June Short

Income disparity will continue to widen as long as Return on Capital exceeds rate of economic growth.

Note: I am a day ahead of schedule on the posts, hence the June Short on the 31st of May.

Incentives for self-serving behaviour

I had another run in with an investment advisor from my bank as soon as I got back to India.

He was trying to peddle some investments that I was clearly not interested in. I tried to explain very patiently that I was looking for an index fund to invest in and he kept circling back to a Small-Cap fund that was probably the product on which his incentives were better. What really ticked me off was that he kept spewing BS about how this bank's investment advisory was about putting client interest first and how they were doing this for my benefit.

I told him that I was risk averse when it came to investing in the stock market and the index was about as risky as I was willing to go. I thought this would take the discussion to index funds. Wrong. It brought us right back to the Small Cap fund.

I seem to remember that this is exactly how the 2008 mess started. Salespeople were being incentivized for hawking stuff that was clearly way too risky for the small investor and beyond the comprehension of the small investor. Truth be told, it was beyond the comprehension of most bankers too; witness Joe Cassano of AIGFP going on record to say about the CDSs that AIG had sold, "It is hard for us, and without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any realm of reason that would see us losing $1 in any of those transactions." This was shortly before the crisis blew and AIG had to be bailed out by the US Government. Cassano took home US$ 315 million in bonuses before he was asked to resign, not fired mind you, but asked to resign, in 2008. Quite a lot of money for someone who did not understand the products he was selling. No agency of the US Government has made any attempt to recover any of these bonuses.

I am bothered by the fact that the private sector banks in India appear to be reverting to the same incentive structures based on sales and not on profit. When the investment goes belly up, the small investor loses his shirt.

Robbing Hoods

On the flight back to India I watched ‘Inside Job’ - a documentary about the 2008 financial crisis. For those with even a remote interest in financial markets, it is a must-watch.

The one startling fact I took away from the film was the contrast that after the Savings and Loans crisis of the late 1980s, when investment bankers used small investors savings to speculate and lost it all, 1000 persons were prosecuted on criminal charges for fraud and 800 of them were convicted.

After the 2008 financial crisis, there have been fines imposed on the big Wall Street banks but no criminal charges filed. Not one person has been convicted.

The film appears to imply that this is because of the immense lobbying power of the financial services industry. The very people who fought hard against any regulation and oversight of the derivatives market were the very people who were appointed as advisors by the Bush Administration to help resolve the crisis. These people had clear vested interests in the Wall Street Machine and they were given the right to use tax-payer money to bail out the big banks.

These are the new Robbing Hoods – the guys who stole from the poor to give to the rich – themselves.

New York too

I have been thinking some more about why New York did not seem so special this time around. The answer might be quite obvious and quite anti-climactic.

Once upon a time, not too long ago, New York was the only city in the world with all those skyscrapers. All the way from 1908 until 1974, the tallest building in the world has been in New York City. The Empire State building alone held the title from 1931 to 1972 only to be outdone by the World Trade Center which held the crown for two years before losing it to Sear Tower Chicago which held it for another 20 years until 1998.

After 1998 however, the crown has remained outside the US. First the Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia were tops from 1998 to 2003, then Taipei 101 in Taiwan until 2010 and the reigning top mast is Dubai's Burj Khalifa since 2010.

This century might truly belong to Asia.
Time to get our act together India.

Desi Quartet

An overwhelming number of Indians residing in the US in the 80s or the 90s drove one of four cars; Toyota Corolla, Toyota Camry, Honda Civic and Honda Accord. This group was called the Desi Quartet.

This time round I have noticed that the Indian diaspora here have since become more adventurous with respect to their choice of cars. I saw Indian driving Mustangs and Camaros and even a pick-up truck. I also noticed Indians traveling business class and toting Louis Vuittons and Pradas.

What caused such a sea-change in one generation? For most of our parents' generation, moms stayed at home. With our generation, we increasingly have double income couples. Life in the US needs be quite frugal with a single income, but with another 60K, one can live a rather good life.

Plus 1 for higher levels of education among Indian women.

