Thomas Alva Edison the great inventor is behind so many inventions, like a storage battery, a Dictaphone, a mimeograph and many more which we are not aware of. The most famous one among them is a light bulb. Its said that he tried making a light bulb for like 10,000 times and failed as many times. Its only after that that he finally got the light bulb to lit up. After that the great man says that ‘failure is ok’, failure teaches you how ‘not to do a thing’. After those 10,000 tries, he says, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
That was 1879, now is 2009, around 130 years later. Now see how relevant is that famous quote of his.
Ever since our childhood days we have been bred for success, not failure. I can remember many of my friends who were reprimanded if they did not get the first rank in their class, they would cry, this is the case with everyone. We never talked about people who failed. Somehow there is a negative emotion related to failure. If you fail you are not good enough to live a respectful life in this world. Everything is gauged by the material success that he has achieved. By how many marks he has scored in the related exam, how many lakhs (make it crores ) of rupees he has in his bank. By what kind (or say what level) of restaurant, he goes to for his lunches and dinners.
We some how never look to find how many hours have we been able to spend with our family and friends in the last month. Some quality time I mean. We some how never look to find out how happy or satisfied we are, when we go to our bed for sleep. We some how never look to find the happiness that’s there in the daily walk towards our work place.
We somehow miss the fun of our daily meals in the mess cause we are too busy trying to figure out what all we have to do in the coming days, the assignments, the presentations, the other ‘important’ things in life. Try this: ask yourself what had you eaten yesterday for dinner. You didn’t get it right, right? You got it right ? Well then I can assure you, you don’t have any submissions soon.
We tend to bask in the glory of our past performance, how we had achieved this and that. We are going to think through what we are going to do in our future. Both ways we are not living in the present. We miss the fun, the simplicity of a small child who walks past us and gives a smile to us. We miss to smile cause somehow we are so busy with our thoughts of past and future that we miss our present.
A big shot professional from an international company, will not be able to be with her wife during the delivery of their first baby. Why ? Cause he is a ‘thorough professional’ who has to leave the country for a ‘very important’ foreign assignment. That’s called success. I call it failure.
Failure for me is not, not getting marks in a particular exam, or not being the topper. Failure for me is the feeling that oh I didn’t give it my 100% and thus I didn’t get through.
Failure for me would not be, when I will not have enough money in my entire life to have dinner in Hotel Taj. Rather failure for me would be when I will not have my family and friends to have dinner with, no matter what the restaurant. Cause I was too busy to spend time with them, that’s classic failure.
Failure is not when you don’t get selected in very good institutions like IIM A or SCMHRD (that feels good). But failure is when we stop trying. Failure is not when you have had a blow on your head from your opponent, no that’s not failure. Failure is when you stop fighting only cause you are scared of another blow on your head, that’s failure.
So I say ‘live in the present’, don’t give it away for your future, cause you never know, ‘kal ho na ho’. Be a professional and thorough one I say, but not the one who doesn’t have time to be with his wife when she needs you the most. Don’t give away the ‘real’ life for the material success. Cause at 70 when you are sipping tea on one fine evening sitting in a bungalow in some posh location in Delhi or Mumbai, you don’t want to have the feeling that I wish I had done this, I wish I had done that. If that feeling comes into you at that age, the time has passed to do something about it. That’s real failure.
Zindagi rocks !!!!
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Customerisation....
The meaning of the title given to this piece is self explanatory. In marketing the concept of customisation is when the company gives some alterations, some additional features to a basic product in line with the demands from a set of customers. For example the customer might want a different kind of paint job to the car according to his liking. That’s customisation.
Now the marketer has gone one step further and is willing to provide many more significant changes to the product for the customer. For example we have car manufacturers (very small in number tough as of now) which will manufacture a car exactly of your requirement, the engine size, the shape, the tyres, almost everything.
Though the concept of customerisation is relatively new to the world of marketing, it’s not all that new to the world of humans. Infact its been in existence since ages. A very simple example will prove my point, this goes for all the men (well almost), who are very well behaved, well groomed, well mannered and you can put many other good adjectives preceded by ‘well’ to describe men in ‘front of women’. See now you know what am I talking about. I hope you agree. And then there is the other side of them when they are no women around, there are some other species all together. That’s called customerisation. Giving whats expected from us.
Same is the case with a situation of say an interview. We have different answers for the same question asked in different companies that we sit for. When I was to sit for Accenture interview in my campus placements (DJ Sanghvi), I was suppose to be a little aggressive and profit oriented, and then preparing for Infosys interview I had to put on the ethical me mask. See customerisation again.
Living in a society where Maslows hierarchy plays a role and social needs being the 2nd most basic need, we cannot upset the people around us. So what we do is customerize our behaviour according to how we are expected to behave and be. We put on different masks for professional life, life with friends, life with family and so many other masks just to fit in, so much for customerisation.
Or else live like the protagonist of the Ayn Rand’s novel ‘Fountain Head’, ‘Howard Roark’. He was a man who didn’t care about what people expected out of him and he didn’t give in to the requirements of the society, to fit in. He went about his own merry way (but faced a lot of hardships in the process) doing what gave him satisfaction and not going for customerisation of any kind.
Its very difficult to live a life like that now in this tough world. But it would be very good if we could do that, if we could be just what we are and not what people expect us to be. It would be great if I was a constant who will have no masks but ‘me’, but alas in this doggie dog world as subbu calls it there is no place for such a behaviour. So customerize and suffice the world.
Zindagi rocks !!!!
Now the marketer has gone one step further and is willing to provide many more significant changes to the product for the customer. For example we have car manufacturers (very small in number tough as of now) which will manufacture a car exactly of your requirement, the engine size, the shape, the tyres, almost everything.
Though the concept of customerisation is relatively new to the world of marketing, it’s not all that new to the world of humans. Infact its been in existence since ages. A very simple example will prove my point, this goes for all the men (well almost), who are very well behaved, well groomed, well mannered and you can put many other good adjectives preceded by ‘well’ to describe men in ‘front of women’. See now you know what am I talking about. I hope you agree. And then there is the other side of them when they are no women around, there are some other species all together. That’s called customerisation. Giving whats expected from us.
Same is the case with a situation of say an interview. We have different answers for the same question asked in different companies that we sit for. When I was to sit for Accenture interview in my campus placements (DJ Sanghvi), I was suppose to be a little aggressive and profit oriented, and then preparing for Infosys interview I had to put on the ethical me mask. See customerisation again.
Living in a society where Maslows hierarchy plays a role and social needs being the 2nd most basic need, we cannot upset the people around us. So what we do is customerize our behaviour according to how we are expected to behave and be. We put on different masks for professional life, life with friends, life with family and so many other masks just to fit in, so much for customerisation.
Or else live like the protagonist of the Ayn Rand’s novel ‘Fountain Head’, ‘Howard Roark’. He was a man who didn’t care about what people expected out of him and he didn’t give in to the requirements of the society, to fit in. He went about his own merry way (but faced a lot of hardships in the process) doing what gave him satisfaction and not going for customerisation of any kind.
Its very difficult to live a life like that now in this tough world. But it would be very good if we could do that, if we could be just what we are and not what people expect us to be. It would be great if I was a constant who will have no masks but ‘me’, but alas in this doggie dog world as subbu calls it there is no place for such a behaviour. So customerize and suffice the world.
Zindagi rocks !!!!
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