Procrastinate is defined as 'to put off from day to day, to delay, to defer to a future time. As I read this, the word doesn't seem to carry a negative connotation. Then why is used in that sense? Another misused word, quoted out of meaning!
And in today's information overload environment, hectic work-style, procrastination is a necessity, and may be the right thing to do. With more technology, we are able to handle more. But demands have also increased manifold. We allow ourselves to be interrupted and disturbed in more number of ways than ever before. And reminders and follow-ups have become the norm.
If you don't procrastinate, you will have to act on all your deliverables, without assigning priority, and it will require us to multi-task. And there is nothing more inefficient that multi-tasking.
The word 'procrastinate' is so benign, so harmless, even necessary. But its usage is incorrect. However, that doesn't mean there is no problem. We have probably used the word to describe a wrong problem. In reality, the problem we are trying to describe could be one of lack of planning, inefficiency in execution. By using a word that means something else, we are actually misreading and misrepresenting the real problem.
So what do we do about it? Lets discuss that some other day!
Friday, December 4, 2009
New York! New York!
An exceptional Mumbai-bred mathematics student is convicted of threatening to kill George Bush and other ministers over his web post. The FBI has filed a case against him based on messages on a Yahoo site, and they believe that the statements calling Iraqis to avenge war on their country by America, were sent from his computer in his university.
That's Vikram Buddhi! He has already spent two and a half years in jail, and has apparently been the target of racially motivated violence. He is looking at 35 years, if convicted. And people believe he is innocent and wrongly held.
This is another example of a possible over-reaction by America post 9/11. A subject very well handled by a recent Hindi movie 'New York'. We saw that movie a couple of weeks back again when it ran on television. The treatment of the subject is very mature. And I like the character played (very well) by Irfan Khan.
Especially two lines. One where he says that it is only a person within the system can restore the confidence lost. And the other where he says that this is the country in which you can still expect a migrant's son to captain the baseball side. Somehow, the way it is said invokes a sense of belief and leaves you assured that things change for the better.
We may or may not agree with what is said. And what was said could be untrue. But in the context and presentation, it appears justified and logical, depending on how liberal your viewing lens are. The current episode of Vikram brought back memories, and gave another reason to not believe!
That's Vikram Buddhi! He has already spent two and a half years in jail, and has apparently been the target of racially motivated violence. He is looking at 35 years, if convicted. And people believe he is innocent and wrongly held.
This is another example of a possible over-reaction by America post 9/11. A subject very well handled by a recent Hindi movie 'New York'. We saw that movie a couple of weeks back again when it ran on television. The treatment of the subject is very mature. And I like the character played (very well) by Irfan Khan.
Especially two lines. One where he says that it is only a person within the system can restore the confidence lost. And the other where he says that this is the country in which you can still expect a migrant's son to captain the baseball side. Somehow, the way it is said invokes a sense of belief and leaves you assured that things change for the better.
We may or may not agree with what is said. And what was said could be untrue. But in the context and presentation, it appears justified and logical, depending on how liberal your viewing lens are. The current episode of Vikram brought back memories, and gave another reason to not believe!
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Business and Finance are very different
Last week, I happened to attend a seminar on treasury and finance organised by EuroFinance at Taj Lands' End, Bandra. Ajit Ranade was the keynote speaker. He spoke about the current financial situation in brief. He also quoted an article that Michael Kinsley wrote in the New York Times in 2007 when Warren Avis of Avis Rentals passed away. An amazing article which I was forced to search and retrieve on the net. I reproduce the article below. I was reminded of the many times we discussed about the importance of the real as opposed to the derivative, about the cake rather than the cream, about drink rather than the fluff. Read the article. I needn't say more.
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We Try Harder (but What’s the Point?)
By MICHAEL KINSLEY
Published: May 16, 2007
Seattle
IN 1946, Warren E. Avis (who died last month at the age of 92) had an idea: rental cars should be available at airports. So he founded Avis Airlines Rent-a-Car. In 1954, he sold the company to another businessman, Richard Robie. Two years later, in 1956, Robie sold Avis to an investment group led by a company called Amoskeag. In 1962, the investment banking firm Lazard Frères bought Avis. In 1965, Lazard sold Avis to the giant conglomerate ITT Corporation.
Since 1946, Avis has been sold or reorganized 17 or 18 times, depending on how you count. Each time Avis changed hands or structure, there have been fees for bankers and fees for lawyers, bonuses for the top executives and theories about why this was exactly what the company needed.
In 1972, ITT spun off Avis as a publicly traded company. Then, in 1977, the company was bought by another giant conglomerate, Norton Simon. In 1983, a company called Esmark (formerly Swift & Co.) bought Norton Simon. In 1984, Esmark was bought by Beatrice Foods, and in 1986, Beatrice was bought by the leveraged buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company.
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts immediately sold Avis to an investment group called Wesray. Wesray sold Avis’s fleet leasing business to a company called PHH Group. Then it spun off Avis’s foreign operations and took them public as a company called Avis Europe P.L.C. And then, in 1987, Wesray sold Avis to its employees under an employee stock ownership program. Wesray more than tripled its money in 14 months.
Two years after the stock ownership deal, the company sold General Motors a complicated security that effectively gave it a 26 percent stake in Avis. Apart from that, Avis’s employee ownership experiment lasted nine years, until 1996, when Avis sold itself to a company called HFS. Employees got an average of $26,000 each. Eighty or 90 current and former Avis executives got an average of $1.75 million each.
