boredom strikes

These are a few of the things I am so bored about .. I don’t want to hear about them ever again :

1.       Not another promotional feature on “Ra-One” seriously SRK have you made such a Dud !

2.       Not another picture of a ‘baby-shower”. Give us a break guys, India is the 2^nd most populous country in the world. Yawn !

3.       Not another ‘chappal’ thrown at Kejriwal and his team, literally and figuratively. Mind your business guys and let them hunker down and do their job.

4.       Not another one of liz hurley’s marriages. Common both she and Shane are now has beens !, Shane dear, please do sign the pre nuptial contract unless you fancy living on the streets !

5.       Not another picture of handcuffed Lindsay lohan … guys now who is she ?

6.       Not another photographic moment of our ‘PM in waiting’ sharing the meager meals of a poor family … please spare them… they need to be able to eat the next day too.

7.       Not another India vs. England cricket match. Ok the English cricket team does score .. but so much of cricket ? who pays??

Reduce Indirect taxes and increase the net Direct Taxes

We all know what are direct taxes, those which are collected directly by the government, from individuals and corporate, but what about indirect taxes? Those are taxes that are passed on to the consumer. That means even the poor citizen who buys a Rs. 5 packet of biscuits is paying taxes. I have thought about this often and I feel this is unfair. We must spare the poor in our country this tax. What is the benefit of this tax. I think such taxes should be very much minimized, or abolished all together. The reasons are

1. The very poor in our country should not be asked to pay this tax. Indirect taxes do not distinguish about paying capacity. If we should have indirect tax, the government should only tax the luxury goods and the addictive and harmful goods. Restaurant being taxed is ok, infact the fancier, upscale restaurants should be taxed more.

2. The other thought I have is around the absolute apathy of most of Indian citizens towards government property and its maintenance. I believe this is also in some way linked to our tax system. If the poor do not pay direct taxes, they assume that roads, drainages ect are free and they do not have to pay anything to get these. Hence they have a propensity to misuse these. They do not realize that they do pay a lot of taxes indirectly.

 Instead, I recommend that we reduce indirect taxes and increase the number of our citizens who have to pay direct taxes. It can be a very nominal amount, but all citizens above a certain threshold of income should  pay direct taxes. This will increase equity in our tax structure as well as make us a country of more responsible citizens.

Judging vs. Accepting

This has been a life long struggle for me. A tendency to unconsciously judge others. Put them into boxes. Lately it has become a conscious process. This resulted in my working on the same. I write this blog to share my learnings with others who may have the same challenge. What happens when we judge others? For me, the main realisation is that , one , of course they know that you are judging them and who wants to be judged? Judging others comes in the way of forming relationships and great friendships. Judging others comes in the way of genuinely enjoying others and helping others. But why do we judge? I have struggled with this answer, and I have come to the conclusion that we judge others because we judge ourselves. We judge ourselves against an ideal which we have formed in our minds, often created by society which includes our parents, teachers and other significant others. If we want to stop judging others we need to stop judging ourselves first and accept ourselves. This is most difficult but most liberating. This is what great leaders are about.

Experience Vs. other

Organizations are risking entry into tomorrow’s business arena using yesterday’s business thinking. Why else would most recruitment advertisements still mention ‘x number of years of experience’ as the number one  requirement? Have we even thought about the fact that the way business was run even 10 years ago is so dated today? And what is very new, hot and current today may not even exist 5 years from now? Then of what use is experience? It is now time to change the selection criteria. Today more emphasis needs to be on expertise, core knowledge, an understanding of the fundamentals in the area that a person chooses to work in. For an IT professional, it is not about the language, but a core understanding of technology, programming logic. Similarly for a pharma professional, it is more about a deep knowledge , understanding and appreciation of the science behind her work.  The other important ability is the ability to learn , the curiousity to know  and the willingness the fail. So will organisations now modify the selection criteria please and work a little bit harder to identify the right person for the job. Looking at numbers of years of experience is an easy way out !

