Being a CEO of firm with 15 people under you, working at various levels and functions, its so difficult to control each of them , ensure most of their work is productive, advice them timely, monitor them constantly, pamper them occassionaly, Pep them up on a routine . To run any enterprise, you need very robust PROCESSES. Lets Define my understanding of processes:

Processes:  No Rocket science or anything to do with codes but are pure logical statements, set of rules or an algorithm which can take care of any thing that is routine.

Robust Process : Every rule has an exception, but there are instances where the frequency of exceptions is high but variations among execptions are low. These execptions can thus be again programmed, or be bound under a set of rules. A Robust Processes addresses these execptions and thus appears as extending flexiblity to the executioner.

Suddenly Why am I talking for these processes ?

On Monday, I happened to meet one Traditional Businessman, put to Indian Context , who runs a jute mill another traditional business with a typical 8~10% Y-o-Y growth rate, matured industry, perfect competition. This person is just 35 years old, considers himself to be the most savvy of his fellow businessmen as he uses email to expedite his communications. Yes, He has a blackberry

Apart from the golden Spoon, there is much more a traditional businessman inherits from his predecessors. He Inherits Processes which have been tweaked, tested and adapted over thousands of years and practiced to perfection.

He runs a Jute Mill with over 500 looms, he is an HNI - so obviously he is a busy man. I reached to meet him at 5 pm , as adviced by him over the phone. I sat in his cabin on the other side of the table, on the corner chair  totally unnoticed for over 2 hours. Infact, I was really enjoying sitting there and observing how  this person conducts business. He sits in a small closed chamber in his head office, hardly gets up and moves around, but he still is in total control of his mill, godowns, inventory, sales, and even in tune with Labour Sentiments. How does he manage that ?

I observed that only He in the entire organisation uses a green pen/ or a green ink. He goes through the Day books, the daily bills, everything nearing the end of the end. Morethan, bothering about the numbers, he carefully pauses to notice the body language of the person who is presenting him the numbers. He personally marks small ticks in his green ink beside each and every figure and places a small signature on each pages. This suggests that those numbers have been checked and need not be revised again. The signature ensures that no one can change that page, paper or numbers. He encircles each and every total with his green ink and again puts a signature beside it. On each of the bill which needs to be paid, he repeats the entire process all over again, but as added measure of security , he notes down one random number from the bill onto his personal pocket diary. No one knows what component of the bill he noted down, this again doesnt allow anyone to tamper with the bills. Ocassionally he points out to certain numbers on the bills and presents some comments on it ” Yeh bill abhi clear kyun hua ? pichle hafte ho jana chahiye tha ” and ocassional ” Ye Lyka waalon ka bill hai, inko bolo kuch discount to de ” . This sends a message across he is in total control of the numbers.

My Dad is an entrepreneur , a business man for last 30 years. He didn’t inherit any business from his father. He still suffers from Labout issues, Stealth, Fraudulent bill payments, arbitrague trade by staff for their own interests. in his 30 years, he designed and master many of the processes - how to use ancilliaries to your advantage, how to get the best quality product within minimum time, how to standardise quality, how to standardise measurements, etc. But again, the saying is Rome wasnt built in one day. You can build a house in one day but not a home.  If you have money, man power, what stops you from setting up a highway in 5 days. Because of these processes which cannot be built overnight. Consultants bill @ $200/hr just to create these processes for you. But still These processes cannot be bought. Coming back, it took 30 years for my father to set product and quality control in place but these 30 years were not good enough to master some of those processes which were developed by the Vaisyas - the merchant class since history.

He came to know of my venture, my idea, my background that I am an MBA from an IIM with an engineering degree too. After lot of carefull thinking, he said ” Youngsters like you lack patience ” . You want to try to many things too early.  He symbolised patience. I can recall him explaining the map of his plant to his  employee for 20 years who has seen the plant in and out - still not getting the picture right. He explained to him over 4 times, then finally the employee went out and got a map from a file and then he explained him again over the map. Not once he riased his voice, or his eyebrow, neither his voice has any dejection or irritation.

He says ” In this kind of industry , if you go too fast you will surely falter ” . He suffers from a problem : there are 2 class of labours - One which is paid Rs. 250 a day and One which is paid Rs. 150 a day. If The higher wage labour ( H )  is absent, the Lower Wage Labour ( E ) will strike a deal with H . He will put attendance for H, and mark an Absent for L . L gets paid Rs. 250, of which he pays Rs. 75 to H without doing any work and himself takes home Rs. 175 which is higher than his daily wage.

