Why we are working harder these days?

Often our Dad and Mom compares our work timing with theirs. Theirs was good. They enjoyed a lot more than what we do. Everybody was home by 6 and 6 to 10 was no work, only gup shup, TV etc … TV was black and white, Car was a retirement dream, own house was the retirement scheme, shopping was a quarterly affair, eating out was very rare and so on …

I can take an example from my traveling. There is a bus stop where we can good trees, shadow and protection from rain. We can stand there and take the next shuttle that comes in. If I go at 12 noon, I stand there and get a shuttle easily, I can pick one of my choice but in the morning, there are less shuttles and more people. So people walk 100 meters in scorching sun or rain as they want to reach office faster, look at them some more people cover 200 meters to get a car faster than these 100 meters and this race continues, we keep walking and walking. In case if I still stand under the tree, I am sure that I will not get anything for next 2 hours, so I am forced to join the walking race. Where do I draw the line? Wherever I draw it, I see others coming and drawing the next line? Is there an end to this? No, unless you say so.

What are alternatives:
– You change your routine, you adjust and start early
– You sacrifice the saving, hire a regular cab
– You find a job near by which may pay you less but you can avoid this race
– Or learn the art of getting the shuttle before others in some way or the other
– Or enjoy the race, keep running to be the first 🙂
– and so on ….

This competition is there to stay, the work is going to increase. I think we will have to define it some day or the other. Very good read by Gautam Ghosh,

MBA hiring is waste of money

There are various discussions about MBA. Many hate MBAs like anything. 2 days back I got a call from Silicon Valley, where an Indian venture got funded and wanted to do some web marketing. During the conversation I said, we have MBAs in our team and the guy just shifted the conversation from “Why Choose TechShu as a web marketing partner” to “How MBAs are useless”. He said, “Man! I don’t give any s*** to MBAs” and the whole conversation went to a different direction. I had to pull it back to web marketing. This is common discussion point. On the other hand, there are people who like to work with MBA teams. Recently, during one of our consulting session with a Large SEO company, I suggested them to hire some MBAs, they were hesitant but later tried with 3 and in few weeks they were going for more MBAs.

Now are MBAs good or not? My take on it is, depends on whom you are hiring and for what you are hiring. MBA degree alone is neither good or bad, it is about people. Any HR is a raw material and one need to see the ROI out of it. Some of them can make them profitable and some can’t. The most offensive video about MBA

If you remember my old post “mba waste of money” (which does bring me some good visitors every month as it ranks for MBA waste of money and surprisingly many are searching for this keyword). Let’s see a video before going further:

Confidence: What I like about MBA culture from AIMK is “Nothing is impossible wala confidence!”. They will like to make things happen in any time. Be it a presentation or a program, they will not complain that “only 5 mins for it”, they will jump in and make it. I remember the days when we had to finish few of the programs and then few presentations along with other parties. We made the presentations in less than 1 hour and were on stage. This confidence always helped me. I have made presentations during my travel to client and was never low in confidence. This confidence matters a lot in every field. But was it about MBA, no, not at all. Though a good MBA institute will give you enough challenges that you will feel confidence in almost everything. Some of our papers by Arnad Laha Sir, http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/faculty/profile.php?id=224were 100% open book, open discussion, open internet and had to answer 1 question out of 10 to get 100% marks :)Recently when I was interacting with 2 interns from IIMs and 2 interns from 2 other MBA interns from different Schools, I could see the difference. After every class the other MBA interns will come and complain with low confidence whereas IIM guys made an amazing (very useful) Internship study.

I must also accept that sometimes they fail to show this confidence

 

Less prepared for failures:

As the above video was explaining us about failures. Fresh MBAs have always seen the big dreams but when reality hits them, some of them do lose their confidence but many do jump back. But they have big things to lose when compared to others. A person coming out of a normal college can risk a Rs 20k job per month but when a top insti MBA has to risk Rs 100k job per month, it hits them bad.

I was talking to a fresh MBA passout who is doing a different job (which is considered low grade job) but the industry is so unorganized that a person who organizes it can mint money. but then this guy is teased few times more than others for being a loser. If he can come out of it, better things for company and him.

“I know things, I have learned it”, marketing is P for … P for …. P for …
Copying something from FB “gujarati friend told me MBA means Mane (I) Badhu (everything) Aaavde (know) !! seen people with less ideas and more actions in their life get more successful!”
Learning is good but remember those are just alphabets the company is going to form some new sentences, so be open to learn more. Teachers are gonna be different here.
Talented:
Most of them are extremely talented. I have worked with many of them from our college, they are so wonderful, I will say the around 30% of them are amazingly good (I don’t know their grades, certainly they are not always the top 30% as per grades)
Sometimes the theoretical talent is different from practical talent:

But when these talented people enters the world where things are less theoretical, they find it difficult. What I like about AIMK was that most of them were from Army culture who have visited many cultures and knows why people are different from others. Most importantly why they are different from you :).

