A CEO Social Scientist - dreamers

Here is the next one in this series. The dreamers. This particular brand of people exist in all possible functions within the company. Be it the least functionally critical security guard to the CEO.

They are people with good intentions. Good skills. Amazing prospective and creativity. But alas they also posess the worst trait that could kill themselves as well as the company.

These are the people who in the midst of their everyday functions lose track by entering into a parallel universe much like in the comic books universe where all their dreams and hopes and fantasies play out to the maximum and thereby lose sight of their goals and activities.

It's not only all positive scenarios that they play out like a child's dream to become a superhero but also like a child, the nightmares.

Examples are like below.

A salesperson who has one lead that looks promising and they are doggedly following that losing sight of their otherwise weak pipeline. They amplify the efforts and also the payout that would be achieved with this one lead that they don't realise that if this one lead doesn't close all their efforts is naught not only for this one lead but also their entire pipeline goes bust as it would take them time to rebuild from their fallacy

A designer or an architect (technical or structural or creative) can often get caught in the search for the elusive zenith that they yeah whatever work that they have done or other peers have done because they believe that its not the best. This results in nothing productive ever coming out our in a creative block which they will never come out of.

A programmer or developer (once again technical, functional, structural) be it in any industry who once again dreams of perfection and enhancement that they never ever go for a release. This leads to a project being caught in a development purgatory out of which there is no release

A CEO is a guy who can go either sides. Both positive daydreams or negative daydreams. On the positive side he or she may completely believe in an utopian upside to the company and its projects, blinding themselves to harsh realities that are lurking beneath the surface waiting to submerge the company under irrevocable losses. Or the negative side where he or she gets so cynical and imagines worst case scenarios for the worst case scenarios and never ventures a step outside of the comfort zone one again being left behind by the changing business environ.

This article is not based upon anybody else but me. At some point of time or the other I have personally been the three examples quoted above. How have I overcome this?  Who ever said I have.  I just wake up a little bit faster than before.

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A CEO social scientist - tire kickers

Being an entrepreneur is a strenuous job. It takes you away from family, your hobbies, your friends. But it also gives you the opportunity to see people in ways that are not usually possible when you are of the salaried kind. People react differently to you. Atleast it seems that way. The truth is that people are always what they are and they do what they always do. Its just that your vision or your perspective has changed or rather expanded so much that you  perceive them differently.

As an entrepreneur I have been exposed to people, sometimes the same set of people that I know and have met even when I was their friend or employee or colleague. I am going to put down my thoughts on some sets of people, so that anybody who stumbles upon this article gets a heads-up or atleast I can look back on these when I need a refresher.

Note: This is a style that I am trying out. A content type that is new to me. A delivery style that is not new but since it is tailored for this content, it may not sit well.

I started my life in Sales and Marketing and I still continue to be in that, alternating between these roles as the situation deems fit. So most of my revelations would be based upon my personal experience. The very first kind of people that I managed to identify and tag would be the Tire Kicker.

This is a species of people who have existed from the dawn of time. Yes, i would call them a species as they have developed interbreeding and producing more of their own. They are very tough to identify and they camouflage as the more desirable entity- the customer. Members of the species are found to be with loads of time and energy in their disposal and they involve in typically maximizing the time and effort that a salesperson puts into the overall selling process.

They are known to hem and haw over the simplest of decisions, Their special ability lies in the way that their queries are disguised like a probable customer and they lace it with all the proper questions.   They are extremely dangerous and many cases of sales pipelines collapsing and horrendous projection meetings are evidence to the effect that this species has on the sales process. They basically lack knowledge of the product or service that they evince interest in and try to make it up with questions that are whispers that they caught in some industry conclave or in the countless newsletter subscriptions that they never bother to read.

Identifying one is the tricky part of the conquest. Pointed questions regarding kick-offs and budgets invariably get the desired prognosis. The  creatures tend to be baffled by this line of questions and will avoid a direct answer or deflect with more questions.

Solution: Quickly move to the point where the prognosis can be made and from that point judge as to the quantum of effort that this particular lead would have on your overall available man-hours. If the probability that this might mutate to, heavens forbid, an actual customer is even minimal, keep the lines of communication open. Ignore frequent mundane requests and the creature would automatically wander off to latch onto another ignorant vendor.

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Why be an entrepreneur

This is the question that my mom, my girlfriend(s)(in the past), my wife, friends, bosses, colleagues, employees have all asked me both loudly and sometimes through a sigh or a misplaced glance. It is a very tough question to answer. To be honest I am not sure I even know the answer but years of experience in starting up stuff and either blowing out or giving up gives me some level of experience in that to talk about it here.

I never had it easy in life. No.No.No. I wouldn't say that everything went against me and I was your quintessential down-on-luck guy. For the average and even the above average human being out there, my life is rosy and comfortable enough. But the problem was the one curve-ball that was thrown at me in terms of a physical affliction that I have been living with for about 15 years now. This made me hungry. Greedy. Impatient for success. I wanted to get big and get big  as fast as possible.