Talent Development – One Size does not fit all

One of the most important elements in development of Talent is to identify the learning style of the individual. Some of us may learn best through class room teaching, some of us may like to learn at our own pace through online learning programs and books, some of us may learn through small group discussions with experts, some of us may learn through one on one coaching. Some of us may learn only  by doing and job rotations, small projects, job sharing, job shadowing may be the answer for such an individual. Once we identify this, we can have a more focused approach to development and optimize training dollars. Increasingly, talent development  in organisations has to be tailored and customized to meet individual requirements and this has to start with how we learn. ‘One Size fits all’ is wasteful and ineffective.

On Society and Values Erosion

It fills me with pain to read about the two CWG athletes who have tested positive for  steroids. Why have we become such a corrupt society? Why this erosion of values ? Where does it all start and where will it end? Does it start at the womb, where with growing prosperity we now believe that it is ok to select the sex of the child ? Does it start with the KG school admissions where huge donations are given to secure a seat? Does it multiply in schools where teachers do not teach in the classrooms but charge exorbitant amounts in private tuition classes where they teach what they were anyways supposed to teach in school and they were getting a salary for that? Does it have to do with the rampant quota system in our institutes of higher learning with 50% & more reservations in colleges where even into the 21^st century we continue to recognize the caste system over merit. Is it that our society is slowing forgetting what is merit? Is it to do with the alarming increase in the gap between the haves and the have-nots in our society? Is our definition of success as being rich and famous quickly forcing us to let go of our century old values of truthfulness , integrity and compassion? If society turns such a blind eye to cutting of corners and falsehood all in the name of becoming rich and famous, how can we hope to keep our organisations clean? How can we introduce those values into our organisations which are slowing becoming alien in our society? Is it possible to expect an employee to be a different person for the 8-10hrs he spends at work every day and a different person the rest of the time? Is it fair to expect a leader who has been a product of the education system which disregards merit to suddenly recognize and reward only merit in an organization? The time bomb is ticking for us as a society and as a culture. India has historically been known as a country which had taught the world to raise above materialism and embrace the one spirit. Slowly but surely , we are becoming a very poor country. Increasingly we have nothing to offer to the world.

Leadership development & Indian Education System

I have recently come across a very interesting research study on Indian business leaders vs. global business leaders with specific focus towards their tendency to search for information. The study mentions that whereas global leaders score at 15.34 on the information search scale, Indian leaders score at 2.72. I think this happens due to our education system which does not encourage study from multiple text books for a subject or topic. We usually have only one text book from which we are expected to memorise the answers and reproduce the same during the exams . Indian business leaders also scored low of 6.41 compared to 20.63 on ‘Concept formation’. I believe this too can be attributed to the way we are taught. In schools we are expected to repeat what is given in one single text book and the important process of applying thought to what we read is bypassed. When we come into organizations we find that these ingrained habits are setting us up for failure. How do we unlearn these habits? Indian leaders also scored low on ‘influencing’, this too can be attributed to our education system which encourages individual contribution over team work. Hence the need for learning the very important skill of ‘influencing’ is never felt by most of us. Dare I say that the best leaders from India will be those who would have participated in team games at the school level.

Joys of life

The joys of life are all about paying attention. Single tasking not Multi tasking. It is about increasing consciousness vs. being unconscious. How much of the work you do in your day you are doing unconsciously vs. consciously?

The 3 Cs of business

Business is all about 3 Cs. The Customer, The Competition and The Company. Business success is all about mastering these.

Have Soya Milk

Very soon the price of Soya Milk will be the same or less than that of Cows Milk. So my dear friends have Soya Milk. Happy health to you.

Buy Gold

Many of my young friends have asked me for tips on investing. So here is one. This is the worst kept secret. I will get no prizes for this one. It is invest in gold systematically. Now don’t put all of your money in gold. That would be foolish, no asset class deserves all your money. Always spread the risk. But Gold is always a good bet. Here are a few reasons why.

1.       Gold can be worn. If designed and created aesthetically, jewellery can be pieces of art and heirlooms. And you know how ‘Art’ appreciates.