New York New York

I visited New York as a tourist over the weekend. We did all the requisite stuff; a Broadway show, staring at the ads in Times Square, looked down at the city from the Top of the Rock and saw the new Freedom Tower.

I know that nostalgia is selective, but even allowing for that, I have to say that this time around New York seemed a little grimy, a little tired, traffic snarls were worse and streets seemed more littered. It looked, well, thirty years older.

The last time I visited New York as a tourist was when I was a starry eyed teenager and I am sure I saw it with a sense of wonder and awe.

This time however, I could not help but notice the contrast; while Las Vegas seemed more like Las Vegas, New York seemed like any other city in the world.

Boredom at work

I met someone a few days ago who works in an engineering company in a proper engineering role. And I mean real old world manufacturing engineering; making stuff that you can see and hold.

This person has been in this job with this company for well over two decades. He leaves home at 6:30 to get to work at 7 am and leaves work at 3 pm and gets back home at 3:30. One of the things he likes about his job is that when he leaves the factory, he leaves the factory behind. No email, no blackberry, no powerpoint presentations due for tomorrow morning. 

What surprised me even more was that he found his work fulfilling; he had what is so elusive in IT - job satisfaction. And before you start to imagine a blue collared guy in grey overalls, I would like to point out that this person wears a white shirt to work and drives a luxury German automobile and lives in a 5 bedroom home. Clearly, he is good at his job.

Which causes me to wonder, what is it about working in IT that more often than not, leaves something to be desired? Are we as humans geared to appreciate stuff that we can see and hold than the stuff that is mere abstraction? Brings to mind a show I saw on Discovery Turbo, way back when the channel was about cars and turbos; where the protagonist said that he used to enjoy working on his own car when he could turn a screw on the carburetor and hear the engine note change and just feel it when the car was tuned right. These days, he said, you plug a cable into the On Board Diagnostic post and tap some keys on a keyboard. The numbers on the screen change and if the font is not red, then you know you are done.

Perhaps this also explains why the most enjoyable hobbies, those that give one a sense of achievement, are those that involve doing something with ones hands.

Convenient equals faster

I have noticed that a number of advertisements these days purport to offer a higher degree of convenience in our lives. Increasingly however, convenience is becoming no more than a synonym for quicker or faster. A mnemonic for convenient these days is a TV dinner, sold in a moulded plastic compartmentalized tray. Unwrap – microwave – eat. No need even to ladle the food from its serving container to a plate to eat. Airline meals are the ultimate TV dinner.  Yet we lament the passing of great airline service with real silverware and food served in porcelain. We explain that away by admitting the cost and revenue pressures on airlines. Airlines are caught between trying to deliver ever lower fares in the face of increasing costs.

The TV dinner is the anti-thesis of a civilized meal, where plating and presentation and the art of serving are a large part of the dining experience.

In our ever faster lives, we aspire to the leisure and style of an expertly prepared and well-presented dinner. Yet we are moving ever closer to fast food and junk food for its convenience.

I had written some time ago that popular TV programs are an indicator of what we aspire to, but have difficulty in obtaining. Behold the popularity of Masterchef as a prime time TV show.

Boredom and leisure

Every time I try to take a do-nothing holiday, where the plan is to go to a resort and bum out on the beach, I find that my tolerance for the good life starts to run thin in about 3 days. By the fourth, I am bordering on miserable. I really need to find something to do; and another round of archery at the resort's activity center ceases to count. I guess I start yearning for something meaningful to do.

I found myself thinking about when this 'problem' set in. As a teenager, when I traveled with my parents, I have at one time been able to enjoy the good life for almost a month. We had relocated to another country and my father was busy setting up the new office and a new factory. We were staying in a hotel until we found a home. I spent a lot of my time at the pool every morning and spent time watching TV or reading in the afternoons. Evening was pool time again. I do not remember getting bored; just as I do not remember getting bored during summer holidays in my school years.

What then causes this change in so many people?

I have come to the conclusion that meaningful work is addictive. Once we have tasted blood, we seek more and more of this gratification. In the early part of our careers, this gratification comes from the paycheck. Making money is addictive too. But soon in our careers, the money itself is not enough. We begin to seek the validation that comes from doing work that someone respects, our bosses, our clients, or in the ultimate case, ourselves.

