Just a tongue-in-cheek title to get your attention. By the way, Christopher Hitchens is going to have a seizure.

I quote from a letter sent to the Members of Congress by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.:

We sincerely hope that the legislation will not fall short of our criteria.

Thank God (ironically) that we do not have to live our lives dictated by the morality standards of these religious leaders. This is the Social Media Age, not 2009 BC. We abort if needed. If these leaders overall earn the right to pontificate through their sacrifices and efforts, then women overall earn the right to abort through their sacrifices and efforts of pregnancy. The issue is not about a particular woman aborting, but of women aborting.

The Church with its pedophilia and “Father Oprah” is a drowned voice in the applause of reason. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? Have they not heard about “Practice what you preach”? How can you absolve pedophiles through financial settlements yet continue to uphold the rest of us on to unreal moral standards?

One word to sum that terrible quote: Arrogance.

Ever heard the statement “I would never ask you to do something I cannot do myself.” Maybe you’ve said it yourself, as I have.

I now disagree with it.

There is no shame in admitting that you can’t do something and need someone else to do it for you. That is why you hire or get hired in the first place. If I am able to do your work, then you are redundant.

People think that statement makes it fair to you. Wrong. Instead, they should say “I am asking you because I cannot do it” so that you know that a lot is riding on you getting it right.

Next time someone says that to you, tell them “That is okay. I want to do something you cannot.”

A great presentation shared on SlideShare, my personal favorite!

While not all of us can become founders, owners, entrepreneurs (someone has to do the nitty-gritty work!), there is definite power in scaling up!

This presentation shows founders, owners and entrepreneurs on how they need to better manage their people: Please open up your minds. Stop boxing in innovation and cutting-edge ideas.

Think in short, small sentences and increments. It helps!

Hah!

Talking about over exposure, the dutiful wife of a guy called Mike has put up a website and headlined on CNN.

I checked out the website and while on the outset it seems like a very creative idea, there are some fundamental issues with it.

1. Guy got wife to look for a gig for him.
2. Wife finds reason to spend tax refund on a cool computer
3. More-than-what-I-need-to-know content
4. Guy comes off looking like a d-bag
5. Weird picture on “Contact Mike” page
6. Inappropriate Q&A

So doing some great personal networking or posting resumes on websites and following is not enough exposure for Mike. We need CNN to find us gigs.

Sorry for the sarcasm, but just wrote a post on over-exposure, but I hope he finds a gig.

Popularly delusional media hound, Ms. Ann Coulter is apparently losing the battle with her own hitherto success. Oops, America is starting to get it right! For a media-savvy, politically incorrect and almost-a-million-copies published, Ann is quite the bookworm!

Over exposure. Something none of us are worried about in today’s day and age.

When do you become too public for your own good?

When will Facebook’s 175 million users implode on each other because they are so tired of being so wired all the time? ESPECIALLY the gen-x segment!

With the risk of over-exposure comes the need to constantly give reason to remain in the spotlight. Even bloggers feel the pressure, hence the countless coaches and teachers on writing better blogs. Write more, say more, see more, do more.

Time has a great article on the subject of finding out which is better – being laid off or being employed living in fear of being laid off. Here is an interesting quote:

It’s better to get the bad news and start doing something about it, rather than languishing in limbo.

The quote refers to patients waiting for their biopsy results feeling more stress at that time, rather than when they get the results, even if it meant they had cancer. Once they got the news, they could then take the necessary action either way.

Shame on companies that do not communicate enough, as I know from personal experience, to quench employee’s thirst to know more about the life of the business, about their own jobs, when the economy is in the crapper. I do not think you can over-communicate the issues. It does not mean having daily 9am meetings to talk about the “economy”, and “how it affects us”, but being open about sharing details about the business, I think, helps.

Most employees are not going to feel the same about the business as the founders or senior-level managers do. You need to communicate at their interest level. Telling them things are going to fine when you are firing others is the surest way to increase their stress.

