(I)
Finally, the Spanish classes took off. We covered the alphabet, the numbers between one and ten, some popular greetings. Amongst the class was a boy, perhaps, of 6-7 years age. The teacher questioned the parent if the boy would be able to keep pace with the teaching. Her remarks surprised me, because it is children who can learn languages fast. To confirm to my understanding, the boy was the first to answer some question she asked. Added to a child’s ability to grasp concepts and languages is his curiosity towards things new and external.

What actually happens between our childhood and our adulthood is the loss of this curiosity and ability. Slowly but in a systematic fashion, parents, school and society through their inescapable heavy-hand torture the child into not asking questions. In some cases, they do not want to answer; in many cases, they do not know the answers. The child is left clueless as to why he is being given a deaf ear, why he is being unanswered and why the same people he reveres are unable to answer his basis questions. Since he does not and cannot find answers to his many questions, he becomes inward looking and slowly becomes self-centered that he loses interests in the knowledge that is attainable from external events. Wherever curiosity is encouraged, we find different types of kids, growing into mature and outward-looking adults.

(II)
Today, a colleague student from consulting background and I made presentation on banking to some of the students. My presentation went on well. It is a good feeling when people like it. But this is not about self-praise, but about how the other person approached the subject. I was a banker and spoke as a practitioner would speak. Much of my analysis was bottom-up and how a practitioner would view the banking world. I covered nitty gritty and also made a few generic/motherhood statements. He approached the subject from an entirely different perspective, which is usual to a consultant. He did a broad picture analysis. How a bank should get into business; which businesses should a bank get into; having gotten in, what is the best way to do it. Which are critical factors for the functioning of a bank; what is sustainable in the long-run. Et cetera. Not all of the tips may work, but definitely, the way in which the consultants look the world is quite ‘interesting’ to me. A consultant’s entire thought process is oriented towards broad picture and how things can be looked in a systematic and structured fashion. Though I like consulting business and if given a right slot would like to go into consulting, I am quite proud to have been a practitioner and get kick out of building franchise, making money for the organization and fighting it out in the market place. To me, business development is my organizational raison d’etre.

Hasta la vista

PS:
-For a few more days, my excitement will manifest in my writing and please pardon the same. You many see a few Espanol words in my blog.
(H) olla todos means hello everyone (H is silent)
Hasta la vista means till I see you

-Not that consultants have an easy time out in the market. They also fight a lot to get business from a client. But there is a good difference between what a consultant does and a manager does.

Long ago read a book by name “The End of History and the Last Man” by Francis Fukuyama. The book was a detailed version of an article, which he had written earlier. The article became controversial and he became popular overnight. People reacted as they felt amused by the title as one knows History cannot end, unless human race perishes or people stop recording events happening in the world.

Now when I go over the topics of Global Economics, I recollect the powerful ideas that the book had proposed. The ideas are simple yet profound. He says that the ideals on which human race progresses will evolve only until such point as to reach a combination of “Liberalism, Democracy, and Capitalism”. He further says that the US has reached this stage, not necessarily smoothly or perfectly by design. By reading the history of the US, one can know what will happen in other parts of the world – repetition of the US history to the extent that all countries would like to approximate to this ideal combination of the principles.

At the beginning, each country had equal opportunity to grow. In fact, about 1900s, many countries had much greater advantage than the US. The economic philosophy adopted by the countries made huge difference in where the countries went. Democracy is another great institution in the US. The economic feat achieved could have been perhaps impossible without the democratic political framework. But above all is the idea of ‘Liberalism’. Each individual has right to talk, write and think what he wants to. The best way to bring the creative elements in people and thus bring out the collective good is to let people do what they want, let them think what they want and let them say what they want.

Why is this combination so good? I will add my own thoughts. Liberalism given an individual incentives enough to think, dream big and innovative. More times than not, only good things happen because of liberalism. The fundamental thinking behind democracy and capitalism (read markets which are nothing but people) is that collective judgment of people is far superior to the collective judgment of a few individual, which is the case in a dictatorship or socialistic economy.

I am quite sure, though it will take a few years or even decades, China will move away from the present political form. To the extent that all other countries are only trying to reach this ideal combination, history will repeat itself and has thus ended.

Post Scriptum: Here, I cannot resist talking about John Mills’ On Liberty – a masterpiece on liberalism. The US follows the principles stated in this book. I, for one, was not more influenced by any other book than this.

Prof Raju mentioned that he had asked his friend and our Strategy tutor Prof. Harbir Singh on why the Strategy discipline always focuses on Leadership and not followership. Brilliant. All I needed to think further was the idea.

