Swig of Truth

Talking about the teaming, Narayana Murthy of Infosys keeps saying, 1+1 is always greater than 2. Having seen the corporate culture for 4 years now, I somehow, do not agree with him and tend to hold a contradicting opinion. I am not bluntly saying that he is wrong, but the probability of him being right is only close to 20%. But for the rest 80% of the opportunities I feel 1+1 is always much lower than 1.5. And as the number of people keeps increasing the marginal increment in the value added is going down, may not be considerably but yes, it does. Things which can influence this function are largely - Leadership, Culture, Kind Of Job, Maturity Level of People and the Governance System.

When the organization is small, when the visibility for each person is very high, when the roles are clearly defined, when the responsibilities were shared with a human touch, when the leadership has a clear Vision and the same is shared among all other people, when employees work for the Organisation but not for any Individual, when one is not just one…Narayana Murthy is right in his Statement. But in reality, I get to see none of the mentioned characteristics is prevalent. What all I see are - vague bond between people, road blocks for the Information/Vision/Objective at each layer of the hierarchy-leaving leaving the completely distorted information when it reaches the ground, Individual objectives taking the driver seat instead of the organization goals, escaping from all the duties and work only when it is extremely needed, involving personal relationships at work place, measuring people’s performance on the wrong Indices or just on the personal relationship and what not…creating all odds for that individual who comes with an intention of serving the Organisation with true spirits and prove himself.

Why an Organisation, when small performs well and the same gets tumbled down as the size crosses the critical mass. And how can one actually say that this is the critical mass for the Organisation. If we dwell in to it, In general when an Organisation is formed, the founder(s) has the clear Vision and makes sure that it is shared with the people who work for it. What part of the information is to be shared and what is to be hidden are clear in his/her understanding. He/She doesn’t need to lay down a rule book/process to function the given job. Most of the times the job is given and accepted with clear understanding of the impact of the job on the other stakeholders of the Organisation. This is the reason responsibility & accountability are instilled without saying. This is the reason you can derive higher average work (Value) from an Organisation of 5 people than that of from the organisation of 500 people.

If 1+1 has to be more than 2 –It asks for, each one complementing the other person in the work, extending the support beyond the set job description, zeal to stretch that extra mile and encourage him or her to achieve that. This is possible only and only when there is perfect coherent set of objectives for the individuals and teams. If these intangible and cultural aspects are absent, the marginal VALUE that each person brings to the table is clearly less than 1. Meaning to say, if he asked to function independently he would add more value (in absolute terms). If my observation is correct - if there are 100 people working on a job, the value derived out of this entire group would be somewhere between 30 to 40. But why do we need teams??? Answer is simple; one can’t be more than ONE. But 10 can be more than 5….got me?

PSS of Life

I present this as the leached extract of few incidents i had gone through for the past few years of my life. In a nutshell i feel these are the Prime factors which i feel stand as the factors for each vertical of life. And the beauty of it is, they are independant of each other and are equally adoptable to each and every one of us.

I am here taking those three verticals of life which are of the obvious importance to everyone. Education, Financial well being and the Joy of living. My objective here is not to make you understand how important each one of them is in life.....but to discuss what is that one factor(Of course one for each) which determines these verticals of life to the highest level possible. Request the reader to understand that, this is not the ONLY factor which influences the Vertical mentioned but this is THE factor which influences the vertical the most. Let me deal them one after the other.


Education - This is of Prime importance for everyone...reasons are many to enumerate..to be valued in the market place...to be more good...to be more prudent...to be more ethical...to be more wise...to be more understanding..on and on and on. The biggest factor on which the vertical depends is the amount of PERSEVERANCE one holds in him or her. This single factor makes the difference between On and Off in this vertical. No matter what else you have or you don't have.....if one has this single factor embedded in the deepest root of his or her heart, i am dead sure that the person will get the Success in this vertical. Ambedker is the finest example to accost this argument. The Society abominated him...poverty shown him the worst ever state of it...friends didn't entertained him to be with them...no teacher hugged him...no tree became the school for him..no roll number...no books...YET this chap made it....and he made it to the highest level possible.....Nothing else but the perseverance he had is the KEY for it.......honestly this is abysmal in nature.....toughest of all to crack...i bow him a million times and rest my head on his feet for it.....and worth noticing is this. "Amount of perseverance needed is a very sensitive function of two things. One-what do you want to do in life and the second one-where do you want see yourself few years down the line?" if one has these things clear in his/her thoughts, Perseverance is the Natural Baby of it. In fact they are inter dependant and mutual complements.


