'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Advice to young programmers
(This is the summary of speech Given by Alex Stepenov (Principal Scientist,
Adobe Systems) at Adobe India on 30 Nov 2004. )
1. Study , Study and Study
* Never ever think that you have acquired all or most of the knowledge
which exists in the world. Almost everybody in US at age of 14 and
everybody in India at age of 24 starts thinking that he has acquired all the
wisdom and knowledge that he needs. This should be strictly avoided.
*You should be habituated to studies...exactly in the same way as you are
habituated to brushing teeth and taking bath every morning. The habit of
study must become a ‘part of your blood’. And the study should be from
both the areas: CS, since it is your profession, and something from non-
CS...Something which doesnot relate to your work. This would expand
your knowledge in other field too. A regular study, everyday, is extremely
essential. It doesnot matter whether you study of 20 minutes of 2 hours,
but consistency is a must.
* You should always study basics and fundamentals. There is no point in
going for advanced topics. When I was at the age of 24, I wanted to do
PhD in program verification, though I was not able to understand anything
from that. The basic reason was that my fundamental concepts were not
clear. Studying ‘Algebraic Geometry’ is useless if you donot understand
basics in Algebra and Geometry. Also, you should always go back and reread
and re-iterate over the fundamental concepts.
What is the exact definition of ‘fundamental’? The stuff which is around
for a while and which forms basic part of the concepts can be regarded as
more fundamental. Of course, everybody understands what a fundamental
means.
*Here are few books which I would strongly recommend that every CS
professional should read and understand.
i. “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs” by Albenson
and Sussman
I personally donot like the material present in this book and I do
have some objections about it but this is the best book I have ever
seen which explains all the concepts in programming in a clear and
excellent way.
This book is available online at http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
ii. Introduction to Computer Architecture: by Hennessy and Patterson.
How many of you have shipped the programs by writing them in
assembly? A very good understanding of basics of how a
computer operates is what every CS professional must have.
H&P Wrote two books on CA. I am talking about their first book,
the introductory text for understanding basic aspects of how a
computer works.
Even if you feel that you know whatever is written in that book,
donot stop reading. It’s good to revise basics again and again.
iii. “Fundamentals of Programming” by Donald Knuth.
The core of CS is algorithms and Data structures. Every CS
professional must have the 3 volumes of Knuth’s Book on
programming. It really doesnot matter if you take 30 years of your
life to understand what Knuth has written, what is more important
is that you read atleast some part of that book everyday without fail.
iv. Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson and Rivest
This book should be read daily to keep your concepts fresh. This is
the best book for fundamental concepts in algorithms.
2. Learn Professional Ethics
* As a CS Professional, you are morally obliged to do a good job. What this
means is that you are supposed to do your job not for your manager but for
yourself. This is already told in Bhagwatgeeta : Doing duties of your life.
* The direct implication of this is: never ever write a bad code. You don’t
need to be fastest and run after shipping dates; rather you need to write
quality code. Never write junk code. Rewrite it till it is good. Thoroughly
test every piece of code that you write. Donot write codes which are “sort
of allright”. You might not achieve perfection, but atleast your code
should be of good quality.
* Let me quote my own example in this context. You might have heard
about STL, The Standard Template Library that ships in with C++
compilers. I wrote it 10 years ago, in 1994. While implementing one of the
routines in the STL, namely the “search routine”, I was a bit lazy and
instead of writing a good linear order implementation of KMP which was
difficult to code, I wrote a best quadratic implementation. I knew that I
could make the search faster by writing a linear-order implementation, but
I was lazy and I did not do that. And, after 10 years of my writing STL,
exactly the same implementation is still used inside STL and STL ships
with an inefficient quadratic implementation of search routine even
today!! You might ask me: why can’t you rewrite that? Well...I cannot,
because that code is no more my property!! Further, nobody today will be
interested in a standalone efficient STL ...people would prefer one which
automatically ships out with the compiler itself.
* Moral is, you should have aesthetic beauty built inside you. You should
“feel” uneasy on writing bad code and should be eager to rewrite the code
till it becomes upto the quality. And to the judge the quality, you need to
develop sense regarding which algorithms to use under what
circumstances.
3. Figure out your Goals
* Always aspire doing bigger things in life
* “Viewing promotion path as your career” is a completely wrong goal. If
you are really interested in studying and learning new things, never ever
aspire for being a manager. Managers cannot learn and study...they have
no time. “Company ladder aspiration” is not what should be important for
you.
* You might feel that you want to do certain things which you cannot do till
you become a manager. When you become a manager, you will soon
realize that now you just cannot do anything!
* You will have a great experience as programmers. But if you care for
people and love people, you will never enjoy being a manager...most good
managers are reluctant managers. If you see people as people, you cannot
survive at management level.
* Always aspire for professional greatness. Our profession is very beautiful
because we create abstract models and implement them in reality. There is
a big fun in doing that. We have a profession which allows us to do
creative things and even gives nice salary for that.
* The three biggest mistakes that people usually make are aiming for money,
aiming for promotion and aiming for fame. The moment you get some of
these, you aspire for some more...and then there is no end. I donot mean
that you shouldnot earn money, but you should understand how much
money would satisfy your needs. Bill Gates might be the richest person
in the world; he is certainly not the happiest. Our lives are far better than
his.
* Find your goal, and do best in the job that you have. Understand that what
is in your pocket doesnot matter...what is in your brain finally matters.
Money and fame donot matter. Knowledge matters.
4. Follow your culture
I have seen the tradition that whatever junk is created in US, it rapidly
spreads up in the rest of the world, and India is not an exception for this. This
cultural change creates a very strong impact on everybody’s life. Habits of
watching spicy Bollywood or Hollywood movies and listening to pop songs and
all such stupid stuff gets very easily cultivated in people of your age...but believe
me, there is nothing great in that. This all just makes you run away from your
culture. And there is no wisdom in running away from your culture. Indian culture,
which has great Vedas and stories like Mahabharata and Bhagwatgeeta is really
great and even Donald Knuth enjoys reading that. You should understand that
fundamental things in Indian culture teach you a lot and you should never forget
them.
Finally, I would like to conclude by saying that it’s your life...donot waste it on
stupid things...develop your tests, and start the fight.
Adobe Systems) at Adobe India on 30 Nov 2004. )
1. Study , Study and Study
* Never ever think that you have acquired all or most of the knowledge
which exists in the world. Almost everybody in US at age of 14 and
everybody in India at age of 24 starts thinking that he has acquired all the
wisdom and knowledge that he needs. This should be strictly avoided.
