Circus from monkey cage!

I was listening to a podcast on top management in which I came across an unusual statement by a US journalist and critic of American life henry luis mencon said that “democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage” In that way you are taking care of your employees( Similar to monkey) and also your customers( Similar to the people who have come to watch the circus). It does makes some sense.

Entrepreneurship: Few Questions

Is it seeking un-chartered waters? Are skills required at the start same as the skill required in the later stages? Is it about breaking the set mentality? Is it about risk taking? Is it about expecting the unexpected? Is it about taking feedback from your first few customers and then implementation? Does it include working in a predictable market? Is it about nurturing great people? Is it about failing fast or succeeding sooner?

Product companies Sales Staffing

How to hire your sales representatives in an IT product company also depends on the stage of the company. For example if the company has just started and has released it beta product then the best strategy will be to hire for learning and hire few good people who are interested in technology and sales so that your burn rate is not much. In the initial stages all your customer facing departments like sales, product engineering, and marketing should focus on learning from customers so as to stabilize the product. In the next stage when the product has stabilized and your revenue model has been proved one can hire more no of sales people who should be instrumental in getting as many leads as possible. In this stage some companies make wrong choices of sales people and they hire along the lines of their initial hiring which is not required. In this stage you require sales persons with decent knowledge of product and aggressive attitude to sell so that they can give as many leads as possible. They need not be paid on similar lines as the previous sales recruits. The goal should be to capture as much market as possible in minimum possible time and to reach the breakeven as early as possible with least burn rate.

Wisdom in hindsight or foresight!

A thought came to my mind that that generally people are of the view that wisdom is in the hindsight , but i feel both foresight and hindsight are inter-related. Only if you have hindsight you can gain foresight. So it become of utmost importance to analyse events which have happened in our life and internalise the learnings. This will sharpen our foresight.

Marketing our teachers

We celebrated teachers day but hardly realise that our teachers are grossly underpaid as compared to other developing and developed countries. Even when it comes to marketing them it is their successfull students who are praised and not their teachers. We hear about IIM's fat salaries but rarely hear about the effort of our lecturers/professors. Even in the media the effect is glorified. In this constant struggle between cause and effect should we not promote the cause rather than the effect!