Advice in 2012

My advice is this - Always listen to the wife!

Why you might ask. Here goes.

Yesterday morning over steaming cups of coffee, our conversation went something like:

Wife: Your blogging is flagging. Your last update was a month ago. You promised to be more regular. How many times have I told you about the business benefits of your blog. You write well so why the procrastination?

Me: Err, Aaah, Ummm…..don’t have anything interesting on the horizon. My holiday hangover persists, yada, yada…….. (you get the drift)

Cut to this morning when I get a business call from Canada. My friend there tells me that she decided to consider our company for an assignment after reading my blog!

I do not have to tell you that my wife walks around with this ‘I told you so’ look and smirks knowingly every time we look at each other.

Over the years, I have struck gold in a lot that she has told me. But this time, the timing shook me awake. And hence this post. So my advice to all you husbands out there is this:

If the world does not end in 2012 (I see no reason to believe the Mayans), I am sure the Mayan’s wife would have told him that his prediction was wrong.

So PLEASE do not just hear your wife out, do actually LISTEN to her. There is a difference!

The first time I noticed a scripted interview was when I followed the antics of Christine O’Donnell. She walked off Piers Morgan when he asked her about gay marriage. Something she did not have in her script that evening, but a topic she had been vocal about & written about in the book that she was being interviewed for.

Then the Blackberry in my hand stopped working for almost a week. Following the company RIM, I happened upon my next scripted interview. Mike Laziridis, Co CEO (whatever that means) of RIM stopped an interview with the BBC, when asked about their troubles with the Indian Government on BBM security. Most recently I watched other industry stalwarts in Asia like Jonney Shih of Asus and Cher Wang of HTC at the recent AsiaD conference sticking strongly to scripted text when talking to Walt Mossberg.

So what is it about these responsible, capable, successful people? Why get so upset and disturbed by questions you do not expect. I think in life (especially business life) as in interviews, you need to (well!) expect the unexpected. Scripted, canned stuff is good but upto a point. I have always been a fan of extempore and experience has taught me that life is never and can never be scripted beyond a point.

History teaches us that the most inspiring leaders have always been great orators (take Churchill, Lenin, Hitler, Steve Jobs……). I do not ever recall hearing of them being too scripted. Yes, they had a plan that they worked towards. Yes, they were dogged in their determination to achieve their goals. But they were also adaptive and responsive as well. And that made all the difference.

Have computers and other tools made us impersonal and able to express ourselves only in type? Are we losing the ability to be spontaneous, to be ready for anything? Is this the beginning of the end of repartee? Are we becoming mindless?

Are we all “Just bricks in the wall” as Pink Floyd put it? Are we to be known only by our Twitter stream and FB updates because that is where we express ourselves. Nothing wrong in that but then such people should avoid interviews, especially those that beam live!

RIP @ the giant Genius Bar in the sky!

This post is important for 2 reasons. After evangelizing blogging to my clients, I am finally back after a years hiatus on this space again. Thus the literal meaning of the words in my title make sense to me. Blogging is good and I plan to go about it diligently from here on forward. Well these posts might just have my own feelings, fears, sentiments, joy, rants about marketing in general and the online space in particular, but I promise to be regular with them. Cross my heart and hope to die so help me Anjana! Anju is a colleague at Qanda who has been instrumental in getting me blogging again and so all credit to her.

More importantly, we lost a true visionary and one of my absolute heroes - Steve Jobs. Listening to him speak about death at the Stanford commencement of 2005 made me see the foolishness of procrastination. Hence the blogging! Hearing him (speak anywhere, about anything Apple) also made me realize the value of being passionate and doing the best with what you are given. So the particular fashion in which the title of this post is written is a tribute to my Apple hero! RIP Steve - He broke the mould when you were made. Bon Voyage and God Speed!

So here’s to more posts! Adieu!