I PUBLISH, THEREFORE I AM

Superb one hour talk by Swami Parthasarthy , the unique thing about this talk was that the speaker told the audience that his talk was not for their age group, instead, he was expecting their kids to come and make use of this talk. Of course, he knew kids don't come to talks hosted by a "Swami"; it's the mid-60 oldies who come to his talks (and a few like me), so he earnestly told everyone to go and share his points with kids in 15-35 age group, the age group that is in business, that has the whole of adulthood left. The topic of the talk was " Renunciation in Action ", the point he made was really enlightening, we don't give up anything, actually, we cannot give up anything, we can only take up something better . You don't give up the toys you loved, you just take up a better toy, a bicycle. You don't give up your bicycle, you just take up a better toy, computers. You don't give up smoking and drinking, you just take up a better sport,...

So, everyday I open my Google Reader or see my news feeds, I see articles and videos on "How was Steve Jobs different from other leaders", "How to be like Steve Jobs", "How did Steve Jobs run Apple", "Steve Jobs' secret strategies", "What customers are to Steve Jobs", "Why do we still need Steve Jobs"...blah blah blah I wonder, now that Steve Jobs (the MAN himself) has kinda retired, he might find some time to catch up with all these articles...what if, he reads all this and thinks to himself " What!!! these guys write about me like they know me...and some of them are sharing their stupid wisdom as something that I advocated "...Also, he might think " I was just doing my job, what is this management style, customer relationship, innovation, entrepreneurship, wisdom, and all that crap " :-). I really really really like Steve Jobs, and no doubt, he is a master-piece, but it gets really difficult to tr...

Dunbar's number makes total sense. Do you know what that is, if not see this . It is something to do with the number of friends you have on Facebook (not exactly Facebook, but it kinda targets Facebook). I think that the number of friends I follow and who I get influenced by, on Facebook, is around 10-12 friends. Although, I have around 500 friends on Facebook, I don't really know 'How come?'. Sometimes it just gets difficult to figure out where did I meet that guy/girl who is a friend on Facebook. To top it all, I have pretty girls as my Facebook friends ...I have no idea what are pretty girls doing in my friends list, I don't remember seeing so many pretty girls in real life. (Either, the girls started using Photoshop, or they mistook me for Brad Pitt :)...whatever) Some of the friends on Facebook are those you saw in the park or in an event. It is good to connect and build your network, but the network effect is not helpful if the network is freakish...

I never used to remember the poems and the freaking one paragraph answers at school, is it because I was not interested, may be, but at least not always. On the other hand, when I used to listen to Metallica and Black Sabbath around 10 times, and then sing along with the song lyric, I used to remember it, actually I still remember it. I sense the way you teach kids (especially, kids like me) isn’t working. There has got to be a better way to memorize things. My point is, I don’t have any problems with learning, instead you have problems with the way you are explaining . PS : Also, Metallica writes amazing lyrics, they are like poems ;).

This is just blowing my mind. If you conduct a 15 minute status meeting every day, and if you have 10 attendees to that meeting, then the meeting just costs you 15 minutes of your day, but to your manager/company, it costs 15 minutes * 10 = 150 minutes (+ 30 minutes for all of them to get back to work). That is 3 hours. Now, you decide if you have a product release going tomorrow, and have lots of work pending, do you want to spend 3 hours getting work done or do you want your team to give status. PS : Just a thought, I can wrong. The point isn’t about spending  15 minute in a meeting, the point is how much does it cost your company , beware of that.

Have you heard about Knowledge broking – sounds geeky, but it ain’t. All it says that “If you are trying to solve a problem, look at the solutions that already exist, instead of actually trying to solve it”. It’s not another philosophy that is going to bore you, it’s not a framework full of rules and regulation, it’s basically a team sport that all of us can use. You will have guys in your companies who have lots of experience and lots of contacts, these guys are the key to finding a solution to a problem at hand. Ask them about what their friends are doing in other companies, call them, message them, and then ask if they can help you. NOTE : You are not sharing any intellectual property (IP), and your friends are not sharing any intellectual property. So, don’t worry about IP issues. You are not inventing anything, you are just sharing an existing idea that is already public. Change required: -           Intelligence experimentation...

If no one said it, is it worth saying it? that’s the question you need to ask yourself when you write a blog post or a message on your FB wall. Personally, I think all of us are looking for an original idea, we don’t want to copy stuff that is online and post it on our blog or our FB wall (as our own). But the point is, do you really think that your original idea is worth sharing. When it comes to news , we want reality and we want to know what is exactly happening wherever it is happening, and we know that a lot of original news feeds are totally unworthy of our time!…So, being original and genuine is great, but make sure your originality is worth sharing, if not, don’t share it J . I come up with original ideas all that time, but I don’t want to be the origin of bullshit , so I don’t blog all my original ideas.