Friday, December 29, 2017

Case of Indian Media gone nuts 30-012







Times Now, one of India’s most-watched English-language television news channels, recently had a stunning scoop about Rahul Gandhi, the 47-year-old scion of the country’s influential political dynasty.

In a “special exclusive”, Times Now revealed that Mr Gandhi, president of the opposition Congress party, was in a cinema watching Star Wars: The Last Jedi just hours after Congress lost a tough election battle in Gujarat, home state of Narendra Modi, prime minister.

In other words, Mr Gandhi was, well, human. Yet that was not how the channel chose to report the story, complete with shaky footage of the cinema floor and undercover reporters asking theatre staff about their sighting of the politician. In a sequence seemingly lifted out of a spoof news show, Times Now anchor Rahul Shivshankar thundered that Mr Gandhi, along with four friends, was spotted “queueing up for popcorn” and sitting in “the posh sofa seats . . . in the J row” after the narrow defeat. Such conduct, he proclaimed, raised questions about “the efficacy of Rahul Gandhi’s personality” and his “suitability to politics”, particularly as a rival to Mr Modi, a notorious workaholic.

Maybe it does; and Mr Gandhi is still struggling to shake his reputation as a political dilettante. Yet the fact that a post-election film outing was deemed worthy of primetime debate raises questions about what Indian voters want in their politicians, particularly when it comes to “work-life balance”.
In some democracies, voters seek out politicians with whom they can identify. In US presidential races, it is widely believed (though never proved) that undecided voters will finally opt for the candidate with whom they would most like to have a beer. Spouses, children and family pets are considered important assets to boost as candidates’ “likeability”.

In the UK, Andrea Leadsom, a mother of three, claimed she was more suitable to be leader of the ruling Conservative party than childless Theresa May, as her children gave her “a very real stake” in Britain’s future. She was later forced to apologise for the comments — and lost the race. Russian President Vladimir Putin makes political capital out of his holidays, boosting his macho image by engaging in “manly” outdoor activities.

India has given rise to a different political ideal — that of the renunciate, who has no personal ties and dedicates every minute to the public good. It’s a political idiom pioneered by Mahatma Gandhi, who took a vow of celibacy, distanced himself from his family, and fashioned himself as a Hindu ascetic, as he led the independence movement.

“There is the strand in Indian politics, and culture generally, which says, if you are in public life, you must not have attachments and be committed totally to public work,” says historian Ramachandra Guha. “It’s a valorisation of joylessness.”

Many top politicians are unmarried. “It’s a plus in your CV if you don’t have a family,” says Mr Guha.

No one fulfils the ideal of political renunciate as does Mr Modi, who abandoned both his wife and mother as he set out on the long journey to the prime minister’s residence. Mr Modi has told reporters he sleeps less than four hours a night and works 20 hours a day.

Mr Gandhi reflects a competing tradition — that of large, close-knit families, finding joy in each other’s company and simple pleasures. His grandmother, the late prime minister Indira Gandhi, was said to see Rahul and sister Priyanka off to school each morning before starting work.
His parents — the late Rajiv Gandhi, another former premier, and mother, Sonia, former president of the Congress party — also revelled in outdoor holidays with their extended family, although these were the subject of criticism by political adversaries.

Mr Gandhi remains a bachelor. But he has obviously close relations with both his mother and sister. These strong family ties — and seeming sense of family duty — will resonate with many Indians.
India’s ideal of a political ascetic still dominates public life. But it is not far-fetched to imagine that one day India’s increasingly materialistic youth will look for politicians who seem more like themselves.

View at the original source

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Gujarat Elections 2017 ... A Parody.. 20-12













Tomorrow’s Prime Time debate on Times Now channel,

Rahul Gandhi is enjoying Hyderabadi Biryani, How can he indulge in such a gross anti national activity, especially, when we have problems with China in Docklam, and Pakistan is creating daily problems in Kashmir???

How sensible is it for a man who lost elections to enjoy and savor Biryani, when all he is qualified to eat is Dal and Khichadi?

