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Showing posts from January, 2011

Unintended learning

It was a noble effort by my banker to invite youngsters for financial awareness programme for the wards of their clients. A renowned financial expert was the star attraction. In an interaction after the programme, I was talking to a participant and asked about the efficacy of the programme and compared to the objectives set by the bank. - need for saving - no additional learning - types of investment - marginal gain in knowledge - how each type of investment grows in future - went over my head - "X" bank takes care of investments - OK, what's the big deal The table turned, when I asked that what were the biggest learnings from a day's programme and the response was stunning: - we need to plan - we need to draw our future - have high interdependence amongst experts - all my peers are struggling with same problems but not sound them off - its easier than I thought! A skill enhancement programme worked as a behavioral transformation programme. Consumer

Diesel premium cars?

Interesting case narrated by a friend. Jaguar sales were very low in this part of the country with petrol version (circa 5 a year). With diesel version launch it is 5 a month. Car costs Rs 50L plus. Any insights! India continues to amaze me every day.

Blind Spot - Auto/Taxi fellows are cheaters

It was a pleasant surprise experience after moving to Mumbai when on a couple of occassions public transport (regular black/yellow or silver/blue taxi and auto rickshaws) returned me the precise amounts due to the nearest rupee. I had tweeted about the same experience and the overwhelming response to me was that it was an odd experience and I must have been extremely lucky to have met such people. I was warned that I should not get carried away with this experience. Bottomline - lack of trust between commuters and public transport. Now in the last 3 months or so, I have used public transport almost about 100 times and nearly 95+ times I have been returned the change nearest to the rupee. The repeated experience that I have in the last 3 months is completely contrary to what others have told me. The sample size is not small enough for me to classify this as a coincidence. I think this is a case of either a blind spot or a fixated mind. Going through this, I recall many instanc