Sunday Posts

Don't be perplexed. I know you may be wondering how on earth can someone love bureaucracy, which stands for all the bad things - slowness, indifference, complexity, lethargy - but I argue back: If we don't love bureaucracy, how does it persist?If we hate it, why the first thing when we start a business is to draw an org chart? Why, when things go wrong, we want to see a manager? Or, better still, why most of us want to be managers? Why we want a job description? Why we fill so many forms and want to fill some more? Why we love emails and calendars, show off our smartphones and smart watches, want to prove how busy we are? I love bureaucracy because it's everywhere. Call it any name, but our lives are bureaucratic. Every morning, when I plan the day and write down my to-do list, I am bowing to bureaucracy. As I run for meetings, cut short conversations, skip lunch or feel guilty about not responding to a message, I am celebrating it. There is no escape. The only way I ...

Of all the strategies a company could conceive to win hearts and minds on social media, nothing is perhaps better than what its employees can do, if they engage socially.  Usually, the Social Media strategies that companies come up with are not very different from the traditional PR. It is top-down, canned good news stories, written by professionals. It has a very predictable, managed feel. Managed by professionals who have transitioned from traditional to social media - what an inconvenience - it can not but be that way.  But, social media is different because of the need for authenticity. Broadcast media has the reputation for editorial control (even if grossly overestimated) and this gives automatic credibility to something seen on TV. Social media has no such thing: Anything can be on Facebook, or Twitter. What such stories lack in credibility, can only be made up by authenticity. And, while one can, and indeed try to, be authentic, it is a hard thing to fake by ...

Via: Online Universities Blog

I consciously worked on my 'work ethic', shedding some practices which I may have picked up early in my working life in the quest of becoming a better professional. Indeed, I did find it a never-ending process, I continuously discover things that I can do better, and have now come to accept that I may never be perfect, but have to keep on trying. An important part of my work ethic, I consider, is my Social Media ethic, because social media is important, for my work and my professional identity. It seems almost all media that I use have a social aspect.  Even, book-reading, my intensely personal experience of all media consumptions, always had book-clubs (one that I intended to join, but got rebuffed for Marxian reasons - I didn't want to join a club which will take me as a member) and now have trendier cousins like Librarything , which I use and participate in. But, going beyond hobbies, social media is everywhere at work.  I spend a lot of time on social media, and ha...

I have come across a number of people who are struggling to keep their professional and personal identities separate on social media. The challenges are common : Have two twitter accounts or one ? Have read so many stories , few with happy endings but a lot more lot less pleasant , of people mixing up their twitter accounts and sending wrong messages to wrong people . On a more involved scale, getting one 's work colleagues on Facebook , and the recent case of one of the jurors contacting one of the defendants , is something fraught with danger . However , another side of the story is that it is incredibly difficult to keep the two separate, and often , an honest effort smacks of dishonesty and manipulative behaviour . The point , indeed , is that this is all about an individual person and it is best to be as open and honest to the world as possible . However , it is equally true ...

I am asked, very often, why I write this blog. People wonder how I can find the time. Others conclude that I don't have much to do. Even my protestations that I usually get up at 5am to try writing the blog does not clarify the point: Surely I can find something more worthwhile to do even at that time, they would so. This blog, when I started writing this in October 2004, started as my 'morning pages'. I just read about the concept then. I used to write, and my aspirations during late school years (when I grew beyond the dreams of being a cricketer) was to become a journalist. I did do some fiction and poetry writing and published some of them in amateur magazines. Then, as I started working and traveling, I gradually lost the habit. I did give up and thought I couldn't write anymore. In October 2004, after having just come to England, life was tough. I did not have a proper job and was working in a Cash and Carry intermittently. It was a strange time to go back to writ...

MySpace , going by the latest reports, has lost 50 million users over the last 12 months, of which the last two months, January and February this year, have seen a loss of 10 million unique users. It is now down to 60 million users from its peak of 110 million, and it is expected to fetch a valuation of $50 million, down from $330 million that News Corp paid for it only a few years back. Compare this with the stratospheric rise of Facebook and its multi-billion dollar valuation, and the decline looks stark and irreversible. This will possibly happen, as the executives look rather directionless and talk about MySpace being an entertainment site rather than a social network. That seems like the business-speak that is sinking the company: It is the social context of entertainment which broadcast media executives never get it. But it may be the time for social media to grow up. It is no longer enough just to blame old media thinking for new media failures. Remember Friendster, which took ...

I have one thing against the twenty-somethings: I am not one of them. As it is obvious from the tone, I regret the fact. Because the world today moves around twenty-somethings. In this Mark Zuckerberg era, if you are not twenty- ish , you are unloved. VCs think you are history. You are not licensed to dream. I was told that if you have reached forty without messing up your life completely or doing something insanely great, you are not qualified to dream. My rather feeble protestation that there were always great men in history who found their calling in mid-life, like Gandhi or FDR, was pushed aside. We don't live in that era anymore, I am told. Yes, indeed, life's faster and there is more respect for young businesspeople. Young business-people by itself is a new phenomena - it is much easier to get capital and run a business early in your life. I contend that what really changed is this - starting up has become easier - we have more young people pursuing a business career. A...