Suresh Dinakaran's Blog

 

The justified attribution for the caption of this blog should go to Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher, who once remarked: “We have a strategic plan. It’s called doing things.”

 

I am not discounting the need for planning here. That said, it does become a kind of rabbit hole where what is sought is the ideal time, the perfect situation, an in-depth analysis and the most conducive environment, before you get around to doing things, which in most cases does not happen because the planning for perfection is never the springboard for getting things done.

 

If you maintain a journal or a to do task list or your old project reports or business plans and you go back in time and look at them, a feeling of nostalgia does take over for a bit. Some of them are brilliant to say the least. But, when you introspect, you realise that most, if not all, have remained  just on paper and you did not do anything as planned.

 

Your plans are like dopamine- it energises, excites and gets you invested and moving. That said, they are also like impediments wherein you get mired in the default of what is planned with no room for looking around corners and adapting to new situations or opportunities. Therefore Planning = Shackles ? Well, probably.

The game changers in the world, the ones who made significant dents in the universe, the people who created global brands, movements and organisations were everyday people- college dropouts, frustrated, angry employees, teenage rebels etc. Did they have a hard bound script and a plan in place? No way. What they had was the willingness to listen to the whispers of possibility and the gumption to embrace uncertainty, the chaos of the world. Now that sounds like a plan.

 

The map is certainly not the territory. And the greatest journeys, discoveries, adventures and inventions are rarely mapped.

 

So, whats your…plan?

 

 

For decades, the over riding three-act structure default in Hollywood movies has followed a pattern of ‘ Set up, Conflict and Resolution  ‘, where the resolution is left completely to the seemingly Herculean abilities of the hero | heroine to resolve, overcome, destroy, make good, vanquish, discover, progress, unearth, overcome, accomplish etc as the situation warrants.

 

A lot of us suffer from what we call the ‘ Hero Trap ‘- an over reliance on our ability to handle something that becomes infuriatingly urgent which could have easily been avoided had it not been the temptation of the short term hack.

 

A project gone sideways, the end of a rocky relationship, the loss of a crucial game etc all leads us to think about what happened at the last moment, which is where we miss the wood for the trees. Actually, what is overlooked is what happened in the beginning or the middle, where the patterns could have been picked up, where one could have distilled the signal from the noise, when you had a stronger chance to make things better.

As it is said, New Year resolutions never really work. Though habits and systems do, more often than not. Hacking on the short term is short changing yourselves. Spending time on avoiding that and investing it in solid practices and habits is probably the best work you can do this year and probably the rest of your lives.

 

That way, we avoid the H(ero)iccups!

 

Yes, this is different from the ‘ idol worship ‘ that we are so used to hearing. Though phonetics will continue to play its part.  And so would ‘ herd mentality ‘ or is it ‘ heard mentality ‘?

 

I was intrigued by this line from a 2012 New York Times blog quoted by the essayist and cartoonist Tim Kreider, providing a memorable self-description ” I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know “. He continues, and I can imagine, reluctantly to add ‘ I’ve insidiously started, because of professional obligations, to become busy…every morning my in-box was full of emails asking me to do things that I did not want to do or presenting me with problems that I now had to solve “.

 

This thinking runs starkly counter to the ‘ hustle and be productive ‘ culture that we are outrageously immersed in.

 

ESSENTIALism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Sounds blasphemous in this day and age. The art of separating the trivial many from the vital few. A few years ago, I came across this fascinating book and after a gentle outreach and gracious response from Greg McKeown, the author, had me falling for the content Book, Line and Sinker.

 

There has been always something obscene about the cult of the hustle, the treadmill of alienated insecurity that tells you that the moment you stop running for even an instant, you will be flung flat on your face. Arbeit Macht Frei. Meaning work sets you free. These words first appeared in an 1873 German novel. And later got adopted by Nazis as a slogan. The mantra of work as freedom or a magical route to happiness has proved incredibly resilient.

 

A study called “Slack Time and Innovation” shows that even companies like Google, 3M and Wella encourage their workers to be innovative besides their strongly innovation-oriented work environments, by providing slack time. As Paul Graham, Y-Combinator founder, wrote: “Microsoft and Facebook both got started in January. At Harvard that is (or was) Reading Period, when students have no classes to attend because they’re supposed to be studying for finals.”

