Business to the Buddha

Author: KRD Pravin

  • Ideate – Save the sinking ship







    Prof Mankad said in our class ‘there seems to be possibility of double dip’ while teaching us macroeconomics. I have written on this in my blog at times. At times question comes in mind, why not using concepts of one field to the other the way we do it in TRIZ (The theory of inventive problem solving). I recalled a news shown on NDTV (it was shown in 2008 somewhere in Aug-Nov). I remember this news because it was unique and I rarely watch TV(:)). So, here comes use of TRIZ to tackle the economic crisis in a non conventional way. I am sharing the idea with a hypothetical scenario.

    As an everyday ritual Vijay logged on to his mail box, amongst others the mail from HR stared back at him. Feeling the heat of economic crisis the company was in process of layoffs. How many Vijays have the same stories to recount? How this time can bring us together and make us more innovative to reckon with the challenge – this challenge is not questioning us only on one front of economics but also on cultural and creative fronts?

    Employee-employer relations are unlike marriage where a pair takes an oath to live together, and share all the grief and joy. In this tough time each should support other for survival and future growth and say – “yes! We are for each other”. It has been proved important and useful in the Japan after the World War II. Lately, a group of ex-workers of a mill bid to revive a dead mill; Garware Nylons Ahmednagar. All the workers joined hand for revival of the mill. In this successful bid the sense of belonging was such that the families of ex-employees even-handed over their jewelery and large sums from their provident fund. Way back in 1996 instead of shutting the mill down, if the management and the workers had come together and decided to make a plan to save the mill on a model of a marriage by surviving in the tough time, they might have come up winning and everyone might have lived happily.

    In recent week there was news in FT that EU is considering bailout in some forms. Bailout is a ‘self-mutually exclusive’ option that is – bailout is needed in the toughest time but it is ill-advised as it is ‘passing-the-buck to taxpayers’. Government needs to bail out various industries; however, the companies may misuse the amount. In such case questions are asked that – How to make companies accountable for the same? When to loan, how to loan and how to gauge the performance of the waived organization?

    Bailout can be tackled when government separate this option of bailing-out upon condition of time and space i.e. conditional separation of amount of money offered, accountability of use of money, time-to-time checks and balances. Separation of assets and liabilities can be one more initiative and offering incentives other than monetary could be other.

    Additionally, if we attentively look around we can learn from nature too. Birds fly in flocks, why? Because flocking helps conserve energy, defends against predators and facilitates orientation and communication. Energy is everything involved in the business – various resources, money and time – it needs to be conserved. Instead of salary cut and layoffs companies can take loans from employees, offer shares or bonds to the employees to generate money. This not only can engender trust in teams but also can invigorate teams to work for their own company. Are you keeping those many Vijays in your team? Are you willing to take on the challenge by sticking together, being creative and innovative to carve success over the slump to ply in the present to fly in the future?

  • Lost in translation







    I read some status messages on gtalk and other places – ‘lost in translation’.

    It is good that people get caught only in translation; there are chances when someone can be lost in words. Take an example – when I write business to Buddha, meaning is not limited to ‘business to Buddha’. Here Buddha relates to humanity, to the messages of the masters (prophets) and how message of the masters are applicable to businesses e.g. Islamic banking. In a more subtle sense what these prophets taught and which is applicable, in general, in businesses too.

    The problem with us today is not translation only; the problem is getting hold of words incorrectly and staying with them. When the words could mean much more than the only dictionary meaning they convey, that’s where we find problems in understanding poetries. I have heard that someone was reading out a poem written by a Noble laureate to an aristocrat. Suddenly, the aristocrat stopped the reader and said either the line you read just now is incorrect or there is some mismatch. The reader re-read the line with some change of words (resulting in grammatically incorrect sentence) and hearing to the incorrect line the aristocrat said it sounds good with the poem. Later, the reader informed the aristocrat, sir “I suggested the correction in that line! Poet was not willing to accept the correction but when I told him the GRAMATICAL mistake he accepted my argument”. Here the big question to ask is – whether the message is important or the words, meaning and beauty or the grammar is more important? [Here again it seems a fight between system and utility of system relating to my earlier blog on line of understanding]

    During his life time, the Buddha never accepted his bhikkus to translate his messages to any other language. Why? May be for the reason that ‘soul of the message would be lost’. After his enlightenment he did not utter a word for few days. Why? Because ‘words create a boundary to any expression or feeling’. I have seen mails floating on why for many feelings we not only stop speaking but also close our eyes for? Because words fail to explain some deeper feelings of life. However, in business that cannot be accepted, you have to speak and you have to express. Therefore, marketing heavily resort on visual advertisements. I was reading an article of Harvard Business Review. The strategy initiatives fail not because of improper strategy formulation. The initiatives fail because there could be one of the reasons: miscommunication and therefore problem in implementation. So, how are you going to tackle this challenge of translation?

