Addicted to the Net? Take this simple quiz and find out

How many days this week have you…

  • Checked Twitter/Facebook before getting out of bed?
  • Had five minutes of Internet activity turn into more than 30 minutes?
  • Taken your smart phone into the bathroom to monitor your activity?
  • Texted while driving?
  • Texted while walking across the street?
  • Shared a photo of your dinner or your child/pet?

How many times today have you . . .

  • Checked your social media accounts [Twitter/Facebook etc.]”?
  • Reached for your cell phone during a meeting, just for comfort?
  • Nearly walked into someone or something while checking your phone?
  • Posted updates on Facebook?

Add up all the numbers you have awarded yourself and brace yourself for the analysis.

0 to 20: you are ok, you live in the real world.
20 to 40: you are a borderline case, the virtual is about to get you.
40 plus: you need help! You live your life in the virtual world.

This survey has been adapted from a FastCompany article. Check it as well.

Posted in Social media, Internet, Humor, Psychology, Smartphones | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Leading from the front: what does it mean?

No general in an army would even think of leading from the front. He would be dead in the opening minutes of the battle, with nothing to show for a foolish act of bravado. Much better to stay safely away from the front lines and direct the proceedings from there.

US President Obama’s foreign policy is increasingly being described as ‘leading from the back’. The President is aware of recent history and is understandably reluctant to get involved in the messes of other countries.

Is ‘leading from the front’ a good idea in the business world? Two ex-bosses of mine spent most of their time managing the shareholders (their bosses). Both of them were quite clear in their philosophy: shareholders come up with crazy ideas and they have to be managed lest they cause serious damage to the business. In both these cases, I and my peers ran the business while the head honchos stayed far away from the front lines. It worked beautifully for the businesses.

Scrappy customers? Most CEO’s sensibly stay away. Sensitive price negotiations? It is advisable to keep the CEO in reserve, for final negotiations and deal clinching. Pitching for a new client? The CEO is for the photo-op after the business has been won. In all my years in business, I have rarely seen a situation that calls for a CEO to lead from the front.

So what does leading from the front mean? Very little, in my view!

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What will future jobs look like?

Andrew McAfee is principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is an economist and studies how technology impacts businesses and the society at large. In this thought-provoking (and somewhat scary) talk he forecasts a future in which there are very few jobs for people! Who will do the work? Why, intelligent machines. And what will we do? Enjoy the talk.

Posted in Economy, Jobs, Technology | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

“I have a terrific business idea,” said my friend

Three great business ideas in as many months, and my friend’s enthusiasm was infectious. By the time she’d finish explaining the idea to me, I felt like dropping my fledgling business and joining her.

First time around, in January of this year, she’d thought up a virtual ad agency. “Lots of high quality planners and creatives are unemployed in the West,” she said, “let’s create an online pool, and offer the world’s best creative to creativity-starved large businesses in the middle east”. And we spent the rest of the afternoon nailing down the idea. The more we massaged it, the more it seems viable.

She was back in March, excited like never before, and this time she wanted to build “a company that will help large businesses mount and manage CSR Initiatives”. The problem with big companies, as I know from personal experience, is not cash or intent but what cause should they support and who will manage the program. If someone could take care of these problems, business would surely pour in.

And last week she had me excited all over again. “The Chinese are big buyers of luxury brands. Let’s create guided luxury shopping tours for them, the tourists don’t have to give us anything, the service is for free, we get our money from the retailers”. Would luxury retailers support such an initiative? She had checked with a few and was confident of lining up an attractive portfolio of luxury brands.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Too many of us come up with good ideas. It’s not the thought that matters, it’s what you do with it. Got a dream? Well, after a while quit dreaming and do something about it. A journey of a thousand miles, as Chairman Mao famously observed, begins with one small step. 

Posted in Business, Dubai, Entrepreneuring | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

BCCI: the real star of Indian cricket?

The antics of a temperamental pace bowler of questionable talent have shifted focus from a remarkable transition in Indian cricket. A new set of players is taking over from some of the greats of Indian cricket and the transition may well go down as a case study in change management. The private sector can learn a lot from what BCCI is pulling off.

