I don't know why I feel this anger,
Un-passionate and bleak, it fails its purpose.
No riveting narrative in its bosom it holds,
No sorrow it exudes no reason it proclaims- this melancholy ire.

Not unfettered and wild, just ....dead defeated and mild
It fails to evoke even my own sympathy -this accursed barren excuse of an anger
It has no substance - no character befitting its traditional stature- it falls flat under the weight of its expectations
Just overbearing emptiness-and affair of contemptuous, pitiful despair.

I fail to understand it,
and this furthers feeds my disgust -my inability to comprehend,
Feeds my disgust over defeat at the hands of this unworthy opponent

It is usually I who cage my anger.
Keep her under lock and bolt.
For fear over what she may unleash if left unchained.
Now karma has come back to bite me
And I do not take lightly
To this reversal of roles- it feels my hand is forced
and my anger has caged me inside me.

The recent killing of the Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud by a US drone puts the precarious position our north western neighbour finds itself in.The government has come out and openly condemned the attack and killing of the terrorist leader.
For most Indians this would be an "Ahah!" moment and would confirm their suspicions that Pakistan is breeding terrorists for the sole purpose of attacking India and that somehow the 180 million odd people all agree on this one aim in life. But they would be missing at least one crucial point- that Pakistan- irrespective of whether or not they colluded with the Taliban- has no idea how to control them. The streets of Peshawar after the incident apparently wore a deserted look for fear of backlash.And why not? The Taliban has issued a threat directly to the Pakistani people saying that they "know who their real enemy is" and that their revenge will be "unprecedented".
In the backdrop of an announcement by the Pakistani PM that Pakistan would engage in a peace dialogue with the Taliban, this killing makes the nation a snake in the grass in the eyes of the terrorist organisation. That is not a perception anybody wants to give these guys who are hiding in your own backyard and feel no qualms about killing children.Oh, and the previous line is not a sentimental outburst- these guys actually do NOT care about beating up children. Among the list of leaders being considered for the top post is Mullah Fazlullah - whose henchmen attacked Malala.
And the US -as has been its wont in the western Asia- is shrugging its shoulders. They probably expected accolades for taking out top Taliban henchmen one by one. They are trying to freedom so hard they forget about the people they are freedoming for. The more they refuse to pull out of this region, the more pregnant it becomes with problems.
And in the midst of it all is the Pakistani who is battling a 9% inflation rate and petrol price hikes, unsure of whether or not to step out , and if he does, unsure if he will step back in.

1) News article : http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/iphone-5s-and-iphone-5c-reaction-and-first-impressions-8808622.html

Apple has always known to be an innovator (or at best when it just misses the innovator train- an analyser) in the technology space. Focussing on premium products with enhanced user experience has allowed it to ward off stiff competition from Asian manufacturers. This time round they seem to have gone for a two-way market stretch. Initial reactions were mixed and only sales will tell if they achieved their goal.

With the iPhone 5S Apple has won the innovation badge for this round of the sparring with Samsung which had really taken the fight to its US competitor with the S2,S3,S4 and Galaxy series. The new fingerprint technology and the 64 bit processor have reassured the public that innovation did not die with the death of its founder. Full points for being a prospector(high Customer Centric innovation)

The 5C seems to be targeted to the Chinese market. With plastic bodies, a range of colours and a comparitively cheaper pricing, I believe Apple is testing the waters to take the fight to Samsung's own backyard of competing on cost. They seem to want to position themselves as the Analyser in the Asian market combining trademark innovation focus with a new found vigor towards cost-centric measures.

It will be interesting to see if this strategy works out.

2) Bounded rationality : A thought experiment suggests that complete rationality would in fact lead to death, since the individual would not even be able to get up from his/her bed without first considering the entire infinity of possibilities. Therefore, rationality does not seem to be the natural state of the human mind. This goes very well with the way laws are framed in our country(as a conversation with the "ordinary and reasonable person"). Natural laws also seem to suggest that entropy is preferred over order and hence it would not be erroneous to assume that tackling such entropy requires a fair degree of heuristically determined behaviour. If this is true for an individual, it must be so for an organisation as well.

3) If believing in leadership affecting the culture of a firm is difficult, one need not look very far from the tech giants with leaders well known for their quirky habits which later formed the basis of the organisations they founded or helped shape. First to come to mind of course, is Google with its "Don't be evil" Manifesto.Based on an innate apprehension that sales would kill the culture of pure technology for technology's sake, it is perhaps this motto which consistently keeps Google high on the list of most admired brands.

Then of course there is Zuckerberg's "Code wins arguments" . It tells you facebook has passionate coders, end of story. Rumor has it that Hackathons- a favourite of Zuckerberg- are the way most of the stuff at Facebook is invented.

These companies today stand for the values that their leaders stand for. Their employees are passionate technologists before all else. This is keeping in line with their founders' visions. Their economic success is just incidental to this value fit.

