How to choose a thesis topic

Read this on the web.....................for a change you people read something light

It's a fine sunny day in the forest and a rabbit is sitting outside his burrow, tippy-tapping on his typewriter. Along comes a fox, out for a walk.

Fox: "What are you working on?"

Rabbit: "My thesis."

Fox: "Hmm... What is it about?"

Rabbit: "Oh, I'm writing about how rabbits eat foxes."

Fox: "That's ridiculous! Any fool knows that rabbits don't eat foxes!”

Rabbit: "Come with me and I'll show you!"

They both disappear into the rabbit's burrow. After few minutes, gnawing on a fox bone, the rabbit returns to his typewriter and resumes typing.

Soon a wolf comes along and stops to watch the hardworking rabbit.

Wolf: "What's that you are writing?"

Rabbit: "I'm doing a thesis on how rabbits eat wolves."

Wolf: "you don't expect to get such rubbish published, do you?"

Rabbit: "No problem. Do you want to see why?"

The rabbit and the wolf go into the burrow and again the rabbit returns by himself, after a few minutes, and goes back to typing.

Finally a bear comes along and asks, "What are you doing?

Rabbit: "I'm doing a thesis on how rabbits eat bears."

Bear: "Well that's absurd!"

Rabbit: "Come into my home and I'll show you."

Scene:
As they enter the burrow, the rabbit introduces the bear to the lion.

Moral:
It doesn’t matter how silly your thesis topic is, what matters is whom you have as a Thesis Guide.

Management Lesson in the context of the working world:
It doesn’t matter how bad your performance is, what matters is whether your boss likes you or not.

Don't take this literally. I don't recommend this nor follow this. This was just for fun

Interpreting systems and procedures

The year was 1983-84. I was in my final year of B Sc (Physics). We had lab sessions twice a week. Since most of the equipments in the lab were quite old, it was impossible to get the readings that confirms to the experiment, especially in the Thermodynamic lab that has heat based practicals.

We had a very senior Professor in charge of our batch, Prof.Ramakrishnan Nair. A man with a heart of gold but a very hard exterior. He signs our Record book but rarely comes to the lab as the lab duty is assigned to a young junior lecturer, Devaraj.

Devraj was an unfriendly character and viewed all students as his enemies. The sentiment was reciprocated by us and locked horns with him regularly.

Since the heat experiments never used to give the proper answers and since Devaraj wont sign the observation book unless the values are within the range, we used to take the expedient way of cooking up the figures so that we finish the experiments.

One day we were hauled up by Devaraj for this and gave us the marching orders to Prof.Ramakrishnan Nair. Devaraj raved and ranted about what we did. We were reaaly embarassed as we held Prof.Ramakrishnan Nair in high esteem and any censure by him would have made us really sad.

But we were astounded by his response. He looked the young lecturer on his eye and said, "Devaraj, the whole purpose of students doing practicals is to reinforce the theory they have studied in the classroom. One can't cook up the figures accurately unless one knows the theory inside out. If they have done it, it means that they understand the theory very well. Then the whole purpose of doing the practicals is achieved. You need to look at the bigger picture. Look at the achievement of objectives and not at the process. Use your commonsense".

Words of Wisdom that I have never forgotten. Systems, procedures and processes are tools to achieve an objective. They should not be an end by themselves.

Absurd situation

Imagine a situation where there are 30 students in a class, a mix of good, average and poor students, who gets marks ranging from 98 to 28. How would the students and the parents react if the School takes a decision to total all the marks of the students and distribute it amongst the students equally or in another scenario where more marks are given to weaker students with a purpose to 'encourage' and 'uplift' them!

Or let us think of another scenario where you are working in an office. You work hard and are the most productive employee. But at the end of the year the Management decides to treat the department as a whole and gives bonus equally to all or opts to give more bonus to the non performing employee at your expense in order to give him an incentive to perform better!

Absurd isn't it?

That is precisely happening in Plan allocation in India. There are states which are prosperous and this prosperity is converted to revenue by way of higher Tax collections, most of which are Central Tax and goes to the Central Government. Some of the good states are Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab. And then there are some rogue States who has year after year showed absolute lack of development, prosperity and growth. Erstwhile they were called the BIMARU States - Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Add to them the new States like Chattisgarh, Jharkand, Orissa, Kashmir. The contribution of these States to the Central Exchequer is considerably less considering their potential.