How do you view this anti national activity by Rahul Gandhi?

What is the threat perception of this act to the security and integrity of the country?
Joining us to discuss this sensitive topic is the elite panel consisting of

Mejad Puncturewala (Who had sudden awakening and now determined to work for value based politics, but refuses to reveal the value, he got for suddenly changing his thought process.)

Lt. Gen. Motti Khal Samose ( Retd. from the army of Bibito. (Pl. try to locate this country on world Map. I couldn't)

Spokesperson of two national parties. (Names not revealed, but they have the capacity to shout and be heard, even when the mikes are switched off. Their shouts sometimes create Connotations of an animal fight.

Aaya Ram Gaya Ram Bhukkad  (Present political loyalty unknown), The surprise element of the discussion.
It feels great to be apolitical and neutral. 

However.

If you support a political thought process, you need to strain and stress to present their wrong as rights, incompetency as great attributes.

Some stock sentences, that may help you defend the political party of your choice.
If you support congress.

You have to learn to say....

BJP has only won the elections; all other things were won by congress party. Ultimately, it is a moral victory for Congress in Gujarat. That BJP has won more seats and form the government is totally irrelevant.

Seven ministers have lost the elections. 40 MLAs of BJP have lost the elections. (That BJP will still form the government is neither relevant nor important.

BJP has just won the elections, rest everything has been won by Rahul Gandhi. He is even celebrating it by going to a movie.

See, in spite of his great position, he is like a common man, go to movies, enjoys Hyderabadi Biryani in Alpha Hotel Hyderabad. Actually Rahul Gandhi is more connected to the people of India than Modi, who is better connected to the people of rest of the world than Indians.

If you are BJP thought process supporter, then stock sentences are..

Thumping victory for BJP in Gujarat (even though it just seven seat majority)
People of Gujarat have totally rejected the congress (That it got 45% vote share and 80 seats is of no relevance, so also the increase of 19 seats, and 15% vote share.)

Develop selective amnesia (forgetfulness). Forget that Amit Shah ever made the statement on 5th November that "If BJP wins 90 to 249 seats, it will not be considered as victory and BJP will not celebrate."

Despite the fact that 7 minister and 40 MLAs from previous government lost the elections, keep claiming that people of Gujarat have supported Modi's development policies.

Though BJP has won 19 seats less than last time, and vote share has gone down from 60% in 2014 to 49%, Please claim that BJP popularity is increasing every day.

Apart from this, you can come up with your own creative ideas to spread lies, and falsehood and fool the people. It is not a sin, because even gods know everything is fair in politics.

For more enlightenment in this matter, tutorials are available from experts from all political parties.

Best Wishes,

Shyam



Now the link to the Financial Times article

Case of Indian Media gone nuts 

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

A rare case scenario, Does this make sense?? 10-18





A rare case scenario,




























Where Economics flirts with Behavioral Science,


A stiff nose (Read economics), that cannot smell beyond stats and statutory instruments, and impediments, falling for an entity with unpredictable psychotics.


A cognitively mature entity (Read Behavioral Sciences) falling for the curves with constant and consistent upturns and downturns in unfathomable spasm (Read Economics).


And progeny named Behavioral Economics get a Nobel Prize.


A very existence of such an entity called Behavioral Science is surprising to many. I have found many a people asking me many a time,


How can human behavior be a science?


Human behavior is nature;


How can you cage something as vast nature in the confinement called science??


Science is definite, measurable and specific. Behavior is not, sometimes it is Cognitive, some other times, it is In-cognitive.


Human Behavior at best can be a Meta-Science that, the human being has not understood completely.

Now stress results in unpredictable but most of the times a very explicit behavioral pattern. An important part of behavioral pattern studies.


Do you know, the human race is yet find a reason and cause for the stressful behavior?


It is yet to identify as to


What are the triggers???


What is the stimulus???


What are the physiological processes???


What are the psychological process???


What are the neurological processes???


Which part of the brain it initiates, where it culminates???

