The MM Club

LinkedIn reco's I didn't write

Mr X : The first thing that strikes you about X is his stupidity. It is rare to meet a person where this characteristic shines out so completely. The last time X tried to say Duh, he stammered, slobbered, sniveled and finally managed to grunt out the phrase, convincing me of his high levels of commitment to convey his point - which is usually nothing. In his tireless pursuit of the meaningless, X has managed to work as a strong individual contributor, since none of the people hired to work under him have continued long enough. In fact, this skill of X even extends within his peer group, where every single project team mate of his has left X to run the show on his own. One of the most amusing people I've met, I recommend X wholeheartedly for an assignment in the motor vehicle license department of the remote game park reserves of tadjikistan


Ms Y : When Y first joined our firm, I was instantly impressed with her ability to interpret data. She showed the unique ability of drawing conclusions fearlessly and continuously without even seeing the data. She also was quite a liberated woman, her freedom from the concepts of right & wrong allowed her to draw inferences that reflected her creative skills of imagination. Her eye for detail ensured that not a single file ever left her table, as she would take forever in going thru them and ensure that every project that passed her way understood what hibernation meant as a file. The only thing that matched her analytical capabilities was her need to communicate - Not one to leave things to chance, I had numerous occasions with her where I sent an email to a colleague, only to follow up with a printout sent via Fax with its sent receipt stapled and couriered by post followed up with a phone call to merely confirm receipt. Truly amongst the most stellar experts in hands on micromanagement, her ability to create motion and activity aimed at tiring herself was a constant source of merriment to her colleagues and harangued reportees. I wholeheartedly recommend her for an assignment checking the vehicular emissions in the arctic ice caps, maybe her frozen demeanor could reverse the ice-cap melting and she could finally be of use to the world

Edited from the LinkedIn MM Club files : The hidden archives (2002 - 2007), Vol 17

Hypermarkets & Target Segments

From the explosive growth in stores of all kinds across the city, it would appear as though customers are completely clued onto the various formats and their offerings. However, I am plagued by doubts of how these blokes segment the market and target their core audiences. Especially since there are the retail pundits that wax eloquent on "Format Clutter". So I decided to embark on some serious consumer research, conducted in the fine climes of Bangalore, within the smoky confines of my favorite watering hole. Within my asking three "respondents", I realized that the truth was staring at me in the face. The segmentation variable to be used was not something as complex as demographic or psychographic parameters that my B School buddies would have me believe, rather it was something that my buddies from Lit school were always saying - "its all about language".

It was this stark realization that prompted this post. Now I understand the urge that sages and seekers have felt to share their realizations with the world at large. And I shall keep aside my mug and pen these lines on how the Hypermarket Operators need to view market segmentation (pardon my telecom legacy which forces me to call firms as operators, I mean no insult to those not operating and instead firming). Here goes...

Basically no customer has any damn idea what a Hypermarket is. Or rather, let me backup. There are various stages of knowledge about a Hypermarket across customers, and this becomes the primary variable for segmenting the market. The research methodology adopted was quite simple and highly repeatable. Basically, Show-Card customers various Hypermarket logo's and ask them "What is common to all these logos". Based on their answers as below, one can segment the market. What follows is the summary of the customer answer and their profile.

1. Hype-or-market - Used by those who try and mix formats, shaken not stirred...
2. High-per-market - Used by those who believe that Big Bazaar is fundamentally a mega con job
3. Hai-pair-market - Used by middle aged North Indian "aunties", who have walked from end of the store to the other and are facing acute feet-ache
4. High-pair-market - Used by confused category managers in search of the elusive combo promo bundle that will get them to their targeted sale
5. Hype-er-ror-market - Used by confused stammering guys from point 1 above
6. Hypermark-et - Used by Web Programmers using HTML trying to be cute
7. Hypermarket - Used by the French who have shopped or worked in Carrefour
8. "Oh Wal Mart" - Used by Americans who dont like the French (primarily because the Americans cant spell "Carfour")
9. "Oh Big Bazaar" - Used by jingoistic Indians who have surrendered their Airtel phone lines because they think Sunil Mittal sold out to Wal Mart
10. "Oh Spar" - Used by pseud guys who feel that paying more for goods is a reflection of their income levels
11. "Oh God" - Used by those who have read this post till this point

Signing out
The Monk (who sold his Ferrari, at the local Hypermarket....)