And what does the Central Government through Planning Commission do? Instead of giving more Central Plan allocation to the high performing states (remember they are the bigger contributors to the Central Kitty and Planning Fund allocation is a redistribution of the tax collected from States), these States are given proportionately less allocation and worse, the offender States are given more allocation. Is there any justification for it?

Similar is the strange case of Kerala and now Tamil Nadu. These two States have done extremely well on the population front. The population growth rate is almost equal to Zero and is expected to go below the replacement rage. This has been achieved through higher education levels and sustained effort by the Government and the social workers over a few decades. Against this, the above said BIMARU states have shown scant attention to this critical issue and the population there has been growing at a mind boggling rate. What would you do if you were in the Central Government? You would pat Kerala and TN on the back and see that their interests are protected, won't you? But no. That is not how we Indians work. We give more and more money for the rogue States to spend to 'curb' population which they have not done for ages and have no intention of doing for ages. Also, the talk of the town is that following the delimitation of the Constituencies which is underway now, the next step is to redraw the Parliament Constituencies to give 'Proportionate' representation to people based on the current population levels. This means Kerala will lose some of its 20 MP seats and in fact will have less representation in the Parliament but the BIMARU states will have more seats as the population there is higher. This means Kerala and TN are being punished for curtailing population growth while the undeveloped States are being given a pat in the back.

It is time we started a discussion on the Centre-State relationship in India. The current model of a powerful Centre is a legacy of the British. The argument that Centre is ensuring equitable development of the Country doesn't wash anymore. Centre cannot rob Paul and give it to Peter anymore. What we need is a much stronger States with Centres role limited to National Security, External Affairs, Military and Monetary Policies. This is the way forward to overall growth of the Country

Brand Building

There is considerable advantage in Brand Building. In fact I have emphasised that Brand Building and developing an appropriate Organization Culture as the two Critical Success Factors for any organization, and more so for a start up company.

Contrary to popular belief, Brands are not developed through advertising, but through brand experience. Everytime a customer comes in contact with a brand, there is a learning for him. It moulds his attitude towards the brand.

An leading organization in Kuwait changed the corporate colours to Red a few years back and claimed that it denotes all customers getting red carpet welcome. But the experience is different. Every single time a customer walks into their offices or calls them up for some service, the experience is so painful that the customer has to be thick skinned to ever use the brand again. Instead of the red carpet welcome the colour was supposed to denote, the customer now associates the colour with a danger signal warning him not to go anywhere near the brand.

Brand building is a conscious effort. Apart from consistency in product/service offerings, one should also carefully plan to improve the positive disposition of the target market towards the brand.

A decade ago, when I was an entrepreneur running a NIIT education centre in Thanjavur, we used to spend money on developing and augmenting the brand image. Our target market was essentially students (and their parents) who has completed 12th standard and missed out on an Engineering/Medical Seat. Every year, Engineering exams were held in 3 colleges which are situated in the outskirts of the town and in the month of May/June, when the temparatures are in the high 40's. Exams are held in two sessions for 2 days, morning and afternoon with a 2 hour gap n between. Parents drop their children in the morning, wait under trees so that they can give food in the afternoon and then pick the kids up in the evening.

We set up a temporary stall in front of these colleges and distributed cool Water packets (250 ml in Polyethelene pouches) free of cost. Trust me, if we had charged a 100% premium, we would have still sold off everything in no time and still got the goodwill and a tidy profit. But we gave it away free of cost. The whole excercise cost us nearly Rs 10,000 and the logistics involved in getting the water packets to the stalls were phenomenal. But the goodwill we got was unbeleivable. We came across as good people, not money minded but genuinely understanding and caring for the students. The parents were extremely grateful to us for arranging water free of cost, that too mineral water in sealed packets that posed no health hazards to their children.

Something to remember by.......................................

Where does one hide a leaf?

So faint was that frigid starlight that nothing could have been traced about them except that while they both wore black, one man was enormously big, and the other (perhaps by contrast) almost startlingly small. They went up to the great graven tomb of the historic warrior, and stood for a few minutes staring at it. There was no human, perhaps no living, thing for a wide circle; and a morbid fancy might well have wondered if they were human themselves. In any case, the beginning of their conversation might have seemed strange. After the first silence the small man said to the other:

"Where does a wise man hide a pebble?"

