The vision

Customer focus is a topic of conversation.

We exist to server our customers. At no stage in the life of a company, the company should become more important than the customer. The evil of some one like Microsoft is in planning ways to milk the customer without providing value.

Going public puts the company/shareholders right above the customers. The private ownership and ownership with only the customer focussed is the way to retain the rationale for the company in the long term.

Degradation of a human being

When a person becomes desparate to earn money and employs all at his/her command to get the moolah, the character deterioration begins.

It does not happen to all human beings. Winning is everying, should get what I want at whatever cost, go all out to win, these are the slogans of the modern market economy. But increasingly, there is realisation even in the management circles that human values and dignity of life for self and others are equally important. This has come out in the form of Emotial Quotient etc.

I have seen in close quarters one such degradation. How the relationship outside develops. When confronted with a situation employing truth, untruth, lies, tears, shouts and falsehood to get what one wants is the ultimate degradation a human being can descend to.

Like the sage who kept on saving the scorpion from river water, stick to your Dharmam and do not get disheartened and change your thinkings and path. Lies can triumph 100s and 100s of times, but truth prevails ultimately.

Ultimately we will be dead. The Lies enjoy the life in the short term. But as thiruvalluvar put it,

Thannenj arivathu poyyaRka, poythapin
thannenje thannai chudum

Do not go against your conscience, for your concience itself will punish you.

Connect with humanity

Yes, it is true that achieving the goals is important, but at what cost? What do you need to bring to the table for the world to sit up and take notice?

Develop relationships with the big shots. Talk to say Razak of Selathaar or Adnan of TAW and become friends with them. Doing business requires developing friendly relations as much as developing professional ones.

You can be strict and demanding but a friend to the sub-ordinates. Try.

Valarthozhil

Last month I sent the article for valarthozhil very late and it is making it to January issue only. Muthupandi called up yesterday to get the new address. He wants me to send the next article soonest.

Why not rev-up with some article on economy, business prospects and management issues in general. What to write this month? It has to be in Tamil. But it is a good idea to cook up the article here in English and then do the tamil version. Now I think better in English, more coherent.

Watch this space!

The market and our software

We are working on a grand vision. When things are put in perspective in my mind and I went to a sales call the price line looked very reasonable and the prospective client also echoed that feeling. A price of Rs 1.25 lakhs is indeed underpriced for an inventory, sales, purchase and costing system.

We need to have a perspective of Rs 20 lakhs total value for our software and giving it at Rs 1.25 lakhs.

Work and intensive work

To get the business successful and wildly successful, one person or a group of persons need to focus their complete energy on the business related issues. In our case who is doing it? By default it has to be me? But am I doing it?

Honestly no. I decided to give up reading all the time and give time to the brain to think and analyse issues concerning the business. That is gone with the wind now.

I decided to concentrate on development work. But nothing substantial, revolutionary coming out of it. There are dozens of major issues and hundreds of minor known issues to be addressed with our current code. With that in hand I should not be sleeping for the next 2 months. I should be wasting my mental energy in news papers, slashdot or magazines for the next 2 months. I need to be on the button 24x7.

Am I going to do it? On this hinges the whole success of the project. This is a make or break situation (let us avoid more cliches). 15 people have bet their time and career on this project and I should do justice to them.

Whatever rhetoric and bluster I dish out to co-workers and outsiders, if I could work on atleast a part of it, things will change dramatically.

Management of rain water

When the first rains came in October some areas were flooded in North Chennai. The administration took action and during the second rains these areas were better off with new victims in South and West Chennai.

Now from last evening it is raining and our office street is coping up nicely without having to bear the water rushing in from the Alapakkam Eri. Temporaray drains have been dug from Alapakkam to the Cooum to carry the water there rather than letting it flow through to Valasarawakkam area.

With sympathy to Jayalalitha, I am happy to say that the government is acting. What we need now is far sighted planning and visionary leadership. Hope another election win will provide her that. Take it from me she is going to become the Chief Minister after the next elections, whatever happens to the opposition koottani.

Why today?

I read that Tim Lee started blogging now. Then I should also follow suit. That is why I started this blog today and started writing.

Talking about the months and days. How to study personalities. One of the aspects which define personalities in the astrology chart. If you know the sun sign (month of birth), moon sign and ascendent as per western astrology you can say quite a bit about the person, thus says Linda goodman author of the famour Sun Signs.

Those born between Nov 21 to Dec 20 are Sagittarians. Outspoken.
Those born between Dec 21 to Jan 20 are Capricornians, Philosophical and visionaries. (that is me btw.) and it goes on thus.

My blog is a Sagittarian and is going to be on your face, frank and outspoken.

At the threshold of 34

Living for 33 years is an achievement. This is as good as any time to look back and put down what transpired in black and white.

January 5, 1972 - born in Nagercoil, Kanniyakumar District, Tamil Nadu, India.
1977 - 1989 - Schooling at D V D Higher Secondary School, Nagercoil
1989 - 1993 - Graduation (B Tech) in Leather Technology at Anna University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu.
1993 - 1997 - Working at Tata International Limited, Dewas, Madya Pradesh, India.
1997 - 1999 - Working at Tata South East Asia Limited - Hong Kong, Shanghai Representative Office, China
1999 - 2001 - Working for BLC Leather Technology Centre - UK, Shanghai Representative Office, China
2002 - - - Working on BSG LeatherLink

Done quite a bit of work on the web. Started with a home page at homepages.com, then a geocities page at http://asia.geocities.com/leatherinfo , there is ryze page .

Wanted to write my definitive biography for sometime. Read somewhere that almost everyone in the world thinks that if only I have time to write up my experiences it will become a best seller overnight. I humbly submit that I also think the same.

I have written random thoughts in paper and some bulky note books. Now after a definite decisive action in my personal life I have the mental freedom and physical time to spend sometime to build myself further.