Strategy of Focus and Spill-over

There is line in famous poetry of Hindi poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan that reads like this –

vyx&vyx iFk crykrs lc ij eSa ;s crykrk gwWa]

jkg idM+ rw ,d pykpy ik tk;sxk e/kq”kkykAA

Through this line, the poet asserts that although there are multiple ways of achieving an objective as advised by different persons, but I tell you to take up any one path and you will reach your destination. This line best explains my concept of focus and spill-over strategy applicable to all endeavors of life including business.

This strategy say to choose a point of focus and keep on concentrating on this. As the focus deepens a stage of saturation comes, beyond which the energies put to focus spill over to related matters on their own and strengthen them. I explain this by an example. In a production unit, the management may focus on one thing, let us say production quantity, and works to maximize it. With this focus, beyond a certain point, various bottlenecks - such as poor maintenance of equipment, lack of coordination between various production sub-units, shortage or inefficiency of personnel, non-availability of inventories needed for production, etc in the path of maximizing production come to surface as spill-over phenomena of the focus. Still with focus on maximizing production, these bottle-necks have to be removed for achieving the objective.

This strategy of focus and spill-over may be used in any situation of routine life, career planning or in business enterprises. Here we deal with application of the strategy in these three fields.

Routine Life

A laborer working with a mason for a few years become mason him/herself because of his/her focus on the masonry work and gradually learn the skill as spill-over effect of his/her skill. A housewife, through concentration of loving her husband gives birth to children, and through focus on caring for the children learns all arts and sciences of motherhood. This way, in every endeavor of routine life, a focus spills over to the related fields in a natural way. From such experiences only, I have conceptualized this strategy for application in commercial fields to such as career development and business diversification plans.    

Career Development

In career plan of an individual, the strategy of focus and spill-over suggests focusing on a current expertise to an extent that it needs additional expertise. For example, an authorship career needs the person to be an expert in some field to write about. If he/she keeps on concentrating on authoring about his/her chosen field, a stage comes when all contents in his/her mind about the subject get exhausted and to continue offshoots of the subject begin germinating in his/her mind as spill-over effect of the main focal point. 

Business Diversification

The best and the most frequent application of the strategy is in business diversification plans wherein the way to diversify into a new product line comes in a natural way while keeping focus on the main product line. The human resource skills, raw materials, market, etc related to the main product line pave way to a new product line wherein the human skills, materials or markets already in hand of the organization are utilized in an optimum way without much of disturbances. Thus, the diversification comes as an extension of the main business for utilization of available human skills, raw materials or markets in hand of the organization.

For example, for a company in business of desk-top computer hardware, as the saturation comes in the business, the skills available may find use in manufacturing more advanced computers, the raw materials with the organization may be used for manufacturing computer peripherals, or the market in hand of the organization may be used to push in laptop computers. 

A Crucial development needed in computer technology

A Crucial development needed in computer technology

Learn to Live on What you Earn

Learn to Live on What you Earn:

'via Blog this'

How to Earn Market Leadership

Being a market leader and maintaining it is a tough job for any company of business-person because of the ever-fluctuating situation of the business world. In-spite of this, there are a few factors deciding one’s status in the market, and through focus on these factors, one improves his/her business’s chances of leading the market.

Brand Power

Building a brand is a slow pocess for conventional products having a lot of competition. With fast chaging technologies, a company can easily build their brand by adopting cutting edge technologies to power their brand. A brand gets well recognized by customers if it has some unique selling points what others are lacking. Tis requires continuous updating the technologies and techniques of manufacturing of products or delivering services to customers to make them feel of getting what they had never expected. Brands that create such a feeling in the minds of customers stay long in the market. 

Here, a political philosophy comes to my mind which says that messages penetrate people’s minds gradually and in layers. Therefore, to send a brand messge to the lowest level of customers, the brand message has to be oft-repeated for penetration.

