The Methodology of Bailout ...

Applying medication ONLY where it hurts. Try this:

1. keep the bailout restricted to employee pay slips,

2. freeze hiring and firing,

3. reduce management remuneration by 50-60%,

4. eliminate corporate tax evasion (both exemptions and through tax heavens) in order to bring on record all known assets and liabilities of the corporation,

5. utilize the liquidity resulting from points 1 and 3 above to reinvigorate the corporation,

6. handout additional funds only if liquidity in point 5 is insufficient.

Contact Sport ... where did we go wrong ?

The service industry is a contact sport. Hospitality, banking, IT & ITeS (para-legal (LPOs), KPOs, BPOs), legal, etc. Unlike manufacturing where the consumer is a needy customer and where creation of a market is based on tangible and visual attraction based needs, the service industry is more psychological and requires more acumen than learnedness. This acumen has to be used to woo the customers is a given and well understood universal fact. What IS NOT is the fact that this acumen cannot be utilized internally with the components of the service corporation, namely the employees. Employees are persons that need to be integrated with the corporation and its ethos, if it has one. So we need to begin with creation of an ethos. This ethos comes with the character in the governing management. Honorable and credible, friendly and professional. Most organizations think that team outings alternated with selfish competitiveness of internal career ransacking is a nice way to boost employee morale and make people love the organisation. It does not work that way. Rightly pointed by Janine Allis, CEO and Founder, Boost Juice Bars, credibility is everything within a corporation and in business at large. We all know the hundi system. It worked on credibility of individuals long before brands emerged. Brands of modern day can not state slogans of quality while their internal quality of people management rots. Its like an apple that has to be good from within and outside as well or else the next time you would not pick up apples from the same bunch at all or from the same vendor.


Reference:

Aviation formula gone sour

Of the people, by the people BUT NOT for the people ...

... education at the IIMs must be 'means-blind', which means that anyone with the required qualifications must not be denied admission due to non-availability of means. The IIMs have not been following that entirely.

We prepare extensively for the entrance, to enter these prestigious abodes of education desirous of passing out and joining the hordes of unemployed youth, YET we are discriminated at the selection level based on the income of our families and those of us who can not secure education loans and can not pay the fees are arbitrarily left out, left behind.

Last I remember the IIMs, IITs and Law Schools were built under State Legislations, by the governments we elect, by the legislature that is accountable to us under the Constitution of India. What happened to the equal opportunity principle that we so dearly built into the system and each child at school is made to remember that preamble that proudly states:

WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:

JUSTICE, social, economic and political;

LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;

EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;

and to promote among them all

FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;

IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.

Reference:

IIMs not following fair admission policy: Panel

"Good Times" are here once again ...

So they sack you, reinstate you for three purposes (1) so that you may be later, gradually sacked in accordance with the principles of natural justice, due process, Section 25f of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 and Section 10 of the Contract Labour (Regulation & Abolition) Act, 1970; (2) so that you do not ask for a raise and (3) for all you know, they might cut your pay for the larger good of your fellow employees, all three purposes you would not have bought unless you had not been sacked.

You will not now oppose the management once you have been reinstated, as the 2 day "out in the cold" treatment has left you shaken and in knowledge of a situation where you have no other airline to work for (see Air-India mulls voluntary leave scheme) and that your debts have haunted you at this tender age of 20 or so ...

Just stay one your guard and stay united, do not sell off camaraderie for gain.

References:

Jet says sorry, takes back all sacked staff

No retrenchment in Air India, says Aviation Minister

On Duties, and rights that follow ...

"Real rights are a performance of duty. No one will have any right but what are inherent in the willing performance of one's duties" (Anthony Parel, Gandhi, Freedom and Self Rule, (Lexington Books, 2000) (quoting M.K. Gandhi) at page 10).

It all boils down to the fact that it takes two to tango. Only if I fulfill my duty of recognizing your right does there exist a right for you.

In the corporate scenario, this is of utmost importance. Respecting team-mates and team members is a very effective means to collectively bear the pressure of work. The team inturn represents a division (e.g. HR, marketing, operations, legal, delivery, manufacturing, etc.), divisions make up the corporation and the corporation as a whole can change its ethos to being more culturally sensitive and not driven by the insane hunger of capital accumulation, definitely not at the cost of the machinery that makes up the corporation, as this machinery is not non-living but comprises of living persons who make up the society that the corporation functions in. The corporation is thus building the community, the neighborhood, the state and the country. Thus, when some one says "Sonny boy, running a corporation is not child's play", I say "Hell no ... I can see that its definitely no joke" ...

