What do you think you are doing?

This is a guest post from a very good analyst friend MA, he had worked for long time in stock market as analyst and then switched to non-stock market job/company for brief period. He narrated this incident that I have written below from his point of view.

What do you think you are doing?

Long time ago there was one Analyst; he was very intelligent and smart. He left stock market to join a company that was in total different business compared to stock market. Company actually manufactured actual product and sold, unlike stock market where product is more of idea (stock idea/ stock recommendation)

Given Analyst has been born & brought up with habit of reading daily newspaper, he would discuss pretty much everything that could impact any organisation – like interest rates (finance), competitors launching new product or new tie-ups or new promo, M&A, big recruit moving from one organisation to another, update on raw material or suppliers front , etc etc. He would interact with lot of office people and he would be shocked to know that most of people working in office are actually less aware about stuff that goes around outside office. Things that would be reported in newspaper and easy to become alert about, he would always wonder why people would just not read simple newspaper.

Once such afternoon, he was reading newspaper and CEO walked in, Analyst nodded in respect and CEO came nearby. Analyst greeted him and CEO said in very grudging voice “what do you think you are doing?” Analyst replied “just trying to move some orders and trying to reduce our freight cost”. CEO gave irritating look, points at newspaper and says “what is this?”, Analyst looks and is about to answer newspaper when he realises what blunder he has committed. Office order newspaper but that is just for show or for outsiders not for office people to read it. Analyst closes newspaper and shoves in it drawer as quickly as he could and that’s when CEO says “if you want read newspaper sit at home, don’t come to office”

This story is applicable to most organisations that work in every other area apart from stock market. Most CEO believe reading newspaper equals to wasting of time, even though that’s first thing every B-School ask its student to do. For that matter most parents also encourage their kids to read newspaper for developing & improving reading habits and also to get to know world around at large. One ought to read as much as possible, however not believe every world written in it.