Tendulkar is almost retired, VVS and Dravid have officially retired and Sehwag has unselected himself. On the bowling front we have lost Zaheer and Bhajji. When teams lose players of such quality, the impact can be devastating.

30 years later the West Indies are yet to recover. Australia is now an embarrassment to themselves and to all cricket lovers. England took well over a decade to rebuild a decent team. The Indian team, by contrast, is looking stronger than ever.

The batting unit (in Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Chetashwar Pujara with Raina, Karthik and a few others lurking in the wings) is probably the strongest it has been in recent memory, though the winter tour to South Africa will be the real test. The bowling pack hunts efficiently and is a wonderful balance of seam and spin. The Captain is at his peak and already the next Captain is being groomed.

These things don’t just happen and credit has to be given where it is due. BCCI and the selection panel have assiduously nurtured new talent, bloodied it carefully and managed the transition better than any cricket board has done in recent memory.

A bellwether of the Indian software industry (Infosys) is in the news of late because of a botched up change management exercise. They have recalled a star from the yesteryears. England once tried something similar; Colin Cowdrey was pulled out of the woodwork to confront Lillee and Thomson in the 1974-75 Ashes tour. It was not a pretty sight, not for the spectators and certainly not for Mr. Cowdrey. 

  

Posted in Business, Cricket, Strategy | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Should you drop out and start-up?

College drop-out and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s commencement address to Yale’s class of 2000 strengthened the myth that college education and über wealth are inversely correlated, that if you really want to make big bucks, college education is a positive handicap. Among the many shockers in his address, here is a particularly memorable one:

“Please, take a good look around you. Look at the classmate on your left. Look at the classmate on your right. Now, consider this: five years from now, 10 years from now, even 30 thirty years from now, odds are the person on your left is going to be a loser. The person on your right, meanwhile, will also be a loser. And you, in the middle? What can you expect? Loser. Loserhood. Loser Cum Laude”.

Are academic attainment and wealth creation really not linked? The data is revealing.

  • Forbes magazine’s latest list of the super rich has 1,125 billionaires. 73 of them are college or school drop-outs. That’s less than 6.5%!
  • When it comes to CEO’s the data is quite different. 99% of Fortune 500 CEO’s have a college degree and 81% also have a post-secondary degree.

If anything, good education and doing well are strongly co-related. The subject came up in a recent discussion I had with a friend’s son who wanted to drop-out and become a chef.

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No bread with soup (or does it pay to pamper your customers?)

There’s a wonderful Italian restaurant in our office building. Their thin crust pizzas are as authentic as any you will get in a fine pizzeria in Italy, the soups and pastas are among the best in Dubai and the service is exceptional.

Often we order in a meal, and normally it’s soup and pizza. In the restaurant they serve excellent bread with the soup. But on deliveries they seem to forget the bread. So when we ordered in lunch yesterday I made a point of asking for the bread. No problem, I was told, it’ll be an extra 10 dirham. An extra 10 dirham? You can get two loaves of freshly baked bread from Spinneys for less than 10 dirham!

Do I pay for the bread in the restaurant, I asked? I do not. So why should I pay if the meal is delivered to an office in the same building as the restaurant? The person manning the phone did not have an answer, the manager was not in the restaurant, and so the chef came to phone. His explanation was, to say the least, ludicrous. Packaging material (for food) costs a lot of money, so the restaurant tries to recover the money by not sending bread with the soup, or by charging for it.

But why be sneaky about it? Why not just say it upfront on the delivery menu? An otherwise first-rate service establishment has found a way of irritating customers. How should they handle it?

It’s simple, have a flat percentage charge for deliveries, say 5% or a fixed amount. Many restaurants do it and customers don’t mind paying a bit more for the convenience of eating at home or in the office. That should tale care of the delivery cost, including the cost of the packaging material. Just be upfront, that’s the important thing.

There’s another restaurant in our building, a new one, started by two Greek brothers. The food is first-rate and they always thrown in a bit extra on the deliveries. Think I will start ordering more frequently from them.

Posted in Dubai, Food | Tagged , , | Leave a comment