2rams's posterous

The sleeping paper shoves it up against the glamour boy - Hindu Vs TOI

Being a market leader also means educating your audience...

Call it the changing times the sleeping paper shoves it up against the glamour boy of Indian Newspaper which is sure to give sleepless nights to people at Times. In a brilliantly conceived commercial the paper thrashes the brand image that TOI has built over years to a trash can. By calling the emperor naked out and loud, The Hindu has made its intentions loud and clear. 

While there are mixed views as to if it was right on the part of Hindu to toy with TOI, as it is a sense of acknowledgement by the market leader about a competitor, I believe it is a sensible move by The Hindu.

Acknowledging competition means you are aware of the market reality and you are not willing to stand on the old laurels. Unlike the Indian cricket team which goes from being numero uno to zero over a couple of series, the problem with business competition is that they chew up your position bit by bit that you dont even know you are falling. You dont fall with a thud to realize that you have been hurt hard but you are nibbled inch by inch that you dont even realize when you are flat on the ground. A brilliant example of this is NOKIA, the phone that connected everyone is now disoriented and fighting hard to revive itself.

It was good on the part of The Hindu to realize that it was losing the race on acquiring its future readers, the young and old teens who were being hooked up to TOI meaning its circulation was going to be hurt if not now over the next couple of years forcing it to come out with a response that is simply brilliant.

Faced with such a dilema The Hindu had two options either it has to change itself or it has to stir and wake up its target audience. I am glad it went with ahead with the second approach and seems to have been reasonably succesful in its effort, but these are too early days to predict. It would be interesting to see what TOI comes back with.

Being a market leader also means educating your audience and moving them along with you or moving along with them and more importantly not get disconnected from them. With this commercial Hindu has made it clear that it is in touch with its audience but it will not be swayed for market forces. The next challenge will be to maintain its standards and still be appealing to the next generation, i think that is what is going to be a major challenge.

Watch below the commercials of Times having a dig at The Hindu and how The Hindu responds.

Sadly this is were The New Indian Express lost when it was at its peak. To a generation it was "The Newspaper" but it failed to touch a cord with the next generation of newspaper readers and  today has become just another news paper. As the war turf opens up if either The Hindu or The Times of Indian were to face serious competition it has to come from "The New Indian Express" a paper that has more soulful and memorable stories than The Hindu and Times of India put together. But the question is will it be able to create new epic stories that leave a legacy?

Disclaimer: I used to work as Product Manager with The New Indian Express.

How to be successful in your Job/Life...

I am begining to love these last minute assignments. I had to go to Tiruchengode to interact with the first year students of KSR college. I was not sure of what to talk to them, well i didnt even know if I will reach there on time.

I reached Koyambedu bus terminals at 10.00 p.m and luckily got a bus to erode, it was the PNK SRT travels. It was a sleeper coach and I had the entire double sleeper for me as no one was next to me, it was like travelling in a double cot bed on the roads :-)

When the driver gives a pleasant smile and takes extra effort to make the passengers comfortable, they can make a lot of difference to the pleasantness of a journey.

The thing about last minute assignments is that they force you to keep looking out for interesting pieces of information. That is when i met my fellow traveller Pradeep whose career journey, I found fascinating. I learnt a lot from him and i am sharing those here.

While these may sound like regular management mantras, when you combine them with real life experience, you understand how powerful they are.
  1. Make a start
  2. Work smart
  3. Keep looking for opportunities
  4. Open up
  5. Win your boss
  6. Keep learning
  7. Have Honesty and belief in your abilities
  8. Read books
  9. Network with people
  10. Expand your knowledge
  11. Constantly evaluate yourself and set goals
  12. Love your job
  13. Develop people management skills
  14. Help people as much as possible
  15. Face Challenges
  16. Be Different
  17. Be clear as to what you want
  18. Get out of your comfort zone
  19. Be a leader, enable people to achieve their potential
  20. Life is not what happens to you, It is what you make it to be.

It makes a more powerful story when you come to know that Pradeep who is currently a GM at a textiles company in Tirupur and has earlier worked with Walmart heading their QA had a formal education only till 9th standard.

Tie Chennai 2011 - Learnings from Mr. Suresh Krishna , Chairman & MD, Sundram Fasteners Ltd.

Choose to serve customers who will be unforgiving, they will help you to build great products and services.

Delegate with vengance, ppl will make mistakes and that is what helps them to discover themselves.

No strikes in TVS history. The secret, message should go directly from top to bottom without filtering

Communicate sincerely and directly to all employees with true facts, it helps to build trust.

Karma of entreprenur is to help people to realize their potential, elevate people and make them

realize much more is possible.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. - Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says


This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

 

Sourced From: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

P.S: This is such an inspiring speech... Just wanted to make sure I can easily access it whenever I need some inspiration. 

Few more quotes...

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” -- Steve Jobs

The quit India moment...

