ashutosh PARASHAR

Why the people in Sales move their hands so much?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 20:55:00 +0000

I had noticed this for long that the salesmen usually move their hands a lot. Making imaginary worlds with in their sign language, repeating with their hands what they will be saying anyway. Was just reading something and I realized it's not just the selling that gets helped with moving hands:

Seinfeld ...gave me an example. “I had a joke: ‘Marriage is a bit of a chess game, except the board is made of flowing water and the pieces are made of smoke,’ ” he said. “This is a good joke, I love it, I’ve spent years on it. There’s a little hitch: ‘The board is made of flowing water.’ I’d always lose the audience there. Flowing water? What does he mean? And repeating ‘made of’ was hurting things. So how can I say ‘the board is made of flowing water’ without saying ‘made of’? A very small problem, but I could hear the confusion....

“So,” he continued, “I was obsessed with figuring that out. The way I figure it out is I try different things, night after night, and I’ll stumble into it at some point, or not. If I love the joke, I’ll wait. If it takes me three years, I’ll wait.” Finally, in late August, during a performance, the cricket cage snapped into place. “The breakthrough was doing this”— Seinfeld traced a square in the air with his fingers, drawing the board. “Now I can just say, ‘The board is flowing water,’ and do this, and they get it. A board that was made of flowing water was too much data. Here, I’m doing some of the work for you. So now I’m starting to get applause on it, after years of work. They don’t think about it. They just laugh.”

So that is why. The customer shouldn't have to put too much effort on it. They should just be able to laugh/ agree/... get sold.

Exchanging foreign currency in Chennai

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 09:56:00 +0000

My experience with banks, regarding online foreign currency transfer, is that they take away about 1 or even 2 Rs/ Euro as part of their commission. And worst part is that you don't have any control or predictability over this.

Compared to that my experience with face-to-face money exchange with authorized dealers has been very good. My only experience is with Camera City in Chennai, and they give very good rate.

My experience is that they give

-10 Paise/ Euro compared to rates available on XE.com, when you take INR in cash;
+10 Paise/Euro compared to the XE.com rate when you take INR via cheque

You go there with your foreign currency, and your passport. And they give you INR along with receipt.

54, Cathedral Road, (Opp Hotel Chola),
Chennai,
Tamil Nadu-600 086
India.

+(91)-(44) - 28110467 / 28110468 / 329 51 309 / 329 52 309

+(91)-9840425733

http://www.cameraciti.com/contact-us.aspx

Of course, if you must exchange money Online, I put my experience in the other post

Google Services That Don't Work on Chrome

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 23 May 2012 07:08:00 +0000

It's very normal that certain Google services don't work as intended on IE. We even get message on IE6 that the user should shift to a modern browser, Chrome touted as one major example of those modern browsers.

But of late I am coming across Google services that are not working on Chrome but are working flawlessly on new versions of IE. Coming from a giant like Google, I find it disappointing. And also bit surprising, the front-end specific coding and very rigorous browser-testing is a standard procedure in Cognizant, I would expect Google would at least test their services on their own browser.

I am huge fan of Google. In fact among my friends I am mocked that I keep pushing for G+ usage, even on my FB stream. I hope they notice these problems and correct ASAP.

~~- Latitude.google.com: On Chrome the page doesn't load properly, so you can't even see the basic content. On IE it works perfectly.~~
- Alerts.google.com: When you try to modify an entry, or create a new entry; on Chrome you can only update the main search-term. The details like frequency etc. are not editable. On IE it works perfectly.

Renting house in Netherlands

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 12 May 2012 12:04:00 +0000

There are several agencies that can help in this. In the past years, as I talked to several friends who were also looking for houses to rent, I found one site specially good- http://www.pararius.nl. Unlike site of individual agencies, this site presents houses from several agencies in a single place and then after short-listing the houses, you can contact the agencies directly.

One more tip from my friend Agor, I pasting as it is from one email of his-

...To be sure that you are renting the place from the real owners please check www.kadaster.nl. They charge you 2.95 euros for providing the information about the real owner based on the address details.

I want to tell you this because one of my friend rented an apartment via the marktplaats and the guy who rented the apartment told him that he is the owner. He had even registered in town hall for the apartment thinking that town hall will do all the verification but after 1.5 months when the real owner showed up, he realized the scam. He lost two months deposit to this scammer.

The scammer is the ex-tenant who stayed in the apartment. I hope to warn you all about scams like this when you rent a apartment directly and Kadaster will help you to find the real owner.

