SAST Wingees

Charlie Munger’s Commencement Address

Here is a must read commencement speech by Charlie Munger.  Charlie Munger on the Wikipedia, for those that don’t know him. We had covered Charline Munger’s views on how to become an expert a while ago.  <Via Sadagopan>

Rasam Restaurant – Kongu Nadu Cuisine – Excellent

Updated June 12, 2007:  Harish Dorai researched and found an excellent link describing Kongu Nadu Cuisine.  Thanks Harish.

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Last night we took some friends and family to the Rasam Restaurant in Purasawalkam (off Poonamallee High Road near Dasprakash). This restaurant is from the famous Sri Krishna Sweets group and specializes in Kongu Nadu cuisine (Kongu Nadu is the region in and around Coimbatore in Tamilnadu). We ordered many of the Kongu Nadu specialties. Food was authentic, tasty and the service was very good.  The prices were economical for a specialty restaurant. Another thing we observed is the nice decor and ambience – they have converted a old palatial building into this restaurant and have outfitted with old photographs, old newspaper clippings.  Amongst the local cuisines, Kongu Nadu cuisine is not that popular compared to Chetti Nadu and others. So its nice to see a good restaurant occupying this niche.  .

Efficiency or Creativity?

Business Week recently weighed in on the question of efficiency vs. creativity. This article has received wide attention with many newspapers like Economic Times (in India) syndicating this article. This is a  must read article.

The article squarely puts the blame on six sigma for the issues with creativity at 3M and other companies. As with many management fads, there are many flawed implementations of six sigma (possibly the one at 3M as well is flawed). But to just look at flawed implementations and blame six sigma for that does not seem appropriate.

Scott Berkun weighed in and correctly points out that making efficiency and creativity mutually exclusive is shallow thinking. Couldn’t agree more.

I have seen many successful implementations of 6 Sigma and it is really an extremely valuable tool to adopt. While the DMAIC variety helps improve existing processes, 6 Sigma also has the DMADV (or DFSS)  process for new products and new ideas. There is nothing in 6 Sigma inherently that inhibits creativity. Since most companies implement DMAIC, it appears at the surface of it, that only efficiency is encouraged. In my view, organization processes tend to become complex over time and become inefficient. DMAIC is very good at cutting this inefficiency out. Now how do you think a process gets improved? By applying creativity, of course. How can you improve anything without being creative?  So to say that 6 Sigma kills creativity is plain wrong. I would also dare you to show me a company that does not have ossified processes that need to be trimmed (except Toyota).  

The article also takes a dig at TQM. Again, TQM is sound but the implementations rarely are. I have seen some excellent implementations and I can tell you that innovation/creativity is at the very foundation of a good TQM implementation.

If you want to understand what TQM can do, look to Toyota – the God of Innovation (my opinion and many would agree). Here is an excellent article about Toyota’s system.

Sorry Business Week, we need you to provide sound research rather than circumstantial evidence to support your observations.  

Work ethic – what is it and why is it important?

Updated June 4, 2007: Samiran points to an insightful article in the comments section. I think the article points, ever so subtly, to religion as the one that we should focus on, but in the process talks insightfully about purpose.  Ganesh makes a brilliant point in his comment as well – True work ethic is in completing things on time and quality even when you  are not passionate about it. In other words, doing things to the best of your abilities dispassionately – which is Karma Yoga. Couldn’t agree more.

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We had talked earlier about passion, but what is the relationship of passion to work ethic? Business Pundit wrote a great post last week about Tiger Woods and how he practices golf.  Business Pundit actually does not use the word work ethic. But this behavior of Tiger Woods is what i would call a winning work ethic.

The Wikipedia defines work ethic as “Work ethic is a set of values based on the moral virtues of hard work and diligence.”  To me this definition does not explain the Tiger woods type of work ethic or the Ricky Ponting work ethic that we covered. 

NK Sreedhar was having some discussions with his friends and sent me an interesting email about work ethic. He concludes that the western work ethic may stem from religion – specifically the protestant work ethic.  Considering that religion has played such an important role in the evolution of culture, i think this is probably a valid conclusion.

I also agreed with Sreedhar on the other conclusion he reached – India’s lack of work ethic may be due to the lack of industrialization or manufacturing industries.  

Where I disagreed with Sreedhar is when he says Hinduism doesn’t accord a similar status to work ethic. I had covered Karma Yoga from the Bhagavad Gita earlier which accords a even greater value to work ethic. So it is not the Hindu religion that is to blame but somewhere during the past few 1000 years after the Vedic period, we have lost the work ethic.

When I re-read my post on Karma Yoga that i referred to above, i realized that it is Mihaly’s state of Flow that we must target. Now this state of flow is not an easy thing to comprehend as well as attain, but  I think if you are passionate about something and you practice or work hard on that something,  you will reach the state of flow.  By extension, if you reached the state of Flow frequently, you are likely to reach higher levels of proficiency in what you are doing. My guess is that top performers like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Ricky Ponting are subconsiously gunning for this state of Flow which allows them to perform way better than everyone else.

What do you think about work ethic and Flow and the correlation to passion?    

World’s oldest company Kongo Gumi goes bust

Businessweek has an article up on the sad demise of the 1400 year old Japanese temple builder Kongo Gumi. Also points to some interesting lessons one can learn Post link:
<Via Economic Times May 18, 2007 issue> Flashback:
I had covered Kongo Gumi in my post on the world’s oldest companies.