Business to the Buddha

Author: KRD Pravin

  • No judgement – its all about perception







    I heard a story – a farmer owned a very good horse, he loved the horse as his son and it reciprocated. Even the king of that kingdom was envious of the horse. He sent his messengers to the farmer stating that farmer can exchange the horse for as much as half of his state. Farmer responded – ‘I will not, does anyone sell his son/daughter?’ People told him that he did a mistake, he responded – no judgement.

    In some days, the horse somehow ran away and could not be traced. People come back to the farmer and told him, you did a grave mistake by not giving it to the king, at least you could have got something in return. Now you don’t even have the horse let alone part of the kingdom. He again responded – no judgement.

    In few days, neighboring kingdom waged a war on the kingdoms where the farmer lived. It resulted in a very tough situation for the kingdom (of the farmer) and king asked for all the support from his people, confiscating even cattle for supporting his army, stating there is no guarantee of returning of those materials/cattle. People again came to the farmer and told him – ‘Thank god at least your horse is not in that trouble, trust wherever it is, it is fine.’ He again responded – no judgement.

    Within few days both the fighting parties announced ceasefire. Some people got their possessions back others didn’t. One fine day morning the horse came back to the farmer with an equally beautiful mare. People came to the farmer praising the horse and saying – “Thank god horse was not here during the war it would have been a problem for you as well as for the horse.” Again he responded in his trademark style – no judgement.

    So, situations change and therefore our decisions could be called as right or wrong, good or bad, but in the end the frame of reference causes the concerns. Something good today could be bad tomorrow. So, judgemental thinking may result in issues. My brother told me once – no decision is right or wrong, it is how we perceive and the frame of reference makes us think whether the decision is right or wrong.

  • Why are you doing what are you doing?







    In an interview with FT a renowned entrepreneur and hotelier Ian Schrager said that ‘…prison gave me time to think’. He was imprisoned for evading taxes.

    JailWhile reading this I started asking myself – Are not we so busy with our work that the best place to sit and think could be a place where we do not want to be. Is not it an irony?

    The biggest difference between animals and humans is the ability to think. However, we are so busy with our ‘work’ (daily chore) that we do not have time to think, we do not pause. How many times have you sat in a coffee shop and thought for your actions? How many times have you sat in balcony of your apartment with a cup of tea just doing nothing? ‘We are very busy for that’, right?

    What we can expect a person to do in a prison? (On a lighter side – when verdict is not ‘rigorous imprisonment’). Think for yourself – when you are sitting in a place where you do not have anything to do, no TV, no Internet, and no mobile you are all by yourself. It is difficult to pass time like that. And so when we hear a statement ‘…prison gave me time to think’ it seems to make perfect sense?

    Long back I read a book by Steven Covey – Seven habits of highly effective people. In that book there was an example for habit 1 – being proactive. The example was of Victor Frankl a Jewish German psychiatrist who was interned in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. He realized that he has the power to respond to the situation he was in. He could think of this in a very adverse condition, we occasionally thing about it even after receiving forward mails regarding the same (I received a mail forward which says – …life is 90% how we respond to situation).

    How many times have we thought – why am I doing what am I doing? What do I want to do in life? What is the purpose of my life? Do we question ourselves for reason of our existence? This is what the Buddha also thought when he left his family…

    Effectively, I had a question to myself and to all of us in general, what does it take to stop and sit down and think. Do we need to go to jails to have time for ourselves to think? When are we taking a leave from our chore for at least few hours in a week, get out of our rut and think something beyond the daily chore?

  • Power corrupts!







    It is an old saying – power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I was wondering on the saying and the recent news. I thought to understand how ‘power’ has morphed in different forms, starting from the prehistoric muscle power to money, economy and authority.

