GMAT AWA: Analysis of Argument, Preparation continues

A sample question from Analysis of argument section :

The following appeared as a part of an advertisement for Adams, who is seeking reelection as governor:
“Re-elect Adams and you will be voting for proven leadership in improving the state’s economy. Over the past year alone, 70 percent of the state’s workers have had increases in their wages, 5,000 new jobs have been created, and six corporations have located their headquarters here. Most of the respondents in a recent poll said they believed that the economy is likely to continue to improve if Adams is re-elected. Adams’s opponent, Zebulon, would lead our state in the wrong direction, because Zebulon disagrees with many of Adams’s economic policies.”
Discuss how logically convincing you find this argument. In your discussion, you should analyze the argument's line of reasoning and use of evidence. It may be appropriate in your critique to call into question certain assumptions underlying the argument and/or to indicate what evidence might weaken or strengthen the argument. It may also be appropriate to discuss how you would alter the argument to make it more convincing and/or discuss what additional evidence, if any, would aid in evaluating the argument. (Taken from mba.com’s official question pool.)

The Analysis of argument section tests your ability to bring out the logical inconsistencies in the given argument, simultaneously testing your skills in three dimensions: critical, analytical and writing. The sample question above is clearly distributed in two parts, first the argument and then the directive. The argument gives you the base for analysis while the directive tells you what to do with the paragraph quoted above. Once again the structuring details discussed in Analysis of Issue post remains to be the same. Also plotting out examples continues to help here also as it did in Analysis of Issue.

There are however some differences from the Issue section, First one being you are not supposed to take sides here. You just have to examine the post in question like a “Wise” critic. Do not try to prove the author wrong or right, all you need to do is just point out the unsubstantiated facts and anecdotes plotted out by the author and then back up your arguments with examples. Don’t worry, in general the questions that appear for this section has cases where author has made some assumptions. All you need to do is feed on them.

Now Lets start preparing:

1. I hope you have set aside adequate time for preparing for this section. Anyways, follow this link to EssayEdge website. Of all the sites available I found it to be most useful. The website covers the main features to be covered for Analysis of Argument section, along with the timings. The link is as follows: Game Plan for Analysis of Argument.

2. This done, you may now find the sample essay. What’s the most striking thing here is there are hardly any conflicts between the suggestions given above and the sample here.

3. Still, analyse the essay from length perspective, example perspective, structure and itsconsistency with the suggestions given in Essay edge section. This exercise will help the suggestions sink in.

4. This done, you can goo through the official question pool. But then don’t start preparing answers for each of them. This is just to give you an idea of what to look out for while researching.

5. Yes now comes the researching part. Try to find the generic examples from Google. You will be required to fit and quote them in the essay.

6. Start practicing at least one or two essay under timed mode.

As usual, this post too is not my brainchild, rather it is a product of rigorous research work. Following are the links of the site that I rate best (Even Google does so!!!). Other than the sites linked above , I recommend Rediff page for some more tips.

Book Review: The Monk who sold his Ferrari

This one review was pending since a long time. I read this book quite sometime back. After that I read its “Counter” book “I bought the monk’s Ferrari” and just went ahead to write its review. But then there was a reason why I waited so long. Actually the review of this book should not ideally be on the blog, (why? You’ll find that out soon), but then you see I am so talkative that I just can’t stop ranting about everything I know.

First of all I rate the book five out of five for the point it makes. The protagonist Julian Mantle, who is a hotshot lawyer, is hugely successful professionally. A descends from reputed family background. A brave, intelligent and hard working lawyer who rarely looses a case, just collapses with heart seizure on one fine day. Reason? As Julian fought his way to the top, he started loosing out on personal front. The hectic hearings schedules and his drinking habits had severely taken a toll on his health.

By now you must have guessed it what follows. Yes Julian sells off all his belongings along with a Ferrari and goes on search of salvation to Himalayas. Julian also happens to be a lucky ones to make it the Shivanas (The holy adobe of great Indian Saints and not easily accessible to everyone). Till this part the story is narrated by his secretary. After sometime, Julian returns back from his journey to spread what he learnt.

The author makes much sense here as he talks about self improvement, self realization and goes on to give a must do for a better life. But then I was not able to make it to the end of the book. As I went ahead reading the book I kept getting a feeling that bug of ambition within me was getting starved by the thoughts imparted by the author. There is something that I am striving for, something that all Entrepreneurs are striving for and while you are into this pursuit someone comes and makes you believe that whatever you long for is worthless!!! How will you react to this? Once again the reaction depends on your determination.Once again I reiterate, the book is one of the best life improvement books available in market, but then be clear of your priorities before you get a copy for yourself. Cause the author’s persuasive style of writing is just irresistible.

I signed up for PPP (Pay Per Post), A stride towards fund raising

“You as a person are identified with the kind of Decisions you make”. You may associate this dialogue with a popular SpiderMan series, but then the sentence carries a million dollar sense. As an aspiring Entrepreneur I finally decided to go for Payperpost program that pays you for blogging. The site is a market leader in its domain and has a robust system in place.

The Type of blogger I am...