Too many questions, too few answers, and that too, very ambiguous answers…


How to manage stress??? No it is not the seers or sages, that teach us that.


You have to learn stress management from Monkeys and Ants. I don’t say this, it the most respected institute MIT research that says it.


Don’t believe it. Please read it here. 


What Ants Mice Monkeys can teach us about the impact of stress



You already know that monkeys are our ancestors, but do you know that ants are our earliest ancestors. Again the same MIT research, you can read at the above link.



You may think all this as crazy thinking, but technically, it called epigenetics.


Another term, that we are hearing more often these days is Endowment Effect.

It is the emotional attachment you have for an object you have been owning for quite some time. This makes over value the object, and you are not prepared to part with it even when someone is prepared to pay a correct value for its worth. The endowment effect creates an artificial loss bias in the owner on account of the emotional attachment the person has developed for the object or the possession. Now this is a case of Behavioral Science creating an effect to impact the economics related to buying and selling pattern of an object, and hence we have a separate branch of economics that is Behavioral Economics.


But when it comes to human relationship, it is other way round. Specially in case of love marriages. But you see a person, develop attachment , then add infinite value to the person and relationship and finally own the person. This could be considered a Retro-Endowment-Effect, where the ownership comes in the last. Your  obsessive possessiveness is so great, that, you are not even prepared to share even part ownership with the parents of the person, that are responsible for the birth and upbringing. And at a later stage, when children are born, it is again a tussle between the possessiveness of the husband and wife for the total ownership.


Basically Behavioral Science and the Behavioral Economics are an amalgam of the intangible, imponderable, and improbable entity coming together to create a very tangible entities that are Behavioral Science and Behavioral Economics.


Now, you are perfectly justified, if you think, my thought has gone rogue….
The entire article is devoted to pondering on the imponderables.  But you do need to go a little insane to understand Behavioral Sciences and be a little irrational to explore
Behavioral Economics.

It is this imponderable human behavior, that creates behavioral economics with good bad or even bitter fallouts., and even endowment effects.


Thanks for reading the article, and now contribute your insights and enrich the mischief mongering activity.


Best Wishes,

Shyam

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Management case study 10-12


FOOD FOR THOUGHT FOR MANAGEMENT PROFESSIOANALS



















Does this happen now too in marketing????????


Or has the scenario changed?????


This is a story that did rounds about 35 years. A story, though not true, is a representative of the conditions prevailing those days in Pharma ethical marketing..... 

It was summer, and the temperatures in that part of Andhra Pradesh (Undivided) should to raise beyond 45*C. 

On one such day, a Medical Representative (MR)working along with his First Line Manager (FLM) were making doctor and chemist calls. 

After the first call, the MR felt Dehydrated and told the FLM that, he felt very weak and could work no longer, and said "let us stop the work and go back." 

FLM did not agree, gave the MR an electrolyte and said continue. They did the second call. The MR started feeling cramps in his body and he repeated the same request.

The FLM again turned down the request and engaged an auto-rickshaw, and started proceeding for the third call. In the third call, the FLM helped the MR with product detailing, the call was completed somehow, and when they sat in the auto-rickshaw, the MR collapsed and fell unconscious. The auto-rickshaw man said, let us take him to the hospital. The FLM said, we can’t do it. We have to inform the Regional office first.

The auto man handed over the MR’s official bag to the FLM took the MR to the hospital.

Now the FLM contacts the regional office, and tells his Regional Manager (RM) the entire and requests him, “Sir, MR’s medical condition is not good, it is better to suspend work for the day, so that I can take care of him and drop him at his residence, and depending on his condition, grant him leave as per the medical advice.”

The RM agrees but says, “please fulfill these conditions and then you can take care of him.

Now what are the conditions????

1. Check his order book, post all the orders to Regional office.

2. Check, if he has completed the day’s sales target, if not you (FLM) work, complete the calls, complete the sales target. Post the report and then, you can attend to him.

