Category: Thoughts

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

Media in an Open Environment

I was talking to a colleague in office and I realized that I need to talk about taking media to a new level. I have been procrastinating it for a while. I am penning down my thoughts on media in India and invite you people to share this with anyone you think can contribute. Please add your opinions also.

In my opinion media is supposed to perform three functions
1. Inform junta about things
2. Bring people together and share opinions
3. Shape public thought

However, currently media as I see it is not really doing any of these three. Media is being operated as a business with profit motives and as my colleague put it, actual function has become the by product. I would not question why or how this happened. I shall talk about what can be done to bring it back on track. And obviously this is where I would need you guys to help me out. Please help me structure my thought process.

I think there are few things that are really critical for having media in true spirit.

1. Objectivity – Obviously we want to take sides, churn out opinions but we should do it with objective bent. We should kill a brand, praise a person but should be objective.

2. Independence – Independence is a huge word by itself and can have many connotations. Independence of thoughts, independence from influence, independence to write. And lots more.

3. Thought leadership – Apart from just publishing happenings and reporting events, media needs to have thought leadership. They should have original opinion on things. Thoughts on how to shape the society and probably a bit of foresight to be able to foresee the future.

4. Reach and feedback – There are two things here. Media could use any platform for delivery – paper, website, twitter, plays, design anything but it should have a certain reach. Atleast in the targeted audience, it should reach everyone and it should be contextual and relevant enough for them to consider it signal, rather than noise. And feedbcak is more critical than everything else. Media needs to know what is happening, how are people reacting to things, what is the audience thinking, is India covering the right things, is the media being a thought leader in the first place?

Now having established things that are critical for media in my opinion, I will talk about how can Internet help us in achieving the goal.

1. Collaboration – This word has been misused more than any other word on the Internet. When it comes to media, collaboration could take shape of co-authoring stories, thinking out loud, accepting defeats and promoting what is better, so on and so forth. Mutiny is a very good example but again we tend to incline towards popular things rather than pertinent things.

2. Reach and Feedback – With Internet as delivery model, both reach and feedback can be much simpler. With Internet, we can real time feedback from people and improvise at the same time. The time gap between conversations is reducing and making us faster.

3. Democratic – Since people on Internet are hidden behind a cloak, they can come forward and talk about things that they want to talk above without any fears of retribution. Although this silver cloak is a bane as well, it gives regular junta lots of power too.

There have to be some issues with the Internet. I foresee following issues with the use of Internet. This is not a problem because of Internet but because it is open.

1. Accountability – Everyone on Internet is hidden behind a silver cloak. If someone wants to misuse media, Internet help him. No one is owner of the content and no one is questionable.

2. Seriousness – Most people still consider Internet as “oh the internet” and think it as a collection of amateurs blogging away to glory. There are so many good authors that I cant even create a list.

3. Numbers – There arent just enough people on Internet in India. And most of people on the Internet don’t really care about reading things. I am not sure how many would read this post completely, leave apart shaping opinions and contributing. If you do read , please say “SECRET REVEALED” in the comments, I will be happy to get 10 comments.

In the end, I dont know if this kind of an initiative could ever gain momentum in India or anywhere else or if this can ever replace traditional businesses disguised as media. I am just trying to present a perspective on things.

Please understand that everything I have said could be incorrect. They are just my opinions and want you guys to help me come up with something concrete.

Thanks for a patient hearing.

P.S.: I started this as a personal email to Sanjukta and another good friend (Swagat) but I thought I could share this with a larger audience too.

Originally posted @ saurabhgarg.com

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?

Why?

I wrote this piece some time ago. Its about time I posted it.

In my opinion everything you do must have a “Why” answered before its done.

Why “The Infinite Monkeys”?

Because there are million things on your mind at any given point in time and there is no way that you an keep track of them on paper notebooks. Maximum you can scribble them. Chances are that you would misplace the notes and then they would be lost forever.

Logical question is that isn’t blogging tougher than scribbling .. ? Answer would be .. yes it is but it gives me an easy retrieval system. Better than text files and notebooks. Data is all about retrieval. Without retrieval, its plain old information. And information by itself has no real value.

TIM is an attempt to collect online, all thoughts and things that can be helpful. It could be a news clipping, an article, a link, an interview, a piece of thought, a doodle. Anything.

Why online?

Its easier to read later. Recollect thoughts.

Why blog?

Ideally I would want a system where I can post my current moods, locations etc. This would make it very easy to recall at a later date. Since I don’t have a system like that, anything that is close enough serves the purpose. And hence Blogger. I can post things with an email address and can write and edit at will. I can also put categories to the posts and all thoughts would be in context. I can make tag clouds. I can hunt for similar posts and get feedback and opinion from people.

Munna Bhai @ Jaadu Ki Jhappi

Munna Bhai gave yet another medium to express gratitude – Jaadu Ki Jhappi. Suddenly hugging someone just like that was cool.

This Jaadu Ki Jhappi was meant to express gratitude, to help someone raise their spirits, give someone respect, shower affection and what not.

One simple gesture was transformed into a nationwide infatuation.

Obviously the second Munna Bhai gave something much much bigger. Gandhigiri. Suddenly Gandhigiri was cool and was admired.

1v1: Popular vs Pertinent

Popular vs Pertinent

One can either have popular sentiments or pertinent sentiments.

This popular vs pertinent debate applies to a lot of things. You could write about popular things or pertinent things. You can broadcast popular news or pertinent news. You can talk to popular people or pertinent people.

Case in point… Indian media. Indian cricket team won over Australia and every single space was used to talk about he cricket match. Many more important things were left out.

What are you? Pertinent? Popular?

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?

Kishore Biyani – Future Group – India Tomorrow

Kishore Biyani is a model businessman at least for me. He is sowing seeds into a lot of interesting businesses and when the time comes, he would reap rich rewards. He is displaying the true spirits of entrepreneurship. In the process of building his companies, he is helping his customers realize his dreams. His way of creating a company is dreaming big, getting the right people on the board and backing all efforts with solid research and relying on intuition and insight.

Lessons to be learnt? Get the right people on the team, let them take risks, invest in the future and try to empower your customers.

Today in Economics Times article, he made clear his thoughts when he said,

…we want to create a strong sectoral play to capture the transition from a savings-led economy to a consumption-led economy.

Now this small piece of comment has a lot to say about Mr. Biyani and his thought process. He has identified, at the right time, that Indians are changing the way they live. There was a time when they were saving more than 50% of their earnings and living on basis necessities. Now slowly and gradually they are living lavishly and often spending the entire monthly earnings before a month is over. They are now more confident about opportunities and their economic well being.

I can easily see Future Group leading the new India.

And by the way, look out for BCCL (NO, not the cricket board but the Times of India group) and TV18 group also in times to come.

Questioning Unity in Diversity

Go to South India and talk about North Indians, interested things would be said and heard. For North Indians, anyone from south of Mumbai is a Madrasi. They dont know about Mals, Telugus, Tamils or Kannadigas, leave apart Aiyers, Aiyengars and others. All they know is one single word. Madrasi. The entire nation looks at East Indians as chinks. They are as Indians as anyone we can be. They are still laughed at, mocked at in public places. Now in Maharashtra, Mr. Raj Thackery is proclaiming that North Indians should be driven out of Maharashtra. There have even been incidences of violence. One person actually lost his life. Greater than any economic loss.

I think we need to remind all these people that an Indian citizen has been granted a few fundamental rights by our constitution. These fundamental rights are very critical pillars of our democracy. Pillars of the Republic of India.

Why is this happening? Is it good? I am keeping this post open for more perspectives from visitors. Please send in your comments.