Notes on Management 261021

 PUMA Pulled out of mid air (Mckinsey Edge book)

DEEPAK CHOPRA Teachings:

L.E.A.D.E.R.S: #1 Look & Listen. #2 Emotional Bonding.#3 Awareness. #4 Dare to Dream a new Reality and Do It. #5 Empowerment. #6 Responsibility. #7 Synchronicity

Happiness Formula: H = S+C+V (Happiness = Set Point In The Brain (Attitude) + Financial Conditions of Living + Voluntary Choices)

Soul Profile: Peak experience? Purpose? Contribution to family? Qualities in a best friend? Heroes in mythology, history? My strengths? Meaningful relationship mean?

PhD for money making is passion hunger drive

Knowledge is not data and facts. Data are facts, observations about occurences and numbers. Information is collection and synthesis of data. Knowledge is a mix of information, experience and context in a value adding process. That process first occurs in the heads of individuals where it is called uncodified knowledge. And when it is shared with others, it becomes codified. (Mckinsey Mind)

"When you make a commitment, you build hope. When you keep a commitment, you build trust."

Notes on Life 22102021

 Reverse Intentionality. A woman was being stalked and saved herself by rushing to her office. She gained composure after a while but her hands were still trembling. A colleague suggested to use reverse Intentionality by shaking her hands even more fast. This decreased her trembling.

Desirability bias is when you see what you want to happen and confirmation bias is when you see what you expect to happen

Use temptation bundling to do boring jobs. Link something tempting, instantly gratifying with a chore you want to do but avoid. For example, watch tv only when you exercise.

Humility is a reflective less, confident humility is a corrective lens. (Adam Grant in Think again)

Detach your present from the past and detatch your opinions from your identities.

Grit is a combination of passion and perseverance.

Life is a marathon, not a horse race.

Self affirmations work better when said out aloud to yourself. First you have think before speaking, then you speak, your ears hear and your brain registers what it heard. So four stages of impact.

We normally worry about memories of the past and imagination about the bad future.

"I have lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which have actually happened."

Notes on Marketing 011021

 My notes from a webinar on branding.

Friday dressing is rumoured to have been introduced by FMCG companies to push sales of their detergent powders as casual dresses may be washed and not dry-cleaned.

Hawaii is said to have introduced wearing of Hawaiian Shirts on Fridays by all locals to popularize these shirts which was successful. 

Tea-breaks were introduced to push for making tea a habit and thus increases sales of tea. Though it had added benefits of better motivation.

Fax machine use in offices was started during US postal strikes to send and receive messages. Later when strike ended, people had gotten used to fax machines so they stayed.

Video conferencing pre-covid was an add-on. But post-covid, it may become the norm.

Regardless of which group consumers belong to, they prioritize consumption by sorting products and services into four categories:

• Essentials are necessary for survival or perceived as central to well-being.

• Treats are indulgences whose immediate purchase is considered justifiable.

• Postponables are needed or desired items whose purchase can be reasonably put off.

• Expendables are perceived as unnecessary or unjustifiable. (reproduced from an article)

Dilemma for a decision-making system that only has incomplete knowledge of the world is whether to repeat decisions that have worked well so far (exploit) or to make novel decisions, hoping to gain even greater rewards (explore).

All Big Data comes from the past.

Deliberate slack in system.

Fail fast, experiment fast and cheap

Notes on Life 270921

Mother Nature and Father Time are two greatest healers

Buildup, anticipation or journey are sometimes better than destination.

Think of attitude as a skillset and not as a mindset. 

Your life starts with B (birth) and ends with D (death). In between there is a C (choice)

Practice being the last to speak, that is what Nelson Mandela did. Hold your opinions to yourself till the end.

Finite players play to beat others around them. Infinite players play to better themselves.

Zig ziglar gave a term automobile University, meaning learning through audiobooks, podcasts etc. during commute.

Your passion is for you. Your purpose is for others.

Routines root us.

Character above cover drives.

The studies have shown that people aren't good at forecasting their responses to emotional incidents. In particular, the researchers have found that people typically overestimate how long they will be unhappy following negative events. In short, the studies suggest, people forget that they possess what Gilbert, Wilson and their colleagues call a "psychological immune system," which shelters them from the worst effects of their misfortune

Identity foreclosure is a psychological term that describes one of the key steps young people experience in the process of finding a sense of self. At this stage, adolescents may adopt different traits and qualities from friends and relatives, but have not yet settled on their own.

Notes on Creativity 130921

 When you set a time limit or pressure, creativity suffers. It needs openness of space, mind and time to bring idea forth.

We can only be creative in an area we have knowledge in.

Curiosity and risk-taking ability are required.

Six thinking hats, negative brainstorming are tools to stimulate creativity.

Get an outsider to encourage creative thinking.

Asking questions can help creative thinking.

Asking solutions from employees who bring problems.

Creativity cannot be taught but caught.

SCAMPER Technique is a team brainstorming technique used to develop or improve products or services. SCAMPER is an acronym for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify/Magnify, Purpose, Eliminate/Minimize and Rearrange/Reverse.

When you over-generalise or focus on just negative things, creativity suffers.

If we can overcome cognitive distortions, we can live life freely and be more creative.

We hold ourselves back with our inhibitions.

Notes on Spirituality 120921

Existence of God can be understood through cause and effect. It is not like milk and curd because milk causes curd to be made, but curd cannot become milk. It is not like ice and water because both can convert to the other but don't exist at the same time. It is more like snake and rope. Rope is the cause snake is the effect. Those who know it is a rope, they know. Those who think it is a snake will not believe easily that it is a rope. Both exist at the same time. It is a superimposition of cause over effect.

In Gita, Krishna says I am the source of all beings. If you can identify with your source, you will start liking everything because it comes from the same source. Just like you don't dislike anything your child does because you identify with and love your child.

World is a projection of yourself. If you are good, all are good. If you are bad, all are bad.

Mind is flow of thoughts. A thought is inert in itself, when we identify with it, the thought becomes flow.. Just like a bucket of water cannot be a river, a mere thought cannot be powerful. River is flow of water, the more water flows, more deep and strong the river. If flow of thoughts is more, they become stronger.

Stories from Work-7

 Let me share two examples to show how experience counts.

First one is from my LIC days. It was in early 90s. LIC was still doing payrolls manually. No spreadsheet softwares, no payroll management systems. I was working in OS (Office Servicing) Department and there used to be A2 size green ruled sheets on which I had to make salary calculations on a monthly basis. For first few months, it was very hard. There always used to be a difference between debit and credit side. Being proud of myself, I hesitated in going to my boss for help. On days, I wasted hours on finding where the difference originated. And after wasting lot of time, when I used to surrender and go to my boss for help, he asked about the difference amount. On hearing the figure, he used to tell me to look in this head. And most of the time, difference used to be in that head of account. This was his experience speaking. After a year or so, I could also guess the culprit area and then I realized the importance of experience.

Another example is from bidding domain. We usually tender out high value jobs. In jobs requiring creativity and expertise, relying on just cost is tricky. So we used mixed bidding in one such tender. Weightage was divided between creative and financial bid. Based on the marking in both the bids submitted by each party, final ranking and work order was to be placed. Initial proposal was to give 70 % weightage to creative bid and 30 % weightage to price bid. One senior official had a different view, hunch or insight whatever you may call it. He changed the criteria to 60 % weightage to creative bid and 40 % weightage to price bid. When marking was done, his hunch proved right and we noticed that the job would have gone to a different party if we had stuck to 70-30 ratio. Here price importance was increased by changing price weightage to 40, and another bidder won the contract. Experience does count.