The Yaxis Live by Rajesh Kumar

I finally read Freakonomics the fourth time!. As I have mentioned in my previous post, this title is an international bestseller. Levitt is an accomplished economist, and Dubner is a journalist. The title gives the impression that this is an economics book and you would be burdened with intepreting curves and lines. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Read the complete title carefully, it reads ‘FREAKONOMICS- A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything‘ This book analyses some day to day phenomena in life which we tend to ignore. The authors have applied some statistical techniques to analyse some situations/happenings and that’s about it of the Economics. (But then, statistical tools are used in studying genes as well, and that does not make genetics a subfield of Economics!). The only term from the field of economics is the the role of ‘reward’ on our actions and what are these rewards.

Example, what is the correlation between a lawsuit of the sixties to the sudden drop in crime rate in the nineties and what the patterns of names in different social and economic strata of US society.

On the other hand, the flow of the book is very good ( The economist could have done it, this is definitely the journalist!) and you do not realize how soon you reach the end of the book. Perhaps a little too abruptly. That seems to be a little dissapointing since you feel that there would be a grand finale,which never comes. Someone asked Levitt about his ‘Unifying Theme’ n the course of an interview at a very young age. Perhaps this book needs a unifying theme as well.

One good thing. For days after you finish reading this book, you are likely to try and analyse the ‘hidden side’ of daily happenings.However, do remember that it is said that the economists are known to be good at ‘predicting the past‘(or fitting the curve to the occasion), so do not expect to be much wiser!!!!!

I would classify this book as General Curiousity read, and if you are curious about the hidden side of some elements of our daily life, go ahead and read it.Am I going to read it a fifth time? Well, not anytime soon.

Disclaimer:Having said all this, I must confess I am not an economist by education or by profession, and the only time I studied ‘Eco’, I managed to scrape through!!

PS: There is much more on the book website at http://www.freakonomics.com

I have read Freakanomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (by Levitt & Dubner) three times so far. Frankly, still trying to figure out what this book is about! Wait till I gather my thoughts. Should not be very long, possibly this very week.

In 1999, Carlos Ghosn ( Rhyming with Phone) was among the leaders at Renault. He had a well established reputation of an achiever, having worked in Michelin as well as Renault. At that time, Nissan was struggling to stay afloat. Nissan and Renault came into an alliance in which Renault took a 44 % stake in Nissan, and Carlos was marshalled off to Japan to change Nissan’s fortunes. He took over as COO and later the CEO of Nissan.That explains the context of title of the book.

Born in an Brazillian family of Lebenese descent, Ghosn was a brilliant student and received his advanced education in France. This book is co-authored with Phillipe Ries and was originally written in French. Under Ghosn’s leadership, there has been a stark change in Nissan’s fortunes. So much so that Renault called him back to lead Renualt as CEO, while holding charge as CEO of Nissan. Today he is a widely respected name in business transformation.

When there is talk of a business transformation of this scale, comparisons with GE’s former CEO Jack Welch are inevitable. ‘Neutron Jack’s’ bestseller Straight from the Gut for years hasbeen read by anyone who reads business excellence. Both Jack and ‘Le Cost Killer’ Ghosn appear very logic driven and straight, though by his writing style, Ghosn appears more sophisticated.

You may even ask the question, what is new in this book? Same old recipe of cultural sensitivity, growth in market share, product innovation, cost -cutting etc! Don’t be fooled by the simplicity with which it appears in the book. It is Ghosn’s writing style to stay away from hyperbole.

This book also shows the deftness with which Ghosn handles the cultural issues ( Not just the western style vs Japanese style but the difference in the companies as well). Perhaps it has to do with his exposure to different cultures at an early age.

Like all great business leaders, Ghosn appears transparent and wants to keep his communication simple to understand. The 180 strategy is a manifestation of this simplicity.

From readability point of view, it holds your attention without becoming too taxing. And perhaps this book is translated from French, personal touch seems to be missing at points. But if a book has been written by a business leader as tall as Ghosn, you cannot miss the point.

Read it , when you can.

Authors – W Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne

Finally Amercians have some competition from Europe!

Chan Kim and Muaborgne are academicians at INSEAD, Europe’s best known B School.They are credited with bringing out a new classic on management, which fortunately is not blessed with the same geographical myopia as suffered by most American Authors suffer, who choose to quote only American companies as having displayed excellence. From this perspective this book is a welcome change. This is the first book in recent years from Europe on the subject of business excellence that has become mainstream(Published by Harvard Business School Press). Check out their website.
Much against the creative proclivity of not mentioning books by other authors, this book actually notes the presence of books such as Good to Great and Built to Last. Kim and Mauborgne point out that though many authors have attempted to study companies whose success appears to be durable, sevaral of these companies have faltered within five years of the publication of the books in which they have been cited!
This is an extremely focussed books which has not been burdened by author created jargons by the dozens, neither has it excessive citation of cases.

