I started watching football after the 1998 World Cup Final – which I saw at a movie theatre in Mumbai. France beat Brazil, I remember. It was an enjoyable experience, primarily because I supported France as I liked the colour of their attire more than Brazil’s. Late 90s were relatively dark ages especially for frail, snotty kids like me in Mumbai. The gift of broadband was not bestowed upon us then. Internet usage had not peaked. And Wikipedia was not up and running. To add to that, I wasn’t much of a reader. Nor did I have any understanding of history, culture or tradition. (Not that I’m any better now for that matter).  So, it was serendipity that led me to choosing my “favourite football clubs”. Little did I know, that those decisions would be questioned, queried and dissected in years to come.

I chose my favourite teams on the colour of the attire they wore. Orange and claret were my favourite colours. Valencia was my favourite Spanish team as a kid, thanks to their cool orange away kit. Back in England, both Aston Villa and West Ham wore claret. It was a real tough time choosing between the two, but then I sided with West Ham as “W” was my favourite alphabet among the 26.

Manchester City got promoted to the Premier League for the 2002-2003 season with Keegan as the manager. Always having a soft spot for the newly promoted sides, I started following their fortunes. Over the season, I took a liking to Keegan’s free-flowing attacking approach to football and got hooked to Anelka’s pace. The same season, West Ham were relegated – which meant I could not watch them on TV anymore. Knowingly or unknowingly, the fall-back option had presented itself. I had no choice but to support Manchester City in the Premier League.

So naive I was back then, that it took me a couple of years to appreciate the City fan’s predicament. It was not very soon that I realized that the all mighty Manchester United, who could do no wrong, were the main villians of our show. And that defeating them in the Manchester Derby meant a whole lot to some of the Blues back in England. Competing against the likes of United remained a pipe dream till some three years ago when fresh cash was pumped into the club – first by Thaksin Shinawatra and then by the Abu Dhabi royal family.

Over the last three years, Manchester City’s “positioning” has undergone a drastic overhaul. City are now the “noisy neighbours”, constantly pushing the “big clubs” out of their comfort zones and gatecrashing their private parties. Fan following has now improved in number – fair weather fans have jumped aboard. City are more than just nuisance value now, they have well and truly got under the skin of the big guys in the park.

At a personal level, I have been lucky that City’s star has risen in tandem with my interest and understanding of the game. But never ever did I imagine that City would be fighting for top honours this early. As a City fan, it is eerily uncomfortable to be in pole position. City fans have been so used to be trailing in games, looking over their shoulder to avoid relegation – crawling to the 40 point mark, that they really do not know how to react to the position that they find themselves in right now. A lot of people have conveniently assumed that City will win on final day to win the title, but it is not as smooth as it sounds, and most of the City faithful are very cautiously optimistic. History has always been against them.

On the personal front, I have been always outnumbered by fans of the “bigger clubs” who have been endlessly cocky about their exploits. Is this my chance to get back at them ? Will Toure’s strike on the final day allow me to show the finger to the increasingly annoying and glottonous bunch of Red jersey worshippers who have been feeding on an embarrassment of riches all their lives?

One swallow will never make a summer. It has been richly rewarding to see City improve from mistakes, and become a stronger side over the past few years, as if it were a young professional working his way to the top of the corporate ladder, or an young entrepreneur selling off his self-made empire to the bigger fish in the pond. Victory or not, the club needs to foster a sense of humility – amongst its players and the supporters.  The club needs to appreciate that clockwork-like consistency is needed in years to come. If it tries to shout at the top its voice with the sole intent of making itself heard, the screams will get drowned out in the multitude of cries – especially from the big boys complaining about the direction of the wind and sundry.

For one, I do not really deserve to be winning the title with City in 2012, as I was not with them when they went down to the third tier 1999. I have not seen the turbulence of the 80s and 90s. I don’t really know the club inside out, nor will I ever be able to connect with it as some of the “true Blues”. But for the millions of Generation X City supporters, who have spent the best part of their childhood and adulthood in footballing misery, a little bit of footballing supremacy won’t hurt. It is for them I sincerely hope City find the courage to win against QPR next Sunday.

There are two canteens at XLRI – day canteen(DC) and night canteen(NC). Both are monopolies – they know that the students have no real alternatives otherwise. There is a real positive sentiment about the NC among the students while a lot of them believe that DC is surviving on tradition. Two subtle difference are captured by the keen eye. The first is the issue of tendering change. Most often than not, you are “expected” to tender exact change at the DC. If you do not produce the exact change, you are forced to buy something that you do not want to or are “barked” at or are forced to abandon the purchase altogether. Loose change has rarely been an area of dissent at the NC, and that is because the seller has taken special care to “emancipate” his patrons from these trivial matters. Every week, the NC person, arranges for heap of coins – 1,2,5 Rs in denomination. Does he arrange for a wad of Rs.10 notes as well? I do not know. The sole purpose of these coins is to tender change to students as they demand, on the spot. A keen observer recognizes the fact that the seller is doing his homework, that he is working hard behind the scenes in interest of the consumer, even before he sets shop. The NC also has the concept of an open kitchen (more forced than voluntary, I would add though). Any consumer can witness the efficiency with which orders getting turned over. It is easy for the patrons to observe that the owners and the support staff are working honestly,consistently and tirelessly to serve them which  in some way or the other reinforces loyalty. The DC is a black box – no one really knows what happens in the kitchen. It’s a case of wait and watch.

Committee elections are a real high-octane affair at XL. Every candidate is allowed a two minute window to present his candidature, after which voting is done. There are two kinds of votes which wait to hit the ballot – votes that get decided immediately as the candidate list is known, and the undecided votes that get influenced by the candidate’s presentation. Now, here’s the funny part. More often than not, the candidate is never allowed to deliver his speech. Clamorous hooting and joy engulfs the room throughout the presentations. How, then, do the undecided votes choose their candidates? More often than not, such votes are determined by the goodwill that the candidate has built up over the year. Throughout the year, the candidate has unknowingly put forward his mandate – through actions not words, deeds not sentiments. The candidate has been selling himself not for those two minutes, but rather for two terms.

