Experiment, Explore, Enjoy
If you looked back at your life, what would you remember?
Extending that concept even further, If you looked back at the day that just passed, what would you remember? Was the day well spent? How about tomorrow?
Working at large organizations is really depressing sometimes. The numerous checklists, policies and timesheets tend to reduce the employee into a robot. At least, that is the employee point of view. But aren’t they present because of a reason? The methods used may be flawed but the reason in most cases would be very valid. The reasons for the existence of such ‘overheads’ may be the only reason why an organization has managed to grow.
Example: MTR Foods. The company started as a small restaurant in 1924. Due to the recipe, it was a pretty famous hotel even in those days. However, an European tour by its owner in 1950 led to quality standards being introduced. He made it a policy that quality shouldn’t be compromised in any circumstance. Whereas most restaurants in those days kept the kitchen as hidden as possible from customers, MTR showed off its kitchen as an exhibit. Whereas most restaurant try to stay open all day, MTR opens up only during specified hours of the day! Policy. Tokens are issued to customers and food is served according to the token number! Not seen in any other restaurant. The hotel is almost a tourist destination at Bangalore these days. But the real outcome of such organizational activities was that the hotel diversified into a 200 crore food product company by 2006. Of course, quality might have been an important factor here. But unless quality is institutionalized, it is impossible to maintain it for such long periods. 80+ years in this case.
Organizing things reduces the options sometimes. However if done neatly, then less options is much better than too many.
If a product is the costliest, then it ought to be the best. That is the line of thought most people have!! A few days back, I saw a bottle of mineral water whose price was Rs.40 as compared to other brands which cost Rs.12. It beats me as to why any one would spend that much! It is after all water. Yet, I see people buy the special water. Similar examples can be seen elsewhere too. An apple with a half inch wide sticker pasted on it is 4 times as costly as the one without the sticker. I’ve never found a really noticeable taste difference between the two.
A few days back I bought this laptop called Asus eeePC 1000h. It provides more than twice the battery backup as conventional laptops, is less than half the weight as conventional laptops, has the same RAM, hard disk and peripherals as conventional ones, has a CPU that runs all my 3D design applications without a hitch AND it is less than half the price of conventional laptops. The minute I say this last thing, no one is ready to believe me. They think SOMETHING must be wrong with this laptop.
Just keeping a low price tag does not always work. It may actually work against the product.