While managers are spending time figuring out how to keep their own jobs and those of their employees, I believe the one thing that will calm everyone’s worries and put them in the frame of mind as that of the patients who got their biopsy results (even if it meant cancer) is to talk with each other openly as two equal human beings. A lot of us get caught up in the titles and pompousness of a “senior level position” or believe that “I am the owner of the business or the manager of this division and I know more”. Sorry, you do not. You are the same as I am. You may have more money than I do, but we both have the same amount of time in a day. That is what equals us.

I think once business owners intrinsicly feel this type of equality, then the communication lines will open up. That is the way I believe that these stress levels will go down.

I speak from experience.

I am way more relaxed now, by the way.

I find Twittering is easier than blogging via WordPress.

The 140 character limit puts enough pressure on me to write something meaningful that is consumed as quickly as it is created. That is all the time both you and I have. The challenge is to know how to squeeze the vastness of a thought into 140 characters.

With more and more people following me on Twitter, it doesn’t make any sense for me to continue to syndicate my blog through RSS. I think Twitter is an easier way for you to read my content and for me to get to know you better.

This is a relevant lesson. Better to be precise in your communication than to be verbose. That is how you brand your company. In simple short sweet words.

Some rabid fans want the portrayal of the Joker to be banned from future Batman movies.

I say, the guy is long dead and gone. Leave the movies alone.

Wouldn’t it be great if some of our customers took to the streets (i.e. web) for us? How does one generate such loyalty? Can you influence my perception of you?

Yes you can. It is not just about a great product or exemplary service. It is the packaging of them both. Of course, if you have a crappy product to start with, then you’re out of luck.

Take what you have – your business – and make every interact as dramatic as the Joker’s portrayal by Heath Ledger. Make it crazy and out of this world. Don’t do something incremental from the competition. Go wild.

People say “Change is the only thing that is constant”. That is meaningless as it states the obvious. It shows that stuff you know and take for granted today, will change in the future. The marketplace will change for the better or worse. Your marital life may change as well.

But what do you do, now that you have this knowledge. How do you translate that into actions and those into results you want?

Status quo is unacceptable.

If change is inevitable, then why not energize it yourself? Flip the switch on things you’ve been doing the same way for a long time. Take a hard look at your sales process month by month. Remove what does not work.

The story posted on popular Indian website Chennai Online is about an Indian family that was successfully assisted by Obama when he was a senator. If only Obama took notice of the travesty that is the US immigration system, then legal immigrants from every country will rejoice! If only Obama recalled his immigrant past (he ancestry is immigrant versus slavery) and took a hard look at what critics of the broken immigration system have been saying for years about the process of becoming a permanent resident or a citizen.

This is neither a racial nor “American competitiveness” issue, but is rather an issue of strengthening the “patchwork” of America. While you can argue till you are blue in the face about if legal immigrants taking jobs away from Americans or not, the fact is, in the words of Mr. Obama, “For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness”. If his words are true, then this heritage will remain strong for future generations if America continues to introduce diversity in it’s populace.

Do you think he will listen?

Quote from WhiteHouse.gov

“The time to fix our broken immigration system is now… We need stronger enforcement on the border and at the workplace… But for reform to work, we also must respond to what pulls people to America… Where we can reunite families, we should. Where we can bring in more foreign-born workers with the skills our economy needs, we should.”

– Barack Obama, Statement on U.S. Senate Floor
May 23, 2007

A big thank to you to my friend Rajesh Setty for his post on quotes from Steve Jobs.

The 3 quotes that really stood for me and made my day better were:

# 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.

# …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

# 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.

If you, like me, felt like you either have thought of these things or have said it before, then you will agree with me when I say that the difference between him and us is that he believed it. Not only that, he believed it and internalized it in his thoughts and actions.