As long as you are selling something more complex and differentiated than a toothpaste, there is a lesson in this. Selling goes deeper than point of sales promotion and hiring a brand ambassador. Like how beauty is not just skin deep, selling goes beyond the marketing mix. Selling is a disposition, not a sporadic surge of false emotional appeal. Think about selling concepts and not toothpastes, think about personal selling.

I have deep respect for Cricket Australia (CA) for their attitude towards selling cricket. Cricket in Australia is a spectacle. And its not a spectacle because Kylie Minougue or Lara Bingle (*funny smile*….those are the only two names I could come up with my limited repertoire….) say it is. It is an experience because over the years CA have worked tirelessly behind the scenes to sell Australian cricket. CA works hard to ensure that the grounds are of the highest quality, with each blade of grass trimmed to perfection. This lush green outfield is complemented with a exciting commentary team and the broadcaster’s philosophy of placing the game of cricket before advertisers’ interest. The cricketers sell themselves by diving across the lush green outfields, throwing themselves in the air to take some stunners.

A lot of work goes into a game of cricket in Australia even before the action starts. And this selling disposition is consistent whether the game might be a World Cup final or a Pura Cup/Sheffield Shield domestic tie. The attitude towards a game of cricket does not change depending on the enormity of the tie. Latently and silently, CA are asserting themselves through their background work ethic which is then supplemented by the usual marketing mix elements. Selling cricket in India depends on the occasion, and it is more of an emotional plea. “We will be dishonest in our efforts and means, and yet you suckers will pay to watch the game. We will not give you lush green outfields, but give you Shilpa Shetty. And that will work.“

In one of her articles on luxury (some eons ago), Radha Chadha lamented how the famous super-duper-luxury brands were woefully lacking in their attention to detail. When she walked into the luxury outlets (selling watches/handbags), she found the selling staff were starkly incompetent when it came to elucidating the facts and folklore behind the brand’s offerings. They were not trained well, did not have subject matter expertise and were not able to convincingly answer any of her queries. She stormed off the stores without making a single purchase. All of the elements of the marketing mix were in place, the store might argue, but they still lost out on a conversion. Primarily because they did not appreciate that the role of the salesperson is enlarging, that it goes beyond the store. When the customer arrives on your premises, you have to be prepared – to serve her to the best of your capabilities. Discerning customers like Radha, can immediately catch you if you have not done your homework and punish you by walking off. Marketers and institutions selling concepts and not commodities, need to be even more aware of this fallacy as it directly affects their businesses.

Why do students with better handwriting and good presentation get better marks than others? I do not know. But perhaps, the person who is evaluating can sense that a sincere effort has been made by the student to sell himself. Perhaps that is why you get marked well even if you write gibberish, but get a naught if you leave a question blank. This is contentious and might not be exactly true, but who knows?

Last night, on my flight to Mumbai, I ordered an orange juice. Fortunately, I had exact change to pay for it. The person next to me ordered his share and flicked out a 500 rupee bill. To my utter shock, he was asked to produce exact change – either by himself or by asking fellow travelers. This same person, very awkwardly, asked a third person for change before making the payment. I was half hoping, that the person took back his order in protest. Imagine haggling for change 10 kms in the air, with atmospheric temperature of about -39 degrees. Tellers at railway counters in Mumbai yell at you if you don’t produce change, and you are IndiGo airlines! Is there no difference in positioning? Or has “company culture” not penetrated to the cabin crew yet?

Like your 7S frameworks et al,  all concepts have hard and soft elements. Selling, too, has its elements. Over the past, marketers have tried to chisel at the customer by focusing on the hard elements of the marketing mix. The marketer has played the game on the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law. Times keep on changing. Customers are becoming more aware and open to new options. In such a scenario, marketing can perhaps only be successful if there is a honest undercurrent of effort on which the sporadic emotional evocations are built.

Selling, (or marketing) is a disposition. It is not about fooling the customer. It does not start when the customer enters the store. It does not end when he exits the store. It does not cease to exist when the customer is not watching you. It does not go away when you wake up after a night’s sleep. Selling is about working hard behind the scenes, making the customer realize that you are going out of your way to appease him.Selling is not about occasional upheavals, not about mocking the customer behind his back. Selling is about facilitating the interaction with the customer, taking a more proactive role and taking a cut in the profits to build goodwill.

Ending with a quote by the much acclaimed marketing guru named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”

P.S: Do let me know if any time in the future, you have walked away from the point of purchase, just because you felt that the seller had not done his homework.  :)

Now let me rephrase the question a bit.

Have you scored 8/10 every single time, day after day, week after week, year after year, all your life? Have you ever felt satisfied after scoring an 8? Or were you ruing why you ended up missing on the 2? Has someone come up to you and genuinely praised you for scoring an 8? Did your friends congratulate you? Does anyone really care about an 8? Does anyone really care about consistently scoring 8 all through one’s life? Does the world care about 8s, or are they blissfully happy glorifying the 10s?

Civilizations, organizations, governments, groups, teams, friend circles and kitty parties, all thrive and succeed on the merit of people who consistently do good (above average) work, in other words who consistently score 8/10 without fail. From a very young age, our mind has been polluted to salivate at winners, laud their 10/10 performances, and then sympathise with them and lend them our condolences as they score a 2/10 the very next week. As I see it, not many of us really want to appreciate the difference between “newsworthy” and “praiseworthy”. And this lack of appreciation often leads us to believe that “what is newsworthy is most definitely praiseworthy”. The grappling issue with 8/10s is that they never create any “news” and as a result never win any “praise”.

