What can we learn from Chinese Bamboo tree??

Usually we learn from our experience or from seeing others so that we don't repeat our mistakes. But do we realize that can we learn from a tree that is growing in our backyards?? The answer is....

YES.

We can learn a lot of things from nature and one of the beautiful lesson that we can learn from the nature is the story of the Chinese Bamboo tree.

When you observe the Chinese Bamboo tree it grows about 80 feet high and it takes about 5 years and 3 months to reach the 80 feet.

When you plant the seed of Chinese Bamboo in the back yard, you can observe the following:

• 0-1 year: You can see anything, even the green sprout can't be seen but you should water it.
• 1-2 year: Even daily watering you won't see any changes as same as the 1st year.
• 2-3 year:Even daily watering, you can't see any changes happening as same as 1st and 2nd year, be optimistic and patience. If you are fool enough dig and see what happens you will get astonished by the result.
• 3-4 year: Daily water it and no visible changes, want to check dig and see.
• 4-5 year:Daily water it and no visible changes.

After the 5th year you can make a note of the changes:

•  6th year: 1st day you can see a small green sprout coming out of the soil.
• 6th year: 2nd day you will be wondered to see the plant as grown 3 feet within a overnight.

Like wise within 3 months of time you can see the bamboo tree as grown of 80 feet high.

So why it took so many years for a small sprout to come up...

Within this five years of time the bamboo tree is getting ready to sustain the 80 feet high that means the tree is growing under the soil and making it stronger. It is making it roots stronger for supporting its height.

How can we relate to our personal lives:

• Patience has a reward.
• Major achievement comes after years of hard work, patience and failure.

Don't be panic every time you loose or didn't get want you want, some or other day you would be recognized and rewarded what you want.  

   

GE's Ambidextrous leadership

First let us understand the meaning of the word "Ambidextrous" it states that  "able to use the right and left hands equally well " as per Oxford Dictionary.

Point in bringing this word in context to the GE company is they were able to use their strategies for growth and cost-control measures equally and balancing both.

In Welch period, he concentrate much on the cost-control measures for making profits.
In Immelt period, he inherited the principle of cost-control and he made strategies for the growth of the company.

Immelt had a right mix of strategy for growth and cost measure. By changing the pattern of working through series of changes.

When Immelt took as a Chairman and CEO of GE on the first day he laid down a series of activities to be done in short and long term.

• Concentrating on emerging economies like China and India.
• Going for green technologies i.e., ecomagination.
• Investing on R&D centers.
• Modernizing the leadership center(renamed as Jack Welch Leadership Center) at Crotonville.

This points tells us that Immelt had a strategic vision for development of the company.

Further to his ideas, Immelt sold the the plastics and insurance business which are eating away the profits of the group and many more mergers & acquisitions as part of expansion and many business were sold of as part of cost-control measures. 

Jeff Immelt's strategy on turning GE into Ecofriendly

We all know that  Jeff Immelt is Chairman and CEO of GE. One of  the biggest companies in the world in terms of market capitalization. GE is conglomeration of various business like energy, aviation, locomotives and financial services.

Jeff succeeded Jack Welch after Jack retirement from Chairman and CEO of GE in 2001
Jeff has developed a business model that is ecofriendly which they term as "Ecomagination®".

Ecomagination is the initiatives taken by the GE under the leadership of Jeff Immelt, for developing cleaner technologies and improve companies energy efficiency.

The main reason behind launching this model is:

• To go for "green" technologies.
• To improve the customer efficiency by delivering the at-most value of the product.
• To practice socio-economic sustainability.
• To provide innovative solutions to the present day energy challenges.

GE's five primary commitments in the business initiative are:

• To increase revenues through ecomagination products.
• Double the investment on research and development for cleaner technologies.
• Reduce green houses gases emissions.
• Reduce water use and improving the water reuse.
• Keep the public informed.

Impact of MOOC on present day univeristies

Recently we have seen changing pattern of learning by students, business practitioners and professionals, etc. This is because of introducing MOOC(Massive Open Online Course) by various universities in the world.

What is MOOC:-

• It is a online courses offered by various universities by providing their course material and sharing their intellectual property. 
• The courses contain various assessments, course material and assignments.

Before introduction of MOOC, the learning the courses is majorly from physical universities through enrollment for full time or part time and distance education. Due to this students has to spend lot of money for their undergraduate/post-graduate education and the only source of learning is by tuition or by private institutions.

Impact of MOOCs on physical universities:-

Due to introduction of MOOCs, the students community welcomed because it helps them to learn new concepts and enhancing their knowledge. For every step taken by mankind has effects which is like two sides of a coin. As for as my knowledge is concerned the following areas of learning may effect.

Some of the positive and negative points are listed down.

Positive points  

• World class knowledge: Many universities may not access to the world class resources due to intellectual property rights this makes the students from various countries and others universities to access to their material. 
• Learning pattern: Previously students are depend on the text books and videos available, but now they can access to the multiple sources for their reference.
• Popularity of the offering university: The offering university develops a special status in minds of readers, as readers will be across the globe.