    I understand it this way – make life simple. Keep your messages simple. Say what you do, do what you believe in and believe in what you are. In my opinion, organizations too have an identity and this identity is formed by behavior of management and the employee. Understanding and sticking to this identity would make life simpler for organization, employee and internal and external interactions amongst all stakeholders. This would help reduce the bewilderment of translating strategy in to actions. This does not require anyone to be being “grammatically correct” always.

  • Six Sigma failed…







    “Not invented here syndrome” is like making a statement to Prof Moradian or Prof Natarajan that your forecasting methods is flawed it does not work in my industry, company or department. Is not it prudent to ask if it worked somewhere, how did it happen? Let us take an analogy –
    Organization = Laptop
    Department = Microsoft Excel (MS Excel)
    When I make a statement–
    “You know what,
    1. Mathematically, 2+2 is not equal to 4 in MY MS Excel therefore Mathematics is flawed
    2. My MS Excel is different from the rest of the world because 2+2 in not equal to 4 in MY MS Excel
    3. My laptop is different from the rest of the world because 2+2 in not equal to 4 in MY laptop”
    If 2+2 is not 4 in your Excel it is not that the math is incorrect, perhaps your algorithm or your laptop processor is at fault. In this analogy Mathematics could be Six Sigma. I have heard that IBM failed in implementing Six Sigma (late 80’s to early 90’s), GE is extremely successful, why?

    Lately, in one of our simulation class Akshat’s team questioned “why Six Sigma failed in our company in the simulation?” one of my teammate wrote on facebook – “After 3 round of simulation today Pravin Krd accepted the disadvantage of using six sigma as corporate project :-)”. I went back to basics to answer this question. What is six sigma? Six Sigma is about vision, philosophy, management system and achieving aggressive goals. Six sigma is also a toolbox and a means to satisfy customers. If Six Sigma fails in an organization it could fail due to – improper vision or management, issues with the goals or incorrect use of tools. The basic philosophy of Six Sigma is reducing defects, how can reducing defect be a failure in a company? If I ask you what you would prefer “good enough” with 99% accuracy or 99.99966 what would you prefer from the following?

    Three sigma (99% accuracy) processes –
    5,000 incorrect surgical operations per week.
    2 short or long landings at most major airports each day
    Six Sigma (99.99966% accuracy) processes –
    1.7 incorrect surgical operations per week
    1 short or long landing every five years

    Naturally, your answer to this would be better accuracy. Six Sigma is all about facts and working logically to reduce defects, and what follows is reduced cost, customer satisfaction etc. I am not a Six Sigma guru or I am not professing it, I am only trying to put some facts – “the six sigma way”. Experts can jump in and suggest or inform why six sigma could fail and share success stories.

    Source –
    Breakthrough Management Group India training on Six Sigma certification. This Data was a sample from USA.
    Class Blue ocean strategy simulation (BOSS)

  • Next super power?







    Germany? Is that… few days back President Obama was in India, he supported India’s candidature for permanent seat in UN. Germany and Japan the other contenders raised their voices on that. Germany is one of the two elected countries to serve as member of Security Council for two-year terms that begin Jan 1. Germany is also the protagonist for Unified Europe e.g. European Union (EU). Germany is the strongest economy of EU. And the trouble starts here – Germany being the protagonist and the strongest economy faces challenge of saving the EU and the cost could be cases against Government of Germany. Reason? German people were promised two things –
    1. Euro would be as strong as Deutschemark
    2. There would be a “no bail out clause”

    These clauses seem to fail. Euro is struggling because of exposure to stupidity of investment banks and naivety of European countries for example Iceland. Next to show domino effect was Greece in first half of the year, Ireland now and perhaps –Spain, Portugal next to face economic doldrums. “With Great power comes great responsibility” said Uncle Parker [to Peter Parker – Spiderman]. Germany needs to understand it, they need to change their promises or the spiral of over exposure and unified economy [not only of EU but also the whole world] would eat half of our generation.

    Balancing this would make Germany either very strong worldwide or make it pauper.

    China, is that? According to the recent FT news by 2014 China would roughly touch 20% of world manufacturing production and has already equaled US. As I earlier wrote [reference Macroeconomics class of Prof Mankad] China is replicating Japan on many fronts and is doing it phenomenally well. China hold Treasury bonds of US in effect it can twist arms of USA any time. Yet it faces a few challenges –
    1. for a strong economy of China, US and other nations importing Chinese products should be economically strong or China needs to increase consumption of its produce in China itself
    2. growing % of population in old age e.g. less working population.

