2011 Season Begins in Earnest

Yes, after the delay due to political tensions in Bahrain , the 2011 F1 season has begun in earnest.

How has it panned out so far.

The reigning world champions Red Bull racing had by far the best winter testing, followed by Ferrari. Mclarens had their worst nightmares in the new MP4 car and Mercedes are plodding on from where they left off in 2010.

Ross Brawn says that he doesn't expect the car to be a championship winner but would fight for the podiums.

On the middle sector cars, Renault seem to have the best package however in the absence of Robert Kubica they might find it difficult to get the traction that they need from Vitaly Petrov and Nick Heidfield.

Force India seem to be decent and would like to improve on their seventh placed finish of last year, they do have new driver in Paul Di Resta who was the reserve driver last season.

Sauber petronas seem to have found some form , how they translate it in the season remains to be seen , Kaumi Kobayashi probably would shoulder big responsibility for them.

As far as Williams go , i might expect them to be somewhere between grid 4-6 , what seem to be seen is how rookie Paul Maldonando keeps up with the experience of Rubens Barichello.

As for the rest of the teams , except Red Bull Toro Rosso , i would consider them pure back markers and no real expectations of surprises.

For Toro Rosso, they have a Renault engine and a Red Bull steering & brakes, would be interesting to see how it goes for them.

The real heroes are not the drivers or the cars but this year it could be one of the three new factors for 2011 season .

1 DRS - Drag Reduction System

2 KERS - Kinetic Energy Recovery System

3 Pirelli Tyres ( After departure of long standing Bridgestone tyres , Italian company Pireli has become defacto tyre supplier)

Lots has been spoken about the new tyre component and expectations are that there would be a lot of pit stops this year and it would be impossible for any car to do a one pit stop strategy.

What remains to be seen is how these would affect the strategy and how teams cope with changing conditions.

Am very excited to see the start of 2011 season. With this , am also kick starting my blogging after a three week hiatus.

May the best team win.

Its World Cup Time Again

Yes,

Its just a week to the ICC World Cup in the sub continent. The world cup is returning to Asia after a decade. The last one was held in 1996.

Am quite excited at the prospect of watching great teams battle it out to win the world cup.

Its going to be two months of high quality sporting action in the sub continent, what's more Bangladesh has been drawn in to co-host for the first time as against the earlier versions, which were co-hosted by the well known trio of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Here are few of my greatest moments of the past cricket world cup

1975 & 1979 - The class act of Viv Richards and Clive lloyd showed the world why West Indies were the natural powerhouse in cricket, with such a abundant supply of talent , there was no stopping this west indian supremacy.

1983 - The one single innings of 175 not out from Captain Kapil Dev goes down as an innings to remember in a world cup. He led from the front and what became as a surprise to a nation of one billion people with India winning the world cup against the much fancied West Indies

1987 - If one single innings from a captain was the highlight of the previous world cup, one single mistake from a captain was the talk of 1987 world cup. Mike Gatting reverse sweeping Allan Border , only to top edge to be caught by wicket keeper Mike Vellata, this single mistake cost England their world cup.

1992 - There were two people who personified this world cup, Jonty Rhodes who electrified the ground with some stunning fielding , who could forget his run out of Inzamam Ul Haq . The second person was Imran Khan who led from the front in all key moments during the tournament as Pakistan became a worthy champions. Of course this world cup was shadowed by the rain rule in the semi-final between England and South Africa and to top it all , those two magic deliveries from Wasim Akram in the finals were just few glimpses of action during this world cup down under.

1996 - World cup saw a return to the sub continent after close to a decade. This world cup was marred by unrest , initially at the beginning when Australia and West Indies refusing to travel to Sri Lanka to play their group matches due to security reasons but also another massive shame when the world cup semi final between India and Sri Lanka abandoned due to crowd's unruly behaviour. All said , there were two notable players who stood out. Sanath Jayasuriya , who made history with his explosive opening batting and the seasoned Aravinda De Silva whose innings in the Semi-Final and the final will go down as the rare gems in world cup history. Sri Lanka went onto win the world cup , completing the list of sub continent giants being holders of the trophy.

1999 - This world cup saw the introduction of qualifiers from countries who were members of the ICC , it was an effort from ICC for development of the sport in other countries.

