Friday, November 21, 2008

60 second guide to Management Consulting....

The last complete book i read was "The Mckinsey way" by Ethan Rasiel. Its a book about life at The Firm and the tips to become a successful management consultant. Most impressive among them being the "MECE" trick... "Mutually Exclusive Completely Exhaustive". While I am not going to review the book and present a judgement on the book (which I assure you is extremely positive), a sudden thought crossed my mind, which I thought best to elaborate here.

Even though it might sound a bit sacrilegious to any Management consultant worth his salt but I feel that any good flirt will make a good management consultant. Though I cant vouch for the reverse to be true, I think the incentive is huge for the consulting community to prove the axiom works both ways. The more i read through the pages of "The Mckinsey Way" clearer it became to me that all the jargons aside the most essential requisite for becoming a consultant is O.A.D. yup ... Obsessive Attention to Detail will get you places in the consulting domain.
Why drive home this simple point with a blasphemous comparision ?? well, there are products and then there are products which sell well. For the latter you need to package it well and thats what i have tried to do.
Well, OAD being the root competency of consulting is easier said than done. The fact you are being called up to clear someone else's mess obviously shows they dont know where to begin and that's where OAD comes into picture. You need to have that animal instinct to pick up a loose thread and it doesn't come easily, read a million cases, follow umpteen principles and build hundreds of reports on your learnings from the previous project but I am pretty sure that a gud management consultant will be sweating his palms on the eve of his next assignment.
When companies call up a management consultant, they generally want a third party view on their set of woes. More often than not, its because they know their processes too well and detailing them will cause them more mental discomfiture than simply off-loading it a consultant.
Sometimes even the most mundane aspects of a process or a product or an assembly line may be the root of all misery, hence OAD can help you get that added edge while going into the project.

Well, as to why I said that a flirtatious guy can make a good management consultant is because on first glance a lot of common things arise between a client and your girlfriend. Both are fussy, confused and need someone to pacify them when the shit hits the fan (of course, going by my brash attitude you would have figured out that I am single!!!) hence, a gentleman who has had the fortune (or misfortune, as the case may be ) to be associated with a few young ladies will by now have developed a genuine obsession towards details. The amount of details involved can give you a headache if you are starting afresh in the consulting industry but if you are in the category just described then any amount of data will appear miniscule in front of all the anniversary's, dog's birthday, three favorite flavors of ice cream, best non-fat topping for pizza and ( this is my favorite!!!!) which PowerPoint Background will go with the color of the dress!!!!
So all those gentlemen who think they have had some success with the fairer gender, feel free to send their resumes to the leading consulting firms of the globe.
happy Consulting!!!

PS: I have to make an apology and give a disclaimer at the same time...
Apology: To all the leading consulting firms. Both for the deluge of resumes that will come your way, with work experience looking some what like this :

Name of organisation (Months)
  1. Rita (12)
  2. Savita (6)
  3. Pamela (3) (present)
and for the crass comparisions made.

Disclaimer: Aspirants in consulting domain are requested to persist with their internships in reputed companies rather than look for greener pastures!!!

Its a certified disaster!!!!


After AB pointed out in my last post that i am no good at proof reading, this afternoon it has been proved beyond doubt that i am no good at Macroeconomics either. It should give you some idea of my anguish that I am writing this post barely an hour after the scheduled close of the exam and had it not been for the miracle called GTalk it would have been much earlier.
There are only two scenarios to the exam which got over at 4.30 pm. Bad and worst. I really need to meet the guy who said that every cloud has a silverlining but before that person I need to lay my hands on this Philip guy and ask him why i should be interested in his curves anyways!!!
Economically speaking I was suffering from an acute supply shock of answers during the whole exam and as it turns out my actual output was nowhere near the expected output, leaving me crucified on the Keynesian cross. If all this sounds over the top to you then imagine my condition while i was sweating it out in the exam hall. Being the eternal optimist that i am, i still hope to escape today's fiasco only if the faculty is ready to accept my answer sheet as my seminal research paper on a new field of macroeconomics, i chose to name... bleakonomics.
All hail John Maynard Keynes!!!!

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Sauce Wars, Embarassing Typos and my ruminations on Democracy!!!!!

