Reality Bytes - Wired Perspectives #AnandKumarPadmanaban

Mental Models 101 What the heck is a mental model ? A mental model is like a blueprint of how you can boost up your capacity to make decisions that are more strategic and intelligent. It typically is a one-dimensional view of reality and hence you would need to use a variety of models based on circumstances. Examples are many but a few you may have heard of include First Principles Thinking, Second-Order Thinking and Systems Thinking Why use them ? Some Advantages Of Mental Models Include : 1. They are efficiency engines: A mental model is going to help the brain learn how to run more efficiently, especially when it comes to dealing with some tasks that may be repetitive and routine. This is going to allow the brain to be more creative and to focus on novel inputs instead. 2. They are Effective: These mental models are going to help limit the errors that we see, and will make sure there is less wasted effort. This is going to make the brain power more effecti...

  4 Tips To Becoming A Great Storyteller  Understanding the difference between presenting and storytelling is critical to a leader’s ability to engage an audience and move them to action. Unfortunately, presentation software often gets in the way. Slides should be designed to complement a story, not to replace the storyteller. Following are five storytelling strategies to help you stand out the next time you give a presentation. Presenters open PowerPoint. Storytellers craft a narrative. If you want to engage your audience, you have to tell a story. But for most people who prepare presentations, storytelling is not top of mind. Most “presenters” do what sounds logical: They begin by opening the slideware. But most presentation programs aren’t storytelling tools. They’re digital delivery mechanisms. PowerPoint’s default template asks for a title and text. A bulleted list is not a story. A story is a connected series of events told through words and/or pictur...

There are around 70+ companies working on a vaccine for COVID-19 (Corona Virus) right now. It’s quite interesting to note that we have only ~22 vaccines available around the world .. for example we don’t have vaccines for malaria, Nipa virus etc but do have treatments for them. I was quite curious on the concept of vaccination and decided to research and see what’s up with this. Aided by wikipedia and research on the internet, I think it’s a very interesting history to the evolution of the vaccine.   THE GREEK CONNECTION   In fact the seeds for a vaccine probably started from 460 BC when a noted historian and writer (Thucydides) saw that some people became ill from the plague which was prevalent then and recovered and could tend to other sick without falling sick again.   THE CHINA CONNECTION   Fast forward to the middle ages and Plague, Smallpox were the major diseases which ravaged the world and at one point 1 out of every 3 were d...

# sharing # know # resource # think # fundamentals # startups # akp #Top60DecisionMakingToolsForStartups The Effectuation approach (analyzing the means and selecting the approach) as compared to the causality approach (defining the objective and selecting the means) is a practical and useful approach for decision making and problem solving.    Take a look at it and use it in your everyday approach towards problem solving especially startups.    

# excellence # framework # important # AllItTakesIsAMinute # AKP#TopToolsForStartups The theory of constraints framework helps identify the most important bottleneck in your processes and systems in your organization which can then be dealt with to improve performance.  It is also about strengthening your weakest link. # management

# value # inspiration # newyear Just a bit of trivia, December got its name from the Latin word decem (meaning ten) because it was originally the tenth month of the year in the calendar of Romulus c. 750 BC which began in March and we have entered a month named after the Roman god Janus, an appropriate personification of the start of the new year.  This particular Roman god Janus had two faces so that he could look ahead toward the future and back at the past at the same time. As we get rid of an old year and look forward to a new one, I hope we can all try to be a little like Janus. We know through experience what we did wrong and what we did right, and hope to do better this year.  Many of us make ambitious new year resolutions while people like me just take a deep breath and hope for the best.…Here's wishing you and your family a happy new year 2020

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...

Imagine if your phone could call up your near and dear once it senses that you are not being normal in terms of the activities you do or in terms of your dexterity or mobility ? Imagine if your computer could call the tech support chap since it senses that your hard drive is going to crash ? Welcome to the world of Artificial Intelligent (AI) Systems . I read a gartner report that 85% of customer interactions are projected to be managed without a human by 2020, I also read that more than 1.6 B USD has been invested into AI uptil last year . AI has been around for a very long time ( right from my engineering school days) but of late has been garnering a lot of interest. I have to hazard a guess and state that it’s because of lower cost of computing and storage including cloud computing and big data concepts. AI can be referred to as the brain , an intelligent agent in an autonomous entity.  AI typically encompasses machine learning, natural language processing and understa...