 

Many innovative ideas seem to be generated as side projects by employees and students.

 

Tim Kreider has an explanation- Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as Vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets…it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.

 

According to award-winning author and innovator Phil McKinney, slack time allows the brain to roam freely, decreases stress, provides an opportunity to refresh, and, ultimately, creates  a better work environment, making people happier and more productive.

 

How about maintaining a ‘ ledger of slack ‘ ?

 

Guaranteed delivery. Within 48 hours or less.

 

The Amazon Prime culture we live in has made us scapegoats for instant gratification. Blink and you have it. As someone said, instant gratification takes too long.

 

What you sow or will sow is in your control. Showing up consistently with authenticity and shipping out your work or art for the minimum viable audience that you cater to is in your control. Planting the seeds and letting it grow beneath the invisible surface is in your control. And the rewards that you end up seeing, a lot of times unexpectedly, makes it all the more worth it. Yes, they may not happen overnight or in an instant, but this kind of magic happens all the time.

 

This runs counter to the Amazon Prime culture that we live in. We crave quick, tangible results, delivered right to our doorsteps in 2 days or less. But the ground reality hums a different tune. And most certainly it is not linear to be given a cause and effect label. It is mostly chaotic. And a lot of times invisible. The silent, diligent work you do, the relationships we establish, without any expectation of outcome or returns, the value we provide seamlessly often are the triggers for the defining moments that we get to gratefully encounter much later.

 

Sowing the seeds without the expectation or the understanding of when, how and if they will sprout is an endeavor worth investing in. Trust the dynamics, the slow, invisible growth that are happening below the surface. In doing so, you open yourself up to the magic of unexpected outcomes. The pleasant surprises that silent followers and admirers bring in. And the significant impacts that you never saw coming.

“The ability to discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable prerequisite for success.”- Brian Tracy

 

Before anything else, here are some staggering mind numbing stats:-

 

In 2022, BCCI sold the IPL broadcast rights to Disney owned Star India for five years at Rs 48,390 crore, at triple the value that it sold in 2017( Rs 16,347 crore for 5 years).  Reliance-backed Viacom18 bagged the tournament’s digital rights for Rs 23,758 crore, and is airing it for free on JioCinema – a move that experts have seen as a way to get more viewers to its platform before it can start charging them.

 

According to media planners, Star’s ad rates for IPL 2024 remain in the range of Rs 17 lakh – Rs 18 lakh per 10 seconds for both standard definition (SD) and high definition (HD) channels. The standard inventory price for IPL 2024 Video Ads on Jio Cinema is INR 200 per thousand impressions. The minimum billing for the video ads is INR 5 lakhs.

 

We are well and truly into the unabashed frenzy that the IPL( Indian Premier League) season brings on in India.

 

That said, this rant is not about the colossal amounts being invested into live cricket played in India. It is more about those stakeholders( read brands and advertisers) who these rights acquiring broadcasters and streamers hope will underwrite their investments by pumping in sponsorships and advertising money. That they are doing exactly as envisaged is unquestionable though what is questionable is the audacity of the brand owners and creators to take the audience’s common sense for granted.

 

To begin with the brutal obsession with having celebrities to endorse a brand is mighty conspicuous. Here are a few that sticks out (puts you off is more like it) for their brazen audacity to be below mediocre.

 

The Pan Masala brands are having a field day. Pan India I reckon. That they make every nook and corner of the country welcoming fields of spittoons is a different matter. Certainly not waving the flag for Swachh Bharat Mission.

 

Let me begin with brand Vimal Elaichi. Earlier the brand believed in Three’s Company when it came to celebrity endorsement: SRK, Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn. They get off their vehicles only to casually echo ” bolon Zubaan Kesri “. And go of. Oh, to have the luxury of time. Inspired by freedom fighter Lokmanya Tilak I guess. Now they believe that it takes two to tango. Leaving SRK and Ajay Devgn to do the (dis)honors and battle it eye to eye amid badly morphed body double with a hoodie. Not to mention the low res stock shots of the London Bridge to convey the brand’s attempted association with ‘ sophistication‘. And the frequency of the ads lead you to believe that it’s Only Vimal, to borrow an earlier campaign strap line from the yesteryear Reliance’ fabric brand called Vimal. Vimal E Lie Chi!

