I have a very bad feeling that I am going to screw this one up. There are 2 reasons why i feel that way. The more important one is I always screw up (whenever I write something). The other reason is i'm going to write about strategy. Heck, after not getting mere sapno ki internship in asset management I'm not sure if I should say this but I am a finance guy; or maybe I should say definitely not a strategy guy. But that's not the point. The point is till now I have taken only one strategy class - yeah the mandatory one. And in this post I'm going to write about the only thing I know about strategy - its definition. In the 1st class itself we learnt that over emphasis on achieving operational efficiency is one of the few things that led to the demise of Japanese management techniques. And then we were introduced to the concept of strategy; a magical solution which transformed the competition from a situation where noone-could-win to a situation where everyone-was-a-winner. Once the companies understood that the race for getting more efficient is a never ending spiral, they started shifting their focus to developing a unique strategy for their firm which unlike operational efficiency, could not be easily copied. A unique strategy creates value for the firm, the industry(it operates in) and the firm's customers. Differentiation is the key. One should do things one is good at. It's the fundamental principle behind origin of international trade (produce what you're good at and trade it for higher opportunity cost products), derivative securities( customize your products according to the investor needs)and a lot of other things we would probably never associate it with.
Let's talk about a couple of those things. What about Yoga? Well I don't know much about yoga either but I was told that its ultimate goal is to produce resonance. And I think it is attained when the frequency of external source of energy becomes the same as that of your inner energy spots...or something like that. Very crudely put, the point of the matter(or energy?) is since every person has a unique set of internal frequencies, it does not matter if your frequencies are higher than mine if I have attained resonance at my own frequency. So what matters is getting close to the desired frequency and not the absolute value of frequency itself.
I know I am really stretching it, but it would be hard not to draw parallels with life now. Almost all the kids in my school wanted to do engineering/medical/MBA and honestly speaking, the only reason some of them did not end up doing it was they just couldn't make it. With such a variety of career options to choose from, it's tough to explain why everyone made the same choice. Maybe that can be attributed to the fact that kids are more likely to follow a herd mentality especially when it comes to making such big decisions, as they lack the experience and knowledge required to make such decisions at a young age. But as adults, are our decisions any better? Is trying to get more of everything, particularly money really worth it...is it even the right thing to do? At the risk of stating the obvious, every individual, I believe is different from others. Each one of us have unique capabilities(internal frequency), and we won't attain perfect happiness (resonance) unless we do something unique(external frequency) that we were meant to do. In fact I would go one step further and say that words like talent are completely meaningless when used in a generic context. Everyone is "talented". The ones who appear not to be, are the ones unaware of their unique but latent talent. You might want to argue by saying there are some people who seem to be pretty awesome at everything they do. But most of the time, it's just because our brain naturally wants to classify everyone as a star or dud. It makes things simple and exciting - it gives us something to gossip about. Noone wants to make an effort to understand what one could be good at because it's complicated and boring to think of everyone being at the same level. A lot of such "multi-talented" superstars of my college failed miserably in corporate life and an equal number of my super efficient colleagues told me they sucked at pretty much everything during their college life. Slightly modifying Jokerspeak, one wouldn't be wrong in saying that you either die a superstar or live long enough to see yourself turn into a lesser mortal. It's just a matter of time. Or in Taleb's words, playing Russian Roulette 10000 times will kill anyone.
All this doesn't mean you should start practicing peeing into the water closet from outside the bathroom just because you have a feeling that you would be good at it or a company should start selling something noone is willing to buy, just because they are uniquely equipped to produce it. Strategy, no matter how effective it is, doesn't make up for lack of common sense.
Let's talk about a couple of those things. What about Yoga? Well I don't know much about yoga either but I was told that its ultimate goal is to produce resonance. And I think it is attained when the frequency of external source of energy becomes the same as that of your inner energy spots...or something like that. Very crudely put, the point of the matter(or energy?) is since every person has a unique set of internal frequencies, it does not matter if your frequencies are higher than mine if I have attained resonance at my own frequency. So what matters is getting close to the desired frequency and not the absolute value of frequency itself.
I know I am really stretching it, but it would be hard not to draw parallels with life now. Almost all the kids in my school wanted to do engineering/medical/MBA and honestly speaking, the only reason some of them did not end up doing it was they just couldn't make it. With such a variety of career options to choose from, it's tough to explain why everyone made the same choice. Maybe that can be attributed to the fact that kids are more likely to follow a herd mentality especially when it comes to making such big decisions, as they lack the experience and knowledge required to make such decisions at a young age. But as adults, are our decisions any better? Is trying to get more of everything, particularly money really worth it...is it even the right thing to do? At the risk of stating the obvious, every individual, I believe is different from others. Each one of us have unique capabilities(internal frequency), and we won't attain perfect happiness (resonance) unless we do something unique(external frequency) that we were meant to do. In fact I would go one step further and say that words like talent are completely meaningless when used in a generic context. Everyone is "talented". The ones who appear not to be, are the ones unaware of their unique but latent talent. You might want to argue by saying there are some people who seem to be pretty awesome at everything they do. But most of the time, it's just because our brain naturally wants to classify everyone as a star or dud. It makes things simple and exciting - it gives us something to gossip about. Noone wants to make an effort to understand what one could be good at because it's complicated and boring to think of everyone being at the same level. A lot of such "multi-talented" superstars of my college failed miserably in corporate life and an equal number of my super efficient colleagues told me they sucked at pretty much everything during their college life. Slightly modifying Jokerspeak, one wouldn't be wrong in saying that you either die a superstar or live long enough to see yourself turn into a lesser mortal. It's just a matter of time. Or in Taleb's words, playing Russian Roulette 10000 times will kill anyone.
All this doesn't mean you should start practicing peeing into the water closet from outside the bathroom just because you have a feeling that you would be good at it or a company should start selling something noone is willing to buy, just because they are uniquely equipped to produce it. Strategy, no matter how effective it is, doesn't make up for lack of common sense.