1)Click www.kadaster.nl

2) Select Particulier

3)Select producten en diensten

4)Select Kadastraal Bericht Eigendom

5)Select nu kopen

6)Enter the postcode and house no of the apartment you wish to verify

7)Select Kadastraal bericht eigendom

8)Click Naar Winkelwegen and pay through online

9)PDF will be opened with all the details

Fast typing on iPad

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:09:00 +0000

1) Alternate versions of a character become available if you keep it pressed. For example, if you keep A pressed, then you will see options for Ã, Ä, Å etc.

2) Effect of special keys such as Shift, Num-lock can be achieved in a single move if you press the key and then slide to the next key you would have otherwise pressed.
press Shift key and in the same move slide to 'a' and it would be typed as A
press Number key (Number keyboard will be shown) and in the same move slide to desired number, and that number will be typed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVRfs4VGh9Q&feature=related

3) Instead of putting a full-stop and then space, just press space-bar twice. That would take care of full-stop and space.

4) Usual MS-Office trick. Most often used word combinations, contractions, small-caps casing etc. will be automatically handled by the iPad.
Type Im and it will become I'm, theyre, and it will become they're.
Type ipad and it will become iPad.

5) Pretty often the iPad will correct spellings or suggest the word based on initial few characters. Pressing space-bar on seeing such suggestions will type that complete word. You can also tap on the suggested word. Removing the suggestion is bit tricky- there is a little 'x' mark beside the suggested word, that should be tapped upon.

Sending money from Netherlands to India

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 09:44:00 +0000

Recently I noticed that ICICI Bank Money2India facility was not available from Netherlands. I understand few of my friends are using fake address of Germany to still make the transactions on Money2India. It works fine. But it would be better to simply use some legitimate way to transfer money to India. Such as sending money directly from your Dutch bank account.

I am putting these steps here specially for my friend Shashi (neither Tharoor, nor Kapoor; he is none other than Ranjan).

1) Login to ABN Amro Internet Banking. Choose Betalen à Buitenland overboeken

2) Enter BIC code as per your bank information.
ICICINBBNRI for ICICI Bank.
HDFCINBB for HDFC Bank
SBININBB250 for SBI Jabalpur (others http://www.theswiftcodes.com/india-state-bank-of-india/)
For other banks, you can find BIC through their customer care. Also the following link may help http://www.swift.com/bsl/

3) Enter

ICICI Bank account number in first field

Address of your own address (not of the bank branch) in the next field (click ‘+’ sign to bring extra rows)

Amount in ‘Bedrag’ field

Choose EUR as the currency code

Put some description in Omschriving field

Select ‘shared’ (gedeeld) as value in the ‘kosten’ dropdown

Click ok

4) Take next steps as usual.

Solving Rubic's Cube

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 30 May 2011 12:24:00 +0000

Recently I learnt to solve Rubic Cube. Was good time pass all these days. My colleague Matthijs helped me a lot. Sharing my notes below.

I hope to put various pictures related to this on this page later on.

Solving Rubic’s Cube

Legend-

Corner piece that has 3 faces

Centre piece that has 1 face

Edge piece that has 2 faces

R right

L left

U Facing Up

B Back

F Facing you

D Downfacing

D would mean turn D clock-wise. D’ would mean turn D anti-clock-wise.

Algorithms
1) First layer.

Arrange yourself. No algorithm needed.

First make a cross. Edge pieces must match the adjasent centre pieces.
Then arrange corner pieces. Must match adjasent corner and centre pieces.

2) Second layer.

Only edges will need to be arranged, as centre is already supposed to be matched. So max 4 adjustments.

Bringing a bottom edge piece to left or right edge

To left edge DR’D’RFRD

To right edge D’RDR’...
Swapping 2 edge pieces
Perform Left or Right swap for the pieces to bring them to bottom layer. Then perfrom above algorithms.
3) Third layer
Make a cross of edge pieces
FRU’R’UF
Orienting edge pieces correctly
RUR’URU2R’

Permuting corner pieces

1) Swap 2 pairs of corner pieces

Top view

ABC

DEF

GHI

A--> C; G--> I. Also They are flipped.

Algorithm F [URU’R’]*3 F’

2) Rotating 3 corner prieces

Top view

ABC

DEF

GHI

A--> G, G--> C, C--> A, I remains same.

