iThink

Where is your Quarterly result?

2011-06-15T10:04:00.002+05:30

I am always surprised by the quarterly result of successful companies. A lot of successful companies relentlessly grow quarter on quarter. They strive for some targets, achieve them and then move on to higher, loftier targets. They don’t halt to take rest, they don’t brag too much, they don’t get tired, they don’t give excuses. They do their best, and better that best very next quarter. Companies seem indefatigable whereas we human beings are so complacent, so very complacent.
We, human beings, look for growth in long term. And many a times we just lose track of time. Time just fly by us and then we wonder -- ohh the year is gone, ohh I’ve been thinking on this for past 6 years, ohh 4 years of graduation are gone, blah blah.

Why don’t we start declaring our quarterly results?

Quarterly/ bi-quarterly appraisals at work can serve the same purpose as quarterly result but in appraisals you tend to bloat your achievement in hunt of higher salary increment. So to avoid fudging data declare your quarterly result to yourself.
We make so many promises to ourselves, or give so much hope to ourselves, but things fade into oblivion during course of time as we remain engulfed in our mundane routine. And even if promises/hopes ricochet, we are so good at deluding ourselves. We have excuses ready for our every failure, every lapse.
Treat yourself as a listed company. You, owner of company, should be answerable to you, the stakeholder.When you are in stakeholder's shoes question ruthlessly why you, the owner, are not performing well. Wash down all your excuses and stop building castles in the air. Start declaring your quarterly results. In your quarterly result:

Give next year’s forecast: Write down what you want to achieve in next one year.
Give your quarterly profit/loss: Write down your successes and failures. Write down whether you are on right track to achieve your annual forecast or whether you need to alter the forecast.
Give your exceptional expenditure: Write down unforeseen blocker that caused dent to your milestones/achievements.

You can jot down a few lines at the end of every week to build a repository of your activities that you can refer and analyze later for declaring your quarterly result.

Am starting off with my quarterly result. Are you?

Presentation mirage

2011-05-10T12:40:00.000+05:30

People claim highest, portray best and promise maximum in presentations. Is your management team claiming a lot in presentations? ‘Accrued saving of $50,000’, ‘possible saving of $225,000’ blah blah. Does this sound familiar? Why all the presentations make things look good, rosy and optimistic?

People claim tall in presentations because:

- Presentations are not connected with any statistical database so fabricated claims can’t be impromptu cross verified

- Presentations are never stored in any centralised repository. So whatever claims made last quarter are already forgotten so you can make fresh big delusive claims, yet again, and earn accolades.

- Presentations are short, one side communication meetings. People don’t ask right questions because of ever pervasive ‘time shortage’. When few people do ask some probing questions, they are replied with mundane gibberish jargon for every question. No more cross questions asked as that might seem argument and people shy away from arguments in meetings. Am good to you, you all remain good to me doesn’t solve anything.

Don’t fall prey to delusional claims.

Make sure all claims are verified, tracked and monitored against centralised statistics repository.

Don’t allow people give you some general jargoned nice circuitous answer to your question. Ask right question and expect right direct answer. Anything less is blasphemy.

Don’t feel guilty that you might put people in a fix in the meeting. Don’t give people leeway on their non-performance.

Be the yardstick of quality, to yourself, to others, always.

Don’t push me to the brink

2011-04-06T23:31:00.001+05:30

- Mobile number portability got introduced in India some days back. When unhappy customer tried moving to other telecom operator she is given cheaper monthly rental and very attractive call rates plan.
- An employee stays with a company for years but when desired growth doesn’t happen she finally resigns, disgruntled. Then same company offers her a good salary hike plus other perks.
- A service offered is not up to the mark. Customer requests, grovel, cries; in vain. She threatens to sue the company in consumer court. Service is provided and some placatory compensation is doled out by company.

Why companies push people the brink and when customer is about to cut loose then same company try to retain them. It doesn’t work. Once human loyalty is hijacked, you won’t be able to rekindle same faith in customer. You might be able to retain customer but she won’t act as your advocate. She will be there with you just for the time being and something better will lure her away. Broken trust is nearly impossible to repair. And in this lightening paced world people don’t have time to trust you for the second time.

Dear corporation, don’t push me to the brink.

Dear Executive, Are you reading the stats on how many people were pushed to the brink in your company, how many of them stayed back, stayed for how long, anything you could have done to not to push them to the brink?

Write to me

2011-04-06T16:50:00.000+05:30

Managers/Leaders/Executives often ask themselves: How do I build trust with my team. How to open floodgates of communications? How to tell team members to open up so as to seek real feedback? How to create an environment of openness?

Writing, personally, to your team once a week (or once in 2 weeks) is the mantra that can make things happen. It can be sort of blog but you send that in a mail to your team, directly to their inbox. When Leader writes to me directly apprising me of the plans, happenings, learning, successes, failures, i feel special. I feel being valued. I feel that am worthy in hierarchy and not just a cog. I will appreciate that you took time to write to me.

