Just Thought...

- Sometimes, to maintain your equilibrium, you have to act as if you've lost it!! (courtesy: Sagar, my younger bro) :)

Just Thought...

- The most important thing in making, sustaining or breaking of a relationship is constructive communication - or the lack of it.

- One of the best gifts that I have received from God - touchwood! - are the people around me with whom I can have an honest and open conversation without the risk of "being judged"...people with whom I can even talk about "what-went-wrong-with-us" and still be one of the closest friends ever...Today, I want to take this opportunity to Thank You Lord, for this wonderful gift! :)

What ails thee, O Com+Pane?

Dear Blog:

I don’t understand…what ails these big companies? How strong is their foundation, which cannot sustain a recessionary phase of even 6-12 months? The way some of the companies have been howling their throats hoarse in the last year, it seems as if they are made of paper! I mean, they have been in existence for decades now, their name comes among one of the best since a long time, they are highly respected by shareholders, customers, suppliers and the stock markets, their employees take pride in the company…so what is it that they cannot sustain a dull period for some time? Being in such a status for a long time, one would like to believe that these companies would have enough emergency ammunition (read: money) to ward off such temporary evils.

But no, it certainly doesn’t seem like it. The worst part is the way they take show reaction to these environmental factors and take so-called “corrective actions” – by laying off scores and scores of employees…I mean, Hello! What part of your total cost is employee cost, guys? And why can’t you choose any other way out? The name "company" originates out of the Latin - Com (with)+ Pane (bread)...i.e., to share bread together...If you’re closing down a certain division, at least re-assign those employees somewhere else. Some honorable companies have done this, others have not. True, some companies were even decent enough to help employees find another job…but the moot question is – how can the companies justify the fact that even after decades of profitable business; they are today unable to absorb this shock…why, by now they should have hundreds of crores in their coffers to fight off the lull. And if your exposure to a particular risky asset class was huge, reduce that...but why take such a drastic step? Sometimes, I think this is just another PR exercise by troubled companies to show to the world that they are taking action against this horrible recession! They know that when they want to hire, they will find talent aplenty, so theek hai na, aaj nikaalo aur duniya ke saamne apna chehra bachao, kal ki kal dekhenge…

I think the root cause of all this is their margins. If the intensity and magnitude of their troubles is really as much as they are showing, then it means that they don’t have the margins they are showing on the balance sheet. Otherwise, there is no way they can’t survive the recession on the basis of the past reserves. I can give examples of companies which have been doing great business in the past and have swam the tide gracefully, so I fail to understand how these guys can’t.

To put in plain XL words, they are giving just GAS. If one decodes everything that they are saying, it reduces to one sentence – “We don’t know why we were doing so well when the market was good, we don’t know what to do in the current situation, we are afraid we might get clobbered in the public and on the stock exchanges and are therefore taking any and all drastic steps to show to the world that we are working to manage the crisis”

MBA - Master in Business Administration. Really?

Dear Blog,

The other day, while Dad and I were on a train journey, we just got talking about the education field and the various options…and also the reaction of our relatives on my completing my MBA and still choosing to join the business, when Dad came across what I think is a very valid point – Why call this degree/diploma an MBA? Before you develop any notions/opinions, let me explain…

You see, every post-graduate degree/diploma has a “Masters” prefixed to it, so you have a Masters in Finance, a Masters in Psychology, a Masters in Education and so on. But none of the “Masters” has been glamorized so much by the academic fraternity, public or the corporate world, except Masters in Business Administration. The effect of this being that the perception about an MBA grad is that he has been taught some secret formulae of success by which he has the weaponry to “Bring a better Future” or “Change the World” or, at least, become a “Money Magnet”!! The "Masters in BA" is seen as "Master of BA" !!

The truth cannot be far from it! We’ve never been taught how to create the future. No one can be taught that. What we have been taught largely is success stories of the past, mostly penned by those who never did an MBA!

We’ve been taught is to think in a sort of structured manner. Ironically, we’ve been taught to do so in a structured environment, whereas what we need is to think with a level head in an unstructured, “real” environment! True, Institutes can’t simulate the exact outside environment inside the campus, but they can – if they want – get pretty close to it.

I am digressing…let me come back to the moot point – why glamorize this discipline so much that it stops a person from coming back to his earlier “normal” life? The perception about the person changes not only in among the people, but in the person himself too, so much so that he may find it difficult to believe that he is the same old version before the diploma!

After all, we’ll all agree…the theoretical knowledge that we gather on campus doesn’t really help us much in isolation – the real learning starts when one is out of the campus in the practical field. All it does is provide us a fancy, comfy ‘cushiony’ start in the name of “Placements”.

What an MBA doesn't teach you...

Dear Blog,

I have been thinking about this for quite some time…in fact, any friend in XL who was patient enough to lend an ear has heard this question from me – what is it in a person that makes him/her successful? What is it in that person that separates him/her from those that are unsuccessful or not so successful?

Better still, allow me to be a bit blunt –what qualities should a man possess that would make him become a “Big Man”? (Sounds a bit weird when expressed in English! So let me express it better – Ek Insaan mein aisi kaun si khubiyan honi chahiye jisse wo ek kaamyaab insaan, ek bada aadmi, ban sake?)

Nope, Bloggie! This isn’t bringing out the “edge” in my question…what I want to ask is, “What stops a person from becoming Dhirubhai Ambani, JRD Tata, Sam Walton?”

What a stupid question, you’d say? I don’t think so. Can you give me an answer? Is there a comprehensive “list” of such qualities or facilities or both? Don’t give me the usual gassy answers…I’ve heard plenty of those…