Lesson from USA- be inward focused

There is a good idea in USA policy. Be concentrating on the internal dynamics. Be outward focused only to the extent necessary. The susceptiblity to external fluctuations is reduced. Japan and China are affected by the outward looking dependence. Indian growth is also relatively less open. The existence of huge population helps. Over 60 percent of Indian  population is youth. So US and India look the best bets for now.
Fed will take decisions on basis of what is best for them. 

RBI - please beware that - trend is your best friend!!

As the Indian Rupee fell, bankers reportedly spotted the RBI  trying to keep the rupee safe from the dollar optimists . The Central Government seems keen to project a strong if not stronger rupee. RBI, more experienced in selling dollars , knows that sentiments alone cannot run an intervention policy. The trend is your best friend and contrarians have limitations. So RBI may only make token purchases. The big worry is when Fed really starts moving up the rates. So RBI will preserve its limited ammunition and wait for the big run. So until then, the Rupee looks set to be in line with  the market trend. For tonight, Fed may not so much go in for an upward rate hike. RBI senses that perhaps.

Management lesson: Do not try to challenge the market. Remember Bank of England and remember Soros!!! Recall Russian Central Bank's misadventure yesterday. 

Readings On the Internet of Things

1. The Internet of Things  and the Connected Person 
By Dr. Charlton Adams Jr

Article emphasizes the need for standards.


 http://www.wired.com/2014/12/iot-connected-person/

2. The Internet  of Things Best Kept Secret 
By Gil Pres

On Service Life Cycle Management (SLM) and the Changing Business Models.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2014/12/15/the-internet-of-things-best-kept-secret-2/

The Myth of a Manager

It is a UVCA World

Managers are workers but differentiated as those with knowledge in comparative abundance . They  have wisdom based on what they have assimilated. They have an integrated perspective of all that affects them and their organizations. They take informed decisions. They absorb the essentials of the four main functions of business: people management , production or service (operations management) ;  marketing management, and financial management.  Managers are also strategists keeping in view the vision and mission of the organization. These functions move at times on known paths and at times take on unpredictable patterns. Managers  are scenario builders evaluating the least predictable and most important occurrences having a bearing on the organizations they serve.

The manager's world is UVCA : uncertain volatile, complex and ambiguous.  Managers are  experienced enough to handle any  random occurrences (outliers) and capable of managing any situation that has the potential of destabilizing the organizational world around them even temporarily. Managers are in a steady state of 'unstable equilibrium'. Managers take coordinated and balanced action on the interactions between the sub sets  of human capital, finance capital, marketing costs and strategic inputs. Managers are maestros that coordinate the  orchestra of business ; they render  business meaningful,  coherent and consistently profitable. 

A Requiem for the Manager

Prelude

History is written by the victors. The vanquished have little say. Management books tend to focus on what the ideal should be. The reality as seen by the silent subordinate is different.

As I look back on my three and half decades of managerial experience both  as a manager and as a subordinate working under a host of managers, guilt thoughts dominate. The gnawing feel is that I have not given my best; that the  tribe of managers (including myself) is  selfish, short and perhaps startlingly nasty.   So I must confess.

As an individual, I am a bold man but as a subordinate official I am a scared man. From the steel framed window of my organization,  now secure but soot laden;  suppressing but stoic,  I stare at  the world in somewhat of a lost confusion. The realities of organizational world then imprint my mind. I receive disturbing images and more alarming signals  of the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of management.  The membrane between my  hazy expectations and the actuality of experience has now become an impregnable wall of disappointment. Of lessons learnt but not implemented...

I perceive management as a purported science of exploitation and the art of deceit. We are circus clowns who believe that organizations run through us. I sigh at my organizational insignificance and my dispensability. I am afraid of this unemployment biased world. I  am awed by the technology that robotically threatens to unseat me. .

My managers are show offs : publicizing their readings from Harvard Business Review; they subscribe to Financial Times and Economic Times and Business Standard to Wall Street Journal to Business Line yet do not read any one of them.

They believe that because I am dumb, I have nothing to stay. I say to myself with my lips on to the wall 'There are no bad workers, there are only bad managers!'

People around me are complex personalities. Human relations are about fragile sensitivities. Handling people is like handling splendorous, many coloured glass. They could splinter if not handled with care. People are rainbows in the sky. They are delicate and  beautiful sights to observe. To me, they come in several hues.  They are different - in nationalities, tribes, gender, styles, ways of living!. Diversity adds to the colours in the prism. 

Managers harness this diversity.  

Management is the key to organizational success.

The Subordinate?

To be continued...