Make this writing subtle professional with a touch of team warmth. Write some informal stuff at the end to give it a personal touch and not just any newsletter.

Benefits to this practice:
- It kills rumors. I strongly feels that ‘Rumors are failure of leadership’. People usually get information through various informal channels but when a leader substantiates/discard/reason the rumours/happenings then it breeds faith and kill future gossips.
- It gives a sense of reassurance to people at ground level, at all levels, to your team.
- It creates openness. People will write more to you giving you right ideas/feedback/opinions.
- It gives people a chance to confide in you. It open direct channel, kills hierarchy.
- It pushes your middle management layer to be more open, deliver more and keep promises.

Whether you are doing good, or its just business as usual or you are in some unruly crisis, write to me.

PS: While i was working for British Telecom, Mark use to write to entire team every week and i just loved the concept. Thanks Mark.

Reassure

2011-03-24T13:35:00.000+05:30

The other day I was at a clinic for some eye procedure. You tend to feel fidgety when someone is playing with your eyes, so was I. When procedure was on, the doctor kept on reassuring me that everything is all right. She keeps on giving me updates on what’s going on and what's coming up. Every step was communicated, “we will fix your eyebrows so that you won’t blink”; “a machine will start and you will hear some noise and that’s perfectly normal”; “you will get some smell, may feel some pain and that’s perfectly normal”. Then suddenly I realized that all my uneasiness vanished. Because I was continuously getting updated and was not just treated like guinea pig on operation table. A supposedly complex exercise went so smooth mainly because of continuous reassurances.
Reassure your client, customers and other stakeholders. Reassurance creates conducive environment for peace and when people are at peace they create a facilitative environment for you to operate hence increasing your efficiency. If I’m about to fly I need continuous updates about status of my flight. Either airline keeps on reassuring me or I will keep barraging their call center or website.
If your customer complains you of something (say broken gadget) and you know that it will take 3 days to fix, reassure customer and keep reassuring till it’s fixed. People might trust your brand but further reassurance strengthens customer’s faith in your brand. People trust that Fedex will reach anywhere on time but still Fedex keeps them updated on progress of dispatched material.
People say “keep me posted” or “keep me updated” but it’s reassurance they are seeking.
Human minds need assurance. Something is wrong, Reassure; everything right, Reassure. Reassurance breeds peace and creates Trust.
Reassure.

It’s just an Excuse

2011-03-18T12:02:00.000+05:30

We make so many excuses, to ourselves.
We make fool of ourselves with those excuses.
We want to believe in those excuses so that we won’t feel guilty of our lethargy, our cowardice, our inertia.
Whenever you feel that you are shirking from something, anything, just tell yourself “This is just an Excuse” and you will know what to do.
I don’t have time for exercise. It’s just an Excuse.
I still don’t have the right money/idea for the startup. It’s just an Excuse.
I can’t find time to write blog. It’s just an Excuse.
I can’t. I will not be able to. I should not. I may not. Tell yourself, “It’s just an Excuse”.
It’s just an Excuse.

Certainly, It's Love

2011-01-08T22:22:00.002+05:30

Sometimes something seems so interesting, enchanting, riveting that you feel that you are in love with that thing. But then due to certain circumstances you move on. Then you wonder was that really Love? What do I really love? What are the things that are just a fad, what are the things that I do/did for the heck of it, what are the things that are just chance occurrence? How do I differentiate them from my real passion or real Love?

Then, one fine day, that thing comes back to you (Or you go back to it). That time you realize that you didn’t really move from that thing. It just got subdued in flux of other things in life (or mundane routine). This time, again, you can claim that its mere reemergence of infatuation with that thing. But your real Love will happen to you again and again, then again. It will keep calling you back.

If you feel that you are in love with some Business idea and really want to execute it, give it sometime to settle down. Till then toy with some other idea/thing. If that idea is your real calling, you will go back to it and you'll implement it. Here am not preaching procrastination in the garb of finding love. If you find your Love first time itself its just stupendous. But it's certain, if you come back to something you have far more conviction than the first time and you develop unflinching faith in your idea by this.
Once you realize you love something just stick to it. Don’t dally. Don’t leave it again. If you let it go, you will come back to it for sure but you would have lost some of the most beautiful time by then.
You can extrapolate this for human beings as well. It’s all the same.

Find your calling.

Image: wordle

Treat me as cow, I’ll treat you as bull(shit)

2010-09-04T23:14:00.000+05:30

I used to be avid reader of Sramana’s blog but of late there seems to be an ostentatious drive to increase the hit count for the website. I feel being milked and exploited daily.

These days the blog primarily contains interviews of entrepreneurs/CEOs. Every interview is split in 6-10 parts and posted on daily basis for 6-10 days. Reader do like to read about experiences of entrepreneurs/CEOs and their stories but if I am interested in some interview I want to read it all today, in fact Now. If you are acting as a platform to give right diet to readers then give them the total diet when they want to gorge it and not just show the bait and lure her to increase your site count by coming everyday to you. This might work for soap operas but definitely not for blog. There are few good posts too on the blog but they seem to be drowned in flood of interview parts.

