Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Penny wise pound foolish..

Nowhere else will one be able to find a true example of the above statement "Penny wise Pound Foolish".

Our great leader Rahul Baba travels by Shatabdi to save the government some Rs 20546 odd (Now don't ask me how I come up with these numbers !! But trust me its probably thereabouts in range).

Some children throw stones at the train, which is a common happening in India across the country and I don't remember the railways ever taking note of this.

Now the government will spend Crores worth in investigating who threw the stones and if there was any terrorist organisation involved in the act. Probably the security level will also be upgraded and will become from Z+++ to ZZZZZZ++++, which may cost the country some more money (Yawn !! I am sleepy looking at the number of Z's).

My simple question here is WHY THE HELL DID HE WANT TO SAVE Rs.20546 !! Can someone please explain !

Friday, September 11, 2009

Unprofessional employees

I am appalled by the behavior of the jet pilots.

Normally I always believe that most of the companies will not care about their employees as soon as the tide turns negative and all talks about the company being a family will be tossed out of the window. We saw that on display recently. No company will ask its investors who have made super normal profit during good times, to fund the salaries of its employees during a rough patch and when I say most companies I mean practically 90%. So when I make this comment about the employees this time around, I think they have crossed the limit.

I think the employees (pilots) of Jet don't deserve any sympathy for calling in sick and inconveniencing thousands of passengers, who finally pay their salaries. This is the worst display of unprofessional attitude that any employee of an organisation can display towards its customers and I hope that Jet airways has the guts to terminate all such employees who have taken leave on a false pretext.

I definitely do not believe any more that Jet Airways can deliver on its promise of customer satisfaction, as its employees are just not interested in the problems of the customer and any compromise with this unprofessional bunch does not solve the problem for future.

I also wish that all these pilots are blacklisted and not hired by any airline company in the country so that we are sure that the other airlines are not being run by a similar set of unprofessional people who will leave you stranded midway if it suited them. In any case there is no dearth of pilots in this country, I am told that there are more than 3000 + pilots looking for a job in these recessionary times, one can easily tap them and get them trained to fill the vacancy.

I definitely am going to move on from Jet Airways and will only fly when it is the last option available.

I hope the HR teams of the airline companies and their management have the guts to take a bold step and ensure that its customers are not exposed to the blackmailing tactics of such employees.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Cut the flab..

I have been lazy !! I can blame it on the recession so am hopefully back to write about what laziness has costed me.

In my state of laziness I have managed to emulate the six-pack wonder Aamir Khan, only difference being he has six-pack muscles, I have six packets of fat on my tummy :-). So big lecture from wife and a quest begins to lose the extra weight. Now gaining it was so easy, but losing it has been a painful experience, without any gains.

I did what any sensible(one can always debate what this means) person would do, looked for the quick-fix solutions, surgery, some sauna belt, medicines so on and so forth and armed with huge amount of data and research sat down to evaluate the best option for me. My doctor friend walks in and tells me that all these methods will not help, I will be gaining back the weight back in no time unless I made fundamental changes to my lifestyle, which included change in food habits, exercise, regular sleep, regular hours etc etc. Sounded very difficult to do.

Applying my new gained knowledge to the world of business, I realised that most organisations seem to be in the same state as me.

Suddenly there is a realisation everywhere that there is extra flab which needs to be shed and everybody seems to running for the most 'sensible' thing to do, shed the extra weight and fast, so organisations are going for quick fix solutions, firing the bench, firing non-performers, going for VRS and so on.

What they are not realising is that as soon as the markets turn around, all this flab will come back more quickly than how much time it takes to shed it. In the business context, also, there needs to be a systemic change to ensure that the organisation changes the way it manages people, performance, skills etc to ensure that they have the right people at any point in time and do not have extra weight. All the people are skilled and re-skilled (just like I am trying to exercise my right muscles) in the right manner to ensure there is no provision for extra weight. And ofcourse good planning is a key to managing your weight, including your manpower numbers.

My simple thought hence is that while you are trying to shed your extra weight, make sure you are making those fundamental changes to ensure that you stay trim in the long term.

Wishing everyone and myself all the very best in this weight losing quest !! Cheers !!