    There could be many ways to tackle this issue –
    1. Work Visas to people of different nationalities
    2. Automation
    3. A least unlikely one is mildness on communism to attract foreign nationals

    India, is it? Perhaps, yes! I may be biased yet the economic, demographic and intellectual capital it posses, this country seems the contender for coming 10-20 years. The secret lies in the leadership, current duo of Dr Singh and Mr Chidambaram is a good combination. However, India needs to be cautious building next leadership line is the need of the hour.

    Coming back to the troubles in EU, I strongly see a solution in applying TRIZ (the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) for the situation. As far as the super power is concerned, only time will tell us who the super power is, I would bet on India and China, more on India ten years from now. Cast your vote…

  • The line of understanding







    I heard a story that a person was ready to change his religion because of the strange rituals followed in time of demise of someone in the family. The question to ask at such times is – Are we meant for systems or systems are meant for us?

    A mobile operator and a credit card company did the same with me. I always paid bills on time, at times in advance! Yes, I paid 1/3rd of my credit limit in advance. The problem with them was they did not listen to my problems because of an error in their system! Yes, ‘paralysis of system dependency’ – I would call it – could result in loss of business. I have also heard and witnessed in some cases – not invented here! and cannot work in this setup, type of comments. The reason for such limited thinking is our dependencies and self imposed limitations. I recall one of my senior facing similar situation, told to the client – are tum karo to sahi, bad me dekhenge kya problem hai. (You just do it we will analyze if there is any problem). He could say this with confidence because he knew what works, what is going to work and importantly he was not the part of the system.

    I am not arguing against systems. I am just trying to say that one has to answer the question – why at first place we designed systems? Answer is to

    1. facilitate operations of society (in case of religion, culture and laws)
    2. facilitate operations of work (in case of businesses).

    We resist change – because we have become inured to our system. See what is happening in case of banking reforms in USA. The situation is dire, yet reforms seem to be a tough nut to crack.

    How long are we going to depend on systems and follow the system till death even if systems are not supporting our cause? Were systems made for making our life miserable? Well, I am not asking to rebel against systems, what I am giving a thought to is – why not critically look at why we are doing what we are doing and question our assumptions. These questions and issues if not addressed correctly create rebellion such as hippie movement.

    What I could see is – There has to be two lines drawn, one between system and understanding its short comings and the other is understanding and rebelling against the system. I would call that line ‘the line of understanding’. More on this in future when I take information age Vs other ages.

    I know this all seems a very weird connection, starting with religion, talking about my personal experience, challenge of a consulting assignment and then banking reforms and lastly to hippie movement! The reason I found is – in the end we all are human being, and everything connects somewhere. The need is to learning to see (oops its a title of a book on LEAN, which I have not read yet) and yes questioning assumptions.

  • Double dip!!







    “There seems to be high likelihood of double dip!” When we heard our professor of macroeconomics Prof Mankad say that we could not believe it. I recently thought to plot some charts and realized that human sentiments are also equally responsible for this. The following is a graph, here we see an increase in the center yet once the peak is achieved there is a drop and no gain. Some call it correction. Well, frankly speaking these are my semester-wise undergrad scores.

    When I had a quick look at the graph I said – ok! I did ok initially, and then my performance dropped, it hurts I improved myself and went down back somewhat. Alas! My undergraduate was over therefore I could not extrapolate things. Yet, if you sem one to two movement there seemed some similarity.
    I tried relating it to the last 10-years NYSE performance. There were phenomenal similarities. I took 10 year performance because it seemed to me that post DOTCOM bubble burst would be a good point to start from, and some other logics. See sentiments are again at work.

    Then I thought about the statement of Prof Mankad, double dip, what about that? There could be a possibility of double dip, why, how and when? Yesterday I was reading Financial Times front page news – Ireland resists bail-out pressure, and viola I got a hint. If nothing is done at this time perhaps the other bottom is not far.
    I recalled another part of macroeconomics class. “Essentially all banks are bankrupt.” Though for self satisfaction we may call them BANKS, on which we bank. Nonetheless banks are sitting eternally on a time bomb ready to explode any time. The bomb of Debt!
    If Ireland does not accept the support from EU perhaps we all would be doomed to see the second dip. The situation is a double edged sword – the world needs an enhanced banking system yet what I read somewhere “if you actually tried to manage according to the regulatory measurements, your bank would fail.” At such times I resort to TRIZ – the theory of inventive problem solving. I would comment on the SYSTEMS in general and TRIZ in next posts.