Because, as you sow shall you reap. Make self-centered monsters out of your employees and they shall inturn infect the society, politics and morality. They corrupt our schools, our education, your children, wives, husbands, teachers, students, police, civil servants, ... everything.

You definitely do not want to make apples go bad in your refrigerator and throw them out into a fresh pile of apples (at a wholesale mart) ready to be sold for retail. Would surely affect the quality of your retail purchase of apples a couple of weeks down the line.

Silent & Violent; Team productivity & Respect

Some are fired silently some violently. Below is the case of violent sacking in the aviation-hospitality industry. However, no one talks of the silent sacking.

Silent sacking is done very creatively. It is part of a COO's Job Description to ensure that the earning rate per employee covers the employee's salary, company profit, infrastructure cost and taxes, etc. Seems a fair enough expectation. But it is not contextualized.

Context: Team productivity is ignored despite demand for team players. Now, a team productivity is the same as employee productivity multiplied by the number of players in a team. So, why is team productivity all that important in silent sacking. A bad manager may handle his team resources to the detriment of say a particular team member's capability and capacity. However, what would seem like a team success and an individual failure may in fact be a team success at the cost of an individual failure. A manager may seek presence of a team member beyond the member's productive hours. The manager needs to push the team member but not beyond the breaking point. This breaking point may infuse either under performance or revolt. Another issue is of respect. From my experience I have gathered that in today's off the shelf show-off life of the middle class and lower middle class neo-rich buggers, respecting one's fellow employees is not part of the game.

There used to be a time I had seen when the boss used to have a regular cup of tea with his team and joke about the way they (the boss while he was not a boss) used to mess up and how they used to get kicked for it. Each team member then would also share one's own experiences and also the present work place issues concerning the work at hand and of the anticipations for the future. There used to be a genuine camaraderie.

Fastforward to today. The only interaction is across the office desk, pub/bar, mall, cinema, etc. One would say what's the difference. There IS a difference. The difference lies in the adrenaline and testosterone driven pub/bar, mall, cinematic culture. Vengeful discussions, bullying, show-off of gagets and competition to outsmart the other team member to the latest gadget or the hottest movie or the coolest and most expensive drink or restaurant where he took out his hot girlfriend. Or the Tag Heuer, or that Rado and Armani. Upward mobility aspirations sold to us, who do not have it, by the marketing gurus of our times. the result is resentment, animosity and frustration.

To restart collaborative efforts rather than competitive efforts one has to curb materialistic negativities and shed State Craft (I have talked of earlier) and embrace a life of Honor. Stand for what is right and just. Do not stand for connaivance, convenience and deceit. Understand one's duties before one's rights ...


References:

Air India 'to shed 15000 staff'

Kingfisher too may hand out pink slips

India's Jet Airways cuts 1900 jobs to 'save' itself

India's Jet Airways cuts 1900jobs to 'save' itself

Kings of Jettisoning good times are here ...

So we will save money say the King of Good Times and the Jettisoning patriarch.

Should have thought of it earlier ... why create jobs to purge them later, that too in contravention of the arbitrariness safeguard and contrary to natural justice, due process, Section 25f of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 and Section 10 of the Contract Labour (Regulation & Abolition) Act, 1970.

References:

Kingfisher too may hand out pink slips

India's Jet Airways cuts 1900jobs to 'save' itself

Jet to shed 1050 more staff

AdSense & Capitalist Appropriateness

This blog was rejected approval by AdSense because of "Unacceptable site content" by Google Inc. So much for impartial analysis of the situation around!!! Guess it just does not make commercial sense ... probably they assessed that "this is not the right thing" to invest their time and effort in.

So where does the problem lie? ... Honor v. State Craft

HONOR: Fighting in battle, [the king] should not kill his enemies with weapons that are concealed, barbed, or smeared with poison or whose points blaze with fire. (see Laws of Manu Chapter VII, Verse 90).

STATE CRAFT: Use of poison, spies, spread of discord, lies and economic sabotage is justified (see Kautilya, who judged the means by the result, a result he sought for the general good of his kingdom .. or was it so? for the Kingdom or for the Kingdom?).