I just read the TechCrunch post on how Adobe is pulling the plug on an idea that planted ads in PDFs. TechCrunch says:

First, who wants to click on ads in a document? It is an unnatural act. Second, unlike a Website where advertisers at least have some sense of who the audience is, PDFs get passed around and downloaded willy-nilly. There is no good way to track who receives them, or who ultimately might click on those ads.

Adobe’s PDF and Flash are ubiquitous tools. I think both are as popular and as employed as the other for vastly different uses, which is great because you now use Adobe when you watch stuff on YouTube while you’re sending out a document to colleague.

I suspect one day we’ll hear about the great scandal in ads and how they never worked for anybody but the platforms (i.e. Google). Until then, I think there are plenty of other ways that Adobe can monetize PDFs.

If Adobe can deliver PDF ads, then they can deliver PDF apps. There are plenty of ideas like dictionary, translator, synonym lookup, on-the-fly spelling-’corrector’. They can also open up formats – allow me to quickly convert to Word, for a small fee of 99 cents.

What software is discovering today, thanks to Apple, is something you’ll find prevalent in Asia in consumer products. The big guns like Proctor & Gamble and Uniliver understood that they will stand to penetrate the market only by cutting the volume and price of their products. I think that’s a great lesson for IT as well. Make bite-sized products at bite-sized prices.

I found this funny ..

Someone has been listening at the Bank of America corporation.

Last night, I got a call from Tara ***** (last name blanked out to protect identity), from the Executive Relations and Office of the Chairman. She read my blog after receiving the email from the PR/Communications team and called me to profusely apologize for the issue. She said that the 0% APR reinstatement and the $39 fee are unrelated, i.e., just because the 0% was reinstated, it doesn’t mean that the $39 fee cannot be refunded. She also said that the representatives (the one that threw me off the line and the other who would only give me 1/2 fee off because he was not “authorized” to refund the whole fee) AND the manager who never called me back, will be coached. Apparently, representatives are permitted to refund this fee.

Not only did Bank of America refund the other half of the fee, but it also has extended a $50 Amazon gift card as an apology for the inconvenience. Of course, Tara also made sure that I understood that I will need to make payments after the 22nd, which believe me, I will not forget! And if I do forget and end up committing the same mistake, then shame on me.

Here are some take-aways from this situation and I think it applies to both small and large businesses:

1. People generally at the top (either as pure managers or as owner/managers) care about what others say.

2. Everything is radically transparent: Information on LinkedIn helped me contact Bank’s Communications team

3. Don’t be a brat when trying to solve a problem – remember the person at the other end is just like you.

4. The web is POWERFUL!

I say the take-aways are similar for large and small companies because I faced a similar situation a month ago. A client of my employer’s wanted us to make good on a consulting engagement that was not completed as promised. While they had approved the work after it was done, they soon realized that it was actually incomplete. Now, I could have hemmed and hawed like a colleague of mine did when she heard this news, but my focus was crystal clear – we have to do what it takes to satisfy this client because it is about the overall relationship. It is never about this one transaction so while in the short run we lost some money, in the mid to long term, we have generated extremely positive brand recognition.

So, thank you Tara for the pleasant call last night and acknowledging that there was no logic behind what transpired. You are the right person to call in such situations because you could have been nonchalant about it, but you were not. You said the right things and hopefully learned a little from this situation as well. Please feel free to send in a comment on the issue.

A hearty thank you for everyone who commented on the previous posts – I believe in the power of us.

I thought about writing this post for quite a while. The incident is still fresh in memory – it happened just last week. But I think the Bank has had an acceptable window of opportunity to respond and they still have not.

First up, as a generally creative but grounded-in-processes kinda fellow, I really appreciate how complicated it is for a large organizations to work well. I’ve never been in one, but as a pioneer in most of the stuff I’ve done at my current small business gig, I can imagine how much planning and management goes into developing a customer service process at a bank. Think about the meetings that managers would have had in the past and in the present as well, about what happens when a customer calls into the 800 line. Now that process must adhere to their internal Service Level Standards (SLA) where they might say that 98% of issues must be resolved in one call, or something to that effect.