He said if you put swipe cards attendance mechanism in place , there is always a risk One person swiping cards for 6 others. So, you have to man the Swiping Card place. Moreover, in a mill, 5000 employees report to work at a shift. Even with 20 Swiping machines, there will be que and the labour will protest to come 15 minutes early just to mark their In time. Thumb Impression based machines were tried on Pilot they failed as they are too slow. Thus the entry time of 5000 labours was running into an hour. Moreover, such a sudden change always run the risk of being taken adversly by the labors.

He being an HNI, I was obviously pitching him to fund my venture ( small seed money ). I was explaining to him fundae of Valuations, Equity , Debentures etc. At the age of 31, this guy has actuired an Electric Transmission Company, which was sick, turned it around in 6 years and was now negotiating with PE to buy stake in the firm. Remember he said - He was most savvy among the compareable lot.

I really have started to admire these businessmen for their processes which we call as acumen as well as their person or human skills. Only thing which have restricted them over the ages to scale much beyond has been the vision,  the need / zeal to scale up  and education .

Now, in this context I remember one very wise saying by Ajit Balakrishnan , as the core problem of Indian Approach to Business and Scaling. He says, Indians are really good in scaling in numbers and replication of processes but fail miserably in adapting automation. This means, if I am running a Call centre of 50 people and I do well , suddenly over few years you will find me having  5 setups of 100 people each . I have scaled from 50 people to 500 people and thus increased the number of customers serviced. This is where out nack is, human resource being available at arms lenght we scale by adding numbers. We dont think much about strethening processes even more, automating more routine work, finding consistancy among requests and making those 50 people service a load of 500 people. This is scaling by automation. This has been the precise debate of Independence Era where British nationals used to take raw material back to Engla

nd and bring finished product back to India and still sell cheap. Because they scaled by automation, India was scaling by adding more Jute mills.

The three hour long movie which makes you ride on all kinds of emotions with a heavily loaded ending compelling to have your eyes go moist, Taare Zamin Per has been speculated by many as Amir Khan’s another shot at the Oscar Nominations – why I mentioned Oscar “ nominations” and not the Oscar is a different debate all together.

I am confused about whom am I writing this post for – ones who have seen the movie or are yet to see the movie. Let me try to deal with both. So ones who have already scene the movie can skip to the next paragraph.

Taare Zamin Per is a movie about a little kid suffering from Dyslexia who cannot make sense for many characters and hence fails to read and write. This brings with it hosts of difficulties like failing in exams, constantly being nagged, cursed and counted-out by teachers, parents. However, this child has amazing observation power, loves to play with colours and enjoys playing with fishes, dogs - a perfect nature boy. Looking at possibilities of being thrown out of school, his parents send Ishant, the boy to a hostel. He takes it as he has punished and sent off to some jail . He is unable to cope with the strict displine, a very cruel mindset and sheer lack of care, and emotion. He sinks into thoughlessness where he stops paintaining, talking to peers and other activities till a his art teacher Amir Khan saves him - the Amitabh Bhachan in Black way.

Ok, now once the story is done with let me come to my point. Something about the movie disappointed me. Yes disappointed me. The tone till now will have been full of praises and so would be once I am done with my grudge.

There was certain expectation mismatch between what theme the promos promised and what the movie dealt with. I was expecting this movie to cater to a much larger population who don’t enjoy studying but have capabilities unlimited – where as post interval the movie took a bend and started talking of Dyslexia and very niche segment of children who are capable of studying, who are “willing “to study but are unable to because of a very fundamental disability to recognize alphabets and relate it to their corresponding meanings. The movie started talking of some apparently disabled people who have the capabilities to live life with the tag of being ‘normal’. Like every normal human also suffer from certain disabilities, they are also suffer for certain disabilities – only problem is that those disabilities are either not common or not easily comprehendible by other fellow “normal” humans. I must admit it’s a brilliant movie, brilliant script and very good cause to address and pointed out to the society that how these people are forced towards being abnormal as “normal” people don’t have time and space to actually lending them the little helping hand.

But as I said the story actually differed from my expectation in terms of people who are “willing “ to study and are not because of certain small problems and how people curse them, count them down, break their confidence to ever stand up against those oppositions.