The challenge for those of us who have had reasonably successful careers, is to be able to control this addiction. We have all aspired to retiring early with a pile of cash so that we do not have to work to pay the bills.

What happens when we find out that we have no idea on how to handle our leisure?

Brand Consciousness

I have been in the US for the last couple of weeks and one thing that strikes me is that wearing expensive branded clothes seem to be de-rigueur among all of society. Even when one is driving through poorer neighbourhoods, one notices the expensive sneakers and branded T-shirts.

As the father of two teenagers, I have always had to think about how to get my kids to think about how they spent their money. There was a time when both my kids were mesmerized by Nike et al.
They appear to have grown out of it.

It will be an interesting social experiment to see how today's teenager, who have grown up on a staple of Nike and Reebok and Adidas and Samsung and Apple will make spending choices when they start spending their own income. That experiment is unfolding before our eyes in India right now.

Young adults who graduate out of engineering school or business school fall into three distinct categories. The first set is those that find a job in their own city and continue to live with their parents. These people have comparatively large disposable incomes. Presuming that they do not need to bolster the family income, a large part of their paycheck goes into fueling the consumption machine. This is how we see young adults sporting the latest Samsung Galaxy 6 Edge or the latest iPhone.  The second set is those that need to move to a new city and have to accord different priorities to their income. A big chunk goes into rent and another big chunk into food. They might need to furnish their new home. They might need to put away some more money to buy air tickets for their parents to visit them in their new location, presuming such new location is in a new country. In this case, the glitzy phone or accessories usually take a back seat to more prudent expenses.

The third set is those that have found the fountain of seemingly infinite cash-flow, the credit card. These people stat spending like there is no tomorrow. Some of their purchases are converted to EMIs and others are left to figure themselves out. After all, one only needs to pay the Minimum Amount Due on their credit card bill. In MBA terms, these people have figured out how to spend discounted future income today. And they are fastest in the race of India catching up with a US lifestyle.

Radium and Nail Polish

There was an article in the New York Times a few days ago about women who work in nail salons in the US having a significantly larger incidence of giving birth to children with deformities or a higher incidence of cancer.

The hypothesis is that these issues are being caused by consistent excessive exposure to solvents like those in nail polish removers.

Reminds me of a similar issue from decades ago when women who worked in watch factories lost their teeth. Turns out, that was due to the fact that these women were handling Radium, a radioactive material used in watches for glow-in-the-dark numbers; and back ten radioactivity was seen as this cool source of free benefits.

It was only after the passing of Marie Curie whose death was attributed to excessive exposure to radiation that humans started to treat radioactive substances with a little more respect.

What surprises me about the more recent spate of issues induced by solvents is that this was not something we were blind to. We have been working hard for decades to reduce benzene in gasoline for it is known carcinogen.

I guess we, as humans are either slow learners or we find it very easy to disregard longer term issues such as health especially when juxtaposed against shorter term gains; like profit.

First impressions last

I was in a meeting with a client manager earlier today and one of the concerns that came up was communications with our team in India. While the client admitted that some of our team members spoke very well and were easy to understand, there were clear concerns about the communication skills of some other members of our team.

I have been thinking about this a fair bit, and have come to the conclusion that excellent communication skills are a necessary but not sufficient factor in business dealings. Of course the same can be said of technical skills - necessary but not sufficient.

We in India need to really up our game on how we communicate. One of the things we check for in our recruitment process is an aptitude for spoken English and this has worked well for us. However, there are still some concerns that our clients seem to notice that we haven't been catching during the interview process. We need to acknowledge that it is very difficult to change habits formed across 20 years; and not every skill is trainable. We need to focus more on recruiting talent with not just good communication, but excellent communication skills; and this includes grammar, vocabulary, diction and sentence formation that is in consonance with structured thought.

The short answer to this quandary might to accord more importance to how presentable the candidate comes across as to the recruitment team. By presentable, I mean not so much appearance, as the first impression they make on the interviewers. First impressions do last.

Foul language

I was on a plane recently and the two guys sitting in the row behind me were speaking loudly throughout the flight. That was painful enough on its own; what made it worse was that these two guys delighted in punctuating their sentences with liberal use of the F word.

