Decision Making – Page 2

Future of Blogging figured out !

My last few posts have been about future of War of Words and Thoughts. On way to office, I think I have figured out a way.

Here is a simple solution.

War of Words will be my personal blog where I talk about things that are personal to me. Things like I hate watching movies, I love watching cartoons, I want to meet Steve Jobs etc. These would be the things that no one else is interested in. These things matter to me and hence I blog kinds.

Thoughts would talk about things that I think passionately about and where I believe I can contribute. I would talk about technology, marketing, media, India, entrepreneurship, people, ideas and a whole lot of things that I would think and compile. Basically things on Thoughts would be useful for everyone. It is meant to be read by people. People would be able to make some sense of these posts and thus will contribute to their learning. This will also give me a good platform to showoff my prowess of these matters (which is obviously debatable). In one line, as management professionals would put it, will add value to them.

Obviously, if I get another brilliant idea, might throw this one out in the dustbin and move on.

Surprisingly, other people also seem to have the same issue (d_grailed for example). Financial community might interpret this as slowing own of Internet Addiction and might downgrade their ratings of technology stocks 😀

Future of War of Words

Few Facts First

1. No one reads your personal blog if your last name is not Hilton or Spears.

2. Even though people dont read your personal blog, it still hangs in the air (stays on the Internet) for everyone to see and read.

3. It still reveals a lot of things about you. Lot of them desirable (that you think, that you are honest, that you like straight-forward, that you love adventure sports) and lot of them undesirable (that you are old, that you are a MBA, that you are getting balder with each passing day, that you are still single and that you dont want to get married) etc.

As I have said earlier that I am thinking what to do with this blog (here and here), I will try to pen down the arguments against and for the decision.

Reasons against shutting down

1. 4 years of effort (first post ever here)

2. Emotional attachment (even though no one else reads this, I write because I want to write and I like venting out whatever I think is relevant to me).

3. Very strong identity (Google for Saurabh Garg and this is amongst the first results).

Reasons for shutting down

1. 4 years of effort – with every passing day this 4 years is growing and would be more difficult to shut tomorrow.

2. Very strong identity – I started this when I was a student. Today I am looking at creating businesses. Every new contact I make in the real world would search for me on the Internet. And they see this blog – which is a good thing but does not talk about my work and other professional interest areas. One way to go about this is to brand this as a personal blog and move on (this is a good idea – I will do this right away).

So basically there is only one strong reason for me even thinking about shutting this blog. Point to ponder is that is it that big that I shut this down (wow three “that”s in six words – a new world record?). Will keep on adding points and thoughts to this. And come to think about it, this could be an interesting personal marketing and branding problem.

How about selling this on ebay? May be I get few interesting bids and money can motivate me to finally end this? Any offers from any generous people around?

More Rational thoughts on the reservation policy in India

The last piece I wrote was an emotional outburst. This is more rational argument on reservations. I shall try to figure out the impact of reservations, thoughts on what could have been done and finally is there any hope?

Ok why reservations in the first place?
Reservation was the card played by the VP Singh govt. when they decreed for the first time that India needs reservations to help the lower castes. Some people credit their win at the centre to this card only. Obviously its a thing of past and no one can say what really happened. After-all history is written by people who win the battles.

I am not saying that reservations is a card that is played when you want to elections. You actually want to help the backward classes. You are motivated by general upliftment of the country.

Is it really going to help?
I have my doubts. These doubts are based on following observations.

I don’t have numbers but I am told that at engineering colleges of repute (not the ones that are opened in small homes on outskirts of Bangalore), the candidates admitted from reserved classes don’t pass at all. Most of them flunk in first and second year and stop studying thereon.

Then a lot of seats for reserved categories are filled with people getting less than 10% marks. End of the day education is about quality of students and maturity of interactions between them. If there are 53% people from general categories and average scores of 80, and 47% of people with average scores of 20, what kind of discussions are we talking about?

There seats remain empty because there aren’t enough applications in the first place to grant admission to people belonging to reserved categories. If an institute can intake 100 students and it has to start a course with 80 students only because we could not find enough people to take reserved seats, aren’t we depriving other students of an opportunity to study?

