About

About the Blog’s Start:

My son and my wife get all the credit in the world for getting me into blogging, for that I will remain eternally grateful to them.

About the Blog’s Spirit:

My family has been very influential for me in terms of what this blog became. I had talked about Teaching in a University, Podcasting, and blogging for a very long time. The inertia never let me move forward to the personal goals I had for myself. One day, my wife read about Become a blogger, and the network effects of blogging. She shared that with me and my son. And what do I learn next? My 10-year old son created a blog on Word Press and started blogging about fun stuff with no inhibitions whatsoever. That was a gentle challenge to get onboard this channel of communication.

It took me over 3 weeks to get onboard to this idea of blogging. Once I did, I had an even bigger challenge i.e. what am I going to blog about? I wanted a topic which I could learn, share my learning, and apply it in my personal and professional life. I got stuck in a spiral of Analysis & Paralysis of the ideas. I went back to the drawing board and created a list of who I am and what I did when I got stuck, my personal drivers and motivations, and then realized that my big personal attribute is work with the best of people; put some ideas together, and implement them; collect feedback and improve those ideas; i.e. GET OFF THE DRAWING BOARD. That is the basic premise of this blog site.

Problem Solving, Thinking, Innovation & Ideas were the original topics. Architecture was my expertise, and General Management is my current role. I looked at the areas of my General Management – People Management, Profitability, Performance Assessment, and Business Capabilities. This led me to evolution of Organization Models, Operating Models, Foundation of Enterprise Architecture & Operating Models; and Strategy. Finally, I had a blog site, and the topics for weekly posts. My goal was to make the connection to every General Manager’s work to the overarching Corporate Execution – why & the context. I have learnt a lot through my own personal journey. I hope you find the blog to be of value, I welcome your feedback.

Two things outlined in Guy Kawasaki’s blogging “principles” post resonate with me as well:

1. “Eat like a bird, and poop like an elephant.” – Japanese Quote.
   This really connects with me. I am continuing to learn from others; and my hope with my blog is to share back with the world, to the extent that I can, in my core areas of expertise.
2. Think “book” not “diary.”
   I have come to believe that this is probably the best way to be successful in blogosphere.

Get Off the Drawing Board is about understanding the intended outcomes quickly, make small changes quickly without getting into Analysis Paralysis, and apply feedback to make incremental improvements into execution.  I am still trying to figure the last time somebody came up with something new either in Personal or Professional life. All my life it has been about small incremental improvement leveraging theories, models, and frameworks others developed.

I love Frameworks and Models – anything that gives me a great start to develop a Strategy. I also like Scenario Planning, Critical thinking methods, Six Thinking Hats, and Systems Thinking. I am also fascinated by Game theory, Mechanism Design Theory for determining the Pricing, Black-Scholes Option Pricing Theory for Derivative Markets.

 Have you ever wondered why Citibank’s “Financial Supermarket” strategy failed? What about Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, initial strategy of letting the financial institutions fail, and buying out toxic wastes did not fly? Strategy by definition is “Differentiation”. What are you going to do that is different to help your institution be profitable? There are great Frameworks and Models (Economic & Financial) models to help develop these strategies. Have you ever wondered what is on the drawing board when all these strategies are being developed? Why did some of these strategies fail, and some never got implemented?