To make the things worse, there is glaring struggle to commoditize this blog. A couple of people have been recruited and been asked to do interviews. So multiple people posting multiple parts of multiple interviews on any given day. This seems like mess to me. There seem to be a race amongst the interns to churn out more content than others on daily basis so it’s quantity replacing quality (as applies to any commodity). Dear Sramana, A blog is one’s signature but you made it a rubber stamp and gave it to other people to use it and monetize for you.

No doubt that most of the articles doesn't have even a single comment. Don’t milk readers. You treat her as cow she’ll treat you as bull(shit).

Bye dear. You just lost me.

Assumptions are good

2010-08-31T11:40:00.000+05:30

Assuming something is absolutely fine. In fact astute and calculated assumptions help us in moving forward with greater agility. Assumptions are made based on prior experience and from information currently available at hand. Gut feel, rough estimate and assumptions strongly twine with each other. When people say ‘don’t assume anything’ they are downplaying the power of assumption.

Assumption needs to be verified against data asap so that sanctity of assumption can be checked. If assumption is found to be wrong then the premise which helped in reaching that assumption should also be checked so that we won’t use that premise in assuming something else. If assumptions are not cross checked then human mind will take those assumption as base facts after certain time interval and assume something on the top of the existing assumptions. Then deviation multiplies and probability of entering into dangerous assumption zone increases.
Go ahead and assume. Then verify.

No Limits

2010-08-29T16:46:00.000+05:30

There are few statements/events that hit me like a thunderstorm. They happen once and come back again and again in various manifestations. One statement of that calibre is: “Limits, like fear, are just illusions” said by Michael Jordon in his Hall of Fame speech.

I play football on Sundays and generally gets tired after 45 mins of game. But one day I promised a friend that I’ll score one goal. I couldn’t score even a single goal that day but i played with extreme fanaticism. After 45 mins my mind told me its time to get tired but I smothered that voice by saying, “Not yet, still not done for the day” and to my surprise that voice never raised it ugly face again. We played for 1.5 hours and concluded the game but i still had the vigor to play for some more time: time till i score, time till am done for the day. I realised that limits are just mental, they don’t exist. When you are on a mission then time, pain or any other hurdle in the universe ceases to exist.

Go find the cause for which you can run, find your mission because once you get that everything else will fall in place on its own. You will find time for it anyhow and you won’t feel pain when you are running towards it. Steve Jobs has rightly said, “ If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.”

Ocean of Comments

2010-08-17T22:48:00.000+05:30

“Its nice”, “Good one”, “great job”, “fantastic”, “congrats” and other similar appreciative comments currently forms majority of the comments on web. Appreciation is a great way to encourage people. These comments give feedback to the concerned person so play a vital role in talent recognition ecosystem. But when appreciations just flood a website and drown other useful information then it is injustice to the website users (including the same appreciative people) because other useful information comments got buried under 'good job' comments.

Possible Solution: An app (or a browser addin/plugin) can be created for filtering comments. App can process all the comments on a webpage and filter them in 4 major buckets namely appreciation, critique, 'related info' and spam.
Appreciation bucket can club all the congratulatory comments; critique bucket will contain critics’ comments; spam bucket will club junk comments and totally non related info, and 'related info' bucket (the most important bucket) can contain comments where other users have added their own opinion and extended the discussion to higher level or some user commented other contextual useful info.

Let’s give people whatever they are looking for. In today’s Google-world when people don’t want to waste even a single second in scanning non-useful information and search even for smallest thing, comments should also be filtered to let people read whichever bucket they are interested in.

Once we started filtering comments this will impact the comments writing behavior as well. People interested in the real discussion will feel encouraged and will participate more as they will know that their opinion will not mobbed.

Hiring or Creating Tribe

2010-08-09T19:37:00.002+05:30

You sell coffee and if your salesperson is drinking Tea, that too from other vendor, you need to speak to your hiring folks, Now.
You sell chocolates and if your salesgirl --on being asked which choc is best--says, “you can take anyone, they are all chocolates after all” then you are not going too far.
Your salespeople are your face to the customer. They are the real brand and create far more impact than your brand marketing gimmicks. Customers perceive you as they perceive your salespeople and subtle signals (watch salesperson not wearing watch) are not so subtle as they create long term impressions.
Find people who love what they do and give them reason to join you and be your advocate. Don’t just recruit based on economical bargain.
Advocates create Advocates.

