Story of I & We

Again, it has been a while since a scribbled last time. Lot of thoughts occupy mindscape but somehow could not make an effort. I just wonder how good it would be if a gadget which I could just touch can record the thoughts and ideas and produce a written output. Nevertheless, I will come back from my imaginative world to reality. Last 2-3 months have been very hectic and eventful. I have been keeping busy at work with lot of new and interesting assignments on hand. Somehow this weekend has been totally free after long time, which brought me to the blog again.

This time, I will share an observation from work life. We all work in teams and an effective teamwork is key to success in today’s hectic work environment where you chase one deadline to another and switch from one assignment to other in matter of hours. This is story of “I&We”. I have been appalled and amazed as to how well educated , well experienced industry professionals glibly use “I” in an effort to take credit while giving presentations, updating about the work to senior colleagues and discussing work output with customers without giving any regard to teamwork that behind the output/result. It looks very odd that people at workplace give a damn about the team members who have equally and at times contributed more than them to produce an output. What perturbs me is that people don’t do this because they lack communication skills or have less fluency and control on English because I am referring to MBAs from premier institutes. Such acts are demotivators to contributors and also put them off at work. It creates friction in execution of assignments and more importantly such acts create a negative environment at workplace. But seemingly a small act of weak inter personal skill creates a distress in high performance work environment. But question is why such a thing happens. Here is my take on this:
· There is unending and cutthroat competition among colleagues, there is strong drive among them to be keep stepping up the corporate ladder at any cost.
· Lack of respect and appreciation for peers and their work.
· Schools, Colleges, MBA degrees have failed in some way to teach such people small but very essential etiquettes. These are same guys who are taught to core during their preparations of Group Discussions but they forgot it the days they got admissions.
· B-Schools and corporates have failed in imparting effective soft skill training to their employees.

A tale of a professional company and sleeping shareholders

This time, I got to listen NRN and Infy board members not as an employee but as a shareholder. It was exciting and one of a kind experience to attend an AGM. I recall the visit of CEO Mr. Gopalakrishnan’s in Infosys Bhubaneswar in year 2006. On asking a question on pileup of cash, Mr. Gopalakrishnan replied that such questions are asked in AGMs and not in employee Open Houses.

That day I decided that I would try and attend Infosys AGM one day. So this is how I ended up attending 29th Infosys AGM in Christ University Auditorium in Bangalore.I arrived and queued up for shareholder registration. All the registration counters were nicely put up. Senior citizens, Housewives and some long time shareholders were all exuding the confidence that loyal shareholders do.Opening speech was delivered by Chairman of Board, Mr. Murthy.

CFO Mr Balakrishnan’s presentation was innovatively done and kept the shareholders engaged with usage of imagery, music , Bollywood songs and videos.You can see Mr. Batni in Currency Avatram. CEO, CFO and COO’s promise that ALL is well. Infy’s conservatism and pride that they sit on 4 bn dollar cash during recession times was shown in NRN the king making a statement – “Cash is king” and Ever saw Mr. Pai in Avatar of Greek God.

So here it is presenting Mr Pai with IRFS highlights.

While everything on screen was great, I could make some disturbing observations which goes on to explain poor corporate Governance in India and Lack of Shareholder activism. 1) As soon as announcement was made that there is an arrangement for High Tea, Half the auditorium got empty in no time which just shows how much shareholders care about AGM proceedings. It was an astonishing act.
Do shareholders come for fine dining or assessing performance of the board and keeping them accountable?

2. Shareholders kept either lauding the performance or cursing the board and the company without proper facts. Here are some ludicrous and disappointing instances.

a. You give a mike to a shareholder and rest assured that you can’t complete the meeting in allotted time. Shareholders were reading pages just to ask a single question

b. One shareholder was very upset with recruitment process- He questioned why do Infosys imposes requirement of 65% cutoff in exams. He suggested everyone should get an opportunity like UPSC exam to appear in a written test. He was asking this question during time reserved for accounting related queries.
c )Another Gentleman was speaking in non-stop Kannada. While perturbed, NRN interrupted and requested to put a stop at the lengthy speech instead ask a question but he was in no mood to listen to such trival request by chairman of the Board.

d. Other shareholder complained on why don’t we conduct AGMs in Infosys campus? - Good request but is that question which really disturbs a shareholder?
Does he really have sleepless nights because of the venue and not what’s happening in Outsourcing industry, ROE and NPM margins, performance of independent board members and executives of the company?

e. Other gentleman raised question of mismatch in remuneration and qualifications. How can BSCs and BEs make lakhs and crore in salaries?f. I have not got returns from Income tax department – One shareholder put forward his request. Don’t expect any strategic, deep insightful, analytical, razor sharp question, after all these shareholders are unaware, uninformed ordinary retail shareholders.

g. Axis Bank is not updating my passbook, why? – Why can’t shareholders not ask a question when they don’t know what and what not to ask?