MBAs are Good at analysis. From SWOT analysis to BCG matrix to maslow’s hierarchy of needs, they know almost all analysis methods. It is good. It does allow you to keep things under control and make logical decisions. But business is sometimes illogical too.
Just copying something from Facebook again where the discussion is about a Jargon “‘give peanuts and u will get monkeys’…sure…Ram got across to Lanka thanks to only monkeys. If he had hired MBA’s, they would still be presenting him a 60 slide plan in a PPT…and charging him for it in advance… “
When Ram asked his MBA manager -what are my chances of getng sita back
Hey Ram, its only 20% or less
…-Why
Because u don’t have enuf resources, the market cap and valuation of Ravan is tooo high, so don’t even think abt it
-What if we hire monkeys?
Don’t even think abt it as you don’t have budgets!
And Ram never got sita back thanks to his mba manager

(Sometimes it is so true, this happens when your analysis becomes paralysis 🙂 )
MBA gets you opportunity: May be too early sometimes: Sometimes people are not prepared for some of the realities.
Perfection is defined in MBA, everything taught there is perfect Perfections needs to be redefined with speed and reality.
MBA gives you tool and its manual, you have more tools Real experience teaches you on what tools can be used
MBA gives you many more options and tools Don’t forget the paradoxes of choices and the factors associated with it
MBA gives you wider examples, wider views and generalized methods.

Remember how Google was created, remember the Microsoft policy & the Apple disasters … etc

Sometimes it is important to know in and out of business at minute level: I remember working with a top Guy from one of the top 3 institutes of the world. He has designed the interface for one of the Linux flavour. He is great guy, great talent. He came in and without even studying the business he started making changes, some of it were good but I knew it is not going in right direction as he missed the strength of our business. In 2 months time we let him go.
MBA sometimes makes you follow things, which are good as you are safe In current world the biggest risk is to be safe
Most of the MBAs from good schools have good communication skills and varied knowledge, so they can be trained for better sales representation. Sorry if you have hired them to become Evangelists for your product. Converting sales team to Sales team to Evangelists is company’s job.
Last point: MBA is about knowledge and tools Real world is about wisdom and execution.
MBAs charge more as they understand business better. I liked this sentence from the conversation “Ram Got Sita, what did Monkey got?” … it is important to share good % of revenue with the team. The other aspect is that sharing is good but what if Ram does not get Sita but still he had to pay money in advance, may be sometimes that is too heavy for startups or SMEs, even for clients. I agree with the fact that if you don’t demand the money you don’t get it easily. You be good (which MBAs have proved so far by being in the top lists), charge good and continuing doing better to charge even more. Nothing wrong in it. A person should be paid really high if the person is creating high value for the company.

Last point

MBA is about knowledge, efficiency and tools, Real world is about wisdom, effectiveness and execution. Now its your take, does more knowledge, efficiency and tools make you wiser, more effective and profitable? We have recruited many MBAs as we want them to be the pillars of the company in long run. They have the tools and the knowledge, its our time to help them use it wisely and effectively.


Chulbul Pandey Vs Makhi Pandey – Happy forgiveness Day!

I am getting few messages on forgiveness day! Happy forgiveness day to everyone! Forgive others not because they will gain anything but for yourself as you will gain a lot in long run.

It is difficult to teach about forgiveness in corporate life. Somebody cheated me, why should I forgive him? That guy, he did that purposefully, why I should I forgive him? Remember, he shouted at me, it was so humiliating, I will never forgive him. All of it is true, there is no true visible benefits of forgiveness. I like the sentence which says

Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again.

http://bible.cc/ecclesiastes/11-1.htm, I think this is one of the greatest messages from my religion to me. The long term benefits of forgiveness. Even when you and I can’t see the short terms benefits, there are many long term benefits.

Ephesians 4:26 (NKJV) says “Be angry but do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath,

This is so powerful message. When we see wrong, we do go angry and it is very nature of US and IT is OK TO BE A NORMAL PERSON. The catch here is not to carry the anger for more than a day, forgive and move on. Sometimes forgiving is like putting water on a spark, the spark which if neglected can burn your house. In my personal life, it has helped me a lot:

  • Forgiving helped me discover better part of others.
  • Forgiving helped me focus on better things than wasting my time and life on something that is bad for both the parties.
  • Forgiving helped me feel good esp when you see others are happy because of it.
  • Forgiving helped me make my world better. Generally your world is much smaller than you think. It consists of people whom you meet almost every day or now n then. If we keep hating some of these people then we are making our world a little bad to life in.
  • It helps me in innovation 🙂 as I can focus on things I love than things I hate, a big thing for me.

Enjoy dabang (Chulbul Pandey Vs Makhi Pandey, the Dabang fans know it :))

So go ahead, forgive, move on in life.
“bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” as said in http://bible.cc/luke/6-28.htm.

Happy Forgiveness day!

Also read:
1) http://www.seoforclients.com/hr/never-between-you-them/
2) http://www.seoforclients.com/hr/hindu-muslim-christian-terrors/