Data god

2010-08-06T13:41:00.000+05:30

Data is omnipresent and omniscient, we just need to collect it and decipher it to make fruitful use out of it. Data is still collected and used but currently people treat data as sacrosanct and gather it only for valuable and important functions. This is because data collection and data mining is still a costly affair. Competition in this area will soon make it economical, in fact dirt cheap and then Data will take seat of 'The God'.
Someone rightly said anything that can be measured, can be improved. Let's drop the sacrosanct aura behind Data and make it widely available, reliable and widely used. Data needs to be collected for every possible measurable thing. Let's collect it for time-cost usage of toll bridge, usage of a particular road lane wrt time, traffic pattern, ATM usgae, stationary usage in a company, usage of a company pantry, productivity pattern wrt to days/months/festivals/mood, and data for every other imaginable thing. The more you collect data, the more you analyze, more you implement, and the cycle goes on. Collect data in your daily personal life, collect it in your business, urge your employer to do it.
Though Market forces (primarily demand and supply) will weed out or flourish products/services but market forces are continental drift slow. Data will prevent mistakes or make amends faster by highlighting the glitches asap.
Data should and will be widely published and should not be stashed by some proprietary behemoth. Now Atheists and Agnostics have something to believe in.

Create Advocates

2010-06-01T10:49:00.001+05:30

Last week I bought a Reliance Broadband Data card and immediately encountered some issue with its activation. I called their Customer Support Representative (CSR) (aka Call Center folks). The support representative listened my problem patiently and asked few probing questions. Then she had conference me with various stakeholders (Sales Person, who sold the data card to me, and Field verification person, who has to verify my Address) and solved my problem within 30mins. I was ecstatic!!

Involving your customer in problem solving and making your internal workflow transparent to them will make your customer believe you. Shroud of secrecy and keeping everything hidden from customers didn’t help companies much till date. Empower your CSR with requisite knowledge and skills and give them authority to make decisions. Zappos gives full freedom to its CSR to decide whether to give replacement shoes or not. CSR is your front end to customer so they need to be empowered to take timely right decisions and hence kindle trust in customer. Customer doesn’t like CSR who just reads out brochure and fail to make any decision for them. CSR folks should be aware of the bigger picture of the company. They should be aware of all workflows in company, scope of various Business Units (BUs) and which responsibility lies with whom. Awareness will help them to make right decision and Authority will allow them to make things happen with people from various BUs. CSR are generally seen to pass buck to other BUs and just acts as mundane information providing centers. They generally crib about not getting proper proactive response from other BUs. Customer is not bothered about what your internal limitations are and why things are not working at your end. They just need solution.

CSR should be customer focused and should have conscious inclination towards customer. This will help them in understanding customer’s pain points better. CSR, in addition to working as problem solvers, can also act as consultant to the company. They can give feedback to management on areas that can be improved. Feedback would be more precise and holistic if CSR is aware of all workflows internal to company. CSRs continuous feedback will smoothen various business units’ integration and inter-BU communication.

In case of customer complain, CSR should pull in all stakeholders in a conference call, find out the root cause of the problem, assign action points to concerned stakeholders and then follow up after expected closure. In case they find some process flaw\blip they can give feedback to concerned person so that problem can be eliminated for all future customers.

Transparent processes will make all stakeholders accountable in product servicing. A product manager told me once that key to success is to make every stakeholder accountable (in success as well as failure). People are more responsive when they are accountable. Various BUs act as if to do their mechanical work and push the work to next basket so that they can say my job is done. They are more focused on avoiding any possible blame rather than focusing on delivering right service. Once responsibility of delivery is shared amongst various BU they will act more coherently and with enhanced communication. Stakeholders should be properly trained for this transparency and they should be made aware of various dynamics of other interfacing BUs. People generally think that things are too complex so they can’t do anything about it. But if things seem complex then it means that you still have not understood them logically.

Once the things are transparent Customer will start to gain faith in you. And faith is far more valuable than, usual, customer delight. Faith makes your customers as your advocate. They will be able to vouch for your service in front of anyone. An advocate is even more valuable than Sneezer as Sneezer only spread information but Advocate vouch for you along with spreading information.

Transparency should be practiced with utmost caution in the beginning. When you are becoming transparent you are exposing your flaws to customer and few customers might not act in very genial manner if they are aware of flaws. Also stakeholders should be proactively responsive to CSR. CSRs should also act as moderator in stakeholders’ conference to facilitate resolution.

Yes, it’s a thin line

2010-05-27T17:29:00.001+05:30

There is always a thin line between:

confidence and arrogance
dressing smartly and overdressing
pointing out the details and nitpicking
loosely coupled business unit and emergence of chaos in company
spending on comfort and spending on luxury

Different people will see you on different side of the line for any of your action. Judging people is highly subjective and depends primarily on evaluator’s perception. Whichever side of the line you are, you are better off there instead of moving to other side of the line just for people’s sake. So do what you feel like irrespective of what people might perceive which side of the line you are. Because, always, few people might feel you are wrong and few people might feel you are right.

An organisation should always seek feedback continuously, reassess its stance and act judiciously. But don’t give too much importance to people’s perceptions; if you feel you are doing it right just carry on.