 

Sometime back we had to tolerate both Big B and Ranveer Singh mouthing the goodness of Kamla Pasand Pan Masala while gyrating( their version of badly choreographed dancing as they send out ‘generational messaging‘) out of tune. Now it is a bunch of ex-cricketers( some of whom like the conveniently altruistic Sunil Gavaskar, apart from Kapil Dev, Chris Gayle, Virender Sehwag) batting for the brand for a few dollars more. As I say this, I am also quite keen to know which is the studio that does this brand’s pathetic VFX, especially when the much touted pearls of garbage are willingly solicited into the palette from the terribly designed pack. Kamla Na Pasand should be more like it. (But then, when current day cricketers are blatantly encouraging online betting in the My 11 Circle ads, the past is taking a cue from the present and cue not I mean why not?).

 

To show uber premium and luxury, I just realised( some of these ads are so educational I tell you) we need to show a few horses casually striding across a hillock for their morning stroll, a master( Hrithik Roshan) in triple breasted suit under harsh sunlight with expression actually giving away his ” what the hell am I doing in this ad “, (other than making a big sum of money) and Siggnature spelt with 2g’s(in these days of 5G and beyond). Every time I see this ad, my Dil goes Bagh from here. Then I remembered it’s a premium product from Dilbagh Group. So, it does make (no)sense.

 

Hrithik also hams his way through the Mountain Dew ad and the viewer is left with no clue as to what he is doing and who, why and how is he saving his friend, so terrible is the creative execution. My fear remains solidly intact even though it is told that ‘ dar ke aage jeet hain ‘.

 

Some guys come with strings attached. Not sure if the pun is intended or not. Well, I don’t care. An actor whom I like Saif Ali Khan, strums the guitar for a few seconds, claps to himself in appreciation( the audience couldn’t care less you see) and presto you are a Raj Niwas Elaichi brand ambassador. Easy does it. Sorry, I forgot to mention- there are the ubiquitous dancers in the background doing their usual floor test too. ” Soch Jo Kare Raj? “- Mein tho soch mein pad gaya! Time for our country to go ” Soch Bharat? ”

 

I am sorry I am breaking the pecking order here a bit but this ad comes in purely on utter demerit. Wild Card entry if you will. And I am totally tamed to include it. I saw it last night. This was for the Real brand of juices where Kareena Kapoor is sashaying across the kitchen badly lip syncing a terribly composed jingle. The horror doesn’t end there. She opens a refrigerator which has only Real juices stocked top to bottom, end to end. I am sure that, the same home has bespoke refrigerators for all the other things that ordinary mortals like you and me use. I am left wondering ” is this for real? ”

 

Now that we are solidly on liquid territory, it’s time to bring in Deepika Padukone and her struggle to advocate for the Bisleri brand. And the audience is supposed to #DrinkItUp. And why? Because she is wearing an outfit that will reinvent the concept of pixel. What else can be the motive? Bling put to shame exponentially.

 

I was caught up in Envy when I saw  the ad of Shahrukh endorsing Denver. I almost went and bought one thinking that it could be the Scent of My Success as well. Then gave up. Sent the thought packing back. But there is a message in the bottle( or aerosol can) here- for all the aspiring Bollywood bound hunks- you know what to pray sorry spray if you are seeking success.

 

If you want to distill staleness from freshness, look no further than the Kartik Aryan endorsed Dabur Red Bae Fresh Gel. I am sure he himself is clueless as to why he is blowing a flying CGI kiss to the audience holding onto the toothpaste pack. I am sure I am not the only one seeing red here.

 

There are many more ads that can effortlessly stake dubious claim to be on this demerit list, but I am sparing the effort. And to think that all these ads would be created by agencies and brands who I am certain have incredibly talented people in their midst, beats the hell out of me. If this is a contagion, we need to quickly create a vaccine to stem the rot.

 

I am not getting into what might seem like a moral science discourse on how these celebrities unabashedly peddle tobacco, betting, alcohol and what have you. The very same select few whom millions look up to. I reckon when it comes to big bucks, the buck doesn’t stop anywhere.