I am a blogger and not Internet marketer. My posts are not the best SEO articles. I do want to earn , but then I want to make money by blogging not just blog for making money. Making life easier for my readers remains at the top of my priorities.

Why did I decide to go with Payperpost as my Income Source?

I did monetize my blog before with advertisements, but that has restricted scope. Something most impressive about Payperpost is the multiple streams of Income that you can benefit from.

To name a few:

1. Get paid to post.

2. Affiliate Income

3. Get paid to get your article reviewed

4. Increase your income by increasing your visibility by networking with experienced fellow bloggers

5. Get the advantage of using well researched blog improvement tips and a lot more.

That “lot more” tag comes because I am a new blogger at PPP and it will take me some time to
find out about all the opportunities available.

How did I stumble upon it?

I firmly believe that if you want to blog more, you should read more and thus that makes me a blog hopper. It was just another day when I came across a blog which said you can make money blogging with PPP. The idea fired a series of queries in my mind, which I fired back at Google and after considerable amount of research I found the standings of the site.

At the end of the day what matters is your credibility and ability to create a buzz in the Blogosphere. This will come only when you associate yourself with market leaders and that is what I am precisely aiming at!!!

Book Review: Who moved my cheese?

It’s been long since I wrote on Book reviews now. One reason being my inability to read new books now. The GMAT thing has just taken the better of me. Anyways I couldn’t resist this book as I was about to make a two hour journey to my sister’s place.

“Who moved my cheese?”, I heard the name of this book for the first time when the VP of a subunit from my organization cited the relevance of this book in today’s scenario. The book is two hours read, but serves as a life time guide. What makes it different is not the story, but the review and application of the main story in question. The book follows a very curious style of narration followed by friends who actually discuss the ways how they applied the story in their real life in different scenarios.

The book is about school friends’ reunion, where one of the friend actually goes ahead to narrate the story of “Who moved my cheese?” The story is about two mice Sniffy and Scurry and two little people “Hem” and “Haw”. These creatures lived in some sort of maze land having cheese stations. Every morning they would run around in the maze to find cheese, till one day when they found a cheese station with huge cheese reserve. All four of them were excited to find it and happily started feeding on it. However one fine day the cheese got over and they had nothing to eat. Sniffy and Scurry who had already sensed this much before, moved ahead into the dark maze to find the new cheese station. How ever Hem and Haw, being little people had complex thought, stayed back to cry over the loss. The story is about how Haw, later, went ahead to find his cheese.

The book has motivating and insightful points highlighted in separate pages (A thing worth going for). What makes the book even more beautiful is the discussion that follows. First of all, the friends decide the character they resembled the most in their real life and then they discuss how they propose to apply it in their real life. The application they discussed ranged from their current Business to how they propose to improve their married life with the help of this story.

To sum up, the book weighs much more than it looks like, but then how much one imbibes from it depends on whether you are Hem, Haw, Sniffy or Scurry!!!

Start Up Plan - Time your actions

As I mentioned in my previous post on start up that things start getting infinitely postponed once the unknown director is missing. So the first important thing in a start up is Start Up Plan. The Start Up plan requires setting up a Goal. As I have mentioned in my Entrepreneurship Basics post. Then the goal needs to be broken up into Long term, mid term and short term goals. Each short term goal has some characteristics. Find out more about them here. Having done this, now you need to map your goal to the actions. These actions will in turn be bound by plans. Now the factors that you should keep in mind for planning:
1. Your own capabilities. Do not over or underestimate yourself. Try keeping those tasks first in which you have some experience. Don’t hesitate from outsourcing or taking help from the right resources when you are not sure about something.
2. Keep flexible timelines in beginning. You can tighten up your schedule as you gain experience with the work.
3. Give time for letting learning curve develop. The better it gets the faster you become.
Now the things you will be required to do for getting a right Start Up in place:
1. As I mentioned set up a SMART goal. Chase the short term goal first. Modularize the goal into set of actions. Bind these actions into time frame, and stick to it.
2. Now comes the concept that gave birth to your start up. This needs to be effectively conveyed to masses. The media for this conveyance is your brand. Your brand represents the soul of your Start up. It’s your brand that actually needs to be promoted.
3. Know who you are selling your products or services to. Find out their purchasing capabilities, the disposable income they possess the requirement for your product or service. Armed with this fact, you can customise your product.
4. Further steps would require your budget in place. Once you have decided the upper limit, you may channelize the budgets proportionately.
5. It’s now the turn for advertisement. This part requires you to know the various media prevalent in the target audience region. You may choose any or all media based on your budget.
6. Now create the benchmarks for you progress. The parameters for success or failure of any step will be defined by these benchmarks as you go ahead
7. Create a plan keeping all the above factors in mind. But keep in mind the “Paralysis of Analysis” adage. Once the start up plan is in place, stick to it.
8. Once the modules start getting implemented, check its progress against the benchmarks you have set. Find out the variance of the actual from projected. This helps in further planning.
Last but not the least; Take all your time to put together the Start Up plan. But once outlined, stick to it against the heaviest of odds.
Note: The concept of the post is derived in parts from http://www.startups.co.uk/ site.

