Management!

Time and again I have asked myself "Do I really wanna do an MBA?", "What is so special about management that an engineer can't handle it","Is actually going to transform my career or I wanna do this because everyone else is doing it?".

I want to do an MBA for a career leap, MBA is like a pole vault, if I can do it I can crossover to a managerial position. But then MBA is an answer to my question only if my ultimate goal in life was to become a manager. How many of us dreamt of becoming a manager in our childhood, As a child I used to dream of making a car that would fly as well. There were others who dreamt of becoming a pilot, doctor, engineer, scientist, etc. But why all of them today are appearing for CAT.

Management is a separate knowledge domain, Engineers do not have management knowledge and the way a electrical engineer cannot do a civil engineers job well, similarly engineers without the management knowledge cannot handle a managerial position.

Management is a definitely the hip thing today. It pays well, but with evolution wealth has moved from one section to another depending on economics. There was a time when cattle were the measure of wealth, then farmers were the riches, then probably engineers with initial industrial revolution. Today it is managers. But what about tomorrow. Management has been around for long enough for it to be the thing of future. Management was actually born because of engineering. Engineering brought industrial revolution and large scale production. Large scale production required semi-skilled employees to perform repetitive activities competently, diligently and efficiently. And then coordinate these efforts to produce complex goods and services in large quantities. So management was born. Essentially management looks at human beings as machine and because these machines are not governed by n number of fundamental laws of science(which is static) management is much more complex compared to engineering. Human beings are dynamic which makes management dynamic. But important thing here is that management has same philosophical foundation as engineering has. Both the knowledge have enabled large scale production. They look at everything as production units/machines and try maximizing efficiency and the quality produced by such a unit.

Human beings are not machines because machines cannot manage themselves. If management is not going to be the hip thing in future then what else would be????? The answer can be easily deduced if we look at current revolution. After information revolution today human beings are moving towards innovation and co-creation. Human beings have two unique ability to adapt and create. With the changing times these two are becoming all the more important. Why lehman brothers a 156 years old organization which made 2 billion dollars in profits in 2007 could not adapt to changing environment of 2008 and collapsed. Having worked for lehman I can say it had one of the world class management systems in place. All its managers were world class. It collapsed because it lacked the human dimension of adaptability and co-creation. In fact in the coming days of recession a number of large organizations might come down, but small individually run business will not because they have the adaptability. Other large organization which will survive recession are organization like Apple, Toyota, which have exploited the creative dimension of human beings and have become centers of innovation.

Entrepreneurship is going to be the hip thing in future. The wave has already started. Entrepreneurship has the same philosophical foundation as innovation and co-creation. Every entrepreneur looks at his employees as complete human beings who have adaptability and creativity. A true leader today is an entrepreneur who does not lead by means of his position but by means of his ability to inspire employees to bring gift of initiative, imagination and passion to work. Tomorrow's successful organization will be more human, every human being then would manage himself, management will then become a trivial knowledge.

Luck by chance!

For a change I am watching a lot of movies these days (courtesy vinay sharma) and i m lucky last 2 were good. Good in my language means something which is created out of sincere efforts and with a vision.



Movies can be source of ideas, reflections etc. apart from entertainment. The current economic crisis is lucky for none but India. In my view the fundamental reason for the crisis is the exorbitant consumption by the west and the blind production by the east in the service of west. If you consume more than you produce you will one day deplete everything your forefathers earned and left for you. And if you presume that there is infinite wealth in west and keep accepting credit bills assuming they are against a real treasure hidden in the west, it will only leave you with paper and a lot of it. US and china are perfect examples of the west and the east. US crude consumption is 30 times that of India for a population less than 1/3rd of India, China exports are 9 times that of India. Today US does not have money to support its consumption and china does not have a wealthy sethji to serve.



India is lucky by chance. Being a poor country we could not afford to be a sethji and being lazy we weren't really interested in serving the sethji. There are two fundamental dimensions to out nature, maximum return in minimum efforts, and save as much as possible and consume as little as possible. Both these dimensions has put us in a unique position: "Luck by chance". We don't have a trade surplus so we don't care whether there is a sethji out there or not and because we have been saving for the future we have deep pockets. India is in a unique position to develop itself to a most powerful economy provided we break our notion of being a underdeveloped or backward nation. This very notion has lead us to follow west and not recognize the leader inside us. Instead of running for a better life to western countries, we can create a better life in our own country. Provided we see ourselves capable doing it.



I know by now you have got into pragmatic mode. "Blog likhne se development ho jata hain kya" Nah! it doesn't happen because of writing blog , blog likhne se time paas hotaa hain :) Development needs resources and productive human beings. We have 1/6th of the total human beings on the earth and resources are getting cheaper day by day, crude is 38$ a barrel today, it has fallen from its peak of 140$ a barrel in july 2008, so is the case with other commodities. Only thing we have to do is consume less than we produce. If we build new roads there will be enough cars to occupy them, if we build new public transport there are people waiting to travel in peace, If we produce world-class consumer products , there are plenty of buyers in the country with a taste for them and even deep pockets to buy them.



So as long as people are willing to produce first then consume, we don't need the world, we can achieve rapid development indigenously! see "Luck by chance"!

Rel@tiv!ty.........

It was perhaps Einstein who first saw things from a frame of reference which never existed before in the world of physics. My mind boggles at the thought of how would this world look, sitting inside Einstein mind or may be Dev D. mind for that matter. Sure everyone knows that there are different frames or paradigms which exists in the world but the fact that the same world appears so much different when seen by different individual is what is exciting the hell out of me....an IIT undergraduate looks at 500 rupee note as a means of his weekend daaru/sutta/movie/food, for an autowala it is half of total revenue from his daily hard work which would sustain his auto, his family, at last himself, for a teenager gal it is a hair cut or a beauty parlor session, for a beggar its a miracle, for a investment banker it is a peg of JD. The obvious question "so what", anyways 500 rupee is just a means for satisfying different needs. I know ....but point here wasn't about how many ways one can utilize 500 rupee but; there is nothing out there its all inside..... :)


It was perhaps Socrates who first saw a self or a ego, a universe which was made of segregated materials and souls, together with Aristotle & Plato they laid down foundation of what we see today as western philosophy.Where individual material and souls exists in various relationships. Essentially opposite of western is eastern philosophy where universe is one, for western philosophy god is outside the universe above all directing this universe whereas for eastern philosophy god is inside in the heart of people. The two philosophies have created two different worlds. Clearly western philosophy is a market leader by volume with 90% market share.


By western I don't mean the geographical west world, although that is where it was born but today it is the most prevalent philosophy. The people living in the eastern globe by geography are also living in the world shaped by western philosophy.


Like stock market everything has a cycle what goes up has to come down....... if today western philosophy is booming then tomorrow eastern has to, I m not saying eastern is better or western because good or bad is again frame dependent. Current economic crisis is sign of power shifting from west to east who knows it might triggers end of another boom which is western philosophy.


It is clear I want to see eastern philosophy boom. But because isme sabh kaa bhala hain :)
Western philosophy has made us to see ourselves as individuals interacting with rest of universe, we always see value in what others have and no value in what we have, it is fundamentally a state of suffering. In such a frame need to evolve arises from unhappiness!