THE Y-AXIS by Rajesh Kumar

At recent annual festival of the company I work for, met a bunch of brilliant sketch artists. They could draw your sketch in just about 20 mins and right there . No wonder, there was a rush and after a forty minute wait, I got the chair too. Leave it here to judge you if this is indeed me, but I was mighty impressed. The reproduction here is through the lens of a phone , and therefore is not the very best.

Authors - W Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne Finally Amercians have some competition from Europe! Chan Kim and Muaborgne are academicians at INSEAD, Europe's best known B School.They are credited with bringing out a new classic on management, which fortunately is not blessed with the same geographical myopia as suffered by most American Authors suffer, who choose to quote only American companies as having displayed excellence. From this perspective this book is a welcome change. This is the first book in recent years from Europe on the subject of business excellence that has become mainstream(Published by Harvard Business School Press). Check out their website. Much against the creative proclivity of not mentioning books by other authors, this book actually notes the presence of books such as Good to Great and Built to Last. Kim and Mauborgne point out that though many authors have attempted to study companies whose success appears to be durable, sevaral of these companies have falt...

Chances are that the page you are viewing knows your location in the world. Or Atleast the country. Is someone watching you? Well, someone somewhere always seems to see something about you, which you never intended them to see( Phrase inspired by "Wardrobe Maul-functions" at Lakme India week recently). Have fun. Will soon write about a much raved book called "Blue Ocean Strategy" by Kim & Mauborgne. Sounds promising in the first few pages. They have obserations about companies, not people, and they too seem to have observed about others what was never thought to be visible.

A colleague recently suggested this book called The Maverick , written by a Brazilian , Ricardo Semler. The beauty of this book is that it talks about business transformation, attitudinal transformation and culture transformation in a family owned enterprise called SEMCO. It is not a new title, and was first published in early nineties (of the last millenium!) and is devoid of jargons that CEOs like to decorate their success stories with. The tone is very lucid and straight and no, Mr Semler does not do any hyperbole. Go ahead and read this book with all my recommendations. A very lnteresting read. (Image courtesy http://www.randomhouse.com.au)

Well, Mr Fanoos, aka Storm number 5 to hit Chennai his season tis knocking at the doors. Fanoos is a word of Persian origin and means a lamp.Well, from the satellite images, it does not seem to be giving any indications of bringing light to Chennai. Like all other storms this seasons, Fanoos also seems bent on nearshoring itself around a weekend. Good luck Chennai. Next week will see another post on the aftermath, and hopefully, some pictures.Chennai's weather has become extremely stressful. Hopefully, when Fanoos dissappears, we will see the bright light of good weather!

Those of us who cross the Adyar river every day expect calm waters below. In fact we expect it to be way below the bridge. Well, that may not be the case always. These pictures were taken on Saturday last (4 Dec). There were many onlookers who wanted to see the Adyar in such mighty state. The water was not stagnant and calm, but moving very rapidly. It was just a few meters below this Thiru-Vi-Ka bridge. The Hindu published a picture on the front page of the same river but at Saidapet. That image can be seen at the Hindu site by clicking here .

Look at this picture. I did not put because I wanted to put a picture of myself. The reasons are different and beyond. After the Dec 26 , 2004 Tsunami that hit India, me and my wife put together a bundle of clothes to be sent for the needy families. The same day we put up another set of clothes, in another large shopping bag, to be sent for ironing. I mixed up the bags and ended up loosing the shirt and trousers you see me with in this picture (and few more). I had worn them only twice.