Got me thinking about why some people can seem to get away with using foul language and others can't. Here are my thoughts.

Foul language does not rile people when the speakers and the listeners are very familiar with each other. We could be far more tolerant of our dorm mate using foul language because, in all likelihood, that is exactly how we remember him anyway. The other situation where foul language does not seem to be contrived is when the situation being discussed is so bad that foul language is the least of our problems.

The most important factor however might be whether the listener has given the speaker and explicit or implicit licence to use foul language.

I have realized that I have not always sought this sanction before I let fly. Sometimes, I have incorrectly presumed that I had the licence granted to me implicitly.

Time to watch my tongue.

The Roll Not Taken

The last time I went on a diet, a good friend advised me to keep a detailed log of everything I had eaten. There are apps that make it easier to maintain this log. They do not however make it any easier to lose weight. The log only feed one's guilt upon not sticking to the strict diet plan.

Here during my travels, I have chanced upon a technique that actually eggs me on to stick to the diet. I am maintaining a log everything I could have eaten on impulse, but didn't. One thing I have been able to stay off of is sodas. That's 180 calories avoided every time I choose water over Coke.
I have also been adding to the list all the Hostess cupcakes and I used to love 15 years ago. I have also steered clear of Starbucks on this visit, though it hasn't been easy walking past that aroma.

This process has been strangely motivating as I notch up the calories that could have been. And even when I do succumb to Philadelphia cream cheese on a honey nut bagel, my guilt score is way lower than my achievement score.

Try it out - celebrate what's right with the world.

The land of milk and honey. And bagels with cream-cheese.

Airports in America are veritable food courts. Here is a partial list of food outlets at just one set of departure gates in one terminal of one Airport. We had Nature's Kitchen, Chipotle, Popeye's, Einstein Bros Bagel Company, Diner Niner, Subway and of course the ubiquitous Starbucks and McDonald's. Add to that list the newsstand Hudson News which also has racks for Hostess Cupcakes and Hostess Twinkies. All of these were open and operational at 5 am and there were long queues at most of them, especially long ones at the Starbucks and at the McDonald's.

What amazed me were not the people waiting patiently in queue to fork over $8.95 for their Java - but people who were ordering 600 calorie breakfasts - like McDonald's Pancakes with sausage or a pair of bagels with cream cheese. And they looked it too.

Clearly, supply side economics is working. A number of these people would have had a bowl of cornflakes for breakfast at home if these outlets had not existed at the airport.

This is clearly a case of availability breeding consumption. We should thank our stars, and the bureaucracy, that airports in India, except perhaps Delhi and Bangalore, do not have such a large array of food joints. Every time I stare at the wares on offer at one of the two food stalls at Pune airport, the view pretty much kills my appetite. Had there been a McDonald's there, serving their Pancakes with Syrup or a Starbucks selling bagels with cream cheese, I would have been 2 sizes larger.

In the interest of national health, perhaps we should all sign a petition to ban food outlets at Indian airports.

Sin City

Once a particular place becomes famous for one particular thing, it becomes very difficult for other activities to raise their head above the shadow of the primary reputation.

I realized this about Las Vegas as I was in the taxi getting to McCarran International Airport. What struck me was the size of the car park at the airport. It is humongous. My first thought was, "Why does an airport that caters primarily to inbound visitor traffic need a local car park this huge?"

I said as much to the taxi driver and his response was muted frustration. "Hard as it might be to believe," he said, "Las Vegas is a big place. There are about 1.8 million people living here and this place is about more than gambling."

A visit to the Wiki page tells us that the population of the Las Vegas metropolitan area is indeed more than 2 million and it is the 30th largest city in the United States.

Apart from Gambling, the city is famous for its convention centers and it is among the leading destinations in the world for MICE - Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions.

The MICE industry employs more people in Las Vegas than the gambling industry - not counting hotel services employees as gambling industry personnel.

Las Vegas is also a retirement destination and a major tourist hub - not only for gambling and sin, but also as a major gateway for tours to Hoover Dam, Lake Mead and the Grand Canyon West Rim.