*You should be habituated to studies...exactly in the same way as you are
habituated to brushing teeth and taking bath every morning. The habit of
study must become a ‘part of your blood’. And the study should be from
both the areas: CS, since it is your profession, and something from non-
CS...Something which doesnot relate to your work. This would expand
your knowledge in other field too. A regular study, everyday, is extremely
essential. It doesnot matter whether you study of 20 minutes of 2 hours,
but consistency is a must.
* You should always study basics and fundamentals. There is no point in
going for advanced topics. When I was at the age of 24, I wanted to do
PhD in program verification, though I was not able to understand anything
from that. The basic reason was that my fundamental concepts were not
clear. Studying ‘Algebraic Geometry’ is useless if you donot understand
basics in Algebra and Geometry. Also, you should always go back and reread
and re-iterate over the fundamental concepts.
What is the exact definition of ‘fundamental’? The stuff which is around
for a while and which forms basic part of the concepts can be regarded as
more fundamental. Of course, everybody understands what a fundamental
means.
*Here are few books which I would strongly recommend that every CS
professional should read and understand.
i. “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs” by Albenson
and Sussman
I personally donot like the material present in this book and I do
have some objections about it but this is the best book I have ever
seen which explains all the concepts in programming in a clear and
excellent way.
This book is available online at http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
ii. Introduction to Computer Architecture: by Hennessy and Patterson.
How many of you have shipped the programs by writing them in
assembly? A very good understanding of basics of how a
computer operates is what every CS professional must have.
H&P Wrote two books on CA. I am talking about their first book,
the introductory text for understanding basic aspects of how a
computer works.
Even if you feel that you know whatever is written in that book,
donot stop reading. It’s good to revise basics again and again.
iii. “Fundamentals of Programming” by Donald Knuth.
The core of CS is algorithms and Data structures. Every CS
professional must have the 3 volumes of Knuth’s Book on
programming. It really doesnot matter if you take 30 years of your
life to understand what Knuth has written, what is more important
is that you read atleast some part of that book everyday without fail.
iv. Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson and Rivest
This book should be read daily to keep your concepts fresh. This is
the best book for fundamental concepts in algorithms.
2. Learn Professional Ethics
* As a CS Professional, you are morally obliged to do a good job. What this
means is that you are supposed to do your job not for your manager but for
yourself. This is already told in Bhagwatgeeta : Doing duties of your life.
* The direct implication of this is: never ever write a bad code. You don’t
need to be fastest and run after shipping dates; rather you need to write
quality code. Never write junk code. Rewrite it till it is good. Thoroughly
test every piece of code that you write. Donot write codes which are “sort
of allright”. You might not achieve perfection, but atleast your code
should be of good quality.
* Let me quote my own example in this context. You might have heard
about STL, The Standard Template Library that ships in with C++
compilers. I wrote it 10 years ago, in 1994. While implementing one of the
routines in the STL, namely the “search routine”, I was a bit lazy and
instead of writing a good linear order implementation of KMP which was
difficult to code, I wrote a best quadratic implementation. I knew that I
could make the search faster by writing a linear-order implementation, but
I was lazy and I did not do that. And, after 10 years of my writing STL,
exactly the same implementation is still used inside STL and STL ships
with an inefficient quadratic implementation of search routine even
today!! You might ask me: why can’t you rewrite that? Well...I cannot,
because that code is no more my property!! Further, nobody today will be
interested in a standalone efficient STL ...people would prefer one which
automatically ships out with the compiler itself.
* Moral is, you should have aesthetic beauty built inside you. You should
“feel” uneasy on writing bad code and should be eager to rewrite the code
till it becomes upto the quality. And to the judge the quality, you need to
develop sense regarding which algorithms to use under what
circumstances.
3. Figure out your Goals
* Always aspire doing bigger things in life
* “Viewing promotion path as your career” is a completely wrong goal. If
you are really interested in studying and learning new things, never ever
aspire for being a manager. Managers cannot learn and study...they have
no time. “Company ladder aspiration” is not what should be important for
you.
* You might feel that you want to do certain things which you cannot do till
you become a manager. When you become a manager, you will soon
realize that now you just cannot do anything!
* You will have a great experience as programmers. But if you care for
people and love people, you will never enjoy being a manager...most good
managers are reluctant managers. If you see people as people, you cannot
survive at management level.
* Always aspire for professional greatness. Our profession is very beautiful
because we create abstract models and implement them in reality. There is
a big fun in doing that. We have a profession which allows us to do
creative things and even gives nice salary for that.
* The three biggest mistakes that people usually make are aiming for money,
aiming for promotion and aiming for fame. The moment you get some of
these, you aspire for some more...and then there is no end. I donot mean
that you shouldnot earn money, but you should understand how much
money would satisfy your needs. Bill Gates might be the richest person
in the world; he is certainly not the happiest. Our lives are far better than
his.
* Find your goal, and do best in the job that you have. Understand that what
is in your pocket doesnot matter...what is in your brain finally matters.
Money and fame donot matter. Knowledge matters.
4. Follow your culture
I have seen the tradition that whatever junk is created in US, it rapidly
spreads up in the rest of the world, and India is not an exception for this. This
cultural change creates a very strong impact on everybody’s life. Habits of
watching spicy Bollywood or Hollywood movies and listening to pop songs and
all such stupid stuff gets very easily cultivated in people of your age...but believe
me, there is nothing great in that. This all just makes you run away from your
culture. And there is no wisdom in running away from your culture. Indian culture,
which has great Vedas and stories like Mahabharata and Bhagwatgeeta is really
great and even Donald Knuth enjoys reading that. You should understand that
fundamental things in Indian culture teach you a lot and you should never forget
them.
Finally, I would like to conclude by saying that it’s your life...donot waste it on
stupid things...develop your tests, and start the fight.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
How to BELL THE CAT - A Consultant's Approach!
With about a month or so to go, the question that junta is asking at this point is not "Do I have it in me to crack CAT?" as much as "Do I have it in me to crack me in crack CAT in a month?"
Now let us presume that you present your problem to a management consultant like say McKinsey, what would they come up with? Remember they would give you only strategic advice, no actual implementation level micromanagement. Here are a few pointers that could actually turn up in their analysis report:
(1) Don't boil the ocean
Simply put, don't try to do something unimaginably huge (boil the ocean) to bring results that are not proportionate (get salt). This ways you will just cause more anguish when you realize half way through that the latent point of boiling for the ocean is pretty huge. Another way to put it is: Work smart, not hard.
Try to come up with a list of possible tasks for CAT and try figuring out what the amount of effort required to do it is. At the end of it, you can either lessen the effort or cross it out completely. Here is an example. A lot of you may be wondering if it is really wise to "do" the word-list. Go through a realistic run of where you are. This is a good time to go through the kind of words given over the last 4 years (over which CAT has kind of streamlined the questions) and figure if you really need to go through those huge word-lists. Amazingly at the end of the exercise, you might want to do away with it all together, or go through a selective portion just to ramp up your rusted skills. (For example, you might decide to do only the "High Frequency" words from Barron's GRE.)