Given a situation, there is only one leader, there are many followers. Why cannot we prepare people to be good followers? Following is not about imitating or blindly going behind some one. A follower can have his own set of rules. He can position himself in such a fashion such that people around can relate to him.

This happens in business. Some companies consciously decide to build their strategy, positioning and advertising around the concept that they are number two*, not number one.

Also, a leader is nothing without proper follwership. Followers, thus, are as much a part of the success or revolution that a leader may bring. Hanuman was a great follower; but he created a niche for himself and is treated as a great Hero/god. PV Narasimha Rao was the leader who had the guts to initiate tough economic reforms when Indian was in doldrums in 1991; but his follower, Dr. Manmohan Singh, being the executioner, is remembered as the architect of the economic regeneration. He thus created an image for himself.

Followership is not about losing; it is about finding one’s own unique reasons to perform and contribute; it is about finding one’s own niche to operate from.

PS:

1. Today, Prof Raju was at his best. We had a case analysis. The perspectives and analyses he used to unravel the complexities in the case were just too brilliant. Nirvana!

2. When I first wrote about Prof Raju, I wrote about his ability to kindle interest and enthusiasm amongst students to think further. I think he is doing this job quite brilliantly.

* Read “Positioning” by Al Ries and Jack Trout for further gyan on this number two business.

We had a workshop organized by the visiting psychotherapist. She has been living on campus for a year or so, and is expected to leave the campus soon. We also have an in house counselor who is available to students for discussions.

What are a psychotherapist and a counselor doing on campus? Why ‘Relax and Rejuvenate’ workshop?

Human mind is a complex and dynamic organism; operates quite contextually. It quite conveniently forgets that the person who owns it has been a successful one and is hence at ISB. It starts comparing him with all others around, puts pressure on him for non-performance, relative performance, and finally completely goes berserk because of sleep deprivation.

The pressure here is just too high to be normal. People have ups and downs. Some have a tendency to get stressed easily. But that does not mean that life is impossible here. Most of the students here are mature and tend to manage themselves. If and when then self-management becomes difficult, approaching a counselor should be an apt choice and there is no need to feel awkward about it. Making such resource available is one more positive for ISB.

Relax and Rejuvenate workshop was to enable us proactively manage stress and become more efficient. She spoke about a few tips to relieve ourselves of stress during high-stress situations as exams, interviews, etc. She also spoke about meditation as a long term strategy to get better control over self.

We tend to generalize (I can never do that); awfulize (things are going pretty bad and there seems to be no recourse); do shoulding (I should be doing this; I should have done that, etc); blame others (just before the exam I had this cold, etc) and personalize (the Prof dint pick me up for cold calling despite the fact that I had kept my hand up for a long time. Perhaps, he does not like me). These are some of the ways in which we tend to think. All it takes to reverse this kind of thoughts is, take a break and try to examine the validity of such claims being made by the mind. Just by changing the place where we are sitting or changing the context or reading some book or just talking to a friend or sweetheart – all these can be stress busters.

But in the long run, there is nothing to beat meditation as a means to get control over mind.

PS: Long years ago, I used to meditate.I can vouch that it gives tremendous power over mind. Today, the psychotherapist asked us to meditate for 10-15 minutes. I snoozed for 5 minutes out of the 15 minutes:-) While I was upset that I did could not manage to meditate and snoozed, I immediately had a hearty laugh and came out of it. Lack of sleep can make you sleep anywhere. Anywhere. Btw, laughter is a very good stress buster too.

(I)
I will repeat ad nauseam – verbal score is the key for high GMAT score. But it is not easy to master the verbal portion, not only for Indians even for the people who have English as primary language. Today I will handle one element of the English language, punctuation. Many (not all) examples have been shamelessly lifted from the book “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” by Lynee Truss (explanations are mine). No one ever expected this book to get into the bestseller category. But it did.

 For a puritan English loving person, it is quite irritating to see the following: we sell CD’s, DVD’s and Book’s / We are Ladie’s hairdresser

Look at the change in meaning punctuation marks / their positioning can make

 A woman, without her man, is nothing (a woman is nothing without man)
 A woman: without her, man is nothing (man is nothing without a woman)

 Leonara walked on her head, a little higher than usual (she walked on her head)
 Leonara walked on, her head a little higher than usual (she walked, with her head high)

 The convict said the judge is mad (judge is mad, says the convict)
 The convict, said the judge, is mad (judge says that convict is made)

 The oft-repeated blunders: it’s (which is ‘it is’) / its (possessive – belongs to it)

 Cannot is one word; all other nots’ are two words – did not, does not, would not, etc

There have been situations where a comma caused difference between life and death

Don’t stop killing.
Don’t, stop killing.

