Week 17 We have never done it that way!

Week 17

We have never done it that way!

If someone asks you to come to office at 8 AM in place of 10, you would take it as an affront into your freedom. And if your Boss asks you to sit in the office till 9 PM, you hardly find a reason to protest. We still type on "QWERTY" keyboards, even though we have been taught "ABCDE…" from the school. We refuse to  confront corrupt officials when they demand bribes for our legitimate and right acts and promptly pay up a bribe. There are a lot of useless or not-so-effective things, we refuse to let go. Whenever, there is a new process or procedure introduced in place, we fight like hell to resist.

The enemy of all good changes in life is the father of all excuses, " We have always done it that way." Period. No argument beyond that. In reality, that is where we put a handbrake on our growth. Experimenting with new changes is the only doorway to innovation and therefore better productivity. It is true that majority of the new changes fail miserably. But the recompense you get from a few that work overwhelmingly transforms your productivity and creativity to another orbit.

This statement "We have always done it that way" can be easily replaced with "There is always a better way. Let's try the new initiative."  And it works wonders in our lives to embrace changes and kick off inertia.

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

_________________________________________________

Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 59 Week 17 The Madness Of The Crowd And We, The Rational Individuals:

Article - 59  Week 17 

The Madness Of The Crowd And We, The Rational Individuals:

Group judgements are akin to mob judgements. I have yet to come across an individual who is as unwise and as irrational as a Group of people. However, when a crowd of rational and highly intelligent people gather, their individual brilliances transmute into manifest foolishness. Their brilliances just disappear and turn into diabolic imbecility instead of adding up to sparkling brilliance. That is the reason why our democratic administration is so utterly chaotic and wasteful. Democracy per se is the best tool to select individuals to govern us. But using democracy as a process to administer is ineffective. 

Let's analyse our shipping industry. As individuals in the industry, we can see the gaping holes and understand the ways of plugging them. But collectively - a Shipping Minister and a Shipping Secretary, consulting a whole body of individuals and institutions inside and outside the industry - go misty eyed to the gaping holes. Ship owning industry, bunkering industry, spares & stores industry are daunted by myriad taxes vis-a-vis shipping friendly nations like the Panama or Singapore. Ship manning in Indian waters is marred by ancient labour laws and myopic unions. Indigenous liner shipping is subjected to crippling service tax and income taxes while foreign based companies with DIT can walk away from these oppressive tax monsters and their hungry keepers. Coastal shipping is marred by exorbitant economic rent collections from terminals and ports and the group of interest groups holding them up. Shipbuilding is suffocated with Unions, labour laws, and indirect taxes while China and Korea continue to subsidise, and the list goes endless. In simple words, we a nation of more than billions, have lost focus on reality - so far as shipping industry goes. At an individual level, we may all concur on these glaring shortcomings and at a collective level, where we elect a body of government to set things right, we go awfully confused. A sort of mad digging at Sethusamudram or Vallarpadams are the tips of such monumental foolishness. That's a painful price we pay for our much prided individual power to elect a collaborative governance.

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

___________________________________________________________________________

Brgds

Capt Rath

Article - 58 Week 16 Don’t we need an Anna Hazare of shipping?:

Article - 58  Week 16 

Don't we need an Anna Hazare of shipping?

A container loaded with two types of deadly DG cargo - wrongly stowed and packed by the shipper - entered JNP. The shipping line realised the danger during final checking before loading the box and shuts it out - rightly so. The shipping line had given approval for each DG cargo to be carried in separate containers - not to be packed into a single container, with dangerous and explosive ramifications. The container was now a big threat to the Terminal and the people working inside. This had to be moved out of the port with utmost urgency for separating out the individual cargo. It is a matter of common sense.

However, there is hardly anything common about common sense and our wolverine Customs processes and its kursis. The process is ridiculously known as 'out of town permission' -  even though the box moves from one customs bonded area (Port) to another customs bonded area(CFS) - undertaken by a transporter under Customs Bond. To get this 'out of town permission' was so time consuming, palm greasing, and pain-staking  that the surveyors appointed by the shipping line, passed the shipping bill and filed the EGM as exported out. On paper at least, it is the duty of the customs department to see that on-boarding on shipping bill and passing of EGM is done by them to authenticate that the cargo has been shipped. In practice, they would blindly stamp on any thing, as long as the palms are greased and the red-tapes are secure.

In this case, the customs inspectorate, turned their own gluttony and felony on its head by putting the full blame on the shipping line. That's an expected given in our land of corruption. The shipping line continued pleading and haggling for praying a lesser bribe - but the agony became harsher and prolonged. Finally, the shipping line had to fork our a bribe of Rs 25,000/ in hard cash under the table to the inspector to get the shipping bills back and the permission for the ridiculous and vulgar 'out of town'. This took a neat 20 days.

Imagine, what could have happened if the DG cargo had exploded or imploded inside the Terminal. We could have had loss of lives, maiming or even seizure of port operations for days. The danger that was posed by this cargo was equivalent to what a terrorist could do to our port or airport. Therefore, our question should be - Who is more dangerous, a terrorist or a wolverine red-tape?

At times it is a shame to do business in our country, because the red-tapes are unbreakable to the common man and a malleable toy in the hands of the corrupt. 

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 - 57 Week 14 Are We All Stuck At 80?

Article - 57  Week 14

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 miracles with that.

Easier said than done. We can not hold back when the mobile phone hums, knowing fully well that it is a call from a colleague from another location to hear out the frivolous 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 jot 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. So, let's change the way we think and change the way we work with an open mind.

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

___________________________________________________________________________