They must also deal with a myriad of types of calls, all being funneled through the same system and routed accordingly. The complexity amazes me. So whenever I call into any such organization with an issue or complaint, I generally approach it with as much respect as I can. I am never that irate caller who will jump down the throat of a poor little representative. I adopt a much more consultative approach.

But all that got thrown out the window when I called into Bank of America last week.

Here is some history on the problem, without going into too much detail: I opened a 0% APR American Express card with Bank of America less than a year ago and transferred a large loan balance to it and have been paying it off $1000 a month. The statement closes every 22nd and the minimum is due by the following 11th. I’ve always made this payment well in advance of the 11th deadline. This time, I ended up making it even before the 22nd statement close so basically my payment got tagged to the previous month.

When I called to clarify this, I was rudely informed by the representative that it is my fault for ‘paying late’ and that I will lose the promotional 0% APR. Then I asked her to check with her supervisor and she came back a little while later saying that they have decided to reinstate the 0% APR as a courtesy. I was delighted and thanked her and realized after I hung up that I had not asked about the $39 late fee. To me, it makes sense to roll it back because they ‘forgave’ the ‘late payment’ by reinstating my 0% APR, so why should I pay the late fee? Mind you, I absolutely agree and understand a late fee for late payments – no argument there.

When I called back, I said that if the Bank has rolled back the 0% APR because I am forgiven for the ‘late’ payment, then why would I pay a late fee? The representative talking to me couldn’t for the life of her understand my logic. So we started arguing back and forth and she said the same thing repeatedly and so did I – classic stalemate situation. So I asked her to connect me to her supervisor. What she did next was appalling – she actually threw me off the line and I ended up at the beginning of the call where you give the machine your card details to find the best route for the call. You’d think I would have given up, but I did not.

When the next representative came on the line (now I’m angry and my voice is louder) I told him about the way in which I got bumped off the previous call and said that I realize none of this is his fault but, come on! getting kicked out is just unacceptable! Since I was angry, after hearing why I called, he offered to cut my fee down to half but no more because representatives are not authorized to do so. In fact, he said that he was not even supposed to offer me half off on the fee, but was doing it because I was upset. I was unable to wrap my head around the fact that half of the fee was being refunded as a ‘courtesy’ but the other half wouldn’t be. So I asked him if he was being half courteous and half rude. Of course, such rhetorical questions only incite the flames of anger, and it did. We started arguing and I said that if he could roll back half my fee while not technically supposed to, then why not roll back the entire fee? Why partially commit the crime? And so on and on we went… Finally I said to him that half off was not acceptable and asked him to connect me to his supervisor. Thankfully he did. I left a message, in a super angry mode, hoping to evoke a response, but I have none so far.

My issue is NOT with the $39 fee. My issue is with the LOGIC of this whole situation. First of all, I did not make a ‘late’ payment. I ended up making two payments in the same month, a day early. In this tough economic environment, I am making multi-thousand dollar payments on-time (except this once), have a checking and savings account with Bank of America and am poised to buy a home next year. Despite all this and the threat of me switching to Discover (which is flooding my mailbox with offers), I am unable to fathom why the fee and worse still, why half the fee? If there was ANY logic to this, and I was indeed a payment too late, then for sure, I will not argue if the Bank starts charging me a high APR and fine me $39.

But when they have reinstated the 0% as a courtesy, why should they charge me $39 or even half of that? A pissed off customer with options is the worst kind of customer. Or am I too small for a large Bank like Bank of America to give a rats ass about? To add insult to injury, they are yet to respond to me.

Check out Bank of America Sucks. I am not that mad at the Bank – all I want is my fee refunded because it is illogical to charge it in the first place. Will someone from the Bank PLEASE respond?

Here is an article about the coffee giant’s latest investor-related woes. I had written about some ideas for ‘bucks here.