All of these other activities do not register in our mind because Sin City has occupied all our mind space. Going by all of this, we need to work very hard to prevent Delhi becoming known as the rape capital of the world.

Grand Canyon

We visited the Grand Canyon today. Truly an amazing sight, especially when you descend between the walls of the canyon towards the Colorado River winding its way across the bottom. The sun hitting the canyon walls makes them glow a vibrant orange and it is one of those things that gets etched on your memory forever.

What amazed me even more was how the Hualapai Indian tribe, which has a 1.2 million acre reservation at the west rim of the canyon has built a sustainable business model from tourism. Unlike most other Indian tribes which run casinos on their reservations; US state laws prohibiting gambling do not apply on Indian reservations; the Hualapai have chosen not to operate casinos. They tied up with tour operators in Las Vegas some years ago to develop the west rim of the Grand Canyon as a tourist destination. An important part of this arrangement was that a right of first refusal for all jobs in the canyon would go to tribe members. The boat operators, the official photographers and the tour guides are tribe members. Our helicopter pilot was also a native American Indian, though not all pilots were.

The tribe has been doing so well over the last few years that they have started offering services to other tribes in the south western United States.

This concept is not unique to the Hualapai Indians. Magarpatta city in Pune has a similar model. The farmers who agreed to lease their land to build the IT park obtained training to become primary contractors for most services.  The electrical and plumbing contractors,  gardening contractors, security services et al are all run by the very same farmers and their families. These farmers are all prospering financially, unlike some land owners who fell into a pile of cash when they sold their land and blew it all away within a year.

Here's hoping to see this emulated more often in India.

Vegas

I am in Las Vegas for a couple of days. Back here after 32 years. The last time I was here, it was to attend COMDEX in 1983 when the IBM PC had just been launched. Memory sizes were measured in Kilobytes and Hard disk drives were an impressive 20 MB.

A lot has changed in Vegas. It is far more crowded and the strip is bigger. Yet in a strange way it seems more subdued. Back then in the 80s, the most famous casinos had running yellow lights and bright neon signs flashing. Today, only the Harrah's casino still has the running lights. Sands has been demolished. Caesars Palace is no more the grand oval building it used to be, it now looks like 3 large chawls.  The Golden Nugget, back then the flashiest of them all was nowhere to be seen. There are of course newer casinos now, The Venetian, the Palazzo,  the Luxor.

The biggest change I noticed however is how in your face Vegas has become. You only have to step out of your hotel and you will be accosted by touts trying to lure you to a strip club with promises of free drinks and a free limo pick up. There also appears be a little less discretion among touts. They were handing out leaflets advertising escort services and 'No holds-barred' entertainment even to people who were clearly with their wives.

One thing that seems to have changed for the better was that there appear to be a number of all women groups visiting Vegas. A couple of decades ago, it would be only stag groups, but clearly women are now confident of making their own money and their own decisions on how they wish to spend it.

Optimization in real life

Here is a real life optimization problem I faced in the US.

We flew into Newark NJ and were planning to stay with Rujuta's brother who lives near Baltimore for day before taking a 6 am flight to the west coast from Baltimore airport.

I hired a one way rental from EWR to BWI and planned to drop it off at BWI an hour before my flight. My brother in law thought I was cutting it too thin because the car rental return at BWI is a few miles away and they have a shuttle bus to the airport with a frequency and reliability that he did not quite trust especially in the early hours.

He suggested we return the rental car the night before and then he would drop us to the airport to catch our flight. I thought that would be too may trips to the airport.

Was there a more efficient way to do this?

Equatorial time

I have been on a plane for 20 out of the last 24 hours, traveling from Pune to Delhi to New York. For most of this time I have been watching the map tracking the progress of my flight.

During this time of the year, the northern hemisphere has long days and short nights. Conversely of course in December, the northern hemisphere will have short days and long nights. Those of us who live in the tropics do not see the days and nights change by too much.

Here is a question I have been pondering over for a large part of my transit time. For people who live exactly on the equator, would the days and nights be exactly 12 hours each throughout the year?

I think I have arrived at an answer - and the reasoning - but I will post that in a couple of days.