Beating the Competition

Competition is the sure killer of business leadership, therefore, it as to be beaten by an aspiring leader or for maintaing the leadership. It is difficult to beat a competitor in their field of strength. Recognizing the fact that there are a number of ways of reaching and influencing customers, the leadership may easily be acquired by choosing a strategy in which the competitor is already weak. For example, a competitor mght have the latest technology for their product, but ay be wek in providing adequate services to customers. The aspiring leader may concentrate on providing the best on-site services for their products and win the race. Chinese products have the advantage of being economically priced for their mass-scale production and world-wide distribution, and hence are dominating markets.

Creating and Satisfying Customer Needs

The prime key to market leadership is satisfying customer needs, and this is easily achieved by creating a new need in the mind of prospetive customers and satisfying it through offering new products. This strategy keeps the business free from any competition for some time until others realize the need and offer their products. With ever higher mobility of people, tey were made to realize a need for communicating while on the move, and thus, mobile telephones came into existence. Similarly, laptop computers too are products developed for meeting mobile computing needs of people. 

Value System

Even when the human society appears to be morally degraded, moral values are still regarded with high-esteem by the same humanity. Therfore, preparing and projecting a value system for the business pays rich dividends and may take the business to leadership heights through keeping up the business balues for long time.

Health is the greatest concern of present humanity in-spite of it being spoiled by most of us through bad habits. Therefore, it may be a good idea for a company to highlight on health-consciousness and poject their products having this aim in their development and manufacturing techniques. Other related issues are being eco-friendly, fighting against water, air, noise pollution, taking care of natural habitats of wildlife, spreading awareness about general cleanliness, etc.

Women and children make backbone of a healthy society, taking due care of them through providing education, nutrition and other health supports to them too make good sense for projecting a company’s image with social awareness.    

For a Quantum Jump in Career beyond Peter Principle

Age-old tried and tested Peter’s Principle says ‘a person rises to his/her level of incompetence’. For a business executive, this is matter of great sadness as this tells him/her to ultimately get proved a failure someday at the end of his/her career. But the story may go beyond boundaries of this principle. Here is how to achieve that.

Business environment up to the middle level of management remains segmented into various segments based on respective skills such as – Engineering and Technology, Accounts and Finance, Administration, Material management, Marketing, Resource allocation and Strategic planning, Communication, Human resource management, etc.

Further, as we go down, these segments have further subdivisions, but as we go up, these segments have no common grounds. Therefore, for a manager to move up the ladder, he/she must develop competency in another field, and the easiest to do this is to choose a field which is complimentary to his/her field of his/her original expertise and develop skills into that.

With each of these core expertise fields, there is one that is complimentary to each of these and that is dealing with people to drive maximum out of them through inducing and inspiring them to do their best. Indeed, this skill is required at all levels of management, but its significance keep on rising along with the hierarchy of the organization.

The complimentary field of skill for a person depends on three factors –

Person’s own bent of mind and choice

Every person has some individual characteristics, traits and tastes and accordingly finds some field more interesting than others. It may depend on his/her family background too. Such a diverse field of interest of the person may or may not be allied to his/her main field of expertise, his/her additional skill in this new field may prove useful to him/her in career development provided the new field is related to business interests of the organization he/she is working for.  

In such a diversification of skill development, the person may even find that the new field suits him/her better than even his/her original field of expertise, and that he/she should have started his/her career in this new field itself. Such a self-discovery by the person makes it easy for him/her to become expert in both the fields.   

Organization’s working

Working of a particular organization and their field of business makes some fields of expertise more close to others. For example, for a manufacturing organization fields of engineering and materials management are found to be closely related and complimentary to each other, while for a trading organization, fields of materials management is found to be complimentary to marketing management.

Therefore, any person looking for a complimentary skill for him/herself must take into consideration the organization’s field of working into consideration for his/here career development  beyond Peter’s principle.    

