Quote: Life’s journey is not to …or #15

Haa.. An amazing quote I saw pinned to a wall at my workplace… 🙂

Quote: Definition of belief #14

For a long time, I have been trying to take a step. Might be a huge step – to start a local business and be self employed.

Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase

May be this quote from Martin Luther King will push me a little further along the path..

Positive deviance – To solve wicked problems

This is an interesting thing I came across in the past few weeks –

Positive deviance (PD) is a problem solving approach to solve supposedly wicked problems. In a nutshell, we spot the positive outliers, investigate as to what makes them so and see if the rest of the population can do the same. PD approach has been used successfully to solve issues of malnutrition in some African countries! 🙂

According to Sternin and others (2010), Positive Deviance (PD) can be summed up as follows:

1. Solutions to seemingly intractable problems already exist,
2. They have been discovered by members of the community itself, and
3. These innovators (individual positive deviants) have succeeded even though they share the same constraints and barriers as others.

Source: Unknown

What appeals me so much is the simplicity of the concept. All the time, one reads about models on strategy or marketing that are tough to recollect after few days and becomes a speck in a matter of weeks.

But this one seems so straight forward, easy to understand, explain… what a relief! reminds me of Occam’s razor! 🙂

– Arun Vallappan

What I could have done instead

On the way to lunch yesterday, in front of a subway station, I was approached by this little girl for donations to Red-cross.

Though I prefer donations to end-users directly and not to aid organizations, instead of troubling her with my preferences, ideals, etc, I did make a small donation! So far, all is well…

Later, at the other end of subway, another red-cross girl (may be it’s a school project or something!!), was collecting
funds.. Normally a gentlemanly-generous sort of person, I, for some reason chose to act otherwise this time!! 😐

Me, with a nice smiling face said – “I just made a donation to red-cross at so and so place… is it ok to pass by?”

She smilingly agreed and one was happy to finally get closer to lunch…

But what one could have done instead, is make a small donation… and probably added something like.. “This is my 2nd donation to red cross in the past 5 minutes.. but that’s ok, i really appreciate the great job you guys are doing for this… have a good day.. “

Now, how tough is that? It would have made her day and definitely mine too..

– Arun Vallappan

Quote: Respondability #13

Supposedly from a Kigge Hvid, CEO of INDEX: Design to Improve Life (Denmark)

If you have the ability to respond, you have the responsibility to do so

An implicit understanding is that the chosen something would take one farther and deeper along the purpose of life. Else anyone would be quickly overwhelmed…

Picture: Chalk outline for stolen bike

A truly creative picture in a long time…

Credit: http://www.dothegreenthing.com/blog/bike_hunters_to_the_rescue

– Arun Vallappan

Gap Analysis

Here’s a thought provoking term called ‘Gap Analysis’.

According to Wikipedia,

In business and economics, gap analysis is a tool that helps companies compare actual performance with potential performance. At its core are two questions: “Where are we?” and “Where do we want to be?” If a company or organization does not make the best use of current resources, or foregoes investment in capital or technology, it may produce or perform below its potential.

Technically, it refers to the gap between current state and end state. While, I have often done this in the recent past with respect to my life, it is nice to put a name to it! 🙂

Another reason why I think an organization and an individual can be governed using the same set of business theories/strategies!

 

– Arun Vallappan