(The cities closest to the equator I can think of are Singapore or Nairobi, even though these places are not EXACTLY on the equator - they are about 1 degree North or South)

Judgements

It has been quite a roller coaster last week. First there was the Sessions court judgement holding Salman Khan guilty and then a couple of days later, the high court setting aside the verdict, questioning if homicide not amounting to murder was the correct charge to apply. And then yesterday, Jayalalithaa was given a clean bill by the Karnataka high court in the disproportionate assets case. She can go back to being Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu again. Phew!

The responses I have been noticing have been baffling to say the least. People had their faith in the Indian judicial system restored when Salman was convicted. Then there was a lot of shaking of heads when the verdict was overturned. It appears that most people wished for both convictions to be upheld by higher courts and demonstrated their disappointment rather vociferously.

People like us who work in banks and IT companies tut-tut when we read about the hordes painting MS Dhoni's wall black when the Indian team loses. We like to believe we are better, more civilized. We do not make biased decisions without complete information.

It's a good thing that people like us don't go around smashing windscreens or painting stuff black. It is not that we had perfectly complete information about events that happened circa 2002.

Conspiracy theory - smartphones as spy devices

A conspiracy theory has been in the news recently for suggesting that the microphone on smartphones can be remotely switched on to record conversations.

Some claims suggest that some malware apps can use the microphone even when the phone has been switched off and later transmit the saved recording. This seemed a little far-fetched to me, until recently, my phone which I had switched off the night before, woke up to deliver the alarm I had set for 6 am. Playing with the user interface, I realized that this is indeed a feature. You can set whether the alarm setting should wake up the phone.

It is not too much of a leap to believe that a resident app could do the same. The truly paranoid would now need to not only switch off their phones, but also remove the batteries.

Interesting timing then, for Motorola and Google to start launching phones that do not have a user removable battery.

Time warp

I just got back from dropping a family member at the Pune bus station for a trip to Mumbai. As it happened, we got there about 25 minutes before the scheduled departure time of the bus.

I remember that many years ago, when I used to take the train or bus far more often, I had mastered the art of arriving at the station about 2 minutes before departure.

We take a number a of flights these days, perhaps more often than we travel by bus or train. And security concerns have been insisting that we get to the airports earlier and earlier. The requirement is now 45 minutes before departure for domestic flights and at least 2 hours before departure for international flights.

I suspect some of this buffering has rubbed off on us. Our processing of time seems to have gotten warped by how we learn to manage it and how our brain connects the dots with similar events.

Time to take an impromptu trip soon.

Tea-time with my significant other

Over the last few years, the ritual of having tea with my wife had devolved into both of us reading the newspaper or me paying more attention to my email than to what she was saying. She always worked very hard at spending quality time with me, to make conversation, but I was always too busy, I suppose.

This changed a couple of months ago, and here is how it happened.

We lost a friend to cancer in February and we visited the family in bereavement after the event. We were sharing memories about the departed, when his spouse brought out some tea for all of us.

Her face lit up with the most amazing smile when she said, "Tea-time was our we-time. With the first tea in the morning and when he got back from work, he would put everything else away and we would chat over tea. No newspapers, no phone calls, no chores while we had our tea. That time was sacrosanct." 

What amazed me was how strong and powerful the happy memory was. Here was a person who had lost her spouse, but the memory of her tea-time brought genuine joy to her face. It was not a bitter-sweet smile of reliving a fond memory. She was actually living the moment. On the drive back home, we decided that this was one change we would implement right away.

And ever since then, when my wife brings the tray with the tea, I put down my email, put down my phone and put down the newspaper. Nothing is more important than spending that much time with someone who has stuck with me through thick and thin, through good times and bad, through trials and through joy.

I should have known this and done this all along. 

Better late than never.

Relationship Managers

I received a call a short while ago from someone claiming to be my relationship manager assigned to me by my bank. This person was seeking fifteen minutes of my time to showcase the various wealth management product offerings of the bank.

I tried to refuse politely, but this person was rather persistent. I eventually told her why I was unwilling to meet with any relationship managers from banks. 