Algorithm URU’L’UR’U’L

2) The two corners to be swapped are in the front right top and the back right top positions

Swapping adjacent corners L U' R' U L' U' R U2

Swapping diagonal corners execute the adjacent corner swap algorithm twice

Orienting corner pieces

Top view

ABC

DEF

GHI

Orient I and then one other corner. It must be done with at least 2 corners.
Orient the cube such that GHI are top, front edge.
Algorithm FDF’D’FDF’D’, U (till another wrong corner pience is right-tip corner), and then DFD’F’DFD’F’

Twisting three corners anti-clockwise R' U' R U' R' U2 R U2
Twisting three corners clockwise R U R' U R U2 R' U2
Other combinations Do above twice or combine
Sites
http://peter.stillhq.com/jasmine/rubikscubesolution.html

http://www.rubiks.com/solving-center/3x3_guide/

Movie: The American

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 19:31:00 +0000

Excellent movie. Like the feeling of a Fredrick Forsyth novel has turned into a movie. Well, its adapted from a novel of another author (A Very Private Gentlemen ~Martin Booth) , perhaps he also likes to detail out things like Forsyth.

They publicized the movie as if it would be the next Mission Impossible, or some James Bond/ Jason Bourne adventure. Plus presence of George Clooney also gives certain expectations- it would be a fast thriller with action scenes, fast music and witty dialogs thrown in between. This movie wasn't any of those, and perhaps that's why the movie failed- it would have totally disappointed if I had gone to theater with those expectations.

But watching at home, days after I had forgotten the publicity during the days of releases, I could see it alone at leisure and enjoy the slow scenes. Scenes shot at close or medium distance where Clooney is shown making the rifle or just sitting & waiting. Scenes spanned over several minutes showing minutes tasks of his trade, i.e. making rifles for assassins. Little things giving a feel of meticulousness that a world class craftsman must exhibit- without much ado he tells his client that he has already walked the river bank for miles, on both sides, to ensure they can safely test the rifles there; when putting the bullets in box, he puts the box on its side ensuring they are packed better, ensuring his hammer throws coincide with the tolling of church bell. Of course, the director has his own sense of humor- while giving this feel to a lay viewer, he leaves enough very obvious loopholes to amuse an expert. So when I read more about the movie- I got to know the rifle specifications rattled off by him are not suitable (too noisy model for a supposed to be very quite assassination), the mercury poured over the bullets must have been covered by wax, the packing of bullets must have been done with gloves on.

Overall, these scenes give an idea about the character that Clooney is playing. To me the movie seemed just that- depiction of a character and little change that it can go through in a period of few weeks. Not much of a story behind the character- nothing about what is his history, why he is the way he is; just what he is. In the very first scene he kills his lady partner coolly, and I thought she was perhaps deceiving him. But with later scenes I realized that this was just a normal thing for him- closing all connections in this cold blooded manner has become very instinctive for this guy. He is just a loner and keeps his connection with other humans to the minimum. Unless really needed, he doesn't talk. When needed, he speaks the very minimum needed. He has his physical needs and in a very matter-of-fact way he handles them through prostitutes. Without flinching he can change his name from Jack to Edward and the director doesn't even allow you to be shocked or impressed by it.

Few sex scenes, few dialogs at the brothel & restaurant and you know slowly he is melting- he is getting tired of his lonely life and would like to settle with a companion. And then finally, when he gets shot his pumps his fist at the steering wheel in disappointment- angry at oneself about being careless when he was so close to his retirement.

Overall it was such a joy to watch this movie. Will recommend to all my friends.

Only one thing was bit irritating- number of times it felt like the movie was massaging the ego of its American audience- as if all the times Italian think of nothing but America-At the very first opportunity a lady character asks if Clooney took take her to American with him; only words that an English listener can understand from the song in restaurant are 'Americano Americano'; the restaurant owner is so proud that hero of a famous Hollywood movie is an Italian. But well, it should be my misunderstanding, as later I understood that including the director, a big part of movie crew was non-American.

IMDB is rating 6.6/10.

Movies on Wall Street

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 17:46:00 +0000

The Last Days on Lehman Brothers
Barbarians at the Gate
Boiler Room
Trader (Nick Leison)

Macaulay Hazir Ho

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 21:20:00 +0000

Microsoft Outlook: Change delete recurring events appointments without losing history

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 10:13:00 +0000

Google calendar has one very good facility- if you want to change details about any appointment, which is part of recurring event series, it provides options to change a) only that event, b) all events in the series, c) only the future events.

This option c) is not available with Outlook. So for example, if you want to shift all the future events by 1 hour later (lets say to handle winter light saving changes), the timing for all the past instances would also get changed. Also, you would end up losing notes & any other changes you might have put in them.