Such is the difference between an honorable and a pragmatic approach. Pragmatism has replaced courage, self-interest has taken the place of sacrifice and honor is now a term only in dictionaries. And rightly so has the usage of pragmatic as meaning "officious; meddlesome; interfering" and "dogmatic; opinionated" been forgotten and become archaic. (see pragmatic definition |Dictionary.com)

One often wonders whether there is an actual problem to begin with or is this just a global take on large scale corporate restructuring in the garb of a global crisis resulting in laying-off of workers employed by corporations who one fine morning realized that their plans of the past had all gone wrong and that they could not sustain their swelling profits to swell any longer and thus are now "being forced" to dispense with human capital like non-living matter.

Wrong assessments galore ... ?

Finance Minister, Prime Minister and RBI Governor. Educated in Oxford, Cambridge and the like. Even Krugman could be wrong despite the Nobel prize. (When Krugman spoke of closing weak banks in India)

Economics is the most dangerous two edged sword wielded by nations and international bodies alike. Personal gains are the only aim; besides the sincere effort to make the present effort look better than the previous solution. (... Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss ...)

Is there a perfect solution or are we to be hung by the very governments that we create? Are these very governments going to tax us (just because we voted for them) and serve the interests of those who have retrenched us?

The the taxpayers' money is being risked on salvaging private interests of corporates (see Effort to halt financial crisis costs governments two trillion pounds, "... the huge cost to taxpayers of bailing out the financial system is likely to be felt for many years -and possibly decades - into the future") while corporations effortlessly evade being taxed by the governments that rescue them (see UK Banks Should Shut Tax Haven Units, Cable Says (Update1)), just because those corporations fund our political system and political parties in it. It seems like quid pro quo for election and kick-back money as distinguishable from tax we pay to the government for services it would or might render us, that is not to be quid pro quo. Is it fair? Is it just? Is it honorable? Or just state craft?

It's not enough ...

Not Enough Money in the World: The Real Monster in the Meltdown Closet

RBI's Rs 20000-cr package not enough, say mutual funds

Reforms are not enough anymore, Hungary needs stabilisation too ...

Brown urges more global reforms - bank stabilization "not enough"

Structural changes not enough to solve SANS problems: BND

Europe' Bank Bailout: Is It Enough?


Well said by The Who in their album Endless Wire

It's not enough
Whatever you give

A little bit more
You always need
A little more man
A little more seed

It's not enough
It's not enough
Whatever I give
It's never enough

I gave you cash
I gave you love
All that I heard
Was "It's Not Enough"

I work so hard
It gets so tough
Whatever I give
Never feels like enough
It's not enough
It's not enough
Whatever I give
It's never enough

When I'm on my knees
I keep taking your stuff
Make sure that you know
It's never enough

You said you'd go as far
As to turn to my friend
Who once warned me of you
Said you'd hasten my end
Because I have lent
Every ounce of my juice
My essence is spent

You'll always want
A little more pink
I'll always need
A little more ink

It's not enough
It's not enough
Whatever I give
It's never enough

However I praise
However I puff
Though you may smile
It won't be enough

Right at the end
When I start to bluff
An' the lift's going down
An' I start acting tough

It's not enough
It's not enough
Whatever I give
It's never enough

I'll find someone else
To finish filling me up
I'll smile and admit
You were never quite enough

Like Brigitte Bardot
In Godard's Les Mepris
I can't love you enough
To make you complete
You appear in my dreams
With some new courtier
You need me there to see
What you need to convey

It's not enough
It's not enough
Whatever I give
It'll never be enough

No hysterical scene
You will never play rough
I'm the one who will scream
But it won't be enough

It's never enough
It's never enough

It's not enough
It's not enough
Whatever I give
It'll never be enough

I'll never hold you
How can I scold you?

It's not enough
It's not enough
Whatever I give
It'll never be enough

Are we getting fooled again ...

The most important thing that we look into is, whether we are being fooled. Is it the right thing? Is it the most profitable thing? Is it the early bird strategy or just a leaf in the wind? Planning, mastering the art and impeccably executing our plans. Always a step ahead of the pack. Or are we ...?

What misses the eye is the obvious nature of the unobvious. The machine that drives it all. The house always wins. As the people who are familiar with my ways, I am a sucker for typing with show non-printing characters. Helps see things clearly. Just a habit I picked up from a guy called ... well I have forgotten the name ... Exactly what we are in for at the end of the line ... to be forgotten in time, but no, not the reality of depression, that can't be forgotten, should not be forgotten, but it now has been, hence our present plight.

If there are no heroes,
Never wait for one to be,
Go ahead, lead the neros,
Step up, for all to see