3. You can sanction him leave as per the medical advice, but you should take the responsibility of making the calls for that period and meeting the sales target. You may do it, yourself, or assign one of the team members the task or divide it among your team. Please ensure that your wok or sales target does not suffer because of that.

4. If, he needs leave for more than week, suspend him temporarily, appoint someone in his place, we will decide, what to do about him, when he recovers.

Now if you are management professional from any field, you know that everyone has to deliver on his objectives and goals. An MR not meeting his target will affect the FLM performance. The FLM not performing affects RM performance. RM not performing, effects Zonal Manager and so on so forth.

In the light of this, if you were a FLM, what would you have differently???

In case, you were a Regional Manager, what would have you have differently????

Please feel free to provide your insight…..


What is your perspective about the decision taken by the First Line Manager and the Regional Manager from the following angles.

1. Professional Ethics

2. Humanism

3. Professional Duty

4. Optimisation Angle

Please analyze the situation and give your insights through comments. 







Saturday, September 30, 2017

"Apply in Confidence" the last line of a recruitment ad gets hilarious responses, But these are the one who deliver better than others.






APPLY IN CONFIDENCE TO......


We often see this line at the bottom of a recruitment ad. Different candidates interpret this sentence differently. And this sends in guffaws through the HR personnel. I have seen many such cases, but I will give just one example.


The cover letter read thus…..


“Sir, you ask me to apply in confidence,


I apply in full confidence.


I have full confidence in my abilities sir.


I also have full confidence in success in your organization.


Sir, you also have confidence in me please.


Sir, your full confidence in me will make me work with full confidence to fulfill your task with full confidence.


Sir, I need your full confidence, and encouragement.


Please have confidence in me and give me a chance.


Thank you sir in anticipation, for your confidence.


Yours obediently


Mr. XYZ


Now has the candidate applied in confidence ….


But these are the same people, who become success stories in the organization afterwards.
I used to get such funny applications, when I used to recruit people for the position of Medical Representative. I used to wave of the requirement of basic English proficiency for the candidates of Hindi speaking states like MP, UP, Bihar, and others.


What I found surprising was, these people performed better than the ones with English proficiency. The less proficient ones used to ‘by heart’ the text of the presentation and then practice the sync with the visual aid. The sync used to be so perfect, that tone and the tenor used to be the same as thought by the trainers. they obeyed all the instructions sincerely. They even followed minute instructions like, when it was written in the text words like "Take a deep breath", "A long sigh", " pause for five seconds" they mimicked that too.


They used to present flawlessly to the medical professional, and it was difficult to believe, that they were the same, that made the mistakes in their written English text.


Contrary to this, those very proficient in English used to perform lesser, on account of their overconfidence, they never bothered to read and learn the text seriously. And when it came to presentation before the doctor. They used get stuck in their presentation and used to use the words and phrases which came to their mind at that time. By the time they completed their presentation, they strayed so much from their text that, purpose of the presentation was defeated. The hours of labour the Product Management team spent on designing gets totally defeated. And they repeated this call after call, day after day, month after month.


The purpose of the presentation in pharmaceuticals, is to link the pharmacology of the product to the physiology of the human being, and tell the doctor, how the product helps in correcting the disorder or curing the disease and restoring normal human physiology. A very correct and accurate presentation of facts with the support of relevant case studies usually gives the doctor the confidence to prescribe the product. Medical Profession has its own inherent risks. One wrong prescription can cause permanent damage to the reputation. That is the reason, that they show lot of diffidence to accept a new product.


The same is true is about a technical product, an engineering product, A software application. The precision in product presentation helps the customer or buyer to understand the precision of the product accompanied by the relevant case studies or the laboratory test reports. These act as testimony for the quality and suitability of the product. Adherence to company narrative is an essential pre-requisite. The executive need not even clear the technical doubts of the product himself. He can refer it to the technical department, or the product development. They can address the doubts of the customer through an online technical demonstration.


