free_LUNCH

VERY

HAPPY

AND

PROSPEROUS

NEW YEAR

~ 2010 ~

See you all in the new year!

This holiday seems to be zipping by and I haven’t really taken up anything very productive yet. Reading a few magazines here and there, catching up on a little bit of photography, searching for a birthday gift for my wife, looking for jobs, and well…not much. Then I came across an article in the NYtimes.com site – The Sidney Awards – by columnist David Brooks. In here he has given out awards to magazine articles (essays) that he feels have narrative drive and social impact. I decided to make it a project of mine to read all the articles he talks about. The reason is very simple – get acquainted with a few well written articles and built up on my repertoire of good editorials to access. Here are the articles that he has mentioned so far:

• The Cost Conundrum (Source: The New Yorker) – Healthcare
• How American Health Care Killed My Father (Source: The Atlantic) – Healthcare
• Fasten Your Seat Belts — It’s Going to Be a Bumpy Flight (Source: National Journal) – Healthcare
• Trial by Fire (Source: The New Yorker) – Judicial system and death penalty
• A Rake’s Progress (Source: The Weekly Standard) – Biographic portrayal
• Rediscovering Central Asia (Source: The Wilson Quarterly) – History and Geography

He will release a few more articles in the coming week. Let’s see what he has in store for me when he comes up with more award winners.

As I finish my “SDA Application Portfolio” series I think about the utility of the knowledge gained in this class. It was one of those classes where you are not taught how financial instruments work, how brand management is done, nor how profitability is calculated. There were no formulas to memorize, no equations to be remembered. It did not go into the world of marketers or traders, it did not made me analyze a country’s economic growth, it did not teach me how to increase ROI. Yet, it taught me all that and more.

You may ask – What was this course? How does it fit into the MBA curriculum? How will it help you in the long run? Answers will follow.

This course was called “Strategic Decision Analysis”. It was a course that harnessed the power of analysis and thinking in order to take decisions and increase your chances of success. The course introduced many concepts such as Negotiations, Prisoner’s Dilemma, Voting, and Auctions, among others. But more than that, this course provided insight into how a human mind works and what it thinks. You don’t need to be a CFA, a Six Sigma black belt holder, or a Statistics major to understand all this. All you need is common sense thinking and more importantly what the other person is thinking.

It fits well into an MBA curriculum because it is expected of us to go out and take decisions. Difficult decisions. Decisions that will affect companies, people, nations. Decisions that will alter the way you live, you eat, you sleep, and all that in between. How can you take such decisions and maximize your chances to take the right kind of decisions? Note that when you are taking the decisions there is always someone else taking a similar type of decision. You have one goal – to win in this duel of decision making. Because if you don’t win, somebody else takes all the glory or the pain associated with the decision. This course, in part, was about maximizing your chances to win.

With knowledge comes great power. But also comes with it the “curse of knowledge”. It is dangerous and can be applied dangerously. An incomplete assessment of your own understanding of the knowledge can actually lead to disaster. So it becomes important that we become competent in the use of this powerful knowledge and how we apply it.

The reason I am stressing this is because the knowledge is not just limited to the world of business. Your understanding of six sigma will not make you a great husband, a great father. But this knowledge is different. It spans our daily life and our relationships. Thus it becomes more important to understand the subject matter closely and intimately. The most important piece of this knowledge is – knowing what the other person is thinking. Not what you know and think. Bluntly speaking – you need to drop your ego from the equation to apply this knowledge. You have to stop force fitting because there are ample opportunities to do so. One formula to apply this knowledge is this –> First, you need to drop what you know. Second, know what the other person knows. Third, apply what you know and what the other person does not know. What you know is what you have learnt from this course, from your observations, and from the uncommon common sense that has been bestowed upon you.

Final thought – Always remember – Cooperation is better than defection! It will become all too apparent for you to defect with this knowledge. With this toolkit in hand, you will take decisions that go against the grain of this thought, that of cooperation. Recognize such tendencies, observe your thought process, re-evaluate the knowledge, and then apply it again.