It helps a lot to keep an eye on the punctuation mark and such detail. Knowing punctuation will be key to cracking many sentence correction questions.

(II)

Why is diversity important? If all students at ISB were like me, ISB would be a lot more silent place, there would have been no elections (because no one will participate), and thinking would have been a little more eccentric (not necessarily acts). At ISB, there are as many types as one can imagine and no one will complain because the types of people, the kinds of acts, the idiosyncrasies, the weirdest outlooks, are simply too many to not engage attention and interest. Any one looking for fun, apart from studies, can find a lot of it here.
Those who are planning to apply to ISB, and who can afford time and money, should come down, go around the campus and interact with the students here. Decision making will become much easier. Motivation will be much higher. Sure, it will be fun too.

PS: The title of the book refers to a Panda, which Eats ‘shoots and leaves’. But by placing a comma after Eats, the author refers to a serious change in meaning which is that Panda eats and then shoots (someone) and leaves.

The topic of today’s strategy session was strategic alliances and how alliances can be used to build competitive advantage. The alliances can be Joint Ventures between two firms from two different countries. We discussed Otis Elevators entry into China through a Joint Venture with a Chinese firm. There were conflicts galore between them and the case discussion was on what we could learn from it.

I found many similarities between the dynamics of corporate alliances and marriage. Here is the summary of how I relate what i learnt to marriage

1. Building trust – this is the first step in laying the foundation for the smooth and sustainable future, for both marriage and business
2. Cultural Clashes – when two people / organizations come from two different backgrounds, there is bound to be differences. Patience and ability to think from others’ perspective required
3. Conflict over asymmetric investments/sacrifices – both parties may tend to think that they have invested / sacrificed more than the other party has invested/ sacrificed. It is important to keep the perceptions at manageable level.
4. Performance ambiguity – this is all about expectations management. Set performance to reach the mutually agreed milestones.
5. Conflict resolution – need capabilities to handle conflicts so that the running is smooth. Parent intervention or expert guidance is sometimes needed to resolve conflicts.

One thing that was not relevant to marriage was prior experience of having been in alliance. In case of corporates, it helps them to have had prior experience of having been in a joint venture.

Post Scriptum: My blog on Marriage and Marginal Utility had created certain impressions. I take this opportunity to clarify that these observations are purely at intellectual level and have no resemblance to mine or any other marriage that I would have observed. Btw, I have been married for a long time and quite enjoy my marriage. Keeping it in the highest vigor is enjoyable and in fact more challenging than managing any business situation. To me, Love – not money or power – is the elixir of life.

There is some magic with numbers. I was always amazed why people needed such complex mathematical formulae to explain reality in the world whereas, i thought, just by simple counting or by multiplying or even by surmising we could explain the various phenomena in life. Hence, I was never able to appreciate mathematics, never attempted to learn a few concepts which could have made life simpler. A few examples made me realize how futile an exercise counting is and why it can never achieve the objective of explaining natural phenomena.

– if a salesman has to travel between three cities (1,2,3), assuming that he starts in city 1, there are only two ways in which he can travel. Easy to calculate and determine which is the shortest, thus cheapest, way to travel between cities. But when the number of cities between which he has to travel increases to, say, 17, the number of possible ways / routes in which he can travel will increase to, lo and behold, 21 trillion! How on earth can we calculate and determine which is the shortest possible route amongst these 21 trillion routes. This problem is famously known as Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP)

– the most obsolescent item in the world is perhaps a newspaper. A newspaper boy has to keep only those many newspapers as he can sell. If he keeps more, he will end up with papers no one will buy. If he keeps less, then he loses sales and thus his profits. How to know how many newspapers to carry.

For both the above problems, answers can be found using decision making models (linear-, integer-, nonlinear- programming) that we are learning in our Term II course.

Numbers & these models and their power to explain the natural phenomena have indeed started fascinating me. They have absolute utility in real life situations.

PS: Try this – keep folding an A4 sized paper for 20 times and see the results. If you are able to fold it so many times, you may have reached the height of a multi-stories building or even beyond……………folding the paper 20 times is equivalent of the thickness of 1032192 papers.

Term II life has been whirling around assignments – individual and group. Tomorrow we have our Global Economics mid-term. This time I consciously decided not to make elaborate preparations for the exam. I have made minimal preparation required, but my focus has been to be able to understand the concepts in the context of real world situations. Economic theory may say that stock market or bond market or foreign exchange market would react to certain economic data in a particular fashion. But in practice, bond markets look more predictable than equity and forex markets. The variables are too many to be captured. The forex markets move to a news such as Bush attacking Iraq. How can any theory capture this variable? So, it is a better idea to read current economic affairs to understand economic theory better.