Feedback

2010-05-26T22:52:00.003+05:30

Last week I happened to visit a hospital’s waiting room. There TV was not working. Everybody in the room was clueless whom to contact. It seems to lie outside everyone’s domain of responsibility. Nurses, housekeeping staff, electrician et al were either nonchalant or busy with their daily chores. How great it would have been if some trigger\feedback was sent to maintenance folks automatically!

Feedback is necessary and does add value. Either we act on received feedback or not but one should actively seek feedback so that we are aware of diverse opinions. We generally tend to leave it to people (either our customer or client) to give feedback. But as nearly all of us are in crunch of time not many people takes out time to give feedback. People are more inclined in finding other option than mending the existing option. We can’t depend entirely on willingness of people to get feedback. Create processes that either automate feedback capture or prods people to give feedback. When ATM machines stops working some trigger should tell maintenance folks to act on it. Historic trend (per hour or, better, every ten minutes) can be collected for every specific machine based on its usage. Once that’s historic usage trend is violated system should flag that as discrepancy and highlight this to maintenance folks. They can validate whether it’s real discrepancy or just a blip. It will lead to decreased maintenance turnaround time and will lead to increased availability of machine hence enhanced customer experience. For how long banks will depend on security guard at ATM or unhappy customer to report ATM's malfunctioning to bank?

Any machine that can capture data should be used as feedback mechanism. The machines that don’t capture data should be modified to capture data and send it to right people for their processing.

If you are dealing with people then don’t rely on people proactively giving feedback. Make processes so that process prods people to give feedback. Like don’t let your waiters to decide whether to take feedback from customers or not. They might shirk from their responsibility many a times. Make this a process that every time some customer is billed, waiter has to mandatorily collect feedback while giving the bill to customer.

Right interpretation of feedback is also very important. Sometimes if you coerce people into giving feedback they won’t tell you the right thing but they will tell you the thing that is easiest\fastest for them. So do give leeway to people whether they want to give feedback or not. Always look for dissenters\outliers while analyzing feedback. Dissenters are the folks who will give you different feedback. Whatever that may be, right or wrong, but you will get different feedback from them. In this world of ‘schedule adherers’ or ‘people blabbering niceties’ or ‘intentionally vague people’ dissenters are rare breed so they must be appreciated for their thinking.
Actively collect feedback, improve, collect feedback, improve……..

Are you ready for the big day?

2010-05-06T07:33:00.001+05:30

We are always told that failure is fine. We can learn from mistakes, improve and carry on. But what if you fail on your BIG day, the day you are most expected to deliver?
Many a time famous bloggers refer or point out something in their blog and add web link to something interesting. The server hosting newly recommended thing crashes because of huge number of hits that day.
This not only make you lose your probable customers but also give them a negative first impression. In case they hear about you again from some other source next time, they might not turn up.

What if one day you get 20 times more customers?
What if your company gets a big proposal today?

Plan for the big day (when it’s about to come you will know that it’s coming; gut feeling?). Get ready and deliver that very day. Because some mistakes pushes you back few years.
Someone rightly said that “it takes 20 years to become overnight success” so that night you need to deliver.
And if sudden rush flummoxed you, recover fast and deliver.
It’s all about delivering at right time. And nothing more right time than Big day.

Can you call me back, please?

2010-05-06T06:39:00.000+05:30

Nearly entire world whines about customer support call center’s long waiting period. But not many organizations did anything substantial regarding this. Companies still have average waiting period of 10 plus minutes before they entertain customer.
When customer wants to speak to support staff of a product or service it means either she is in need of some info or some action from support team. And most of the times it is urgent. When customer is calling you with utmost urgency and you want her to wait endlessly and force her to listen to your promos or on-hold music then it means you don’t give a damn about customer and you are making her irritated.
Automate as much responses as you can for the customer. Take care that just for the heck of automating responses you won’t let customer travel in zigzag fashion (like press 1, now press 7, now press 9, now…). When customer has chosen one particular selection where the end point is speak to customer representative give option to end user for call back service. As soon as your support staff is free they can call back customer and handle query\issue.
Call back facility will make customer feel special and will obliterate the need of irritating waiting period. You value your customer, customer will value you back.

So Right yet so wrong!

2010-04-28T23:22:00.000+05:30

When I was reading NYtimes today I realized that when you reach end of the page one slider box slides into the page to give reference to another article. A very novel and breakthrough idea! As soon as reader reaches end of the page suggest her something more so that you can retain her for longer time on your site. These days people are getting routed to websites through some referencing links (either referred by some blog or website or mail etc) for some specific interesting article. So as soon as article is done reader will close the webpage and move on. But if you refer something when reader is done with current page, reader will surely be tempted to go to suggested page provided the reference is good and interesting.
Some websites shows suggestions at the start of the webpage itself. But when reader visits website for some specific article they are focused on that article so will not move to another article even if suggestion at the start of the page is really good. But suggesting at the end of the page will surely evoke my intrest.
But the reference that nytimes shows is not contextual. Even if you are reading a business article it is suggesting some political article so reader will not be interested. So despite introducing something out of the box nytimes lost to milk the opportunity. Am sure they will fix it very soon.
New ideas are very important but executing them to get maximum return on investment is equally important. Give your customers reason to stay on with you. And keep them happy during their stay.

