Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The Times Ascent article on career planning
I had mentioned being asked a few questions regarding career planning by a journalist. Here is the resulting article in the Times Ascent.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Estimating the Diwali spend on pyrotechnics
I am no expert on firecrackers and firewords, but this Diwali I was awed by the sheer amount of explosives and light on beautiful display at Dehradun. I thought I would estimate the total spend.
I was at the outskirts of the city. I could hear a steady bursting of crackers. It was a continuous sound in the background. I estimated about 20 crackers were going off every second within my audible range. For perhaps 3 hours (including the previous day's crackers etc.)
How much did each "pop" cost? I had no idea. But I estimated it at Rs. 10.
So Rs. 200 per second. 3600 seconds an hour or Rs. 720,000. Three hours = Rs. 21 lakhs.
I guessed my audible range was 1 km. The city is 5 km in radius, say. 75 sq km, of which I was hearing 3 sq km. I had to multiply by 25.
25 times 21 lakhs = Rs. 5 crores.
Is this the right number? I don't know. But I checked on the net a few minutes ago and it seems that Lucknow spends Rs. 30 crores on firecrackers each Diwali. So Rs. 5 crores may be reasonable.
I tell you, I love this number-checking.
I was at the outskirts of the city. I could hear a steady bursting of crackers. It was a continuous sound in the background. I estimated about 20 crackers were going off every second within my audible range. For perhaps 3 hours (including the previous day's crackers etc.)
How much did each "pop" cost? I had no idea. But I estimated it at Rs. 10.
So Rs. 200 per second. 3600 seconds an hour or Rs. 720,000. Three hours = Rs. 21 lakhs.
I guessed my audible range was 1 km. The city is 5 km in radius, say. 75 sq km, of which I was hearing 3 sq km. I had to multiply by 25.
25 times 21 lakhs = Rs. 5 crores.
Is this the right number? I don't know. But I checked on the net a few minutes ago and it seems that Lucknow spends Rs. 30 crores on firecrackers each Diwali. So Rs. 5 crores may be reasonable.
I tell you, I love this number-checking.
Monday, October 19, 2009
The importance of sticky strategies
An airline industry veteran was talking about Lufthansa's success even as other European airlines have fallen behind. I asked him, "What do you think that Lufthansa did different that enabled it to succeed?" His answer went something like this: "I think Lufthansa has had a clear vision of what it wanted to be, and has stayed true to this vision regardless of management changes. This probably best explains its success." Today the combined reputation of Lufthansa as an airline and Frankfurt airport as a hub eclipses that of British Airways plus Heathrow or Air France plus Charles de Gaulle for many travelers.
Strategy is long-term by definition. Yet very often "strategies" get dropped by the wayside at the slightest and new strategies adopted with much fanfare. Only to be dropped themselves. Poorly run companies do this all the time. Remember Air India and Indian Airlines? Remember the Maharaja logo? The IA logo? Remember Vayudoot? Remember the re-branding as "Indian" and the re-painting of the aircraft? And now the merged entity is called Air India once again. Just what is going on?
Some change is good and no strategy should be set in stone. But if you yourself don't know what you stand for, how can you expect the customers to know it and believe in it? You should try to stick to your strategies.
Now, when I began to write this post I was talking about strategies in general and not creative strategy in particular. I just happened to use the entire Indian Airlines + Air India logo fiasco to make a point. But then, on a hunch, I went to Google and searched for the history of Lufthansa's famous logo. I found it here and this is what I found!
Strategy is long-term by definition. Yet very often "strategies" get dropped by the wayside at the slightest and new strategies adopted with much fanfare. Only to be dropped themselves. Poorly run companies do this all the time. Remember Air India and Indian Airlines? Remember the Maharaja logo? The IA logo? Remember Vayudoot? Remember the re-branding as "Indian" and the re-painting of the aircraft? And now the merged entity is called Air India once again. Just what is going on?
Some change is good and no strategy should be set in stone. But if you yourself don't know what you stand for, how can you expect the customers to know it and believe in it? You should try to stick to your strategies.
Now, when I began to write this post I was talking about strategies in general and not creative strategy in particular. I just happened to use the entire Indian Airlines + Air India logo fiasco to make a point. But then, on a hunch, I went to Google and searched for the history of Lufthansa's famous logo. I found it here and this is what I found!
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Testing the numbers, on the fly - part 2
Let me give another example of testing the numbers on the fly. And this time, I really mean "on the fly"!
Some years ago, I was traveling by air and looking out of the window when I saw a plane flying parallel to us but going in the other direction. In a few seconds it was gone. Now we were nowhere near an airport when this happened, so this was out of the ordinary. It made me think how much distance there had been between the planes, and whether their being so close in the middle of nowhere had been a chance occurrence.
