The Satyam affair broke out in early Jan with Raju's famous letter. Since then, two parallel chain of events have happened - one handled brilliantly and one handled abysmally.When the news broke, the company was on the verge of immediate collapse. The government acted swiftly in naming an eminent Board to take over. These individuals demonstrated why they are of so eminent a stature. They immediately...
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
How the mighty fall
I read the news from General Motors yesterday, that they are discontinuing their Pontiac line from next year, with some sadness.I grew up in the days when what was good for GM, was good for America. The best selling business book was, of course, "On a clear day, you can see General Motors". Any aspiring...
Sunday, 26 April 2009
Dilemmas - IV
One final poser and I'll move on from this topic.You discover something about a key supplier of yours that you didn't know before. He employs child labour.Would you1) Stop buying from him even though it may affect your business2) Report his employing child labour to the authorities, but continue to buy from him3) Ignore this, saying its his business and none of yoursIf you work for a global company,...
Saturday, 25 April 2009
Dilemmas - III
Today's poser.You resign from your company and join another company. Your were happy with your previous employer and he treated you well - you are moving just because a better opportunity arose.In your new job, you need to hire four good lieutenants. You know that if you approached your four buddies in the old company, they would join you (for they loved working with you). But if those four left too,...
Friday, 24 April 2009
Dilemmas - II
Ethics are either black or white - there are no shades of grey in my view, as I posted before.But there are some situations in business life where ethically it seems OK, but morally its not so clear. In such a situation, an individual's value systems determine what's right or wrong and there is no one right way.Today's poser.Does it matter what business the company you work for, is in ? If your company...
Thursday, 23 April 2009
Dilemmas - I
Ethics are either black or white - there are no shades of grey in my view, as I posted before.But there are some situations in business life where ethically it seems OK, but morally its not so clear. In such a situation, an individual's value systems determine what's right or wrong and there is no one right way.I intend to post a few dilemma's over the next few days. I have no answers for any of them...
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Trust : Why businesses lost it
Chris Jarvis has made a superb post in his blog Realizing your Worth on "Trust : Why businesses lost it and how to win it back."He quotes Charles Handy, an Irish philosopher specializing in organizational management who wrote in his book ‘What’s a Business For’ in 2002 this prescient paragraph: The markets will empty and share prices will collapse, as ordinary people find other places to put their...
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Outsourcing Agriculture
The greatest crisis, in my view, of 2008 was not the financial crisis. It was the food crisis that hit the world in the early part of the year. Global food prices rose by 75% as compared to 2000. Food riots broke out in many countries. About 73 million people, in 78 countries, who depend on food aid...
Monday, 20 April 2009
How come Bollywood is so small ?
Bollywood is world famous. Every Indian is mad about films and its a defining aspect of Indian culture. Indian films are now being known world over. India makes the largest number of movies in the world. Apart from Hindi films, there is a thriving film industry in many Indian languages. This must be...
Saturday, 18 April 2009
A moving video
No its not Susan Boyle !Its Chicken a-la-carte , a moving, award winning video. I guarantee you'll be touched.Its only 6 mts long.For some weekend contemplation. Thank you Chandu Nair for sending the link to me.Click here to watch the video.Whew...
Friday, 17 April 2009
China's Q1 figures
These days China's numbers matter as much, if not more, than America's numbers. There was therefore more than the usual interest, when China announced its Q1 numbers yesterday.GDP grew by 6.1% compared to Q1 of last year. This was greeted with some disappointment by the markets (who only react against expectations and not against reality !) This is actually very positive. Firstly, 6% is nothing to...
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Is globalisation a dirty word ?
Whenever there is any event of importance anywhere in the world, you are sure to find some form of "anti globalisation protest". "Globalisation" seems to a be a dirty word. Also dirty are 'multinational", "capitalism", etc etc.If you ignore the loonies and listen to the arguments of the sane protesters,...
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Global businesses, National Laws - the woe of taxation
Business are global, but the laws they have to follow are national. Nowhere is this conflict more severe than in the arena of taxation.Every nation has the right to tax as it pleases. And businesses have to abide by the tax laws in every country it operates in. But when businesses go global, it causes a real problem. Its common these days for a company to buy materials from 10 countries, manufacture...
Monday, 13 April 2009
Global businesses; National laws
Businesses are going global. But the laws they have to follow are national. No two countries can agree on any law. The result is a massive blocker to globalisation. Today, I focus on one aspect of the law that affects businesses - anti trust.My immediate trigger for this post was the hold up by the Chinese competition authorities of Mitsubishi Rayon's takeover of Lucite. This is an interesting case....
Saturday, 11 April 2009
Wanna work in the US - No thanks say the Chinese
Has the US lost its lure as an attractive destination for the best and the brightest ? I gave a guest lecture at the MBA school in the Sun Yat Sen university here in Guangzhou today. This is one of the top universities in China and some of the brightest students in the country study here. They come from all over China - there's a tough competitive exam to get through before anyone can get in. There...
Friday, 10 April 2009
The Satyam case - PWC partners
The PWC partners, S.Gopalakrishnan and Srinivas Talluri, who signed the Satyam balance sheets over the last few years are in jail for the last three months. Their latest bail petition was rejected yesterday.Is it right for them to be jailed now ? I am not a legal man and have no pretensions to expertise in law, but from a common sense of what is right and wrong, this does not seem to be right.The...
Thursday, 9 April 2009
Visa is a four letter word
Business travel is painful at the best of times. Especially if you do lots of it internationally. Air travel these days is not nice at all - the long commute to airports, overcrowded airports, long and winding security queues, delayed flights, cramped seats, apology for food, and so on. But at the top...
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Is there a future for "different" companies ?
This week, innocent drinks (that's right, its written with a small i), sold a minority stake to Coca Cola. Is this another instance of a "different" company succumbing to the mainstream ?innocent is a 1o year old company based in the UK. It was started by three guys who gave up their jobs to start...
Monday, 6 April 2009
Leave the wives at home
Who was the most seen and talked about person at the recent G20 summit. Barack Obama ? Wrong. It was Michelle Obama. What was she doing there in the first place ? As far as I know, she did not have a contribution to solving the financial crisis at the London summit, or insights into NATO policy at Strasbourg,...
Sunday, 5 April 2009
A (Power) Pointless World
A presentation without Power Point ? Unthinkable ? Think again.A business presentation is all about communication of a message. Sometimes slides help in the communication of the message. But more often, you can communicate better without any slides.The great communicators of the world don't need any...
Friday, 3 April 2009
Ten Cardinal Sins of Listeners
Ten cardinal sins of listeners (when they are in the audience for a presentation)1. Check your e mail while somebody is presentingThis has to be at the top of the list. Checking email on blackberry or, worse still, on the laptop. Oh, its very polite. Tell the presenter you aren't one bit interested in what he is saying. I have seen many times, when somebody has flown 10 hours to be here and when the...
Thursday, 2 April 2009
Ten Cardinal Sins of Presenters
Ten cardinal sins that presenters make (using Power Point, of course) 1. Spend 95% of the preparation time on chart making and 5% on what you are actually going to sayA whole battalion of underlings works on the charts. Hours and hours spent on revising and re revising them. A lot less time on what the presenter is actually going to say. Charts are an aid to speaking and not the other way around....
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
The curse of Power Point
How often have you seen a slide that says "Thank You" at the end of a presentation ? To me, this symbolises how much Power Point has become a curse, and many people its slaves. If you need a chart to say thank you, God help you !Presentations are a bane of corporate life. You make them all the time....
Posts