Obviously I don’t have numbers to prove or reject these claims. Can someone help me with this?

To end this chapter (if I may say), honestly I don’t think that reserving more seats is going to help. They should rather try to find out why do people from these classes perform this bad in the first place. Is there a flaw in the primary education system? Is it because they assume that education for them is going to be easy and hence no need to put in effort?

What will be the impact and what could be possible outcomes?
Impacts would be many-fold. For the students that avail this opportunity, students that are now deprived and the country itself.

Reservations means that only the best from the education system get into quality higher institutions. What happens to people who were average? They would have to settle for below average education. And because of this, they would miss the opportunity that could have transformed them from average to exceptional.

This also means that general quality of education will come down. Not because people from reserved categories cant perform or they lack intelligence. But because they are not equipped to face higher education. Mind you a person can be intelligent and ill-equipped at the same time.

Brain-drain might be back. And with a bang. I can already foresee a lot of talented budding doctors, engineers leaving the country in search of a place where their talent is respected. Not their castes.

All the hoopla about FDI and India’s growth story might be in for a rude shock. If I was Microsoft or Google or Suzuki for that matter, I would not want to set shop in India because I know that finding good people would be tough and costly. It would also mean that business environment is unconducive. And once the growth story stops, then its a debate for another day if the country would grow or not.

Is there a way to help backward classes?
Getting a reservation done at under-graduate level does not guarantee that the life standard would improve. This move might create a large work force that is unemployable. And this would bring in more frustration. You are educated and cant find a job. From personal experience, I know for a fact that there is no feeling worse than that.

So what can we do to change things for people who have been oppressed? To start with I think we need to change the way they live. A child learns as much from his parents as from his surroundings. How about taking a cue from Madarsas and Gurukuls and replicate this in mainstream? These are the places where gurus preach and teach kids about virtues of life. Make them aware of the world around them. If we cant provide quality education to these kids at formative stages of their lives, how about making the system unconventional.

I used to work with an NGO called Pratham and they used this concept really beautifully. They would take a community and teach all the underprivileged children there. Mind you – underprivileged, not the reserved category. And they did it very well. That model runs on a self-sustaining model and is awesome. Can share more details if someone is interested in knowing more about it.

What can be done to mark protest against this move?

How about getting talking to all bloggers to write about it? At least the ones with reach like Mutiny, DesiCritics etc.?

Can this be a topic for blogathon? Anyone from their team listening/reading?

Help YFE and other forums with online propaganda and marketing.

Make an online task force and spam news websites with comments, thoughts and opinions. And make these quality comments so that they have to raise it on their prime-times. Knowing Indian media, they would anyways do anything to hike their TRPs.

I am strongly against any kind of mass agitations that stops the normal functioning of the country. I voiced my opinions on the medico strikes, batti bandhs etc. I think I was wrong when I took that stand and I need to change. Now I am neutral to it. Is there a strong case of a mass agitation?

I am simply out of ideas. Can someone please put forth more thoughts so that we can actually do something constructive rather than just debating? Another peril of Indian education system is that we start debates and never finish things. Lets come forward with solutions rather than talking about things.

To end this on a light note, I was thinking about way forward for people who advocate reservation

Just education is no point. We need to reserve places on the buses also. How about roads? Special clubs for reserved categories. Does someone remember ‘Dogs and Indians not allowed’ posters? How about ‘dogs and unreserved not allowed’ posters? Come to think of it, this could be an awesome article.

Now that we have reservations for SC, ST, OBC, how about talking about reservations on the basis of religion? region? height of a person. Imagine – we only accept applications from people who are 5 feet 7 inches and weight 150 KGs.

How about creating small states for every simgle category that you can identify and then ruling over them? Who wants 29 states. Lets split India into 19043 states all with homogeneous people. There could be a state for people who are bald and have Sharma as their surnames. Oops what about ladies then? Will they marry inter-caste, inter-state? Will these be approved?

Please understand that views submitted are personal only and might be flawed. Please help me see the correct picture.

Crossposted

The Art of Looking Sideways

The Art of Looking Sideways is an awesome book by Alan Fletcher. I just bought a copy.

I had blogged about it earlier also on SaurabhGarg.com (on 13th Jan 2008).

