Business to the Buddha

Tag: China

  • Leadership and education







    Election results of couple of Indian states are out and largely there are clear mandates in all states. So, there are not many permutations and combinations happening for forming governments. I was wondering about the elections, results and post results – five years. The long term thoughts (five years after results) were hampered by a news of rabble rousing activities in UP. Does the confidence of victory create so much defiance that people do not mind taking law in their hands or crossing the limits?

    This question lets me ask myself – what do we need? Politicians or leaders? Are politicians really leaders? I was thinking about this and on LinkedIn I read a question. IF YOU HAVE GOOD STRATEGY, DO YOU STILL NEED A LEADER?

    Can a good strategy create a leader or leaders can create effective strategies? My answer is leaders can create effective strategies. Also, I heard someone say – An army of sheep led by a lion are more to be feared than an army of lions led by a sheep.

    I was talking to Prof Ramanathan, he told me “…Pravin I see there is a lack of leadership at various levels, be it corporate or others…”

    The fact of the matter is the crisis is wide spread are we creating leaders? Are we creating excel, power point and ivory tower experts of solutions? When I read the book – I have a dream I realized that there are people who took initiatives, who rolled their sleeves and got down to work. There may be many more not covered in the book, yet how many of us have become leaders after studying at Ivy league?

    Recently, I met Prof Mankad, we discussed Greek crisis and the visible solutions to it. He made a good observation on the economic power of China that made me think – having and managing power requires a sense of responsibility and ability to be fair. This ability requires courage and confidence to say – ‘yes I erred’ when one did commit mistake. Does our education teach kids to have these qualities?

  • God be the CEO!







    From The book of Mirdad –

    God is your captain, sail, my Ark!
    …
    Love is your compass, ply, my Ark!
    …
    Faith is your anchor, ride, my Ark!

    Today I was wondering about what if the world is an organization and the God is the CEO! What would be the situation, in the boardroom and what must be going through His mind?

    Situation – the countries and continents are a department each. There is a cost center – USA – this department is in debt and there seems to be no way out for it to survive. The likely other cost center is the EU – European Union. Operations and manufacturing unit is China. Parts of Middle-East and India a chaotic department wherein the left hand ‘does not know‘, ‘does not want to know‘ and ‘does not want to support‘ what the right hand is doing. The chaos is such that the department is rather a destruction center, not even a cost center. Only good department seem to be Africa and the South East Asia region. Would the CEO resign? Or He would dismiss few those who are responsible for this. For namesake – Former president of USA George W Bush (he forced the world to a war – to me which was unnecessary – the Iraq war), Gaddafi, many politicians including Indian politicians, leaders of the terrorist organizations (Osama is already dead) and those others who are the culprits.

    Keep aside the joke of the God being the CEO. Do you think that the situation is really dire – accounts (economy), production and administration everything is in a chaos. If yes, do not you think that it is our responsibility to improve everything round us. Should one take life of the other in the biggest organization – The World? (terrorism). Should one be corrupt in the organization where her/his family will also be at the receiving end? (India). Should one produce products which could be contaminated by Lead (China – some toys), be prone to fail and take life (cars)? Should one be so extravagant that the whole organization is under debt because of that department? (USA).

    Even if we still continue thinking the God be the CEO, would not the CEO want every employee to do his/her job responsibly, be moderate and ethical? Let us hope that the CEO succeeds in his mission and vision of making the organization profitable with the triple bottom-line and make it an ethical organization. With that hope what we need is ‘responsible we’ – each one of us – and committed employee to make the organization a better place.

    Note – those who are agnostic, for the time being consider God exists. Or do not read the blog, or shoot your concerns/comments. Even if we do not want to consider God be the CEO, I thought about another philosophy from India – ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’. It means that the whole world is one single family. Would you kill your brother or sister, would you do something for which you may have to feel sorry in your family?

  • 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…

  • 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.