 

Sum summarum, my conclusion is that the bigger the star doing celebrity endorsements, greater the level of abysmal creativity and mediocrity. Thoughts?

 

End of rant! Socho, kitni badi baat hain!

 

BTW, all these ads are being experienced in between the ‘ expert commentary ‘ mouthed by self anointed experts like Murali Kartik, Deep Das Gupta, Anjum Chopra and the likes. Mediocrity is indeed infectious.

 

The venue was the eclectic The Collection at Four Seasons Hotel Bengaluru at Embassy ONE. The ambience was understated elegance. The meeting of senior thought leaders from diverse industry verticals, the first in the CEO Meet series in India, heart crafted by ISD Global, was a class act. The spectacular team at Four Seasons Hotel Bengaluru at Embassy ONE   put on a grand show and the special edition cocktails made brilliantly fluid by Diageo | Godavan took the evening to a new high. And our partners in rhyme Wings Brand Activations let our creative imagination take flight. Here are some candid moments captured from the evening – A Meeting of Distilled essenCEO!

They arrived in full force. At the Four Seasons Hotel Bengaluru at Embassy ONE. Stalwarts, achievers, senior leaders from industry verticals as diverse as Retail, Infrastructure, E Commerce, Wellness & Healthcare, Learning & Development, Media, Aviation, Technology, Sports, Luxury, Culinary, Lifestyle, Software, NGOs, Consulting, Transport & Mobility and more. Resulting in a happy collision of heterogenous thoughts with the homogenous intent of making things better.

The theme for the evening centred around trust and the high voltage panel discussion on it was moderated by the mercurial Dr Smitha Ranganathan, also, the co curator.  Our eminent panelists included Dr Shankar Sundaran, Head of Renal Transplants at Aster, Deepthi Bopaiah, CEO of Go Sports and Chef Avin Thaliath, co-founder and director of academics at Lavonne Academy of Baking Science and Pastry Arts. That their respective stories were truly inspiring would be making an understatement.

Conversation expert and co curator of the CEO Meet Uday Kiran , co-founder @ Mentza, seamlessly facilitated more engagements with some of the invitees on the subject of trust and that led us to believe that they struck the right chord with a vast majority of the esteemed invitees.

 

 

 

 

Stimulating engagement and conversations led us to believe by end of the evening that trust indeed is more than a five letter word. We look forward to carry the baton forward together with all fellow travelers in this journey whom we are all at ISD Global grateful to.

 

 

 

This adage has stuck with me for a while now. ” Fear is a reaction, while creativity is a response “.

 

Fear is about us, inward. How will I fare in the entrance test? Will I ace the interview? Will my presentation go well? What if the investors reject my idea? Should I become an entrepreneur and let go the secure safety net of a job? Should I be the one to make the call? Will I reach on time? Weird as it may sound, fear comes across as selfish, self-centred, myopic. Remember, “Afraid is a country where they give you passports at birth and hope that you never seek citizenship in any other country “.

 

Yet, as soon as you cross the chasm, start showing up and shipping out, trying to impact a MVA(Minimum Viable Audience), the fear transcends and lets go of the coat tails that it hangs on to for dear life. Now you have entered the territory of generosity.  Where it is no longer about you or inward but it is outward, about them. Where the speech you deliver is not about you but about engaging and influencing the audience. Where the idea that you want to bring to market is not about fanning your ego but creating something worthwhile for the customer.

 

 

“Intention is one of the most powerful forces there is. What you mean when you do a thing will always determine the outcome. The law creates the world.”― Brenna Yovanoff, The Replacement

 

 

 

Before anything let me admit that this rant is not about jumping off from a plane and then figuring out whether you have a parachute and if so, trying to assemble it on your way down.

 

That said, your intuition is the best GPS app you can have in the operating system of your life. It’s that subtle tug in your gut that guides you, even when the destination isn’t mapped out. Leaps of faith get triggered by intuition.