There are plenty of apps available for iPod Touch and its bigger more sophisticated brother, the iPhone. I am a fan of many of these apps – all of them free – because they have helped me increase my reach to information and entertainment while increasing my productivity. So here are the apps that I currently use quite frequently:

News apps – serving different purposes – regular, financial, RSS feeds, and etc.

Alternate sources of knowledge and information

Social networking – its becoming increasingly important

Keeping me busy while waiting for my bus, or on the plane

My bank

My school email

A few other helpful ones

Let me know if there are other apps you may have found useful so that I can try. The only catch – it should be free!

Downloaded this free WordPress App to post while on the go. If this works, it is really cool. Now I can blog via WordPress, a standalone editor, email, and a glorified mp3 player.

It is now almost trite to say ‘Common sense in not common‘. We all know this. Ironically though, everybody, including yours truly, strongly believes that he/she has that “common” sense.

Then what is this common sense. Why is this uncommon and why does everybody think they seem to possess it?

Symptom 1 : Curse of knowledge

Partly, I think it is to do with today’s world and the environment we live in. There is an abundance of knowledge everywhere. At the same time, we are forced to have a steep learning curve because of the nature of our profession. What this leads to is learning but not to understanding. What I mean is this – Because we have to assimilate so much in such a short duration, instead of experiencing or living the knowledge one step at a time we have decided to memorize and move ahead. Unless the knowledge is not experimented with we don’t develop that intuitive instinct that separates an expert from a generalist. Look at great painters, musicians, and architects. Each of them understands a brush, a guitar string, and a brick respectively. That is why they are able to innovate. They are able to derive something from them a common man does not see. Something obvious, yet hidden. Common sense.

Symptom 2: Challenge me!!!

There is another aspect which can be directly or otherwise derived from the first analysis. We have been fed on complexity – complex puzzles, complex exams, complex movies, complex workstyle, and so on. It seems that we are ingrained with the thought that what sounds simple is not that simple. With time, they turn out opposite. What was thought complex, was very simple. There is a story of a great mathematician who was giving one of the most difficult exams (in those days). He got stuck in a problem and was unable to solve it. Desperate, he started looking around the room and saw the most stupid guy in the class had completed the problem. Naturally, he felt both amazement and jealousy at the same time. After pondering for a few seconds he thought why not approach the problem simply. After all thats the best a stupid guy can do. Problem solved. We tend to see and approach a problem as if it has a twist, something hidden. But if we just take a step back and remove that thought from our mind, we will see that the problem was simple, easy, intuitive. Common sense.

Symptom 3: You know, I’m lazy.

Finally, there is a lack of discipline that forbade us from practicing common sense thus eroding it from our minds. When we hear a learned guru speak about how to conduct your life, don’t we say – Common sense, man. When we read about how to organize our time and work, don’t we say – that’s obvious, but can’t do. There are so many more examples. Following common sense forces us to come out of our comfort zone, makes us do things uncommon in our environment. We cringe from it. Hide behind an excuse. But don’t you think you will benefit immensely by following these many small baby easy steps diligently. Common sense.

DIY

Do an experiment and test my hypothesis. Approach day to day problems simply. Without branding it difficult, complex, one-of-a-kind. Act on it based on the first solution that comes to mind. Trust your instincts. Check the results. If what I feel is correct, you will see a sea change in your attitude towards problems, towards challenges, towards everyone else. Your “common sense” will come back to you. Common sense!!!!

Today I met Ramesh. He runs a salt plant in Chennai, India (a family business for more than 100 years) and he gave me some really interesting perspective on this common thing that everyone needs. Here is the abridged version of the conversation I had with him:

Me: Why do we just have iodized salt? Is there something unique about salt that iodine is mixed with it and not with say, cookies, bread, and milk?

Ramesh: Based on some research it was found that salt is the most common food item of all. Moreover many people are allergic to milk and other food items, or they do not like cookies, and so on. But salt is one food that is consumed by all communities in the world. So it was decided that iodine, an important mineral required by our body, should be mixed with salt in order to ensure regular consumption.

Me: Is it important to consume iodized salt to get iodine?

Ramesh: Most people get the necessary iodine from their food, so it may not be necessary to have iodized salt for iodine requirements. Typically iodized salt is important for people who live in hills and mountains because the iodine in the soil is very low (gets washed away). But people living at sea level typically get their necessary requirement from other food items and thus do not need iodized salt.