As I tried to estimate the distance between the planes, I felt instinctively that the other aircraft "had looked a few centimeters long". Then I reflected and realized this measure does not make any sense until you define just how far from you those centimeters were! That is, a centimeter in a ruler near your nose looks different from a centimeter in the same ruler at arms length, and that in turn looks very different from a centimeter one kilometer away. I concluded on some reflection that when we say, for example, "the man was so far that he looked one centimeter tall" we instinctively tend to refer to the angle subtended at our eye by a centimeter placed somewhere between a half to one arm's length away. For the sake of simplicity, I assumed that our measure is taken one meter from our eyes. This is a non-obvious insight, and tremendously useful.
What does this mean? This means that if a man is 2 meters (6 feet) tall and he shrinks 100 times to appear just 2 cm high, he must be 100 times 1 or 100 meters away. If he looks just 1 cm tall, he must be 200 m away.
In other words,
If an object looks "1 cm high/long", its distance from you is 100 times its height/length!
How convenient!
The plane had looked, say, 2 centimeters long. So how far away was it? Well, that depended on how long it was in reality. It had looked like a commercial Boeing airliner and those often have 30 rows of seats, I thought. A meter per row, so let's say 40 meters, nose and tail included.
So if the plane was 40 meters long and looking like 2 centimeters, the multiple was 2000x. Therefore the plane was probably about 2000 meters away - two kilometers.
Then I wondered if the other plane had been taking off or landing in this wilderness. How could one tell? Well, by seeing its speed. So how fast had it been going? I guessed that it had covered a 90 degree angle in my eyes in about 6 seconds. The distance was the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle (remember school geometry?) with one side of 2 km or 1.414x2 in length or about 3 km. So it appeared to cover 3 km in 6 seconds (say) or 1800 km per hour. Now this was relative speed. Part of this speed was ours - I could find our current speed on the in-flight TV. I don't remember what it was exactly but it was clear that the other plane had been going very fast too, at cruising speed. So it was probably not taking off or landing at that time!
Needless to say, I got immense satisfaction from running these rough numbers.
Something similar had happened one day when I was still at school, watching the Air Force Day celebrations on a TV set. As part of the day's events, air force aircraft carried out mock sorties on some gasoline-filled targets at Hindon air force base. They would fire a missile at an "enemy tank" and it would burst into a fireball with a loud explosion on TV. As I watched, I began to realize that every time a "tank" was blown up on TV, the windows of our apartment would reverberate a half minute later. Highly excited (having been solving Agarwal Classes JEE problems in that year), I calculated 300 m/sec (speed of sound) times 30 seconds = 9 km approximately. Which was approximately the distance between where we lived and Hindon!
Some of you may be thinking this sort of number-checking is just a nerdy engineering trait. I don't think so. I find all intelligent management practitioners asking similar questions. The best venture capitalist wants to probe your business plan numbers in the same way - by quickly running a set of independent calculations in her head. The good CEO does quick back-of-the-envelope numbers to see for himself where, say, working capital can be best shaved. And so on.
In fact, doing this sort of number-checking is like a secret handshake of a secret society - jo ise jaante hain wo iska mahatva pehechaante hain!
Some years ago, I was traveling by air and looking out of the window when I saw a plane flying parallel to us but going in the other direction. In a few seconds it was gone. Now we were nowhere near an airport when this happened, so this was out of the ordinary. It made me think how much distance there had been between the planes, and whether their being so close in the middle of nowhere had been a chance occurrence.
As I tried to estimate the distance between the planes, I felt instinctively that the other aircraft "had looked a few centimeters long". Then I reflected and realized this measure does not make any sense until you define just how far from you those centimeters were! That is, a centimeter in a ruler near your nose looks different from a centimeter in the same ruler at arms length, and that in turn looks very different from a centimeter one kilometer away. I concluded on some reflection that when we say, for example, "the man was so far that he looked one centimeter tall" we instinctively tend to refer to the angle subtended at our eye by a centimeter placed somewhere between a half to one arm's length away. For the sake of simplicity, I assumed that our measure is taken one meter from our eyes. This is a non-obvious insight, and tremendously useful.
What does this mean? This means that if a man is 2 meters (6 feet) tall and he shrinks 100 times to appear just 2 cm high, he must be 100 times 1 or 100 meters away. If he looks just 1 cm tall, he must be 200 m away.
In other words,
If an object looks "1 cm high/long", its distance from you is 100 times its height/length!
How convenient!
The plane had looked, say, 2 centimeters long. So how far away was it? Well, that depended on how long it was in reality. It had looked like a commercial Boeing airliner and those often have 30 rows of seats, I thought. A meter per row, so let's say 40 meters, nose and tail included.
So if the plane was 40 meters long and looking like 2 centimeters, the multiple was 2000x. Therefore the plane was probably about 2000 meters away - two kilometers.
Then I wondered if the other plane had been taking off or landing in this wilderness. How could one tell? Well, by seeing its speed. So how fast had it been going? I guessed that it had covered a 90 degree angle in my eyes in about 6 seconds. The distance was the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle (remember school geometry?) with one side of 2 km or 1.414x2 in length or about 3 km. So it appeared to cover 3 km in 6 seconds (say) or 1800 km per hour. Now this was relative speed. Part of this speed was ours - I could find our current speed on the in-flight TV. I don't remember what it was exactly but it was clear that the other plane had been going very fast too, at cruising speed. So it was probably not taking off or landing at that time!