(2) Pluck the low-hanging fruits first
An important point that many students don't realize at this juncture, due to immense pressure, is that it makes more sense for one to consolidate what he/she knows, rather than make an immature attempt to try learning everything. Do not attempt anything that is difficult. I have seen many students coming to me at the nth moment asking if they should be attempting "Permutation Combination". My simple answer is - If you have not done it in your schooling, if you have not done it in college, if you have not done it through out your CAT prep so far, then the chances that on November 21st the neurons in your brain actually go into a synaptical surge and the answer will plop in front of you are .........well, to be frank - quite bleak! Rather I would strengthen topics I know well - percentages, profit-loss, mensuration etc.
On the flip side, is it wise to be completely ignorant about these topics? The answer is a resounding NO!!!! I strongly suggest you take out some time (a few hours perhaps from an otherwise eventful study schedule) for each of these dreaded topics and figure out which are the formulae and basic types of problem. The test-setters of the more diabolic variety are known to sneak in a few deceptively. Most test-takers are blissfully unaware of this till the coaching institutes print a bold "SITTER" next to that question a day after the CAT and the cutoff seems all the more further away. Better safe than sorry!
(3) Think out of the box
Edward De Bono once famously remarked "An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgments simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore."
Try to ensure that whatever you do from now on is not something that is mechanical or by rote, but something that involves you actively in the process. So take up each problem and try figuring out stuff like - can it work with some variation? How can anyone twist this problem? Is there a simpler way of doing this? How I can design a problem for someone along these lines? etc. etc. In short - try to "internalize" the problem you are solving.
A classic example is the mock CATs you have taken so far. Even for those questions which have helped you inch towards the elusive cut-offs - try to figure which were ill-considered attempts. I have seen many instances in the past when my reason for choosing a correct answer was preposterous to say the least (I have, in good humor and on occasions, picked up answers because, from among others, it "sounded" correct!) and yet managed to get them right. Try to sit and figure if the same problem has a better way of doing it.
(4) Peel the onion
Layer by layer......one thing at a time
Let us presume you have a problem with reading large data in DI. In short, number crunching is not exactly one of your virtues, (normally these are areas you would not touch with a ten-foot pole!), yet is a necessary evil which cannot be avoided (like say P&C). We need to figure out how best to deal with this.
Take a couple of the mocks you have taken and try figuring out how you have done in it. See what is it that actually stopped you from getting in the top percentile. "I suck at numbers" is an answer which will neither aid your morale nor help you analyze yourself better. Be more objective and tough. Speed? Bad at approximation? The questions were too ambiguous? Whatever the reasons - try making a list of those things. Now instead of racking your brain alone over what can be done for that, speak to someone at your institute. Better still, catch a friend/mentor who has "been there and done that" for his/her insights on what can be done to help bridge this gap. Remember that you may also use the "boiling the ocean" principle here and remove any ideas of indulging in frivolous activities like learning Vedic mathematics at this point.
(5) Pareto's principle
The 80/20 rule. Some of the variations are :
20% of the time goes in doing 80% of the tasks, 20% of the business brings 80% of the revenue,20% of the world controls 80% of the money etc. The point here is: Try to figure which is the 80% that is bringing you the marks and focus on that. I read somewhere what one of the CAT 2003 100%iler had written - he had wanted to maximize on Verbal and tried to get cutoff in quant. And sure he maximized in Verbal with a score of 45 (and just around 17.5 in QA)!! There is no use spending all 1hour in quant and getting 2 marks more than the cutoff and spending 20mins in verbal and get barely get the cutoff.
(6) Parkinson's Law
The law states - "Work expands to fill the time available to do it" I think the scourge of every self-respecting graduate is doing a "night-out" to write that college journal a day before the submission. And we carry this habit with us to the work place too. Just look around you it keeps happening all the time - software project, advertising campaigns, government decisions - you name it! So is it with CAT.
Set yourself challenging schedules and stick to it. Tell yourself you are going to analyze those dreaded mock cats which have been piling on a corner for the last few months. Sounds impossible right? But as the Nike ad says "Just do it!" Even if you are not able to complete it, so be it, at the least you started and finished in a go. Keep challenging yourself; try sneaking out every last minute you have to get something done. Do those distasteful tables when you are having your smoke after lunch. Do those obnoxious RC practices when you are reading the morning newspaper.
And remember you cannot really challenge yourself unless you have a hard target to achieve.
(7) The fish cannot bat and I cannot swim
Words from Boycott could not be truer in the CAT perspective. Realize what your areas of strength and areas of weaknesses are. But still at the end of the day there will be the odd ball "stud" who licks the field clean. So in your approach you would be wise if you remember to steer clear of any ego-issues. Don't try tackling that extra toughie DI problem set which goes into 3rd decimals of approximation or the arcane RC passage on Madhubani paintings just because you are out there trying to prove you too are one. The point in case is that if you were one, you would not have been struggling.
Last year there was this guy in IIT Chennai. He was a math and physics Olympiad with an IIT-JEE AIR of 12. He ended up with a 100%ile (and a score of 103 in CAT 2003!). He went on to join IIM-B. Realize that there are always going to be guys like this. Instead of worrying about them, realize that at the most there are going to be around 100 odd guys like this. Forget about them. Think about the 1100 others who are vying for the same seat as you. And if you are really bothered about such guys, then stock your fridge with some cold beer!
(8) Fail to plan then you plan to fail
Put in excruciating detail into the planning/scoping work before you start out. Make sure every waking hour is accounted for. Doesn't mean you have to go overboard and start planning to account for each minute. Rather, a detailed account of how you are going to spend time over the next month. A caveat to the fore-mentioned point. At times we do things just because it was in the original plan. Make sure your plan is flexible. If a week before CAT you figure that doing more practice in RC is going to pay off, so be it!! But make sure you constantly check your plan and ask "Is it the right thing to do?" rather than "Am I doing it correctly?"
(9) Life is what happens when you are busy making plans - John Lennon (1940-1980)
Some words of wisdom that I keep telling myself everyday, CAT or no CAT. "The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home.
The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. "
At the end of the day it is a just an exam. Nothing more. Nothing less. No reason why you should treat it differently. No reason why you should worry more. No reason why you should not think about other things in life. No reason why you should not keep your cool. If you were expecting a list of dos and don'ts I am afraid I might have disappointed you. But this is not meant to serve as one in the first place - the institutes are already doing a pretty good job of that. What I have done is tried summarizing a few points (which I believe are neither mutually exclusive nor collectively exhaustive) to give you a checklist against which you can verify the usefulness of everything that you would be doing from now on.
