Salute to Jobs

This one is all over the internet these days, but definitely worth reading any number of times.

Steve Jobs. And his attention to detail. On a Sunday. Well said !!!

More of my posts on the Infosys SCM Blog

Got a new post here on some of the trends in retail grocery. You could call it the effect of working with bananas, lobsters and chicken for sometime now. :D

I also have a few supply chain posts going at the same Infosys SCM blogsite. You already have seen this earlier. Its continuation can be found here and here.

This talks about how lean warehousing and agile development go together.

As always, would love your comments.

Farewell Mr. Murthy

Newspapers are talking about the N.R. Narayana Murthy era as he transitions out of Infosys on his 65th birthday today. Business channels are running his interviews alongside programs depicting the simple origins of this terrific company. Watching them, one gets the sense that here was an extraordinary leader & visionary who possessed great integrity & values to build Infosys into what it is today.

Much of what is said is true. Being a visionary leader with integrity did lay a rock solid foundation to success. However, remember that Leadership is a diffuse term as pointed out here and here.  And the human mind is not very expansive when it comes to retrospection. It prefers to look at a situation and draw succinct conclusions on why it is so. We are a countdown generation. 'Top 3 Reasons Why It Happened' is our i-Phone Playlist Favorite rather than 'How to Assimilate the Complex Interplay among Varied Dimensions & Levers to Determine Why It Happened'.

At the public farewell to Narayana Murthy yesterday in the Infy campus, I was privileged to witness some of this interplay that made NRN great. When speaker after speaker extolled the virtues of this man and regaled us with stories from the past, when videos depicted a measure of his persona and his phenomenal rise, and when NRN himself came on stage to exhort us to dream of a $60 billion and $600 billion Infosys - it became increasingly obvious that his success cannot be solely explained by the 'vision-leadership-integrity' triad.

Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO of Infosys says that the first call made to him that morning is from NRN at 6:10 to apprise him of some status, and NRN had preceded this call with an email at 5:43AM. Mind you, this is NRN's penultimate day. Bill Gates sends his wishes in a recorded clip and looks forward to working with NRN on philanthropic causes. Deepak Satwalekar, Independent Director of Infosys (and MD & CEO of HDFC Standard Life Insurance) mentions that here is a man who played with a straight bat and never preached what he did not practice. Dr. Rohan Murthy, his son, thanks us and former employees for the joy we brought to him, and indirectly to his family. KV Kamath, Independent Director (and incoming co-Chairman of Infosys), tells us how NRN had the ability to look at seemingly complex technology and provide insight on its relevance to the common man. And how he is always generous with his time and willing to mentor you and back you. 

As 2500+ Infoscions rise to applaud as NRN walks on stage - and a lot more watch the event  live on their desktops - he tells us that for him, the past is dead and gone. The past is only useful to draw lessons from and apply to the present in order to create a better future. "In God We Trust" he had once said, "but for everything else, we believe in data". Well, on Friday, data just flowed. He is confident that Infosys can add value for the next 200 years. We get a lesson on per capita revenue productivity and how we must look at competing developing countries like China, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan that are 20% higher on this metric. He articulates the need for fast-track leadership programs to nurture and motivate top talent. Take quick decisions, remain humble and be kind to ex-employees who chase a different dream is his advice.

From this evening, certain memories will remain. Mrs. Sudha Murthy in a video talks about the Rs. 10,000 she had lent to start Infosys. We all know this. But did you know that she had actually saved Rs. 10,250 for emergency purposes? "Even then I did not give him all my savings. The other Rs. 250 went back into the emergency fund". In another segment, she adds that if ever a blood test would be taken of NRN, there would be no haemoglobin... only Infosys.... Infosys....

But to me, the pinnacle was an anecdote from Vallabh Bansali of Enam, the Lead Manager of the Infosys ADR in the 90s. During the roadshow in the US, Mr. Murthy does not attend the dinner meeting one night. Vallabh is told that he cannot make it. It is only several days later that the truth is known. Mr. Murthy was suffering from a bad tooth and in pain. But he did not want to search for a dentist in the US, go through the procedure and impact the roadshow. Therefore NRN does the right thing in the way only he can.... he spends the evening in his room.... to pull out the painful molar.... with his own hands. The roadshow is a success. 

Mr. Murthy - Dreamer, Leader, Visionary, Strategist, Master Tactician, Mentor, Human Being, and much much more - Thank You.

Indian Puttars & Half-Blood Princes

The Times of India Aug 15, 2011 edition carried a special supplement that was an extract of the Times of India Bombay Edition dated Aug 15, 1947. It was wonderful to read the mood of the country on the day of its independence. Both India and Pakistan got significant mentions - not surprising at all since they had only parted ways the day before. Also seen in the paper were grainy photographs of political leaders along with adverts selling milk, apparel, oil - and toothpaste.

Toothpaste? Yes. Colgate. My childhood favorite. Boldly asking “ARE YOU AFRAID TO KISS HIM... because of your breath?” WHOA!!! STOP!!! What was that? There was more. “He leans near, whispering romantic words. But how can you be sure your kiss will please? Are you sure your breath is sweet and fresh?... So be careful. Use Colgate Dental Cream.” Wow!!! Toothpaste sure was sold different in those days.

And then I recalled my MBA. Lessons on how the exclusivity of a product is lost when it becomes a commodity. That the uniqueness of a luxury brand is diluted when it becomes just another product. So in a country largely used to neem sticks & tooth powders in 1947, was toothpaste a luxury afforded only by the elite? Was that why the advt. was oriented more towards pleasing HIM than the obvious health benefits? One can never say. But what I can say with absolute confidence is that millions of young Indian males in the 80s & 90s would have been spared tons of insecurity if they knew that a product to fight bad breath was once sold to women. Let me explain....

'Stops bad breath. Fights tooth decay' intoned one advt. to me in the 80s. Another told me to get the 'Colgate Ring of Confidence'. And I even watched this on TV.... guy approaches a girl; girl turns away because of his bad breath; he brushes Colgate or Close-Up or whatever; and presto - they are into la-la land.

For the go-go youth of the 80s & 90s, bad breath was a masculine issue that we had to overcome. If we aspired to be even within 30 inches of a woman's lips, we better brush baby. I can bet that every morning in the 80s & 90s, millions of groggy-eyed and half-asleep Indian males ran the poor man's breathalyzer routine in their homes - trot into bathrooms, scrub their mouths to the point of bleeding, wipe their lips, and blow breath into their palms to smell them.

Now, can you imagine a single lady doing this? Seriously, come on. What in the hell were we males thinking? If only we had seen this 1947 Colgate advt., we would have realized that the same product was sold to women in a different era for the very same problem. We would have divined that bad breath cannot differentiate between male and female. And we would have then concluded that if a woman takes 5 minutes to brush her teeth every morning, a man can exactly do the same - and smell fantastic. More importantly, every guy would have slept 10 minutes longer and lost lot less blood.

So ladies and gentlemen, boys & girls, here is an Independence Day resolution for you to ponder. The next time you see a pitch for anything that tugs your masculine / feminine strings, don’t fall for it. Instead, go to YouTube and Google first. If that same product or formula has ever been sold once upon a time to the other sex - or to dogs, cats, or silkworms for that matter - chances are that it is not as exclusive as you think. And the money you save will make you smile in ways no toothpaste can.....

The 25 Most Influential Business Management Books

A very good collection. If you are book buff - and of management books at that - you'll love more than just a handful of them....

Go here for more.