Mondays are 'bad' days

Mondays truly are 'bad' days. Don't get me wrong. BAD is an acronym I use for Beautiful And Demanding. Actually, Mondays set the tone for the entire week, and I take extra care to ensure they go smooth.

So was today. Let me share my day's learnings!

• The day started with a detailed telephonic counselling given to a colleague from the PT education network. He was worried about a new competitor entering his market. The counselling lasted the entire duration of my drive from home to office (25 minutes) (I wasn't driving), and the summary of discussion was
• Never project fear or anxiety outside. It'll get amplified & come back with full force. So better project smiles & confidence. Everyone around you will pick that, amplify it manifold, and give it back to you.
• This is especially important for CEOs / Business Heads during strategic marketing battles. The smallest of signals get picked up. So be very cautious.
• Get your act in order. Improve standards even more. Focus on every customer more vigorously.
• Get your marketing machinery activated all over again. Wherever the competition is about to get a "major" break, it needs to be checkmated.
• Rules till yesterday were rules till yesterday. For the next few months, the rules now change. Evolve fast.
• I was happy that my counselling made him very happy, and charged up.
• Then came a detailed report from a colleague (whom I personally like very much due to his graceful style) on a recently inaugurated PT education centre. I was happy to see that the telephonic update consisted of very fine inputs regarding the quality and quantity of audience/crowd during the inauguration, and what that augured for the new PT centre, apparently. It is important for marketing reports to have insights that are useful - they should not be just bland recitation of facts.
• When a company head takes a report, especially marketing reports, he/she wants material facts that shape his opinions and future decisions. So observant individuals win hands down here!
• As I landed at the office, the day was jam-packed with to-dos I had listed carefully the last Saturday. Sadly, I found one of the fish in my room's fish-tank dead :-(  Got that sorted out, changed the thermostat etc. and realised that the guys responsible were actually making certain assumptions about the water temperature.
• 'Never make assumptions while working'. Good revision of basic wisdom.
• A detailed counselling of a manager responsible for several work-groups highlighted some key issues -
• Efficiency versus Effectiveness - the perennial debate - we spent some time assessing what percentage of the manager's time was being spent on what.
• Final conclusion after an hour long brainstorming - the staff reporting to him were not clear about the extent to which they were supposed to take ownership of their own work (till the last deliverables)
• We concluded that at least 25% of his time was to be spent on "effectivenss" rather than being obsessed with "efficiency" alone.
• I was reminded of the axiom - if you wish to chop a tree, spend half the day sharpening your axe. Today was the "sharpening the axe" day for my colleague.
• Three other incidents in the day reminded me (and my senior colleagues) of one of the strongest management principles ever "What gets measured gets done". This is so important a truth, that I will treat it separately in another post also.
• I took a personal tuition in the evening for almost 2 hours (from an external IT professional I respect a lot due to his practical expertise) on basic Internet related issues.
• Actually, for quite some time, I was feeling hamstrung while taking some IT decisions (costly ones!) due to lack of authoritative insights into internet issues. So decided to get myself coached today. It really helped. The guy was kind enought to come over and coach me, as I sat with my diary, noting all crucial points. (If you are a student reading this - remember - there is nothing as powerful as properly prepared, neat & clean handwritten notes)
• I now can ask sensible questions while deciding issues related to : Webservers, Dataservers, ISPs, Domain Hosting, Streaming servers, Mailservers, Spam, etc.
• The work related to Protons' final placement continues unabated. We are sure that the institute be able to place the students in good profiles.There's a lot of work that's been done. It cannot go waste at all :-)
• The neon-signs (the glowing red letters you read all around you) are an interesting advertising medium. They go "phut" with every rain. So at the SBM Indore campus, we have this beautiful big red SBM mounted on the 5th floor, and all possible combinations have arisen in the rainy season. SB, BM, M, SM ....  Fortunately the maintenance guys repair it in 3 to 4 days each time.
• For anyone who understands what capitalism is (creating a business model that removes some inefficiency from the system), here is a big opportunity. Develop some kind of technology for the neon-signages that takes care of their going "phut" in bits and pieces every time Lord Indra smiles. You have a multi-crore idea ready buddy.

Signing off, here is a powerful thought for tomorrow. I found it quite moving in the film "The Untouchables". The veteran policeman Malone (Sean Connery) judges the newcomer to Chicago Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) who has been sent to get the dreaded Al Capone. Here goes the conversation -
Malone: You said you wanted to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? You see what I'm saying is, what are you prepared to do?
Ness: Anything and everything in my power.
Malone: And *then* what are you prepared to do?


Since you reached this far, dear reader, may I offer you a special bonus.. here is a very sweet video I recorded personally in the famous Swanand Kirkire's (Lage Raho Munnabhai fame) hotel room. Enjoy Bawra Man Dekhne Chala Sapana raw, unplugged! Click here for video

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