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Books and Me: Cosmic Love and Human Apathy

Book Title:  Cosmic Love and Human Apathy

Author: Jyotirmaya Sharma

This is not a book for somebody who is yet to understand the three protagonists that the book speaks about, namely Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda and Hinduism. Trying to understand any of these using this book could be misleading while also doing injustice to the author’s extraordinary intellectual analysis.  The book is a part of the Author’s ongoing research into Hindutva and restatement of Hinduism.  After reading this work, I am personally excited and look forward to read the fourth book in the series that the Author intends to publish based on Mahatma Gandhi.

As an ardent reader of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda literature,  my understanding of their unique individual personalities has deepened post my reading of this book.  But this has also led to my re-reading a lot of the original literature to understand how and why these two personalities who were almost like chalk and cheese in their gross manifestations, seem to connect, collaborate, synergise and give to the world a lasting message and an institution.

Hinduism in my limited understanding is a foreign word.  It is a label provided to us by those who don’t belong to it.  Historically  India lived by what is called ‘Sanatana Dharma’ which reasonably translates to ‘ Eternal Principles of Living’ . It is because of this strong foundation of Sanatana Dharma, that we have had a glorious history of openness, sharing, giving and embracing. We have always looked towards the greatest truths of life and living while providing adequate pointers to what one can do in life to enable realise those eternal truths.  Hinduism has been created and is being used as a vehicle to propagate limited ideologies based on individual faiths.  While these may have been motivated by the context, situation and need at various stages in our history, it only makes me feel the need to forego this limited understanding of  Hinduism as a religion and attempt to connect Hinduism  to the way a person in Hindustan lives, which is essentially based on Sanatana Dharma.

The book highlights how Vivekananda has shifted the focus of Ramakrishna order from one of bhakthi to a more rational, scientific, masculine and nationalistic world. One the surface these seem very far from Ramakrishna’s world of love, ecstasy, irrationality and faith. The Author’s intellectual analysis is logical, extremely incisive and at many places brilliant. In the limited context of the subject under study the case made by the author seems interesting and provides a much needed alternative perspective to look at the celebrated relationship between Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. In fact this book has made me start re-reading the original literature of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda and look for lessons on how different personalities can come together for the sake of a higher cause. It has also triggered in me the curiosity to understand the guru-shishya relationship in a much more serious manner.

Marketing – Missing the obvious?

In a recent workshop at Kolkata for CEOs of early stage and small businesses i shared the most up to date version of an entrepreneurial marketing tool that i am creating. The underlying premise of the tool is to narrow so as to focus efforts and through this achieve growth. When one of the participants walked up to me at the end of the workshop and told me that in the last seven years he has been in business i was the first person to tell him to reduce the breadth of his marketing activities, narrow his target markets, focus efforts in limited products and services! He said he was both surprised and bewildered at the beginning. But having spent  the entire day thinking and working out – he figured that he may have missed something very fundamental.

I was glad. This is exactly what i wanted my CEO participants to recognize. I knew that if they can acknowledge that there is a need for a fresh approach to marketing which is very different and at times opposite to what traditional marketing offers – much of my work is done.

All the participants identified one market to focus for their growth. They were excited at the end of the day long deliberations that they have a possibility of growing through narrowing. They promised themselves to detail the plan that they started working on and implement it. I hope to hear from them soon on their success!

“Entrepreneurial Marketing” as an area is searching for fresh thoughts. My current work is on that. Hope to get it into a formal manner (book / articles) soon!

But my biggest learning (reiterated) – it is easy to miss the obvious.

Drinking water at the new airports!

As more and more people are taking their first flight journey, airports are getting busier. It takes a lot more time at the check-in counters and the air carriers are being tested daily for their efficiency and effectiveness. The airport authorities also have a tough time managing the crowd especially the facilities namely toilets, general cleanliness, and drinking water. Interesting drinking water got me all worried this time!

In my attempt to consume less plastic and be as environment friendly as possible i have over the last few months stopped buying and carrying water bottles. I try to consume water at safe points, especially at the airport water dispensers. But this time around i stopped in front of the water fountains and left without drinking. The new airports in line with the international standards (or whatever that means) have replaced the water dispenser taps with little fountains, where you press a little button and water comes out of an outlet like a fountain, we can consume it keeping our mouths to the water flow. But this time around i found a man (ignorant one though) putting his mouth to the water fountain itself and then pressing the button. I stopped, i saw and i left. His explanation to the person next to him was – don’t waste so much water. To drink a few mouth fulls why are you wasting so much water that is flowing.