And the tall man answered in a low voice: "On the beach."

The small man nodded, and after a short silence said: "Where does a wise man hide a leaf?"

And the other answered: "In the forest."

There was another stillness, and then the tall man resumed: "Do you mean that when a wise man has to hide a real diamond he has been known to hide it among sham ones?"

"No, no," said the little man with a laugh, "we will let bygones be bygones."

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They were soon in the most secret entrails of the wood, and felt close about them foliage that they could not see, when the priest said again:

"Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do if there is no forest?"

"Well, well," cried Flambeau irritably, "what does he do?"

"He grows a forest to hide it in," said the priest in an obscure voice. "A fearful sin."

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There was still no reply, and the priest added still more mildly and quietly:

"And if a man had to hide a dead body, he would make a field of dead bodies to hide it in." (Excerpts from the 'Sign of the Broken Sword' in the book 'The Innocence of Father Brown' by G K Chesterton (Father Brown stories are arguably the finest detective stories ever written. I place Father Brown in a higher pedestial than even Sherlock Holmes))

It looks like our politicians are great favourites of Father Brown Stories. I can almost hear them asking their Flambeaus,

"Where does a crooked politician hide an embarassing problem?"

"He creates a myriad of numerous other problems to hide it in"

The most critical problem facing the country today is the 11% plus inflation which has adversely affected all the people barring none in the country. Instead of talking about it and finding solutions about it, what does the PM and the Congress party do?.

They hid this problem in a host of other problems like the Indo-US nuclear deal (which frankly is of interest to no one other than the silly and stubborn Manmohan Singh and the obstinate Prakash Karat as the deal, if implemented, is not going to make any dent in either the energy security or the life of the common man), transfer of forest land to the Amarnath Shrine by a Governor who is a Congress stooge (the Governor had already been replaced when he executed an order which none of the Hindus ever asked and which even a child knows will create communal discord considering that it is an election year in Kashmir. That the issue exposed once again the ugly side of Islamic non tolerance of other religions is another matter), Prime Minister threatening not to attend the G-8 summit if deal is not operationalised (as if it matters a great deal to us if he chose not to go) and so on.

Look at the main opposition party. They care a fig if there is double digit inflation. Instead of calling for a prolonged agitation against the Government on this issue that has the support of all the people, they called for a Bharath Bandh on thursday to protest against the revoking of order of land transfer to Amarnath Yathra, which is a much trivial issue at this stage.

The venerable communists are no better. When Nandigram was burning, they instigated a few fanatic muslims to throw stones at the Bangladeshi Author Taslima Nasree who was then residing in Calcutta, hounded her first out of the State and finally out of the Country. All to divert the attention.

There are classic cases from the past. Indira Gandhi creating a fictional crisis and imposed Emergency to escape from being disqualified after the Allahabad High Court indicted her and her son Rajiv Gandhi sending Indian Troops to Srilanka for a Peace Keeping Mission which no one asked for (the biggest political and military disaster in post independance India that led to spiralling inflation and death of thousands of our young soldiers) to divert attention from the Bofors problem faced by him.

History repeats...........................

'Where does one hide a leaf?' ...............................................................

Interesting Characters I've met 1

A trip down the memory lane. Some interesting character I met in my life,

Vellakovil Veerappan was a HPCL petrol pump owner in Avanashipalayam. He also ran a reasonably big provision shop in Vellakovil. A self made businessman who was very astute, I was shocked the first time he came to my house and I asked him to sign a document, he looked around for a stamp pad, for he couldn't read or write. Before that, he walked into the house on a summer afternoon and asked me whether 'kattadi' was not working in chaste tamil. I didn't understand and blinked. I had never heard anyone say 'kattadi' for a ceiling fan. Next thing he asked was for a glass of water from 'isupetti', meaning icebox or refridgerator. It took me a year or so to get used to his language.