I would dare to say a line which many may not agree “Education destroys Creativity “. The more learned you are the less creative you are. This is a thing which once my school time friend told me. I can quote an example: Once for XLRI MBA entrance exam XAT had this essay writing part where the topic was “your vision of 2010 – most revolutionary change or innovation “something like this. I was an engineering student who had done my mechanical engineering and school time friend was a commerce graduate - who was not so techno savvy. I wrote about evolution of alternate fuel, falling reliance on fossil fuel, greener fuel in terms of hydrogen burning in oxygen to form bi-product steam as the “pollution” etc. My friend started talking of inter-planet teleportation where man won’t need any rockets or vehicles to move places, a very sci-fi imaginative, most likely to tagged un-realistic by we “scientific studs”. People who are knowledgeable are quick to classify their imagination into practical, feasible, impractical or infeasible. This forces them to restrict their thinking within their “knowledge” domain. Very filmy dialogue – Only those can achieve who dare to dream. So, what turns out be way out of the box success already occurred to many educated people but was outright neglected as not making much sense.

So had the movie talked about brilliant painter, a kid with a very powerful imagination, perception of colors not so inclined to study but spends time to observe things and how he made it big in life that way without opting the regular education – MBA way ,it would have been also a great thing.

I know a brilliant web designer - an absolute genius in creating web designs. But the problem is web designers don’t become project managers, for every 4 coders in a company there is only one designer. Facing this reality, the designer learned to code and started shifting towards coding. This in-effect destroyed a designer.

Education also does something very similar. When I was a kid, I used to memorize things to pass GK exam – Voice of India – Lata Mangeskar, Nightingale of India, Sitar Maestro, Sehnai Maestro – Bismillah Khan, etc. Now we are stepping into an age where there is not many to step on to the mantle. I think this because of strong social pressure to study.

One more thing i think makes sense is that somewhere this movie raised false hope for parents of children not able to compete with “normal” students. I am not saying that they can’t turn themselves around, atleast hope would make them keep up the will to live but false hope in terms of finding that Magic Man. Amir Khan in TZP , Amitabh Bachchan in Black, all point to a magician but none of the movie production group went ahead to answer where to find these men for the needy.

I have friends who are investment bankers ( I like to boast of it since i missed the train - why ? is another issue) . Investment Bankers are supposed to be well rewarded rather well compensated in monetary terms for their lack of time and leisure. All in all they are supposed to be rich guys. Still I know many, all are shocked and found turning their pockets inside out when they get their Credit Card Bills.

Everyone knows what he is earning, stock markets, mutual funds, fixed deposit are re-earning on it but they are modest not to count on the re-earnings. But people forget that EMIs actually reduce their salaries. If one earns Rs. 35,000 in hand a month and buys a Santro with an EMI for Rs. 8000/- , the fools paradise lures him to belive that next month he will pocket Rs. 35,000. Actually his salary has been reduced to Rs. 27,000/- .

Next Best eating up happens with rent. Its also a huge chunck eating up into the pockets of ‘well paid’ people too.

Why i am counting out this silly items ? Actually i want to get to the figure of DISPOSABLE INCOME. Many have a perception of disposable incomes, which is largely ruled by the ball park figure of the Cash - in - hand. If i receive Rs. 35,000/- in hand and with a strong urge to grow, Rs. 12,000/- gone in IPO. So is my disposable income still Rs. 35k or 23k?

Thats the reason why people who are earning big are opting for damn expensive credit card financing, late payments etc which is a vicious cycle. These extra burgens further reduce your ‘disposable ‘income’ which you fund by your newly received GOLD CARD or PLATINUM Card, which again increases your leverage.

I think its a growing need of the generation to help them out with something like an instant balance sheet of individuals where people can actually know what exact their source of earning is , which sink is eating what pie and what will be left for the dessert.

Comments please… will address the issue @ kitnebaje.com

 I take pride in saying that most of the people around me rather say all are most intelligent people blessed with best of education and in terms of potential - every one packs a nuclear bomb in his belly. But the common trend among most is - they all are contributing to current Indian GDP. Most of them are creating “present day ” services which is no doubt adding to our GDP. But is doing this enough? What should serve our country best?

We are not here to put a “+” to the resources but a “x” sign. We should not create “present services ” but create Future service creators.  If i build a road , I just dont increase my countries GDP by the cost of building that road, but it multiplies ‘n’ number of times as the moment a road is built , there will be vendors along it, there will be contruction, there will be traffic n vehicles, there will be electricity consumption , there will be taxes so many things to think of.