South Africa was expected to win this world cup but only to be denied by two costly mistakes, one when Herschelle Gibbs dropped Steve Waugh's catch and next when Allan Donald didn't see Lance Klusner running from the strikers end in what has so far been regarded as the best ever semi-final in world cup history. The world cup also saw the most one sided world cup final of all times when Australia thumped Pakistan in just 20 overs. With Adam Gilchrist blazing away to a unbeaten 140+.

2003 - Australia were the formidable side but were equally matched by India in the group games. Again rain ruined South Africa's chances as an ill fated decision by Mark Boucher cost them the match. It again boiled down to team work of Australia against India's dependence on one single match winner in Sachin Tendulkar . It is also worthy to note the great integrity showed by Adam Gilchrist when he walked off even when the umpire gave him not out in the semi-final against Sri Lanka.

When Sachin was out to Glenn Mcgrath in the finals , the result was all but known, Australia being the worthy winner.

2007 - Matthew Hayden was the name of the game in 2007. His clean hitting and aggressive batting paved the way for Australia's resurgence in the game. Although it was expected to be revival of West Indian cricket but it was far from being any where closer to revival as the hosts were shut out in the super eight stages. With Sri Lanka defeating New Zealand in one semi final and Australia making a short work of South Africa in the other ,it was expected to be a engrossing contest in the final as Australia were expected to avenge their defeat at the hands of Sri Lanka in the 1996 encounter. They did that in style as the final of the world cup almost ended in complete darkness.

One incident which shook the 2007 world cup was the death of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer which put the tournament in jeopardy but in the end game won.

With all the ups and downs in the previous nine editions etched in the memory of cricket aficionados , the tenth edition is returning to the sub continent in about a weeks time.

Iam looking forward to an exciting contest ahead.

May the best team win.

It's world cup time again

A Week of Sitting Through Sales Talks

A self explanatory heading to the blog.

This week i had a chance to sit through two sales discussion from two companies . The first one a big corporation which has made its mark already and another trying to get off its ground.

The discussion in both the meetings were dramatically different, even the tone of the discussion was very different. The one with the big company was focussed more on which product of theirs we could choose , how could they send in army of their people to do some consulting work for us and how their expertise in their field is helping companies in various lines of business and all standard sales pitch.

As i sat there completely flummoxed and thought to myself why these sales guys aren't asking the question about what is that my organization want from them? Rather they were firing off statements on what their company could do and how their expertise was top quality etc . We already knew their offering , it was daft from them to keep reiterating their product offering.

On the other hand , on the very same evening i met the sales executive from the second company which was getting its feet off the ground, it was clear from the outset that , they wanted to help us.

The first question the sales executive asked me was , 'so what is that you do currently and what is that you want to change in which our product can assist?'.

I was genuinely surprised and the conversation became interesting from that point onwards . The sales executive was open and honest about the shortcomings of their product , which impressed me a lot and also couple of my colleagues.

After more than an hour of absolute grilling , the sales executive from the second company made a lasting impression on all of us in the room.

He had been truthful, open and honest about the product . I came away very impressed and also with a good lesson.

Its always better to be open and honest .

The winning factor was this sales executive was very prompt in responding to my questions and more pro-active in directing me to his colleagues when he couldn't answer technical questions.

Turning to the larger company , my questions with them are still outstanding .

The difference was definitely not due to the individual person but more reflective of the culture of the organization.

The two meetings and the activities relating to these have made me think is being big and successful such a bad thing or is this a one-off occurrence?

These days sales executives from big companies actually reflect to me the wider life blood of their organization , do big companies care for its clients or potential clients?

I have seen numerous cases when big companies scoff at its clients. This isn't the right attitude. By no means i am saying that big companies shouldn't care for themselves and their bottom line but i am trying to say that these companies should always put clients at the heart of everything that they do.

All i understood from this weeks incident was that statement only hangs as a phrase in much of larger corporations and there seem to be no concrete example of the same in action.

Maybe i am concluding this subject way to fast but i am going by own personal experiences and am convinced that big companies need to start thinking along the lines of how they put customers at their fore front rather than always thinking about how they can profit from each trade or sales pitch.

If clients are put at the forefront , the bottom line is taken care of automatically.