The most interesting thing is, for the same product, the narratives change from organization to organization depending on the technical positioning of the same product by different organizations. A person who has sold the same product in a previous organization, finds it very difficult to shrug of culture and the narratives of the previous organization. He ends mixing both the narratives, which cause more harm to the product than good. While a candidate who has not sold that product previously is like a clean slate.


The adoption and adaption process becomes all the easier. Of course an experienced person may have better customer and market knowledge, but all these come to a naught if the product is not presented with required technical precision.

This is also true of the Manufacturing, production processes, Distribution and Warehousing and across other supply chains. Most of the conversations in the shop floors take place in the native regional language. Sometimes there are managers who have excellent English conversation skills but poor native language knowledge, they find it difficult to interact with team members.


So when the technical head asks for English proficiency in the prospective candidates, the HR department should ask the person as to how much this adds to the job efficiency, or how much lack of it take away from it. HR on its own cannot make an assessment in this respect. Hence the HR also needs to keep this factor also in mind along with so many others they usually consider during the recruitment process.


The gist of what I have written in this article is that the communication is too specific an attribute to be treated in a generic sense. To effectively and efficiently communicate, we need domain specific skills.


We need domain specific communication experts to impart domain specific skills. Responsible communication skills emanate only out of the underlying domain expertise.
We must evolve ourselves to a stage where the communication skills are re-segmented under technical skills, not just Soft Skills.


Even people aspiring for leadership, need a performance, that speaks, based on robust domain Knowledge.


Here the technical linguistics, work better than the language linguistics, and convey a more impactful message. Even a silent demonstration of work, results in better imbibing of skills by the trainees. This also results in better and more impactful sharing of knowledge and intellect.


I am not against the imparting of communication skills. I want it to be upgraded to technical perquisite for the trainees.


Finally, I do not want the communication skills to be identified with the language proficiency, ability to gesticulate, outwardly visible buoyance, a forced extrovert outlook.


I feel articulation is more important than gesticulation.


Sedate seriousness can deliver better than outwardly visible buoyance.


An introvert need not wear a mask of extrovert behavior to communicate better.


Don’t we have the need to redefine, what actually communication skills are?????


Your insights please, I am all prepared to learn from you, the young guns, and the experienced missiles.


Best Wishes,


Shyam







Sunday, September 24, 2017

One miss and South korea gets demolished, South Korea has right to dignified existence, especially when it has done no wrong. 09-24

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One miss and South korea gets demolished, South Korea has right to dignified existence, especially when it has done no wrong.


This is about the show of force by the US jets in the demilitarised zone in the Korean peninsula.

This won't work with North Korea.

You can't continuously provoke a person, who has no value for scruples and ethics. of course the jets are still in the demilitarised zone.

However,

A small slip by the jets and the retaliation by North Korea will demolish South Korea.

South Korea has a right to dignified existence, more so because it has done no wrong. You can't be the reason for the destruction of a thriving and vibrant economy. Seoul is just 35 miles from North Korean border

You cannot impose another war on the people of Korea.

You just can't make Asia, again the battle ground to test your weaponry.
Asia and Africa have continuously borne the brunt of the misdemeanour of consecutive US presidents. This needs to end. The world community has a right to peaceful existence.

United States should now take backstage and allow China and Russia to engage with North Korea for diffusing the situation.

As international community, we need to continuously throw carrots at Kim Jong-in instead of sanctions.

Considering his desperate position and the pathetic condition of the people there, there are chances of his picking up one of the carrots. We can promise him food, medicine and development aid in return for peace and some nuclear activity rollbacks.
This was done earlier, with some amount of success, when his father was ruling. 

Hope, solace comes to the people of Korean Peninsula in the form of another such package.



Please also read on North Korea  



North Korean doomsday weapon could kill up to 90% of Americans, experts warn experts


North Korea 'could kill almost four million people in Seoul and Tokyo with retaliatory nuclear attack'



Time to Accept Reality and Manage a Nuclear-Armed North Korea  



Creative diplomacy is vital to defuse Korean crisis 


Thursday, September 21, 2017

Compensation package, that factor's retention and growth ( 8 components) 09-21

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When a we recruit a management professional. We generally base our evaluation and suitability for the job on the basis of history, which factors most of our decision making process. The history may also include the type of organizations their brand equity and their positioning and performance in the related market segment. The performance of the individual and the factors, the environment and the entire ecosystem.