Other disturbing Facts:

1. Minimal presence of young shareholders and Infy employees: I thought many young shareholders would come considering Infosys being a new economy technology company and venue was in young city like Bangalore.
Had Even Infosys employees holding shares come, they would have made an impact by perhaps asking intelligent queries. It’s disturbing to note that even employee shareholders show little interest in health of the company.

2. Non Participation by DII/FII and mutual funds: It didn’t seem that DII or FII (domestic/foreign institutional investors) and mutual funds bother to come to such gathering. Such investors could have made huge difference by keeping the board on their toes but sadly they hardly care to attend and make the difference. They anyways get the feed from company during analyst calls.

3. Any guesses for Family owned companies? If such is the state of investor participation, awareness and vigilance in an investor’s friendly, utterly professional company such as Infosys, It is anybody’s guess what must be state of affairs in family owned companies?

Cloud and Virtualization

Elegant way of explaining benefits of Cloud and Virtualization

Why HUL's illustrious days are over?

Recently, glanced over Hindustan Unilever (HUL’s ) full page chairman’s annual statement; I wondered why HUL and ITC unlike other companies need to publish a full page chairman’s AGM speech/annual statement. This year, HUL’s chairman talked about HUL’s contribution in grooming managers and producing leaders out of them. As a Bschooler, it was enough to attract my attention and write this post which is highly critical perhaps one sided but definitely food for thought.

I somehow think days for HUL as a supreme brand which commands awe in all respects are over. Here is why I think so.

Poor financial performance: HUL’s topline and bottomline are stagnant since last few years. In recent past, There has not been any innovation in an emerging country like India which is full of innovation for masses. There have not been any revolutionary product launches in recent years which would have enhanced lives of consumers.

HUL has become a reactive competitor. Which products/brands have they brought and sustained after the success of Wheel? Does it not seem that they are consciously ignoring bottom of pyramid markets?

Has Power brands strategy worked? HUL management seems to be driven by what bosses say in Unilever. Do HUL board and executive have mind of their own? Why do they follow strategy of premium brand, high margin business in a country which is full of opportunities in low margin, mass market? In fact it seems in implementing this strategy; HUL managers have killed many promising brands.

Shareholder returns: Why HUL doesn’t talk about Shareholder returns? Shareholders have not gained much in terms of stock appreciation. With average financial performance, the stock has languished for past 10-12 years. Why does the board not wake up and think seriously for creating wealth for stockholders as many other companies consciously do?

Poor Top of mind recall- Think of Tea, you think of Tata tea, Think of milk, you think of Amul, Nestle or Britannia, Salt – you think of Tata salt and list goes on. Despite huge spending on advertisements, many brands of HUL don’t even figure in the consideration set of consumers.

Overpaid management: It is said that HLL managers are paid through nose and yet such conventional and poor performance?? Performance to payment ratio seems to be definitely better for companies such as Dabur, Future group, Tata group etc.

CSR: HUL never shies away from bragging about Shakti amma project. But are they really serious? If yes, then why is it restricted primarily in South India? India has 600,000 villages. Why don’t they become aggressive through out India in such well meaning project as they are in fighting Pantene over billboards?

HUL gives impression of an arrogant MNC which has lost its way. Serious rethinking is needed to mend old ways of doing business. HUL is full of excellent professionals who just need to take control of situation and put pressure on their top leadership to act sensibly and do things out of box.

image http://www.hul.co.in/

XLRI GMP 2010 Batch's Placment Summary

Here's XLRI GMP 2010 Batch's Placment Summary as covered in Media


Yahoo News

Financial Express

CoolAvenues

Project Managers: Can they live up to the expectation?

With so many young people working in Indian IT industry, there is huge challenge to manage the staff in unique ways so as to keep them motivated and guide them. I have been huge fan of Mr. NRN Murthy, Chief Mentor, Infosys and Mr. Subroto Bagchi, Chief Gardner, Mindtree. These great men spend considerable in mentoring, helping employees become true professionals. Mr. Bagchi mentions need for mentorship in his fabulous book, Go kiss the world. It is a must read for all young professionals.