360 Degree Feedback

You ought to have expected this subject crop up at this time of the year.

So what really is 360 degree feedback?

Its a form of multi layer feedback or round the circle feedback , where the feedback receiver is in the centre and all his peers, superiors , and subordinates provide feedback about the individual in question. This is being used in variety of organization to performance manage senior staff .

Is this a good thing? Yes, without doubt, this is a very good thing only if you understand how it works.

Lets take this example, if i were to provide feedback to six people although i would like to be unbiased and provide genuine feedback , it so happens that per human psychology the feedback is largely driven by what others say about the person for whom am about to provide the review i.e. what i have heard about him/her and also what were the latest actions by the individual concerned.

One of my colleague recently told me the untold truth of human mind. The human mind forgets and forgives things in the past , only recent actions are in the mind. This is called as recency effect in psychology, where recent actions/ phenomenon have greater impact on an output than events in the past.

This is true and is reflected in general across the 360 degree feedback that an individual receives.

Reading a 360 degree feedback can be nerve wracking. At least for me it has always been. There would be elements that would be surprises. Some of them positives, some negatives.

In general , when we read a report , it is clear that most of the strengths match to what others see , very rarely does the strength go unnoticed.

Having said that , the problem is when you compare the weakness , as an individual we could have rated our self as average in an area while others might rate as below par.

This is where the problem becomes acute in the report. As is often the case , the weakness gets magnified by the views and perception of various people.

We have to bear in mind that the feedback is an opinion and strictly not the truth. However it does give an element of direction on where things are going wrong , at a much magnified scale due to thoughts and perceptions of all individuals who have provided feedback

Some times reading the report can make one sweat, as it could be a nasty reading and vilification of the individual.

Couple of my mentors have always educated me to treat the 360 degree feedback report objectively and treat it as a tool to better oneself rather than to consider it as a finger pointing exercise .

Its a tool which can provide orientation to what actions that an individual need to carry out in order to perform better.

To be honest i have had extremely successful reviews and not so great reviews, how we turn this around is a matter of how we treat the report.

Should this report be exclusive in treating an individuals performance, its any body's guess . Am not a big fan of using it solely for performance management.

If we treat it as a report which is critical in nature and allow the confidence to be dented, things go from bad to worse, on the other hand if we treat it as a tool to provide direction to our efforts, results are always going to be better.

One of my strongest supporter ,mentor and probably can call coach because he identified me early on in my carrier, recently said - As one grows in the organization, he/she needs to become an enabler rather than the doer.

How true. So use the 360 degree feedback as an enabler/catalyst for you to perform better in future and don't take it to heart. After all you are what you are, no one is a perfect individual and people always have an opinion about you, whether good or bad. Take the good things, work on the not so good things. Items which you think are actually irrelevant and said on a personal bias , you aren't too bothered about anyway.

Good Luck.

I didn't know buying an Iphone and a bottle of Wine were this difficult!

Yes, its been a good week overall.

The highlight of the week was the weekend , where i had to buy an iphone and a bottle of Wine for two different people.

The iphone request came in earlier in the week from one of my friend , he wanted a 16 GB black Iphone 4 , i promised i'll buy him little did i realize that i would run pillar to post to get it.

On a gloomy saturday morning , i went to the Apple showroom to buy one, only to be said that i had to reserve a phone before i can buy it. The reservation can only be done on a daily basis , so we cannot reserve in advance , hang on doesn't reserve mean booking in advance ? Yes, that's correct , however Apple being Apple , have their own way . You can only reserve a product for purchase later in the same day but not advance book it for subsequent days.

Such a misery. So i checked if i can reserve one for later in the day , alas i couldn't there were no stock left. tried reserving it in other Apple stores but in vain.

I went shop after shop, went into all retail mobile phone shops, searched each and every mobile carrier and all i got was , either it was sold only in contract i.e. you could buy the phone only if you also take a connection for a minimum of twelve months or there was no stock left.

I walked the length and breadth of a major street , after two hours , i just ran out of gas and my mind wasn't thinking.

I went to the ISCKON temple , not to pray but to have a sumptuous vegetarian meal. After the meal , my instincts kicked in and i thought there must be one shop that should sell this product.

My friend was in another country and i was buying for him , so i had to update him as well, in comes Twitter as i posted real time updates . He was aghast that i couldn't buy one for him.