--By Psychodementia
(The author himself is a consultant working as an Associate - Technology for Sapient Corporation, who gave up any notions of cracking CAT after having failed for the third time last year)
Now let us presume that you present your problem to a management consultant like say McKinsey, what would they come up with? Remember they would give you only strategic advice, no actual implementation level micromanagement. Here are a few pointers that could actually turn up in their analysis report:
(1) Don't boil the ocean
Simply put, don't try to do something unimaginably huge (boil the ocean) to bring results that are not proportionate (get salt). This ways you will just cause more anguish when you realize half way through that the latent point of boiling for the ocean is pretty huge. Another way to put it is: Work smart, not hard.
Try to come up with a list of possible tasks for CAT and try figuring out what the amount of effort required to do it is. At the end of it, you can either lessen the effort or cross it out completely. Here is an example. A lot of you may be wondering if it is really wise to "do" the word-list. Go through a realistic run of where you are. This is a good time to go through the kind of words given over the last 4 years (over which CAT has kind of streamlined the questions) and figure if you really need to go through those huge word-lists. Amazingly at the end of the exercise, you might want to do away with it all together, or go through a selective portion just to ramp up your rusted skills. (For example, you might decide to do only the "High Frequency" words from Barron's GRE.)
(2) Pluck the low-hanging fruits first
An important point that many students don't realize at this juncture, due to immense pressure, is that it makes more sense for one to consolidate what he/she knows, rather than make an immature attempt to try learning everything. Do not attempt anything that is difficult. I have seen many students coming to me at the nth moment asking if they should be attempting "Permutation Combination". My simple answer is - If you have not done it in your schooling, if you have not done it in college, if you have not done it through out your CAT prep so far, then the chances that on November 21st the neurons in your brain actually go into a synaptical surge and the answer will plop in front of you are .........well, to be frank - quite bleak! Rather I would strengthen topics I know well - percentages, profit-loss, mensuration etc.
On the flip side, is it wise to be completely ignorant about these topics? The answer is a resounding NO!!!! I strongly suggest you take out some time (a few hours perhaps from an otherwise eventful study schedule) for each of these dreaded topics and figure out which are the formulae and basic types of problem. The test-setters of the more diabolic variety are known to sneak in a few deceptively. Most test-takers are blissfully unaware of this till the coaching institutes print a bold "SITTER" next to that question a day after the CAT and the cutoff seems all the more further away. Better safe than sorry!
(3) Think out of the box
Edward De Bono once famously remarked "An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgments simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore."
Try to ensure that whatever you do from now on is not something that is mechanical or by rote, but something that involves you actively in the process. So take up each problem and try figuring out stuff like - can it work with some variation? How can anyone twist this problem? Is there a simpler way of doing this? How I can design a problem for someone along these lines? etc. etc. In short - try to "internalize" the problem you are solving.
A classic example is the mock CATs you have taken so far. Even for those questions which have helped you inch towards the elusive cut-offs - try to figure which were ill-considered attempts. I have seen many instances in the past when my reason for choosing a correct answer was preposterous to say the least (I have, in good humor and on occasions, picked up answers because, from among others, it "sounded" correct!) and yet managed to get them right. Try to sit and figure if the same problem has a better way of doing it.
(4) Peel the onion
Layer by layer......one thing at a time
Let us presume you have a problem with reading large data in DI. In short, number crunching is not exactly one of your virtues, (normally these are areas you would not touch with a ten-foot pole!), yet is a necessary evil which cannot be avoided (like say P&C). We need to figure out how best to deal with this.
Take a couple of the mocks you have taken and try figuring out how you have done in it. See what is it that actually stopped you from getting in the top percentile. "I suck at numbers" is an answer which will neither aid your morale nor help you analyze yourself better. Be more objective and tough. Speed? Bad at approximation? The questions were too ambiguous? Whatever the reasons - try making a list of those things. Now instead of racking your brain alone over what can be done for that, speak to someone at your institute. Better still, catch a friend/mentor who has "been there and done that" for his/her insights on what can be done to help bridge this gap. Remember that you may also use the "boiling the ocean" principle here and remove any ideas of indulging in frivolous activities like learning Vedic mathematics at this point.
(5) Pareto's principle
The 80/20 rule. Some of the variations are :
20% of the time goes in doing 80% of the tasks, 20% of the business brings 80% of the revenue,20% of the world controls 80% of the money etc. The point here is: Try to figure which is the 80% that is bringing you the marks and focus on that. I read somewhere what one of the CAT 2003 100%iler had written - he had wanted to maximize on Verbal and tried to get cutoff in quant. And sure he maximized in Verbal with a score of 45 (and just around 17.5 in QA)!! There is no use spending all 1hour in quant and getting 2 marks more than the cutoff and spending 20mins in verbal and get barely get the cutoff.
(6) Parkinson's Law
The law states - "Work expands to fill the time available to do it" I think the scourge of every self-respecting graduate is doing a "night-out" to write that college journal a day before the submission. And we carry this habit with us to the work place too. Just look around you it keeps happening all the time - software project, advertising campaigns, government decisions - you name it! So is it with CAT.
Set yourself challenging schedules and stick to it. Tell yourself you are going to analyze those dreaded mock cats which have been piling on a corner for the last few months. Sounds impossible right? But as the Nike ad says "Just do it!" Even if you are not able to complete it, so be it, at the least you started and finished in a go. Keep challenging yourself; try sneaking out every last minute you have to get something done. Do those distasteful tables when you are having your smoke after lunch. Do those obnoxious RC practices when you are reading the morning newspaper.
And remember you cannot really challenge yourself unless you have a hard target to achieve.
(7) The fish cannot bat and I cannot swim
Words from Boycott could not be truer in the CAT perspective. Realize what your areas of strength and areas of weaknesses are. But still at the end of the day there will be the odd ball "stud" who licks the field clean. So in your approach you would be wise if you remember to steer clear of any ego-issues. Don't try tackling that extra toughie DI problem set which goes into 3rd decimals of approximation or the arcane RC passage on Madhubani paintings just because you are out there trying to prove you too are one. The point in case is that if you were one, you would not have been struggling.
Last year there was this guy in IIT Chennai. He was a math and physics Olympiad with an IIT-JEE AIR of 12. He ended up with a 100%ile (and a score of 103 in CAT 2003!). He went on to join IIM-B. Realize that there are always going to be guys like this. Instead of worrying about them, realize that at the most there are going to be around 100 odd guys like this. Forget about them. Think about the 1100 others who are vying for the same seat as you. And if you are really bothered about such guys, then stock your fridge with some cold beer!
