Organization building

1) How soon does it take to put up blinds on a window ? : 6 months

2) HR figures that the actual working hours are next only to France on this planet and hence proposes a siesta time which would be added to daily working hours

3) There are value systems, value coaches, value huddles and other things that would increase value

4) Firmwide HR responsible for a business does not know what the people in that business do

5) A million dollars and more on executive training

6) Everything is stuck between the nth meeting and the n+1th meeting

welcome to the growth organization. god bless.

Perpective

Our times cannot product great art writes Aakar Patel in his piece in mint. Everything that is great in art has already been done and hence from here on our lives shall be doomed to wander in a rewind mode. True? Quite possible. After all, in most fields what s to be created has since long since been created. New particle, new political theory, new religion have been true relics of the past, we don't hear about such things so easily. Why would art be any different?

Art becomes an important barometer because of two very unrelated reasons: Measurement (of the goodness of an artist) and a sense of perspective (for the the artist regarding the wider world). What s so different about the current artistic environment against maybe something two or three centuries ago? Patronage. As any artist will tell you, patronage allows one to pursue art for art s sake. Art was/is opium of the nobility: My court artist is better than yours, I can identify a high note, this piece is so good lets put it up at the Louvre, the whole audience gave in to the uplifting music.....these are phrases that we seldom here these days. The reasons for that are too obvious: nations are comfortable about their culture and communications have fundamentally changed.

Sculpture: Give me rapid prototyping. Literature: The twitterati are waiting. Paintings: Everybody is a photographer. Without the opportunity to put people on pedestals and the ability to compare them, art will never seem creative enough. Till we get that "perspective", we shall continue to believe that we dont see great art these days. Someday, 21 st century art will be great, but the measurement of the same will definitely not be traditional.

Short Story: The Beautiful Night

When do you realize that the night is beautiful? When it has passed right? You, know you wake up suddenly and realize that the night has passed? Of course the night is beautiful when the stars are shining on you? Hmmmm, what then on a starless night? That happens in cities you know. Of course you do, don’t lie you looked it up on google right? Anyway, the night is still beautiful today in its starless moonless way. I was just wondering how cats possibly think about night? I mean if they do think i.e. They must surely be thinking about it because my mom says they can see at night. Good thing for cats, otherwise they would be falling of walls or bumping into parked cars just like that. The good black cat, actually for this story line why should the cat be black, lets make him white, ok why only white, maybe white with a black star on its head like black beauty, for that I would need to give the poor cat one off foot to be black too. Maybe we should give it that too. But then maybe I should let the poor black cat go in peace and continue with my story. Three cheers to that. So where was I exactly? Ah the beautiful night.

Why are love stories set in night times? Candle lit dinner, moonwalk sort of thing, maybe some Greenpeace guy thought up of it to save electricity, that one sounds lame so it likely isn’t the reason., but lets continue with our man “the night” as the protagonist. I mean the night and not the Knight, caught ya, I am sure you word spell checker using idiots wouldn’t have known the difference whether it was knight or night. Gotcha. I digress.

I was not exactly sure how I was born, nor who was born first, my brother or is it sister day or me but suffices to say most people understand that I only appear after the day. If it were not for love stories I would have been confined to some corners of the English dictionary (actually its got more to do with time and physics), but here I am alive and kicking. Today as it is my season, I started a bit early for work. Kind of monotonous it is, not to have the option of not appearing to work one day. Hmmm. There was this couple over something. From afar I thought it was one of those couple fights, random with no particular reason but possibly essential to a relationship. I crept up on them as they sat on the park and realized that were discussing Star Trek, some discussions on space etc. I am getting ahead of myself, the couple were busy in an argument and seemingly were unaware of my distant cousins the stars brightening the sky or the vain display of her beauty from my wife the moon. You cant miss my wife easily can you? But these two were completely oblivious of the entire surroundings and left each other s company cursing me for the darkness I brought upon them. They have been repeatedly replaying the conversation of what went wrong trying to figure out what went wrong.

That’s how it goes, take it or leave it. I alone remain witness.

Short Story: Being an Author

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me begin by thanking you for entertaining this humble soul today. I do not know what each of you does for a living, what your thoughts are, what your ideals are, what keeps you awake at night…. infact I know nothing about you. You are but a face that I see, faces that I most likely will not remember, nor will I be able to tell apart. What I do know is the fact this 30 mins will change your life profoundly, it will provide you a beacon of hope in your dreary humdrum existence, it will help you connect to what is possibly your most important possession: a book.