Your regular 8/10 guy:

• Will rarely ever win the Booker Prize
• Will rarely be known to have written Revolution 2020
• Will rarely manage to shellshock his peers with a fistful of A+s
• Will rarely be said to have “been unlucky” and “deserved more” on getting a F
• Will rarely spellbind the spectators by scoring a 25-ball hundred
• Will rarely be fortunate enough to be forgiven for getting out on an irresponsible shot
• Will rarely have the strength to be heroic enough to stop a robber
• Will rarely have the machismo to eve tease a helpless female in broad daylight
• Might score a 10, at times, and walk away all others are busy consoling the laggards
• Might never score below a 4

When we try to think over this 8/10 rule on a single discipline, it does not seem to have any appeal. Well, if Abhinav Bindra scored an 8/10 on all his shots, he would not have qualified for the finals, let alone win the gold. The beauty of an 8/10 starts to unfold when we look at it in a multidisciplinary environment. Most of us make an attempt to secure a 10 in a particular discipline while completely neglecting, sometimes disdainfully, all areas wherein we choose not to “specialize”. It is not a surprise that we rarely score above 4 or 5 in all such areas. Now think of someone who consistently scores a 8 in almost everything life has to offer. Some people, more than others, make a genuine attempt to score a 8 in everything they do. They might not necessarily achieve this target. Sometimes, they fall short and score a 6 or a 5 on very off days. But they would never stoop to the 0s and the 2s. And in activities that supplement their talents, they almost casually end up hitting the 10s. It’s like being ‘Jack of all trades, master of one’.

The world has its way of honouring 10’ers. All the awards in life are instituted on the basis of a uni-disciplinary spike in performance, and never for all around holistic consistency. The winner of the 100m sprint gets more bandwidth than the winner of the modern pentathlon. Finance is a much bigger attraction in management schools as compared to General Management. Bulls are always more colourful than bears. Marriages are still made on the basis of one’s educational qualifications and not on the overall consistency and compatibility in thought. If you are an 8/10 individual, the challenge is not to get fazed by the sporadic 10’ers around you.

Giving it a 8/10 on the mundane activities of life is another challenge. So, how much did you score when you had your dinner yesterday? Did you gulp down your food to the point that it started to hurt you or did you make a conscious attempt to savour the moment and score an 8? I suppose you ate methi ki sabji. Did you try to find out what methi is called in English? Fenugreek, no? Did you savour the gajar ka halwa? Ever thought of why you did not know how to make this delicacy? Did you make a mental note to learn to make the same? Did you get reminded of someone close who made awesome gajar ka halwa? Did you call him/her or send an appreciative sms? Did you try to remember what part of your tongue sensed its sweet taste? Did you pull out a chair for someone next to you? Did you get up to bring a dozen of chapatis for your whole table?  Do you do this day after day, week after week? Is this your “dining disposition”?

The description of dinner would seem very simplistic (there can obviously be more abstruse tasks and models). But if you answered most of the questions with a “yes”, you would have secured a 8/10 on yesterday’s dinner. What you did was perhaps “praiseworthy” but not “newsworthy” at all. The winner of  “Badshah of jalebi eating contest” will have his name engraved on the walls of the dining hall, but did he score a 8/10 on yesterday’s dinner? Not just on today’s dinner, but wouldn’t it be nice if one could score 8/10 consistently on life in general?

Some people do not need to get 8/10 consistently, because they have transcended to a different level, and have made a habit of getting 10/10 regularly. But such individuals who score 10/10 on all tasks of “life” are as rare as Indian batsmen comfortable with seaming tracks.  This might be a bit irrelevant, but Abhinav Bindra was once asked why he did not feel happy on winning. I don’t remember the exact response, but he said something like – ‘winning signalled the end and that happiness was always in the journey.’ Perhaps he was trying to indicate that happiness is going from 8/10 consistently to 10/10 consistently, not just in a single discipline but replicating the same in whatever you do, each day, day after day.

This might sound forced, but trust me it is not the case. Mumbai is the epitome of an 8/10 city. Day after night after day, it compels you to give your 8/10. The occasional winner gets drowned in the crowd. The failures are disregarded as there are tons and tons of them. It honours only those who are consistently consistent.

Taking inspiration from Prasad Sawant’s post, I resolve to read 25 books in 2012. If I were a sales guy, I would have set my target as 25000 and then fabricated books, stories and excuses to justify meeting 0.01% of my target. But I do not believe too much in inflated targets or futuristic projections. 25 it will be then! An honest attempt. It’d be really nice if I could somehow overshoot this target. And I’m hoping I will. After all, setting modest targets has always been my forte (much to my dismay, I may add). I’ll maintain the list of books on my sidebar and update it after every read.

25 books in 2012 has to happen! A start this is.

Wish me luck!

Education as a topic is worse than a lullaby, more potent than pills. To write about education is as dull as Rahul Dravid’s ODI batting strike rate in the mid/late nineties. But with Dravid’s renewed eloquence in 2011, education can take heart. There is hope, still! Random thoughts of a confused/convoluted/demented mind make for good blog posts, you then graduate to love sagas, abstruse lines of poetry, armchair commentary on sport and so on. All make for good reads. Yet, I ended up sticking to prose on education. There is a reason to it.

My father is a education consultant/educator/tutor. And education in the 1990s was orthodox to a great extent. All throughout my schooling, there was tremendous focus on paper and pen education. About solving, erasing, drawing lines, resolving, rewriting, better presentation, practicing, reading text. You get the drift, don’t you? And tuition was encouraged. I must have spent half my life sitting in institution/classes/tuition. School classes, math classes, science classes, competitive exams, Bombay Talent Searches, National Talent Searches, language sessions, lab sessions, Sanskrit classes, computer science courses, C++, Java to list down a few. The best bit is that I was never too enthusiastic about any of them. I am pretty convinced that if I had spent half the hours I have spent in tuition in my life, in practicing (say) water polo or fencing, I would have made the fringes of the Indian national squad, for sure!