I have nothing else to do today so i am clearing up my backlog of posts and now i have settled on writing this too. Interesting things have happened in the last 24 hours.
When I went to Pizza Hut last night, fighting with a bottle of tomato sauce was not on my agenda however i landed up doing just that. For about 2-3 minutes I struggled to get a single drop of sauce out of the bottle while my whole body jerked up and down to the rythmic movements of my hand. The sauce finally yielded to my repeated attempts and finally, out came from the bottle some fresh, tasty looking tomato sauce to go with my Garlic Bread Exotica... yummy.. which brings me back to the question... is there is no standard viscosity for tomato sauce ??? shouldn't somebody look into this matter!!!!
Standardisation also involves weeding out the errors to maintain conformity. I was never a fan of proof reading, blame it on my impatience, but this stance has changed over the last couple of hours. If you have been patient enough to read through my story "Coffee Machine" i have used the word "pantry" a number of times and a crazy typo, in JUST one place, left one of my friends moist eyed, flushed and out of breath, because she (yeah SHE!!!! can you believe it !!!)couldn't stop laughing... If you have understood the whole situation I expect you to be in a similar state as she was and I am now the newest member of the "Proof Reading is Essential" fan club !!!
Tragedies apart, there is an eerie air of political activism in my surroundings for the past few days. Suddenly the most insignificant members of the group are becoming the most-soughtafter souls and words like agenda, responsibility, voting, lobbying and parleying have become common day parlance. Welcome to the world of elections and democracy!!!
The strength of democracy rises from the representative nature of power in the system, "Of the people, by the people, for the people" as it is often referred. It, of course, goes on with the assumption that all people have equal access to the power and the utmost willingness to exercise the same. What this idealism discounts is the inherent self-centred nature of the people and the various "facilitators" that thrive in the system, acting as if on behalf on the masses while in fact serving their own agenda. These "facilitators" are whom we call the politicians and should not be confused with the great leaders of yore, instrumental in envisioning the system. The great leaders of previous era have been replaced by this self-serving polity because the next generation of kurta clad, dreamy-eyed, ideological evangelists could never graduate to leading from following and were promptly replaced by a breed of sycophants, weak on idealogy and unyielding on ambition.
Thus, the failure of democracy lies in a short-sighted bourgeoisie, a legion of self-serving, power hungry polity and most of all, the inability to create a stream of leaders, who are ideologically lofty yet grounded hard in political reality.
It might intrigue people as to my ranking of the three major causes of democratic failure. It has been debated quite frequently, and none less in management circles, as to the procedure that will ensure a steady stream of leaders. Leadership has been mystified over the times and worse still, deformed. However, in its original form, it is the primary responsibility of leaders to envision long term goals and help the bourgeoisie understand the same while marginalising the self-seeking political class. With the advent of leaders, a dramatic power struggle is imminent. The bourgeoisie has to play its part in this drama, no doubt, and so will the incumbents, the current holders of political power but as of now, the stagnation in democracy is resulting from a major crunch in leaders and huge influx of politicians!!!!
Hope the times throw up some good leaders. Amen!!!!


PS: Article has proof read. If you still find typos, please feel free to slaughter me!!!

Thursday, November 13, 2008

वो नज़्म और तेरी उन आँखों का पानी

My first try at writing something substantial in hindi...
Based on a true story!!!!
but dont mistake me for a sad love failed loner... ha ha ha... its just the way it came out for me.


वो नज़्म और तेरी उन आँखों का पानी
याद आ गयी आज मुझको तेरी कहानी
हथेली में मेरे था तेरा लाल कंगन
कहा था जो मैंने "ये है जन्मों का बंधन "

वो लम्बी सी राहों में दिन भर का चलना
वो छुप छुप के महफिल में नज़रों का मिलना
वो चाय की चुस्की पर मीठी सी बातें
मुझे मिलने आया आज मेरा वो माजी
वो नज़्म और तेरी उन आँखों का पानी
याद आ गयी आज मुझको तेरी कहानी

मेरी रुखसती पर तेरे दो बूँद आंसू
लफ्जों में लिपटे बेवफाई के आंसू
कहा था तुम्हे "कभी तुम न रोना "
तो तोहफा दिए तुने मुझे वोही आंसू
वो नज़्म और तेरी उन आँखों का पानी
याद आ गयी आज मुझको तेरी कहानी

ख्वाब था तू , ये दिलासा है मुझको
मगर आज दिल को फिर से फुर्सत मिली है
सर्दी की रातों में अकेले ठिठुरना
ज़रुरत का कम्बल या तेरी कमी है
वो नज़्म और तेरी उन आँखों का पानी
याद आ गयी आज मुझको तेरी कहानी

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Back to home turf!!!

Its been a while since i posted anything here aint it ?
I was active on the AVENUES08 blog temporarily before going off the radar completely owing to Diwali and my own insipid interest towards typing... yeah thats all.
So what do i talk about now ? During the time i have been off the blog, i made a presentation on a very powerful book "Power Shift" by the legendary Alvin Toffler and was introduced to the idea of a "knowledge worker". Owing to my ad hoc reading habits, the next book was "The Effective Executive" by Peter Drucker, which has been suspended due to end-term presentations, and there too i found mention of the phrase "knowledge worker".
I suddenly visit my blog and have this whole clutter of drafts lying around that it becomes absolutely impossible to move ahead without moving the mess. So I have done that and now i hope to be a bit more regular with the blogging.
Time to pay proper tributes to the AVENUES'08 blog. AVENUES'08 blog was a wonderful place to be and it really felt great being a part of the pack, crazily posting all sorts of information, trivia and behind-the-scenes action. Special thanks to AB (Aditya Banerjee) for handholding the blog, Vishal (Vendetta) for his contributions and a certain Avenues_Rocks for being the first to post....
For those who missed out on the blog here it is... AVENUES'08
Job well done guys!!!! Hope to be back next year better than ever!!!!