What white shirts taught Kishoreji and me…

Below are some of the excerpts from the book “It happened in India” by Kishore Biyani:

A couple of years back a team at Big bazzar came up with an idea of buying white shirts at low, stacking them high and selling them cheap. This is the underlying principle of any hypermarket. The premise to the idea of white shirts was that every person in India owned a white shirt in his wardrobe. So, if they could sell it cheap, they would make handsome profits. So they purchased a huge stock of one lakh white shirts and priced them at Rs 149 each. But the customer response didn’t seem to be keen enough. Reason: White shirts although are cheap, they are costly to maintain. And the intended customers to whom this price is meant for are those who travel by bus, train and will have to bear dust and pollution. And those of whom who can afford for maintaining a white shirt are those who are willing to pay Rs 500 or Rs 1000 per shirt. So when the manager on floor realized this he brought the selling price further down to Rs 129 (Rs 105 being the cost price). But this strategy too didn’t help. When this issue came up to Kishoreji, he said that his manager though has put in good effort hasn’t tried enough. Kishoreji simply asked “Have you tried it to sell at Rs 49!?” The essence is that when we have done a mistake, accept it and try to get out of it quickly. Never put bad money after good money.

The above statement is somewhat similar to what my friend surender told me when I had expressed my interest over trading. He said “Never get obsessed with any particular share. If a share isn’t fetching you money, forget it, you may lose some money, but you can probably avoid a debacle.” No matter how much research you have put in buying those shares, no matter how much time and effort you have put in, no matter how much sentimental you are about that share, at the end of the day what matters is whether that share is fetching you money or not. If it is not fetching you money, dump it, Kill it! And forget it. Things like shares depend on n number of variables or parameters. And the failure of the share is not that one hasn’t put effort, it is just because, of these n variables, m variables didn’t perform well.

I believe that the same principle follows for life in case of any sort of investment (not just money). Generally people are obsessed with those things in which they put in a lot of time and effort. Even if we know that things aren’t going well, we tend to think “Let me give it one more chance”. The reason is “how can we let go things when we have put it so much effort in it”, “common let me try a little more”. I believe that it is OK to think this way, But when things are not in our hands, it is foolishness to be obsessed with them. When other parameters as mentioned or other people for that matter are not willing to make things work, it isn’t our fault! If things aren’t working fine and we know that they won’t, its better we leave them aside and concentrate on those that would fetch us more.
The best part of these bad investments is that they teach you some good lessons in life. Take the lessons, forget those bad things and move on with your life!

Can perfection be matched to ‘meeting deadlines’?

Today was a day packed with learning and realising. Today in office, we had to listen to all the criticisms made on us for not meeting the deadline or as our PM mentioned “miserably missing the deadline”. The question in the afternoon’s meeting was “why wasn’t our part completed in the given time frame?” There were criticisms made on everybody and I was last to be left out. Although there were so many things I could learn from our seniors, it also brought out some intriguing questions in me.

First of those questions is that What is expected on a deadline? It is easy for anyone working in a software firm to understand that a job when it is submitted for the first time is not without any errors or bugs as we call them. It is after rigorous testing and rework, the system becomes stable. From the very little experience I have, I can state that this is true not only in the case of software but also in the case of any field. So probably on the first built (job completion), the job is expected to have some errors.

Second of these questions is that Is finishing a job more important than doing it with satisfaction? Well I would say that satisfaction should come first.

Third question is why wasn’t I able to complete my job? Well a lot of reasons follow. First, I had tough time with my priorities during the initial stages of our project because of my GMAT. Then I had troubles with my piece of mind continuously being disturbed by an estranged relationship of mine. The above two being personal ideally should not have affected my work. I tried not to. I worked late nights, came early in the mornings, came during weekends, but still things didn’t work. Probably, one mistake I made was not having a firm deadline in my mind and working towards it.