Beer & Diapers!!!

After 10 hours of non-stop reading up on Data Mining in the retail sector, I now know for sure why Beer and Diapers are bought together. The fact that this was discovered in US shopping and not in India was my first clue. Also, I noticed that most of the beer buyers here were youngsters, and the idea of their having kids needing diapers seemed odd. So I decided to follow various buyers of alcoholic drinks and found that beer tended to be bought in larger numbers per person (the famous 6pack for the double chin), and sometimes tended to get consumed on the way home. I mean, hey, its just a can of beer, easy to hold and drive… and drink of course! So I also noticed that most of these folks who had a beer would pull over on the way home, to the side of the road and relieve themselves – that’s common where I am from.

Now, cut to the US. Where does the poor bastard tanked up with beer take a leak on those interstates or those avenues & streets leading to his house? And then my friends, do you truly understand, why beer and diapers are bought together.

Just as the writers of history have the advantage of making it say what they want, so too the male statisticians who like to believe that behind their beer guzzling paunches lies the soft interior of a caring father!!

Beer and Diapers do go together indeed!!

(This insight came to me as I was reading stuff on the PC, drinking some wonderful Port Wine from a friend in Goa, and patting my baby to sleep on my lap… which is when the Peepul tree sprung up behind me after my 5^th glass of wine, enlightening me to the obvious advantages of diapers to a person in discomfort. Fortunately my kid was asleep already and the loo was three steps away, but think of the guy on the 495 Beltway!!)

Organizational relationship track

Boss : Happy Birthday!!!!
Subordinate : Its not my birthday….
Boss : It isn’t?
Subordinate : Errr… No
Boss : Then who’s birthday is it?!
Subordinate : Eh!! I don’t know
Boss : Why don’t you know! How can I know unless you know!!
Subordinate : What!... I mean, huh?!
Boss : I see this as the basic problem – the unwillingness – did you at least think before saying “No”? Its so easy to always say No. What have we done to make it happen?! Lets be more proactive…
Subordinate : <now how do i get out of this> "Ok, I see… actually, I was thinking – you were right – it is actually my star-birthday today, but I didn’t think you were referring to it… I mean, how did you know?
Boss : <Smiles indulgently>
Subordinate : Wow, you are the greatest
Boss : No no, its all about teamwork. Change management is critical. Leadership is about pain....

Discovery

I found an old CD where I had taken a backup on the 4th of August, 2002. This had some of the stuff that I was writing back when I had time. Now might be a good time to start dumping some of those thoughts here,

The next few days, I'll try and keep adding some of the stuff I've written,

Will be great to actually have some comments
The Monk

Lamarckian digitalism

Its about my fingers really. Rather my finger tips. Over the last few years, the following gadgets have begun to take their share of the usage of this part of my body - The mobile phone, the remote control and the PC keyboard - these have primarily fought and won their share of usage from the insides of my nostrils, which had primary ownership on the use of my fingertips. Given this rather honest admission of the slimy past of my fingertips, you would empathize with my amusement whenever anyone referred to the "answer being on their fingertips". Not being a great reader, the ends of pages within a book did not really compete in this regard. Also, the lack of a persistent criminal record and minimal fingerprinting also ensured disuse in this regard. Given this background, I am inclined to think how my fingertips will evolve.

Well, at least less of such meaningless posts
The Monk

Reality Bytes

The movie Matrix got it partially right. I was a believer. But now, I am more into Realization. Its fundamentally about reality shows. And here is why it is so, and what it will become.

My basic habit is to flip channels. Years of preferring and watching advertisements instead of actual programs has successfully reduced my attention span to a 10-15 second granularity. So much so that if an ad is a 60 seconder, it seems like a TV show on its own. But thats not the point. The point is flipping channels, and the point is reality shows. Earlier, there was the era of songs. Primarily you would come across hindi-movie songs no matter which channel you went to. This was further spurred by the actress who epitomized the female equivalent of the chest-thumping alpha-male... madhuri dixit and her chest heaving bosom movements, which masqueraded under the garb of a song. Anyways, so now ... its reality shows.