Solution? Till Microsoft incorporates this feature, a bit complicated procedure is needed. This post gives the details, a little update version would be as the following.

i) Make one temporary Outlook Calendar (Temp).

iii) View your regular Outlook Calendar (Regular) in Category view. This will show all events as a list.

iv) Drag the event-sereis (for which future events need to be changed) to Temp.

v) Open Temp and export it to one MS-Excel file Excel).

vi) Open Excel. It would have all events in the series as separate rows. Change the particular entry (timing for example) for future events. Or better delete all future events and later make a new series for them in Outlook. Save Excel and close it.

vii) Import the Excel into Temp calendar.

viii) View Temp in category view. Drag the events into Regular.

ix) Delete Temp and Excel.
x) Create a new series for future events with changed timing & other details.

Note:

1) If you use Calendar in your local PST, then the global Calendar of your exchange account can also be used as Temp- or vice versa. This would save the time of creating another calendar and then later deleting it.

2) The post mentioned above gives almost the same procedure except that it doesn't use Temp calendar. The problem with that method is that all other appointment series also get into Excel and in the process are broken into individual appointments when imported back.

I hope this helps others. If you can find some other less cumbersome process, please let me know in comments. And lets pray that MS makes this change in Outlook, the Net is full of such requests already.

Book: The Perfect Prey ~ Jeroen Smit

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 15:17:00 +0000

The Perfect Prey: The Fall of ABN AMRO, or What Went Wrong in the Banking Industry ~ Jeroen Smit

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 15:10:00 +0000

Considering so many other behemoths like Lehman went down, the fall of ABN AMRO becomes perhaps less exciting one to read about. But being in Netherlands and specially being ABN AMRO customer makes me specially interested in understanding how it happened.

Jai Arjun Singh says in his post about Wolf Hall 'When we learn about history primarily through cold details set out “objectively” in textbooks, it’s possible to lose sight of the fact that the distant events we take for granted – events that now appear set in stone, almost as if they could have unfolded in no other way – were the accumulated products of the personalities, life experiences and whimsies of human beings who happened to be in a certain place at a certain time: real people with ambitions, weaknesses, dilemmas, biases and prejudices of their own.' I think the story of ABN AMRO is no exception.

This book that describes the people, their egos and the events that they led which eventually resulted in demise of the Dutch financial institution. At first the book struck me as providing rather too many details about too distant history, which I thought would not be related to the final event. But slowly, those details got me into the environs, which made me appreciate the clash of the personalities and meaning behind events. Unlike Barbarians, which was mostly focussed on the period & process of LBO process, this book was more focussed on how ABN got to the stage where it became target for acquisition, actual details of how Barkley or the Consortium (RBS, Banco Santander, Fortis) valued or structured the deals are not provided.

A very good summary of the events described in book from the moment Groenink took over till 2004 can be found here. From there till 2007, when the bank was acquired by the consortium is well documented in so many articles, including Wikipedia.

The hunter metaphor (or analogy or is it simile or ...) is used to depict the personality of Rijkman Groenink, the last CEO of ABN AMRO (AA) and the organization that he led for 7 years. By the end of the book there is too much of this hunter became the hunted language- first when AA has been acquired by the Consortium, and then due to financial crisis even the 3 constituent banks of the Consortium, specially Fortis, get into trouble. The start of the book is from one hunting incident years back, when Groenink gets hurt seriously-so bad that doctors say only 1 out of 10 such victims get back to active life. But Groenink is made of different mettle, almost immediately he gets back to office with a resolve that never in his professional life he would complain about physical pain/ difficulty arising from the injuries. He is one macho AMRO guy.

AMRO and ABN were 2 separate banks. As per Jeroen Smit ABN people were largely good hearted, laid-back bankers, while AMRO guys were aggressive bankers, who considered themselves better. From the moment of merger, somewhere in 1991 the chairmen of the 2 banks led the combination to become a single bank, arising from the merge of equals. After these two, Jan Kalffe took reign and then handed over to Groenink.

I think seeds of the eventual demise of the bank were sown even at this stage, where still the people from 2 parent organizations were not fully working together- the communication within the board was not seamless. Towards the end of the book Smit tells how ABN people were surprised to know that even after roughly 20 years of the merge, there was still separate club of AMRO managers active.

But when Groenink too over, he got seven years before bank came to brink of losing its independence. In that time, he could have saved the bank, and could have made it into world's top ten. In fact, Groenink promised to make it among the top 5 in its peer group. But time after time, he and his team failed to form a good strategy, let alone to execute it.