Here's the thing you see. This entire relationship manager thing, while ostensibly designed to provide better service to the customer, is actually designed to push the flavour-of-the-month product that the bank is trying to hawk. A few years ago, when I was a little more naive, I had agreed once to a meeting and saved his number in my phone. But when I wanted to call to enquire about something, the number belonged to someone completely different. I guess that person had left the bank.

Last year, another person called me from my bank, again claiming to be a relationship manager, and had the gall to request that I maintain a certain balance in my Savings account with the branch on 31 March as it would help him meet his targets or incentives. Clearly this person saw the customer as a captive that existed to serve his needs.

What these people seem to miss, is that the keyword in their designation is 'relationship'. They are busy making calls and setting up meetings, racking up overheads for the bank while completely neglecting this raison-de-etre of their role. Why customers are willing to trust such a role is beyond me. But then there are enough gullible people out there. You can read about some of them 

here and here. 

At the other end of the spectrum, my best experience with a relationship has been, believe it or not, with a car salesman. I know that 'car-salesman' is almost a dirty word, but this person changed my impression of the trade and how it could really be done. 

Way back in 2003, I had bought my first Mitsubishi, a Lancer, from the Mitsubishi dealer in Pune. It was the car I have enjoyed the most, and I really should write a product review, but I digress. The purchase experience was so enjoyable, that I ended up becoming friends with the people at the dealership. The person I dealt with went on to become CEO of the dealership by the time I was shopping for another car in 2010. I had visited this dealership a few times to check out the Mitsubishi Outlander. Every single time, this CEO would escort me to his office and order the iced lemon tea that he knew I loved and we would chat about how Mitsubishi is company of great engineers and bad marketeers and how the brand deserves to do better. I would look longingly at the Outlander parked in the showroom and state wistfully that it was a little too expensive, and that I would buy it if only it were a few lakhs cheaper. 

One day, as I was driving home from a client meeting, my path took me past this dealership and I decided to drop in for an iced-lemon tea. As we were chatting in his office, a truck pulled up outside to deliver a brand new Outlander to the showroom. As I watched the gleaming car being driven off the truck and into the showroom, the CEO saw the look in my eye and made me an offer I could not refuse. "Tell you what," he said. "Why don't you take this Outlander home? Drive it for a few days and then tell me if you think it is worth the price. If you still think it is not worth it, drop it back." 

I stared at him for a few seconds and he probably knew he had me right there. "I might actually take you up on that offer," I said. 

"You should," he grinned, "because we both know how this is going to end. "Two days later, I became the proud owner of a Mitsubishi Outlander.

This person recently moved to become the CEO of a motorcycle dealership in Pune and he called me to visit their showroom for a look-see. 

That, for you, is relationship management.

Commercialization of higher education

A few days ago, I received a phone call from a professor at a B-School where I teach as visiting faculty. He wished to meet with me to discuss what the B-School could do to build talent that is employable. We spoke at length about curriculum design and came to the conclusion that the curriculum in itself appeared to be well suited to building managerial talent. Why then are corporates getting disillusioned with the quality and abilities of people they are able to hire from B Schools in India today?

I suspect the answer is multi-faceted. On the one hand, students who get into B Schools somehow switch off once they get in. It is almost as if their goal was to get into B School for the label and not for the education. The B Schools are also to blame for the poor quality of their output. The quality and aptitude of the teachers they employ is often suspect. And apart from the government run institutions, there seems to be a tendency among B Schools to ensure that every student admitted graduates. There is a near zero failure rate. This is perhaps caused by commercial nature of the non-government schools. Everybody passes so that the institute can collect admission fees from the next batch on entrants.

I have been at the receiving end of this warped logic, when after a number of students failed to pass a tough examination for my course, the institute requested me to set another paper for the backlog examination. As per the institute's own published rules, the questions for the backlog paper had to be more difficult than the original, ostensibly to adjust for the extra time that the backlog students had to prepare for the exam and for the practice they had gotten at their first attempt. Predictably, most of the students who had failed the first time, failed again. At this point, the institute director assigned them some field work in lieu of another exam and everybody passed. Needless to say, most of these students were not among those who the best got job offers.