The best evaluation based on the above and the other factors is also, at the best a notional evaluation, may be or may not be close to the actual performance and deliverables.

However, after the employee successfully completes the period of probation and is ready for absorption in the organization, an appraisal is made of the person’s performance to decide his compensation package. After taking into account all the statutory additions and deductions, We decide on a package for the performance.

I have a suggestion on the breakup of this package on the basis of various contributing factors, both long and short term.

Please go through it and suggest an alternative or a better combination. I thank you in anticipation of high value insights.

At the time of performance appraisal, the suggested breakup of the salary with a long time employee retention and growth perspective are as follows in my opinion.

You can pay a management professional for simply being on the rolls of the company, but let it not be more than 10 % of his salary 

He needs to be paid for the sincere efforts he is making in the right direction, which may or may be, as of now producing results, but most probably precursors for extra ordinary deliveries in the future. 10% of the salary.

How much his work and behavior at the work place is creating positive environment, and encouraging and motivating his colleagues at the workplace to upgrade their performance levels. 5% of the salary.

Dress sense presentably, how much of it goes with the company culture, how much of it adds to the corporate equity of the organization.2% of the salary. 

How does the person manage the work life balance? How much the either of the two impact the other? 5% of the salary. 

If the professional is successful in all the above attributes, how much do these abilities help in replication of successful professionals like him from his team. 5% of the salary

How well he is picking up management skills and improving on them constantly (Growth rate.), and making himself a likely for future succession management. 3% of the salary.

Pay him for his deliverables that directly contribute to the turnover and bottom lines. 60%

Now how to evaluate a person on these traits or attributes. It may not be possible for one person to evaluate a person on all the traits. You can have a team of experts on individual traits. A person can be evaluated once every three months by way of questionnaire, personal formal informal interactions, and through performance evaluation reports from the concerned managers.

We can design related metrics with well-defined parameters.

Before we evaluate the person, it is necessary to orient the person about the skillsets the organization is going to evaluate.

It also helps to be transparent  about the configuration of the package, and after the valuation the scores the professional has attained in various parameters. He will be able to know about his strengths and weaknesses and will try to improve on his weak links before the next evaluation.

THIS AMOUNTS TO EQUAL OPPORTUNITY POLICY BEING IN ACTION.

This article deals only with the components of the compensation package. The dispersal method, methodology and components are a subject of another article some other day.

Your views are very important, please contribute.

Best wishes,

Shyam


Friday, September 1, 2017

Technology advance and Humanism 09-01

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Image credit : Shyam's Imagination Library

From the time the  human being was created, humanism also came into being, in some form or other. Even when he did not know how to cover his body, or create fire to cook his food, he knew how to live in cohesion with his fellow human beings. He lived in kind of loosely knit social collaboration with his fellow human beings.

The advent of technology has sort of alienated the human being from his/her inner self. The ways, modes, quantum, the technology has increased is just mind blowing, and it keeps on increasing by leaps. And on account of that, the conversation between the soul and the self  has become lesser and lesser over the period. The distance between the countries, continents, and planets has come down to a level that there is nothing inaccessible in the cosmos today.

Your Telescopes can locate any planet in the cosmos, but your being cannot locate and interact with the inner self. The most advanced Telescope will not be able to help locate the inner self. It is the crude and undeniable truth of the human existence.

Large internet companies in an indirect admission of  lack of humanism and lack of time or opportunities to explore humanism have created artificial facilities in the work place, the music room, billiards table, painting walls, food shacks, artificial or natural gardens. This they feel will relax the body and the soul. No it is nothing more than superficial convenience. They do not in any way energise or recharge the tired soul. The urge to innovate the inner longing to be creative, or the desire to be different have almost vanished from the professionals thought process.