- First, they formed a special group to form strategy (ARROW), which under time-pressure formulated the strategy for such a behemoth without waiting for complete information. I can't believe they could do that, but they did. And later when they got the complete picture, after a delay of more than a year, they corrected course but again towards the other extreme.
- The ARROW and later few more such highly publicized initiatives and reorganizations were either not based on fully baked thought process, or were not brought to their logical conclusion before being replaced by the next initiative. In this matter, ABN AMRO did exactly as Jim Collins says 'comparison' companies do.
- To grow the bank, Groenink constantly kept looking for next acquisition targets. Internally his own bank was not performing well, the efficiency ratios were pathetic, but he left that to his team and didn't follow-up on that aggressively.
- They kept on investing in the corporate banking division in the hope that they would be counted among the big IBanks. Perhaps the aura of wall-street kept giving them motivation to continue investing in expensive bankers, who didn't have big enough market in NL to justify so big salaries. But first, Groenink & board didn't put effective stop to this, and then the board and the supervisory-board didn't want to fire or limit ambitions of chief of Ibanking group- Jiskot, as he was the only one to provide enough counterweight in managing- board to Groenink. What a logic to keep paying some highly paid guy.
- Concept of managing by Value (Net profit- cost of capital) was indeed a very positive (and radical at that time) change. But it requires a big change in mindset, and to make all understand and buy the idea is a mammoth task. Management should have spent a lot of time on that, employing a consulting agency wouldn't be sufficient to make it happen.
- The new head of the supervisory governing body came to know only at the end that finally he had responsibility and powers to reign in Groenink & the managing board.
- And finally, and mainly (as per the limited understanding that a book can provide about such a complex event) the relationship/ communication between the various board members and the management of ABN AMRO in general was not conducive to bring out best solutions for tactical problems and best strategy for the long term. The personality of Groenink was not such that he would lead the team into one single direction with unity.

But overall, I am in sympathy with Groenink. Surely he didn't succeed in making ABN AMRO among the top-five, but in the end he got the best value for the shareholders. Though personally the acquisition by Consortium was in his best interest, he kept pushing for the merger with Barclays. Still, when going out he got some 20+ million Euros, thats something everyone on the Net keeps focussing about. They don't seem to get that he got the best deal for the shareholders in the end- 14+% CAGR over 7 years of his tenure!

"End of IT Outsourcing" ?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 15:50:00 +0000

Recently an article from ATK is in discussion- "The End of Outsourcing (As We Know It)"

Article itself is here

An interview with one of the authors is here

Summary from my perspective
- Google, Amazon and others are making big inroads in the area of cloud computing and have gathered know-how to provide the benefits of their huge infrastructure to other companies.
- Vendors like these would keep instances of applications on their systems and provide their use to clients as a service- so pay per user, or pay per transaction. I think 'Software as a Service' is someone else' registered term, so the authors invest another term 'Pay as you drink'.
- To say it bluntly, current set of IT outsourcers will die. Some will be acquired, others will starve of clients as all business would go to Amazon, Google etc. In the end, it would be Google, Amazon and IBM who would rule this area.

Its interesting view point, gives quite some points to think about. But not the one I entirely agree with-

1) ATK seems to be assuming that all applications being built and managed by IT outsourcers (lets group them all under this one umbrella term) are so standard that firms can start taking them from service providers.

However, I agree that there is growing trend to move towards SaaS. Already in the payments area companies are providing entire mobile banking platform to banks for use on transaction basis. So such outsourcing from banks to service provides would definitely happen. But I doubt if Googles and Amazons would want to get into these specific (domain specific, or market specific or ...) services.

This in itself could be a pointer towards next steps of the IT outsourcers

a) They can become one of such SaaS providers- a number of product based companies came to be so because they learnt the domain while working for one specific client and then they structured that knowledge in the form of a product to give it to other clients. The IT outsourcers also can take the same route. But this time instead of making a product, they can sell the services hosted on the Cloud.

b) The can start providing man-power (and the delivery capability) to such SaaS providers.

2) A big chunk of all applications (whether made by some Saas provider or proprietary applications from companies themselves) would be hosted on the Cloud. But I am not clear why that would affect work of IT outsourcers. Biggest portion of their work comes from providing man-power and delivery capability to their clients, not from giving infrastructure services to them. So regardless of where the clients' code, data or application is hosted, the outsourcing of application maintenance and building would continue.

We will see how this actually turns out.

How to compare two versions of MS-Word documents

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:03:00 +0000

MS-Word has inbuilt facility for this.For Office 2007 or higher, in English, directly refer to this link.

Since a number of my friends use Dutch version of Office 2003, the following can help.

- Open any one of the versions (A) of the document. Typically this would be the initial version, on top of which chagnes are made,
- Go to Tools menu and click on 'Compare & Merge Documents' ('Documenten Vergelijken en Samenvoegen' in Dutch- see picture below),
- In the upcoming dialog box, select the other version (B) of the document, click Ok;
- Another dialog box will open to ask in which version (A or B) we would want to see the changes marked. Choose as per your choice. By default it would be A.
- Click Ok. You would see all changes marked in the chosen document in track-change mode.