It is almost as if the education business in this country is answerable to Wall Street or Dalal Street. Rather than do what is right by the customer, their recruiters and their students, they do what would look good this quarter.

Anger and self pity

A dear friend wrote to me after he read the May Short where I posted, "Have you noticed that when you are angry, you are so sure you are right."

He said he had noticed something else happening when he was angry. Not only was he sure that he was right, he was also certain that he had been wronged.

I have to admit that this is often true for me too, though not always. I suspect it depends on the root cause or source of the anger. These days, I find myself getting angry at myself for being so stupid about some decision or a being unable to honour a commitment I had made. If I can find someone or something to blame that kept me from honouring a commitment, then the feeling that I had been wronged raises its head.

It gets most worrisome when this feeling of being wronged morphs into self-pity; for anger coupled with self-pity is a dangerous combination.

Contraptions of Science Fiction

A number of things have made it from science fiction to real life. Electric cars are here. The self-driving cab from Total Recall is almost here. And I am hoping the light saber will be here someday.
To be honest though, I haven't quite figured out how they are going to make that work. The light saber is a blade of light that can cut through anything except another blade of light, at which point both energy blades become rigid matter swords.

And here is an interesting one. Not too many science fiction authors managed to predict the mobile phone. Most presumed ubiquitous wall receptacles or connectors that protagonists could plug into with a wired device. One popular series however got this right, Star Trek's communicator. The Star Trek Communicator eventually made it into our hands as the Motorola Star Tac.

Good call Mr. Roddenberry.

Star Wars Day

I have often wondered how all these days started; mother's day, father's day, sister's day, brother's day and the like. Some, like St Patrick's Day, celebrated on the 17th of March had probably to do with the date of birth or date of passing of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. With St. Valentine's Day, I am not so sure. I have a feeling that greeting card companies have had a significant role in creating a number of these occasions to boost sales opportunities.

Star Wars day is different. It started out a few years ago, presumably with a bunch of Star Wars geeks wishing each other on the 4th of May. It was launched neither for commercial gain nor to further political power; it is special in that it is the first that gathered momentum amongst a heterogeneous crowd with a common interest and its spread was accelerated by the use of social media. The popularity of Star Wars Day, in that sense is an indicator of growing influence and power of the common man, of you and me. It is movements like these that can make possible, for the first time, movements like the support for Anna Hazare and for Nirbhaya.

Here's wishing you a great Star Wars Day. May the fourth be with you.

Commitments to yourself

As I wrote the blog-post for yesterday, I realized that the commitments we make to ourselves are the most onerous.

These are the ones that can really weigh you down. We start out young and ambitious and set goals for ourselves. Along the way, life deals out surprises; sometimes a leg-up, sometimes a setback.

Sometimes a string of successes can cause hubris and megalomania, followed by the feeling that one has the Midas touch, that one can do no wrong. Conversely, failures are often ascribed to external factors.

How we internalize these boosts and setbacks is what defines who we are.

What is your biggest stressor

I realized a few days ago that one of the things that stress me out the most is when I realize that I have given someone my word and the situation changes such that my commitment is now likely to take a hit.

In purely transactional cases, such as a software deliverable that is clearly going to miss the deadline, the right thing to do is to apprise the client of the new situation so that he or she can inform ahead and avoid bigger problems for all. That is exactly what we do. It is better to take the bitter pill now than to have to address a ton of bitterness later.

The tricky part is when you see that there is a chance that your commitment might fall flat, but there is also a chance that things might work out.

What should one do in this case? The simple act of informing the other party does not necessarily suffice. If you have always played it safe and informed the other party, only to be okay most of the time, then the other party soon learns to disregard your warnings. Alternately, if you do not inform the other party until the situation becomes obvious, they would be right to be upset that you did not inform them earlier.

The situation gets even trickier when we are dealing with our personal lives, where the commitment is more than transactional.
Let us say you have promised yourself that you will do such and such for your children's future. But as life is wont to do, there will be some surprises and let us say you find that commitment slipping. This kind of stress is more long term, the kind that clogs arteries and puts you on the track to an angioplasty.

Is there a way to alleviate this kind of stress?

May Short

Have you noticed that when you are angry, you are so sure you are right.