This is truly an inspirational story not because of the ultimate success in business but because the protagonist Bob Williamson was a former druggie and homeless man. He was like one of those guys you see on busy intersections today, juggling tennis balls or selling the local newspaper.

Bob is a man after my own heart because he is in the business of providing software to school cafeterias, among other such large institutions. I’m deeply interested in this space because if you’ve been to a school lunch room or University cafeteria, you’ll be amazed at the sheer amount of food. While I don’t have any hard facts on hand, I am sure that almost 75-80% of the food goes wasted. When looked at nationally, there are over 5000 universities in the US and far more number of schools. The waste is endless.

I’ve always believed that solutions to these socio-economic problems must be capitalistic in nature. Of course, a non-profit model also works, but we all know the clear difference between the two. People sit up and listen when there is money to be made in solving a problem. Also, it would be in a food service company’s best interest to better estimate food demand and reduce waste in order to boost profits. While I am sure the Sodexho’s of the world are already doing that, I will also tell you that they’re not doing a good job. And therein lies the opportunity.

A recent show about freeganism got me thinking about developing a for-profit business plan that will move wasted food out of the hands of grocery chains, bakeries and cafeterias and into the hands of the homeless and needy and quite simply, people who want to buy food at cheaper prices. I am also happy to discuss if you want to sound off on your own ideas about how a money-making idea can make it easier to take good wasted food and move it into the hands of hungry people.

BusinessWeek

Inc. Magazine

Profile on corporate website

Brilliant article by Ramesh Ramanathan on Livemint.com

Jeff Bezos was interviewed by BusinessWeek for their story on Innovation. I can’t be more of a fan of Jeff Bezos. I loved reading his story a few years ago, as having gone from a quirky hedge fund manager to being the founder of Amazon. He is truly one of the sharpest minds out there having lived through the dotcom bust riding a pure -to use outdated dotcom verbiage- “clicks and mortar” play.

BW asked a very poignant question and I quote “Q: Every company claims to be customer-focused. Why do you think so few are able to pull it off?”. Jeff’s answer just blew me away. He says “Companies get skills-focused, instead of customer-needs focused. When [companies] think about extending their business into some new area, the first question is “why should we do that—we don’t have any skills in that area.”

I thought about how it goes down at my place of work and how it probably is at your jobs as well. Or maybe at your own businesses. Almost everyone’s instinctive reaction to an innovative, out-of-the-box-idea is “But we can’t do that” or “It is not part of our model” or “You’re crazy!”. Recently, I had the honor of earning the indignation of my colleagues and a boss when I suggested tagging leads to a salesperson for life – i.e., if salesperson A uses salesperson B’s lead, then A should be given a (small) referral fee for the life of the deal that B put together with that lead. You should have seen the huffs and guffaws that went around the room and I was quickly pounced on by everyone. Needless to say, the internal confusion about compensation for sharing leads remains unresolved and is going to result in a lot of disastrous meetings and confusion with a last minute solution cobbled together and put in place. The idea was to move away from an ownership model, let salespersons relax about cross-sells and focus on increasing their business.

Jeff is not suggesting that if you run a painting company to start selling flowers. No way. The point of focus in his words are “A much more stable strategy is to start with “what do my customers need?”. He says Amazon’s Kindle is a great example. He doesn’t say what prompted him to develop this new gadget but one can imagine that it might have stemmed from delivery delays that buyers might have experienced on Amazon. If you were savvy enough to buy all your books from Amazon, then you probably want to get to the book faster. And so Kindle was born.

This was the most insightful questions for me from the interview… it clearly validated my way of thinking, thank God! One of the ideas I picked up from the jokers at SearchMyCampus.com is to offer a service if there is a critical mass of folks asking for it. By that I mean, if you’re in the painting business and a certain number of your clients (say 2 out of 10) ask for spackling services then that is something you might want to review. 1 out of 10 might be a random request but 2 out of 10 signals the start of a pattern. 3 out of 10 and you should start hiring the right folks and buying the equipment and by 4 out of 10, you should be ready to do your first spackle job.

