Enigma Solution

R to L: We brothers. Varinder, Gurvinder, Parvinder and late Paramjeet with visitors from Bendix Corp. (1984) It is a fallacy, to believe that merely sending our children to school and college, will prepare them for life.  There is no perfect way to prepare the young, but parents and family can play a powerful role, in successfully preparing the young for life.   An approach that facilitates both success and  happiness is to enrich the lives of the young.  To not stifle them in our bosom, but  expose  them to life as early as is safe and possible.  This enables the young to learn at the more impactful formative phase of life.  It usually instils in them a sense of independence born out of learning to take responsibility for their thoughts, actions and results. The young should be acclimatised to the real world at an early age and this is the responsibility of the elders. If we fail to do this,  ' The young ...

Generally speaking, until they are about 10 years of age, children are sure their parents are superheroes, clever, and the most loving people in the whole world. They are the best.  When youngsters join college, at about age 16 they think, parents to be the biggest idiots in the world. Old fashioned, in thoughts and everything else. When they leave college at about 20, they do not think, they know their parents are outdated if not actually stupid. If they join the family business at about age  22 they are certain that such people cannot be their true parents. When they have worked for about 5 years, they suddenly realise how smart and wise their parents are.  ______________ It is a fascinating and exciting time, when the young join the family business. It is also frustrating and can even be hazardous for everyone concerned, if not handled properly. There is no perfect way, but there are some good principles. here is one way I recommend those who seek m...

My family and I built up a rather large and highly reputed automotive components manufacturing business. In the early years our dependence on the domestic market and a few key customers made us vulnerable to cyclic demand which had bad consequences for our organisation. So we began to explore export markets. One day in 1984, thanks to the Chamber of Commerce, we hosted a small delegation of prospective American buyers. At dinner that evening, me a very young man, tried rather too hard to impress a very senior, highly experienced delegate, Ms. Helen about our capabilities as an organisation and me as an individual. We chatted for quite a while about a wide range of matters, and I sprinkled our conversation with American business jargon.  After about an hour, Helen who was a senior executive in her organisation, asked me. "Apparently you are well informed GS, from where are you getting all this information and these perspectives?" With my chest puffed up , I rep...

"If you don't read the newspaper,                   you are uninformed; If you do read the newspaper,                        you are misinformed."                                                     - Mark Twain Since I do to have figures of India, I refer to American statistics as an indicator. Why refer to America? Because Mark Twain was referring to American media and capitalistic America has driven modern global trends in technology and social change for past 100 years. Television, news media and publishing whether it is books, magazines,or newspapers, were originally set up to provide a news service and generate advertisement revenue to subsidise the cost of bringing news to the public.  Now news is just a fig leaf for...

My nephew Karan and I recently debated over various economic and political matters one evening. I asked him how he was convinced that what he said was correct. He replied that he read and saw it in the media, and therefore they were 'facts'. Foolishly we believe we are consumers and therefore we are being served with facts. Nothing can be further from the truth. ___________________________________ By whatever affiliation, all the major media players are large companies, owned and interlinked with even larger business groups. Like other companies, they sell a product to a market. The market is advertisers - that is, other businesses. The product is audiences. The elitist media decides the basic agenda who and what must be promoted and which others must adapt. So we have major corporations selling their ideas to other businesses. Not surprisingly the picture of the world presented reflects the narrow and biased interests and values of the sellers, which ...

The recent Arab Spring where so much changed reminded me of a life changing experience of a friend Sanmeet and his dear friend and business associate Rashid. Sanmeet exports from India quality engineering goods and automotive components all over the world. Africa was and remains a good market. He used to export to Mr. Rashid in Khartoum( Sudan) for over 30 years. The manner in which he developed his business and built relationships makes for educative reading. Coming in as refugees from Burma in 1964 where the family were successful importers of auto parts from all over the world, Sanmeet's family decided to export automotive components. Relatively neglected and not so demanding in terms of performance Africa was considered a good entry market. Yemen and Sudan provided good opportunities. In 1971 Sanmeet landed in Khartoum and looked around and learnt of a very small trader called Rashid. Moving around on a bicycle Rashid had a ramshackle shop. Logicall...