Future Synergy

Date – 26^th January, 2015
Place – Mumbai

CEO of the biggest Indian IT company, Lemon Corp had called a press conference to make an announcement.

No one in the press was aware about what was going to be announced. All reporters were curiously waiting for the conference.

“IT industry and our company are at decisive point. The competitive advantage is not technology but talent. There is extreme competition among all players in this industry for talent“; the CEO started his speech on this serious note.

“We at Lemon Corp have always faced this challenging task of recruiting, training and retaining talented people. Decreasing hourly rate from clients and increasing salaries made the matter worse. We want to double our manpower every two years. We asked ourselves, is there any out-of-the-box way to get out of this situation? Now, we have got the solution for this problem.”

There was a long pause and everyone was waiting for his next words.

“We are planning to acquire FastClone, a company with expertise in human cloning.”

All were stunned with disbelief.

“What is the synergy between an IT company and a cloning company?” a reporter questioned the CEO.

CEO answered, “I thought you would have guessed that!! We plan to clone all our talented employees so that we would never face human resource crunch. We have been closely working with FirstClone for some time, and we thought it would be perfect backward integration.”

“I believe it’s impossible, how you can clone a knowledge worker and expect the Clone to perform intelligent tasks?” a reporter questioned.

“Change begins at the top”; the CEO smiled and he switched on the big screen behind him.

It was live, the same CEO was in Bangalore addressing press conference at same time!!”

Shouting for Silence

He was sleeping in his home. Some noise outside the home spoiled his sleep. He was frustrated. He decided, "I'll sleep only when I get complete silence around me." He came out of home and screamed at people who were making noise. Those people stopped making noise.

Still there was not complete silence.

He made up his mind to find a place of complete silence.

He was beating a drum, shouting and asking everyone where he could get a place of complete silence.

When I saw him, I laughed at him. I wondered why he was looking for more silence. He was better off in his home.

He was shouting in search of silence.

Relationship Manager

I was sitting alone in a café. The café was crowded, with very few seats left empty. A man occupied a seat in front of me. He was near thirty and was formally dressed. I was getting bored sitting alone so I started chatting with him.

I introduced myself. He told me that, he had done his MBA from a reputed B-School and was working with a top bank as Relationship Manager.

Whenever I meet someone experienced person from the industry, I always try to get maximum information.

“Do I need to be a Finance genius to succeed in banking career? “ I asked him curiously.

“No, not at all! The key to any successful career is relationships. Take my example I am a Relationship Manager handling big accounts. I understand what exactly the customer wants. Relationship with customer is the most important factor in success,” He started his speech. Probably after many days he had got a dedicated listener.

He went on and on about his relationship doctrine and its importance to success.

To escape from his relationship monologue I changed the topic I asked him about his family.

He uttered only three words, “I am divorced.”

Economics of Attraction

"Am I so attractive? Why is everyone trying to impress me? This never happened in my graduation college,” She was thinking about these questions in her mind. She was just one month into the B-School and was wondering why she was getting so much attention from boys.

In her thoughts she almost forgot that she was attending a lecture.

Economics teacher's loud voice interrupted her thoughts, "Prices of goods are decided by forces of demand and supply. When demand for goods is significantly more than supply of goods then prices of goods increase even though there is no change in the intrinsic value of goods."

She got the answer.