Friday Reflections

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.

The three stages in the life of a dreamer and risk taker:

1. When others first hear about their ideas, they say: "He/she is not practical, the ideas are at 50,000 foot level".
2. If he/she still continues pursuing the idea, people say he/she has gone CRAZY.
3. Once the idea becomes reality, people fondly recollect: I knew him/her then. “The first time I met that lad/girl, I knew he/she was different and going to make it BIG.”
   (Success has many followers...)

Story Line: You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.

Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to a father who was an engineer. When their son started getting into artistic ventures at the age of 16 instead of normal career pursuits (e.g. engineer, doctor, lawyer), Paulo’s parents got worried that something was wrong with their boy. His parents took him for psychiatric evaluation and later admitted him to a mental institution. He spent time in mental institution twice before the age of 18, just for not being a “normal” kid. When he started a theatrical venture, he was again (for the third time) taken for mental consultation by his parents. In his 20s, he joined progressive political movements, was imprisoned and also kidnapped. By then his parents had already given up on him.  

Paulo believed that his personal legend was to write. But his early age dream of being a writer encountered lots of setbacks. He took all kinds of jobs to survive but never dropped his lifelong love for writing. At the age of 38, his first book was published with little success in the marketplace. His second book, The Alchemist, was published in 1988 when he was 41. It sold only 900 copies, and the first publisher dropped the book. Paulo tried to find another publisher with no success. Both his first books did not do well until he published his third one. That book gave him enough exposure for readers to explore his first two books.

The Alchemist, a novel that explores his theme about following one’s personal legend, got noticed and made him an international bestselling author. The Alchemist has been translated in 66 languages and has sold more than 65 million copies in more than 150 countries, becoming one of the best-selling books in history. Combined with his other books, his total number of sales exceeds 100 million copies.

Reflection:

Paulo Coelho once said: “Following your dream is like learning a foreign language; you will make mistakes but you will get there in the end.”

Here is an excellent review of The Alchemist: http://bookreviews.nabou.com/reviews/thealchemist.html

Keep On Learning New Skills

Keep on learning new skills: They will never abandon you until your mind does.

Your people will judge you on what you build, not what you destroy

Some Points to Ponder from President Obama's Inaugaration Speech:


Your people will judge You on what You can build....

"We understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned.

Rather, it has been the risk takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked 'till their hands were raw, so that we might live a better life."

e.g. Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Warren Buffett, Martin Luther King Jr., Hellen Keller, Marie Curie, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Disney, JRD Tata, founders of Intel, Deng Xiaoping, Albert Einstein, Gandhi, Gates, and ?

not what you destroy ...

e.g. S&L Scandals, Enron, WorldCom, Llyods of London, Madoff's Ponzi scheme, Satyam, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, the very values that made your country great and admired, millions of livelihoods

“Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame ...

That without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.” 

- President Obama

Don't bite the hands that feeds you

Hint: you can click the cartoon above to zoom in

Reflection: Demand creates supply and in return supply creates demand. Abraham Lincoln used to tell this story: "There was a boy who killed both his parents and then during court proceedings, pleaded mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan."

An analogous line of thinking applies to current economic situation.

Fortune does not change a man, it only unmasks him

"For how does it benefit man if his status is raised but he himself is not raised?" - Mahatma Gandhi.

 

Nowadays, the above thought often comes to mind while watching the news and reading the papers: a governor taking bribes, the head of a major stock exchange caught in a Ponzi scandal that ripped off $50 billion from investors, the person selected for commerce secretary withdraws his nomination as a result of an investigation into improper business dealings, the guy selected for treasury had failed to pay $34,000 in taxes; the very people who preach morality and ethics caught in scandals of immoral and unethical acts. Such acts are not exclusive to the United States, the latest one is the $1.5 billion false earnings reports by corporate executives at Satyam. (Satya in Sanskrit means Truth).

For a moment it seems that can not trust any one around us. Is there any good left in this world?

But on further reflecting, for every one person that is bad, there are millions of good people in this world. And there are many who have managed their success with great humility and kindness. Today's FR talks about one such person and future articles will cover many more.

Story Line: "Fortune does not change a man, it only unmasks him."  An old Chinese proverb that was the final message in the book: "The Billionare Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune", by Conor O'Clery.

Chuck Feeney was raised in a blue-collar Irish Catholic family in New Jersey. After leaving the army, Feeney started a business called Duty Free Shoppers (DFS) with a partner, Robert Miller. Being extremely cost conscious, he held meetings in coffee shops and had no entertainment budget. Leveraging his previous experience with the army and knowledge of different cultures, he made DFS into an international empire.