I don’t want to debate what is right and wrong! But i definitely want to raise the question of culture. In India we are used to drinking water out of a tap. In fact in many homes people don’t even sip water from the glass! Where has all that cleanliness gone? Are we aping the west wrong? While we may be given to understand that a few thousand paper cups may be wasted in an effort to dish out water at the airports – this effort to make them drink water directly from the fountain will lead to a much greater cost – cost of health, which in my opinion is much larger than a few thousand cups every day.

While someone may argue that the ideal way is to teach and educate the air travellers the importance of hygiene, one must accept that it is fairly impossible in the short term; especially in a multi-lingual, diverse, multi-cultural, fast developing economy like India. I am sure it the case at many other places too. Sometimes we need to assess the total cost of environmental efforts – being green is important, but not at the cost of new communicable diseases. Design thinking needs to consider the downside of ignorant users too. Many times i am beginning to feel that sticking to basics is a lot better.

For now i have decided to have water at the home / hotel and then stay put till i get into the aircraft to have my next glass. In case of an emergency there is always the bottled water.

Vedantic Wednesday: Who we hurt the most?

If you fight with a friend, you take it out on your loving mother at home!

If you get pulled up in office, you come home and take it out on your spouse!

If you get upset because of someone, you normally don’t take it out on the person who upset you. You normally take it out on the person who cares for you. Just look back at the situations in your life when you have been unreasonable with people. How many times has that been with people who truly care for you – like mother, father, aunt, uncle, grand parents, etc.,.?

Why are we unreasonable with people who care for us? It is because in those moments we are not thinking at all. We may apologize or feel sympathy for them after the anger has subsided – but at the moment of anger we say and do things that really hurt the one who cares. Why do we get angry with the people who really are not the reason for our anger? Think! Because you know these are people you won’t lose. We take out our anger on people who live for us; we take out our anger on people who truly care for us; we take out our anger on people who take responsibility for us. Most often we know deep down that these people won’t leave us and hence we take it out on them. The funny part is we fight with these important people and hurt them badly for the sake of temporary fantasies or desires. If only you can sit and think why you are not even bothered about these people who care so much – we will start valuing what deserves to be valued. This will help us put things / beings who come and go in our life in the right perspective and start treating those who will stay with us through thick and thin with care, concern, respect and love.

Who we hurt the most? Who are we most unreasonable with? The people who we know will not leave us. It is this strength of relationship that we take for granted and this makes life miserable for us. It is important to understand this and ensure we don’t hurt people who live and support us in our lives. Because without these people who care for us, we won’t even exist today.

If only you can ask who are the people who have always been there for us and who we know will always be there for us irrespective of our behavior towards them – we know who we should care for?

All this requires us to think – yes ‘THINK’ before we react. If you can think even for a moment, you will not hurt and not be hurt as well.

JOBS Act – Changing the way entrepreneurs raise money!

What is the JOBS Act? It has nothing to do with Steve Jobs, though I would deem it as a honor in his memory!

JOBS Act is the recent federal legislation (applicable in the US only) to become partly effective starting this week. “Jumpstart Our Business Start-ups Act” or JOBS Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumpstart_Our_Business_Startups_Act) as it is widely referred, allows start-ups and small businesses to raise equity investments from the public using both online and offline forums with much lesser regulations regarding public listing, etc.,. While on the face of it, this seems like a welcome thing for the start-up ecosystem and small businesses, it provides immense opportunities for misuse.

There are number of checkpoints that the regulators have put in place including who you can raise money from and how much can be invested per year by an individual. Initially only accredited investors are eligible – these are high net-worth individuals with at least a million dollars in net-worth and a minimum of $200,000 in annual income. But this definition is expected to be lowered which will enable a lot more of the public to invest in small enterprises. There are also other major changes in the regulation which can change the financial industry and its approach to market quite a bit.

Is this the same as raising money through crowd-funding sites like ‘kickstarter’ or ‘indiegogo’? I am not sure, because the ventures (ones raising money) don’t normally promise any results back to the investors (which used to be the case with projects on those sites) except equity stake – which could literally become waste paper over time! Will people be ignorantly enticed into playing a part in the high risk environment? Will it actually make a lot more people learn about entrepreneurship and small business before investing in them? Will it provide an opportunity to raise money from customers themselves? Will it lead to another set of ‘little investment bankers’ who act as the middle-men between the small investors and the ventures? Will it increase the ratings business? Or will it result in lots of more focused crowd-funding sites especially focused on equity prior to public listing?