Some of my earlier experience had taught me that it is not deadline but it is the perfection that matters. Probably it is these experiences that taught me that I should not deliver anything without ensuring the quality myself. Ensuring quality myself means the satisfaction of a finished job. The problem that happened was that I could not let the job go off my hands when I knew that there were some things in the job to be fixed. Had I been under the impression that “of course, these things could be fixed sometime latter also”, probably I could have met the deadlines. This is what brings me to the whole point of writing this blog late in the night. Can perfection be matched to meeting deadlines?

The answer is YES. And those who do are the most successful ones on earth. For instance, Kishore Biyani and a group of men involved in making of the first Big Bazzar outlet in kolkatta had a tough time in opening the shop 10 days prior to the Durga puja, which is the most celebrated festival out there. For a couple of weeks, they had to spend 24x7 on the shop floor to ensure that the things were done at the right time. And as far as the perfection is concerned, it was embedded in the planning itself. They could match perfection with the right timing(deadline) and that scripted the success story of Big Bazzar.

One thing I learned today is that the challenge of meeting deadlines does not lie in completing a job, but in doing it with utmost perfection in the given time frame.

The luxury of not having anything to think about…

Who said that it’s a sin not to do anything? Who said that an idle mind is a devil’s workshop? Who said that one can’t be happy doing nothing? Today was one such day when I didn’t do anything significant, didn’t have anything to think about except that I was pondering upon some really insignificant things yet I was happy and no such devil did set up any workshop in my mind! Let me take through my day.

I first woke up at 6.30 am and caught up with insomnia. As Edward Norton in the movie fight club says “when you are in insomnia, you are never really awake, never really asleep”, I was in the same position. I caught up some sleep at around 8.45 am. Sindhu woke me up at 9.45 and reminded me about the promise I made last evening that I shall prepare the breakfast for today. The one breakfast recipe I know is bread-omelet. Swetha called me up and asked me to get some vegetables for the lunch. I brought vegetables and started my preparation. Though I knew the recipe, I confirmed everything with my mom. Somehow, with the help of others I prepared two varieties of bread-omlete for breakfast, one was sweet while the other spicy. I myself claimed the breakfast a success story. Then there were some sprouts and that completed a heavy breakfast. Then we played a round of snake and ladder as kids do. Each one of us climbed ladders without the knowledge of others, though there wasn’t any ladder. Ultimately, the game ended when Sindhu disturbed the whole arrangement. Then I was looking at Swetha who was able to finish the brain-vita game with just one marble left. I was surprised to see that as my best performance ever was finishing with two marbles left. Then Swetha taught me a standard technique of finishing the game. Then some old telugu movie was on TV. I felt a little tired and slept on the marble watching TV, my eyes half closed, half open. At around 2pm I was walking back to my room walking in the laziest posture possible. Suddenly Sindhu reminded of a ‘lazy Sunday afternoon’ and it was then I realized that I was going through one such lazy afternoon. Then I came to my room and started reading the book ‘It happened in India’ while laying on my bed. I caught up some sleep again at 5 pm. Slept and woke up at 7 and again started reading the book. At 8 I felt as if something was missing. Yeah, my evening coffee/tea. I walked to the irani café nearby and had a cup of ‘irani chai’ with the best thing that complements it. I somehow like the irani cafés for that they represents something that is truly hyderabadi! Then went back to Swetha’s room and spent a lot of time chatting.

It’s been really long time since I spent such a Sunday. I remember last one around a year and half ago. Since then, there was always something or other going in my mind. Although there was nothing to do at times, I had some worry that was eating up my mind. Today I was free of all those. At the end of the day I was quite happy.

There are a couple of things that I learned today. One, there is so much luxury of not having anything to think about. It is this luxury that makes one dream, dream a lot. Also there is so much happiness in thinking about lot of insignificant, fairy tale things. Secondly, one doesn’t need to do a lot of things to be happy. One doesn’t have to roam around places to be happy. All that one need is a set of good friends for whom you really mean something. Even talking nothing, but having them around would bring out the charm in one’s face.

Looking back at this day, I had a wonderful time and I’m glad to have some good friends around.