Photo credit nytimes

Money

2010-04-22T09:09:00.001+05:30

People raise eyebrows when I say I love money. Everyone loves money but they don’t accept this fact as ostentatiously as I do. Valuation of money varies and people rate importance of money very subjectively. But money is the enabler, money is the fuel for life, money can play vital role in bringing happiness and money helps us in not turning to barbarianism again (though sometime it acts opposite) by trade.
Money can:
Buy everyone a meal.
Help eliminate child labor and give them a chance for life.
Buy flip flops for bare feet school kids.
Help people fight poverty, earn their livelihood and get out of poverty rot.
Help in research of diseases and alleviate ALL physical suffering from the world.
Help fund self help groups so they can earn their respect their way.
Help in agriculture research and make farmers a happy lot. The one who feed us should have the right to happiness.
Help you treat your friends without any reason and celebrate life.
Help you go on unplanned trips.
Bring freedom to think, plan, execute, fail and try again.
Help you seed another people’s business ideas.
Money can attract more money and above mentioned cycle continues.
So,
I want money.

Photo credit Meanest Indian

Don’t stop me in middle of something

2010-04-19T22:15:00.000+05:30

People hate when they are stopped in midst of something. If they have joined a queue and guy at the counter tells them that this is wrong queue they are rightly enraged. If people are buying something online and on 3rd step if you add some caveat or clause that will change their buying pattern or decision to buy then they will not feel happy. By stopping people in midst of something you are wasting their time and their effort so they will definitely give you a piece of their mind.
Give people seamless experience. Smoother the experience, more they will appreciate you to value their time and effort.
If you want to tell them some instruction or note, tell them before they embark on their journey. They will accept your note very gracefully and might not even budge. The same instruction\note given in between their journey will force them to leave you for someone better.
Remove all the hurdles from every journey.

Surprise me!

2010-04-17T14:34:00.002+05:30

People love positive surprises. They feel pampered, special when something\someone amazes them. It is surprise that make people travel across the world to visit different places to see different culture, nature or history. Creative advertisements surprise people and we tend to remember those product\services more whose story surprises us. Discounts are also a form of positive surprise (omg, 30% discount on my favorite clothing!) that make people flock to shops. Touch-screen computers are surprising people that computers can be so easy to handle; hence they are and will be so popular. A easy to use product feature surprise you every time you use it and forces you stay longer with that product.
It is beyond doubt that pleasant surprises works wonder for relationships.
So create surprises and your customer will surprise you back with their warmth and their prolonged association.
Did you surprise someone today?

Photo credit Tetsumo

Enjoy!

2010-04-15T23:39:00.003+05:30

Whatever you are doing, whichever field you are in, enjoyment should be your highest priority. This applies to relations, work, your future plans, your journeys etc. When we are happy:
1. We give our best.
2. We spread happiness around and believe me true happy state of mind is contagious.
3. And above all you are happy. Isn’t life all about happiness?

If you are not happy with your current state then keep looking for happiness. As Steve jobs has said “..like all matters of heart, you will know when you’ll find it”. Love, enjoyment and happiness are closely linked with each other. Find what you love, you will enjoy if you are working on your love and this enjoyment will give you blissful happiness.
This post is triggered when I saw one of yanni’s show. All the musicians were literally enjoying to the hilt and that enjoyment is contagious enough to spread happiness to audiences.
If you are not enjoying it, then it’s not worth it.

Given a chance

2010-04-11T10:50:00.000+05:30

I have this hidden wish that I want to be a truck driver for few weeks. So many I times I caught myself wishing, “given a chance I want to be truck driver”. Nearly all of us are stuck in vicious ‘chance’ circle and find ourselves saying:
Given a chance I want to leave this job and move to another field.
Given a chance I want to start my company.
Given a chance I want to date that girl.
Given a chance I want to go to Himalayas.
Given a chance I want to live more nomadic life.
Given I chance I want to visit xyz place.
Given a chance…….Ok, cut the crap. No one will bring your wish on platter and thrust upon you to enjoy it. If you really desire something then work towards it and doesn’t leave it for chance.
Get going.

Breakfast at hospital

2010-04-10T10:58:00.001+05:30

My daily routine breakfast joint was closed today morning. I was on my weekend bike ride so thought of stopping at one hospital. Why hospital? I don’t know, to be very frank. I have seen that hospital many a times during my various journeys and some light lit in my mind today that let’s try breakfast at that hospital today. I’ve seen that good hospital have average cafeteria and I was looking for some change (that’s the thing I hunt for everyday).