The JOBS Act is in all measures a very bold step by a forward looking nation. After all if we want to be ahead of the crowd even as a nation we have to take risks and live on the edge. It will be interesting to watch how this progresses, since it is a much awaited legislation. It will ease up the start-up process especially that of entrepreneurial ventures.

If it doesn’t turn into something like the ‘Tulip Mania’, we could be in for some serious gains and trends that other nations can learn from. But the big question remains – will rationality reign? Our behavioral economist friends may be laughing especially looking at their research outputs – saying ‘rational thinking’ it’s never happened before! But who knows?

Aren’t we living in interesting times?

Losing entrepreneurs to the Perennial Dilemma

Where we lose our entrepreneurs? Here: I want to be a product company! But I will start as a services company for now and fund my product creation! Soon my product will be ready and then i will focus on selling my product and move from a services company to be a full-fledged product company.

How many times have you heard this from entrepreneurs? I soak myself up in the start-up ecosystem quite a bit and so I get to hear this quite often. When I detest this thinking as ‘lack of focus’ – many entrepreneurs aggressively raise questions if this approach is totally wrong? In my recent workshop at Kolkata we had this discussion again, especially because we were discussing ‘Go to Market’.

Nothing is absolutely right or wrong, but many decisions can lead you down one of the paths.

Most entrepreneurs get caught up in the above thinking, which by itself is not wrong totally. Why not do what you know and quickly raise cash for building the dream product? The trouble is not at the start of this thought process, but somewhere along the way. Most often in a few years the above route produces enough cash flow and makes the entrepreneur think that services is an interesting business and it should be a division by itself. They invest in many activities like setting up an office, building a marketing force for services, creating P&L responsibilities for it and still keep the product initiative going, albeit at a reduced momentum. Soon the product takes the back seat as a paying customer is not going to keep quite. The entrepreneur being one who loves taking on challenges gets fully involved in growing the services business and eventually loses focus on the product. At some point in time the goal moves from creating the best product to creating a large profitable company! This is the place we lose the battle.

If you do decide to take the above route here is my advice:

Ensure enough checks to ensure services income is being used only for product development.
Ensure no extra services business is being taken-on beyond what is needed to keep the product development funded.
Ensure there is enough wise counsel to stop you in case you are over stepping towards quick money and compromising on the long term bounty.

It’s not an impossible route, but one needs to be extremely focused and avoid distractions. We need more companies that grow on purpose and for that we need mentors / coaches who will ensure they help their CEO’s keep focus. I enjoy doing this with my entrepreneurial CEO’s, especially because they are early stage high growth ventures where distractions are too many. Hope to see many of them blossom!

Interesting Links This Week: 22-September-2013

The links that made to my top list this week:

MIndfulness and its practice – lessons from two founders - http://bit.ly/15he9ZZ

Jobs I never thought of – a reflection of our lives in 2025?- http://bit.ly/19vdOKz

 

When you thought economy is hitting a new low, here is something sky high to really look forward to: http://bit.ly/15VLcVg

Books and Me: # Thought Leadership

Books Title:: # Thought Leadership

Author: Liz Alexander and Craig Badings

Being in the thought leadership business, I am always fascinated to know what people think thought leadership means.  While I have read denser publications on thought leadership as a subject,  I picked this book up out of curiosity around its creative structure.  Anybody who wants to read beyond 140 characters (a tweet) goes to a blog, an article, a journal or a book .  But in recent times, I have begun to see books written in tweets.  While the world wants everything in a tweet,  I was curious to know how a book could convey a subject as subtle as thought leadership using tweet sized statements.  I picked this book before boarding a short flight in the hope that I will finish it before I reach my destination. Thanks to a short delay in departure, I ended up finishing the book even before I boarded the flight.  I actually ended up picking one more book for the flight.

The book belongs to a series called THINKaha which I presume is a series of tweet books on a variety of subjects.  The representation of the book is very creative and I am sure it puts a lot more work on the author(s) to choose what to include and what to let go.  The book is a very good introduction to the subject, though being cursory in nature. Sticking to the intent of the book, the authors have provided lot of references for further reading both online and offline.