Financial Well Being: The term RICH is indeed a relative one. No one is absolutely Rich and No One is Absolutely Poor. We are poor or rich only with respect to the other person in focus. But as the time passes how one becomes richer or poorer with respect to the same person depends on his or her ability to SAVE. And what fraction of his or her income is being SAVED is the key factor here. No matter how much ever one earns, if there is no Saving, then there is no growth in this vertical. Your cash flows are just like a perforated vessel ....sees a heavy/less flow depends on your income. Unless one saves something out of the flow... he or she does not grow up the value chain in this vertical. There are couple of us who are blessed with the ancestral assets....but again as i said, if you don't save..you will stay where you are but the growth is almost Zero. I here, urge the reader to understand the word SAVE. Pl do not go by the literal meaning of it, that is retaining the money away from spending but also two other things. "The amount of money one can hold and put it back in the upstream of the flow. The other one is one's ability to reduce the time each cash flow demands..not to forget the Time Value of Money and the age old adage "Time is Money"". If one can SAVE (Save, Re-Invest or Reduce the time of the flow) a little fraction of it, growth is certainly awarded and accorded by the Goddess Lakshmi.


Joy of living: I am talking about the post married life of an individual here but not the life before it. In fact the life before marriage depends on highly fragmented factors than the life after.This is the primary reason i chose the later. And this part of the life is indeed where you become productive in all terms...growing your tribe, reaching your true ambition and also to lay the road to reach the Maslow's acme i.e. Self Actualisation. The biggest parameter influences this vertical is your SPOUSE. Trust me when i say that more than 90% of your life depends on this ONE person. In some cases the damage because of the presence of SPOUSE is million times more than the loss (loss of many things....u must know them) because of the Absence of that person. This is the very reason i feel, a lot of our well known people (To name a few, Kalam, Vajpai, Mother Theressa, Vivekananda etc..) abstained themselves from getting married and hedged their life for a better purpose. And in some other cases, they frequently changed the spouse, expecting a better one every next time...this culture is more prevalent in western. In India i get to see the same tribe of people staying Bachelor/Spinster for the entire life. Now coming to the presence of him/her. Its a disaster if one makes this call wrong. End up choosing the wrong Person. This one mistake is more than sufficient to up side down everything of your life. But if....if one makes the correct choice, this indeed the best booster one can ever find in any of the DOPEs. You make miracle because of him or her and you stand tall in life because of him/her.



I am here again insisting that these are not the only factors which can influence the respective Vertical, but these are THE parameters have the greatest Influence on that part of the life. And the beauty of it is, as i said in the beginning of this blog, these are all independant of each other....that is...the presence or absence of any one of them does not influence the other vertical. For example, one can be Rich and Lead an unsatisfactory life, one can be highly qualified yet be a pauper....and so on. He/She will be the person who understands all these controlling levers we are gifted to the highest level will be the most successful person in life. "An alrounder" is the one who is needed - the Essenes of it.

Dejected and Stayed Back

I wonder why any two people (Who know each other**) in this world do not have the same amount or considerably the same amount of feeling towards each other. The feeling may be like, dislike, love or any other. I am not saying this statement just out of some random thought...but after giving a profound understanding towards it.  

Except for the few best Couples i have seen, this phenomenon is clearly visible. Indeed at this point in time i would like to ask you one question......Can you tell me the names of 10 people whom you like most? and can you also give me the names of 10 people who like you most? I am cent percent sure both the lists do not match more than 50%. And the matching percentage goes down inversely with the number of people you take into consideration. Even this 50% is with a difference in priority of ranking. If there is a better match, i am almost certain that you are biased in your judgement. But there is a chance. 

In fact this ranking is done by everyone.....even a layman does that. If you dont trust me ask your grandma....who on the earth dear to you? She answers without thinking back. 

This is the very reason you expect right things from Wrong people and vice-versa. Because you expect someone to be more transparent to you that in turn because you feel he or she is more important to you. But the fact is ..."the same" is not true from the other end. So you end up landing dejected for something which you feel is close to your heart.  Each time it happens you have a lesson to catch. The lesson should ideally make you rearrange the list that you have in your backyard. If the general inertia you have is stopping you to do that, get ready for the next incident and the following lesson. I am not here trying to say "Go Away" from people.....but all i want to say is give the rational judgement. 

It is not only immoral but also injustice to give wrong rankings......because of which you are dejected and sometimes you cause someone getting dejected. ....

Hyderabad Blasts - Time to retroscope

This is the most gruesome act one can adapt to demoralize the truly cosmopolitan city there by the entire nation. Two days back we found fake notes of 2.3 crore rupees and the next day we sustained two major blasts causing 40 innocent souls and injuring 100 odd people.

