Science of decision making - Movie Review Edition

Vencut Sobbo, BTech, MBA, Senior Vice President–Strategy, was busy making a presentation on “Strategic Initiatives for Sustainable Growth by Leveraging Synergies”, when he got a call from his wife that she would like to go for a movie.

Hard pressed for time, he called up his Secy and asked about hindi movies currently playing.  Cecillia replied, “Dil to Baccha hai Ji, Yamla Pagla Deewana, Dhobhi Ghat, No One Killed Jessica & Tees Maar Khan ”.

His AVP, Suniel GoSwami, MBA from IIIICM, overheard this and decided to do a quick research on the reviews and ratings,  and knowing that Mrs. Sobbo was an Aamir Khan fan , he "zeroed in" on Dhobhi Ghat.

Suniel, like most of you , relied on the medieval “Star Rating” system to choose which movie to watch but decided to “Walk an extra mile” to impress his boss .

He pulled out 21 reviews of Dhobhi Ghat , meticulously put them in a PowerPoint.

These were the results :

« One Star – (1) Komal Nahta

«« Two Star – (3) Minty Tezpal ( Mumbai Mirror) , Gaurav Malani ( Economic Times) & Blessy Chettiar ( DNA)

««^1/2 Two and a Half star – (4) Khalid Mohammed & Kaveree Bamzai( India Today) etc

««« Three Star – (5) Anupama Chopra ( NDTV) , Rajeev Masand ( IBN) , Sonil Dedhia ( Rediff) etc

«««^1/2 Three and Half Star- ( 5) Nikhat Kazmi ( Times) , Sonia Chopra ( Sify) , Sarita Tawar ( Mid-Day) etc

«««« Four Star – (3) Taran Adarsh , Santa Banta and Now Running.

Little confused but knowing his Boss’s fetish for numbers and stats , he didn’t settle for this raw data and “drilled down” further . So all 21 results were “populated” in “Microsoft Access” and he “Run a query” to find a little more scientific and statistically correct rating , results were :

Average	2.928571
Mode	3
Median	3
Geometric Mean	2.805119
Harmonic Mean	2.643093

As any statistical result would have , he also added a disclaimer : "It's assumed that all 21 reviewers are equally talented ( hence no need of weighted mean), and none of them has been influenced by any kith, kin cast or crew of any of these movies. Also, it's assumed that they have rated these movies after watching at least 10 minutes each of both halves"

Satisfied that he had done enough, he called his boss to tell the results. Vencut , entered the cabin humming “Sheila ki Jawani”, looked at the PowerPoint titled “Informed Decision Making” .  Inspite of being a “Man of numbers”, he was not looking visibly impressed with this 6 slide power point presentation with graphs and pie charts. He called Cecilia to check who’s the heroine in Dhobhi Ghat , Cecilia said “Some new unglamorous chic, I don’t know the name, sir”.

Vencut immediately called his wife “Honey , tried tickets of Dhobhi Ghat , but couldn’t get , so got you Tees Maar Khan – It’s an Akshay Starrer, and a comedy which you’ll like”. 

Tweet

Spirit of Mumbai !

This Sunday, it would be my 5th year at the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon - 2011 . And,  like last four years , this year too I along with my colleagues would be led by some amazingly spirited kids from The Victoria Memorial School for the Blind , Mumbai . We all would be participating in the Dream Run. 

Yes, these kids would walk / run the whole six kilometers with us. 

These are some of the pics I clicked , while running / walking with them in 2010. 

These pics are clicked by me , feel free to copy paste. Btw , if you feel like making some donations to the Victoria Memorial School for the Blind , Mumbai , contact them http://www.vmsb.org/ or let me know. 

Tweet

LinkedIn – The Blunder years !

As of 1 January 2011, LinkedIn had more than 90 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries. You can be proud that You , Your neighbor , and the society watchman, all are one in 90 million.

 

Let’s get started .

 

Profile

It’s first and the easiest step , all you need to write is your education( if any) , Past and Current ( no no not girl friends ) Employments , and it’s ready . It also allows you to give a brief summary , that’s where many of us try to be creative.

 

Sample Summary of Vencut Sobbo

“I am a vibrant , creative and hardworking young professional with a sharp focus on quality tasks. Other than BAU am also good at multi tasking and have accomplished a robust culture in current organisation. My goal in life is to scale new heights and take my organisation to even higher height. If given a chance , I would prove an ASSet to your esteemed organisation , together we can achieve even newer heights – you can see that I am not scared of heights"

 

This will ensure that your summary appears in every possible search , by any damn consultant , MBA or a wanna be MBA cum Consultant.

