Business to the Buddha

Search results for: “engineerish”

  • Exploring the unexplored

    More than 100 years back, ice harvesting was a whole business model ecosystem in USA. There were ice harvesters, ice storage (kind of warehouse), and ice deliverymen. When refrigerators were first introduced the harvesting ecosystem improved their harvesting mechanism, storage systems and delivery systems. It happens with businesses, at times, we try to increase our efficiencies of doing what we know the best even though the whole industry is changing. In few years they lost to the new industry refrigeration! It happens many a times, either organizations are blinded or do not change resulting in the death or reduced shareholder value. It reminds me of a quote of former CEO of General Electric Jack Welch – If the rate of change on the outside is greater than the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.

    I learnt this lesson practically in my MBA too. I dedicate this post to Prof Lopez. unfortunately he is no more, but his memories and teachings – specially to me, are long lasting. He always put me in a spot, not just me but other students also. When you are in a spot, either you are numb or your mind starts working faster, thankfully for me it was the later. He pushed me to think more and more and challenged me to unbind myself from my limited approach (Engineer-ish thinking style on which I wrote earlier). What is strikingly similar between my reaction and any organization is – initially I tried doing (number crunching) what I was good at, I tried it even harder. This is what happens to companies fighting for survival. As I explained from the ice harvesting industry. The idea of giving your full energy to something is great, however at times one has to think in blue sky – without inhibition. Situations that the ice harvesting industry was facing needed that blue sky approach. This was a great learning for me from Prof Lopez.

    Later the exploration of unexplored began, when I realized why am I doing what am I doing? I realized that I was digging a hole even harder, faster and deeper when I had to get out of the hole and search my unexplored dimension. There are facts beyond numbers; there are reasons when digging in numbers is not THE only thing which is required to be done.

    Besides the books, case studies and team projects other MBA lessons included sustaining and keep learning spotted by him, in uncomfortable situation. This one learning came from the sessions of Prof Lopez, the extra learning I took was – one may have to face such situations in organizations or from competitor organizations / business environment, how to handle such uncomfortable situations?

    Prof-Lopez-Pravin-shoe

    Here is a picture of me attending one of his class (extra class of other stream). In which I responded – correctly – to a question. However, the question was changed later and I got his shoe as a reward for this – literally as a beating me for that response. Source – Jaydutt Kamat’s uploads, may require login to Facebook. Missing you Professor Tomas Lopez on this day – your birthday. I would have written to you for permission to write this blog – unfortunately you are not with us today.

    Death of ice harvesting industry is not the only example for us this story has been repeated umpteen number of times. In fact some research suggests that the average life of companies are reducing drastically. Thank you so much Prof Lopez, you gave a great learning to me, I am sure I would less likely be the person who would work with an organization that is getting into ice harvesting industry type scenario, if probably I do, I am better equipped to have a direction before it is too long. Prof Lopez’s putting me in a spot helped me explore the unexplored on personal and professional level to be better equipped in decision making. I can summarize this lesson – being receptive in toughest situation.

  • Balancing act… continued!

    Recently, I wrote about the ‘balancing act’ based on the story of the Buddha. I started observing the concept of balance to a greater detail when I received the story from Prof Mankad, and here are few pointers in this continued blog.

    What I have realized in my studies lately is, the “engineerish thinking” (numbers all the time all the way) is not the end in itself. Marketing has long been a function requiring creative thinking. Long time back – before my joining my MBA – someone (talking to me) made a remark – ‘marketing is a bottomless pit, you do not know the return on investment etc etc. Now in the era of result orientation everything is being measured and therefore the results are key for marketing departments too’. Here again creativity should not take toll on numbers. Thus, a balance has to be made between being creative and being critical for return on investment.

    Second thing what came to my mind with reference to marketing, and in general to all of us, was perceptions. While communicating to outside world e.g. marketing companies try to play on ’emotional’ hot button of target audience yet want to be analytical of the effect of the marketing efforts. Again the balancing act comes into play based on the perspective inside out Vs outside in.

    In case of say leading teams, one needs to balance. Leader needs to involve and empower his team at the same time guide when anyone needs help (I wrote about this earlier in blog Growing and becoming leaders). Thus, a balance has to be made between giving power to take decision and taking control of situations when required. I had few things in my mind regarding the same in the language of TRIZ. In TRIZ there is a principle called separation on condition (giving control and taking control based on condition) for such cases. I would write more on application of TRIZ in marketing and sales in some other blog.

    Changing gears, in personal life we manage relationships. At times these relationships come to such a point that we need to act as a funambulist (tightrope walker) to sail through the rough patch of managing the relation. So, balancing act continues throughout the life.

  • Every problem is a nail… if you only have hammer in your tool box!

    In a class of Prof Moradian we were learning about a model, a model which had two dimensions. Each axis has ‘Low’ and ‘High’ as the extremes. I have learnt that for few thing quantification is not necessary, ok! When I saw this combination of ‘Low’ and ‘High’, I understood it is a qualitative measure. I waited for two minutes (a long duration for struggle in mind), at last a typical attribute of a classic personality came out.
    “Sir, how do I define a number is ‘Low’ or ‘High’ on this model and on the scale?”
    I took two minutes because I struggled to put this in my mind – ‘do not try to quantify everything’. I was thinking quantify or not to quantify? It was equally a struggle for Prof Lopez to teach me – don’t try quantification of everything. Old habits die hard! Six Sigma taught me to be data centric and this struggle has always been in mind – clarity with data or instinct with less or no data (I worked as TRIZ/Innovation consultant). Seemingly two different approach six sigma data centric and innovation instinct based.
    I knew it is qualitative, and Prof Mordian said – ‘Pravin, it is not necessary to quantify this measure, come out of the engineering mind’. To save my face I can say I was just questioning my assumptions, you may check possibility thinking and questioning assumptions blog.
    Let me come to the “classic personality” type. Personally, this incident was making the same mistake (of course learning from that too). The trait I want to highlight here is ‘engineerish’ e.g. engineer and mathematician type thinking. What else can you expect from an engineer – numbers, data, technical details and much more concrete information?
    Here, I came up with few future blog ideas of Blue ocean strategy, frameworks and problem solving. I will try to cover them in future. As I wrote in my introductory blog, not necessarily every blog entry will be on relation between Business and the Buddha. I will not offer correlation here, though I can do that. For a change I would quote a real life example which many of us are suffering from –
    Dr Mankad taught us in class of Macroeconomics that – few bright engineers turned MBAs have created many models e.g. financial models that ‘quantified rationality/irrationality’ which became one of the worst problems and resulted in the melt down.
    So, I write here a cliché of many management consultants – Every problem is a nail… if you only have hammer in your tool box! I also encountered it many a times. It is occasionally a struggle to pull people out of their thought process and make them realize that – some problems are not nails. Our myopic thinking can be summarized in (again a cliché) joke to explain the issue –
    Once mechanical, Electrical, Chemical and Computer science engineers were traveling in a car. Suddenly the car stopped and everyone was puzzled. Mechanical Engineer suggested that that there is some problem with the engine. Electrical Engineer suggested that it is due to the fault in ignition system. Chemical engineer said “no-no car was making some strange knocking and the problem was with the fuel.” Suddenly the computer science Engineer intervened and said “I think we need to go out and then come in the car (log out and log in).”
    The message is …
    “Every problem is a nail… if you only have hammer in your tool box!”
    And the lesson – “Because you have a hammer, don’t go searching for a nail”!!

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