Article - 56 Week 13 Are We All Stuck At 80?

Article - 56 Week 13

Are We All Stuck At 80?

We are creatures of habit. We keep on doing things in our work place day in and day out, exactly the same way and yet expect spectacular bonuses, promotions, and pay hikes. When we are even mildly poked to change, we defend back with extremely ingenuous excuses.  Little do we realize that most of what we do produces close to nothing and a few of what we do produces awesome results. I became a fan of Pareto's 80/20 thumb rule, the day I laid my mind on that. It tells us that 80% of our results come from 20% of our efforts.

What happens to the rest of the 80% of our efforts? What would happen if we stop putting those 80% efforts? Of course, this would take away 20% of our cake. If we are ready to sacrifice this 20%, we are effectively armed with 80% more time and resources. And that is huge. We can create much more with that.

Easier said than done. We can not hold back when the mobile hums, knowing fully well that it is a call from a colleague from another location to take the full details of yesterday's operations. The same can be given in a few lines on an email. And you had to stop half way through your "To Do" to indulge in this unproductive '80'. We call the client to find out some details which we already have and had failed to record in an easy way to refer today. Many times, we keep working to look busy to others, only to realize that the rug is being pulled from our feet because we skipped what we should have done earlier. And so on.

Therefore, pinning down this '80' is the first step towards personal effectiveness. We need to joy down a large list that falls under this '80'. Then systematically and methodically dispensing with them one at a time. Once done, we have a huge block of spare time and other resources at our disposal. The process is some thing like tuning and fine tuning. Our personal effectiveness, creativity, and productivity largely depends to the extent we can fine tune. The thing to be careful about is that, if stop tuning, we stop growing. And stagnation hurts as much or probably more than embarking on radical changes and styles in our efforts.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

___________________________________________________________________________

Brgds

Capt Rath

Econship Marine

704:5:6 Maithili's Signets 7th Floor,
Sector 30A  Vashi Navi Mumbai 400 703.

Dir No : 6457 2316

Tel : +91 22 6457 2316 Fax: 27814294

Sales : 645723  18 to 19 Trade : 645723 29 to 31

Acc Adm Hr : 645723  20 to 23 IT : 6457 2324 

Export & Customer Service : 645723 25 to 27

www.econshipping.com + www.econarmy.blogspot.com

MSN : psrath@hotmail.com Skype : psrath

Article - 56 Week 13 HIJACKING FROM A STRATEGIC VANTAGE POSITION

Article - 56 Week 13

HIJACKING FROM A STRATEGIC VANTAGE POSITION

Khyber Pass has been under the control of tribals for millenniums. Even today, the Americans have to pay their way through for the NATO supplies & logistics to Afghanistan. The terrain is such that you can be ambushed easily by the local people. The practice of ambushing and at times just blocking the pass has been highly profitable for the locals. All movements of cargo and humans have been held at ransom for a huge price.  Essentially a handful of people sitting on the vantage points on the pass  have forced billions of people on both sides of the pass to on their knees.

Nothing much has changed today, even in a progressive India. A handful of villagers have branded themselves as PAP (Project Affected People) and partially blocked JNP, the gateway of India's commerce for more compensation and stopping corporatising of a typically slow and inefficient JNP management. What good can possible happen to the local people, if JNP is not corporatised and inefficiency celebrated? How different are these people from the tribals in the Khyber Pass? 

India had a population of about 350 millions in 1950 and 2010 it would be far in excess of a billion. And it is going to grow. How can you possibly accommodate the needs and wants of such a huge population, if pockets of passages and infrastructures are hijacked by narrow interest groups? If the group of people inhabiting the strategic nodal points hijack the project like the tribals in the Khyber Pass, they would cause enormous pain to the rest of the people and their livelihoods. Sitting on railway tracks or blocking the port facilities are anti-people, anti-national, and should be condemned by all sections of the society.

At the same time, it is true that the legislations pertaining to acquisition of lands for government or private projects are both primitive and oppressive, with threads of law from the colonial era. The biggies in league with the political patrons have usurped lands for SEZs etc both from villagers and public for a pittance. This issue needs to be resolved fairly and quickly. The government's inability to legislate intelligent and fair laws, has given this destructive weapon in the hands of the so-called PAPs to take the nation on its knees. 

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

_________________________________________________

Brgds

Capt Rath

Econship Marine

704:5:6 Maithili's Signets 7th Floor,
Sector 30A  Vashi Navi Mumbai 400 703.