Most books on Strategy are backward looking, i.e, they tend to analyse trends in the past but generally talk about the future in highly qualified terms. In Blue Ocean Strategy that’s untreadable space of future is where Kim and Mauborgne have dared to go, and make no bones about it. In that sense, this is a very balanced book- refering to past success, and trying to make sense with the future.

The book talks about making competition irrelevant. So, is this book about being competitive alone? Or, is about positioning? Or, about defining your business? It is about a mix of all the strategic elements, without loosing the holistic picture, placed in the canvas of future. At strategy level, this book does not just say how to look at things, but how to go forward.
The book has a very lucid tone, and the tone is very optimistic. No wonder over a million copies of this book have already been sold and this book has been translated in 32 languages so far (None of them Indian, sadly)

Hats off to the authors and my recommendations as a book not to be missed. Buy it if you have to, rather than wait for it to appear in the library. You must go the book website as well.

Chances are that the page you are viewing knows your location in the world. Or Atleast the country. Is someone watching you? Well, someone somewhere always seems to see something about you, which you never intended them to see( Phrase inspired by “Wardrobe Maul-functions” at Lakme India week recently).

Have fun. Will soon write about a much raved book called “Blue Ocean Strategy” by Kim & Mauborgne. Sounds promising in the first few pages. They have obserations about companies, not people, and they too seem to have observed about others what was never thought to be visible.

A colleague recently suggested this book called The Maverick, written by a Brazilian , Ricardo Semler. The beauty of this book is that it talks about business transformation, attitudinal transformation and culture transformation in a family owned enterprise called SEMCO.
It is not a new title, and was first published in early nineties (of the last millenium!) and is devoid of jargons that CEOs like to decorate their success stories with. The tone is very lucid and straight and no, Mr Semler does not do any hyperbole. Go ahead and read this book with all my recommendations. A very lnteresting read.
(Image courtesy http://www.randomhouse.com.au)

Came across this new book called The Search authored by John Battelle. An interesting read. Beware: It is not a management classic. It is a chronicle by an award winning journalist and a good one at that. It is a very lengthy filing by a journalist.

Go ahead, read it, if only because no one realized that the Google , ASK and A9 already have enough history to be written about.

A bit expensive in India right now at Rs 984/-.

(Well, I am coming with more on this shortly)

Just finished reading ‘The World is Flat’ by Thomas Friedman. The subtitle suggests it is the ‘A brief History of the Globalized World in the 21st Century‘.

Once again an attempt at creating a stereotype. This book is targetted at western audiences, who have probably read about outsourcing etc through the media, but have not had the chance to read it in the form of a story, something the three times Pulitzer awardee is very good at.

Mr. Friedman conjures up images of Indian IT companies as replacing the jobs in the US, but he forgets some parts of the story, viz, most of the Indian Tier 1 IT services providers have strong sales arms in the US, which have many an American employed.Outsourcing is not new at all. A famous acedemician recently commented that Americans outsourced their undergraduate education to India decades ago. That remark, made half in jest, alluded to the large number of Indian students who went to(and still go) US to after earning their basic engineering degrees in India. Many are now part of American society and Industry.

Hollywood movies have been around for a while. For the duration these were (or are ) seen across the world, Mr. Friedman and like minded individuals have absolutely no concerns. The moment two or three out-of-US movies get adopted by US mainstream audience, we would probably have Mr. Friedman believe that the world is flat, and entertainment is outsourced.

Mr Friedman completely forgets that there is a certain commodity called oil where the concept flat is a liitle in favour of US and hence, does not merit a discussion. (BTW, the American commentators have been blaming “Scaled up Chinese demand” for the USD 70 a barrel oil price, completely forgetting that US auto industry never paid any attention to fuel efficiency!!)

Some other issues. After reading this book, you may ask yourself, what is new in this book. The answer probably is that here’s another well-packaged brand-managed item where the core is a little weak, but they still survive because they created the category. To that extent, we give full credit to Mr. Friedman and soon we might see many other books in this category. I call this category Outsourcing 101.

Some factual issues. Indian IT industry did not take birth because of Y2K. The major names in this business have been in the business for over a decade prior to Y2K. They merely leveraged the opportunity presented by Y2k to get close to American/Western customers. Likewise, they were not given free bandwidth due to dotcom overcapacity. They merely leveraged an available resource.Indian IT Industry is not Bangalore alone. Infact, most major names in Indian IT industry have very well spread out footprints, and have development centers in multiple locations in India, and indeed even in Eastern Europe and Latin America.