While many are sleeping

As most of the world population is worrying and sleeping, some silent moves are changing the world forever. It may not be fair but it sure is real.

1. In 2019, richest 1% of the world owned 44% and the richest 10% owned 83% of the global wealth. As virus mutates in waves, it will surely take time to come back to normalcy. During this depression/slump/tough time, productive asset ownership will keep changing hands for those who are ready.

2. As the challenge of making ends meet gets higher, finding laptops/broadband for kids homeschooling is not in everyone’s reach. Another critical wealth building driver — Skill building takes back seat. While most are facing this, some are leveraging online courses/podcasts/communities to acquire skills that can be exported globally to a world that is becoming more comfortable with remote work.

3. The populations that already had high mortgage/student loan/credit card/personal loan burden before the virus, the additional strain on finances due to virus will move them a couple of notches lower in the wealth pyramid that may change the equation to 90–10 or worse.

4. As startups flounder due to virus, the risk takers now are forced to pivot and discard mediocre ideas/business models. The most inventive , win.

5. What was bare essential/nice to have/luxury before pandemic is not the same now. Consumption patterns/preferences may change making some industries less relevant. Habit changing/making that may take decades is now forced upon and new habits are formed in weeks.

Those making digital goods are growing the fastest during pandemic and that will make the legacy industries to re-look at building capital intensive businesses.

Irrespective of the final virus impact, the global order changes and some are leveraging it , while other are just impacted. Not fair but real.

Faith vs Truth ( in tough times!)

During storms, people would like to hold on to something strong to stay stable and weather the storm. That something varies for different people. It could be preparedness, faith, religion ….

when something completely unexpected comes long ( like a personal tragedy, grave sickness or a pandemic), one may not be prepared. People then turn to religion/faith/science/rationality and so on. when the event is unexplainable , one may turn to relegion and faith. Since faith is not absolute but graded ( and is determined by mental condition) it tends to be fragile when bad things happen. ( E.g. why is this happening to me? Why God isn’t helping?).

Since faiths come from religions ( most of ) which demand blind faith and do not encourage doubt or questioning, the faith becomes fragile and the person becomes fearful/doubtful and vulnerable. Many look down upon those who question or doubt as 'non-believer' and ostrasize.

While those with blind faith may be able to weather the storm, those without absolute faith, waver and falter.

Compared to faith, truth is a different animal altogether. Absolute truth destroys fear and doubt. Ancient Indian philosophies encourage and infact insist on Mimansa ( consideration, thought , discussion) and Tarka ( debate) as paths to finding the truth. While a master or text may initiate someone to the truth, debate and reasoning is encouraged to self experience the truth so it stays absolute . Truth and knowledge set one free and get rid of fear/doubt and help one become mentally strong to weather the storm. With the help of reasoning, it explains the world and its happenings to help one be unwavering and strong.

In tough times, truth makes one strong compared to a fragile faith.

The Popular and the Right

What is popular is not necessarily right. Why?

In any area, popular is determined by the past, herdish nature,FOLO( fear of losing out) and common denominator. Going against the popular is risky and uncertain. Most are lazy to determine the right path and find it easy to follow.

In everyday life, the car that sells the most or the movie that most see 'must' be the best(!). with Instagram likes , WhatsApp forwards, established routines and traditions, most of the decisions have already been made for us. It is super convenient to let the popular bear the burden of deciding.

What if it’s not right for you? What if the popular choice is outdated and mediocre? Why is there a Pareto’s principle if everything that’s popular must be important or right?

In a world full of uncertainty and past is certainly not a determinant of the future, how will the popular help you?

Make your own path and find your own truth . Atleast you won’t be part of the fat ‘ middle’!

Repurposing - why is it becoming critical?

Repurposing is the process by which an object with one use value is transformed or redeployed as an object with an alternative use value. It is becoming increasingly critical in today’s context.

Why? There are multiple contexts , a few of them i will list below.

Creation of any object or a product or a platform is costly , painful, challenging with uncertain results. When the results are not realised, should the costs and efforts go waste?

Building the initial object or product or platform in a way that it can be re-purposed for another industry/another use case/ another market means the costs are not written off altogether. With a little effort and cost, the product can become useful another way . Pivoting is so common today in ecosystems that repurposing is a key planning attribute in any product design.How easy it is to re-purpose when you want to pivot?

For an individual, certain skills/attributes and experiences are relevant in only one area/industry/role. Certain other skills and experiences can be re-purposed to other areas/functions/industries/roles. This re-purposing makes the individual more marketable and relevant.

For a platform serving a product/service/market segment, the ability and ease of serving another is a critical differentiator to scale.

Re-purposing is a deliberate, critical intent in design that is well worth institutionalising.

One habit that helps in 1000 ways

The number of ways /areas this helps is just too many.

The habit is to ínquire’.

Most people are not comfortable asking questions. They might offend the others, dont know what to ask, dont want to look ‘stupid’ ….

Many are not comfortable answering. They dont know the answer, dont know whether answer is right, dont want to look ‘stupid’ or take the questions personally that someone is judging them.

Its the inquiry that leads you to the truth. Its the inquiry that helps you look at alternatives, evaluate/validate the current one and remove noise.

Its the inquiry that helps you reject projects /investments/approaches that are not worth your while, focus on the one that can stand scrutiny and move forward. It helps you get to the truth and reject falsehood. It helps you get better/smarter/closer to your goal.

Do not assume that the one questioning knows the answer. S/he may not and want to learn. Or want to look smart. Or want to be busy /noticed…..

Neither should you assume that the one questioning has a better idea. They may want to verify their idea/view point/perspective.

Anyone questioning you is helping you. If you are questioning yourself, you are helping yourself.

Thats the habit that helps you in 1000 ways.

Data is Business - The attention seeking kid

While traditional business processes get automated once and are tweaked periodically for enhancement, Data is more like a constant attention seeking kid.

Even in an agile world, the business processes change at a slow pace. But a data driven business changes almost daily. Why?

• Everyday there are new insights to be found,
• new data sources become available,
• new signals to be targeted,
• new experiments to be tried
• and the feedback comes in a 24 hour cycle or less.

This makes data driven businesses to be constantly tended to, try mutliple things in an iterative fashion to get to better results all the time. ‘ Use as needed’ Cloud resources make this easy and almost imperative since the competition must be doing this all the time.

When booking.com does 20000 experiments in a year to tweak everything to see what will move the needle in desired direction, it is thanks to the cloud based data driven business that makes it possible. There is no set business process /specification to be automated.

It is a continuous discovery of better business outcomes, powered by data driven insights!!!

Failing in the 'Right' things

When you try something first time, failure is a given. What matters is if you are failing in the Right things.

Now what is the right thing?

One that is impactful and strategic. You do not want to fail on things that are neither impactful nor strategic. While every failure has a learning, failing on the wrong things means the failure is not worth it.

When someone asked Einstein why he failed 1000 times in making the light bulb, he said “ i did not fail 1000 times. There are 1000 steps to making a light bulb!”

One of world’s most successful hotel booking company Booking.com does about 10000+ experiments annually to see what works and what will improve the key business outcomes. while some of those actually improve the outcomes, there are 1000s that fail. But without those, you will never know what works!!!