 

The default guard rail fondly called the status quo is not the premise to grow, prosper, progress, explore, discover or invent. That is where you see entrepreneurs continuing to invest time, resources and energy into their ideas or projects that has gone sideways long ago. As they are burdened under the weight of the ‘ sunken costs ‘.  This is when you see someone continue to work in an organisation inspite of an acerbic culture and little chance for freedom of expression or career progression. Exactly the same thing in relationships which have gone bitter but you continue to hold on thinking that things will change for the better.

 

This should not be news to any of you. Our comfort zones are the domicile where our dreams travel to gather dust. As you take your plunge and that overdue leap of faith, you need to let go of the trapeze and trust that you will find your wings on the way down or find an handle to hang onto. The typical playbook will never encourage to disrupt the status quo. Put that playbook into the bonfire.

 

 

It is good to understand that the universe always has bigger, better plans and it’s the seemingly precarious leaps that often lead to the most exhilarating flights.

 

“Most of what I know I’ve learned from falling, from placing the brighter side of my hands against the earth and pressing until vertical. The ground has taught me more about flight than the sky ever could.”

― Rudy Francisco, I’ll Fly Away

 

Fear, apprehension, self-doubt will come and scream in your ear which is when you wear your noise cancelling headphones(metaphorically speaking) and distill the signal from the noise.

 

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Seek unabashed attention is the rallying cry. And get it at any cost seems to be the endeavor. By being over the top. Being controversial. By gross exaggeration. By misleading. By being opportunistic. By waving the flag on cancel culture. By tagging along with the powers that be.

 

The noise around is deafening. The hustle culture is omnipresent. The temptation to trade standards, principles, dignity, ethics and values in the quest for some attention is high. It might be an interim desire but that remains.

 

 

Simon Sinek called out to Start with Why– how about Start with Trust ? Trust is the basis for almost everything we do. It’s the foundation on which our laws and contracts are built. It’s the reason we’re willing to exchange our hard-earned paychecks for goods and services, to pledge our lives to another person in marriage, and to cast a ballot for someone who will represent our interests. It’s also the input that makes it possible for leaders to create the conditions for employees to fully realize their own capacity and power.

 

There is also the temptation to overlap and substitute trust with reputation but there is a clear divide and both are distinct from each other. The tripod of trust stands on authenticity, logic and empathy. People tend to trust you when they believe they are interacting with the real you (authenticity), when they have faith in your judgment and competence (logic), and when they feel that you care about them (empathy). When trust is lost, it can almost always be traced back to a breakdown in one of these three drivers.

 

So in the toss up between trust and attention, what are you willing to call out?

 

The caption above might be a misfit considering that most of the matches in the IPL(Indian Premier League), one the richest sports leagues in the world and the Board of Control for Cricket in India( BCCI)’s cash spewing monster( cash cow would be too tame a term) are played in the evenings from 7.30 pm onwards. But that is not important. I am here to rant about what must have dawned on a lot of people like me well before I am giving vent to my utter disgust and disillusionment.

 

Last evening, i.e the 25th March, courtesy the grace and kindness of my brother who booked premium seats, I had the opportunity to watch the IPL  match between between RCB and PBKS  at the over romanticized, over hyped, over sized backyard garden but (considered for a long long time good enough to hold international matches) cricket ground called the Chinnaswamy Stadium.

 

Having watched quite a few of the IPL games both in Bombay and Dubai, I had tempered expectations. My wife did not want to come but relented reluctantly. My uncle and aunt, on a holiday trip to Bangalore, were the others who made the fource. Tour de force would be more like it.

 

Irrespective of how you go to the stadium, by car, metro, auto, train, bus, foot, bended knees or whatever, getting in is the perfect inspiration for an ‘ against all odds documentary ‘. Unless of course you are considered the ‘ powers that be ‘, the select elite who have frictionless access and experience at every touch point at such so called hallowed venues.

 

Traffic cops( under motivated, under paid, over weight, over stressed, over worked) give you the get lost, why are you here glare within 500 metres of the stadium. And why not? The cost of one ticket that we had would be far more than the monthly salary they take home.