Good to Great ~ Jim Collins

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:05:00 +0000

Jim Collins would want to introduce the book as '7 habits of Highly Effective Companies' when 'Effective' means companies that went from usual survival mode to phenomenally outperforming the market consistently. Now, the 7-habits has some real gems, and otherwise a lot of generic gyan, the same is true with this book too.

More ...

Good to Great ~ Jim Collins

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Summary
Jim Collins would want to introduce the book as '7 habits of Highly Effective Companies' when 'Effective' means companies that went from usual survival mode to phenomenally outperforming the market consistently. Now, the 7-habits has some real gems, and otherwise a lot of generic gyan, the same is true with this book too.

From thousands of publically traded companies market-price data Jim Collins (and the research team) came up with 11 companies that showed a Good to Great transition. They had a specific criteria to identify such transition and 'Great' company. Then they studied these 11 companies and their direct comparison companies to come up with common traits. Traits are

1) Level 5 Leader- leaders who have both “personal humility” and “professional will”. Seems arbit idea but they thing to be common quality of CEOs of those 11 companies. Perhaps it works that way, a low-profile, open-to-feedback CEO may get opportunity of invite the brightest ideas and also can get buy-in from all without hurting their egos. But I don't think Jamie Dimon of JPMC, or Sandy Weill of Citi or Jack Welsh .. any other guys fit this critieria and still they made their companies great.

2) Get the right people in team. Don't worry about what to do, that's for later. First who, then what.
3) The “Hedgehog concept”: One simple idea about what you can best in the world at, make money from and like doing it. Each of them separately and together are different from what is your core-competence.

4) Culture of self-discipline- so that you just make systems and norms and team follows it. You dont have to spend time on managing/ motivation etc. This comes from step 2.

5) Pioneering use of technology as accelerator, but as a source of transition

6) Flywheel- all these things together, very slowly build-up momentum and like fly-wheel sustain it. Then the company breaks through.

My view of the book

A lot of gas. Perhaps the points he is making are correct, but after reading the book who are no wiser as to how to make it happen- how can be a level-5 guy, how you identify who are right people, how you actually come to Hedgehog concept etc.

Biggest point can be that perhaps his criteria to decide on these G2G companies was not the correct one and so these 6 common traits of publicly traded old (atleast 50 years old to have that much history) are not relevant for the remaining companies and organizations.

But overall still there were quite some good pointers. Biggest of them was that while doing budgeting G2G companies don't reduce allocation for their non-main-focus areas, they simply stop allocation for them- they have a stop-doing list (as opposed to to-do list).

Read this article on vary good analysis of the book.

13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown ~ Simon Johnson, James Kwak

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 14:38:00 +0000

What the book is about

For the past 3 decades Wall Street has become too entrenched within Washington power corridors. Under their influence an increasingly de-regulatory regime has overseen (or failed to oversee) American financial system. Current financial crisis (2007-2009), which is the main subject for the book, has resulted from these circumstances. Bankers'approach has resulted in situation that privatizes the profits, while socializes the losses. Solution in short: Too big to fail is too big- cut them to size.

More...

13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown ~ Simon Johnson, James Kwak

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 14:10:00 +0000

What the book is about
For the past 3 decades Wall Street has become too entrenched within Washington power corridors. Under their influence an increasingly de-regulatory regime has overseen (or failed to oversee) American financial system. Current financial crisis (2007-2009), which is the main subject for the book, has resulted from these circumstances. Bankers'approach has resulted in situation that privatizes the profits, while socializes the losses. Solution in short: Too big to fail is too big- cut them to size.

Why this name:
2009- 13 bankers came to meet President Obama to discuss how the deal with the finacnail crisis of 2007-2009. And after the meeting there message was 'we are in this together'.
1997- Brooksley Born, then head of Commodity Futures Trading Corporation (CFTC) proposed to issue a “concept paper”. Her concern was that 'lack of oversight allowed the proliferation of fraud, and lack of transparency made it difficult to see what risks might be building in this metastasizing sector'. Larry Summers, Deputy Treasury Secretary at that time, is supposed to have called her saying "I have thirteen bankers in my office, and they say if you go forward with this you will cause the worst financial crisis since World War II." NYTimes so aptly alliterates Credit Crisis Cassandra.
These two event, coincidently involving 13 bankers, symbolize the power of Wall Street; the new financial oligarchy within US.

Very apt quote from The Great Gatsby

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Referring to big banks, who brought global economy to the brink of failure, caused millions to lose their savings of life-time and then left it for the governments to salvage the situation using taxpayers money.