    For a long time power was defined as muscle power of individual. When humans created concept of ‘money’ slowly economy took precedence over muscle power. European countries colonized more than half of the world and economic superiority took precedence worldwide. Until now economic power has been the major factor influencing force. So, countries having economic influence changed the world (for good or bad is disputed), such as oil crisis of 1970s, slow down of 1980s and recession of the last decade (which still continues and perhaps result in double dip).

    Then I started looking at ‘authority’ as power. Recent news about Egypt and arrest of Indian politician triggered this thought in my mind that authority is one major factor to prove the saying – “…absolute power corrupts absolutely”. We have debated enough on democracy and dictatorship, which one is good? There is no debate over this – authority given in either case corrupts.

    We see that power corrupts but who gives the freedom to others to exercise those ‘right’ to influence? Are we not equally responsible for the state we are in? Should not we take charge of ourselves and – rather than being spectators – act to bring the change?

  • Old path white clouds!







    I was inspired by the book “Old Path White Clouds” and learnt a lot about Buddhism and the Buddha from the same. The concept of the blog also came from that understanding. So, here in this blog I am posting what I felt while I was reading the last chapters of the book –

    When I was reading the last 3-4 chapters of the book, I stopped and was not willing to continue because I did not want The Buddha to die. I was so much connected to the book that I was not reading the book – “I was living the book”, and so I was not willing to let the time reach when The Buddha had to depart. In other words I did not want the Buddha to die (even in the book), it is worth appreciating the way the last chapters have been compiled and written. I realized later –

    1) This (what I was reading) has happened 2500 years ago

    2) The book itself says at various places (repeat various places) that

    i. the thing which has a start will eventually end, if there is birth there is death. So, why am I worried that The Buddha will die or to complete it? Or am I thinking that The Buddha will die when I read those chapters (of course when I was living the book i.e. reading the book, I was in that mindset)?

    ii. Our body is only one manifestation rather a physical manifestation and if the body dies it does not mean we cease to exist

    And I continued to read and completed the book. The book has become a treasure for me, and I have started looking at business from a different perspective. If you want to know about the Buddha and Buddhism the book is a must read.

  • TRIZ in sales and channel management







    Contradictions! We live in a world of choices, conflicts and trade-offs. The following idiom says it all – “you can’t have your cake and eat it too!” In this regard, there is an approach to solving such problems wherein you are faced with contradictions. The theory is named TRIZ – the theory of inventive problem solving. By way of example, let me introduce a contradiction in simple terms.

    Let’s say you want to increase pressure in a vessel and the result of that also reduces temperature, which you do not want. The conflict in this case is clear: increasing one parameter affects the other parameter negatively, or, changing a parameter positively affects another parameter negatively, which creates an undesirable outcome. The idiom used above “you can have your cake and eat it too!” implies a potential physical contradiction- You want a cake but you cannot eat it!

    TRIZ is extracted from the field of engineering. This methodology helps resolve the contradictions without compromise. Lately, I tried applying concept of TRIZ in class of Prof John Davis (Dean SP Jain Center of Management, Singapore/Dubai) on Sales and Channel Management. There was a company which had acquired many diverse companies and thus had a dilemma of structuring its sales force differently to increase efficiencies. The range of organizational options included – letting the sales force be as they were (independent), merge the sales forces, using distributors, or a unique combination of these or alternative structures.

    The solution of merging or having independent sales forces had their own positive and negative implications. This type of issue can be termed as “physical contradiction” in the language of TRIZ. To solve physical contradictions separation principles are applied. So, when applying the principle of separation on condition and space, we can identify that the sales force could be geographically separated (separation based on space). The conditional separation in this case was manifested in determining big account vs small accounts for both distributors and an in-house sales force. Additionally, the conditional separation was represented by a merged sales force (one bag) vs a separate sales force (silo) for product offerings.

    Thus, though TRIZ was distilled from field of engineering but we can apply principles of TRIZ to solve problems in different functions (e.g. sales in this case) and other non-technical fields. I am trying to apply TRIZ in different fields and I have also identified application of TRIZ in marketing, strategy planning and areas where conflict appears, though I feel there is a lot more to be done in terms of making it easier to apply.