(8) Fail to plan then you plan to fail
Put in excruciating detail into the planning/scoping work before you start out. Make sure every waking hour is accounted for. Doesn't mean you have to go overboard and start planning to account for each minute. Rather, a detailed account of how you are going to spend time over the next month. A caveat to the fore-mentioned point. At times we do things just because it was in the original plan. Make sure your plan is flexible. If a week before CAT you figure that doing more practice in RC is going to pay off, so be it!! But make sure you constantly check your plan and ask "Is it the right thing to do?" rather than "Am I doing it correctly?"
(9) Life is what happens when you are busy making plans - John Lennon (1940-1980)
Some words of wisdom that I keep telling myself everyday, CAT or no CAT. "The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home.
The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. "
At the end of the day it is a just an exam. Nothing more. Nothing less. No reason why you should treat it differently. No reason why you should worry more. No reason why you should not think about other things in life. No reason why you should not keep your cool. If you were expecting a list of dos and don'ts I am afraid I might have disappointed you. But this is not meant to serve as one in the first place - the institutes are already doing a pretty good job of that. What I have done is tried summarizing a few points (which I believe are neither mutually exclusive nor collectively exhaustive) to give you a checklist against which you can verify the usefulness of everything that you would be doing from now on.
--By Psychodementia
(The author himself is a consultant working as an Associate - Technology for Sapient Corporation, who gave up any notions of cracking CAT after having failed for the third time last year)
Thursday, March 24, 2005
The ExtraOrdinary story of Mittal Steel...
London-based Ispat International (now Mittal Steel) and its founder Lakshmi Niwas Mittal recently became the world's biggest steel maker, and has been named by Forbes magazine as the world's third richest man.
How does Mittal transform poor performing steel mills into power-packed profit centers?
We bring to you an inside account written by written Gita Piramal and late Prof Sumantra Ghoshal. Sumantra Ghoshal was a leading management guru. Gita Piramal is managing editor, The Smart Manager. The two also co-authored a book: Managing Radical Change.
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Acquisitions is one of the three major routes for business expansion, the other two being organic growth and strategic alliances.
But why choose acquisition as a growth strategy? When is this strategy more appropriate? And, if you have chosen this strategy, what are the main do's and don'ts for managing it well?
While not quite an Indian company -- incorporated in Holland and headquartered in London -- Ispat International N.V. (now called Mittal Steel) is Indian in both its spirit and management. In less that a decade, Lakshmi Niwas Mittal has spectacularly expanded the company from a wire rod manufacturer in Indonesia to the largest steel producer in the world, largely through an acquisitive strategy.
He can buy 44 lakh Maruti 800s!
Lakshmi Mittal's $19-billion year!
In 1992, Mittal acquired a Mexican steel mill. From this case study, it is possible to distil some simple lessons about how to manage acquisitive growth.
There are, of course, some variations depending on the nature of the industry, the history of the acquiring company, and the specific circumstances of each individual acquisition case. But, overall, there is a certain commonality in the pre- and the post-acquisition phases.
The story of Ispat Mexicana (Imexa)
Lakshmi Niwas Mittal's (widely referred to as 'LN' both inside and outside the company) faith in DRI (direct reduced iron) technology governed his choice of acquisitions. He believed in its future long before others.
"This has spelt success for so many of my plants," he says. Starting in Indonesia in 1976, he bought mini steel mills using the DRI route in various countries and turned them around. Eventually in January 1995 Mittal acquired Hamburg Stahlwerke, the originator of DRI technology on which almost all LN's plants depend.
According to Peter F Marcus, director of Paine Webber: "Lakshmi Mittal championed the practice of mini mills becoming integrated producers through the use of scrap alternatives."
This faith created 'the only true global steel company,' according to the Financial Times, and Mittal's reputation as a doctor of sick steel mills. In 1991, this reputation brought the Mexican government knocking at his door.
In the early 1980s, the Mexican government decided to build a new steel mill -- Sicartsa II -- adjacent to its existing Sicartsa facility located in Lazaro Cardenas.
They invested $2.2 billion in a state-of-the-art facility, which included a pelletizer plant to produce iron pellets from ore, the first DRI plant in the world using the HyL III technology, electric arc furnaces, casters to roll molten steel into flat slabs and a mill to convert these slabs into plates to produce pipes for the then-booming oil industry.
Before the factory was completed, however, the end of the oil boom coincided with a faltering economy which forced Mexico to devalue the peso. The government curtailed investment in the planned pelletizer plant, which forced Sicartsa management to source high cost iron pellets on the open market.
The government also abandoned the planned plate mill, forcing the plant to sell steel slabs -- an intermediate product -- rather than finished steel plates. Three years after opening, the plant operated well below its capacity of two million tons per year and incurred significant operating losses.
Mexican government officials publicly blamed the management and employees of the factory for the losses, and decided to privatize both Sicartsa factories in 1991. Based on Ispat's reputation for turning around Iscoot, a steel mill in Trinidad, the Mexican government invited Ispat to join two other steel companies in bidding for Sicartsa.
The pre-acquisition negotiation process
The team: Mittal sent a due diligence team consisting of twenty managers representing all line and staff functions chosen from Ispat's Trinidad and Indonesian plants and instructed them to develop plans to turn around the plant.
Mittal also explained that some members of the due diligence team would have an opportunity to remain in Mexico if Ispat acquired the facility. There were no merchant bankers.
The team was divided into sub-units to look at specific are as such as finance, marketing, management and costs. Each team had to make specific recommendations.
"These had to be solid and do-able as the person making the recommendation could easily be called upon to implement it," said one manager. "This eliminates consultants and their ivory tower analyses. After this process, targets are fixed and LN largely steps out of the picture."
Each team's report provided a valuable check on the other's to eliminate biases and oversight.
The team's due diligence revealed a factory plagued by technical problems, running at 20% of capacity, producing low quality slabs and manned by a dispirited workforce. The Ispat team was impressed, however, by the recent vintage of the assets, a young workforce with an average age of 27 years, and the supporting infrastructure.
The team recommended bidding for the plant, and developed a turn around plan.
The bid: Ispat proposed acquiring all the Sicartsa II factory's assets and liabilities, excluding contingent environmental liabilities.
Ispat also bid for 50% equity stakes in several of the businesses that supported the Sicartsa II plant, including PMT, a producer of welded pipes, Pena Colorada, which provided the factory with iron pellets and Sersiin, which managed the deep water port facilities and distributed electricity. It took eight months to sew up the contract.
Ispat proposed a total consideration of $220 million, consisting of $25 million in cash and $19 million n in ten year bonds (at 15% interest) issued by the Mexican government and secured by a warrant for 49% of Imexsa (not Ispat) equity. Of the cash component, $5 million was a loan from Trinidad and $20mn came from LN's personal resources.