What is the major advantage that these people are having over the police department, ANONYMITY status? Even the intelligence is anonymous. One small clue will enable the intelligence department to go to the roots of terrorist plots. But still we are facing so many terrorist attacks. We are only next to Iraq, when it comes terrorist deaths in the last year with almost 3400 deaths. I call it sheer intelligence failure. Isn’t it?

When we are spending 4% of our GDP on arm forces, navy and air force, they found it next to impossible to face India directly. But the desire to disturb the country is undying in the hearts few Nations.

There are articles in various news papers saying even a common man can go to Bihar and buy RDX which is imported from Bangladesh, why is India still aiding millions of rupees to Bangladesh for various development programs that too at the cost of keeping its own people hungry and unemployed? When it is evident from the facts that these people are trying to disturb the entire nation financially as well as morally, I don’t see any point in aiding such nations. Bangladesh’s foreign affairs minister did not even take 10 hours to reject the AP Chief Ministers allegations that Bangladesh Terrorists are there behind these blasts.

A system of zero tolerance is very much needed for a country like India to save its innocent people. Fear should be instilled by killing anti social elements in the public without reading and rereading the penal codes. A revised POTA has to be resumed that would become a major setback to all the terrorists across the world.

I hope the nation will long live without any such disturbances.

Dirty IMAGE HOSPITAL in Hyderabad

I wonder why people claim big words in their quality/vision/mission statements when they are literally not aware of what it means. Forget about the 4th grade employees even the top management of many organisations are not even aware of these statements. Even they are aware they are hardly bothered about them. Should anyone trust these statements? i guess not. Its been several such incidents i have come cross so far. One and the most recent one which bugged me is the incident with Image Hospital of Ameerpet, Hyderabad.

Few days back i went for a movie with my brother. While coming back at around 1AM, he met with an accident and sustained a fracture to his left hand elbow. I took him to the nearest hospital which happened to be Image of Ameerpet for first aid. They have admitted him after depositing a sum of 5000 INR in the hospital and the doctor in charge took an X ray of the injured hand and confirmed the fracture. They wrapped the fractured hand with a pink color cloth and gave him a pain killer to sleep. The next day morning an Orthopaedic Surgeon came and said a surgery is needed and it would cost a sum of 40000 INR. Shocked me with his words, he also said today we have a special offer for you under which you would get a discount of 10000 INR.

Having understood the BUSINESS culture of the hospital, i said sorry and requested them to discharge him. The doctor agreed to that and the discharge process was initiated. Few minutes later a neatly dressed lady came up with a new proposal saying that the operation can be performed in 25000 INR and she also said that even this figure is open for negotiation. Poor me had no words to say to that lady's business offer. After two hours at around 11 AM i went to the payment counter to make the final settlement.

For a pain killer and dressing the injured hand and a stay of 10 hours in the hospital that too in general ward ( i paid for the X Ray earlier) i was expecting an amount of 500 to 1000 INR considering the fact it is a big corporate hospital. But to my lifetime shock i was given a bill of 5300 INR for a treatment which would have costed a maximum of 300 INR anywhere else. I tried to peep into the bill to see how could they come upto 5300 amount. To my surprise not even i could not find a single mentioned service which was actually given to the patient.

In their quality statement (It is written on every possible wall of the hospital) they mentioned that they offer a reliable medical services at an affordable cost.

I went to the Operations head of the Hospital and asked her about the bill. She looked at the bill for a min and said everything seems correct to me. I asked her about their quality statement which states that they offer affordable medical services, she said it is for people who can afford it. She had asked me a return question "Will you take your girl friend to a udipi hotel?" when i told her the same treatment anywhere else would have costed me around 300. She called me crazy when i asked her about the word affordable in their quality statement.

I really don't understand one thing, when it is not affordable to the major fraction (Trust me this fraction is more than 95%) of the society, how could they claim such statements? I am cent per cent sure that more than 95% of Indians cannot afford a sum of 5300 RS JUST FOR FIRST AID.

When i asked few of the doctors about the same point, they said they are all simple employees over there and it is management's decision and they cannot comment on that. I am sure medical ethics is one compulsary subject that every doctor should accept during their under graduation, but it seems nobody really understood the concepts which were taught over there.

I found it sheer robbery. In fact a robber does it with fear but these people are doing it with a smile on their face. Image hospital as it is claiming itself a Corporate hopital, is not following any corporate ethics and profit making is the whole and sole objective driving it in and out.