Halo Effect

I went through an interesting theory called "the Halo Effect". It is a psychological theory where we loosely attribute characteristics to a thing based on our feelings/opinions from other events. An interesting example of this theory is the case of successful companies like the Tatas. They are highly successful and the reason for this success, we all assume, is the trust factor in the minds of the customer. But, the problem here is that not all companies that consumers trust are successful. A classic case in point are banks that have recently failed. People trust banks and their trust has not resulted in extraordinary profits for the banks. Therefore, terms like trust are mostly factors attributed to successful firms retrospectively and might not be the factors that contributed to success.

This concept is a good learning to isolate the right factors that contributes to success of a business or to any of our conclusions. A humerus way to remember this effect would be to remember the Vadivel comedy, "vellaya irukuravan poi solla matan".

PLAYING FOR PIZZA - Book review

An infamous top NFL player from the US fails big time in a do-or-die game. The whole nation goes on a rampage to troll his failure. In fact, he was never a big fish in the NFL and always was considered a back up for the main players. Although he was a devout footballer who always tried to give his best, he didn't have the talent to shine in the biggest football league. After his failed stunt in the final of the NFL, which led him to the hospital, he was dumped by all the major teams and his future looked rather bleak. 

His agent, though, never gave up on him and tried to hunt for teams that needed a solid quarterback. He tried contacting teams from the US and once his search turned futile, he started looking for teams from other countries where the American football had not yet taken root. He finally manages to find a team in a minor league in Italy that  offered a meager fee along with stay and a temporary car. Our star though was not very excited about joining a random league in a random country. But finally, as he needed a break from the routine insults in his country, he agreed to join the club for a season.

The story moves to Italy, where the players were very excited to have a quarterback from the NFL. Our hero, though, was impressed more by the food[pizza] and girls of Italy. He liked the the culture that valued people more than money and he started respecting his team mates. He started hanging out with the team mates often for food and wine and has a nice time. He also finds a cute American college girl who had been in Italy on a study tour. In the meantime, he gets a glamorous offer from a mid-level Canadian club which he dumps. This part of the story is very impressive as the hero doesn't get attracted to money and commits himself to his contract. 

The story ends on a happy note with the Italian team, with its star quarterback, winning the trophy after a tough fight and our hero gets popular in Italy as well as in his home country, the US. Even though he spent a year adding virtually nothing to his bank accounts, he finds happiness both in his professional and personal life. 

Moral of the story is, there is more to life than money.