Needless to say, I got immense satisfaction from running these rough numbers.
Something similar had happened one day when I was still at school, watching the Air Force Day celebrations on a TV set. As part of the day's events, air force aircraft carried out mock sorties on some gasoline-filled targets at Hindon air force base. They would fire a missile at an "enemy tank" and it would burst into a fireball with a loud explosion on TV. As I watched, I began to realize that every time a "tank" was blown up on TV, the windows of our apartment would reverberate a half minute later. Highly excited (having been solving Agarwal Classes JEE problems in that year), I calculated 300 m/sec (speed of sound) times 30 seconds = 9 km approximately. Which was approximately the distance between where we lived and Hindon!
Some of you may be thinking this sort of number-checking is just a nerdy engineering trait. I don't think so. I find all intelligent management practitioners asking similar questions. The best venture capitalist wants to probe your business plan numbers in the same way - by quickly running a set of independent calculations in her head. The good CEO does quick back-of-the-envelope numbers to see for himself where, say, working capital can be best shaved. And so on.
In fact, doing this sort of number-checking is like a secret handshake of a secret society - jo ise jaante hain wo iska mahatva pehechaante hain!
Monday, October 12, 2009
Testing the numbers, on the fly
I wrote in a recent post about how I love finding links between different facts that I have learnt. I also thoroughly enjoy linking this with some quick "number testing".
Last Saturday, I was driving from Dehradun to Delhi with my family when my father said, "We had gone to see an old hydel power project that takes water from a river. They have built a tunnel through the mountain for this and all the equipment is buried in the earth. Though it was built in the 1970s, it is in good condition and looks very impressive. The tunnel is about 15 feet across and the total head of water is about 100 meters of height. The plan was to generate about 100 MW through 3 stages, of which 2 have been built."
My first reaction was, "100 MW through just a 15 feet tunnel? That's too much!"
Then I began to calculate. 15 feet is about 5 meters, say. That is, 2.5 m radius. Or area of about 6Pi or 18 sq m approximately.
Now every meter length of the tunnel contained 18 tons of water (one ton of water is 1000 kg). This was falling 100 meters. Work done is force x distance. Force here is 18000 kg mass into 9.8 m/sec sq acceleration (due to gravity) or 180,000 Newtons. So if this acts for 100 meters, we are talking of 18 million Joules of potential energy from 1 meter of water.
What would be the speed of the water? We have all seen how water rushes out of such hydel tunnels. 20 meters going out in a second is not inconceivable IMHO. So we have a possibility of 18*20 million Joules/second or 360 MW. So we are in the same ballpark.
Now, there will be a loss due to conversion efficiency etc. The tunnel may not be full. So a 100MW generation is plausible.
I hope my calculations are correct (I am now a rusty engineer!) My estimates may also be off by a bit, so the numbers might be quite inaccurate. But here I'm emphasizing more the need to start to cross check these calculations - whether in engineering or in business or in general life - rather than just accepting what is given to you. I think this is an important trait of the best executives.
I'll give some more examples in the next post.
Last Saturday, I was driving from Dehradun to Delhi with my family when my father said, "We had gone to see an old hydel power project that takes water from a river. They have built a tunnel through the mountain for this and all the equipment is buried in the earth. Though it was built in the 1970s, it is in good condition and looks very impressive. The tunnel is about 15 feet across and the total head of water is about 100 meters of height. The plan was to generate about 100 MW through 3 stages, of which 2 have been built."
My first reaction was, "100 MW through just a 15 feet tunnel? That's too much!"
Then I began to calculate. 15 feet is about 5 meters, say. That is, 2.5 m radius. Or area of about 6Pi or 18 sq m approximately.
Now every meter length of the tunnel contained 18 tons of water (one ton of water is 1000 kg). This was falling 100 meters. Work done is force x distance. Force here is 18000 kg mass into 9.8 m/sec sq acceleration (due to gravity) or 180,000 Newtons. So if this acts for 100 meters, we are talking of 18 million Joules of potential energy from 1 meter of water.
What would be the speed of the water? We have all seen how water rushes out of such hydel tunnels. 20 meters going out in a second is not inconceivable IMHO. So we have a possibility of 18*20 million Joules/second or 360 MW. So we are in the same ballpark.
Now, there will be a loss due to conversion efficiency etc. The tunnel may not be full. So a 100MW generation is plausible.
I hope my calculations are correct (I am now a rusty engineer!) My estimates may also be off by a bit, so the numbers might be quite inaccurate. But here I'm emphasizing more the need to start to cross check these calculations - whether in engineering or in business or in general life - rather than just accepting what is given to you. I think this is an important trait of the best executives.
I'll give some more examples in the next post.
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