Shankar Meembat

Entrepreneur and Business Leader

Entries for the ‘Management’ Category

Investing successfully

Couple of days back, I was listening to Warren Buffet’s interview on CNBC. He talks about how he loves to read about companies and research them and how that guides him in his investment decision. That brought to mind one of my MBA lessons that has stuck with me. What our lecturer then pointed out […]

Nokia – Too much, Too late ?

A look at what the latest announcements mean for Nokia. Why is Nokia where it is now – some views on both short and long term failings. And some thoughts on where Nokia could go from here. It is not all doom and gloom.

Strategy is about what you don’t do

Continuing from my post on basic rules. Here’s something I have found people forget. Most of us have either worked on strategies or have been presented them. I am willing to bet that in the vast majority of cases, the strategy set out what and how something was going to be done. I’d challenge that. […]

Matter can neither be created nor destroyed

I talked about some basic rules in my earlier post. Here’s one of those, one that is the law of conservation of mass. Now, we have all learnt this in Physics. Why am I bringing it up here? Such a basic law is applicable not just in the physical world, but also in macroeconomics. Here […]

I have failed ! And because of that, so has my company

Note : This is a externalised version of a post on the Internal blog. So, colleagues who have have read that, please bear with me. If you are reading this, I hope it was because the title was provocative enough. Thanks. Was my failure really the reason for failure in my company ? You decide. While […]

Value of my MBA

After I completed my MBA, other aspirants used to frequently ask me about the value I got from my MBA. I usually answered with a smile – “The biggest gain is that when someone now bulls**ts me, I can confidently bulls**t back”. That answer would have probably applied to the outcome of my engineering degree […]

What’s a plan worth ?

“A plan is only worth the paper it is written on” – that is a phrase I came across in an internal newsletter from our unit head. So not worth much, you would think. If you are like me, an action person who just wants to get things done, that statement would be very welcome. […]

Learning from Monopoly

The simple game of Monopoly (game by Electronic Arts) that I have on my Nokia N8 gives some good lessons in Strategy. Yes, it is a game of chance since the outcomes depends on the roll of the dice. But isn’t business the same too – it is a roll of different situations – macroeconomic, […]

Product Portfolio strategy

Recently I had the pleasure of talking to a number of start-up CEOs. I was trying to understand what they were doing and why they seemed to have a very diverse set of offerings in their portfolio. You can imagine the common rationale that came through. Quite high on the list was that there was […]

Being approximately right

Decision making in business is 80% gut and 20% fact. Facts and data are important. Business plans, forecasts, ROIs, etc. are all critical parts of decision making. But, breakthroughs, by definition, cannot happen based on facts. If the future is predictable and can be modelled, then we can’t have breakthroughs. In our pursuit of these factual […]