Kids in Mumbai waste a quarter of their childhood travelling to tuition. In sweltering heat, with sweat under their armpits and fifty rupees in pocket, most kids travel on about an hour to reach their college/tuition. I used to travel 2 hours a day (1 hour each way) bearing the full brunt of local trains just to “reach” my junior college. And, let me assure you that it is a very difficult task to motivate yourself to pay attention in class/tuition after one hour of ruthless travel. Like most others in my city, I have sat through hours and hours and hours of tuition, listless and confused – most importantly physically and mentally tired. Add t0 that the randomness of engineering in Mumbai where I was sitting in class six hours a day, travelling for another two hours per day with just 40 days of proper holiday per year, and what you get is more education and some more. Add to that the tuition I took for ghastly horrors like engineering drawing and you have some more education. Then education for MBA entrance exams. And then MBA itself.

All throughout my childhood, I was told that tuition was essential for academic and professional development and thattuition was academia itself. (By tuition, I mean the act of an educator/coach delivering concepts/knowledge/gyaan in classroom environment to students). And hence I held all classrooms in very high regard, as if it was my moral duty to absorb all “tuition” that was being delivered. Naive and young, I had no reason to believe that tuition was a farce. As time passed, and I developed some ounce of critical thinking, it slowly crept to me that tuition was not as sacrosanct as it was made out to be. I started finding faults in tuition methodologies. At times, it became very glaring that the educator was simply not putting enough effort into delivering tuition, and here I was on the other end, writhing in frustration because someone else was not doing his job (for what he was being paid for) perfectly. Sometime in the middle of my engineering curriculum, I suffered a total breakdown in faith. I came to the conclusion that, as a student I could do no more. I was trying my level best to be a attentive student, but thetuition and methodologies were failing me over and over again. I sensed no improvement. And from then onwards, a huge part of me resigned to the fact that I would have to make up for this inefficiency in tuition by working on my own, behind closed doors, not only trying to consolidate my understanding, but also make up for the fallacies in tuition and its methods.

According to me, the gaps in a course emerge out of the following themes:

1. Interest: Lack of awareness and understanding of why one is taking the course.

2. Planning: Lack of a solid course structure which would have otherwise allowed the students to plan their way across its duration.

3. Communication: Educators not working on their communication are like batsmen refusing to work on their fielding. Unfortunately, there is no place for either in the modern world.

4. Ambiguity: Some educators, even at this day and age, prefer to thrive on ambiguity and information asymmetry. I thought that these themes vanished back in the 19th century.

5. Relevance: What is taught in class vs what appears in exams vs what is required/relevant in the real world.

6. Trepidation: A feeling of constant fear that if I don’t lick your boots, I will fail in the course.

7. Mindset: Educators need to move from a Theory X mindset to a Theory Y mindset. Students want to learn. And if you can put in honest, quality effort; they will reciprocate with honest, quality work. But it is not easy to put in honest effort being an educator perhaps. Because it entails generating interest, structuring the course, mesmerizing the students with classy communication, reducing ambiguity to zero, bringing in relevance and not abstraction and alleviating any fear in the minds of the students. Clearly, an uphill ask.

In my honest (and worthless) opinion, good schools are those which work systematically towards eliminating all these gaps which agitate student lives. I don’t know what schools these are, and where you find them, but an ideal institution needs to have a publicly available mandate describing its measures/efforts made to tackle and eliminate the above gaps. There are other minor themes to talk about as well, but that would drag this post on forever, so i’ll cease to flirt with them.

In the middle of all the chaos, I ended up securing a University Rank and some obscene scores in my engineering degree. How and more importantly why, I do not know. But a lot of it has to be attributed to this web I had gotten myself into. I would put a lot of effort into every course, not because I wanted to excel badly at it, but because I felt that the tuition and its methods were inadequate and insufficient. I have spent hours and hours inside my study room, contemplating on “How should this have been taught?” , “Say if I were to teach this, how could I do this better?” and thus wasted a whole lot of productive time reworking and reinventing the wheel, to cover up for the foibles of poor tuition. All this in the hope that somewhere down the line the educators would perhaps work a bit harder to deliver quality content, and somewhere down the line I could just go back to my room, put my feet up and relax, knowing that the content had been ably delivered in the classrooms.

When I look back at it, I do not feel bad about the grind as much. On the positive side, it helped me make a lot of friends – for almost always I was the one explaining, elucidating concepts before exams. But it has cost me a fortune. For the last three to four years, I have sacrificed all my interests and desires, for getting entangled in this web, I have never really managed to find time to indulge myself in things that I want to do. I have not attended/enjoyed/pursued as many quizzes as I would have wanted to, never found the peace to prepare for prestigious quiz events. I have given up on cricket totally, and almost all other sports other than football. There have been numerous occasions where I wanted to begin something entrepreneurial, which of course I had to shelve. Regurgitating classroom concepts meant lesser movies, lesser parties, lesser sporting events, lesser life. Compensating for the lack of proper tuition has made me unhappy, unhealthy and grumpy beyond repair. It should not surprise you when I tell you that I’ve not had a proper holiday/vacation/sojourn for four years now. For, I have spent all my vacations doing mundane activities which I wanted to but could not pursue because of the ambiguity, irrelevance and futility of tuition and courses.

But very recently, I have made peace with the fact that the education and tuition is never going to improve drastically. And it is an individual choice that one has to make whether to bother oneself with the clumsy and regressive methods of tuition or just let this phase go, expecting no real value out of the whole deal. What good has come out of this million hours of fruitless labour, is that I now have (very?) sound perspectives about tuition – methods, frameworks, responsibilities of the educators and students, planning, delivery, execution and grades/rewards.  Sometimes, I desperately want to don the hat of an educator for I genuinely feel that I could structure/deliver courses gazillion times better than they are done today. And then I write posts on education, hoping against hope, that someone in the wind would catch the sentiment and tuition would improve in the coming periods. I am a wiser man now. People talk about market research, prospecting to find undervalued stocks, emerging themes and what not –  education for me is the theme of the next decade. There is so much to do in education (as with insurance, bond markets, infrastructure, healthcare and microfinance) that somewhere down the line these ideas about tuition would no doubt bear some fruit. With international schools (as are health/wellness centres) mushrooming all over the country, education presents itself as a lucrative/meaningful opportunity. With added competition, institutions would have to shoulder more responsibility, reinvent themselves, work on their tuition and academic structures in order to survive. And I hope that the generation ahead, will have a better sense of tuition and education than what I was fed. The education theme is so strong that Mckinsey and BCG have set up their own education practices in this country in recent years. There is enough work for everyone!