How Wall Street became so powerful
Election campaign contributions, 'revolving door' between private sector and government services' and finally but most importantly their idealogical power that convinced people to the extent that pro-Wall Street sentiments were taken for granted.

Comparison with the Asian crisis of 90s
They dissect the financial crisis of South-East Asia (starting from Mexico, and that extended to Korea, Russia...). They show that in each emerging economy one common factor was crony-capitalism- close relationship between some oligarchs with the government (other factors were high levels of debt, cozy and dependence on volatile inflows of capital from the rest of the world).
And in each of these economies US and IMF pushed for taking long term stance (instead of bailout), even when it meant making few big companies bankrupt.
Later, when the similar situations came up in US (thats 2007-09 crisis), government took just the opposite route. This time, instead of huge money of taxpayers was spent to bailout the financial institutions.

I wonder why India was not mentioned. We didnt have this crony-capitalism problem, or because we were not affected directly by this crisis?

Further
The book is a good read. A lot of further readings can be obtained from the blog of the authors. One post by another expert provides a very good summary (in fact more than that) of their last chapters. Book's site also provides very good information.

Baudolino~ Umberto Eco

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 12:21:00 +0000

A wonderful adventure of a lovable liar.

Year 1204, place Constantinople, person Nicetas Choniates a historian at Eastern Roman Imperial court. The city is being sacked by the pilgrims on their way to the 4th Crusade. Nicetas (Niketas in the book) is saved 'from the fury of the invaders' by a knight, who "appeared as handsome as Saladin, on a bedecked horse, a great Red cross on his chest, sword drawn, shouting "Gods belly!...". That's our hero Baudolino, who later flatly informs Niketas that he had the horse and the knights attire are actually stolen. Perhaps this is the only truth he tells, as after this there is no limit to the wonderful tales of Baudolino.

More...

Baudolino~ Umberto Eco

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 12:17:00 +0000

A wonderful adventure of a lovable liar.

Niketas is a court historian, and living at Byzantine court has taught him to evaluate people with calm distrust. But what to do of a man, who flatly admits that he is an inveterate liar, possesses likable personality, has got wonderful tales to tell and most of all who is also ones savior? While the city burns and later when he is on the run with family, Niketas can not keep himself from constantly listening to the amazing account of Baudolino's life.

Towards the very beginning of the book Baudolino gives himself out candidly-

"Whether or not I saw him is another question. Master Niketas, the problem of my life is that I've always confused what I saw with what I wanted to see. ...with me, whenever I said I saw this, or I found this letter that say thus and so (and may be I'd written it myself), other people seemed to have been waiting for that very thing. You know, Master Nikatas, when you say something you've imagined, and other they say that's exactly how it is, you end up believing it yourself."

But still, there are things that keep Niketas half convinced that he is listening to a true account of life- Baudolino's knowledge of the thing that are known only to most widely read savants, his confidence in narrating stories and of course his evident fluency with so many languages (an ability possessed only by the apostles). Baudolino tells about how he came to be the adopted son of the Holy Roman Emperor himself (Frederik I Barbarossa), the story of founding of city of Alessandria, how he was instrumental in brokering peace between the Italian cities and the Emperor and how he falls in love with his adopted mother and end up even kissing the Empress! Taking a number of personalities, events and even the legends of the era as raw material, Eco spins out an entertaining adventure of Baudolino. Over the course, he shows how a number of legends (holy grail, wealth of Pretor John's kingdom, so many holy relics, myriad mythic creatures like Unicorn etc.) might have become part of popular legends. Checkout the fantastic world map that Baudolino used in his quest for Prestor John's kingdom.

After Tom Holland's scholarly account of European life around the first Millennium, I could appreciate this romance from Eco even more- depiction of roughly the same era, portrayal of a number of events and personalities from the and events from the same period, but in more fun-filled, and imaginative way. In an interview Eco had said about the book 'There are no advances in philology here – ... These are not pages or erudition, they are pages of comedy'. But that doesn't mean he takes it lightly. He says further 'it is an apology for utopia, for those inventions that move the world. Columbus discovered America by mistake: he thought that the earth was much smaller... A continent is conquered following a myth.' And towards the end of the book Eco uses one of the mythic creatures to explain Gnostic creation beliefs.

But why is it we never hear of this superhero, this Baudolino, in our history books? Its because, when Nicetas wrote his history, he omitted Baudolino's name deliberately. Otherwise he would 'have to tell about the relics they fabricated (and so many other irreverent things.)... And the readers would lose faith in the most sacred things'. Niketas is comforted by his mentor that the beautiful story of Baudolino would still not be lost- 'sooner or later, someone- a greater liar than Baudolino- will tell it.' Thus referring to himself, Eco closes the enchanting story of Baudolino.