This is great for me personally as well because I clearly recognize that I do not possess all types of skills. I am good in some and suck at others. But instead of being skill based (can you make presentations? Can you train your team? Can you manage people? etc.) Jeff now makes it easy for the million of us by suggesting retaining focus on needs. If you are not able to manage people, then you can find someone. Ditto for all other skills. Seems like the winner is the person who keeps his/her ears open to client needs and orchestrates the execution to provide solutions to them. Simple?

Ray Kurzweil lives in Massachusetts and has been a prolific inventor since he was in his mother’s womb. He has also written a ton of books – here is his Wikipedia entry for more information.

He is also the main proponent of Singularity. WIRED has a cool article about him in their latest issue, billing him as a Futurist who is doing everything he can to live long enough to witness this event. Briefly, it is the point in time predicted by Kurzweil where when machines become conscious or become aware and overtake human intelligence. Before you start guffawing, remember that he has been at the cutting edge of technology for many years and has been almost always ahead of his time.

Kurzweil’s toenail is smarter than me. But then when I read that he and his research partner Dr. Terry Grossman whom he met in 1999 have “exchanged thousands of emails, sharing speculations about which cutting-edge discoveries could be safely tried” (WIRED article), and also that “The doctor charges $6,000 per appointment”, I couldn’t help wondering what will happen to the future of Singularity, if I placed and win won a bet that Kurzweil will be dead in 60 years or less? You see, this obsession with immortality or doing stuff in the afterlife is traceable to the Egyptians. They buried their Pharaohs with artifacts to be used in the afterlife (which still lie lie still unused after 1000s of years!), so this idea of wanting to either live forever or for at least way beyond general life expectations, is very, very old.

But can such stupendous claims, backed no less by the most complex and probably the most accurate of equations generated by one of the smartest men on Earth, be dissolved into oblivion, by the simplest of representations of information – a binary choice … a bet?

Kurzweil pops a LOT of pills (“He takes 180 to 210 vitamin and mineral supplements a day, so many that he doesn’t have time to organize them all himself”), which for a renowned scientist like him seems like a very stupid naive approach because after all, these are pills from today’s time, created by today’s unethically scary pharmaceutical industry, for treating yesterday’s problems from yesterday. I think if old age doesn’t kill him eventually, then the chemicals will probably get to him soon enough. He also “frequently bicycles through the Boston suburbs” – seems like a fairly safe activity but you can be hit by a car anytime and as the traffic is crazy in the city.

The “Singularity” movement hinges on Kurzweil’s ability to live very long. Guys like Matt Philips, 32, “who became independently wealthy when Yahoo bought the Internet advertising company where he worked for four years” and are willing to pay Dr. Grossman (remember, he is Kurweil’s Singularity partner) $6,000 an hour purely based on Kurzweil’s word, means I smell opportunity.

I’ll bet that Kurzweil (born 1948) will die sometime in the next 60 years. He is already around 60 years of age, and people living up past 100 is not uncommon (there are around 75,000 100+ year olds in the US). I think he will probably die due to a major illness concocted by these toxic pills, or by riding around in Boston, or by being shot by a crazy-eyed Matt Phillips (JUST KIDDING!). Dr. Grossman states that “The normal human lifespan is about 125 years” – ancient Indian texts suggest 4 stages of life each spanning 25 years. So do I believe 1000s of years of knowledge or a $6,000/hour doctor with a deeply vested interest in propagating Singularity till Kurzweil lives?

Can the great mathematical and scientific Kurweil and his million books on Singularity be brought down by an scientific simpleton like me?

I closely identify the “Worst Manager” with the “Worst Person” because they share this particular trait in common. Every other “bad trait” is forgivable, except this one.

While I try not to judge people, I believe that this old trait dating back to the creation of modern civilization, is sinister and has no place in today’s world. It probably was born out of the necessity of grabbing neighboring lands and ruling the country.