Me: How do you make “free flowing” salt?

Ramesh: There are many additives included in the salt that prevents caking of salt, making it free flowing. One such chemical is Potassium Ferrocyanide. We have achieved a better way of making it free flowing without such additives.

Me: What’s the concept of refined salt?

Ramesh: Refined as the term suggests is basically almost pure sodium chloride with necessary additives such as iodine. When salt is first retrieved from evaporating sea water, it is in crystallized form with some impurities and many other minerals such as magnesium and calcium. This salt is then further processed to remove the impurities and other minerals to refine the salt. That is refined salt.

The Pinch

Me: So is it good to have refined or unrefined salt?

Ramesh: Actually, unrefined salt free of impurities is better. First, you get necessary minerals such as magnesium and calcium along with the salt. Second, because unrefined in stronger in concentration, you require a lesser amount than refined. Thus is economical in the long run. In fact having unrefined salt will help you avoid expenses on all the magnesium and calcium tablets that you purchase to meet dietary requirements. Third, to many people, unrefined will taste better. 

It is possible that some governments and health agencies are just catering to the big companies who want to sell all these unnecessary tablets and capsules by regulating the salt requirements. The expected salt intake was recently doubled by some agency. Possibly to sell more of this commodity by further refining it and diluting the strength.

My question to you: Can you imagine that refined salt is yet another scam? Do you think it is possible? Or do you think – its better to be safe than sorry? Thoughts?

No. This is not a feature by feature comparison of iPhone and iPod touch. But these are my views pertaining to a discussion I was having yesterday whether iPod touch is in a declining stage of its lifecycle. I say not.

First the facts: I have been an avid user of iPod touch and love the device. Though it is restricted in its use of wifi to connect to internet (data), I find it quite satisfactory as all places I frequent – home, office, hotels, most fast food restaurants (yes!) and school, have free wifi connection. The only time I am unable to check my emails is when I am commuting to and fro these places. I am completely fine with that as I do not need to do that anyways (and it may be dangerous). Most apps that work on the iPhone also work on the iPod touch. I have an RSS reader that helps me read various blogs and news sites I frequently visit. There are music applications, even an NPR application for radio. There are various applications for Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites. It also doubles as a mobile gaming platform. I don’t mind carrying a phone with me as my pants mostly have four pockets and there are enough slots in the dashboard and my bag to accommodate both these devices. What are absent is a phone and a GPS. The lack of GPS is compensated by an excellent maps application in iPod touch. I just download the directions one way and use that if necessary and voice direction is provided by my wife. Needless to say, a lot of innovation is still left in this product (adding a camera, GPS, office applications, etcetera) for a long time to come. Total cost of ownership for an iPod touch is $229, $299, or $399 depending on the memory one desires.

On the other side, iPhone has all of the above including what’s lacking in iPod touch. Will I prefer one over the other. If I have a choice, yes!!! I will go for an iPhone. But the cost of ownership of the device is prohibitive, for now. It comes to around $120 per month. I will go on to say that unless a corporate is sponsoring my data plan, I may never buy an iPhone and be happy and content with my iPod touch.

Coming back to the original argument – Broadly speaking, there are two categories of people – one who can afford and one who cannot afford an iPhone. In my opinion there are more in the latter than in the former. And I also believe that there are many more people in the latter category who haven’t yet switched to iPod touch from their current mp3 player. This is a huge market segment that will show itself in the years to come and buy the product. With Apple providing free iPod touch to Mac buyers as part of back to school program, this device will continue to have users and will get continuous traction among the 15 – 27 age group.

What can also point us in coming to the right conclusion are the sales figures of these devices. Per last announcement by Apple, sales of iPod touch doubled over the last year. Almost 3.21 million devices were sold last quarter, in line with 3.79 million iPhones. More here.

In the end, I would still place iPod touch in the growth stage. iPhone is going to be the choice of device for corporate users and those who can afford it.

A trip to Amicalola falls – Highest falls (729 ft/222 m) in Georgia, USA

The falls

The trail

The view