Dir No : 6457 2316

Tel : +91 22 6457 2316 Fax: 27814294

Sales : 645723  18 to 19 Trade : 645723 29 to 31

Acc Adm Hr : 645723  20 to 23 IT : 6457 2324 

Export & Customer Service : 645723 25 to 27

www.econshipping.com + www.econarmy.blogspot.com

MSN : psrath@hotmail.com Skype : psrath

Article - 55 Week 12 Progress sans Justice:

Article - 55 Week 12

Progress sans Justice:

Last week I was in Singapore, where I gave a talk to the students of SMU on Government, Business, and Society. Something struck me like a hard-rock when one student asked me if the Government of Singapore was a good one or a bad one. I was not struck by the question, but by the answer that had to be delivered with as much propriety, honesty and candidness in the forum. I told the audience that a good government is not one who is just successful in our eyes, in fact success does come forth from being fair and good to all the citizens and in promoting well directed freer market forces. Freeing up market forces again is an externality of unadulterated fairness and justness on exchanges of excesses. Doling out quick and fair justice is the first step of building a good and durable government. When you read the ancient Indian stories about the Kings and Princes, you realize that for a good and successful King, quick and fair justice preceded military prowess. Even Lord Ram, had to push his own wife into fire and wilderness to make sure that justice had to be quick and fair and made no special relaxation for the privileged that included the First Lady.

The reason we languish in mediocrity in our shipping industry, along with many other fields in India is because, justice is in the slammers. Justice is unarguably delayed beyond tolerance, is mostly unfair, and the worst thing is that it is discriminatory. 

When CONCOR makes a mistake in its billing, it refuses to own up and pay back, when the terminal makes a mistake of not handling its duty properly, it slaps a storage cost on the shipping line, when the Port Authority scripts a doubled-edged instrument of BOT contract, when a small & genuine error is detected in data entry the Customs not only slaps a humungous punitive charge on the shipping line but also takes a huge bribe that could wipe a business off, when some company  pays its service taxes on time and sincerity its books are ravaged by the department to extort bribes and the list is endless.

And the quality and quantity of justness and fairness injected upon the populace, differentiates a good government from a bad one, without being specific. A democratic form of government can also be bad. The consolation lies in the fact that at least  there is a recourse for badness, but there is no guarantee that the replacing government would necessarily be just and fair in its life to death struggle to perpetuate its seat and handle on power.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

___________________________________________________________________________

Use http://econarmy.blogspot.com for info sharing

Brgds

Capt Rath

Econship Marine

704:5:6 Maithili's Signets 7th Floor,
Sector 30A  Vashi Navi Mumbai 400 703.

Dir No : 6457 2316

Tel : +91 22 6457 2316 Fax: 27814294

Sales : 645723  18 to 19 Trade : 645723 29 to 31

Acc Adm Hr : 645723  20 to 23 IT : 6457 2324 

Export & Customer Service : 645723 25 to 27

www.econshipping.com + www.econarmy.blogspot.com

MSN : psrath@hotmail.com Skype : psrath

Article - 52 Week 9 Personal Goal Setting Precedes Corporate Goals:

Personal Goal Setting Precedes Corporate Goals:

We hear about goal setting as a management rhetoric or rather a fad in our corporate climes. This over-kill of goal setting in our work places, does not mean that we can be really productive without it. First of all, goals need not be grandiose in design or sound. Goal needs to be simple and clear. Sometimes it is difficult to think in simpler and clearer blocks. We need to think of what we want to achieve in a year, and then try to quantify our projected growth, as objectively as we possible can. The same needs to be broken into blocks of months. 

A monthly block looks less daunting and gettable at first sight. But when you go about getting there, you realize that you are almost stuck. That is where we have to believe in ourselves to hold on tenaciously. We have to be careful to our vulnerability to frustration. Revisiting the past to find splinters of unattended patches is important here. And the challenge would be to think and find better ways of getting things done to get at your goal. This introspection and innovating on the strategies ahead, should be a group think to have a better quality of newness in addition to adding commitment and cooperation from the full team. 

Even in our personal & professional work spaces, we need to set goal for ourselves. We can not be part of a bigger goal, if we are unable to set personal goals for ourselves. Personal goals need to be congruent with the larger team goals, or else we are on the wrong job. While setting goals for ourselves, we need to keep our focus on gettability, objectivity of the goals, reviews, re-strategizing, improvising, measuring progress, and celebrating the mile stones. Progress goes something like a fly-wheel - slow at start and building almost an unstoppable momentum towards the end. At that stage, we could stretch our goals.

It's a haunting dilemma as to how we can set our personal goals. We need to understand that our professional achievement is not an isolated space. Our family life, mental state, physical health, intellectual sharpness, and even a good social life affects our professional productivity. If we lack in any one of them, it does affect our professional prowess. Therefore, it becomes imperative that we need to bring in incremental and measured improvements on our family life etc. Many of us buy the story of our corporate set-set goals to such an extent that we forget to improve ourselves first. When we do that, we work far too hard, far too late, and drink far too much caffeine to tire ourselves to exhaustion or burnout. With mounting stress, we keep neglecting our personal improvements. This can lead to stress in family, health, and a fractured social clime. 

Therefore, personal goal settings are far more important for us and their positive effects shall give us the ammunition to participate in the corporate goal settings.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

Use http://econarmy.blogspot.com for info sharing

Brgds

Capt Rath

Econship Marine

704:5:6 Maithili's Signets 7th Floor,
Sector 30A  Vashi Navi Mumbai 400 703.

