when we put tight leashes around time, space and resources, and start recognising and appreciating brevity as a virtue in academics, instead of letting duration, length or aesthetics drive judgement.
2. People skills:
Real life is about real people. It involves dealing with diverse personalities, cultural backgrounds and competencies that you do not normally encounter in B-school. The challenge is, thus, compounded and you often see stars of academia unable to deal with this core reality.
Working with, dealing with, and successfully arriving at mutually beneficial and satisfactory decisions on a day-to-day basis is what the real world teaches you — sometimes harshly.
Understanding, communication and appreciating someone else’s point of view is difficult. It is seldom as the books expound, a clear rational process aided by the theories of people management.
3. Execution:
In B-school, all that you learn is from books, periodicals, case studies, which do not prepare you for the biggest differentiator in the real world: the ability to execute.
Perhaps the most understated competency needed, it hits you between the eyes the first time you try to execute a plan, a project or a campaign.
The various parameters you deal with and the fickle nature of the elements are not issues you think about in B-school.
The need to plan with buffers, with alternatives, and the need to keep an eye on the ball at all stages of execution, cannot be overemphasised.
Unfortunately, in our desire to move ourselves up the knowledge curve, there is a propensity to take this skill for granted, and most management programmes don’t expose you to this harsh reality.
4. Dealing with failure:
Learning to live with failure is another of those often not realised truths. In the real world, we are constantly dealing with the fact that not all decisions, activities, interactions, strategies, or communication translate into success.
My favourite saying is that learning comes from experience and good learning from bad experience. But no B-school teaches you to take failure in your stride.
More often than not, there is enough time to mull over a failure or even lick your wounds. Facing it with grace and bracing yourself for the next set of decisions or actions is what the real world is all about.
We will still deal with the same environment where we failed; at times, lead the same team that could not pull it off, have the same limited facts and figures and information; and more importantly, yet have the same objectives to achieve. It can be a humbling experience, which no education with books or classrooms can simulate.
Dealing with failures is paramount. Otherwise, a propensity to shy away from decision and action for fear of failure can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
5. Multi-tasking:
This is probably the most common, yet the most demanding task. Unlike academics, more often than not, executives have to deal with the very real implications of their ability or inability to multi-task.
Financial, organisational and people implications are the riders we contend with. On a day-to-day basis, the ability to multi-task, yet prioritise and drop a few tasks and live with the implications is something no classroom can teach in its entirety.
To quickly estimate the impact, segregate the critical, handle them with speed and calm, constantly scan the environment for changes, and build them into your thoughts and actions as you go through the day, is an experiential learning.
Add to this the fact that often, the information available is scant or incomplete, there are always a few angles no one knew about, the unpredictability of people we are dealing with — and your hands are more than full. In hindsight, vision is often 20-20, but reality is not.
B-schools do give you an understanding of the tools, aids and theories with which you need to arm yourselves, but where they fall short is in correctly teaching the application and the virtues of experiential learning.
- Raj Raman (senior vice president, sales and marketing, Prudential ICICI AMC Ltd. Hegraduated from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. )

the CALL of ENTREPRENUER….!

GURU SPEAKS : -

STEVE JOBS .. @ his best

ALL ABOUT FRIENDLY COMPETITION 

STEVE TAKING OVER..APPLE CEO……

Tom Peters: Business Should Be Energetic and Passionate

JACK WELCH SPEAKING

  

CORPORATE LESSON

chk out this PPT. It is really good, explain about 3 important lesson to learn in corporate life. This PPT is created by IIM-Kolkata

Mind ur language;u never knW WHAT it will land U…!!!

There were these 4 guys, a Russian, a German, an American and a French, who found this small genie bottle. When they rubbed the bottle, a genie appears. Thankful that the 4 guys had released him
out of the bottle, he said, “Next to you all are 4 swimming pools, I will give each of you a wish. When you run towards the pool and jump, you shout What you want the pool of water to become, then
your wish will come true.”

The French wanted to start. He ran towards the pool, jumped and shouted WINE”. The pool immediately changed into a pool of wine. The Frenchman was so happy swimming and drinking from the pool.

Next is the Russian’s turn, he did the same and shouted, “VODKA” and immersed himself into a pool of vodka.

The German was next and he jumped and shouted, “BEER”. He was so contented with his beer pool.

The last is the American. He was running towards the pool when suddenly he steps on a banana peel. He slipped towards the pool and shouted, “SH** !!!!!!!………”

MORAL OF THE STORY: Mind your language; you never know what it will land you in.

Life’s Problem!!!.

Once a professor began his class by holding up a glass with some water in it. He held it up for all to see; asked the students,
“How much do you think this glass weighs?’50gms!’?…’100gms!….’125gms’ ….
The students answered, “I really don’t know unless I weigh it.”