2.       Gold can be gifted. I don’t think I need to add anything here.

3.       Gold does not lose its shine.

4.       Gold cannot be counterfeit. You can always check its purity and authenticity.

5.       Gold is the commodity with eternal demand –supply mismatch.

6.       Today Inflation is soon to touch double figures. So money is losing its value everyday. Gold is your bet against inflation

7.       If you look at the domestic economic scenario today, the rupee is set to lose its value due to a looming large fiscal deficit. If the government is forced to print money, what happens to the price of gold?

8.       If you look at the world economy today. It is a tale of greed and mismanagement. QE1, QE2 … QE3? QE4? EU crisis?. So let us look at the various scenarios. In case there is QE3 then I don’t think I need to elaborate. The value of the dollar will go down and Gold will be the safe haven. If there is no QE3, then what? Well, this affects growth, growth will slow down and returns will be miniscule. So where will all the money sloshing around the world go to? To safer haven, to speculative haven? Which is Gold once again. The EU crisis is already here, what can EU do? Well what else but print more Euros? And what happens to the Euro? It plummets and what happens to Gold? It rises.!

9.       In India, we are suddenly sanguine that with no QE3, commodities will be down and Oil will be down and so our economy will be back on track. But we are forgetting that with no QE3, dollar will appreciate and this coupled with rupee devaluation ( refer to point 6&7 above ) will make Gold very very dear oh dear !

So my young friends buy gold

Talent Wars … 2

Dear friends, thanks for all your comments on the earlier blog on the coming Talent War. How to get ready to fight this war? Yes, it is about training and retraining, yes it is about identification of your ‘A’ and ‘B’ players . But before all this, the Talent war is fought and won or lost at the beginning, at the recruitment stage.  ‘ Recruit in a hurry and repent at leisure’ is one of the main perils for organisations today. There is too much pressure on HR to fill in the numbers.  And how do we recruit right. By slowing down the recruitment process. Putting levels of elimination in place. Unfortunately our education system does not churn out ‘employable’ candidates . We will need humungous  training effort. So we need recruitment processes that will select the ‘trainable’ candidates . I am a strong believer in the good old aptitude tests. Which will test the three ‘Rs’ ability to read, write and arithmetic. Evaluate and Eliminate. Spend more time on the selection process, get independent views from senior recruiters ( line managers) in the organization. Make the candidate meet at least 3 of your senior line leaders. Get at least 3 independent views. Make Selection one of the most important roles for line managers. Make Selecting right the first capability of your organization in this War for talent.

The Coming Talent Wars

All business leaders beware, the next war is going to be the Talent war.

‘A’ level businesses will get ‘B’ level talent and ‘B’ level businesses will get ‘C’ level talent.

Only the ‘A+’ level businesses will get the ‘A’ level talent.

‘A+’ level businesses are those that are the best in their field. These are the top 2% of companies, which have consistent records of great financial performance. These are companies who have proven themselves where it matters most, the market place , amongst their competitors and customers.   These companies have a history of attracting, developing , challenging , rewarding and retaining top talent. The companies are in an enviable position. ‘A’ level talent will propel them to ‘A+’ level performance and ‘A+’ performance will help them attract ‘A’ level talent.

The talent wars will be so severe, even the ‘A’ level companies will have to settle for ‘B’ level talent. A level companies are amongst the top 10-12% of companies in their respective fields in terms of market share and profitability.

That leaves out the ‘B’ level Companies. These are good companies, but not great. Here the Talent crunch will be the worst. It is an inevitable downward spiral.  ‘C’ level talent begets ‘B’ level results which will attract ‘C’ level talent .

In my next post,I will talk about what A and B level companies can do to survive the Talent War.

How to make money on the stock exchange NOW

My suggestion is to go for FMCG and Health sector if you are looking at short term of one year. India is a consumption lead economy. Money is at the bottom of the Pyramid. And the non discretionary spending is only in the above two sectors, given the inflationary conditions. The other sector that should do well is the Education sector.Next comes the Auto and Capital Goods Sectors.
Best Wishes