Once I was in Eranakulam and stayed for 3 days. Every day on the footpath below my hotel, I saw a bearded young man selling sandaks while leaning on the railing. He was holding the Hindu paper in his hand with a pen. Curious, I peeked and saw that he was working on Hindu Crosswords. The guy had a ragged look, wearing a lungi and a well worn shirt. I got to talking to him and to my astonishment found that he was a double post graduate having Master's degree in English and History. Since he couldn't find a decent job, he got to selling slippers. In his words, "I make at least Rs 3000 a month, so why not? There is a dignity in even this job'. Felt a lot sad that someone with such a nice attitude and qualification had to be jobless.

Then there was this guy in rural Kerala, where me and my father had gone for electrifying the village (my father was an Executive Engineer in State Electricity Board and I used to accompany him as a kid), who steadfastly refused to allow the stay wire of a post which is used to give a counter support to the electric pole to be fixed within his premises. Someone has scared him by telling him that current passes through the stay wire which will endanger his life if touched. No amount of convincing by all of us and even the village elders budged him. His college educated son was so frustrated with him that we had to restrain him from physically harming his father. A real obstinate character if I have ever met one.............. to be contd

Never use a job offer to gain additional benefits in your company

I have always felt strongly about people using a job offer letter to get additional benefits from their present company. This is a common practice these days and has to be condemned. I was planning a post on this when I read this article by Hal Reiter, a Head Hunter in www.rediff.com today. I thought of reproducing it verbatim as the issue has been handled superbly by Reiter.

A few years ago, I recruited an executive to run a mid-level company. The night before he was supposed to start his new job, the executive called to say he was staying put. The board of directors at his current company--a major multinational retailer--had offered to name him CEO in one year's time.

I was aghast, but my former candidate could hardly envision a better scenario. He had leveraged an offer to run a mid-sized company and used it to land the coveted top spot at a retailing giant. No greater career coup exists, right?

Wrong.

After three tumultuous years as CEO, my former candidate was fired. This executive was not yet ready to run such a large organisation. Had he accepted the job at the smaller company, he could have gained the necessary experience to successfully run a major multinational in due time.

Instead, he lured his company into a bidding war and forced the board to make a rash decision about retention in the name of corporate competition. As a result, his career ultimately suffered a mortal blow, not to mention the damage he caused shareholders, who watched their stock drop as a result of his inexperience.

Unable to land another CEO position, he took an early retirement.

In my 25 years of experience, I have learned that accepting a counter-offer is usually career suicide. Watching your boss scramble to keep you may be a heady experience, but in exchange for that sweet moment, you'll have squandered your honour, a sacrifice that will haunt you for many years. Even more troubling, you may never know exactly when or to what extent your reputation has been sullied.

There's a good chance hiring executives might blacklist you from other employment opportunities. Aside from refusing to ever hire you again, executives have long memories and will bad mouth you any chance they get.

I remember sitting on a plane with a group of retail executives when someone mentioned, by name, a seasoned retailer. The group listened intently as one of the executives launched into an unflattering tale of how the employee had used the executive's perfectly good job offer as a bargaining chip for a fat buyback. By being dishonest with one company, the employee harmed his reputation with all of the executives on that flight.

Whenever I deliver a short list for a top job to one of my clients, I feel obligated to mention which potential candidates have accepted buyback offers in the past. Often my client will choose not to proceed with one of these people. Remember: Recruiters never forget a buyback, and computer files help us immensely.

Bosses don't forget either. Initially, the company that retained you delights in winning you back from the competition. But after perhaps six months, management will begin resenting you for essentially extorting money or power from the firm.

A bitter taste of disloyalty lingers. Now you're tacitly expected to perform like a new hire, proving yourself all over again to justify your new salary or position. You had better be up to the task.

Anytime you use a new job offer as a bargaining chip with your boss, there's always a risk you'll lose the bet. Next thing you know, you're sitting in a strange office, having left a trail of ill will in your wake.

To be fair, counter-offers can provide an opportunity for employees to voice issues or concerns about their jobs. When you are recruited for another job, ask yourself: What are the pros and cons of my current position? If the negatives outweigh the positives, you simply must leave. However, you may decide you genuinely like your position, aside from one or two problems, in which case it's time to have an open, honest conversation with your boss--before you accept the offer.

Down the road, such a conversation will be far more valuable if you choose not to force your boss into a buyback offer. You will retain your reputation for honesty, and, in my experience, this will serves you far better than a single raise or promotion ever could.