  • Change is the only constant!







    Long back, I was thinking about the common wealth games (CWG), the news around that and what can I learn from that. I generally don’t want to comment on politics; nevertheless I learnt from these events and therefore I am trying to put my opinion on the same.

    When the news of corruption in CWG preparation started surfacing the Prime minister’s office (PMO) took control of the situation. The following events taught me few lessons such as be patient and do what makes most sense.

    The decision of the PMO was to tackle the core issue at a later stage, and therefore the management of CWG was not changed immediately. Delaying the decision is the best way of tackling certain situations. Therefore the business was moved from incapable hands to those hands which could complete the project on war footing basis. This transition was smooth and the event was successful. This was the best example of change of management, in recent past, in a dire situation.

    I was talking to my friend Romit Gupta and he suddenly made a statement – “Change cannot be given to you every time. You have to bring your own change”. This statement made perfect sense to me. Yes! If you need change, YOU have to be the catalyst for the same. In business either you change the rules of the game or the competitor changes it, better you change it before anyone does.

    The statement was made by a BEST bus conductor in a bus in which Romit was travelling long time back. Romit heard it passively yet he could not forget. He restated the same verbatim almost 6 years later. Why, because if someone is willing to learn he/she can learn from anywhere and anytime. My learning from this blog has been multi-fold – I am seeing dots being connected and changes being made. The dots are my earlier post on – ‘game changers’ and ‘Learning… and possibility thinking’. I took these cues and have decided to change the design of my blog. You see! Change is the only constant.

  • 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.

  • ‘Balancing act’







    This is one of the stories shared by Prof Mankad with me.

    Once on his tour, the Buddha was resting in the shade of a large pipal tree. Under a nearby tree a group of dancing girls was also resting. One of the apprentice musician girls asked the leader of the group, “How do I tune this string instrument?” The head of the group, a ravishing beauty of a dancing girl, obviously with limited virtue and ignominious fame said, “do not stretch it so much that it breaks and do not leave it so loose that it does not play”. Buddha hearing this went to her and bowed to her with respect. His disciples seeing him bow to a very infamous character were disturbed and intrigued. When they asked Buddha about his behavior, he said, she taught me a valuable lesson in life.

    This story tells us a very valuable lesson. The lesson of balancing act, I recalled the recent incident of Cricket test match between India and South Africa. In that match Indian player Sreesanth and South African player Graeme Smith had an altercation. For this incident Indian Cricket team captain M S Dhoni made a statement in press for Sreesanth – “…there is nothing called over aggression till you don’t cross the limit. There are guidelines which need to be followed. You need to be yourself but at the same time shouldn’t get into others’ space…”

    The balancing act also applies to businesses in terms of product portfolio, organizational behavior and a balance between business and social responsibility (triple bottom line). This also applies to individuals e.g. work-life balance.

    The other important lesson to learn from the story is – one can learn from wherever one wants to learn from and no one is old or young to learn from. This is what an earlier blog suggested – Learning… and possibility thinking.

  • My New Year wish!







    In the first month of reaching Dubai, we friends went to Barasti bar in required party wear e.g. shoes, jeans shirts and T-shirts, shaven etc etc. Doorman said “only for pairs”. We said ‘our girlfriends are already in’; we were told call them out and then you can enter. We called them and were waiting outside. The wait outside was the trigger for this wish. [On a lighter note – I do not have a ‘girlfriend’ but yes ‘friends those who are girls’]

    I critically observed the operation of the doorman. By the time our friends came out I observed few things. One, roughly four groups of people went inside. Each group had average four members. Few were in their car, parked their car somewhere and walked toward the Barasti gate. Those were coming from a nearby residence (this is my guess, owning a car and their outfits).

