Information is Power yet....

This has been one of my favourite statements since MBA college days. This term was first coined up by the erstwhile POWER TEAM. However I feel foolish now thinking about the name we were given by our classmates. Im sure we could have developed a better name than that.

A bit about the POWER TEAM first. 3 of us constituted the POWER TEAM. Lets keep the members anonymous for the time being and call them 1 2 and Me.

About No. 1. - Tall, Lean, Intelligent, Smoker (Intelligent and Smoking are synonymous in most B schools). This guy was the balancer in the team. His analytical ability, ability to drill holes in any theory stood him in great stead as compared to the other two. He was more brain and less heart. An absolute team man.

About No. 2. - Fat, Intelligent, Wierd, Aloof, Chandraswami (i hope i got this right). People were scared to be friends with him. This guy was good. Creative. His ability to read people and surroundings made him a class apart. People never really understood him. However i dont blame them. Anyone would feel hes being watched with No. 2 around. Surprisingly No. 1 and Me didnt care as we read him more than he read us. Ah enuff, lets move on.

About Me - (ill try not to boast) Intelligent, Smart worker (not hardworking at all), The computer Wiz. My core competence in the team was to collate all data in Raw form and present it in a manner that would be used at some corporate meeting after years of research. (I was bloody good at that).

The Power team together worked on several projects, sometimes we would just hit the nail on the head at the first shot. Eg. We were doing a case study on a Crane Company entering India and some problems it had faced. It was a chance visit to Escorts and a magazine at the reception table. Bingo. The case was cracked. We knew exactly which company our professor was referring to. There you go. We scored 100s of brownie points in class. There were other occasions we would slog through information, google it, and present it as it were being researched it for last 3 years.

Somewhere down the line i think No. 2 coined the term.
Information is POWER
We began to swear by this statement. When projects began, our first goal was to get information, which more often than not was FREE. Library, Internet, Export Associations etc.(we must have dug out tons of imformation from the APEDA office for an export project).

If you look at real life, Im still following the same principles. Especially when i go to a new place, i dont leave without maps. Be it train maps, routes, info on just about anything. Its just me i guess.

In Business if you look at things around you, you can make any decision provided you have the information. All you need is a good rapport to get you information be it within the organisation or outside of it.

along the way this statement got modified a bit by Me, while the Power team still existed. I just added the following.

Information is Power - yet so many people are powerless

now go try and figure this one out.