 In my early teens, I lived under the presumption that I deserved that and it should be something that I inherit. When I started college, I realized I needed to put in some effort to get there but never really capitalized on my degree to get there. Come on, an Arts degree in English literature isn't going to get you millions any day soon. When I started to work,  I realized that this was going to be too slow to get there and I couldn't stand idiocy and mediocrity which was possibly the main characteristics anyone in the corporate management level possessed and nurtured. That's when I started out for the first time. It flopped. It was a small time software start-up. It folded very quickly and I moved on to my next venture and my next and then my next and the next one too.

I have been involved with about 5 start-ups  in my life and although a few of them made me enough money to splurge on luxuries at that point of time, they never amounted to anything earth-shaking. My last one was a game development company that was about started about 3 years back. A great team, a few good projects, amazing environ to work at. It had everything going for it and then it quickly turned into the usual story. The company still exists and there is still a couple of projects running in the same but it is not poised to achieve the lofty goals that was set when we started out. Mismanagement, lack of focus, unnecessary expenditure. These are the mistakes that was committed. Not deliberately but in hindsight these seem to be the mistakes that we did. Of course during the heat of the moment, which in a startup is every single day, these didnt stand out. Hindsight is always nice and can prick your heart to a guilt trip like nothing else. Loads of people thing that company isnt in existence anymore and its actually on its way to a slow death.

I took a break and joined up with another software firm just to get some financial stability which I don't think was necessary, but just to keep the folks at home happy, bit the bullet and accepted.  Every single day, I wanted to do my own thing but just kept at the job. As is the norm for me, I couldnt do a mediocre job. I had to drive myself to succeed, kept banging on the doors, moved ahead and within a short period got promoted to senior management in the company. Still it wasnt enough for me. I had to achieve more. Egos clashed. I was burning out more than I could try to recuperate from. I left the job.

Now I am once again starting off a new firm. With new lessons learnt. With new mistakes to make. Its about a month now and I am typing this out with extremely restrained financial flow. The easy way would be to get a job, get the financial stability. But the matter of the fact is that I am addicted. Addicted to success. I have to succeed. I have to prove to the world that I am something. I have proven it in my professional career. I need to prove it to the world in my entrepreneurial path. The drive is there. The passion is there. The concepts are there. The energy is there. But I am not sure that this one will become a success. There would be mistakes done. Timelines missed. Projects mishandled. Clients escalations. But the only thought that drives me on is that I know that I will learn from these mistakes also and move on. To quote something that I absolutely love and possibly the only thing that I love about that movie. "Its not about how hard you get hit. It's about  how hard you can get hit and keep moving."

I hope I can move fast enough this time around. Success to me is not measured by the money that I make. It seems easy enough. Get a job. Be myself. The crazy psychotic, sleep deprived, success craving maniac and I will make it big in the career. But my dream would then remain just that. A dream. To achieve my dream I would need to do it for myself. Build something for myself. And hence this.

Why be an entrepreneur? you ask... Why not is my reply. 

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CSR- Citizen social responsibiltiy

CSR seems to be the buzzword of the age. As far as i know it has been the buzzword for the past few/many years. Anytime a company goes through a bad phase of publicity(external or internal) the spin pundits in the company come out with a CSR initiative. Sheesh...talk about sleazy.

Our country doesnt need large companies coming forward to adopt villages. The top management come and hold the impoverished's hands for the duration of the photo-shoot and then speed of in their waiting air-conditioned sedans. I am not going to talk about the CSR initiatives of the soul-sucking, mind-numbing conglomerates here. I am more concerned with another CSR. Citizen social responsibility.

The average citizen in India is 29 years old. That's not youth right? compare this to China where it is 37 and to Japan where it 48 or even to the US where it is 35. So definitely it is a much younger demographic than to the superpowers. The average salary of an Indian is Rs.38000. That sounds pretty impressive right? Wrong!! that's per annum. So you are talking about a salary of Rs 3000 + for the average kuppan or suppan in India.

Now look at our American counterpart. The average salary is 18000 USD which translates to about Rs.810000 per annum. Something is wrong with the picture here.We have all heard of how India's brains power the large MNC's and organizations across the world. After all that, it is a bit confusing as to how low the average indian earns when compared to their counterparts around the world.

I have been reading Gopinath's book (watch his speech here)and subsequently did some research. Apparently in the US, every day 11 new companies are being formed. This number might have dropped in the recent prolonged recession/depression. In India, 11 companies are being formed every month. I am talking about the official numbers here in terms of registration and with proper paperwork and not starting of a lemonade shop in your driveway. This shows the entrepreneurial spirit that is there in the two countries. The number of new businesses directly relates to the number of new jobs made available which in terms relate to the national income.

The day that we stop thinking about our next paycheck and start worrying about the payday for our own employees is when we could change this disparate setup. As a citizen, we have had loads of reasons to criticize and bitch about the country and the state it is in. But until and unless we as citizens do a bit of CSR, this isn't going to change anytime soon.