Given this rather verbose disclosure, my intensity of posts on education will wane. You shall be taken out of your misery, not to worry. But not before I have made you read this another post under the category “Education”. Ha! 1-up on you!

There is a sense of betrayal. I have given up far too much in search of education/tuition and have returned empty handed far too often. Perhaps, it is because my ideas are flawed. Or my decisions. I don’t know. But now, as I see things, it is futile to give up life for the cause of education. There are better causes, more pressing needs (both personal and societal)  in this world to channel your attention onto.

Genius is usually defined as an ‘exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability’. The most important deduction is that (as you would say in study of microeconomics) genius is an internal. Genius is the inherent ability of an individual. It can be put to use with the same efficacy at any time of the day.

Method is perhaps what you would call the learning component of an activity. Method is all about skill. Method is about improving your chances by repetitive practice. Method is about locking yourself in a room, giving up things that you like and focusing on the task in hand, by repeatedly (rather monotonously) doing the same thing. Over a longer period of time, method can take various forms and there is always a chance for improvisation. The key takeaway is that method is an external.

Almost every publication in the world refers to Sachin Tendulkar as the best batsman of his generation. But very rarely, perhaps never has his success been attributed to Genius. Sachin Tendulkar is the epitome of Method – a brilliant example of how the power of Method can be harnessed to its optimum. There have been stories of Sachin being asked to practice with a one rupee coin kept on the stumps. If he batted through the entire practice session without getting bowled, he would be allowed to keep the coin. A lot of Sachin’s critics have pointed out his inability to win matches overseas. Throughout his childhood, Method prepared Sachin to play on the tracks of the sub-continent. Methodical approach would take more time (especially as compared to Genius) to adjust to different conditions abroad. Its all but natural.

Genius is the ability to score 40 ball hundreds on green-tops when the rest of the team folds out without scoring. Genius is about making Method looks stupid. Humiliate it at times. Genius is about playing an outrageous shot and getting out on a zero when your team needs you most. And then be shameless enough to smile at the cameras while biting into a Cassata. Genius could be equated to Virender Sehwag.

There have been times when some very enthusiastic (rather delusional?) relatives have termed me a genius. They could not have been farther from the truth. (General gyaan alert. Farther is appropriate when used in terms of distance. Further denotes time span. I had noted this during the CAT preps an year ago.) My life is governed by Method to the tee. I make lists all the time to organize things. Add new items. Cut out items. Duplicate lists. Write them twice. Make new lists. I solve sums. 100 sums of the same variety. If the 101st sum is asked, I won’t be able to answer. I rarely participate in class. For I don’t grasp things intuitively. Only when I go back to my room, and re-read what has happened, I am in a position to comment on the topic. When I’m learning a new topic/skill (say driving a car, economics, appreciation of poetry), I  lag behind to start with as the initial phase is all about Genius. It is internal. Only after a certain period of time, the impact of Method sets in. And I begin to make ground on the Geniuses who have the early advantage. In short, I am a Method person, and I have no hesitation in admitting it. And I am tempted to believe that I understand how Method works and can spot Method in action! Rahul Dravid’s recent batting exploits in England are an apt tribute to Method.

As Genius is intuitive, it saves its bearer a lot of time. What the average John Doe can do in 10 hours, the Genius can do in 5. Let us call the five hours saved by Genius by a rather methodical and an unimaginative name as – Genius Dividend (GD) – on similar lines of the Demographic Dividend (DD).

How the GD is put to use makes or breaks a person. Lionel Messi is a Genius with the ball at his feet. And the entire world knows that. But the 2009 Champions League Final was won by a smashing header by Messi who was incidentally the shortest player on the pitch(http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=445360167242). No footballer I know works harder than Messi. He is Methodical in areas where he knows that his Genius won’t take him through. Messi from what I know has worked very Methodically on his heading and tackling. Same goes with Graeme Swann’s & R Ashwin’s spin bowling. On the other hand is a very talented, natural footballer called Mario Balotelli who in the last twelve months has been involved in dumping his girlfriend on national television, disrupting traffic after being left out of the first eleven, scoring it with hookers, throwing water balloons on cars and partying with the Italian Mafia. No wonder Jose Mourinho was fed up with him in no time.

The problem with Genius is that it almost always errs on the side of arrogance. Method on the other hand prefers to err on the side of caution. Genius needs to realize that it has to do better than Method. That it is a complete failure on Genius’ part if it gets trumped by Method. Our society values Genius a bit too much. A lot of time, effort and bandwidth is expended on discussing Genius – mostly its fads, foibles and fallacies. Genius is pampered to the extent of making it lazy, redundant. Worse, unaccountable. Genius should be made accountable for its GD.  Salivating over unaccountable Genius is a waste of time. Method is a better, more honest prospect. While Genius is not affected by talk or constructive criticism, Method is sure to respond to any attention that it gets. Method makes most of its resources. Genius is perhaps wasteful. But minimizing waste has never been our motive in life, has it? Especially given the amount of food we waste in weddings.

Dark clouds were hovering menacingly since morning, and every second person mumbled a silent prayer, trying to delay the advent of any rains. The programme started on time, with groups of students performing gracefully as ever.