If we travel back in time, when these companies were still in the garage or spare bedroom stage, we will immediately find the difference.

Just go back to your garage days and you will realise that, what you think as technology evolution are in fact great retards in Humanism.

Most of the creativity in the great internet companies of today have happened during their garage or spare bedroom stage. That is where they made mistakes unwittingly, unhesitatingly. Every mistake they made gave birth to creativity in the form of the fix for the problem. Every time they made mistakes and fixed it, they had created something new. Budget constraint often made to innovate things in an ingénue manner in an indigenous manner. Sometimes the Jugaads were put into place to substitute for the costly material and spare parts.

But the same organizations moved from the Garage and spare bedrooms to own corporate offices the nonchalance to make mistakes, learn from them, and be creative vanished. Each executive became an island unto himself lost in the pile of vast business information and intelligence in the form of data. The surfeit of information and the need to deal with it, made him almost robotic in nature.

With every advance in technology, we have seen that, there was an equal retard in Humanism (a collective term to describe the human feelings, emotions, and human chivalry.) at the work place.

Every new technological advance creates an avatar, and human being has unwittingly, but quite willingly agreed to compress himself within the avatar given by the Technology advance.

Humanism has to wait till Christmas vacations to manifest itself. Or to put it more aptly, Humanism manifests itself only during the Christmas vacations.

In this new services economy, we want the latest and greatest for the best possible value, and we only want to pay for what we actually use. In a world where we own less and less and yet have access to so much more. Adapting to the relentless pace of change in business and customer expectations will be critical to the success of tomorrow’s global leaders.

Multiple revenue models, dynamic pricing, and service-based business plans will become mainstream for every organization, and the ability to quickly adapt on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis will be essential to their viability. This will hardly leave any time or opportunity for a professional to be a human being for at least some part of the day.

There’s a decent amount of evidence indicating that creative expression keeps our brains younger and makes us live longer. When you’re bogged down at the job with 60 hours of work to squeeze into 50 hours because you want to have a life goddamn it, when do you think you’re going to make it to that studio? The studio organisation has created for you to unplug and be yourself at least for sometime.

I have not one, but two examples of how activities that make you human and bring out the inner humanism in you can be practiced as part of your work schedule.

I have had the good fortune of having worked with and for Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. He used to tell us. Two hours in twenty four hours he would earmark to do things that he liked to do. Things that did not in any way give him any fruits. physical or ethereal. Sometimes he would do things that would surprise many. There would not be anything constructive in the work he would do, except to construct, reconstruct the inner self  to recharge it to take the grueling work pressure of the next 24 hrs.

The second example I have seen is in a Japanese work culture in a Japanese corporate giant. This must have been a good 25 years back. This organization had global projects, that entailed international travel for the executives. Their tour itinerary of 45 days included 30 days of tour of various countries where the projects were in execution and last 15 days at home with family. They had to complete the full itinerary of 45 days to be eligible for the next tour.

After completing their 30 days tour and submitting the report, next 15 days they were not required to come to office. They were required to spend that time with their families with absolutely no tension.. During their tour. the salary used to be sent to the family by a messenger by cheque. Online transactions were not there those days. A company person used to come and pay their utility bills. Everything used to be done so that the family did not feel the inconvenience during the person's absence.

Things must have changed  with the advance in technology, but there definitely must be some way  or to allow the humanism in the employee to come out and celebrate.

Finally, I would like to suggest that, even if the wherewithal to make the humanism to come and unwind itself is offered as an outreach, it is ok. It will at least put the professional on the path to reconquer the lost territory in his pursuit to acclimatise himself with his inner self.

How did you like this article???

Please come out with your insights, and suggestions. You can email you views  to me at fouresspanchavati@hotmail.com

Best Wishes,

Shyam


Is this Japanese concept the secret to a long, happy, meaningful life?
























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Read more about this here HERE



Please also read Shyam's another well read article














Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Ten years of Hashtag 08-23

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Hashtag has completed ten years of its existence. We are today celebrating ten years of association
with the Hashtag. It has become an inseparable part of our social media content sharing activity.. 

