Questioning the question?

A wise person once said ' if I stop asking you questions, it means I have given up on you!'

Some of the best discoveries, inventions, ideas and improvements have come from  starting with the right questions. Many of us are not comfortable in being questioned. We see it as questioning our competency, judgement and credentials. 

Because it's unpleasant to ask tough questions, if everybody remains nice and polite to each other, soon the customers will ask those tough questions. In some time, customers also will stop asking those. Because they give up!!!

Sense 'less' senses!

While we cannot function without full use of the senses ( see, hear, touch, taste and feel), they have a limit.

When you are thinking of a new business idea, new way of doing things, new project or new anything, let the power of thought and abstraction be not limited by your senses! They operate at a much lower level of creativity and flexibility and would only constrain.

Ground breaking ideas may not have come through a simple process while the output may be simple. Senses are based on the laws of evidence while the ideas are not. Not every hypothesis is a fact to start with. But that should not limit you from creating such hypotheses. They may not appeal initially to the evidentiary  world. 

Put simply, don't do the mistake of justifying to conventional senses when you are ideating. 

They should come much  much later!!!

Creator and the player

While there are number of reasons for an entrepreneur to go public, off late there are many who want to go back to private. Why?

Suddenly you are compared to your peers ( worst form of criticism!!!), crucified by analysts and investors who do not have as good understanding of the business as you do, your competitors determine what you do next quarter and the next and suddenly the vision and passion are overtaken by spreadsheets!

As they say, the 'suits' take over and mediocrity , short term thinking, playing to satisfy outsiders set in. Pursuit of ' good enough' is now the norm compared to the 'pursuit of excellence and best in class'. 

End game : A new leader and a new vision OR risk becoming a ' me-too'!

Vaporware

As services start dominating economies globally, one wonders whether human activity is creating more 'vaporware' than anything real and useful! 

High speed algorithmic trading now accounts for half the trading volumes in American stock exchanges. Some of the world's most valuable companies are those that help people share frivolous videos and pictures, those that search and find information that exists already, those that allow people to communicate in very few characters the latest gossip going around!

Once in a while, you hear of technologies that help extract gas from rocks and reduce fossil fuel consumption. But mostly it's sharing cat videos and celebrity bling.

As golf's popularity wanes, the innovation there is to kick foot balls into large holes!!! Is that real progress? Where has all the ingenuity gone? Have the minds become numb from watching silly videos and inane tweets?

Life is short, world is small

In business and competitive world, backstabbing, back biting, scheming, talking behind one 's back, politics are unfortunate realities.

But life is short and world is small. You never know when you need help from someone and how long this life lasts!

Is it worth burning bridges and holding grudges?

In the long run, you might see the current disturbances as mere blips in bigger scheme of things.

Forgive and forget - for your own mental peace at least!

Be nice to people no matter what they are or how critical they are to you right now.

Share without expecting something in return always!

Pass on your learnings to others so they start ahead and not go through the evolution!

Be a net giver rather than a taker!!!

Jumping the hoops

As MOOC (massive open online courses) get popular and world gets more integrated thanks to internet, the traditional steps of learning process get blurred.

With global best practices and learnings become available much easier than ever, opportunities to jump the hoops covering multiple steps at once become available.

If the learning includes leveraging others ' experiences instead of academic approaches alone, you can learn two or three steps at a time and move ahead.

Let's take an example : suppose you want to open restaurant. In the traditional route, you may want to work in a restaurant and experience things first hand and then decide to start small. In the connected world, what if you are able to connect with other  restaurateurs and learn from their experiences as well?

You can jump multiple steps in your evolution as a restaurateur and start much ahead. 

Can you apply this to your area of interest?

Emotions in Business life

I have heard of a story ( apparently true) that a famous builder in Mumbai India hired an American as part of procurement which all of us are sure is an extremely critical function in a real estate firm.

This American then found a supplier from Pakistan who could export cement to India at a landing price that is half of the local produce!!!!

Can you imagine an Indian doing this? What gives? Emotion taking over in business decision making.

What an Indian would consider unpatriotic an American finds a simple clear business decision.

Leaving out the countries above, the point to glean is the aspect of emotion clouding or decision making.

Some times a fresh neutral perspective is most needed!!