 

Neither the IPC(Indian Penal Code) nor the Constitution of India considers women or girls carrying hand bags a crime. As far as I know. The tickets issued for the match did not in anyway, anywhere mention that handbags are not allowed(Law abiding citizens don’t do all this. What will politicians do then? We can’t be upstaging them surely especially in election year). But, my aunt, my wife and several other ladies and young girls had the ignominy of being rudely told that you can’t go in with bags. And they provided an ‘easier‘ option- go out, walk another 500 metres, stand in line for another 45 minutes and deposit the bags at another gate and come back, rinse and repeat. Not to mention to be at the unwelcoming end of pushing, shoving and jostling because history has to repeat itself you see.

 

By this time, our enthusiasm was clearly turning into frustration, irritation and anger combined as we watched the absolute disregard and contempt of the authorities to the people who make the game ie the paying public. It was also a blatant exhibition of the absolute lack of coordination between the various stakeholders be it the IPL Organising Committee, the RCB franchise, the KSCA( landlords of the -for us atleast- infamous, grossly and hopelessly inadequate Chinnaswamy Stadium), local state police, the traffic cops, the on ground event coordinators and any|all stakeholders.

 

Somehow, having come to the end of our tether and found a good samaritan who understood our plight, we managed to get in after trading off a huge amount of dignity and self respect. Quid pro quo. Somehow the cricket buff in me still harbored hopes that the worst was over. But, we had another thing coming.

 

We discovered a new definition of premium seating- hard piles’ forming plastic chairs with the primary view facing the Jimmy Jib( camera mounted on a crane to get spectator shots) where you had to use Prabhudeva type of neck movements to watch the action on the ground. We realised later that we were in much better luck. We had another group of 6 who were in ‘ premium seating ‘ whose view was completely blocked by a suite of speakers belting the nonsense that the monster(read DJ gone wrong on barrels of adulterated Red Bull) whose only incentive was to pulverise the highest of decibels at its own game. I know it sounds gross and you bet it was!

 

Well, we have enough common sense not to expect Italian marble flooring at the stadiums especially in premium seating where ordinary mortals sink their hard working backsides but the floor there resembled as if a tsunami of garbage had just made a landing. Civic and civil sense made no sense. Can’t blame the paying public as there was zero provision for waste disposal of any kind as far as the eye could see. Waste disposal- ahh, what a waste, isn’t it KSCA| Chinnaswamy? Premium seating should be redefined as premium shitting.

 

Now premium seating would ensure that civility and basic decency would prevail- or so was the belief when we went in. Amidst families and kids, there were absolute hooligans( some of them unfortunately qualify to be fans of the franchise RCB) who after a couple of sponsor supplied beers, behaved as if they will outdo obnoxious English football fan behavior at all costs 8 days in a week and win hand over fist.

 

I saw kidney dialysis machines for the first time( sorry, just kidding). But I wouldn’t have been surprised had I seen some there. The washrooms were shit holes personified, literally. Dirty, unkempt, over crowded. So much so that most of the women and some of the men refused to use it. Bangalore’s water shortage was a willing ally to the well calibrated strategy of the powers that be of treating the paying public as ‘shit’.

 

The premium seating tickets came with food and beverage coupons served in the hospitality area(read Badminton Court of the KSCA)- there another racket ensued. A place which can accommodate at best 150-200 people was trying to feed and host ten times that number. But the net impact of this was that a lot of us learnt how to walk on biryani, trashed cans, disposable plates, garbage bags( yes I saw a few surprisingly) and plastic glasses among other things with aplomb. Alas, if we could have done likewise with our self respect and dignity!!

 

Stuffed with claustrophobia and disgust, we made our way back out of the stadium. That was our just desserts. Didn’t wait for DK and his histrionics. We had a different bitter experience.

 

Disappointed? Nah! Disillusioned, yes and how! I am aware that this rant will hardly make any dent in the vast universe of unabashed capitalism. Shame on you BCCI, IPL, IPL Governing Council, KSCA, RCB

 

I am not sure how Qatar Airways, the sponsor of the enclosure we were in( and Main Principal Partner of the RCB Team in the Indian Premier League) sees this from a branding lens. To me, this is worse than being next to acerbic content. And for an airline that has been an unprecedented seven-time winner of the “World’s Best Airline” voted by Skytrax (2011, 2012, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021 and 2022).

 

Love for the game is fine but being tortured and blinded is not! Wake up. Our silence is deafening.