What is Hashtag???

It is a metatag that is used for sharing content on social media platforms to attract the bots of search engines, and classify all the words implying the same meaning together. known as the hash character # in reference to its resemblance to several slices or chops with a sharp implement) Hashtag helps you to find all the content at place in relation to a subject,topic, event,place or an individual.

Twitter the micro blogging site which was launched in 2006, caught the imagination of the people immdetially, but it was not able to technically sustain its structure and often crashed on account of load of traffic or technical bugs. 

It was during one of such technical hitch in 2007, that Biz Stone, one of the founders, who was trying to fix along with his technicians, a person named Chris Messina walked into Twitter office and explained about the Hashtag and suggested its integration into Twitter infrastructure. It was not immediately accepted but was later on integrated in to twitter web infrastructure. 

On 23rd August 2007 Hashtag first appeared in the tweet by Chris Messina. After that it was integrated into the Twitter system. AND NOW 125 MILLLION HASTAGS (#) ARE BEING USED ON TWITTER DAILY.

Later it was widely adopted across websites, blogs and social media platforms like Facebook, Google+ and others. it was also accepted across almost all the news publishing websites.

LinkedIn did not recognise the Hash tag till a considerable period. In fact, once, after I cross posted conent on LinkedIn, I received a message from someone at LinkedIn telling me that, there was no use of cross posting content with Hashtags, as LinkedIn did not recognise Hashtags. However this year in March, when LinkedIn went in for a major makeover, Hashtag  started working on the LinkedIn timelines.

It is now widely used to get attention and create trends for people, events, places, and other things. Because of its widespread use, hashtag was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in June 2014.[2

Metatags, social media platforms, and later day evolution.

In the early stages of the web history, the website used to have metatags on their web pages. The metatags are texts that are hidden from the viewers but visible to the search engine bots (short for robot).  The metatag text was used to tell the search engines bots the nature of the website. the subject, the domain specificity, and any lineage it had to any organization. The search engines used to scan the web pages and pick up the metatags and place it in proper category. When a person searched for a particular information relating to any aspect, on a search engine like Google or others, all the webpages belonging to  the topic searched used to show in the search. The order depended on many factors, one of the factors being  the websites with maximum traffic relating to that topic, which were featured at the top. However there were other parameters also which decided the sequence in the search results.

First it was required to manually register your websites on the search engines. There were many agencies with the required software, who could register your website simultaneously on more than hundred search engines with a single click. There were also many search engine optimisation agencies which promised to get a better ranking for your website against payment. and it was difficult separate the genuine one from the fake ones. These people exploited the innocent web owners, who innocently fell into the trap.

In view of this exploitation and with the advancement of the  search technology,  metatags were done away with, and  Search Engine bots used high end technology to scan web pages and categorise and segment information based on various parameters, which evolved from time to time. 

When internet became more accessible in developing countries, post the millennium, social media platforms also became more accessible to people. Google had its Orkut, Microsoft and Yahoo had their messenger. However everything changed when Facebook was launched in 2003. Facebook with unique feature not only captured most of the social media market share, it also attracted more people to social media. Its domination was so complete, the other media platforms almost went into wilderness. Google retired its Orkut.  Google introduced wave micro blogging platform with a lot of features and strong search engine support from Google. However Wave could not sustain itself  in the face almost total domination from Facebook and twitter. Wave was withdrawn and a new platform Google+ was launched.

Now with the advent of mobile social platform WhatsApp, even Facebook and Twiter are struggling for existence. Though Facebook claims to have crossed 2 billion mark, it is finding it difficult to make its members log into their accounts regularly.


The future belongs to the mobile media platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram. WeChat the Chinese mobile social media platform is growing by hordes and claims a membership of more than a million.The other mobile media platforms that have come recently are also consolidating themselves and in not too distant a future they will present a challenge to the established media platforms.

Hope you have liked this article . Please feel free to express your opinion.

Best Wishes, 

Shyam