Our new eco professor, Krishna Kumar, says that there is no better alternative. Btw, he is rocking. I found him quite effective in his pedagogy. He brings with him a set of convictions; will take us through the course through the framework he believes in. It may not give us an impartial view of the world. But it is always good to have an opinion than not have any opinion. The problem with reading textbooks is that you do not get to form opinions. A professor who has strong convictions can pass on those to the students. Though I did not agree with his view that human beings are almost entirely rational (we had a discussion in class. In a class, you can never win a discussion with a Prof. Remember, he grades you.). I am of the firm view that human beings are not necessarily rational. There are many times, even when making economic decisions, where he is not rational (covered in my blog on behavioral economics dated March 14). Coming back to the topic, good to have a professor who has firm beliefs and better to have one who believes in classical view of economics. He showed us part of ‘Commanding Heights’ documentary. I understand this is one of the best documentaries ever made. It was indeed good. The object of screening of this is to make us learn macroeconomics better. We have full screening of this doc on Saturday, after which I will write more about macroeconomics.

PS: Readers need to excuse this excess propensity towards economic. But it never hurts to learn economics.

Term II life has been whirling around assignments – individual and group. Tomorrow we have our Global Economics mid-term. This time I consciously decided not to make elaborate preparations for the exam. I have made minimal preparation required, but my focus has been to be able to understand the concepts in the context of real world situations. Economic theory may say that stock market or bond market or foreign exchange market would react to certain economic data in a particular fashion. But in practice, bond markets look more predictable than equity and forex markets. The variables are too many to be captured. The forex markets move to a news such as Bush attacking Iraq. How can any theory capture this variable? So, it is a better idea to read current economic affairs to understand economic theory better.

Our new eco professor, Krishna Kumar, says that there is no better alternative. Btw, he is rocking. I found him quite effective in his pedagogy. He brings with him a set of convictions; will take us through the course through the framework he believes in. It may not give us an impartial view of the world. But it is always good to have an opinion than not have any opinion. The problem with reading textbooks is that you do not get to form opinions. A professor who has strong convictions can pass on those to the students. Though I did not agree with his view that human beings are almost entirely rational (we had a discussion in class. In a class, you can never win a discussion with a Prof. Remember, he grades you.). I am of the firm view that human beings are not necessarily rational. There are many times, even when making economic decisions, where he is not rational (covered in my blog on behavioral economics dated March 14). Coming back to the topic, good to have a professor who has firm beliefs and better to have one who believes in classical view of economics. He showed us part of ‘Commanding Heights’ documentary. I understand this is one of the best documentaries ever made. It was indeed good. The object of screening of this is to make us learn macroeconomics better. We have full screening of this doc on Saturday, after which I will write more about macroeconomics.

PS: Readers need to excuse this excess propensity towards economic. But it never hurts to learn economics.

Term II life has been whirling around assignments – individual and group. Tomorrow we have our Global Economics mid-term. This time I consciously decided not to make elaborate preparations for the exam. I have made minimal preparation required, but my focus has been to be able to understand the concepts in the context of real world situations. Economic theory may say that stock market or bond market or foreign exchange market would react to certain economic data in a particular fashion. But in practice, bond markets look more predictable than equity and forex markets. The variables are too many to be captured. The forex markets move to a news such as Bush attacking Iraq. How can any theory capture this variable? So, it is a better idea to read current economic affairs to understand economic theory better.

Our new eco professor, Krishna Kumar, says that there is no better alternative. Btw, he is rocking. I found him quite effective in his pedagogy. He brings with him a set of convictions; will take us through the course through the framework he believes in. It may not give us an impartial view of the world. But it is always good to have an opinion than not have any opinion. The problem with reading textbooks is that you do not get to form opinions. A professor who has strong convictions can pass on those to the students. Though I did not agree with his view that human beings are almost entirely rational (we had a discussion in class. In a class, you can never win a discussion with a Prof. Remember, he grades you.). I am of the firm view that human beings are not necessarily rational. There are many times, even when making economic decisions, where he is not rational (covered in my blog on behavioral economics dated March 14). Coming back to the topic, good to have a professor who has firm beliefs and better to have one who believes in classical view of economics. He showed us part of ‘Commanding Heights’ documentary. I understand this is one of the best documentaries ever made. It was indeed good. The object of screening of this is to make us learn macroeconomics better. We have full screening of this doc on Saturday, after which I will write more about macroeconomics.

PS: Readers need to excuse this excess propensity towards economic. But it never hurts to learn economics.