We are all part of system irrespective of whether we like it or not. But when the system becomes corrupt and we learn to accept it to be a part of us without any resentment it signals dangerous path the society is treading into. The indifference we are showing is really a matter of concern.

As humans we are gullible to yield in to temptation. When a Rs.50 bribe may seem to be a better way off than a Rs.500 fine or paying a Rs.1000 note is cheaper than setting up a fire fighting system, or a few lakhs and crore of bribe can cut down competition and help us win a contract, we are tempted to make or save that extra quick buck. We are not worried about the consequences this action brings on the society we live in. 

If one has to get a government job after paying of lakhs as bribe from where will they make the money they paid and what happens to the deserving candidate who should have got their in the first place? If one has to get a contract to build roads after paying couple of lakhs or crores as bribe, what kind of roads will be built for us, it is there for us to be seen.

How many of us even believe it is possible to get a job done in the public department or win a government contract without paying bribe. The word politics has been associated with rogue elements and more than 30% of our elected representatives have been charge sheeted for criminal activities. Power has led to corruption and corrupt have power, this viscious cycle needs to be breaken. Today honesty in public life is a paradox. Over a period of time we have entered into a conclusion that corruption cant be do away with but we are also welcoming it to be a part of the system.

The Janlokapl movement by Anna Hazzare is a significant one as it shook the conscience of few people even if it lasted for less than a fortnight. It sent shivers into the leaders who had taken the people who elect them for granted. It has signalled a warning bell to the politicans about the dangers of the path they are treading on. It also have given hope to  honest politicians that they do stand a chance to be heard.

Few wise men have questioned the wisdom of common man to challenge the system of constitution but the bigger question they need to ask is why are people fed up with the current system. Why has this monster been allowed to grow unchecked? Let us not have a mirage that our constitution set up is the perfect.

Our democracy and constitution is just sixty years old, it is nothing compared to the legacy of our civilization. Democracy is new to us, there is lot of scope for improvement in the way we conduct it. The Janlokpal movement is just a way to breath that fresh thought into the system to ensure the purpose of democracy is put back in track. 

Things will not change overnight, it needs sustained efforts to ensure those dreams are realized. Sometime in future looking back this might the quit india movement or the sepoy mutiny that sowed seeds for corruption free India.

 

Anna Hazzare... Hit them where it hurts hard...

Dear Anna Hazzare...

We had been looking for able leaders for decades now and everytime people in whom we trusted have not failed to betray us. This country has a leadership crisis. How many people do you think will come in if Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh or Advani were to call for a fast tomorrow. 

There are very few men to whose voice the nation has rised as one. It will be a shame if they dont become leaders. It will be more shameful if these men were to loose to some third rated politicians because today all these bastards have joined together as they understood the perils of having a strong civil society. It is time to hit them where it hurts hard... it is time to speak in a language only which they will understand... it is time for politics.

You can't win them as long as you are apolitical. There is only one way now to get this bill passed... All you need to do is to announce India Against Corruption will be launching a political party and will support anyone who supports Janlokpal. You will than see a very strong Janlokpal passed in minutes...

For the first time politicans who have been behaving as if they are not accountable to anyone have shivered seeing this uprising. But they take peace from the fact that we dont have a choice but to choose from only a list of thieves. They have an unsigned pact wherein each of them will take turns to loot for five years and we have been given the mandate to elect who will loot us for next five years.

If you dream of a strong Lokpal to build a strong India than you dreams will remain dreams. Look at the people who are waiting in the wings to rule this country. Do you belive these are the jokers who have the leadership capabilities to take our nation forward. 

For the first time the country has seen people who have been saying "nothing can be done here" hit upon the street wanting to do something they rightly deserve. There has been something that you have been able to arouse in the common man who otherwise wass very much happy to live the 9 to 7 life. 

We deserve better leaders and I dont see anyone in the nearest horizon. Maybe the time has come to groom a new set of leaders to take this country forward. It is time to give people more choice as to who needs to rule this country. In thousands they came with a dream and now dont let them experience the pain of someone snatching their dreams away. I have been praying for long that this should not become a political movement but remain a strong civil society, but now I fear the dangers of, if it does not. Who will be the leader of these ignited minds who have taken upon the street today?

Men who live on Air, Water and Vandhe Mataram...

As Anna Hazare's health was declared worrying by doctors my immediate concern were with the people who were fasting at LB road Adyar, Chennai for the past 8 days. I immediately went there, it was well past 9 pm but each of the volunteers were going through their job and people were still trickling in to have a glimpse of this movement that has caught the imagination of the world. Couple of girls who would have never picked brooms in their lifetime to clean even their houses were sweeping the entire premises and preparing the venue for the battle next day. These girls holding brooms are some of the top brains in the country working with various MNC's and college studeents who have taken it upon themselves to sweep the epidemic of corruption.