Ispat's bid outlined the company's five-year plan for improving Sicartsa's operations, and included a commitment to invest an additional $350mn, with a $50mn penalty if the company failed to follow through on its promised capital spending.
Ispat's proposal also included a clause capping the number of employees it would lay off at 100 of the 1,050 workers. Impressed by the business plan, the Mexican government selected Ispat's bid. Ten members of the due diligence team remained in Mexico to run various departments, including Dr Johannes Sittard the former head of Iscoot, who served as the managing director of Imexsa from 1991 to 1993.
The post-acquisition integration process
Stopping the bleeding:Ispat took control of Imexsa on January 1st 1992 in the midst of a global recession in the steel industry, and had to briefly shut down the furnaces because there were no orders for the steel and no place to store the finished slabs.
Despite the shut-down, Imexsa laid off only seventy people -- thirty fewer than the agreed-upon limit -- and ultimately hired an additional 270 employees.
The $220 million consideration which Ispat had committed to more than halved almost instantly. The plate mill which had been lying abandoned -- still packed in crates -- was shipped to a Korean company.
"Our focus is slabs and we didn't need the plate mill," RR Mehta, Imexsa's executive director told Business India. The deal brought in $135 million -- much of this went towards upgrading facilities.
Mittal recalled his first steps at Imexsa: "In Mexico we did what we do with every business . . . we sat down with management of the acquired company to discuss various options for improvement and we developed the business plan. We sat down with each of the departments to understand their problems and viewpoints and gave our input based on international experience and our due diligence."
"Together we set very aggressive targets because we don't benchmark companies based on local standards, but on international standards. If the management of the acquired company is willing to commit to these targets, they stay. If they have any problems following our business plan and vision, they go. The Imexsa managers stayed," he added.
Production Planning Manager Oscar Vasquez recalled his first meeting with Mittal: "In our first meeting, we presented two alternative production plans, one for 600,000 tons -- it was conservative and based on our past experience -- and another plan for 1.2 million tons. Mr Mittal saw both and said, 'forget the small plan, just let me know what you need to implement the second plan.' We expressed concern that we might not find a market for the additional slabs, but Mr Mittal said, 'You will have the volume because I'm going to take care of that for you'."
Mittal used Ispat Indo's sales network to identify Asian customers for Imexsa's slabs, including a contract for 400,000 tons per year with a Taiwanese steel manufacturer. Although these orders provided low margins, they allowed Imexsa to increase capacity utilization while improving quality to win more profitable business.
Imexsa also reduced costs by switching to suppliers willing to match the lowest costs provided at Ispat's Trinidad and Indonesia plants.
The next step was to quickly develop cost-consciousness and discipline among the Imexsa management team. Jai K Saraf, Ispat International's finance director, and Sittard instituted a daily meeting of the heads of each department in the plant, which began after the day shift ended at 5:00 p.m. and generally ran until 9:00 or 10:00 at night.
The team evaluated the previous day's cost, volume, productivity and quality performance, discussed the current day's results, and agreed on detailed targets by department for the following day.
Om Mandhana, purchase director, described the purpose of the daily meeting: "The idea of the daily meeting was to cut red tape. You got together all of the people involved to talk through any issues, and as a means of coordinating and resolving day to day problems. The idea was to take a decision then and there rather than refer to committees."
Raul Torres, melt shop director, recalled his first impressions of the meetings: "Before Ispat bought the plant, the boss just told us how we should do things, but the daily meetings were nothing like that. Dr Sittard asked a lot of detailed technical questions to force us to think through problems to their root causes."
"If we were consuming too much steel in the electric arc furnaces, for instance, Dr Sittard would ask: 'Why are you consuming this amount of steel? Is there leakage? Why do you have this amount of leakage? Are you losing steel in the slag? How do you plan to improve this? Is that the cheapest way in the world? Who does this best in the world? Can we adopt their technology?'"
"We had open and sometimes heated discussions, but once we agreed on the right thing to do, it was easy to get Dr Sittard's approval and any resources you needed to make it happen. But you had to commit to improvements -- how much you were going to achieve and by when, and the entire team monitored how you did against the promised target."
"And Dr Sittard was always asking for higher targets -- he always kept the pressure on us to increase volume and quality and cut costs."
Imexsa's existing cost accounting system reported only aggregate production costs on a monthly basis, and was first available three weeks after the previous month ended. One of the first things the new management team did was to implement Ispat's daily reporting system which provided overall figures for each day's operations by the next morning.
Led by Saraf, Imexsa's accounting department began collecting detailed volume, cost, quality and productivity data for each step in the production process on a daily basis.
Initially, Imexsa's accountants collected these data themselves every day, and analysed it by hand. To monitor raw material usage, for example, the accountants asked warehouse workers to track the volume of materials leaving the storeroom each day.
As the discipline steeped in, kudos flowed back. A JP Morgan report hailed Imexsa as the lowest-cost slab producer in the world, while Credit Suisse First Boston reported, 'At Imexsa, Ispat makes Nucor's cost position look almost amateurish.'
Imexsa could land a slab in the middle of American at $35 a ton below Nucor's cash cost of production of $210 a ton. And Nucor founder Kenneth Iverson acknowledged, "Ispat comes in and runs the operations very well. They control costs very very closely."
In 1992 -- the first year under Ispat ownership -- Imexsa increased shipments from 528,000 tons to 929,000 tons, decreased the cash cost per ton produced from $253 to $178, and earned a small profit.
From 1992 to 1998 Imexsa increased annual steel shipments from 929,000 tons to over 3mn tons, and improved productivity from 2.62 to 0.97 man-hours per ton.
Antonio Gonzales, the Pelletizing Plant Supervisor observed, "There is no feeling of having finished the turnaround . . . we keep resetting the targets, and now we are aiming for 4 million tons per year -- that's double our rated capacity."
In 1997, MRR Nair joined Imexsa as managing director from the Steel Authority of India, the seventh largest steel company in the world, where he had served as chairman and CEO and had been awarded the Best CEO in India award.
Nair cited four mechanisms for maintaining constant improvement at Imexsa -- i.e. daily meetings and reports, quality programmes, global integration and stretch goals.
01. Daily meeting and daily report: The daily meeting, now held each morning for one or two hours, continued to play a pivotal role at Imexsa. A typical meeting (in March 1998) was attended by representatives from each of the departments, most of whom wore the khaki Imexsa uniform.
A few of the managers however wore red Imexsa jackets awarded to recognize achievement of ambitious goals, such as increasing one of the DRI facility's production nearly 50% above its rated capacity.
On several occasions during the meeting, participants jokingly asked whether their targets were ambitious enough to earn a jacket. Nair guided the meeting with a series of questions, inquiring about the results of previous experiments to improve performance, asking what level of performance was budgeted for the following month, and probing why targets were not higher.
