As hard as it sometimes can be to accept, stress is not something that is happening to us, but rather it's something that is manufactured from within our own thinking.

For instance, there are people who are perfectly happy and claim to have virtually no financial stress on very little income. On the contrary, there are people with a lot of money, but seem very insecure.

Small things about big things.

Dare to experiment

WHEN was the last time you did an experiment? In your school physics lab? Too bad, because Stefan H.Thomke argues in Experimentation Matters that every company's ability to innovate depends on a process of experimentation. If you are too worried about the cost of all those broken beakers and wasted chemicals that are the byproducts of experimentation, the author has a comforting thought: "Never before has it been so economically feasible to ask `what-if' questions and generate preliminary answers." Read on:

Large companies often spend millions of dollars to correct late-stage development problems but underestimate the savings of early experimentation. New technologies are most powerful when they are deployed to test what works and what does not work as early as possible — the `front-loading' effect.

Uncertainty about technical and customer needs can be resolved quickly via a process of iterative trial and error experimentation. A case in point is stereolithography, a technology that allows companies to create three-dimensional plastic objects from CAD drawings in a matter of hours, thus providing a quick and cheap way to turn design concepts into real and testable objects.

Every day, Bank of America processed 3.8 million transactions — including more checks than the entire Federal Reserve System. Even a 99.9 per cent success rate would still mushroom into over a million mistakes a year and expose consumers to problems, ranging anywhere from late paycheck deposits to bill mispayments.

It was feared, therefore, that `experiment' and `mistake' would be considered synonymous. Yet if consumers wanted Swiss watch movement precision for their money, they also craved Mediterranean warmth for their service experiences.

Experimentation with many diverse — and sometimes seemingly absurd — ideas is critical to innovation. But when people experiment more rapidly and frequently with the aid of new technologies, the inevitable happens: many novel concepts fail. Early failures are not only desirable but also necessary since unfavourable options can be eliminated quickly, letting people refocus their efforts on more promising alternatives that often build on ideas that were initially unsuccessful.

Predicting where value will migrate — and knowing how to capture it — will be crucial as customer toolkits become more widespread. Many companies already offer so-called product configurators that enable consumers to obtain a mass-customised version of a standard product — such as computers, eyeglass frames, automobiles and even Barbie dolls. General Mills is planning to introduce a Web site that will allow consumers to mix and match more than 100 ingredients to create their own breakfast cereal.

It would be a mistake not to experiment, even if there are mistakes in the experiment.

A six-pack

PACKING six books in one is Management Skills Manual from Penguin. It comprises finance and budgeting for line managers, report preparation, letter writing, discussion on interpersonal skills, tips on meetings and time management. A sampler:

Useful pocket guide for managers.

Failure formula

AS COMMON as the rich-boy-loves-poor-girl, twin-brother-gone-missing, and such themes is the usual corporate tale that the blurb of a new book portrays: "A great company breaks from the pack; the analysts are in love, the smiling CEO appears on the cover of BusinessWeek and Fortune, the stock explodes. Employers, stockholders, vendors, and customers are happy. Two years later, the company is in flames, the pension plan is bleeding, the CEO is under attack — or even indictment — and the stock is worthless."

Sydney Finkelstein's Why Smart Executives Fail and what you can learn from their mistakes is the offshoot of a research project on leadership failure. What the author finds astonishing is this: "Businesses that seemed to have nothing in common turned out to have failed for exactly the same reasons. Even the excuses that failed managers offered turned out to be the same in case after case."

So, why do top executives flounder? Not so much because of greed or ineptitude, but because they "choose not to cope with innovation, misread the competition, brilliantly fulfil the wrong vision, cling to an inaccurate view of reality, ignore vital information, and identify too closely with the company." Here's more about failure:

People defending yesterday's answer will invariably point out how successful it has been. But companies operating with yesterday's answer are assuming that a formula that worked in the past is still valid today. In a world of rapid change, this is often not the case.

Businesses that believe too much in their own mission are always in danger of becoming missionaries. Instead of letting customers express what they need, these companies tend to tell customers what they need.

Don't fail to read the book about failures.

(Books courtesy: Landmark, Chennai. www. landmarkonthenet.com)

Tailpiece

"Some books are for the byte."

"Looks like you are too hungry?"

"No, I mean the computer books."

ReadingRoom@TheHindu.co.in

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