Reality Bytes - Wired Perspectives #AnandKumarPadmanaban

It is human nature to fear the unknown and be very comfortable with the known but the times are such that to grow, you would need to constantly expand your comfort zone and explore unknowns ... This is a great story which illustrates this ..... In the late 1800s there was a thriving ice industry in the Northeastern part of the US. Companies would cut blocks of ice from frozen lakes and ponds and sell them around the world. The largest single shipment was 200 tons that was shipped to India. 100 tons got there un-melted, but this was enough to make a profit. These ice harvesters, however, were put out of business by companies that invented mechanical ice makers. It was no longer necessary to cut and ship ice because companies could make it in any city during any season. These ice makers, however, were put out of business by refrigerator companies. If it was convenient to make ice at a manufacturing plant, imagine how much better it was to make ice and create cold storage in everyo...

As I meet and mentor startups and other SME's the one challenge I keep looking for is how are they addressing and tracking their critical paths on the work they do ... most of the time I find that the focus is on the symptom rather than the cause or the plan is very loose and vague ...  I thought that having a visual guide to help build your own KPI's maybe a good way to help anybody working on a project or a project idea or a startup to track their progress or lack of it ....

We recently ran a Pitch fine tuning event at Indian Institute Of Management, Bangalore, India and while the participants did OK, I realized that we seem to have forgotten how to tell a story .... quoting the celebrated entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk ... “People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don’t have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.” Storytelling is a powerful strategy for building personal relationships, as well as building relationships with your customers and potential customers, and for providing these customers with positive experiences. Storytelling is an age-old concept that brings people together and keeps them engaged. Person-to-person connections are at the center of any successful business and interpersonal relationships and connections are basic needs.  Even in business, we need to know and feel that we are dealing with a real person.  No matter what business you are in or what kind of per...