Nair left the room for extended periods on two occasions during the meeting, but the discussion continued with the members of the different departments discussing targets and experiments among themselves.
The participants frequently referred to the daily report which provided detailed data on cost, productivity, volume and quality for each of the departments.
02. Quality programmes: In 1998, Imexsa used standard quality tools, such as ISO methods, to describe existing processes. Imexsa's quality efforts won numerous international awards and earned it the British Standards Institute's prestigious Company Wide Recognition, one of only two steel companies in the world so honoured (Iscoot was the other).
More importantly, Imexsa's quality initiatives helped the company upgrade its products to serve more demanding customers.
Imexsa enhanced its product mix from 97% low grade steel sold into construction applications in 1992 to 47% of slabs sold for demanding automotive and coated plate applications in 1997.
Despite Imexsa's success, Quality Director Rafael Mendoza wanted more:
"Traditional quality programmes such as ISO 9000 provide excellent statistical tools for documenting your current processes, but they are not as useful in accelerating continuous improvement. For this we introduced benchmarking, Top 10s and internal agreements."
In benchmarking operating processes, quality team members looked at best practices within the Ispat network, the steel industry as a whole and also identified and studied related processes at global leaders such as Ericsson and General Electric.
When Imexsa management wanted to improve cafeteria service during the busy lunch hour, for example, a quality team studied the restaurant in a busy soccer stadium renowned for serving large quantities of excellent food quickly during half time.
Imexsa would only work with customers and technology suppliers who agreed to openly share information on new technological developments and applications, and in turn agreed to open their plants for benchmarking.
Mendoza was not worried that Imexsa would surrender competitive advantage by allowing other companies to benchmark the plant:
"In the steel industry these days, all companies have access to good ideas through customers, suppliers and consultants. The difference is who can implement them successfully."
In the Top 10 programme, each department identified projects to either cut costs or improve quality, quantified each project's financial impact (in US dollars per year), and rank ordered the projects from one to ten based on their bottomline impact.
Each project was assigned to a project owner charged with selecting a multi-disciplinary team to quantify the benefits of the project, develop an action plan and monitor progress against agreed process milestones.
In Mendoza's view, the Top 10 programme introduced a consistent discipline in translating proposed projects into financial results and allowed each department to prioritize its own projects for improvement.
In 1996 Imexsa initiated a systematic program for making internal service agreements between Imexsa's departments and monitoring service delivery levels against these agreements.
The head of the department receiving a service would meet once a year with each internal supplier to articulate their key requirements and agree on targets and concrete measures of service delivery. Before agreeing to target service levels, a service provider could request any prerequisites necessary to guarantee delivery.
The maintenance department might agree to provide preventive maintenance on time, for instance, provided that they were notified at least one week in advance of the scheduled downtime.
The head of the department providing the service was responsible for monitoring performance on a daily basis and reporting to the head of the internal customer on a monthly basis, who would sign off on the performance evaluation.
If a service provider repeatedly failed to meet goals, the failure would be elevated for discussion in the daily meeting, but this had occurred only once in the programme's first two years.
In 1998 Imexsa had 140 internal service agreements across 28 production and service departments and sub-departments in the plant. 70% of the agreements fulfilled 100% of the requirements, 11% of the agreements met between 95% and 99%, with the remainder fulfilling less than 95%. These internal agreements yielded significant improvements in operations.
03. Knowledge integration programme: The Knowledge Integration Program (KIP) was an Ispat corporate initiative designed by Mittal to "keep stirring the whole organisation."
A few representatives from each operating and staff function (twelve in total) at each Ispat plant would meet twice each year. These KIP meetings lasted two to four days, and rotated among the plants in the Ispat network.
Prior to the meeting, the department heads would send their suggestions for discussion topics to Ispat group headquarters in London, where the agenda would be set and then distributed to each of the participants in advance.
During the meeting, the participants would review their performance against targets, including major accomplishments and disappointments, discuss common technical problems, update each other on developments in their plant and commit to future targets. The participants also communicated between KIP meetings, as Torres described:
"If I have a question, I don't have to wait until the next KIP meeting. I can make a phone call or send an email to Canada or Trinidad. I probably exchange at least one email every week with them."
04. Stretch goals: Each department in Imexsa committed to annual targets for production volume, productivity and costs, and presented their plan for achieving these goals. The process was based on a firm philosophy of Ispat.
As described by Nair, "Senior managers should ask the departments what they plan to do, rather than telling them what to do."
At the same time, however, it was not a laissez fair. Nair and his team asked a lot of questions on the plans that were presented. "You achieved this level last year, why can't you do it again? They can achieve the level at another factory, what prevents you from doing the same? What can we do to help you achieve more?"
At the end of such discussions, while the targets were very demanding, they were owned by the departments instead of being perceived as coerced from above.
As Raul Torres described: "I feel the need to constantly improve performance every day, but its not forced on me by management. I'm not fighting against somebody else's budgets -- I agreed to the goal, and the best way to reach a goal is not with a big gun to your head. I set stretch goals because I want Imexsa to win."
"At first, I wanted Imexsa to be the best steel plant in Lazaro Cardenas, then the best steel plant in Mexico, but now I ask 'why can't we be the best steel plant in the world?' We always wanted to be the best, but we couldn't because the old management put up too many limitations."
Saturday, March 05, 2005
FAITH, CONVICTION & PERSEVERENCE CAN MAKE MIRRACLES HAPPEN
A very touching story I came across on perseverance. It was narrated by WIPRO Chairman in his convocation address to IIT. Here it is...
An eight-year-old child heard her parents talking about her little brother. All she knew was that he was very sick and they had no money left.
They were moving to a smaller house because they could not afford to stay in the present house after paying the doctor's bills. Only a very costly surgery could save him now and there was no one to loan them the money. When she heard daddy say to her tearful mother with whispered desperation, 'Only a miracle can save him now', the child went to her bedroom and pulled a glass jar from its hiding place in the closet.
She poured all the change out on the floor and counted it carefully. Clutching the precious jar tightly, she slipped out the back door and made her way six blocks to the local drug store. She took a quarter from her jar and placed it on the glass counter.
"And what do you want?" asked the pharmacist. "It's for my little brother," the girl answered back. "He's really; really sick and I want to buy a miracle.""I beg your pardon?" said the pharmacist. "His name is Andrew and he has something bad growing inside his head and my daddy says only a miracle can save him. So how much does a miracle cost?"
"We do not sell miracles here, child. I'm sorry," the pharmacist said, smiling sadly at the little girl. "Listen, I have the money to pay for it. If it is not enough, I can try to get some more. Just tell me how much it costs." In the shop was a well-dressed customer. He stooped down and asked the little girl, "What kind of a miracle does your brother need?""I don't know," she replied with her eyes welling up.
