Business to the Buddha

Tag: Prof Harkant Mankad

  • 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?

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • 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”!!