For me personally the book provided a number of thought triggers, with regards to content creation and dissemination. Whether you are a thought leader yourself or you are attempting to build a thought leadership image around your business or planning to use thought leadership as a marketing tool this book will provide you with an overall structure, a bunch of questions a quick road map, as well as extensive references. All of these will hep you understand thought leadership and plan on content creation, curation, dissemination and measuring the effectiveness of your initiatives. I am sure the book will encourage readers to pick more titles of the series as well as to dig deeper into the subject themselves.

Vedantic Wednesday: Instability of Life – Part 2

The last week’s Vedantic Wednesday post on “Instability of Life” ( http://rajshankar.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/vedantic-wednesday-instability-of-life/ ) received number of responses, likes and shares. People even wrote back asking how to take this thinking ahead. Here is my humble learning so far on this topic.

The essence of last week’s thought was this: “Life is like a dew drop on a lotus leaf”

But looking at it this way seems so pessimistic. Then why would a great teacher like Bhagavadpada Sankara Acharya give us such a lesson. The man, who in less than 32 years of life on Earth performed more work than even most performing people, could not have written this to share his pessimistic view of life. There is a deeper message for us.

When we understand that life is uncertain we begin to appreciate the importance of not taking it too seriously. When we are advised to take it too seriously the immediate reaction is to give up – but that’s where spirituality and spiritual knowledge is misunderstood. If life is to be lived like a sport (‘Leela’ in Sanskrit) then one needs to learn how to play! When you see children play sports we don’t see them go to a game to lose, but at the same time they don’t go to win either. They go to play. But soon we start feeding them that winning is important. This is the place the fun part of sports is lost and the seriousness of a game comes into picture. When this happens we begin to start experiencing pressure, expectations, happiness and disappointment. It doesn’t stop there, this spreads to all aspects of life. Instead of being a good writer we want to be a New York Times best seller or an Amazon best seller! Instead of being a good businessman, we want to be the most famous businessman, etc.,. The misunderstanding of the statement makes people who achieve things dismiss philosophy and those who lose either dismiss it or use it to justify their pessimism in life. Both are not true. Religion wants you to live life fully, but joyously. We misunderstand, think that life is a race and end up beating ourselves down to stress, disappointments, and sadness.

Life is unstable. But isn’t that what makes life interesting? If you knew what’s coming next all the time, do you think life will be interesting? Never! We get bored even with mundane repetitive actions, then if every next thing in life is predictable and known, we would all become extinct through boredom. Human beings are the only species given the faculty of reasoning and thinking, but we use it for everything other than thinking about how to live? Think about it.

The great acharya is only reminding us about the futility of our actions and urging us to think about our misunderstanding of the truths of life. If we get the message right, we will start re-thinking about the importance of having the right attitude towards life and living.

Have another great week of contemplation and reflection!

What must we NOT Google?

It sounds so anti-thesis to what anyone would think in today’s world. But that’s what i learnt over the last few weeks.

NOTE: I am a big fan of Google, its services and its entrepreneurial approach to everything. So this advice is NOT against using google. But how to utilize the power called Google in the RIGHT manner.

A young man experiences a symptom. A few years ago if it was bothering him he would go to a doctor to seek advice. But now he goes online first – Googles the symptoms and learns about the possible problems. He doesn’t understand half the words in most articles the way a doctor should – but yet arrives at some solutions. He decides to take some tests online and concludes he/ she has a particular disease.  This creates more psychological damage than having a disease will actually create. With this information (partial and misunderstood) within reach, people today feel they know what even a doctor declares he is still not sure about.

When information was not democratized ignorance was bliss. Now with information access almost unstoppable, we need better maturity to acknowledge the limits of information and our ignorance of the knowledge. If we don’t accept the limitations of our individual knowledge we will not surrender to an expert to help us. We will question everything they say – in fact in one such conversation at a doctor’s clinic, I heard the young patient (who i accompanied) actually ask the doctor why he is prescribing this medicine and if this was not for some particular disease which he had read online. Will this half baked and misunderstood access without any quality check on the source harm more than benefit. This only time can tell. But in the mean time its worth learning first:

What someone should search online?
What someone should NOT search online?
When someone should stop the search and seek help?

Atleast let us not try to Google to learn medicine as patients!

To start: Google to know & locate. Ask to learn – and ask someone who knows.

If you have any advice and/or experience on how to use search services please do share them!