 I sail in a boat where i am not praticing what i am preaching. If i am hardcore statistical stud, borrowing project from abroad and solving a financial miracle for him, what i am doing is just adding my salary to my countries growth with some addon like salary of support staff, air conditioner, computer vendor etc. not in entireity but fraction of it. This is not our country needs . Then what should be our aim?

There was a time where all the japanese in america struggled under a single aim to get hold of american technological blue prints and get it replicated in Japan. Every single IIM grad is bind by atleast one aim i.e to get his company go and recurit from IIM Campus. So We should struggle to do get our companies have operations in India, not just outsource in India. Imagine if you are the guy who brought Boeing to India to make aircraft - if you can do that you can change the landscape of India manufacturing practises. If you are one who is bring Canadian robotic arms to be manufactured in India you can imagine what huge change it can bring to our future capabilities.

 I am working in the services industry itself. I can see people trying to create services by creating their own layers between the distribution channel ( thats precisely what i am doing ) and think that they have done a lot by becoming entrepreneurs. Its my own woe. A person can buy tickets by going to the multiplex, what we will be doing to bring the ticket to him. But does it actually serve the country in the long run?

These replication of existing service can only bring about efficiencies ( like it will only reduce the travelling of a person if he doesnt get the ticket for a house full show once he reaches home - but who the hell goes back home? They will eat out - I just killed business for that eatry )

Innovating, Manufacturing and constructing is the only way you can contribute to the future GDP. You are not here to create, you should rather strieve to gather enablers so that other countrymen can create.

Again, Lots to scribble but lost my thought mid way… Bricks Batters and comments please !!

Suddenly while watching this movie “Lions of Punjab” it put me into a dilemma whether I can call myself a country – loving Indian, a patriot or I have become to educated, too liberal, too global and insensitive to my belongingness to a country. There are lot many thoughts like this which I am sure many have shared at different points of time or rather been too busy to actually realize.

The point in the movie which provoked my thought was a scene were a person of foreign origin was about to sing the national anthem. Thought the immediate reaction might be that he being a foreigner knows the Indian anthem by heart and can I actually sing it from start to end? I easily dodged the question – It’s a movie and that actor was made to memorize it by heart and take was finalized after more than dozen repetitions – see it was easy. But the actual point of surprise came when the director of the movie had to specifically mention (though under a disguise of a pun) – “Yes! He is going to sing the anthem. So please stand up “.

I am particularly ruling Mumbai out of this article as they have been educated to stand to the anthem but others are not used to it. The lethargy to stand or the inhibition or awkwardness (I will come to the exact reason later) was really evident. I even recall sometime back an advertisement floating on the television (issued on public interest) where a lame man stands up to the respect of the anthem but the masses largely ignore it or treat it at par with a “good song”.

First of all, coming to the movie hall incidence – I think the answer lies in one question. If you are sitting in a restaurant and the manager asks a question to all the people sitting in the crowd “ how many of you own a cell phone – please raise your hand” I wouldn’t have picked up my hand as I know everybody has a cell phone and there is no big deal in putting up my hand and letting people know – the crowd will look at you as “here is another attention seeker”. But had the same question dated back to 1998, where I would have been asked the question and had I got a cell phone, I would a proudly but politely raised my hand. So coming to analogy, had the same movie being played in New York, Durban or Beijing I would have jumped up my seat and would have proud to “show off – Hey I love my Country “ . I haven’t gone to answer whether this is right or wrong – its just an effort to explain a mass behavior.

Americans have master this art to “show off how much they love their country” .

Have lots of thoughts to scribble, currently I have most deadly situation to handle – Mom is standing on my head and as its lunch time – another Indian Dilema

Just leave your thoughts on this issue.

After whole day of Office - Tired , Frustrated and hungry two of us went to watch this movie. We knew that the reviewers have torn this movie apart. But for some strange reasons Gunda happened to the favourite movie of my campus. So i thought may be two of us can have a good laugh and tried our best to find the movie hilarious.

 And Guess What ? We left the hall cause we could not resist laughing and risked heart stroke each.

The pathetic song sequences, funny mindless imitations of an epic movie and supposed gr8 personalities looking so kiddish - really hilarious.