Start something. Anything. Even if it fails, it doesn't matter. I know it's pretty easy to say it doesnt matter when it's your time and money that is being invested. But until we take the plunge and do something on our own, we are going to remain chained to our desks, signing of on a 9 to 5 job, waiting for the month end and keep checking our bank account online to see if the salary has been credited or not. If at all you fail, the job market is still good enough for you to pick yourself up and get another job to survive the temporary financial setback.

Recently my wife got a new manager at work. This guy had been working for quite some time in some concern before he ventured out and started something on his own. It did well for some time before it faltered. I believe it must be because of his way of working. Atleast my wife keeps cribbing about him and his style of working. But the amazing thing here is that, here is a guy in his mid 40s, his business plummeted to the ground, picked himself up, got himself a job and still looking for the next big thing that he can start of on. We need more people like him. Who are ready to take the risk and plunge into the unknown. Running a business isnt for everyone. At the same time, it is something that one must do in order to know whether its for them or not.

I know, i know. I have been talking big here but still stuck in the same rut as all of you. I had been an entrepreneur and had started a couple of things way back. These had put me back into very serious financial setbacks(Thanks to my dad who was with me through all those times). Now I am married, my financials are slightly better and above the red mark. Any safe person would say I stick to this because of my commitments. I say, its because of these commitments in fact that i need to venture and take risks. I wouldnt be able to make such a move say five years from now.I would have become institutionalized by then. The time is now. The moment is now. I am taking the plunge. It's time for my CSR.

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Every time I see you

Every time I see you

 
 

The longing look in your eyes

The desire burning bright

The passion the mind denies

Love and logic fight

 
 

Wanting to touch and hold

Wanting to caress you

Never been so bold

This courage in me anew

 
 

Wonder what might have been

Wonder how it could be

At least fate aint so mean

We have a lifetime to see

 
 

What do I, from you, desire

What is it I want

All I want is you near

To be my own to flaunt

 
 

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my private angst....

the following piece was written sometime back...but today of all days it holds more true..today the bravest woman i ever know..damn ..knew passed away. this is not a tribute to her...i can never think that i can ever be qualified to talk about her.

all i can say is that it is a outbusrt from my end...a private moment..a private thought.

Do you feel like screaming out
Just wanting to scream till it hurts
Does it hurt so much
Hurt so much that you want to die

I want to drive a nail into my head
Deeper till it fully bled
Want to reach in and pull my heart
Fated to lose even before I start

Every single step that I take
Why is it I cant catch a break
Just want to scream out aloud
Want to get far away from this crowd

Why is god so messed up with me
Why cant he ever let me be free
Why doesn’t he just end it all
I am ready for his final call

But like a coward he wont take me
He would rather let me on earth, be
He knows if he takes my life
I will be up there after him with a knife

So I dare you again, you God
Come fuck with me if you can
You are just one big fraud
Face me and show you are a man

People call me faithless
That god is just testing my patience
I have passed the test for so many years
To be as normal as my peers

If I cant even have that right
Why the fuck do I have to fight
Who died and gave you the right
To go ahead and check my might

I don’t have to keep proving to you
You havent seen half the shit I have been through
Don’t you dare try to judge me too
Let me just simmer in my own stew

The rhyme has been random and far apart
But to get rid of my angst, it’s a start
Every time I feel like cutting my self
I shall reach out to you for help

No…I don’t want your support
This is my battle, this is my court
I shall turn my anger into rhymes
Might prevent me from doing crime

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Welcome to SWOT

SWOT...any damn MBA course offered by any established institutions or fly-by-night operations keep drilling this into our heads only... but my SWOT is different..atleast i am going to try my best to try and make it different ( as though you haven't heard that before ). I basically have two plans for this blog.

1) make it a blog of things, events, news, that is happening around me. it could be about a new movie, a joke at work,( most of the times, my work is a big joke), happenings at home...anything. yeah that's right. YOU are stuck reading whatever i feel like writing about.

2) make it an online attempt at a novel. I have been pestered by people over the years to write one.( Hey, i swear...come on..i am not lying...ok will give you their numbers provided you don't file cases or inflict physical harm...ok maybe a little beating would do them some good i guess..). i have actually listened to some of these people and started work but never would i proceed beyond the initial chapters.( ya ya..i know its amazing that Manoj listens to other people also).that's when i got this idea...how about a novel that i write as a series of posts. that way i am not under any compulsion to finish off the entire epic.( yes it would be a masterpiece ...an epic...a tome that would be beyond all fame and recognition...already in talks with Warner brothers for the movie rights...i want george clooney in the lead...)

anyway that is the plan... so i would be doing either of these, or both...or one at a time..followed by the other...in no particular order. Man , the above sentence could be true for this blog as well as a menu of choice for any Bi-sexual looking for a hot night.

...ya one more thing...this might contain material inappropriate for children below the age of 18...so kids make sure you don't bookmark this page and clear your history for the ride is about to start.

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