(I’ve been to two schools in my life – Pragnya Bodhini High School and Gokuldham High School. One commonality was that both schools were ‘entrenched in culture’, so as to say. I did a lot of culturally significant, socially relevant activities while in these schools. And it made me happy at the end of the day. I never expected any reward. It was just a way of life. Over the last six years, the scenario has changed so badly, that at times, I feel like weeping in a corner)

The prayers were not working, and the weather got more menacing with every passing moment. Within half an hour or so, the heavens opened and it started pouring. Students ran helter-skelter. Some took refuge under trees, some went into the basement. The drizzle stooped within minutes, but it had done a lot of damage. There were puddles of water on the cement. The brown soil had become filthy and gooey. All students came out to the open area and stood looking at each other, waiting for someone to take some initiative. The mumurs got stronger. There was unease in the air.  Neither the students nor the teaching staff wanted to soil their whites and were reluctant to sit in the mud. Our principal, Mrs. Usha Raina, then did something spectacular which still remains fresh in my mind. She caught a whiff of what was happening around her. In no time, she came down from the podium and plonked herself on the ground -  brown slimy dirty patches of mud all over her pristine white sari. After a couple of gasps and shrieks, all the teaching staff and students had gotten back to their positions on the ground and the rest of the programme concluded as planned.

The above for me is the most definitive description of leadership.

I was wondering about ways to define leadership. Say, what makes a good leader? Write five qualities of a leader -

a. Inspiring

b. Forward Thinking

c. Motivating

d…… yada yada

Half way through this method of defining leadership, I realized that one can’t really define leadership. It’s like goodwill or love. Very intangible. Can’t be captured in words. And it’s also very under-rated. When mutual funds/institutions invest in foreign equities, all they see (apart from a certain market cap threshold) is the quality of the senior leadership. Investors who put their faith and money in sound leaderships like Infosys, Unilever, Tata Group, HDFC Bank, Asian Paints have reaped tremendous rewards over the years.

I honestly believe that India has a huge leadership deficit. Not just at the Centre or at the political level, but even in local bodies and communities. And there is a worrying leadership deficit especially in our GenI – impatient, irresponsible and infidel. Although I’ve not done enough to explore different aspects of student life, I still maintain that I’ve really felt sad at the lack of “student leadership” around me for the last six years. More disappointing has been the complete leadership failure of non-students around me – educators, mentors, relatives et cetera. Leadership is not about the number of committees you’ve headed in your life. If it makes you feel any better or worse, I’ve headed none. Leadership is about making a difference.

Can you be taught leadership in college? Can there be a course on “how to lead”? I don’t know. But some colleges and their students have always exhibited better leadership qualities. Perhaps it’s in the air out there. Perhaps it’s in their DNA. Perhaps it’s just a result of focused effort. So, about a week ago, when I was given a chance to join Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI) for their MBA course, what I immediately told myself was, “Dude! Its XLRI! The cradle of leadership!”.

To put it in cricketing parlance, if the famed IITs are known for producing Sachin Tendulkars, XLRI gives the world its Mahendra Singh Dhonis. The world identifies with a good leader. Although Dhoni’s batting average might not be amongst the world’s best, there is no questioning his brand equity or the respect he commands from his peers. And a lot of it has got to do with exemplary leadership – Winning captain of the T20 World Cup, Winning Captain of the 2011 World Cup, Captain of the top Test playing Nation – perhaps the best leader Indian cricket has ever had.

Leadership has always been a huge turn on for me. I used to get goosebumps when Leander Paes led India in Davis Cup ties or when Patrick Vieira led out Arsenal or when Steven Gerrard inspired his Liverpool troops. I secretly dreamt of “playing under” such a leader.

If I do end up joining XLRI in a month’s time, it’ll never be about the big money or the big ticket. It’ll be more about understanding, appreciating and imbibing leadership – a quality that is very scarce these days. And as we all know, scarcity creates value! And what better place to put an end to this leadership deficit of six years other than “The Cradle of Leadership” which incidentally happens to be in Mahendra’s home state. Perhaps he’ll be able to teach me a few things during my vacations

Collins Obuya is your average frail Kenyan who looked like he’d blown away by Shaun Tait’s bouncers in a recent World Cup encounter. Obuya burst onto the scene in the 2003 World Cup and impressed all with his leg spinners. He picked up 13 wickets at an average 28.76 in the 2003 World Cup and took a career best 5 for 24 in Kenya’s win over Sri Lanka at Nairobi. Hailed as the successor to Asif Karim, Obuya was touted as the best young spinner in Africa. His stellar performances earned him a contract with Warwickshire in the English League. In the months to follow, the ball just wouldn’t turn for Obuya. He faced health issues, his bowling deteriorated and he couldn’t buy a wicket.  Obuya has thirty ODI wickets to his name. He had 25 till 2003, which means he’s picked up five wickets in the last seven years, after earning his contract with Warwickshire. To much surprise, Obuya has played in both the 2007 and 2011 World Cups. Not as a leg spinner, but as a specialized middle order batsman. Obuya is Kenya’s highest run-getter in the 2011 World Cup with a healthy average of 48.60, scoring a 98* against the mighty Australians.

James Franklin made his Test debut in 2000 when he played as a seamer against Pakistan. He scored a pair (zero runs in either innings) to kick start his Test Career. For the last three years, he has been a permanent fixture in New Zealand’s batting order. In his first year in international cricket, he had a batting average of 7. He averages 54 in one day internationals played in 2011. Franklin suffered a knee injury in 2006-07 and was never the same bowler. That he switched his core competency from being a bowler to a batsmen given the circumstances, is what still guarantees him a spot in the Kiwi side.

The highest wicket taker in the 2011 World Cup is our very own Shahid Bhai. With twenty one wickets to his name, he’s outperformed stalwarts like Muralidaran and Harbhajan Singh. The problem is that he started his career as an opening batsman, some twelve years ago. Afridi was ferocious with the bat in the late nineties. Aged 16 years and 217 days, Afridi became the youngest player to score an ODI century. In his first international innings, Afridi broke the record for fastest century in ODI cricket, reaching his hundred from 37 balls. The eleven sixes he struck also equalled the record for most in an ODI innings. Batting was his calling or so it seemed. Sometime in the middle of the last decade, he was found out by international bowlers. And runs came to trickle. His technique and approach was not good enough to merit him a spot in the team as a specialized batter. He had to develop his bowling to remain a part of the Pakistan side. As things stand currently, Shahid Afridi is Pakistan’s most successful spinner. His 313 ODI wickets make him Pakistan’s third highest wicket taker behind Wasim and Waqar. Not bad for a Pathan, for whom batting was his ‘true calling’.