Dir No : 6457 2316

Tel : +91 22 6457 2316 Fax: 27814294

Sales : 645723  18 to 19 Trade : 645723 29 to 31

Acc Adm Hr : 645723  20 to 23 IT : 6457 2324 

Export & Customer Service : 645723 25 to 27

www.econshipping.com + www.econarmy.blogspot.com

MSN : psrath@hotmail.com Skype : psrath

Article - 51 Week 8 On Government & Business:

Article - 51 Week 11

On Government & Business:

"What is the relationship between government and business? Why in some nations the governments enable and facilitate business? And why in some places they restrict businesses?"

The answers to these questions can uplift many lives and make our place a much better place to live in. Before, attempting to answer this, we have to understand the constituents and meaning of business. Business means exchanges of excesses among individuals and entities representing a group of individuals. That means, if there are no excesses, there would be no businesses. If each individual can produce a little less than what he needs to survive, using his labour, mind, and available resources, he will eventually have nothing to give in an exchange. He can not even promise to give any thing in future, considering his present state. And to survive and prove Darwin's laws right, he needs to steal from others. If he alone, is unable to execute this act he would join up with people with similar conditions as his. Then you have the stronger group surviving at the cost of the weaker group. That is how, nations have been built on the moving sands of history. By plundering a weaker group, the stronger Group creates excesses over what they need to survive. And immediately they would seek equally strong Groups to exchange the excesses. This was clearly seen in the arid and dry deserts of mediaeval Arabia. Same too was seen in the wild west. In those circumstances, justice, fairness and equity have a completely different hue from what we have from a position of plenty for many.

Hypothetically speaking, if each individual produces just enough to survive for himself and nothing more, he will have little reason to take up the risky task of stealing where he could be killed or maimed by the victims. At the same time, he has nothing in excess to exchange. That is an unstable stasis. The situation would sway toward formation of stronger Groups and fleeing weaker ones.

Today's situation is unique. Many pockets of nations have excesses far more than they possible need and they continue producing the excesses. And many other nations like in Sub-Saharan Africa have far less to make a living. The differences between the rich and poor nations grows more and more when we have governments in in the poorer nations looking at short-term and extorting every thing they can lay their hands on, including the natural resources over and under the ground - selling them at a pittance to the rich nations, who would bloat their excesses even to phenomenal levels.  

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

Brgds

Capt Rath

Econship Marine

704:5:6 Maithili's Signets 7th Floor,
Sector 30A  Vashi Navi Mumbai 400 703.

Dir No : 6457 2316

Tel : +91 22 6457 2316 Fax: 27814294

Sales : 645723  18 to 19 Trade : 645723 29 to 31

Acc Adm Hr : 645723  20 to 23 IT : 6457 2324 

Export & Customer Service : 645723 25 to 27

www.econshipping.com + www.econarmy.blogspot.com

MSN : psrath@hotmail.com Skype : psrath

Article - 54 Week 11 Our Government & Our Shipping:

Article - 54 Week 11

Our Government & Our Shipping:

Even the Romans understood the pitfalls of democratic dizziness in timely & gritty decision making. They  empowered Fabius to wield absolute power and authority for six months to save Rome from the marauding Hannibal. He brought in a set of new & novel strategies and tacts to take on the enemy of a higher mite and skill.

Lets us look at ourselves in the shipping industry. We have a democratic system that does not understand its elbow from the toenails. A bureaucracy that is mostly self-serving and inward-looking. The significance of an important industry that would support this growing nation, is lost in this labyrinth of democratic chaos and a cock-eyed bureaucracy. 

How desperately we need a Fabius to save Indian shipping from the Global shipping market, especially from the flags of convenience and our own tax maze, is evident from its very decline. Our shipping Ministers talk about the port capacities - albeit occasionally - as synonyms for the entire Indian shipping industry. No one bothers to talk about the realities. Declining tonnage, a third rated coastal shipping, a laggard & expensive rail service, an infantile ship-building industry, a ship manning industry that smacks of inconsistency, and the other related droopy and sleepy services like repairs, supplies, bunkers, training, technical and commercial managements etc  are a testimony to the fact that we need a Fabius. A Fabius that lays the road ahead with a roadmap and goal to match the pace of a resurgent India and its shipping needs. It would be a defeatist strategy to seek shipping services from China on one hand and a state-owned and state-funded & gloated entity on the other. 

We need to lobby hard for a Fabius as our Shipping Minister or Secretary, who could understand and initiate the changes in the right direction and save us from this whirlpool of mediocrity.

For more & unedited versions, please visit & leave your opinions on, http://ourships.blogspot.com/

_____________________________________________________________

Brgds

Capt Rath

Econship Marine

704:5:6 Maithili's Signets 7th Floor,
Sector 30A  Vashi Navi Mumbai 400 703.

Dir No : 6457 2316

Tel : +91 22 6457 2316 Fax: 27814294

Sales : 645723  18 to 19 Trade : 645723 29 to 31

Acc Adm Hr : 645723  20 to 23 IT : 6457 2324 

Export & Customer Service : 645723 25 to 27

www.econshipping.com + www.econarmy.blogspot.com

MSN : psrath@hotmail.com Skype : psrath