Contrast - Microsoft: Steve Ballmer is an exceptional salesman. Under him Microsoft launched XBox, acquired Nokia, brought out Windows 8 and completely revamped itself. However since he has taken over the share price has remain well below the $50 mark when he took over. (Partly due to changes in dividend policy). This is because it made mistakes- Vista, Zune, completely misreading the mobile market until it was forced to make an acquisition. It took ore than 10 years for them to find a balance under his leadership.

Apple- same story , different names. Headed by a visionary techie founder soon after  his death iOS6 maps happened. Even the recent iPhone 5C has not been met with the same thunderous applause that Apple had grown used to in the past decade.

All of this points to the notion that the continuation of the original story a company stood for is extremely important in its future. Tech companies which have their founding fathers at their head are thriving. But one must wonder- how do they ensure that posterity does not dilute that vision?

Articles: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323665504579030842346520218.html

http://theweek.com/article/index/246045/tk-the-story-behind-5-great-business-mantras

4) Here is an interesting read on a large scale re-branding exercise carried out by Argos. Over 96% of UK's population lives ten mins away from an Argos store is a household name in the UK. The company changed its internal culture in 2003 responding to employee needs. Then in 2010 it embarked on an ambitious marketing mix and re-branding strategy. This seems to have worked. Does this show that any re-branding or external facing change must also be predated by an internal change wherever necessary? The People Expess case study had the company jump into external growth strategy without resolving their internal problems. Argos has handled it differently and the results are starkly different.

Articles:

http://communicatemagazine.co.uk/archive/99-april-2010/1394-brandrebrand-argos

http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/argos/re-focussing-a-companys-culture-and-marketing-mix/changing-the-culture-at-argos.html#axzz2iikdzRdZ

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24634730

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHuOfdLabCw



5) One little known site making waves on the internet by acting as the photo sharer of choice for the internet's billboard Reddit is imgur.com. Started by Allan Schaaf in 2009, this website has redefined image sharing and commenting on the internet.

The interesting phenomenon to be observed is the way one can see a community evolving on the internet from scratch just as it would in the real world. Overtime the site's members have defined artefacts such as the mascot "imguraffe", rituals such as "giving love for cake day posts". The site itself promotes some of the artefacts by giving medals and trophies based on popularity of submitted content- forming an informal heirarchy of sorts.There are some roles people perform on the site and not all these roles are socially acceptable in the context of the imgur society e.g downvote fairies. There are also invisible aspects of culture - set of underlying beliefs and attitudes (an almost morbid fascination for cats and video games, general abhorence for airing political/religious views, a strong support of democracy and free speech and supporting talent and charities when possible). It's amazing how people who have never met each other, do not track each other(this is not the facebook model of content sharing) come together to form a strong community closest to a meritocracy. Sure, there are geographical biases based on the timezones, but the site's content management system(which the developers often tweak based on inputs form the community) does a pretty good job of giving you options in terms of what you want to see.

Then there is the spillover. There are plenty of cases of people in meeting in the real world and interacting via real world gifts and letters post the online interaction which again makes it into the content submitted.

This clearly goes to show that culture when seen in an organisational perspective is something that humans gravitate towards. The amount of money raised, the number of missing people found and stories of people bringing each other back from the brink bear testimony to that fact. Culture binds communities and it is important for an organisation to view itself primarily as a community of its clients, employees, shareholders and other stakeholders within its sphere of influence.

If this is true in such a flat community as an online sharing site, the power of imposing a culture top down to move the organisation as a cohesive unit should never be underestimated.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/imgur.com

http://imgur.com/r/startledcats

imgur study: http://imgur.com/gallery/ah8hZkN

Another song from the pavement

I have a cat.

We tried naming him, my friends and I and pretty soon we had come with a veritable Sahasranaamam of names each extolling one or more of his cat like qualities. the only problem was, the little rascal didn't respond to any of it. The only semblance of a response- and by that I mean, the term which fetches you the highest probability of evoking a cocking of the ears in your general direction by the little bugger- is achieved quite simply by "Cat". so we named him Cat Cat. To increase the probability you see.

Not to say that they aren't responsive to external stimuli-cats.Both, Cat cat and his dominating little sister respond magnificently to the crackling of the food packet prised open five or six times a day.
They are natural hunters and hence more attuned to hearing. So much so , that CatCat can figure our from the steps in the hallway as to who is approaching, and accordingly either hide himself(except the tail- he somehow doesn't realise that it's also a part of him) behind the curtain or meow audaciously for no good reason.

They are pretty gifted in the smell and hearing department as well and would remind you of it, sniffing and licking you(sometimes I wonder if they are going "tsk tsk" in their head) at each nap time.

Touch and sight are extra ordinary as well. So much so that the little devil bawls her lungs out when I pat her, which in itself is rare considering that she scampers away at Boltian speed if she catches sight of me.

Overall - sensible - but pretty dumb all things considered. A solid 3.5 out of 5.

{P.S: LPT and Note to self: Get a dog}