  • There is no substitute…







    My brother taught me playing Cricket; he introduced me to my Football and Basketball club. I played and represented club and division. I achieved some good accolades in athletics. He was the one who abusively told me when I was in class 5th that let us see if you can pass mathematics of class 10th either. And to his surprise I improved so much that I could solve MSc Physics problems when I was in 12th. He was All India Ranked 16th in GATE and had many PhD offers. He plays flute, he is an artist acts in theaters too. Well, why am I writing all this? The reason is – My brother taught me “there is no substitute to hard work”. He is right he has proved it always. And I recalled the lesson when I saw the following on facebook.

    One of my friends, Rahul Krishnan, recently said – every professor of operations management seem to be fascinated with Japan or Toyota. To this I said, perhaps 10 to 20 years down the line Japan would be replaced by China.

    I started thinking – what is the reason? The reason seems to be – there is no substitute to hard work. Japan did this post World War II, China did in late 70’s to present. In 80’s manufacturing started following Japanese systems, and I think in next few years we will start looking at what does China do differently that it is so economic, so efficient and so competitive?Our professor of Macroeconomics Prof Mankad shared with us how economy changed and Japan became an economic power to reckon with, now it is China. The currency of Japan was undervalued, they became manufacturing super power and export experts. See China, the same is happening now once again – history is repeating itself. Perhaps it will repeat again when we move from TPS to CPS (Chinese Production System) in future. In fact many Japanese companies outsource their work to China. So it is time to learn what China is doing differently.

    No doubt Japan is a nation of hardworking people and so is China. And I come back to the lesson – there is no substitute to hard work.

  • Evolution







    I was wondering about evolution – how, what and when? I asked myself a question – when do we call something has evolved? The answer which came to my mind was –well, when the whole category of the group (species) grows from something old to new, that time we call this movement as evolution.

    If only one entity of a taxonomic group evolves – we may call development as an anomaly. Therefore, an evolution relates to the whole group. Here, it is worth considering that evolution relates to whole group not one entity in a group. We say that whole mobile industry has evolved. This evolution, for example, has been two-level evolution, first, handsets and second, services.

    What point I am making is, the growth in any aspect of a category happens supporting the growth in other related category as well. An ecosystem of the surrounding evolves with evolution of one category. The Buddha said once – whole humanity and the world has enlightened the day I was enlightened. This statement is a very subtle statement, which means a different thing for a different type of category.
    Let us take another example, of sports. First 100 m sprint world record was of 11.6 sec in 1896, current world record stands at 9.58 sec. The whole concept of competition has evolved for 100 m sprint. The product, the arena and the processes e.g. shoes, tracks, clothes, coaches and techniques etc. Technology which was not related to sports earlier has now been very efficiently used to track who is the winner by the photo finish technique. Well, let’s see the business side of this – did Nike exist in 1896? Did Puma exist in 1896? No!

    Effectively, whole ecosystem has evolved in this example. This happens everywhere. In last century many industries have come into existence and many have grown from where those were 100 years back.

    In nutshell, evolution relates to the whole group of a taxonomy. Additionally, everything evolves and the evolution of one particular product results in evolution of all associated services or products.

  • Collaboration in logistics and supply chain management







    We all are on a path of evolution. We evolve, systems evolve, technology evolves… everything evolves.
    We were discussing in supply chain management, how cost can be reduced, how inventory is managed and how transport can be efficiently managed. The part which attracted me to write that here is ‘collaboration’ amongst distributors, suppliers, transporters and businesses. Resources are pooled and thus efficiencies are improved by collective transportation.
    Our professor suggested to us that until two decade back organizations used to have many suppliers in their procurement database. Reason – companies were Price sensitive. Slowly companies switched/switching to single or less suppliers. Even the quality management of supplied material is also moved to the supplier. I think that is called supplier development (evolution of suppliers). The reason to do this is supplier and the manufacturer is working in unison and both have incentive – growth. I reflected on the concept of interdependent co-arising, together everyone grows. When the costs are controlled with better quality, this could be transferred to the customers, and companies can become more competitive. Further, this process helps everyone – supplier gets business (helps his employees), companies get better cost control (more profit) and customer gets quality at economic pricing.
    This blog is going through its third update. There were few examples I missed earlier. I found in my diary one was – a manufacturing company started buying steel from the steel companies not only for itself but also for its suppliers. This gave the company – good quality and competitive pricing because of volume buying. We have evolved and so the businesses consider suppliers as partners in business. Therefore, businesses partner with supplier and rely on them.
    I was asked by someone; prove this in practical life that businesses are using Buddhists concepts. I said many times businesses are using that, however unknowingly. This idea was again a concept of interdependent co-arising.