What does a book represent? A book is but a means for an author to propagate his thoughts. The author is the representative of the sane voices of society. We live in an extremely topsy turvy world, a world where change is the only constant. A world in which you are looking for symbols, something to hold on to, something that will keep you from going insane. The book and hence the author is your route to sanity.

Writing a book is a tedious and mind altering process, something that the author goes through so as to help humanity. Each word is carefully weighed, thought upon, rehashed and then re-written, do you even understand the meaning of such careful thoughts? I bet you just read every book as if it were a piece of fiction, without ever bothering to read what the author is trying to tell you.

Every author goes through a self discovery process. He travels through different lands and sometimes time itself, he meets different people, assimilates different cultures, adopts new ideas and acts as a funnel to supply you with words that best represent all that he has learnt during the course of his life. He is a mirror to the society that he is a part of, he probably defines what a society means. You look at a terrorist and you feel insecure, the author feels for the terrorist because he has grown to understand what creates a terrorist in the first place, the society itself. You are bound for fickleness, living for the next moment, whereas the author is looking for the larger piece that will provide you meaning in you life. If you have not read an author who has changed your life, you haven’t lived life at all.

“Is he usually like this?”

“Not really, this happens once a fortnight, rest of the time, he is deeply reading”

“So what next?”

“What next indeed – keep watching?”

Professor Rudrasen – don’t you think that most authors are just writing for commercial reasons?

Well young lady, it is true that some people have sullied the profession by writing purely for commercial purposes, but what else can they do, they have succumbed to the same need to attend to the basic instincts that inflicts mankind today. That wouldn’t have happened if society at large maintained a funding mechanism for authors, who are the true purveyors of art, not some random movie maker or your next youtube hero.

So professor, in your opinion a fiction writer is upto no good? – another young voice.

Hardly my friend, fiction is just a stepping stone for one to think of higher reaches of literature, a stepping stone towards realizing one’s true kind of author. As you rise up the level of literature, you shall find the life-changing author.

“Hmmm, who all attends these lectures?”

“All the junior doctors here and sometimes the senior doctors who are interested in literature too. The Professor is quite good you know”

“Is he harmless?”

“Yes, he needs an audience to talk to every fortnight that’s about it”

“Since when has been here”

“Since the time Professor wrote his seminal work: Being an author – a guide towards sanity.”

“Hmmm, it figures”

“Yeah I guess, time to put the good Professor to sleep for today, till the next fortnight”

Hedgies are not dead .... not yet.

http://www.iimagazine.com/Alpha/Articles/2165684/TODAY/Brother,_Can_You_Spare_a_Billion?.html

Inspite of the stupendous losses that the markets have seen (a year of great learning as a colleague puts it) a few fund managers have made staggering amount of money. On average $474 million. Awesome. Someone should put out a number on funds that went down.

Mr Obama are we going to regulate this next?

Next story about their lifestyles? Voyeurism at its best.

RBI cuts rates!!

I have been tied up a bit - but this rate cut by RBI is very very intriguing. By clearly signaling that they want to keep the window of rate cuts only for the next crisis only a few days ago, the RBI has done an about turn and cut key rates. The cuts are even more baffling considering the comfortable liquidity position of the system and by now it has become pretty clear that interest rate cuts will not lead to increase in lending by banks.

In terms of monetary actions there is nothing that this cut would do unless there is expectation that govt. borrowing would suck out all liquidity from the market. Or more likely is the this a politically forced bailout to stimulate the now dead real estate market.

None of the commentators I have read have called for a rate cut. What is going to happen?

1) A large scale govt. borrowing program
2) Calls for banks to reduce lending rates (whether they lend or not is a different matter). Having recently seen the benefits of the PM s scheme to build local roads I am convinced you are better off putting money into people s hands that way.
3) Rupee under further downward pressure.

Interesting times.

What is the reason for the optimism?

Been traveling and working late the last few days. There seems to be a muted optimism in the markets, almost as if people expect a breakout. I am not very good at this predicting thing, so lets see what has been dished out.

A flurry of positive news
1) We did (will do) 7.1% growth apparently, what grew that much you might want to ask?
2) The Govt. will announce a new stimulus plan on Feb 16th, they have a lot of room to play with the interest rates how far will they go and how soon
3) Implied change in FDI classification, I mean implied because the fine print is what determines the validity of any of these announcements
4) A host of real estate firms have rolled on their debt, falling interest rates hence are making home owners come back
5) The worst is over, Q 3 is possibly one of the worst ever quarter, but you cant really go down on earnings from here

US collapsed yesterday, but India (along withe Asia actually) held pretty strong. Deal flow seems to be pretty good and fund managers seem to be more inclined to listen to stories.

Everybody is a friggin realist now. Bhalue is king.