Rebecca Romero has two Olympic medals – a Silver in 2004 and a Gold in 2008. What makes it special is that the 2004 medal was won in Rowing and the 2008 triumph was in cycling. A champion rower – she won a silver medal at the Athens 2004 Olympics in the quadruple sculls, and the following year was part of the British crew that won the 2005 World Championships in the quad sculls. In 2006, she quit rowing due to a chronic back problem. But she couldn’t give up her love for sport and the stomach for a fight. She took up cycling and made rapid advances. The individual gold at the Beijing Olympic was her crowning glory.

We have been told a lot of times, stories of companies going out of business as they failed to embrace change, failed to adapt themselves with the need of the markets and the consumers, failed to innovate. A lot of corporate branding has to do with change and dynamism as well. More importantly, a lot of careers hit a roadblock, when the employee fails to reinvent himself in the workspace.

How difficult is it to reinvent yourself professionally? Suppose an employee working at a desk for four years just realises that his core skills are no longer good enough to sustain him in the market. What does he do? Surely, pick up something else. That he can’t afford to given that he is so highly leveraged is another issue altogether.

Why are certain people able to reinvent themselves faster and more peacefully than others? How can Sachin Tendulkar rule over all three versions of cricket, whereas most others invariably restrict themselves to one form? Anurag Behar, in his latest column talks about two extremes in philosophy of education – “the liberal educationist” and “the instrumental educationist”. He says -

The “liberal educationist” believes in education for its own sake: That only learning anchored in deep thoughts and broad perspectives can be called education; that stoking the thirst for knowledge is sufficient to handle life. To him, thinking of how education can prepare someone for a vocation is somewhere between ludicrous and sacrilegious.

The “instrumental educationist” wants the child to prepare for employment— the earlier the better. After all, the real purpose of education is generating livelihood—everything must be aligned to that. Skills and knowledge relevant to employment must be central to the curriculum. In this view, the ability to think critically, perspectives about society and scientific understanding of nature are somewhere between distractions and unaffordable luxuries.

As graduates in India, the focus on instrumental education is very high. Liberal views are not valued by the system, peers or examiners. The current focus of Indian education, especially IT, is on vocation, which aims at transforming lifestyle and eating habits more than anything else. There is no impetus for thought per se, and the confluence of thoughts from various walks of life. And this method of learning perhaps, is what makes most Indian graduates very rigid; very inflexible. Because most students are taught to study for a particular vocation, it becomes difficult to change career tracks at a later stage. Most of us join engineering because a mediocre engineer earns more than a mediocre lawyer or a mediocre artist or a mediocre footballer or a mediocre keyboard player or a mediocre ballet dancer.

Say you are the 256,443 rd best engineer in the country. You’d still be having a six digit annual salary. And a 256,443 rd best physiotherapist in this country would be jobless. The problem is that they day India needs 256,442 skilled engineers, you’ll have nowhere to go, if your education has not been a marriage of the the two extremes mentioned above.

Realising that your core skills which you’ve been nurturing for more than half a decade, are not good enough for the marketplace, can be a very damning experience. But as a lot of sportspersons have showed, it’s not the end of the world. With the right mentality and “soft skills” or “soft attributes”, mastering another domain or vocation, is not really out of reach. Viren Rasquinha captained the Indian hockey team and then studied management and currently heads the operations of the Olympic Gold Quest. So, if you are 21, and totally out of sync with your current vocation/training, all’s not lost. The Governor of the Reserve Bank of this country is a production engineering graduate. Take heart. Have patience. Strengthen your “non-functional” skill base. Vocation training is easy.

I’ve had pretty bad experiences in buying from shops which are ‘Marathi owned‘ – so to say. All along, I’d maintained that the poor customer service meted out to me was a function of a businessman not fully understanding what the business demanded of him, and was not dictated by the language he spoke or the region to which he belonged. But it seems that there is a lot of substance in this theory of a certain section of Indians being ‘inherent businessmen/shopkeepers’ or ‘baniyas‘.

There are two sweetmeat shops in and around my place. One is upmarket, hep, expensive, situated in a prime location, trendy, well-marketed and owned by a Shetty. The other is a small, docile Maharashtrian establishment at not so prime a location. A few months ago, I had to buy pedhas and went to this Maharashtrian establishment. I’d wanted to buy a good three kilos of pedhas but demanded them in packs of four. I was promptly told that such a service was not possible, and that I’d only be given them in boxes which were multiples of 250 grams. I tried arguing my case and tried explaining the owner that he’d be losing a customer for life due to his high-headedness. He did not budge. Five minutes later, I was at the Shetty’s shop. I was asked to taste three kinds of pedhas, choose my kind of packaging, and I got my work done in no more than ten minutes. In plain revenue terms, a loss of Rs.1200 for the challenger and a gain of Rs.1200 for the market leader. Whatever happened to the famous Avis motto – “We try harder”.

Is the average Marathi entrepreneur ‘inherently’ inflexible? Has he never heard of the customer being king? Has enterprise been thrust upon him? Abhijeet Badrike once told of a Maharashtrian selling laddoos outside school. That makes perfect business sense, yes. But the only problem was that he sold them in packets of 10. School kids, attending a municipal school, do not have cash to spare. And no kid, would want to buy the whole packet. All the kid aspires for is a single laddoo. And he has money in his pocket for only a single laddoo as well. Months passed, but never was the packet opened and never were laddoos sold loose on a per piece basis. It was completely okay to alienate customers, to lose business but not cool to innovate or step down from that perch of being a ‘Marathi shopkeeper’. You could very well tell that the poor entrepreneur had never been told of the story of the shampoo sachet.