A year later, in 1997, HFS took Avis public. (The initial public offering raised just over $330 million. The banker Bear Stearns charged $15 million for its services.) In 1999, Avis bought PHH. Remember PHH? That was the company Avis sold its fleet leasing operation to in 1987. PHH was owned by Cendant, a company that had been formed in 1997 by the merger of HFS — right, the company that had spun off Avis in 1997 — and another company called CUC. HFS had retained 19 percent of the company’s stock when it took Avis public. With the stock portion of Avis’s purchase price for PHH, Cendant now owned 34 percent of Avis.
A couple of years later, Cendant bought the roughly two-thirds of Avis that it didn’t already own and made Avis a wholly owned subsidiary.
In 2006, Cendant split itself into four independent companies, one of which was the Avis Budget Group. (Somewhere along the line, Cendant had also acquired Budget Rent a Car.) The Avis Budget Group became the parent company of Avis Budget Car Rental.
Modern capitalism has two parts: there’s business, and there’s finance. Business is renting you a car at the airport. Finance is something else. More and more of the news labeled “business” these days is actually about finance, and much of it is mystifying. Even if you can understand — just barely — how it works, you still wonder what the point is and why people who do it need to get paid so much. And you strongly suspect that the swirl of financial activity around Avis for the past six decades has had little or nothing to do with the business of renting cars.
Last September, a week after the Avis Budget Group began trading on the New York Stock Exchange, The Wall Street Journal reported that the new company was “ripe for the picking.” Carl Icahn, another wily financier from the 1980s, had acquired a $100 million stake in the company and would not comment about his intentions.
The Journal warned, “If a buyout or acquisition deal doesn’t materialize for Avis, stock and bond investors will have to focus on the fundamentals of its car-rental business.” Goodness! Anything but that!
Michael Kinsley is a columnist for Time magazine.
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=====
We Try Harder (but What’s the Point?)
By MICHAEL KINSLEY
Published: May 16, 2007
Seattle
IN 1946, Warren E. Avis (who died last month at the age of 92) had an idea: rental cars should be available at airports. So he founded Avis Airlines Rent-a-Car. In 1954, he sold the company to another businessman, Richard Robie. Two years later, in 1956, Robie sold Avis to an investment group led by a company called Amoskeag. In 1962, the investment banking firm Lazard Frères bought Avis. In 1965, Lazard sold Avis to the giant conglomerate ITT Corporation.
Since 1946, Avis has been sold or reorganized 17 or 18 times, depending on how you count. Each time Avis changed hands or structure, there have been fees for bankers and fees for lawyers, bonuses for the top executives and theories about why this was exactly what the company needed.
In 1972, ITT spun off Avis as a publicly traded company. Then, in 1977, the company was bought by another giant conglomerate, Norton Simon. In 1983, a company called Esmark (formerly Swift & Co.) bought Norton Simon. In 1984, Esmark was bought by Beatrice Foods, and in 1986, Beatrice was bought by the leveraged buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company.
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts immediately sold Avis to an investment group called Wesray. Wesray sold Avis’s fleet leasing business to a company called PHH Group. Then it spun off Avis’s foreign operations and took them public as a company called Avis Europe P.L.C. And then, in 1987, Wesray sold Avis to its employees under an employee stock ownership program. Wesray more than tripled its money in 14 months.
Two years after the stock ownership deal, the company sold General Motors a complicated security that effectively gave it a 26 percent stake in Avis. Apart from that, Avis’s employee ownership experiment lasted nine years, until 1996, when Avis sold itself to a company called HFS. Employees got an average of $26,000 each. Eighty or 90 current and former Avis executives got an average of $1.75 million each.
A year later, in 1997, HFS took Avis public. (The initial public offering raised just over $330 million. The banker Bear Stearns charged $15 million for its services.) In 1999, Avis bought PHH. Remember PHH? That was the company Avis sold its fleet leasing operation to in 1987. PHH was owned by Cendant, a company that had been formed in 1997 by the merger of HFS — right, the company that had spun off Avis in 1997 — and another company called CUC. HFS had retained 19 percent of the company’s stock when it took Avis public. With the stock portion of Avis’s purchase price for PHH, Cendant now owned 34 percent of Avis.
A couple of years later, Cendant bought the roughly two-thirds of Avis that it didn’t already own and made Avis a wholly owned subsidiary.
In 2006, Cendant split itself into four independent companies, one of which was the Avis Budget Group. (Somewhere along the line, Cendant had also acquired Budget Rent a Car.) The Avis Budget Group became the parent company of Avis Budget Car Rental.
Modern capitalism has two parts: there’s business, and there’s finance. Business is renting you a car at the airport. Finance is something else. More and more of the news labeled “business” these days is actually about finance, and much of it is mystifying. Even if you can understand — just barely — how it works, you still wonder what the point is and why people who do it need to get paid so much. And you strongly suspect that the swirl of financial activity around Avis for the past six decades has had little or nothing to do with the business of renting cars.
Last September, a week after the Avis Budget Group began trading on the New York Stock Exchange, The Wall Street Journal reported that the new company was “ripe for the picking.” Carl Icahn, another wily financier from the 1980s, had acquired a $100 million stake in the company and would not comment about his intentions.
The Journal warned, “If a buyout or acquisition deal doesn’t materialize for Avis, stock and bond investors will have to focus on the fundamentals of its car-rental business.” Goodness! Anything but that!
Michael Kinsley is a columnist for Time magazine.
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