Second hand shop in Utrecht:Stichting Kringloop Centrum Utrecht

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 09:48:00 +0000

Stichting Kringloop Centrum Utrecht

Bus no. 6 from central station

Bus stop Kastelenplantsoen

The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman ~ Louis de Bernières

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 23 May 2010 22:05:00 +0000

Magic realism. Need to read at least one book of Gabriel García Márquez's books to check it out from the master himself. Someone mentioned in Wikipedia that Louis de Bernières was paying homage to the style that came from Latin America by employing the Magic Realism style that was born there (?). And, intelligent as I am, further thought that he was paying specific tribute to Garcia by naming one of the characters after him. It might be that Garcia is fairly common name in Latin America and that this style (or even way of thinking) was usual for de Bernieres in his initial years as author; and so homage or no homage, perhaps he had no choice in these matters.

This was my third book by de Bernières. In each of his earlier two books that I read (Corelli's Mandolin & Birds without Wings) I had observed a method- an arrangement of events to get to the heart of the reader. First, he would depict an idyllic picture of a community and slowly get you in love with them. When doing so, he would give so many details for each setting, each character and each event that you would find the whole situation funnily real, and also would find yourself living those moments. And then in the second half, he would disrupt the whole way of living for the village/ small town, uproot them from their homes and would show one by one, how life turned sour for the individuals. And once again, like he had done with the good days, here also you would not be spared the gruesome and melancholy details.

I was suspecting the same treatment in this book, and was already dreading reaching the 2nd half of the book. But this time the end was not so bad. While for Colombia (or whichever country it was he was describing) the nature of the governance doesn't change much by the end of the book just becasue of regime change; the little town of Cochadebajo de los Gatos is spared the destruction and the townsfolk end the novel with a long fiesta, like in Asterix.

The long named town is the setting for the novel. And is home to funny, strange but lovable characters. While they are living their lovely-lovely life their with their million idiosyncrasies and hundreds of wild cats; a dishonest cardinal unwittingly starts an inquisition with an over-zealous priest in command. Unimaginable atrocities depicted with horrifying details make you wonder if really man is capable of doing all that. But the wonder should rather be reserved for the funny ghosts of the town who not only refuse to marry, but also fall in love in their afterlife, have kids and even get killed from their ghost-hood and transported back to life with a rebirth :)

Eventually the inquisition reaches the town, but is defeated in a fantastic battle fought by army, townsfolk and ghosts. The modern day Torquemada, El Innocente, is taken by St. Thomas Aquinas himself with a promise that he will go naked forever.

Millennium ~Tom Holland

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 23 May 2010 20:36:00 +0000

Millennium, by Tom Holland

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 15 May 2010 23:04:00 +0000

Subtitle of the book reads "The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom", that should give some idea about the book. Focus of the book is roughly the 100 year span of European history around the first Millennium (10th & 11th century). During that time, a lot of political and religious movements happened the way they happened, as people were waiting for the anti-Christ and then Christ to come once the thousandth year after the Savior was over. While no one exactly knew whether those thousand years were to be counted from the moment of His birth or Passion, or if those years were to be taken literally as 1000 years or even if those years were already gone by. And so even when the years kept going by, the people continued with their games out of fear, despair and hopes of the Millennium and the arrival of the Christ.

The tussle between the Papacy and rulers, Holland explains, first made Church getting too strong (with much fun and at length, he describes how even a emperor was forced to wait on a Pope for three days, standing outside the Pope's castle in snowy winter). And then, this same struggle made rulers to assert themselves more sternly, which made the state more independent and separate from the Church. He says that this would have paved way for secular democratic states ruled by modern ideas (allowing gay marriages etc.), however, the evolution of this modern state is not the focus of the book. So I find it funny that this is exactly what The Independent wants to highlight the most, perhaps because its so catchy- 'A pact between an obscure Pope and a Dark Ages emperor led to gay weddings and Voltaire' :)

Holland also describes at a very high level also the major events since the death of Constantine that led to the momentous years around the Millennium. The evolution of Lord-serf relation, Knights, Castles, Peace of God and so many other things that I used to read about became even more clear. I think best part was the chapter on events that finally resulted in Norman conquest of England. True to his style, Holland named that chapter '1066 and all that'.

Another masterpiece of Tom Holland that matched my expectations after Rubicon and Persian Fire. Just today finished the book. Unlike other books, and like any of Tom Holland's, this one was required you to really focus due to its over-complicated sentence structure; but was still so much enjoyable, interesting and hence a fast read.