 

Sending Invites

First and foremost , use LinkedIn special feature to send auto invites to all your gmail, rediffmail and yahoo mail contacts , this will ensure that your invite reaches atleast 749 people. Now it’s time for sending some personalised invites.

 

Sample personalised invites :

First , to that pretty HR lady who hired you.

“Dear SunderLuxmi , I would like to invite you to my LinkedIn because I like the way you helped me in filling all the 19 Joining Forms including my hobbies , I still remember the way you smiled listening that Orkutting is my hobby”

 

Second , to the Head Marketing , whom you met in the LOO.

“Dear Sunderassan Sir, I am working with despatch department , as a junior vice executive – outgoing emails , please accept my invite. In case you don’t remember , we met at the place where all bodily fluids meet , and I liked your tattoo”

 

Making Recommendations

Now , it’s time to make some recommendations. By now , you would have received at least 19 messages asking for your recommendations.

 

The typical message would look something like - "I'm sending this to ask you for a brief recommendation of my work that I can include in my LinkedIn profile. If you have any questions, let me know. Thanks in advance for helping me out"

 

Now seeing this , don’t waste your time in remembering who’s this guy. All you need is to dust off your old “wren n martin “ , see what is an adjective – pick any one at random and make a sentence and Bingo .

 

Sample Recommendation for an Ex

“Nymphia and I go a long way , I still remember her first day in our office , also when we met at the “Annual Forward Looking Strategy and Looking Back Meeting”. She is very well dressed and has an eye for detail , she quickly spotted the mole and some hairs on my left ear lobe”

 

That’s it for this time , keep licking linking.

 

Disclaimer: Names have been changed on requests, If still it’s your name you better change it. 

Tweet

If Bollywood was on LinkedIn ?

First thing, it would no more be called LinkedIn , it would be LinkedUp – and you know why !

Now let’s explore some popular features of LinkedIn.

Profile :

That’s the first step for any LinkedIn user, and knowing Bollywood they would hire script writers for it. Chetan Bhagat would be the busiest person on earth and the first one to approach him would be one film wonder Sonakshi Sinha and no film no wonder Shazahn Padamsee.

Shazahn Padamsee : Current – Doing nothing , Past – Did nothing except a blink and you miss kinda role in Rocket Singh.

Shazahn Padamsee through Chetan Bhagat’s pen.

"Shazahn Padamsee, a theatre artist , a successful model turned actress is the daughter of renowned ad guru / theatre personality Alyque Padamsee and prominent pop singer Sharon Prabhakar.  She made her feature film debut in 2009 in the Hindi film Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year opposite Ranbir Kapoor, which opened to critically acclaimed reviews ( by both Alyque and Sharon), and now she is working with critically acclaimed , national award winner , eminent director – Madhur Bhandarkar."

Add Connections :

Now as you know , typical LinkedIn user connects with people he/ she has worked with or studied with. But, Bollywood and studies hardly go together except Tusshar Kapoor who has graduated with a BBA from the Ross School of Business ( Now you know why Bollywood doesn’t pursue education).

So LinkedIn would come up with a new tab , “People you have partied with”, and Kishen Mulchandani would be the most connected man. Bombay Times and HT Cafe would sponsor this section , and would provide data and photographic proofs. So, the people you partied yesterday night , would automatically appear today in “People you may know”.

By the way, unlike tattoos , connections are not permanenet . So Deepika can always block Ranbir and reconnect with Sid.

Who’s viewed your profile:

This feature tells that “Your profile has been viewed by 14 people in last 15 days” and it further tells that who all viewed your profile. Now this would be most used feature , as it would tell that Deepika and Sonam have viewed each other’s profile 19 times and Shakti Kapoor has viewed both of their profiles 190 times. Surprisingly , Katrina has never viewed Salman’s profile.

Recommendations:

Well , this has got nothing to do with casting couch , and I repeat there’s no casting couch in this industry. So Aditya Panchssholi would self-lessly recommend Kangna but Kangna would never display that recommendation on her profile. Karan Johar would recommend every damn person except Ram Gopal Verma . Uday Chopra and Harman Baweja would love to recommend people , but LinkedIn won’t allow them to recommend.

Morani Brothers and Wizcraft would start “Paid Recommendations” where for a measly sum of INR 2 crores , you can get recommendations from Shahrukh Khan , Salman Khan or Akshay Kumar.

Aamir Khan won’t recommend any one except Kiran Rao or Imrran Khan .

Some day , I’ll also talk about premium features of LinkedIn. 

Tweet