Think about the worst boss you’ve had. While many people have different reasons why a person is a bad boss, the common denominational trait you’ll find in this group is their desire for your back to bend and remain bent. Straightening it out is a threat of sorts.

This is more prevalent in small owner-managed firms. The owner-boss thinks “just do the damn job, will ya?” and expects no creativity or strategic inputs from you, because the time you spent “thinking” could have been spent doing your job. They may say that they foster freedom of thought, but the opposite is true.

Worst Manager = Worst Person = Expects underlings to have a bent back.

Recognize this trait as the bad boss and as the employee that has to deal with this situation. Invaders broke the backs of their victims and thus were able to rule over them – plenty of examples are available in history. You need to recognize this possibility when considering a job with a startup or small family run firm. Your back must be bent if you want to survive and keep your job.

Do you know someone who qualifies?

Disclaimer: All the above is true ONLY in firms run by owner-bosses who want your back bent and is definitely not the case in every small family-owned or owner-managed business.

“Paperless office” if I recall correctly, was the buzzword in the very early 90s. Later Adobe was heralded for Acrobat and paper was declared irrelevant. That was then, this is now. I just saw Mojo HD’s “Start-up Junkies” and their first season is focused on Earth Class Mail Inc.

I realized just how paperless I have gone since 2002/2003. For instance, I no longer receive paper statements for my credit cards or checking account. Checks that are deposited in the ATM now appear as images thanks to Check21. 100% of all faxes that come into my office are all “efax” – and as long as we’re not mandated to send back hard copies of signed contracts, we just fax the printed copy to our eFax number, which comes to us as an email. Invoices for services delivered are also now almost 100% paperless. And of course, greeting cards have been electronic since 1997.

Similarly, while in the MBA program, I wrote all my papers in MS Word and some were even uploaded to Blackboard that is prevalent in US educational institutions, but not exploited to its full potential by all professors (some disliked it even!). For some I had to submit print copies. Many tech-savvy professors reviewed the papers online and submitted grades in the system as well.

In a flat world, being paperless is the only way things can work and have been working since outsourcing began 12+ years ago. The other day I was emailing chatting with my friend Subbu who lives in Bangalore and works for Ernst & Young doing taxes for it’s American clients. How do you think he is exchanging information with the US office? I am pretty sure he gets all his work electronically, he works on his computer and then sends it back electronically. Paper is analog and obviously, email is digital. And it looks like you can take any existing system and re-imagine it digitally and almost automatically you can create a product and start a business.

Subbu also talked about microfinance. In traditionally poor countries, paper receipts are prevalent. So many of these entrepreneurs borrowing micro loans, are quite electronically adept. Many even have hand held computers. So going paperless can solve a small problem of avoiding missed micro loan receipts all the way to processing tax returns globally.

So when I saw and learned about Earth Class Mail, I was blown away in some respects and skeptical in others. Obviously I am not an immediate potential customer because I don’t own a PO Box, but the solution is brilliant. If I review all the mail I get electronically, trash all the direct marketing pieces of crap and have them recycle it (which is a service they offer for free) and electronically store anything else that is of value, then I think it is a brilliant piece of personal management. Owning a PO box now immediately looks like something my grandfather would have liked using, enjoying a leisurely walk down the street to meet his post office friends and have a chat

Of course, the coverage on Mojo HD (which is on cable) is something I absolutely love because it tells a story neatly edited yet with the fervor and excitement in a startup on small victories (I work in one). One of the episodes shows Ron Wiener who has just started blogging, talking to the Post Master General of India Post and was able to get him and PM Generals from many other nations to agree to run pilot programs. So even these bureaucratic government run organizations are looking to go paperless. That too all at once, globally.

So looks like paperless has finally arrived. I would be delighted if Ron Wiener would be interested in a discussion on this interesting topic.

UPDATE: On further research, I ran across this really nice blog about a Chiropractor in San Diego, CA trying to and then running a paperless office. Here are all the paperless posts, and here is an interesting post in particular.