 Ram Gopal Verma ki AAG - In term I can guess ke this aag was initiated by act of insanity contagious enough to rope in great acclaimed actors like Ajay Devgan and Sushmita Sen. Why i left Amitabh Bachchan out? I think he is a great actor without any class . Money ke liye wo kuch bhi karega - and apne bete se bhi karwayega. Buy one and get the other free.

 There are some Movies where the Directors owe public apology to the crowd and should refund the money along with some compensation to each of the viewers. No prizes for guessing that this movie was right there. I thought Ek Challis ke Last Local was the last such movie. But Here Was the AAG.

The whole point of claiming it to be a remake of Sholay was nothing but a publicity stint. Nothing more than that. It also tried to copy some snippets of the movie and some odd bit of music. But this movie couldn’t even flirt with the glory of RAMPUR KE SHOLAY.

This movie could have been shot in any colony. The actors were no more than the colonywala who would have readily volunteered for the job. The Entire setup is baseless - a personal war or a business lure for land. The dialouges sounded like the best effort in 10 mins flat before the shot as the original script was submitted to the court to fight the case with the Sippys. Casual dialoges, wierd camera shots, shabby locations and awful looking people - thats all the movie was worth.

The Intimidating Gabbar was this time a weak lost old man who had absolutely no agenda in life. The time Samba was a super stud and right hand of gabbar. Tambhe was the only guy who did justice to his job but he too couldn’t handle Amitabhs absurd comments on Laden, America and Iraq.

 All in All - RGV ki AAG  - really suggestive title ! I think there is also a hint of explanation as to why he made this movie

India is a country with a considerable impact on the world economics and specially the future economy.  The whole world believes that we are leaders but for us ( here us is “we - the people ” not United States ) We are past 60 years of independence bubbling with energy, enthusiasm and youth but what we lack is the attitude.

Which attitude am I talking off ? We had so many great kings in the past like Chandragupta Morya, Ashoka, Akbar but do we hear about Indian Colonies abroad like the Spanish, French, Portuguese? Maybe now we call them”great” emperors but in contemporary times even they didn’t believe that they were actually great and capable to think of a land beyond what they can see with their own eyes. I don’t prophesies they taking colonies abroad, killing people and collecting loot but about moving out, conquering minds and creating NEWS n History. We dont hear of Indian Missionaries travelling abroad or stories of far side Hindu colony in the North America in the medieval times.

 Time and again we were raided and conquered by Goons leave aside big armies. We had our language hindi, sanskrit and regional languages too. China forced the whole world to release softwares in Chinese language. Hindi Language support is now a new “little” marketing gymic. Nothing more serious because we never gave it importance ourselves.

 Once there was a man who was hiding in his room scared of some goons outside.

I asked : Why are you Scared

Man : Because i am unarmed, i am weak .

I said : Ok Take this vitamin it will make u strong, take this gun . If gun is not enough take an AK 47. Further take tanks, warships, submarines, aircrafts and tum bhi kya yaad rakhoge take a NUCLEAR BOMB.

The man was now feel contented that he has all these weapons up his sleaves. But still he didnt move out. He just waited with all the ammunition which he thought he will use if someone tries to break in.

The recent example can be related to OVAL test match. We had the most experienced batting line up, the captain was the WALL himself , we had a lead of 300 odd , we had bowlers who did a decent job in the first innings to bowl them out of 300 again. Then also we lacked that attitude of moving out, shouting out aloud , claiming victory with such a conviction that we have half the match that very moment. The captained held back all his ammunition which he would use if we were about to loose .

The Kandahar Indian Airlines Hijack and release of criminals, not even reacting to act of outrage by mino bangladeshi army  on chopping 26 indian soldiers to pieces doesnt give us any boost. It just points out a lack of aggression, lack of roaring out in the open the worth of an Indian, lack of intent to become a leader.  

We have the money but not the class . We have the potential but we lack performance. We have the capability we lack the right attitude.

If you give any average indian a one page letter to right in the a whole working day of 8 hours, which should not take any more than one hour to draft,read, proof and print. Most of us will be found to submitting the same on five minutes past the 8 hours. We are Bad finishers. We are just not that type who will finish the letter off in 2 hours and go home packing. Rather we linger till 11th hour, then we do what we are really best at - performing under pressure.

 We are exceptional when pushed against the wall, treated as underdogs, given unlimited constraints. We are the most lousy people when given with cakewalks with open timelines.