The professor said, ‘now, my question is: What would happen if I held it up like this for a few minutes?’
‘Nothing’ the students said.
“OK what would happen if I held it up like this for an hour?” the professor asked.
“Your arm would begin to ache” said one of the students.
“You’re right, now what would happen if I held it for a day?”
“Your arm could go numb, you might have severe muscle stress & paralysis; have to go to hospital for sure! Ventured another student”, all the students laughed.

“Very good! But during all this, did the weight of the glass change?” asked the professor.
“No” was the reply of all the students

“Then what caused the arm to ache; the muscle to stress?” After a pause the professor asked “Before my arm ache what should I do?”

The students were puzzled. “Put the glass down!” said one of the students.

“Exactly!” said the professor, “Life’s problems are exactly like this. Hold it for a few minutes in your head; they seem OK. Think of them for a long time; they begin to ache. Hold it even longer; they begin to paralyze you. You will not be able to do anything.” It’s important to think of the challenges (problems) in your life, but EVEN MORE IMPORTANT to ‘put them down’ at the end of every day before you go to sleep. That way, you are not stressed, you wake up every day fresh; strong; can handle any issue, any challenge that comes your way!
Remember friends to…. PUT THE GLASS DOWN EVERYDAY!

WindOW

Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room. One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour a day to drain the fluids from his lungs. His bed was next to the room’s only window. The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back.

The men talked for hours on end. They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation. And every afternoon when the man in the bed next to the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.

The man in the other bed would live for those one-hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and color of the outside world. The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake, the man had said. Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Lovers walked arm in arm amid flowers of every color of the rainbow. Grand old trees graced the landscape, and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance. As the man by the window described all this in exquisite detail, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine the picturesque scene.

One warm afternoon the man by the window described a parade passing by. Although the other man could not hear the band, he could see it in his mind’s eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words. Unexpectedly, an alien thought entered his head: Why should hehave all the pleasure of seeing everything while I never get to see anything? It didn’t seem fair. As the thought fermented, the man felt ashamed at first. But as the days passed and he missed seeing more sights, his envy eroded into resentment and soon turned him sour. He began to brood and found himself unable to sleep. He should be by that window – and that thought now controlled his life.

Late one night, as he lay staring at the ceiling, the man by the window began to cough. He was choking on the fluid in his lungs. The other man watched in the dimly lit room as the struggling man by the window groped for the button to call for help. Listening from across the room, he never moved, never pushed his own button which would have brought the nurse running. In less than five minutes, the coughing and choking stopped, along with the sound of breathing. Now, there was only silence–deathly silence.

The following morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths. When she found the lifeless body of the man by the window, she was saddened and called the hospital attendant to take it away–no words, no fuss. As soon as it seemed appropriate, the man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.

Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look. Finally, he would have the joy of seeing it all himself. He strained to slowly turn to look out the window beside the bed. It faced a blank wall.

Moral of the story:
The pursuit of happiness is a matter of choice…it is a positive attitude we consciously choose to express. It is not a gift that gets delivered to our doorstep each morning, nor does it come through the window. And I am certain that our circumstances are just a small part of what makes us joyful. If we wait for them to get just right, we will never find lasting joy.

The pursuit of happiness is an inward journey. Our minds are like programs, awaiting the code that will determine behaviors; like bank vaults awaiting our deposits. If we regularly deposit positive, encouraging, and uplifting thoughts, if we continue to bite our lips just before we begin to grumble and complain, if we shoot down that seemingly harmless negative thought as it germinates, we will find that there is much to rejoice about.

if u don’t put d big rocks in first,u’ll never get thm in@all

One day an expert in time management was speaking to a group of business students and, to drive home a point, used an illustration those students will never forget. As he stood in front of the group of high-powered overachievers he said, Okay, time for a quiz.
Then he pulled out a one-gallon, wide mouth mason jar and set it on the table in front of him. Then he produced about a dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one at a time, into the jar. When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked, Is this jar full? Everyone in the class said, Yes.

Then he said, “Really?” He reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. Then he dumped some gravel in and shook the jar causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the space between the big rocks. Then he asked the group once more, Is the jar full? By this time the class was on to him. Probably not, one of them answered.

Good he replied. He reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in the jar and it went into all of the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel. Once more he asked the question, Is this jar full? No the class shouted.

Once again he said, Good. Then he grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it in until the jar was filled to the brim. Then he looked at the class and asked, What is the point of this illustration? One eager beaver raised his hand and said, The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard you can always fit some more things in it. No, the speaker replied, that’s not the point. The truth this illustration teaches us is: If you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in at all.

What are the big rocks in your life? Time with your loved ones? faith, education, your dreams? A worthy cause? Teaching or mentoring others? Remember to put these BIG ROCKS in first or you’ll never get them in at all.
So, tonight, or in the morning, when you are reflecting on this short story, ask yourself this question: What are the big rocks in my life?

Then, put those in your jar first.

Life PPt

Amazing video abt life….