Interactivity of fields of expertise

Irrespective of personal choices of an individual and working of an organization, a field of expertise is found to be interactive with another field, hence thus becomes a natural determining factor for developing complimentary skills by a person.  For example, fields of Administration and Communication, Materials management and Marketing, Engineering and Strategic planning, make mutually interactive pairs of fields of expertise for a business executive.     

Save Yourself from Worries of Impossible

Save Yourself from Worries of Impossible

Factors to Improve upon Performance

In real life and in business environment, every individual is required to work optimally and it is in the interest of all - the person him/herself, the employer and the society as a whole. It means getting the best from the human resource. One very effective way of achieving this is to keep on providing regular feedback on the performances of individuals. In a business organization, this feed may be provided by the managers while in our homes, elders may provide feedback to youngsters.

Every individual has a heartily desire to do his/her best always to derive maximum results from his performances. But he/she fails to do that for the following four contributing factors listed below.

1.      Resources :  Every performer needs resources such as knowledge and experience of the work, and tools and tackles needed for working. For knowledge of the work, the person must get training in the field of his/her work, while for experience, the performer must get it through on the job practice. In this, role of a supervisor is underlined in finding what type of training a person needs and then guide him/her during on the job practice. This demands the supervisor to be an expert – experienced on the job. Tools and tackles for working are as important as hands of the performer for working. These not only strengthen hands of the performer, but also provide convenience, speed and precision to the performance.

2.      Incentive : When there is no clear-cut incentive for the person for doing his/her best, he/she may hurry up the thing to avoid hardness of work and to get rid of the job to enjoy free moments. Although, a good performer does his/her job faster than others and finds time to relax in between his/her working. Secondly, every good performance has its built-in rewards for the performer in the form of his/her own contentment but this is not recognized by all the persons. Therefore, need of some tangible and visible incentives become necessary.   

3.      Work Culture : A place where quality of work is not appreciated, performances go on deteriorating making a bad work-culture of the place. In such an environment, even a good performer becomes a bad performer in due course of time. Conversely, a healthy work culture of a place makes all performers to do their best through learning and getting inspirations from each other. Discipline is the essence for developing a healthy work culture.

4.      Feedback : Often a performer fails to find deficiency in his/her own performance and that is where role of a supervisor comes into play, to keep watch on the performance and providing feedback to the performer – positive to boost the latter’s morale and negative to make the performance free from deficiencies. In a negative feedback, public reprimanding of the performer must be avoided not to hurt his/her honor and self-esteem. 

Out of the four factors enumerated above, feedback plays the most important role in improving performance of a person. For a performer, faster the feedback he/she gets, more the improvement in his/her performances he/she achieves.

These performance factors are not only applicable to business places but also to all other places where performances matter, such as schools and even homes. At schools, the students are the performers while the teachers play supervisory roles. At homes, children’s performances need be supervised by their respective parents.

Money does not Change Life, Professionalism Does

Money does not Change Life, Professionalism Does:

'via Blog this'

Do We Have a Free Will in Reality

Since 1993, I have been working on a Desk-top Computer, but yesterday i decided a Laptop Computer for myself. Is it my decision due me having a free will, or it is some thing else but looking like my free-will to do things in my own way?

True, I was not asked by anyone to buy a Laptop or was compelled by my circumstances to do that. I decided on it myself without any external interference. I could have decided to spend the money I have to buy some thing else also, indicating thereby that I have a free-will to do things as I like. Let me now point out the details of my decision more minutely than just what appears to be.

Factors that prompted me to the decision are enumerated below -

1. Recently, I sold out a manuscript for a lump-sum payment enough to buy the laptop computer,
2. I have no pressing demands on myself to use the money I got,
3. In recent years, I have become more mobile, and feel incapable away from my desk-top computer,
4. The old computer I have often breakdowns due voltage surges and I get stuck up with work in hand,
5. My four children and a number of friends have lap-top computers and I find them more satisfied with their possessions than myself,
6. The publisher that paid me for the manuscript, asked me write a voluminous book for them to publish. On doing the manuscript, I would be more comfortable with my financial position, so I wish to do that fast and in that laptop computer shall be highly useful.    