2017 has started off and it is the time for writing up your new year resolutions ... and NO, I am NOT going to bore you with advice and other perspective but just going to give you a succinct list of possible things you can think about as you make your way through 2017 ....hope this helps ... Surround yourself with people you truly enjoy being in the company of and stop being judgemental (including yourself), choose being happy over being right Say ‘thank you’, Smile more and be kind Be comfortable with silence and listen to understand, not to respond or retort Prioritize yourself and procrastinate only when absolutely essential Be Mindful - Feel your breath Hope you can think through and make these subtle adjustments ... Have a good 2017 Stay blessed ...

Decisions need data and analysis and the ability to make the right decisions, especially in resource intensive sectors like IT are posing an interesting challenge. The difference between a right decision and the wrong decision could run into thousands of dollars or more and added to that the net cost of the investment gone wrong in terms of business inefficiencies and business lost. Some key questions which typically arise are Value (including “intangible” benefits)?  Risk Management How do I know whether one IT investment is “better” than another (IT or otherwise)?      How do I know when to stop analyzing, accept some risk, and make a decision?   How do I know viability of approach ?         Applied Information Economics (AIE) is the practical application of mathematical models and scientific measurements in order to optimize decisions in uncertain  investment environments. In IT, measuring wha...

There is a great possibility that ideas could be destroying your organization. Puzzled? Join the gang as I was too until I read the article creativity in not enough. Ideas for the sake of ideas without rigorous implementation models and follow up lead to organizational chaos.  Typically successful ideation models have proven to be successful when the organization insider, the apparent conformist has driven an idea through evaluation, implementation and follow up.  This Harvard Business Review article is a thought provoking article on this topic ... Here is the synopis of the article ....

After a while I return to blogging ... i have been busy and have just published my book titled " All It Takes Is A Minute" , which is about 1 minute pointers for driving success ... check the book out at http://pothi.com/pothi/preview?pFile=32292

This is a nice article from Harvard Business review http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/01/youre_rude_because_your_boss_is.html but I dont believe it is an excuse ... I also dont believe that stress should lead to rudeness ... reminds me of the wonderful book by Malcolm Gladwell titled " What the dog saw "  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Pinker-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 ... one instance is about Dogs being aggressive because their master were aggressive as well ... I sincerely believe that we should be who we are, irrespective of what the external world projects on us ... that is the reason why we need an internal compass to guide us ... more on that later ...

Is Sustainability about just getting by? I have been wondering about the meaning of the word sustainability - Does it mean to just get by (Wiki Answers says “to get by, endure or support”), many others have many different definitions. For me, it means being able to get to a better alternative and leaving the world a better place than what it is currently and eventually leading to a healthier community. When I look at sustainability initiatives, I am hoping that the objective is not to get by but to help create conditions which allow us to live a wholesome life – helping create a standard of living that is healthy socially, environmentally and economically viable as well. Another common definition I have come across is that sustainability is about development that meets the present needs without compromising needs of future generations. I am not too sure how to understand or interpret that , I also wonder how do we know the needs of future generations and how do I draw the line an...

I have many of my friends lamenting that they need to change but have not been able to ...well, here are some pointers ... A. Stay involved in whatever you are doing - if someone else were considering the work you do, what would they think ? B. Keep an eye on the big picture - our workplace is more than our workstation C. Talk and listen - we will be better able to interpret the world around us if we talk and listen D. Look for ways to add value - conduct a personal swot analysis E. Be flexible - be flexible in your attitude and your responsibilities ; be keen on finding efficient ways to adapt to new realities F. Learn from your network - if we don't learn together, we hang together ... As Peter drucker said • Managing oneself (Sept. 13): Drucker says to ask yourself some basic questions in deciding how to guide your career. Are you a reader or listener? How do you work best: alone or with others? Please refer to the link as well ...

I was reading a report which says that an average worker spends at a minimum 2 hours a day at work doing personal work. This could be either doing day trading , or house hunting or trying to buy something etc etc. Managers have a dilemma ? how much of this should be allowed and what should be done ... I have a few pointers around this ... involve your teams and employees on what is reasonable and what is not ... once you do this .. you set guidelines and you also elicit tacit disapproval on what is not reasonable. You will find more cooperation around what you believe is not reasonable time spent at work doing personal stuff having regular dialogues and updating the guidelines and reminding them is also a key aspect for sustaining the message sometimes, when employees dont follow the guidelines, disciplining them is a key part of the whole message as well. the key message should be ... keep your personal work at work time to a minimal amount .... hope this helps ... have a ...