"He's really sick and mommy says he needs an operation. But my daddy can't pay for it, so I have brought my savings". "How much do you have?" asked the man. "One dollar and eleven cents, but I can try and get some more", she answered barely audibly. "Well, what a coincidence," smiled the man. "A dollar and eleven cents --The exact price of a miracle for little brothers." He took her money in one hand and held her hand with the other. He said, "Take me to where you live. I want to see your brother and meet your parents. Let's see if I have the kind of miracle you need." That well-dressed man was Dr Carlton Armstrong, a surgeon, specialising in neuro-surgery. The operation was completed without charge and it wasn't long before Andrew was home again and doing well. "That surgery," her mom whispered, "was a real miracle. I wonder how much it would have cost." The little girl smiled. She knew exactly how much the miracle cost ... one dollar and eleven cents ... plus the faith of a little child.
Faith, Conviction & Perseverance can make miracles happen.
An eight-year-old child heard her parents talking about her little brother. All she knew was that he was very sick and they had no money left.
They were moving to a smaller house because they could not afford to stay in the present house after paying the doctor's bills. Only a very costly surgery could save him now and there was no one to loan them the money. When she heard daddy say to her tearful mother with whispered desperation, 'Only a miracle can save him now', the child went to her bedroom and pulled a glass jar from its hiding place in the closet.
She poured all the change out on the floor and counted it carefully. Clutching the precious jar tightly, she slipped out the back door and made her way six blocks to the local drug store. She took a quarter from her jar and placed it on the glass counter.
"And what do you want?" asked the pharmacist. "It's for my little brother," the girl answered back. "He's really; really sick and I want to buy a miracle.""I beg your pardon?" said the pharmacist. "His name is Andrew and he has something bad growing inside his head and my daddy says only a miracle can save him. So how much does a miracle cost?"
"We do not sell miracles here, child. I'm sorry," the pharmacist said, smiling sadly at the little girl. "Listen, I have the money to pay for it. If it is not enough, I can try to get some more. Just tell me how much it costs." In the shop was a well-dressed customer. He stooped down and asked the little girl, "What kind of a miracle does your brother need?""I don't know," she replied with her eyes welling up.
"He's really sick and mommy says he needs an operation. But my daddy can't pay for it, so I have brought my savings". "How much do you have?" asked the man. "One dollar and eleven cents, but I can try and get some more", she answered barely audibly. "Well, what a coincidence," smiled the man. "A dollar and eleven cents --The exact price of a miracle for little brothers." He took her money in one hand and held her hand with the other. He said, "Take me to where you live. I want to see your brother and meet your parents. Let's see if I have the kind of miracle you need." That well-dressed man was Dr Carlton Armstrong, a surgeon, specialising in neuro-surgery. The operation was completed without charge and it wasn't long before Andrew was home again and doing well. "That surgery," her mom whispered, "was a real miracle. I wonder how much it would have cost." The little girl smiled. She knew exactly how much the miracle cost ... one dollar and eleven cents ... plus the faith of a little child.
Faith, Conviction & Perseverance can make miracles happen.
A Touching Story...
One day a teacher asked her students to list the names of the other students in the room on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name. Then she told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down. It took the remainder of the class period to finish their assignment, and as the students left the room, each one handed in the papers.
That Saturday, the teacher wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper, and listed what everyone else had said about that individual. On Monday she gave each student his or her list.
Before long, the entire class was smiling. "Really?" she heard whispered."I never knew that meant anything to anyone!""I didn't know others liked me so much."
No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. She never knew if they discussed them after class or with their parents, but it didn't matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose. The students were happy with themselves and one another.
That group of students moved on. Several years later, one of the students was killed in Vietnam and his teacher attended the funeral of that special student.
She had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin before. He looked so handsome, so mature. The church was packed with his friends. One by one those who loved him took a last walk by the coffin. The teacher was the last one to bless the coffin.
As she stood there, one of the soldiers who acted as pallbearer came up to her. "Were you Mark's teacher?" he asked. She nodded, yes. Then he said "Mark talked about you a lot."
After the funeral, most of Mark's former classmates went together to a luncheon. Mark's mother and father were there, obviously waiting to speak with his teacher.
"We want to show you something," his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket. "They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it."
Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times. The teacher knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which she had listed all the good things each of Mark's classmates had said about him.
"Thank you so much for doing that," Mark's mother said. "As you can see, Mark treasured it." Mark's classmates started to gather around us. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, "I still have my list It's in the top drawer of my desk at home."
Chuck's wife said, "Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album."
"I have mine too," Marilyn said. "It's in my diary."
Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. I carry this with me at all times, " Vicki said without batting an eyelash. " I think we all saved our lists."
That's when the teacher finally sat down and cried. She cried for Mark and for all his friends who would never see him again.
The density of people in society is so thick that we forget that life will end one day. And we don't know when that one day will be. So please, tell the people you love and care for, that they are special and important. Tell them, before it is too late....
That Saturday, the teacher wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper, and listed what everyone else had said about that individual. On Monday she gave each student his or her list.
Before long, the entire class was smiling. "Really?" she heard whispered."I never knew that meant anything to anyone!""I didn't know others liked me so much."
No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. She never knew if they discussed them after class or with their parents, but it didn't matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose. The students were happy with themselves and one another.
That group of students moved on. Several years later, one of the students was killed in Vietnam and his teacher attended the funeral of that special student.
She had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin before. He looked so handsome, so mature. The church was packed with his friends. One by one those who loved him took a last walk by the coffin. The teacher was the last one to bless the coffin.
As she stood there, one of the soldiers who acted as pallbearer came up to her. "Were you Mark's teacher?" he asked. She nodded, yes. Then he said "Mark talked about you a lot."
After the funeral, most of Mark's former classmates went together to a luncheon. Mark's mother and father were there, obviously waiting to speak with his teacher.
"We want to show you something," his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket. "They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it."
Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times. The teacher knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which she had listed all the good things each of Mark's classmates had said about him.
"Thank you so much for doing that," Mark's mother said. "As you can see, Mark treasured it." Mark's classmates started to gather around us. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, "I still have my list It's in the top drawer of my desk at home."
Chuck's wife said, "Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album."
"I have mine too," Marilyn said. "It's in my diary."
Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. I carry this with me at all times, " Vicki said without batting an eyelash. " I think we all saved our lists."
That's when the teacher finally sat down and cried. She cried for Mark and for all his friends who would never see him again.
The density of people in society is so thick that we forget that life will end one day. And we don't know when that one day will be. So please, tell the people you love and care for, that they are special and important. Tell them, before it is too late....
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