...     ...     ....  and so on. 

From the above, it becomes clear that my decision has not come from my free-will but from many other factors like my circumstances, my desires, my society, my needs, .... and so on.

On further insight into the subject, I find that our minds always remain pre-programmed in specific ways by our backgrounds, present circumstances and future aspirations, and every time we make choices, looking like our respective free-wills, these are under heavily influenced by these pre-programs, indicating thereby that we have no free-will as a creature of this world. 

We all are often said to be slave of our circumstances, and that is true to a great extent, in-spite of the fact that some of us, to varying degrees, make their own circumstances. In rural India, there is a popular saying, "No body can afford to go against God and the society". This may not be true literally, particularly for an atheist like me, but has an essence. 

It is also true that results of our past actions determine our present and this, in turn, determine our future plans.  We keep on following this chain of causes-and-effects on our way from past to the future, all the time of our life. If that were not so, we would have been doing the same thing throughout our lifetimes. We differ individually, spatially as well as temporally just because we don't have our own free-wills. 

Succeeding as a Team Leader

Business environment puts undue pressures and hence stresses on the executives particularly in the leadership roles at project level or the organizational level. Under stress, a person loses his/her creativity at work, get irritated at minor disharmony with others and spoil inter-personal relationships and team-spirit. After work, the stresses are carried to home spoiling the person's relationships with family members. 


These things may make the person to fail at an early stage of his/her career if he/she forgets importance of personal well-being and pour the whole of him/herself in to the job. Those, who are able to manage their jobs along with personal well-being,  not only survive in their positions but also succeed to rise up the top hierarchy level of the organization. 


There are two important aspects of succeeding - managing your job well, as well as, keeping your well-being intact. Let us see how one can do so together.

Managing Your Job Well

For any working, you need to have a support structure in the form of personnel apart from communication gadgets, tools ad tackles, etc. necessary for your performance. Check out on these and acquire whatever you feel is deficient. The support structure in the form of your team members and the subordinate persons works for you in accordance to your impression on them. For this, you need to create an image of yourself remembering that your image works all the 24 hours while you work only 8 to 10 hours a day. 

Tuning up the support structure reduces your workload of routine matters, taken care of by your team members and subordinates, so that you remain free for priority tasks like foreseeing a oncoming problem, planning the next step, analyzing your teams' performance for further tuning up, etc. With all such jobs, you just keep a watch on the tasks your team is performing on and advising them on their asking, or wherever you find an improvement is possible with a little tip from you.

Here, you must remember that a performer hardly finds faults with his/her work by him/herself and hence needs a review of his/her work by someone higher up or his/her supervisor to improve upon. With this thing in mind, don't reprimand the performer for his/her deficiency in performance to your standard, but advise him/her how he/she can perform better. Show to him/her that performing better is in his/her own interests, without letting him/her feel that you are the authority to monitor and regulate his/her performance. 

Relax Whenever Possible

Forget about having a particular time or duration when you will comfortably relax without being disturbed. In the present business environment, such relaxations are a thing of the past only. So, while on the job in your office, your work desk at home or playing with your children to entertain them, relax even if you find a few moments appropriate for this. Such relaxing moments in between your busy schedules rejuvenate your mind and body to a great extent. With this practice, you will notice that all such relaxing moments added together for the whole day make up a good period of relaxation what you had been dreaming for a long time but were not getting time for. 

Judging your Actions in Advance

Judging your Actions in Advance

Preventive Maintenance to Keep on Productivity

Preventive Maintenance to Keep on Productivity:

'via Blog this'

Sources and Role of Vitamin Retinol in Health

Sources and Role of Vitamin Retinol in Health:

'via Blog this'