In traditional Maharashtrian houselholds, ‘dhanda‘ is synonymous with flesh-trade and ‘udyog dhanda‘ is what is very reluctantly acknowledged as ‘business‘. Agreed that most Marathi kids grow up in a household where there is little or no impetus for enterprise. But is it  justification for Maharashtrians being poor entrepreneurs (well, shopkeepers at least) ? A good entrepreneur learns, innovates, learns more and innovates again. He understands that aspirational value of customers is the fodder for his business. He sheds his ego and inhibition, and caters to what the consumer wants. A lot of Maharashtrians do nothing of that. Sadly, for a lot of Marathi-speaking people, business is just a money-making tool, often employed in conjunction with criminals, gangsters and politicians.

Businesses don’t make money. Businesses create wealth. Businesses create goodwill. For both the entrepreneur and his customer.

A big thank you for showing me how naive a MBA aspirant I am. I guess you are a bit grumpy as your sub-standard cousin of the feline nature has been hogging the lime-light over the past decade, and you choose this time of the year to strike back at the empire. But I am starting to like you a bit. You comprehensively defeated me today. Not out-witting me with petty constraints like time, or difficulty level, or ambiguity. But, in some way, you defeated my thought process. It just made me realise, that *perhaps* I am a one-trick pony and the way I approach a MBA-type exam is not fool proof. It lacks innovative thinking, and how! Thank you again, for trying indicate that I am still a big ball of sh1t. I will be richer for this experience. If you can spare some time from gloating in your vanity, please do read on.

About a month ago, I took IIFT in the middle of my engineering examinations. Like a brash kid, I woke up from sleep and blindly entered the examination hall without an ounce of any preparation over the week leading into the exam. I got out feeling really happy, because everything in the paper made a lot of sense. A month later, I was attributed a score of 46.06 (which dare I say would have put me in the top 25-50 applicants in the country). A sense of  ”I belong to MBA” started flowing through my veins. And I was pretty much convinced that I had the aptitude for these kind of examinations. That I could walk into an MBA exam and still be on par with people who have slogged their backsides for it.

Mind you, I am not proud of being under-prepared. Far from. Circumstances under which I am working have been very acute over the last two years. And I do not have much room to flex my muscles. I know you are having a wry smirk on your face and are trying to indicate that the situation will get worse once I graduate. But believe me on this one, my case is an outlier. I believe things will get better once I graduate. Not the point.

Similarly, I went in today with little “specialized” preparation, and was found out. Stamping your authority, you bluntly stated that aptitude could not be a substitute for methodical preparation. At least in my case. The reason I feel especially violated is because my “intuitive approach” fell flat on its face today. More often than not, when I see a question which I don’t know how to go about, I innovate, back-substitute, punt and get to the final answer in a way that might not be the most efficient path to reach to the solution. But it works. To cut a long story short, I have a knack of “reaching to an answer” in questions where I ideally shouldn’t. The exact opposite happened today. Forget punting to get to an answer, I couldn’t get to answers that I should have. I felt that my innovativeness was still a couple of notches short. Next time when we meet, I hope to hone my punting skills to a level that you want or better I might just be so well prepared that I won’t need to fall back to street-smartness.

Let me appreciate you specifically on a few questions.

Q.  On 1st March, Timon arrived in a new city and was looking for a place to stay. He met a landlady who offered to rent her apartment at a reasonable price but wanted him to pay rent on a daily basis. Timon had a silver bar of 31 inches, and an inch of the silver bar was equal to one day’s rent. He agreed to pay an inch of the silver bar towards the daily rent. Timon wanted to make the minimum number of pieces of the bar but did not want to pay any advance rent. How many pieces did he make?

5     8     16       20     31

-> I wasted three minutes on this. And gave up. While coming back, within fifteen seconds it all fell into place. Total number of combinations for a n bit binary number = 2^n -1. So 3 bits can represent 0-7. 4 bits 0-15. And hence 5 bits can represent 0-31. So you would just need five pieces of lengths 2^0=1, 2^1=2,2^2=4,2^3=8,2^4=16 and you are done. To make it worse, I am a Computer engineering student and have been doing binary arithmetic for four years now. I know I wasn’t sharp today but again, I love you interpretations of basic systems.

Q. The micromanometer in a certain factory can measure the pressure inside the gas chamber from 1 to 999999 units. Lately, the instrument has not been working properly. The problem is that it always skips the digit 5 and moves directly from 4 to 6. What is the actual pressure inside the gas chamber if the micromanometer shows 3016?

->To be honest, I did not even read this question in the stipulated two hours. After the paper, as I flipped through the pages, it took be fifteen seconds without a pencil in hand:(

Isn’t this a classic case of –

Initially – 0 to 9 all available – base 10 (decimal) system.

Modified case – 0 1 2 3 4 6 7  8 9 – base 9

So you are just asking me- (3016)9  = (?)10. Well it is 3*729+1*9+6=2187+9+6=2202.

Again, good question. Too bad I missed it

Recently, I heard reports that Kapil Sibal is getting anxious at your competency and you might be barred from seducing minds from the next academic year. I pray to God that it does not happen. CAT is of the more docile kind, like the female you would perhaps settle down with. You are the firebrand achiever – one part an intellectual and one part a sultry seductress. Making a choice between the two often proves to be the defining moment of most people’s life. I’m at that crossroads too. But I do hope to meet you again, next year. Otherwise, I’ll be ruing the fact that I botched up the only chance I got at scoring with the most alluring lady in the pack. You can have your bunch of playmates for this year. I’ll be back next year, better prepared for one, sharper too. And I will make an offer that you just won’t be able to resist. Ok. Sorry, I know you hate cliches.

Also, to let you know honey, I always err on the side of caution. And estimate on the dearer side. But to be very frank, I think I’ll miss your criteria by not more than 7-10 marks. And that too when I had a real stinker of a paper. Just imagine what will happen when I am sharp and playing to 80% of my potential. The possibilities are endless

Love,

CGK.