If you have been living in a bubble or on Mars, you will find the CNN article as a very interesting read. I chanced on it because I was surprised to read the headline “Inflation is top economic worry”. I thought we were in a recession, but apparently it is some form of stagflation (inflation with prices going up while having jobs and economic growth in recession).

This survey of 1000+ American adults reveals some really invaluable quotes:

“86% said they are worried about jobs”

“65% said they are “very concerned” about inflation”

“unemployment concerns loom large, with 59% saying they are “very concerned”"

“76% of Americans are concerned about the recent drop in the stock market”

“77% are worried about the drop in the amount off money homeowners get when they sell their houses”

BW’s Christopher Farrell has this article about how we might be talking ourselves into a recession. Really?

The underlying point of this book (which was a very quick read) is that the Internet is just like electricity. I agree and disagree with the author on various points he makes in the book because while he is right, he is also dead wrong. That is all I have to offer at this point.

The average reader like me will love connecting the dots between the Internet and electricity but that is pretty much it – I was pretty surprised that Wired chose to glorify the book.

Update: CNN.com has a good article on the subject. Note the comments about traders making money only when the prices change. So keeping in mind the comments below, if I were a trader, it only helps me if I bet higher because that is the natural trend in oil prices given the world situation today. Only an uneducated person will bet on it going lower. The only reason I can think of oil futures trading lower in the distant future is if it’s demand is stabilized due to other competing sources of energy.

The Times of India has an article about oil prices and the consternation over the inability to accurately predict the future and to manage the rising price of oil.

The article says “Goldman now sees average selling prices of $95 a barrel for 2008, $105 a barrel for 2009 and $110 a barrel for 2010 and that was before this weeks spike according to Dow Jones wire service”

So the star analysts and brainiacs over at Goldman get it wrong because this is something that is larger than all of us. We may like to think that we can neatly chop world events into number arrays and review them, but that is very far from the truth.

To sum it up, more cars = more expensive crude. Unless you change the left side of the equation (not factoring in oil-based or oil-dependent products), you are not going to see the price of crude drop. From the 70s crisis till now, America was able to keep the price down but at some point price has to catch up with the rest of the world. We may see another drop in prices for political reasons (not for the election this time around) but reality is something else altogether. Mind you, crude has not become more expensive to produce but the futures on a barrel of oil determining what prices a buyer will be expected to pay next year and the years after that, is what is driving up this number. The irrational traders believe that demand will eventually outstrip supply (and even bring it down to 0) and want to make the most of it before that happens. Pure and simple economics.

Any economically sound individual with a long term view will realize that oil-based products are going to get phenomenally expensive, until it’s price drops to zero when there is nothing left to consume. It is going to be inflated so to counter it, you’re going to have to earn more by being productive. At some point, oil will become nationalized – owned and run by governments, who will ration it like chocolate during the world wars of past. That will create a universe of its own problems, but much smaller in magnitude.

Oil is a “key industry” as socialist India would say. We know what business leaders are capable of when such key industries are made private (Enron). In India power generation is still with the government, which has it’s follies. But never will the price of a unit of power exceed what the peoples of that nation can afford to pay. That is when you get politics to finally work for the masses. Similarly, oil is meant to be owned and controlled by the government, which will always have the power to keep prices low.

I believe the privatization of an economy is the best way to let a nation prosper; look at India since 2003. However, there needs to be a meeting point between economic growth and economic stability. That is exactly where the government needs to fit in. While it is staffed with ‘human beings’ who permit inefficiencies to thrive, I’m willing to bet that the price-to-be-paid for those infarctions will be far less than the irrationalities of today’s oil merchants. If we can all mutely agree to let our present rest on the shoulders of nervous futures traders, then why can we not let it lie with government bodies that will be SO slow to move that the price of oil may artificially remain lower than it’s true cost?

Wouldn’t that be refreshing!