I entered the hospital and was greeted by cool air-conditioned breeze. Outside it was hot and just about right temperature inside made the first killer impression on me. Decor of the cafeteria was really good with well spaced tables. Chairs and tables are light green and white (sorry am not too fanatic about colors so they might be some shade of green or some shade or cream\white) with few well trimmed plants lined on one side. Place was spic and so are the clothes of serving staff. Clothing of staff was not mundane; it was some pleasant flowery shirt with blue (that one you can guess) pants. Prices were pretty reasonable and quality of food was remarkable. I never expected this quality of food from a hospital cafeteria so it was very pleasant surprise. Entire staff was of very happy demeanor and people will really require that if they are in hospital. So overall it was awesome experience. I’m happy that my mundane breakfast joint was closed today.

Sometime I wonder that if one hospital cafeteria can give you such a good foodie cum good ambience experience why can’t the restaurant that are in the business specifically for food and ambience?

My tuppence for Google Finance and Google AdSense

2009-10-02T23:37:00.009+05:30

I was just submerged into my weekly dose of new info on my portfolio of stocks on Goggle Finance when I noted a few things:

1. When I am watching trend or reading info on my airlines stocks Google AdSense is displaying advertisement of online travel ticket portal. Obviously if someone is interested in airlines stock that doesn’t mean that he is interested in traveling. This space can be use for more effective Ads.

2. When I am on Portfolio-related news page, Google finance shows me my portfolio stocks by their stock exchange numbers (like 530073) and not stock names (like xyz Ltd). This is not user friendly. I can’t map any company news to action on that company’s stock as they are just numbers and like many other mortals am bad at remembering so many 6 digits company stock exchange numbers. If I have some news about company xyz then I have to go to my portfolio and check what happened to company xyz stock post that news. Instead on these vanilla numbers Google should display company names here.

3. The info displayed on Portfolio-related news page is redundant. ‘Recent quotes’ and ‘my portfolio’ section is showing same quotes as I just visited my portfolio. As people generally focus on their portfolio only, the info shown in these 2 sections will nearly always be redundant. Of-course Google can check if info for both these sections is same it can eliminate info from ‘Recent quotes’ section and use that space for something more fruitful, may be some more space for one more ad.

Am sure that Google folks are intelligent enough to mine web for feedback\ideas related to their products and soon they will give consideration to my tuppence as well.

101 blog templates that are not for me

2009-02-16T21:08:00.000+05:30

As soon as I started writing blog I realised that blog presentation must be reader friendly. No doubt, content of blog is the king but along with content if blog is presentable enough to read then it’s like you can have your cake and eat it too. By presentable blog I mean that blog should not be very flashy, must have good font and colour combination, and soothing background settings. (I am not writing about how to make blog presentable so I won’t delve further into it. Google already shows millions of site on this topic). So to make my blog presentable I started looking for a suitable template.

Google nearly have answer to all my queries (or at least direct me to the right answer). ‘Blog template’ search gave me millions of results back. I scanned through 8-10 websites to find the template I was looking for but all the templates that I saw were like commodity/goods and presented no customisation to me. The blog template that I want should be according to my needs and not according to anyone else’s whims and fancies. I feel blog template is highly subjective to individual’s needs and desires. You just can’t pick and use some flowery/sunset/green/historical/random-coloured template for your blog. If you are serious blogger then you blog is your signature and you can’t design your signature on someone else’s wish. So I discarded hundreds of templates as they didn't suit my style. So here comes this idea.

Why can’t we make a web based 'blog template creator' application. Any blog template basically is some flavour or permutation of font, colour, columns, boxes, background and image (please point out in case I missed something). Application will give people freedom to arrange these flavours according to their wish. Seems like a very simple thing but this can lead to customer delight and give people's blog a unique identity. Currently some people are charging 100s of dollars just to make a blog template that suits your persona. Once this 'blog template creator' application is launched people will throng to try it out. This application will be amongst the best example of tailor made service given to customer.

Image: wordle

Listen Marketers: I am all yours!!

2009-02-02T01:57:00.000+05:30

I go to gym quite often, though not as often as I wish. This idea popped up when I was running on a treadmill. I run for nearly half an hour on an average and don’t have anything to do that entire duration but to stare at increasing LED number on a black background screen. Advertiser and marketers struggle for audience attention for few seconds on various media. They have got customers in gym for hours but they have not exploited this avenue.

Ok, gist is machines in gym has to be made more intelligent (more technically advanced) so that they can understand who is working out on them and what he is interested in and show them that very thing.
Current version 15 inches LED screen in gym can be turned into more advanced display like computer screens, better if they are touch screens so that interaction can be better. These machines can be connected to web where an online application can monitor which user is currently working out so that it can display user specific advertisements. Machines can get to know about user info either through users’ memory stick or by extracting info from users’ mobile phones. These days most of the folks have GPRS/3G phones so it won’t be very difficult for machines to interact with phone to get the info. Once this connection is established then it’s like any other media, but with better attention span, where user is yours and you can engage him by various measures.