At the age of 53, he decided to give away his billions for worthy causes, but he kept himself out of the limelight.  Only 15 years later, when a legal problem in the business forced him to reveal the secret of his philanthropic acts, his identity as a donor became public.

The following expert from BusinessWeek sums up his life: "He avoids luxury, buys his suits off the rack, uses a plastic bag for a briefcase, sports drugstore spectacles, wears a $15 plastic watch, and flies coach. He owns no house and no car. He wonders aloud about the need for more than one pair of shoes. When he's in New York, he likes to dine on chicken pot pies at grubby midtown dives."

"It has always been hard for me to rationalize a 32,000-square-foot house or someone driving me around in a six-door Cadillac," the publicity-phobic Feeney told BusinessWeek in a rare interview in 2003. "The seats are the same in a cab. And you may live longer if you walk." As New York Times columnist Jim Dwyer once said, this is a man whose life is like Donald Trump's, only backwards.

And Chuck Feeney has instructed his foundation to give away his remaining $8 billion by the year 2016.

Reflection: Fortune does not change a man, it only unmasks him.

Out Of The Box Thinking - Jan 2009

It's that time again - watch the video above as we rotate a simple image, and let your creativity run free!  Let us know what you can see in the comments section.  The best idea (leaving an email address) will receive a free copy of Friday Reflections.

Successful strategies that helped companies survive and thrive in the great depression

Point to Ponder:

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change" - Charles Darwin

Story Line: Successful business strategies during the great depression

By now It is pretty clear that the global economy is in severe recession. The main driver for customer's choice is not between the technical merits of your company's products vs your competitor's products. It is a choice between: To buy or not to buy at all.

As one young man, Michael A. Choi puts it, "Rather than making cosmetic changes in the balance sheet, companies need to focus on fundamental shifts in the way they do business”

Since the toughest economic times of the past 100 years was during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and because experts have drawn many similarities between the conditions that led to the Great Depression of 1930s and current times, my curiosity compelled me to do some research about that period during year end holidays to see if there were any "ponies in the dung heap" of the 1930s.

Actually, it was not all bad during that period. Many companies that were creative, not afraid to try new approaches and had the positive mental attitude did well, becoming stronger and thrived in the future. Most of the successful ones focused on one primary thing: emotional connection with the people. They kept themselves visible to consumers, community and people (brand association).

1. Those companies who not only survived but did well and grew during the Great Depression are those who continued to act as if this was an ultimate challenge in selling and believed that consumers would spend if there was a good value proposition and feel connection with their brand. Those companies didn't wait for public demand for their products to rise, they created that demand even during the most difficult of times.

2. While their competitors were focused primarily on cost reduction, the successful companies stayed focused on advertising as one of the primary means to keep the consumer connected with their brand. The successful companies increased their spending in this area, used the emerging technology of radio to keep visibility to the consumers. Those that disappeared focused too much on cost reduction and thus lost visibility to the consumers about value of their products and brands. Also, consumers interpreted their behavior as lack of staying power and stayed away from those brands.

3. Some other companies used print media to connect with consumers. Radio and printing industries thrived during that period.

4. A very innovative approach in creating an emotional connection with their brand was developed by Proctor and Gamble where they sponsored evening shows on the radio to entertain the masses who were looking for any kind of stress reliever during tough times. These shows did not focus on P&G products but they were called "Soaps." (Forever Young connected to Camay Soap, O'Neill for Ivory Soap). There lies the origin of today's "Soap Operas", a huge cultural phenomenon.

Are there similar opportunities for your current products to create associations with TV shows or internet games or Movie/Cartoon characters and open up a brand new opportunity?

5. A few months ago, Business Week had an excellent article about nine small companies who "All have weathered wars, economic downturns, and changes in technology and society. Moreover, they all endured the Great Depression and emerged intact.” It is a must read to get clues for what we can do in current environment. There are some really good stories about diversification, leveraging resources, helping community, creative payment terms and most importantly staying connected with the people.

Reflection:

1. Are there similar opportunities as a "Soap" for your current products, e.g. to create associations with TV shows, or internet games, or movie / cartoon characters? There is a possibility of a creating a brand new culture and market through association.

2. Where are opportunities to leverage your current skills, experience, process and tools for use in other industries, government affairs?

3. Is there something you can do in the community to make a positive impact and create goodwill?