Small Organizations

The best way to learn the basic nitti-grities and the laws of management is in a small organization. It goes like this, every day, every moment, every phone call, you will come across new problems and new case scenarios and nevertheless you tend to devise new formulas or remedies.

Every work is handled by you, you supervise everything, you tend to think more, you devise better ways of working and in short you become more adapted to the management fundas.

Atleast it has given me more exposure while working in a small organization. I have worked (even though for a small period of times) with big organizations of 500+ employees and governmental organizations, where you follow protocols. But the things I have learnt in this small organization, far outweighs that from the rest.

According to me everyone should, atleast a couple of years work in such a miniscule organization, so as to polish his/her management skills. This experience will especially work for people who are to appear for a MBA entrance, or putting together a resume to put it on with the adcom of various reputed institutions. It works out nicely as an added work experience and at times of interviews as real case study, from which you can answer things you have learnt.

Hope that this has been of help to someone, so do keep joining the new upstarts and smaller organizations.

Friendship-its a strange relationship

This post is as a tribute to my friendship with a friend. O the friend is alive, but the friendship is on the verge of death, courtesy an unnecessary gossip article.
It takes years, ages to build up friendship with anyone, and it takes only few, mark me, just a few minutes to ruin one, bring misunderstanding into it and then killing it altogether.
Well, its always that people dont comment on things for any purpose, just for the sake of drumming someone up, u do so and then it ends in a tragedy like mine.
If the person, I m have in mind, reads the post, then hopefully he would understand. I started a topic with him, based on all kinds of false facts etc. and he as such got carried away into it. He should had understood that such mischiefs have been done previously also and had been taken in the spirit of the sport of Friendship. But then I didnt quite know that he was so close to the topic, I had hummed up. Nevertheless the harm has been done. I just hope that the person tries to accept my apologies in the form of this blog.
All the other readers who feel bored with my blattering of personal stuffs, please keep in mind to be aware of true facts before you drum it up with someone (otherwise BE AT THE RISK OF LOSING A GOOD FRIEND, which I think the person in the q will understand and I will not lost one).
More on the weekly updates of things happening out here, Africa may be going from bad to greater height of badness (cant say worse, but only a level lesser than that).
Kenya still seems to be burning. Maybe people are correct about Africa not being able to adhere to democracy (truly here Democracy = Demons gone crazy). There are only about a handful of countries, who have truthfully followed the laws of democracy with all its stamps and prints.

Anyways that will sum up the day for me. Please keep posting those criticisms, which may help me to better the quality of the blog.

Kenyan Situation and Me

Living in Kampala, Uganda or for that matter any place with whose topography your folks are not well versed with is problematic. If anything happens any place nearby, you are the ones who are bombarded with emails, smses and phone calls.

Take for instance, the case of the Kenyan trouble. Kenya is a different country and everything associated with Kenya is different including the people, culture, security, infrastructure and even the expartriates living there. The only problem is that it is near to Uganda and whenever the crisis in Kenya is talked about, Uganda is named invariably.

There have been a lots of things happening there in Kenya and the worst affected are no doubt the common people living there but people like me living here in Uganda are also well affected. Our fuel and most of the Raw material comes through Kenya, so it has affected most of the supplies incoming into Uganda and production in local entities as well. On personal front, Everytime I find anyone from my friends or family circle online, I have to convince them that Kenya is a different place than Uganda. The airtime expenses have gone up. I have to call my family everyday to say that I m fit and fine here, that today's violence was in so and so place is not in my residence 'country'. It may feel funny for us to comment on it, but the situation was really grave and worth giving a thought that can Africa ever be sure of having regimes, which can boast of being democratically elected and constitutionally correct. From Kenya's example, we can say that even economical powers dont have a stability, when it comes to governance.

For that matter, I can reliably comment that Uganda is an oasis of peace and stability (for the timebeing, but hopefully will continue to be so in future).

Johari window

Hi all,

Found this site, which can tell your JOHARI window.
Do comment on mine at http://kevan.org/johari?name=santoshpillai

A Big Happy New Year to all

Happy New Year to one and all.

This post is coming atleast a week late. The excuse being the same old of working too much.

Ok it may be old but I had been under tremendous workload especially for a small organisation like ours. Forgot to tell, ours is a very small organisation comprising of 2 Indian and 3 Ugandans or make that 4, one being in Rwanda.

More on the organisation in a later post.

This was my second Xmas in Uganda. Ugandans, you may be a bit surprised to know, have one of the highest per capita consumption of alcohol. In a recent research, it was ranked the first on their list of priorities. Airtime following next and then education, food, lodging etc. So from this, we can estimate how much alcohol plays a part in their life. So Xmas would have been a boom time for the breweries. Uganda may at some point of time, form apart of a case study for MBA students (may be I will take it up, when I go for that delayed MBA degree) on the Marketing and sales of alcohol. There are actually many things on which you can write a case study here in Uganda. But, again there too I m in the process of making a detailed list, so that will also have to wait for a later post.

Nevertheless, last Xmas had been pretty uneventful for me, I slept it off at home. So, this one I made up my mind not to waste the holidays in slumber and went off to visit some place here.

On Xmas day, we headed off to Jinja. Jinja, by topograpical sense is a bit on the warmer side than Kampala (dont know the reason, may be because Kampala is surrounded by hills & Jinja is a plateau, thats my inference, nevertheless it was hot). It was a quite trip but a nostalgic one for me, because it was my first trip outside Kampala on vacation or siteseeing and also because it was the first time I was visiting a genuine virgin water source/waterfalls. Bujagali Falls is just beautiful. White water rafting, swimming, bungi jumping, you ask for it in water sports and you get it there. But then I didnt venture out into one, because I dont quite know swimming and I have a hydrophobia of sorts. Some pics of the trip have been captured from amature cam phone. I will upload the same asap. The same day, we visited another charismatic place. It was the Source of Nile (ya, the great Nile river originates from Uganda). Dont know how true that is, but then it should be true because no one has yet refuted the claims or put forth any counter claims. This place is actually strange. Its in Lake Victoria, from one end, you could see Entebbe, which is about 160 kms. from Jinja & at the other end you are in Jinja & for reaching both places you have to pass through Kampala.

Truely said, Uganda is one hell of a beauty, may be thats why Gujaratis came and settled here hundreds of years back. Atleast it has a better climate than Ahmedabad. I should say that everyone should atleast once try to visit Uganda.

The Boxing Day trip should be for the next post. It was more eventful with full of more twists and turns. But till then keep posting those comments (actually I have received just one comment, but thats not a deterent to keep me from writing :-))