Sadly, employees don’t realize the value of a guide or a mentor, and even if they do, they don’t find mentors because of their acute shortage. A mentor is one who can bring you out of all disillusions and confusions; He is the one who shapes the young mind to do the best. He understands and helps you with lessons on career and industry; He nurtures your ambitions, aspirations and goals. Most importantly, he is the one whom you look up to and get inspired.
In IT industry, this mentor role can be beautifully played by Project Managers who closely work with team members, especially with those who are new in their careers and can play a vital role in mentoring them. Unfortunately, neither Project managers nor employees seek such a kind of role modeling.

In one his articles in The Economic Times dated 5th July 2010, Mr. R Gopalakrishnan, ED Tata Sons suggests “To be successful it is important that a manager is perceived as authentic and genuine.” It is in this context, I have seen that expectation of mentorship is a far cry if managers don’t even match up to such basic qualities.

But why does it happen?
In IT Industry, Project managers manage projects of team size ranging from 5 to 100. Their primary job is to successfully deliver projects within boundaries of scope, cost and time. Fortunately, projects get delivered without much value-add from Project managers. These managers don’t even focus on upgrading their skills, finding scope of doing things better and most importantly setting the benchmarks for other team members to follow. Many of them can’t imagine the scope and challenges of project management involved in building dams, highways, refineries etc. wherein millions of dollars is at stake, work environment is harsh, where project managers need to deal with an unskilled laborer to a highly skilled engineering staff.
How do they survive then?
Without value addition, they are able to survive because of their low cost in dollar terms. A number of clients don’t bother not to pay for a project manager for even small team sizes because in dollar terms, perhaps they get a project manager for the cost of a software engineer.

But how long these so called not performing project mangers survive? Until the cost arbitrage is reduced or IT budgets are severely cut, the breed of underperforming managers will continue to be on board.

It is not that managers are not capable. Many have illustrious pedigree. Just that over the years, the fire in their belly is doused. They have become complacent and habituated of easy money.
In such a scenario, how will they add value to customers and focus on employees’ careers?
If go you around the campuses of IT companies and interview employees, they would grossly crib about their managers. They perceive them as overhead to a project, who does some talking, prepares some reports in excel or doc. Some won’t even have soft skills to deal with human resources because of their rise from technical roles and lack of exposure to human resource perspectives.

It is not that I have come across only such project managers. I have been fortunate to work with one of the best project managers in the industry and have got mentored by them but this post just happens to be an output of series of observations that had been troubling me for a long time.

Image source http://mohannadtayeb.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/proj_mng.jpg

Linking Penalties to Inflation

Government of India seems to be very active in annulling dead laws and reframing them in order to keep them meaningful. There are hundreds of laws which need much amended and reviewed .Laws need to be modernized and made relevant for time we are living. To give an example, Under the Aircraft Act, 1934, the Government can control "manufacture, possession, use, sale of aircraft". And ‘aircraft’ includes balloons and kites. This is so ludicrous and in a way symbolizes our archaic laws
We all must have read the warning or ignored it after reading. Laws are made as if they are to be broken. Law says that “smoking is punishable”. We can’t even communicate certainty of punishment. It is just another example of how communications are loosely done.
Another thing noticeable is that in most cases, a paltry sum of penalty is imposed. Is it strong enough to detract? Everybody knows it is not then why do we set them so low they become meaningless. How come Lawmakers arrive at such figures defying all the logic? Even if we set them high while framing laws, over the period of time, they are not revised and hence lose their significance.
Rents increase annually, DAs are linked to Inflation, and almost all costs gets a periodic revision but why can’t we link penalties for committed crime to average inflation growth rate so as to keep them stringent and deterrent enough for offenders of law?

Have you tried Slideshare?

Samsung And The Theme Park Industry

View more presentations from Anshuman, XLRI, Jamshedpur.

Recently I received below comments on the analysis of a case study.
"actually, i want to thank you ,your presentation was extremely mind storming ... you are a great team work ... my professor asked me to make my analysis within more than 2 months but believe me i was surrounded by hundreds of question marks till i found your presentation my papers became in order and actually i believe my analysis will be the best over my colleagues i gonna deliver my presentation next Thursday 'if my god wishes' and i will upload it and i wish to receive comments from you... thanx again. "

I uploaded the presentation to share the learnings to the world. During MBA, I can't remember when did I not use Google for references for various assignments and submissions. Hence, thought of sharing some ppts on slideshare. Slideshare is an incredible tool with plethora of information in a concise format as mostly ppts are uploaded. Hence, getting information in capsule format has been made easy by Slideshare. Ppts,Pdfs are uploaded in no time ,hence as a user you don't waste time in waiting for uploads to complete.

If you have not tried slideshare, give it a try and give back to the world!