    The teasing and striking part is this. Those groups going in were wearing – floaters [instead of shoes], 3/4th [instead of jeans or pants] and sleeveless [instead of T-shirt or shirts], all were male (perhaps male pairs in the language of the Doorman of Barasti). There was only one group which was 3 males and 1 female. Why were they allowed, I asked myself and to my friends. The only possible reason to let them enter was – skin color. They were European or American ‘white’. We waiting outside were brown skin [on ‘von Luschan scale’ 21-28].
    I decided not going to Barasti in future, my friends are liberal they are giving a chance to Barasti to be ‘racially neutral’ for a better tomorrow. My friends are celebrating New Year at Barasti. I wish for the year 2011, organizations, places and societies become more liberal. I am not saying all are as Barasti – discriminating. There are a few who may still be functioning such that the term – ‘Racist’ still exist in the English Dictionary.

    It was my maiden experience to go to a bar or night club. Oh yes! Eventually we went inside as our ‘girlfriends’ came out.

    I wrote my experience with due respect to all of us and our skin colors, trust you would not mind it. I showed a mirror to myself, trust we also saw ourselves. The thoughts presented in the blog are based on my experience; I am not on one side or the other. In my opinion, in the battle of mind and opinions we – human beings – are on the same side. We need to face the mindset and move towards a direction wherein equality is the name of the game. At times I feel we all are on the same side, still we fight.

    My wish for the year, organizations, places and societies become more liberal and racially neutral.

  • The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ)







    I have written few blogs using concepts of TRIZ, so let me explain what is TRIZ?
    It is a problem solving methodology, more below from my earlier post at other place.
    How do we look and try to solve our problems?
    Generally, it is observed that everyone thinks in his circle of intellectual dominance (emotional, intellectual, social or technical). But when our interest is to find out solution for any problem relating to any particular technical field this becomes rather more obvious and clear that we tend to search into our field of expertise to find a better way or solution for anything. I shall explain this with a joke I heard when I was doing my Engineering:-

    Once four Engineers, namely mechanical, Electrical, Chemical and Computer science, 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 its 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 that “I think we need to go out and then come in the car (log out and log in).”

    The above joke may give you an idea about the “circle of intellectual dominance” I am talking about, that is everyone tries and looks into his field of expertise for finding solution of any problem.

    A new look at same things
    This “circle of intellectual dominance” called “Psychological Inertia”, which limits even experts to come up with better perhaps “OBVIOUS”, solutions (in terms of expert of other field) for any particular problem or improvement.
    TRIZ provides a big leap for experts to learn to look beyond their area of expertise and get a general look at a problem, find a similar problem in other field and its method of solving the problem then customize the solution according to need. Thus, it gives a generalized method for solving virtually every problem in any field.
    History
    TRIZ is a Russian acronym which means “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving”. This concept and theory came in to existence when a Russian Patent Expert Genrich Altshuller and his colleagues studied over 200,000 patents looking for problems and the way they were solved. Of these only a small fraction 40,000 had somewhat inventive solutions; the rest were straight forward improvements. With these studies Alshuller came up with a systematic approach, termed TRIZ. It was a generalized way for finding out solution of any technical difficulty or for any further improvements.

    TRIZ concept in nutshell
    The method used in solving problems in TRIZ can be summarized in the following points –
    1. Identifying the problem or finding out opportunity for improvements in the present product, design etc.
    2. Formulating the problem and searching for similar, previously solved problems with an overview to understand the concept of solution.
    3. Looking for analogous solution(s) for presently defined problem or conceived improvement.
    4. Applying the best identified analogous solution.

    Thus, TRIZ gives a general concept, for virtually every field, to find out opportunity and solutions for problems or improvement sought. I myself have played with concepts of TRIZ beyond engineering fields such as social sector innovation, medical field, Travel infrastructure in Mumbai and currently working in management domain specially economics, marketing and finance.