As luck would have it , there was one small shop (of course a store of a major carrier) which had stock of the phone. The lady in the counter said , sir you can only buy he phone with a pre-paid top up , i didn't mind it so long as i was able to buy it.

Hurray , finally i bought the Iphone and was so elated as if i was buying it for me. This was Saturday.

Come Sunday , i had been invited to my colleagues house for Lunch , i had no idea what to buy.

I had seen in lot of TV programmes that giving liquor as a gift is quite common and was thought to be appropriate, i thought to myself buying a liquor should be easy and let me follow that route.

Little did i realize that if i had to buy some thing , i had to know about what am buying. Me being tee-toddler had no idea about wine or champagne.

All i knew was Bordeaux wine , however i stood in dismay looking at shelves of Wine bottles without knowing what meant what. There was Chabalis, Sparkling wines, red wines , the list was endless. Enter the all important skill that defines us Humans , not intelligence but speeech. I asked around on how to select a good wine for the occasion and in came help via a lady who came to my rescue in the shop, she explained the culture and adviced that i buy red wine, also explaining why it was the most appropriate.

She helped me pick up a bottle of wine from the scores that were available , finally i had managed to buy it , i bought a shiraz wine, was a south australian 2009 wine.

The above is what i ended up buying.

What a week!

Take Care.

Everything Can Be Solved If Only We Talk - A Hard Lesson Learnt

Such a big title , yes it was such a big lesson for me and hence such a big title.

Its quite explicit from the title on what i want to write.

How easy can issues be solved if only we speak out. It could be issues between countries , between two sect , between two communities, between two families and of course between two individuals.

We have seen lots of success stories around the world where much pain had been averted when two leaders put aside their differences and were ready to speak. Its the only way out to solve issues, keeping quite is not an option.

However my blog is about two individuals ,one a male (myself) and a female who also closest pals, its beyond doubt that spelling out the issues and speaking to each other is the way out to solve problems.

I learnt this lesson from my closest friend, who incidentally is much younger to me.

Who said only elders ought to teach young people? I think we can learn things even from Kids.

My relationship with my friend was absolutely at breaking point last week , we had a tiff off on probably the most simple yet the most complicated thing and in friendship , this issue is the pillar. The element on what they call Trust.

I was relentlessly putting pressure on her without understanding her situation and why things were done the way they were. In hindsight , i had made far too many mistakes for my liking.

Things started off badly last weekend and as the week progressed it went from being bad to worse , i had no idea where this was all heading to. It was middle of the week it struck me as a thunderbolt that my relationship was at a breaking point and i was feeling sick.

I was at loss as to what has gone wrong and feeling bitter to even imagine that such a cherished and the most important relationship that i had cared for in the recent years was in the brink of disaster.

Things just didn't look brighter at the start of Thursday , it was all doom and gloom, much to my misery . I did not give up hope , all i hoped was that i get a chance to sort out the issue.

Work pressure didn't help either , as everything piled on me and i had no answer to what fate had to offer and thought life sucks and i thought i was sitting inside a pressure cooker.

I didn't know whom to turn to , i just turned to the obvious messiah of all troubles ' The Almighty'.

I prayed to him and said , save my friendship . I didn't have to wait for long , i did get an answer the same evening in the form of a lesson and the lesson was an email stating the following.

' Hi,

I need to speak to you regarding whatever is going wrong. Lets speak and sort it out.

Can you call me tonight.

Regards

Ur Best friend'

What a relief i had seeing that email as tears rolled in my eyes , i thanked the almighty and also thought , i could have done that but i guess male ego just blurred my thoughts.

I did speak to her the same evening , we spoke at length and spelled out all issues , if there was one. I had been slightly farsighted and anger was a killer as it almost drowned whatever i had earned in this friendship.

I had learnt an important lesson in life , if only i had spoken out and sorted out the issue early on , lots of pain would have been averted nevertheless it was one heck of a ride and i have learnt an important lesson.

This week has been worth living , this lesson will stay with me for a long time.

Now things look brighter , hope i don't make this mistake again.

Take this as an example to all people who follow my blog. Please do speak out and sort out the issues, always understand issues from each others perspective and not only your own.

Have a bright start to the week ahead.