XLRI GMP Graduation speech

Finally my tryst with MBA is over. A sense of pride, nostalgia for missing XLRI and wonderful batchmates and anxiety for new life is setting in. Here is the speech that I delivered on behalf of batch in Graduation Ceremony, May 12, 2010 @ XLRI Jamshedpur.

Good after noon Respected Director, Dean, distinguished Guest of ceremony, Faculty, Staff, Families and GMP Class of 2010. I am honored to deliver this graduation speech on behalf of the whole GMP class, A class coming from different parts of India, which has worked around the globe, which comes from diverse sectors from Steel to Education to Hospital, a class consisting of Bankers, doctors, defense personal and technology geeks, a class with work experience ranging from 5 years to 16 years. It has been a wonderful year with memories that we will cherish forever.

Before I speak further, I would like the graduating class to applaud for our families because without their support and sacrifice; we would not have been here.

I remember the day when we 96 of us came to Jamshedpur. Some of us were anxious, some were nervous; after all we were going back to school after so many years of working in the industry. It is said that Gold becomes finest only when it goes through hottest fire. After having gone through 32 courses, numerous mid terms, end terms, quizzes, term papers, assignments, group projects, presentations, we are here in the Graduation ceremony. The XL academic rigor has sharpened and molded us into competent managers.

We are indebted to our esteemed faculty for shaping our minds and guiding us at every juncture of our stint here @ XL. We will remember Fr Jesurajan’s invitation for 7 course meal, Prof Gangopadhyay spine chilling lectures( Like many of you, I remember running without a break from Hostel to class to avoid being late), STP lessons from Marketing gurus, different forms of demand supply curves from Economics Professors, Accounting lesson that Prof Sengupta drilled in us – Profit is different from cash.

How can we forget the strikes and lockout lessons from Prof Sarkar, classes on complex and perplexing organization behavior, the basics of human resource management from our Dean, Mind scratching Anecdotes from Prof TAS Vijayaraghavan, International finance classes from truly Intl professor and realization after every class of Prof Uday Damodaran that how little we know of Fin world. The list goes on….

Inspired by the Jesuit spirit of ‘Magis’, XLRI stands for Excellence and Integrity. It has allowed us to stretch our thinking and imagination. XLRI is known for developing social conscience and beyond doubt; we have not only learnt hardcore management techniques but also have grown emotionally to develop a conscience that extends beyond companies and corporations.

It is not that we just restricted ourselves to academics; we dared to compete in every aspect of B school life. Few of us cleared CFA level 1, A team of three reached the Asia Regional finals of Global Social Venture Competition organized by Haas School of Business, Berkeley University, one of our Sports fanatics reached Badminton Finals in IIM Lucknow’s Annual Sports and cultural competition, Bloggers from the batch emerged XL winners in a Blogging competition organized by Directi and a clear GMP dominance was witnessed in Tata Steel XLRI Peace marathon.

XLRI unlike its peers has always been focused on grass root development. In this context, we were exposed to remotest Naxal inflicted tribal villages in Jharkhand. Harsh realities of tribal villages have had profound influence on our thinking and I am sure we would actively work towards making lives of our people better.

As we move out of XL today, we will miss 2 am Bishuda’s aloo paratha with loads of butter, Chai breaks at Dadus, a sylvan and serene campus, diamond jubilee park that is host to number of gossips as well as serious discussions, our excellent Dining and accommodation facilities and fiercely fought cricket and football matches.

We are thankful to ever cheerful Rani Mam, ever helpful Freddie, Lazarus, Rashmi, Roshan and Sandra Mam, and numerous XL Staff for making our lives easier.

As we graduate today and join companies in middle and senior management positions, our future will be guided by XL’s core values and teachings. This is momentous occasion for all of us as we ready to shape destinies of companies and enterprises. We have task cut out for ourselves as these are most exciting times and we are fortunate to be active participants in this Indian Growth story. In decades to come, we need to evolve as leaders with highest ethical standards, we need to set new benchmarks and beat old records to create organizations which will be world leaders in terms of financial numbers as well sustainable practices.

Thank you

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NHAI: Is it IT oriented?

The latest annual report of NHAI http://nhai.org/Audit.htm on their website is for year 2005-2006. No wonder the progress of GQ and East-West Corridor has slowed down.

Governments, PSUs and Central and state agencies , academic institutions are notorious in providing in old, outdated information to public. Their orientation towards Information technology is only on paper.

Consumers, public at large are also to be blamed for not raising the issues of poor interfaces and lack of availability of proper information.

Mr. Kamal Nath, It is high time, Please take out some time, visit the site and get it updated.

Find out the difference?

The Learning Center