I went in there and stood around observing. Seeing me standing alone couple of volunteers sitting next to me invited me to join them and one of them even went and got a chair for me. They were energetic bunch of guys and we were happily bantering about various things. It was only after half an hour or so I realized that few of these people were not just volunteers but men who had been fasting for the past 8 days along with Anna Hazare. Such was their energy level that it was tough to believe they have been living on just water for close to 200 hours. My jaws just dropped... 

I could not resist myself anymore, I asked them how is it that they are so energetic even after having been on fast for so loong... That is when they said something beautiful "We derive energy from you people, we derive energy whenever we see so many people coming here supporting this fight against corruption, we derive energy from the volunteers here who have been taking care of us very well, we derive energy with each and every chant of Vandhe Mataram..." 

These people who came in as individuals totally unknown but today have become a family, they look after each other and take care of one another and derive strength from everyone around them. Such is the bonding that they have become one large family and also attract you to become a part of it. They were full of praise to the volunteers who ensure that every 30 minutes they are given water to drink and every two hours a medical checkup is done on them. A Sidha doctor hearing these people fasting came and checked the pulse of each and every one using the traditional nadi method, a reiki healer who came in and energized them with reiki, a yoga teacher who teaches them yoga and breathing techniques. They also said they were moved to see people older than their age come and massage their feet and head to relax and comfort them. People just come in and voluntarily pour in whatever bit and pieces of help they can do to help them.

It is not bed of roses out their for them, they have seen fellow fasters removed from the fasting arena due to dehydration, uneven blood pressure and sugar levels and some on suspiscion that their liver might be in danger if they continue fasting, but none of them showed any fear or concern about the danger that loomed large over them. The impasse and the lethargic response of the government has not made them weak but strong, their resolve grows stronger and stronger with every passing minute, these are warriors who are fighting for a cause they believe in and they dont seem to be the ones who are going to give up anytime soon.

They derive strength and courage from each one of us here who support them, make mockery of them or sit indifferently, because they have taken it upon themselves to fight for us too. People may have different opinion about the Lokpal bill but there can not be no two opinions about the honest intentions and spirit these men and women have displayed to wake up and shake up our conscience into a fight against corruption. I was proud to have spent couple of hours of my lifetime with this brave men and women who for close to 200 hours live on air, water and Vandhe Mataram.

Jai Hind.

P.S: In case you believe in their cause it will be wonderful if you can just send a sms congratulating them and encouraging them with your support... Their name, occupation and number given in the images below...

(download)

Arundhathi Roy - God of small things or small minds...

Dear Arundathi Roy,

I read your article http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article2379704.ece and it left me puzzled... It at best looked like a cheap publicity stunt... Here are five questions that seek your answer based on your article.

1) ‎"Will the 830 million people living on Rs.20 a day really benefit from the strengthening of a set of policies that is impoverishing them and driving this country to civil war?"

Question: What is the reason for these people to live on Rs.20 per day. Where does the billions of funds allocated for their upliftment go? "

2) "You could say that the Maoists and the Jan Lokpal Bill have one thing in common — they both seek the overthrow of the Indian State. "

Question: So if someone fights for a strong anti-corruption bill does it mean they seek to overthrow the state? 

3) "The 24-hour channels have decided that there is no other news in the country worth reporting."

Question: Why blame the media??? They are covering what the nation is voicing. Didnt the media give coverage to the causes you fought for, or is it because you didnt get the kind of coverage that Anna is getting. 

4) "Who is he really, this new saint, this Voice of the People? Oddly enough we've heard him say nothing about things of urgent concern. Nothing about the farmer's suicides in his neighbourhood, or about Operation Green Hunt further away. Nothing about Singur, Nandigram, Lalgarh, nothing about Posco, about farmer's agitations or the blight of SEZs. He doesn't seem to have a view about the Government's plans to deploy the Indian Army in the forests of Central India."

Question: Why do you expect or want Anna Hazare to voice his concern for everything? Is it wrong to focus his energies on something he strongly he believes in.

5) "The Jan Lokpal Bill is a draconian, anti-corruption law, in which a panel of carefully chosen people will administer a giant bureaucracy, with thousands of employees, with the power to police everybody from the Prime Minister, the judiciary, members of Parliament, and all of the bureaucracy, down to the lowest government official. The Lokpal will have the powers of investigation, surveillance, and prosecution. Except for the fact that it won't have its own prisons, it will function as an independent administration, meant to counter the bloated, unaccountable, corrupt one that we already have. Two oligarchies, instead of just one."

Question: How does having an independent anti-corruption body account to oligarchy?

There are many causes you have raised your voice for including separating Kashmir from India, India's Nuclear policy and even favored Naxals fight. As an activist who has fought has various causes including few which are highly controversial, why can't you give Anna the respect for a cause he is fighting against? Forget respect, Why do you want to sully his image?

As I am not able to get a sensible answer to any of this questions, it makes me think... "Does God of small things have a small mind or has she been sold for small things."

P.S. You cannot kill the message by trying to destroy credibility of messenger. The message gets more powerful everyday. #Anna is messenger. (via @shekharkapur)