So marketers/gym equipment makers there lies an unexplored opportunity where First-mover advantage will surely be a huge business opportunity.

**this is just a high level idea. Implementation details like which economical computer screen (plus processor) need to be put on machines that can withstand gym’s environment, how to connect machines to mobile phone, which medium (cable, WiFi, WiMax) can be used by machines to connect with application, how the application will look like and what all features it will have, etc can be easily handled with an meticulous plan. Nearly all of these feature are already implemented in parts in various places they just need to be mashed to cater to our need.

Photo credit Chris Makarsky

Trustworthy doctors/dentists

2009-01-03T20:57:00.000+05:30

‘Writing more frequently on blog’ is now officially my New Year resolution for 2009. When something becomes your resolution it means that you desperately want to do that but couldn’t do that as diligently as you wish. New Year brings new hope and new vows to do new things or same things in better way.

Okie, to cut the crap I will be blogging more often in 2009. Till date Idea used to work under ‘push-mechanism’ i.e. they are wild and untamed and used to come whenever they wish. This is really good for me but apart from that I will also try to implement ‘pull-mechanism’ for ideas means I will try to churn my mind for more ideas. I am sure I can do that so let’s try it out. I have already jotted down few ideas as my notes that I never got time to blog so I would be posting them in next few days. So here I go:

Trust Indicator of doctors and dentist in India

When somebody needs to consult a doctor/dentist they always wonder who the best one in their locality is. This is a dilemma faced by nearly everybody sometimes. People generally ask for references from their relative and friends but that doesn’t always lead them to the best option. Your friend/relative might be visiting a doctor/dentist since eternity and they didn’t explore other better options in neighbourhood because their existing doctor/dentist serve their needs and people really don’t want to try anything new especially when it comes to doctor/dentist. So a Database of all the doctors and dentist can be maintained. People can rate doctors on the basis of their experiences. Other people can search for doctors on the basis of their trust indicators and other parameters.

Features:

To begin with portal can enlist all private practitioners, hospitals, clinic and other health industry associated firms. Portal will give people access to rate doctors and write comments as well against their webpage. Moderators will surely be required for every city/town as people may misuse this site.

Various options like consultation fees, mail ids and contacts info of doctors can also be published on specific doctor web pages.

Revenues:

Ad Revenue from health industry would surely be the first option. A part from that other revenue models can be looked at as the model emerge. Currently there is no such portal in India and first entrant in this space can surely make a big dent.

**This is just is demand supply gap study so prior to implementation a proper business case needs to made.

PS: After writing this idea, as some folks have said that you have to keep thinking on it and polish it continuously, I came across few health industry initiatives online. Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault and WebMD are among the best or popular ones. None of these 3 websites contain much info on Indian health industry (however Google Health contains a lot of info on doctor addresses etc because of sheer fact that Google is storehouse of world data) so a good India specific health web portal should surely find its rightful place in customer’s mind.

I guess am in BIG league:)

2008-06-30T21:58:00.001+05:30

Isn’t everybody thinks that he\she is in big league when they read some biography or interview about a great person. While reading qualities of great person you always think whether you posses that quality or not; if not you want to add that to your profile asap. Ok cut the crap why I think that I am in big league. For the past few days I am seeing that world in implementing the same ideas that I have thought of. I can’t call them my idea as somebody else has implemented them but it gives me a huge sense of ego boost. It tells me that I think in the right direction. First it happened with mail2blog idea (see my last post) and then next came in line diggnetvibes (putting digg features on netvibes). Today I read about ‘Collaborative Filtering’ which I have been thinking of for the past few days. Its sheer pleasure to know that my ideas are worth some salt and people are implementing them. Now the next in line target for me is how I polish my execution skills that I can implement my ideas faster than anybody else.

Think fast, Implement faster.

2008-06-30T21:58:00.000+05:30

The other day I was thinking about a blog where people can post their blog just by dropping a mail to the blog. Sending SMS to a URL and it si getting published caould have also been implemented. Today I realized that someone has already implemented this idea (http://posterous.com/). So in this lightening paced world in case you have any idea you have to execute it sooner than the speed of the light. Millions of techies are reading same stuff on internet, facing same sort of issues and thinking probably on the same lines to resolve these roadblocks. So the one who will think fastest and execute\implement fastest would get the benefit of the first entrant to the market. Of course your product should be useful to the user but many a times just to make it perfect people take too much time and loose the first entrant opportunity.
Lesson: think fast, Implement faster.

What is BIG Idea?

2008-06-18T20:01:00.000+05:30

I created this blog few months back thinking that I would write my big idea and their detailed business plans on this page. However as it happen to most of other things I kept hunting for a big idea to make auspicious start of the blog. It never came. I waited for long to make grand entry that I miss entry itself, be it small. So just like SIP (Systematic Investment Plan) I would pour my ideas continuously on this page. They might belong to any sphere of universe. I believe power on compounding, just like SIP, would make it BIG some day. See you soon and often mate.