Lead India is one such reality show. The way the Times Group has taken this on makes me feel quite trapped. First off, the complete multi-media dominance of this - be it TV or print. But thats not the irksome part - its the oh-so-high-and-mighty attitude that Times is throwing. Its behaving like the modern day Punjab Kesri. I have never read any Punjab Kesri of the past, all I know is that my history textbooks and the Amar Chitra Katha on Tilak mentioned the Kesri as the newspaper that ignited the spirits and minds of a nation. There was a clear cause then. When newspapers such as the Times attempt to hike their readership and TV ratings thru these inexistent causes, noble as the overall intent is, my cynicism kicks in. And then I liken it to the glut of reality shows.

Another one was one where Cyrus was watching participants pull gags. This was quite truly the eye opener for me. I now wait with bated breath for more such reality shows. Will Harpic sponsor the reality show of people taking a dump or a leak in the public loos in railway stations? Will Johnson & Johnson sponsor the reality show of people cleaning their ears with stuff that aint a Johnsons bud? Will Kamasutra sponsor a reality show where.... hmmm... maybe this website is PG13.

But overall, here's the point. We will move from primitive concepts like work-life balance to Life-Reality balance. This comes from my experience on a recent flight to Delhi. Here is exactly what happened - and it seems remarkably like a prison experience - first, I was frisked at the entry. Then, with a bus full of similar accused, I was heralded to an isolation chamber (the plane). Therein, I walked thru a narrow passage (yes, I've put on 8 kilos) and reached a seat where I was strapped in. Then I was plugged into the Matrix, so to speak, with the headphones and was fed a concentrated dose of artificial laughter in an elimination format version of the laughter challenge III. Yes, the programs are now anthropomorphic, they have generations and each subsequent generation is titled. So we have Ptolemy II, Octavian Ceaser and the Laughter Challenge III. 3 hours of travel aided further by fog, and yes - I am seized with Reality Shows.

And thus the current state of affairs. Reality shows are now soon going to become the birth place of philosophical thought and we should not undermine them. The questions : Who am I, What am I doing, What is my purpose in life... these are the questions that these shows will bring to the minds of the participants and the viewers. For there will be the three classes of society - those that participate in reality shows as contestants, those that participate by casting their vote, and the rest of us... those meaningless nothingness who lead their miserable lives unaffected by all the above, lost in our own reality.

For truly it is the era of the observer, be it the quantum physics version or the Upanishadic version... Reality is in the mind of the be(e)holder

Time to buzz off
The Monk

Return of the Monk

Ok,

Its now 4 months since the last post, 4 months since I joined my new job, 4 months since I had a drink, 4 months since I slept in the afternoon.... 4 months that feel like a full year. Things seem finally in some sort of control - not that its become better, but there is a better sense of control. Rather, if one sees the original structure and setup like a shapeless looped string undergoing a change in shape with any sort of pressure on it, the current structure is embellished with more nodes. The purpose of nodes is to provide a static reference point as pressure is applied on the string, and at the same time, shield the pressure from distorting the overall string architecture.

A useful and easy way to imagine this is to take a rubber band and stretch it across three pins on a board. Vibrations caused by pinching the rubber band would be spread over L/3 in a strong manner, and 2L/3 in a weak manner, where L is the length of the rubber band. With the introduction of more pins along which the rubber band is now stretched, the impact of pinching keeps coming down ... for N pins, the impact is thus L/N. Now, as N-> infinity, the impact is near zero, which is a steady state situation of a perfect circle.

The point here is that there is another hidden variable, which is the interactions between the nodes. If the interaction between the nodes is positive to the overall situation, in my opinion, there spring up virtual nodes between these that work like a surface-tension mechanism to stretch the rubber band to its position of being a part of the arc of the perfect circle that would emanate. In order for this to happen, the idea or the view of the eventual circle that would emanate, in terms of its radius primarily, this idea needs to be consistent across the 2 nodes in question. This is usually referred to by management theorists as "vision alignment", but it is primarily a geometric alignment on the nature of the circle. In more complex geometries or organizational structures, the circle morphs to a sphere and we reach and understand the great Pythagorian obsession with spheres.

Thus, from here on, the blogging begins on Retail.

The Digital Monk who sold from his outlet...