This book should help me with a lot of inspiration about design, advertising, creativity, decision making and thinking. Looking forward to reading it.

And now this book becomes the second most expensive book that I have purchased after Still Reading SRK.

Other links
A vid on Youtube where Alan Fletcher talks about it.

1v1: Excellence vs Mediocrity

Third in series after Popular vs Pertinent, Expert vs Employee.

Excellence vs Mediocrity

You can either pursue excellence or remain a mediocre.

A mediocre by definition is someone engaging in an act where objective is to finish the task rather than to complete it with best of abilities. Often, shortcuts are used and outcomes are ordinary. Borrowed wisdom is put to work and original thought process takes a back seat.

Excellence is where the objective is to compete with oneself. Idea is to create something out of the world even though the objective is well defined. Excellence could be in way you work, in way you opine of things or even the way you execute. People who pursue excellence sleep easy and tight.

Mediocrity vs Excellence in one line: The pursuit of excellence creates original thoughts that a mediocre person would put to use.

Both these are more about an attitude rather than expertise or availability of resources. And once you start the pursuit of excellence, its very easy to fall in the trap and move back to mediocrity. By definition, most of the human population falls in the mediocre category and funny thing is that they dont even realize it.

You can pursue only one at a time. You could be mediocre or you could be excellent. What are you?

Originally posted at Thoughts @ Work

1v1: Expert vs Employee

This is second in the 1v1 series after Popular vs Pertinent

I was talking to Monica when I remembered something I had thought of about 5 months ago. Finally posting it.

Expert vs Employee.

You can be seen and known as either an expert or employee.

An employee is a “just another person”. He is competent and does his job well but that is all to him. There is no such thing as new ideas, innovation, bright sparks coming out of him. He is one amongst the crowd. No one expects anything from him.

Expert on the other hand is someone who is everything an employee is and then there is lot more to him. He is expected to change the way world moves, come up with brilliant yet simple ideas and should be as close to indispensable as someone can be. Expert belongs to the rare breed.

Expert vs Employee in one line: You would not want to meet an employee but would pay to see an expert.

And interesting thing is that the distinction between an expert and and employee is often an outcome of the way a person himself thinks and approaches things. Until you start projecting yourself as an expert, no one would consider you an expert.

What are you? Expert? Employee?

How Zero marketing can revive Indian hockey?

Prof. Ray Titus talked about reviving Hockey on his blog here. I am copy-pasting it here …

You don’t need a marketing genius to plot how hockey can come up to cricket’s stature in India. For that matter, pin no credit to anyone in the cricket administration team (read BCCI) for cricket’s supremacy as a sport in India.

The only reason why cricket is what it is, despite being one of the most boring of sports, is ’cause that’s one game at which we are ‘world-beaters’, never mind the ‘world’ being just a few countries.

Want a resurgence in hockey? Get India to win!

Sure, that’s a tall order considering yesterday’s Olympic qualifier debacle. But its not impossible. Can the guys who manage the sport. Get in foreign coaches. Revamp the admin. team. Build astro-turfs for players to play and practice on. Bring in something akin to Corporate governance.

Again, an initial investment is needed. Well, its worth it, if that can propel India to become world beaters. If that happens, watch the moolah roll in. No marketing whiz-kids needed.

I dont really agree with him. I left a comment there. Reproducing it here …

Hi Prof. Titus,

I am mostly a silent reader of your blog and agree to most of the things that you say. However today I disagree with you.

I dont think getting more facilities and making the game professional will help the status of Hockey in India.

I think there are two huge variables in making something a mass phenomenon.

1. The network effect coupled with a feedback loop: Most people (including media) talk about the game because most people want to hear about it. And more people want to hear about it as everyone else around them is talking about it. No one wants to be left behind. Over a period of time, this network effect gets a positive feedback loop and suddenly you have a mass hysteria for something. In our case, cricket.

2. Experience: Most of the current fans of Cricket have grown up playing the game in the gullys, homes, schools etc. Most of the people have fond memories of the game and somewhere or the other they relate to the game and hence the following.

Am sure there are other things also. Please share.

Regards,
SG

P.S.: Posting this on my blog as well.

Any thoughts?