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You've Been Framed! by K R Ravi Years of conditioning and training can lead to a freezing of frames. These frames help us to simplify the world but the danger lies in oversimplification and holding on to frames after they are no longer relevant. Albert Einstein admonished his colleagues, “Make it as simple as possible but no simpler.” |
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The Power of NO by K R Ravi An oft repeated fault in many organisations, is to automatically attribute success to the brilliance of the manager concerned or the team. Failure conversely is attributed rather automatically to incompetence. This is a serious flaw. In the above instance the CEO could have requested the ‘star’ performer to make a presentation to all the sales staff and share his insights into the strategy and tactics that in fact led to his grand ‘success’. |
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Paradox: The Heart of Creativity! by K R Ravi One of the most brilliant displays of paradoxical thinking is by scientist Faraday in the 1830’s. He had observed that a current of electricity passingthrough a wire could have the effect of causing the magnetized needle of a compass to deflect, that is, move in a rotational direction when a compass was located close to the wire. This was the basis of his invention of the electric motor. |
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The neo-oligarchs! by K R Ravi I was talking to my cabbie in New York who happened to be an emigrant from Hungary. I asked him how life was these days in his home country. I was taken aback when he stated rather casually that the ‘oligarchs’ were enjoying themselves while the public suffered privation. |
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Jurassic India: Where Dinosaurs Still Rule The Roost! by K R Ravi dinosaurI still recall with laughter my first day at B school. Students introduced themselves dutifully and solemnly till one guy said that he was working for Hindustan Motors, makers of the Ambassador car. Later we ribbed him on this, telling him that his department had an entire year to decide on the shape of the headlights -- this being the only innovation in what has been billed as the world’s only vintage car under active production and use. A living dinosaur. |
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Thinking Clearly by K R Ravi One of the wonders of the world is that obviously intelligent people make elementary but serious errors in thinking. I happened to meet a friend of mine, a successful banker in California who had migrated from India to the US more than a decade ago. He was talking about violence in India and gave that as one reason for his disappointment with his home country. |
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Can You Figure It Out? by K R Ravi That the U.S or for that matter many other countries are in recession is well known. The question is how does one measure recession? In the US the main yardstick is the shrinking of the GDP for two successive quarters. There are also many other indices that are closely monitored as indicating the health of the economy like retail sales, new house purchases and real estate prices, motor car sales, and so on. |
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New-year resolutions and the rule of 21 by K R Ravi What many people may not know is that to lead a rich and satisfying life we ought to devote about 70% of our time and effort on our long-term developmental goals. We are so caught up in day-to-day issues which in the final analysis turn out to be of small significance to our lives. We lose sight of our main and meaningful goals. |
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Why Not Legalise Corruption? by K R Ravi The CEO of a large company asked me to meet with his HR manager to discuss the possibility of conducting workshops on Lateral Thinking for his colleagues. I sought an appointment with the HR manager only to find the man was not interested in meeting me. I suspected that he did not like the idea of being told whom to meet. |
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Deciding how to decide! by K R Ravi Meta decision should take place before you frame the issue. ‘Plunging’ into the various stages of decision making can lead to disastrous consequences. Not devoting sufficient time and effort to this phase may lead to you solving the wrong problem thereby exacerbating the actual problem. |
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Understanding the Indian psyche will solve our language problem! by K R Ravi There is one issue never dies out in India. Just when I thought that it was settled -- not by any serious thinking by our netas -- but by the collective wisdom of our people, the controversy has resurfaced. By sheer coincidence events have indicated the solution that no policy maker can devise in his head. I refer to the language issue. |
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If Excellence Is Your Ideal Everything Else Will Fall Into Place by K R Ravi A young man went to Gautama Buddha and sought the Master’s guidance on how to achieve Enlightenment. The conversation, which in my opinion must be required reading for anyone, went roughly as follows: Young Man (YM): Master, how long will it tak... |
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India: Where is the creative facet of our culture of destruction? by K R Ravi In recent weeks a couple of incidents told the true story of India in a manner that nothing else can. The Delhi metro bridge crashed killing some poor people one early morning a few weeks ago. When my quality control friend of Indian origin in t... |
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Modern India: The ghosts of our past still haunt us by K R Ravi When Jaswant Singh wrote something about Mohammed Ali Jinnah the ensuing brouhaha in the BJP told a tale about India that needs to be analysed. I suggest that we as a nation are prisoners of the past in many of our activities in daily life. In o... |
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Misperceptions, Minorities and Mother India by K R Ravi There is a joke going around on the web. An American went visiting India. On his return, his NRI friend asks him how he found the Indians.The American replies laconically that everywhere he went he met Tamilians, Punjabis, Sindhis. Telugus, Hindus,... |
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Beyond The Boundaries by K R Ravi My friend Katyal says that he had flown from the US to Jaipur just to see a cricket match between India and Pakistan. He checked into a five star hotel in Jaipur, refreshed himself and took the lift to the bar. He was both shocked and amazed to see ... |
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Yes Bharat! by K R Ravi Do we value knowledge and learning? Do we accept charity with grace? Do we have our priorities straight? These questions flashed in my mind when at a party in Washington DC, an NRI who is a reputed medical practitioner told me this story. He hap... |
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Thinking creatively by K R Ravi Based on an experiment that was carried out in the US, I tried this with my trainees, relatives and friends – all Indians. Here is the experiment. Find out the odd one out in the following: A cow, a stack of hay and a pig. Most people poi... |
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AR Rahman and multiple order thinking by K R Ravi I practice a kind of thinking called multiple order thinking. This means that I try to go beyond the obvious and the apparent. At first I try and get into the second order thinking where one can grasp what lies beneath. In the third order I try to ge... |
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Solutions? No problem. by K R Ravi Traffic authorities in a city faced a problem typical of any busy city - a street choc-a-bloc with vehicles, bumper-to-bumper in ordinary parlance. It is evening time and harried office goers are returning home. Suddenly a pedestrian darts across the... |
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Systems thinking - the Fifth Discipline for young managers by K R Ravi In a hilarious sequence in one of his immortal films Charlie Chaplin ambles into a shipyard and finds himself right next to a big ship with no one around. He cannot resist fiddling with the ship. He notices that the ship has been tethered with ropes.... |
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How many dosas can you eat? by K R Ravi I decided to test my favourite food-related hypothesis. My hypothesis is based on my own behaviour as well as my family and friends. My hypothesis is as follows. We tend to eat more of a food item – say dosas – when we eat at home and less ... |
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Incongruous Situations by K R Ravi Recently I bought a couple of management books at a bookstore in South Mumbai. The books cost me a minor fortune. As I walked out of the store something struck me as very strange. This store was situated right in the midst of a locality with seve... |
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The Broken Window by K R Ravi The editor of a Delhi based newspaper wrote an article bemoaning the fall in standards of the Indian Foreign Service. It was but natural that this article would be followed by a barrage of letters from readers, some agreeing with him and some not amu... |
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Signal to the left but turn right! by K R Ravi I had occasion to discuss the ongoing Wall Street crisis with two of my friends. One of them lives in Singapore and the other works for a nationalised bank in Chennai. My Singapore friend remarked that with capitalism having capitulated his execut... |
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Barkha Dutt is wrong! by K R Ravi In an article in The Hindustan Times, television star Barkha Dutt contrasts presidential debates in the US with poll campaigns in India. I notice that, on most occasions, when Indians (including yours truly till I moved to the US) compare I... |
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