“That is what TTN has visualized.” I’d heard my dad say this so many times as I was growing up. TTN was TT Narasimhan, his boss – who relied heavily on my dad as his execution guy. In later years, my father took on the role of the CEO of two group companies and was […]
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This last week I made a mistake for a second time and paid for it dearly. A friend had offered to book a hotel for me and feeling lazier than usual I’d agreed. And when she sent me an email with the reservation I actually felt good, because she’d booked me in a fancy downtown hotel at bargain rates. Of course, only when I showed up at the registration desk did I realize that I’d confused my drachmas for dirhams. So the good deal in a downtown hotel, for what I thought was $100 a night, turned out to be nearly $400. But by then it was too late not just with the non-refundable booking but also on a long day after a long flight with the family in tow. I reckoned might as well have a good time. But I was in for yet another shock. The lady behind the desk had a most snarky attitude. “No! Breakfast is not included with your room. It is $30 per person.” “No, there’s no free wi-fi—$7 for an hour or $15 for a day. By the way that’s per device.”
Waiters at French restaurants— maybe only at upscale French restaurants in the US—have a legendary reputation as unfriendly and at times downright disdainful. Of course, waiters across the social spectrum in India could easily teach their French cousins a thing or two about treating customers shoddily. And these are folks in the service business, where […]
There are few things that have been written so much about and yet not understood well as leadership – okay possibly parenting, but that’s for another place and day. Stop the next six people you encounter today and ask them about their favorite leader and what it is that makes them a great leader. You are likely to get at last six different answers, possibly more. If we dig a little deeper we’ll also discover people expect different things from different leaders – as in what constitutes a great statesman, a successful business leader, a politician or a community or social leader. Whilst all this is natural and not unexpected, it is of little help for those of us looking to role models and to answer the question how do I become a leader and what should I do as a leader.
Image by F33 via Flickr “Son, businesses can succeed or fail. Because your business fails doesn’t mean you have failed!” My father said this to me, one evening as the two of us sat down to discuss how the startup I headed was doing. For a little over four years I had been running my […]
Image by Ravages via Flickr Entrepreneurship 2.0 What should all of us who care about entrepreneurship and helping it thrive in the Indian milieu do? There are three simple steps I believe we can take. Story telling Collect and disseminate stories of entrepreneurial success at every forum and opportunity. Blog about it, write it up […]
“I’ve already spent more time on this than this deal is worth to me.” That’s what a prospective business partner said to me, complaining about the 45 minutes we had spent in a meeting together. I was taken aback. I had just flown most of the previous 20 hours (from Bangalore to Chennai to Frankfurt […]
Image by Auberon via Flickr This evening I came across Richard Luck’s post on “5 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me (about starting a company)” and it triggered thoughts about stuff I wish folks had told me about. Two things that popped up immediately in my head were, about the unstated emotions that surround […]
Talking about firing a customer sounds blasphemous in the present climate of economic slowdown. Nevertheless talk about it we must , if only to get acquainted with the idea well before we actually have to do it. The idea of having to fire an employee, while unpleasant, has definitely crossed the minds of most entrepreneurs. […]
Life has a nasty way of springing surprises on you. The only certainty, it would appear, is that you will encounter a lot of uncertainty. Being an entrepreneur is no different. If you are like me, you might have thought you made your hardest decision when you chose to become an entrepreneur. Wrong! Before you […]