Negative points

• Effect on admissions:- Due online courses and access to virtual class rooms, the students community may prefer to register in online rather than to physical universities.
• Intellectual property:- There may be chance of misuse of the intellectual property rights.
• Damage to traditional way of learning. 

Some of the famous MOOCs are listed down:-

1. MIT's OCW.
2. UDACITY.
3. COURSERA
4. EDX
5. NPTEL(Indian context)

All above points are my personal views and any suggestions & constructive feedback is always welcome.

Relevance of proverb: Jack of all trades, but master of none.

We all know the English proverb "Jack of all trades, but master of none" do we think that this is valid anymore in this present day world. As this 21st century is highly competitive and filled with advanced technological know-how.

I think it has to rephrased as "Jack of all trades, but master of one" his statement can be best suit in this world where we should be equipped with at-least one skill for employable.

I think today's world we have two perceptive's to think about, they are:

• Company's perceptive
• Individual perceptive

Company perceptive:-

The company looks for the individuals who are experts in the domain knowledge and their skills and they look for candidates who are expertise at-least in one of the their core abilities, so that we are value creators to the company.

Individual perceptive:-

As a individual we wanted to gain knowledge irrespective of the area of our interest i.e., wanted to learn about everything what we see, but this good until some point of time.

We as a individual has to develop an area of interest for creating a competitive edge over others( friends, colleagues and peers). So by building our ability on one area we can develop a niche in that area of interest. 

3 C's for a Strategic decision making

Generally for any decision making we think so much for reducing risk and unknowns in our decisions in day to day life, i wondered how companies will take decision's for achieving it's mission and vision.

In this regard Mr Kenichi Ohmae,  developed a strategic triangle for business decisions. The three elements of the triangle are:

• Customers
• Competitors
• Corporation

(Source:- The Mind of the Strategist by Kenichi Ohmae)

The success of the business is achieved by properly balancing this three elements, if any one of the element is not given sufficient priority then the strategy will go for a toss which ultimately impact the business.

• Customers:- Customers are the ultimate buyers of our products/services, which should appeal to them and the decisions should address the total market in which the company is operating. In further to that, in present day market condition every market is not homogeneous but it is heterogeneous addressing this market is very difficult.
• Competitors:-In a free and open economy, the market place is filled with lot of competitors and we should carefully address them. The strategy what we take should differentiate with the competitors product/service it may be price, packing,functionality, etc...  
• Corporation:- The strategic decisions what we make should be aligned to our business mission and vision. These decisions may be functionary inclined and should strength the corporations uniqueness.

Kellogg's failure in India

Kellogg's is world's leading breakfast cereal manufacturing company hardhearted in USA.
In 1994 Kellogg's entered Indian market with it's iconic brand Corn flakes, this brand was a strategic failure for them. why they failed??

After there intensive market analysis they understood that the traditional Indian breakfast consists of hot served food like Idly, vada, Roti  & Puri, etc but the Kellogg corn flakes should be taken with cold milk which is not preferred by Indians. So there is a mission component of customers preferences in their decision making.

As i described above that for  any strategic decision making the three C's must be taken into account for success for the decision.

Value analysis and Value engineering- A tool for cost cutting

I wondered how companies are doing cost cutting in their products to achieve a competitive edge over the competitors with absolute no compromising on the quality of the products.
In this regard, present day companies figured out a competitive tool for analysis of  the product with at-most detail, this tool is termed as "Value analysis" and "Value engineering".

Generally people tend to call Value analysis as Value engineering and vice verse.

Kenichi Ohmae describes VA and VE in his book "The mind of the strategist" as "analysis of the purchased materials or components from the point of view of price so that the results can be incorporated into planning in such areas as cost reduction and development of new products".

Value analysis/Value engineering :- It is a orderly method to increase the value of the material or component in the system by understanding it's present value and it's associated costs.

In general sense the term value can be determined as the ratio of it's functionality and cost.

VA/VE tend to improve the value by increasing the functionality of the product or decrease the cost associated with it.

Example:
Consider a product X which is charged at Rs 10 and product Y is charged at Rs 10, both are competing in the same market place and both companies are trying to increase their market share, so both companies are allocating huge budgets for marketing people to push the their respective products.

Due to increasing intense competition, the company manufacturing product X wanted to increase their market share and revenue from the product with out any additional budget, so they decide to undertake cost cutting scheme but without affecting the quality of the product.

At this times VA/VE helps to come out of this situation, by analyzing  each and every component.

First, collect the competitors product Y and product X, dismantle both the products to the smaller components . Now analyse both the components of products and you can know which component and do cost analysis for the component then you can know which component is costing more and you can try to reduce it with out compromising on the quality of it.

This how the cost cutting measures are taken by major automobiles manufacturing companies in Japan.