Sunday Posts

Jim Collins, after his two very successful investigations into how one sets up companies to survive long term and how companies achieve greatness in their respective industries, has now turned his attention to the not-so-good, ones that fail, and ones that are poised to fail. His intervention could not be more timely. As I write this post, General Motors will file for bankruptcy in the United States, an almost unthinkably big company to go down. The book isn't out yet and will only be released in Britain later this week, but the essential ideas are available through video and excerpts at this time. I thought it to be appropriate and useful to review the core argument in the context of my own experience. So, here is the backstory , which I am sure you will find as interesting as I did. I found it particularly interesting as I have seen companies going through these stages. Indeed, some companies are set up to fail - they were never going to make it from the very start - but the...

So, yes, I am on that watershed day today. It has started as an ordinary day, and from the signs, it is indeed going to be a fairly ordinary day as well. But, in the end, I shall be forty, a sort of milestone in everyone's life. Actually, it is a fairly long way, forty years. And, once on this side, one is surely fairly ol .., matured, let's say. If my grey hairs already did not say this. But then, this is a watershed moment if I make it one, and I will. So far, my life is one about following patterns. Formulas set for me by others. Expectations - by people who mattered. I strayed all the time, the compulsive deviant I am, but always wished I did not. And, in the end, I produced a mediocre fare, as inevitable because I was playing someone else's game. But all that should stop now. Being forty is being closer to the tail end of life than the beginning. Getting that sense of urgency back in your bones. Feeling the need of living on one's own agenda. This day is about cr...

In India, I met several people this time who talked about the requirement to create leaders. Not Netas , of course, India has no dearth of them. People I spoke to were speaking from a purely business perspective - they thought they needed staff who can cope with uncertainty, handle independent responsibility, be entrepreneurial at work and stay the course despite difficulties. One has to take such realizations in perspective - not just of the current gloomy economic climate, but also of the unique staffing challenge in India, where, it is thought, that the Senior Management talent is high quality and low skill manpower supply is abundant, but there is acute shortage of Front line service executives, Middle Managers etc. And, this is where the leadership skills, defined by the four dimensions mentioned above, are critically required. The Indian businesses today are inextricably caught between the global recession and an undying confidence in the prospect of their businesses. Recently, a...

If one is to sum up the affairs of South Asia so far this year, it will read like this: (A) Pakistan resumed its civil war, after attempting to reach, and then aborting, a peace deal in the Swat valley. Currently, Pakistani Armed Forces are engaged in a civil war and they claim that the extremists are pushing back, at least from the main towns. (B) Sri Lanka claimed victory in its two decade long civil war, after the LTTE Chief, Prabhakaran's body was recovered. This victory, however, comes at a great cost - the final phase of the battle saw brutal tactics employed by both sides. Cornered LTTE used Tamil civilians as a human shield, and the Sri Lankan government, emboldened by the silence of all major powers, bombarded the civilian positions without any humanitarian considerations. Peace holds, for now, though thousands of Tamils live in refugee camps, and despite the military victory, the society remains deeply divided. (C) Bangladesh put down a bloody mutiny earlier this year, wh...

The news reads like this - Amitabh Bachchan has turned down a Ph D degree from Queensland University of Technology , Brisbane, on the wake of racist attacks on Indian students in Australia. In a statement on his blog, Mr. Bachchan said : "I have been witnessing, with great dismay and shock, the recent violent attacks on Indian students in Australia, on the electronic media the entire day. I mean no disrespect to the institution that honours me, but under the present circumstances, where citizens of my own country are subjected to such acts of inhuman horror, my conscience does not permit me to accept this decoration from a country that perpetrates such indignity to my fellow countrymen." This is indeed a grand gesture, sure to get some media attention. But in my view, a rather meaningless, and possibly a dangerous one. Obviously, the racist attacks are obnoxious , and need to be nipped in the bud by Australian authorities. However, this should not elicit, at least at this...

Over the last week, the shape of the new Indian administration has become clearer. It did emerge that the leadership of the Congress party is ready to do some fresh thinking, and they are fully using their mandate to take some strong decisions which were long overdue. Unlike the recent fresh faced administrations in the United States, Bangladesh or Pakistan, the new Indian administration does not start with a burden of a huge expectation. So far, they have used this to an advantage and delivered, or at least appeared to be delivering, more than what was expected, booting out the incompetent and the corrupt, reigning in undisciplined allies, projecting a national agenda over regional populism, and instilling a sense of new initiative and direction. Next few months will affirm how much of this will hold the momentum and make a difference. For the moment, however, it seems okay to enjoy a sense of new urgency. We have already seen that in Finance, where, if rumours are true, the governme...

I am back in India after a considerably long time - 7 weeks! Considering that I travelled almost 129 days in last six months, seven weeks at home was a really long time. I was enjoying the wonderfully summer, and almost getting back to normal - all appliances in my house was back functioning, I was picking up the post the day it is delivered, reading the current magazines, driving the car - I probably have not lived like that since June 2007! As if I was becoming too happy! My nightmare indeed started the moment I landed in the Kolkata airport. I almost concluded that Emirates Airlines will soon lose its edge with the rest of Dubai, and even toyed with the idea of flying Jet Airways between Heathrow and Mumbai this time. But then the relative ease of getting to Gatwick won the day and I decided to give Emirates a try. I was proved wrong - the flight was unbelievably busy - and right, because it did seem that Emirates is losing its touch. The Emirates flights between Dubai and Kolka...