"Too late to go for this kinda Start up"

You said that??? You feel you have a brilliant idea backed by plan, but then there are already established players who are into the sector and that there is no part of market left for you to capture? Wait a second; you need to reconsider your view. If you are a good strategist, you can very well make out that the global market is too big for any one to capture all alone. The market is huge and you never know which section of it may lap up your product or service. Yahoo! Mail is the market leader in its section, but then that never stopped Google to join the league with Gmail and I suppose Gmail is faring well... Isn’t it? Well you may argue that Gmail was backed by Google and that you don’t have even nuts backing you (Gosh you are so pessimistic). Well then here goes a legendary story from Indian software sector, which has now made deep impressions across the world IT community.
Cognizant Technologies (CTS), which is usually termed as “Johnny-come-lately” in India’s IT sector, now features in Top four of the sector, only after Infosys, TCS and Wipro which came in market a decade before CTS. Earlier the companies that ranked with it are nowhere in the league now. There is famous story that every CTS employee loves to narrate. The story goes as... During early days of CTS, there was a lucrative project up for bidding. There were big players bidding for that along with TCS. TCS which was already an established player by then gave the presentation demonstrating it’s credentials and experience in similar kind of project. The clients looked nearly convinced and TCS was all set to take away the project, when Laxmi Narayanan, now the chairman of CTS, came in with his team for a short presentation and went on to say “I know TCS has given a great presentation and that it has demonstrated its experience in the field. But then for I am a product of TCS, my team mates are a product of TCS and the projects and tools which TCS was talking about were developed by us, who are not with CTS” The rest they say was history.
Moral of the story? Irrespective of who you are, what kind backing you have (or for that matter, you don’t have any); if you are clear with your strategy, you have right kind of expertise and experience then there is nothing stopping you. But let me reiterate the three basics... Clear strategy , experience and expertise are a must. Cause in case you venture into a new field with inexperience, you wont be sure of yourself, then how do you expect your clients to be sure of you? Do i llok like making some point here???

Naming a Start Up and Branding

Sources: Kishore Biyani’s “It happened in India”, Internet and my online experiences.

I decide to play safe as I move ahead with my views and ramblings. As such whatever information you have on start ups or for that matter any other issue, you get it from some book, some site or magazine, but then if you write about them people hold you up for Intellectual property rights violation, however if you mention the source you are not offending the cause of the writer, thus this post begins with source’s list. Lest my segment on Start ups (along with the full blog) ends up even before it starts up. However as you can make out, a lot of reading has gone into creation of this article of naming and branding of a start up. (This usually is the case with my other articles too)
Coming to point... Once you have thought of going ahead with a start up, the first thing you do is think of the naming your start up. How ever what immediately crops up in our mind is “Why create so much fuss about naming a Start up and is it all that a serious issue worth a eight hundred word discussion?” I suppose yes it is. As a common man, we commit a serious mistake of ignoring the minute but obvious details of business. My personal learning of this issue comes from my experience with Google Adsense. Once you have an account approved you’ll get know that Google has gone to an extent of minimizing our eye movement as we read through an ad or an article. No wonder Google is a leader in its segment. Talking on same lines, giving a right name to a start up is one such detail. Actually a name is something with which a start up gets recognized with. Mark me when I use the word recognise. Actually the word “Recognize” not only means being known, rather it also refers to the brand that takes the onus of our product or service. Yes, that’s the point I was dying to mention, before naming your start up keep in mind a long term vision of your product or service going places and that it will be known by the brand name you keep now.
Thus a name like “sam’s cafe” or “tom dick and harry consulting” is a strict no no for any kind of start up. Rather a name should be such that it should be able to click some kind of curiosity in the prospective customer’s mind. Always remember that whenever you start up finds a new customer, it won’t be because the customer had a premonition that you have got a great product or service but it will be because of your branding and advertisement. What’s worth noticing here is that the name of your start up plays a prominent role in both brand building and advertisement.
So here are the few characteristics of good name:
1. The sole purpose of a well thought name for your start up should be creating a stir in the brains of customer and at the same time relate closely to your start up’s product or service. Just think, in one day how many advertisements do you come across? How many of them you actually remember? The names you remember would usually fall in two categories. First one, you come across a familiar name and the second one the name clicking the chemical process of thought and logic in your brain. However under any circumstances you will not even bother to recall what product or service the company named XYZ corp had to offer. So as an owner of budding start up I have just one of the two choices left, i.e. Going for a start up name that clicks logic and reasoning in a human brain. Cause becoming a familiar name for everyone is actually not possible for nascent start up.
2. The name should relate directly to product or service your start up has to offer. Don’t ever get emotional enough use your start up for carrying your family name or for that matter your kids’ name. However your name can also be used to carry forward your vision for your business, you society or country or your countrymen. Doing that will certainly endear your product to masses.
Once you have taken care of these two facts, I suppose your brand can have the potential to rename that product or service. Confused??? What the hell do I mean with renaming a product or service? Well then tell me what will you do when you want information on something on internet. Will you search it out or will you “GOOGLE” it out??? That’s what a name is!!!